Forgotten Ages Research

Plato’s Atlantis—Memories and Remains of Poseidon’s Children

Report Topics:

• Correlations of Plato’s account of the geographical position, environment, history and destruction of Atlantis 12,000 years ago with modern studies in oceanography, geology, paleo-botany, archaeology, ethnology and paleontology of the central Atlantic and surrounding landmasses
• The mystery of sunken ruins found in the Caribbean region—a lost colony of Atlantis?

Full Report:

The test as to whether Atlantis once existed or not comes when we begin looking for confirmation of the details which Plato supplied us with. This, to be sure, is not an easy task, for as Russian researcher N. F. Zhirov noted: “The study of Atlantis requires scholars with adequate encyclopedic perspective. Proof of its reality consists of a complexity of innumerable small facts and observations connected with diverse branches of science.”

Unlike a study of any of the other, known ancient civilizations, whose remains exist on dry land, in plain sight or just below the surface, and whose ruination took place slowly and only within the past five thousand years, with Atlantis we are dealing with a culture that was destroyed violently and quickly, its cities sunken deep beneath the ocean, and having a history which extended back beyond twelve thousand years. To put this into perspective, Atlantis was twice as old to the ancient Egyptians as the ancient Egyptians were to us today. The combined effect of sudden catastrophe and great age means that what pieces and evidence have survived are going to be few and far between. For this reason, the full picture of Atlantis will not become apparent to us without touching upon such diverse disciplines as oceanography, geology, pale climatology, anthropology, archaeology, mythology and ancient history.

Just as the remains of Atlantis lie scattered about the Atlantic floor, so the proofs of Atlantis’ existence are scattered throughout various areas penetrated by scientific inquiry. The pooling of information and tying together of the many observations from all these disciplines are like the threads of an intricate fabric, which when woven together create an unmistakable pattern that was once lost but can now be regained.

Plato’s date of 9500 to 10,000 B.C.E. for the destruction of Atlantis happens to fall precisely at a time geologists call the end of the Pleistocene era, or the end of the Ice Age, which was indeed marked by several cataclysmic events. There is evidence that at this time period the Earth either shifted on its axis, or thee was a major crustal displacement. It was also the time of a reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field, called the Gothenberg Event.

Paleontologists and oceanographers alike have noted the curious recurrence around the world of the radiocarbon date 11,400 B.P. (Before Present), plus or minus 200 years, as pinpointing a great transformation in the Earth’s climate.

Charles Hapgood, citing dramatic changes in vegetation remains for this period, believed that the two-mile thickness of glacial ice that covered the Hudson Bay area in North America, and the highlands of Sweden and Norway, all disappeared twelve thousand years ago in as little as a hundred years’ time. The melting of that quantity of ice would have meant adding 100 to 300 feet to the ocean levels, drowning all continental shelves and mid-ocean islands.

This observation was confirmed by Dr. Cesare Emiliani, marine geologist at the University of Miami, who discovered from undersea core samplings that in a ten-year period around 9600 B.C.E. ocean levels rose catastrophically, completely changing the geography, climate and flora-fauna distribution of the entire Atlantic basin.

In similar fashion, Russian hydrologist M. Ermalaev reported that the Arctic Ocean water system changed suddenly to its present state twelve thousand years ago, due to an unexplained altering of the flow of the Gulf Stream.

Russian scholars Vladmir Obrucev, E. Hagemeister, and Sweden’s Atlantic expert Rene Malaise saw definite connections between the end of the Ice Age and evidence of severe tectonic and volcanic activity throughout the Atlantic region at the same time.

And German researcher Otto Muck found that the same date also saw tens of thousands of animals quick-frozen in Siberia, and the bones of millions of others smashed and jumbled together into caves, fissues and crevices all over the world—as if some great force had suddenly destroyed three-quarters of all living things on the Earth’s surface. The period, too, witnessed the unexplained extinction of the mammoth, woolly rhino, and hundreds of other animal species unique to the Pleistocene, but which never survived beyond it.

We find that there is considerable evidence both from oceanography and geology for the former existence of a large mid-ocean Atlantic land mass. Plato placed Atlantis just west of the Straits of Gibraltar. If we follow his directions to the letter, we arrive in the area of the islands of the Azores, near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. If these were once part of a much larger island—the 400,000 square miles Plato described Atlantis as once having been—then it would answer a long-standing enigma of what happened to the Atlantic Gulf Stream during the Ice Age. The Gulf Stream originates as a western current of warm water between West Africa and South America, enters the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, then leaves the east coast of North America as a warm easterly current, flowing to the Azores, and turns northward to travel to Britain and Norway. It is the heat carried by the Stream that gives northern Europe a much milder, more temperate climate than it normally would have for such latitudes. This is made apparent when we realize that London exists on the same latitude as the cold and barren plains of Labrador.

Now during the Ice Age, northern Europe was covered by a thick blanket of ice. Temperatures all over the world were generally cooler at that time, but the Gulf Stream should still have been warm enough to have prevented the glacial ice from covering at least Great Britain and portions of Scandinavia. As it was, the ice buried the location where London now it under a mile of ice, and the glaciers pushed as far south in central Europe as Berlin.

The only explanation is that during the Ice Age some barrier existed in the mid-Atlantic that prevented the Gulf Stream from reaching northern Europe, and that toward the end of the Ice Age this barrier was suddenly removed and the Stream established its present route. The proposed “barrier” would have been situated exactly where Plato placed Atlantis: An island of the size and location that Plato specified would have been more than sufficient to divert the path of the Gulf Stream. What is more, it is at precisely that time Plato said Atlantis sank—11,500 B.P.—that paleoclimatologists note dramatic changes took place in ocean temperatures and European weather patterns, in part caused by a change Gulf Stream route.

Many myths and legends the world over preserve a memory of Atlantis as having been Paradise, the home of the gods and heroes—the origin point from which many peoples either received the gift of civilization, or escaped when the land was lost. Plato tells us that the fertile plain of Atlantis grew all manners of foods and vegetation, having a temperate to tropical climate, sheltered by the mountains in the north from boreal winds. As we already noted, up until twelve thousand years ago, the Gulf Stream was blocked from reaching northern Europe by the presence of Atlantis where the Azores are today. Because of this, Atlantis received most of the Stream’s warmth and tempering effects on wind and plentiful rainfall, before it was diverted back toward the south. At the same time, cold ocean currents and icy winds descending from glacial-covered northern Europe were stopped by the towering Atlantean mountainsin the north of the island. Thus, Atlantis had an ideal, garden-like climate, at a time when most of Europe and North America were in the grip of the Ice Age.

