The starting point in Rand Flem-At's hypothesis was the same assumption that the Platonic geographical terminology did not correspond to the current designations. This assumption freed the researcher's hands, and he did a small experiment. He took off an ordinary school globe from the axis and began to turn it from himself to the north. He stopped the globe at the moment when Antarctica appeared in front of his eyes, that is, the South Pole appeared in the center of the world.
Having carefully examined the picture that opened on the globe, Rand Flem-Ath made a number of interesting conclusions that are directly related to the problem of Atlantis.
The researcher took the original text of Plato and again read a very interesting passage: “From it (that is, from the island of Atlantis) it was easy to move to other islands, and from them - to the entire opposite continent, which is bordered by the TRUE ocean. After all, the sea on this side of the Strait of Gibraltar is just a bay with a narrow passage into it. " Rand Flem-Ata could not help but be puzzled by Plato's use of the word "bay" in relation to the Mediterranean. Only one thing could serve as an excuse for him: the "true ocean" was so great for Plato that the Mediterranean Sea seemed in comparison with it a small harbor!
It is unlikely that the Atlantic Ocean could claim the role of the "true ocean", since, as is known, it is practically isolated from other oceans of the Earth by continents. But when looking at the "world" through the South Pole, the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans merge together, and perhaps they form the very "true ocean" of Plato? And the continents, bordering the "true ocean" with this view, are much more expressive here than in the Atlantic!
Readers must have already guessed where Rand Flem-At is heading: he is placing the legendary Atlantis in … Antarctica! Nobody seems to have proposed such an option yet. And interestingly, the researcher finds new arguments in support of his surprising assumption.
Plato reports that Atlantis was larger in territory than "Libya and Asia combined." Under
Libya, the philosopher meant North Africa, and Asia considered the regions that we call the Middle East. Libya and Asia "put together", according to Flem-Ata, are slightly larger than the current United States. The size of Antarctica (somewhat reduced due to later formations) and the United States has approximately the same ratio. Plato further adds that Atlantis was a mountainous island and rose "high above sea level." And in this respect, the analogy with Antarctica is complete (it rises almost 2000 meters above sea level).
In 1665, the German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher published a multi-page work, including a reproduction of the ancient Egyptian map of Atlantis. Comparing the configuration of the island with the outlines of Antarctica, which it was 12,000 years ago, shows, according to Flem-At, their striking similarity. And although on the Egyptian map Atlantis is placed in the Atlantic Ocean, Flem-At considers this a mistake, into which Plato also fell.
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Traditionally, it was believed that Antarctica was covered with ice for at least 50-60 million years. But in 1990, 250 miles from the South Pole, geologists discovered remnants of a tree forest 2 - 3 million years old frozen into the ice! The famous map of the Turkish admiral Piri Reis, created in 1513 on the basis of older maps dating back to the 5th century BC, depicts Antarctica without ice!
On the map of Orontius Phineus, compiled in 1531, we see mountain ranges and rivers in Antarctica - where there are now only glaciers. All this speaks of ice-free Antarctica in the memory of mankind, which in those days, in an incomprehensible way, without aviation and even more so satellites, was able to draw up maps of the southern continent with outlines drawn only in the 20th century by seismic sounding methods of a two-kilometer ice cover!
Cartographer Charles Hapgood has determined that the Piri Reis map contains at least 24 points, accurate to half a degree.
Europeans could not have achieved such precision until the famous voyages of Captain Cook in the second half of the 10th century! For many years, Hapgood developed the idea, unrecognized by official science, of periodic displacements of the earth's crust (lithosphere), "floating" over a more viscous layer (asthenosphere), resting on a solid mantle (a thick layer between the earth's crust and the Earth's core). Moreover, together with the crust, the ocean basins also "travel"!
This idea was enthusiastically accepted by Albert Einstein and even wrote the foreword to the first edition of Hapgood's book "Shifts of the Earth's Crust". Hapgood's hypothesis has the straight poles stay in place, and the panorama just changes beneath them. By analyzing climatic changes due to the displacement of the earth's crust, the author comes to the conclusion about the former warm climate in Antarctica. And he writes this circumstance into the asset of his "Antarctic" version of the location of Atlantis.
And finally, Hapgood refers to the ancient Japanese emperor Dark, who in 681 AD ordered his guild of chroniclers to collect together the oldest myths of the Land of the Rising Sun. As a result, a whole book of myths and one attitude to the problem of Atlantis was formed, because the displacements of the earth's crust explain abrupt climatic changes on the planet without the need to allow the "rocking" of the earth's axis, that is, the "wandering" of the poles.
In fact, according to Hapgud, one of them mentioned the times when the Earth was "very young" and the first inhabited country was called "Onogorodzhima". And it was located … not far from the pole. Hapgood is convinced: not far from the South Pole!
P. Kirillov