The Economy of Atlantis
Atlantis Chapter 7
This is the seventh chapter of my manuscript book called Atlantis.
Plato continues his description of the economy of Atlantis. He describes several things that could be used to identify the location.
Orichalcum
Plato describes a metal called orichalcum which is an alloy of copper and gold.
In the first place, they dug out of the earth whatever was to be found there, solid as well as fusile, and that which is now only a name and was then something more than a name, orichalcum, was dug out of the earth in many parts of the island, being more precious in those days than anything except gold.
Even today, the copper mined in the region of Peru, Bolivia, and Chile is found naturally alloyed with gold. The natives of that region used a process to make beautiful images from this metal. They would cast the metal to the desired shape and then treat it with an acid. The acid removed the copper atoms from the surface, leaving a shining surface of pure gold. Then they would polish the surface until it was gleaming.
Plato described the temple in the city of Atlantis as, “glinting with the red light of orichalcum.”
While historians knew about orichalcum from Greek legends such as Atlantis, it had never been found in the Mediterranean until a shipwreck was discovered in 2014. This wreck, off the coast of Sicily, sank in the seventh century BC, and contained a cargo of gold ingots which were alloyed with copper. (figure 12)
.
In the region of Peru and Bolivia many artifacts of this alloy have been discovered, as seen in figure 13.
Elephants
Plato informs us that the island of Atlantis had many wild elephants.
Moreover, there were a great number of elephants in the island; for as there was provision for all other sorts of animals, both for those which live in lakes and marshes and rivers, and also for those which live in mountains and on plains, so there was for the animal which is the largest and most voracious of all.
The continents of North and South America do not have any representatives of the elephant family living there today. However, the mastodon and wooly mammoth were known to live there during the Ice Age. Several skeletons have been found by archaeologists which contained spear points, indicating that people were hunting them.
However, we also find that these mastodons and mammoths lived in the Americas during historical times. The natives of the Americas depicted elephants in sculptures, petroglyphs, and inscriptions. (figure 14, 15, 16)
The City
Plato describes the capital city as being connected to the sea by a canal. If we accept Atlantis as South America, and the plain around the capital city as the Altiplano, then this sea on which the capital was located must be either Lake Titicaca or Lake Poopo, as they are presently called.
And beginning from the sea they bored a canal of three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and fifty stadia in length, which they carried through to the outermost zone, making a passage from the sea up to this, which became a harbor, and leaving an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find ingress.
Moreover, they divided at the bridges the zones of land which parted the zones of sea, leaving room for a single trireme to pass out of one zone into another, and they covered over the channels so as to leave a way underneath for the ships; for the banks were raised considerably above the water. Now the largest of the zones into which a passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth, and the zone of land which came next of equal breadth; but the next two zones, the one of water, the other of land, were two stadia, and the one which surrounded the central island was a stadium only in width.
One major difference that sets the ancient civilizations of North and South America apart from those in Eurasia and Africa, was that they did not use the wheel. The reason for this is that both North and South America received so much rainfall that it was possible to develop a network of rivers and canals to transport goods by water. This was much less costly than building a network of roads for wagons and chariots. The description of Atlantis mentions only one road, bridging the three rings of land. But it is quite clear from the description that ships were the primary means of moving cargo around the empire. This matches the reality of ancient America.
Plato said that near the sea was a low mountain, as opposed to the very high mountains that surrounded the plains. The capital city seems to have been built with an acropolis on this low mountain, surrounded by the rings of land and water which were artificially enhanced.
J. M. Allen identifies an extinct volcano called Pampa Aullagas as the remains of the capital city with alternating rings of land and water. (figure 17) It is located at the south end of Lake Poopo about twenty-five kilometers from the shore. His case is made well on his own website and in his books. It sits at the current exit of the river from Lake Poopo, which Allan identifies as the “sea” beside which the capital was located.
The mountain of Pampa Aullagas seems to have alternating rings of sand and land, but it is not in a perfect circle. When Plato describes Atlantis he says the center of the capital city was made by the god Poseidon, by which he seems to mean it was a natural feature that was later enhanced by men.
I find Allan’s case quite convincing that the capital of Atlantis was located near the center of the plain, at the south end of Lake Poopo. However, I have less confidence that it was on the mountain of Pampa Aullagas.
The island in which the palace was situated had a diameter of five stadia. All this including the zones and the bridge, which was the sixth part of a stadium in width, they surrounded by a stone wall on every side, placing towers and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in. The stone which was used in the work they quarried from underneath the center island, and from underneath the zones, on the outer as well as the inner side. One kind was white, another black, and a third red, and as they quarried, they at the same time hollowed out double docks, having roofs formed out of the native rock. Some of their buildings were simple, but in others they put together different stones, varying the color to please the eye, and to be a natural source of delight. The entire circuit of the wall, which went round the outermost zone, they covered with a coating of brass, and the circuit of the next wall they coated with tin, and the third, which encompassed the citadel, flashed with the red light of orichalcum.
