Atlantis Checklist 2

Another subject of extreme importance in the texts of Plato on Atlantis is the matter of the “innavigable seas”. The philosopher refers to these innavigable seas twice, one in the Critias and the other in the Timaeus. In the Timaeus (25d), Plato mentions that when Atlantis sunk underseas, “the sea in the region became impassable and impenetrable because of the shoals of mud in it, caused by the subsidence of the island [of Atlantis]”.

In the Critias (108d) Plato repeats the same story of the “impassable barrier of mud”, adding the detail that the island that sunk was indeed “greater than Libya and Asia put together”. The Greeks had no name for “continental” in the modern sense. So, they used the word “island” for it, in the sense of an extension of land “isolated” by the seas. This usage has caused an enduring difficulty for Atlantologists unfamiliar with this fact. Such is the reason why they believe that Atlantis was an island rather than a continent or a large piece of land of continental size isolated by the seas.

But let us return to the matter of the “innavigable seas”. The Atlantic Ocean particularly in the region outside the Strait of Gibraltar is actually very deep and very fit for navigation. It apparently never posed a barrier for navigation and never presented shoals of sand or mud either natural or as the result of the sinking of any islands or continents there.

Hence, the oceanographers and other such specialist put the words of Plato to rest, and started looking for Atlantis elsewhere. In despair, some appealed to the Sargassos Seas, even today a favorite theme of Atlantologists unaware of the recent advances of Oceanography and of Mythological Exegesis. Indeed, the Sargassos Sea got its name due to a mistake of Columbus.

Columbus believed to the day of his death that he was heading to the fabulous Indies. The Indies are the true site of the Eldorado and of Paradise, as any seasoned mariner well knows. Hence, when the great explorer saw the Sargassos and flotsam of these seas, he immediately thought he had reached the Indies and its fabled Sargassos Seas which are indeed shallow and treacherous, just as Plato claimed. Columbus, thus, wrongly baptized the seas he discovered with the hopeful but unfortunate name that persists even today.

In reality the true Sargassos Sea is the one the Hindus call Nalanala, meaning the same in Sanskrit. The Indian “Sea of Sargassos” is indeed the South China Sea. This sea is the one of the Indonesian region, which is no other than that of sunken Atlantis. These seas are indeed shallow and full of reeds, sargassos, kelp, sandbars and coral reefs which render its navigation next to impossible, except to the extremely skilled local pilots.

What is more, the Indonesian Seas are prone to a very peculiar event that is indeed linked with the Atlantean cataclysm, just in the manner disclosed by Plato. When the Krakatoa volcano erupted explosively, back in 1883, it caused one of the worst catastrophes ever recorded by men. The explosion originated an immense tidal wave that killed some 40,000 people instantly. Far more persons died of famine, later on. But the most curious feature of its explosion was the liberation of immense floating banks of pumice stone. These endured for months, impeding navigation in the region and causing the death of a large number of fishes and other marine organisms.

We can now understand the true meaning of Plato’s words. The “mud” in question is what Plato calls pelos, a Greek word meaning “slime”, “clay”, “mud”, “muck”, “silt”, “ooze”, “sediment”. In other words, this “mud” is the pumice stone and the fly ash erupted by the giant volcanic explosion possibly one thousand times larger than the Krakatoa eruption of 1883.