Atlantis: two thousand years of searching
Perhaps not a single legendary country has been searched for as long as Atlantis, and there is nothing to be surprised at, because the beginning of this story was laid by Plato, who described in his writings "Timaeus" and "Critias" a huge island, which after a monstrous earthquake went under water in one day and one night. According to the philosopher, Atlantis was famous for unheard of wealth - the walls and roofs of buildings there were laid out in gold, and there were also many statues made of precious metals on the island.
Disputes about whether the state described by Plato was real began soon after the death of the philosopher. For example, his student Aristotle categorically denied the existence of Atlantis and wrote that it was destroyed by the same man who created, that is, Plato himself - in his imagination. But, say, the philosopher Posidonius, who lived in the 2nd century BC. e., believed in the existence of a sunken island, like the followers of Plato - the Neoplatonists.
Plato writes that Atlantis was located west of the Pillars of Hercules, that is, the Strait of Gibraltar, and it is clear that they began to look for it there. The first attempts were made at the beginning of our era, but real interest in the mysterious city-state awakened in the 16th-17th centuries, after the discovery of America. It was then that hypotheses appeared that, possibly, the New World is Atlantis, because formally, if you look from Europe, America - or at least part of it - really lies to the west of the Strait of Gibraltar. For example, in 1552, the work of Francisco Lopez de Gomara, "General History of the Indies and the Conquest of Mexico," was published, where it was argued that the Indians of the New World are the descendants of those very inhabitants of Atlantis. In fairness, it is worth noting that Gomara's theory was criticized even by his contemporaries,not to mention scholars of later eras, although not all. So, a similar point of view was held by the famous philosopher and historian Francis Bacon.
Map of Atlantis by the German scientist and philosopher Athanasius Kircher. 1669 year.
Of course, America is far from the only or even the main place to search for Atlantis. In total, there are several dozen of them - from the expected ones, like the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic, to the most fantastic ones like Scandinavia or Siberia. The hypothesis that Atlantis is Scandinavia was proposed back in the 17th century by the Swede Olaus Rudbeck, and as for Siberia, the mysterious island was “identified” by the French abbot Balya, the author of “Letters about the Platonic Atlanteans”. In his opinion, Atlantis was in the Arctic Ocean, and when a cold snap began in those parts, the inhabitants of the island moved to the continent near the mouth of the Ob.
"The Death of Atlantis" by Nicholas Roerich. 1929 year.
But nevertheless, most researchers who are still keen on searching for Atlantis often lead them closer to the places described by Plato, that is, in the Gibraltar region, however, not only to the west, but also to the east of the strait. It is believed that if Atlantis really existed, then most likely it was in the Mediterranean Sea. The famous actor Rob Riggle is testing the same version. He goes to Greece and, after talking with local archaeologists, dives around Crete to see unusual caves. These caves are evidence of a catastrophe that occurred in the 2nd millennium BC. We are talking about the eruption of the Santorini volcano, which caused the strongest tsunamis and powerful earthquakes. As a result, a caldera with an area of more than 80 square kilometers was formed. And if there really was an island in this area, then it,undoubtedly went under water. Researchers interviewed by Riggle believe, based on archaeological finds at the bottom of the ocean in the Crete region, that this hypothesis is far from groundless, although it has not yet been confirmed.
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Eldorado: obsessed with gold
The very name of the mythical country of El Dorado, which is translated from Spanish as "golden", speaks of the purpose of its search. When the New World was discovered, many legends appeared about the fantastic riches of local residents, which they carefully hide from the conquistadors. The start of the gold rush associated with the search for Eldorado was given in 1533, when four ships with gold and silver arrived in Seville from America. It was a ransom for the liberation of Atahualpa, the ruler of the Incas, which never took place. Francisco Pizarro and his detachment took Atahualpa prisoner, and he offered, in exchange for freedom, to fill the room where he was held with gold up to the mark at the height of the raised hand, and fill the neighboring one with silver twice. The Inca ruler kept his word: his subjects delivered so many items of precious metals to the conquistadors,that only it took 34 days to melt them. However, the Spanish conquistadors still did not release Atahualpa and executed him, fearing that otherwise the Incas would attack and kill them. The total value of that ransom in modern terms reached about $ 7 billion, and the weight of gold alone was 6 tons.
Engraving depicting Atahualpa.
When the riches were brought to Spain, many Europeans decided that this was only a small part of the treasures hidden in the New World, and rushed in search of the "Golden Country" - El Dorado.
Another source of the legend was the customs of the Chibcha Indians, who sacrificed golden sand, gold and precious stones to the gods. In addition, once a year they turned their leader into a "golden man" - literally "el dorado": he was coated with clay and sprinkled with golden sand. After that, the leader, accompanied by assistants on a reed raft loaded with gold and precious stones, sailed along the lake in the dawn rays of the sun. In the middle of the lake, the gifts that were on the raft were sacrificed to the gods - they were thrown into the water.
