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

Didn't I read a year or so ago that someone had discovered an ancient city under an inland sea high up in the Andes somewhere and was claiming it was Atlantis?

That more likly to be the lost city of El Dorado (lost city of gold)

No, definitely Atlantis. That was what made the theory so peculiar. The guy could account for some of the strangeness (submerged high up in the mountains) by referring to geological shifts. As for the difference between mid-Atlantic and mid-South America, that he just put down to the vagueries of the descriptions! Actually, I think the theory was a bit more scientific than that, but I don't remember the details.

On the subject of 'vague descriptions' and reasoning that doesn't quite hold water ...

Here in Britain (don't know where you are) we have a series called 'Horizon' that looks at science / sort of science. About 6 - 8 weeks ago they did a two-parter on Atlantis. One of the guys trying to prove 'Yes, it did exist and it was the basis of the Egyptian and Central American and Ancient Cambodian civilisations' was Graham Hancock, who has written books on the subject. One central strand of his reasoning is that the 3 pyramids at Giza form the same alignment as the stars in the 'belt' of the constellation Orion as it was over 10,000 years ago (or something), and that certain temples in Ankor Wat (spelling?) form the constellation Draco. Astronomers and archaeologists jumped all over his theory on the grounds that:

1) There are over 80 pyramids in Egypt and only 3 line up with any aspect of any constellation. These 3 only line up if you hold a star map 'upside down', and anyway were built in that aligment because the geology of the area wouldn't allow them to be built any other way.
2) There are 60+ temples in Ankor Wat and only a few sort of line up with the constellation. This constellation has no significance to the local people and never has, and the temples were built where they were for well known historical reasons.

Hancock's attempts to wriggle away from the criticisms sounded more and more feeble - not all the pyramids/temples need to be used, the alignment doesn't have to be exact, it doesn't matter that it's the wrong way up ... What finished it for me was when the program produced evidence that a civilisation had built a number of important buildings to line up with the constellation Leo. The alignment isn't exact (Hancock says it doesn't need to be) and there are a great many more buildings in the area (Hancock says that doesn't matter). I can't remember all the buildings, but they included Grand Central Station, the Rockefeller Centre, Madison Square Gardens, a theatre and a police station. Location - New York!

Seriously, though, I believe that Atlantis probably did exist, but not as the 'lost civilisation with all the scientific knowledge' that some people believe in. It was probably just another ancient civilisation, fairly advanced compared with some others, but not 'rocket science'.

I'm a UK (London - some would consider it a different planet, I suppose) resident, since you ask.

I didn't see that Horizon, but I've seen Ghostbusters and I'm prepared to believe that there are buildings in NY arranged along ancient ley lines or matching the constellations. There has to be _some_ explanation for the city....

There are people whispering that Antartica is in fact Atlantis. In the early Middle ages maps existed where there was an island, somewhere around the equator, called atlantis (or something familiar). The form of that island was drawn with astonishing accuracy (as if they were able to fly and draw it from a high altitude). Unfortunately, most maps disappeared. Only few remain. It is a fact that the form of that island resembles strongly to the form of Antartica, even though it is now covered by miles of ice. An expanation? At a certain point in history between two ice-periods, the temperature decreased rapidly (the start of the next ice-period). As a consequence, icebergs started growing and growing....until the earth turned around a different axis because of the heavy weight of the ice. Atlantis moved to the southpole and all inhabitants left or died.

Antarctica has been a frozen land for millions of years, and I mean back to the time of the dinosaurs. Inland Antarctica (rather than the coastal bits where penguins and seals live and breed) has been too cold to support life since before the great extinction 65 million years ago. And man wasn't around then, so the 'inhabitants' couldn't have left.

Antarctica hasn't always been where it is today, but it got there by continental drift over millions of years, not because the weight of the ice tilted the Earth's axis. Besides, what about the weight of the ice in the Arctic. The Antarctic is ice over land. The Arctic is solid ice!

Also I think(not sure) ice is penetrable by sonar Which they would have used.

The north and south poles are considerably differnent! The arctic is not solid ice, it is ice floating on water, making it much more dynamic than the antarctic. Arctic ice sheets can move much more than the antarctic ones around the coast of Antarctica.

While I fully agree with Continental Drift and it is true that much of Antarctica has been frozen for millions of years, there is the theory of Earth-Crust-Displacement. I forget who first proposed the idea and some of the specifics but it goes something along these lines...

During periods of glaciation, ice sheets can form unevenly around the poles. If a large amount of ice forms on one side of the Earth and not the other, the large mass of ice can generate huge forces in the Earth's crust as the planet rotates. (The effect can be seen by placing a weight on a spinning-top.) This force can become strong enough to make the entire crust shift position, making the rotational poles appear to move in relation to the crust (when really the crust is moving over the poles). This has happend a number of times in the Earth's recent (geological) history.

Before the last shift, part of Antarctica lay in a temperate latitude with it's other side near the south pole and the north pole was located in northern Canada. Massive ice sheets built up over time across much of the North American continent eventually triggering a shift of the crust. The poles moved to their present location, moving Antarctica from the temperate zone into polar latitudes.

The effect of this is that the old North American ice sheet would suddenly melt and the sea at the north pole would freeze over. This would cause a large rise in global sea levels, flooding many coastal areas - explaining the flood that Plato said destroyed Atlantis - long before Antarctica could completely freeze over.

...Phew! I think that covers it! There are, of course, other reasons for Antarctica being the location of Atlantis, but I must rest my weary fingers now!...

Sorry, but it still doesn't work. Even if you are right about the 'Earth Crust Displacement' theory, Antarctica still could not have been Atlantis. When I said that Antartica was a frozen land millions of years ago, I meant it. There is evidence of dinosaurs living in the Antarctic, but they died out when it got too cold too support life. This was long before the advent of man, so even tilting and flooding you mention does not explain the demise of Atlantis. The tilting would have been gradual, so the dinosaurs would have tried to stay in the warmer bits, but they still died out millions of years before the 'Great Extinction' (65 million years ago).

Oh, and I know that the Arctic is floating ice. When I said 'solid ice' I meant that the ice wasn't resting on land, which it is in the Antarctic.

OK, I won't keep banging the E.C.D. drum because I cannot remember enough of the theory to put forward a well informed argument! I have studied geology in the past and will readily agree with the points you make! It is only recently I have come to question some aspects of the commonly accepted teachings, upon hearing convincing arguments, from various sources, for the theory of E.C.D.

I do know, however, that fossilised tropical flora dating from the Tertiary period has been fount on Antarctica and in 1986 fossilised wood and plants were discovered from around 100,000 years ago. Sedimentary core samples have also been taken showing that rivers were running into the sea as late as 4000BC! Plant life cannot grow in Antarctica's present climate so conditions there must have been alot warmer than they are today.

Hang on - I thought I said I wasn't going to keep banging on... oh well, sorry!!!

On another front, ancient maps exist that have been copied from generation to generation that acurately show the coastline of Antarctica - one copy of which was compiled by the Ottoman Turk Admiral Piri Reis in 1513, who was an expert sailor and map-maker. He produced his map, from earlier works, centuries before Antarctica was discovered let alone charted by modern scientists! These maps have been proven to be genuine, so how can they show what they should not be able to show?!?!

Thanks Red Devil !! You supported the remarks I made some weeks ago (with some more scientific arguments). Antarctica is one of the mysteries on earth, and the theory that Antarctice is in fact Atlantis makes it even more interesting.