Pierre Termier
1912
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NOTE |
Pierre Termier (1859-1930) was a giant in French geology, and in 1912 he turned his attention to the question of Atlantis. The resulting lecture, delivered to the Oceanographic Institute of Paris on Nov. 30, attempted to make the case that the lost continent of Atlantis once existed in the Atlantic. His scientific arguments were among the last to argue a convincing case based on what was known at the time before new discoveries gradually made it impossible to support the notion that the Atlantic once held a major landmass. The acceptance of the theory of plate tectonics in the middle twentieth century dealt the final blow to this line of reasoning, and with it the hope that Atlantis really existed in the mid-Atlantic where Ignatius Donnelly and Athanasius Kircher had placed it. The lecture was published in French in 1913 and translated into English in 1915 for the Smithsonian Institution, which published it in its Annual Report for 1915 (published 1916). Two rebuttals appeared in the Geographical Review of the American Geographic Society in January 1917. Two further papers on the subject ran in May of that year.
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ATLANTIS [1]
By Pierre Termier,
Member of the Academy of Sciences, Director of Service of the Geologic Chart of France.
There is a somber poem, that of Atlantis, as it is unfolded to our eyes, marvelously concise and simple, in two of Plato’s dialogues. We understand, after having read it, why all of antiquity and the Middle Ages, from Socrates to Columbus, for nineteen hundred years, gave the name “Sea of Darkness” to the ocean region which was the scene of so frightful a cataclysm. They knew it, that sea, full of crimes and menaces, wilder and more inhospitable than any other; and they questioned fearfully what there was beyond its mists, and what ruins, still splendid after a hundred centuries of immersion, were hidden beneath its peaceful waves. To brave a voyage across the Sea of Darkness and to pass the gulf where sleeps Atlantis, Columbus required a superhuman courage, an almost irrational confidence in the idea that he had apprehended the true shape of the earth, an almost supernatural desire to bear the Christ—after the manner of his patron, St. Christopher, the sublime river ferryman— to the unknown peoples who so long were awaiting Him, “seated in the shadow of death,”
On the mystic shores of the western world.
After the voyages of Columbus terror disappears, curiosity remains. Geographers and historians are occupied with the question of Atlantis; leaning over the abyss they seek to determine the exact location of the engulfed island, but, finding nowhere any definite indication, many of them slip into skepticism. They doubt Plato, thinking that this great genius might indeed have imagined, from beginning to end, the fable of Atlantis, or that he mistook for an island of gigantic dimensions a portion of Mauritania or of Senegambia. Others transpose Atlantis into northern Europe, while others at length do not hesitate to identify it with all America. The poets alone remain faithful to the beautiful legend; the poets who, according to the lofty phrase of Léon Bloy, “ne sont sûrs que de ce qu’ils devinent” [are sure of only what they dream]; the poets, who would never be satisfied with an Atlantic Ocean which had no drama in its past, and who would not be resigned to the belief that the divine Plato might have deceived them, or that he might himself have been entirely mistaken. [2]
It may be, indeed, that the poets were once more right. After a long period of disdainful indifference, observe how in the last few years science is returning to the study of Atlantis. How many naturalists, geologists, zoologists, or botanists, are asking one another to-day whether Plato has not transmitted to us, with slight amplification, a page from the actual history of mankind. No affirmation is yet permissible; but it seems more and more evident that a vast region, continental or made up of great islands, has collapsed west of the Pillars of Hercules, otherwise called the Strait of Gibraltar, and that its collapse occurred in the not far distant past. In any event, the question of Atlantis is placed anew before men of science; and since I do not believe that it can ever be solved without the aid of oceanography, I have thought it natural to discuss it here, in this temple of maritime science, and to call to such a problem, long scorned but now being revived, the attention of oceanographers, as well as the attention of those who, though immersed in the tumult of cities, lend an ear to the distant murmur of the sea.
Let us first, if you please, again read Plato’s narrative. It is in the dialogue called “Timaeus,” or “ Concerning Nature.” There are four speakers: Timaeus, Socrates, Hermocrates, and Critias. Critias has the floor; he is speaking of Solon, and of a journey that this wise lawgiver made to Sais, in the delta of Egypt. An old Egyptian priest profoundly amazes Solon by revealing to him the history of the beginning of Athens, all but forgotten by the Athenians.
On the mystic shores of the western world.
After the voyages of Columbus terror disappears, curiosity remains. Geographers and historians are occupied with the question of Atlantis; leaning over the abyss they seek to determine the exact location of the engulfed island, but, finding nowhere any definite indication, many of them slip into skepticism. They doubt Plato, thinking that this great genius might indeed have imagined, from beginning to end, the fable of Atlantis, or that he mistook for an island of gigantic dimensions a portion of Mauritania or of Senegambia. Others transpose Atlantis into northern Europe, while others at length do not hesitate to identify it with all America. The poets alone remain faithful to the beautiful legend; the poets who, according to the lofty phrase of Léon Bloy, “ne sont sûrs que de ce qu’ils devinent” [are sure of only what they dream]; the poets, who would never be satisfied with an Atlantic Ocean which had no drama in its past, and who would not be resigned to the belief that the divine Plato might have deceived them, or that he might himself have been entirely mistaken. [2]
It may be, indeed, that the poets were once more right. After a long period of disdainful indifference, observe how in the last few years science is returning to the study of Atlantis. How many naturalists, geologists, zoologists, or botanists, are asking one another to-day whether Plato has not transmitted to us, with slight amplification, a page from the actual history of mankind. No affirmation is yet permissible; but it seems more and more evident that a vast region, continental or made up of great islands, has collapsed west of the Pillars of Hercules, otherwise called the Strait of Gibraltar, and that its collapse occurred in the not far distant past. In any event, the question of Atlantis is placed anew before men of science; and since I do not believe that it can ever be solved without the aid of oceanography, I have thought it natural to discuss it here, in this temple of maritime science, and to call to such a problem, long scorned but now being revived, the attention of oceanographers, as well as the attention of those who, though immersed in the tumult of cities, lend an ear to the distant murmur of the sea.
Let us first, if you please, again read Plato’s narrative. It is in the dialogue called “Timaeus,” or “ Concerning Nature.” There are four speakers: Timaeus, Socrates, Hermocrates, and Critias. Critias has the floor; he is speaking of Solon, and of a journey that this wise lawgiver made to Sais, in the delta of Egypt. An old Egyptian priest profoundly amazes Solon by revealing to him the history of the beginning of Athens, all but forgotten by the Athenians.
