(Published in GralsWelt 26/2002)
THE DOWNFALL
Can a continent disappear?
Whoever wants to take Plato's Atlantis report seriously has to ask himself how an island "bigger than Asia and Libya together" can disappear. If Plato only meant Asia Minor by “Asia”, it is a landmass that is believed to be larger than the British Isles; and such a huge landscape is said to have suddenly sunk into the sea?
When in 1882 the bestseller “Atlantis, the Antediluvian World” by Ignatius Donelly (4) appeared in London, his statements matched the modern doctrines of theosophy, but scientists did not want to hear about Donelly's hypotheses. Donelly was at the cutting edge of his time, and his book, which has been compiled in an interesting way, contains some arguments that are still worth reading today.
The judgment of the geologists
The modern geosciences were not established until the 19th century. Since Charles Lyell (1797-1875) geologists thought in long periods of time and followed the doctrine of actualism, which assumed that the same geological forces had shaped the earth at all times, as in the present. There was no room for rapid change in this geological worldview; because all geological catastrophes known from historical times, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis or storm surges, could not let any microcontinent go under within days. (14, p. 499).
Until the end of the 20th century, the search for the causes of the downfall of Atlantis remained a playing field for outsiders.
The opinion of the astronomers
Even ancient thinkers suspected that the Flood was due to a heavenly body that had come close to the earth, perhaps touched it. A world fire, a great flood and severe winters were the results.
Heraclitus (450-475 BC) even reckoned with the periodic recurrence of such cataclysms every 10,800 years (14, p. 409). at Plato (427-347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC) there are similar statements.
Astronomers of the 19th / 20th centuries Century thought collisions of the earth with cosmic bodies were impossible. It was known that between Mars and Jupiter, in the so-called "planetoid belt", thousands of small celestial bodies circled, the largest of which (Ceres) is a fifth of the diameter of the moon; but the fact that not a few of these tiny planets cross the earth's orbit was not seen as a threat until the end of the 20th century.
That changed in 1980. Luis Alvarez, Nobel Prize Winner in Physics, and his son, the geologist Walter Alvarez proved that the extinction of the dinosaurs was the result of an "impact", ie the impact of a minor planet (asteroid or asteroid) on the earth. Only now did astronomers and geologists accept the fact that thousands of planetoids can come ominously close to the earth and crash onto it. The orbits of only ten percent of these dangerous celestial bodies are known. There are also long-period comets, the appearance of which is unpredictable. In the post "Death from space"(Under" Science ") was discussed. Today this theory has become almost common knowledge and provides material for exciting feature films.
Chaos in the planetary system
Propagated in the first decades of the 20th century Hanns Hörbiger (1860-1931) wrote his “World Ice Theory” (glacial cosmology, cf. 5), which assumed that the earth repeatedly captured celestial bodies made of ice, which then fell to the earth. This is how he explained the formation of the oceans. The view that the water came to earth through small ice comets is still occasionally held today. (See “Der Spiegel”, issue 10/2001).
According to Hörbiger, the sinking of Lemuria was caused by the crash of a (presumably small) earth moon; the Atlantis catastrophe triggered the capture of the current moon, which is also said to be responsible for shifting the earth's axis (pole shifts).
Hörbiger's hypotheses were more sectarian than scientific in character and were hardly taken seriously by astronomers, although they were promoted for ideological reasons during the Nazi era (12).
Today lunar theories also apply Muck (11) discussed, not as suitable explanations for the downfall of Atlantis.
The writings of Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979), who postulated instabilities in our planetary system that triggered the myths handed down, otherwise difficult to explain catastrophes on earth. According to his hypothesis, Venus was initially a comet, which then became a planet, and Mars once left its orbit (15).
Until a few decades ago, our planetary system - the theories of the famous Pierre Laplace (1749-1827) following - as stable. Only recently did chaos theory question this assumption, and it can therefore no longer be ruled out that our planetary system may become chaotic in the distant future.
A tenth planet?
For decades, astronomers have suspected a "transplutonic planet" due to orbital disturbances of Pluto and space probes. It should be as big or even bigger than Jupiter, and draw its circles far outside the orbit of Pluto. It may even move “retrograde”, that is, in the opposite direction to the other planets, which suggests that it did not come into being with the other planets, but was later captured by the sun. Due to its enormous distance, this “Planet X” *) can hardly be made out with current telescopes, and it has not yet been discovered. (Cf. “Brief, terse, curious” page 9 “The enigmatic Planet X” and 17, p. 128 f.).
Unconventional thinkers have gone one step further and postulate from ancient traditions or supernatural inspirations a large planet that wanders around the sun in a strongly elongated ellipse for millennia. The point of its orbit closest to the sun is said to be in the asteroid belt (between Mars and Jupiter) or even closer to the sun. When it approaches the sun, it triggers terrestrial catastrophes, e.g. a polar turning point with global earthquakes and volcanic eruptions (1), or impacts with small planets that are thrown out of their orbit by it. Such periodically recurring cataclysms were already suspected by the ancient Greeks (see above), who may have adopted this knowledge from ancient oriental peoples. Sitchin (13) believes that there are reports of this planet, which he calls "Marduk", in ancient Mesopotamian writings. The Summerers supposedly called him “Tiamat”, the Greeks “Phaeteon (17, p. 126), and Andersen (1) called him“ Typhon ”.
