The search for an extinct civilization will push for strategic planning at the state level.
In Russia, interest in Atlantis, as well as in general to the topic of sunken continents and the most ancient civilizations, has never faded away. And so, on June 16, 2000, the 1st Congress of Atlantologists took place in Moscow. Mainly organizational issues were resolved on it. Science fiction writer, president of the Moscow club of secrets, candidate of technical and philosophical sciences Vladimir Shcherbakov was unanimously named the leader of the Atlantological movement in Russia.
Whether Atlantis existed is yet to be proved, but a powerful cultural tradition has already "grown" around it. Lev Bakst. Ancient horror. 1908. Russian Museum.
The next step in the formation of the Russian Atlantological movement was the formation on April 25, 2003 of the Russian Society for the Study of the Problems of Atlantis (ROIPA), whose president was Alexander Voronin (1954-2012). Historian, philologist, president of the Russian Society for the Study of Atlantis Georgy NEFEDIEV is talking with journalist Alexander Evdokimov about when the dead great civilization will be found and whether it will be found at all.
Georgy Vladimirovich, how did you get this passion for Atlantis? You are, as far as I know, a philologist, in theory far from the problems of oceanology
- I first heard about Atlantis at the age of six. And it shocked me. Back in my school years, while studying atlantological literature, I turned to the work of the Russian symbolist poet Valery Bryusov, having read his work “Teachers of teachers. The most ancient cultures of mankind and their relationship”. Then, through his poetry, he became interested in the entire era of the Silver Age. And here a certain metamorphosis happened to me: through Atlantis, thanks to her, I became a professional philologist. And then, without leaving the latter, he returned on a different level to his childhood dream - the search for the legendary Atlantis - the most alluring mystery of millennia.
Will Atlantis ever be found, in your opinion, or, unlike Troy, is it nothing more than a myth?
- It will certainly be found. Two problems stand in the way. One is related to the need to fund research at the highest national and international level. The second is the skepticism of traditional science. Even if we presented now a huge number of artifacts, this would not have affected the wall of misunderstanding, since many scientists consider atlantology a pseudoscience, they do not believe that a civilization could exist older than those generally recognized by school textbooks (the most ancient were formed in the IV-III millennium BC). BC). However, in the last century, archaeologists found a lot that, although not directly related to Atlantis, pushes our historical past aside. Found the cities of Chatal-Guyuk and Jericho, which existed in the X-VIII millennia BC. This time coincides with the period of the existence of Atlantis,described by Plato in the dialogues Timaeus and Critias.
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Where do you personally consider it necessary to look for her?
- There are two global topographic versions of the location of Atlantis. The first is "Crete-Minoan", that is, the islands of Santorini and Thira in the Mediterranean Sea. The second, more orthodox, is "Atlantic". Of course, there are more than 40 hypotheses, but these are the main two.
The "Cretan-Minoan" version is convenient for official science, since the corresponding civilization does not go beyond the traditional chronological framework. But at the same time, the supporters of this version rewrite Plato himself, who was mistaken, since not 9 thousand years have passed since the date of the catastrophe that destroyed Atlantis, but only about a thousand.
If you carefully read the texts of the "Dialogues" of the ancient Greek philosopher, you can find many arguments in favor of the second, "Atlantic" version. For example, the Egyptians, who communicated with the representatives of the Cretan-Minoan civilization, never called them Atlanteans, and Europe was not called the foggy "opposite continent", which, like Atlantis itself, is "on the other side of the Pillars of Hercules", that is, beyond the Strait of Gibraltar.
I believe that Atlantis should be sought not far from Cuba. Western atlantologists Frank Joseph and Andrew Collins think the same. Underwater stepped pyramids and sphinxes were recorded in 2012 off the coast of Cuba during the last expedition of Polina Zelitskaya, and for the first time, apparently, they were discovered there during the Cuban missile crisis. It was there that Antilia, depicted on medieval maps, could be located - "the country of Seven Cities", the last remnants of which sank into the abyss in the historical memory of the Phoenicians. There are also legends about Atlantis in the mythology of the Aztecs, who called it the country of Aztlan.