During this era, judging from Plato’s description, the Atlantean people possessed a high civilization, commanding great wealth and power. In contrast, all the known prehistoric civilizations, both in the Old World and the New, were at this time either just beginning to acquire the rudiments of civilization, or at least had a civilization on a very simple level. In Plato’s record, we read that Athens was not more than a prehistoric wooden fortress, and the people of the Nile had yet to acquire the status of a grand culture it was later to become. To them, and the rest of the pre-emerging known civilizations, Atlantis—with its civilization fully evolved and its empire far-flung and expanding—would have appeared as an island of cultural wonder and ease. And it is the memory of just such a place, and its location in the area of the Atlantic, that is found in practically every mythology and religion.

Core samplings and observations made throughout the Atlantic—from the Azores and along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to the Caribbean and on the continental shelves—support the existence of a former large oceanic island. In 1913, French geologist Pierre Termier analyzed lava particles taken from the sea bottom at a depth of two miles just north of the Azores. He discovered the particles to be tachylyte, a form of lava which is vitreous and not crystalline—which means it could only have solidified in air. Because the disintegration of such lava occurs within a relatively shor time, Termier dated the rock at 12-13,000 B.P.–10-11,000 B.C.E. He concluded: “The entire region north of the Azores and perhaps the very region of the Azores was very recently submerged, probably during the epoch which geologists call the Present.”

In 1924, an Eastern Cable Company repair ship was sent to a spot 800 miles north of the Cape of Good Hope in order to retrieve a broken cable between the Cape and St. Helena Island. When the grapnels were lowered, the found the broken cable at a depth of three-quarters of a mile. The mystery was, when the cable had been laid in 1899, the depth recorded at this point had been 2,700 fathoms, or just over three miles. What this means is that within just 25 years, the ocean bottom had risen almost two miles. This finding serves as an example of what tremendous forces are at work beneath the Atlantic Ocean floor, forces that can not only raise land relatively quickly, but could probably also sink land, like Atlantis of old.

Ten years later, in the summer of 1934, the Woods Hole Institute research ship, appropriately named Atlantis, took tow-dredgings from off the Georges Bank and Cape Cod, at depths of 8,000 feet. What the expedition discovered were fossil-bearing rocks from the late Tertiary period which showed they had been cut out by river action since that time. H. C. Stetson, commenting on this finding in the Bulletin of the Geological Survey of America, said: “A fall and rise of sea level of the order or magnitude which the evidence demands, coupled with the shortness of time within which it must have taken place, approaches catastrophic.”

Another oceanographic survey, performed in 1947-1948 by the Swedish Deep Sea Expedition aboard the Albatross, took core samplings from along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. What amazed the researchers involved was that several cores, from a depth of two miles down, revealed the remains of fresh water diatoms or algae, below a layer of marine sediments. One core, taken from 8,000 feet, off the Sierra Leone Ridge 578 miles from the west coast of Africa, contained more than 60 species of diatoms all exclusively fresh water type.

Swedish pale botanist R. W. Kolbe regarded this sample as evidence of a strata laid down by fresh water, while his colleague, geologist Rene Malaise, concluded that the diatoms had lived in a fresh water lake once above water. Conservative researchers attempted to explain the presence of these diatoms as being the result of a “turbidity current” having carried the micro-life from the African coast and deposited them in their present position. As Kolbe pointed out, however: “If ever we should accept the faint possibility of a turbidity current flowing from the African coast and dumping its load of fresh water diatoms at a distance of 930 km from the coast, it remains to be explained how it was possible for this current not only to carry its load such a distance, but, at the same time, to climb uphill more than 1,000 meters before dumping the load on top of a submarine hill.”

A year later, in the fall of 1949, Professor M. Ewing of Columbia University published a report on more findings made along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge of a curious nature. Ewing observed: “One was the discovery of prehistoric beach sand brought up in one case from a depth of two and the other nearly three and a half miles, far from any place where beaches exist today.” Beach sand is formed as the result of the action of waves pounding a seashore, in shallow water, and in the action of rain, winds and extreme temperature changes—events which do not take place deep beneath the ocean.

A second mystery involved unexplained differences in sediments on the foothills of the Ridge. As Ewing described it: “Measurements clearly indicate thousands of feet of sediments on the foothills of the Ridge. Surprisingly, however, we have found that in the great flat basins on either side of the Ridge, this sediment appears to be less than 100 feet thick.” Ewing called this a “startling fact,” because such a lack of thick deposits in the basin suggests a relatively young age for the formation of the present Atlantic undersea floor.

The type of sediment deposits found were also striking: Samples dating at 11,000 B.P. from the western half of the North Atlantic showed ocean mud, but those from the eastern side—especially in the region where Plato placed Atlantis—revealed granite, mud stones, rocks striated by glacial action, land soil and loose gravel.

As for the thick deposits concentrated on the Ridge, these were found covering terraces at uniform depths. These terraces, like the beach sand upon them, were formed only by shallow water wave action. The fact that several terraces exist, and all well below present ocean levels, suggests that this area was subject to stages of submergence in the past. It is significant that Plato wrote that immediately after Atlantis sank, that part of the ocean where it had existed for a long time was impassable to shipping, because of the shallowness and muddiness of the waters. Atlantis appears to have gradually sunk in stages—as the terraces indicate--and the muddiness filtered out of the waters, becoming the thick sediments covering the Ridge area.

The Russians have been involved in deep sea explorations in the Atlantic, and their findings likewise support the existence of a former mid-Atlantic land mass. In 1963, an expedition of the oceanographic ship, Mikhail Lomonsov, sponsored by the Soviet Academy of Sciences, examined rock samples taken from a depth of 6,600 feet, at a location 60 miles north of the Azores. In a report made by Dr. Maria Klionova, the rocks showed evidence of having been exposed to atmospheric weathering approximately 17,000 years ago. Dr. Klionova stated: “This discovery allows us to suspect the existence of an ancient continent buried 14,500 years ago in this area of the ocean.”

