Were ancient American civilizations in contact with the Atlanteans?
The term Atlantis is intended to indicate a hypothetical huge continent sunk, thousands and thousands of years ago, in the waters of the current Atlantic Ocean which assumed its name. But what's true? Is it only a figment of imagination or did the continent of Atlantis really exist? In any case, among all the peoples of the earth there are concordant traditions which demonstrate the enduring memory of the mysterious submerged continent, to which the origin of many legends must be attributed.
The most complete information we have about Atlantis is provided by Plato (Athens 428-27 348-47 B.C.) who described it in two of his famous dialogues, the "Timaeus" and the "Critias" which have given rise to opinions contrasting.
The Greek philosopher based his description of Atlantis on what he believed were the written documents preserved by the Egyptian priests of Sais and the paintings on the temple columns.
Here is therefore reported from the text of the Timaeus the dialogue that the Athenian legislator Solon (638 558 B.C.), an ancestor of Plato, had precisely with the Sais priests:
Therefore many great works of your city (Athens) are admired here, but one of them is superior in size and value; because it says the writing of an immense power which your city put an end to, which had violently invaded all of Europe and Asia at the same time, coming out of the Atlantic sea. In fact, at that time it could be crossed by that sea; that in front of that narrow mouth which is called, as you say, Pillars of Hercules, there was an island. And this island was bigger than Libya and Asia together ... In later times however, earthquakes and extraordinary cataclysms having followed, in the course of a day and a bad night ... all en masse sank underground, and the island Atlantis similarly swallowed by the sea disappeared
Plato confirms the story of the cataclysms that broke out in that period, in the "Laws" in which he states that
once there were great mortalities, caused by floods and other general calamities, from which very few men managed to save themselves. And it is obvious to think that, as the cities were completely razed by this destruction, a large part of their civilization was buried under the waters with them, and it took a very long time to find the trace, that is no less than several thousand years
According to the Egyptian-Indian tradition, also confirmed by that of Wales, the disappearance of Atlantis would have occurred following four catastrophes, probably triggered by volcanic action.
The first cataclysm occurred about 800,000 years ago and was caused by the reversal of the poles. This would begin to attack the Atlantean earthen backbone which would subsequently be swept away along with all the emerging lands of the Ocean by the water masses from the north.
The second cataclysm probably of volcanic origin would have occurred about 200,000 years ago, and because of it Atlantis remained reduced and diminished.
The third cataclysm, caused by volcanic action, occurred 80,000 years ago and gave the earth an entirely different appearance, reducing Atlantis to two islands, Routo and Daitya.
Finally the fourth cataclysm took place in the year 9564 B.C. when Atlantis existed only as an island: the island of Poseidon. It was swallowed up and thus disappeared from the earth. It is important to note that these traditions coincide in a certain sense with Plato's account, in which the priest Sais states that at long intervals, disturbances caused by celestial movements occur, so that general conflagrations necessarily follow.
A memory of the geological catastrophe that struck Atlantis has been preserved by the nations which, in all probability, were part of the ancient Atlantean empire.
The Toltecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru claimed to be descendants of Atlan or Aztlan, a distant land
where a high mountain rose and a garden inhabited by the gods
Even the Dakotas of North America tell that they come from an island located against the rising sun, which was later submerged and from which they escaped at the time of the cataclysm.
A description of the image of the cataclysm is contained in the Aztec Codex Chimalpopoca:
In that moment the sky joined the water, in a single day everything was lost, and the day consumed all humanity ... even the mountain disappeared under water
In the famous Mayan sacred book (kept in the British Museum) we read:
In the year 6 of the Kan, the II muluc, in the month of zac, there were terrible earthquakes and they continued without interruption until 13 chuen. The district of the clay hills, the country of Ma, was sacrificed. After being shaken twice, he suddenly disappeared in the night. The ground was continually uplifted by volcanic forces, which made it rise and fall in a thousand places. Finally she fell ... This happened 8060 years before the composition of this book
It is important to note how this date of the abyss of Atlantis coincides exactly with that of the Egyptian priests who calculates the year as 9564 B.C.
In fact, adding to this calculation the years of the common era we arrive at approximately 11490 years, and adding to the years 8060 of the Maya the 3400 of antiquity of the Book, we obtain 11460 years.
In Haiti and in the Antilles there is a tradition that says:
The sea overthrew its broken banks, and the whole plain that stretched far away, without end or end on either side, was covered by the waters ... only the mountains and the islands, due to their height, were not covered by this inundation
According to Welsh traditions concerning Atlantis, three races had occupied the country of the Gauls and Harmonica: the indigenous population, the invading Atlanteans and the Aryan Gauls. Furthermore, according to these traditions, there were three great catastrophes which had submerged on three occasions an immense continent, of which the country of the Gauls constituted one end. Furthermore, the old Gauls told, showing the Atlantic Ocean, that once the forests stretched very far into the sea and covered an immense expanse.
More precise is a text written by the Greek philosopher Proclus (Constantinople 410 - Athens 485) in which he states that:
The historians who speak of the islands of the Outer Sea say that in their time there were seven islands consecrated to Proserpina, and three others existed, of an immense surface, of which the first was consecrated to Pluto, the second to Ammon, and the third, of the size of a thousand stadiums, to Poseidon. The inhabitants of this last island have kept from their ancestors the memory of Atlantis, that is an immensely large island, which exercised dominion over all the islands of the Atlantic Ocean for a long time ...
