Atlantis Beneath the Ice Read online

  9560 BCE

  Change in the path of the sun

  Worldwide earthquakes of extraordinary violence

  Overwhelming worldwide floods

  Island

  Continent (larger than Libya and Asia)

  High above sea level

  Numerous high mountains

  Impressive cliffs rising sharply from the ocean

  Other islands

  Abundant mineral resources

  Beyond the Pillars of Heracles (known world)

  In a distant point in the “Atlantic” ocean

  In the real ocean

  The Mediterranean Sea is only a bay of the real ocean

  The true continent completely surrounds the real ocean.

  THE ANCIENT GREEK WORLDVIEW

  The Greeks of Solon’s time saw the world as an island in the middle of a vast ocean. This world-island was divided into three important cultural units: Europe, Libya, and Asia.

  The Pillars of Heracles were a psychological barrier, a forbidden gateway beyond which none but the foolish would dare to venture (see figure 4.4). The Greek poet Pindar (518–438 BCE) wrote that the Pillars were considered “the farthest limits [of the Greek world]. . . . What lies beyond cannot be trodden by the wise or unwise.”13 This original concept of the phrase “Pillars of Heracles” is often forgotten or ignored by searchers for Atlantis, who assume only a literal interpretation of the phrase, thereby limiting the location of the lost continent to the North Atlantic.

  What the Greeks called “Libya” described the area we know as North Africa. Their “Asia” was equivalent to the present-day Middle East. Only their “Europe” matched its contemporary area. In an encounter described by Plato 2,500 years ago, Sonchis told Solon that Atlantis was larger than Libya (North Africa) and Asia (the Middle East) combined—a match with the size of Antarctica.

  Figure 4.4. The Greek worldview at the time of Solon. The Straits of Gibraltar were then known to the ancient Greeks as the Pillars of Heracles.

  Plato added that compared to the “real ocean,” the Mediterranean Sea is “but a bay having a narrow entrance.” In describing Atlantis, he stated, “To begin with the region as a whole was said to be high above the level of the sea, from which it rose precipitously . . . [and the mountains] were celebrated as being more numerous, higher, and more beautiful than any that exist today.14

  A description of Antarctica, published in 1992 (more than twentyfour centuries later), offers a strikingly similar geographic account. “The most conspicuous physical features of the continent are its high inland plateau (much of it over 10,000 ft.), the Transantarctic Mountains . . . and the mountainous Antarctica Peninsula and off-lying island. The continental shelf averages 20 miles in width (half the global mean and in places it is non-existent).”15 Like Atlantis, Antarctica rises high above sea level. Indeed, it is the highest continent in the world.

  Average Elevation in Feet16

  Figure 4.5. Antarctica has a set of islands that are obscured by today’s ice sheet.

  Geologists, using the theory of plate tectonics, have concluded that Antarctica was once joined to the mineral-rich lands of South Africa, Western Australia, and South America, and so they have reasoned that similar mineral resources must be locked beneath its frozen soil.

  Two of the geological clues could only have been confirmed by modern science. In 1958 it was discovered that Antarctica, contrary to what we see on most modern maps, is not a monolithic landmass, but rather an island continent adjoined by a group of smaller islands not visible to the naked eye. Although these neighboring islands are covered by a fresh ice cap, seismic surveys have penetrated their blanket of snow to reveal the true shape of the island continent. An ice-free map of Antarctica unveils the “other islands” mentioned in Plato’s account (see figure 4.5).

  THE ATLANTEAN WORLDVIEW

  Ultimately, every search for the lost continent must answer to Plato’s detailed description of the island’s geography. When we step outside the comfort zone of our distorted cultural perception, Antarctica passes Plato’s test. Plato’s account provides an accurate, global view of the world as described to a Greek with a limited view of the earth. Although different from our current perspective, it is accurate if we imagine ourselves residents of Antarctica. Atlantis is described to the Greek as being beyond his known world (Pillars of Heracles), and encircled by a vast body of water called the “real” ocean. Compared to the real ocean, the Mediterranean Sea is “but a bay having a narrow entrance.” The real ocean was the world ocean. Plato’s chronicle states that, when seen from Atlantis, the “real ocean” appeared to be framed by an unbroken mass of land that “may with the fullest truth and fitness be named a continent” (see figures 4.6 and 4.7).

