Societal collapse on Easter Island: eco-tragedy or eco-fable?
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There's nothing like a 'lost civilisation' to spark interest in a gripping tale of destruction and lost knowledge. But when it comes to the tales of lost civilisations, limited facts are often embellished by documentary-makers and writers. "So often, the facts are sacrificed for a nice yarn," says Colin Hope, an Egyptologist and director of the Centre for Archaeology and Ancient History at Monash University, Melbourne.
For many lost civilisations, such as Atlantis and Easter Island, the yarn goes far beyond the evidence. But, for others, recent research is revealing startling gems of truth at the heart of some previously disregarded or overlooked stories - such as the great cities of Africa or even El Dorado, a fabulous city reputed by Spanish conquistadors to lie hidden deep within the Amazon jungle.
So what do researchers really know about our lost civilisations? Where do the facts end and the fantasy begin?
Atlantis
It's a region of the southern Spanish coast. It's an island in the Strait of Gibraltar. It's Ireland. Or, if you're inclined to believe a team of Russians, it's 150 km off the tip of southwest England.
"Every year, Atlantis pops up somewhere," says Dale Dominey-Howes, who researches ancient volcanic eruptions and earthquakes at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.
No 'lost civilisation' has captured the public imagination quite like Atlantis. Two and a half thousand years since it was first described by the Greek philosopher, Plato, its possible location is still hotly debated by scientists as well as the media.
Plato wrote of a great island, which was home to a noble civilisation descended from Poseidon, god of the sea and earthquakes. As this race increasingly bred with mere mortals, it degenerated, went to war with Athens and eventually was destroyed.
"There were earthquakes and floods of extraordinary violence," Plato wrote. "In a single dreadful day ... the island of Atlantis was ... swallowed up by the sea and vanished."
While some Atlantis enthusiasts hold that Plato's story describes a genuine civilisation, philosophers are far less sure. "The idea was that we should use the story to examine our ideas of government and power," writes University of Arizona philosopher Julia Annas in Plato: A Very Short Introduction. "We have missed the point if instead of thinking about these issues we go off exploring the seabed."
But if the civilisation itself was fictional, were elements of the story at least inspired by real events? If so, some argue, surely these were events that occurred in Plato's homeland - what we now know as Greece.
Dominey-Howes thinks that the story of Atlantis is most likely based on an eruption on the island of Santorini, in Greece in 1628 BC. The volcano " basically collapsed into the sea at the end of the eruption," he says. "The ocean poured into the hole in the ground, and then exploded out."
At the epicentre, the waves are thought to have been higher than 100 metres.
"The tsunami travelled out in all directions. It was like dropping a pebble into a pond. The ripples ran out around the east Mediterranean, creating destruction."
In fact, he says, the eruption ended the great Bronze Age Minoan civilisation.
Others think the idea for Atlantis can most closely be identified with Helike, a once-flourishing city-state about 150 km west of Athens. Helike was home to a highly revered, sacred grove of Poseidon that promoted peaceful co-existence with neighbouring states. But one night in 373 BC (when Plato was in his mid-fifties), a terrible earthquake wiped out the city.
Dominey-Howes, for one, is convinced that the story of Atlantis was not pure fiction. "Often myths are embedded in some element of the truth."
