The Legend of Atlantis and The Science of Geology: Atlantis and Catastrophe: Myth or Reality?

By Joseph O’Donoghue

"Atlantis and Catastrophe, Myth or Reality" is the first volume in a new series about the mystery of Atlantis. The strictly scientific nature of this series is revealed by its title: "The Legend of Atlantis and the Science of Geology." While many are the books that have been written about Atlantis, this volume, and series, differs from most in that the author is a qualified geologist, and here presents a serious scientific treatment of the legend.
The academic establishment, governed as it is by gradualist uniformitarian geology, takes a dismissive view of Atlantis and all such catastrophe legends. In this series, and very much breaking with convention, this author takes an open-minded approach to the Atlantis question, and, for balance, a critical approach to the science of geology.
There is a very simple either/or question to be answered by this series: if modern geology has everything right, then the Atlantis legend is a myth with no basis. On the other hand, if the Atlantis legend can be shown to have validity, then this raises questions about the validity of the theories of orthodox geology---and vice versa.
The science of geology has had quite a varied history, and, as many people know, there was a time when notions of Atlantis, and catastrophes in general, were taken a good deal more seriously than they are today.
This book series, therefore, seeks to redress the inequality in the way Atlantis and geology have been officially treated. A thorough study of the Atlantis legend itself should give a sense of its reliability, or otherwise, while a critical analysis of geology should do the same for the so-called story of our planet.
This first volume focuses on the Atlantis legend from both geological and mythological points of view and includes a survey of classical and modern scholarly opinion of the legend, its language and structure, and its trustworthiness in light of what is known of Plato himself and his times.
Catastrophe and flood legends are prevalent the world over, and a general global survey of such legends is included. Further, in this study, a sampling of legends from the Pacific Northwest of the United States are discussed and analyzed through the new discipline of geomythology.
Because catastrophist geology has long since been rejected, there is no room in academia today for legends such as Atlantis and its catastrophic end. This series of books will show, however, that the natural history of this earth is quite possibly very different to what modern geologists claim it to be, and the fabled island of Atlantis may indeed be lying at the bottom of the Atlantic, right where Plato said it was.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350910285

Joseph O’Donoghue

The author graduated as a geologist in 1986 from an Irish university and worked professionally for a number of years in Ireland and for a further three years the United States. Finding that the work of a professional geologist did not really appeal to him or reflect his interest in geology, he left the professional field for a different career and took up the study of the science in his spare time. This private and independent study better reflected his interest in the subject and left him free to indulge this interest in any and all aspects of the science that might strike his fancy. At the same time, he had maintained a life-long interest in the field of archaeology, particularly that pertaining to very ancient times, going back as far as the Ice Age. One of the greatest mysteries in the science of geology is the Ice Age, and it was this phenomenon in particular that the author sought to investigate and perhaps find a solution. Being well aware that many had tried before him, going back to 1840, he was quite aware of the challenge posed. However, he was also somewhat suspicious, because he had a hard time accepting that 160 years of supposedly diligent study could prove so sterile. He resolved, therefore, to study all aspects of the problem, all previous theories, and all the different branches of science that might pertain to the question. One advantage the author does have in studying the Ice Age is the fact that he grew up in Ireland and now lives in the Northeastern United States, both of which were scenes of glacial action, so to speak, and the northern states and Canada are within relatively easy driving distance. He has traveled and hiked extensively in this area, and examined much of the evidence for himself. In a general way also, the author found that in certain other branches of science, what he was taught in college did not match what he could see with his own eyes. He grew up near one of Ireland's major rivers, and swam in that river throughout his youth. He became, therefore, very familiar with it. Even though he was not studying geology during these early years, he could not help but notice the behavior of the river from year to year, and, modesty aside, the author has a talent for taking in detail, noticing things, and remembering them, and that river did not behave the way it was supposed to. There were other phenomena that also did not fit, and they will be mentioned as the series progresses. Given that Ireland, long a British colony had been annexed, without the Irish people's consent, by Britain in 1801, it featured prominently in the development of the science of geology, along with the rest of what constituted Britain at that time, i.e., England, Scotland and Wales. The author was, all along, also well aware of the mystery of Atlantis, and other mysteries from ancient times. There are quite a lot of enigmatic archaeological sites scattered around the world, as well as a lot of other phenomena that seem also to defy explanation. While he has spent upwards of thirty years (part-time and full-time) at this work, he can now declare the endeavor successful and avers that he has solved the mystery of the Ice Age, and all other ice ages also. At the same time, the solution to the Ice Age question automatically provides the solution to the mystery of Atlantis, and whether it existed and what happened to it. The author, therefore, also avers that he has solved the mystery of Atlantis and thus can declare that the island continent did exist exactly where Plato said it did, and sank in the ocean as per Plato. Further, the solution to the Ice Age also provides answers to many other geological puzzles, and perhaps a few archaeological ones also. This book series is a complete chronicle of the results of the author's work wherein all these answers will be revealed, and a different geological history of this world defined.

