introduction All nations, of all times, believed in the existence of a Primordial Paradise where Man originated and developed the fist civilization ever. This story, real and true, is told in the Bible and in Hindu Holy Books such a the Rig Veda, the Puranas and many others. That this Paradise lay "towards the Orient" no one doubts, excepting some die-hard scientists who stolidly hold that the different civilizations developed independently from each other even in such unlikely, late places such as Europe, the Americas or the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This, despite the very considerable contrary evidence that has developed from essentially all fields of the human sciences, particularly the anthropological ones. It is mainly on those that we base our arguments in favor of the reality of a pristine source of human civilization traditionally called Atlantis or Eden, etc..
[FOOTNOTE: We emphasize, once again, that our theory, though superficially reembling those of the Theosophists, the Velikovskians, Pole-Shiftists and son, has nothing to do w
ith them, as they are all strictly scientific and founded on actual fact, rather than on religion or Tradition alone. Theosophists derive their wisdom from Mme. Blavatsky, a Russian lady who, in the 1860's moved to India, where she founded the theosophical Society, which had a considerable following among the intellectuals of the time. Blavatsky was an extremely intelligient person, and soon amassed an immense mass of knowledge of Hindu and other esoteric tradition, which she published in books such as The Secret Doctrine and the Veil of Isis, which became extremely popular, even today. But her writings seem an undigested version of the esoteric doctrines of Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religions and Occult doctrines,mingled to some pseudo-science which she obtained from the geological textbooks of the time, which would allprove wrong in the course of time.
Pole Shift is sheer unscientific bumcombe that holds no water. It is impossible on both physicaland geological grounds, as we explain elewhere in detail. These ideas were originally ppularized by Charles Hapgood, and survive in writers such as John White and Graham Hancock. Rather than scientists, these authors are journalists, whose specialty is precisely rendering palatable to the public what are usually government lies and propaganda. White has — as indeed most such proponents of the theory, Hapgood included — publicly recanted from his former views on PoleShift, which henow recognizes as an unscienific concept. We hope Graham Hancock will soon do the same, particularly because he now dropped his proposalof an Antarctic Atlantis, in favour of our own hypothesis of a Far Eastern one.
Velikovsky is another unusual character. A Russian Jew and an emigré to the US, his books became the delight of all inquisitive persons who, in the 1950's,were discontent with the obscurities of Academic Science. Among these, I should be counted, as his books opened my eyes to the inconsistencies of theories such as Darwin's Uniformitarian Geology and his theory ofEvolution, based on precisely this false premise. The problem of Velikovsky was taking the catastrophic events he proposed as the literal truth. Moreover, as an orthodox Jew, Velikovsky also believed the dates and events of the Bible — ridiculously small by geological standards — to be actual facts which should be implicitly believed by all. Of course, most of his proposals proved to be false, excpt insofar as Catastrophism seems indeed to be one important feature not only of Evolution, but also of geology, in contrast to what Drawin and Lyell so emphatically argued. But his books — like the ones of Blavatsky and even Graham Hancock are a good read even today, as long as they are considered what they indeed are: pleasant Sci Fi, based on ill-digested pseudo-Science.
It was in the Orient, and beyond, that agriculture (of rice and grains) and animal domestication were invented. These two crucial inventions allowed Man's fixation to the soil, and the resulting prosperity led to civilization and the founding of the first cities. It is exactly this fact that is related in the Bible, that attributes the foundation of the first city — called Henok or Chenok, ("the Abode of the Pure", in Dravida) — to Cain (Gen. 4:17). This end at the completion of its allotted time is what is meant by Henok's lifespan of "365 years".
This name ("Pure Land") of the very first of all cities is the same in Hindu traditions (Shveta-dvipa, Sukhavati, Atala, etc.). Even in the Amerindian traditions, Yvymaraney "the Land of the Pure", is the legendary birthplace of the Tupi-Guarani Indians of Brazil, just as Aztlan is the land of origin of the ancient Aztecs of Mexico, and Tollán is the one of the Mayas of Yucatan. Man — or, more exactly, the anthropoid simians that were our ancestors — in fact arose in Africa some 3 million years ago. But these anthropoids soon spread all over Eurasia and beyond, reaching the Far Orient and Australia, inclusive, by about 1 million years ago or even more.
indonesia, the site of eden
It was in Indonesia and the neighboring lands that Man, after emigrating from the semi-desertic savannas of Africa, first found the ideal climatic conditions for development, and it was there that he invented agriculture and civilization. All this took place during the Pleistocene, the last of the geological eras, which ended a scant 11,600 years ago. Though long by human standards, this is but a brief moment in geological terms.
The Pleistocene — a name which is Greek for "most recent" — is also called Anthropozoic Era or Quaternary Era or, yet, the Ice Age. During the Pleistocene and, more exactly, during the glacial episodes that happened at intervals of about 20 thousand years, sea level was about 100-150 meters (330-500 feet) below the present value. With this, a large coastal strip — the so-called Continental Platform (with a width of about 200 km = 120 miles) — became exposed, forming land bridges that interconnected many islands and regions.
The most dramatic of such exposures took place in the region of Indonesia, precisely the spot where humanity first flourished. The vast expansion of the South China Sea then formed an immense continent, indeed "larger than Asia Minor and Libya put together". This is, as we shall see below, precisely what Plato affirms in his discourse on Atlantis, the Critias.
With the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, the immense glaciers that covered the whole of the northern half of North America and Eurasia melted away. Their waters drained to the sea, whose level rose by the estimated amount of about 100-150 meters quoted above. With this rise, Atlantis sunk away and disappeared for good, along with most of its population, which we estimate, based on Plato's data, at about 20 million people, huge for the epoch in question.
eden was the same as lemurian atlantis
More exactly, this sunken continent was Lemurian Atlantis, the larger of the two Atlantises mentioned by Plato. Lemuria was the vast prairie which the Greeks called Elysian Fields and which the Egyptians named "the Field of Reeds" (Sekhet Aaru) or, yet, "the Ancestral Land" (To-wer), the overseas Paradise where they formerly lived, in Zep Tepi ("Primordial Time"). The sunken continent became the Land of the Dead, the dreadful, forbidden region where no mariner ever ventured to go, for it was "the Land of No Return".
Interestingly enough the name "Ancestral Land" (or Serendip) is precisely the Dravidian name of Taprobane (Sumatra), the island where the Hindus placed their pristine Paradise, likewise sunken in a cataclysm. The gloomy, pestilential place that remained above the water was named Sheol ("Hell") by the Jews, and, in the spared spots, "Island of the Blest" (Makarion nesos) or Hades by the Greeks, Amenti or Punt by the Egyptians, Dilmun by the Mesopotamians, Hawaiki by the Polynesians, Svarga by the Hindus, and so on.
