"From the hidden valleys of Tibet and the stunning pyramids of Mexico, to the icy wastes of the Antarctic and the deepest ocean trenches, our search for Atlantis will take us all across the world to seek out ancient clues of a civilisation" "that perished before history had even begun." "An object of endless fascination and relentless obsession, it is a quest through time and space to pivotal moments in human history" "as well as the dark side of man`s longing for perfection." "The myth of Atlantis has cast its spell over generations, each trying to find its own unique vision of this lost idyllic paradise." "Our journey will take us across oceans and continents and span 1 0,000 years of human history." "A journey to find a magical lost world." "The search for Atlantis has captivated some of the most restless minds and original thinkers of every generation." "lt`s a search that begins here, in the most glorious city of Ancient Greece." "Athens." "ln the 4th century BC, Athens was a city pre-eminent in all the world the very epicentre of classical civilisation and a beacon of cultural and artistic excellence that has shone through the ages right down to the present day." "And it was here, in the world`s first democracy, that the philosopher Plato wrote a story three and a half centuries before the time of Christ that is the first account of Atlantis in all literature." "The fact that Plato originated the story of Atlantis gave it a great amount of weight." "Plato was essentially the father of Western philosophy and because what he had to say was so important, has remained so important it became much more acceptable, much more respectable, if you will, than if someone else had written it." "Plato wrote his account of Atlantis towards the end of his life, but it was first told at a dinner party that took place when he was only a young boy." "An account that somehow he must have overheard." "The gathering hosted by Plato`s uncle was traditional to the day, where wealthy and learned Greek men would eat, drink, tell stories and exchange ideas." "Among the guests was Plato`s teacher the great philosopher Socrates and perhaps it was to be near his brilliant mentor that the young Plato sneaked in to listen to all that the men had to say." "The legend of Atlantis, he learned, was already generations old, handed down by a famous Greek sage and law-giver called Solon who learned the tale in Egypt." "Solon was one of the seven sages of Ancient Greece." "He was a very, very important person historically because he was a law-giver and he established the basis from which" "Athenian democracy eventually developed." "He was a poet and a scientist and a statesman, and one of the things that he did is to have visited Egypt." "It was almost like a pilgrimage that all the ancient sages made and in Egypt he first supposedly heard the story of Atlantis." "ln the holiest shrine of the ancient Egyptian capital," "Solon was shown records of unsurpassed antiquity the secrets of a long-lost age when a civilization of incomparable power and prestige had dominated the world nine thousand years before." "The empire of Atlantis." "The description the Egyptian priest gave to Solon of this mighty vanished civilization is the starting point for every search ever undertaken to find Atlantis." "A description which Plato says:" "" has the great advantage of being a fact and not a fiction."" "Atlantis was said to lie beyond the Pillars of Hercules outside the Mediterranean Sea in an ocean we now call the Atlantic." "Plato was very, very specific about where Atlantis was and what size it was and he described it as being larger than the continents of Africa and Asia put together and he located it very carefully outside the Pillars of Hercules." "The Pillars of Hercules are what we know now as the Straits of Gibraltar, and when you locate something outside the Pillars of Hercules you are locating it in the Atlantic Ocean just to the west of Spain and North Africa." "Atlantis was dominated by a vast, almost perfectly rectangular plain, surrounded on three sides by high, very beautiful, mountains." "Possessed of abundant natural resources, rare plants and precious flowers of every description, even elephants and other exotic animals," "Atlantis was a land like no other where the people wanted for nothing." ""That sacred island, which then beheld the light of the sun, brought forth infinite abundance and the blessings of the earth."" "He tells us about the flowers, the plants, the kind of metals the people used." "The kind of the way that each canal and each channel is built." "He puts in elephants. ln fact it`s only the second time that they are mentioned in Greek literature when Plato describes Atlantis." "What does all that piling up of detail and very strange detail do?" "Well it does two things." "First, it makes it very exotic and something very strange, but because there`s so much of it also makes it seem real." "On the edge of this plain, facing the open sea, was the spectacular capital city of Atlantis." "Laid out in a series of concentric circles of land and water." "The circle for the Greeks, for Plato in particular but for the Greeks in general, the circle is a perfect geometrical shape." "Circular motion is a perfect kind of motion." "By building it in circles, he allows it to manifest that geometrical perfection that he finds the world really exhibits, even if we don`t see it every day." "Each ring of land was home to new wonders and marvels." "There were docks for huge numbers of ships and a causeway over which they could offload the riches that were coming into Atlantis." "ln other words everything that human beings could need was available in Atlantis itself." "Connected to the ocean by an immense canal a hundred feet deep and several miles long, at the very centre of the city was the dazzling citadel of Atlantis," "which housed the most spectacular treasures that ever graced the earth." ""They had such an amount of wealth as was never before possessed by kings, and is not likely ever to be again."" "Plato tells us that for long ages the Atlanteans lived at peace with the rest of the world on their beautiful island paradise." "Unspoilt by their material possessions and great wealth, they were concerned only with learning, cultivating virtue, and living in harmony with nature." "Yet finally this Golden Age passed and the Atlanteans became like other mortals." "" Human nature got the upper hand." "They became tainted with unrighteous ambition and power."" "Insatiable for wealth and glory, the Atlanteans pushed forward the bounds of their empire enslaving all before them." "Finally only one city stood between Atlantis and world domination, Athens." "But here at the hands of the Athenians, the armies of Atlantis suffered a crushing defeat for the first time, a defeat that was swiftly followed by a natural disaster that laid waste to most of the world completely destroying the islands of Atlantis." ""Violent earthquakes and floods and in a single day and night of misfortune the island of Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea."" "And within a day and a night both Atlantis and the Athenians who fought the Atlanteans disappear from the face of the earth." "The only ones who are left are a few uncultured, as the Egyptians tell Solon, Athenians who no longer remember the story of their triumph against the foreign invaders and that`s why they have to learn it again from the Egyptians when Solon visits them." "It was this tragic tale, first relayed to Solon in Egypt, which many years later was told at an Athenian dinner-party." "A story that might have been entirely lost were it not for the uninvited young guest who it seems remembered every word." "All of the other guests scoffed at this incredible story of a lost paradise, all save Plato`s teacher, Socrates." "ln order to convince the others of the story`s truth," "Plato`s uncle agreed to explain more." "Zeus, he said, had convened a council of the gods, and spoken to them thus." "But at this point Plato`s account abruptly stops." "lt`s almost as if something or someone prevented him from writing more." "Why did he never finish the story?" "We don`t know why he never finished the story." "He stopped it in mid- sentence actually and we can assume that he intended to finish it he didn`t die at that moment and in fact there are works of Plato`s that can be dated after the completion of Timeaus and Critias," "the dialogues in which Atlantis is discussed." "Nevertheless, Plato`s short account of an after-dinner conversation was the beginning of a myth that continues to inspire and provoke twenty- four centuries later." "Strangely though, despite Plato setting up the world`s first university called the Academy, the subject of Atlantis seems to have been largely neglected by his pupils." "The myth of Atlantis, the story of Atlantis is one that people seem to have been disputing about from the very beginning, whether it was true or not true, and we have one of his successors who actually believed