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
navigants 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.