  Figure 4.6. These features of Plato’s Atlantis correspond directly with a worldview centered on Antarctica: a single world ocean, a surrounding whole opposite continent, some islands off Atlantis, the Mediterranean Sea is but a bay of the “real ocean,” and the size of “Libya” (North Africa) and “Asia” (the Middle East) approximates the actual size of Antarctica. Drawing by Rand Flem-Ath and Rose Flem-Ath.

  Figure 4.7. The Atlantean worldview. Drawing by Rand Flem-Ath and Rose Flem-Ath.

  The map above reconstructs this ancient worldview. It shows the earth as seen from Antarctica before the last earth crust displacement and the catastrophic destruction of Atlantis. Due to the lower ocean levels at the time, England and Japan were not islands and Beringia joined the Americas with the Afro-Euro-Asia continent, forming the unbroken world continent.

  Sonchis said that Atlantis was “larger than Libya and Asia combined; from it there was passage for the sea-farers of those times to reach the other islands, and from them the whole opposite continent which surrounds what can truly be called the ocean. For these regions that lie within the strait we were talking about seem to be but a bay having a narrow entrance; but the other ocean is the real ocean and the land which entirely surrounds it may with fullest truth and fitness be named a continent.”17

  Every search for Atlantis is built upon the foundation of these two sentences spoken by an Egyptian priest twenty-five centuries ago. The priest claimed the location of Atlantis was recorded in Egypt’s most ancient records, presumably originally written by a survivor of the lost land. When compared to figure 4.7, this Atlantean account of the earth becomes exactly what Plato claims: an accurate depiction of a real place at a very specific time.

  After the catastrophe, torn and shattered, abandoned to a freezing death, Atlantis lived on with a strange fascination in the memories of peoples scattered throughout the globe. Shreds of the past and wisps of recollection were woven together over the centuries.

  Remnants of this delicate fabric of history eventually came into the hands of the learned Egyptian priest, Sonchis. Many rare documents had no doubt passed through the hands of this honored priest, but the story of Atlantis he carefully wrapped, sending it intact from generation to generation through the voice of Solon and, eventually, Plato.

  These words were spoken around 600 BCE. As can be seen from the map in figure 4.7, they describe the earth as it would have been mapped by someone from Antarctica almost twelve thousand years ago as he or she looked out to the wider world.

  From this perspective Plato’s account is an accurate depiction of the entire globe as it would have appeared in 9600 BCE. Plato relates that this finely tuned geographic knowledge originated with the survivors of Atlantis, who passed their maps to the ancient Egyptians.18 Only an advanced civilization could have achieved such a highly sophisticated conceptualization of our planet.

  Despite the evidence before our eyes, we lost sight of Atlantis because we inherited the skewed worldview of the European explorers. But if we remove that prejudicial lens, the earth’s contours fall into place like the final pieces of a puzzle to reveal a crystal-clear image of Atlantis in Antarctica.

  FIVE

  THE LOST ISLAND PARADISE

  To this point, w
e have been exploring through words and ideas and images on maps that have been passed down to us through the ages, pointing us to Atlantis. But now we take a different approach, using the modern science of genetics to draw a link between the ancient pharaohs of Egypt and a native people of Canada, half a world away. But how could these distant people be connected? Perhaps, through Atlantis?

  Off the northwest coast of Canada lie 150 islands known as the Queen Charlottes. Incongruously named after a long-dead, bewigged, British aristocrat, this exquisite place was more suitably christened Haida Gwaii, or Islands of the Surface People, by the Haida, who have occupied the land for at least ten thousand years.1 They believe that they live in a special place suspended between the sky and the sea gods. The Haida’s wood, shell, and bone carvings are world-famous. But their art reaches its fullest expression in the haunting features of the totem poles that still stand guard in some isolated inlets.

