Was This Atlantis?
Examination of the possible location and the reason of its disappearance.
Version Française.
Disappearance, when did it occur?
Due
to lack of eyewitnesses, because even if there were any, they
wouldn't be alive any longer, we must therefore rely on written
evidence and information hidden in the myths and religions. Even
when those written ones shouldn't be very many, because of these same
religions. It's even feared that most of the written testimonies
were destroyed under different pretexts, including the one that we
know all; the destruction of the library of Alexandria. The latter
was first destroyed by Caesar, what then remained as Egyptian culture
had been destroyed by the Muslim armies. But the Muslim and Roman
armies are not the only ones to blame, there are also Spanish
conquerors, they too, did not see the need to keep the sacred
writings of the Maya, and they have burned all their history on the
pretext that these writings were heretical. It's true that every
society shows such a dominant response, whenever a population is
conquered, the conqueror destroys or attempts to destroy its history,
and replace it with a history forged in his image.
We should, therefore, content ourselves with what Plato has left
us. His writing, better known as the dialogues of Timaeus and
Critias, could well be an exception among witnesses who survived. It
may be that the Catholic Church did not regard this document as
heretic and it's by miraculously escaping the destructive follies of
religion that it could be preserved.
But there are few traces of tracks and signs. Egyptians have left
us, in despite of their two library destructions, with other
evidence, interposed by hieroglyphics or by passing these legends on
to the Greek, Roman and other peoples. Because we do not find but
very few Egyptian papyrus up today and even less papyrus which allude
to an event like a flood or a star that fell on Earth. What kind of
evidence can we expect? Well, if a shift of the poles caused by an
asteroid impact took place, witnesses located elsewhere on Earth
should have had violent earthquakes, with an unexplained movement of
the Sun in the sky, and a change in its daily course from east to
west. The Greek mythology contains in fact such a story. It's the story of Phaeton, son of the
Sun, Helios, who had drawn the chariot of his father and not being
able to maintain it in his father's way, setting fire to everything
that was on the land and killed himself struck by lightning. Even
when this looks like a fable, the whole story comes fairly close to
that of an asteroid or comet impact on Earth.
For the dates, it are once again the dialogues of Plato that
provide us with a more or less accurate date. Plato wrote his
dialogues in 380 years BC and the story of Atlantis had been told by
Egyptian priests to Solon hundreds of years before that date. The
date that the events should have take place was 9'000 years before
this story was narrated to Solon by Egyptian priests, which leads us
to a period of 9'600 years BC. We can estimate, leaving a margin of
a few hundred years, that the events should unfold according to Plato
on dates ranging from 9'400 to 9'800 years BC.
It's much more than a coincidence, that occurred as many events
related in one way or another to Atlantis. First there are the
mammoths of Siberia, which seem to have been frozen alive during this
period. Then there is the zodiac of Denderah which seems, according
to the interpretations, point to the year 9792. Even if this date is
probably obtained by an interpolation over 2160 years. It may
actually have variations of several hundred years. It's nevertheless
in the same period in which the dialogues of Plato locate the
disappearance of Atlantis. The zodiac of Denderah is based on the
fact that the signs of the zodiac and with them the spring, are
moving very slowly, a degree every seventy-two years. This will
require 2160 years to move a complete sign of the zodiac. The year
9792 is obtained by the location of a lion in a boat, with an
interpolation of the position on these 2160 years. Even if the
person who determined that the sign says that it should be the year
9792, we can take on our side without major risk a margin of a few
hundred years. Taking this in consideration, we obtain the same
period as that of Plato.
Another event from which we don't know the exact date, but we know
about the period, is the beginning of the melting of glaciers of the
Ice Age. The beginning of the melting of ice is also around ten
thousand years before Christ. It's, with a range of a hundred years,
in the same period in which the dialogues of Plato locate the sudden
disappearance of Atlantis. A quick reminder regarding the glaciers
of the Ice Age; northern Europe, North America and Canada were almost
entirely covered by glaciers twelve thousand years ago. But the
climate has twelve thousand years ago warmed up in an unexplained way
over a hundred years, causing the melting of these glaciers. An
indirect consequence of this meltdown is the rise in sea levels,
flooding many areas that were once inhabited. There are many areas
that were inhabited between what is now at one hundred and one
hundred-thirty meters below today's sea level. Among these places
where many people who had to leave their homes we find among others
the coastal areas of the Black Sea. The Black Sea, which should have
been a lake twelve thousand years ago, had at the time no direct
connection with the Mediterranean. The Black Sea should have had a
level corresponding to the level of the Bosphorus Strait. Following
the submarine excavations made in the Black Sea, it seems that it had
a level of at least sixty-six meters below the current level. By
taking a small glance at the map, we can see that this leaves us with
96'000 square kilometers which have been submerged by rising waters.