it was a true story which suggests" "that there are others who didn`t believe it was a true story." "However, what is interesting about the story of Atlantis is that unlike many other stories, that people knew not to be true, this inveterate race of story-tellers never picks up to make anything of." "We don`t have versions of Atlantis in the same way we have versions of the Trojan War or of Jason`s expedition to get the Golden Fleece or all the other great stories of Greek mythology." "Nobody picks up that story to make something of it." "It sort of sinks very much in the way that Atlantis itself sank in the depths of the ocean for a very long time." "The myth of Atlantis would be lost disappearing into the shadows of the Dark Ages." "It wouldn`t be until European explorers inaugurated an age of discovery that the search for a lost island paradise began with fervour." "A search that would begin with the dogged pursuit of a mythical isle by history`s most famous explorer, Christopher Columbus." "The Holy Inquisition of Spain." "Men of God scour the land, searching for any sign of deviation from the One True Faith." "ln less than a decade thousands have already perished" "Jews and Moors, lapsed Christians and social outcasts all consumed by the cleansing fire of religious zeal." "ln such an atmosphere of terror, Spain would seem an unlikely starting point for Christopher Columbus` unprecedented voyage of discovery." "Yet it was to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, the very people who had set the Inquisition in motion, that Columbus would have to appeal to finance his bold plan to cross the ocean." "Long neglected by the history books, the great navigator had a secret reason to undertake such a perilous voyage." "Columbus had heard of a lost island paradise of untold riches and wealth, a mythical land called Anthilia." "A land that had replaced Atlantis in the medieval imagination." "Since the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 6th century, much of the learning of Antiquity had been forgotten." "Suspicious of Pagan wisdom, Christianity had evolved a very different vision of the world, one defined by the battle between good and evil." "At the centre of this world was Jerusalem, surrounded by the three known continents:" "Europe, Asia and Africa." "Beyond this was a netherworld populated by people who were not descended from Adam and Eve." "Making them, in the minds of many,children of the devil." "But some, like Columbus had radical ideas about the real geography of the world, ideas that made him an obvious figure of suspicion." "Columbus had a great ally:" "knowledge." "Knowledge gained from travel stories and maps of dubious origin." "Knowledge that might threaten his very life." "It took Columbus a very long time to convince Isabella and Ferdinand that he ought to be able to find something because for the most part his ideas were ridiculed and this was of course during the Inquisition so that people" "who had strange or antithetical ideas were not only ridiculed." "They were sometimes burned at the stake." "Mocked and abused, even by children, it had taken Columbus eight long years to persuade" "Ferdinand and Isabella to finance his voyage." "They did so for trade." "Muslim conquest of the Holy Lands had reduced their valuable commerce with the Far East to a trickle." "A new route to the riches of the Indies had to be found." "Up until the mid fifteenth century, all of these precious goods got to Europe by way of overland caravans but in 1 453 when the Turks invaded, they cut off these trade routes so if the nations of Europe" "wanted to get these goods, they had to find an alternate way and that would have to be a sea route." "Above all, maps were the key." "To a European King a map was treasure beyond anything else in the world because it gave him access to the new world, to treasure, to the future." "And everybody kept their maps under lock and key and to to steal a map from another country was a great coup." "Armed with the most recent maps of Europe`s best cartographers," "Columbus had a better picture of the world than most of his contemporaries." "His maps were much like our own, save for one all-important exception the undiscovered continent of America was entirely absent." "These maps also suffered from another dangerous defect." "No one knew what lay in the Atlantic itself." "The ocean was a mystery." "It was a fearful undertaking, it was one that one would not be taken lightly and there was still the existence of legends of sea monsters that would grapple with their ship and pull them down." "And there`s always the problem of the potential of making it there, but can we make it back?" "Christian folklore suggested an ocean teeming with islands, but how many of them really existed?" "There was one mythical island whose existence the great navigator considered absolutely certain:" "Anthilia." "I don`t think it was doubted that Anthilia existed and it was constantly shown on maps." "No one ever doubted it." "lts position was always in the middle of the Atlantic and it would have been what they called the `stepping stone route`, that Columbus saw this as a good stepping stone on the way to the far east." "According to the writing of his son, Ferdinand," "Columbus` fascination with Anthilia began when he met a one-eyed sailor in the Azores." "It was while sailing in the Azores, that my father, the Admiral, met a one-eyed sailor to seek the story of Anthilia." "The sailor claimed to be a survivor of an expedition that had glimpsed this legendary realm, and told him of a land of seven cities founded by seven bishops in the distant past." "Home to wonders and marvels beyond the imagination," "Anthilia was said to be a land of limitless wealth even its beaches were sprinkled with gold." "The final motive my father, the Admiral, undertook was the hope of finding, before he arrived in the Indies, some island and land of great utility." "An island of great utility that was almost certainly Anthilia." "We only have Columbus`journal." "We know that he thought he was looking for the Indies, but we know also that he was looking for gold and spices and riches and certainly at least part of what he was doing was looking for Anthilia or Atlantis." "On August 2nd, 1 492, as Columbus finally set off on his epic voyage to cross the Atlantic Ocean, he had not one, but two goals in mind." "Crossing the endless expanse of an uncharted sea." "And discovering the mysteries of an island called Anthilia." "History has recorded only scant evidence for the events of Columbus` momentous journey." "We do know that when his expedition was twelve days out from the Canary Islands and two thousand miles from Spain, he ordered his tiny three-ship fleet to set a north westerly course in precisely the direction that Anthilia was thought to be." "Two days later he ordered the ships to turn west again and two days after that they set a course south west." "After six days of searching, Columbus abandoned what appears to have been a frantic search for Anthilia." "The decision probably saved the expedition." "Columbus had made a potentially fatal error in common with the mapmakers, he had estimated the size of the world based on calculations of Arabic scholars." "Now the problem is that measurement was made in Arabic miles which are much longer than Italian miles with the result that the er, all geographical thinkers take the Earth to be much, much smaller than it really was." "On the 1 2th of October, after nearly three months at sea," "Columbus and his men finally made landfall." "They had crossed the vast ocean and reached the Americas." "Returning to Spain a hero, Columbus managed to persuade the king and queen to support three further voyages to colonise the New World." "But Anthilia and its legendary riches were never found." "lts name now lives on in a chain of islands in the Caribbean Sea: the Antilles." "When the Caribbean colonies he established, rebelled against him," "Columbus suffered the ultimate humiliation." "Dragged back to Spain in chains, he died a broken man in 1 506." "But without realising it, Columbus had played an essential role in the history of Atlantis." "They expected to sail across the ocean and bump into Japan but there was a whole continent in the way and this therefore, especially because it was across the Atlantic Ocean, this gave rise, I think, to much more speculation about Atlantis." "A good example of how the legend has been adapted or is different in each age, is the time of great discoveries." "When Columbus was crossing the Atlantic in search of the Spice Islands, he knew the myths." "He wasn`t a stupid mariner just hoping to head off and find something on the far side of the ocean." "He was looking for things related to the Atlantis myth." "We know that other seafarers were doing the same thing at the same time so there was actually one of the impetuses for the exploration westwards across the Atlantic, was the Atlantis myth." "Amid the spectacular ruins of the New World, the