Collision with an asteroid
Even three decades after it was published, Everything About Atlantis is from Otto Muck (10) still interesting to read. Many of his arguments seem tenable, and his analyzes show a considerable degree of ingenuity.
Muck sees the crash of an asteroid near Charleston (South Carolina, USA) as the cause of the fall of the fabulous continent:
“It came from the northwest, that is, from the sunset side. He has thus overtaken the earth in its rotation and in its solar orbit; so he was much faster. For this reason, its path must have been very flat and elongated. All of this is true for the Adonis Group **). The approach of the small to the larger is likely to have happened by chance near a junction - that is, an intersection of the two tracks. So he came even closer to earth than Adonis did in 1936. Their gravitational attraction attracted him; it curved its path to an increasingly steep parabola. He was getting faster and faster. It must have hit the hydrogen mantle at at least 15 to 20 kilometers per second (earth-related speed), along a path that crossed the earth's orbit at around 30 degrees. At about 400 kilometers above sea level, it began to glow red around him in the hydrogen light. The hotter he got himself, the more dazzling, whiter his own shine became. The gas tail grew bigger and bigger behind him. This killing lightning bolt must have struck down more tremendously than any comet could ever do, in a gleam of light before which the sun turned pale. The eye that saw him was blinded - forever. The temperature of its frontal surface, which was exposed to the worst air resistance and thus the greatest heating, has exceeded the twenty thousand degree limit; it shone twenty to a hundred times brighter than the solar disk. The backward rushed gases must have given the burning giant a fantastic appearance. When it hit the nitrogen mantle and ripped through the last, dense layers of air, the heat and the tensile stress were apparently excessive - it shattered, its brittle stone mantle dissolved, in the wake of several explosions, into a myriad of deadly fragments that formed a furrow of doom moved across the southeastern part of North America. It was only in the immediate vicinity of the ground that the core burst - with a clap of thunder that no eardrum could withstand. The two giant pieces, each weighing a trillion tons, hit the sea. It splashed up high up the mountain, and a tidal wave of unimaginable height surged from the eddy around the impact holes in all directions. With a height of about ten kilometers it would have flooded Mount Everest ... " (10, p. 193 f.).
War with nuclear weapons
The most fantastic conjecture for the fall of Atlantis is derived from ancient Indian scriptures, and Martin Freksawho considers this thesis to be correct, comes to the following conclusion:
“It is not the first time that civilization has reached a level of development that we have today, at the end of the 20th century. Such a level has already been reached at least once, namely more than 5000 years ago, immediately before the greatest catastrophe that we can know about in human times. At that time, the world-conquering Atlantis was hit by an atomic explosive force of Indian origin (Sudarshan weapon) at a sensitive point on the earth's mantle. By tearing the earth seam in the northern latitudes of the mid-Atlantic ridge, the island of Atlantis disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean, and this triggered the Great Flood, which destroyed all developed civilization around the globe. From certain high altitudes, in Europe, among others, from the Western Alps, from the Carpathians and from the Scandinavian Alps, the life of our ancestors continued - initially on a stone tool level without written language. " (6, p. 200 f.).
As unbelievable as this explanation for the fall of Atlantis may seem, it has found increasing supporters in the last few decades, especially in India, where more and more scholars are dealing with ancient Indian traditions: e.g. writings such as Mahabarata, Bhagavadgita etc., which are not yet fully translated into European languages are translated.
Atlantis sank in the sea
As things stand today, the most plausible explanation for the downfall of the Atlantic culture is, in my opinion, the comet impact researched by Alexander and Edith Tollman.
The mid-Atlantic ridge, i.e. the area in which Atlantis is suspected, is a first-order geological weakness zone with the thinnest earth's crust in the entire globe (14, p. 500). In this tectonically and volcanically unstable area, the Atlantic island may have sunk into the ocean as a result of the impact quake or the impact of a comet fragment. A shift of the poles is even conceivable.
This demise of the most developed world culture of its time had unforeseeable effects, not only on the neighboring regions influenced by Atlantis. There was severe destruction in all parts of the world, and hardly any building could have withstood fire storms, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. The few survivors were scattered in small and very small groups. Cultural contacts broke off, the new beginning was laborious, and it took many centuries before the civilizational level that had already been achieved could be achieved again.
For the time of this disaster there are different statements, all of which are hypothetical, even if they have been deciphered with a great deal of ingenuity. Some of these data, which can be multiplied almost at will, are given to him:
Ancient authors (Plato, Herodotus): approx. 8,500 BC Chr. (8, p. 165).
Murry Hope: 5,000 - 4,000 BC Chr. (8, p. 325).
Otto Muck: 5. 6. 8498 BC Chr. 13 h (10, p. 282).
Alexander and Edith Tollmann: September 23, 7542 BC At new moon (14, p. 23).
