Sundaland (GGG)

The cradle of human civilization may well have been the prehistoric lowlands of the Southeast Asian peninsula, rather than the Middle East. Since those lowlands ‘sank’ beneath the seas thousands of years ago (actually drowned by rising sea levels), humanity has remained unaware of their possible significance up through the early 21st century.

Unaware except, that is, for a so-called myth perpetuated by a respected Greek philosopher named Plato, before 347 BC. Plato spoke of an advanced civilization named Atlantis, which sank below the seas perhaps around 9,000 BC. It may well be he wasn’t so far off after all.

The Asian legend of Mu is very similar to the western tales of Atlantis, involving a great landmass that sunk beneath the seas long ago.

Sundaland (the lowlands of the greater Southeast Asian Peninsula) is the current name applied to the largest single section of Asian real estate submerged by rising sea levels after the last Ice Age.

This area when above water would have been twice the size of India, and included what we now call Indo-China, Malaysia and Indonesia. The South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand and the Java Sea, formed the connecting parts. There are also sunken tracts of Pacific coastline, which once covered the East China and Yellow Seas, and linked China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Apparently, the present location of Hong Kong and other Chinese ports were “hundreds of miles inland during the last Ice Age”. These areas were submerged by the Great Flood.

We also now know that it is certainly possible for a catastrophe to wipe out an entire civilization, leaving perhaps little or no evidence of that civilizations passing. Pompeii. Herculaneum. Port Royal. Two were entire cities buried alive via volcanic eruptions in 79 AD. One was a pirate haven that sank into the sea without warning in 1,692 AD, taking its inhabitants with it. All three events are well proven and documented. The vast real estate forming the Bering land bridge during the last glacial maximum is also known to have disappeared beneath the seas at roughly the same time Plato places the sinking of Atlantis (9,000 BC). The land bridge was at minimum 700 miles wide at its driest moment-- so we’re talking a significant sunken landmass here.

The timeframe of the last Global Glacial Maximum is still a matter of scholarly debate, it is believed to have occurred as early as 23,000 BC or as late as 19,000 BC. It was then that global sea levels would have been at the lowest.

Sea levels during the maximum were 392 to 425 feet lower than they currently are. The lowlands of the Southeast Asian Peninsula (Sundaland) are for the most part some 327 feet below 1999 AD sea level - so they would have been 98 to 65 feet above sea level at the time of the maximum itself.

Scholars are in agreement that the ice sheets did not melt everywhere at once and that by 8,000 BC the final fragmentation of the Scandinavian ice sheet took place. The ice age drew to a close and this melting ice brought about a major rise in global sea levels that continued to rise until about 4,000 BC.

The melting of the ice sheets changed the geography of the planet. Massive tracts of land simply disappeared underwater. The land bridge across the Bearing Strait from Asia to Alaska vanished, so too did the connections between Briatain and Europe, Japan and Siberia, Australia and Tasmania, Sri Lanka and India. For the first time in millennia large pockets of humanity found themselves suddenly isolated.

Coincidental to the date of 4,000 BC is both the abrupt “from out of nowhere” rise of the Sumerian civilization and also, though still a hot matter of contention between certain scholars, the Mesoamerican culture abruptly arose, possibly a thousand years prior to that of Mesopotamia. Additionally new archeological evidence indicates that Indian culture suddenly declined in this period, what some scholars refer to as the “Dark Ages of India”.

This information is pertinent to unraveling the propagation of the Atlantis, Lemuria and Mu legends. In fact this information is at the very root of everything, from understanding the roots of world religions to the origin of species and to the history of the Earth.

Sundaland was dry from @23,750 BC to at least 15,250 BC. The most recent rise in global sea levels caused the re-submergence of the Southeast Asian Peninsula between 15,000 BC and 3,000 BC.

There is mounting evidence that South America received migrations directly from across both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans as well as through Central America from the north, at dates far earlier than migrations across Bering Land Bridge itself.

The information we have that supports a possible thriving and advanced civilization in this area, during this period is admittedly scarce, but it is no more scarce than that of many other archeological sites worldwide, in fact more evidence is cited here than for most other currently accepted theories for other civilizations.

We have only recently begun to realize that much of human prehistory must now lie buried on the ocean floor due to the rising seas of 15,000 BC- 3,000 BC; so only extensive submarine efforts may enlighten us as to our true past prior to around 4000 BC. Another obstacle has been our inadequate technology for such submarine explorations. This too has only recently begun to be rectified.

In 1926 James Churchward published the book ‘The Lost Continent of Mu’. It made the bold claim that an advanced prehistoric human civilization had existed in Southeast Asia, but succumbed to earthquakes and a fiery inundation. Mr. Churchward said he learned about Mu in 1868 from an old Hindu priest who taught him an ancient language, Naacal. Mr. Churchward believed it was the original tongue of all mankind. He said he was then able to decipher the story of Mu on ancient stone tablets hidden for centuries in the priests’ temple and also after from translations of still another large collection on stone tablets discovered near Mexico City in the earlier part of the Twentieth Century by WILLIAM NIVEN.

“I learned that in this beautiful country there had lived a people that colonized the Earth and that the land had been obliterated by terrific earthquakes and submersion and had vanished in a vortex of fire and water,” he explained.

The tablets revealed that man first appeared in Mu millions of years ago, at a time when dinosaurs walked the Earth, and that a sophisticated race of 64 million people had somehow evolved. They built fabulous temples and palaces of stone, excelled in the arts and settled colonies throughout the Pacific Ocean and in Asia and the Americas.

“These tablets, with other ancient records, bear witness to the amazing fact that the civilizations of India, Babylonia, Persia, Egypt and Yucatan were but the dying embers of the first great civilization,” Mr. Churchward wrote.

He spent more than half a century studying the Naacal tablets, along with 2,500 others discovered in Mexico. Both sets, he asserted, originated in the same place, the motherland of Mu.