  This fog-swept, rugged area of the 150 scattered islands cradles some of the oldest living forests in the New World. The great trees have thrived there because the western edge of the islands remained unglaciated during the last ice age.

  The Haida celebrated elaborate traditions like the potlatch, a means of distributing wealth among all the people, until the practice was savagely repressed by the Canadian government. The ruthless new order was further enforced when Haida children were pressed into residential schools and forbidden from speaking their own language under pain of severe punishment. The scythe of tragedy continued to cut through the people when in the summer of 1862 a plague of smallpox, helped along its deadly path by government intervention, killed 83 percent of the population.2

  Despite this painful recent history, the Haida are enjoying a renaissance. Their culture is intimately tied to the land and sea, and that bond is reflected in their magnificent art, which is among the most sought after First Nations’ art in the world.

  Like the Egyptians, Greeks, and other ancient peoples, the Haida feared for the safety of their home when earthquakes shook the land. They placed their faith in a god who restrained the buckling earth and secured the sky from falling. “Sacred-One-Standing-and-Moving . . . is the Earth Supporter; he himself rests upon a copper box, which . . . is conceived as a boat; from his breast rises the Pillar of the Heavens, extending to the sky; his movements are the cause of earthquakes.”3 If the Earth Supporter ever lost control of the Pillar of the Heavens, the ensuing catastrophic effects would mirror the events of an earth crust displacement: earthquakes, the illusion of a falling sky, and a disastrous worldwide flood.

  A Haida legend tells of a time before the Great Flood when their ancestors lived in a magnificent city in a distant land.

  The great chief of the heavens . . . decided to punish this great village . . . he caused the river waters to rise. Soon the rivers and creeks all over the country began to swell. Some of the people escaped to the hills, while others embarked in their large canoes. Still the waters were rising higher and higher until only the high mountain peaks showed above the swollen water. . . . [The Haida ancestors landed on a mountaintop.] When the Flood was over, the lost stone anchors were found there, at the place where they had anchored their canoes.4

  The Haida language, which the people are making a heroic effort to preserve, has never satisfactorily been pigeonholed by linguists. It is usually grouped with the Na-Dene First Nations language.5 The Na-Dene language may be related to the language of the Sumerians, who created the world’s first known civilization in the vicinity of Iraq six thousand years ago.6

  As we will see, the Haida and the people of the distant land of ancient Sumer share many things, from cultural traits to genetic traits, but before we can link them, let’s examine Sumer a bit. The Sumerians domesticated rabbits, goats,a sheep, wheat, rye, and barley. In northern Syria, on a mound overlooking the Euphrates River, archaeologists have discovered one of the oldest remains of agriculture in the world.7 For hundreds of thousands of years, people in this part of the world lived by hunting and gathering. Suddenly within the same century as the fall of Atlantis, they turned to agriculture.

  Radiocarbon dating at Tell Abu Hureya revealed that by 9500 BC some early villagers had begun to practice farming alongside their hunting and gathering, domesticating wild rabbits, goats, sheep, wild wheat, rye, and barley. From these early developments arose what archaeologists believe was the first civilization after Atlantis—Sumeria—which began to flourish around 3300 BCE.

  Three gods were held in high esteem by the Sumerians. The first, Enlil, was known as the lord of the air and the king of kings. He was the most worshipped and feared because he wielded the most destructive weapon: the power of the Flood. “The word of Enlil is a breath of wind, the eye sees it not. His word is a deluge which advances and has no rival.”8

  Enki, the second great god, was the lord of the earth and the god of waters. The Sumerians believed Enki saved them from the Flood. He overheard the birth of a conspiracy between the flood god, Enlil, and the third powerful god, the sky god, An, in which they planned to destroy mankind. Enki determined that he would save one man and his family from the coming disaster. He chose Ziusudra, a king and priest living on the island of Dilmun. A Babylonian myth records Enki’s words: “Destroy thy house, build a vessel. Leave thy riches, seek thy life. Store in thy vessel the seeds of all life.”9

  We learn the fate of Ziusudra’s ark from the original Sumerian tale, which states, “When for seven days and seven nights, the Flood had raged over the land, and the huge boat had been tossed on the great water by the storms, the Sun-god arose shedding light in Heaven and Earth. Ziusudra made an opening in the side of the great ship. He let the light of the hero Sun-god enter into the great ship. Before the Sun-god he bowed his face to the ground.”10 The vessel comes to rest on the top of a mountain in the Middle East. Like Noah, Ziusudra and his family must begin life anew.