I will make no secret of it with you, Solon [says the priest], I agree to satisfy your curiosity, out of respect for you and for your country, and, above all, in order to honor the goddess, our common patroness, who reared and established your city, Athens, offspring of the Earth and Vulcan, and a thousand years later our own city, Saïs. Since the foundation of the latter our sacral books tell of a lapse of 8,000 years. I will then entertain you briefly with the laws and the finest exploits of the Athenians during the 9,000 years which have elapsed since Athens began to live. Among so many great deeds of your citizens there is one which must be placed above all else. The records inform us of the destruction by Athens of a singularly powerful army, an army which came from the Atlantic Ocean and which had the effrontery to invade Europe and Asia; for this sea was then navigable, and beyond the strait which you call the Pillars of Hercules there was an Island larger than Libya and even Asia. From this island one could easily pass to other islands, and from them to the entire continent which surrounds the interior sea. What there is on this side of the strait of which we are speaking resembles a vast gateway, the entrance of which might be narrow, but it is actually a sea, and the land which surrounds it is a real continent. In the Island Atlantis reigned kings of amazing power. They had under their dominion the entire island, as well as several other islands and some parts of the continent. Besides, on the hither side of the strait, they were still reigning over Libya as far as Egypt and over Europe as far as the Tyrrhenian. All this power was once upon a time united in order by a single blow to subjugate our country, your own, and all the peoples living on the hither side of the strait. It was then that the strength and courage of Athens blazed forth. By the valor of her soldiers and their superiority in the military art, Athens was supreme among the Hellenes; but, the latter having been forced to abandon her, alone she braved the frightful danger, stopped the invasion, piled victory upon victory, preserved from slavery nations still free, and restored to complete independence all those who, like ourselves, live on this side of the Pillars of Hercules. Later, with great earthquakes and inundations, in a single day and one fatal night, all who had been warriors against you were swallowed up. The Island of Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea. Since that time the sea in these quarters has become unnavigable; vessels can not pass there because of the sands which extend over the site of the buried isle. [3]
Here surely is a narrative which has not at all the coloring of a fable. It is of an exactness almost scientific. It may be thought that the dimensions of the Island of Atlantis are slightly exaggerated here, but we must remember that the Egyptian priest did not know the immensity of Asia, and that the words “ larger than Asia” have not in his mouth the significance that they have to-day. Everything else is perfectly clear and entirely probable. A large island, off the Strait of Gibraltar, mother of a numerous, strong, and warlike race; other smaller islands, in a broad channel separating the large island from the African coast; one may pass easily from the large island to the little ones, and from the latter over to the continent, and it is easy then to gain the shores of the Mediterranean and to subdue the peoples who have become established there, those of the south first, as far as the frontier of Egypt and of Libya, then those of the north, as far as the Tyrrhenian, and even to Greece. This invasion by the Atlantic pirates Athens resists with success. Perhaps, however, she might have been vanquished, when a cataclysm came to her aid, in a few hours engulfing the Island Atlantis, and resounding, with violent shocks and frightful tidal wave, over all the Mediterranean shores. The conflicting armies disappear, taken unawares by the inundation of the shores; and when the survivors recover themselves they perceive that their invaders are dead, and they learn then that the very source is wiped out whence descended those terrible hordes. When long, long after some hardy mariners venture to pass through the Pillars of Hercules and sail across the western seas, they are soon stopped by such a profusion of rocks and debris from the engulfed lands that fear seizes them, and they flee these accursed regions, over which seems to hang the anathema of a god.
In another dialogue, which is entitled “Critias,” or “Concerning Atlantis,” and which, like the foregoing, is from the “Timaeus,” Plato indulges in a description of the famous island. It is again Critias who is speaking. Timaeus, Socrates, and Hermocrates are listening to him. Critias says:
In another dialogue, which is entitled “Critias,” or “Concerning Atlantis,” and which, like the foregoing, is from the “Timaeus,” Plato indulges in a description of the famous island. It is again Critias who is speaking. Timaeus, Socrates, and Hermocrates are listening to him. Critias says:
According to the Egyptian tradition a common war arose 9,000 years ago between the nations on this side of the Pillars of Hercules and the nations coming from beyond. On one side it was Athens; on the other the Kings of Atlantis. We have already said that this island was larger than Asia and Africa, but that it became submerged following an earthquake and that its place is no longer met with except as a sand bar which stops navigators and renders the sea impassable.
And Critias develops for us the Egyptian tradition of the fabulous origin of Atlantis, fallen to the share of Neptune and in which this god has placed the 10 children that he had by a mortal. Then he describes the cradle of the Atlantic race; a plain located near the sea and opening in the central part of the island, and the most fertile of plains; about it a circle of mountains stretching to the sea, a circle open at the center and protecting the plain from the icy blasts of the north; in these superb mountains, numerous villages, rich and populous; in the plain, a magnificent city, the palaces and temples of which are constructed from stones of three colors—white, black, and red—drawn from the very bosom of the island; here and there mines yielding all the metals useful to man; finally the shores of the island cut perpendicularly and commanding from above the tumultuous sea. [4] We may smile in reading the story of Neptune and his fruitful amours, but the geographic description of the island is not of the sort which one jokes about and forgets. This description tallies well with what we would imagine to-day of a great land submerged in the region of the Azores and enjoying the eternal springtime, which is the endowment of these islands; a land formed from a basement of ancient rocks bearing, with some fragments of whitish calcareous terranes, extinct volcanic mountains and lava flows, black or red, long since grown cold.
Such is the Atlantis of Plato, and such, according to the great philosopher, is the history of this island, a history fabulous in its origins, like the majority of histories, yet extremely exact and highly probable in its details and tragic termination. This is, furthermore, all that antiquity teaches us, for the accounts of Theopompus and Marcellus, much vaguer than that of Plato, are interesting only from the impression that they leave us of the wide circulation of the legend among the peoples along the Mediterranean shores. On the whole, down to very nearly our own era, there was a general belief, all about the Mediterranean, in the ancient invasion by the Atlantians, come from a large island or a continent—come at all events from beyond the Pillars of Hercules, an invasion abruptly checked by the instantaneous or at least very sudden submergence of the country from which these invaders came.
Now, let us see what science teaches as to the possibility or the probability of such a collapsing, so recent, so sudden, so extended superficially, and so colossal in depth. But we must as a preliminary recall the facts of geography as to the region of the Atlantic Ocean where the phenomenon must have occurred.
For a ship sailing due west the distance across the Atlantic Ocean from the Strait of Gibraltar is about 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles). Such a ship would touch the American coast in the locality of Cape Hatteras. She would not in her voyage meet any land. She would pass, without seeing them, between Madeira and the Azores, and she would leave the Bermudas very far to the south, though these coral islands, very small and low, might to the eyes of the crew have emerged from the marine horizon. Her passengers would have no suspicion of the relief of the ocean depths, so irregular notwithstanding, and none of the mysteries of the “sea of darkness” would have risen before them.
But had the ship lengthened her route a little by making a detour, first toward the southwest, then toward the northwest, then again toward the southwest, it would have been enough, successively, to bring in view Madeira, the more southern Azores, and finally the Bermudas. And if the travelers, whom we are supposing embarked on our vessel, had possessed a perfected instrument for sounding, and had known how to use it, they might have ascertained, not without surprise, that the marine depths over which they were passsing are strangely unequal. Very near Gibraltar the bottom of the ocean is 4,000 meters down; it rises again abruptly to form a very narrow socle, which bears Madeira; it drops again to 5,000 meters between Madeira and the southern Azores; reascends at least 1,000 meters in the neighborhood of these latter islands; remains for a long distance between 1,000 and 4,000 to the south and southwest of the Azores, with very abrupt projections, some of which approach very nearly to the surface of the sea; then plunges to more than 5,000 meters, and for a short distance even to more than 6,000; rises again suddenly in a bound which corresponds to the socle of the Bermudas; remains buried under 4,000 meters of water to within a short distance of the American coast, and finally rises again in a steep acclivity toward the shore.
Let us imagine for a moment that we could entirely empty the Atlantic Ocean, drain it completely dry; and, that done, let us contemplate from above the relief of its bed. We shall see two great depressions, two enormous valleys extending north and south, parallel with the two shores, separated one from the other by a median zone elevated above them. The western valley, extending the length of the American coast, is the larger and deeper of the two; it shows oval fosses, or depressions, descending to more than 6,000 meters below the level of the shores, and also occasional elevations, one corresponding to the Bermudas, which, from the bottom of the gulfs, rise boldly toward the surface. The eastern valley, along the European coast, appears to us narrower and of less depth, but much more hilly; and numerous pyramids, some thin and slight like that of Madeira, others massive like those which bear the archipelago of the Canaries and Cape Verde, rise here and there in the midst of the valley or near its eastern border. The much elevated median zone outlines before us a long promontory, whose axis coincides with that of the Atlantic abyss. It curves in an S shape like the two valleys and the two shores, and, starting from Greenland and surrounding in its mass Iceland and the northern islands, goes tapering southward and ends in a point at the seventieth parallel of latitude south. In most of its course, this promontory has a mean breadth of about 1,500 kilometers (937.5 miles). Far from being regular and with a uniformly spherical curve, its surface is everywhere indented, bristling with projections, riddled with hollows, especially in the region of the Azores, what we call the Azores being merely the summits of the highest protuberances.