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The Legend of Atlantis and The Science of Geology

Volume 1

Atlantis and Catastrophe: Myth or Reality?

Copyright © 2023 by Joseph O’Donoghue

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced by any means, photo, electronic, or otherwise, or transmitted by any means, or translated, without the written permission of the author, except for brief quotations in a book review, analysis, or commentary.

All images contained herein are used under license from the image owner or producer, with the license supplied with each image, or are used under Creative Commons, or are freely available from the producer, or are used under Fair Use terms, and all sources are credited.

Proof of license can be supplied if necessary.

Print ISBN: 979-8-35091-027-8

eBook ISBN: 979-8-35091-028-5

To My Wife Robin

And

My Daughter Jordan

Contents

SERIES INTRODUCTION

GENERAL SERIES OUTLINE

PROLOGUE: PLATO AND GEOLOGY

PREFACE: ATLANTIS AND GEOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE: PLATO’S LEGEND OF ATLANTIS

CHAPTER TWO: THE EXISTENCE AND DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS

CHAPTER THREE: CLASSICAL OPINION

AND COMMENTARIES

CHAPTER FOUR: MODERN CLASSICAL ANALYSIS

CHAPTER FIVE: PHILOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

CHAPTER SIX: FLOOD AND CATASTROPHE LEGENDS

CHAPTER SEVEN: WORLD AGES

CHAPTER EIGHT: GEOMYTHOLOGY AND PLATO’S LEGEND

CHAPTER NINE: GEOMYTHOLOGY AND

INDIAN LEGENDS

CHAPTER TEN: A CRITIQUE OF GEOMYTHOLOGY

CONCLUSION

EPILOGUE: CATASTROPHISTS AND UNIFORMITARIANS

SERIES INTRODUCTION

ATLANTIS! EVER SINCE PLATO, THE LEGEND OF THE lost continent of Atlantis has intrigued people the world over, and despite all the dismissals and skepticism down through the centuries, especially in the last hundred years, it has managed to maintain its grip on the imagination and simply refuses to stay sunk—and out of mind—in the ocean depths where Plato put it.

Whether or not a continent recently existed in the Atlantic Ocean is, without doubt, one of the most fascinating mysteries in the world today. According to an old Egyptian temple priest, as Plato relates, a large island continent, with a genial climate and an advanced civilization, sank suddenly somewhere in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean about 11-12,000 years ago, and did so over the course of but a single dreadful day and night of catastrophe, involving earthquakes and floods.

It is a legend that refuses to go away, despite all the efforts of establishment science to dismiss it as the mere imaginings of Plato. A major part of the Atlantis legend concerns the presence of a relatively advanced civilization on the continent and the war that these Atlantean invaders waged against ancient Athens (also a relatively advanced civilization, at least judging by the description). The catastrophe that sank the continent, while also affecting Greece to a limited extent, according to the priest, is by no means the main focus of the legend, comprising only a very limited part of it.

The legend itself concentrates mostly on the people, civilizations, and gods involved. Any investigations into the question, therefore, could include archaeology, geology, biology, anthropology, mythology, and so on. Thus, there are many aspects to the legend from the point of view of studying it or seeking evidence to support it. And, indeed, many are the books that have been written on every possible line of enquiry, real or imagined. And there is no shortage of the latter.

Many books include a limited amount of geological evidence considered to support the concept, but as far as I know—and I’ve looked—no geologist has, as yet, conducted a thorough, balanced and open-minded analysis of the Atlantis legend. Nor has anyone, anytime recently, done a critical analysis of the science of geology, or simply the geology of the North Atlantic Ocean basin, and the theories that purport to explain its geological makeup, structure, and history. This series, therefore, seeks to address what we might consider the imbalance, shall we say, in the establishment’s treatment of both the legend of Atlantis and the science of geology.

