THE HYPOTHESIS OF CONTINENTAL SUBSIDENCE AND THE LEGEND OF ATLANTIS

L. A. Pukhlyakov

(Presented by Professor A. G. Sivov)

The hypothesis of the subsidence of continents is at present one of the most popular. Among the proponents of this hypothesis are V. V. Belousov [1], M. V. Muratov [11], and other scholars. As evidence for it, they cite the similarity of the terrestrial faunas and floras of different continents in the past, the existence on the floor of modern oceans of submarine canyons which, in the opinion of F. Shepard (Shepard) [20, 21], are flooded river channels, and also of guyots—submarine mountains with flat summits, located at depths down to 2000 and even 3000 m. In the unanimous opinion of many scholars, for example F. Kuenen [7], E. Hamilton [25], L. Wicks [26], and others, their flat tops were formed by the action of waves.

In recent years, certain scholars, for example N. F. Zhirov [2, 3], have begun to cite, as evidence for the hypothesis under consideration, the legend of Atlantis, set forth by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427–347 B.C.) from the words of an ancient Egyptian priest in the dialogues Timaeus and Critias, from which it supposedly follows that this island was located in the Atlantic Ocean and unexpectedly sank below the level of its waters.

It is very difficult to agree with such a formulation of the question. First of all, an analysis of the aforementioned dialogues does not show that Atlantis was located in the Atlantic Ocean and, most importantly, it does not show that it sank below sea level. In fact, in one of the dialogues, Timaeus, the discussion of this question begins with Solon*) starting a conversation about floods, while his interlocutor, an Egyptian priest, told him that he (Solon) did not even know of those floods that had overtaken his own country (the land of his ancestors), and began to relate how this had happened. It follows from this that, in beginning the conversation, the Egyptian priest intended to tell how Greece (more precisely, the Greek army) perished by drowning, and not Atlantis at all. In the course of the narrative, however, when he touches upon the island of Atlantis, he describes its location, characterizes the people inhabiting it, who by that time had accomplished great

) One of the best translators of Plato into Russian, Professor V. N. Karpov [14, pp. 492–493], believes that the listener of the Egyptian priest was not Solon, but Plato himself, who, as is known, visited Egypt and conversed there with certain priests. Incidentally, in Timaeus* the pharaoh Amasis is mentioned, who ruled Egypt from 569 to 525 B.C. Meanwhile it is known that Solon (640–559 B.C.) made his journey to Egypt between 593 and 584 B.C. [3, p. 21] and therefore could not have heard anything about this pharaoh.

conquests and threatened Egypt. But the Greeks entered the struggle, and the Atlanteans were defeated. The story ends, in general, in accordance with what was said at the beginning—with the destruction by floods of the entire Greek army. “But afterward, when terrible earthquakes and inundations (floods) occurred, in one grievous day and one fatal night your whole numerous warrior people vanished from the face of the earth” [15, p. 59], and, as if to console the listener, it is added: “And the island of Atlantis likewise disappeared, sinking into the sea” [14, p. 385].

The last phrase is in obvious contradiction with the main idea of the priest, who, as noted above, intended to tell how the Greek army perished, and not Atlantis; and therefore there are grounds to suppose that in the original text of the legend, from which the Egyptian priest began to object to Solon (Plato), this phrase was absent. Evidently, it was uttered so that to a Greek the story of the destruction of his valiant ancestors would not seem hostile.

If this phrase is removed from the text, then the catastrophe under consideration turns into the most ordinary tsunami. As is known, a tsunami is a series of gigantic waves moving one after another, arising during underwater earthquakes. The speed of their motion in the open sea exceeds 200 m/sec; in shallow water it is somewhat less [12, p. 609]. Rushing onto the shore in the form of waves up to 20 m high and more, tsunamis produce terrible destruction there. Thus, during the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which was accompanied by several tsunami waves, about 60 thousand people perished [18, p. 25].