Such is the Atlantis of Plato, and such, according to the great philosopher, is the history of this island, a history fabulous in its origins, like the majority of histories, yet extremely exact and highly probable in its details and tragic termination. This is, furthermore, all that antiquity teaches us, for the accounts of Theopompus and Marcellus, much vaguer than that of Plato, are interesting only from the impression that they leave us of the wide circulation of the legend among the peoples along the Mediterranean shores. On the whole, down to very nearly our own era, there was a general belief, all about the Mediterranean, in the ancient invasion by the Atlantians, come from a large island or a continent—come at all events from beyond the Pillars of Hercules, an invasion abruptly checked by the instantaneous or at least very sudden submergence of the country from which these invaders came.
Now, let us see what science teaches as to the possibility or the probability of such a collapsing, so recent, so sudden, so extended superficially, and so colossal in depth. But we must as a preliminary recall the facts of geography as to the region of the Atlantic Ocean where the phenomenon must have occurred.
For a ship sailing due west the distance across the Atlantic Ocean from the Strait of Gibraltar is about 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles). Such a ship would touch the American coast in the locality of Cape Hatteras. She would not in her voyage meet any land. She would pass, without seeing them, between Madeira and the Azores, and she would leave the Bermudas very far to the south, though these coral islands, very small and low, might to the eyes of the crew have emerged from the marine horizon. Her passengers would have no suspicion of the relief of the ocean depths, so irregular notwithstanding, and none of the mysteries of the “sea of darkness” would have risen before them.
But had the ship lengthened her route a little by making a detour, first toward the southwest, then toward the northwest, then again toward the southwest, it would have been enough, successively, to bring in view Madeira, the more southern Azores, and finally the Bermudas. And if the travelers, whom we are supposing embarked on our vessel, had possessed a perfected instrument for sounding, and had known how to use it, they might have ascertained, not without surprise, that the marine depths over which they were passsing are strangely unequal. Very near Gibraltar the bottom of the ocean is 4,000 meters down; it rises again abruptly to form a very narrow socle, which bears Madeira; it drops again to 5,000 meters between Madeira and the southern Azores; reascends at least 1,000 meters in the neighborhood of these latter islands; remains for a long distance between 1,000 and 4,000 to the south and southwest of the Azores, with very abrupt projections, some of which approach very nearly to the surface of the sea; then plunges to more than 5,000 meters, and for a short distance even to more than 6,000; rises again suddenly in a bound which corresponds to the socle of the Bermudas; remains buried under 4,000 meters of water to within a short distance of the American coast, and finally rises again in a steep acclivity toward the shore.
Let us imagine for a moment that we could entirely empty the Atlantic Ocean, drain it completely dry; and, that done, let us contemplate from above the relief of its bed. We shall see two great depressions, two enormous valleys extending north and south, parallel with the two shores, separated one from the other by a median zone elevated above them. The western valley, extending the length of the American coast, is the larger and deeper of the two; it shows oval fosses, or depressions, descending to more than 6,000 meters below the level of the shores, and also occasional elevations, one corresponding to the Bermudas, which, from the bottom of the gulfs, rise boldly toward the surface. The eastern valley, along the European coast, appears to us narrower and of less depth, but much more hilly; and numerous pyramids, some thin and slight like that of Madeira, others massive like those which bear the archipelago of the Canaries and Cape Verde, rise here and there in the midst of the valley or near its eastern border. The much elevated median zone outlines before us a long promontory, whose axis coincides with that of the Atlantic abyss. It curves in an S shape like the two valleys and the two shores, and, starting from Greenland and surrounding in its mass Iceland and the northern islands, goes tapering southward and ends in a point at the seventieth parallel of latitude south. In most of its course, this promontory has a mean breadth of about 1,500 kilometers (937.5 miles). Far from being regular and with a uniformly spherical curve, its surface is everywhere indented, bristling with projections, riddled with hollows, especially in the region of the Azores, what we call the Azores being merely the summits of the highest protuberances.
In this complete view of the ocean drained and dry we would certainly observe many other things, which are otherwise invisible beneath the waters. We would see not only the longitudinal arrangement which I have just described and which has been revealed to us by soundings but also the transverse irregularities which can not fail to exist and of which, at the present time, we know almost nothing, because the soundings have not yet been numerous enough. The map of the archipelago of the Azores shows clearly that the nine great islands of which it is composed are ranged along three parallel bands, in a direction from east-southeast to west-northwest; and these bands are staked out by the islands over a total length of nearly 800 kilometers (500 miles). No doubt such lines are prolonged very far under the waves, and they would have great importance in making a model of the ocean bed, but they are evidently not the only ones. The day will come when the charts of the Atlantic depths will be exact and detailed; we shall then see fault lines and bands of folds crossing the vast abyss and extending from Europe to the United States, or from Morocco to the West Indies, or from Senegambia to the South American Continent.
Now, let geology say its word. In the same way that the painter’s eye perceives a whole world of colors and reflections unsuspected by other men, so is the eye of the geologist impressed by the vague and very uncertain gleams which illumine, for him alone, the darkness of the gulfs and the still deeper night of the distant past. And his ear, sensitive as that of the musician, vibrates to the murmurs, the crackings, and the sighs which come from the earth’s depths or from the depths of history and which the majority of men mistake for absolute silence.
Observe one primary fact: The eastern region of the Atlantic Ocean, over all its length and probably from one pole to the other, is a great volcanic zone. In the depression along the coast of Africa and of Europe and in the eastern part of the highly elevated strip which occupies the middle of the sea volcanoes are abundant. All the peaks which reach the surface of the sea outcrop in the form of volcanic islands or bearing volcanoes. Gough Island, Tristan da Cunha, St. Helena, Ascension, the Cape Verde Islands, the Canaries, the great Madeira and the neighboring isles, all the Azores, Iceland, Jan Mayen Island are either integrally or in greater part formed of lava. I will tell in a moment how certain dredgings in 1898 found lavas, at depths of 3,000 meters, on a line from the Azores to Iceland, and at about 500 miles or 900 kilometers to the north of the Azores. One navigator in 1838 established the existence of a submarine volcano on the Equator at about 22° west longitude, or on the line joining Ascension to the archipelago of Cape Verde; warm steam was rising from the waves and shallows had formed unlike those indicated on the charts. On the islands I have just named many volcanoes are still in activity, the extinct ones appear to have been extinguished only yesterday, everywhere earthquakes are frequent, here and there islets may spring up abruptly from the sea or rocks long known may disappear. The continuity of these phenomena is concealed by the ocean covering them, but to the geologist it is unquestionable.
The volcanic zone of the eastern Atlantic is comparable in length, in breadth, and in eruptive or seismic activity, to that which forms the western border of America, and coincides in the south with the cordillera of the Andes; it is one of the characteristic traits of the present phase of the earth, quite like the fiery girdle of the Pacific Ocean. Now, there is no volcano without a convulsion, or, at the very least, not without a subsidence of some portion of the terrestrial crust. The volcanoes of the fiery girdle of the Pacific stake out the border of a deep marine foss which compasses this ocean, and which, undoubtedly, has not stopped growing deeper; the volcanoes of the Mediterranean appear on the margin of great abysses recently opened and into which enormous mountains have fallen. It must be, therefore, that there is also in the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, still present, a certain mobility, and that the median wrinkle of this bottom, already much elevated above it, has not finished its relative movement upward in proportion to the eastern depression. While the continental shores of the Atlantic now appear immobile, and a hundred times more impassive than the Pacific shores, the bottom of the Atlantic is in movement in the entire eastern zone, about 3,000 kilometers (1,875 miles) broad, which comprises Iceland, the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, and the Cape Verde Islands. Here there is even now an unstable zone on the planet’s surface, and in such a zone the most terrible cataclysms may at any moment be taking place.
