CHAPTER 8: ATLANTIS AND LOST CONTINENTS

Written by Mark Howitt

"In the first place you remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones; in the next place, you do not know that there formerly dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, and that you and your whole city are descended from a small seed or remnant of them which survived. And this was unknown to you, because, for many generations, the survivors of that destruction died, leaving no written word"

-Plato (Greek Philosopher)

I Am an Alien - Chapter 8: Atlantis and Lost Continents

When speaking the words “Atlantic Ocean”, a majority of people pronounce the word Atlantic with a “k” sound at the end, like At-Lan-Tick. However, if you pronounce the word the same way you would as the word “apprentice” for instance, it would be pronounced as At-Lan-Tis with an “s” sound at the end. Surely it is no coincidence then that the location of Atlantis is said to have existed in the area of the “Atlantic” Ocean between the shores of western Europe and eastern North America. The belief in the existence of Atlantis is likely how the Atlantic Ocean got its name, as the story of Atlantis is one of the most popular and widely written about myths throughout modern history.

It's been said that there have been more works written about Atlantis than any other subject found in literature. Atlantis has always been an enigma, a mythological place in time full of questions and mystery, of fantasy and folkloric legend, making it a tempting topic for researchers to put a magnifying glass to. The search to find evidence and identify the location of Atlantis has continued in earnest since it was first described on record by the Greek philosopher Plato, and many theories have been suggested as to its location. After centuries of searching however, the exact location has yet to be discovered or agreed upon with any absolute certainty.

The story of Atlantis is closely related to the numerous flood myths found throughout the world, as it describes the rise and fall of an advanced society that once existed on the Earth, only to be destroyed by the chaotic elements of nature in the form of earthquakes and floods. Similar to the deluge legends, it also describes the people of Atlantis being wiped out by the gods due to their arrogance and greed, although there are many different interpretations of the Atlantean legend.

The similarities between the story of Atlantis and the deluge myths cannot be ignored, and it is to my belief that the story of Atlantis originated from the older versions that were passed down through the Mystery Schools by word of mouth or ancient texts, stemming from the Eridu Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh. As we have discussed, these accounts influenced later stories such as the biblical accounts of Noah and the great flood in the books of Genesis and Enoch. The story of Atlantis finds itself in the middle of these narratives as it was first produced during the Classical Mediterranean period, which predates the biblical version of events.

The topic of Atlantis exists within divided territory, as there are some who believe that it's merely a myth and work of fiction while others believe that it's historical fact. This argument has lasted for centuries, leading to periodic revivals of the legend through epic quests and archaeological expeditions, adding to the mystery and folklore of the subject. If we take into consideration all of the evidence proving that floods and disasters have destroyed civilizations in the past, then the Atlantis literature is most likely an alternative account of what actually happened.

Within his works, the Greek author and bard Homer once described a great lost city, thought to have been a myth since it was introduced by him so long ago. It was not until when in 1870, using Homer's Iliad as his reference guide, the German archaeologist and businessman Heinrich Schliemann actually located it. The ruins of the ancient lost city of Troy were discovered and definitively entered the history books as "fact" as opposed to "fiction". Although Troy is not the only place of myth realistically discovered, the tale of Atlantis has stood the test of time and has been of great interest since its first whispers in the historical record.

As I've discussed in previous chapters such as 'A New View of the Earth' and 'NEO World Order', it seems that these natural disaster events described by our ancestors has shaped the geography of our planet and human civilization as a whole, and is a very important piece of the puzzle. And speaking of puzzles, the continents of the world seem to fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, indicating that these continents were likely connected together at some point in the past. It is to my belief that they were separated from each other as the result of a series of impacts during specific periods of cosmic alignments and influences, leading to the cataclysms which caused the disruption and end to these once-thriving civilizations.

It is said that the Atlanteans were an advanced race of beings and held the seat of being the world's superpower at the time it flourished. Some researchers believe that their society was destroyed due to a war with the Lemurians, while others believe it was a natural disaster which caused it to become a lost civilization. Plato scribed that the city of Atlantis had once existed around 12,000 years ago and came to an end around 9600 BCE, fitting it within the timeline of the Younger Dryas period. Researchers like Randall Carlson and Graham Hancock believe that the Atlantis story is linked with the catastrophism that took place during this period of time.

What remains true is that although Atlantis may have become lost, it has not been forgotten. The search for Atlantis and the many aspects relating to its mythology continues to fascinate people from all over the world, and just as with the many subjects found within this book, it seems that the more we look at the past, the more we will find the answers and keys to unlocking our future.

ORIGINS OF ATLANTIS

Stories of the Atlanteans have survived and evolved over the centuries, often being associated in folklore with sea-beings such as merfolk, mermaids and sirens. The Marvel Comics character Namor, also known as the Sub-Mariner, is an Atlantean hybrid superhero who is distinguished as being the first antihero in the history of comic books. Namor has other notable aliases such as Namor the First, the Avenging Son and the King of Atlantis.

The first documented accounts of Atlantis were written around 360 BC by the Greek mathematician and philosopher Plato, found within the pages of his 'Timaeus' and 'Critias' dialogues. Although Atlantis is only briefly introduced in Timaeus, it is greatly expanded upon in Critias however this dialogue has no ending and is considered to be an incomplete work. This is because they were intended to be part of a trilogy, with the third and final offering 'Hermocrates' never coming to fruition.

Plato lived around 2400 years ago and was a student of the great Socrates. He also traveled quite a bit throughout his life and was highly influenced by the teachings and work of Pythagoras. Plato was also himself a teacher, whose most famous pupil was the famous Aristotle. It was Plato who is considered by many to be the establisher of western philosophy and sciences, and was the founder of the Platonic Academy, an esteemed philosophical school in Athens.

Although Plato is often associated with being the original source for the story of Atlantis, it is Plato himself who claimed that it was transmitted orally for generations before he wrote about it in 360 BC. According to Plato, the story was brought to Athens by the Athenian lawgiver and statesman Solon, who was his distant relative along with Critias indicating that they were all related. Critias had learned of the story from his great-grandfather who Solon had originally told it to. Solon in turn learned the story from Egyptian priests in Sais at the temple of Neith while he was visiting the Nile Delta region of Egypt around 590 BC. The priests at Sais claimed the story dated back 9000 years before the time of Solon and was preserved in the records of ancient Egyptian temples and the mystery schools.

The Egyptian priests told Solon about an advanced civilization that once ruled from an empire of islands that became lost to the sea, located west of the Gates of Gibraltar beyond the Pillars of Hercules. An act of divine punishment destroyed their corrupted society, similar to the cautionary tales of hubris found within the other flood narratives around the world. The Egyptians explained this record to Solon as a matter of historic fact as opposed to a myth or legend, and in my opinion, they were actually transmitting to Solon the Egyptian cosmology of the “first time”, known as the Zep Tepi.

The Zep Tepi describes the primordial beginning of creation when the first mound rose from the chaotic waters of Nu, leading to the emergence of the gods as well as the dawn of civilization. According to some historians, it is believed that the time of the Zep Tepi occurred around 36,400 BC and it has many similarities to the ancient Mesopotamian creation and flood myths, as well as the biblical deluge account which was written much later in the historical record.

Although there are many differing details found within these flood mythologies, there are also many similarities within these stories and the oral transfer from the Egyptian's to Solon, and then from Solon to Plato serves as a good example of how stories survived and evolved as they were passed down throughout the ages. While it can be argued that not all flood myths are connected, links have been made in many instances and it's quite likely that more connections will be made in the future following continued research and investigations.

Another author of Greek flood mythology from this era who has often been associated to the Atlantis story is Berosus, a Hellenistic era-Babylonian writer, astronomer and high priest of Bel Marduk from the Esagila Temple in Babylon. Berosus is most well known for being the author of the 'Babyloniaca', better known as the History of Babylonia, which was written at some point between 290 to 278 BC. According to the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius, Berosus was also the inventor of the semi-circular sundial.

What makes this particular period of history so interesting is that we begin to see the convergence of ancient flood mythologies from Mesopotamia and Egypt emerging into literary works around the time of Plato's Atlantis. This aspect of the deluge myth evolution was followed by an expansion of further narratives along with an increased interest in discovering the truth to these stories and finding the location of the mysterious lost civilization.

PLATO'S TIMAEUS & CRITIAS

According to the Greek mythology, the kingdom of Atlantis was created after the god Poseidon mated with a mortal woman named Cleito, impregnating her with the godseed of future generations. As a result of their procreations, Atlantis became populated by demigods who were ruled over by the sons who had descended from the direct lineage of the creator god. Atlantis was named after the eldest son of Poseidon, Atlas, who the Greeks associated with astronomy and navigation.

In the Timaeus and Critias dialogues, Plato described Atlantis as a highly advanced seaport civilization comprising a kingdom of islands located beyond the Pillars of Hercules and the Gibraltar Strait. He described a central island surrounded by circular harbors forming a series of alternating rings of water and land. Plato was very detailed with his descriptions, going as far as to use exact dimensions to describe its harbors and architecture, meticulously outlining specific details of the ancient kingdom.

The size of the island empire was larger than the that of Libya and Asia combined, and the concentric circles of alternating islands formed a maritime pathway like steppingstones across the Atlantic Ocean which led to the North American continent. The Atlanteans were the maritime superpower in the region of the Atlantic, which had a military consisting of over one million soldiers and a navy fleet comprising of 1200 ships. They were very involved in foreign trade with other nations and had already navigated and charted much of the known world.

Their society was governed by laws and an admirable constitution, and was initially ruled by the ten kings and sons of Poseidon, comprising of five sets of twins. His eldest son Atlas had dominion over the central kingdom which was named after him, and his brothers ruled the surrounding islands and territories. Gadeirus who was also known as Eumelus ruled the region of Gades/Cadiz, Ampheres ruled a mainland island, Euaemon, Mneseos, Autochthon, and Elasippos had territories, Mestor ruled the Cape Verde Islands, Azaes ruled an archipelago such as Azores, and Diaprepes was the tenth king. These realms were unified before the time of the great cataclysm.

A temple and large statue were built to honor Poseidon that was located in the center of the main city, described as having a rooftop made of ivory, a likely source for later folklores relating to the Ivory Tower. The walls of Poseidon's temple were lined with silver, and its pinnacles were adorned and crowned in gold. Other precious metals were also used in the architecture of the kingdom, including the use of orichalcum, a rare earth metal found exclusively in Atlantis. Inscribed on the Pillar of Orichalcum were the sacred laws which each royal house was responsible for maintaining, similar to the biblical ten commandments.

Plato described a well-developed civilization complete with agricultural and architectural wonders, military power, and advanced technologies which rivaled that of our own more recent energy inventions. The Atlanteans had extensive mining operations which extracted an abundance of materials such as crystals, gold, silver, and rare earth metals like orichalcum. The perfect climate of Atlantis made for a Garden of Eden type utopian environment, and the perfectly enriched soils allowed for multiple harvests each year.

Hot and cold springs flowed throughout the kingdom and vast forests covered the interior of the main island. An abundance of fish and wildlife including elephants were present, and the Atlanteans had a thriving trade industry with other nations, where many spices and fruits were traded that were grown exclusively in the Atlantean kingdom. As they explored and interacted with cultures from other continents, the rulers began to accumulate a mass amount of wealth and control over resources. As their wealth amassed, the Atlanteans became the global superpower of its time.