story of Atlantis would now take a different turn:" "becoming the focus for one man`s bold quest to discover the truth about his country and himself." "Thirty miles from modern- day Mexico City, lies Teotihuacan, the spectacular `City of the Gods`." "It was already an abandoned ruin long before the time of the Aztecs, who regarded it as the birthplace of the sun." "The Spanish conquistadors had been so overwrought by the city`s majesty, one of their earliest chroniclers had written:" ""There is now no cause why we should any longer doubt of Atlantis the discovery and conquest of the Indies do plainly declare what Plato had written."" "A hundred and fifty years after Columbus had discovered America, such sentiments would inspire one man to come to this city of silence and search for physical proof of the lost legacy of Atlantis, a search that was bound up" "in his own quest to discover himself." "Though much of his story has been forgotten," "Don Carlos Seguenza was among the most brilliant men of his age." "A poet, mathematician, astronomer and engineer," "Seguenza was also one of the first archaeologists in history." "Born in Mexico City, Seguenza was a Creole and considered an inferior by the country`s Spanish rulers." "Seguenza was a Creole, which means he was descended from Spanish parents." "Although we know now that perhaps there were Creoles who had part indigenous blood." "They were not at the same level as Spaniards." "That they were not equal." "They were inferior." "Overcoming the prejudices of Mexico`s Spanish overlords had become Seguenza`s self- appointed task from an early age." "He was determined to prove that the ancestors of Mexico`s Indians had once forged a culture to rival ancient Rome." "Seguenza had first learned of Atlantis while studying to be a Jesuit where he came across the work of Athanasius Kircher, whose 1 665 map of the lost continent was the first in history." "Expelled from the Jesuit order for his lack of discipline," "Seguenza turned to science, making ground-breaking studies of eclipses before journeying to Teotihuacan to see the city`s ruins for himself." "What he found there overwhelmed him." "Carefully measuring and recording everything he could," "Seguenza found Teotihucan`s lay-out truly mystifying." "A puzzle that appealed to his mathematical talents and would bring him back to this ruined city time after time." "The city bore all the hallmarks of an advanced civilization and Seguenza found evidence of astronomy, hieroglyphic writing, and pyramid-building that was uncannily similar to that of ancient Egypt." "He saw many parallels between Egypt and the early Mexican culture in the calendar, in the way of dress, in the hieroglyphics and in the pyramids." "Could the two civilizations have been related?" "" l have been stimulated by the great love which I have for my country, and in which would be found exceedingly strange information." "These data will probably die with me on account of my great poverty."" "But fortunately some of Seguenza`s works did survive and we know that amid these vast monumental ruins he believed he had found the answer to the ancient riddle of Atlantis." "What he was trying to do, I believe, was to connect Atlantis" "Plato`s ideas, with the Bible." "Seguenza would have jumped from the myth of Atlantis, which would have been kind of the foundation for him, to biblical prophecy of people dispersing across the globe after the deluge." "Fusing scientific ideas with his deeply-held belief in the truth of the Bible, Seguenza concluded that the destruction of Atlantis and Noah`s flood had actually been one and the same event." "A vast deluge which had swept away a forgotten civilization, whose survivors sought refuge in both Egypt and Mexico where they built the pyramids before vanishing from history." "Seguenza believed that if he could show that Mexico`s pyramids contained hidden chambers, as the pyramids in Egypt do, his theory about Atlantis would be confirmed." "Under the hot Mexican sun, Seguenza and his servants spent many days trying to find a way into the abandoned city`s pyramids." "But the attempt ended in failure leaving Seguenza frustrated and in despair that he could ever convince sceptical Europeans of the true achievements of Mexico or its connection with Atlantis." "Even worse, disaster was about to strike." "ln 1 691 , a riot broke out in Mexico City." "Provoked by cruelty and mistreatment from their Spanish overlords," "Mexico`s native population rebelled." "Fires spread throughout the city." "A mob broke into the Viceroyal Palace and set the country`s national archives ablaze in one senseless act of vengeance." "Seguenza raced to the scene." "The archives contained countless documents that dated back to the time of the conquest." "It was a vast body of evidence in which Seguenza hoped one day to find proof of his theories about the Atlantean origins of Mexico." "Again and again Seguenza plunged into the inferno, trying to save whatever he could." "ln desperation, he began paying rioters to salvage books from the flames." "His entire wealth spent on saving just a few records." "" l cut beams and pried open doors and by my own efforts the best archives of the city were rescued from the fire."" "Because of his efforts, much of our knowledge of early Mexico and its conquest has been preserved." "Tragically, after his death in 1 7 01 , most of Seguenza`s own works were lost." "With no means to date the great citadels and pyramids of Teotihuacan, Seguenza could never have known that the city did not reach its height until 7 50 AD ten thousand years after the date Plato gave for Atlantis` destruction." "But Seguenza was right about the secret of these pyramids." "They did contain burial chambers hidden deep within them a fact that was only discovered three centuries after his death." "Don Carlos Seguenza was the first Atlantis seeker to search for physical proof of the lost continent." "But he was not alone in wanting to cast new light on an ancient legend." "Across the ocean in 1 7 th century England, two courtiers of Queen Elizabeth I were also immeasurably broadening the scope of the quest for Atlantis." "One of the reasons that by the 1 7 thcentury the Atlantis myth had become re-introduced was because there was much more exploration under Elizabeth I and there was a renewed interest in science, in Elizabethan England." "This obviously would have encouraged people to re-open the Atlantis story and therefore people began once again, if not to look for it specifically, certainly to refer to it specifically." "Francis Bacon was a statesman, playwright and one of the first modern scientists." "Eager to promote the merits of science to still a largely unscientific world," "Bacon wrote a fable called "The New Atlantis" , the first re-working of the myth since Plato." "The New Atlantis told the story of how survivors from the original Atlantis had founded an idyllic society in the still unknown reaches of the Pacific Ocean, and used science to uncover the mysteries of the universe." "Like Plato, he left his story tantalisingly incomplete." "Bacon refers to Plato so this was the origin of his story but it is not seriously an attempt to resurrect Plato`s Atlantis but to create a Utopian society that the British could look at as a way of re-writing the way people could live together." "But Bacon`s linking of Atlantis to advanced technology would stay with the myth ever after, as would Atlantis`s association with a rather different field of human investigation." "Dr John Dee was an alchemist, spy, philosopher and physician." "Astrologer to the Queen herself," "Dee was also the most famous magician of the Elizabethan age." "Using a method of crystal-gazing," "Dee claimed to have communicated with the spirits of Atlantis in a series of terrifying occult experiments." "Both Dee and Bacon considered their Atlantis work so subversive they refused to publish anything about them in their own lifetimes and it would be England`s great rival, France, that opened the next chapter in the story of Atlantis." "When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1 7 99 he took with him the largest collection of scholars ever to accompany a military campaign." "The finds and discoveries made by Napoleon`s archaeologists generated a national obsession with all things ancient." "ln time inspiring a fellow Frenchman, Jules Verne, to take the story of Atlantis from the arcane libraries of a few lonely scholars into the imagination of the whole world." "" Here were the encrusted remains of an Acropolis, with the floating forms of a Parthenon, here were the vestiges of an ancient port on the shore of a vanished sea, which had once given shelter to merchant ships and craft of war." "Further still, was the outlines of crumpled walls and long lines of wide, deserted streets, an ancient Pompeii buried beneath the sea." "Atlantis."" "Jules Verne`s image of Atlantis in `20,000 Leagues" "Under the Sea` was perhaps the most spellbinding description of the lost city since Platos." "It