Impact of a huge comet?
“At 3 o'clock in the morning Central European Time at the beginning of the northern autumn, on September 23, 9545 +/- a few years ago (based on 1993) a huge comet hit the earth with a new moon. It was approaching from the southeast at a cosmic speed of perhaps 60 km / s, a speed many dozen times higher than an artillery shell. Previously, he had passed the sun in close proximity as a so-called "sun scrambler". The enormous heat of our central star had turned the frozen gases and part of the comet's water ice into a gaseous state. Since comets can consist of 80 % and more of water ice and volatile elements, the expansion of the gas masses released inside often causes the comet to break up into a number of fragments in such cases. During this process, the deluge comet was split into seven large fragments and a series of medium-sized and smaller splinters. This initially dense, then gradually expanding swarm of contaminated ice projectiles then raced straight towards the earth.
The unconscious man following this natural spectacle had spotted the approach of the doom in the sky from a great distance early on. The first message comes from the Peruvian indigenous population, who saw this swarm of closely spaced comet debris in the distant firmament as small as distant stars ...
Through the biblical forefather Enoch we know about the second stage, in which in the head of the divided comet there were already clearly seven individual fragments, the size of burning mountains, to be excluded. The tail of this seven-headed celestial dragon or the cosmic serpent, as the comet was called by the eyewitnesses of the time, had developed to a considerable length as a result of the close passage to the sun in perihelion ***); it moved across the entire zodiac in the firmament ...
The sound of the explosion from the impacts was perceived across the continent as a terrible roar. In rare cases we even have eyewitness reports from very close proximity to the impact centers, most precisely about the impact in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. They vividly describe the sight of these super explosions, in which the energy of many tens to hundreds of millions of Hiroshima atomic bombs was released ... " (14, p. 23 f.)
Atlantis today
Atlantis is still a myth, a mystery, almost a question of faith. There are legends, mythical traditions, supernatural perceptions, archaeological finds, religious writings that make the existence of a vanished, antediluvian high culture plausible; but the decisive proof, the scientific recognition, is a long time coming.
In the 21st century, the possibility is recognized that our earth could collide with an asteroid or a comet. Such impacts have existed in the past and may also occur again in the future. Depending on the size of the cosmic object, such catastrophes remain regionally limited, such as the Tunguska event on June 30, 1908, which is attributed to a cometary fragment 100 m in diameter. (14, p. 337). Fortunately, this object hit one of the most sparsely populated regions! Small planets or comets with diameters of several hundred meters or even kilometers in the order of magnitude could trigger a cataclysm that would endanger civilization, throw our world culture back thousands of years and, in extreme cases, endanger all life on earth; like the flood, which is probably identical with the Atlantis catastrophe.
Even the warning about the misuse of nuclear energy is included in the Atlantis myth. It is true that we can hope that the use of nuclear weapons will no longer be an option; but there are nuclear power plants which, in the event of an impact, become a self-imposed, deadly trap (14, p. 377).
Endnotes:
*) X = ten. Some count the sun and moon and call it the "twelfth planet".
**) Adonis group: A group of small planetoids with strongly eccentric orbits that cross the earth's orbit. The largest is Adonis with a diameter of about 2 km (author's note).
***) Perihelion = the closest point to the sun in an orbit around the sun.
Literature:
(1) Andersen, Hans J. "Polsprung und Sintflut", Publishing House for Prehistory and Future Research, Bochum, 1992.
(2) Aschenbrenner, Klaus "Die Antiliden", Universitas, Munich 1993
(3) Berlitz, Charles "The 8th Continent", Droemer-Knaur, Munich 1995
(4) Donelly, Ignatius "Atlantis, the antediluvian world", Oskar Ziegler, Deisenhofen 1911.
(5) Fauth, Ph. "Hörbigers Glacial-Kosmologie", Hermann Kayser, Kaiserslautern 1996.
(6) Freksa, Martin, “The lost Atlantis”, Klöpfer & Meyer, Tübingen 1997.
(7) Henning, Richard "Das Rätsel der Atlantis", DTV Munich 1973.
(8) Hope, Murry "Atlantis", Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt 1994.
(9) Mavor, James W. Jun. "Journey to Atlantis", DTV, Munich, 1973.
(10) Muck, Otto, “Everything about Atlantis”, Droemer-Knaur, Munich 1984.
(11) do. "Birth of the Continents", Econ, Düsseldorf 1978.
(12) Nagel, Brigitte "Die Welteislehre", Publishing House for the History of Natural Sciences and Technology, Stuttgart 1991.
(13) Sitchin, Zacharia “The twelfth planet”, Droemer-Knaur, Munich 1989.
(14) Tollmann, Alexander and Edith "Und die Sintflut gab es doch", Droemer Knaur, Munich 1993.
(15) Velikovsky, Immanuel “Worlds in Collision”, Ullstein, Berlin 1982.
(16) Zanot, Mario "The world went under three times", Rowolt, Hamburg 1979.
(17) Zillmer, Hans Joachim “Errors in Earth History”, Langen Müller, Munich 2001.
