Legendary man and myth country: their romance is organic. He is the author of songs with which our compatriots have spent their evenings around a campfire for half a century. Geophysicist, oceanologist, doctor of geological and mineralogical sciences. She is a fabulous land, terra incognita, sunk to the bottom as a result of an ancient catastrophe. As a poet, he glorified the Atlanteans holding the sky on their shoulders. And as a scientist, he put forward a scientific hypothesis about the place of the underwater resting place of their homeland. On the days when the Russian Society for the Study of Atlantis is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary, we talked with its member, one of the founders of the bard song genre, poet, chief researcher at the P. P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, RAS, Alexander Gorodnitsky.
Photo: Yuri Mashkov / TASS.
“Do only children need fairy tales? Fairy tales are much more necessary for adults”- your famous song sung. How did the fascination with the mythical island begin?
Gorodnitsky: This theme itself arose for me from the song. And by chance. Earlier I read, of course, Plato's dialogues "Timaeus" and "Critias" with descriptions of Atlantis, but somehow I did not get into it. And in 1970, for the first time, I found myself in a voyage after sailing on naval ships (I then had a closed topic on submarines) on the Dmitry Mendeleev research vessel. We were walking across the North Atlantic when, on the eve of March 8, the head of our detachment, Igor Belousov, decided to announce a competition for the best song about Atlantis. With a very valuable prize in a maritime dry law - a bottle of cognac.
Why Atlantis? Still do not understand. I did not take part in the competition and, as a member of the Writers' Union, was appointed chairman of the jury. And then the captain and Belousov, who jointly composed the victory song, generously shared the prize with me.
When we were already at night in a pleasant euphoria at the stern, Igor suddenly said to me: "The devil knows where this Atlantis was, and maybe over there." And he waved his hand into the distance, to where the moon swayed on a wave behind the stern gaps. Then the lines in my head moved, or rather the very mood of the song about Atlantis.
But the most interesting thing is that at that moment we were in the region of 300 nautical miles from the coast of Europe, approximately in those places where Mount Ampere stands under water, on the top of which the remains of strange structures were later discovered and where I had a chance to dive, having become infected with the "Atlantic virus ".
Did it happen shortly after that voyage?
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Gorodnitsky: Where there! There were almost a decade and a half ahead. In 1984, aboard the R / V Vityaz, we purposefully approached this underwater volcano, where the research vessels Akademik Petrovsky and Rift had already visited several years earlier. The latter was equipped with the Argus deep-sea vehicle, from which geometrically regular rows of ruins were discovered and captured on top. We also used "Argus" - by the way, I took part in one of the dives. They examined the guyot - the top of a five-kilometer volcano cut off by erosion at a depth of one hundred meters. With great difficulty the manipulator fished out the "amphora". After cleaning from shells, it, alas, turned out to be an aluminum pan washed off from a modern ship.
However, we were once again convinced of the man-made structures that were there, although there is still no exact scientific evidence of this. In my book “Secrets and Myths of Science. In Search of Truth”, two photographs are presented. On one - the regular square outlines on Mount Ampere, taken from above from an underwater vehicle. On the other - photographed from a height of the excavations of ancient Chersonesos. One to one! To finally clarify whether it is an artifact or a rare natural anomaly, you need to carefully look at the objects from the side, take samples.
Your interest in the legendary Platonic Island has probably only grown stronger because of this?
Gorodnitsky: My friend, now deceased, historian Nathan Eidelman warmed him up. He even wanted to take me on a flight to Mount Ampere to attend the landmark opening. And when he was not given a visa, he joked goodbye: "Sash, if you find Atlantis, do not ask for political asylum there!"
I think so: the problem of Atlantis today is more geological. It is doubtful that ethnographers, archaeologists, historians, geographers will find anything on the Platonic island. As a rule, artifacts on the seabed have not been stored for thousands of years: they are washed away by currents and covered with sediments. New ancient maps and manuscripts are also unlikely to surface. In this area, only esoteric versions and frankly delusional fantasies will multiply. Blavatsky, Casey, magic crystals, giants-demigods - all this is not for me.
But from a geological point of view, there is a normal question, which will sooner or later be answered: did there exist in historical time, that is, already during the lifetime of human civilization, a microcontinent or a large archipelago that sank catastrophically quickly into the water?..
When Nikolai Feodosyevich Zhirov, Doctor of Chemistry, published his book about Atlantis in 1964, the concept of fixism prevailed in Soviet geology. She argued that continents sometimes float or sink, but cannot move horizontally. Today, the opposing concept of mobilism and the theory of plate tectonics, which recognize continental drift, dominate. According to this model, continents cannot sink. In addition to errors associated with fixism, Zhirov's work is exceptionally solid from a scientific point of view. I wrote a preface to the last edition.