was published in 1 8 7 0." "Enormously popular book." "The drawings that accompanied the book showed people marching around in Greek, sunken Greek temples and this is course was a kind of interesting concept and probably was the element that got people more and more interested in Atlantis," "the idea that underwater you could walk around in sunken Greek temples." "Written in the 1 8 7 0s as the effects of the lndustrial Revolution and new technologies were rapidly changing the world," "Verne`s story of undersea exploration was a prescient guess at the shape of things to come." "It was really a Da Vinci kind of prophecy." "The general population of the day had no idea about the oceans really." "Most people didn`t know how to swim." "Most people certainly had never been under water." "All they knew was that the ocean was populated by monsters of one kind of another that probably ate ships and certainly ate people." "Verne`s description of Atlantis, located in a abyss of undersea volcanoes in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, was so convincing that within a decade it would inspire a writer half a world away to prove that Atlantis truly did exist." "Here in his study in Minnesota, Ignatius Donnelly, a failed politician, wrote one of the greatest best-sellers of his age, making him the founding father of the modern hunt for a real Atlantis." "His ideas launched a wave of Atlantis-mania that has been with us ever since." "A former congressman and Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota," "Donnelly had railed against the tycoons of big business who controlled the politics of the day, choosing to champion the cause of the common man." "His idealism unfortunately brought only political and financial disaster." "He started a commune in Minnesota with a man called Nininger." "The commune was called Nininger City." "It didn`t seem to work very well as an idealistic commune and by the time it was over, there was exactly one resident there and that was Ignatius Donnelly." "By 1 880 Donnelly was out of office and down on his luck, and so he retired to his study to begin the work for which he is now most famous a book entitled Atlantis the Antediluvian World." "Donnelly had studied Plato as a boy and the story of Atlantis had always intrigued him." "With time on his hands he decided to read everything and anything he could to find out once and for all the truth about Atlantis." "Donnelly had been galvanised in his quest to find the location of the sunken continent by an archaeological find that had thrown all preconceived ideas about the myths of the ancient world into chaos." "Ten years earlier, German businessman turned archaeologist," "Heinrich Schliemann uncovered on the coast of Turkey the ruins of the city of Troy and many of the treasures from this mythical war between Greeks and Trojans." "When Schliemann discovered Troy it completely changed the way people looked at mythology and archaeology." "Before Schliemann people had thought that what Homer had written was fiction." "He made this up, there wasn`t really a city of Troy, but what Schliemann did was he read Homer carefully and he figured out, correctly, where Troy would be located if you performed a literal translation of Homer." "It was this astonishing find that persuaded Donnelly that if Schliemann could discover Troy by carefully re-reading Homer, then he too might discover Atlantis by re-reading Plato." "Obsessed in his quest, Donnelly tirelessly searched for Atlantis in everything around him until a thesis slowly began to emerge." "Donnelly found evidence of Atlantis having existed in the similarity of plants, animals and ancient cultures on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean." ""We find on both sides of the Atlantic precisely the same arts, sciences, religious beliefs, habits, customs and traditions." "It is absurd to say that the people of the two continents arrived separately at precisely the same ends."" "The pyramids of Mexico were very similar to the pyramids in Egypt." "Their methods of writing, the hieroglyphics were very similar." "So he deduced from that there must be a common source which must lie somewhere in between those two continents therefore in the middle of the Atlantic." "But where in the Atlantic might the remains of the lost continent be?" "By an amazing coincidence the British Navy had just conducted the first undersea survey of the Atlantic seabed." "It indicated that deep beneath the Atlantic a vast ridge of undersea mountains stretched from Iceland to South America: their highest peaks being the islands of the Azores and the Canaries." "For Donnelly the riddle was solved." "These undersea mountains had once been wholly above the surface, but due to their volcanic nature had sunk destroying Atlantis in the process." "When it was published in 1 882, Donnelly`s book" "Atlantis the Antediluvian World was an overnight bestseller that portrayed Atlantis as a highly advanced seafaring empire with colonies all over the world." "An empire that Donnelly believed:" "" Lived under a kingly government and had their courts, judges, records, their boats, their highways, aqueducts, wharves, docks and canals." "They knew the use of the magnet and of gunpowder." "ln short they were in enjoyment of a civilisation nearly as high as our own."" "Donnelly`s book sparked debates from every fashionable salon to the most prestigious academies of science." "Atlantis-fever swept the nation." "ln 1 883, the New Orleans Mardi Gras even adopted it as its theme." "Letters of congratulations arrived from all over the world, including one marked only Ignatius Donnelly, America." "To Donnelly`s astonishment it came from William Gladstone," "Prime Minister of the British Empire." "Though much pressed by public affairs, I have contrived to read an already appreciable portion of your book and I am much disposed to believe in Atlantis." "Gladstone sent this letter and addressed it to Ignatius Donnelly Esquire, America." "And Ignatius being an Irishman and not wishing to be outdone decided to reply to him and his reply said:" "The Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone, The World." "" l could not but smile." "I was corresponding with a man whose word was fate anywhere in the British empire." "I could have uttered a war whoop of exultation."" "Because his book was so popular, people tended to believe that it was fact." "A good parallel, I think, is with Peter Benchley`s book `Jaws. `" "What Benchley has the white shark doing in Jaws does not actually happen but think about how many people read this book and became absolutely terrified to swim in the ocean." "It is possible for people to take what is essentially a work of fiction but if it`s presented cleverly enough and if it has enough science woven into it, to believe that its absolute fact." "Flushed by the overwhelming success of his book," "Donnelly, now a wealthy man, turned his attention to the truth behind other ancient myths." "But none of his other books ever came close to matching the success of `Atlantis the Antediluvian World.`" "Disappointed he returned to politics, again without success." "He died in 1 901 ." "ln many ways politics was his undoing." "There`s a quote from an obituary which says the memory of Donnelly the politician will die, it is for Donnelly the author which we weep." "Which I thought summed it up." "Donnelly`s book began a tradition of armchair exploration that has accompanied the search for Atlantis ever since." "The father of Atlantology, Donnelly was the first man to convince the public that Atlantis really could be found." "Little did he realise that his work would prompt a search for the lost continent that was literally out of this world." "ln the late nineteenth century a new fad swept America." "Spiritualism took the country by storm." "Here, in the New York apartment of an eccentric Russian aristocrat, the story of Atlantis was about to move into a whole new dimension." "Helena Petrovna Blavatsky arrived in New York in 1 8 7 3, penniless after years of travelling the world." "But she was soon to become one of the greatest occult gurus of the modern era: the herald of a New Age of spirituality in which Atlantis would hold the key to cosmic enlightenment." "She was very ugly in conventional terms, and her dress sense was not very good." "Somebody once described her as a badly wrapped parcel or looking like a badly wrapped parcel." "She smoked like a trooper, she swore like a trooper in broken English, she had gross eating habits." "She`s thought very rarely to have washed, and so she wasn`t really a very good prospect in terms of any gainful employment." "The only talent she claimed to have was an affinity to spirits." "With her air of cultivated mystery, her almost incomprehensible Russian accent and her outlandish behaviour, Madam Blavatsky soon became one of the stars of New York seance scene." "Revealing to her guests, through a series of bizarre spiritual contacts, that she was in communication with mysterious