The Celts — whose legends are perhaps the best recollection of the sunken golden realm — called the place Avallon, Emain Abbalach or, yet, Ynis Wydr ("Island of Glass"). They also associated the eerie place with the Holy Grail and the resurrection of their dead heroes, as we detail in other, forthcoming articles of ours. And we already mentioned above the Yvymaraney of the Tupian Indians of Brazil, or the Aztlan or Aztatlan of the Aztecs of Mexico, or the Tollán of the Mayas of Yucatan, the submerged land from which these Indians were obliged to flee, when it sunk underseas, disappearing forever.
the seminal exodus
The greatest of all Lemurian colonies was Atlantis, founded in India, already during the heydays of Lemuria, and which, in time, reached the apex of human grandeur. Atlantis and Lemuria had prospered for a full zodiacal era (2,160 years), when the great cataclysm destroyed their common world, at the end of the Pleistocene, some 11,600 years ago.
The scant survivors of the cataclysm that sunk Lemuria away were forced to flee their destroyed Paradise, moving first to India, the site of Atlantis, which had been spared in its northern, loftier portion. But the global catastrophe had also caused the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, and the melting of the Himalayan glaciers caused huge floods of the rivers of Asia, rendering the region unfit for human habitation. These floods ravaged this remainder of Atlantis, already greatly destroyed by the original cataclysm, the giant conflagration of the Indonesian volcanoes and the huge tsunamis they caused, as well as by the plague that ravaged their country in their wake.
Again, this doomed people was obliged to flee, emigrating, along the ensuing millennia, to remote places such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, North Africa, Europe, North Asia, the Near Orient and even Oceania and the Americas. Some came on foot, in huge hordes like those of the Israelite exodus. Others came by ship, like Noah in his Ark or Aeneas with his fleet, to found the great civilizations of the ancient world.
The great civilizations that we know of, in the Indus Valley, in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, Mexico and even the Americas were all Atlantean colonies founded by the survivors of the cataclysm that destroyed the twin Paradises of Atlantis and Lemuria. These colonists, of course, attempted to recreate their Eden in their new homeland.
The newcomers named each topographical feature after the archetypes of the pristine abode just as immigrants will do the same nowadays. Such is the reason why we keep finding vestiges of Atlantis everywhere, from Brazil and North America to Spain, Crete, and even Africa and North Europe. All these ancient civilizations spoke of Civilizing Heroes such as Manu, Noah, Aeneas, the Oannés, Hotu Matua, Quetzalcoatl, Kukulkan, Bochica and, of course, Atlas and Hercules, the omnipresent Twins that founded civilizations everywhere.
the reality of the civilizing heroes
Interestingly enough, the only place so far unclaimed among the literally hundreds of sitings of Atlantis is Indonesia. Of course, no solid evidence of the existence of Atlantis and, even more so, of Lemuria, has ever been found. The reason for this absence is easy to explain: the experts have all been searching Atlantis in the wrong sides of the world.
The legends of all peoples tell of Civilizing Heroes, Angels, Gods, or even Demons and Monsters who were their civilizers and who taught them religion, law, agriculture, metallurgy and the alphabet. These are the Fallen Angels, the same all too human heroes who fell desperately in love with the beautiful native girls, the Daughters of Man (Gen. 6). These fallen gods were not Astronauts, nor Sprites, but saintly men who came as missionaries from Atlantis. How else could they mate with human females and breed children?
The mysterious "Sons of God" (ben Elohim) of Gen. 6 are precisely the same ones identified by Plato with the Atlanteans. Their sin with the Daughters of Men — and, more probably, the rejection and enslavement of their hybrid offspring — led to the Flood. This is indeed the mysterious Original Sin that resulted in the destruction of Paradise (Atlantis) and the Fall of Man. This sin is the one ritually "washed" by the Baptism, itself an allegory of the Flood, as St. Jerome and other Church Patriarchs explicitly acknowledge.
Plato quotes precisely this cause for the destruction of Atlantis by God (Zeus) in his (unfinished) dialogue on Atlantis, the Critias. And the same story, in allegorized form, is also told by Homer concerning the Phaeacian "Sons of God". It also figures in the Celtic myths concerning Mererid, the sinful daughter of King Gradlon, whose scabrous conduct led to the sinking of the land of Ys. So, in the Americas (Bochica, etc.) and elsewhere.
If we read the Bible attentively, we note that it also speaks of two creations, exactly as Plato also tells of two different Atlantises (cf. Gen. 1 and 2). Moreover, the Bible also tells of two destructions of the world by the Deluge. These two different narratives are quaintly embroidered on each other in Gen. 6, and comprise the Elohist and the Jahvist accounts of the Flood, which relate two visibly different events.
the bible is right after all
We see, then, that the tradition (or traditions) narrated by Plato exactly coincides with the Biblical lore. Moreover, as we said above, the two traditions also exactly agree with the prehistoric events observed in the geological and the archaeological records. And, when we trace the worldwide legends to their source, we always end up in India and Indonesia, the two Atlantises of legend, no matter where we start from.
In truth, continents don't sink. It is the sea that rises, flooding entire continents, as it did in Lemurian Atlantis and, to a great extent, in the Indus Valley, the site of the second Atlantis. Relativists will say that both events — sea level rise and continental sinking — are one and the same thing, at least from the point of view of the observers. But geologists will hotly debate the issue, and claim, as they have long done, that actual sunken continents are a geological impossibility. It is all a matter of perspective, of relativistic illusion. But the best ancient sources — say, for instance that magnificent Hindu saga, the Mahabharata — speak of sea level rising rather than of continents sinking.
the elusive sunken continent revealed
However, anyone who inspects a chart of the oceanic bottoms in the region of Indonesia such as the Ice Age Map of Indonesia shown in Fig. 1 below, will readily concede that the South China Sea encircled by Indonesia indeed formed a continent during the last glaciation, which ended some 11,600 years ago. This chart clearly shows the sunken continent of Lemurian Atlantis in Indonesia, as well as the extensive sunken strip of Indian Atlantis at the Indus Delta.
