5 Reasons Why Atlantis is Making a Comeback

Posted on October 4, 2013 by andrew

I love a good Atlantis story, and I despair a bit that Atlantis has never quite broken into modern pop culture, at least not in a way with much gravitas.

For sci-fi geeks, there was the Stargate Atlantis series and for kids there was Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Some big name authors have written about Atlantis, like Clive Cussler with his espionage thriller Atlantis Found, but generally Atlantis stories are considered genre and niche.

It’s time for a full-on Atlantis blitz, on the order of vampires, post-apocalyptic dystopias and zombies. Here’s why the time is right.

5. The Every-Thirty-Years Theory: Sociologists say our culture is cyclical.
Political, social and even artistic trends tend to fall in and out of fashion every
thirty years.

This is good news for Atlantis fans because the last decade of major Atlantis popularity was the 1980s. Here’s a look back in thirty year spans.

“Psychic” Edgar Cayce

1920s:

Atlantis makes its silver screen début with the French/Belgian silent movie L’Atlantide, Scottish journalist and folklorist Lewis Spence publishes his seminal book The History of Atlantis. Pop-psychic Edgar Cayce claims that he can contact ancient Atlanteans.

From the 1959 film adaptation of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth

1950s:

Jules Vernes’ Journey to the Center of the Earth is made into a movie. Pulp author Lester Del Rey, who will become the founder of Ballantine’s sci fi/fantasy imprint Del Rey books, publishes Attack from Atlantis. Atlantis:The Lost Continent becomes the first Hollywood studio production about the legend (OK, that’s stretching decades just a touch; the movie came out in 1961).

Screen shot of Atari’s Atlantis

1980’s:

Best-selling Australian author Marion Zimmer Bradley takes on Atlantis with her epic Fall of Atlantis. The award-winning film Cocoon is based on extraterrestrial myths about Atlantis. Atari is inspired and releases an Atlantis video game.

4. Everyone loves Greek Mythology: Recent projects about Ancient Greece are a warm-up for the BIG Atlantis breakthrough.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters There’s Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson book series and movie franchise, the 2010 reboot of Clash of the Titans (from the original 1981 movie — see #5 above), along with films like 300 and Immortals.

3. Young adult fantasy author T.A. Barron just released the Atlantis Rising series.

TA Barron's Atlantis Rising

2. BBC’s Atlantis mini-series just came to the small screen for Fall 2013.

via YouTube

1. You know where this was leading: Andrew J. Peters’ The Seventh Pleiade, upcoming in November 2013, begins a new epic series retelling the story of Atlantis. (And is available for pre-order by the way).

*Note: This article is not meant to be taken entirely seriously 🙂

What did the Atlanteans look like?

Posted on October 18, 2011 by andrew

A friend who started reading my manuscript asked me this question recently, and it caught me by surprise.

I had a good picture in my head of most of the characters. But I used physical description sparingly in my manuscript because, as a reader, I like letting my imagination shape my view of a character’s appearance.

The exception is when there’s some well-placed, evocative trait. I’m reading David Malouf’s RANSOM now, and Hermes’ “golden hair hanging in ringlets” is a great example.

But the question made me realize I had taken a lot for granted with my readers. Atlantis conjures up a huge range of images, from extraterrestrials to mermaids. So the ancient world sensibility I was trying to get across may not be immediately apparent even though the character and place names should be familiarly ancient world—Greek and Egyptian in particular—to some.

The main character is named Aerander. His love interest is Calyiches. His nemesis is the High Priest Zazamoukh.

Without geeking out too much (hopefully), let me explain that the inspiration for my Atlantean world comes from the cultural diffusion theory proposed by Lewis Spence. Atlantean civilization began around the 10,000 B.C.E.. It declined ten centuries later, and was destroyed by natural disasters and invaders from Western Europe. Were there survivors and what happened to them are questions that my novel THE SEVENTH PLEIADE seeks to answer.

According to Spence, Atlantis was located in the vicinity of the Canary Islands, where conditions were optimal for a flourishing Neolithic civilization. Its evidence lies in the spread of an “Atlantis culture complex” most notably to North Africa, Mediterranean Europe and Central and South America.

My premise is the Atlanteans migrated from the Iberian peninsula—though they claimed to be descendants of titan gods—and they came into contact with Northern and Western Africans (who I call Mauritanians and Tamanans), Northern and Southern Americans (who I call Lost Pangeans and Lemurians), and Europeans (who I call Azilians).

