ATLANTIS AND ANTARCTICA

Was Atlantis In Antarctica? Arguments In FavorBy Flavio Barbiero, Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici
Capodiponte, ItaliaAll over the world there exist myths about a universal flood and traditions about an antediluvian civilization called Atlantis or Mu. Scientists deny usually any validity to such traditions or at least greatly reduce their significance, bringing them to more manageable spatial and temporal dimensions from an archaeological point of view (Santorini, etc.) Geology and archaeology, in fact, do not allow any space on Earth for an advanced civilization of the size and the antiquity of Atlantis, as described by Plato.
This attitude does not take into account the climatic situation on Earth during the concerned period. According to the theory exposed by the author [that is, Flavio Barbiero] in a previous section, the climatic situation during the Pleistocene was influenced by the fact that the North Pole was located between Greenland and Canada, at the edge of the great Wisconsin Icecap. As a consequence, the South Pole was placed near the current magnetic pole, on the coast of Antarctica facing Australia. The coast of Antarctica facing the Atlantic, therefore, was placed at a much lower latitude and was completely free of ice, as witnessed by conclusive geological evidence.
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While the palaeolithic cultures were thriving all over the remaining parts of the world, in that part of Antarctica the first human agricultural civilization developed in complete isolation, thanks to populations driven there by oceanic currents from Southeast Asia and South America.
At the end of the Pleistocene, an asteroid or a comet impact triggered a shift of the poles, according to the mechanism explained in the previous communication. This resulted in the worldwide catastrophe remembered by traditions as the "universal flood", during which Atlantis sank (temporarily) in the ocean. Soon after, the glaciation covered the Atlantic coasts of Antarctica, thus deleting all archaeological evidence.
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Several vessels must have survived the catastrophe, bringing their crew safely to the coasts of America, Africa and Asia. Here they started, in complete autonomy and isolation, the Neolithic cultures and later civilizations. The numerous striking similarities between ancient civilizations all over the world were due in our view to the common culture of the survivors of the flood. An impressive amount of evidence of different kinds supports this theory.
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The chronological gap of 4 millennia between the end of Atlantis and the archaeological findings of the most ancient known civilizations (such as Mohenjo Daro, Ur and so on), is only apparent due to the thawing of the northern hemisphere's icecap; the sea level has been constantly rising during the first 4 millennia after the end of the Pleistocene, for a total amount of possibly 130 meters, thus submerging any remnants of populations established along the coasts. This is confirmed by the existence of submerged structures all over the world, like the great pyramid off Yonaguny Island (Japan), the remnants of a town off the Cadiz coast and so on.
UNQUOTEThe following information was taken from an article by the late British Atlantologist, Dr. Egerton Sykes, that appeared in The Atlantis Magazine in September 1973 (page 95). "All three [Bimini, Andros, North Sea] are facets of the megalithic culture, which lasted until BC 1500 and which may well have started in BC 10,000 in Atlantis.
The ruins which we have been able to find are those which were on the European and American continental shelves which endured until BC 6000, the date when the Atlantic broke through into the Mediterranean by the Straits of Gibraltar, into the North Sea by Ys and Lyonysse; and into the Caribbean and surrounding islands of Bimini and Andros. The cause was probably the melting of glacial ice sheets in the North, the same as that which forced the Thalassic peoples to leave Central Asia."
There were Polar Axis Shifts, with accompanying melting polar ice-caps, in 1587, 5187 and 8787 BCE. The fact that the "megalithic culture" lasted until about 1500 BCE undoubtedly reflects the axis shift of 1587; and the date for the Atlantic's breaking through into the Mediterranean, along with other contemporaneous events, most certainly could be more accurately dated at 5187 BCE, rather than closer to 6000 BCE.
In the book Atlantis Rising by Brad Steiger (Dell, 1973) we find these observations. "In the January 1969 issue of Fate magazine, Hugh Auchincloss Brown reports on the evidence that indicates that the Temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli on the Adriatic Sea's Gulf of Venice was erected by artisans of a civilization that existed 12,000 to 19,000 years ago.
