Atlantis Lost; Atlantis Found?

FOUND: One lost city. Might compare to Plato’s description. Must be collected in person.

Recently, the BBC news reported that Dr Rainer Kuehne of the University of Wuppertal believes that satellite photos of southern Spain reveal features on the ground appearing to match descriptions made by Greek scholar Plato regarding the fabled utopia of Atlantis.

The Satellite images are of a salt marsh region known as Marisma de Hinojos near the city of Cadiz, and show two rectangular structures in the mud and parts of concentric rings that may once have surrounded them. Dr Kuehne believes the rectangular features could be the remains of a "silver" temple devoted to the sea god Poseidon and a "golden" temple devoted to Cleito and Poseidon – all of which were described in Plato’s Timaeus and Critias dialogs.

Despite the fact that the research, which has been reported as an ongoing project in the online edition of the journal Antiquity, is still very much preliminary in nature (no excavation has been carried out as of yet), it is extremely problematic. Now, when I say problematic, I don’t mean in terms of the research itself. What I mean is that the very nature of the modern manifestation of Atlantean mythology raises a whole host of complex and difficult questions which must be discussed.

First off, there is much debate as to whether Plato was actually referring to a real place when he discussed Atlantis Timaeus and Critias dialogs. Most scholars believe that the discussion of Atlantis was a complex metaphor in or to further Plato’s discussion of the ideal society. This, however, is certainly not the most serious issue.

Over the past 150 years or so, the Atlantean legend has become embedded in out pop culture as "faithful believers" layer increasingly outlandish extensions onto the myth. Visitors from outer space, alien breeding programs, time travel, telekinesis…the list goes on and on. The problem is that the current Atlantean mythological discourse has a frightening subtext (beyond its superficial silliness) that is not only damaging to our collective (and infinitely supportable) understanding of the human past, but also intrinsically racist in the way it portrays many early state level societies (an idea which Dr. Kenneth Feder has referred to as "Our Ancestors, the Dummies Hypothesis" in his book Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology).

The thing is, in order to fully understand the reasons why Atlantean mythology has become so amazingly fraught with problems, we need to cast our eyes backwards and take a look at its (surprisingly long) historical lineage:

Ignatius Donnelly

Perhaps one of the first modern (19th Century) figures to influence the modern pseudoscientific Atlantean movement was a fellow named Ignatius Donnelly. Born in 1831, Ignatius Donnelly studies law and eventually went on to become one of the youngest lieutenant governors of Minnesota. He later went on to serve several terms in the federal House of Representatives, and ran twice for the Vice President of the United States.

By all accounts, Donnelly was an exceptional individual – a voracious reader who collected an enormous body of information covering topics such as world history, mythology, and geography. Clearly, as we’ll see, he was somewhat less than selective in his studies and seemingly incapable in his research of discriminating between the meaningless and meaningful.

Donnelly is the father of modern Atlantean studies and, as some have aptly put it, his book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (first published in 1882), is the "bible"” for the belief in the legend. His position as a patriarch of Atlantean lunacy also places him as the father of a particular branch pseudoarchaeology which holds that all early state level civilizations originated from Atlantis. Interestingly enough, and having nothing to do with Atlantis, in his book The Great Cryptogram, Donnelly also claims that Sir Francis Bacon wrote all of William Shakespeare’s works.

Donnelly’s Atlantis: The Antediluvian World is am amazing piece of inductive scholarship. While being close to obsessive in his collection of "facts," Donnelly had very little scientific or skeptical sense. His approach was totally indiscriminate – he never met an absurd theory about Atlantis that he didn’t like (or include in his book). He begins the book by asserting that he will prove that the Atlantis story told by Plato in the Timaeus and Critias dialogs is not a legend, but "veritable history;" that Atlantis "was the region where man first rose from a state of barbarism to civilization;" and that it was the source of civilization in Egypt, South America, Mexico, Europe, and North America. Donnelly’s argument is a confusing morass of disconnected claims and ostensible proofs. He does little more than enumerate supposed evidence. Nowhere in the book does he ever try to test his various hypotheses.

The primary fallacy with his so-called theories lies in the fact that he uses cultural comparison in order to prove the truth of the Atlantis story. He maintains that "if we then prove that, on both sides of the Atlantic, civilizations were found substantially identical, we have demonstrated that they must have descended one from the other, or have radiated from some common source."

This argument for the significant role of diffusion in cultural development was common in anthropology in the late 19th and early 10th centuries. The presumption was that cultures are basically uninventive and that new ideas are developed in very few or even single places. They then move or "diffuse" from these source areas. Donnelly was a staunch diffusionist. However, rather than Egypt, Sumer, or some other early state level society, he believed that the common source of all civilization was Atlantis. In his attempt to prove this idea, he presents a series of artifacts or behaviors which he finds to be identical among civilizations of the Old and New Worlds.

In these comparisons, Donnelly presents what he believes is the clearest evidence for the existence of Atlantis:

1.Egyptian obelisks and Mesoamerican stelae are derived from the same source.

2.The pyramids of Egypt and the pyramids of Mesoamerica can be traced to the same source.

3.Ancient cultures in the Old and New Worlds possessed the arch.

4.Cultures in the Old and New Worlds both produced bronze.

5.Civilizations in both the Old and New Worlds were dependent on agricultural economies for their subsistence. This indicates that these cultures were derived from a common source.

Ever hopeful of the legitimacy of his argument, Donnelly ended Atlantis: The Antediluvian World by stating:

We are on the threshold. Scientific investigation is advancing in great strides. Who shall say that one hundred years from now the great museums of the world may not be adorned with gems, status, arms, and implements from Atlantis, while the libraries of the world shall contain translations of its inscriptions, throwing new lights upon all past history of the human race, and all the great problems which now perplex the thinkers of our day.

Lets leave it at that for now. Tomorrow I’ll talk about Edgar Cayce – easily one of the greatest contributers to the Atlantean lunacy.