As we all know, official science utterly rejects the possibility of Atlantis, and is none too keen on the idea of catastrophes either, other than maybe an asteroid strike every now and again—millions of years apart, of course. Instead, the earth sciences offer a history of the world based on an interpretation of the geological evidence as being the result of familiar, everyday, minor processes, working imperceptibly over enormous lengths of time.

This governing theory, or paradigm, known as Uniform-itarianism, is what we’ve all been taught in school, and it has been the overwhelmingly dominant theory in all of the earth sciences, including the biological, since the 1860s or ’70s. It has, ever since then, been presented as the triumph of rational science over the religious superstition of the misguided older generations of geologists who all supposedly believed everything was due to Noah’s Flood.

Among historians of the geological sciences, however, it is rather well-known that few of these older geologists believed that Noah’s Flood was the main formative agent that rendered the earth’s surface as we see it. A certain number certainly did, but most had abandoned belief in the efficacy of Noah’s Flood by the early 19th century. This, however, is generally ignored, or quite possibly unknown, by many present-day academics, because few geologists delve very deeply into the history of the science. Hence, this false impression is widespread, including among the public. Those older geologists certainly believed in catastrophes and enormous floods but did so because that’s what the evidence told them.

Like the Biblical story of the Flood, the Atlantis legend is but one of hundreds of flood and catastrophe legends from the world over, and thus, neither of these local traditions stands alone as in any way unique, as is generally implied by academia. The flood legends from other regions are generally ignored, dismissed, or disparaged as the superstitious ravings of simple-minded primitives, the easier to dismiss them both. As a matter of fact, much of what we hear about those early geologists, and their supposed beliefs and defense of the biblical interpretation of earth history, is almost as much of a legend as Plato’s fabled Atlantis, and, in fact, a lot easier to refute than Plato’s.

Another legend peddled by academia is the so-called war between science and religion. This imaginary conflict, where rational science triumphed over religious superstition, was only introduced long after the science had already accepted uniformitarianism. It would, therefore, appear to be more a case of revisionist or invented history, likely introduced to support the primacy of uniformitarianism, and discourage any investigations of non-uniformitarian geology by curious younger students, such as I used to be.

Obviously, if the island of Atlantis existed and sank as described by Plato, then the Establishment’s paradigm of uniformitarianism must be flawed at the very least or wholly wrong at the most. The question to be asked and answered therefore is: Is the present landscape and the earth’s geological history the result of all those currently-operating, everyday processes we see, slowly and imperceptibly wearing down mountains, carving out valleys, cutting canyons, battering down cliffs, and generally smoothing out the surface of the earth, or are all these processes simply acting on a landscape that has been recently pre-formed by some type of regional or global catastrophe?

We will examine this question from both perspectives, and we will see if all of these uniformitarian processes are actually up to doing the work that has been done or if perhaps some form of catastrophism holds the better answer.

While uniformitarianism remains the firm Establishment position vis-à-vis the formation of the earth’s surface as we now find it, in the early years of Natural History, geologists, almost to a one, held the view that only a major catastrophe, involving water action on a massive scale, violent earth movements and widespread volcanism could explain the evidence found. And despite the general acceptance of uniformitarianism in the latter 19th century, many geologists, back then and in the years since, maintained a catastrophic view of earth history, and many still do.

Furthermore, and contrary to the claims of academia, religion and Noah’s Flood had, and have, nothing to do with it. In actuality, it took those older geologists little time to demonstrate that the evidence did not support either version of the story of Noah’s Flood as told in the Bible. Instead, it indicated that a global flood of a quite different nature and much else, a good deal more violent, had occurred in the not-too-distant past. The reason obviously was that if Noah’s Flood was the correct answer, then the evidence—i.e., the results of the various phases of the Flood-event as related in the Bible—should have been reflected in the deposits and features on the earth’s surface, and they manifestly are not.