forces." "Mysterious forces from Atlantis." "Although exposed as a trickster on numerous occasions, somehow Madam Blavatsky`s appeal just kept on increasing." "Before long Madam Blavatsky attracted the attention of Colonel Henry Olcott, a former member of the committee that had investigated President Lincoln`s assassination." "The two soon moved in together." "They called each Jack and Maloney which doesn`t suggest a sexual relationship, but they did live together." "They lived together perhaps as pals, chums, friends." "Mysterious letters soon began appearing all over the apartment." "Written in her own handwriting," "Blavatsky claimed these materialised letters had been dictated to her by Cosmic Masters who were eager to inform Olcott of their shared mission." "The messages told him he`d been admitted into the secret order of these Cosmic Masters whose ranks included such great spiritual teachers as Christ, Buddha, Confucius, Solomon and Plato." "A very few people are admitted to this wisdom, and the knowledge of Atlantis is part of that wisdom, because, of course, the continent of Atlantis was the original settlement of these arriving cosmic masters, coming from a different part of the universe" "to set up, as it were, human life or what was to become human life." "After Atlantis` destruction the Cosmic Masters had retreated to hidden valleys in the Himalayan Mountains venturing out only rarely to monitor the progress of the human race." "Blavatsky claimed she had first encountered these Cosmic Masters when she herself had been travelling in Tibet many years before." "Now after an apprenticeship of twenty years, the Cosmic Masters wanted her to bring about a New Age of Spiritual Enlightenment with Olcott`s help." "ln 1 8 7 5, the two companions set up an organisation dedicated to universal brotherhood, the investigation of man`s latent psychic powers, and spreading the wisdom of the East to the West." "They called it The Theosophical Society." "lncredibly, within a decade they had branches all over the world, including India, where Mahatma Gandhi would become a member." "You could say that without it the New Age wouldn`t exist, so in that sense it`s had hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of heirs who are members of other religious movements which owe a great deal to Theosophy." "There were, however, contradictions." "From the very start it was clear to Colonel Olcott that the woman entrusted with leading this New Age of Atlantean spirituality was anything but a model of Eastern serenity and contemplation." "He was a natural administrator, in a way, with a great deal of experience." "She was an odd ball, she was an eccentric, she was headstrong, she was reckless, she was mad, she loved stirring up trouble." "She loved dramas, she loved scenes," "She loved screaming, swearing she loved upsetting people:" "she wanted excitement." "ln 1 888 Blavatsky wrote a book called The Secret Doctrine in which she attempted to establish the principles of Theosophy or god-wisdom that the Cosmic Masters had imparted to her." "Blavatsky cited most of Donnelly`s theories about Atlantis with approval, but she had one major disagreement." "ln her opinion Donnelly`s belief in Darwin was a grave error and in one corner of her room sat a stuffed baboon as a constant reminder of how wrong she thought the theory of evolution was instead Blavatsky proposed that the Cosmic Masters of Atlantis" "had been the real progenitors of the human race." ""Occultism rejects the idea that Nature developed man from the ape tracing the origin of the species to the Third Race man of the early Atlantean period."" "Blavatsky argued that while some peoples, notably the Aryan Hindus, had retained the Atlantean purity of their ancient ancestors others had not." ""The Aryan Hindu belongs to the oldest race now on earth, the Semite Hebrew to the latest." "There was a day when the Israelites had beliefs as pure as the Aryans, but now Judaism has become a religion of hate and malice."" "Blavatsky`s linking of Atlantis to ideas of racial superiority would later be seized upon by the most sinister forces of the twentieth century." "Madam Blavatsky died in 1 901 , and true to form, the grandmother of the New Age refused to go quietly." "Her last years, alas, were fraught with endless traumas, because although she had officially retired from the Theosophical Society, she couldn`t stop meddling." "And being a hellraiser she took every possible opportunity to stir the pot." "So she died rather sadly really, because she was in the middle of a maelstrom of anger and scandal when she died." "But somehow that`s entirely appropriate." "One feels she rather enjoyed it." "Madam Blavatsky`s ideas cast a long shadow over the story of Atlantis, providing fertile ground for the mythmakers of New Age spirituality." "But ironically, it would be the propagandists of the Third Reich who would first seize upon her theories of a pure Atlantean race." "The year is 1 933 and in Central America one of the forgotten chapters in the story of Atlantis is about to unfold." "Deep in the Guatemalan jungle a German archaeological expedition believes it has unearthed finds which challenge many of our most cherished ideas about human evolution." "Buried deep in the earth are the mortal remains of a people who don`t even appear to be human, remains which local people believe to be the forgotten race of Atlantis." "From the moment the Nazis seized power in Germany in 1 933 they inaugurated a series of quests in search of fabulous objects and places from mankind`s earliest myths." "The Lost Ark of the Covenant." "The Holy Grail." "The Spear of Logenius, which pierced Christ`s side." "And the lost continent of Atlantis." "For Adolf Hitler, such places and objects held a dark promise of secret knowledge and limitless power." "If the Nazis could find them, their armies would be invincible." "Missions were dispatched all over the world from Wewelsburg Castle:" "the sinister heart of the Third Reich." "Built on the intersection of four prehistoric pathways called ley-lines," "Wewelsburg was believed to lie in a zone of magical earth-power and thus a befitting place for the home of the Nazis` most elite troops, the dreaded SS." "" Never forget we are a knightly order from which we cannot withdraw, to which we are recruited by blood."" "Headed by Hitler`s trusted lieutenant," "Heinrich Himmler, the SS modelled themselves on an order of knights." "The purest members of the Aryan race, they were the only men considered fit enough to such ancient secrets as Atlantis." "The search for these objects had a dual purpose." "On the one hand it made for great publicity." "I mean this kind of stuff just looks good in the headlines, you know, with the archaeologists out looking for the Ark, or have found the spear of Logenius and it`s coming to Berlin and you know, the archaeologists actually" "were out there in teams looking for these types of objects." "That is, in fact, an accurate element in Spielberg`s films." "ln fact there was a major concern within the profession that" "German archaeologists were going to become the laughing stock of their colleagues outside" "Germany because of this this type of lunatic fringe research." "How and why German archaeologists became so obsessed with pursuing these mythical objects and places, has its roots in the disaster of World War One and its terrible aftermath, in which the myth of Atlantis played a fateful role in the Nazis` rise to power." "The Great War had been greeted almost with celebration." "After decades of peace, European leaders saw a chance for the manhood of their nations to be tested." "Many people at the outset of the First World War, many extremely distinguished, sensitive, refined people were to be found writing peans in praise of the war, of the anticipated slaughter, because they believed it would spiritually purify Europe." "Well, they didn`t believe that for long." "By the war`s end millions lay dead and the map of Europe had been completely redrawn." "Defeated by the allies, the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires fragmented, leaving German- speaking people all over Europe feeling humiliated and deeply insecure." "Military disaster brought economic disaster and Germany plunged into chaos, an unstable hotbed of hyperinflation and extremist politics." "lnsecure about themselves and their role in the world," "Germans turned to history, hoping that in the ancient past they might find a way to reinvent themselves in the present." "We`re dealing with a nation, in the 1 920s in Germany which is going through a kind of identity crisis." "lt`s feeling under-appreciated and obviously it`s in search of symbolism that will allow it to feel better about itself, and basically it`s sort of a self-esteem issue and archaeology was one of the ways that" "Germans attempted to kind of create a picture of themselves that they could be proud of." "As archaeologists began excavating Germany`s remote past, so a number of `volkish` or `people