a possible origin for the story of Atlantis
To all:
In discussing the story of Atlantis, a critical aspect is the locating of the position of the continent, or what supposedly inspired the story of the continent. In many cases, the position of Atlantis, in space, is used as a starting point. Using the description of Atlantis being "beyond the Pillars of Hercules", everything from a land in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, to the Americas, themselves, have been offered as sites for Atlantis. Usually unaddressed, though, is the information offered by the placing of Atlantis in time. Plato's writings, from which Atlantis was derived, is described as having sunk around 15,000 years ago.
That period, it turns out, was almost exactly the end of the most recent Ice Age. At that time, huge sheets of ice locked up large amounts of sea water, uncovering large areas of continental shelves. The "land bridge" between Siberia and Alaska, for example, was above water, at that time. Among these regions above water, too, was an area called Dogger Bank, a region of continental shelf, between the British Isles and Scandinavia, only about 150 feet below sea level, at the present time. Sites such as
http://www.fortunecity.com/bally/sligo/93/past/pre_norman_history/iceage.html, describe the region of Dogger Bank as covered with coniferous forests, and inhabited by game animals and, possibly, even humans, at that time. The melting of the ice caps, though, caused those areas to become submerged. This process, though, may have taken a relatively short period of time. The site on
http://www.fortunecity.com, for example, described the flooding of Dogger Bank as having "lasted only a few decades".
It is possible for a tribe, which had lived in the area for generations, to have been pushed out, possibly by another tribe. Forced to flee to mainland Europe, they could have maintained an oral history of the land they knew, eventually having it enter almost a kind of racial memory. If they tried to return, only a couple of generations later, possibly, hoping, perhaps, to reconquer it for themselves, they could have found the land completely covered by water. To have so drastic and dramatic a fate befall a place they may have held closely could be a genuinely traumatic experience, and that could have entered their consciousness as a story of immense cataclysm and disaster. Through circulation and contact with other cultures, which may even have similar tales in their background, from the days when the ice caps melted, the story of a sunken land could have taken hold as a powerful and common element. It may be argued that there could have been any of a number of other places where continental shelves flooded, 15,000 years ago, and those may have given rise to the story of Atlantis. Dogger Bank is only one possibility, but, it should be mentioned, it, too, lies "beyond the Pillars of Hercules".
If nothing else, this can, at least, inspire the idea of wholesale archeological exploration of areas lost to the waters, after the end of the last Ice Age. That would, of course, require underwater exploration of those sites, but there is a likelihood of significant finds. Indeed, much of standard archeology can be rewritten, or, at least, numerous questions answered, by this exploration.
Julian Penrod
