Atlantis and the Silver City (36 page)

It is left to writers and researchers such as Graham Hancock, who have devoted their lives to the subject, to continue to probe and question. These are not armchair researchers but motivated people who have traveled widely and investigated—not just sites on land; they have also thrown light on
colossal remains on the seabed. Some are at depths that, as the world-famous “sea-level unit” at England’s Durham University points out, could only have been above water approximately eleven thousand years ago. Ah, but there are perfectly natural explanations, say the cynical, professional doubters. Come on! Natural explanations for massive stone blocks, precisely cut, fitted together, and stacked one above the other; explanations for pillars, arches, doorways, and steps laid out over huge areas of the seabed! Such remains are increasingly being found in Asia, particularly off the coasts of India and Japan, indicating that advanced civilizations once existed worldwide, concurrently with Atlantis.

Plato alluded to this in clues 18, 39, and 82:

“In the days of old, the gods had the whole earth distributed among them by allotment.”

“For because of the greatness of their empire, many things were brought to them from foreign countries.”

“The largest of the harbors were full of vessels and merchants coming from all parts.”

Cataclysmic inundations and upheavals have engulfed our vulnerable planet at least three times during the melting of the great glaciers around fifteen to sixteen thousand, eleven to twelve thousand, and seven to eight thousand years ago. Inevitably, they will have destroyed most tangible and dateable evidence for these huge stone remains, although some artifacts found off the coast of India in one such giant city have been scientifically dated between 7000 and 9000
B.C.
We may yet strike gold. Exploration of the relatively shallow seabed in front of the Algarve and Andalucía may well reveal something sensational.

Religious bigots among the Spaniards who invaded South America destroyed masses of recorded, critical local history. One pious and proud Catholic bishop boasted of making a bonfire of tens of thousands of manuscripts and other items. Fortunately, the Spaniards never conquered India, so Plato’s Atlantis story is not the only account of ancient civilizations to have survived. The Indian Vedic literature records India’s distant past, with the gods wielding weapons uncannily similar to hydrogen bombs and death rays, and gadding around in a varied fleet of airplanes. The descriptions are too accurate for this to be coincidental fiction.

There is now too much plausible evidence to continue in denial. It is time the establishment embraced serious alternative researchers and started rigorously examining their discoveries and theories, instead of instantly dismissing and insulting them for daring to challenge the establishment’s own dogmatic beliefs.

Over the last twenty-four hundred years, many have also dismissed Plato’s story as fictitious. This book has proved that much of the detail from his accounts was indeed factual. Certainly he added a little “top dressing” here and there, but the basic legend is proven to be true.

Circumstantial clues indicate that the original rulers who created Atlantis were tall, with blond or red hair. As time passed, they were not content to stay there, just sunning themselves in the balmy climate. Whether they were righteously inspired to spread civilization and improve mankind’s lot, or were forced to emigrate by natural disasters, we will never know. It was probably a combination of both.

Apart from many legends, actual physical remains of people answering to this description have been found all over the globe. Invariably they were visitors who often became rulers and imparted their vastly advanced knowledge for the benefit of the indigenous populations. They were the builders of the earliest pyramids in South America, as well as gigantic cities such as Tiahuanaco. Many researchers have suggested that some of the exceptional remains in Egypt were built in a much earlier epoch than that officially attributed. Some readers will already be familiar with these theories that particularly relate to the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, as well as a few of the temples. The latter exhibit a building style unlike other local temples, and are completely devoid of the usual hieroglyphics and decorations. Discoveries of the remains of people with red hair support the legends of tall white people ruling Egypt long before the great dynasties. One logical conclusion is that these earlier gods or rulers were responsible for the construction—or at least the planning—of these great monuments, just as they were in South America.

Pyramids elsewhere in China and the Canary Islands are also connected to people with these physical characteristics. Discoveries are slowly completing a picture to match the prose in the Indian Vedic accounts. The great ancient cities such as Mohenjo-daro and others from the Harappan culture,
plus huge underwater sites recently found off the Indian coast, support the written record of an advanced civilization. Early archaeological finds again indicate that the original rulers were red-haired people.

Recent genetic research has proven that the population in Celtic Wales came from the Algarve and southwest Andalucía. Red-haired people are still much in evidence among the current Welsh population, and even more so in other Celtic societies. Pockets of redheads still exist in some Portuguese villages. It has been assumed that these were the outcome of liaisons between the locals and the Duke of Wellington’s troops who had been sent to kick out Napoleon. The analysis in this book leads to the possibility of their having remnant genes of the Atlanteans.

It is apparent from Plato’s account that Atlantis was a great maritime power; so, logically, it would have mapped the planet. Is it surprising that “atlas,” the name of the first king of Atlantis, is still given to a book of maps?

