Atlantis in India and High Technology in Egyptian Tombs

It’s time for our regular dose of a pre-hysteria, which I define as the white-hot excitement fringe believers feel when they think they’ve discovered “proof” that mainstream accounts of prehistory are wrong. Today’s studies in pre-hysteria come from our favorite artifact exporter, Brien Foerster, and from a Hindu nationalist in India. Let’s start with Foerster.

The Before It’s News conspiracy website reported this week that scientists are shocked and surprised by the convincing proof of prehistoric high technology Foerster uncovered while exploring “beneath” Egypt. The Before It’s News writer claims that “100 ton stone boxes were discovered” beneath Egypt and that Foerster “takes you” there to prove these boxes were “used for ancient ‘high’ technology.” According to Foerster:

Inside a tunnel system carved out of the solid limestone bedrock in the desert of Egypt, more than 20 granite boxes made of precision shaped Aswan granite are a true enigma. Said by some to have been the burial places of prized bulls, their real function is far more intriguing. And they are clear examples of Lost Ancient High Technology created before the time of the Dynastic Egyptians.

I assume that most readers immediately recognized this supposedly shocking discovery as nothing more than the sarcophagi of the Apis bulls, well known for centuries and well-understood to have been carved by human hands from granite blocks. Claims that they are technological devices are not original to Foerster; instead, he has taken them over directly from Chris Dunn (of Giza Power Plant fame) and David Childress.

Needless to say, no scientists were “shocked” or otherwise forced into cover-up mode by Foerster’s YouTube videos, or their discussion on Before It’s News. However, Foerster is planning to charge $4,550 per person for a tour of Egypt focusing on such “high technology.” He also intends to prove that the lost continent of Mu existed, which will be a neat trick since it was only invented in 1926, by James Churchward.

But what is more interesting is the way that the Before It’s News writer immediately leapt to the conclusion that such high technology had to come from the Nephilim, the Fallen Angels, and the mighty men of old from Genesis 6:1-4 by way of 1 Enoch: “The fallen angels had the knowledge handed down to them by God, and they taught their children, the nephilim (sic), and all of humanity the secrets of technology they had acquired.”

It’s always the Watchers. Every time. Unless, that is, you’re a Hindu nationalist. In that case, you’re more likely to try to prove that Western cultures bastardized the Vedas, which you will hold up in place of the Bible as the great truth of history.

If you are this guy posting at the Indian Defence forum, you believe that Atlantis was originally in India. According to the explanation he posted, Plato was telling truth when he said that the story of Atlantis came from Solon, who in turn heard it from the Egyptians. This, however, was not the end of the story. Instead, the Egyptians got the tale from the Hindus of Punt, which he identifies with Indonesia, and that it refers to the sinking of Lemuria, called Atala in Sanskrit.

It is from the primordial Lemurian Atlantis that derive all our myths and religious traditions, the very ones that allowed the ascent of Man above the beasts of the field. From Atlantis derive all our science and our technology: agriculture, cattle herding, the alphabet, metallurgy, astronomy, music, religion, and so forth. These inventions are so clever and so advanced that they seem as natural as the air we breath[e] and the gods we worship. But they are all incredibly advanced inventions that came to us from the dawn of times, from the twin Atlantises we utterly forgot.

The warrant for all of this is the idea that the world Ocean, believed to surround the whole of the habitable land in ancient times, was the Ocean of the Atlanteans and therefore not specifically the Atlantic Ocean of today. He cites this to Herodotus at 2.28 and Aristotle’s De Caelo, although the claim appears in neither. He is interpreting De Caelo 2.14, which claims that the sea beyond the Pillars of Heracles connects to the Indian Ocean, as applying the name of the Atlantic Ocean to the whole, probably on the authority of Diodorus, who speaks occasionally of the Atlantians (Atlantoi) and the “Ocean of the Atlanteans” (3.56-7, 3.60-61) and Herodotus of the Atlantean people (4.185) meaning the people of the Atlas Mountains, not of Atlantis.

But when I say that the commenter makes such claims, I am of course being generous. He is actually providing big blocks of text from the 2005 book Atlantis: The Lost Continent Finally Found by the late physicist Arysio Santos, chosen to emphasize the alleged role of India in originating the Atlantis narrative. Santos also thinks that the four rivers of Eden are the major waterways of China, and that Demeter, Ishtar, the Virgin Mary, etc. are all personifications of Lemuria, “the Great Black Mother.” For him, naturally,

All of this ties back to the Tamil myth of Kumari Kandam, an alleged lost continent in the Indian Ocean. However, the earliest Tamil references to this lost continent come about 500 years after Plato wrote of Atlantis. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that Theosophy influenced the Tamil people to identify Kumari Kandam with Theosophy’s Lemuria, making the Tamil legend identical with the cradle of civilization Theosophy assigned to Lemuria. In this form it became one of the central tenets of Tamil nationalism, for it assigned to the Tamils the honor of being the originators of civilization. This is also some of the background for Hindu nationalists efforts to re-appropriate Atlantis-Lemuria for the Vedas and for Hinduism, in opposition to the Tamils.

But since Helena Blavatsky took inspiration for her Lemurians from the Nephilim, and placed them on that continent, I guess this is also another derivative of the Watchers myth.