In February of 1969, a Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory team from Columbia and Duke Universities dredged up from fifty sites along the Aves Ridge, stretching underwater from Venezuela to the Virgin Islands, over a ton of light granitic and acid igneous rock—the type of rock usually associated only with continents. As Dr. Bruce Heezen noted: “The occurrence of light-colored granitic rocks may support the old theory that a continent formerly existed in the region of the eastern Caribbean, and that these rocks may represent the core of a subsided lost continent.” Expedition members also found coral reefs located at depths of several thousands of feet. But corals form in no more than 50 feet of water—which means the region where they had formed had sunk a considerable distance.

In the same year, a U.S. Geological survey made off the Florida Keys discovered 400-foot basins on a shelf 500 feet below water, which were determined to have been fresh water lakes before this shelf had once been sunk beneath the waves.

In a 1973–1974 expedition, researchers from the University of Halifax took core samples from the North Atlantic which showed in the first 800 meters materials formed either in shallow water or air. A year later, marine scientists a the University of Miami found limestone deposits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, dating to 11,500 years ago, thousands of miles from any present-day shore, where limestone forms.

The year 1975 also saw a report published concerning a survey conducted by the Franco-American Mid-Atlantic Ocean Study, which used direct observation by deep-diving submarines. At one location on the Ridge, to the southwest of the Azores, the diving team suddenly found themselves not looking at the typical topography of giant, jagged rift fracture zones and sharply broken transverse faults, but at gently rolling mountains and U-shaped valleys, extending in a north-south direction for about fifteen miles. There were also great shallow depressions and mountain passes that had all the appearance of former lakes with river run-offs. The contour and topography of the land showed all the signs of weathering by wind and rain—yet it exists at a depth of over 2,700 meters below the ocean’s surface.

In 1978, famed underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau, accompanied by his Calypso divers, completed a study of submerged caves in the Caribbean, and off the Central American coast. Near Andros Island in the Bahamas, Cousteau found a huge cavern 165 feet down, containing stalactites and stalagmites—which only form in air. Marine sediments taken from the wall of the cavern indicated the place had been submerged about 10,000 B.C.E. Off of Belize, Cousteau also explored the famous “Blue Hole.” Here again, he discovered stalactites and stalagmites, only these were sharply slanted from the vertical, indicating the are had undergone a great upheaval at the time of the Hole’s inundation. Once more, dating techniques demonstrated these events had taken place about 10,000 B.C.E.

A curious aspect preserved by Plato about the earliest history of Atlantis was that when Atlantis City was first built by Poseidon and his offspring, there were no ships or navigation. What this implies is that, originally, Atlantis was not a true island: The construction of a city and other large-scale construction projects necessitates a large population being present to build them and maintain them. If people thus lived in the country, yet they did not come by ship, as Plato says, then there must have been one or more land bridge connections over which they crossed, from one or more of the surrounding continents. Professor R. F. Scheiff of Dublin believes that the Madeira and Azores Islands were connected with both Portugal and Morocco in Miocene and Tertiary times. During the Ice Age, the bridges disappeared--first the European, then the African--the latter within the time of early humanity’s appearance in the Old World. The Azores plateau then remained as an island—as Plato described Atlantis to be in 9500 B.C.E.—before it, too, sank into the ocean at the close of the Ice Age.

There are other descriptions which Plato gave concerning Atlantis that also have a bearing as to the location of the lost isle—and offers clues as to where we should look for Atlantis’ remains. The rocks of Atlantis, Plato recounted, were white, red and black, and the land abounded with hot and cold springs. Without having ever visited the eastern Atlantic, Plato accurately described the predominant colors of the geologic formations found in the Azores, as well as the neighboring Canary Islands. Concerning the description of springs, investigator Charles Berlitz commented: “When Plato mentioned cold and hot springs for thermal bathing he correctly assessed an Atlantic island phenomenon. Today in Reykjavik, Iceland, housed are heated and hot water is supplied from hot springs, and not volcanic springs are prevalent in the Azores, thought by some to be the mountains of Atlantis.” On the Azorean island of San Miguel, in the Furnas Valley, there is a place where in fact two springs arise like Plato described—one of boiling water, the other icy cold.

Plato also observed that in northern Atlantis there were mountains higher than any known to the Mediterranean peoples. In the year 1665, Jesuit Father Athanasius Kircher, in his work Mundus Subterraneus, was he first to realize that the islands of the Azores may be nothing less than the tops of the mountains of old Atlantis. On the island of Pico is an impressive volcano, Pico Alto, that today rises 7,600 feet above sea level. Ocean research has confirmed Kircher’s original concept, for below the ocean surface Pico Alto continues to descend into the depths, leveling off on the northern Azores plateau at minus 10,000 feet. When Atlantis existed--when this plateau was above water—Pico Alto would have towered a total of over 17,000 feet, or 1,700 feet higher than Mount Blanc n the Alps, the tallest mountain in Europe. Once again, Plato—who certainly knew nothing about submarine topography—preserved a piece of information confirmed by modern underwater findings.

The exploration of the eastern Atlantic has not only brought to the surface fossils and rocks testifying to Atlantis’ existence in terms of geology, but at times has revealed the presence of humankind and their civilization as well.

In 1941, a ferry pilot flying a bomber from Brazil to Dakar, west Africa, spotted several walls of ruined buildings that could be clearly seen on the ocean floor about 500 feet below the surface, very near to St. Paul’s Rock—a small barren island jutting off the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. To date, there have been no follow-up reports or investigations of these mysterious walls.

Several years later, near the top of a submarine mountain situated in the eastern North Atlantic not far from the Canary Islands, numerous strange limestone discs were dredged up. Each was 15 centimeters in diameter, 4 cm. thick, and had a perfectly centered uniform hole drilled through it. The discs have all the appearance of having been artificially made, with almost machine-made precision. A thin organic film that covered some of them was radiocarbon-dated at 12,000 B.P.

In August of 1964, the captain of the French research submarine Archimedes, Georges Huout, observed a giant stone stairway leading into the depths of the Puerto Rico Trench, off the north coast of Puerto Rico. The steps were uniform, and had all the appearance of having been carved from the rock, each one about thirteen inches high and forty feet long. The steps ended at the old Caribbean sea level of twelve millennia ago.

In 1967, explorers aboard the American deep-diving craft Aluminaut, while investigating the continental shelf off South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, suddenly found themselves traveling along a smooth roadway paved with a layer of manganese oxide. Even though submerged at a depth of three thousand feet, the Aluminaut was able to proceed down the road like a car on a modern highway.