According to the Czechoslovak researcher Zdenek Kukal, there is not a single place in the Atlantic Ocean that at least to some extent corresponds to Plato's description, where in the foreseeable past a catastrophe would have occurred that could destroy a huge island or even the mainland
- Official science suggests that the sinking of a significant area of land could not happen instantly. But now we know for certain that small islands can appear and disappear very quickly, literally before our eyes, especially if they are on a volcanic basis. Atlantis could have perished as a result of a planetary cataclysm. The explosion of the Santorini volcano (in fact, the island of Santorini itself is a volcano caldera protruding from the sea), which destroyed the Cretan-Minoan civilization, had, of course, catastrophic consequences, but local ones, within the Mediterranean basin. Therefore, I personally adhere to the hypothesis of the fall of a giant asteroid.
That is, you believe that not only millions of years ago, but also relatively recently, a large space object fell to the Earth?
- This is not only my version, but also a number of other scientists. For example, the German explorer Otto Muck, presented in his book The Fiery Sword Over Atlantis.
But in this case, some artifacts should have been preserved - coins, works of art, clay tablets. Did you manage to find something similar?
“We couldn't find any artifacts with the words“Made in Atlantis”. But we find all over the Earth evidence of the existence in the distant past of a civilization with the highest technologies. I'm not talking specifically about Atlantis, but in general about the ancient civilization, which possessed such. Let's take the same Egyptian pyramids. At the end of the last century, the Japanese tried to build a small pyramid - and failed.
I'm not even talking about polygonal masonry in Peru and Bolivia and the so-called "plasticine" technologies. This is a complete fantasy, impossible even in our time …
And what will the discovery of Atlantis give to mankind?
- Unlike Troy, which Schliemann discovered, finding Atlantis will not just prove that Plato was right, like Homer. There can and should be two fundamental changes. First, the entire historical, and not only historical, picture of the world will have to change. The myth of progress will be revised, that we are moving from more primitive forms of civilization to higher ones. Atlantis can bring down the myth of such a linear nature of the historical process. We will see its spiral nature, we will see that in the past there could exist civilizations superior to ours, modern in the technological - and maybe not only technological - relation, which were destroyed as a result of a cataclysm of a planetary scale.
And secondly, if the cyclical, that is, recurring periodically, the nature of catastrophes in the history of the Earth is proven, then this will force us to look for a "mechanism" that triggers such cataclysms. Such, for example, can be a comet approaching the Earth at regular intervals (remember Halley's comet) or the melting of ice caps at the poles. Understanding the reasons for the death of Atlantis could help our civilization survive in some future cataclysm. This could become a task, I'm not afraid of this word, of global strategic planning at the state level.
“But we still have to deal with Atlantis itself. Was she what Plato imagined her to be? Or are they two different Atlantis, described by him in the dialogues "Critias" and "Timaeus" and existed in reality?
- Plato speaks of several floods, more accurate records of which were among the Egyptians in the temple of the goddess Neith in the city of Sais. The civilization that existed in Crete was better known to him, historically close to his time than the one that existed in the Atlantic. Her death, in my opinion, layered on other catastrophes in the historical consciousness of the same Greeks. Here what happened in postmodernism is called a palimpsest - the layering of a new image and a layer of paint on an old picture.
Is international cooperation in search of Atlantis possible? Or has it been a reality for a long time and Atlantologists from all over the world have connected?
- Previously, there were Western analogues of our society. But, in fact, although it is called Russian, it has long been de facto already international, since foreign, in particular American, atlantologists cooperate with us. Many foreign colleagues even envy us in a sense, seeing that there is such a functioning society in Russia that we can get together and hold forums.
Alexander Evdokimov