Plato's accounts of Atlantis seems to describe a society with technologies similar to that of modern man. They used the powers from crystals and rare earth materials, and could communicate with each other instantly using invisible energy similar to how we use radio frequencies and WIFI today. Many aspects relating to Atlantean technology seems to suggest that they were the first high tech civilization on the Earth, living in a way similar to our own but thousands of years ago in our distant past.

A common theme underlying the Plato texts is the growing corruption of the Atlanteans, as they began to invade and conquer other nations such as Libya, Egypt and parts of Europe like Tyrrhenia, or Tarenia in western Italy. The only power that was able to successfully defend themselves against the Atlantean conquests were a unified force of ancient Athenians. The colonial expansion led to exploitive trade relations, and the use of their military powers for invasions and conquests as opposed to defense purposes. This transition is eerily similar to what we are currently seeing in our world today.

The rulers of the ten royal houses met every five or six years to renew their laws and ethics of governance, and to update each other on the status of their particular regions. These meetings were of utmost importance, and in a ritual to honor the gods they would hunt a bull and perform a sacrifice, drinking its blood with a mixture of wine from a sacred golden chalice. As the corruption of Atlantis grew, the harmony of the ten houses began to deteriorate leading to internal disputes and disregard of the sacred laws of the Pillar of Orichalcum. As their greed and arrogance thickened over the generations, their divine blood grew thin which upset the almighty god Zeus. Their once perfect utopia began to collapse along with the springs, soil and environment around them, leading to a scarcity of fish and wildlife and harvests which no longer yielded crops.

According to the legend, it took but a single day and night for the civilization to be lost to history from the natural disasters it suffered from the wrath of Zeus. The advanced technologies that the Atlanteans apparently possessed were lost due to the natural destruction of their once flourishing society, as hurricanes destroyed their naval fleet and floods and earthquakes caused Atlantis to sink and become consumed by the sea. The only surviving records of the Atlanteans existed in the oral transfer of the legend from those who associated with them in the past and knew of their existence.

Plato wrote, ”They have all been written down by us of old, and are preserved in our temples. Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves”.

Curiously, the fate of the Atlanteans seems to parallel the cataclysm which struck the Minoans of Crete 1500 years before the time of Plato, as their civilization fell after the eruption of a volcano which devastated the Aegean island of Thera, also known as the Santorini. This eruption may have been a source of inspiration for the Atlantis saga, serving as a prototype for the civilization described in the dialogues of Timaeus and Critias.

The eventual demise of Atlantis is believed to have occurred at some point around 9600 BC, approximately 11,600 years ago, or so the tales passed on to us from Solon and Plato suggest. At one point in time, the Straits of Gibraltar was the reason the Atlantic Ocean did not flood the Mediterranean Basin. Curiously, a flood caused the formation of the Maltese Islands when the connecting mountains between Africa and Europe collapsed, causing a resulting surge and flooding of ocean water which could have devastated the area and essentially sinking Atlantis.

If we follow the trail of the Atlantis mythology, we discover many transitions and evolutions of the story. Following Plato's rendition, new versions and characters were introduced that have been linked to the prediluvian kingdom, such as the biblical Enoch, the Egyptian Thoth and the Greek and Egyptian fusion of Hermes Trismegistos and hermetic traditions. As described in the Plato dialogues, it was Solon who had learned of the story from the Egyptian priests at Sais and if we trace the story back to its place of origin, a broader understanding of Atlantis is revealed.

THOTH, HERMES, ENOCH & THE KINGS OF ATLANTIS

A common theme present throughout history during the periodic shifts of power from one nation to another is the fusion of various elements of their cultures. Often this merging has occurred during times of conquest and invasions, and after a civilization is conquered their religious beliefs and history is removed, destroyed or altered in an attempt to better control the people of those nations. This tactic has been used time and time again, which has led to the truth of the past being buried or hidden until the box of Pandora is once again opened.

Following the conquering of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 BC, the new Macedonian Greek dynasty brought with them the pantheons of their gods. As a result of this transition, new deities were created using both Greek and Egyptian influences resulting in the cultural assimilation of the Egyptians. Although the worship of the original Egyptian gods did continue in many areas, the pantheon of gods in Egypt expanded and became crowded as new temples and gods were introduced by the Greek pharaohs that held the kingship during their reign.

The capital of Alexandria was established by one of Alexander the Great's generals, Ptolemy I Soter, who ruled Egypt from 305 to 285 BC. This shift of power is a significant era of human history which contains several key elements and crossroads that merge within the chronology. Prior to the invasion of Egypt by Alexander the Great, Egyptian pharaohs had ruled the kingdom for thousands of years. This lineage of dynasties came to an end after the Ptolemaic era of history as the Ptolemies were the last line of pharaohs to rule Egypt.

What is interesting to point out is that not only were the Ptolemies the last pharaohs of Egypt but following their reign we see the historical transition from the ancient world into the modern biblical world. The Ptolemy dynasty ruled Egypt for close to 300 years, from 305 BC until 30 BC, when the rule of pharaohs dissolved. The 30 years of time after their reign until the chronological dividing line of BC and AD is an important element to this. This is because this division of history is defined by the time before Christ (BC) and the time after his death (AD), with the transitioning into the biblical chronology in the timeline of history.

The last recognized pharaoh to rule Egypt was the famous Queen Cleopatra VII Philopator, who ruled from 51 to 30 BC and shared the throne with her brothers and sons. Cleopatra is perhaps best known for her relationship with the Roman military general Julius Caesar, and there is a great amount of mystery and controversy surrounding the details of their relationship. The reason why the 30 years of time after the rule of the Ptolemy pharaohs is so important is because there was supposed to be another Ptolemy king to continue the rule in Egypt, but it never came to be.

The relationship between Cleopatra and Caesar resulted in the birth of his only son, Ptolemy XV Caesar, more commonly known as Caesarion or “Little Caesar”. Technically, he was the last pharaoh of Egypt and the facts surrounding his life are shrouded with intrigue and mystery. I believe that many facts and details relating to Caesarion have been manipulated and withheld, including details of his life and dates within the timeline. These details are explained in greater detail within some of the subsequent chapters of this book.

Having the royal blood of the pharaoh Cleopatra and being the only son of Julius Caesar, the timeline of little “JC” falls right in line with the timeline of Jesus Christ (JC), including the 30 missing years of Jesus' life leading up to the shift in our chronology from the time “before Christ” to the time “after death”. In this parallel, it is said that baby Jesus was taken out of Egypt by Mary and Joseph, and he returned later on in life to claim himself as king after a period known as the 30 missing years. It is also curious that an emergency birth in our modern times is called a C-section, or a “caesarian section”, likely given this name in relation to the birth of Jesus, or Caesarion, the last of the Ptolemy kings.

Many aspects of our history relating to religion, human civilization, kings and rulers, and the cover-up of our past really begins to escalate around the time of the Ptolemaic period of Egypt. During his reign, Ptolemy I Soter introduced a new god to be worshipped in Alexandria which held both Greek and Egyptian attributes. This god was Serapis, based on the Egyptian god Osorapis who himself was a fusion of Osiris and Apis. Serapis also had Greek attributes linked to Zeus and Dionysus, in which Isis was made his consort. Dionysus is said to have founded the Amun Oracle in the desert.

In relation to the Atlantis story, a similar merging of Greek and Egyptian gods can be found in the connections between the Egyptian god of wisdom and writing Thoth, and the Egyptian/Greek scribe Hermes Trismegistos, the messenger of the gods who was Mercury in the Roman pantheon and Enoch in the biblical parallel. These deities are often associated with knowledge and divine communication, connected with the prediluvian world and the Kings of Atlantis as well as the hermetic traditions and the secret teachings of the mystery schools and secret societies.

During the rule of the Greeks and Romans, the arcane wisdom and religious beliefs of the Egyptians were gathered and kept secret by these orders and secret groups, and new gods and places of worship were established to control the conquered population and disconnect them from their past. Khmun, the Egyptian city dedicated to Thoth was renamed after Hermes as the Hermopolis Magna, or the 'Great City of Hermes', and they applied to Thoth the same epithet as they did to Hermes, which was 'Trismegistos', meaning “thrice great”.

The ancient teachings of the scribe Thoth and the Egyptians comprised the Corpus Hermeticum, which became the basis for the hermetic traditions. The Hermetica combined elements of ancient teachings, secret wisdom, alchemy, science, spirituality, and European magical systems. The word hermetic means “sealed”, relating to the secrecy of these teachings and writings and influenced many future organizations such as the church and the Knights Templar, Rosicrucian's, and the Freemasons. The word “taught” may find its roots with the god of knowledge, Thoth.

Another connection to be made here is found with the Tabula Smaragdina, better known as the Emerald Tablet, which is associated with the Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus and the Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean. According to the original Egyptian source, Thoth was also known as Djehuty and was a scribe of the gods who created writing and hieroglyphs and was associated with the moon, science, magic, art and judgement. Thoth is said to have authored the Egyptian Book of the Dead and wrote the Emerald Tablet, and is often linked with resurrection and hidden secrets, who was depicted as having the head of an ibis. According to the ancient Egyptians, Thoth was considered to be the singularity, who was self-produced and credited with the establishment of the stars, the heavens and the Earth.

In esoteric teachings, Thoth was the wise son of Thotme who was a king of Atlantis and was known as the “Keeper of the Great Temple”. It was Thoth, his Atlantean son, who brought the knowledge of Horlet and the lost teachings of the “Children of the Light” or “Children of the Law of One” to Egypt. These teachings held the spiritual gifts of energy and magick, which was all but lost after the destruction of Atlantis, and it was Thoth who transferred the arcane wisdom to Khem, or the “Black Land”, as Egypt was referred to. Perhaps the priests in Egypt told Solon the story of Thoth while he visited Sais, eventually leading to Plato's later story of Atlantis.

In ancient Egyptian culture, the evolution from the gods to living pharaohs and the royal lineage can be found within the Thuthmose dynasty, whose name means “born of Thoth” and received the throne following the death of Amenhotep. It is believed that the biblical parallel of Thutmose is Moses, and many connections have been made in biblical references linking characters of the bible to some of the pharaohs of Egypt. I believe that further links will be made in the future as a result of ongoing studies relating to these parallels and ancient secrets are revealed.

In the 4^th century, Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea wrote that the city of Atlantis was ruled by the biblical Enoch, the parallel of the Egyptian Thoth and the Greek Atlas. In this equation, Enoch is the same figure who ruled Atlantis and received his divine wisdom from the fallen angels known as the Watchers. As described in the Book of Enoch and Genesis 4:17, this forbidden knowledge was given to humanity and Enoch built a city. According to the biblical account, Enoch walked with God and was taken up to heaven.

It has been proposed by some scholars that the city that Enoch built was the first city, a forerunner to Atlantis or perhaps was a part of the kingdom of Atlantis. This would be the kingdom from the time before the flood of Noah. Many links and connections have been made in this regard, but what has remained a mystery is finding the location of this ancient city and proving the truth of its existence. Although historical efforts have been made to piece together the lost fragments of our past, the biggest question still remains unanswered, and that question is “where do we come from?”

