All nations, of all times, believed in the existence of a Primordial Paradise where Man originated and developed the fist civilization ever. This story, real and true, is told in the Bible and in Hindu Holy Books such a the Rig Veda, the Puranas and many others. That this Paradise lay "towards the Orient" no one doubts, excepting some die-hard scientists who hold that the different civilizations developed independently from each other in such unlikely places such as Europe, the Americas or the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

It was in the Orient, and beyond, that agriculture (of rice and grains) and animal domestication were invented. These two crucial inventions allowed Man’s fixation to the soil, and the resulting prosperity led to civilization and the founding of the first cities. It is exactly this fact that is related in the Bible, that attributes the foundation of the first city — called Henok or Chenok, ("the Abode of the Pure", in Dravida) — to Cain (Gen. 4:17). This end at the completion of its alloted time is what is meant by Henok’s lifespan of "365 years".

This name ("Pure Land")of the very first one of all cities is the same in Hindu traditions (Shveta-dvipa, Sukhavati, Atala, etc.). Even in the Amerindian traditions, Yvymaraney "the Land of the Pure", is the legendary birthplace of the Tupi-Guarani Indians of Brazil, just as Aztlan is the land of origin of the ancient Mayas of Yucatan. Man — or, more exactly, the anthropoid simians that were our ancestors — in fact arose in Africa some 3 million years ago. But these anthropoids soon spread all over Eurasia and beyond, reaching the Far Orient and Australia, inclusive, by about 1 million years ago or even more.

Indonesia, the Site of Eden
It was in Indonesia and the neighboring lands that Man, after emigrating from the semi-desertic savannas of Africa, first found the ideal climatic conditions for development, and it was there that he invented agriculture and civilization. All this took place during the Pleistocene, the last of the geological eras, which ended a scant 11,600 years ago. Though long by human standards, this is but a brief moment in geological terms.

The Pleistocene — a name which is Greek for "most recent" — is also called Anthropozoic Era or Quaternary Era or, yet, the Ice Age. During the Pleistocene and, more exactly, during the glacial episodes that happened at intervals of about 20 thousand years, sea level was about 100-150 meters (330-500 feet) below the present value. With this, a large coastal strip — the so-called Continental Platform (with a width of about 200km = 120 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 humanity first flourished. The vast expansion of the South China Sea then formed an immense continent, indeed "larger than Asia Minor and Libya put together". This is, as we shall see below, precisely what Plato affirms in his discourse on Atlantis, the Critias.

With the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, the immense glaciers that covered the whole of the northern half of North America and Eurasia melted away. Their waters drained to the sea, whose level rose by the estimated amount of about 100-150 meters quoted above. With this rise, Atlantis sunk away and disappeared for good, along with most of its population, which we estimate, based on Plato’s data, at about 20 million people, huge for the epoch in question.

Eden Was The Same as Lemurian Atlantis
More exactly, this sunken continent was Lemurian Atlantis, the larger of the two Atlantises mentioned by Plato. Lemuria was the vast prairie which the Greeks called Elysian Fields and which the Egyptians named "the Field of Reeds" (Sekhet Aaru) or, yet, "the Ancestral Land" (To-wer), the overseas Paradise where they formerly lived, in Zep Tepi ("Primordial Time"). The sunken continent became the Land of the Dead, the dreadful, forbidden region where no mariner ever ventured to go, for it was "the Land of No Return".

Interestingly enough the name "Ancestral Land" (or Serendip) is precisely the Dravidian name of Taprobane (Sumatra), the island where the Hindus placed their pristine Paradise, likewise sunken in a cataclysm. The gloomy, pestilential place that remained above the water was named Sheol ("Hell") by the Jews, and, in the spared spots, "Island of the Blest" (Makarion nesos) or Hades by the Greeks, Amenti or Punt by the Egyptians, Dilmun by the Mesopotamians, Hawaiki by the Polynesians, Svarga by the Hindus, and so on.

The Celts — whose legends are perhaps the best recollection of the sunken golden realm — called the place Avallon, Emain Abbalach or, yet, Ynis Wydr ("Island of Glass"). They also associated the eerie place with the Holy Grail and the resurrection of their dead heroes, as we detail in other, forthcoming articles of ours. And we already mentioned above the Yvymaraney of the Tupian Indians of Brazil, or the Aztlan or Atitlan of the Mayas of Yucatan, the submerged land which these Indians were obliged to flee, when it sunk underseas.

The Seminal Exodus'
The greatest of all Lemurian colonies was Atlantis, founded in India, already during the heydays of Lemuria, and which, in time, reached the apex of human grandeur. Atlantis and Lemuria had prospered for a full zodiacal era (2,160 years), when the great cataclysm destroyed their common world, at the end of the Pleistocene, some 11,600 years ago.

The scant survivors of the cataclysm that sunk Lemuria away were forced to flee their destroyed Paradise, moving first to India, the site of Atlantis, which had been spared in its northern, loftier portion. But the global catastrophe had also caused the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, and the melting of the Himalayan glaciers caused huge floods of the rivers of Asia, rendering the region unfit for human habitation. These floods ravaged this remainder of Atlantis, already greatly destroyed by the original cataclysm, the giant conflagration of the Indonesian volcanoes and the huge tsunamis they caused, as well as by the plague that ravaged their country in their wake.

Again, this doomed people was obliged to flee, emigrating, along the ensuing millennia, to remote places such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, North Africa, Europe, North Asia, the Near Orient and even Oceania and the Americas. Some came on foot, in huge hordes like those of the Israelite exodus. Others came by ship, like Noah in his Ark or Aeneas with his fleet, to found the great civilizations of the ancient world.

The great civilizations that we know of, in the Indus Valley, in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, Mexico and even the Americas were all Atlantean colonies founded by the survivors of the cataclysm that destroyed the twin Paradises of Atlantis and Lemuria. These colonists, of course, attempted to recreate their Eden in their new homeland.

The newcomers named each topographical feature after the archetypes of the pristine abode just as immigrants will do the same nowadays. Such is the reason why we keep finding vestiges of Atlantis everywhere, from Brazil and North America to Spain, Crete, and even Africa and North Europe. All these ancient civilizations spoke of Civilizing Heroes such as Manu, Noah, Aeneas, the Oannés, Hotu Matua, Quetzalcoatl, Kukulkan, Bochica and, of course, Atlas and Hercules, the omnipresent Twins that founded civilizations everywhere.


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