The map leaves no room for doubt about the reality of what we are affirming concerning Lemurian and Indian Atlantis, one almost wholly sunken, and the other sunken to a very considerable extension. We remark that this map — in contrast to most others presenting proposed sites for Atlantis and/or Lemuria — is purely scientific, rather than an invention of ours or of others. It is based on the detailed geophysical reconstruction of the seafloors in the region in question, and portrays the areas of depth under 100 meters, which were obviously exposed during the Ice Age, when sea level dropped by that amount and even more.
In fact, several strictly scientific, similar maps exist, and can be seen elsewhere, inclusive in the
Internet. One of these maps, was published in the National Geographic Magazine (vol. 174, No. 4, Oct. 1988, pg. 446-7) and is reproduced, for comparison, in Fig. 2 below. It shows the world as it was some 18,000 years ago, at the peak of the last glaciation of the Pleistocene Ice Age. As can be seen, this map corresponds quite closely with ours, shown in Fig. 1.
In particular, please note the huge chunk of land, of continental dimensions, to the south of Southeast Asia, and which became sunken when sea level rose, at the end of the Pleistocene. Another sizable piece of land in the Indus Delta, the site of the second Atlantis, also disappeared likewise, at that occasion. No other regions of the world display a similar event, including the Americas (not shown). The conclusion is that Atlantis, if Plato was in fact speaking truthfully, could only have been located in that region of the world.
As both maps above show, a huge extension — of continental size — prolonged Southeast Asia all the way down to Australia. This continental-sized land was indeed "larger than Asia [Minor] and Libya [North Africa] put together", exactly as Plato affirms. It is seen to have been about two or three times larger than continental-sized India. It was also far larger than Australia, shown exaggerated due to the peculiarities of the projection utilized.
The Indonesian Islands and the Malay Peninsula that we nowadays observe are the unsunken relicts of Lemurian Atlantis, the lofty volcanic mountains that became the volcanic islands of this region, the true site of Paradise in all ancient traditions. The sunken portion of continental extension now forms the muddy, shallow bottoms of the South China Sea. It is encircled by Indonesia and forms the boundary of the Indian and the Pacific Oceans.
Then, as now, Indonesia formed the divide of the New and the Ancient Worlds; what the ancients called Ultima Thule ("Ultimate Divide"). Thule also corresponded to what our elders named the Pillars of Hercules, which, according to Plato, were placed "just in front of Atlantis" (hyper ten Heraklei Nyssai).
The Pillars of Hercules were also the impassable frontier between the Old and the New Worlds, also called Orient and Occident. These two are sundered by the volcanic island arc of Indonesia, truly the boundary of the Tectonic Plates that form the Ancient and the New Worlds. This barrier to navigation, in the region of Atlantis is also insistently mentioned in Plato and other ancient sources on Atlantis.
the great rift and the khasma mega of hesiod
The great rift that came to separate the islands of Java and Sumatra, caused by the subsidence of the Krakatoa volcano turned into a giant submarine caldera, which now forms the Sunda Strait. This great rift was very well known of the ancients. Hesiod called it Khasma Mega ("Great Rift"), a designative he learnt from the Hindus. This people called it (in Sanskrit) by names such as Abhvan ("Great Abyss"), Kalamukha ("Black Hole"), Aurva ("Fiery Pit") Vadava-mukha ("Fiery Submarine Mare"), and so on. This Great Abyss is also the same one that the Egyptians called Nun, and which the Mesopotamians named Apzu ("Abyss").
Hesiod and several other ancient authorities place this Khaos ("Divide") or Khasma Mega ("Giant Abyss") at the world's divide, at the very entrance to Hell (Tartarus). Hesiod also places Atlas and his Pillar (Mt. Atlas) at this gloomy spot where the ancient navigators such as Ulysses and the Argonauts met their doom. As we said above, this terrifying Black Hole — the archetype of all such that haunt Man's imagination — is indeed the Krakatoa's fiery caldera, ready to revive at doom, at least in Hindu traditions on the Vadava-mukha.
what happened during the pleistocene?
Let us recapitulate what happened during the Pleistocene Ice Age, for its true significance seems to have escaped the notice of all Atlantologists thus far.
This is how Ice Ages start. Converted into clouds by the sun, sea water is carried into the continents by the wind, where it pours down as either rain, hail or snow. If conditions are right, as they were then, this downfalling water is retained in glaciers that end up covering the temperate regions with a shroud of ice that is one or two miles thick. Sea level consequently drops by 100-150 meters or even more, exposing the shallow bottoms of the sea.
Such was the case of the South China Sea, whose depth seldom exceeds 60 meters or so, as we show in the Map of Fig. 1. When the Ice Age ends, the process is reverted. The glaciers melt away, and their meltwater quickly drains into the sea. In consequence, the bottoms previously exposed as dry land become submerged once again.
As we see, the world works as a kind of flip-flop or swing, forever oscillating between the extremes of cold and heat. Interestingly enough, it is Life itself that equilibrates the balance, introducing a negative feedback that counteracts the tendency for the world to freeze or to sizzle. For instance, if carbon dioxide (CO2) increases in the atmosphere, the temperature tends to go up with the so-called Hothouse Effect. This is precisely what we observe in sizzling Venus, whose atmosphere is almost pure CO2. In gelid Mars, whose atmosphere (and Life) was almost all lost in a tremendous cataclysm - probably caused by the fall of a meteorite of planetoidal size — the opposite swing took place.
Wherever Life exists, as on Earth, increased CO2 contents of the atmosphere also results in increased photosynthesis. Plants grow more luxuriously, fixing the excess carbon dioxide in themselves, and alleviating the situation. The opposite process happens if the CO2 content of the atmosphere is reduced for some reason. Photosynthesis is consequently reduced and plant matter - mainly the plankton in the seas, rather than the tropical forests — decreases, liberating CO2. This increases the atmospheric content, tending to increase earth's temperature back to its normal value.
However, this compensation only works within rigid limits, and any excessive perturbation can trigger an Ice Age or a Hot Age. Like with flip-flops and balances, the transition is enhanced by positive feedback, and quickly leads to the extreme situations that are, again, stable and permanent until triggered back on again. For instance if the seas warm up, the solubility of CO2 is decreased, and its atmospheric content increases, tending to further increase earth's temperature, and vice-versa.
Moreover, an ice cover effectively reflects sunlight back towards outer space, reducing the amount of solar heat absorbed by the earth. Its temperature consequently drops, and the glaciers further increase, until they cover all the temperate regions of earth. In the absence of Life, we have the two extremes instanced by our two neighboring planets, Venus and Mars. As we said above, Venus is as hot as hell, whereas Mars is completely frozen up, as if to vividly exemplify to us all the two extremes of lifeless conditions.
the cause of the ice ages
The causes of the Ice Ages and of the periodic advance and retreat of the continental glaciers is not well known. But, to believe the myths, the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age was due to the cataclysmic explosion of Mt. Atlas, the one which wiped the twin Atlantises out of the map.