  In 1899, the lost Sumerian culture offered up another legacy. A team of American archaeologists were excited when they unearthed thirty-five thousand tablets from a treasure trove that contained the written records of the world’s oldest known civilization. They were from Nippur, the ancient Sumerian city dedicated to the flood god, Enlil.

  Such a rich find could reveal the very roots of civilization. According to the tablets, those roots were to be found in a place called Dilmun, a mountainous island in the ocean. Most of Dilmun’s people had perished when the sky god conspired with Enlil to destroy humankind. The survivors escaped the Flood in a great ship (in which they stored “the seeds of all life”), sailing to a mountain near Nippur.11 The tablets said that Dilmun, the island paradise from which they had fled, lay across the Indian Ocean12 toward the south—toward Antarctica.

  BASIC ELEMENTS OF HAIDA AND SUMERIAN MYTHS

  The Haida and the Sumerians share a remarkably similar story of their origins.

  The basic elements of the Haida myth are: Long ago, our ancestors lived in the world’s largest village. Life was carefree until the chief of the heavens decided to destroy humankind by changing the sky and bringing a worldwide flood. Survivors escaped in giant canoes, which took them to a new home, where they landed on a mountaintop. A new era began.

  The basic elements of the Sumerian myth are strikingly similar: Long ago our ancestors lived on the island paradise of Dilmun. Life was carefree until the flood god Enlil decided to destroy humankind by changing the sky and bringing a worldwide flood. Survivors escaped in a large ship which took them to a new home, where they landed upon a mountaintop. A new era began.

  The rain-drenched forests of Haida Gwaii lie half a world away from the sun-baked plains of Iraq, yet their mythologies and languages share critical elements. It is unlikely that they made contact even though they both have a long tradition of ocean voyages. But could it be that they shared a common motherland? It was this curiosity about the similarities between the Haida and the Sumerians—the possibility that they could be connected through memories of a lost island paradise to the south�
��that Rand Flem-Ath (coauthor of this book) took with him on his first visit to Haida Gwaii.

  The Haida carver and master jeweler Gwaaib was intrigued by the similarities between his people and those of ancient Sumer and Greece. He shared his knowledge of the many Haida myths celebrating the plants and animals, the sea and earth that are so precious to the people who have occupied these beautiful islands since the time of the Great Flood.

  Gwaai told Rand about Foam-Woman, the great goddess who emerged from the sea to establish a dry home for those who lived beneath the ocean. She became possessive of the newly discovered land and prevented the other beings, confined to their increasingly over-crowded ocean, from joining her. The sea dwellers were too afraid to challenge Foam-Woman, even though they longed to rise from the water and become earthlings.

  Gwaai also revealed a story of the Haida carving tradition that dates from these ancient times. It is a tale about one of the smallest, most humble of animals.

  Only Mouse-Woman dared to challenge Foam-Woman. Mouse-Woman, who at this time was of normal size, rose from the ocean and scolded Foam-Woman for not sharing the new land with all the people. As she advanced on Foam-Woman the goddess cast a spell over her. With each step she took, Mouse-Woman shrank. Until finally, she was transformed into the tiny creature we know today.

  But Foam-Woman was so impressed by Mouse-Woman’s bravery that she yielded to the wishes of the sea people to join her on land.

  To honor the courage of Mouse-Woman, Gwaai and other Haida artists often conceal an image of a mouse in their carvings.

  Raven, one of the most significant creatures in Haida mythology,c is described as a serious-minded god rather than the trickster that he became. At that time, the myth says, “Hereabouts was all saltwater,” which suggests a time right after the Flood. And the “first land” was a rock protruding from the ocean, where Raven landed.