Both before and after the disaster, the people of Mu had supposedly traveled widely about the Earth, mingling with other peoples and colonizing other lands.

The Naacal tablets mysteriously disappeared in the 1920s, along with all other evidence of Mr. Churchward’s visit to the Indian monastery. No trace of Mu has yet been found.

Churchward’s work does however compare, to the latest findings of Geologists, Historians, and Archeologists. Some pieces of this submerged “Continent” did not sink. They remained to become what we now know as, the South Sea Islands. On these bits of land, some of which are thousands of miles apart and totally deserted of human life, there are ANCIENT BUILDINGS, ROADS, and STATUES structures so old, there’s no record of the builders at all. The native Islanders refer to them as “The Before People”.

According to Churchward’s translations, Mu “was undoubtedly the original (earthly) habitat of man”. He learned that “this beautiful land of smiling plenty” had produced “the people that colonized the Earth”, and that it had been “obliterated by terrific earthquakes and submersion 12,000 years ago, and had vanished in a vortex of fire and water”. Subsequently, he traced the same story to India, where colonists from Mu had settled: “from India into Egypt; from Egypt to the temple of Sanai (Sinai?), where Moses copied it; and from Moses to the faulty translations of Ezra, 800 years later. The plausibility of this will be apparent even to those who have not studied the subject carefully, when they see the close resemblance between the story of the creation as we know it and the tradition that originated in Mu”.

Other more material evidence concerning the existence of Mu takes the form of many early maps of the world in which a continental land mass is marked in the southern hemisphere. That was long before the name Mu was ever devised, and the land mass was known as ‘the great unknown southern continent’ (Terra Australis Incognita). Exploration in the 17th Century and later disclosed plenty of water but no trace of any continent, but that does not disprove that the early Grecian and other cartographers were necessarily wrong. Their maps were based on historical records passed down over centuries and not on direct observation.

Mayan, Egyptian and Indian, texts recount stories that may contain grains of the truth: “when the earth’s crust was broken up by earthquakes and then sank into a fiery abyss. Then the waters rolled in over her, leaving only water where a mighty civilization had existed”.

Ample confirmation of Mu can be found in ancient manuscripts, like the Hindu Ramanyana epic. At one point, mention is made of the Naacals “coming to Burma from the land of their birth in the East” - which is the direction of the Pacific. Mention is also made of Mu in the Troano Manuscript, an ancient Mayan book, written in Yucatan, and now in the British Museum. It refers to The Land of Mu using the same symbols as were found in Egypt, India, China, Burma, Tibet and Cambodia. Yet another Mayan book as old as the Troano Manuscript - The Codex Cortesianus also mentions Mu as does a Tibetan book in Lhasa, and as also do scores of other ancient records from Egypt, Greece, Central America, Mexico and even the Anasazi cliff-inscriptions in the southern USA!

There are many existing ruins on the South Sea Islands, such as Easter Island, Mangiaia, Tonga, Ponape and the Marianas Islands, which seem to hark back to the time of Mu. Whilst at Uxmal, in Yucatan, there is an inscription upon an ancient ruined temple that commemorates “The Lands of The West, whence we came” - and a pyramid south west of Mexico City was built, according to its inscriptions, in memory of the destruction of these “Lands of The West”.

There is also a universality of certain ancient symbols and customs which were to be found in various ancient lands such as Egypt, Burma, India, Japan, China, the South Sea Islands, Central and South America, as well as among the aboriginal tribes of North America. They were so identical that it seemed certain that they all came from only one source.

According to these ancient manuscripts, the Muvians were great navigators and sailed all over the world - much as the Atlanteans are purported to have done, being also a great maritime nation. They were also reputed to have been great builders, too; another thing they had in common with the as of yet unfound Atlanteans! One is compelled to wonder whether these two groups, the Muvians and the Atlanteans were simply “two sides of the same coin”!

They evidently had an emperor who bore the title of “Ra Mu” and the term “Ra” also represented their common Deity, an unseen God, whose name. (like the Hebrews) they were not allowed to speak, except through a symbol. This symbol was “Ra The Sun”. Most readers here will remember a certain Egyptian deity known also as Ra but does anyone know of the South American Inca Sun God - Illa-Ra.

The Lhasa (Tibet) Record also mentions that there were seven principal cities, which were the seats of religion, science and learning in Mu. This relates very closely to the seven Rishi cities of the subsequent Rama Empire which ruled India, and could possibly have been the original paradigm for that powerful nation, who were said to have come from Mu. It’s interesting to contemplate the close similarity between “Ra Mu’ and “Rama”, and, of course, the connection of the Sun-god name, Ra, both in Mu and later in Egypt, needs little or no explanation! So it seems that Mu may have had great colonial as well as commercial interests around much of the ancient world. In fact, the Lhasa and other records are reported to state, categorically, that Muvian colonies had been set up in all parts of the world.

Surviving Mayan texts and similar architectural building styles as well as many other cultural similarities indicates that they sailed from Mu (Atlantis) to establish civilization across both sides of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Atlantean knowledge subsequently spread to Sumeria, Egypt, the Indus ValleySouth America and Mexico, hence the obvious cultural similarities. Timeline wise the currently accepted earliest known civilization was the Sumerians followed closely by Upper Egypt and the Indus Valley Civilization. The Sumerians interacted with and eventually absorbed their predecessors in the region of the Ubaidans. The social arrangements of these “migrants” were different from their Neolithic predecessors and those whose lands they settled in. They erected great buildings, such as ziggurats, pyramids, palaces and temples. Their rulers were god-kings and priests, their language written in glyphs and pictograms.