Mount Atlas — "the Pillar of Heaven" that decorated Lemurian Atlantis — was an immense volcanic peak in the region that now corresponds to the island arc of Indonesia. To be more precise, this volcano was the terrible Krakatoa, even today still alive and very active, despite its monumental explosion in Atlantean times. After its colossal explosion, the Krakatoa volcano sunk away underseas, becoming the giant caldera that now forms Sunda's Strait between Java and Sumatra.
This giant caldera — fully 150 km across — is the "Fiery Submarine Mare" (Vadava-mukha) that we commented above. The giant explosion of the Holy Mountain is attested not only by the worldwide myths that recount the end of Paradise (Atlantis). Similar cataclysms in this remote region of the world are also testified by the tektite belt and the volcanic ash layer that covers most of the South Indian Ocean, Australia, Indonesia and Southeast Asia.1
The ashes and dust liberated by the gigantic explosion were carried away by the winds, and covered the glaciers of North Asia and North America with a dark veil of carbonized matter. The result was an increased absorption of sunlight and a quick melting away of the glaciers that covered the continents beyond the Tropical Regions.
thermal runaway and the quaternary extinctions
The process of glacier melting was far from uniform, as many geologists of the Darwinian school tend to think. The meltwater of the glaciers quickly flowed into the seas, creating huge stresses between the overloaded sea bottom and the alleviated continents. Earth's crust cracked and rifted at many places, originating volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis of unprecedented proportions. And the violent process continued, impelled by its own momentum, until it was finally complete and the earth had quit the Ice Age. In this terrible event — the same one that the myths call the Flood — some 70% of the species of great mammals became extinct.
This self-sustaining, degeneratively increasing process is what physicists call "positive feedback", and is identical to the one that causes the transitions of electronic flip-flops in electronic computers and such. It also corresponds to another physical process called "thermal runaway", which happens, for instance, on a global scale in the Hothouse Effect. Increased temperature of the earth tends to liberate the CO2 (carbonic gas) dissolved in sea water to the atmosphere, since its solubility decreases with temperature.
The extra atmospheric CO2 further tends to increase global warming, liberating further amounts of CO2, and so on until all of it is liberated to the atmosphere, and the earth becomes overheated. This is possibly what happened on sizzling Venus, perhaps billions of years ago. And it may well be the case that Venus also had Life, as Mars apparently did too, as we are starting to learn.
Geologists call the widespread mortality that took place at the end of the Pleistocene by the name of Quaternary Extinctions. But they are foiled at explaining their cause, and none of the literally dozens of scientific theories hereto proposed to explain the cause of Ice Ages have been consensualy accepted by the scientific community. Among the extinct species we had several magnificent animals: the mammoth, the mastodon, the saber-toothed tiger, the cave bear, the giant sloths, dozens of species of camelids, cervids, cavalids and, very probably, the Neandertal and the Cro-Magnon men, who became extinct at about this date for some unexplained reason that can only have been linked to this one.
No, the ancient myths in no way overstate the universal extent and violence of the Flood cataclysm. The worldwide mass extinctions of the end of the Quaternary (the Pleistocene Ice Age) attest, most unequivocally, that the brutality of the cataclysm was truly Velikovskian in extent, if not in nature.
And the instances of both Mars and Venus are Celestial witnesses of what may indeed happen to the Earth if we persist in abusing her the way we presently do. Are these two planets the Two Witnesses mentioned in the Book of Revelation (11:8), "their corpses exposed in the streets of the Great City (the skies?) for all to see and marvel"? I would not know, but I fear they could well be so. Aren't these witnesses of permanent death on a planetary scale indeed perhaps the scariest thing in the entire sky?
the collapse of the holy mountain of osiris
Mount Atlas is the same Holy Mountain of Paradise represented by the Great Pyramid. Osiris dead, reposing inside the Holy Mountain, represents the dead Atlantis or, rather, the dead of Atlantis, buried and entombed by the gigantic explosion of the Holy Mount Atlas. Mount Atlas is the same as the Mount Meru of the Hindus, the pyramid-shaped mountain that there served as the sky's support.
Indeed, the Egyptian word for pyramid, M'R was most probably read MeRu as in the Hindu name of the mountain simulated by the monument. The ancient Egyptians did not spell out the vowels in their hieroglyphs, so the above reading probably corresponds to the actual one of Mt. Meru, the exploded Mountain of Paradise.
In Hindu traditions, Mt. Meru served as the Stambha, the Pillar of Heaven. Mt. Meru (or Kailasa = "Skull" = Calvary") also served as the support of the Cosmic Tree where the Cosmic Man (Purusha) was crucified, like Christ on the Cross. Mt. Meru is also the Holy Mountain of Paradise, endlessly portrayed in India during its explosion, in beautiful mandalas such as the Shri Yantra. By the way, the Golden Lotus often shown with them portrays the "atomic mushroom" of the cosmic explosion, as we argue in detail in our work entitled "The Secret of the Golden Flower".
In consequence of the giant explosion, Mt. Meru (or Atlas), voided of its magma, collapsed like a sort of punctured balloon. Its enormous peak sunk underseas, turning into a giant caldera. Our researches into the ancient world legends have shown that this volcano is indeed the Krakatoa, the same one that still castigates the region whenever it again erupts explosively, as it did in 1883 and other occasions.
the meaning of the primordial castration
The Krakatoa is now a submarine volcano located inside the gigantic caldera that now forms the Sunda Strait separating Sumatra from Java. In Hindu myths, its explosion and subsequent fate are allegorized as the Primordial Castration which turned the Cosmic Phallus (Linga) into the Cosmic Yoni (or Vulva). And Earth's Yoni is the same as the Khasma Mega of Hesiod, mentioned further above.
We see how the apparently absurd traditions of the ancients indeed make far more sense than those of the crude attempts at explanation by the modern experts of all sorts. It is also precisely to this fact that refers the legend of Atlas, the Pillar of Heaven. Unable to bear the load of an earth overpopulated with gods, Atlas collapsed, and let the sky fall dawn over the earth, destroying it.