Brown writes that the temple must have been erected when the site was above sea level, as it is at the present time, but that it has been below sea level by at least 20 feet, judging by the holes left by boring clams 15 to 20 feet above the present sea level. The creators of the great marble columns had tools that enabled their workmanship to rival the Egyptians'. According to Brown: 'The present location of Pozzuoli is approximately 46° North Latitude, but at the time the Temple was erected its latitude was 40°. The earth did a roll-around which was caused by the eccentric rotating mass of ice at the North Pole, and Pozzuoli moved to approximately 65° North Latitude at which time the temple was submerged.'"
These conclusions of Mr. Brown confirm my own (as well as Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky's) placement of the previous North Polar Zone in the North Atlantic Ocean and the zone previous to that in the upper South Atlantic Ocean. If this Temple of Serapis was constructed when its present geographical location was at about 40° North Latitude, then it must have been erected when the North Pole was located between Nigeria and Brazil. At that time the Gulf of Venice was located at about 35° North Latitude, rather than at its present latitude of 46° North.
Then following the Polar Axis Shift of 5187 BCE, when the Atlantic broke through the Straits of Gibraltar and thereby raised the level of the Mediterranean Sea, the site of the Temple of Serapis in the Gulf of Venice not only would have most likely been submerged but also would have been located at about 55° North Latitude. Thus, when the North Pole was positioned between Spain and Québec, south of Greenland, from 5187-1587 BCE, the level of the Mediterranean Sea must have been at least 20 feet higher than its present level.
This would also help explain recent enigmas discovered in the
Finally, here is additional miscellaneous information which is taken from the book We Are Not The First by Andrew Tomas (Bantam Books, 1971), pages 74-76. This information in included here for the record.
QUOTEThe people of antiquity believed in the tremendous ages of the world and mankind, which they estimated in tens of thousands and even millions of years. To the European of Napoleonic times, the earth and man were created by God only several thousand years ago. However, the Asiatics had different views.
The Brahmins of India calculated the duration of the universe, or the Day of Brahma, to be 4.32 billion years. The Druses of Lebanon set the beginning of creation at 3.43 billion years. The present age of the earth is considered to be about 4.6 billion years, whereas that of the crust is 3.3 billion years. There are strange parallels between these figures. What is really extraordinary is the pundits' time reckoning in milliards of years -- cosmic chronology of this type was unknown until this century.
According to Simplicius (sixth century A.D.) ancient Egyptians kept records of astronomical observations for 630,000 years. The archives of Babylon were 470,000 years old, wrote Cicero with a remark that he did not believe this claim. Hipparchus (c. 190-125 B.C.) mentioned Assyrian chronicles stretching back for 270,000 years.
The Egyptian priests told Herodotus [sic -- actually it was Solon, whose visit was mentioned by Plato in Timaeus & Critias] in the fifth century B.C. that the sun had not always risen where it rose then. This implied that they had kept records of the precession of equinoxes, covering at least 26,000 years.
The Greek historian Diogenes Laertius (third century A.D.) claimed that the astronomical records of Egyptian priests began in 49,219 B.C. He also referred to their registers of 373 solar and 832 lunar eclipses, which would involve a period of approximately 10,000 years.
The Byzantine historian George Syncellus said that the chroniclers of the pharaohs had recorded all events for 36,525 years. Martianus Capella (fifth century A.D.) wrote that the Egyptian sages had secretly studied astronomy for over 40,000 years before they imparted their knowledge to the world.
The first dynasty after the Deluge was traced by Babylonian priests to a date 24,150 years before their time.
According to Codex Vaticanus A-3738, the Mayas had kept their calendrical system since 18,612 B.C.
Herodotus places the reign of Osiris at about 15,500 B.C. from the information given to him by the priests of the land of the Nile. He made the remark that they were quite certain about the exactitude of the date.
The lunar calendar of Babylon and the solar calendar of Egypt coincided in the year 11,542 B.C. The calendrical computations of India began with the year 11,652 B.C.
According to Plato, the Egyptian priests fixed the date of the sinking of Atlantis at 9850 B.C., while the Zoroastrian books set the "beginning of time" at 9600 B.C.
That these dates are correct can be questioned. But we cannot escape the conclusion that the ancients were much closer to the truth than the scholars and clerics of one and a half centuries ago who thought that the world had been created in 4004 B.C., according to the Biblical chronological study of Bishop Ussher.