Archaeologists and anthropologists have yet to pinpoint the region(s) on earth from where these unusually sophisticated and technologically advanced “migrants” came from. Our research indicates that at one time there must have been an ancient advanced civilization, either on a regional scale or possibly on a global scale, whose civilization abruptly ended and the surviving people were displaced. These migrants who brought civilization to Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, Egypt, and the Indus valley had to have been a remnant of this civilization. When many academics trained in the study of the ancient world look at pyramids on different continents, they see proof of humankind's division into distinct, separate civilizations. We see something distinctly different: compelling past evidence of the underlying unity of civilization. Whether you prefer to call the place they came from, Atlantis, Mu or Lemuria makes no difference, as it had to have been from what we now call Sundaland!

This isn’t so unreasonable to accept, when one considers that Lake Titicaca, which is now 13,000 feet above sea-level has the remnants of a man-made canal-sea-way running out of its western side, which once connected directly into the Pacific - at sea-level! The uplifting of the mountain chains was by no means confined to pre-human geological eras! The ancient city of Tiahuanaco, now in Bolivia, used to be on a plain a few feet above sea level. It is now nearly 13,000 feet above sea level. Some of the ancient monoliths and character inscriptions at Tiahaunaco are from Lemuria. Tiahuanco is therefore older than the surrounding mountains, which are about 12,500 years old. By using mapping calculations and astronomical measurements Archaeologist, Prof., A. Posnansky, dates it back to at least 15,000 BC or possibly 9,000 BC based upon the field of Archeo-astronomy the fact that Tiahuanco was built before the plain upon which it sits was raised to 13,000 feet the earlier date of 15,000 BC is more likely. In either case it makes it the oldest known city of antiquity. An ancient site, called the Muru (Mu Ru?) Doorway in the Lake Titicaca region, near the Bolivian border, is said to be the origin of The Children of the Light.

There is evidence that “Sundaland” submerged by rising ocean levels was previously densely populated by human beings.

Great flood myths and folklore are common among many peoples, including those of Asia and the Pacific Island regions. These flood-related tales may well relate prehistoric people’s perceptions of rising sea levels and glacial floods triggered by the end of the last Ice Age. The now undersea Sunda shelf of the Southeast Asian Peninsula, or ‘Sundaland’, seems a ripe place for research into prehistoric human settlements and perhaps even civilizations, forced to migrate to other lands or drown.

The folklore of the Tamils puts forth that their Sangam poetic institution has a history of 10,000 years, and that its center (plus the Tamil capital) has been forced to move three times due to rising ocean levels. They also tell of their nation in the past extending deep into the south, as the lost continent of Kumarikhandam.

Homo sapiens were clearly in the region of Sundaland as far back as 43,000 BC to 28,000 BC; and so almost certainly traveled and lived on the vast dry lands existing there due to the Ice Age Glaciation which resulted in lower sea levels.

The “Lost Continent” variously called Mu or Lemuria and we believe, even Atlantis, if looked at from a realistic viewpoint the area of Sundaland fits the descriptions perfectly.

All peoples, of all times, have believed to one extent or another in the existence of a “Paradise”, whether called Paradise, Dilmun or Eden, where humanity originated and developed it’s first civilization(s). This story is told throughout the world in many different civilizations. That this Paradise laid “towards the Orient” no one doubts.

It was in this area, and beyond, that agriculture (of rice and grains) and animal domestication were invented. These two crucial inventions allowed Man’s fixation to till the soil, and the resulting prosperity led to civilization and the founding of the first cities.

All this took place during the Pleistocene, the last of the geological eras, which ended a scant 11,600 years ago. The Pleistocene - also called Anthropozoic Era or Quaternary Era or even, the Ice Age. During the Pleistocene and, more exactly, during the glacial episodes that occur at intervals of about 20 thousand years, sea levels were about 330-500 feet below their present value. With this the so-called Continental Platforms with varying widths, some as much as120 miles became exposed, forming land bridges that interconnected many islands and regions.

The most dramatic of such exposures took place in the region of Indonesia, precisely the spot where we believe that humanity first flourished. The lower levels of the South China Sea then formed an immense continent, indeed “larger than Asia Minor and Libya put together”, as quoted by Plato in The Critias.

With the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, the immense glaciers that covered the northern halves of North America and Eurasia melted away. Their waters drained to the sea, whose level rose by the estimated amount of about 330-500 feet as stated above. With this rise, Sundaland (Lemuria, Mu, Atlantis) sank away and disappeared, along with most of its population.

The great civilizations that we know of, in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, the Indus Valley, Greece and the Americas were all “Atlantean” colonies founded either prior to or by the survivors of the cataclysm that destroyed Mu (or Atlantis and Lemuria). These colonists, of course, attempted to recreate their “Eden” in their new homeland.

· The parallels of all the “Gods and Goddesses” of various world religions.

· The scholastic belief by Etymologists and linguists who are positive that all world languages sprang from a common source.

· The same common story themes all over the world; the similar creation myths, the creation of man, the garden, the fall from grace, the deluge, etc.

Cataclysms of fire and water are told about time and time again in the most ancient records and mythologies and to certain degrees are strictly scientific. Floods are widely attested to in the geological record, at least on “local” levels and are also generally accepted by modern Geology. So are the massive extinctions of all sorts of species, and particularly of the large mammals which took place at the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, some 11,600 years ago. Some 70% of the former species of great mammals that existed in the former era became extinct then, including, in all probability, two species of humans, the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnons.

The legends of all peoples tell of Civilizing Heroes, Angels, Gods, or even Demons and Monsters who were their civilizers and who taught them religion, law, agriculture, metallurgy and the alphabet. These are the Fallen Angels, the same all too human heroes who fell desperately in love with the beautiful native girls, the Daughters of Man (Gen. 6). These fallen gods may not have been Astronauts, nor Spirits, but saintly men who came as missionaries from Atlantis.