QUESTS TO FIND ATLANTIS

Just as there have been numerous works of literature written about the topic of Atlantis, there have also been countless theories put forth on the possible location of the lost civilization. Likewise, there have also been many expeditions to find the prediluvian world, and because it has yet to be found the quest for Atlantis has prevailed and lives on. As we continue to search the cosmos for signs of extraterrestrial life and links to our cosmic ancestry, we also continue our search to connect the dots with our ancestry here on Earth.

There have been many debates over the location of Atlantis, and indeed many scholars, authors and researchers have poured their life's work into trying to undoubtedly verify the geographical location of the lost ancient civilization. A majority believe that the location of Atlantis will be found in or around the area of the mid-Atlantic Ocean, however there have been suggestions placing the remains of the Atlantean culture in nearly all corners of the Earth. In essence, we have literally spanned the entire globe searching for the missing links to our ancestral roots.

The list of possible locations is nearly endless and it continues to grow as new theories are proposed all the time. This growing list indicates our urgency to finally find the evidence and settle the mystery once and for all. All of the continents and nearly all islands on Earth have been suggested, ranging from the Azores Islands to the Bermuda Triangle, and the many islands around the Mediterranean Sea such as Italy and the Greek island of Santorini. The Eye of Africa in the Sahara Desert, the Ring of Fire, Mariana's Trench, Australia and even both poles from Antarctica to Greenland have been speculated as being candidates for Atlantis.

Knossos, which eventually became the central city of Minoan culture, was the location of the Greek myths involving the Minotaur and the labyrinth crafted by Daedalus by orders of King Minos. This ancient city has been considered by some to be a potential Atlantean site. Knossos was settled during the Neolithic period and is considered to be the oldest city in Europe. It is located on the island of Crete, whose name survives from references by the ancient Greeks to the major city of Crete. Knossos is also the largest archaeological site discovered from the Bronze Age currently known.

The area of Malta has always been a highly considered contender for being a possible Atlantis location, as not only is it located in the Mediterranean, but also has what is claimed to be the world's oldest manmade freestanding megalithic structures. In an area just 316 km², there are 35 megalithic structures which predate the monuments at Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids. The temples erected in Malta, just as with most megalithic structures found on the Earth, are aligned with astrological precision which shows an advanced civilization had once resided in the region.

By 1894, a local Maltese architect by the name of Giorgio Grognet had been speculating that the area containing the Maltese Islands was the likely place where the ruins of Atlantis could be located. It is also an interesting fact that the very name Malta is nearly "Atlas" spelled backwards. This is specifically important because just as old Phoenician, ancient Greek writing was scribed from left to right and the sigma letter "S" in Greek was actually written more similar to an "M".

Plato described Atlantis as being located on a distant island, found outside of the pillars of Hercules. This area is actually the Strait of Gibraltar, located between Spain and Morocco and essentially being the last connecting point of the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean from where Plato resided. Coincidence? If this is so, then the location described as being outside of that zone would have to be the continents of North and South America, and possibly the remnant islands found in between them. Perhaps the concentric rings of islands described were actually the steppingstones to the Americas.

For centuries, campaigns, expeditions and charters were carried out in an attempt to reconnect with our ancestors of the past. Each time a new relic or ancient text was discovered, translated and understood, we got closer to finding the cure to our human origin amnesia. Our journey of self-discovery remains one of the most important quests in human history, and some of the most powerful organizations in the world have been involved in the effort to answer the fundamental questions of who we are, how we got here and why are we here?

Perhaps the most famous of these organizations is the so-called “Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon”, who are better known as the Knights Templar. Although they claimed to be poor, the created the modern banking system and amassed so much wealth that even kings borrowed currency from them. The Templar were among the first well organized archaeologists of their time, the original tomb raiders and treasure hunters searching for famous relics and biblical artifacts, and they were also spearheading searches for lost civilizations and links to our past.

In esoteric traditions, it is said that the Knights Templar had discovered sacred treasures under the Temple Salomonis during their stay at the Temple Mount in the Holy Land. They established Acre as their base following the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 AD. The Templum Domini, or Dome of the Rock, was the prototype for their rounded churches established throughout Europe. Legends claim that they had found the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, the Spear of Destiny, and the Emerald Tablet of Thoth beneath the temple which gave them advanced Thothian knowledge from the secrets revealed through the ancient texts.

Red, white and black, the colors adopted by the Templars, are said to be associated with Egyptian alchemy and Thoth, the King of the Atlanteans. It is believed that the Holy Grail was not a physical cup, but the secrets relating to our ancient ancestors from Atlantis. It was discovered that Thoth was not just an Egyptian deity but was an immortal priest from Atlantis who survived the earthquakes and floods and brought the tablets to Egypt, gifting them the advanced knowledge of civilization and the wisdom of the ancients.

The Templars not only searched for treasures but were heavily involved in maritime exploration to find traces of our lost civilizations. Although they were at one time outlawed and hunted by monarchies in Europe, they prevailed by dispersing to establish new bases and secret societies through colonization efforts, as evidenced by various orders of knights and freemasonry which continues to operate and thrive. The symbol of the red cross became their trademark flag which is still used by many organizations even to this day.

Perhaps the best example of usage of the red cross is by the famous colonizer Christobal Colon, better known as Christopher Columbus. The search for Atlantis was re-popularized around his time as he was sailing the Atlantic Ocean searching for new lands to conquer for Spain and the Templars. While we are traditionally taught that Columbus had discovered the Americas, we know that these lands were previously inhabited by the indigenous people of those places, and after genocides were committed, he claimed the lands through the charters and funding he was given for these expeditions and the Knights of Columbus.

What is a lesser-known fact is that in 1479, Columbus married Filipa Moniz Perestrello, who was the daughter of a former Grand Master of the Portuguese Templar Order of the Knights of Christ. Bartolomeu Perestrello was a Portuguese navigator and nobleman, who was the first governor of Porto Santo Island in Madera, a captain involved in charters and colonization efforts. He is also believed to have been part of the Military Order of St. James, also known as the Order of Santiago. In order to marry Columbus, Filipa needed permission from the Master of the order, who at the time was King John II of Portugal.

Having been married into the Templar circle, Columbus had access to secret knowledge and texts, as well as maps that were created and collected by Templar cartographers and other explorers of the time. Some of these maps went on to influence the famous Piri Reis map which was compiled in 1513 by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer of the same name. Exploring the world and creating the world atlas was of utmost importance during this time, and kingdoms would issue charters in order to gain territorial control over locations that were identified on some of these ancient maps.

Another similar order of Templars was the Teutonic Order of Knights, which were founded in the city of Acre in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1190 AD. This order was fully titled the Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem. This order was the model used by Heinrich Himmler as the precursor and influence of the Nazi paramilitary unit the Schutzstaffel, or SS. Himmler claimed that the Teutonic Order were the guardians of Germanic culture and the SS were used as bodyguards of the Nazi party, committing acts of terrorism and genocide on their colonization campaign across Europe during the second World War.

The Nazi's seemed to have continued the efforts of the Knights Templar in attempting to locate lost civilizations, treasures and the origin of humanity in our distant past. As many know, the Aryan race became an obsessive interest and popularized by the Nazi party during the second world war, which upset many theosophists of the past and present because of their perversion of the concepts surrounding Atlantean origins. This Nazi search to find ancient relics and treasures such as the Holy Grail was outlined in the 1989 movie 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade'.

During their expansion across Europe, the Nazi's were also searching for treasures and historical texts and one of the first things they did after occupying a territory was to raid and plunder the lodges of Freemasonry in those countries, which was most notably evidenced during their invasion of France. They were heavily influenced by the occult and esoteric traditions such as the theosophical societies that were forming at the time, as well as the Thule Society, which greatly supported their ideologies. They believed that the Aryans were a root race, which resulted in medical experimentation and deep studies relating to eugenics and the lost human history on the planet.

To support these ideals, Himmler established an organization called the 'Ahnenerbe' on July 1^st, 1935. This research group supported and funded Nazi archaeology and exploration campaigns to find lost civilizations such as Atlantis, Lemuria and Ultima Thule, and although many of these quests were unsuccessful, they did recover many artifacts during these expeditions. They also plundered museums and galleries, stealing famous works of art and historical artifacts all across Europe, similar to the Templars throughout history.

The search for Atlantis has seen many revival periods, and the famous masonic figure and author Francis Bacon was no exception to this. Bacon was responsible for the creation of the King James version of the bible, using Elizabethan English in order to have a modern universal language to bring to the “New World” and convert the aboriginal people of the America's. Francis Bacon is one of the most important figures in freemasonry as well as a key player during this time in history.

After being run out of England for pedophilia like the Frankenstein monster, I believe that King James allowed Bacon to flee by changing his name to Francis Cooke, who was on board the Mayflower when it first brought European settlers to America. Bacon, aka Cooke, was responsible for conquering the tribes and implementing the rule of religion and monarchy upon establishing the Virginia colony. Prior to this, he wrote a book called 'A New Atlantis' which seems to describe his belief that this new world was what he believed to be Atlantis, or at least that America would be the location of the new supercivilization and center of world power.

ATLANTIS: FACT OR FICTION?

The fact remains that for as long as the story of Atlantis has existed, no archaeological evidence or absolute proof has ever been found to solve the mystery once and for all. While we have discovered and confirmed that there have been extreme natural disasters and epic floods to have taken place in the past, the fabled first civilization of Earth has yet to be located and confirmed as being a historical fact.

Despite our current inability to locate and prove the existence of Atlantis, the idea of this lost civilization lives on, and it has remained one of the most mysterious and interesting stories over the centuries. It is one of the great debates of fact or fiction, and through our search it has produced more questions than answers in most instances. While Atlantis has yet to be found, it has drawn great attention to the subject of our ancient past and of lost civilizations leading to new ideas and important discoveries, helping to form the truth and solve the mysteries of our ancient past.

What is clear however is that there does seem to be a missing gap in human history, where it seems that we suddenly evolved during a restarting of civilization as described in some folklore. The figures of Thoth, Hermes, Enoch and others are associated with ancient wisdom, and accredited with passing on this lost wisdom to human beings which kickstarted or rebooted our presence on Earth, essentially with forbidden knowledge being given to humans to explain our sudden awareness and eureka moment relating to everything from astrology, astronomy, science, agriculture, mathematics, spirituality and religion.

Through our search to connect us with our past, it has been suggested that the remnants of Atlantis may be found in the megalithic sites of Göbekli Tepe or even in the America's in places such as T'Enoch 'Titlan, indicated a unified theory of a lost and advanced civilization that once existed on the Earth located continents apart. There has been a merging of mystical interpretations relating to ancient mythologies, apocryphal texts, and religious figures of many cultures from around the world. This fusion exists within a division of theories relating to creation and evolution, and the patterns of the rise and collapse of ancient civilizations and human advancement.

Esoterics sometimes refer to Atlantis as "Kusha", which sounds similar to the Sumerian antediluvian kingdom of Kish, in where the kingship was transferred after the deluge. Just as the Mesopotamians described their greater gods as being fish-like deities associated with the sea, the Greek god Poseidon was one of the twelve Olympians, brother of Zeus and was the god of the sea, storms and earthquakes. Many aspects relating to the creation and destruction stories of the past are associated with cosmic beings and water, and the destruction of humanity being the result of our greed and corruption.

