They figure in numerous ancient traditions and the “somber haze” that covered their region are indeed a reference to the cloud of volcanic smoke that covered Atlantis for a long time after its destruction. Cimmeria is the same as the dark Tartarus or Erebus (Erebodes = “Darkness”) of Hesiod and Homer, which equated it with the Abode of the Dead. In Homer, the Scheria of the Phaeacians, a sort of Paradise, is placed just beyond the dark mists of Mount Erebus and the currents of the circular Oceanus which closely corresponds to the analogous features of Atlantis.
- Accordingly, the Egyptians spoke of the mysterious Hanebut (or Haunebut), a people who lived beyond the Indian Ocean, in the region of Amenti (or Punt). The name of the Hanebut means “People of the Haze” or “People of the Pillar [of Atlas]” (Hau-nabha in Sanskrit and Dravida, the t ending merely marking out the feminine gender in Egyptian). This enigmatic people was said to live under a dark haze which the light of the sun never penetrated, just as in Cimmeria. As for Punt and Amenti, the Egyptians affirmed that the region of the Hanebut was real and could indeed be visited, as they often did. As we show elsewhere, the elusive Hanebut were indeed the same as the people of Punt who, as the Gerzeans, invaded and conquered Upper Egypt in pre-Dynastic times, and who were later expelled when Egypt was unified by King Menes, “the Greek”. Not impossibly, this great prehistoric war was the same one mentioned by Plato as the “War of Atlantis”, when the Egyptians and the “Greeks” united to expell the Atlantean invader.
- Most ancient nations spoke of a similar region in the overseas covered by a dark haze or mist that can only be volcanic smoke. Thus, the Polynesians spoke of Hawaiki, a large island or continent to the west, beyond the ocean (Pacific). Hawaiki was said to be their destroyed homeland, in Indonesia, and was deemed to have been a veritable Paradise before its destruction by a huge volcanic cataclysm. This cataclysm sunk away most of its land, and smothered it in cinders and smoke. The destruction of Hawaiki took place during a great war, just as was the case with Atlantis.
- The remains of Hawaiki, the Polynesian Paradise, became equated with a sort of Hades or Hell, as in Greek and other legends. It is interesting to note how, in the Western traditions, Paradise and its remains are located towards the East and the Orient, whereas in the Far East and in Oceania, the opposite is true, and these are located towards the West and the Occident. In other words, the universal traditions concur that Paradise and its infernal remainders are located in a region that can be no other than Indonesia, the true “Navel of the World”. The American Indians – who lay in an intermediate position – were confused about the issue. Those on the Pacific coast pointed towards the West, whereas those of the Atlantic coast pointed to a region beyond the Atlantic Ocean and probably further away, across the Indian Ocean as well, in Indonesia.
- The Romans – or, rather, their predecessors, the Etruscans – had traditions concerning their coming from an overseas land submerged under the seas in a cataclysm shortly after or during a great war. They were led by Aeneas, and came in a great fleet of ships from a region located outside the Pillars of Hercules. The itinerary of Aeneas is unclear, as is often the case of the heroes provenient from Atlantis. Aeneas is said to have come from sunken Troy, in the outskirts of the ocean, leading the Romans to their Promised Land. Alternatively, he is said to have come from Mt. Ida, that is the primordial Paradise of the Greeks and Romans, and which seems to be the same Eden of Judeo-Christian traditions.
- One should keep in mind that the true Troy (see above) lay not in Turkey as archaeologists pretend, but beyond the Ocean (Indian), as is clear from the texts of Homer, Virgil and others. To start with, Troy lay “beyond the ocean”, which is not the case of Hissarlik. Secondly, it was a great walled metropolis, and not the shoddy village (several) found by Schliemann in Turkey. Thirdly, Homer’s Troy – like that of Aeneas, but in contrast to Hissarlik – lay on the coast, and was indeed a seaport attacked from the seasby the Greeks.