Anyone who inspects a chart of the oceanic bottoms in the region of Indonesia such as the Ice Age Map of Indonesia shown below, will readily concede that the South China Sea encircled by Indonesia indeed formed a continent sized Land Mass during the last glaciation, which ended some 11,600 years ago. This chart clearly shows the sunken continent of Sundaland in Indonesia.

The map leaves no room for doubt about the reality of what we are affirming concerning Mu, Lemuria and Atlantis. We remark that this map - in contrast to most others presenting proposed sites for Mu, and/or Lemuria and/or Atlantis - is purely scientific, rather than an invention of ours or of others. It is based on the detailed geophysical reconstruction of the sea bottoms in the region in question, and portrays the areas of depth under 100 meters, which were obviously exposed during the Ice Age, when sea level dropped by that amount and even more.

In particular, please note the huge chunk of land, of continental dimensions, to the south of Southeast Asia, and which became sunken when sea level rose, at the end of the Pleistocene. Another sizable piece of land in the Indus Delta (not shown), a site intimately linked with Atlantis, also disappeared likewise, at that occasion plunging India into what is known by most scholars as the “Dark Ages of India”.

No other regions of the world display a similar event. The conclusion is that Atlantis, if Plato was in fact speaking truthfully, could only have been located in that region of the world.

As the map above shows, a huge extension - of continental size - prolonged Southeast Asia all the way down to Australia. This continental-sized land was indeed “larger than Asia [Minor] and Lybia [North Africa] put together”, exactly as Plato affirms. It is seen to have been about two or three times larger than continental-sized India. It was also far larger than Australia.

The Indonesian Islands and the Malay Peninsula that we nowadays observe are the unsunken relicts of Lemurian Atlantis, the lofty volcanic mountains that became the volcanic islands of this region, the true site of Paradise in all ancient traditions. The sunken portion of continental extension now forms the muddy, shallow bottoms of the South China Sea. It is encircled by Indonesia and forms the boundary of the Indian and the Pacific Oceans.

Then, as now, Indonesia formed the divide of the New and the Ancient Worlds; what the ancients called Ultima Thule (“Ultimate Divide”). Thule also corresponded to what our elders named the Pillars of Hercules, which, according to Plato, were placed “just in front of Atlantis” (hyper ten Heraklei Nyssai).

The Pillars of Hercules were also the impassable frontier between the Old and the New Worlds, also called Orient and Occident. These are sundered by the volcanic island arc of Indonesia. Which is the boundary of the Tectonic Plates that form the Ancient and the New Worlds. This barrier to navigation, in the region of Atlantis is also insistently mentioned in Plato and other ancient sources on Atlantis.

It has already been scientifically proven that Atlantis did not exist in the Atlantic Ocean. The only place that fits the bill and can be a possible candidate for this ancient civilization is Sundaland.

It is our contention that in Sundaland the origins of humankind will be found. From this area populations spread to many different lands and all of them point back to one place.

The orthodox consensus viewpoint goes something like this. Civilization dates to no earlier than the middle fourth millennium BC. It began in Mesopotamia spread to Egypt, and subsequently throughout the Old World. In the Americas other civilizations arose on their own - and much later - where they remained disconnected from Asia and Africa. The Old World and the New World each invented civilization independently.

The evidence for the current orthodox consensus does not support the theory. Only by ignoring a large portion of the evidence accumulated worldwide has such a theory been defensible. Many scientific communities are sadly all too like religions. In spite of all the evidence against their theory, their doctrine and dogma must be observed and preserved!

We have already provided the arguments for Sundaland as an ideal location for ‘a’ lost civilization lets see if there is anything in Plato’s works to suggest that it was ‘the’ lost civilization known as Atlantis.

How the story of Atlantis comes into all this is simply that the Greek philosopher, Plato, wrote the only known account(s) referring directly to Atlantis. In his dialogues, he tells us the story of how a much earlier Greek philosopher, Solon, visited Egypt in about 600BC, and learned of Atlantis from an Egyptian priest. The Timaeus, and The Critias dating from about 360BC are the resultant stories. What is considered a ‘key’ feature in the priest’s description of Atlantis was its size, being some sort of landmass (whether ‘island’ or ‘continent’) “bigger than Libya and Asia combined”, that was lost “in a single day and night of misfortune”. Of course, in Classical times, Asia was simply Asia Minor, and Libya was the northern part of Africa minus Egypt itself.

-In 1997 an underwater archaeological survey was conducted at Little Sole Bank off the Cornish coast n the UK, the Russian scholar Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev to lead this expedition believed the area to contain the capitol of Atlantis.

-Around the same time a British explorer John Blashford-Snell prepared his own expedition, he thought Atlantis to be located on an island in Bolivia’s Lake Poopo.

-The official Guide to Kerry blatantly mentions that the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland once formed part of Atlantis and other Irish traditions suggest it actually encompassed the whole of Ireland.

-Author Lewis Spence tended to believe that Atlantis lay off the coast of Africa.

-Architect H.R. Stahel illustrated Atlantis as a chain of islands stretching from Newfoundland in a line towards Spain.

-Dr. John Dee, the court Astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I, was sure that the newly discovered continent of America was Atlantis and even labeled it so on one of his maps.

-Francis Bacon and several other scholars of his era who saw South America as a candidate for Atlantis also shared this view.

-In 1953 Jurgen Spanuth discovered rock walls at a depth of 45 feet during a diving expedition near Heligoland an island in the North Sea. He promptly claimed the walls were the remains of Atlantis.

-Atlantis has been variously placed in Minoan Crete, Thera, Greece, Portugal, France, England, Sweden, Belgium, Prussia, Italy, Iran, Tunisia, Peru, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), The Caucasus mountains, Russia’s Azov Sea and off the coasts of Ireland, Holland, Africa, Florida and Bimini in the Bahamas and finally Atlantis has been placed in Antarctica under the ice sheet.

