LOST ATLANTIS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 56, 15 September 1928, Page 17

LOST ATLANTIS

DID IT EVER EXIST ? WIDESPREAD TRADITION 2LANY INVESTIGATING Tradition has it that the Atlantic Ocean holds in its depths the wreck of a great island continent which once boasted of a flourishing civilisation. With the passing of generations cred- ! ence in this tradition, instead of growing shadowy and become an inchoate myth, seems to increase. The gradual growth of certainty in respect, to the Atlantean theory has been pictured as resembling the process by which the existence of an American continent became increasingly clear to men of science in Europe at the time of Columbus. There was then a world intuition backed by Icelandic and other sagas that such a continent existed. . Convictions were put to the test and tradition was proved to be but truth, fossilised.. So it may be with Atlantis. No amount of scientific protest seems, capable of shaking the world-wide- conviction in. the former existence of an Atlantean continent, a conviction which is deeply rooted in the minds .of thousands. On the contrary, there' is an increasing amount of scientific knowledge in favour of tho truth of the tradition, to disregard altogether any so-called occult information on the subject, so much so that geologists arid folklprists alike arc almost compelled to treat the matter seriously. There is evidence of this in the announcement from New York, published in "The Post",a few days ago, that a scientific search has begun for the lost continent Atlantis. Harvard geographers" and oceanographers, sailing to the Azores, hope to determine, by study of dredgings, whether the continent of tradition and folklore really exists, and whether there was once a land communication between Europe and Africa andthe^Americas. ■' The legendary island or continent in, the Atlantic Ocean, land called either Atlantis or Atalantis, is first mentioned; in detail by Plato.: .He describes how o'ertain priests, in'a conversation with Solon, represented the island as a country larger than Asia Minor, and Libya' united and situated just beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits'"of Gibraltar). Beyond the mainland of Atlantis, according to ,the,' priests, lay' an archipelago of smaller islands. Atlantis, they said, had been a powerful kingdom 9000 years before the birth of Solon','.its armies overrunning lauds on either side of the Mediterranean, Athens being the only city to withstand tho conquerors successfully.. Finally, the ocean, after great volcanic convulsions, overwhelmed this continent, leaving the sea unnavigablo owing' to shoals. In another work Plato adds details of tho history and civilisation of Atlantis, his narrative, or all that lias come down to us of it, suddenly breaking^'off. How far the story is duo to Plato's inventive genius, or how much it is based on records handed down from tho past, has long been debated. Medieval writers, for-whom, the tale was preserved by Arabian geographers,'believed it to be true, finding their belief fortified by numerous- traditions' of islands in the1 wo'stern ' seas ' which offered. various points of resemblance to the Atlantean ■ tradition. The Isles of the, Blest, or the Fortunate Isles, the Welsh Avalon, the lost land of Lyonesse, St. Brendan's Isle, are all the subject of many sagas in many languages, and Atlantis became associated with them,and with an earthly paradise awaiting discovery. It, or some part of it, is marked in maps of the fourteenth-and fifteenth centuries, and even in the eighteenth ■ century voyages were made to discover fit. Brendan's Isle. In later years a number of books have been written proving, to the satisfatcion of the'writers at any rate, the previousl existence of Atlantis, and other savants have taken up the pen ridiculing the idea. That the island of Crete -ivas the "lost" Atlantis .was a new. theory propounded in "The Times" in; 1909. EVIDENCE OF SCIENCE. In one article it is impossible to do more than very briefly indicate: the grounds on which modern scholars base their belief in a -drowned. Atlantis.' Folk-lore on either side of the-Atlan-tic is rich in reference to sdme-' great cataclysm—"Tho Flood." -. Biologists say that it is impossible to account for the similarities in fauna and flora between western Europe and eastern America without postulating a land bridge at one'. time, and that not so very long ago, as. geological time goes. Then, too, there is the sudden appearance :in central America of the Maya civilisation, a civilisation akin to that of the Mediterranean. Whence could it havo sprung, savo froni a common origin? .So the theory is that some fifteen to twenty thousand years, ago there

was an Atlantean continent and eivir Hsation, successive waves of immigrants going east and west from it to Europe and America, tho Cro-Magnon and Magdalenian men of early Europe hailing from Atlantis, as well as the ancestors of the Iberians. A series of disasters gradually disintegrated the continent, first splitting it into two, and then completely overwhelming it, leaving but a few scattered islands (the present Antilles) and a few mountain peaks above water, this final disaster taking place about 10,000 B.C. That there is geological evidence of the lost continent is maintained by many. Soundings in the depths of the Atlantic reveal the existence of a submarine bank or elevation starting frorii the coast of Ireland, where it is traversed by the 53rd parallel, stretching southward to embrace tho Azores, and then running across the ocean to the coast of French Guiana, at the mouth of the Amazon. This bank then runs in a south-easterly direction towards the coast of Africa, taking in the rocky isle of St. Paul. Changing its course again just north of Ascension Island^ it stretches due south to Tristan d'Acunha, where it ends. Hundreds of miles broad in places, this bank, which lies on an average 9000 feet above the level of the re3t of the ocean.bed, is the lost continent, whose" mountain peaks are now mere rocky islands. WHAT DREDGING REVEALS. It;may be so, or it may not, but there-is a curious feature about the bank. Dredging hasshown that it is covered with volcanic, detritus, and from it has-been fished up lava which, to judge from appearances, has solidified under atmospheric pressure and not beneath the waves, some geologists maintaining that it could not have been under the water for more than 15,000 years at the outside. There is another feature, too, to be noticed about the bed of the Atlantic: it is apparently very unstable, and in places seems to be continually rising. The Western Telegraph Company and others who nave surveyed the bed of the Atlantic Ocean in recent years have found marked changes occurring, and the theory is held in some quarters that the lost continent of Atlantis is slowly rising again after its submergence. But theso geological changes in tho earth's surface take thousands of years to accomplish as a rule, so that probably none, o" the present generation will live to see the re-emergence of drowned Atlantis. But, on the other hand, they may live long enough to see indisputable proofs brought forward of its existence. . ■ .