Today, of course, anyone espousing global floods or catastrophes, or even daring to question uniformitarianism, is automatically labeled a crank, heretic, or maverick if a scientist, or, if from any kind of religious background, a creationist crackpot or intelligent designer—the latter, according to the establishment, supposedly being merely an alternative name for the former. While there’s actually a very big difference between the two, the point of the name-calling is merely to deny any of them any credibility, lest, no doubt, they should get an audience outside of their own small and generally isolated communities.

However, and significantly enough, the ranks of the catastrophists have been growing again in more recent years, and these so-called neo-catastrophists are, one and all, card-carrying members of the academic establishment.

And thus, it must be emphasized that much of modern (neo-) catastrophism is considerably less extreme than that needed to sink a continent in the mid-Atlantic, while destroying much of the earth’s surface at the same time. Neo-catastrophism deals mostly with the usual types of small-scale natural disasters that we’re all familiar with: floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, and so on, as well as more extreme or unusual so-called rare events. They do not, generally speaking, accept the idea of global catastrophes, or even regional ones, other than impact-types, and concern themselves mostly with what we might call local catastrophes as being the cause of some phenomenon or another.

The main reason for the academic reticence of today’s neo-catastrophists is the long-prevailing anti-catastrophist stance of official geology, along with pre-conditioning resulting from the usual uniformitarian training that all geologists, including myself, received as undergraduates, and which was further intensified during their postgraduate years and subsequent career. There is also a major pressure to conform to a common uniformitarian consensus in their work and teaching, especially if they want to continue to work and teach, and more importantly, to receive research grants, the latter being very much the deciding factor in the success or otherwise of any aspiring academic geologist’s prospective career.

As is usual, on the rare occasion when a new idea does appear, it is almost invariably the younger geologists who challenge the established order and its theories, but they don’t control the purse strings, and there isn’t a whole lot of grant-funding available for scientific rebellions.

Most of today’s catastrophism centers, on the one hand, on asteroid or cometary impacts, especially since it is now, supposedly at least, generally accepted that an impact of some large cosmic body caused the demise of the dinosaurs. This is really the only type of global catastrophe that is accepted by the establishment, while the other branch of neo-catastrophism, which deals with the so-called rare event such as extra-large hurricanes and eruptions or hundred-year floods and so forth, is now being called cataclysmic geology or maybe convulsive geology, the better to distinguish it from the genuine catastrophic geology of the first half of the 19th century.

It has to be said, though, that these two terms sound a lot worse than catastrophe and are typically reserved for events way beyond the bounds of any ordinary catastrophe, and what they actually reflect is an effort by academia to divide a big catastrophe into a bunch of little ones and stretch them out over time, essentially diluting what was most likely but a single event.

However, that being said, the many shortcomings of uniformitarianism are at least, and finally, being acknowledged with regard to explaining some of the evidence and phenomena that have confounded the science for so long. The public, of course, is more or less completely unaware of the existence of many of these problem issues, and the evidence and theories proffered to explain them. While certainly acknowledging some gaps in our narrative of earth’s history, the academic establishment ever and always promotes the doctrine of slow and gradual uniformitarianism.

This paradigm, in the opinion of at least some well-known and well-respected scientists, has done little but blind scientists and constrain their thinking, and is finally, albeit slowly, on the way out. Assuming this is not just wishful thinking on the part of some disaffected academics, it will perhaps allow a more clear-eyed and unencumbered examination and analysis of the evidence and a more open-minded reinterpretation of it, which is exactly what I intend to do here.

In this series, I will be presenting a very different geological history of this planet, one that has a major bearing on the Atlantis question, and which is considerably more energetic than the current version. Of rather obvious necessity in light of that statement, I will be showing that many currently accepted theories, and various explanations for many well-known phenomena, cannot meet the challenge of actually explaining those phenomena scientifically, or elucidating the history of this earth of ours. This means, of course, that much of what I will be saying goes entirely against current theory and the position of establishment science, and I’m not alone.

Apart from creationist groups or flood geologists, for example, there are many other secular geologists both within and without academia that also hold to a catastrophist position. Many in this particular neo-catastrophist grouping go much further than run-of-the-mill neocatastrophism, being amenable to the idea of events way outside any normal, or typical, extreme type of familiar catastrophe. This group also, and automatically, includes anyone writing favorably about Atlantis, academic or otherwise.