The universe of the Brahmins was almost as old as that of modern science. The chronicles of the Mayas, the Egyptians, and the Babylonians went farther back in time than our history. In view of what our science has yet to learn, it would be presumptuous to accuse them of exaggeration.
The mental horizons of the peoples of antiquity were vast, and we are only beginning to see today what they perceived yesterday.
The priests of Babylon and Egypt believed that man was civilized 500,000 years ago. They kept historical and astronomical records in their archives, as Simplicius and Cicero tell us. We can smile at these claims and give civilization 5,000 years to progress from the chariot to the automobile, from bows and arrows to the atomic bomb, from the boat to the spaceship.
Since 1973, I have been a charter lifetime member of the Ancient Mediterranean Research Association headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Our Founder and Director is Professor Maxine Klein Asher, formerly of Pepperdine University. The Co-Founder was Pepperdine Professor Julian Nava, who later served as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico under President Jimmy Carter. I first became acquainted with Dr. Asher in 1973, because she was in the news for her expedition to Spain to prove the discovery of the Lost Atlantis. Accompanied by Spanish undersea diver Francisco "Paco" Salazar Casero, she travelled with a university group to Cadiz. Paco, she reported later, took some underwater photos of Atlantean artifacts. But, as luck would have it, they were diving and exploring too close to a top-secret naval facility and got "chased out" of Spain as spies, fearing for their lives, and sought refuge in Ireland.
Back in New York City, Maxine gave a press conference, and she got stories written in Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report, as well as in various newspapers like The Dallas Morning News. 1973 was also the same year that I'd taken up the study of Atlantis myself, and I was most intrigued by her expedition. However, before I ever heard of her, I'd already made up my own mind that Atlantis was Antarctica, not some area only a short mile or two off the coast of Cadiz.
Paco's pictures were blurry black-and-white images of a couple of "ancient" vases, supposedly on the bottom of the ocean. There was no size-frame of reference for anything, and no people were in these pictures. But other than these pictures and her own account of events as she chronicled in her book The Atlantis Conspiracy, over the years Dr. Asher has produced absolutely no evidence of Atlantis off/in Spain. And she has made over 40 trips to Spain in this regard.
She informed me several years ago that she has a lot of "confidential" material which she is unable to reveal to anyone, not even to trusted longtime association members like myself, who have contributed money to the funding of one of her illustrious expeditions to Cadiz and who were promised a full report which we investors never received. Frankly, I don't buy it anymore. After all these years, as well as the fact that she herself is getting older, she should release some of this material to prove her contention. Periodically she will send out a newsletter from AMRA, faithfully I might add for 27 years. In it she will once again state that an exciting new discovery is about to be made in Atlantis research, so stay tuned for more details. After a while, it becomes repetitively old news.
Atlantis was Antarctica. Once whilst on a trip to Southern California, I visited Dr. Asher and was invited to lecture to the association. I took along my world polar globe and demonstrated how Plato could have been referring to Antarctica. Maxine and the group listened politely and applauded, but I got the distinct impression that I was merely their "curiosity program" of the month, that none of them intended to give up the fantasy belief that Atlantis was off the coast of Cadiz.
Again, her newsletter arrived today. She had the following to report about a recent television program which I personally did not see and knew nothing about.
Of course. Ignatius Donnelly in Atlantis : The Antediluvian World mentioned all of these similarities. They are the cornerstone of modern Atlantology. RS] From this statement, one can immediately note that this writer, as did Dr. Velikovsky, considers these occurrences as "random" events, such as an errant asteroid or comet. Thus, they are forced to discuss them in isolation from each other and thereby arrive at false conclusions. RS] Here we find that the Atlantic coast of modern Antarctica contains evidence of deglaciation, which is just what one might expect. It was the contention of Dr. Velikovsky that the previous North Polar Zone was centered between Greenland and Canada; thus, this is a Velikovskian idea. However, it is my thinking that the last North Pole actually was located a few hundred miles south of Greenland, more into the North Atlantic between Spain and Quebec. Nevertheless, the previous North Pole was located farther southwards into the Atlantic than today, in the direction of the former North Poles which were located in the Middle-South Atlantic Ocean and South Africa. RS]Black Sea. Finally, following the Polar Axis Shift of 1587 BCE, the level of the sea decreased and exposed the Temple of Serapis once again, now located at its current latitude.