Herodotus gave an interesting description of a tsunami. Namely, in 479 B.C. the Persians besieged the city of Potidaea. Suddenly there was a strong and prolonged ebb. The Persians decided to make use of this circumstance and set out over dry land toward that part of the city which was not adequately protected. But they had not managed to go even halfway along the sea bottom when suddenly a huge wave surged in and carried off the greater part of the army. The surviving soldiers were slain by the Potidaeans, who saw in what had happened a manifestation of divine wrath. The Persians, in their opinion, had been punished by Poseidon for destroying his temple [9, p. 502]. Apparently, something similar also occurred on Atlantis. It is possible that some aggressive army, which had invaded this island, after another battle withdrew to its camp on the seashore, where it was overtaken by an earthquake accompanied by several tsunami waves. In favor of such an assumption speaks also the fact that the tradition of this event was preserved and fell into the hands of the Egyptians. For it could not have been preserved if the whole island had suddenly sunk below sea level by two or three kilometers, since in that case all witnesses of the catastrophe would have perished. N. F. Zhirov himself, after lengthy reflections on this question, ultimately acknowledges that “the last remnants of Atlantis” continued to exist for approximately 700 years after the composition of the Egyptian text of the tradition on this question [3, pp. 372–379]. And if this is so, then the words “And the island of Atlantis likewise disappeared, sinking into the sea” could not have been present in it. Thus, we again arrive at the conclusion that this phrase is an invention of the Egyptian priest, made for diplomatic reasons.

In connection with what has been set forth, it is interesting to note that the second dialogue on this question, Critias, which is rather Plato’s commentary on the Egyptian priest’s story than the story itself, begins with a promise to tell of the destruction of Atlantis, and ends with the wrath of Zeus against the impious Atlanteans, i.e., with a “theoretical explanation” of the catastrophe; but the catastrophe itself is, after all, not described here. The impression arises that Plato finally persuaded the priest to take up the pen—

written records and read the ancient tradition about Atlantis (from the text of the Timaeus it is clear that in the future the priest promised to speak on this question in greater detail, “taking the written records in hand”), and since reading and translation were slow, Plato not only managed to write down what had been read, but also supplied the text with his own comments. However, after hearing the end of the ancient tradition and becoming convinced that Atlantis had not sunk anywhere, he became disappointed in the work on this dialogue and abandoned it.

Seeking to prove that Atlantis nevertheless did sink beneath the water level, N. F. Zhirov asserts that the Egyptians received the tradition about it from the so-called “Sea Peoples,” who attacked Egypt in the eighth year of the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses III, i.e., in 1196 B.C., but were defeated by the troops of this pharaoh and were partly exterminated and partly taken prisoner; and that from the inscriptions on the walls of the temple in modern Medinet Habu, where these events are described, it supposedly follows that the country of these peoples was engulfed in flame and earthquakes.

First of all, if numerous fires occur in a certain country, it does not follow from this that it is sinking below the water level. The situation is analogous with earthquakes. At the present time hundreds and thousands of earthquakes occur every year, yet not one of them is accompanied by the sinking of continents and islands. Thus, the reference to earthquakes that allegedly took place in the country of the Sea Peoples gives N. F. Zhirov nothing. Incidentally, there is no mention at all of any earthquakes in the inscriptions on the walls of the temple at Medinet Habu [23]. As for the flame, it turns out that it was prepared by the pharaoh along the route of the Sea Peoples’ advance into Egypt [23, p. 53], and not at all on the islands from which they came. But the most important thing in this matter is that there are no grounds for identifying the Atlanteans with the Sea Peoples of the time of Ramesses III. The Sea Peoples actually fought against the Egyptians, whereas the Atlanteans, according to Plato, merely created the threat of a military attack (and this is not the same thing). Obviously, these are completely different peoples, having nothing in common with each other. Incidentally, analysis of the texts at Medinet Habu shows that the homeland of the “Sea Peoples” was not some mysterious islands in the Atlantic Ocean, but the Sporades in the Aegean Sea.