It's therefore not surprising that some researchers believed they had
found Atlantis in this place. The same reasoning applies to the
coastal areas of Greece and the surrounding islands of the Cyclades
and the island Thera, which was higher before its explosion 1500
years before Christ. In front of the Cadiz coast, the coastal area
of Andalucia today, a German researcher believed to have found
Atlantis a few years ago. He based his finding here on satellite
images on which one can distinguish a structure of a strong
resemblance to the description that Plato made of Atlantis, except
that Spain is not an island (The island is called like the ocean that
surrounds it...) and it misses the place for the plain; also added
that he thought that this area has, according to him, disappeared
nine hundred years before Christ. The only thing that is certain, is
that there was a city there with circular fortifications having at
least two large buildings in the center. Another area that might
reserve us some surprises is the Indonesian archipelago today. Here
the melting of glaciers had removed as much as several million square
kilometers. With a little luck we may well find an empire swallowed
in the sea of Java.
There are still a little less obvious dates, those that correspond
to the rather special alignments of the planets. So before returning
to material on these dates, you must know that most asteroids in
orbit travel quite asymmetrical and cross the orbits of other planets
on a regular basis. It's therefore not surprising that it does not
take much to deflect such an asteroid off its usual path, so it falls
on a planet. Such a condition is an alignment of planets and
especially the large ones, so that an asteroid is sufficiently moved
from its original orbit to be captured by Earth's gravity. We have
just three of those dates, 9'537, 9'716 and 9'895 years before
Christ, with such an alignment. These dates are thus in the same
time frame as where Plato places the destruction of Atlantis.
The feature of these alignments is that all
planets with a mass large enough, the Sun and Moon, were the same
side as the Earth. We could therefore see three times, the planets
Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter on one side of the Sun, and then
Venus, Earth and Moon on the other side. It's clear that such a
combination of gravity generated by the alignment of planets, is not
conducive to the stability of one or more asteroids moving in the
vicinity of the Earth's orbit. It's very
likely that a large rock of several tens of kilometers had been
diverted from its path and was captured by Earth's gravity.
There are also other dates, including the renewal of the Maya
eras. Regarding the reason for the choice of moments of transition
into a new era, no one knows it to this day. All we can confirm, is
that the Maya calendar was most probably based on the position of
three planets, Jupiter, Venus and Mars. It seems that these three
planets occupy every five thousand years a special place in the sky.
It's therefore very likely that the Maya had based the transition
from one era to another on such a symbolic position of these three
planets. We know not to this day the exact meaning of the dates
8'238 and 3'113 BC. Be aware though, that these dates may vary
depending on the method of calculation. It suffices to remember that
our current calendar is not accurate. Especially since our calendar
does not have the year zero, it starts with year one. It's due to
these differences in method of calculation that we obtain 3'112,
3'113 or 3'114 years BC. It depends how we calculate the date.
Depending how we go back the days, day by day as the Maya did
themselves, by calculating astronomical years, or using the
traditional years, we obtain three different dates. There remain,
however, so far no indication that these dates are related to an
event other than a particular position of these three planets in the
sky. The Maya had on the other hand left us other dates, from which
we don't know the significance to this day. Archaeologists have
found two dates separated by two weeks in one of their temples. Both
dates of an interval of about two weeks are at 2'794 years BC and
those dates are strangely close to the date on which some experts
locate the Biblical flooding. The only
problem with the theory of this flooding at that date is that at that
time the Egyptians had noted all what they were doing, including the
exploits of their warring pharaohs, the details of every day, but not
one word about a flood which would be around those years. The
Egyptians had on the other hand well noted that there was a huge
flood due to heavy rains after the destruction of Atlantis for
thousands of years ago.
We can therefore estimate because of the coincidence of the dates
between 9'000 to 10'000 years before Christ, that the event of the
disappearance of Atlantis has with a high probability occurred
between those dates. In addition to these dates we have the fact
that the lava, which was found at the bottom of the ocean, should
have solidified in the open air at less then 20'000 years ago. The
area where the lava was discovered, was therefore necessarily in the
open air at a year later then 18'000 years before Christ. Then on
the other hand, the Egyptian pharaohs have not noted a flood or other
similar event from 5'000 years before Christ onwards. We find
therefore that the event must have taken place between 5'000 and
18'000 years before Christ. We can, as such, conclude that the date
mentioned by Plato in his dialogues, may be fairly close to the
truth.
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