Atlantis of Rudolf Steiner

Atlantis lore

NO SCIENTIFIC SUPPORT. However, there is no scientific support whatever that there was a continent where Steiner and others said it lie. That is to say, a required rug of support is pulled away from under the feet of the tale and makes it very hard to believe that the last remnants of wonderful Atlantis disappeared into the ocean only about 10,000 years ago - but that is what Steiner says.

PLATE TECTONICS. Modern plate tectonics shows that the Atlantic Ocean was slowly formed long before a claimed Atlantis, and offers no room for it. The current understanding is that a supercontinent, Pangea, split as the assembled plates beneath it slowly drifted apart on the earth's mantle, to the end that the Americas currently drift about 2 cm away from Europe and Africa each year.

Further, the bottom of the deep Atlantic Ocean has not been submerged. The drift of the continents is caused by a very long rift, slightly S-shaped rift at the bottom of the ocean, the Mid-Atlantic rift. Magma comes up through the rift and has built a "Mid-Atlantic mountain range". Here and there islands appear along that ridge, and Iceland contains such volcanic isles. But most of the ridge is submerged, deep in the ocean. [Wikipedia, "Atlantic Ocean"; "Plate tectonics"]

The rift that is caused by the drifting tectonic plates, makes present continents move away from one another, but it does not make any of the drifting plates slide downwards. The ocean bottoms of each side of the rift just glide apart. These findings yield no necessary space for a recently submerged continent in the Atlantic Ocean.

Could an asteroid have fallen down from the sky and submerged the whole continent, or great parts of it? Hardly. There was an impact in the Caribbean Ocean - around Yucatán - but that was about 65 million years ago - and long before the Atlantis of the seers. [Wikipedia, "Chicxulub crater" and Yucatán Peninsula"]

◎ Atlantis did not sink into the Atlantic Ocean at all, according to plate tectonics.

"Why are there found no migrants from Atlantis anywhere so far?"

ATLANIS MIGRATIONS NOT TRACKED BY GENETIC STUDIES. Steiner also talks of migrations from Atlantis, but recent genetic studies draw quite another picture, and conclude so far that today's mankind come from humans that migrated from southern Africa - There is nothing about Atlantis-migrations in such a picture. [Wikipedia, "Genographic Project" og "Early human migrations", and "Root race"]

The Said Atlantis History and Its People

ATLANTIS HISTORY. The story of Atlantis comes down to us through two dialogues by Plato, Timaeus and Critias. Platon tells that the story of Atlantis as told among Greeks comes from Athen's lawgiver Solon. Solon in turn had been told about it on a visit to Egypt. That is where the earliest talk of Atlantis may be traced, actually. And recent findings of writings on stone walls in ancient Egypt mention a sea-faring people from "the west" (of Egypt). In brief, there are characteristics of the Minoan civilization of Crete and surrounding islands that match some of Platon's descriptions, and others that do not. The Minoan civilization floundered around 1480 BCE. Another candidate to the name of Atlantis may be Tartessos in Andalucia, although what has been found there so far, is not convincing - just promising.

The Atlantis of Rudolf Steiner is much bigger than Crete and surrounding islands. He says the people there descended from a "root race" that once lived where southern Asia is now - the Lemurians. The Atlanteans of Steiner are a so-called root race, one of seven, each with sub-races - and Steiner places the races as he calls them, in a scenario of spiritual development.

CHARACTERISTICS OF ATLANTIC PEOPLE. According to Steiner, our Atlantic forebears had no skeletons, no logical reason power, but could recall very well. They had levitating vessels (made by "softies without reason") . . . and water was thinner back then, some ten thousand years ago. (Was it?) And so on. Steiner puts the Atlanteans into a wider scheme, that of mankind's spiritual evolution through ages and races on fancy continents.

STEINER'S ATLANTIS AND THE ATLANTIS OF OTHERS. For about ten years Rudolf Steiner headed the German Section of the international Theosophy movement. He was also initiated into Rosecrucianism, and ran his own Masonic lodge. Theosophy teaches about root races and Atlantis, as does Steiner.

Conclusion

SUMMARY. The Atlantis of many claimed clairvoyants is not mainstream. Much accepted, scientific support of vital claims about Atlantis seem missing to this day. The bottom of the Atlantic Ocean did not sink recently at all. There must have been no people on that missing continent; no people from there to migrate here and there.

One may suspect that some clairvoyants tell similar stories after being deeply influenced by one another.

As for races, genetic diversity within any racial group dominates the diversity between racial groups and very much so, says Siddhartha Mukherjee, in The Gene: An Intimate History (2016). (Cited in Robert Todd Carroll's the Skeptic's Dictionary, online version).