Let us consider the second question: where was Atlantis located? In the Timaeus it is said on this question that it was located “in the Atlantic Sea,” “in front of that mouth which, as you [Greeks] say, bears the name of the Pillars of Heracles” [15, p. 58].

Supporters of the hypothesis of the submergence of Atlantis, for example L. Seidler [4, p. 31], assert that the ancient Greeks, and in particular Herodotus (484–425 B.C.), understood by the term “Atlantic Sea” the space west of the Strait of Gibraltar. Such an assertion is a gross falsification, for it is known with certainty that the ancient Greeks called this space part of the Ocean, and Herodotus, on this subject, says the following in Melpomene: “The Greeks place Geryon beyond the Mediterranean Sea, namely on the island of Erytheia, which is near Gadeira, beyond the Pillars of Heracles, in the Ocean.” An analysis of the Timaeus and the Critias shows that the Egyptian priest, from whose words the tradition about Atlantis was recorded, did not invest this term with any such meaning. He simply translated from the Egyptian into Greek a word that meant “the strongest.” This was the name of one of the kings of Atlantis, and in his honor the island itself and the sea surrounding it were named. This king, the son of Cleito and Poseidon of the Atlanteans [16, p. 16], had nothing in common with the rebel of ancient Greek mythology Atlas, son—

...by Iapetus, the brother of Prometheus. Thus, the term “Atlantic Sea,” at least within the limits of the Critias and the Timaeus, can express nothing.

The matter stands somewhat differently with the term “Pillars of Heracles.” The ancient Greeks usually understood by it the Strait of Gibraltar. This is precisely how Plato understood the term within the Critias. But could the Egyptian priest have known the Greek name of this strait? Apparently not, for he evidently did not possess a geographical map with Greek names of individual points, and he himself could not travel anywhere from Egypt. Similarly, the Atlanteans could not have known the Egyptian name of this strait. One gets the impression that by the term under consideration the Egyptian priest understood not the Strait of Gibraltar, but something closer to his own homeland. Further doubts are raised by the fact that in the Timaeus the Greeks are contrasted with people living “on this side” of the Pillars of Heracles (the Egyptians), that is, they are regarded as a people whose homeland lies on the far side of them. “It was then, Solon, that your state... prevented the enslavement of those who had not yet been conquered; and those who, like us (the Egyptians), dwelt on this side of the Pillars of Heracles, it set free with magnanimity” [15, p. 59]. But could Greece have been situated on the far side (relative to Egypt) of the Strait of Gibraltar? Of course not. Consequently, the Pillars of Heracles of the Timaeus are not the Strait of Gibraltar, but something situated between Greece and Egypt.

There is one more fact to which, for some reason, the proponents of the hypothesis of the submergence of Atlantis pay no attention: namely, that in the Timaeus, where the speech of the Egyptian priest is recorded more or less verbatim, the word “mouth” appears almost every time before the expression “Pillars of Heracles.” Moreover, twice the word “mouth” is used in the same sense without the words “Pillars of Heracles.” But can any Strait of Gibraltar be called a mouth? Apparently not. Incidentally, in the Critias, where Plato’s opinion is expressed on this question and where the Pillars of Heracles are understood precisely as the Strait of Gibraltar, the word “mouth” is not associated with these words.

The problem of the Pillars of Heracles in the Timaeus was solved by A. N. Karnozhitskii [5], who, on the basis of the works of A. S. Norov and Diodorus Siculus, came to the conclusion that by this term the Egyptian priest could have meant precisely and only the western mouth of the Nile. In fact, in the first book of his Historical Library, Diodorus Siculus (80–29 B.C.) notes that the Nile has seven mouths and that the westernmost of them “is called Canopic, and by some Heracleian (Heraclean)” [19, p. 52]. Evidently, this double name for this mouth existed also at the time when Plato was writing down the tradition about Atlantis, and one of these names was considered Egyptian, while the other was Greek. Plato, however, apparently did not know this, but did know of the Strait of Gibraltar, which the Greeks called the Pillars of Heracles. As a result, by making a small addition to the words of his interlocutor (the Egyptian priest), he obtained a mouth bearing the name of the Pillars of Heracles.