Allan has shown that Pampa Aullagas does have ancient cut stones in the colors of red, white, and black, all of which are used in modern construction there, as well as in ancient times. However, other sites such as the Richat Structure also have stones in all three colors.
The palaces in the interior of the citadel were constructed on this wise:-in the centre was a holy temple dedicated to Cleito and Poseidon, which remained inaccessible, and was surrounded by an enclosure of gold; this was the spot where the family of the ten princes first saw the light, and thither the people annually brought the fruits of the earth in their season from all the ten portions, to be an offering to each of the ten. Here was Poseidon's own temple which was a stadium in length, and half a stadium in width, and of a proportionate height, having a strange barbaric appearance. All the outside of the temple, with the exception of the pinnacles, they covered with silver, and the pinnacles with gold.
In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, curiously wrought everywhere with gold and silver and orichalcum; and all the other parts, the walls and pillars and floor, they coated with orichalcum. In the temple they placed statues of gold: there was the god himself standing in a chariot-the charioteer of six winged horses-and of such a size that he touched the roof of the building with his head; around him there were a hundred Nereids riding on dolphins, for such was thought to be the number of them by the men of those days.
There were also in the interior of the temple other images which had been dedicated by private persons. And around the temple on the outside were placed statues of gold of all the descendants of the ten kings and of their wives, and there were many other great offerings of kings and of private persons, coming both from the city itself and from the foreign cities over which they held sway. There was an altar too, which in size and workmanship corresponded to this magnificence, and the palaces, in like manner, answered to the greatness of the kingdom and the glory of the temple.
When the conquistadors came to Peru they found temples with the walls covered in gold hangings. The mines of the Altiplano produce gold and silver in such abundance that it is not at all surprising to find that kind of wealth here in the distant past.
In the next place, they had fountains, one of cold and another of hot water, in gracious plenty flowing; and they were wonderfully adapted for use by reason of the pleasantness and excellence of their waters. They constructed buildings about them and planted suitable trees, also they made cisterns, some open to the heavens, others roofed over, to be used in winter as warm baths; there were the kings' baths, and the baths of private persons, which were kept apart; and there were separate baths for women, and for horses and cattle, and to each of them they gave as much adornment as was suitable.
Figure 18 shows hot and cold springs in the region of Pampas Aullagas.
Of the water which ran off they carried some to the grove of Poseidon, where were growing all manner of trees of wonderful height and beauty, owing to the excellence of the soil, while the remainder was conveyed by aqueducts along the bridges to the outer circles; and there were many temples built and dedicated to many gods; also gardens and places of exercise, some for men, and others for horses in both of the two islands formed by the zones; and in the center of the larger of the two there was set apart a race-course of a stadium in width, and in length allowed to extend all round the island, for horses to race in.
Also there were guardhouses at intervals for the guards, the more trusted of whom were appointed-to keep watch in the lesser zone, which was nearer the Acropolis while the most trusted of all had houses given them within the citadel, near the persons of the kings. The docks were full of triremes and naval stores, and all things were quite ready for use. Enough of the plan of the royal palace.
The ancient culture of the Altiplano used canals and hot and cold springs, most of which are still there today. Even today, there are remnants of a method of agriculture called “suka kollus” which enabled high-altitude agriculture. This involved digging irrigation canals with fingers of land between them so that the water kept the plants from freezing at night.
Leaving the palace and passing out across the three you came to a wall which began at the sea and went all round: this was everywhere distant fifty stadia from the largest zone or harbor, and enclosed the whole, the ends meeting at the mouth of the channel which led to the sea. The entire area was densely crowded with habitations; and the canal and the largest of the harbors were full of vessels and merchants coming from all parts, who, from their numbers, kept up a multitudinous sound of human voices, and din and clatter of all sorts night and day.
I could devote an entire book to further demonstrate that the Bolivian Altiplano was the capital of Atlantis. But J.M. Allan has already written six books devoted to that thesis, which I cannot improve upon. The purpose of my book is to look at the bigger picture of how Atlantis fit into ancient history, and how the Anglo-American civilization of the past five centuries has created an echo of the Sidon-Atlantis civilization of the ancient past.