While the establishment vehemently denies the former reality of Atlantis or any other landmass in the Atlantic, and, other than a rare comet or asteroid strike, also denies the possibility of global catastrophes, there are certain well-known events all seemingly coinciding at the same time that the island-continent of Atlantis supposedly sank beneath the waves. As most are aware, Plato’s legend states that this event occurred about 11,500–12,000 years ago.

Now, the science of geology (the establishment) holds that the Great Ice Age also ended at about this time, and it did so very rapidly indeed. In fact, the estimates of the time taken to end said Ice Age continue to be revised downward. At about the same time, the mammoth and dozens of other animal species went extinct for an as-yet unknown reason. The period was also marked by a major outburst of volcanic activity in many areas of the world, and one that was so extensive as to be considered global. A reversal, or some disturbance, of the earth’s magnetic field also occurred at this time, as did a cosmic bombardment of at least microscopic particles and possibly much larger fragments.

Major, and very recent, changes in the relative positions of land and sea are apparent in many places around the world, implying tectonic, or structural, activity on a large scale. At the same time, and logically enough due to these land movements, many or most of the world’s rivers changed course or ceased to flow, or new ones came into being, as did many lakes and even inland seas, reflecting major changes to the world’s drainage patterns. Major, very rapid and radical changes in climate are clearly evident as having occurred in many areas of the world. Also, large-scale flooding occurred in many places, and enormous and widespread fires raged over the surface of the earth at this same time.

We will, needless to say, examine the evidence for all these major events as this series progresses. Furthermore, many anomalous, but much more localized, phenomena have been found that are inconsistent with the narrative of the world of the Ice Age, with its end, and with the uniformitarian paradigm in general, hence the term anomalous.

None of the events listed above fit that uniformitarian paradigm, which is to say we do not see any of these large-scale processes or agents in action today, operating at the scale or rate at which they operated during the period of the ending of the Ice Age. Today, any version of these activities that are seen to be occurring are mere shadows of those that can be shown to have acted at the time in question.

While academia acknowledges that there is some apparent coincidence in the occurrence of these events or activities around the time the Ice Age came to an end, the establishment is insistent that the coincidence is only apparent and that it doesn’t mean that any kind of large-scale catastrophic event ever occurred, despite what the evidence very clearly says. In which case, the aforesaid list is a lot of coincidence to explain away. And, it is curiously interesting that all these events occurred about the same time as the legendary destruction of legendary Atlantis. And this last is the most interesting coincidence of them all.

The geological sciences first of all deny that some of these events—i.e., magnetic reversal and large-scale tectonic movements—very clearly recognizable in the record, happened at all, or anywhere as recently as this time period. They also offer explanations of most other of these seemingly coincidental events as being actually separate in time and unrelated, only appearing to be coincidental. The approach taken is the usual one of stretching out the duration of each event to have it occur over a nonspecific, long period of time, a period of time different to those of the other events, each of which, of course, also takes place slowly and gradually in true uniformitarian fashion.

Some are declared to have occurred well before the end of the Ice Age, while others are thought somewhat coincidental, and others occurred well after the end of said Ice Age. Any overlap of the apparent durations of different events is claimed as minor or, again, simply accidental. The evidence, however, as well as many academic geologists, past and present, say something very different. Obviously, if they all occurred at exactly the same time and very rapidly, then the implication is that something very unusual, and very obviously catastrophic, did indeed occur at this time, and that, of course, is Occam’s simple answer.

Were the legend of Atlantis the only report we had of a global catastrophe having occurred in the deep past, we might be inclined to dismiss it out of hand, based on the belief that official geology and its uniformitarian paradigm had the correct story of our planet, as it so persistently claims. However, we have hundreds of catastrophe legends from virtually all parts of the world attesting to a major catastrophe involving massive earthquakes and land movements, fire, floods, volcanism, cosmic bombardment, death and destruction on a huge scale, extended periods of darkness, and the survival of but a few individuals who repopulate the world. Furthermore, we have these types of legends that clearly refer to more than one catastrophe.

Both sides of the issue, therefore, the legendary and the scientific, have a whole array of coincidental events in common, except that academic geology has them all not really coinciding but occurring separately over an extended period, and all supposedly due to different causes, while legend has them all happening at the same time and all due to the same single cause. They are, of course, easily reconciled by the recognition that a major catastrophe did indeed occur in the not-too-distant past, and one that would easily account for the destruction of Atlantis, the widespread legends of catastrophe, and the evidence from the period of the ending of the Ice Age that the geological sciences have not, as yet, been able to explain in their uniformitarian way.