The name of Atlas indeed derives from the Greek radix tla meaning "to bear", preceded by the negative affix a, meaning "not". Hence, the name of Atlas literally means "the one unable to bear [the skies]". Such is the reason why Atlas (and other Titans like himself) are often portrayed with weak, serpentine legs. The collapse of the skies is, of course, a clever allegory of the fall of volcanic dust and debris from the afar explosion of Mt. Atlas. In Hindu myths, one layer buries the former one, giving rise to a new heaven and a new earth, just as we read in Revelation.
atlantis and the rising of the phoenix
The above is, of course, exactly the message of St. John's Revelation (21:1) concerning the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is Atlantis, reborn from its cinders, as a sort of Phoenix, the bird that personifies Paradise in Greek myths. These myths were indeed copied from Egypt who, in turn, cribbed them from India. India and, more exactly, Indonesia, is the true land of the Phoenix, as is relatively easy to show, since it is from there that comes the name of the Benu bird of the Egyptians and that of the Phoenix of the Greeks.
This mystic bird was called Vena in the Rig Veda. So, if the Phoenix indeed symbolizes Atlantis-Paradise resurging from its own cinders, as we believe it does, there can be little doubt that the legend is originally Vedic, and originated in the Indies. The name means nothing that makes sense in either Egyptian or Greek. But in the holy tongues of India it means the idea of Eros (Love) and, more exactly, the Sun of Justice that symbolizes Atlantis rising from the waters of the primordial abyss. This myth forms the essence of the one of the Celestial Jerusalem, as well as, say, those of the Orphic Cosmogonies, those of the Egyptians, and those of most other ancient nations.
egypt and the origin of the legend of atlantis
Plato concedes that he learnt the legend of Atlantis from Solon who, in turn, got it from the Egyptians. But those, in their turn, learnt it from the Hindus of Punt (Indonesia). Punt was the Ancestral Land (To-wer), the Island of Fire whence the Egyptians originally came, in the dawn of times, expelled by the cataclysm that razed their land. From there also came the Aryans, the Hebrews and Phoenicians, as well as the other nations that founded the magnificent civilizations of olden times.
It is from the primordial Lemurian Atlantis that derive all our myths and religious traditions, the very ones that allowed the ascent of Man above the beasts of the field. From Atlantis derive all our science and our technology: agriculture, cattle herding, the alphabet, metallurgy, astronomy, music, religion, and so forth. These inventions are so clever and so advanced that they seem as natural as the air we breath and the gods we worship. But they are all incredibly advanced inventions that came to us from the dawn of times, from the twin Atlantises we utterly forgot.
It is in India and in Indonesia, that, even today, we find the secret of Atlantis and Lemuria hidden behind the thick veil of their myths and allegories. The crucial events are disguised inside the Hindu and Buddhic religious traditions, or told as charming sagas like those of the Ramayana and the Mahaharata. The error that led the ancients, along with the modern researchers, into believing that Atlantis lay in the Atlantic Ocean is easy to understand now that we know the true whereabouts of the sunken continent. When humanity moved from Indonesia into the regions of Europe and the Near East, the "Occidental Ocean" of the Hindus became the Oriental Ocean, for it then lay towards the east.
The (Hindu) myths that told of Atlantis sinking in the Occidental Ocean became interpreted as referring to the Atlantic Ocean, western in regards to Europe, their new residence. The Hindus called the sunken continent by the name of Atala (or Atalas) a name uncannily similar to that of Atlas and of Atlantis (by the appending of the suffix tis or tiv = "mountain", "island", in Dravida, and pronounced "tiw"). It is from this base that names such as that of the mysterious Keftiu of the Egyptians, the "Islands in the Middle of the Ocean (the "Great Green")" ultimately came (Keftiu = Kap-tiv = "capital island" or "Skull Island" = "Calvary" in Dravida, the pristine language of Indonesia). But this is a long story which we tell elsewhere, presenting the detailed evidence for this uncanny allegation of ours.
the reversal of the oceans and the cardinal directions
It is to this "reversal" of the Cardinal Directions just mentioned that Plato and Herodotus make reference, along with other ancient authorities. Interestingly enough, even the Amerindians — who came in, at least in part, from Indonesia into South America via the Pacific Ocean impelled by the Atlantean Cataclysm — often confuse the direction of their primeval homeland, which they sometimes place in the east, sometimes in the west. But, strangely enough, they never place it towards the north, as they should, if they came in via the Bering Strait.
The ancient Greeks attempted to mend their myths calling, by the name of "Atlantic", the whole ocean that encircles Eurasia and Africa. But the result was even worse than before and the confusion only grew. Herodotus used to laugh at this ridiculous attempt by the geographers of his time (Hist. 2:28). Aristotle, in his De Coelo, is also very specific on the fact that the name of "Atlantic Ocean" — that is, the "Ocean of the Atlanteans" — was the whole of the circular, earth-encompassing ocean.
So, we able to conclude that Atlantis can legitimately be localized either in the ocean we presently call by that name, or, even more likely, in the ocean where the ancients placed their legends and their navigations, the Indian Ocean. This ocean they named Erythraean, Atlantic, and so on, names which are indeed related with that of Atlantis, "the land of the Reds", the Primordial Phoenicia or Erythraea, whose names mean "the red one".
It should perhaps be emphasized that it is the name of the Atlantic Ocean (or "Ocean of the Atlanteans") that derives from that of Atlantis, and not vice-versa. And that name far predates Plato, being mentioned, f. i., by Herodotus, who wrote his History fully a century before Plato wrote the Critias. Moreover, as Herodotus explains, the name of "Atlantic Ocean" originally applied to the Indian Ocean, rather than the body of water now so named. So, it is on that side of the world, and not on ours that we should expect to find Atlantis.
atlas, hercules, atlantis, and the itinerary of the heroes
Greek myths often embody the confusion of east and west that we just pointed out. The itineraries of Greek heroes such as Hercules, Jason, Ulysses and the Argonauts are all absurd when placed in the Mediterranean or even in the Atlantic Ocean. But they all make a lot of geographical and mythical sense if we place them in the Indian Ocean, as we should. And that is indeed what we do, in other more specialized works of ours on this fascinating subject.
Likewise, the Titan Atlas and his mountain, Mt. Atlas, were placed just about everywhere, from Hesperia (Spain), the Canaries and Morroco to the Bosporus and the Far Orient, at the confines of Hades (Hell). The result was a profusion of Atlantises and of Pillars of Atlas (or of Hercules) that makes no sense al all. Indeed, the two heroes who personified the World's Pillars represented the two Atlantises we discussed further above. They are personified as Atlas and Hercules, the primeval Twins whom we encounter in all Cosmogonies.