As such, Atlanteans and their contemporaries wouldn’t have looked much different than ancient world peoples, or us modern day folks for that matter.

Atlanteans didn’t have blue skin or gills or fishtails.

Marvel Comics interpretation of the Atlanteans, Homo mermanus

An interesting theory is the Atlanteans are ethnically linked to the ancient Guanches and Berbers whose origins have been elusive to anthropologists.

The Guanches were first described by a 12^th century Arab geographer Muhammad Al-Idrisi who visited the Canary Islands and found a mysterious indigenous population. He wrote about visiting a village: “whose inhabitants have long and flaxen hair and the women are of a rare beauty.” No one knows how the Guanches came to arrive on the Atlantic island.

Similar to the ancient Berbers (who lived in the evocatively named Atlas Mountains of Northern Africa), the Guanches are described as physically distinct from their Mediterranean and North African neighbors. They were tan in complexion but tall in stature and tended to be fair haired. These characteristics lend themselves to a rich mythology, which I propose the Atlanteans capitalized on. They were the sons of gods, the “chosen ones.” With their high-minded claims to heredity, they managed to colonize the pre-historic world.

Here are some of my references for what the Atlanteans might have looked like.

A Guanche statue from Tenerife, Canary Islands

One of the Guanche Statues from Tenerife, Canary Islands

A young woman of Guanche descent

French star soccer player Zinedine Zidane, of Berber descent

French actor Fu’ad Ait Aatou of Berber descent

Roman Emperor Septimus Severus, ancient Berber heritage

Songs, Poetry and Images Inspired by Atlantis

Posted on September 1, 2010 by andrew

Suffice it to say, my fantasy series-in-progress travels well-trod literary territory. My interest in Atlantis came late in life—just five years ago—and prior to my research, my only frame of reference was Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and the ubiquitous nautical namesakes–Atlantis car washes, Atlantis diners. There’s even a gay cruise line called Atlantis.

My hope is to bring a fresh perspective to the legend while remaining faithful to classic mythology. My favorite texts on the subject are Lewis Spence’s History of Atlantis, Edith Hamilton’s Mythology and Frank Joseph’s The Atlantis Encyclopedia. The latter is literally an A to Z reference book and a fascinating read.

Here’s some poetry, lyrics and imagery I found to keep me inspired.

Atlantis

Being set on the idea

Of getting to Atlantis,

You have discovered of course

Only the Ship of Fools is

Making the voyage this year,

As gales of abnormal force

Are predicted, and that you

Must therefore be ready to

Behave absurdly enough

To pass for one of The Boys,

At least appearing to love

Hard liquor, horseplay and noise.

Should storms, as may well happen,

Drive you to anchor a week

In some old harbour-city

Of Ionia, then speak

With her witty sholars, men

Who have proved there cannot be

Such a place as Atlantis:

Learn their logic, but notice

How its subtlety betrays

Their enormous simple grief;

Thus they shall teach you the ways

To doubt that you may believe.

If, later, you run aground

Among the headlands of Thrace,

Where with torches all night long

A naked barbaric race

Leaps frenziedly to the sound

Of conch and dissonant gong:

On that stony savage shore

Strip off your clothes and dance, for

Unless you are capable

Of forgetting completely

About Atlantis, you will

Never finish your journey.

Again, should you come to gay

Carthage or Corinth, take part

In their endless gaiety;

And if in some bar a tart,

As she strokes your hair, should say

“This is Atlantis, dearie,”

Listen with attentiveness

To her life-story: unless

You become acquainted now

With each refuge that tries to

Counterfeit Atlantis, how

Will you recognise the true?

Assuming you beach at last

Near Atlantis, and begin

That terrible trek inland

Through squalid woods and frozen

Thundras where all are soon lost;

If, forsaken then, you stand,

Dismissal everywhere,

Stone and now, silence and air,

O remember the great dead

And honour the fate you are,

Travelling and tormented,

Dialectic and bizarre.

Stagger onward rejoicing;

And even then if, perhaps

Having actually got

To the last col, you collapse

With all Atlantis shining

Below you yet you cannot

Descend, you should still be proud

Even to have been allowed

Just to peep at Atlantis

In a poetic vision:

Give thanks and lie down in peace,

Having seen your salvation.

All the little household gods

Have started crying, but say

Good-bye now, and put to sea.