In the summer of 1979, Professor Andrei Aradyevich Aksyonov, a deputy director of the Institude of Oceanography of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, reported in Lisbon that a Russian photographer and colleague, Vladimir I. Marakuyev, had been taking pictures from an underwater diving bell attached to a research ship, the Kurchatov. It was making a survey in cooperation with the Portugese government of the Ampere Seamount, a horseshoe-shaped oceanic rise located 275 miles southwest off Portugal, near the Madeiras Islands. At a depth of about 200 feet, Marakuyev snapped eight photos which showed walls, a stone bridge, a stairway with wide steps leading to a “stronghold,” giant statues, and road pavements—all in ruins and partially covered by underwater plants. One photo revealed the image of eight hand-hewn bricks or stones—four square and four rounded—in a line about three and a half to four feet long. Askyonov remarked that the specialists examining this picture have confirmed that this architecture is typical of the very earliest European and Mediterranean styles. Another photo showed three evenly spaced steps leading to a high embankment.

When we consider that Atlantis was destroyed violently, it would be considered miraculous to have very much left for us to find. As Plato depicted it, the island and its cities must have been swept over by great tidal waves of water induced by the huge earthquakes that finally submerged it. Such waves have tremendous destructive power, and there are many modern examples of just what the force of water can do against man-made structures. William Bascom, in a report on “Ocean Waves” published in Scientific American, August, 1959, observed: “At Cherbourg, France, a breakwater of large rocks and capped with a wall 20 feet high was built. Storm waves hurled 7,000 pound stones over the wall and moved 65-ton concrete blocks 60 feet. At Wick, Scotland, the end of the breakwater was capped by an 800-ton block of concrete that was secured to the foundation by iron rods 3.5 inches in diameter. In the great storm of 1872, the designer of the breakwater watched in amazement from a nearby cliff as both cap and foundation, weighing a total of 1,350 tons, were removed as a unit and deposited in the water that the wall was supposed to protect. He rebuilt the structure and added a larger cap weighing 2,600 tons, which was treated similarly by a storm a few years later.”

What Atlantean artifacts managed to survive the action of water and quake would have been tested by the onslaught of time. Woods and fabrics rotted or were eaten by sea worms and other parasites; metals rusted and disintegrated from the corrosion by seawater salts and chemicals; and coral, seaweed and algae attacked stone surfaces, obliterating the smooth surfaces. Remains that were swept into the ocean depths up to two miles down were crushed beyond recognition by the tremendous pressure being exerted per square inch.

Finally, what artifacts were preserved by some stroke of luck could conceivably remain totally undetected by modern investigation. Walworth, in his work Subdue the Earth, made these significant observations:

“Even if the location of the city (of Atlantis) were known, probes and cameras might not disclose its ruins. A coring probe that fell upon any building material that was tough enough to survive on the ocean floor would only be deflected, and perhaps broken and bent. Landing on a bronze lintel, a building block, or a cobblestone would only produce an incomplete core—of which many are found. Nor is undersea photography the answer. Under the best of circumstances and with brilliant lighting, a camera at the depth of three miles might have a range of perhaps fifty feet. Under less than perfect conditions, the range is less than ten. Locating the rubble of a city buried under yards of mud and silt in those conditions is like trying to locate a razed and buried Peoria, Illinois, by cruising over the Midwest on a cloudy and foggy night in a dirigible, trailing an instamatic camera on a three-mile long string.”

We can say that there already exists substantial evidence corroborating Plato’s location of Atlantis in the Atlantic, from classical sources, from geology, oceanography, and—to a limited degree—from underwater archaeology. But so far we have only literally scratched the surface, and yet more evidence will inevitably come to light as further explorations of the Atlantic seafloor are made.

Now let us examine what legends and remains exist for lost Atlantis that have survived among those areas surrounding the Atlantic Ocean to where the children of Poseidon once escaped.

Throughout the areas of the Old World, we find many legends, many mystery ruins and many remnants of forgotten peoples who appear to be the cultural residue of an age long before the known ancient civilizations came into being. They cannot be explained in terms of “accepted” historical schemes of the past. Only in the context of the existence of Atlantis do these anomalies take on special meaning and significance.

During the Ice Age, geologists know that England and Ireland were joined to Europe, and what is now the North, Irish and Baltic Seas, and the English Channel, were dry land. One can still trace old river beds where the Thames, the Rhine and the Seine flowed together in low valleys to the prehistoric coast. Between 25,000 and 11,000 B.P., these valleys sank in stages, with the last date marking the greatest submergence. Today, fishermen dredge up in their nets mastadon bones, mammoth teeth, as well as stone tools and other human artifacts. They have also reported the presence of large stone structures in various locations, sometimes in fairly deep water. The number of remains and ruins indicate that the very last submergence—between 12,000 and 11,000 B.P.—must have been cataclysmic in nature, to have caught by surprise and destroyed so large a population of animals and civilized humanity.

In this prehistoric flooding of the northern European coasts, several outposts that were once part of the Atlantean empire were undoubtedly lost, and the folklore of the region contains many references to fabled sunken cities. In Brittany the story is told of the city of Ys, once situated in what is now the Bay of Trespasses. Its monarch, the wealthy Gradlon, built a high wall and a catch basin reservoir to protect the city from an encroaching sea, and he alone possessed the silver key which opened both the sluice and the city gate. One night, so the legend goes, Gradlon’s beautiful but dissolute daughter, Dahut, stole the key to open the city gates for her lover, but opened the sluice instead, drowning all of Ys. Only Gradlon, forewarned in time, escaped on swift horseback ahead of the surge, to higher ground.

A similar tradition in southwest England tells of a large isle called Lyonesse which once lay between he Scilly Islands and Cornwall. The isle is said to have once had a prosperous town, made up of no less than one hundred and forty buildings. A series of rocks called the Seven Stones seven miles west of Land’s End mark the site, all that is left after Lyonesse was destroyed in a cataclysmic flood. Like Ys’ king Gradlon, Lyonesse had its sole survivor, Tevilon, who also escaped by riding horseback with the waves at his heels.

To the south, bordering on the Pyrenees, is a prehistoric peoples today known as the Basques, who call themselves the Eskara. They appear to be cousins of the Ausci, an ancient Aquitaine tribe to the north of the Pyrenees territory. Their language bears no relation to any of the modern languages of Europe and Asia, except for curious isolated pockets that are spread almost around the world: Gaelic, Breton, Andalusian, the Berber languages of North Africa, the ancient Guanche dialect in the Canary Islands, several obscure Caucasian tongues including Georgian; Mingrelian, Ugro-Finn, Turkoman, Chukchi, Tungus, ancient Japanese—and in Central America: Guatemaltec, Otomi and Lacandones.