Compounding the confusion over the location of Atlantis is the Aztec version of their own history claiming that their ancestors settled their Empire from the east from a land called Atzlan which many scholars quickly jumped on as a rendition or version of Atlantis.

The best way to go about finding out if Sundaland may be a candidate for the location of Atlantis which we believe to be another name for Mu and/or Lemuria is to simply pick out passages from the Timaeus or Critias, and comparatively analyze them against what we know of Sundaland.

[2] “situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles”

In a Greek, or Mediterranean context, this would be known as the Strait of Gibraltar. There are two other straits situated in the Middle East, both to the east of Egypt and Greece, both joining smaller seas with the main Ocean, the Indian Ocean in this case. They are the Strait of Hormuz at the eastern end of the Persian Gulf, and the Bab-el-Mandeb, at the southern end of the Red Sea. Since the latter is situated so much closer to Egypt, we suspect that the Bab-el-Mandeb could have been the ‘Pillars’ in the original, assuming the Egyptians referred to them as such - they certainly wouldn’t have named them after the Greek hero Heracles! However, it is possible it wouldn’t have been completely navigable 11,600 years ago, because it is relatively shallow in parts. Which then points at Hormuz, which according to the current data would have been a small inlet, 16,400 years ago, but would have opened up completely by 10,600 years ago, only a millennium after the date in question. So we could assume it was navigable 11,600 years ago.

Indonesia and its neighbors are not in front of either Hormuz or the Bab-el-Mandeb, but consider the original Greek rendering of the phrase, which is: “huper Hêrakleias stêlas.”

‘Huper’ in time came to be rendered as ‘hyper’, and is a prefix we recognize in modern English as meaning ‘very much of’, ‘excessive’, etc., as in hypertension, hypermarket, and so forth. The original Greek meaning of ‘hyper’ in the above context as an adverb is something along the lines of ‘beyond’, or ‘further out’. So the real meaning is probably nearer ‘Beyond the Pillars of Heracles’ which could be anywhere including a considerable distance away from the Strait, and not right next to it.

Isn’t fatal to our theory, because we have no evidence that the Greeks ever thought that there was more than one ‘Ocean’. They had their “Oikumene”, or known world, encircled by what they thought was an all-encompassing ocean. ‘Beyond the Pillars of Heracles’ would therefore have meant anywhere out in the Ocean.

[4] “this island was the way to the other islands; and from these you may pass to the to the opposite continent, which encompasses the true ocean”

The ‘way to the other islands’ could be a reference to Oceania, including, of course, greater Australia, which would have combined Oz, Tasmania and New Guinea. Also, they - Plato or rather, Solon’s Egyptian Priest could have had the many Polynesian islands in mind. Finally, of course, ‘the opposite continent’ must be a reference to the Americas, which is opposite whether traveling west from Europe or Africa, or eastwards from Asia.

Clearly, irrespective of any controversy regarding the location of Atlantis, this demonstrates pre-Columbian knowledge of there being an American continent. Which though the Archaeological consensus does not admit this fact yet, there is a great deal of evidence to indicate the presence of many ancient visits from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

This ties in well with the latest scientific research into the meltdown at the end of the Ice Age continental shelf would have been inundated during the flood roughly 11,000 years ago

Either Plato’s reporting of events 11,600 years ago is a coincidence, or we could justifiably speculate that the Egyptians did keep records, or at least traditions, that dated back to 9,600 BC. In fact, there is an allusion to the three floods in Plato’s account, for the Egyptian priest tells Solon:

So perhaps such records did exist. Plato clearly alludes to unfavorable maritime conditions caused by underwater debris and obstacles in the region of the sunken Atlantis landmass after its demise, both in the Timaeus:

[7] “...the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.”

[8] “[the sea] became an impassable barrier of mud to voyagers sailing from hence to any part of the ocean.”

The present day South China Sea in the vicinity of the submerged Sunda Shelf is very shallow for such a large expanse of water, being never much deeper than 160 to 195 feet. This is in sharp contrast to the precipitous depths of the Atlantic or the Pacific. We could speculate that along with catastrophic flooding, seismic activity could have occurred, which would have introduced significant amounts of volcanic ash and debris into the newly formed South China Sea. Krakatoa, of 1883 explosion fame, could well have been involved, this volcano having once stood proudly between Sumatra and Java.

This could be an alternative rendition of ‘seeing the light of day’. Sundaland saw the light of day, prior to being submerged. It could possibly also refer to the altitude of the sun above of the horizon. An alternative translation of the same phrase is given below:

If Plato was implying a tropical latitude, this could explain his choice of words, because the sun would be higher in the sky at midday than in a temperate region like the Mediterranean. Indeed, at the equator, which neatly bisects the Indonesian region, the sun appears directly overhead.

Sundaland being on or near the equator fits the bill for the above description as well the following two.

[11] “the island itself provided most of what was required by them for the uses of life....also whatever fragrant things there are now in the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or essences which distil from fruit and flowers grew and thrived in that land”

This points to a lush and fertile environment, exotic fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices. Another, perhaps bigger clue to a tropical, and not temperate, climate is given below:

[12] “Twice in the year they gathered the fruits of the earth - in winter having the benefit of the rains of the heavens, and in the summer the water which the land supplied by introducing streams from the canals.”

This surely suggests a climate driven by seasonal monsoons, as is the case in much of southern and Southeastern Asia today. Perhaps by ‘winter’, Plato refers to the wet season, and ‘summer’ would refer to the dry season.

Also, it is clear from the above passage that the Atlanteans devised effective irrigation schemes, an issue that we’ll return to below.

Apparently, the land that was Atlantis was extensively forested, because Plato makes a number of references to the number of trees, as well as the resultant amount of timber available to the Atlanteans:

[14] “and much wood was available of various sorts, abundant for each and every kind of work.”