One major aim of this series is to explain the evidence from that period surrounding the end of the Ice Age, as well as the Ice Age itself, which is the key to the whole question. It will further attempt to elucidate the more general and long-term history of this world. And, despite the somewhat radical nature of these claims, the reason I can make them is that most of these answers have already been found and described over the last two hundred and some years, and mostly by establishment geologists. For the most part, in this series, therefore, I am simply reporting the results of other people’s work.

While the general term establishment geologists refers to all those, past and present, who engaged in geology in a structured or institutional way, many other geologists of the early years were amateurs. Despite this, much of what they wrote is still relevant today, as is the work of more modern amateurs. Utilizing many and varied sources, this series offers answers to many outstanding geological puzzles, and shows why these explanations were all officially rejected by an Establishment that seems determined to maintain the uniformitarian paradigm at all costs, and utterly denies the reality of catastrophe—not to mention the former existence of the island continent of Atlantis.

This series consists of a so-far estimated eight installments, due to the variety and large amount of material we must necessarily cover in this endeavor to account for the destruction of Atlantis, assess and analyze modern geological theory, compare it with the older theories, and try to elucidate the geological history of our earth. Although there is quite a lot to cover, I believe it shouldn’t take me too long to persuade the reader that, at the very least, I have a valid case to make.

And now it’s time I introduced myself a bit more fully.

Having grown up in Ireland, I now live in Massachusetts, not too far from Boston. I graduated from University College Cork in 1986 with a BSc. degree in geology and arrived in the United States two years after that. In this era of experts and credentialism, I must rather gladly admit that I do not have a PhD or a master’s degree. If I had either, then it’s a near certainty that I wouldn’t be writing this, because I myself would have become some part of, or at least somehow professionally associated with, that same establishment fortress I am currently in the process of besieging. In any case, I worked as a geologist for a year or so in Ireland and for a further three years in the United States. I found that I didn’t really like the work of a geologist all that much and left the field for what, at least back then, appeared to be greener pastures.

However, I didn’t lose interest in the science of geology by any means—I always found most branches of it interesting, and I still do, with caveats. However, my specific interest has always been more recent geology, along with ancient archaeology, with which it intersects to a great degree. The official agreed-upon jumping-off point for the modern period of geological, anthropological, and archaeological history of this planet is the end of the Ice Age. This latest modern period is known as the Holocene Era, and its beginning is dated variously as 11,700 or 11,550 years ago, depending on who you ask, while the famous Niels Bohr Institute of Copenhagen, Denmark, has somehow managed to narrow it down to precisely 11,711 years ago (as of 2008).

While I would have little confidence in this pseudo-precision, at the same time, it is obviously very close to the supposed time of the destruction of Atlantis. As discussed in future volumes, there are a lot of questions regarding events that occurred during this period, and not merely the geological ones previously mentioned. We have many issues with archaeology and anthropology, both of which cover the strictly human history not included in geology but begging valid explanations just as much, if not more, considering these issues are rather personal.

There are any number of unexplained archaeological remains scattered about the world, along with various puzzles regarding humanity and its level of advancement, all of which parallel the many unanswered questions in the various fields of geology discussed earlier. The existence of so many unsolved problems and mysteries in these fields, and in particular, geology, was to me both fascinating and more than puzzling. My time in university had, of course, told me that we already knew just about everything about just about everything, except for maybe a few minor matters here and there. However, a glance behind that pretty public picture told a very different story.

As we will see over the course of this series, there are not just a few minor unanswered questions lying about, but entire legions of unexplained phenomena, evidence that doesn’t fit into prevailing theories, and a veritable host of unanswered questions that are simply ignored, dismissed without a glance, denied, and even suppressed, in all of these branches of what we can consider to be ancient earth history, and I found that rather perplexing, to say the least.

It became apparent after much research, that for modern academia, the maintenance of long-prevailing theories of Uniformitarianism in geology, and those of evolutionary Primitive-to-Sophisticated in archaeology and anthropology, seem to be far more important, for some reason, than investigating any of the long-persistent puzzles in these sciences, or entertaining any challenges to any of the long-prevailing theories.