There have been many eye-witness reports of members from one area discovering to their great surprise their ability to speak in their own tongue to the indigenous people of another area halfway across the globe. During the Spanish conquests in the New World, for example, a Basque missionary found he could successfully preach to the Guatemalans in his Pyrenees tongue’ a Russian officer of Georgian extraction conversed freely with the Basques while on a tour of northern Spain; and a Japanese ambassador to Mexico visiting the area of Peten suddenly realized he could understand Otomi natives, and spoke with them in a very old Japanese dialect.

Besides language, the Basques are also related to their distant prehistoric cousins by blood type. First of all, their population has a high percentage of a blood factor called Rh negative—a characteristic they share only with the Berbers of North Africa. They also possess an unusually high percentage of blood type O, up to 75%. Such percentages are found only in Ireland, northwest Britain, Crete, Sardinia, a small area around Carthage, in the Canary Islands (where it approaches 94%)—and among various isolated Central and South American populations, where the frequency is near 100%.

The Basques, too, have a marked absence among them of blood type B—only 0 to 3%. This is exactly the same frequency found among many Native Americans. In contrast, most East Asian and European populations have occurrences of B type from 30 to 60%.

Are these remnants of language and blood type what is left of Atlantean colonists who settled the Atlantic rim long before the present populations inhabited these regions, which include both sides of the ocean, and the western Mediterranean? Is it only coincidence that this was the exact same area, as described by Plato, once ruled by the Atlanteans?

One population related to the Basques was the Guanches of the Canary Islands. When the Spanish invaded the islands in the fifteenth century, the Guanches were surprised to learn that there were other peoples in the world who had escaped a global catastrophe, for they were convinced they were the only survivors. The Guanches are remembered as having been physically large, light-skinned, often having auburn or reddish hair. Unlike other primitive peoples, they exhibited signs of having inherited a high culture: They build circular fortifications, mummified their dead, possessed a solar cult reminiscent of both Egypt and the Incas, had a form of alphabetic writing, practiced canal irrigation, and curiously enough elected a council of ten kings to rule over them. Tragically, soon after their discovery of the Canaries, the Spanish decimated the Guanche people and their culture, so that very little remains today.

The Guanches are thought to have been physically related to the Berbers and Tuaregs of North Africa. Waldemar Stohr, in his Lexikon der Voler und Kulteren, noted of the Berbers: “The North African area appears to have been taken over by a people of a Europidic race during the Upper Paleolithic (25,000 to 9000 B.C.E.) whose type has been well preserved among today’s Berbers; now and then, there are even blond and blue-eyed people among them.” Before the Arab invasions of the seventh century, the Berber tribesmen ranged the Sahara from Morocco to Egypt, but are now found concentrated in the Atlas and Ahaggar mountains, as well as in the farthest reaches of the desert.

One Berber tribe, located in the Shott el Hameina in Tunisia, call themselves the Uneur, a name which bears a striking resemblance to Euneor, who Plato said was the earliest man to inhabit Atlantis. The Tunisian Berbers also have another appellation for themselves—”the sons of Attala.” Among the Berber family is one outstanding group, the Tuaregs, who live in the Ahaggar region. They are often called the Blue People, because they dress in blue veils, and tattoo their skins with blue dye—reminiscent of the ancient Britons and several Native American tribes. The Tuaregs are a proud and independent people, giving themselves the name Imoshagh or Amazigh, also Mazys. The Tuaregs have a spoken language related to Punic and Old Libyan, but they also possess a written script totally unrelated to their speech, the origins of which are unknown—but which has similarities to the script of the Guanches.

It is not without significant that ten thousand years ago the vast stretch of the Sahara was not a desert, but instead was a fertile land teeming with forests, animal life—and highly civilized humankind. During the last century, archaeologists Di Caporiacco and Almasy found in the Arkenu massif, located between Libya and the Sudan, carvings of bulls, buffalo, zebus, ostriches and giraffes, being chased by men with bows and arrows. French explorer Coche discovered peaceful scenes of herders and oxen at Martutech in the central Sahara. Both the German explorer Leo Frobenius and the Societa Geografica Italiana came to the conclusion that fauna typical of present central Africa—crocodiles, ostriches, elephants and rhinos—were once also indigenous to the Fezzan in Morocco in 12,000 B.C.E. Italian artist and archaeologist Fabrizo Mori uncovered rock pictures of men, women, canals, boats, and a wide assortment of animal life, in a place where even a camel has a hard time to survive today, in the Acacus massif, between Libya and Algeria. Mori noted that the carvings bore resemblances to both archaic Greek and Egyptian art. Not far away a prehistoric fishing village was unearthed, complete with heaps of shells and fish bones. During the same time period, French explorer Professor Henri Lhote located and photographed the now famous rock paintings of Tassili, depicting everyday scenes of life in a rich and beautiful world: There are running elephants, hippos splashing in streams, and giraffes feeding on leafy trees.

At times the desert sands have also yielded other surprises: The Italian scholar Centunviro discovered on the southern edge of the Libyan desert near Waw al DanI, several ruins including pillars surmounted by two-headed animals. At the bottom of an underground passage which led into what he believed was a temple of the sun, the explorer retrieved a golden cup and vase, each filled with images of men, animals and flowers dating at least eight thousand years old.

Whatever prehistoric civilization inhabited the Sahara was also master of a high level of engineering: In the deserts of Morocco around the oasis of Adrar are underground structures called foggaras. They consist of a network of tunnels sometimes dug to depths of 250 feet, running for miles and connecting ancient reservoirs of water, when the Sahara region had a much higher water table—just before and just after the end of the Ice Age. The tunnels were ventilated every hundred yards by shafts called seggias. In some areas, where the foggaras are still able to collect water, the Arabs still keep them in order—but they have no idea who built them. As French researcher Robert Charroux wrote: “The desert foggaras should be numbered among the great works of antiquity. Even today, with all the mechanical means we have at our disposal, the creation of such a system of tunnels under the desert would present engineers with greater problems than would the building of a similar system in one of our big cities.”

Somewhere within a hundred miles of the Saharan Hoggar, which serves as the crossroads for four main caravan routes through the desert, are the remains of the fabled City of Brass, capital of the prehistoric Amazons. It was known to Alexander the Great, who sent an expedition from Egypt to search for it, but in vain. Baron de Protok, the Polish adventurer, discovered a royal grave near the crossroads, complete with the regaled body of a queen and twelve of her consorts.