[15] “[there were] all manner of trees of wonderful height and beauty owing to the excellence of the soil”

The latter passage conveys the picture of a region dominated by tropical rainforest. We know the Indonesian islands today have Asia’s largest total rainforest area, some 279 million acres, and Malaysia’s rainforests cover some 63% of its total area of 128,000 sq. miles. Imagine just how extensive the forests would have been on the plain now forming the Sunda Shelf, prior to being submerged.

Plato also makes a curious, but rather specific, reference to ‘elephants’ roaming the lost Atlantis:

[16] “there were a great number of elephants in the island; for there was ample provision for food for all sorts of animals, both for those which live in lakes and marshes and rivers, and also those which live in mountains and on plains, so there was for the animal that is the largest and most voracious of all.”

The very mention of ‘elephants’ immediately brings southern and Southeastern Asia, or even Africa, to mind. Although, we concede, Africa would include the Atlantic seaboard of Morocco, and Mastodons were around in Florida at the end of the Ice Age, though they didn’t outlive it. However, bearing in mind what Plato wrote about the climate and vegetation, it is clear that conditions were lush enough to support a population of elephants.

Also intriguing is the physical description of the landscape, which does paint a reasonably accurate picture of the Sundaland region as it would have been during the Ice Age:

[17] “The whole country was said by [Solon] to be very lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea, but the country immediately about and surrounding the city was a level plain...smooth and even, and of an oblong shape”

Sundaland, as it was, would have had high mountains along the south coast, in the present day islands of Sumatra and Java, and also in the east, in Borneo, and all three regions would have been immediately bounded by the main ocean, but the central portion, now forming the submerged Sunda Shelf, would indeed have been a flat plain.

[18] “near the plain again, in the centre of the island....there was a mountain not very high on any side”

This could very well be a reference to the island of Natuna Besar, part of Indonesia, but halfway between peninsula Malaya (west Malaysia) and northern Borneo (east Malaysia) The highest point on the island is 3,146 feet above sea level, and adding a minimum 330 feet or a maximum of 500 feet for the lower sea level during the Ice Age wouldn’t make it much higher than 3,476 or 3,646 feet. This would make it ‘not very high’ if compared to the much loftier peaks in Malaya, Sumatra, Java and Borneo, regularly soaring to well over 6,500 to 9,900 feet above current sea level. While there are other much smaller and flatter islands in the vicinity, we are convinced that Natuna Besar is the best candidate for the mountain described in the Critias.

Additionally there a number of activities described in the Critias that we could easily reconcile with a Southeast Asian location for the civilization described.

[19] “The depth, and width, and length of this ditch were incredible, and gave the impression that a work of such extent, in addition to so many others, could never have been artificial....Further inland, likewise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut from it through the plain, and again let off into the ditch leading to the sea.”

There are visible signs of settled agriculture in the Southeast Asian area at least as early or earlier than that in the Middle East. For instance, the cultivation of rice, which needs a fair amount of irrigation, seems to have been undertaken in the Malay Peninsula as early as 9,000 years ago, about 2,000 years before the first signs in India or China.

Another aspect of human endeavor is an allusion to a vast trade network in the region:

[20] “For because of the greatness of their empire, many things were brought to them from foreign countries....meanwhile they went on constructing [their] harbors and docks”

Tiahuanaco, in Bolivia has been dated between 15,000 BC and 9,000 BC. Based upon clear geological evidence that the Altiplano on which the city was built did not rise to it’s current height until somewhere between @ 12,000 and 8,000 BC and that Tiahuanco contained a “Sea Port” shows that the city existed before then and the date of 15,000 BC is probably the more accurate. Tiahuanaco is also an archaeological enigma as well.

The monumental stone construction involved is to this day unexplained as far as cutting dressing and transporting the stones form the two quarries used; one being ten miles away and the other 50 miles away, as well as the grooves which contained bronze to support the stones one against the other when the Americas supposedly did not have a bronze age is interesting.

The Cuicuilco Pyramid in Mexico is another enigma. It was geologically dated to before 8,500 BC based upon the fact that it existed before the first volcanic eruption of Mount Xitli.

The other available evidence doesn’t go as far back as the epoch of 11,500 years ago, but what is known is that there are definite signs of a cultural and genetic diffusion from Southeast Asia dating from at least 7,000 years ago. For instance, there are 6,000 year-old statuettes found as far apart as Mesopotamia and New Guinea as well as South America depicting rather Oriental looking ladies with slanting eyes, and a type of skin scarification (performed ritually) found today only in Oceania.

Populations as far apart as Polynesia, Korea, Australia, India and the Middle East show both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA links with the population of Southeast Asia. An example is Thalassaemia, an anaemia associated with resistance to Malaria, which is endemic in a vast arc of territory stretching from the Western Mediterranean and Southern Africa right across to northern Australia and farthest Polynesia. This suggests some degree of settlement by peoples from Sundaland in the areas mentioned above.

Another tantalizing piece of evidence is the Cantino Map @1502. This early Portuguese map of the world shows what can only be a fair representation of Southeast Asia (and India), as it would have appeared during the Ice Age - namely a massive peninsula approximating to the Sunda Shelf. As the Portuguese only reached Malacca on the Malay Peninsula in 1509, obviously someone must have had the need, and ability, to map the Indonesian region upwards of 7,000 years ago. Now knowing , of course, that there are underwater structures off the coast of India (such as Poompuhur), as well as off Taiwan (such as Yonaguni), that were likely to have been above water 11,000 years ago, demonstrates that there would have been plenty of scope for a trading network centered on southeast Asia in such a distant epoch.

The third major application of technology seems to be that of both mining of metal ores, and the manufacture of metal alloys. In Critias, Plato informs us:

[21] “they dug out of the earth whatever was to be found there, solid as well as fusile”

and, also, that the citadel in the capital city was coated in various kinds of metals:

[22] “The entire circuit of the wall, which went round the outermost zone, they covered with a coating of bronze, and the circuit of the next wall they coated with tin, and the third, which encompassed the citadel, flashed with the red light of.”

