Lost continents: Exploring a recurent theme

Men have always dreamed of what they don‘t have. Whether it be peace, justice, beauty, or wealth, I don‘t need to convince you that our ambitions are vast. Dreaming of lands inhabited by those desires isn‘t new ground either. Imaginary Edens, Utopias and Golden Ages are also mainstays of our cultural baggage. More interestingly, stories of lost lands of plenty are sometimes brought outside fiction and taken quite literally. Take for example Tomas More‘s Utopia - an imaginary island where people live by virtue. We have written evidence of More‘s alarm when he received demands from Church officials to send missionaries to convert Utopians to Christianity. Today, I want to take some time to talk about some of these imaginary worlds throughout time. Please enjoy it.

Soaked roots

Our first story is probably the most famous and influential of all: Atlantis. Believe it or not, Atlantis was a literary creation - of Plato of all people. Very late in Plato‘s life, he would write down the basis for Atlantis in two Socratic dialogues: Timaios and Kritias. Interestingly, those two were supposed to be part of a trilogy. Timaios established the creation of the Greek world, Kritias explained the war between Atlantis and Athens and Hermokrates would have detailed military, political and theological aspects further. Plato never wrote Hermokrates and did not finish Kritias (taking time to write his final dialogue instead: The Laws). Let‘s now focus on what he wrote about Atlantis.

Timaios can actually be seen as a sequel to The Republic, using the same cast of characters and taking place the day following the conversation that took place in The Republic. In Timaios, the eponymous character tells of an account from Athens' famous tyrant Solon where he in turn heard the story of the origins of the Greek state from an Egyptian priest. We learn about here of the Greek Empire founded 9000 years before Plato‘s time. Athens? No, rather it's adversary at that time - Atlantis. Atlantis was blessed by Poseidon and Athens by Athena. According to the priest, things would escalate quickly between both gods - leading to the invasion of Athens by Atlanteans. The proto-athenians supposedly pushed them back on their island… only for the war to end with a catastrophic earthquake. That cataclysm would have destroyed then-Athens and sunk the island of Atlantis entirely.

Even though Plato uses Socrates to emphasize that “this is a real story“, no other account of Solon‘s epic ever existed outside the Timaios and the Kritias. Not a trace of it was found in any surviving records from Greek sources. The same can be said for Egyptian, Phoenician, Babylonian or Sumerian sources dating centuries before Plato. Therefore, we can safely credit Plato with creating this recurring theme. Although we have to keep in mind that many elements in that story appear in our records before Plato. Greek classical authors for example commonly mentioned imaginary islands and continents in the Atlantic Ocean. Take for example Homer, who scattered islands in the Mediterranean Sea (like Aiaia and Ogygia) in his Odyssey - disregarding any accurate geography.

The Greeks were also familiar with the general concept of the emergence of lands from the sea and their sinking back into it. Myths told of the Island of Rhodes rising out of the sea. Herodotos even inferred from seashells in Egypt that some regions were once underwater. Interestingly, we also have accounts pointing out that it was generally held that Sicily had been broken from Italy by an earthquake, and that the Strait of Gibraltar had been opened up similarly. Let‘s not forget the very common deluge legends that we can trace long before the Greeks (take Noah‘s flood and the Sumerian story it was probably based on). Plato was not breaking entirely new ground here. Yet, credit must be given where credit is due: Plato‘s version of that tale would be what influenced lost land stories to follow.

Dubious (or not) discoveries

Centuries would pass and stories of lost land would appear here and there. The authors of the Arthurian legend described their king as convalescing from the Battle of Camlan on the fairy island of Avalon in the West, waiting until the day when he should return to lead his people.

But it's only when the Western world stretched its sea legs in the Middle Ages that an influx of imaginary land stories would begin. Take the story of Antillia. First encountered in the fifteenth century, this story follows seven bishops who fled Spain in 734 A.D. (during the Saracen conquest) sailing westward. Those bishops would have found an island and erected seven cities there. The story was so common that it was sometimes identified on pre-Columbian maps (where mapping of South America was lacking). In such maps, Brazil was identified as an island (a practice that would persist until the nineteenth century). Coming back to Antillia, when Columbus set out on his first American voyage, the astronomer Toscanelli even wrote to him suggesting Antillia as an ideal stopover for India. Funnily enough, the accepted shape, size and position of Antillia would fit quite nicely with the real Cuba. This strange coincidence explains why European explorers named the region encompassing Cuba and neighbouring islands the Antilles! At least one medieval map-maker in 1455 identified Antillia with Plato's Atlantis (neglecting that Atlantis was supposed to have sunk).