Some cataclysms certainly have occurred, and they date only as from yesterday. I ask all those who are concerned with the problem of Atlantis to listen attentively and to impress on their mind this brief history; there is none more significant: In the summer of 1898 a ship was employed in the laying of the submarine telegraphic cable which binds Brest to Cape Cod. The cable had been broken, and they were trying to fish it up again by means of grappling irons. It was in north latitude 47° 0′ and longitude 29° 40′ west from Paris, at a point about 500 miles north of the Azores. The mean depth was pretty nearly 1,700 fathoms, or 3,100 meters. The relaying of the cable presented great difficulties, and for several days it was necessary to drag the grappling irons over the bottom. This was established: The bottom of the sea in those parts presents the characteristics of a mountainous country, with high summits, steep slopes, and deep valleys. The summits are rocky, and there are oozes only in the hollows of the valleys. The grappling iron, in following this much-disturbed surface, was constantly being caught in the rocks by hard points and sharp edges; it came up almost always broken or twisted, and the broken pieces recovered bore large coarse stria; and traces of violent and rapid wear. On several returns, they found between the teeth of the grappling iron little mineral splinters, having the appearance of recently broken chips. All these fragments belonged to the same class of rocks. The unanimous opinion of the engineers who were present at the dredging was that the chips in question had been detached from a bare rock, an actual outcropping, sharp-edged and angular. The region whence the chips came was furthermore precisely that where the soundings had revealed the highest submarine summits and the almost complete absence of oozes. The fragments, thus torn from the rocky outcrops of the bottom of the Atlantic, are of a vitreous lava, having the chemical composition of the basalts and called tachylyte by the petrographers. We are preserving some of these precious fragments at the Musée de l’Ecole des Mines at Paris.
The matter was described in 1899 to the Académie des Sciences. Few geologists then comprehended its very great import. Such a lava, entirely vitreous, comparable to certain basaltic stones of the volcanoes in the Hawaiian Islands, could solidify into this condition only under atmospheric pressure. Under several atmospheres, and more especially under 3,000 meters of water, it might have crystallized. It would appear to us as formed of confused crystals, instead of being composed solely of colloidal matter. The most recent studies on this subject leave no doubt, and I will content myself with recalling the observation of M. Lacroix on the lavas of Mount Pelee of Martinique: Vitreous, when they congealed in the open air, these lavas became filled with crystals as soon as they were cooled under a cover, even not very thick, of previously solidified rocks. The surface which to-day constitutes the bottom of the Atlantic, 900 kilometers (562.5 miles) north of the Azores, was therefore covered with lava flows while it was still emerged. Consequently, it has been buried, descending 3,000 meters; and since the surface of the rocks has there preserved its distorted aspect, its rugged roughnesses, the sharp edges of the very recent lava flows, it must be that the caving in followed very close upon the emission of the lavas, and that this collapse was sudden. Otherwise atmospheric erosion and marine abrasion would have leveled the inequalities and planed down the entire surface. Let us continue our reasoning. We are here on the line which joins Iceland to the Azores, in the midst of the Atlantic volcanic zone, in the midst of the zone of mobility, of instability, and present volcanism. It would seem to be a fair conclusion, then, that the entire region north of the Azores and perhaps the very region of the Azores, of which they may be only the visible ruins, was very recently submerged, probably during the epoch which the geologists call the present because it is so recent, and which for us, the living beings of to-day, is the same as yesterday.
If you recall now what I told you a little while ago of the extreme inequality of the depths to the south and the southwest of the Azores, you will agree with me that a detailed dredging to the south and the southwest of these islands would give the same results which have been shown at the north, in the operations of fishing up the telegraphic cable again. And before your eyes would increase then, almost immeasurably, the buried region, the region which was abruptly engulfed yesterday, and of which the Azores are no more than the evidences, escaped from the general collapse.
But observe other facts, always of the geologic order. The Atlantic abyss, almost as a whole, seems to be of relatively recent date: and, before the collapse of the Azorian region, other collapses occurred there, the size of which, more easily measurable, staggers the imagination.
Since Eduard Suess and Marcel Bertrand taught us to regard our planet and to decipher the slow or rapid transformations of its face through unnumbered centuries we have become assured of the existence of a very ancient continental bond between northern Europe and North America and of another continental bond, also very ancient, between the massive Africa and South America. There was a North Atlantic continent comprising Russia, Scandinavia, Great Britain, Greenland, and Canada, to which was added later a southern band made up of a large part of central and western Europe and an immense portion of the United States. There was also a South Atlantic, or African-Brazilian, Continent extending northward to the southern border of the Atlas, eastward to the Persian Gulf and to Mozambique Channel, westward to the eastern border of the Andes and to the Sierras of Colombia and Venezuela. Between the two continents passed the mediterranean depression, that ancient maritime furrow, which has formed an escarp about the earth since the beginning of geologic times, and which we still see so deeply marked in the present Mediterranean, the Caribbean Sea, and the Sunda or Flores Sea. A chain of mountains broader than the chain of the Alps, and perhaps in some parts as high as the majestic Himalaya, once lifted itself on the land inclosed shore of the North Atlantic continent, embracing the Vosges, the Central Plateau of France, Brittany, the south of England and of Ireland, and also Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and, in the United States, all the Appalachian region. The two coasts which front each other above the Atlantic waters 3,000 kilometers (1,875 miles) apart, that of Brittany, Cornwall, and the south of Ireland on one side, that of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia on the other side, are among the finest estuary shores in the world, and their estuaries are face to face. In the one as in the other, the folds of the ancient chain are cut abruptly, and often naturally, by the shore; and the dirigent lines of the European chain are directly aligned with those of the American chain. Within a few years it will be one of the pleasures of oceanographers, by clearing up the detailed chart of the ocean beds between Ireland and Newfoundland, to establish the persistence of a fold, of oriented mountainous aspect, on the site of this old engulfed mountain chain. Marcel Bertrand gave the name of “Hercynian” to this old chain. Eduard Suess calls it the chain of the Altaïdes, for it comes from far-off Asia, and to him the Appalachians are nothing less than the American Altaïdes.
Thus the region of the Atlantic, until an era of ruin which began we know not when, but the end of which was the Tertiary, was occupied by a continental mass, bounded on the south by a chain of mountains, and which was all submerged long before the collapse of those volcanic lands of which the Azores seem to be the last vestiges. In place of the South Atlantic Ocean there was, likewise, for many thousands of centuries a great continent now very deeply engulfed beneath the sea. It is probable that these movements of depression occurred at several periods, the contours of the Mediterranean, which then separated the two continents, being frequently modified in the course of the ages. From the middle of the Cretaceous the Mediterranean advanced as far as the Canaries, and its southern shore was then very near the site to-day occupied by these islands. On this matter we have a precise datum recently found by M. Pitard, and very exactly fixed by MM. Cottreau and Lemoine. The region of the Cape Verde Islands, at the same era, still belonged to the African-Brazilian Continent.
While the Mediterranean in this Atlantic region was being enlarged by the gradual collapsing of its shores, it was being subdivided, perhaps, and in any case its bottom was becoming undulated by the formation underneath it of new folds and wrinkles. In this broad and deep furrow, where the sediments from the north and south continents were accumulating to enormous thicknesses, the movement was in fact developing which during the Tertiary period gave rise in Europe to the Alpine chain.
Now, let geology say its word. In the same way that the painter’s eye perceives a whole world of colors and reflections unsuspected by other men, so is the eye of the geologist impressed by the vague and very uncertain gleams which illumine, for him alone, the darkness of the gulfs and the still deeper night of the distant past. And his ear, sensitive as that of the musician, vibrates to the murmurs, the crackings, and the sighs which come from the earth’s depths or from the depths of history and which the majority of men mistake for absolute silence.
Observe one primary fact: The eastern region of the Atlantic Ocean, over all its length and probably from one pole to the other, is a great volcanic zone. In the depression along the coast of Africa and of Europe and in the eastern part of the highly elevated strip which occupies the middle of the sea volcanoes are abundant. All the peaks which reach the surface of the sea outcrop in the form of volcanic islands or bearing volcanoes. Gough Island, Tristan da Cunha, St. Helena, Ascension, the Cape Verde Islands, the Canaries, the great Madeira and the neighboring isles, all the Azores, Iceland, Jan Mayen Island are either integrally or in greater part formed of lava. I will tell in a moment how certain dredgings in 1898 found lavas, at depths of 3,000 meters, on a line from the Azores to Iceland, and at about 500 miles or 900 kilometers to the north of the Azores. One navigator in 1838 established the existence of a submarine volcano on the Equator at about 22° west longitude, or on the line joining Ascension to the archipelago of Cape Verde; warm steam was rising from the waves and shallows had formed unlike those indicated on the charts. On the islands I have just named many volcanoes are still in activity, the extinct ones appear to have been extinguished only yesterday, everywhere earthquakes are frequent, here and there islets may spring up abruptly from the sea or rocks long known may disappear. The continuity of these phenomena is concealed by the ocean covering them, but to the geologist it is unquestionable.