In the opinion of N. F. Zhirov, such an interpretation of the term under consideration is “a speculative conjecture” based on tendentiously selected factual material [2, pp. 27–28]. To confirm this he refers to the following passage from the Critias: “And the twin born after him, who received as his lot the outermost part of the island, from the Pillars of Heracles to the present country of Gadeira, had a name which in Greek would be Eumelus, and in the local tongue Gadeirus (shepherd of beautiful flocks), and from which name he gave its name to this country” [16, pp. 15–16]. But one may ask why N. F. Zhirov

quoted this passage not in full, but only in general terms. Yes, because elementary logic is absent from it, and this reveals the given expression as an obvious interpolation into the original text of the tradition. In fact, both the region of modern Cadiz and the land areas adjoining the Strait of Gibraltar are component parts of the mainland, contiguous with one another. Atlantis, however, is an island, which must be separated from the mainland by at least a thousand kilometers. And so it turns out that one part of this island is situated between these parts of the mainland. Strange. No less strange is the fact that the king’s name was borne not by the country over which he ruled, but by the one that lay nearby—more precisely, opposite his possessions across the sea.

Thus, Atlantis must be located in front of the western mouth of the Nile. Let us turn to a map of the Mediterranean Sea and see whether there is, opposite this mouth, any large island on which remains of an ancient civilization have been discovered. It turns out that such an island exists. It is the island of Crete (Fig. 1), with its famous Palace of Knossos, discovered by A. Evans at the end of the last century. It is very important to note here that, in the opinion of one of the participants in the excavations on Crete, K. T. Frost [24]—who, incidentally, knew nothing of the work of A. N. Karnozhitsky—the country described in the Timaeus and the Critias corresponds exactly to the Cretan state of the Late Minoan period, and one cannot but agree with him.

Fig. 1. Schematic map of the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, on which it is evident that, if one looks from the upper delta of the Nile, then opposite its western mouth lies the island of Crete

First of all, in the Timaeus it is said that from Atlantis “it was convenient for seafarers to cross to the other islands, and from these islands to the opposite mainland” [15, p. 58]. This means that between Atlantis and the opposite mainland there were many islands of smaller size, while on the opposite side of it there were no such islands. To the south of Crete (on the African side) there are in fact no islands, while to the north of it (on the side of the opposite mainland) there are many. Moreover, it is known that from the most ancient times Crete was an intermediate station on the route between Greece and Egypt.

Further, in the Critias it is said that Atlantis was “very high and steep on the seaward side; but the entire plain around the city, encircling the city and itself in turn surrounded by mountains descending all the way to the sea, was smooth and flat” [14, p. 515]. But precisely such a surface is found on the island of Crete as well. A mountain range runs along it, with only two large gaps; moreover, on the southern side (the side where, between Crete and the mainland, there are no islands—“the seaward side”) the mountains come right up to the shore and drop steeply to the sea. The northern side of the island is comparatively level; however, several spurs of the main range cross it in a meridional direction, which fully corresponds to a plain surrounded by mountains.

K. T. Frost also cites more subtle features of similarity between Atlantis and the Cretan state. In particular, according to Plato, the capital of Atlantis was situated around a hill on which the chief god (also the sea god) of the Atlanteans, Poseidon, and his wife once lived.

Clito, and still earlier Clito’s parents, were the “first” people on earth [14, pp. 508–509, 512]. The Knossos palace is built on a low hill rising above the surrounding plain. On this hill a Neolithic settlement was discovered, in which primitive man lived no less than 12 thousand years ago [24, p. 197].