Even though voyages to imaginary islands abound in that time, sometimes we realized those to be true long after the fact. Take the discovery of Vinlandia (North America) by the Norse around the start of the second millennium. Stories around Leif Eiriksson's discovery were highly debated for centuries. Yet, Eiriksson description of American Indians is quite convincing: “dark men and ugly, with unkempt hair […] large eyes and broad cheeks […] wearing leather jackets, paddling skin boats, fighting with bows, slings, and clubs, and obviously ignorant of cloth, iron, and cattle“. It is sometimes theorized that Columbus might have heard of it on his trip he made in Iceland in his early years while following family business.

Another voyage story deserves some credit. The Arab geographer Edrisi tells of some "deluded folk" sailing from Lisbon (then a Muslim city) and finding an island inhabited by tall tan people. Their king, after questioning them sharply through an interpreter, supposedly sent them blindfolded to the African coast, where they found their way home. Did they reach a tribe living near modern Mexico? Maybe.

Scientific mistakes…

But explorers are not the only ones to have vivid imaginations. No, the growing scientific expertise did too. I think there is no better example here of the mythical Lemuria. During the second half of the 19th century, Darwin‘s theory brought a tidal wave of evolution-adjacent theories in many fields. The geological field was particularly active. Researchers had now broken free from the shackles of the six-thousand-year-old world (see my post on the age of the Earth if you are curious) and were filling in the gaps in bygone geological eras. Still, the field was relatively new and mistakes happened… Lemuria for example.

To be fair, mistake is a rather unfit name for what was broadly speaking a speculation. Lemuria was a proposed ancient continent that grouped South Africa, India and the islands around Madagascar during the Jurassic. The idea is often attributed to the English geologist William Blanford but gained popularity with Ernst Heinrich Haeckel. Haeckel included Lemuria in the very first attempt at a paleogeographical map - a complete map of the world during the Jurassic in his 1887 Erdegeschichte. For Haeckel, the presence of lemurs in Madagascar, Africa and India was clear evidence of that ancient land-bridge. This theory would inspire Philip L. Scater to name that region “Lemuria“ and the name stuck. Haeckel even went as far as to propose Lemuria as the original birthplace of man as a (now sunk) breeding ground of half-man half-monkey ancestors. Haeckel's theory isn‘t entirely false (in geological terms), although geologists no longer think that continental mass was united during the Jurassic and it certainly wasn‘t when any talk of man is relevant (and lemurs for that matter).

And scientific successes!

Still, we do have some scientific evidence for lost continents! Indeed, the land mass known as Zealandia truly is a “sunken continent“. This 4.9 million kmˆ2 region is currently 94% submerged. What is the 6%? Mainly, New Zealand and New Caledonia. Just think about the immensity of it. New Zealand is less than 5% of it. Zealandia is about half the size of Australia! “Well, if it‘s all under the sea, why would it count as a continent?“ you say. Well, take the official definition of a continent in the Glossary of Geology (Neuendorf et al., 2005). A continent has:

1. High elevation relative to regions floored by oceanic crust. Yes, Zealandia is under the surface, but it is elevated about a thousand meters above the sea floor. A clear demarcation.
A broad range of siliceous igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks. Simply speaking, a variety of rocks. That is indeed the case with Zealandia.
Thicker crust (and lower seismic velocity structure) than the oceanic crustal region. Yes, yet again.
Well-defined limits around a large enough area to be considered a continent rather than a microcontinent or fragment. This criteria is less bulletproof. But I think that a land mass larger than the Arabic Peninsula counts as a “large enough area“.

So, yeah: we have a sixth (or seventh… or eight. Continent count is another problem in itself) continent! And you didn‘t even know about it.

In any case, I hope you like this quick survey and learned something. I certainly did.

See you next time.

References

Zealandia: Earth’s Hidden Continent, Nick Mortimer & al., School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
Lost Continents - The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature, L. Sprague de Camp, Dover Publications, New York, 1970.