"It was a beautiful land inhabited by a seafaring nation, with advanced technology, monumental architecture, and a magnificent capital. Too perfect to survive. When people began to pursue money, they lost their innocence, and then the stars shifted in the sky and the sun began to shine at a different angle. Earthquakes shook the land, and volcanoes spewed hot streams of lava. Finally, water flooded the scorched earth and erased it from the map forever."
This is how the Greek philosopher Plato depicted Atlantis in 400 BC. Two thousand years later, a Canadian couple, Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, gathered evidence indicating that this mythical civilization may have actually existed. They tried to solve this mystery for twenty years, from their family home in Nanaimo, near Vancouver, to the reading room of the British Museum in London.
There, the Flem-Aths' search for the world reached a breakthrough. They compared ancient manuscripts and maps with modern information and found evidence to support their hypotheses. According to them, the Atlantean civilization was buried by Antarctic glaciers in 10,000 BC.
According to Plato, Atlantis was destroyed by cataclysms in 9600 BC. As we know, historians date the birth of today's civilization to at least 1,000 years later. The Flem-Aths were not the first historians to recognize the influence of geological changes on cultural diversification. The motif of a flood wiping out various civilizations and cities is also present in the accounts of various peoples, such as the Sumerians and American Indians. It is also mentioned in the Judeo-Christian Bible.
The couple rejected the theory that Atlantis lies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea. They considered a different solution. They decided to embrace the theory proposed in 1953 by American geologist Charles Hapgood, a theory that even Albert Einstein himself found compelling.
According to Hapgood, the growing polar ice cap, becoming heavier over time, is pulling down the Earth's crust, much like an orange peel. He called this phenomenon crustal shift.
"Your theory has made a great impression on me, and I believe you are right," Einstein wrote to Hapgood. Scientists now call the phenomenon Hapgood discovered drifting continents or plate tectonics. However, geologists believe the rate of rock mass movement does not exceed 16 km per million years. Hapgood believed it was much faster. He believed the crust could shift suddenly and without warning, so quickly that entire continents could disappear without a trace.
If a developed civilization truly existed 10,000 years ago, it's possible it could have foreseen the impending catastrophe and prepared for evacuation. However, if it was unaware of the threat, it must be assumed that some of its members managed to survive the cataclysm by fleeing to the mountains, where the waves flooding their lands couldn't reach. Such high, inhabited regions of the Earth include the area around Lake Titicaca in the Andes, or the mountains of Thailand and Ethiopia – it is from these regions that traces of the oldest agricultural cultures come, dating back to around 9600 BC. As a reminder, Plato believed Atlantis was destroyed in 9600 BC. Could it be that the knowledge of plant cultivation was passed on to other races by the surviving Atlanteans?
It's possible that when some Atlanteans survived, they managed to take fragments of their world. Perhaps some of these objects fell into the hands of Piri Reis, a Turkish admiral, in 1513. Perhaps using their nautical charts, he created his own map. Its true significance only became clear when the Piri Reis map landed on Hapgood's desk in 1956.
He wondered how the eastern coast of South America could have appeared on a map from 1513, let alone Antarctica, which hadn't been discovered until 1820. So he sent the map to experts from the United States Air Force. The experts were shocked. They compared the Piri Reis map with a geological map of Antarctica showing the outline of the ice-covered land and noted that the two maps were almost identical.
"This allows the conclusion that the coastline was drawn before the land was covered by ice," the USAF report states.
Hapgood managed to obtain another "impossible map," drawn by Orontaeus Phineus in 1531. On this map, we can see all of Antarctica, with clearly defined details such as mountains, plains, and rivers. All details matched contemporary maps of Antarctica, as well as Plato's descriptions, which he recorded 2,000 years earlier. The authenticity of the maps is beyond doubt. The original plans that served as the template for these two maps must have been drawn by people who had achieved a level of civilization comparable to today's. However, civilization required climatic conditions that would favor population growth. If we move Antarctica 3,200 km north of the Arctic Circle, it would fall into a climatic zone where it is possible to feed and develop a society.
The existence of a technologically advanced civilization before 10,000 BC would shed new light on the mystery of monumental structures in various parts of the world, whose origins are still not definitively explained. This includes, among others, the cities in South America, likely built by the Maya and Aztecs. Perhaps the surviving Atlanteans taught them architecture?
Similarly, we can consider the mystery of the Egyptian pyramids, whose construction required immense technical expertise. Recent research has revealed that the Sphinx is much older than previously thought. Its face suffered the most damage from torrential rains that fell over ten thousand years ago. How is this possible, since, according to our knowledge, ancient Egyptian civilization only arose around 4000 BC?
The location of the pyramids also seems to confirm the connection between ancient Egypt and Atlantis. Scientists have discovered that their arrangement closely mirrors a portion of the Orion constellation. Not as we see it today, but as it was in 10,450 BC. The arrangement of stars as seen from Earth changes from year to year due to fluctuations in the tilt of the Earth's axis. A full cycle of star motion in the firmament takes 2,600 years.
These fluctuations in the Earth's surface cause a shift in the magnetic poles. On average, every 500,000 years, magnetic fields shift and reverse the position of the magnetic poles. The last such shift occurred 780,000 years ago, and scientists say we can expect another one soon. It seems that a pole reversal can occur suddenly and can trigger almost any kind of cataclysm, from mass extinctions of disoriented species to complete climatic disruptions. Some believe that a pole reversal is responsible for the largest shifts in tectonic plates (see Hapgood's theory).
This is how Plato imagined Atlantis, based on the stories told by his ancestor Solano, who in turn heard about it from Egyptian priests. According to the stories, the capital of Atlantis was composed of several concentric canals separating individual zones: a recreational area, a commercial area, and a royal palace built in the center.
The Piri Reis map of 1513 was based on lost ancient plans, likely drawn by a nation of accomplished navigators. It depicts Africa, South America, and part of Antarctica to within half a degree of accuracy, a level previously thought impossible before 1735.
Phineus's 1531 map of Orontaeus was also a copy of earlier plans. It depicts Antarctica (right) with mountains and rivers marked, suggesting that the continent was visited or inhabited by humans before it was icebound. Drifting icebergs prevented Antarctica from being rediscovered until 1820.
The inhabitants of Atlantis may have used the still-active Mount Erebus volcano on Ross Island as a source of energy. A fossil plant imprint found in Antarctica indicates that a milder climate once prevailed there.
If the Earth's crust suddenly shifted 3,200 km 10,000 years ago, the then-inhabited land could have been pushed into the Arctic Circle. Under this assumption, Antarctica, surrounded by oceans, would fit Plato's description of Atlantis.
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