PLATO (428/427 or 424/423 – 348 BCE)
Ignatius Donnelly (1831 – 1901)
James Churchward (1851 – 1936)
Graham Hancock (1950 - )
| PLATO (428/427 or 424/423 – 348 BCE) |
Ignatius Donnelly (1831 – 1901) |
James Churchward (1851 – 1936) |
Graham Hancock (1950 - ) |
The theme of lost civilizations and lost continents (a staple of 19th Century science fiction and pseudoscience) traces back to the famous Greek philosopher Plato. He preferred to present his ideas in the form of dialogues between his former mentor Socrates and (usually fictional) students. One of his most famous dialogues is The Republic, which presents Plato's ideas on the ideal form of government. In two later dialogues, Timaeus and Critias (named for their principal speakers), Plato responds to a request to show how his ideal government would respond to a major crisis. These two dialogues recount how a prehistoric Athenian civilization organized along Plato's lines responds to the threat of a supercivilization, Atlantis, based on a large island just beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
Upon the rediscovery of Greek and Roman literature which brought on the Renaissance, some scholars did not know what to make of Plato's version of political-science fiction, and treated it as a real account... particularly polymath Athanasius Kircher. But the man who fully fleshed out Atlantis was 19th Century US politician and polymath Ignatius Donnelly. Taking advantage of a term in the US Congress, which gave him access to the huge Library of Congress, Donnelly created a detailed history of Atlantis, recounted in multiple books. In his version, Atlantis was the first human civilization, and it founded colonies all over the earth. Atlantis was wiped out when a comet struck the Atlantic, but some of the colonies survived the cataclysm and ultimately founded some of the great civilizations of antiquity, such as ancient Egypt. His books inspired Helena Blavatski to make Atlantis an important component of her fictional account of the origins and evolution of the human race, that she published as holy scriptures of the religion of Theosophy which she co-created. The lost continent theme was expanded almost beyond recognition by late 19th - early 20th Century eccentric James Churchward. In addition to the imaginary lost continent in the middle of the Atlantic, Churchward invented one in the middle of the Pacific, Lemuria, or simply Mu, which had been originally inspired by zoological speculations of the day about a possible ancient land bridge between Madagascar and India.
 Alfred Wegener (1880 - 1930) |
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Lost continents unexpectedly vanished from possible physical reality when the International Geophysical Year project unexpectedly confirmed speculations of German geophysicist and explorer Alfred Wegener. Wegener noticed how neatly the continental shelves of all existing continents could be fitted into a single titanic continent, and speculated that the continental plates float and drift on the underlying denser sea-floor material. The intensive international geophysical studies beginning in 1957 - 8 confirmed Wegener's ideas with many pieces of evidence, and since then geophysicists have managed to calculate and establish the positions of the continental plates, even the smallest of them, through a couple of billion years of geological time. No continent has been lost; they are all still present, only having changed their relative positions repeatedly.
Lost continents have largely vanished from prominent pseudoscience, but the mass communications media shamelessly trumpet that phrase whenever reporting on geophysicists' efforts to track down some tiny plate splintered off one of the larger continental plates. However, the Lost Civilization myth is still alive and well. Its major current promoter is British writer Graham Hancock, who has so far written a dozen books about an advanced civilization existing during the last Ice Age. All traces of this civilization were lost when comets struck the earth's North Pole. But of course, as in the usual Ignatius Donnelly scenario, survivors jump-started technology and ultimately urban civilization among the "lesser races" of the earth. There is some similarity between Hancock's scenario and the infamous Welteislehre, a pseudoscience popular in Nazi Germany because it "explained" why the "Aryan" race was virtually superhuman compared to the "lesser" breeds that "infest" our planet. One popular variant of the myth of ancient civilizations civilizing "lesser breeds" that was heavily promoted by the mass media, particularly in the 1970s, was the "Ancient Astronaut" or Space God myth, that had visitors from some other planet bringing technology and urban civilization to ancient humans, or even creating the human race. The theme is first found in 19th Century Theosophy, where Lords of the Flame from Venus come to earth to help primitive ape-men make a transition to human, and is of course the central theme of the spectacular 1960s film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