groups` sprung up all over the country." "Formed to promote the unity of German-speaking peoples all over Europe, these `volkish` movements organised festivals and sports events which celebrated the strength and vitality of the German race." "Their members were also among the keenest advocates of a number of extremely unorthodox ideas that linked" "Germany`s past with the myth of Atlantis." "Published in the 1 930s, the novels of Edmund Kiss told the story of how in the long forgotten past an ice moon from deep space had collided with the earth bringing with it the seed of Aryan man." "Naturally superior to the ape-men of the earth, this Aryan race had established the world`s first civilisation on islands in the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantis." "Most incredible of all, Kiss`s novels were not meant to be purely fantasy, they were based on ideas which many Germans actually believed to be fact." "Edmund Kiss published a series of novels, at least four that I know of, `The Glassy Sea`," "`The Spring in Atlantis`, `The Last Queen of Atlantis`, and then there`s the sort of diaspora novel that talks about the eventual migration to South America." "And these seem to have been quite popular." "Certainly Himmler was a big fan, and Hitler believed that they were a true to life if fictionalised representation of what actually happened." "Kiss` Atlantean city closely resembled Plato`s, but in the place of a fantastic temple in the centre of the city," "Kiss put a vast war office echoing plans for the Nazis` rebuilding of Berlin." "From here the purest and most noble Atlantean leaders ruled an empire that spanned from the first cities of South America to the classical civilisation of Greece." "As Kiss wrote, "only time will tell where the limits of our power lie." "We must build a community that will demonstrate to all the visible signs of our Nordic blood:" "the whiteness of our skin, the blueness of our eyes, our freedom of spirit uncorrupted by the base superstitions of religion."" "Yet just as an ice moon from deep space had brought the Atlanteans to earth, so many ages later another would bring about their doom colliding with the earth and destroying their continent." "Kiss tells us the Atlanteans returned to the Arctic North, seeking safety in the ice and snow which had once given birth to them." "Far away from inferior races that might pollute their noble blood-lines." "The Aryans of Atlantis rejuvenated, purified by the icy environment of the north." "And there they reborned as the germans awaiting the day when a leader would emerge to resurrect the Aryan Empire of Atlantis once more." "What Hitler and Himmler both seem to like most about this was the cyclical nature of it and the fact that you could extend Kiss`s ideas into the present by arguing that Germany was again going through one of these periods where it had to purge itself," "where it had to be tested, basically." "It was beginning to become compromised in its superiority and purity,and that of course you need a leader to kind of guide you through this dark period, and Hitler was that leader." "So from a propaganda perspective, Kiss`s novels were, they were gold for people like Himmler." "Enthralled by the concept of an Aryan Atlantis," "German expeditions departed for Central America, where deep in the forest of Guatemala they set about investigating the overgrown ruins of the Mayan civilisation." "A civilisation that had reached its height long after the date given by Plato for Atlantis`s destruction." "It was nonetheless here that archaeologists unearthed strangely misshapen skulls that local people claimed to be those of Atlanteans." "This documentary film lost in the German archives, played to packed audiences in German movie-theatres in 1 933." "Not wanting to dispel the illusion of a great find, the archaeologists remained evasive about what they had really discovered." "These misshapen skulls were actually the result of an ancient native American practice, in which the heads of young children are bound and deformed for religious reasons." "But the Third Reich`s obsession with Atlantis and other myths went much further than appeasing the German public`s appetite for mystery." "ln 1 934, a year after this film about Atlantis was made," "Himmler formed the Ahenerbe, a specialist division of the SS recruited from some of the country`s best universities." "Though many members didn`t yet know it the Ahenerbe`s aim was no less than the reinvention of German history." "The academics and archaeologists who joined the Ahenerbe soon found their leader to be a difficult and troublesome taskmaster." "He had a habit of getting, you know, three o`clock in the morning, getting a sudden inspiration, jotting down a memo `find out why butterflies migrate` or `find out why crows tend to sort of gather at places of execution` and he would send this off to" "the appropriate unit, and you know, if you imagine this sort of appearing at someone`s desk and they`re looking at it thinking," "`where did that come from`, and if you were lucky he`d forget about it." "When war broke out in 1 939, and German armies swept across Europe the scientists of the SS Ahenerbe followed in their wake using archaeology to claim that the Nazis weren`t conquering territory, they were merely reclaiming land that once belonged to the Aryan race." "As the war progressed, the myth of Atlantis began to assume a far more malign role." "The lost racially pure homeland of Atlantis now became the model for the new Nazi Germany." "That meant removing elements that were not Nordic from the population, from the breeding population and from the culture." "And genocide then becomes an option, so I think the Atlantis myth plays a role there, quite definitely." "Generally the myths of a Golden Age are are extremely double-edged because they give authority and they give legitimacy to ideas which may otherwise find no justification." "Archaeologists and academics who had joined the SS" "Ahenerbe imagining they were knights of a new order searching for the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant and Atlantis, now found themselves justifying and implementing the indescribable terror of the Holocaust." "You could not claim today, although people have tried, that `oh well, we were just archaeologists, we didn`t have anything to do with the medical research or whatever was going on in the camps. `" "That`s not strictly true, because in effect Himmler made it impossible for people to completely remove themselves from what other branches of the organisation were doing." "Everybody was was part of this organic sort of web that had been created." "At the war`s end the full extent of the Holocaust became horrifyingly clear." "Himmler, the chief of the SS, cheated the executioner by suicide, while his footsoldiers the men of the SS Ahenerbe slipped quietly back into civilian life, anonymous, forgotten and unpunished." "The myth of Atlantis had come full circle transformed from the story of an earthly paradise into the ideology behind a genocidal nightmare." "Most of the men of the Ahenerbe escaped punishment for their role in the atrocities." "The archaeologists who survived the war seen to have done a pretty effective clean up job in the archives." "Atlantis`s connection with the Third Reich was forgotten almost immediately." "Nazi propaganda had hired the myth of Atlantis for deadly intents" "But across the Atlantic mythmakers of an entirely different sort were also re-inventing Atlantis as pure fantasy." "Hollywood!" "Most famous of all Atlantis movies is probably the 1 961 `Atlantis:" "the Lost Continent`, in which a humble Greek fisherman called Demetrius saves the beautiful Princess Antillia from the evil masters of Atlantis." "But `The Lost Continent` was only the most memorable of a whole genre of B-movie adventure films and serials that have continued to reinvent Atlantis." "Go ahead and ram!" " Ram the gates!" "There`s something about the Atlantis theory that everybody loves, and even now or in recent times people have used it in movies." "They`ve used it in novels." "There are serials made in the 1 930s about Crash Corrigan and the undersea kingdom of Atlantis, and a wonderful kind of idea of Crash, on a horse, riding through Atlantis, which looks very much like the Monument Valley in the American West," "because I think they just happened to be there and they said, `well, why don`t we make an Atlantis movie?" "`" "Okay, you put the saucepan on your head and we`ll do that." "From `The Man from Atlantis`, who sought to help the US navy protect the free world, to `The Warlords of Atlantis`, who wanted to enslave it, Atlantis has been portrayed in almost every conceivable way, except as a real place." "Astonishingly, that would all suddenly change." "ln the late 1 960s archaeological discoveries would bring" "Atlantis hurtling from the realm of fantasy and Hollywood B-movies onto the front pages of newspapers around the world." "Hidden in volcanic rock, on the Greek island of