Our understanding is that orichalcum was some sort of brass (an alloy of copper and zinc) [55]. The mention of bronze (an alloy of copper and tin), and tin itself, suggests that the Atlanteans had a considerable amount of both copper and tin available, considering that they were covering whole walls with them. Indonesia and Malaysia are two of the world’s largest producers of tin, as well as having significant copper reserves, along with several other metals. As much of Indonesia’s tin is extracted from offshore ‘placer’ deposits, and in fact about 40% of Indonesia’s potential reserves for these metals are actually offshore, on the Sunda Shelf is a strong piece of evidence to support our theory. The neighboring countries of Malaysia and Thailand also have significant tin deposits, including ‘placers’. These three Southeast Asian countries produce approximately one third of all the tin in the world.

Following on from the description of the citadel above is the curious passage describing the layout of the capital:

[23] “Now the largest of the zones into which a passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth, and the zone of land which came next of equal breadth; but the next two zones, the one of water, the other of land, were two stadia, and the one which surrounded the central island was a stadium only in width... All this including the zones and bridge, which was the sixth part a stadium in width, they surrounded by a stone wall on every side, placing towers and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in.”

This appears to be a mandalic construction, similar in design to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, a massive temple which consists of interesting rectangles surrounded by a moat and connected to the surrounding country by causeways. The ‘sea’ and ‘bridges’ Plato described could really have been a moat and causeways similar to those of Angkor Wat and its surrounding temples. The mandala motif seems to be a hallmark of Indian and Southeast Asian temples built to Hindu or Buddhist specifications. 11,600 years ago, Cambodia would have been an integral part of the antediluvian Sundaland landmass!

It’s a given that Angkor Wat was built sometime between the 9th and 13th centuries AD some 10,000 years after the sudden demise of Atlantis as rendered by Plato. We now know that the ‘modern’ sites of Angkor Wat and its neighbors were actually built on ‘mounds’ dating back to the deepest antiquity, these ‘mounds’ can be dated by the celestial ‘Draco correlation’ to 10,500 BC. A possibility exists that like many ancient builders when a building needed repairs or enlarging they built anew or rebuilt at the same site as the previous structure stood upon.

A slight inconsistency in Plato’s account that needs to be put in context with respect to Atlantis’ location is examined below. We are led to believe that there was a war between Atlantis (which had conquered Egypt) and the Hellenic city-state of Athens, which would of course mean that Athens would have to be as old as Atlantis before inundation in 9,600 BC something we know archaeologically can not be true. Orthodox history tells us that the only civilizations on the northern side of the Mediterranean dated from about 2,000BC at the earliest, these being Mycenae on the Greek mainland and the earlier Minoan civilization on Crete. The only possible candidate may have been the mysterious civilization on Malta, though this island, which at the end of the Ice Age would have formed a lengthy land bridge stretching all the way to Italy via Sicily, would surely have been too far west to have been considered a ‘primeval Athens’. An example from Timaeus is given below:

Earlier in the Timaeus, the Egyptian priest pointedly ridicules Solon and the Greeks by telling him:

[24] “O, Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you”

Then later, a seemingly utter contradiction regarding the venerability of the Hellenes:

[25] “and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind. She was pre-eminent in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes.”

Some have derided the entire story based upon this “evidence”. It is Plato himself however who provides an explanation:

[26] “you must not be surprised if you should perhaps hear Hellenic names given to foreigners. I will tell you the reason of this: Solon, who was intending to use the tale for his poem, enquired into the meaning of the names, and found that the early Egyptians in writing them down had translated them into their own language, and he recovered the meaning of several names and when copying them out again translated them into our language.”

Solon apparently ‘Hellenised’ the tale that originated in Egypt and transposed ‘foreign’ places names to provide a Mediterranean setting. Another thing to consider in regards to this is Plato’s complicity. The era of 360BC was one of increasing Greek confidence. The following line is a blatant ‘self-aggrandizing’ statement:

[27] “Athens was first in war and in every way the best governed of all cities”

[28] “In comparison of what then was there are remaining in small islands only the bones of the wasted body… the mere skeleton of the country being left.”

This also fits the Sundaland theory well as the tips of the mountains are all that remains for the most part of the once great continent of Sundaland.

Though not from the Timaeus or the Critias another clue to consider given that the source of the Atlantis story is from Egypt is that the Egyptians considered their ‘paradise’, or ‘primeval homeland’, as being far away to the East, ‘in the sea of the Rising Sun’ the ‘Abode of the Blessed’. The place where their civilizing gods such as Thoth and Osiris originated.

The Egyptians believed that this land could only be reached by means of a boat, or by the personal help of the gods and that it was rectangular in shape, and intersected by canals supplied from the stream by which the whole region was enclosed.

Then we have the mentions in Plato’s Dialogues of a large land mass, disappearing for ever under the flood; a shallow sea left in its place; lush, fertile soil; tropical climate; herds of elephants; an abundance of metals; early engagement in agriculture and irrigation; construction of mandalic edifices; an extensive trading network....

Sundaland more than any other site examined so far is the only place that fits the bill!

This is the best book to read on the subject. Schoch's book reads more like a Graham Hancock book:

Eden In The East

From the Author

'Eden in the East'overturns conventional ideas of the origins of western civilization in Mesopotamia. In this book I place Southeast Asia for the first time as the key to the first roots of civilisation.
At the same time I provide scientific explanations for numerous, and previously unexplained, cultural links between early Eastern and Western cultures. Notable among these links are the hundreds of myths of a great flood which forced people into boats and left only a few survivors.
I can now identify this flood as the dramatic rise in sea level at the end of the ice age that suddenly inundated vast areas of Eurasia. In other words the Biblical Flood really did occur. It had its most disastrous effects, however, in the continent of Southeast Asia - now a lost and half-sunken Eden.

