Atlantis and Vinland: Contrasting Myths

Sir Daniel Wilson wrote an interesting series of ethnographic studies in the late 1800s, some of which focused on alternative history. Wilson examined claims about Atlantis, and he found them wanting, especially in the way they were used to support claims that Native Americans were not responsible for the pyramids of Mexico and the temples of Peru:

It forms one of the indisputable facts of ancient history that, long before Greece became the world's intellectual leader, the eastern Mediterranean was settled by maritime races whose adventurous enterprise led them to navigate the Atlantic. There was no greater impediment to such adventurous mariners crossing that ocean in earliest centuries before Christ, than at any subsequent date prior to the revival of navigation in the fifteenth century. It would not, therefore, in any degree, surprise me to learn of the discovery of a genuine Phoenician, or other inscription; or, of some hoard of Assyrian gryphons, or shekels of the merchant princes of Tyre "that had knowledge of the sea," being recovered among the still unexplored treasures of the buried empire of Montezuma, or the long-deserted ruins of Central America. Such a discovery would scarcely be more surprising than that of the Punic hoards found at Corvo, the most westerly island of the Azores. Yet it would furnish a substantial basis for the legend of Atlantis, akin to that which the runic monuments of Kingiktorsoak and Igalikko supplied in confirmation of the fabled charms of a Hesperian region lying within the Arctic circle; and of the first actual glimpses of the American mainland by Norse voyagers of the tenth century, as told in more than one of their old Sagas. But until such evidence is forthcoming, the legendary Atlantis must remain a myth, and pre-Columbian America be still credited with a self-achieved progress.

But Wilson reminds us that not all alternative claims are equally fallacious. The above passage was from his paper "The Lost Atlantis." His next article was about Vinland, the legendary colony of the Norsemen on Canada's Atlantic coast. At the time, its existence was questionable; that the Vikings had discovered America around 1000 CE was about on par with claims of Phoenician voyages. Both Atlantis and Vinland were known only from late mythic sources (Plato and the Sagas, respectively); both were supported by vague evidence relying heavily on supposed connections to Native American myths and rituals.

Wilson carefully evaluated the evidence, and showed that unlike the Atlantis myth, the stories of Vinland made specific, testable claims that were verifiable. The sagas made specific geographic claims that conform to known geography; old maps place Vinland where it ought to be. By contrast, the geography of Atlantis is completely fictitious; its story bears no relation to any known facts of ancient history. Wilson tentatively concluded that Vinland really existed, along with the Norse voyages. Half a century later, the remains of the colony were found.

No remains of Atlantis have ever been found.