The search for Eldorado was actively pursued throughout the 16th century. Pizarro himself returned for gold, however, during the next expedition he found not gold, but death. In 1537, feuds over power in the colonized territories began already between the conquistadors, and in 1541 Pizarro was killed by supporters of his former associate Diego de Almagro. But Pizarro was far from the only treasure hunter. So, in 1540, the conquistador Francisco Vasquez de Coronado set out to look for "the city where the streets were paved with gold and the roofs of houses were made of it". His expedition lasted two years, but neither mysterious cities nor gold was found.
A year later, Francisco Pizarro's brother - Gonzalo - began to look for Eldorado, together with the adventurer Francisco de Orellana, but then their paths diverged: Pizarro with part of the detachment went overland, and Orellana and the other part of the detachment, leaving Gonzalo to fend for themselves, continued on the water. Orellana eventually became the first European to swim along the entire length of the Amazon - by the way, he chose this name for the river, because he heard from the Indians the legend of a tribe of women warriors living on the banks of the river. By association with the ancient Greek Amazons, he gave the river the name that it still bears. True, throughout the entire journey, Orellana did not find any Amazon tribes or gold. Gonzalo Pizarro himself, believing that Orellana's detachment that sailed along the river died,finally returned to Quito two years after the start of the expedition - without gold and accompanied by several dozen surviving companions.
Eldorado was often sought after and mapped near Lake Parime. Here, for example, is such a map performed by the Dutch engraver, chief cartographer of the Republic of the United Provinces of the early 17th century, Hessel Gerrits. 1625 year.
In the 17th century, after a series of unsuccessful expeditions, the excitement around Eldorado subsided, but one way or another, the search for it continued for 500 years, although the existence of the "golden country" by that time had long been recognized as a myth.
In the late 2000s, satellite photography uncovered geometric shapes in the middle of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and northern Bolivia, which could have been the remains of roads, moats, streets and other traces of civilization. Opinions about their dating differ from the 3rd to the 13th centuries. ad. In the same area, archaeologists have discovered the remains of massive earthworks. Perhaps it was this ruined city, where a developed civilization definitely existed, that was one of the sources of the legends about the golden country of El Dorado.
Shambhala: subtle matters
The answer to the question whether Atlantis and Eldorado ever existed, and if so, where, has not been found, but in any case, the search for these mysterious places was carried out exclusively in physical earthly realities. Simply put, people assumed that these mythical states could be underground, under water, in remote mountainous areas, but one way or another in the material world. In the case of Shambhala, everything is much more complicated: some believe that it is material, others - that it exists on some energy level or in the spiritual world.
"Song of Shambhala" by Nicholas Roerich. 1943 year.
The first mentions of Shambhala are found in the ancient Indian epic "Mahabharata", which was formed in the 1st millennium BC. e. It talks about the village of Sambhala, in which the great king Kalki, the Hindu messiah, the tenth incarnation of the god Vishnu, is to be born in the future. Shambhala has been mentioned in Buddhist texts since the 10th century A. D. e. - for the first time it is mentioned in the Kalachakra Tantra. In modern Buddhism, it is believed that Shambhala exists not on the physical, but on another, more subtle level of reality. Only those who have experienced several rebirths and have accumulated a sufficient amount of karmic merit can get there. At the same time, Shambhala itself resembles the human world, but is devoid of suffering, and only those who have attained enlightenment live in it, and they exist not in physical, but in energy bodies.
Nevertheless, searches for Shambhala were repeatedly undertaken in the real world, as a rule, in mountainous regions. Usually it was Tibet, but the Sayans, Altai, the Gobi desert and other hard-to-reach places were also considered. Perhaps the most famous was the expedition of Nicholas Roerich, who, together with his wife Elena, traveled more than 25,000 km to discover the mysterious kingdom of enlightenment.
They also searched for Shambhala at the government level. For example, under the guise of a Mongol lama, the Chekist Jacob Blumkin went to the Himalayas in the 1920s, and Felix Dzerzhinsky supported the expedition. True, there are no less secrets around this operation than around Shambhala itself: the reports have not survived, and it is not known whether this goal was only a cover for something else, for example, for reconnaissance of quite real territories.
Nicholas Roerich's “Order of the Rigden-Jyepo”. 1933 year.
They were also interested in Shambhala in Hitler's Germany: in the 1930s, the Nazis sent several expeditions to Tibet, Himmler himself supervising them. Moreover, there is a point of view according to which Himmler proposed sending experienced climbers in search of Shambhala after the defeat at Stalingrad. According to this version, he convinced Hitler that, having reached the mysterious country, the Nazis would be able to achieve a guaranteed victory in the war.
They are still looking for the mysterious kingdom of enlightenment: some are studying spiritual practices for this, others go to Tibet, believing that the place is on the same physical plane, but hidden from human eyes. One of the most common search areas is in the vicinity of Mount Kailash. Pilgrimages are regularly made around it, but the summit remains unconquered - partly due to the difficulty of the ascent, partly due to the fact that Buddhist believers actively oppose this idea.
In 2000, a Spanish expedition received permission to climb Kailash, but thousands of pilgrims stood in the way of the climbers, and the Dalai Lama, the UN and other international organizations expressed their protest. Who knows, perhaps the outrage was connected not only with the fact that the mountain is considered sacred, but also with the conviction that it is at its top that the gateway to the legendary land of enlightenment is located?
