Atlantis (Scion)

For thousands of years, debate has raged as to the location, description, even the very existence of the legendary City of Atlantis. Although interest has waxed and waned over the centuries, humanity has dedicated thousands of hours, spent millions of dollars and, in some cases, risked—and lost—human lives, all in the pursuit of this mythic location that many claim never even existed. Although the search for the island-nation has occupied lifetimes of research, at no time has the investigation been more vital than the present.

History
Two and a half millennia years ago, Plato wrote of the “Island of Atlas”, a place his writings claimed was known to the Ancient Egyptians more than 9,000 years before that. According to Plato, this ancient civilization, located beyond the Pillars of Hercules (now the Straits of Gibraltar), had lived peacefully under the dominion of descendants of Poseidon for millennia until they suddenly were overcome with greed and corruption and were destroyed by the Gods for their weakness. Over the course of one terrible day, the entire island-nation was destroyed. Thousands of soldiers, millions of inhabitants, towers, gates, bridges and palaces all struck from the Earth and plunged into the depths of the sea never to return. This story, which Plato claims was passed down through his family for multiple generations, is the earliest written reference to the city of Atlantis known to humanity. From the time he set it down in writing, debate about the veracity of this tale has occurred. Some claim that the lack of earlier verifi cation of the story is proof that Plato created it from whole cloth as a parable to illustrate one of his philosophical theories on social and political structure. Others believe that he was alluding to some centuries-old event, a volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean that had, through the unreliable process of oral communication over generations, turned into a mostly fantasy legend. Earlier tales do not exist, say adherents to this theory, because Plato combined several oral traditions about unrelated events and wove them into a single, more complete and more interesting tale. The truth, however, while less palatable to the modern mind, is very simple. At the time of Atlantis’s destruction, during the height of the Gods’ power in the World, when the Gods erased something, it stayed erased. That any mention of the lost civilization remains at all is a testimony to the astounding recordkeeping of the ancient Egyptians in general and the tenacity of one minor Goddess in specific. Without them, and the already rampant inter-pantheon squabbling and prejudices, the story of Atlantis might have been wiped as cleanly from the face of the planet as the civilization itself.

Early Atlantean Culture
Before the last bout of continental shifting, the land that would one day become Atlantis was tucked securely in the land mass that is now Africa, India and Australia. It was populated with an aggressively intelligent people with a society-wide interest in exploration. This drive led them far from the cradle of humanity, and as the continents drifted, developed their own early culture separate from those of their former-neighbors. As the eons passed and their culture evolved, this separation became more and more evident. Surrounded by the great southern ocean, they relied heavily upon the sea, which at that time brimmed with all manner of fi sh, fowl and fur-bearing mammal. While their thentropical island was lush and expansive, the bounty of the sea provided food, furs, leather, sinew, oil, bone and feathers, leaving them little need for agriculture or animal husbandry. Instead, the vast majority of their time was dedicated to the ocean, and through it, to science. The thick forests of their island provided a bounty of wood for their ships, homes and temples, and the rich soil was full of copper and iron for their tools, nails and, eventually, their astrolabes, sextants and telescopes. This wealth of natural resources, along with a cultural focus on intellectual expansion and exploration, vaulted the people into the forefront of World technological development. Their sea-faring vessels were greatly more advanced than those of other civilizations, which had to divide their time between herding or farming, and their understanding of weather, sea currents, blacksmithing techniques, architecture and construction were well beyond those known in other parts of the World. Fortunately for those they visited, Atlantis was also a peaceful nation. While its people traveled farther abroad than any other culture of the time, they did so out of a love of exploration, a need to answer the question of what was beyond the known horizons, rather than out of a drive to conquer other nations. While willing to protect themselves against aggressors, for the most part, they relied on their overwhelming knowledge to maintain contact with other civilized cultures of the time and traded the technological advances they’d developed freely with other nations. This attitude led, in no small part, to the production of architecture, sculpture and technology in many early nations that seems, to modern historians who are not aware of the Atlantean culture, dramatically incongruent with the native cultures of the time. To those who were familiar with the Atlanteans, however, it was simply one benefit of having contact with such an advanced nation.