A FROZEN CIVILISATION : ATLANTIS IN ANTARCTICA

Book Synopsis: The legend of the lost civilization of Atlantis was first revealed to the world by Plato, who in two of his famed Dialogues, the "Timaeus" and the "Critias", brought forth a wealth of scientific, geographic and religious information of surprising accuracy. However, no proof has come to light that an advanced civilization ever existed in Paleolithic times (12,000 b.C.); no remains have ever been discovered of the great city Plato described; above all, no one has ever been able to give a logical and acceptable explanation of the phenomenon of glaciation, nor of the Great Flood, nor of the complete disappearance of numerous species of fauna. Many populations both of the Old and New Worlds speak of a "Universal Flood" and that the memory of that appalling tragedy has been handed down in the legends of populations as widely separated as the Mayas and the Eskimos, the Hebrews and the Indonesians. The author of this book, a young engineer with an extremely wide scientific background and a senior officer in the Italian Navy, has adopted a completely scientifically controlled approach which leaves nothing to chance, any doubts created by deduction being resolved by modern scientific methods. The validity of his method lies in the fact that nothing in Plato's "Dialogues" has been distorted to fit the author's thesis; everything had to be scientifically proven or nothing could be accepted. The first thing Plato affirms is that Atlantis disappeared overnight through the action of a tremendous earthquake and floods as high as mountains. What phenomenon could have caused such a situation within the space of a few days, if not within hours? Barbiero's answer is: a SUDDEN displacement of the Earth's axis. How is it possible? As an engineer, he knows that free liquid surfaces are a factor of instability, therefore Earth, which is covered for two thirds by deep oceans, is an inherently unstable planet: a “kick” is enough to trigger a process at the end of which the equatorial bulges are “reshaped” and therefore the poles shifted. Barbiero with a rigorous mathematical analysis demonstrates that the impact of a one-kilometer asteroid or of a comet can provide such a “kick”. Well, about twelve thousand years ago - that is the figure indicated by Plato - the Earth was hit by an asteroid or a comet, as it is demonstrated by geological evidence and by the better known legends of many races. It is therefore evident that in those times Earth's climate was profoundly different and in many regions now ice-covered, or at least with very low temperatures - the Antarctic and Siberia, for instance - there was once an eternally spring-like climate with biosystems widely different from those of today. Barbiero puts forward the theory that the ancient Atlantean empire had its location in the Antarctic, to be precise in the region washed by the Weddell Sea. This breathtaking hypothesis needs time to be assimilated, mainly because no one seems to have thought of it before, also it is the farthest removed from the ideas of all the other researchers. In order to arrive at this surprising conclusion, Barbiero has closely examined all the data and the measurements given by Plato and has subjected them to a very rigid criticism and a tight check. Nothing has escaped his scrutiny and the entire book is an admirable synthesis of the results obtained by research in the most widely diverging sciences, from Astronomy to Oceanography, from Cartography to Anthropology, Geology, Zoology, etc. It is surprising that one man alone has been able to delve into so many fields of human knowledge: this fact alone proves how seriously he prepared himself for the work which brought him to the conclusion referred to above. Prof. Silvio Zavatti (director of the Polar Institute)