Diodorus Siculus, in the first century B.C.E., preserved the tradition that in the dim past northwest Africa was inhabited by a ace of warrior women, the Amazons, whose Queen extended their conquests as far as the eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor.

She was said to have formed a league with Horus when he was King of Egypt. Horus, in Egyptian myth-history, was one of the earliest “god-king” rulers of the Nile—according to Egyptian chronology, over 20,000 years ago. According to Diodorus, the Amazons shared territory with Atlantis at a time when Atlantis was divided from the African continent only by an extensive marshland lake called Tritonis. The Amazons built a prehistoric city on their side of the border called Chersoneus—which in Greek simply means “city of the peninsula.” This faced an Atlantean city on the other side of Tritonis named Cerenes. Eventually the Amazons mustered a force of 2,000 horses and 30,000 soldiers dressed in serpent skins and armed with swords, javelins and bows to oppose Atlantean expansion into their territories. At a time when conflict between the two civilizations came to a head, Diodorus described: “It is reported that by an earthquake the lands toward the ocean opened its mouth and swallowed up the whole morass of Tritonis.” In other words, an earth submergence caused the ocean to completely flood the Tritonis swamp between Africa and Atlantis, cutting Atlantis off by land. We have here an eye-witness account from prehistory of Atlantis’ first becoming an island.

Concerning the time when Atlantis was totally destroyed and the aftermath of the cataclysm twelve millennia ago, Plato offered many details concerning the prehistory of his native Greece.

According to Plato’s account, the country of Greece was then richer in soil and vegetation, softer in contour, and larger in size. The Greece of Solon’s time (and today) was only a dried up, shriveled body, a skeleton of small islets compared to the former Greece. This agrees completely with the geologic and paleo-climatologically records: Up until the end of the Ice Age, with the Mediterranean much lower, Greece was indeed larger in area, and a thick blanket of soil covered what are now rocky hills and almost barren terrain. Between that Greece and present Greece, scientists agree, something catastrophic happened: The climate turned for the worse, the sea submerged the valleys, and millions of tons of soil were washed away.

Plato records that when pristine Greece existed, in the earliest times remembered, the world was divided among the gods, with Atlantis falling to Poseidon, and Greece and Europe becoming part of the domain of Zeus. In making this statement, Plato firmly roots Atlantis within the framework of Greek mythic history. The Greek memory of events preceding the First Olympiad, and stretching back to the creation of the world, reads as a fascinating sequence of cosmic, terrestrial and human catastrophes—of which the Atlantis disaster was a part. More than a few scholars of the Greek legends are recognizing that behind this primo-historical outline are facts testifying to what must have been actual events which once took place in prehistory. And because Atlantis is an integral part of this sequence, its memory is also becoming important to consider as a plausible reality.

When the world had been divided among the gods, Europe was chosen by Zeus, and Greece fell to his daughter, Athena, and his son Hephaestus. Athena took particular interest in what is now Athens, and the inhabitants there who “sprang from the earth” (were indigenous), knowing the region would be fertile ground for the development of a noble race. By the time of the Atlantean invasion, the prehistoric Athenians possessed a well-organized social order, high moral standards and just laws, as well as knew many forms of divination, medicine and other sciences. Yet the civilization was simple and not luxurious, with no use of gold and silver for decoration. All classes and specialists were separate one from another, the military, 20,000 men and women strong, lived together in a wooden fortress complex surrounding the Temples of Athena and Hephaestus, on the top of the Acropolis. The Acropolis in this age was much larger and far more fertile—the coming deluge would reduce it to its present bare rock.

Prehistoric Athens formed an alliance of European and Asian forces, to repel the onslaught of the Atlantean invaders. One by one, however, her allies were either conquered or deserted the fight, and Athens soon stood alone in the north, with Egypt remaining alone in the south.

Against overwhelming odds, the Athenians defeated a siege by the Atlanteans, saved from slavery other peoples who would have been subjected (including the Egyptians), and—forming anew alliance—finally pushed the Atlanteans out of the Mediterranean basin altogether, back beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The entire war may have lasted as much as a hundred years, for the Critias records it involved at least four Athenians kings—Cecrops, Erechtheus, Erichtonius and Erysichthon.

At the moment of her final defeat by the Athenians, in a single day and night the island of Atlantis was rocked by violent earthquakes and floods, and disappeared beneath the waters of the Atlantic. The ocean in those parts where Atlantis had existed for a long time was impassable for shipping, because of a quantity of shallow mud in the waters.

The entire Athenian army and her allies, having routed the Atlanteans near the Pillars of Hercules, suddenly sank en masse into the earth amid the same floods and earthquakes that destroyed Atlantis. At the same time, those prehistoric Greeks who lived in cities, including prehistoric Athens, were swept away, carried by torrents of rivers, into the sea. Only herdsmen and shepherds in the mountains escaped.

The Greeks of Solon’s time were but a remnant left of an older, and fairer race. For many generations after the cataclysm, the survivors made no signs—that is, built no civilization or communicated with other civilized centers. The people were left destitute of letters and education.

Except for massive flooding, the land of Egypt escaped the full brunt of the cataclysm. It managed to preserve its records and civilization. The citizens of Sais claimed a prehistoric link with the Greeks, their founding goddess Neith identified by them as being the equivlalent of Athena. Contact between the surviving Greeks and the Egyptians was made eight thousand years before Solon—about 8500 B.C.E.—or a thousand years after the cataclysm. At that time a colony of Greeks was brought to Egypt and established at Sais, at the founding of that city.

Plato’s description that the Mediterranean was a very different place twelve millennia was supported by other classical sources. Tertullian, who lived from A.D. 160to 240, discussed dramatic earth changes, and referred to the inundation of a large island iin the Atlantic having occurred at the same time that, “the side of Italy, cut through the center by a shivering shock of the Asiatic and Tyrrhenian seas (the eastern and western Mediterranean basins), left Sicily as its relic.” Likewise, Philo Judaeus, in the time of Christ, wrote about “the island of Atlantes overwhelmed beneath the sea,” and “these sacred Sicilian Strait, which in olden times joined Sicily to the continent at Italy.” Plato mentioned that Greece was much larger in size in the same period. Twelve thousand years ago the Mediterranean was several hundred feet lower, as the result of waters locked up in the Ice Age glaciers covering northern Europe. The effect would not only have made Greece larger in area, but would have exposed land between Italy, Sicily and Tunisia, cutting the Mediterranean into two distinct basins or bodies of water. The same disaster that destroyed Atlantis and inundated coastal Greece would have also submerged the Italian-Sicilian-North African land bridge—just as the Greek and Roman historians recorded it from legend.