The Importance of Atlantis to the Early Bronze Age
From the fragments about him in mythology as well as the physical remains in Egypt, we surmise that Nimrod’s personal hero was his maternal ancestor, Cain. Nimrod appears to have self-consciously attempted to imitate Cain by building cities, and recreating the higher technology culture that he learned about from his mother, and wife, Naamah. His maternal uncle, Tubal-Cain, was a professor of advanced metallurgy. And we may guess that the writings of Tubal-Cain were preserved in the library of Noah. The Greeks preserved the legend that Herakles robbed the house of Nereus looking for something. (figure 18) Was he looking for the tablets from Tubal-Cain?
Later Ham obtained these manuscripts or tablets. In the story of Inanna and Enki, we learn that Naamah tricked Ham into giving them to her. Later we see Nimrod depicted as Osiris, who was celebrated as a culture bringer.
From this information, we can guess that the highest priority of Nimrod was to re-establish a network of mining sites to supply the raw materials of metal ores required to make bronze. This required sources of copper and either tin or arsenic. We do not know when the patriarchs discovered the copper deposits in North America and the rich metal deposits in the Andes Mountains. But, the perplexing ancient stone cities of the Altiplano appear to have been used for mining and metal refining.
The mountains of Peru and Bolivia are, even today, the richest sources of copper, tin, gold, and silver on the planet. The Early Bronze Age civilization of Sumer, Canaan, and Egypt arose in the two regions that were controlled first by Nimrod, and later by Naamah and her son Gilgamesh.
For the five centuries of the Early Bronze Age, Egypt was the most powerful nation. But Sidon and its overseas colony of Atlantis were allied to Egypt. The Egyptians considered the territory of Canaan from Egypt to the Euphrates River to be theirs, because that is where their gods, Hathor and Osiris originally came from. Sesostris III and later Thutmose III both campaigned to the Euphrates and beyond to reclaim what they considered rightfully theirs.
The ancient cities of Byblos and Sidon were the earliest Canaanite centers of trade, where the cartouches of Old and Middle Kingdom Egyptian kings have been found on clay jars and tombs.
We can surmise that in the Early Bronze Age, a trade network emerged where Sidon was the mother city, and Atlantis was the daughter colony. According to Plato, Atlantis became extremely wealthy in trade with other nations. Why would this happen? Metals were the most valuable commodities in the ancient world, and metals were the most suited for long-distance trade by sea. Atlantis became wealthy through mining and the export of gold, silver, copper, and tin. This trade network became an economic power, very similar to the much later trade empire created by London and her colonies in the Americas, India, and Australia.
In our own era of history, Britain was the mother of the several nations of North America. Later, the child called the United States of America, became more powerful than the mother city, London. At first, there was a struggle and war between them. But once the new relationship was accepted, London and Washington, DC became a power axis where the wealthy civilization on the other continent fed and supported the mother city of the old world. Britain was an island of limited size. But North America and Australia were large continents with very low population densities. The rapid population growth of Europe after the seventeenth century overflowed through London to the Americas. Once the population of the British civilization in North America began to explode in numbers, it was natural that the daughter colony became more powerful than the parent.
Looking back through the fog of ancient history, we can see that a similar relationship developed between Sidon and Atlantis. Sidon was the original mother city. Just like London in our own time, Sidon had a limited area of arable land for population growth in Canaan. Both Sidon and Byblos were located on a narrow strip of land with very high and rugged mountains behind them. As the Canaanite population exploded in the Early Bronze Age, many of them probably went to Atlantis in search of land. And in only a few centuries, Atlantis would have a population in the tens of millions, while the Canaanite population of the motherland remained relatively small in size.
In the Quito Manuscript, Montesinos recorded the traditions of the Indians of Ecuador and Peru that large numbers of new immigrants came to the region a few centuries after it was founded by Manco Pirua.
By ancient tradition, the Indians of the Audiençia district of Quito say that by the Midi or South vanda, and by the from the Septenitrion, great troops of nations came many times, by land as well as by sea, and peopled the coasts of the sea Oçéano, and they entered through the main land inside; with which these scattered kingdoms that we call Pirú were filled…
By the end of the Early Bronze Age, Atlantis had become richer and more powerful than Sidon. The only thing holding back the power of the Sidon-Atlantis Axis was the power of Egypt. If Egypt should fall, then the Atlantean-Sidonian Axis was positioned to become the most powerful nation in the world. In the next chapter, we will see that is exactly what happened.
Preview of the Next Chapter
Next month we will look at how the destruction of Egypt by the 10 plagues of the Exodus ties in with several other events recorded in ancient history such as the Fire of Phaeton, the Flood of (the second) Deucalion the Sinking of Dwarka, and the Flood of Dardanus. The Exodus destroyed Egypt, allowing the Atlanteans and their allies to dominate the Ancient Near East for the next four centuries.