Our fascination with these mysteries has not ceased, and the more we learn about our past and attempt to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, the resistance to these ideas has continued in an attempt to seemingly keep us separated from learning about the roots of humanity on this planet. Skeptics and debunkers seem to comprise one side of the argument, while optimistic researchers continue to put forth connections and ideas in an attempt to try and find the answers to mankind's greatest secrets. The fact of the matter is that these academic arguments have brought us closer to finding the truth, as undisputable evidence is revealed and practical solutions have been put forth to explain these dividing issues.

Perhaps the best example of this in modern times is directly related to the search for Atlantis, as archaeological evidence has been used to prove that the details provided by Plato in his Timaeus and Critias dialogues fall into the category of mythology and folklore as opposed to being a historically accurate account. A great example of this is put forth by the classical archaeologist Flint Dibble, who specializes in Greek mythology and history. The analysis and evidence he put forth is a commonsense approach to the question of Atlantis, which explains the historical inaccuracies found within Plato's account.

If we go back and review the source of the Atlantis story using modern evidence, we do find many inconsistencies with what the archaeological records show. According to Plato, the Egyptian priest at Sais told Solon that mankind was periodically destroyed by floods and fires, and the knowledge and records of our past were lost and forgotten following these catastrophes. Solon was told that this cycle has taken place many times, which is why we have lost our connection and memory of the past. According to the priest, the Egyptians were the only ones to keep the records in texts and on a pillar, however these items have never been discovered or proven to exist.

Another problem that is prevalent in the Plato narrative is the timeline of events described by Solon and Critias in the dialogues. Solon was told that the establishment of ancient Egypt took place around 8500 BC, and that ancient Athens took root 1000 years prior to that, around 9500 BC. We know this to be false however, as no known writing had existed in Egypt at this period in history. It is said that the ancient Athenians were the only civilization that had defeated the Atlanteans, however at this time Athens had yet to be established. Archaeological evidence has shown that the establishment of Egypt actually takes form around 3100 BC, and that Athenian culture took place when the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures emerged around 2100 BC.

Curiously, these more accurate dates are approximately 1000 years apart from each other, the same amount of time described by Plato in his dialogues. Perhaps the dates of Plato were intentionally altered at some point to shelter us from learning the truth, and make it impossible to prove in the archaeological record. Perhaps this was done intentionally by Plato, as a sort of dark humor with the story of Atlantis being orally passed on from one person to another, and the story evolving further from the truth over time resulting in our inability to find the truth in these matters.

I'm sure that my suggestion that Plato may have intentionally put forth false dates in order to hide the truth will be considered to be a conspiracy theory, which in truth is an accurate description of this idea to explain the inaccuracies of the historical timeline. One thing that cannot be argued is that the truth of many of these mysteries has been withheld and contained in the realm of secret societies, and this method of knowledge control has worked throughout the centuries, sheltering the majority from learning the truth about our origins and distant past.

What remains obvious is the fact that for as long as we have searched to find the answers to these fundamental questions, there has been a clear opposition relating to these concepts. Although there is nothing inherently wrong about seeking to find these answers, and it is healthy for us to research these topics they are often met with fierce opposition by mainstream academia. Essentially, if the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist, they are doing a remarkable job in sheltering us from discovering these hidden truths and there must be a logical explanation for this.

A perfect example of this opposition can be witnessed in the Joe Rogan podcast where he had Flint Dibble and Graham Hancock on his show to debate these issues. At the time of this writing, the podcast is nearing 8 million views, and it could be one of the most important archaeological debates in recent memory. This debate provides a clear picture of how those who are simply searching for the truth have become pariahs of our age, targeted by smear campaigns and mainstream opposition, ridiculed and censored, often having an impact on their careers and strengthening this great historical divide.

The podcast reveals at what lengths mainstream archaeologists will go to in order to discredit and tarnish the names of truth seekers and independent researchers such as Graham Hancock. In respect to this example, Dibble uses the term “pseudo archaeology” to describe those who search for answers and disagree with the mainstream views and theories put forth by so-called peer reviewed research. Anyone questioning the establishment has been deemed to be quacks, conspiracy theorists, pseudoscientists and fringe theorists by the gatekeepers who control the “official” narrative.

This “pseudo” categorization and smear campaign has been used in an attempt to discredit the noble efforts of many important individuals who have brought us closer to finding the truth, especially in relation to catastrophes and topics related to the Younger Dryas and human history and development. Some of these targeted victims include John Anthony West, Robert Schoch, Randall Carlson and perhaps most prominently Graham Hancock. I have also experienced similar opposition in regard to the documentaries I've made, and the podcasts and research I was doing in the past.

When Graham Hancock landed a show on Netflix called 'Ancient Apocalypse', it was met with strong opposition by Flint Dibble and other archaeological associations he had influences with. Attempts were made by Dibble and his peers to have the show cancelled and taken off the air, and smear articles were published to give the show bad press. One of these articles, published by The Guardian was entitled 'Ancient Apocalypse is the most Dangerous Show on Netflix', and others had titles such as 'Hancock Declares War on Archaeologists'.

In an attempt to have the Ancient Apocalypse series cancelled and classified as “science fiction”, a letter was sent to Netflix and ITN Productions from the Society for American Archaeology (SAA), which was written by John Hoops and co-authored by Flint Dibble. In the letter they claimed that “Hancock's narrative emboldens extreme voices that misrepresent archaeological knowledge in order to spread false historical narratives that are overtly misogynistic, chauvinistic, racist and anti-Semetic”. Although Dibble denies the existence of gatekeepers or any targeted campaigns against what he calls pseudoarchaeologists, he has used the term “Big-Archaeology” to describe those who control the mainstream narrative.

While the evidence and explanations put forth by Big Archaeology does reveal errors found within Plato's account of Atlantis, it does not absolutely prove that a moderately advanced prediluvian civilization never existed. The knowledge of our past has continually shaped and evolved over the centuries as a result of questioning the narrative, and it is healthy for us to be able to do so without being rejected or dismissed if we are proven wrong. The whole process of this journey of discovery relies on theories to be put forth in order to consider it and approve or disprove it in order to come to an understanding of the truth.

SUPERCONTINENTS & LOST CIVILIZATIONS

While being the most popular and widely studied, Atlantis does not stand alone in relation to the theory relating to long lost continents and civilizations. During our search for the answers to Atlantis, many other “phantom continents” have been proposed to have existed in the past. As new evidence and discoveries are made relating to our ancient past, the timeline of the existence of modern anatomical humans on this planet has been revised showing that our presence on this planet is much older than previously taught.

It has been proposed that the death and rebirth of human civilizations have taken place many times in the past, as part of a cyclical process leading to our amnesia and quests to rediscover and reconnect ourselves with our ancestors and roots of the past. This search for the “missing link” has provided us the ability to be able to relearn everything that was forgotten, and much of what we know about our existence is the direct result of reverse engineering and relearning things like astrology, geometry, science and mathematics. It is truly fascinating that at some point in our past, we forgot everything we know about ourselves.

In describing the Egyptian priests telling Solon of the Deucalion's Flood, Plato wrote, “In the first place you remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones; in the next place, you do not know that there formerly dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, and that you and your whole city are descended from a small seed or remnant of them which survived. And this was unknown to you, because, for many generations, the survivors of that destruction died, leaving no written word”.  

The concepts of supercontinents and lost civilizations have led us to rediscover what was unknown to us for many generations, and based on the fact that we are currently living our lives in a world where we have forgotten our past it is not so hard to believe that this cycle of death and rebirth is likely to happen again at some point in the future, just as our ancestors have described to us in ancient texts. If we have learned much of what we know from these ancestors, perhaps we should consider their explanations of these things happening in cycles as a warning, in order for us to be able to calculate and be aware of future catastrophes. In fact, this concern could be the reason why they tracked objects and observed the sky so intently.

As I have suggested, I believe that the Earth has experienced multiple events of cosmic bombardment and natural disasters leading to the current positioning of the world ocean and continents that comprise our planet. All of the existing continents seem to fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and I believe that the separation of the continents was caused by cometary impacts and cosmic events at some point in our distant past.

Although it was initially opposed, the idea of an original supercontinent was proposed by the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener in 1912, based on his research of continental drift. This most recent supercontinent became known as Pangaea, often spelled Pangea, which was named after the Greek word meaning “all the Earth”. The existence of identical fossils of various plants and animals found on continents apart provided the evidence to show that at one point in time the continents of the world were connected. It is believed that Pangaea was assembled around 335 million years ago by the original continental pieces of Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia.

Evidence shows that Pangaea once held nearly all of the landmasses of Earth together from the late Paleozoic era into the Mesozoic era, and this cycle took place approximately 335 million years ago. This supercontinent was surrounded by a world ocean called Panthalassa and began to break apart due to plate tectonics and volcanic activity, although I believe that it may have actually broken apart by various impact events. If this is indeed the case, then these impacts would have been the largest one's ever to have hit the Earth, and the continental drift and plate tectonics played a role after the fact.

Following the break up of Pangaea, it is believed that the landmasses were separated into two smaller supercontinents called Laurasia and a new Gondwana, which occurred around 200 to 180 million years ago. This separation process led to the formation of ocean currents, and various ecosystems. The Atlantic Ocean was created and over time, the landmasses evolved into the continents that we know of and identify with today. Prior to Pangaea, it is believed that other supercontinent scenarios existed known as Rodinia, Columbia, Kenorland and Vaalbora, to name a few.

The formation of supercontinents is believed to take place in cycles throughout time, and therefore it has been proposed that it will likely take place again at some point in the future. In fact, we have already established names for the next three predicted supercontinent cycles, with the next one expected to take place in approximately 250 to 200 million years. This hypothesized future supercontinent has been called Pangaea Ultima, also known as Pangaea Proxima. This formation will occur when all the landmasses of Earth come together again as a result of the closing of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

The processes and formation of Pangaea Ultima is expected to cause extreme Earth changes including a dramatic rise in global temperatures, volcanic activity and an increase of CO2 levels in the atmosphere, making much of the planet uninhabitable. A mass extinction level event will take place as a result of these changes, and after Pangaea Ultima the supercontinents of Amasia and Nova Pangaea will be formed at some point in our distant future. These scenarios seem to resemble the cataclysmic events that ended civilizations in the past, as described by our ancient ancestors in stories like Atlantis.

Although the idea of supercontinents and Pangaea is rather recent, originally being proposed in 1912 by Alfred Wegener, ideas of lost continents and the dispersion of civilizations were put forth prior to this realization. These ideas were not surprisingly opposed and continue to be disregarded in the same way as the subject of Atlantis. Some of these theorized lost continents include Lemuria, the Land of Mu, Hyperborea or Ultima Thule, Shambala, Agartha, Asgard and of course Atlantis.

Perhaps it was actually the ideas and search for some of these lost civilizations which inspired the later developments and theories relating to supercontinents like Pangaea, which eventually became a generally accepted hypothesis among scholars. In fact, the evidence and similarities of fossils, animals and plants found continents apart was originally observed in the late 1800's which may have inspired the research of Wegener, leading to the idea of Pangaea.

Of these lost continents and forgotten civilizations, three of them have been studied and stand out the most, which has often been referred to as the “Trinity of Lost Continents”. This trinity consists of Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu.