In Plato's dialogues concerning Atlantis (the Critias and the Timaeus), Hercules is called Gadeiros or Eumelos, names that correspond to something like "Cowboy" or, rather "Fencer of Cattle". This name is a literal translation of that of Setubandha, the Sanskrit appellation of Indonesia. This name is due to the fact that Indonesia indeed "fences out" the seas, dividing the Pacific from the Indian Ocean.
the ultima thule, the twins, and the war of doomsday
Indonesia was, as we said above, the Ultima Thule (or "Ultimate Boundary") of the ancients, the last frontier which should not be crossed by the navigators. There lay the Pillars of Hercules and of Atlas, the two primordial Twins. In another guise, the two correspond to the twins of Gemini (Castor and Pollux), directly derived from the Ashvin Twins of the Hindus. In Egypt they corresponded to Seth and Osiris, and were commemorated by the two obelisks posted at the entrance of Egyptian temples.
Hercules is, of course, a Phoenician deity (Baal Melkart), in turn derived from Bala or Bala-Rama ("the Strong Rama"), the twin brother of Krishna. Bala means "Strong" or "Strength" in Sanskrit, being called the same (Bias = "Strength") in Greek and other tongues. Krishna is the World's Pillar, clearly the personification of Atlantis.
More exactly, the Twins personify the two races of blondes (Aryo-Semites) and brunets or "reds" (Dravidas), fated to fight wherever they meet. Both shades are originally from Eden (Lemuria), the primordial Paradise where humanity originally arose. Osiris, the Egyptian god, also played the role of Cosmic Pillar (Djed), a role he shared with Seth, his twin and dual. But this mythical symbolism ultimately derives from that of Shiva as the Sthanu, the "Pillar of the World" and that of Shesha (or Vritra), the Cosmic Serpent who was the archetype of Seth-Typhon.
the battle of the sons of light and the sons of darkness
The Twins — like the Devas and Asuras of the Hindus and the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness of the Essenians — are always the personifications of the two races that dispute world hegemony since the dawn of times. It was their war, according to Plato — who calls them "Greeks" and Atlanteans — that led to the destruction of Atlantis.
There is no reason to doubt that the great philosopher was indeed transmitting ancient traditions faithfully. For, we are starting to learn all over again that global wars can indeed lead to the world's end. In fact, it is the same endless war that menaces us now as it did at the dawn of times. This frightening reality is told in the Ramayana, in the Mahabharata and in the Iliad, not to mention the other myths and traditions.
But the war of Atlantis is also the War of Armageddon narrated in the Book of Revelation. This war is in reality a repetition or replica of the worldwide, primordial battle between Gods and Devils. These mighty beings were the same as the so-called Titans (or Giants) in Greece. Their war was, as Plato and his commentators explain in detail, the same as the one of Atlantis.
Armageddon means (in Hebrew) the same as Shambhalla (in Sanskrit), "the Plains of Gathering". There the armies of the world will gather, in the end of times, for "the war that is to end all wars", for it will close the Kali Yuga. The perspective indeed seems frighteningly real, doesn't it indeed? Fables or Reality? Religion or Profanity? Science or Superstitious Nonsense? We are inclined to believe that our ancestors spoke in earnest, and that the war of Armaggedon and the end of the world are fast becoming all too real possibilities.
are mars and venus a celestial example?
We do not want to seem alarmists, as our message is indeed one of hope and salvation, and not of "Bible thumping". The recent discovery of vestiges of extinct life in Mars brings a memorable lesson that is worth detailing. Earth has been, in the past, the victim of countless catastrophes that nearly wiped out Life altogether. These cataclysms were due to different causes such as cometary and asteroidal falls or volcanic cataclysms bringing on or off the Ice Ages. Not impossibly, wars such as the War of Atlantis and the Battle of the Gods can have indeed happened in a far, utterly forgotten past that lives on in our myths and holy traditions from everywhere.
Perhaps our wars just continue these and others that possibly took place on Mars and Venus, destroying Life there, if not in other Solar Systems as well. It may even be the case that Big Bangs and Creations are indeed cyclic processes that recur periodically, just as the traditions of the Hindus on Cyclical Eras affirm in detail. The extinction of the dinosaurs, and the origin of the Moon — pulled out of the Earth by a planetoidal impact — are instances of such sobering cataclysms. Thousands of giant craters — as large as those on the Moon, though almost effaced by erosion — are still observable on the earth, as scientists are starting to discover. Hundreds of times in the past we have had massive extinctions of Life on earth.
Many times in the past our world nearly became as "empty and dark and devoid of form" as at Creation, when God reshaped the earth for the last time. The Uniformitarianism of Darwin and Lyell is no more than a naive belief in the Panglossian doctrine that "all things only happen for the better, in the best of all possible worlds".
Fossils and extinctions are here to prove, just as do Geology and other sciences, that Catastrophism is a feature of Nature as much, and possibly even more, than Uniformitarian phenomena. Thousands of Apollo and Amor objects swarm across earth's orbit, ready to strike us at a moment's notice with a force of a million Megatons and over. The idea that God favors humans "above the beasts of the field" is just our own naive, self-centered notion of what God should look like. More likely, He regards all Life as sacred, as His own handiwork, if He exists at all. That is what Nature indisputably demonstrates in practice all the time.
Mars, with its dead residues of Life, with its oceans empty and dry, with its terrible dust storms sweeping across the endless void and devastation, is here to prove to all that God — or, as some will, Nature or Mother Earth — sometimes loses his/her temper and extinguishes Life altogether. This almost happened at the Flood, as the myths tell us. The victimizing of Atlantis — perhaps because they sinned, perhaps because they warred — almost took the rest of us along. Venus is another instance, in reverse, that planets can indeed die and become as sterile as the Moon. And perhaps, earth itself was just "reset back to zero" some four billion years ago, when the Moon was pulled out of it by a giant meteoritic impact of planetoidal size.
atlantis and the illusion of darwinian uniformitarianism
As we just said, Darwin's Theory of Uniformitarian Evolution is just an illusion of die-hard
scientists. What the world presents us daily is an endless series of ever larger cataclysms, ranging from atom smashing to the Big Bang. We recently watched a comet hitting Jupiter and opening a gash on that planet as big as the whole earth. Mars shows all signs of having been hit by a planetoidal sized body, which opened a huge crater on one side and pushed up Olympus Mons on the opposite one. Perhaps it was this cataclysm that extinguished Life on the Red Planet. Venus too presents vestiges of similar catastrophes. Perhaps we are only stranded here on earth, fated to become extinct when our allotted time expires who knows when?
