The city was beautiful, inhabited by a seafaring civilization with advanced engineering, monumental architecture and a glittering capital. But the people became materialistic and corrupt. Then, the stars shifted and the sun rose from a different direction. Volcanic eruptions spewed torrents of lava and earthquakes tore the ground apart. The city was submerged, wiping the land off the world's maps forever.
THE QUEST
The myth of Atlantis was created by the Greek philosopher Plato in 400BC. The story tantlized mankind with visions of a paradise lost. Over 2400 years later Rand and Rose Flem-Ath gathered evidence that the civilization could have actually existed. But their investigation into this ancient mystery lasted two decades taking them from their home in Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, on the west coast of Canada, to the reading room of the British Museum, in London.
By connecting modern scientific discoveries to ancient manuscripts, maps and myths, that the Flem-Aths found evidence to support their radical theory that since 10 000BC, the remains of the lost civilization of Atlantis had been buried beneath the ice of Antarctica.
The Flem-Aths were not the first researchers to make the connection with geological disaster. Stories from native Americans about the mythology of the Orient and the Judeo-Christian Bible, tells a similar tale. Plato said that Atlantis was destroyed by a cataclysmic disaster around 9600BC, at least 4000 years before the currently accepted start of modern civilization.
OLD USELESS THEORIES
In their research, the Flem-Aths discarded the debunked theories that put Atlantis at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean or in the Mediterranean Sea and came across a geological theory from American academic Charles Hapgood in 1953 - A theory supported by physicist Albert Einstein.
Hapgood believed that, over time, the massive weight of the polar ice caps tugs the earth's crust over the globe, like an orange peel slipping round the fruit. He called this 'earth crust displacement' in his book in 1958, The Earth's Shifting Crust, in which Einstein wrote the foreword.
Today, scientists call the phenomenon 'continental drift' and 'plate tectonics'. But the accepted timescale for such shifting of land masses is no more than 16 km every million years. Hapgood was suggesting something much more apocalyptic. He believed the earth's crust could shift, as one, suddenly and swiftly, enough to disappear entire continents.
AN EVACUATION PLAN
If there was such an advanced civilization 10 000 years ago, it is possible that it foresaw the disaster and made plans to evacuate. Even if it did not, it is still possible that some people survived, escaping to higher ground before the waves engulfed their land. Such high-altitude havens include Lake Titicaca in the central British Library Andes, and the highlands of Thailand and Ethiopia. These are places where the earliest forms of agriculture spontaneously developed around 9600BC. The Flem-Aths were intrigued that this was around the same date at which Plato recorded the destruction of Atlantis. Was the farming knowledge passed on to other races by the surviving Atlanteans?
MYSTERIOUS MAPS
Assuming some people survived, it is also possible that they brought artefacts from their lost world with them. Such artifacts could have made their way into the hands of Piri Reis, a Turkish admiral in 1513, who used ancient charts to draw up his own map. It was not until this map turned up on Hapgood's desk in 1956 that its true significance became clear
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Hapgood wondered how the Reis map could show the eastern coastline of South America, when it had not been fully mapped in 1513. And Antarctica - part of which was also on the map -was not discovered until 1820. The US Air Force (USAF) were just as bewildered. They compared the Reis map with a 1949 geological survey of Antarctica which showef the continent as it was before it was frozen over, and found that the two were almost identical.
'This indicates the coastline had been mapped before it was covered by the ice cap,' the USAF report concluded. 'The ice cap in this region is now about a mile thick. We have no idea how the data on this map can be reconciled with the state of geographical knowledge in 1513.
Then Hapgood unearthed another map created by Oronteus Finaeus, copied in 1531, which showed the whole of Antarctica, with remarkably accurate details, including the location of mountains, plains and rivers. All these features were present in Antarctica according to the 1949 survey and in Plato's description of 2,000 years earlier.
GENUINE MAPS
The original charts on which the maps were based must have been drawn up by people who had attained a level of technological sophistication previously thought to have been only fully achieved by Man this century. In order for such a civilization to develop it must have been sited on a continent with a temperate climate that could support a growing population. Shift Antarctica 3,200 km north of the Antarctic circle and the land could have easily supported a seafaring civilization.
THE EGYPTIAN CONNECTION
The existence of a technologically developed civilization before 10,000BC would help to explain ancient monuments around the world which still defies rational explanation. These include cities in South and Central America, built supposedly by the Aztec and Mayan civilizations. Could their achievements have been based on ancient knowledge passed on from survivors of Atlantis?
The same theory can be applied to Egypt which is where Plato's Story of Atlantis came from: An ancient civilization may have provided the technology needed to build the pyramids. Recent archeological evidence indicates the Sphinx to be far older than originally thought, its weather-beaten face the result of rain erosion, possibly sustained over 10,000 years ago. This sound impossible considering the Egyptian civilization was not thought to have begun until after 4000BC.
Further confirmation of this Egypt Atlantis connection lies in the layout of the pyramids. Scientists have discovered that the pattern duplicates that of part of the Orion star group - not as it is today, but as it was in 10,450BC. The stars appear to move from year to year because the earth does not rotate evenly, but wobbles slightly on its axis. In fact, the stars move in a cycle that takes 2,600 years to complete.
IS DISASTER COMING FOR US?
This wobble of the globe also causes the shifting of the magnetic poles. Every 500,000 years or so the earth's magnetic field flips, swapping the position of the magnetic poles. The last switch happened 780,000 years ago, so scientists believe we are well overdue for the next one.
This flip is likely to be sudden, possibly causing all manner of disasters, from mass extinctions of confused migrating species to freak weather conditions. There is speculation that it might also result in major shifts of the earth's crust just as in Hapgood's theory. Are we in any better position to survive than Atlantis? We shall see...