I Am an Alien - Chapter 8: Atlantis and Lost Continents

LEMURIA

The lost continent of Lemuria, sometimes spelled Lemurya, was first proposed by the British lawyer and zoologist Philip Lutley Sclater in 1864 after he published a paper in the Quarterly Journal of Science called 'The Mammals of Madagascar'. Similar to Pangaea, the observations of fossils and genetic similarities of plants and animals found continents apart led Sclater to suggest that these land masses must have been connected at some point in the past.

While Sclater was studying fossilized lemurs found in India and Madagascar, he noted an anomaly that was found within the distribution of primates found continents apart. He observed 30 species of lemur in Madagascar, as well as around a dozen in Africa and three in Asia, which indicated that a dispersion must have occurred at some point in the past. Since it seems Sclater was one of the first to make this correlation, perhaps he should also be recognized as one of the forefathers of the supercontinent theory and the concept of Pangea, and not just Lemuria.

Based on his observations, he believed that these lemurs must have migrated to these locations on a land mass that once existed beneath the Indian Ocean. He called this theorized lost continent Lemuria, the “Land of the Lemurs”. Sclater proposed that these continents formed land bridges which once connected Madagascar, Australia, and India at one point in the history of the Earth, reinforced by the alignments of geological strata that were scattered continents apart.

Essentially, Lemuria was considered to be the eastern counterpart of Atlantis and the idea of a long-lost civilization being located somewhere to the east was considered and referenced by others in the past, centuries prior to the research done by Sclater. Around 300 BC, in his work entitled 'Sacred History', the Greek mythographer Euhemerus of Messene proposed that the Greek gods were actually ancient heroes and mortal kings and claimed that he sailed on expeditions and discovered an island called Panchaia, or Panachaea. The lost history was discovered on a golden stele at the Temple of Zeus Triphyllous.

Some have suggested that these expeditions led to the early discovery of civilizations such as Easter Island, which was confirmed much later after its rediscovery in the 1900's. A couple hundred years after the Sacred History of Euhemerus, another Greek geographer Strabo wrote of a lost civilization in the same area, which he called “Taprobane”, meaning “the beginning of another world”. Strabo described this location as being “20 days sail” from the southern tip of India. It can be said that the Greek's were certainly convinced that there was a lost civilization and they spent hundreds of years searching for it.

In Tamil literature, some writers such as Devaneya Pavanar have associated Lemuria with the legendary sunken landmass they called “Kumari Kandam”. The dimensions were described by Adiyarkunallar saying that it extended between the Pahrali River and the Kumari River in the Pandyan country, which was later taken over by the ocean. According to the Tamil literature, Kumari Kandam was the cradle of human civilization, a theme which has been echoed and expanded upon by many others throughout history.

Since we know that a separation of species did take place at some point in the past, as indicated by Sclater with his work relating to Lemurs and primate distribution, it is not so hard to come to the conclusion that this dispersion would have also applied to human civilizations. Many have disregarded this concept however, but if we know that a separation has been evidenced with plant and animal species, then why would this not also apply to human beings and ancient cultures of the past? The evidence of similarities found between ancient island cultures in locations separated by oceans has been noted by many researchers, leading them to theorize that they must have been influenced by an earlier civilization that was lost and separated at some point in history.

Just a few years after Sclater published his paper in the Journal of Science, Ernst Haeckel also proposed that Lemuria was the ancestral home to all of humanity in 1870. Haeckel was a famous German naturalist and philosopher who was also a well studied zoologist, biologist, physician and professor at the time. Following the work of Sclater and Haeckel, the American clairvoyant Edgar Cayce also believed that the civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria had existed and predicted that their artifacts would later be discovered near the Bahamas, which shocked the world after the famous Bimini Road was later discovered there.

More recently, author Frank Joseph has published many books relating to the Trinity of Lost Continents which provides modern evidence and discoveries connecting the many island cultures to an ancient civilization lost to our past. Joseph agrees that Lemuria is the birthplace of civilized human beings and has suggested that Lemuria was the famous Garden of Eden as described in biblical accounts. He believes that the people of Lemuria suffered a series of cataclysms, and the high level of technologies they had developed rivaled even that of our own but was lost to history only to be rediscovered later.

Joseph links the amazing ancient monolithic Moai statues of the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island to other cultures who had similar artifacts and statues, such as the Inca's and Mesoamerican cultures. He also associates the similarities found within the early cultures that lived in Polynesia, Hawaii, the Phillipines, India, Japan, and as far as Madagascar and Australia. There are many sunken cities off the coasts of these areas that indicates lost civilizations that were buried at sea. Although the land bridge “theory” has been apparently disproved by science using plate tectonics and continental drift to explain it, the similarities and evidence relating to Lemuria cannot be disregarded.

Following the coining of the term Lemuria and the research relating to lost civilizations was reignited, a group of those who were fascinated with occult and esoteric studies established theosophy and the Theosophical Society in 1875, which greatly influenced secret societies at the time. The co-founder of the society was the Russian American mystic and occult writer Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who is more commonly referred to as Madame Blavatsky, or the "Mother of Modern Theosophy". She contributed to the concepts of Lemuria and called the people from this lost and dispersed civilization as the Lemurians.

In 1888, Blavatsky published her famous book 'The Secret Doctrine', which she claimed was the result of her research of ancient texts and history as well as psychic visions and telepathic messages she had received. She believed that the Lemurians were the 3^rd root race of humans on the planet, who had advanced technology using various energies and were monument builders who had advanced architectural capabilities, including the construction and use of crystal spires. She claimed that the Lemurians were a race of giants, some being up to 18 feet tall and that they were hermaphrodite beings who were asexual and could reproduce themselves.

The Lemurians were the predecessors of the Atlanteans, whom at that time are thought to have been in their beginning stages of development when Lemuria was lost to time. Some modern theosophists have come to the belief that Lemuria may in fact be the ancient supercontinent known as Gondwana, and some have referenced it as the Land of Mu. The Trinity of Lost Continents is deeply rooted in theosophical thinking, and it is believed that the people of Lemuria, Atlantis and Mu were essentially survivors of the earlier predecessors.

THE LAND OF MU

The third in our trinity is Mu, which has been refered to as the “Motherland of Humanity” in the Pacific Ocean. As mentioned previously, many people believe that the lost continents of Lemuria and Mu are the same, however there are those who also believe that they are separate sources relating to the origin of humanity and birthplace of civilization. Perhaps this difference of opinion could be explained if the destruction of Lemuria resulted in a fracturing of the original landmass, and Mu was a separated portion of the original continent.

The idea of Mu was first popularized by the British inventor and writer James Churchward, in a story that greatly resembles a modern version of Plato's Atlantis, as Churchward claimed that he learned of a lost civilization from a priest while he was stationed in India just as Solon had done in Egypt. After befriending the priest from a temple in India, Churchward was shown some clay tablets that contained a dead language and writing that was only known by 3 living individuals. After Churchward gained the trust of those at the temple, he was taught the language and secrets of what he called the Naacal people from the land of Mu.

After learning these ancient secrets, Churchward spent the next 30 years or so searching for evidence of the Naacal and putting together evidence to support what he had learned. During this time, he kept his knowledge of Mu secret and amassed funds before finally publishing his first book regarding the subject in 1926, when Churchward was 75 years old. The first book was called 'The Lost Continent of Mu: The Motherland of Men', which was followed by several other books including 'The Children of Mu' in 1931 and other works which were published by his grandson after Churchward passed away.

According to his publications, the land of Mu was an area consisting of around 50 million square miles and the Naacal had an advanced civilization of around 64 million people. He believed that the land of Mu ranged from the north of Hawaii to as far south as Fiji and Easter Island. The Naacal were master navigators and expanded their territories by exploring distant shores, and they flourished around 50,000 years before his time. The evidence of their engineering and building capabilities was linked to the advanced metallurgy found in Peru, the irrigation systems of ancient Hawaii, and the megalithic and monolithic structures in Mesoamerica, India, Persia, the platforms in Polynesia, and Pacific Island cultures ranging from Hawaii to Fiji and the Moai of Easter Island.

The Naacal worshipped the sun, which they called Rah, and Churchward claimed that the religion of Mu influenced the Egyptian's and their sun god Ra. He also claimed they influenced many other cultures including the Babylonians and their god Shamash, the Aztecs and Tarascans, and the red crowns found on some of the statues on Easter Island were influenced by the Naacal and their sun god Rah. Churchward believed that Mu was the location of the biblical Garden of Eden, and they had seven commandments of creation similar to the ten commandments. Like Atlantis, Mu had ten tribes and a single government and religious system throughout their seven urban centers.

During his down-time and investigation, Churchward studied various structures such as the Nan Madol in Micronesia, an ancient abandoned city off the coast of Pohnpei which features over 100 artificial basalt and coral structures forming islets, known as the “Venice of the Pacific”. He also noticed similarities especially found in the Mayan cultures, leading him to believe that the Maya inherited their advanced knowledge of astronomy and the creation of their calendar from the Naacal. He noticed that Mayan linguistics, literature and symbols were similar to those that he was shown by the priests at the temple in India, and religious themes such as the 7 headed serpent found in the mythology.

French-American freemason, author, amateur photographer, archaeologist, surveyor, antiquarian and doctor of medicine Augustus Le Plongeon was a well known pioneer regarding the Maya civilization. He was particularly known for his research, excavations and photography of the pre-Columbian ruins of the America's, specifically the ruins on the Northern Yucatán Peninsula and was the first to excavate the ruins at Chichen Itza. At the age of 19, during his sailing voyage to South America he became shipwrecked off the coast of Chile.

He spent 12 years studying the ruins at Chichen Itza and an article published by Time Life Books in 'Mystic Places: Mysteries of the Unknown' shows an image of him with an excerpt stating, "Wearing full Masonic regalia, French archeologist Augustus le Plongeon strikes a somber pose. His excavations of Mayan ruins in the 1880s convinced him that refugees from Mu, a lost continent resembling Atlantis, had founded the Mayan civilization".

Le Plongeon became convinced that the Mayan peoples must have influenced the Egyptians and firmly believed that the founders of the Mayan civilization must have originated from Mu. In his own words from his book 'Origin Of The Egyptians', which was prefaced by Manly P. Hall, he writes: "Plutarch, in his Life of Solon, informs us that Psenophis and Sonchis-one a priest of Heliopolis, and the other of Sais-told the Athenian legislator that 9,000 years before his visit to Egypt, on account of the submergence of the Island of Atlantis (Land of Mu of the Mayas) all communications had been interrupted with the Western countries".

In relation to his belief of the connection and influence the Mayan's had on the Egyptian's, he states: " If the Egyptians learned the art of writing from the Mayas, as no doubt they did, it must have been in times anterior to the cataclysm. In this we would find the explanation of why identical characters are being found on the most ancient monuments of Egypt and those of Mayach, having the same meaning and containing the relation of the same cosmogonical traditions".

Similar to the stories of Atlantis and Lemuria, the ending of the Mu civilization came to an abrupt end due to natural disasters and cataclysms, which Churchward noted with the abandoned structures of Nan Madol and the Easter Island statues that appeared unfinished. Churchward believed that their civilization ended around the time of the Younger Dryas, about 12,000 years ago due to volcanic eruptions and seismic upheavals, blocking off trade routes and leading it to sink below the Pacific Ocean. The scattering of Pacific Island cultures is what is left of the survivors and refugees of the cataclysmic destruction of Mu.