As the Ice Age ended, there were three catastrophic and rapid rises in sea level. The last of these, which finished shortly before the start of civilization in Mesopotamia, may have been the one that was remembered.
These three floods drowned the coastal cultures and all the flat continental shelves of Southeast Asia. As the sea rolled in, there was a mass emigration from the sinking continent. These flood-driven refugees, carried their domestic animals with them in large ocean-going canoes in all directions.
The networks of sea trade, created by their settlements around the Indian Ocean, fertilized the Neolithic cultures of China, India, Mesopotamia and Egypt.

The Southeast Asian contributions to the building of the first cities in Mesopotamia may not have been solely technological. While they may have brought the new ideas and skills of megalithic construction cereal domestication, sea-faring, astronomy, navigation, trade and commerce, they may also have introduced the tools to harness and control the labour of the farmers and artisans. These included magic, religion, and concepts of state, kingship and social hierarchy.

The evidence:

While most alternative prehistories are based more on speculation than fact, I have found some very solid evidence; and have built on the work of specialists in many fields in addition to my own research, to support a comprehensive new picture.

The most solid facts come from oceanographic research of the last decade. It now appears that the great rise in sea level after the last ice age, known about for many years, was not gradual; three sudden ice-melts, the last of which was only 8000 years ago, had catastrophic effects on tropical coasts with flat continental shelves.
Rapid land loss was compounded by superwaves, set off by cracks in the earth's crust as the weight of ice shifted to the seas.

Archaeology holds the most accurately dated clues to the past. I have devoted two chapters to archaeological evidence found on coasts and in caves throughout the Indo-Pacific region. All of the technological 'firsts' which signalled man's emergence from the long Palaeolithic era towards the end of the Ice Age come from the Pacific Rim islands.
These include evidence of deliberate long-distance sailing and grinding of cereal flour in the Solomon islands from 30,000 years ago. The world's first pots, 12,500 years old, come from Japan. The first evidence that swamps were drained for agriculture comes from the New Guinea Highlands 9,000 years ago.

These snapshots hint at a much older history to the discovery of Neolithic skills in the East. The better archaeological preservation of the later stages of human development in Mesopotamia and Egypt, however, has given rise to the view that civilization started in the West.

I review the evidence of the spoken word in the two linguistic chapters. Experts in the history of language now recognise that Southeast Asia not Europe or West Asia was the centre of language dispersal at the end of the Ice Age.
The ancestral language of the Micronesians and Polynesians did not come out of China, as has been recently assumed, but further south over 8000 years ago out of the drowning islands of Indonesia.
As the Flood engulfed Indo- China and separated Sumatra from Malaysia the ancestral languages of the Khmers, whose descendants built Angkor Wat, moved west into India.

The most dramatic new findings in this book come out of my own research field. I have published more than 25 scientific papers on the genetic prehistory of the Indo-Pacific region over the past 15 years. Building on my initial work, in Eden in the East I have shown that genetic disorders can be used as people-markers revealing a new view of prehistoric migrations in the Indo-Pacific region.
My latest finding, made in collaboration with the Oxford Institute of Molecular Medicine, was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics in October 1998. This paper arose directly out of my research for Eden in the East. It provides compelling evidence that Polynesians and other argonauts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans originated in eastern Indonesia back in the Ice Age rather than in China, as previously thought.
This finding alone forces the realisation that the Polynesians' skills of sailing, navigation, astronomy and agriculture had their origins, back in Indonesia, during the Ice Age.

Another objective tool that I use to explore ancient East-West cultural influence in the last part of the book is comparative mythology. Uniquely shared folklore shows that counterparts and originals for nearly every Middle Eastern and European mythological archetype, including the Flood, can be found in the islands of eastern Indonesia and the southwest Pacific.
Southeast Asia is revealed as the original Garden of Eden and the Flood as the force which drove people from Paradise.

My multidisciplinary approach to prehistoric enquiry has been recognised in the academic fields of linguistics and comparative folklore.
I have been invited to present papers on my work on prehistory at international linguistic meetings. This year I contributed a chapter to a book on Flood myths in the Moluccas published by the Department of Languages and Cultures of Southeast Asia and Oceania, Leiden University (Netherlands). --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Good grief ~ I'm still working on the meaning/origin of two "hand me down words" from oldtimers in the family for a language now spoken poorly by less than 400 people.

One of them seems to mean "reindeer crossing" or "mule's crossing", and the other seems to mean "reindeer pants" ~ like a coverall you might wear out working with animals in a corral.

These words give me a clue about where some of the ancestors came from several centuries ago (from roughly 1638 to 1812). It's definitely the Sapmai, but is it in Finland or Norway?

So many questions, so few answers, and when the family members left the place, there was no nationstate that'd yet organized any of it.

Still, little as I can figure out about the individuals involved, their ancestors seem to have used a highly developed pictoglyph system as much as 9,000 years ago, and that's very important.

The Chinese now have a collection of 20,000 similar pictoglyphs to study and they think it's very nearly an ideographic system very similar to the one currently in use in China.

These places where this stuff was found were cold as the devil back then and had more than today's 168 "snow days" per year.

I can tell you why they had a lot of time on their hands, but not what their language sounded like, or what they called themselves or others, or if they even knew that others existed.

Research in all things procedes in fits and starts and progress is always questionable.

The Sundaland thesis fits into my own question ~ why is it cinnamon is so incredibly healthy for 5% of the human population to use ~ it helps us use insulin, lowers cholesterol, drives down tri-glycerides, and smells so good. Cinnamon's homeland is Cylon and Sundaland. We must have lived there a long time for an appetite like that to become written in the genes.

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