A second indication that the geography of the Mediterranean and Greece was different during the time of Atlantis was noted by researcher H. S. Bellamy, who made these observations regarding Plato’s description of the Atlantean war against prehistoric Athens: “The Atlantean expedition was made by land, and not be sea. After landing the Atlantean armies appear to have marched eastward, passing through, or subduing, various regions along the way, until they reached Grecia. If the Mediterranean as we know it had existed in those days they would surely have sailed part of their magnificent fleet up the Gulf of Aegina, as Xerxes did much later, and started their invasion of Attica form the beaches of Phaleron. Yet nowhere is there a report or hint of any such thing nor are the Athenians anywhere said to have had a fleet, as, say, in the days of Themistocles. Indeed, ships are only mentioned after the great cataclysm.”

As for the memory of the prehistoric Atlantean-Athenian war having taken place, Bellamy discovered: “There is, I believe, a peculiar reminder that once the forces of the Atlanteans did stand in the vicinity of Attica, and that most of them were wiped out by a flood. To the west of the entrance of the Piraeus there is a small rocky islet, called Atalanta by the ancients, and still going by the name of Talanto; and in the fjord of Euboea there is an island also called Atlanta in antiquity (now Talandonisi), while on the mainland there is a village of the same name which has become Talanti in modern Greek. No explanation why this name has been given to the islands can be found; the ancients just seem to have assumed that ‘they were always called so.’ It may not be too fantastic to assume that they originally obtained their name from survivors of the Atlantean armies who had taken refuge there when the land around them was lost in the waters of the Mediterranean flood.”

Another remnant memory of the Atlanteans which also hints at conditions in the Mediterranean once being far different than they are today, is found in the classical historian Aelian’s account in his work De Natura Animalia:

“The searams (great seals) of which many have heard tell but few know the natural history, except in so far as it is depicted in paintings and reliefs, long ago once wintered in the straits between Corsica and Sardinia. They were seen standing right up above the surface of water, and the largest dolphins swam around them. The head of the male searam is bound by a white band, like a diadem, one might say, the female searam has a tuft of hair hanging beneath her neck, like the little beards of cocks. Dwellers by the ocean tell the story that the ancient kings of Atlantis who traced their descent from Poseidon, wore head-bands of the skin of the male searams, as a sign of authority. The queen likewise wore fillets of the female searam.”

Noteworthy is the fact that today, as in classical times, seals were no longer seen in the Mediterranean. The fossil record informs us that the only time they inhabited the Mediterranean, and in fairly large numbers as this story reveals, was before the end of the Ice Age, over twelve thousand years ago.

Not only did Atlantis leave its mark in the Old world, but it also had its influence in dim antiquity in the New World as well. Plato in his account recorded that, “Beyond Atlantis to the west were islands, and from these islands once could reach the opposite continent, which encompasses the true Ocean,” the Atlantic. If a major land mass existed south of where the Azores are today, westward would be the Caribbean islands, and beyond them, the Americas. Researcher Otto Muck made this comment about Plato’s revelation of North America’s geography: “The most exciting feature of these details is the very fact that they contain not the topography of a mystical sea, but an utterly true, realistic description of it. Of Plato had wished to invent the outline of a region, he had limitless possibilities. How, if only imagined, did he give a description that in fact is a brief statement of the true conditions of an actual environment?”

Noteworthy also is that Plato described the American continent as “encompassing” the North Atlantic, fitting the geographical features of the late Pleistocene: With the oceanic waters lower, an ice-covered land bridge connected Labrador with Greenland and northern Europe, and another land bridge or chain of islands linked Brazil with West Africa. The North Atlantic was thus surrounded, almost land-locked, by these extensions of the American continent.

One important aspect to realize, when looking for traces of Atlantis in the New World, is that the evidence must be considered with great care, because our understanding of the Americas’ past has changed radically in the last several decades. Many researchers on Atlantis during the last one hundred and fifty years—among them, the most notable, Ignatius Donnelly—were often fond of making impressive lists of the numerous striking similarities between Old and New World civilizations, which they claimed were proofs of Atlantis’ existence. The lists usually included pyramid-building, mummification, metallurgy, agriculture, architecture, writing, etc. The scenario these Atlantologists proposed was that Atlantis was the “mother culture” which sent out colonists eastward and westward, and then the continent sank, the peoples on both sides of the Atlantic lost contact but retained the cultural practices and traditions they had all originally received from their sunken homeland.

However, we now know the real reason for the cultural similarities. Through the intensive investigation of such researchers as Thor Heyerdahl, Cyrus Gorden, Barry Fell and others, it is becoming increasingly apparent that most of the seafaring civilizations of the known ancient world had been in direct contact with the civilizations of the Americas, for trading purposes. Between 3000 B.C.E. and A.D. 1100, the Western Hemisphere was visited by waves of Sumerians, Egyptians, Dravidians, Minoans, Mycenaeans, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Carthaginians, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesians, Polynesians, Greeks, Romans, West Africans, Arabs, Welsh, Irish and Norse. Each made their impact, and each left the residue of their influence on the peoples of the New World, from the Olmecs and Mayas, to the pre-Incans and Nazcans. Thus, the cultural similarities came about as the result of face-to-face communications, and not the mediation of a “mother culture” like Atlantis.

The real evidence for Atlantis in the Americas in truth can have nothing whatsoever to do with the known ancient cultures, because Atlantis antedated them all. It is the American remains which show evidence of high civilization having existed on the two Western Hemisphere continents will over ten thousand years ago, which point directly to the influence of a lost prehistoric culture.

Among the most controversial discoveries made are extensive submerged ruins which have been reported throughout the Caribbean, particularly in the area of the Bahamas. The first sighting was made in 1968 by two American pilots, Trigg Adams and Robert Brush, and later examined through the underwater exploration efforts of Dimitri Rebikoff. Within a few years’ time, other divers joined the search for other ruins, among the Robert Ferro, Michael Grumely, Count Pino Turolla, and most notably Dr. J. Manson Valentine, Honorary Curator of the Science Museum of Miami.