The volcanic zone of the eastern Atlantic is comparable in length, in breadth, and in eruptive or seismic activity, to that which forms the western border of America, and coincides in the south with the cordillera of the Andes; it is one of the characteristic traits of the present phase of the earth, quite like the fiery girdle of the Pacific Ocean. Now, there is no volcano without a convulsion, or, at the very least, not without a subsidence of some portion of the terrestrial crust. The volcanoes of the fiery girdle of the Pacific stake out the border of a deep marine foss which compasses this ocean, and which, undoubtedly, has not stopped growing deeper; the volcanoes of the Mediterranean appear on the margin of great abysses recently opened and into which enormous mountains have fallen. It must be, therefore, that there is also in the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, still present, a certain mobility, and that the median wrinkle of this bottom, already much elevated above it, has not finished its relative movement upward in proportion to the eastern depression. While the continental shores of the Atlantic now appear immobile, and a hundred times more impassive than the Pacific shores, the bottom of the Atlantic is in movement in the entire eastern zone, about 3,000 kilometers (1,875 miles) broad, which comprises Iceland, the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, and the Cape Verde Islands. Here there is even now an unstable zone on the planet’s surface, and in such a zone the most terrible cataclysms may at any moment be taking place.
Some cataclysms certainly have occurred, and they date only as from yesterday. I ask all those who are concerned with the problem of Atlantis to listen attentively and to impress on their mind this brief history; there is none more significant: In the summer of 1898 a ship was employed in the laying of the submarine telegraphic cable which binds Brest to Cape Cod. The cable had been broken, and they were trying to fish it up again by means of grappling irons. It was in north latitude 47° 0′ and longitude 29° 40′ west from Paris, at a point about 500 miles north of the Azores. The mean depth was pretty nearly 1,700 fathoms, or 3,100 meters. The relaying of the cable presented great difficulties, and for several days it was necessary to drag the grappling irons over the bottom. This was established: The bottom of the sea in those parts presents the characteristics of a mountainous country, with high summits, steep slopes, and deep valleys. The summits are rocky, and there are oozes only in the hollows of the valleys. The grappling iron, in following this much-disturbed surface, was constantly being caught in the rocks by hard points and sharp edges; it came up almost always broken or twisted, and the broken pieces recovered bore large coarse stria; and traces of violent and rapid wear. On several returns, they found between the teeth of the grappling iron little mineral splinters, having the appearance of recently broken chips. All these fragments belonged to the same class of rocks. The unanimous opinion of the engineers who were present at the dredging was that the chips in question had been detached from a bare rock, an actual outcropping, sharp-edged and angular. The region whence the chips came was furthermore precisely that where the soundings had revealed the highest submarine summits and the almost complete absence of oozes. The fragments, thus torn from the rocky outcrops of the bottom of the Atlantic, are of a vitreous lava, having the chemical composition of the basalts and called tachylyte by the petrographers. We are preserving some of these precious fragments at the Musée de l’Ecole des Mines at Paris.
The matter was described in 1899 to the Académie des Sciences. Few geologists then comprehended its very great import. Such a lava, entirely vitreous, comparable to certain basaltic stones of the volcanoes in the Hawaiian Islands, could solidify into this condition only under atmospheric pressure. Under several atmospheres, and more especially under 3,000 meters of water, it might have crystallized. It would appear to us as formed of confused crystals, instead of being composed solely of colloidal matter. The most recent studies on this subject leave no doubt, and I will content myself with recalling the observation of M. Lacroix on the lavas of Mount Pelee of Martinique: Vitreous, when they congealed in the open air, these lavas became filled with crystals as soon as they were cooled under a cover, even not very thick, of previously solidified rocks. The surface which to-day constitutes the bottom of the Atlantic, 900 kilometers (562.5 miles) north of the Azores, was therefore covered with lava flows while it was still emerged. Consequently, it has been buried, descending 3,000 meters; and since the surface of the rocks has there preserved its distorted aspect, its rugged roughnesses, the sharp edges of the very recent lava flows, it must be that the caving in followed very close upon the emission of the lavas, and that this collapse was sudden. Otherwise atmospheric erosion and marine abrasion would have leveled the inequalities and planed down the entire surface. Let us continue our reasoning. We are here on the line which joins Iceland to the Azores, in the midst of the Atlantic volcanic zone, in the midst of the zone of mobility, of instability, and present volcanism. It would seem to be a fair conclusion, then, that the entire region north of the Azores and perhaps the very region of the Azores, of which they may be only the visible ruins, was very recently submerged, probably during the epoch which the geologists call the present because it is so recent, and which for us, the living beings of to-day, is the same as yesterday.
If you recall now what I told you a little while ago of the extreme inequality of the depths to the south and the southwest of the Azores, you will agree with me that a detailed dredging to the south and the southwest of these islands would give the same results which have been shown at the north, in the operations of fishing up the telegraphic cable again. And before your eyes would increase then, almost immeasurably, the buried region, the region which was abruptly engulfed yesterday, and of which the Azores are no more than the evidences, escaped from the general collapse.
But observe other facts, always of the geologic order. The Atlantic abyss, almost as a whole, seems to be of relatively recent date: and, before the collapse of the Azorian region, other collapses occurred there, the size of which, more easily measurable, staggers the imagination.
Since Eduard Suess and Marcel Bertrand taught us to regard our planet and to decipher the slow or rapid transformations of its face through unnumbered centuries we have become assured of the existence of a very ancient continental bond between northern Europe and North America and of another continental bond, also very ancient, between the massive Africa and South America. There was a North Atlantic continent comprising Russia, Scandinavia, Great Britain, Greenland, and Canada, to which was added later a southern band made up of a large part of central and western Europe and an immense portion of the United States. There was also a South Atlantic, or African-Brazilian, Continent extending northward to the southern border of the Atlas, eastward to the Persian Gulf and to Mozambique Channel, westward to the eastern border of the Andes and to the Sierras of Colombia and Venezuela. Between the two continents passed the mediterranean depression, that ancient maritime furrow, which has formed an escarp about the earth since the beginning of geologic times, and which we still see so deeply marked in the present Mediterranean, the Caribbean Sea, and the Sunda or Flores Sea. A chain of mountains broader than the chain of the Alps, and perhaps in some parts as high as the majestic Himalaya, once lifted itself on the land inclosed shore of the North Atlantic continent, embracing the Vosges, the Central Plateau of France, Brittany, the south of England and of Ireland, and also Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and, in the United States, all the Appalachian region. The two coasts which front each other above the Atlantic waters 3,000 kilometers (1,875 miles) apart, that of Brittany, Cornwall, and the south of Ireland on one side, that of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia on the other side, are among the finest estuary shores in the world, and their estuaries are face to face. In the one as in the other, the folds of the ancient chain are cut abruptly, and often naturally, by the shore; and the dirigent lines of the European chain are directly aligned with those of the American chain. Within a few years it will be one of the pleasures of oceanographers, by clearing up the detailed chart of the ocean beds between Ireland and Newfoundland, to establish the persistence of a fold, of oriented mountainous aspect, on the site of this old engulfed mountain chain. Marcel Bertrand gave the name of “Hercynian” to this old chain. Eduard Suess calls it the chain of the Altaïdes, for it comes from far-off Asia, and to him the Appalachians are nothing less than the American Altaïdes.
