by William Skink
I’m going to take a little break from politics today in order to take a look at the lost city of Atlantis.
Last week, I finished a book by Mark Adams, titled Meet Me in Atlantis. I found the book, which came out last year, at Shakespeare and Co. It was a fortuitous find, considering Atlantis had come up several times in my research of the occult aspects of Nazism and the overlap with the origins of the New Age movement.
What I didn’t know about Atlantis is the fact that all we know about this presumed mythical city came from Plato, who described Atlantis in oddly very specific detail. Another fascinating detail is that the revived contemporary interest in Atlantis came primarily from the writing of a US Congressman from Minnesota, one Ignatius Donnelly:
Ignatius Loyola Donnelly (November 3, 1831 – January 1, 1901) was a U.S. Congressman, populist writer, and amateur scientist. He is known primarily now for his theories concerning Atlantis, Catastrophism (especially the idea of an ancient impact event affecting ancient civilizations), and Shakespearean authorship, which many modern historians consider to be pseudoscience and pseudohistory. Donnelly’s work corresponds to the writings of late 19th and early 20th century figures such as Helena Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner, and James Churchward, and has more recently influenced writer Graham Hancock.
The concept that myths derive from kernels of truth was once a laughable idea, but as locales like the ancient city of Troy get discovered, and with new abilities to utilize technology, like satellite imaging, archaeologists are less prone to ridicule.
I think this is an important topic to take seriously because absent solid scholarship, wild fictions take hold. Atlantis played prominently in Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine and her description of “root races“:
Root races are stages in human evolution in the esoteric cosmology of theosophist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, as described in her book The Secret Doctrine (1888). These races existed mainly on now-lost continents. Blavatsky’s model was developed by later theosophists, most notably William Scott-Elliot in The Story of Atlantis (1896) and The Lost Lemuria (1904).
This is where modern day white supremacists who believe in the superiority of their Aryan origins get a lot of their twisted ideology from. If this topic goes unchecked by more objective scholarship, then it will remain a breeding ground for developing deeply racist belief systems, including the state-sponsored racism of modern day Israel.
One of the more interesting aspects of the Atlantis myth is how this ancient city was allegedly destroyed. The following quote comes from this Smithsonian Mag article about ten ancient stories and the geological events that may have inspired them:
Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, wrote of a great civilization called Atlantis founded by a race of people who were half god and half human. They lived in a utopia that held great naval power. But their home, located on islands shaped like a series of concentric circles, was destroyed in a great cataclysm.
Science: Atlantis probably wasn’t a real place, but a real island civilization may have inspired the tale. Among the contenders is Santorini in Greece. Santorini is now an archipelago, but thousands of years ago it was a single island—a volcano named Thera. Around 3,500 years ago, the volcano blew up in one of the biggest eruptions in human history, destroying the island, setting off tsunamis and blowing tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere where it lingered for years and probably caused many cold, wet summers. Those conditions would have ruined harvests in the region and are thought to have contributed to the quick decline of the Minoans, who had dominated the Mediterranean from nearby Crete.
The city of Helike in Greece has also been suggested as inspiration for Atlantis. The ancient metropolis was wiped off the map by an earthquake and tsunami in December of the year 373 B.C.
Just this century we have seen two major earthquake/tsunamis disasters devastate Japan and Southeast Asia. Closer to home, FEMA is planning drills next week on how to respond to a cataclysmic tsunami hitting the Pacific Northwest:
Starting on June 7th, FEMA will be conducting a large scale drill that has been named “Cascadia Rising” that will simulate the effects of a magnitude 9.0 earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone and an accompanying west coast tsunami dozens of feet tall. According to the official flyer for the event, more than “50 counties, plus major cities, tribal nations, state and federal agencies, private sector businesses, and non-governmental organizations across three states – Washington, Oregon, and Idaho – will be participating”. In addition to “Cascadia Rising”, U.S. Northern Command will be holding five other exercises simultaneously. According to the final draft of the Cascadia Rising drill plan, those five exercises are entitled “Ardent Sentry 2016″, “Vigilant Guard”, “Special Focus Exercise”, “Turbo Challenge” and “Joint Logistics Over-The-Shore”.
The primary scenario that of all of these participants will be focusing on will be one that involves a magnitude 9.0 earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone followed by a giant tsunami that could displace up to a million people from northern California to southern Canada.
Maybe one day there will be stories told about the mythical city of Seattle.