Life is an illusion, as all things, as the Hindus teach us. According to them, even the gods eventually die, and are replaced by better, more evolved godly forms. An illusion is also the suprematist theory that affirms that Civilizations first arose in an Occidental Atlantis that never was, out of Europoid stock. But Civilization evolved at a time when the whole of Europe was almost fully covered by a mile thick glacier that rendered survival very meager and scant.
Plato's Atlantis is, in contrast, described as a luxurious tropical Paradise, bedecked with metals, horses, elephants, coconut, pineapples, perfumes, aromatic woods and other features that were an exclusivity of India and Indonesia in the ancient world. Was the great philosopher dreaming, or was he indeed basing himself on Holy Books now lost in the bonfires of the Holy Inquisition ?
The Atlantic Atlantis is an illusion too, just as are the Cretan, the African, the American, the North European and the Black Sea ones. The true Atlantis, the archetype of all other Atlantises is Indonesia, or rather, the extensive sunken continent rimmed by this island arc. It is there that we had Plato's "innavigable seas", the same one mentioned by navigators. such as Pytheas, Himilco, Hanno and others. It was this primordial Atlantis that served as a model for the second Atlantis — the one of the Indus Valley — as well as for the myriad other similar Paradises that we encounter in all ancient religious traditions and mythologies.
the krakatoa volcano and the "innavigable seas" of atlantis
Another central, unique feature of Atlantis were its seas, rendered "innavigable" as the result of the cataclysm, as reported by Plato and other ancient authorities. As we mentioned further above, the seas of Atlantis were innavigable because they were covered thick with giant banks of floating, fiery pumice-stone. This pumice was ejected by the giant explosion of volcanic Mt. Atlas, the one which caused the foundering of the Lost Continent..
A similar phenomenon indeed happened — in a far lesser scale, but one big enough to be one of
the world's largest catastrophes — at the explosion of the Krakatoa volcano that we mentioned further above. The formation of pumice — a sort of stony "froth" made of siliceous glass — is characteristic of the Indonesian volcanoes, and is indeed the cause of their explosive eruptions of incomparable force. The phenomenon is quite similar to the "popping" of popcorn. The water-soaked siliceous magma of the submarine volcano (the primeval Krakatoa) built up tremendous pressures under the weight of the crust and the overlying sea water. Eventually, the topping crust which formed the volcanic peak gave, and the eruption occurred, explosively.
Thus released, the overheated water dissolved in the hot magma turned instantly into vapor, literally bursting like popcorn, except that in a worldwide scale. The sea was impelled, in a huge tsunami that was the event mythified as "the Flood from below". Simultaneously, the ashes and debris were thrown up into the stratosphere, as "soot". This fly ash eventually fell back to the earth and the sea, choking all life in the region, and causing the enormous quantities of rain, "the Flood from above". Further away, it settled over the Ice Age glaciers, causing their melting and triggering the end of the Pleistocene, precisely as related above.
Interestingly enough, the Hindus associate this sort of stuff — this vitreous "seafroth" — with Krishna and Balarama, the archetypes of Hercules and Atlas. Balarama is the alias of the Serpent Shesha, whose name means (in Sanskrit) "residue" and, more exactly, the kind of foam such as ambergris or pumice stone thrown over the beaches by the seas. The whole story is a clever allegory of the explosion of Mt. Atlas, the World's Pillar, ejecting the huge amounts of pumice stone and fly ash that covered the soil and the seas of Atlantis, and choking out all its paradisial forms of life.
The Titans — and Atlas in particular — were likened to Serpents (or Dragons), and to "weak-legged", anguipedal, Civilizing Heroes such as Erychthonios, Cadmus, Hercules, Quetzalcoatl, Kukulkan, etc.. All such indeed derive from the Nagas ("Serpent-people", "Dragons") of India and Indonesia, as we argue elsewhere.
the illusory, chimerical atlantises
As we said above, the Cretan "Atlantis" of certain authorities is an illusion, as are all others outside the two Indies. Nevertheless, the explosion of the Thera volcano closely parallels the one of the Krakatoa of 1883, as some have noted. But it is far too small and far too wrongly sited in relation to the Pillars of Hercules for to be the right time and the right place.
Moreover, Crete lacked the size and the importance that Plato attributes to Atlantis, being puny in comparison to, say, the contemporary civilizations of Egypt, Babylon and Mycenian Greece. And the Theran cataclysm never sunk Crete underseas, or even hampered its existence in any notable way. In fact, the name of Crete (Kriti) means "swept", rather than "sunken one", as does the name of Atlantis in the holy tongues of India. So, Crete was recognizedly "swept" by the Theran cataclysm, but not indeed "sunken" by it, as Atlantis was.
The prehistoric explosion of the Krakatoa volcano that sundered open the Strait of Sunda was, by comparison a million times stronger. If the Theran explosion could sweep away the considerable extent of Minoan Crete, we are led to conclude that the one of the Indonesian volcano could well have wiped out an entire continental-sized civilization, and have triggered the chain of events that culminated in the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age.
Equally illusory are the Atlantises of the Bosporus (Moreau de Jonnés), of Spain (R. Hennig), of Libya (Borchardt), of Benin, in Africa (Leo Frobenius) and the even less likely one of the North Sea (Olaus Rudbeck), the Americas (several authors) and Antactica (idem). Even more impossible are the Atlantises located in sunken islands of continents of the Atlantic Ocean and, particularly, the Sargasso Sea, for they are not even geophysical possibilities.
the mid-atlantic ridge and donnelly's atlantis
There are no sunken continents at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, as an extensive study of this region has unequivocally shown. What this detailed research disclosed is the existence of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a vast submarine cordillera that divides the Atlantic Ocean at the middle. This feature corresponds to the rift from whence the Tectonic Plates issue, causing the continents to drift away from the spot, at the rate of a few centimeter per year.
Hence, despite the brilliant plea of Ignatius Donnelly, this ridge corresponds not to a sunken continent, but to land that is slowly rising out of the sea bottom. Such rifts and ridges in fact exist in all oceans. They rise above sea level in certain spots forming island arcs, as in Indonesia and at the Indus Valley. Where they do, they cause the kind of terrible volcanoes and earthquakes that we have been discussing above. It is no coincidence that the two Atlantises we mentioned are located precisely at such spots where the Mid-Oceanic Ridges rise above the surface of the sea.