Thus the region of the Atlantic, until an era of ruin which began we know not when, but the end of which was the Tertiary, was occupied by a continental mass, bounded on the south by a chain of mountains, and which was all submerged long before the collapse of those volcanic lands of which the Azores seem to be the last vestiges. In place of the South Atlantic Ocean there was, likewise, for many thousands of centuries a great continent now very deeply engulfed beneath the sea. It is probable that these movements of depression occurred at several periods, the contours of the Mediterranean, which then separated the two continents, being frequently modified in the course of the ages. From the middle of the Cretaceous the Mediterranean advanced as far as the Canaries, and its southern shore was then very near the site to-day occupied by these islands. On this matter we have a precise datum recently found by M. Pitard, and very exactly fixed by MM. Cottreau and Lemoine. The region of the Cape Verde Islands, at the same era, still belonged to the African-Brazilian Continent.
While the Mediterranean in this Atlantic region was being enlarged by the gradual collapsing of its shores, it was being subdivided, perhaps, and in any case its bottom was becoming undulated by the formation underneath it of new folds and wrinkles. In this broad and deep furrow, where the sediments from the north and south continents were accumulating to enormous thicknesses, the movement was in fact developing which during the Tertiary period gave rise in Europe to the Alpine chain.
How far did this Tertiary chain, this Alpine chain, extend in the Atlantic region? And, also, what was the extent of its faultings in this now oceanic region? Did some fragments of the chain rise high enough to lift themselves for some centuries above the waters before returning, suddenly or slowly, into the starless night? Did the folds of the Alps or of the Atlas Mountains spread abroad as far as the Caribbean Sea? And must we admit, between our Alps and the Cordillera of the West Indies, which is itself only a sinuous outpost of the grand cordillera of the Andes, a tectonic bond, as we are admitting, since Suess has shown it to us, a stratigraphic bond? These questions are still unanswered. M. Louis Gentil has followed, in the western Atlas Mountains, the folds of the Tertiary chain to the shore of the ocean, and he has seen these folds, gradually diminishing, “drowning themselves,” [5] as the miners say, descend into the waves; their direction, on this coast of Agadir and of Cape Ghir, is such that, if prolonged in mind, they would lead us to the Canaries. But to be able to affirm that the Canaries are highly elevated fragments of the engulfed Atlas one must have observed the folds in their Cretaceous sediment, and I do not believe that this observation has been made. The Atlas Range, as every one knows, is only one of the branches of the great Tertiary chain; it is the prolongation in the north of Africa of the mountainous system of the Apennines. As to the true Alps, which are the principal branch of the same chain, they may be followed without difficulty as far as the Sierra Nevada, and even to Gibraltar. Under the Strait of Gibraltar they are reunited to the Rif Mountains. But the Rif, in which some geologists would see the continuation of the entire Alpine system, certainly correspond to only a part of this system; all of one northern band of Alpine folds, emerging from under the nappes of the Sierra Nevada, moves toward the west instead of turning toward Gibraltar. I see them, under the recent terranes, crossing Andalusia, forming a narrow band on the coast of Algarve, and finally, at Cape St. Vincent, abruptly cut off and not showing any tendency toward “drowning,” hiding themselves in the sea. Their direction, if prolonged, would lead us to Santa Maria, the most southern of the Azores, where we observe undisturbed Miocene sediments.
Summing up, there are strong reasons for believing in the Atlantic prolongation of the Tertiary folds, those of the Atlas Mountains toward the Canaries, those of the Alps toward the southern islands of the Azores, but nothing yet permits of either extending very far or limiting very narrowly this prolongation. The sediments of Santa Maria prove only this, that at the Miocene epoch—that is, when the great Alpine movements were terminated in Europe—a Mediterranean shore extended not far from this region of the Azores, the shore of a continent or of a large island. Another shore of the same Miocene sea passed near the Canaries.
In every way the geography has singularly changed in the Atlantic region in the course of the later periods of the earth’s history; and the extreme mobility of the bottom of the ocean, shown at the present time by such a multiplicity of volcanoes and such an extent of lava fields, surely dates from far back. Depressions during the secondary period, enlarging the Mediterranean and causing the ruins of the Hercynian chain to disappear; foldings in the entire Mediterranean zone during the first half of the Tertiary era, modifying the beds of this sea and causing mountainous islands to arise here or there near its northern coast; collapses again at the close of the Miocene, in the folded Mediterranean zone and in the two continental areas, continuing up to the final annihilation of the two continents and the obliteration of their shores; then, in the bottom of the immense maritime domain resulting from these subsidences, the appearance of a new design whose general direction is north and south and which conceals or, at the very least, partially obliterates the former marking; the pouring out of the lavas, everywhere a little, in the residual islands and even on the bottom of the seas, this pouring forth being the necessary and inevitable counteraction of the very deep, downward sinking of such portions of the crust. Such, in brief, is the history of the Atlantic Ocean for several million years. Many incidents of this history will never be exactly correlated, but we know that certain of them are very recent. M. Louis Gentil has given us, in this connection, some very interesting observations, gathered along the Moroccoan coasts. The Strait of Gibraltar was opened at the beginning of the Pliocene. Already, at the Tortonian epoch, the sea was washing the shore of Agadir, and consequently Madeira and the Canaries were then already separated from the Continent. But the Tortonian and even the Plaisancian beds on this Moroccoan shore are faulted and folded. Therefore in the zone of prolongation of the Atlas Mountains there have been important movements posterior to the Plaisancian, and consequently Quaternary. The channel which separates Madeira and the Canaries from the African mass was again deepened in Quaternary times.
Such are the data of geology. The extreme mobility of the Atlantic region, especially in conjunction with the mediterranean depression and the great volcanic zone, 3,000 kilometers (1,875 miles) broad, which extends from north to south, in the eastern half of the present ocean; the certainty of the occurrence of immense depressions when islands and even continents have disappeared; the certainty that some of these depressions date as from yesterday, are of Quaternary age, and that consequently they might have been seen by man; the certainty that some of them have been sudden, or at least very rapid. See how much there is to encourage those who still hold out for Plato’s narrative. Geologically speaking, the Platonian history of Atlantis is highly probable.
Now let us consult the zoologists. There is a young French scholar, M. Louis Germain, who is going to answer us; and I really regret very much not being able actually to give him the floor, but instead to be only his very inadequate interpreter.
First of all, the study of the present terrestrial fauna of the islands of the four archipelagoes, the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape Verde, has convinced M. Germain of the clearly continental origin of this fauna. He even observes numerous indications of an adaptation to desert life. The malacological fauna especially is connected with that of the region about the Mediterranean, while differing from the African equatorial fauna. The same analogies with the fauna about the Mediterranean are observed in the Mollusca of the Quaternary.
Secondly, the Quaternary formations of the Canaries resemble those of Mauritania and inclose the same species of Mollusca; for example, the same species of Helix.
From these two primary facts M. Germain deduces the evident conclusion that the four archipelagoes were connected with the African Continent up to an epoch very near our own, at the very least until toward the end of the Tertiary.
Thirdly, in the present Mollusca of the four archipelagoes there are some species which seem to be the survivors of the fossil species of the European Tertiary; and a similar survival exists also in the vegetable series, a fern, the Adiantum remforme, at present extinct in Europe, but known in the Pliocene of Portugal, continuing to-day to live in the Canaries and in the Azores.
M. Germain deduces from this third fact the bond, up to Pliocene times, with the Iberian Peninsula, of the continent which embraced the archipelagoes and the severing of this bond during the Pliocene.
Fourthly, the Pulmonata Mollusca, called Oleacinidae, have a peculiar geographic distribution. They live only in Central America, the West Indies, the Mediterranean Basin, and the Canaries, Madeira, and the Azores. In America they have preserved the large size that they had in Europe in the Miocene epoch; in the Mediterranean Basin and in the Atlantic islands they have become much smaller.
This geographic distribution of the Oleacinidae evidently implies the extension to the West Indies at the beginning of the Miocene of the continent which included the Azores, the Canaries, and Madeira, and the establishing during the Miocene, or toward its close, of a separation between the West Indies and this continent.