The apparent inadequacy of certain theories offered to explain some phenomena, along with the reluctance on the part of today’s academic establishment to address others, also made me rather curious, if not a little suspicious. I therefore decided, for a hobby really, to investigate the history of geology and the validity of its theories, as well as both recent geology and ancient archaeology, to see for myself just what the story might be. I must emphasize that I didn’t start out with ideas of finding Atlantis; it was the mystery of the Ice Age I was after, so I started with that. The reason I wound up at Atlantis was because that was where the evidence and the science led me, and so, we’ll see if they led me astray.

The legend of Atlantis and the whole Atlantis destruction question are representative of the kinds of academic conflicts that have gone on, and still do to a degree, within and between various schools of thought in the fields of geology, archaeology, and anthropology. On the geology side, it’s a conflict over some uniformitarian theory or other, or it’s one between uniformitarianism and catastrophism, while in the others, it’s an ongoing argument over the existence or otherwise of advanced ancient civilizations, and degrees of human development. At the same time, it is clear that these three fields are interdependent and cannot really be strictly separated.

Emblematic of all of these unexplained questions and everlasting theories is what is termed the Great Mystery of the Ice Age. The Ice Age, made famous (not originated) by Louis Agassiz, the Swiss geologist who later moved to Harvard, has been around for almost two hundred years, and as yet there is no explanation for how it began, proceeded, and ended.

At the moment, the so-called orbital theory of Milutin Milankovitch is presented as the cause, but that theory had already been rejected back in the 1920s shortly after he first proposed it. It was, and is, not much beyond a more mathematically-refined rehash of a theory presented by a man named James Croll in the 1870s, which had been quickly rejected for sound scientific reasons when he first proposed it, as we’ll see. Milankovitch did little more than redo Croll’s calculations to three decimal places, which got him no further than Croll.

Furthermore, Croll’s theory was not the first of its kind either, but only one of a series of astronomical theories proposed over the years, all of which were rejected for similar reasons of inadequacy. The very fact that Milankovitch’s theory, well known to be deficient, has been dusted off and polished up nicely for modern consumption, merely shows how little progress has been made in the last hundred years in solving the Great Ice Age Mystery. This, to me, is somewhat disconcerting and disquieting, especially when we remember that the entirety of the academic establishment agrees that the end of the Ice Age is the defining event, so to speak, and jumping-off point of practically every aspect of our modern world’s history—meaning, in essence, that we don’t know where we come from.

We have been told that the Ice Age ended gradually and the climate improved accordingly and humanity lived a stone-age existence for thousands of years until some people started farming and building houses and villages instead of living in caves and hunting, fishing, and gathering. From that time onward, humanity continued to slowly (always slowly) develop and advance through various ancient civilizations, such as Sumeria, Egypt, China, Greece, Rome, Maya, and so on, and finally get more and more technological until we wind up with modern sophisticated us and all our civilization. And all the while, the world continued to behave peacefully and calmly just as we see it does all around us today, with only the usual minor upsets due to typical earthquakes, hurricanes, and such.

It is an official narrative of slow, gradual progress being the norm, while the natural world has always stayed more or less exactly the same as it is now, and all the while, we humans slowly and gradually developed, generation after generation. In other words, we are led, or induced, by our academic establishment, and all our educational institutions, to believe that the natural order of this world is slow change and painstaking progress, whether it’s the natural world or the civilized one we’re considering. In which case, needless to say, the idea of sudden change or rapid progress is out of step with normality.

However, what I had heard and read and learned of geology and archaeology, both in and out of college, had left me somewhat skeptical of both official stories and wondering if the real history of both the earth and humanity wasn’t perhaps quite otherwise. However, back then, as a naïve young student with little in the way of serious reading and research under my belt, I was in no position to judge the rightness or wrongness of the official account and assumed that much of the overall narrative was perfectly valid. The public, of course, is under the same impression all of us impressionable young students were under. We thought that all this geological knowledge had been worked out with all the due diligence academia tells us they’re famous for.

As a young, naïve student, one expects that the guru at the top of the class knows what he’s talking about, and that everything one is being told has been verified by those whose job it is to do the verifying. I was later to find out just how wrong a young man could be. At the same time, and in this state of academic innocence, I