When we inspect the map of Fig. 1, we also note that a sizable chunk of India disappeared at the end of the Ice Age at the Indus Delta. This region is now known as the Rann of Kutch ("Marshes of Death") and is in fact still sinking underseas, even today. This region is deemed a sort of Hell, and has been clearly flooded by some sort of terrible cataclysm that also took place at the end of the Pleistocene, just as did the one of Lemurian Atlantis.
lemurian atlantis and the four rivers of paradise
At this occasion, that of the demise of Atlantis, the Himalayan glaciers melted in the greater part, pouring its waters down the Indus Valley, in floods that were hundreds of times larger than the ones of today, even when the monsoon storms castigate the region. Such is clearly the record left by the tempest that swept away the second Atlantis (Hesperus), throwing it into the sea during the second of the Biblical Floods.
The same thing also happened at the other side of the Himalayas, whence issue the rivers that irrigate South Asia, China and Southeast Asia, such as the Huang-ho, the Yangtzé, the Mekong, the Irrawaddy, the Brahmaputra, the Ganges. These are indeed the Four Rivers of Eden (Lemurian Atlantis), as we argue in detail elsewhere. There can be very little doubt that the Lemurian Atlantis — as well as its successor, the Indian Atlantis — are sacred traditions based on real facts which were in no way exaggerated by our ancestors.
the civilizing heroes and heroines are atlantean escapees
The cataclysms in question caused the mass migrations of nations which later were to form civilizations of the past such as those of the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Cretans and the Mesopotamians. These also included the Jews, the Phoenicians, and the Aryans, driven away from their ancestral lands in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. At first they settled in India, but were driven out by the locals, moving to the places just mentioned.
Such mass migrations are told in the Bible and in similar Holy Books of all nations, in legends such as those of Moses and the Israelites, Aeneas and the Romans, Hercules and his Greek "cattle" (armies), of Cain's expulsion from Eden, of Quetzalcoatl's arrival in Mexico, of that of Viracocha and the Incas in Peru, of the Fomorians and the Tuatha de Danaan arriving in Britain, and so on.
These legends disguise real facts under the veil of allegories, and personify or deify the nations in question under the figures of heroes such as Noah, Manu, Hercules, Kukulkan, Abraham, Quetzalcoatl, and a myriad others, or in heroines like Venus, Demeter, Dana, Danu, Vesta, Hathor, Isis, Hecate and so on. Lemuria was indeed the Great Black Mother of Gods and Men. She is the same goddess that we know by names such as Kali, Parvati, Demeter, Hera, Isis, Ishtar, Venus, Cybele and even the Virgin Mary.
The paradoxical virginity of the Great Mother refers to the fact that she bore the Lemurian civilization on her own, in an autochthonous manner, without the help of an "inseminator" civilization. In contrast, all other civilizations evolved by being seeded from outside by the Civilizing Heroes, the Angels, the Gods, the Devils, etc.. These were the Lemurian Sons of God that, though , illuminated the world with the Light of our Great Mother.
The second Atlantis, India, is our Great Father. The Father is the inseminating god known as Shiva in India, Jahveh in Israel, Zeus in Greece, Viracocha in Peru, Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, Bochica in Colombia, and so on. He is the god that is castrated and dies but who resurrects from among the dead, whole and virile as ever. The image is not without analogy with an immortal volcano such as the Krakatoa that explodes and vanishes from sight, but keeps shining underneath the ocean, until the time comes for it to rise and shine again, perhaps at God's command.
the many aspects of god
As we just said, myths work at several levels, and a parallel such as the Atlantean one is just a facet of God's myriad aspects. In other words, volcanoes are manifestations of God's power, the weapon he often chooses to castigate the nations and to force Evolution to follow its course. The Hindus call this force by the name of vajra, a Sanskrit word meaning both "hard as diamond", as well as "thunderbolt". The vajra is the thunderbolt weapon used by almighty gods such as Baal (Hercules' archetype), Zeus, Indra, Haddad, and a myriad others. In fact, God is neither the vajra nor the volcano, but the force behind it, its impeller and wielder.
For the vajra is indeed the flail of the gods, the Celestial weapon He uses in order to quicken Evolution and to stir Nature into action, in the endless parade of life forms that characterizes Life. Perhaps all this has a purpose in the divine conscience, though I don't really know for sure. But there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Catastrophism is God's way, if He indeed has any. Moreover, it is also Nature's way, let no one doubt it. The ancients well knew that, and so do I, having learnt from them. For instance, they often portrayed the vajra as a flail or a lash, or even a hammer or a mace wielded by the god in order to stir Nature into action.
Gods like Christ are not the only ones to die and to rise again from the dead. By the way, Christ too is the wielder of the "iron rod", the hardest of metals being a metaphor for "diamond" and, hence, for the vajra. Christ was preceded by many aliases, and the conception of "dying-resurrecting" gods akin to the Sun of Justice dates from oldest antiquity. Among the many archetypes of Christ we can mention, offhand, Osiris, Attis, Tammuz, Adonis, Shiva, Kronos, Saturn, Dionysos, Serapis, Mithra and, of course, Krishna, in his infinite series of avatars, and Hercules, the great hero, in his fiery apotheosis that figured the Atlantean Conflagration.
ships were ca 15 meters long, and they had a mast and textile sails. There was a lot of room below deck, where all selling goods was kept, along with food and drink for several weeks. The water was kept in wooden barrels or sacks of animal skin. When there was little or no wind, the ship was rowed with 4 m long oares.
broad ships for trading trips overseas, and smaller freight vessels for journeys in safer waters, fishing boats and naturally the well known long, narrow and fast warships. 
people who chose burial, most were buried with all the things they thought they would need in the afterlife. Grave goods might include beer and food, clothing, jewelry, weapons and even animals.
An infinite number of winters before the earth was created there was only the Great Abyss, a gorge of unfathomable depth. The abyss of emptiness was called Ginnungagap. From the North, from the land of frost and cold, ice and snow fell into the Abyss. From the South, from the land of fire and heat, burning rivers flowed into the deep. After an eternity of time the ice and the fire came within of each other, and when Surt struck sparks against the ice, the primordial cow came into being. Then also Ymer, the first ice-giant, was born. From his armpit, without the aid of a woman, Ymer gave birth to a giant and a giantess. Foot was coupled with foot, and a son with many heads was born. Out of the salty ice the primordial cow licked a man with beautiful features. His name was Bore, the born one. It is from him that all the Gods are descended. There was no earth nor sky, but under the soil the World Tree, Yggdrasil, pushed forth its roots.