Summing up, there are strong reasons for believing in the Atlantic prolongation of the Tertiary folds, those of the Atlas Mountains toward the Canaries, those of the Alps toward the southern islands of the Azores, but nothing yet permits of either extending very far or limiting very narrowly this prolongation. The sediments of Santa Maria prove only this, that at the Miocene epoch—that is, when the great Alpine movements were terminated in Europe—a Mediterranean shore extended not far from this region of the Azores, the shore of a continent or of a large island. Another shore of the same Miocene sea passed near the Canaries.
In every way the geography has singularly changed in the Atlantic region in the course of the later periods of the earth’s history; and the extreme mobility of the bottom of the ocean, shown at the present time by such a multiplicity of volcanoes and such an extent of lava fields, surely dates from far back. Depressions during the secondary period, enlarging the Mediterranean and causing the ruins of the Hercynian chain to disappear; foldings in the entire Mediterranean zone during the first half of the Tertiary era, modifying the beds of this sea and causing mountainous islands to arise here or there near its northern coast; collapses again at the close of the Miocene, in the folded Mediterranean zone and in the two continental areas, continuing up to the final annihilation of the two continents and the obliteration of their shores; then, in the bottom of the immense maritime domain resulting from these subsidences, the appearance of a new design whose general direction is north and south and which conceals or, at the very least, partially obliterates the former marking; the pouring out of the lavas, everywhere a little, in the residual islands and even on the bottom of the seas, this pouring forth being the necessary and inevitable counteraction of the very deep, downward sinking of such portions of the crust. Such, in brief, is the history of the Atlantic Ocean for several million years. Many incidents of this history will never be exactly correlated, but we know that certain of them are very recent. M. Louis Gentil has given us, in this connection, some very interesting observations, gathered along the Moroccoan coasts. The Strait of Gibraltar was opened at the beginning of the Pliocene. Already, at the Tortonian epoch, the sea was washing the shore of Agadir, and consequently Madeira and the Canaries were then already separated from the Continent. But the Tortonian and even the Plaisancian beds on this Moroccoan shore are faulted and folded. Therefore in the zone of prolongation of the Atlas Mountains there have been important movements posterior to the Plaisancian, and consequently Quaternary. The channel which separates Madeira and the Canaries from the African mass was again deepened in Quaternary times.
Such are the data of geology. The extreme mobility of the Atlantic region, especially in conjunction with the mediterranean depression and the great volcanic zone, 3,000 kilometers (1,875 miles) broad, which extends from north to south, in the eastern half of the present ocean; the certainty of the occurrence of immense depressions when islands and even continents have disappeared; the certainty that some of these depressions date as from yesterday, are of Quaternary age, and that consequently they might have been seen by man; the certainty that some of them have been sudden, or at least very rapid. See how much there is to encourage those who still hold out for Plato’s narrative. Geologically speaking, the Platonian history of Atlantis is highly probable.
Now let us consult the zoologists. There is a young French scholar, M. Louis Germain, who is going to answer us; and I really regret very much not being able actually to give him the floor, but instead to be only his very inadequate interpreter.
First of all, the study of the present terrestrial fauna of the islands of the four archipelagoes, the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape Verde, has convinced M. Germain of the clearly continental origin of this fauna. He even observes numerous indications of an adaptation to desert life. The malacological fauna especially is connected with that of the region about the Mediterranean, while differing from the African equatorial fauna. The same analogies with the fauna about the Mediterranean are observed in the Mollusca of the Quaternary.
Secondly, the Quaternary formations of the Canaries resemble those of Mauritania and inclose the same species of Mollusca; for example, the same species of Helix.
From these two primary facts M. Germain deduces the evident conclusion that the four archipelagoes were connected with the African Continent up to an epoch very near our own, at the very least until toward the end of the Tertiary.
Thirdly, in the present Mollusca of the four archipelagoes there are some species which seem to be the survivors of the fossil species of the European Tertiary; and a similar survival exists also in the vegetable series, a fern, the Adiantum remforme, at present extinct in Europe, but known in the Pliocene of Portugal, continuing to-day to live in the Canaries and in the Azores.
M. Germain deduces from this third fact the bond, up to Pliocene times, with the Iberian Peninsula, of the continent which embraced the archipelagoes and the severing of this bond during the Pliocene.
Fourthly, the Pulmonata Mollusca, called Oleacinidae, have a peculiar geographic distribution. They live only in Central America, the West Indies, the Mediterranean Basin, and the Canaries, Madeira, and the Azores. In America they have preserved the large size that they had in Europe in the Miocene epoch; in the Mediterranean Basin and in the Atlantic islands they have become much smaller.
This geographic distribution of the Oleacinidae evidently implies the extension to the West Indies at the beginning of the Miocene of the continent which included the Azores, the Canaries, and Madeira, and the establishing during the Miocene, or toward its close, of a separation between the West Indies and this continent.
Two facts remain relative to the marine animals, and both seem impossible of explanation, except by the persistence, up to very near the present times, of a maritime shore extending from the West Indies to Senegal, and even binding together Florida, the Bermudas, and the bottom of the Gulf of Guinea. Fifteen species of marine Mollusca lived at the same time, both in the West Indies and on the coast of Senegal and nowhere else, unless this coexistence can be explained by the transportation of the embryos. On the other hand, the Madreporaria fauna of the island of St. Thomas, studied by M. Gravier, includes six species—one does not live outside of St. Thomas, except in the Florida Reefs; and four others are known only from the Bermudas. As the duration of the pelagic life of the larvae of the Madreporaria is only a few days, it is impossible to attribute this surprising reappearance to the action of marine currents.
In taking all this into account, M. Germain is led to admit the existence of an Atlantic continent connected with the Iberian Peninsula and with Mauritania and prolonging itself rather far toward the south so as to include some regions of desert climate. During the Miocene again this continent extends as far as the West Indies.
It is then portioned off, at first in the direction of the West Indies, then in the south, by the establishment of a marine shore which extends as far as Senegal and to the depths of the Gulf of Guinea, then at length in the east, probably during the Pliocene, along the coast of Africa. The last great fragment, finally engulfed and no longer having left any further vestiges than the four archipelagoes, would be the Atlantis of Plato.
I will refrain in my incompetence from expressing the slightest opinion as to the zoologic value of the facts pointed out by M. Germain, and as to the degree of accuracy of the conclusions that he draws from them. But how can one fail to be struck by the almost absolute agreement of these zoologic conclusions with those to which geology has led us? And who could now, in the face of so complete an accord, based on arguments so different, still doubt the preservation, up to an epoch very near our own, of vast lands emerged in the part of the ocean which is west of the Pillars of Hercules?
That is sufficient; and this is what we should remember from our brief talk. To reconstruct even approximately the map of Atlantis will always remain a difficult proposition. At present we must not even think of it. But it is entirely reasonable to believe that, long after the opening of the Strait of Gibraltar, certain of these emerged lands still existed, and among them a marvelous island, separated from the African Continent by a chain of other smaller islands. One thing alone remains to be proved—that the cataclysm which caused this island to disappear was subsequent to the appearance of man in western Europe. The cataclysm is undoubted. Did men then live who could withstand the reaction and transmit the memory of it? That is the whole question. I do not believe it at all insolvable, though it seems to me that neither geology nor zoology will solve it. These two sciences appear to have told all that they can tell; and it is from anthropology, from ethnography, and, lastly, from oceanography that I am now awaiting the final answer.
Meanwhile, not only will science, most modern science, not make it a crime for all lovers of beautiful legends to believe in Plato’s story of Atlantis, but science herself through my voice calls their attention to it. Science herself, taking them by the hand and leading them along the wreck-strewn ocean shore, spreads before their eyes, with thousands of disabled ships, the continents submerged or reduced to remnants, and the isles without number enshrouded in the abyssmal depths.