Just as found with the entirety of lost continents and civilizations, the idea of Mu and the Naacal people was opposed as fiction by mainstream scholars, filing it within the pseudoscience and mythology category. The ideas of Mu have been met with scientific scrutiny as little proof of the sources exist to prove the claims made by Churchward. No tablets from India or physical evidence have been found to support his story, however there is evidence of lost civilizations scattered all over the Pacific, as well as many other locations around the world.

ULTIMA THULE & THE HYPERBOREANS

Another popular lost continent is the concept of a northern island or landmass known as Thule, which is sometimes called Ultima Thule or Hyperborea. Ultima Thule is also the name of a trans-Neptunian object which was located in the outermost region of our solar system, which can be found within the Kuiper belt and was initially discovered by the Hubble Telescope in 2014. The name of this object has since been changed to 486958 Arrokoth.

The first known description of Thule comes from the Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia, who wrote about it in 320 BC as a land located somewhere north of modern-day Ireland or Britain. The Latin translation of Ultima Thule means “farthest Thule”, and since Pytheas has taken the classical and medieval interpretation to mean any land that is located beyond the borders of the known world. Around 150 AD, it was also referred to as the lost continent of "Pausanias", and it has also often been called Hyperborea, the land of the Hyperboreans by esoterics and theosophists.

This mysterious land has always been associated with the northern regions of the world, and for centuries as tales of Thule were passed along, there were those who searched for it just like the lost continent of Atlantis. As explorers updated the literature and cartography of the region, by the later part of the Middle Ages up until modern time, it's believed that Thule was actually a description of Greenland, Iceland, Orkney, Shetland, northern Scotland, the Faroe Islands and the countries of Scandinavia, including Norway, Sweden and Finland.

In 1539, Thule appeared as “Tile” on the famous Carta Marina map by the explorer Olaus Magnus, which depicted the location of the island northwest of the Orkney Islands. Magnus also drew a large sea-monster on the Carta Marina, which he described as a “monster, seen in 1537”. The location, size and shape of the landmass seem to closely resemble the island of Greenland, which many people now believe to be the actual location of Thule as originally described prior to its official mapping and confirmation.

The concepts of Atlantis and Thule greatly inspired European occultists prior to the second world war, leading to the establishment of the secret society known as the Thule Society, which was founded on August 18^th, 1918. The members of this occult group greatly influenced the philosophies and establishment of the Nazi Party and the Third Reich in Germany. They believed that the Hyperboreans were the source for the Aryan race, which led the Nazi's to organize campaigns to search for artifacts and evidence to support their theories and the ideals of the Thule Society.

Not only was the land of Thule eventually confirmed to be an actual location long after it was initially described, but it was also discovered that an ancient isolated culture had also existed there for thousands of years. We know these arctic maritime indigenous people as the Inuit, who inhabited not only Greenland but also the arctic regions of Alaska and the northernmost regions of Canada and Russia. It is now commonly agreed that the Inuit people are descendants of the Thule culture, who migrated to these locations across land bridges once frozen, such as the Bering Land Bridge.

The first European to cross the Northwest Passage on dogsled was the “Father of Eskimology”, the Greenlandic Danish polar explorer and anthropologist Knud Rasmussen. In 1910, he established a trading post and missionary in north-western Greenland which he called Thule, which was also the name of the many expeditions he organized to learn from the Inuit first-hand about their culture and history. Although a Norse settlement was first established on Greenland in 982 AD by the famous Viking Erik the Red, it was not officially colonized by Denmark and Norway until 1721 through the missionary work of Hans Egede.

Greenland remained a colony until it transitoned to become an integral territory of Denmark in 1953. It then achieved the status of Home Rule in 1979 and became an autonomous territory in 2009, making it possible for them to pursue their own independence from Denmark. In 2026, the subject of Greenland's independence began making headline news around the world as the United States under Donald Trump claimed they would invade Greenland for reasons of national security. This threatened the foundations of the NATO alliance, shining a light on the ancient land of Thule once again.

What is interesting to point out here is the fact that while Greenland was not an official territory of Denmark until 1953, the United States had already constructed an air force base on the northernmost point of the island in 1951. This military outpost, which they named the Thule Air Force Base, was built by 12,000 men in complete secrecy under the code name “Operation Blue Jay” and took 104 days to complete. The reason for its construction was to have an early-warning defense system during the Cold War, and to have long-range bombers strategically located closer to the Soviet Union.

The Thule Air Force Base was not the only top secret military facility built on the territory of Greenland by the United States, as there were many defense agreements made between the Kingdom of Denmark and the United States. Less than a decade after the construction of the Thule Air Force Base, a top secret nuclear launch facility was built 100 feet under the Greenland ice sheet in 1959. This “research” base was officially called Camp Century, however the secret nuclear weapon program was operating under the code-name “Project Iceworm”. After the ice sheets began to shift and tunnels collapsed, the facility was abandoned in 1967, leaving behind toxic waste buried deep under the ice which still remains to this day. Although reports stated that the base was abandoned, a B-52 bomber loaded with nuclear weapons crashed near the base in 1968.

Another interesting aspect to this is that the United States Space Force was also operated out of Greenland, indicating links to a relatively unknown military space program. On April 6^th, 2023, the Thule Air Force Base was renamed to the Pituffik Space Base, and since this transition the once mythological land of Thule has been an area of keen interest, not only militarily but also in regards to the United States space program. It is highly likely that arctic security and the abundance of rare-earth minerals found under the ice of Greenland are not the only reasons there has been such a renewed interest in Ultima Thule.

As we have seen, the idea of long lost civilizations is always refuted as pseudoscience until the evidence is discovered to prove these theories as the truth. Often these lost continents were described by cartographers centuries before they were discovered, and Thule is no exception. The similarities of arctic cultures found continents apart is a pattern that exists within all of these instances, and it seems that as the ice continues to melt and we witness and evidence these Earth changes of the past, we are slowly getting closer to uncovering the truth.

I believe that the separation of the ancient Thule culture was the result of these changes, perhaps caused by the same catastrophic events during the Younger Dryas. It makes sense and the evidence seems to show that the Thule traveled across land bridges that were once frozen and connected by the ice caps in the northern regions of the continents. The famous Greenland Ice Cores provided evidence of drastic Earth changes during the Younger Dryas, and it seems the more that we look for the evidence of our forgotten past, the more we are reconnecting with it which is why we continue to search for the answers of who we are.

ICE AGE EVIDENCE

While the location of Atlantis, Lemuria or Mu has yet to be confirmed and accepted by the scholars of mainstream academia, the best evidence we have used on our search seems to always bring us to the ice age and in particular, the Younger Dryas period. This connection is opposed vehemently by the establishment, but the evidence always seems to point us in this direction. It seems as though these stories are rooted somewhere in the real events which took place at the end of the last ice age, and it seems we are currently living in a similar time of natural disasters, political corruption, cosmic disturbances, climate change and the rise of sea levels due to glacial melting.

According to our geological timeline, the official ending of the last ice age coincides with Meltwater Pulse 1B, marking the end of the Pleistocene period and the beginning of our current Holocene Epoch. MWP-1B is the name used by Quaternary geologists, oceanographers and paleoclimatologists to describe the period of rapid ice melting and the dramatic rise of sea levels which took place following the Younger Dryas cold event, around 11,450 to 11,100 years ago. This event is also sometimes called the Catastrophic Rise Event 2, or CRE2, exampled in the sea level rise in the Caribbean during this time period.

Intriguingly, this timeframe falls in line with the date that Plato and Solon gave for the submergence of Atlantis beneath the sea. In the words of the physics scholar and pioneer of electrogravitics Paul LaViolette, “there may be much truth to the many flood cataclysm stories that have been handed down to modern times in virtually every culture of the world. In particular, the 9600 BC date that Plato’s Timaeus gives for the time of the deluge happens to fall at the beginning of the Preboreal at the time of the upsurge of meltwater discharge”.

This event also coincides with the timeline given by Zecharia Sitchin in the 12^th Planet, where around 12,000 years ago the Nephilim vowed to let mankind perish after learning of an impending catastrophe and flood, which is triggered by the nearing of the planet Nibiru to Earth. This event was originally described in Babylonian astronomy, which abruptly ended the ice age resulting in the restart of civilization on our planet. Could it all be a coincidence that so many of our ancient ancestors described similar events all coinciding with the same timeframe in history? I doubt it, and so do a growing amount of people all around the world.

The founder of paleoceanography was the Italian American scientist and geologist Cesare Emiliani, who also noted these connections during his studies on global flooding and climate changes, which ushered in the first stage of the Holocene Epoch known as the Pre-Boreal. Commenting on this connection, the famous Robert Schoch, Professor at Boston University in the Department of Geology said that there is a “stunning line-up in time between the sudden warming of 9645 BC, Emiliani’s scenario of a massive freshwater flood pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, and the date Plato ascribed to the sinking of Atlantis”.

The combination of processes like temperature changes, cosmic and solar activity, glacial melting, sea level rise, isostatic rebound, flooding and coastal erosion caused significant and noteable changes to the Earth during this time. It's estimated that over the span of around 15,000 years or so, the sea levels rose around 400 feet at the end of the last ice age. As one might expect, this would have caused any coastal civilizations to be greatly affected, resulting in vast expanses of shoreline to be swallowed by the sea, forcing the migration of the refugees fleeing from the catastrophes.

These events could be what caused the dispersion of the Inuit people, as the ice sheets at the time would have connected the northern areas of Canada to Greenland and quite possibly Russia and northern Europe as well. The melting ice and rising sea levels would have exposed the continental land masses beneath, filling the spaces between with meltwaters that expanded the bodies of water between them. Much research has been done relating to the migration over the Bering Land Bridge and many believe that this dispersion was a direct result of the natural disasters and Earth changes of the Younger Dryas.

Indeed, the Inuit also have their own deluge myths similar to those found all over the world. The great floods and disasters unfolded as mother nature and the spiritual world punished mankind for their sins and destructive ways. This cleansing event preceded the emergence of the Inuit people and has been described in stories of the Inuvialuit or Mackenzie people of the arctic. Many traditional stories including the Inuit flood accounts were passed down to us by the famous Inuvik drum dancer Kenneth Peeloolook. As a way to describe the thinning of sea ice, flooding and the increase of water levels caused by environmental changes, contemporary Inuit communities often use the term “deluge”.

A majority of these flood stories describe a time of significant environmental disaster and changes, and it seems probable that they could be explaining the events that transpired during the transitioning periods related to the ice age. Currently, we are still living in and experiencing the gradual effects of these changes, and our ancestors did not have the abilities we do today to be able to foresee, prepare for and deal with the natural disasters which took place. Most of these flood stories were passed down orally, surviving over time and it seems that they not only served as a lesson from the past, but also a warning for future generations.

While our technology has evolved, and our ability to track and understand the weather gives us a greater advantage over the survivors from the past, what remains clear is that no matter what we do, mother nature will always have the upper hand over the Earth and humanity itself. We can build dams and levees to try and withstand the forces of nature, but the reality is that no matter what we do, the elements will always prevail. Earthquakes, floods, landslides, glacial melting and climate changes are beyond our control, and it seems that we are currently witnessing an increase in extreme weather and global changes, perhaps entering another “deluge' period in human history.