We always find more detailed information about Atlantis in the text of the Timaeus, and it is Critias who exposes them to us:
The Atlantis had therefore fallen to Poseidon. He placed in a part of this island some little ones that he had had from a mortal woman ... And it was a plain lying near the sea, and, towards the middle of the island, the most fertile of all plains ... The sons of Poseidon and their descendants reigned over the land for a long series of generations, and their empire extended over a large number of other islands, even beyond the strait, as we have already said as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia ...
After describing the foundation of Atlantis by Poseidon, the philosopher goes into detail on the wealth and splendor of an empire that was thought to be as vast as Egypt:
They possessed such enormous riches as never before there were in any domination of Kings and as it is unlikely that there will be in the future, and they had everything they could need, both in the cities and in the countryside. Thanks to their power, many things were procured from foreign countries; but the island itself produced almost everything necessary for life, in the first place all solid and fusible metals. And that metal, of which we know nothing today but the name, orichalcum, is found there in abundance, being mined in many parts of the island and after gold, it was the most precious metal. The island provided the arts with all the material they needed; fed a large number of domestic animals and wild beasts, and among these very numerous elephants; gave pasture to the animals of the ponds, lakes and rivers, to those of the mountains and plains ...
Plato's mention of elephants suggests a connection with legends and depictions of elephants in America.
The description of the climate of Atlantis and the variety of food available to its inhabitants suggests an earthly paradise:
It produced and maintained all the perfumes that the earth produces today in different districts, namely roots, herbs, plants, juices flowing from flowers or fruits. The fruit of the vine was also found there; and what we need as solid nourishment, wheat ... These are the divine and admirable treasures that that island, then flourishing under the sun, produced in inexpressible quantities
It is said that even Christopher Columbus was prompted to venture into the ocean after hearing the story of an Irish monk who claimed to have crossed the Atlantic with Norman navigators and to have landed in a vast land populated by red men. Columbus then thought that this land was a remnant of ancient Atlantis, but during the journey the voyage encountered on its route only the land of the Indies, which was later called America.
A theory that circulated in the seventeenth century was that according to which Atlantis existed west of Gibraltar, and it was also stated that the Canary Islands and the Azores archipelago must be considered remnants of the ancient Atlantean continent.
Bory de Saint-Vincent declares that, after having made long cruises to study the geological state of the western islands of northern Africa, Madeira, the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands appear as the remains of an ancient continent (fig. 1).
Furthermore, according to his theory, the disappearance of Atlantis would have been caused by an immense lake, called Tritonide, which existed in ancient times in northern Africa, which, as a result of a violent earthquake, would have broken its short dam, overturning its enormous masses of water. Water first in the channel that separated the African continent from the Atlantic one, and then on Atlantis itself, thus leaving its bed dry, which is none other than the Sahara desert.
In the eighteenth century geologists and naturalists, drawn from the physical modification of the land and the similarity between the animal races and the flora of the new and ancient continent, admitted the need for an intermediate continent, which served them as a natural bridge.
Furthermore, the presence of continental animal and insect life in the Azores, Canaries and Madeira implies that the Azores were once part of a continent.
Even the French naturalist Luigi Germain, after careful studies of the fauna and flora of the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries and Cape Verde, concluded that towards the middle of the Tertiary period these four archipelagos formed a single land united to the north with the peninsula Iberian, to the south with Mauretania, to the west with Bermuda and the Antilles. At the end of the tertiary period, due to vast orogenic movements, there was a split: first it was a large western fracture which definitively isolated the Ancient and the new continent, then it was a deep valley which separated it from present-day Africa. What was left would form The Atlantis of which Plato speaks.
Therefore, both geology and paleontology officially admit the existence of Atlantis, a vast continent of the tertiary era which gradually decreased in size from the end of the tertiary to the beginning of the quaternary.
The French archaeologist and palaeontologist De Morgan notes that
at the beginning of the post-glacial period some bridges certainly existed in the Mediterranean sea, and it was through Atlantis or some disappeared land that the New World communicated with our Europe
The Canary Islands, where an ancient race of survivors were found and exterminated, and the Azores, where statues, tombstones and submerged ruins are said to have been found, are considered by some researchers to be like mountains of the submerged continent of Atlantis.
According to recent soundings on the bottom of the Atlantic, the average level is 4800 meters below the liquid surface, but with a chasm of 7137 metres. Imagining the Atlantic without water we would see two valleys stretching from north to south and separated by a Mediterranean wrinkle and on the side of this furrow, of which the summit remains only 1800 meters below the water level, with two ditches, wide and deep (fig. 2).
In 1898 a cable ship, in an attempt to recover a cable that had broken north of the Azores, brought to the surface fragments of tachylite, a kind of glassy lava that forms exclusively above water level and in the presence of the atmosphere. Hence the certainty of immense abysses, in which islands and perhaps continents have escaped. Hence the certainty that the land that today forms the bottom of the Atlantic, 900 kilometers from the Azores, was covered by lava flows when it was still submerged.
In conclusion, we can say that the study and research of the events of a land, which various peoples say existed with its own civilization, still fascinates today and pushes us to undertake more and more new investigations.