Santorini, scientists unearthed the lost city of a forgotten people, destroyed in an unimaginable catastrophe." "All the elements finally seemed to fit and the great city of legend would now make the world of science sit up and take notice." "Santorini, once called Thera, is a beautiful collection of small Mediterranean islands encircling a central volcanic hub." "With its breath-taking views and stunning sunsets," "Santorini is a magnet for tourists from all over the world who visit to sample the unique culture of the Greek islands." "But Santorini is much more than a picturesque holiday retreat." "Hidden under layers of volcanic rock are the remains of a once-proud city that perished in a terrible calamity over 3 5 centuries ago." "A city whose destruction many people believe gave rise to the myth of Atlantis." "The story of this momentous archaeological find began in the nineteenth century on another Mediterranean island" "7 0 miles south of Santorini, an island called Crete." "ln 1 899 the British archaeologist, Arthur Evans, had begun unearthing on Crete the remains of a mysterious civilisation which seemed to have been completely forgotten by history." "Based at Knossos, Evans uncovered the remains of a powerful sea-trading people who worshipped the bull and built large labyrinthine buildings, factors which encouraged him to name this unknown culture the Minoans after King Minos, a mythological figure" "from ancient Greek history, said to have been the father of the Minotaur." "The Minoans are probably the single greatest mystery in all of classical history." "We don`t really know where they came from and we certainly don`t know what happened to them." "But they were building these elaborate palaces and making these fabulous frescos long before anyone else was doing it this was fifteen hundred BC, and remember that the Parthenon and Plato himself existed around 3 50 BC." "It was while excavating a Minoan villa on Crete some 3 5 years after Arthur Evans that a Greek archaeologist called Spyridon Marinatos discovered evidence of a huge volcanic explosion." "When he reached the foundations my father found quite a large quantity of volcanic pumice." "And so he thought, What is going on here, was there a volcano?" "And he looked on the map and thought well the closest volcano is the volcano of Santorini when did this erupt?" "Based on provisional calculations, Marinatos estimated that the volcano of Santorini had erupted in around 1 500 BC." "It was a cataclysmic explosion." "Equivalent to 1 50 hydrogen bombs, the centre of Santorini was ripped open as 50 cubic miles of rock vaporised." "Debris was hurtled as far afield as Egypt and Israel, gigantic tsunamis overwhelmed coastlines everywhere in the Mediterranean and after-shocks were felt all over the world." "The island of Santorini was shattered into fragments of its former self." "lt`s the idea of cataclysm, something as violent as a volcanic explosion of that dimension is a bit like the extinction of the dinosaurs." "lt`s such a dramatic event that it must have been recorded in history somehow and the only evidence we`ve got of this eruption being recorded in oral tradition is the Atlantis myth." "Convinced that the explosion of Santorini held the secrets of the sudden demise of the Minoans," "Marinatos decided to investigate Santorini itself and look for further evidence of this lost civilisation, but war and a lack of funds held him back until 1 967, when almost immediately he discovered the remains of an ancient city, Akrotiri." "The first trial spot he hit exactly on the city of Akrotiri." "Marinatos` find made headlines around the world." "A forgotten people from ancient history wiped out in one apocalyptic blast." "Surely this was the real-life basis for the myth of Atlantis." "I think it was the spirit of the times the whole generation of my father capitalised on the fact that myths are true." "They reflect some distant reality of the past, and so as a result of that all we need to do is to search and we will find this core of truth." "So in the late 60s, and especially the 7 0s, people thought they had found scientific confirmation for the end of a culture." "And the next step was to say, Well, that`s Atlantis." "Entombed by a 30-foot layer of volcanic pumice for more than three and a half thousand years, the city was clearly related to the ruins on Minoan Crete." "Hundreds, if not thousands of years ahead of its time, among the city`s ruins was evidence of complex drainage systems, showers, flushing toilets, even hot and cold running water." "Here too were exquisite wall paintings, their rich colours preserved by the centuries of confinement, their subject matter unlike anything previously discovered in the region." "We look at the frescos and we see very free-flowing, beautiful art and it`s made scholars think of them as gentle people, people without any violence in them." "We find that the the cities and palaces on Crete are not fortified, so again we get this vision of a sort of utopian society." "Clearly the Minoans had been an exceptional and artistic people, far ahead of their contemporaries in many fields, but were they really the Atlanteans of legend?" "There were both many similarities and many differences between Plato`s story of Atlantis and the discoveries on Santorini and Crete." "Like the Atlanteans, the Minoans had been in contact with the earliest Greeks as well as the Egyptians." "But the Minoans disappeared from history nearer nine hundred than nine thousand years before Plato`s time." "And even though only a fraction of the city of Akrotiri has been excavated, so far it bears little resemblance to the city of Atlantis described by Plato." "It is certainly nowhere near the middle of the Atlantic Ocean." "Academic opinion remains divided." "What Marinatos found was very important." "He was able to produce evidence which could form the basis for at least part of the story of Atlantis, maybe not the whole thing but part of it and that was the crucial thing." "There is no comparison whatsoever between the Minoans and the Atlanteans." "The Minoans had a high level of culture but nothing extraordinary." "It was a very open society and they had an empire but it was run by a fleet, none of which seems to fit the description of Atlantis at all." "Nevertheless there is one group of people who stick firmly to the belief that Santorini was Atlantis, the islanders themselves." "The islanders of Santorini, the residents of Santorini obviously have a vested interest in making tourists think that they have found the lost continent of Atlantis." "And what do you get to do with that?" "You get to claim Santorini as one of the most important spots on earth and you also get to sell a lot of T-shirts, and mugs and posters and everything that is possible with the word Atlantis on it." "But the entrepreneurs of Santorini would soon find that they had competition in laying claim to the riches of being associated with Atlantis." "Only months after Akrotiri was unearthed, the hippy culture of the 1 960s discovered its own Atlantis and it reflected a very different image of the lost continent." "ln the summer of 1 968 the occupants of a small plane, flying off the coast of Bimini, near Florida, spotted beneath them mysterious shapes in the clear waters." "The site quickly attracted huge interest especially when fragments of ancient monuments were also found in nearby waters, known as the Bimini Road." "Could these strange misshapen rocks be the corroded ruins of ancient Atlantis?" "Their sudden dramatic appearance had been foretold by one of Americas most famous clairvoyants, Edgar Cayce." "Called the sleeping prophet because of the trance-like state in which he delivered his prophesies, Cayce had predicted that Atlantis would rise again in 1 967 or 1 968." "But the circumstances of the discovery cast a shadow of doubt on the risen Atlantis." "Not only had the Bimini Road been discovered by followers of Cayce, it also turned out that Cayce himself had been sponsored" "by a wealthy businessman to locate gold, oil or other mineral deposits in the Bahamas." "Unfortunately, on this occasion" "Cayce`s powers seem to have abandoned him." "l`ve heard that Cayce was in the employ of businessmen who believed he could actually find gold, and he, Cayce, then decided to produce Atlantis as some kind of substitute for that." "The fragments of ancient monuments also have another explanation that is far removed from the ruins of Atlantis." "They are almost certainly the remains of ships` ballast dating back to the time of Columbus when ships needed to take on board and later dump extra weight." "They don`t want all that ballast in a ship, you want buoyancy to get rid of the storm and there all of a sudden is a Corinthian capital from Rome or from what have you in the Caribbean." "Cayce also prophesied that a long-lost haul of Atlantean records would be discovered under the Egyptian Sphinx in 1 999." "Unfortunately these records have so far failed to materialise, further discrediting