Songs like 'New Orleans is Sinking' and 'When the Levee Breaks' offer a modern warning in musical form, as many believe that it's just a matter of time before islands like Japan and Taiwan or coastal cities like New Orleans and the California coast falls to the sea. Places like Bangkok in Thailand and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), formerly Saigon in Vietnam, see constant flooding events and often experience multiple disasters on an annual basis. In some of these areas, the citizens are not worried due to the regularity of bad weather and before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, many people didn't leave thinking they would be safe and survive the event.

There are many coastal cities around the world that are considered to be “at-risk” due to their location, and for the most part these areas also see the most natural disasters and extreme seasonal weather. Videos of the catastrophic floods that hit Japan and New Orleans show how possible it is for a civilization to be lost to the sea, similar to the events described by our ancestors in their deluge myths and stories like Atlantis.

UNDERWATER WORLDS

Civilizations living under the sea, and the search for Atlantis has perplexed the general public and researchers for centuries, and this is still quite apparent in our own modern culture. The enigma of Atlantis has been kept alive throughout recorded history in the form of oral tradition and teachings, inscriptions and texts, and even through entertainment like music and television shows. Concepts of cities and communities under the sea have survived in stories like Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Little Mermaid, BioShock and Aquaman to name a few.

The Nickelodeon cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants is about a sea sponge who works as a cook making Krabby Patties at the bottom of the ocean, symbolic of Atlantis itself. In the 92nd episode of the series called Atlantis SquarePantis, which is also the name of a SpongeBob video game, he discovers a fragment of the key to Atlantis, perhaps symbolizing the Emerald Tablet of Thoth. When finding out his friend has the other half of the key, they venture off to locate and explore the city. When they finally arrive in Atlantis, they are shown a civilization of advanced lost technologies, complete with an armory and weapons room, science laboratory, art gallery and treasury room, among other mythical items. SpongeBob eventually meets the King of Atlantis, known as Lord Royal Highness, whose voice was fittingly played by English pop rock icon, actor and artist David Bowie.

The influence of flood narratives has stood the test of time, indicating the importance of these stories and serving as a reminder that it could one day happen again. In 1995, the movie Waterworld was released depicting a dystopian future in where the Earth was flooded over. The survivors had to live on boats and we lived on an oceanic planet of pirates battling above the lost sunken civilization of the past. This story is a modern approach which portrays the possibility of humanity living in an antediluvian world, offering an interesting glimpse at what it might be like to live in these conditions.

According to recent statistics published by the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, as of June 2025, around 27.3% of the ocean floor has currently been mapped in high resolution. Astonishingly however, we have only currently directly explored or observed a mere 0.001% of the world's seafloor. That means that over 99% of it has yet to be explored and charted. It seems that we know more about our inner solar system than we do about the oceanic depths of the abyss, making it an equally unknown world of discovery which we should be paying more attention to.

The most famous submerged structure which has currently been discovered is known as the Yonaguni Monument, which was discovered in 1986 near Okinawa off the coast of Yonaguni Island in Japan. This region of the East China Sea is known to have extreme weather conditions including typhoons which frequent the area. The massive underwater site at Yonaguni is often referred to as “Japan's Atlantis” or the “Submarine Ruins”, and since it was discovered by Japanese diver Kihachiro Aratake it has sparked a controversial debate on whether or not it is a natural formation, or if it's the remnants of an ancient man-made structure.

The Yonaguni Monument spans the area of about five football fields and has features that are as tall as an eight-story building. The edges of the structure are straight and sharp, featuring many 90-degree angles and flat walls, with massive steps and architectural features too perfect and precise to have been created by natural processes. Some of the steps seem as though they were built for giants, although the structure itself is only about 25 meters below the sea level. Carbon dating of the monument dates it to around 8000 to 10,000 years ago, meaning that if it was created by humans, it was done so prior to the pyramids of Egypt being built. This also places it to around the time of the Younger Dryas.

Due to the significance of the structure, modern sonar scanning and technology was used to map out the structure and the seafloor around the location. This revealed that nearly the entire structure is one solid mass, leading most to conclude that it was formed naturally and not by human construction. Adding to their argument, no artifacts or pottery has yet been discovered at the site with the exception of what seems to be some primitive stone tools. Scholars have proposed that these tools must have got there after falling off a ship or being placed at the location at some point in the past.

Another location which some have linked to Atlantis is the famous underwater road in the Bahamas known as the “Bimini Wall”, which is more commonly known as the “Bimini Road”. Since its discovery in 1968, it has become a popular scuba diving and snorkeling destination and tourist attraction. Although the site is considered by most scientists to be natural formations of submerged beach rock, the massive rectangular blocks resemble something that was created using intelligent design and precision, and similar to the steps of the Yonaguni Monument, the size of the blocks make it seem like the road was built for giants.

The Bimini Road is only accessible by boat and stretches for nearly a kilometer, featuring a series of large limestone blocks situated in a linear northeast-southwest position to form what appears to be a massive underwater cobblestone road. Numerous research expeditions and searches have been done in order to find any evidence of human involvement but it appears no artifacts have been discovered, or so we are told. This is not surprising however, because if it was a road then it would have been used to travel and this could logically explain why there have been no signs of human inhabitants.

The remains of an ancient civilization were discovered under the water beneath Lake Titicaca, located in the Andes Mountains on the border of Peru and Bolivia. The builders of this city are presumed to have existed thousands of years ago, predating the Incas and various cultures found throughout the region. Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world, sitting at over 12,000 feet above sea level and is the largest freshwater lake in South America. The lake is often referred to as “the birthplace of the Incas” and played an important role in the region's cultural history.

The shocking discovery of submerged cities with temples, retaining walls, agricultural terraces and paved road systems revealed that an ancient lost civilization had once thrived there before it became submerged due to a rising of water levels. Being located so high above sea level, if a flood were to have occurred the waves would have been over 12,000 feet tall, assuming that the sea level at the time was lower than it is today. The structures may have been built inside of an impact crater or volcano, which filled with water over time like a bucket, or the water may have burst from a massive spring beneath the surface, causing floods to form the lake and submerge their civilization.

Researchers believe that the ruins were originally built by the Tiwanaku culture, who inhabited the region between 1500 BC to 1100 AD. A large 660 x 160-foot temple was discovered near Koa Island, and several sites have been located near the Tiquina Strait, the Island of the Sun and the Island of the Moon. Precious metals, ceramics, bones and other artifacts have been recovered from the K'hoa Reef, and the ruins are protected by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) due to threats such as looting and structural damages caused by tourism.

Lake Titicaca was a sacred place in Andean mythology, and was considered to be source of where life emerged and re-emerged from. The Incas believed that during a great flood, the sun and the moon took refuge in the lake and that humans were made by their creator god Viracocha after he emerged from the lake. In another narrative, Viracocha not only creates human beings but also the sun, moon and the stars after he emerges from the sacred waters. They also believed that their first rulers, King Manco Capac and Queen Mama Ocllo, also emerged from Lake Titicaca establishing the first Incan dynasty.

A vast number of submerged archaeological sites have also been discovered in the many volcanic lakes of the highlands in Guatemala, such as the lakes of Atitlan, Amatitlán, Ixpaco and Atescatempa, to name a few prominent examples. These sites contain the remains of ancient Maya settlements which are believed to have become submerged after a rising of water levels caused by volcanic activity and are also protected by UNESCO to preserve the cultural heritage of these sites.

The most famous of these submerged cities is Samabaj, often referred to as the “Mayan Atlantis”, which was discovered beneath the waters of Lake Atitlan in 1996 by diver Roberto Samayoa. The Mayan site dates back to the late Preclassic Period between 600 BC to 900 AD, and features residential structures, plazas, stelae, ceremonial altars and sweat baths that were used for purification rituals. It is believed that Samabaj became submerged due to a volcanic eruption or significant cosmic event. Many artifacts from the site have been recovered and are on display at the Museo Lacustre in Panajachel.

Many have looked for Atlantis in the area where the source of the story originated, and as a result there have been many discoveries made around Greece and the Mediterranean Sea. Taking the words of Plato literally, a survey and scanning of the seafloor between the Gates of Gibraltar uncovered a submerged island which sank due to rising sea levels around 11,600 years ago, exactly during the time of the Younger Dryas. This sunken landmass is known as Spartel Island, located near Cape Spartel and the Spartel Sill. Currently, there has been no evidence found to support that the island was once inhabited, however the island was above sea level at one time, and it was discovered by searching in the general area of where Plato described it as being.

While evidence of human civilization has not yet been located on Spartel Island, several other submerged sites in Greece have been discovered that show more promising evidence. Spanning an area of around 30 acres in the bay of Alykanas in Zakynthos, curious structures resembling the bases of collapsed columns and stone blocks were revealed in 2013 by an underwater photographer. The unnatural circular shapes of these objects seem impossible to have naturally formed, yet it is argued that they were created by microbes and methane-induced calcite cementation millions of years ago.

In 1967, the oldest submerged city to have been discovered was located by marine geo-archaeologist Dr. Nicholas Flemming off the coast of Pounta and Elafonisos Island in Laconia, Greece. The prehistoric Bronze Age city of Pavlopetri spans an area of around 20 acres and contained pottery and artifacts ranging from around 5500 years ago up until 1100 BC, with no gaps of inactivity or production. Evidence shows that the submerged settlement manufactured textiles and pottery and was a significant trading post, with ports for distribution and numerous roads and building structures. Around 40 graves and stone coffins were also discovered, and geological evidence shows that the city was destroyed and abandoned due to earthquakes and flooding.

One of the more popular candidates for the location of Atlantis is the Black Sea, in what is known as the “Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis”. This scenario describes the filling of the Black Sea after the opening of the Dardanelles and Bosporus, resulting in a flood during the late Quaternary history of the Black Sea. This flood is often associated with the biblical flood of Noah, which displaced the residents of the area and is a highly debated subject despite the evidence that has surfaced. Studies of the ruins at several ancient sites have been carried out by groups like the Underwater Archaeology Centre in Bulgaria and BSMAP, the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project.

The discovery of several prehistoric submerged settlements and ancient civilizations have been indentified, some of which have been dated back to around 6000 years ago. Over 60 shipwrecks have also been uncovered, with some dating back to around 3000 years ago, remaining well preserved due to the sea's anoxic oxygen-free environment. Some of the more well known of these ancient communities include the sunken city of Akra in Crimea, Kerpe in Turkey, Panagoria in Russia, as well as Nessebar and the Ropotamo River in Bulgaria.

During our human journey there have been many fascinating discoveries made under the surface of the oceans, bringing us closer to understanding our past and proving that entire cities and cultures have been lost to the sea throughout history. Although these submerged cities are not absolute proof of Atlantis, they do provide evidence that perhaps the deluge stories of the past are not so farfetched after all.

Knowing that we have barely scratched the surface in ocean exploration, the number of sunken civilizations that have been discovered within the 0.001% of the observed area means that many more will come to the light in the future. New discoveries are made all the time and the more we look, the closer we get to having a better understanding of the Earth and of human civilizations of the past. Over 200 submerged sites have been discovered off of coastlines and islands, and the number keeps growing the more we investigate.