Farewell, my dear, farewell: may

Hermes, master of the roads,

And the four dwarf Kabiri,

Protect and serve you always;

And may the Ancient of Days

Provide for all you must do

His invisible guidance,

Lifting up, dear, upon you

The light of His countenance.

WH Auden

Moon Turn the Tides Gently Away

So down and down and down and down

and down and down we go.

Hurry my darling we mustn’t be late

for the show.

Neptune champion games to an aqua

world is so very dear.

“Right this way,” smiles a mermaid,

I can hear Atlantis full of cheer.

I can hear Atlantis full of cheer…

Jimi Hendrix

Atlantis – A Lost Sonnet

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder

that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades,

not to mention vehicles and animals—had all

one fine day gone under?

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.

Surely a great city must have been missed?

I miss our old city—

white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting

under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe

what really happened is

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word

to convey that what is gone is gone forever and

never found it. And so, in the best traditions of

where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name

and drowned it.

Eavan Boland

Did Atlantis Exist?

Posted on July 14, 2010 by andrew

Here’s a shocking departure from my usual bloggerings. In returning to my Stories from Atlantis series, I’ve had my source material on my mind and figured I’d share some thoughts about it here.

I’ve set aside the angel project. My brain got wrapped around a street lamp, a plot and structure street lamp. The manuscript is in the intensive care unit in critical condition. That’s the last bad metaphor I’ll use and the last thing I’ll say about it.

Everyone thinks they know something about Atlantis—it sunk in the sea, its citizens took a space ship to another planet, or it’s protected beneath the ocean in a bubble. Nowadays, Atlantis is regarded as myth and legend, but that wasn’t always the case. In the 19th century and early 20th century, many respected archeologists and geologists believed they could find evidence of the ancient civilization. In the 1930s, “psychic” Edgar Cayce told people he communicated with Atlanteans during hypnotic trances. Cayce wrote a number of books about his paranormal conversations, and they were a lot less interesting than you might imagine.

Atlantis is part of our collective unconscious, a Jungian concept. The collective unconscious is a cerebral storehouse for universal ideas, inherited over generations. It’s the place for archetypes and myths, the flood story for example, or Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth. In modern terms, you could say it’s the source of urban legends.

Psychology and “hard” science have only become distinct relatively recently. It was always a curiosity of mine how scientists sought to prove the veracity of Atlantis before the age of cold, rational science.

The classic source material comes from Plato who wrote about a technologically advanced society pre-dating the Greeks by 9,000 years. His description placed the ancient continent west of the Pillars of Heracles (the Strait of Gibraltar), so Plato “purists” went looking for evidence in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North Africa. Some, like British archeologist Lewis Spence, argued that the Canary Islands are vestiges of a much larger land mass that sunk. Only its highest mountain peaks remain above the water.

There’s a school of thought that says Plato was referring to the island of Santorini in the Mediterranean Sea where pre-Greek Minoan civilization thrived for years until it was destroyed suddenly by a volcano. Others have placed Atlantis in Indonesia or even North America. Cayce was “told” that the Atlanteans used to live in the Caribbean—the Bimini Islands.

While Spence never produced much in the way of compelling evidence, he launched a cultural diffusion theory that was wonderfully evocative. Comparing a host of ancient African, Central American and North American cultures, he noted a variety of similarities in language, religion and architecture (e.g. the pyramids). How could this have happened when cultures were separated by the unpassable Atlantic Ocean? Spence insists it was because there was a continent in the middle of the ocean facilitating travel. Spence believed that bull sacrifice was an important Atlantean tradition that was passed on to many cultures, even evident today through the popularity of bull fighting.

I’m predisposed to doubt just about everything, but it’s tempting to believe that Atlantis was real. If I was to believe, the most compelling explanation comes from geology. By Plato’s account, Atlantis disappeared around 10,000 B.C.E. That was the tail end of an ice age. So, it’s possible to imagine that while much of Europe was covered in glacier, some people migrated south to warmer climes and traveled a land bridge from coastal Spain to an island. There, with better terrain and an abundance of food, they developed a thriving society. But with global warming, ocean levels rose. The island was washed away. Maybe there were survivors who brought their language and traditions to other parts of the world. Maybe we’re all descendants of the Atlanteans.

For more about Lewis Spence, check out this.

Andrew J. Peters

Author, educator, and activist

Tag Archives: Lewis Spence