Atlantis in the Andes & Pie in the Sky

(Originally posted on Wednesday December 17th 2008)

I have always been interested in the esoteric and the strange, had a tendency towards the fantastical and far-fetched. Sometimes it is the only logical response to a world that really does not care about the feelings and wishes of the individual at all. So it happens that I have heard most of the enduring legends and seen the fleeting images that we have of them. Bigfoot, Area 51, the Bermuda Triangle, the Nazca Lines...and Atlantis.

I am currently laid up with the flu and as a result seem to find myself watching many of the documentaries on the National Geographic Channel that I have seen in the past. And today it was the one on "Altantis in the Andes" that reminded me of the most frustrating elements of such unproven myths and legends.

The documentary focuses for the most part on a cartographer who thinks he has found evidence of the existance of a civilisation on the Alta Plana in South America that he claims fits Plato's description of Atlantis better than any other. The man is no loon, he has a convincing argument that there is a very advanced civilisation just waiting to be discovered in the area which could rewrite the history of that part of the world.

I just don't see why it has to be Atlantis?

The usual intellectual squinting and selective siting of evidence presents a somewhat questionable claim that this is Atlantis, but one of the "experts" used the stance that must be so tired by now:"Heinrich Schliemann found Troy!"

This statement falls into the same catagory as the: "they laughed at insert pioneer in the field the crackpot is supposedly working in here" line. It seems that when no good evidence presents itself for a radical claim this statement is somehow thought to be wise and sage, pointing out that people have ignored pioneers and visionaries in the past and look foolish for it in hindsight.

On an intellectual level this annoys me due to the fact that it mistakes scientific and logical method for arrogance. Exceptional claims require exceptional proof and the burden is with the party making the claim. On the occasions that science accepted knowledge have been proven wrong they have been changed, theories discarded and textbooks re-written accordingly. On the reverse it is seldom seen that those making outlandish claims do the same, they instead plead prejudice and conspiracy against their ideas.

Because the Wright Brothers, Gallileo, Copernicus and Einstein proved the doubters wrong does not mean every outspoken lunatic can claim them as precedent!

On the actual level of factual accuracy this one statement in particular galled me in that a so called expert would claim Schliemann discovered "Troy", when he in fact did not.

Schliemann discovered an amazing site in modern Turkey that has yielded fascinating information and rightly been named as a sight of world heritage by UNESCO, but that site is the remains of a Hittite city named "Wilusa" not the Troy of legend. The overwhelming probability that this was the inspiration for the Homeric Troy was established by careful and dogged research after Schliemann. All this evidence was gathered inspite of the fact that he had named his find Troy simply to attract popular attention when he had no real evidence that it was so.

What we have here and in so many cases is the failure to differentiate between myths and legends and that which inspires them. Wilusa was the settlement that inspired Homer's Troy, but that does not make it Homer's Troy anymore than a historical film that takes liberties with a historical figures character represents the person in question.

It would be nice to think that there is something sparkling and fantastic behind all such legends, but looking at them in that way blinds one to the truely wonderous nature they really hold. Troy and Atlantis are fantasies spun by a talented storyteller around a more mundane reality.

Looking for the fantasy that never existed is a one way path to disenchantment.

The true miracle is that these stories have endured over the countless generations and come to engender so much shared cultural significance to us to this day. Through them we can walk alongside Achilles and Odysseus, gaze upon the fatal arrogance of the Atlanteans and see the fate that would befall Camelot.

What do you say when you find that there were only 100 men involved in the siege of "Troy", that your "Atlantis" was an abandoned midden pit, that Helen of Troy looked rather like Jade Goody?

Pick at something long enough and you'll destroy it.