One of the most revered animals in Atlantis was the bull (buffalo). A certain number of bulls grazed freely in Poseidon’s sacred grove. But they were not objects of worship. The Critias describes a solemn hunt for bulls, which were then sacrificed to the chief deity (Poseidon). The distinctive feature of this hunt was that it was carried out without weapons, with the aid only of sticks and rope nooses [16, p. 25]. In some rooms of the Knossos palace the walls are decorated with scenes of bull-fighting; images of bulls occur on seals and cult objects. Charred remains have been found of bulls that were sacrificed [13, pp. 174–203]. But that is not all. On a cup found in the present-day village of Vaphio (near Sparta), which, in the opinion of specialists, was brought from Crete, there are depicted scenes that exactly reproduce the description of the weaponless bull hunt in the Critias [24]. In particular, here one can see how one hunter has seized with a noose the hind leg of a walking bull, while beside him a running enraged bull has knocked down two hunters and raised a third on its horns [10, p. 54].

The weaponless bull hunt described, according to the Critias, was conducted by the kings of the separate regions of Atlantis before they began to sit in judgment on one another once every five or six years. Naturally, it may be supposed that the kings must have sought to lengthen the intervals between such trials, and sooner or later the thought must have come to them of sending slaves instead of themselves on this dangerous business. In this connection it is interesting to note that, according to the ancient Greek myth of Theseus, Attica once paid Crete a quite unusual tribute—seven youths and seven maidens were sent every nine years to that island to be devoured by the Minotaur, a monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man. Apparently these youths were sent not to be devoured by a bull-man, but to hunt bulls without weapons, during which many of them perished. Incidentally, before his departure to fight the Minotaur, Theseus freed Attica precisely from the Cretan bull (from the bull which Heracles supposedly brought from Crete, and which was a great evil for the farmers). Moreover, he did not kill it on the spot with some weapon, as logic would require, but seized it by the horns, bent its head to the ground, bound it, tamed it, and brought it to Athens, where he sacrificed it to the god Apollo [6, p. 187], that is, he did exactly what, according to the Critias, the kings of Atlantis did with the bulls from Poseidon’s grove.

This hunt also received a definite reflection in the myth of Heracles, one of whose labors (the sixth) amounted to this: by order of King Eurystheus he went to Crete and there caught a bull intended as a sacrifice to Poseidon. In the opinion of J. Pendlebury [13, pp. 247–250], the Cretan state perished as a result of an invasion from continental Greece around 1450 B.C., and this event was reflected in the myth of Theseus.

In the light of what has been set forth, one more fact deserves attention, to which no one has hitherto paid attention: this is the similarity between the genealogy of the king of the kings of Atlantis, Atlas, and the genealogy of the Cretan king Minos. Both of them are sons of the chief god and a simple woman; moreover, the names of the grandfathers on the mother’s side of each of them may be said to be identical. Namely, the grandfather of Atlas was Evenor [16, pp. 14–16], and the grandfather of Minos was Agenor [6, p. 120 et al.].

As an objection to the idea of identifying Atlantis with Crete, it is sometimes pointed out that, according to the Timaeus, Atlantis was larger than Libya and Asia taken together. Here, however, it should be noted that in the Critias there are also other data on this question. Namely, in one place it says that the plain on which the capital of Atlantis was located was 3 thousand stadia (about 550 km) long and 2 thousand stadia (about 370 km) wide [14, p. 515]. In another place its dimensions are still more modest. Thus, in describing the hill on which Cleito and Poseidon lived, it is said that it was situated in the center of the island and was 50 stadia (about 9 km) from the sea [14, p. 508]; moreover, the latter figure is repeated in the description of the activities of the kings of Atlantis [14, p. 515]. Thus, the width of Atlantis is reduced to 18 km. If we now recall that the greatest width of Crete is 57 km, and its length 250 km, and that throughout both dialogues Atlantis is referred to only as an island (and this characterizes its dimensions more accurately than any figures that can be cited within these dialogues), then the impression arises that Atlantis corresponds to Crete to a far greater extent, and to a far lesser extent to a continent which, in the opinion of N. F. Zhirov and his like-minded associates, was located on the site of the Atlantic Ocean.

