Where did the Atlanteans go?

Somebody has been bugging me to post. However, I am reading an extremely interesting book. Yet, I suppose I will want to keep up my one-month-one-post habit...

So nothing sophisticated.

Any faithful reader of this lonely blog would know that Atlantis is one of my pet topics. Perhaps many would wonder why a staunch Christian would indulge in such New Age 'nonsense'. This post will not offer any explanation. I would carelessly assume that Atlantis existed in some form and obliterated itself at some point. And then I would move on. This sort of speed things up a little, yea.

So, Atlantis fell. An advanced civilisation possessed of inner and outer science--a glorious achievement of humanity lasting between 5000-10000 years? Who knows? I don't. So where did the survivors go? Let us consider a few possibilities.

Scenario 1: The Atlanteans never existed and we don't really have to consider this question. Fortunately, this elegant solution has been rendered impossible by my preemptive assumption two paragraphs ago.

Scenario 2: The Atlanteans deliberately obliterated all visible signs of themselves. If the Atlanteans could wage a war that made an entire continent disappear, a thorough cleaning of this kind would not be peculiarly difficult. The bigger question is why they would trouble themselves to undertake a literally fruitless project. Indeed, why didn't they rebuild? Perhaps they could not. Too weakened, maybe dying of some mysterious plague or of monstrous insects (grasshoppers maybe). But if so, they should be too feeble to demolish their grand works. Or destruction is always more fun and easier than creation. Or perhaps at the end of the war, there was not much left to demolish. Possible too--except that there has been NO unmistakeable signs of Atlanteans or their works. If they did clean up their traces deliberately, it must have been a meticulously organised work. Still, why bother? Perhaps they wanted to be forgotten. Perhaps they knew that whatever humans can remember we can always recreate. After all, they were humans, not gods. What they could do, we certainly can do. Perhaps they looked at themselves, did not like what they see, and did not want future generations to become like them. Perhaps we have become like them, or dwarfed versions anyway, in the end. They should have saved the effort, or maybe they postponed our emulation and that might prove to be our salvation.

Scenario 3: The Atlanteans wiped out most of their works. But they deliberately left a few tantalising hints of their presence. They even left their technology or magic intact somewhere. While the field of pyramids and sphinx have inspired many books from the lunatic fringe, there is a particularly interesting (and sane) book by geologist Robert M. Schoch called 'Pyramid Quest' (published 2005) that summarises many of the interesting mysteries of the Giza complex. One of them happens to be the water erosion features of the Sphinx, with all that may entail. Certainly I think the book makes a pretty convincing case that conventional Egyptology may have severely underestimated the date of construction of the pyramids and the Sphinx. An Atlantean connection? Maybe.

Guess it may also have the 'feel' of Giza itself that has inspired so much interest. I certainly cannot forget it though it has been 9 years since I left it.

New Age? Who cares. I seek truth wherever it is found. What is madness in one age will turn out to be the genius of another. Though that may imply another age of waiting.