Our famous astronomer and popularizer Felix Yuryevich Siegel, who believed in aliens, once came up to me (we were friends) after another ocean voyage. And he said excitedly: "I read that the fishermen found pieces of marble on Mount Ampere, where you almost discovered Atlantis." And I immediately upset him: these are the fragments of the sinker that Portuguese fishermen tie to the nets - there is the whole mountain in these nets. He looked at me offended and said: "You are a boring person, well, what to talk to you about!"
At the same time, my teacher - a wonderful Russian geophysicist Oleg Georgievich Sorokhtin sternly reprimanded me: "Throw your nonsense with Atlantis, the continents cannot submerge, otherwise I will fire you!" But I didn’t quit, but tried to solve the problem as a geologist.
How?
Gorodnitsky: The fact is that the Ampere is part of the Hosshu seamount system, bent by a horseshoe. They sit, as if on a skewer, on a giant rift from the Azores archipelago to the Strait of Gibraltar. There, between two lithospheric plates - African and Eurasian - in the Mesozoic era there was the Tethys ocean, which divided the ancient continents of Gondwana and Laurasia. Its remains are the Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Seas. About 170 million years ago, the plates crawled one on top of the other, forming the Alpine-Caucasian mountain system at the collision boundary. And under the current Atlantic Ocean there was a tectonic seam - a fault from the Azores to Gibraltar. The analysis showed that the basalt of volcanic origin (Alexander Moiseevich hands me a weighty stone, chipped off from the underwater plateau - author's note) could not freeze under water. Hence,ancient volcanoes were once land, a chain of islands. There are other confirmations of this: traces of erosion and weathering, surf pebble pellets. In 2005, I made a report on this research at the Congress of the Russian Geographical Society in Kronstadt.
As a scientist, you have probably been pecked more than once for atlantology?
Gorodnitsky: And they still continue. When a conference of our society was held several years ago at the Institute of Oceanology, a denunciation was made to the director of the Institute, Academician Nigmatulin, to the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences: he, they say, provided the Academic Council hall for a gathering of occultists. Robert Iskanderovich courageously defended me. He knew that I, as the chairman of such meetings, closely monitor that there was no paranormal nonsense. Based strictly on the concept of plate tectonics and mobilism, I created a consistent model of the destruction of Atlantis in the area of the Hosshu Submarine Ridge.
Why could she dive into the ocean as quickly as possible? The eruption of Vesuvius at the beginning of our era that destroyed Pompeii, the catastrophic earthquake in Lisbon in 1755 - all hail from this tectonically active zone. There was such an old disaster film "The Death of Japan" about how the Land of the Rising Sun began to split, going into the water under the Kuril-Kamchatka arc. The scenario is quite possible from a geological point of view. It is on the same principle that, in the collision of the African plate with the Eurasian one, Atlantis, which was nearby, could sink, in my opinion. We cannot yet date this event with any precision, but I suppose that it refers to the general period of catastrophes in the then Oikumen, traces of which have come down to us from literary sources. For example, in the form of legends about the Flood.
Look, the famous Santorini volcano on the island of Thira is located inside the Aegean island arc, which, in turn, sits at the other end of the tectonic suture mentioned above. So, once Santorini exploded, destroying the highly developed Cretan-Minoan culture. Potassium-argon analysis showed the date of the eruption - about one and a half thousand years BC. Some researchers identify it with Atlantis, but I disagree with that. I carefully studied Plato's dialogues, which, in particular, described how the Atlanteans seized northern Africa, the Apennine Peninsula, and fought with the Egyptian Empire and the Proto-Athenian state. Crete could not do it.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau found the stone remains of an ancient civilization under the water near Santorini, hastening to report that this is Atlantis. But I'm sure the Athenians were there. And in the west of the fault - on the other side of the Pillars of Hercules (that is, Gibraltar) at the same time and from the same cataclysm, the Atlantean archipelago perished. Later, Jacques, speaking with me, on his version reproduced by the media, did not insist at all: "I'm just a diver - I find interesting things, and you - historians, geologists - explain further".
Is there any other geological, historical or mythological confirmation of that cataclysm?
Gorodnitsky: I think there are many of them. It has been established, for example, that the ash from the eruption of Santorini orbited the planet five times. For a while, the so-called nuclear winter came: the sun's rays almost did not reach the Earth. Hence "Egyptian darkness" and all the other biblical "Egyptian executions". I have written a whole book on this subject. As Moses led his people through the wilderness, they saw a pillar of smoke and fire in the distance. It turns out that all the events of the book "Exodus" are absolutely real and took place simultaneously with the death of Atlantis.