N. F. Zhirov attaches colossal significance to the fact that the date of the submergence of Atlantis given in Plato’s dialogues (9 thousand years before Solon’s visit to Egypt) corresponds to the date of the warming of the climate in Europe (11.5 thousand years ago). In his opinion, this was a consequence of the fact that before the catastrophe Atlantis (no longer an island, but a continent) blocked the Gulf Stream’s access to the shores of Europe. Here it must first of all be noted that the cooling of the climate, which ended about 11.5 thousand years ago, was planetary in character. In particular, it manifested itself even in New Zealand [22], where there can be no question of any influence of the Gulf Stream. On the other hand, the dating of the catastrophe in Plato’s dialogues is made not according to the chronology of the Atlanteans, but from the words of an Egyptian priest who, having no idea of the real date of the event being described, “determined” it in the following way: “Without any envy I shall tell this both out of goodwill toward you and out of respect for your state, but above all out of reverence for the goddess who, having received both your state and ours as her portion, reared and educated them both—yours first, a full thousand years earlier... But our present state order is recorded in the sacred books as being 8000 years old. Thus I must give you an account of the institutions of citizens who lived exactly 9000 years before our time” [15, pp. 55–56].

Without entering into a discussion with the ancient sage as to who reared and educated the Egyptian and Greek states, let us note that by the time Plato’s dialogues were composed the Egyptian state was only about three thousand years old, and the Greek one even less. To doubt this means to ignore all the achievements of modern science; however, for some reason N. F. Zhirov pays no attention to this and, in order to prove his idea, continues to refer to individual mentions by ancient authors of lands which were located no one knows where and information about which reached these authors no one knows how, as well as to traditions of the inhabitants of the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean about earthquakes and floods which likewise occurred no one knows when. One may agree that some of these traditions contain descriptions of earthquakes or floods that in fact once took place, but there are no grounds whatsoever for agreeing that all these descriptions refer to the event that occurred exactly 11.5 thousand years ago. Rather the contrary: if 11.5 thousand years ago any

geological cataclysms had occurred, no traditions about this could have been preserved. Too many floods and earthquakes occur on Earth.

The situation is quite different in this respect with Crete. Thus, according to J. Pendlebury [13, pp. 196—200], around 1580 B.C., that is, approximately one hundred and thirty years before the defeat of the Cretan state by Theseus, a catastrophic earthquake actually occurred here, one that affected the entire island. And after it, throughout the island’s territory, the construction of military fortifications begins, although life proceeds peacefully. From what has been said it follows that shortly before this earthquake some serious attack on the island took place, which, however, did not end in its conquest. And this is precisely what allows one to suppose that it was at this time that the very tsunami discussed above occurred.

Thus, without denying the possibility of subsidences of individual land areas relative to the level of one basin or another, one can say with confidence that in the case of Atlantis there was a tsunami, and not a subsidence of this kind at all. Here it is necessary to note that known cases of sudden subsidence of land are limited, as a rule, to amplitudes of several meters. For example, during the formation of Proval Bay on Baikal, a land area of about 200 km² sank below the level of this lake by an average of 3 m [8]. At the same time, the sialic shell is preserved unchanged in the sunken areas. In the oceans, however, including the Atlantic Ocean, it is absent. Thus, from the point of view of geology, contrary to the opinion of N. F. Zhirov [3, pp. 118—183], the existence in the recent past of a continent between Europe and North America, which subsequently supposedly sank beneath the water level by several kilometers, is inconceivable. Not a single serious geologist believes in this possibility.

As for traces of subaerial weathering on the ocean floor, they are explained by the hypothesis of a lowering of the level of the world ocean. One variant of this hypothesis, proposed by L. A. Pukhlyakov [17], amounts to the following. In epochs of the Earth’s quiet development, in the process of accumulation of sediments, enormous masses of bound water are buried (up to 20% of the volume of the rocks). During periods of active tectonic life, significant quantities of sedimentary rocks are drawn into the Earth’s deep zones. In the process of metamorphism, the water enclosed in these rocks passes from a bound state into a free one and appears on the surface of our planet; as a result, the level of the world ocean may rise. One such rise occurred in the first half of the Cenozoic, when the Earth’s tectonic life was especially active.

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