For my own part I can not help thinking of the abrupt movements of the earth’s crust and, among others, of that terrifying phenomenon of the almost sudden disappearance of some outskirt of a continent, some element of a chain of mountains, some great island, into a gulf many thousands of meters deep. That such a phenomenon may be produced, and even repeated many times, in the course of later geologic periods, and that it may often attain to gigantic size, this no geologist is right in questioning. We are surprised sometimes that similar cataclysms have left no traces on our shores, without reflecting that it is the very suddenness of their arrival and their flight which renders them scarcely conceivable. Not one of them, in fact, has ever occurred without initiating a lowering of the mean sea level, but the counteraction is never delayed at all, and the rapid rising of another division of the ocean bottom, or the slower issue of the by no means unimaginable submarine flows of lavas, has soon reestablished the equilibrium; so exact is the balance in which are weighed—on one side the deeps, on the other the mountains.
And when in thought I thus review those frightful pages of the earth’s history, usually in presence of the smiling sea, indifferent, before the sea “more beautiful than cathedrals,” I dream of the last night of Atlantis, to which perhaps the last night, that “great night” of humanity will bear semblance. The young men have nil departed for the war, beyond the islands of the Levant and the distant Pillars of Hercules; those who remain, men of mature age, women, children, old men, and priests, anxiously question the marine horizon, hoping there to see the first sails appearing, heralds of the warriors’ return. But to-night the horizon is dark and vacant. How shadowy the sea grows; how threatening is the sky so overcast! The earth for some days has shuddered and trembled. The sun seems rent asunder, here and there exhaling fiery vapors. It is even reported that some of the mountain craters have opened, whence smoke and flames belch forth and stones and ashes are hurled into the air. Now on all sides a warm gray powder is raining down. Night has quite fallen, fearful darkness; nothing can be seen without lighted torches. Suddenly seized with blind terror, the multitude rushes into the temples; but lo! even the temples crumble, while the sea advances and invades the shore, its cruel clamor rising loud above all other noise. What takes place might indeed be the Divine wrath. Then quiet reigns; no longer are there either mountains or shores; no longer anything save the restless sea, asleep under the tropic sky, with its stars unnumbered; and in the breath of the trade winds I hear the voice of the immortal poet singing:
O, waves, how many mournful tales you know!
Wide waves profound, that kneeling mothers fear!
Those tales the flooding tides recount with care;
And thus arise those voices of despair
Which you to-night again bring with you here!
In taking all this into account, M. Germain is led to admit the existence of an Atlantic continent connected with the Iberian Peninsula and with Mauritania and prolonging itself rather far toward the south so as to include some regions of desert climate. During the Miocene again this continent extends as far as the West Indies.
It is then portioned off, at first in the direction of the West Indies, then in the south, by the establishment of a marine shore which extends as far as Senegal and to the depths of the Gulf of Guinea, then at length in the east, probably during the Pliocene, along the coast of Africa. The last great fragment, finally engulfed and no longer having left any further vestiges than the four archipelagoes, would be the Atlantis of Plato.
I will refrain in my incompetence from expressing the slightest opinion as to the zoologic value of the facts pointed out by M. Germain, and as to the degree of accuracy of the conclusions that he draws from them. But how can one fail to be struck by the almost absolute agreement of these zoologic conclusions with those to which geology has led us? And who could now, in the face of so complete an accord, based on arguments so different, still doubt the preservation, up to an epoch very near our own, of vast lands emerged in the part of the ocean which is west of the Pillars of Hercules?
That is sufficient; and this is what we should remember from our brief talk. To reconstruct even approximately the map of Atlantis will always remain a difficult proposition. At present we must not even think of it. But it is entirely reasonable to believe that, long after the opening of the Strait of Gibraltar, certain of these emerged lands still existed, and among them a marvelous island, separated from the African Continent by a chain of other smaller islands. One thing alone remains to be proved—that the cataclysm which caused this island to disappear was subsequent to the appearance of man in western Europe. The cataclysm is undoubted. Did men then live who could withstand the reaction and transmit the memory of it? That is the whole question. I do not believe it at all insolvable, though it seems to me that neither geology nor zoology will solve it. These two sciences appear to have told all that they can tell; and it is from anthropology, from ethnography, and, lastly, from oceanography that I am now awaiting the final answer.
Meanwhile, not only will science, most modern science, not make it a crime for all lovers of beautiful legends to believe in Plato’s story of Atlantis, but science herself through my voice calls their attention to it. Science herself, taking them by the hand and leading them along the wreck-strewn ocean shore, spreads before their eyes, with thousands of disabled ships, the continents submerged or reduced to remnants, and the isles without number enshrouded in the abyssmal depths.
For my own part I can not help thinking of the abrupt movements of the earth’s crust and, among others, of that terrifying phenomenon of the almost sudden disappearance of some outskirt of a continent, some element of a chain of mountains, some great island, into a gulf many thousands of meters deep. That such a phenomenon may be produced, and even repeated many times, in the course of later geologic periods, and that it may often attain to gigantic size, this no geologist is right in questioning. We are surprised sometimes that similar cataclysms have left no traces on our shores, without reflecting that it is the very suddenness of their arrival and their flight which renders them scarcely conceivable. Not one of them, in fact, has ever occurred without initiating a lowering of the mean sea level, but the counteraction is never delayed at all, and the rapid rising of another division of the ocean bottom, or the slower issue of the by no means unimaginable submarine flows of lavas, has soon reestablished the equilibrium; so exact is the balance in which are weighed—on one side the deeps, on the other the mountains.
And when in thought I thus review those frightful pages of the earth’s history, usually in presence of the smiling sea, indifferent, before the sea “more beautiful than cathedrals,” I dream of the last night of Atlantis, to which perhaps the last night, that “great night” of humanity will bear semblance. The young men have nil departed for the war, beyond the islands of the Levant and the distant Pillars of Hercules; those who remain, men of mature age, women, children, old men, and priests, anxiously question the marine horizon, hoping there to see the first sails appearing, heralds of the warriors’ return. But to-night the horizon is dark and vacant. How shadowy the sea grows; how threatening is the sky so overcast! The earth for some days has shuddered and trembled. The sun seems rent asunder, here and there exhaling fiery vapors. It is even reported that some of the mountain craters have opened, whence smoke and flames belch forth and stones and ashes are hurled into the air. Now on all sides a warm gray powder is raining down. Night has quite fallen, fearful darkness; nothing can be seen without lighted torches. Suddenly seized with blind terror, the multitude rushes into the temples; but lo! even the temples crumble, while the sea advances and invades the shore, its cruel clamor rising loud above all other noise. What takes place might indeed be the Divine wrath. Then quiet reigns; no longer are there either mountains or shores; no longer anything save the restless sea, asleep under the tropic sky, with its stars unnumbered; and in the breath of the trade winds I hear the voice of the immortal poet singing:
O, waves, how many mournful tales you know!
Wide waves profound, that kneeling mothers fear!
Those tales the flooding tides recount with care;
And thus arise those voices of despair
Which you to-night again bring with you here!
Notes
[1] Lecture given before the Institut Océanographique of Paris Nov. 30, 1912. Translated by permission from Bulletin de l’Institut Océanographlque, No. 256, 1913.
[2] The latest comer of these poets of Atlantis is a young girl, Emilie de Villers (Lea Ames de la Mer [The Souls of the Sea], Paris, 1911, pub. Eug. Figuière).
[3] Works of Plato, translated [into French] by V. Cousin, vol. 12, pp. 109-113, Paris, pub. Rey and Gravier.
[4] Works of Plato, translated [into French] by V. Cousin, vol. 12, p. 247. Paris, pub. Rey and Gravier.
[5] “S’ennoyant.”
[2] The latest comer of these poets of Atlantis is a young girl, Emilie de Villers (Lea Ames de la Mer [The Souls of the Sea], Paris, 1911, pub. Eug. Figuière).
[3] Works of Plato, translated [into French] by V. Cousin, vol. 12, pp. 109-113, Paris, pub. Rey and Gravier.
[4] Works of Plato, translated [into French] by V. Cousin, vol. 12, p. 247. Paris, pub. Rey and Gravier.
[5] “S’ennoyant.”
Source: Pierre Termier, "Atlantis," Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution 1915 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1916), 219-234.