Perhaps the most well-publicized and explored ruins exist off Paradise Point, North Bimini, taking the shape of a “backward J” wall or road formation, approximately 700 yards in length, and composed of large stone blocks, many averaging 15 to 18 feet long and 10 feet wide. Largely through the intensive investigative work of Dr. David Zink of Virginia Beach, Virginia, it has been established that these blocks are of man-made origin, oriented to the northeast direction, with solar and stellar alignments incorporated into the design, like Stonehenge. The blocks are also made of material not native to the Bimini or Bahamian region. Radio-isotope and geologic datings point to these ruins having been above water no later than 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.

The combined evidence so far gathered from the investigations of the Bimini and other various sunken remains strongly indicate that prior to twelve thousand years ago—at a time when the Caribben and Atlantic bodies were from 100 to 300 feet lower, exposing far more land area than exists at the present—a highly advanced civilization employed sophisticated architectural and large stone manipulating techniques, and built extensive walls, temples, harbors, colonnades as well as other structures throughout the region. Sometime between 10,000 and 8000 B.C.E., however, the sea level began to steadily and rapidly rise, with attempts made by the Caribbean populous to erect dikes and sea walls as a preventive measure. But the sea finally won the battle, and the structures were inundated. The fact that the type of civilization, the time element and water destruction matches those of Plato’s Atlantis, is far more than a striking parallel: The lost Caribbean civilization was very likely an American outpost of the Atlantean empire in the manner which Plato described it, and when Atlantis was engulfed, this outpost suffered the same fate, though the sinking was more gradual.

The sinking in the Caribbean appears to have given the people inhabiting the region time enough to escape and resettle elsewhere. Where did they go? The nearest landfalls would have been the shores of the Americas.

In the 1920’s, Dr. G. C. Valliant and his wife began a study of pre-Columbian pottery throughout the New World, and discovered a curious cultural residue in the earliest pottery examples which they simply termed “Q.” Dr. Valliant found the first instance of “Q” residue in the earliest pottery of El Arbolillo, about a mile northwest of Ticoman, Mexico—considered to be one of the oldest pottery sites in Central America.

Although the pottery was without precedent, Dr. Valliant noted that it was not at all primitive. About ninety percent of the wares were highly polished and red or bay in color; they took the forms of large jars with handles, or open bowls with reinforced rims. There are also examples of white, red-on-white, and black polished wares, some with incised designs into which red or white powder had been rubbed to enhance the patterns.

Next, Dr. Valliant found examples of the same type in southern Mexico and the Atitlan district of Guatemala. From there, other remains showed up, as far south as Peru and as far north as the Mississippi valley. Dr. Valliant discovered that the “Q” residue was particularly strong in the latter, along the Mississippi, and this prompted him the believe that the ultimate origin point had been in the Caribbean area. As Dr. Valliant queried: “To what epoch and to what culture do these forms relate? As and inexplicable residue among the ceramics of Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, and Costa Rica they also occur. These elements were obtained under such conditions of antiquity as beneath the volcanic ash of Salvador, under Old Empire Maya remains at Holmul and Uaxactun, and associated with pre-Maya material at the Finca Arevalo in Guatemala. Such traits are rare or absent in the early cultures found under the lava and on the hills of Mexico, but their distribution is very wide, extending as far as Recuay in Peru, the earliest Peruvian site to date, and north of Vera Cruz and as a scattering residue in northern Mexico, with a strong source of infection in the pottery of the western drainage of the Mississippi and to a less degree in Tennessee.”

The sunken ruins of the Caribbean high civilization center may yet provide the answer to the enigma of the “Q” culture, and was the earliest and most logical point from which survivors cold have escaped, and influenced the initial occupation sites in the rest of the New World.

Dr. Valliant’s work has been verified in part by more recent investigations of Dr. Joseph Mahan of Atlanta, an expert in ancient Native American ethnology of the southeastern populations of the United States. He has found distinct interlinkings between pottery from this area, and pottery fragments uncovered from the Bahamas.

Dr. Mahan has also collected Native American legends, particularly from among the Yuchis, which tell how their people migrated to Georgia and Florida in a remote age, after their island sank into the sea, and they were forced to flee for their lives.

Another possible result of the Caribbean’s prehistoric influence may have begun the Mound Build cultures. The Mound Builders’ domain in North America can be generally divided into two major area—north and south—each possessing their particular architectural and artistic characteristics, many of which point to foreign sources of influence. In the south, archaeologists have noted repeatedly certain traits which show affinities to the Mexican and Central American cultures. Shetrone lists these as follows: “truncated pyramids or temple mounds; monolithic hatchets; seated human figures; sculptured idol heads; plumed serpents as decorative or symbolic design motifs; vessels with tripod feet; certain engraved shells; spool-shaped ear ornaments; and long ceremonial swords chipped from flint. The truncated pyramids or flat-topped temple mounds are particularly significant, and may be regarded as analogous to the temple pyramids of Mexico.” Many of the Mound Builder structures, also paralleling Mexican architectural practices, took the form of large circles, squares and polygon shapes.

The usual interpretation by conservative historians has been that the southern Mound Builders represent a distant offshoot of the early Mexican civilizations, via the Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest. Since recent excavations have shown that the south earthworks were the oldest, it is believed that the offshoot developed first in the lower Mississippi, and then moved northward.

The problem with this theory of Mexican origins is that, between the Pueblo peoples and the Mississippi valley there is an intervening blank gap of a thousand miles in which there are no successive steps whatsoever demonstrating any such dispersal. As Shetrone commented: “Just why this great territory, reaching from the Mexican border to Alabama, should be barren of evidences resembling those of the cultures under discussion is a decided puzzle.”

The theory of Central American origins for the Mound Builders is clearly not supported by the facts—yet the Mexican affinities do need to be explained. As Dr. Valliant noted earlier in regards to “Q” residue, the answer to the mystery is that both the Mexican and Mound Builder civilizations derived their parallel cultural characteristics from a third source—the prehistoric Caribbean.

It is significant to note that, from what explorations have been conducted so far, among the sunken ruins off the Bahamas and elsewhere, there are repeated finds of temples, platforms, and a variety of geometric designs dotting the sea floor, just as one finds among the landed American civilizations. More research is needed before more detailed comparisons can be made, but architecturally speaking at least, the sunken Caribbean high civilization center appears to contain those very same elements found in both Mexico and the Mississippi.

[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]