Cayce`s prophesies that Atlantis would rise again." "The Atlantis legend if you like has become a new religion." "lt`s a new age religion, it`s for all those people who are dissatisfied with what the conventional churches have to offer." "I think modern people look to, want to find something, something they can believe in even if it`s not reachable, not attainable so they search for a Utopia, a fabulous land and they try and believe in that, even though" "they can never really find it." "But hope springs eternal." "Using a dazzling array of hi-tech and low-tech equipment and spurning the skepticism of conventional experts, a new breed of fringe researcher continues to search for Atlantis." "ls it a search without end or will advances in new technology finally reveal the location of lost Atlantis?" "Based in Torbay, Engand, Jim Allen is a former aerial photography analyst for the British Royal Airforce." "And it is by analysing aerial photography that Jim Allen believes he has discovered one of the lost continents most distinctive landmarks the vast irrigated floodplain of Atlantis." "Many people talk about Atlantis, a lost continent, city, whatever you want to call it." "But nobody bothers to talk about the rectangular plain." "And the large part of Plato`s story is a very geographic description of this actual area." "Jim Allen believes that the continent of Atlantis was actually South America." "High up on the rugged floodplain in Bolivia, called the Altiplano, Jim thinks he has found the plain which Plato described:" ""There was a plain said to have been the fairest of all plains and very fertile it was smooth and even and of oblong shape and canals of a hundred feet were cut through it."" "Could the Altiplano of Bolivia really have been the plain of Atlantis?" "Despite several expeditions Jim has found concrete proof, elusive, and academic experts refuse to even examine his ideas." "Well some time ago I wrote to the leading archaeologist in Cambridge, who is head of a Cambridge college, and he returned all my material unexamined, and he wrote `Atlantis is a subject in which I have never been interested. `" "And I think that that reflects the archaeological opinion around the world." "Undeterred, Jim hopes that advances in technology will eventually force sceptical experts to sit up and take notice of what he believes is a water-tight theory." "Modern technology, the satellite mapping which is only available in the last 20 or 30 years, shows, we can prove quite positively, this is the elongated, rectangular plain that Plato talked about." "Jim Allen is not alone in hoping that modern technology will reveal the location of the lost continent." "Based in British Columbia, Canada, Rand Flem-Ath also believes that satellite technology holds the key to finding Atlantis." "Rand believes that in the ancient past a catastrophic geological event shifted the outer crust of the earth over its molten core, moving the location of Atlantis from the temperate Atlantic to the frozen south pole." "A theory called Earth`s Crust Displacement:" "it has had some notable supporters, including Albert Einstein, whose correspondence on the subject runs to many pages." "To imagine an earth`s crust displacement, if you think of an orange and you take off the peel and then you reattach it, but if you had a lubricant in between, say the the peel and the flesh of the peel," "the it its just the crust that`s moving, the rest of everything inside is remaining stable." "According to Rand, a few Atlanteans managed to survive this unimaginable disaster, and went on to found the earliest known civilisations, leaving to history many of the great monuments of the world." "From esoteric and mathematical clues contained within these monuments, Rand believes he has managed to decode the exact location of the city of Atlantis, still buried under miles of Antarctic ice." "I think that we have found very specific co-ordinates on Antarctica that are, that have a striking circular object beneath the ice about fourteen hundred metres, about a mile down which can be seen by satellites." "Critics argue that trying to locate Atlantis under miles of ice by satellite is doomed to failure from the start." "These people believe that the ice sheet is kind of rotating, like the loose skin of an orange and managed to find itself over Atlantis." "The ice moves, the plates of the earth move, both of these things actually happen but what doesn`t happen is an ice sheet doesn`t cover existing civilisations." "If ice moves the way a glacier moves, it mows down existing civilisation." "Scepticism is normal in science." "Ice is a good preserver, and in the location that we`re looking at we`re hoping that that there is still something there." "But who knows?" "Twelve thousand years is a long time." "Only time will tell if technology will prove the ideas of 21 st century Atlantis-seekers, like Rand Flem-Ath or Jim Allen, correct." "Throughout the ages Atlantis-hunters have diligently followed the clues laid out in Plato`s 2000-year old description." "But is it a description of fact or fiction?" "I think Plato used real characters, so that people would accept it as truth." "I think, however, that Plato knew he was writing fiction and Plato intended to write fiction." "I don`t think that Plato believed a word of it." "But what might have inspired Plato to invent such a story?" "ln 399 BC, Plato`s revered tutor, the great philosopher" "Socrates, was arrested in the dead of night." "Dragged before an open court, he was charged with corrupting the morals of Athens with his outspoken philosophical ideas and sentenced to death, a fate he accepted without bitterness or regret." "" Men of Athens, I honour and love you, but understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times, for if you kill one such as I, you will injure yourselves" "more than you will injure me."" "Surrounded by his closest friends and disciples," "Socrates calmly drank poison and passed away into history as one of the great figures of Western civilisation." "But Plato could not be consoled." "Plato thinks of Socrates as the best and the kindest and the justest man who ever lived, and he sees Athens, a city he loves, turn against him and kill him." "That, I believe, was devastating for him, so a lot of Plato`s work is an effort to imagine alternative political and social organisations in which the horrible injustice that he sees having been done in the case of Socrates" "could never happen again." "He would like ideally to create a world in which philosophy, in the person of Socrates, will be for ever safe." "And one of these ideal cities where a great teacher like Socrates would be safe and respected is described in Plato`s story about Atlantis." "However, the ideal society is not in fact Atlantis." "Of course, one would say, `oh, it`s Atlantis. ` No it isn`t. lt`s Athens." "It is the ancient Athens, the Athens that defeated the Atlanteans, which had all the features that Plato associates with this imaginary ideal state that he has just described." "So after all these years Atlantis may be no more than a story invented by Plato to compensate for the tragic loss of his mentor Socrates." "ln our own age the name Atlantis resonates still." "A spiritual realm of the New Age and a substitute religion." "A space shuttle voyaging like Columbus into new and uncharted domains." "Even a gigantic billion-dollar holiday resort where the excesses of Atlantis are all too real." "Curiously, we have an Atlantis in our own time now." "There is a resort and casino in the Bahamas called Atlantis, and it`s everything that Plato said Atlantis was, and this, to me, is the the epitome of at least part of our current civilisation, and it might even be argued that its part" "of the downfall of contemporary civilisation." "Each period in history, I think, reads both the accomplishment of Atlantis and the reason for its destruction in a different way." "And I think this is probably how the myth has always functioned, how many golden ages have always functioned." "We use them to project the things we most admire and of which we are, at the same time, most afraid." "A myth that reaches back in time to a lost Golden Age," "Atlantis has haunted the pages of history like a restless, inconsolable spirit." "A mirage sought in every age, it has been a medieval paradise of infinite riches, the cradle of our most ancient civilisations, an undersea ruin that captivated the world, and a mystical homeland where humanity`s highest aspirations and most dangerous fantasies of perfection meet." "The search for Atlantis goes on." "Many of us just can`t resist the idea that somewhere in the gloomy deep Atlantis still lies, awaiting the day when some bold adventurer or new technology finally brings its secrets to light." "Until that day it if it ever comes" "Atlantis will remain only in the depths of the imagination:" "a measure of our humanity, or lack of it." "A mirror of the hopes and fears of every generation." "Ripped by Njarse njarse@email.si"