Just as with many other subjects relating to the history of humans on the planet, when underwater civilizations are discovered they are often opposed and objected by the mainstream gatekeepers. Unless there are signs of human activity such as pottery or tools, sites are often written off as being naturally formed structures and the study of these locations dwindles. Without a thorough investigation, it makes it difficult to fully understand these mysterious places and prove without a doubt that humans had indeed inhabited these places in the past.

DIFFUSIONISM & ATLANTEAN DISPERSION

Based on the growing evidence of catastrophes like earthquakes and flooding during the last ice age and the timeframe of the Younger Dryas, as well as the continual discoveries of long lost civilizations submerged under the seas and oceans, it seems evident that if those cultures were not outright destroyed by these events, then the survivors would have taken to higher ground or migrated in order to survive and restart their civilizations in safer locations. These refugees would have dispersed on boats or by traveling inland, taking with them the knowledge from their past as they built new cities and colonies.

Perhaps it actually was what we call the Atlanteans, Lemurians, or other ancient cultures who built the megalithic sites found around the world, which are shrouded in mystery and leave us scratching our heads even up to this current time in our human history. Perhaps they did transfer the knowledge of their experiences to those they came into contact with, and to the future generations of their people as described in the many stories found within our ancient cultural history.

We now scientifically call this process as “diffusionism”, which basically states that all of the civilizations in the past can be traced back to a single source. Diffusionism was widely promoted and often attributed to the American congressman and writer Ignatius Donnelly, and his theory of what is known as the “Atlantis Dispersion Theory”, which was popularized during the later half of the 1800's. Donnelly remains a controversial figure due to his ideas relating to Atlantis and ancient civilizations, catastrophism, and Shakespearean authorship. Not surprisingly, he is often categorized as being a pseudoscientist and pseudohistorian.

In 1882, Donnelly published his book called 'Atlantis, the Antediluvian World', where he outlines his belief that the similarities found in various ancient cultures around the world were the result of the dispersion of the Atlantean civilization. Through this dispersion and maritime exploration, new settlements and trade centers were established bringing forth the foundation of new cultures and the rise of technological advancements and the transfer of Atlantean knowledge and language, resulting in the similarities found in flood myths and the architecture and building style of monuments and temples around the world.

The notable similarities of ideas and advancements found in the ancient cultures of Egypt, Mesoamerica, and Africa sparked an interest in diffusionism, and researchers began to connect the dots to the human civilizations of the past. Atlantean dispersion was linked to numerous Mediterranean cultures such as the advanced Etruscan civilization in Italy, the Tartessos from the Bronze Age in southern Spain, the Carthaginian Empire, who originated from Phoenician settlers in the modern-day area of Tunisia, and as far as the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán on Lake Texcoco.

Many other figures during the late 19^th and early 20^th century shared similar views with Donnelly, such as Helena Blavatsky, James Churchward and Rudolf Steiner, many of whom have also been lumped into the fringe category. Essentially, this group of thinkers would be classified as conspiracy theorists if they were still around today. Some of the supporters of diffusionism expanded on the Atlantis dispersion theory by claiming that the Lemurians ended up influencing some of the cultures such as those found in Mexico and western America, and the Atlanteans influenced others such as those in eastern America, Mexico and South America.

It's not hard to believe that cultures were influenced by others because it's obvious that ideas are transferred by human interaction through communication and language, teaching and innovations. Everything we learn in life was taught to us or learned from the environment we are raised in, with the only other logical explanations for this transfer of knowledge and experience coming from natural primal instincts or through psychic or clairvoyant means. Scientists have dismissed these methods of learning, regarding the theories and concepts as pseudoscience and works of science fiction. By the middle of the 20^th century however, psychic research was well under way as seen in secret CIA and KGB programs relating to ESP, remote viewing, mind control and studies of perception and brain functions such as the MK-Ultra program.

It was around this time when the famous American clairvoyant Edgar Cayce enters the picture of the Atlantis story, who earned the nickname the “Sleeping Prophet” for his psychic revelations gained through while under trance or through his dreams, and the stunning accuracy of some of his predictions. In a sense, he was considered a sort of modern day Nostradamus. Cayce described the Atlanteans in over 700 psychic readings which revealed that Atlantis was the first advanced society of the Earth, spanning from the areas of the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean. He supported the belief that the Atlanteans spread out all over the world after a series of catastrophes destroyed their once thriving civilization.

Cayce described the Atlanteans as having superior technology, which incorporated the use of lasers and crystal energy to power their lives. They utilized what he called “firestones” to generate energy and power their vessels, which could travel in space and underwater, and their knowledge of this energy allowed them to have lengthy lifespans, such as the first rulers of Earth as described by the ancient Mesopotamians on the Sumerian King List. Due to the misuse of their technology by the “Sons of Belial”, the Atlantean civilization fell apart after a series of cataclysmic events. He also believed that the souls of the Atlanteans would be reincarnated or resurrected one day through a collective consciousness on the west coast of America during the 1960's. Some believe the resurrection of their souls is occurring today in our modern time.

Cayce's visions also predicted that the history of Atlantis would be found underneath the Sphynx in Egypt, contained in what he called the “Hall of Records”, and a buried labyrinth in Egypt was also a bank of knowledge. He claimed that portions of their civilization would also be located in the Yucatan Peninsula and the Bahamas, specifically in the region of Bimini. Astonishingly, prior to his death in 1945, Cayce accurately predicted that portions of Atlantis would eventually be discovered near Bimini in the year 1968 or 1969. As we now know, his vision was correct as the submerged linear pathway of Bimini Road was indeed discovered in 1968.

It seems that Cayce had the ability to tap into what is known as the Akashik Record, essentially the vault of collective knowledge and entire accumulated history of events of the planet. This ancient wisdom was passed on through the shamans and spiritual leaders who were connected to the gods or through the souls of deities. While many oppose this idea, we are still only beginning to understand the links to our ancestors and what really happened to the lost civilizations of the past. While some theories and predictions have been wrong, it has at least sparked new ideas and brought us closer in our journey to find the truth to these matters.

As our own technology advances and expeditions to find the proof of Atlantis persists, new links and evidence have been identified indicating a stronger connection between the cultures of the past than we originally thought. Before the advances of modern archaeological methods and technology, we noticed the similarities between the architecture and building techniques of societies, as well as the mythology and advanced astrological wisdom of these ancient cultures. We learned much of what we know today from these ancestors, showing that the diffusionism is still being transferred to us even in these modern times.

While the idea of a transfer of culture relating to Egypt was initially opposed, foreign elements have been discovered indicating that there were interactions that took place in the past. An example of this evidence was revealed after cocaine was discovered in Egyptian mummies, which was not native to the area indicating it was transported there from elsewhere. Connections have also been made in relation to agriculture and the appearance of native plant species found continents apart. There have also been human genetic markers linking the cultures of North America to those in Europe and the Mediterranean. This DNA evidence cannot be refuted and provides additional support to the many “theories” regarding Atlantis and the lost civilizations we have discovered in our past.

CONCLUSIONS

Although it can be said that currently there has been no absolute archaeological evidence supporting the existence of a highly advanced metropolis like Atlantis, the search continues and has been greatly expanded upon by the circumstantial evidence and connections that have been made. I believe that new revelations will eventually be made once honest consideration and research campaigns are conducted, without limitations and biased objections to fit an agenda or cover up our past. It appears that modern historians want us to believe that human civilization began to advance around 3500 to 6000 years ago, however we are finding out that this is simply not true, and the date of our ancestral past continues to be pushed back with new discoveries that are made.

Sanskrit writings have been discovered claiming that civilizations have come and gone for vast periods of cyclical time. Some believe this happens in cycles of around 12,000 years in time, where society ends after a catastrophe and restarts anew. As above so below, a renewal, and our start from the beginning only to become advanced as we once were during the original civilization of Atlantis, when the Earth was re-colonized by our ancient ancestors who survived the period of destruction. The advanced society that once lived in our distant past flourished at one point, and as the old saying goes, "life goes on", but it didn't always.

Humans have been faced with many Earth catastrophes in the past, almost becoming extinct but surviving and pursuing onward. There is recorded times when great catastrophes influenced the Earth, and much of the advanced civilization that lived on the Earth was reduced to the memories and sands of time. However not all perished during these events and many survived, leading to our current civilization today. Civilizations like the Thule became separated, perhaps by an impact event which broke apart the ice sheets and solar activity causing climate changes, causing glacial melting and the rise of sea levels.

As we have discussed, around 11,600 years ago a series of impacts occurred and this timeframe seems to fit with the account of Plato's Atlantis. Seemingly, at one point the land masses on Earth were united, in a single supercontinent scenario. There has been many stages of continental change on the paleogeographic record, however the possibility exists that Atlantis was the original civilization, destroyed by cataclysms and fracturing the land mass, forming smaller new continents and separating people by vast distances of ocean.

If this is the truth, then perhaps this has happened many times and civilizations have risen and fallen for thousands, if not millions of years in the past. Indeed, modern anatomical skeletons have been discovered in the strata during these time periods indicating that our presence on the Earth is much older than we are currently told. We are finally beginning to understand the significance of our connection with the cosmos, and our ancestor's obsession with tracking the stars and celestial movements, and it's now clear that if our Earth were to experience a similar period of catastrophism, we would be left in the dark and have to start all over again.

In this regard, perhaps it is actually we who are the Atlanteans, and the cyclical stories of the past were but prophecies from our ancestors attempting to warn us of a similar fate.

SOURCES

Book: Plato - Timaeus (360 BC)

Book: Plato - Critias (360 BC)

Book: Stephen Hodge – Atlantis (2000) ISBN 0-7499-2087-4

Website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis

Website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon

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Book: Jim Willis - Ancient Gods: Lost Histories, Hidden Truths, and the Conspiracy of Silence (2017) ISBN: 9781578596140

Book: Paul LaViolette, Earth Under Fire, 183, Starburst Publications, New York, (1997)

Book: Robert Schoch, Voices of the Rocks, 147-148, Harmony Books, New York, (1999)

Article: Quest of the Caribbean - https://aosj.org/quest.html

Documentary: National Geographic - Finding Atlantis (2011)

Podcast: Danny Jones Podcast – Flint Dibble – Ancient Egypt & Graham Hancock's Lost Civilization

Podcast: Joe Rogan Experience #2136 – Graham Hancock & Flint Dibble

Article: The Guardian – Ancient Apocalypse is the Most Dangerous Show on Netflix (2022) https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient-apocalypse-is-the-most-dangerous-show-on-Netflix

Article: The Conversation - Graham Hancock Declares War on Archaeologists (2022) https://theconversation.com/with-netflixs-ancient-apocalypse-graham-hancock-has-declared-war-on-archaeologists-194881

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Book: James Churchward – The Children of Mu (1931)

Article: https://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/leplongeon_a/leplongeon_a.html

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Book: Augustus Le Plongeon - The Origin of the Egyptians (1996 Reprint)

Book: Zecharia Sitchin – The 12^th Planet (1976) ISBN: 9780380393626

Book: Mark Adams - Meet Me in Atlantis: Across Three Continents in Search of the Legendary Lost City

Article: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research – https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/ocean-fact/explored/

Television Series: Spongebob Squarepants: Episode 92: Atlantis SquarePantis

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