There is a discrepancy with the dating of events. Plato writes about the death of Atlantis about 10 thousand years BC …
Gorodnitsky: The ancients have trouble with dates and generally with numbers. I think Plato, of course, was mistaken, or maybe the distortion occurred during the correspondence. In my opinion, the death of Atlantis, the biblical Great Flood, the Sumerian "Legend of Gilgamesh" reflect the same global catastrophe.
And if Plato just came up with a beautiful fairy tale? After all, his student Aristotle said a catch phrase about this …
Gorodnitsky: "Plato is my friend, but the truth is dearer." By the way, in this form we learned this aphorism from "Don Quixote" by Cervantes. And the real phrase from Aristotle sounded like this: "Let friends and truth be dear to me, but my duty commands me to give preference to truth." Moreover, judging by the context, she related not so much to the existence of the island of the Atlanteans itself, but to the interpretation of it as an ideal state.
An interesting detail for reflection was given to me by Nathan Eidelman, who knew antiquity well. According to Plato's dialogues, the Egyptian priests told about Atlantis to the ancient Greek legislator and poet Solon - one of the seven wise men revered in Hellas. So it turns out that Plato was his direct descendant. The question is, could he have put a clear lie in the mouth of his so respected ancestor? That is, here Plato should be believed.
Today's enthusiasts see Atlantis everywhere. And in Africa, and in Spain, and in the Caucasus, and near Spitsbergen …
Gorodnitsky: And in the Bermuda Triangle, and in the Arctic, and in Antarctica, and even on Solovki. Who has enough imagination for that. But I try to rely on geology and Plato's text. For example, he has a description of a tree that provides food and drink - clearly a coconut tree. In the Mediterranean, they did not grow at that time. Elephants are also mentioned there. That is, if you do not attribute the island of the Atlanteans in time immemorial with a different climate, then we are talking about deep southern latitudes. Well, from the point of view of geology, I pose the problem simply: so far, apart from the sunken vast archipelago in the Hosshu mountain system, nothing of the kind has been found in the Atlantic. If they find it, then we can argue. So far, our hypothesis is the most consistent, I have not received any serious criticism from geophysicists.
However, atlantology for many continues to be a pseudoscience, it was crushed in Soviet times, and it is not favored even today …
Gorodnitsky: There is a simple, but at the same time, deep explanation for this. If we assume that such a high civilization existed for so long, then the orderly chain of historical evolution is disrupted - from simple to complex. This means that humanity can develop not only towards progress, but also towards regression. And so, perhaps, it was already in our history more than once. This runs counter to the principles of dialectical materialism …
And in general it contradicts the theory of social progress, which, starting with the French enlightener Condorcet, considered the movement of civilization only ascending …
Gorodnitsky: That's right. For me personally, the study of Atlantis has moved from classical Darwinian evolutionism to catastrophe theory. I remembered and re-studied the unfairly, in my opinion, pushed to the sidelines of the great zoologist Georges Cuvier. And then, proceeding from my main scientific direction - magnetism, I developed a model of possible global catastrophes during the rotation of the Earth's magnetic field. It turned out that the evolution of fauna and flora on the planet periodically stopped due to the mass death of all living things. And then it started as if anew: that is, civilization is discrete. This has happened more than once and can happen again at any time. Science today cannot predict this.
Let's get back to your song: why are so many adults, serious people seriously fascinated by the legend of Atlantis?
Gorodnitsky: Probably because they see in her a story about the "golden age", when everything was fine. This is an eternal dream - an archetype, a memory of a lost paradise. She is indestructible.
At the beginning of the 20th century, humanity looked with hope and optimism into the future. But already at the end of it, they began to look forward with anxiety and horror, and backward with nostalgia. As in Alexander Kushner's poem "Vase": "Among them I will find a little man with his head turned back."
Gorodnitsky: Yes, in the future we often see nightmares and dystopias. At the same time, all the bad things in the past tend to be forgotten. I have lines: “Where does the source of hope come from, where is the root of the current losses? As we looked ahead before, so we look into the past now! " But the same friend of mine Sasha Kushner wrote the textbook lines: “Times are not chosen, they live and die”. And in the same poem: “Time is a test. Do not envy anyone."
But what about Atlantis?
Gorodnitsky: She has sunk into eternity. But, on the other hand, it remained a vivid picture of the flourishing of human civilization. The Atlanteans, according to Plato, could not stay at the top: pride, greed, the desire to dominate other peoples caused the "wrath of the gods" - a geological catastrophe. Fascinating today by the living Platonic images of Atlantis, one should not forget about its lesson to all earthlings.
Andrey SAMOKHIN