A whole new template for man’s ancient past is now emerging. A powerful civilization called Atlantis existed at the end of the last Ice Age, its trading tentacles stretching around the world. If they did not already exist, civilizations on other continents were likely spawned toward the end of its existence, a process that was continued out of necessity when the homeland disappeared below the sea. The movers and shakers were all from the same highly individual stock. Later survivors from the empire’s outposts probably infiltrated even farther, confirming North American Indian reports of red-haired invaders.

Atlantis was where it all started, and Atlantis was in southwest Iberia on land now largely below the Atlantic.

The potential now exists for truly exhilarating discoveries that could shatter the current paradigm of history.

PART THREE

Stop Press

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Astounding Confirmation

B
y the time this manuscript was completed, I was convinced that I had exhausted all avenues for evidence to support my hypothesis. Indeed, having matched sixty of Plato’s exacting clues, I hardly deemed any more as necessary. All that remained was for serious archaeological digs and underwater surveys to start, hopefully revealing historical riches.

Then I came across some astounding further confirmation. I was aware of the ancient Indian Vedic book the
Mahabharata
, which was written long before Plato’s time. It gives information about a much earlier Indian civilization ruled by gods who possessed immensely powerful weapons and flying machines. They are described in great detail, including graphic descriptions of the terrible devastation wrought by this armory. Hard as it is to believe, it appears to describe atomic warfare. Here is an example:

“… a single projectile

charged with all the power of the Universe

an incandescent column of smoke and flame

as bright as the thousand suns

rose in all its splendor …

a perpendicular explosion with its billowing smoke clouds …

… the cloud of smoke rising after its first explosion

formed into expanding round circles like the opening of giant

parasols …

… it was an unknown weapon,

an iron thunderbolt,

a gigantic messenger of death,

which reduced to ashes

the entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas

… the corpses were so burned

as to be unrecognizable.

The hair and nails fell out;

pottery broke without apparent cause,

and the birds turned white.

After a few hours

all foodstuffs were infected …

… to escape from this fire

the soldiers threw themselves in streams

to wash themselves and their equipment.”

This civilization’s implacable enemy was ruled from an island on the other side of the world in the great western ocean. India was threatened as this enemy’s forces conquered area after area, inexorably moving ever closer.

The island was called Atala and, since it consisted of three concentric cities encircling each other and separated by water, the capital city was known as Tripura. Does that sound familiar? It was eventually destroyed by a dreadful weapon created by the Indians’ gods. After the city was destroyed, the land sank into the sea.

I also knew that in a Moroccan Berber legend, Atala was the name given for a fertile land to the north, occupied by a nation of people expert in mining gold, silver, copper, and tin. They launched eastward in conquest across North Africa; but shortly afterward, their homeland also disappeared in a huge conflagration.

These Indian and Moroccan references to Atala have frequently been cited as evidence for Atlantis that has survived from ancient times, although only Plato supplied any detail.

One day, while poring over a Google Earth image of the Atlantis capital’s harbor area, west of Silves, my son spotted that the large hill overlooking it was called Atalaia. It set my heart pounding. Investigation immediately confirmed that this was the local name for the whole substantial hill, and had been so as far back as records existed. The word has been adopted into the Portuguese language to mean a “lookout point,” hardly surprising when the top of this hill was a perfect lookout point and already called Atalaia as part of the whole capital complex. It had been assumed to have been introduced by the Moors; but in fact Atala was originally a Sanskrit word and also meant “lookout” in ancient India, as well as referring to its implacable enemy. A similar word, Atalaya, is used across the border in Andalucía.

The great white limestone egg, called Alatuir in Slavic legend and detailed in Chapter Nineteen, was unearthed at the very side of the Atalaia hill.

The
Mahabharata
also described Atala as “The White Island.” It has been widely assumed that this was because the inhabitants were described as having white skin. Now I suggest that there is a more logical explanation, as the Atalaia hill mostly consists of white limestone and, a little upriver, the top of the hill upon which Silves is built had also consisted of white limestone before it was quarried (or blasted) away.

I explored the top of the Atalaia hill and, to my amazement, rather than the usual summit there is a very large saucer-shaped depression like a shallow crater. It is a good five hundred meters in diameter. The rim is broken on the western edge and the side of the hill below it is scattered with variously sized lumps of rock.

These incredible similarities in association with the ancient capital of Atlantis cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence. It is the ultimate confirmation that Atlantis and Atala were the same place and have been identified. Coupled with my discovery of Atlantis, it also gives credibility to the
Mahabharata
, as it proves that it was also describing somewhere that actually existed on the other side of the earth.

There is more, however. As mentioned earlier in this book, large cities have recently been discovered submerged on the seabed off the coast of India, as well as in Japanese waters. One, in India’s Gulf of Cambay, has been reliably dated to the same period as Plato gave for Atlantis. It verifies Plato’s statement that Atlantis was but part of a worldwide civilization and underpins the research of other authors who have painstakingly assembled evidence to prove that such a civilization once existed but was destroyed by cataclysmic natural events.