by Rand Flem-Ath

from Flem-Ath Website

I’d like to be able to say that I’ve been fascinated by Atlantis since I was a child. But the site of the great lost civilization unfolded itself to me quite by accident.

In the summer of 1976 I’d been unemployed for nearly a year and had finally stuck my foot in the door for a job interview with the public library (I’m a librarian) in Victoria, British Columbia (Canada). The interview was on a Friday. It promised to be a very long weekend as I waited to find out if I had the job. As a distraction from counting the hours I decided to try my hand at a screenplay.

A science fiction story about a group of aliens marooned on Earth some ten thousand years ago appealed to me. The aliens would hibernate while they waited on help from their home located in a very distant star system. I jotted down some ideas: the aliens were under ice, they had bases in Peru, in Mexico, in Egypt, in India, on all the continents. As I wrote this down Donovan’s "Hail Atlantis" come over the radio and it struck me that the lost continent would be the perfect place to locate my aliens. Liking the hibernation notion I decided to put Atlantis under ice (as a Canadian, the idea of surviving in ice is never more than a subconscious level away) so I jotted down: "Atlantis = Antarctica."
 

I knew nothing about Atlantis so I jogged off to the library to do some research and soon discovered that everything we know about the lost continent comes from the Greek philosopher, Plato. In L. Sprague de Camp’s book LOST CONTINENTS, I came across a map of Atlantis reproduced from ancient Egyptian sources by a Jesuit priest (Athanasius Kircher 1601-1680). Kircher placed Atlantis in the North Atlantic Ocean but strangely, put north at the bottom of the page. The Kircher map had to be studied up-side-down.

This intriguing depiction propelled me to find out all I could about ancient maps. I tackled the library’s card catalogue and almost immediately came across Charles Hapgood’s MAPS OF THE ANCIENT SEA KINGS: EVIDENCE OF ADVANCED CIVILIZATION IN THE ICE AGE. It took my breath away. Ancient maps and ice woven together in the same book: exactly what I needed for my story.

As I flipped through Hapgood’s work I suddenly came to a full stop at a depiction of Antarctica without its ice cover. I remembered Kircher’s map. The two were so close in so many particulars. Since Antarctica wasn’t discovered until the early part of the 19^th century and its ice free shape was unknown until 1958, the Egyptian Map of Antarctica represents solid evidence that someone had mapped Antarctica long before Europeans ever landed. How far in the past I didn’t know but Hapgood argued that the entire world had been mapped by some unknown, ancient, maritime culture which had been destroyed by an Earth Crust Displacement.

In the library’s pamphlet file I found a brochure produced by the U.S. Naval Support Force on Antarctica called INTRODUCTION TO ANTARCTICA. I had just read Plato’s account of Atlantis which he claimed gave an account of the earth’s geography FROM Atlantis.

On the 30^th of August 1976 I notarized a think piece called "Atlantis and the True Ocean". It began:

"Atlantis, the legendary lost continent of antiquity, has haunted men’s minds for countless centuries. This lost and fascinating continent may lie beneath our own vast, frozen, and little known continent of Antarctica! Our search for Atlantis was led astray as long ago as Plato’s time. Plato records the first known reference to Atlantis. Its location is described as being in the ’true ocean’. Pre-satellite generations have assumed this ocean to be the Atlantic. Viewed from a satellite perspective, the Earth has but one true ocean and the continent of Antarctica is in its center."

The U.S. Naval projection shows the world as seen FROM the shores of Antarctica. Antarctica and Atlantis were both island continents in the middle of the "True" or "Real" ocean which I learned was what oceanographers now call the "World Ocean." (Atlantean Worldview).

Seen FROM Antarctica a modern globe matched perfectly the ancient Egyptian’s account of the world as seen FROM Atlantis. This ancient geography was in fact far more advanced than our own which made sense if Atlantis was, as Plato’s account argues, an advanced civilization.

I had found my quest.

Little did my wife Rose and I suspect it would take nearly two decades of sometimes frustrating, always fascinating research to assemble all the evidence and finally bring it together in WHEN THE SKY FELL: IN SEARCH OF ATLANTIS.

By the way, I got the job.