h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Two of my maxims are:
#1. Absence of evidence DOES NOT mean evidence of absence.
(No evidence will be forth coming so long as no-one's looking for it!!)

#2. Will the available evidence hold up in a court of law?
(Whether right or not; Death Row is full of people convicted merely on the strength of circumstantial evidence, without a corpse or smoking gun!!)


Part ONE:
Recently there has been considerable debate over so-called "Lost or Sunken Continents"; and whether they actually existed in reality or in peoples imagination. Unfortunately whenever this subject is raised; inevitably the 'A' word comes up (Atlantis), with all the associated baggage attached.
Plato's ATLANTIS was allegory based on some truth.
It just wasn't where he said it was. He was a Greek first and foremost.
Therefore anything he wrote about would have been "SPUN" for the home audience. Thats why his dialogues were Greco-centric in their telling. Remember that he said the Greeks were victorious ??
The Egyptian priests who originally told Solon of the land beyond the "Straits of the Pillars" didn't mean the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar); but in fact meant the mouth of the RED SEA.
(Hey!! Its not like Plato was the first or last writer to 'embellish' the facts in order to sell a good yarn!! )
Ever since Plato's dialogues concerning an advanced civilisation that sank beneath the waves following some "Wrath of the Gods" catastophe; people have tried to place this fabled land everywhere from the Mediterrean, Africa, the mid Atlantic, the Americas and even an impossibly ice free Antarctica.
We now know that there is absolutely NO geological possibility of there ever being a missing mid-Atlantic continent.
Even the planet Mars has been offered up as the location of the 'true' Atlantis. Maybe they were keen watchers of the TV show 'Star Gate Atlantis' (!?!) Then theres the starry eyed New Ager's insistance that the Atlanteans were a divine race of being who (possibly with the aid of extra-terrestrials) had flying machines and energy crystals and blah blah blah,...ad infinitum.
Add to this the Third Reich and Heinreich Himmler's so called Master Race of Atlantis; also conveniently located under two miles of Antarctic ice.(Hence the Nazi mythology of "Ice and Iron")
And you can begin to see why "The 'A' word" is such a negatively loaded subject, that most sane investigators give a wide berth.

Fortunately, recent scientific research into this subject has started to turn up some interesting facts and figures.
For example, where could you hide a piece of real estate the size of a small continent (or a.k.a. 'Sub-Continent') without resorting to flights of fancy about an ice free Antarctic or a non-existant mid-oceanic land mass?
A very convincing answer to that was put forward by several people in the late 1990's. Known as the Sunda Shelf or SUNDALAND; this region of Southeast Asia is bordered by Indonesia to the south, Malaysia to the west, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam to the north, the South China Sea to the northeast and the island of Borneo to the west.
Now covered by the shallow seas of the Gulf of Thailand, the South China Sea and the Malacca Straits; this portion of the globe was dry land until the end of the period of ice age known as the Younger Dryas around the eighth millennium B.C.

For many years, Southeast Asia was generally considered an archeological and cultural backwater, living in the shadow of neighbouring China and India. However, the recent discoveries of 9000 year old agricultural terracing in places such as Kuk in the Papua New Guinnea highlands. The Kuk Swamp terraces in Papua New Guinnea were constructed aprox. 3000 years before the development of agriculture in the so-called 'fertile cresent' area in the mid-east.
Evidence of 7000 year old rice cultivation in the region around Ban Chiang in Thailand, have meant that this region was 'agriculturally developed' a full millennium BEFORE China and at least 1500 years before India. Also found at Ban Chiang is evidence of copper and bronze smithing dating back to nearly 1800 years before the first such finds in the middle east. Although in all fairness; I must state that over the last 2 decades there have been many attempts to date Ban Chiang finds using [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator] isotope. Unfortunately it appears that no two experts can agree (!?!) But recent dendrochronological (dating using tree-rings) studies of worked timber found at the site have produced tentative dates around the fifth & sixth millennium B.C.
Indonesia, Malaysia and Southern Thailand are rich sources of both tin and copper deposits, the two basic ingredients of BRONZE. Both these minerals have been mined and smelted in this region for several thousand years.

Oooops ..... must dash!! Gotta go back to work (sigh)
I will continue this post later.
Until then......see ya