Nagoya also believed tectonic plate intersection had been used to destroy a continent and civilization. His first contribution to gate theory was a historical one, based on his fascination for ancient cultures and civilizations. During his undergraduate years he had had dual majors in history and physics, only deciding to go into the latter when he accepted that it was the more factual of the two, able to be proved, whereas history, the more he studied of it, presented itself as fact, but was often wrong.
Nagoya had always been fascinated by the legend of Atlantis. First mentioned by Plato in the Timaeus and Critias, two of his dialogues, historians had widely felt it was just a device used in the oratories and not based on an actual place. Nagoya had found that assumption rather naive. Connecting that legend with archeological finds that were often suppressed and alternative theories of the development of civilization, Nagoya believed that a highly advanced human civilization had once existed in a place known as Atlantis and the gates had opened- as they had just a week ago- destroying it to the point where it was now only a legend.
Besides Plato’s mention, Nagoya believed in the existence of Atlantis for other reasons. The discovery of large stone blocks, closely fitted together in about fifty feet of water of the coast of the island of Bimini in the Bahamas had excited him. He felt that it might be actual, physical evidence of the existence of Atlantis or more likely, given the location, an outpost of Atlantis.
Another area he found fascinating- and one that the writing on the Scorpion had resurrected- was the similarities in early writing among ancient cultures. The Viking runic alphabet was not that much different from writings he had studied in South America, Mexico, Africa, even on Easter Island.
Nagoya believed these similarities were because they stemmed from a common ancient writing system that predated the oldest recorded language that was generally accepted by historians. That interest had led him to the diffusionest theory of the development of civilization.
The historically accepted concept of the development of civilization was the isolationist one. Isolationists believed that the ancient civilizations all developed independent of each other. The cities of South and Central America, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, China, Egypt- all crossed a threshold into civilization at about the same time- the third or fourth century before the birth of Christ. When looking at the vast timeline of the existence of the planet, and even mankind, that was a rather remarkable coincidence.
Nagoya knew of course that there were explanations for that coincidence the largest one being natural evolution. The many common discoveries in the archeological finds of these civilizations- such as the similarities in written language- were explained by isolationists as due to man's genetic commonness. Nagoya called that the great minds think alike’ theory and he didn’t buy off on it one bit. An isolationist would say that there were ancient pyramids in South America, in Egypt, in Indo-China, even in North America- some made of stone, some of earth, some of mud, but remarkably similar given the distances between those sites and the traditionalists insistence that those sites had had no contact with each other- all that was because each society as it developed had a natural tendency to do the same thing.
Nagoya was much more a fan of the diffusionest theory of civilization. He believed that those widely separated civilizations developed at roughly the same time in roughly the same way because those civilizations were founded by people from a single earlier civilization- survivors from the destruction of Atlantis.
Isolationists over the years had scoffed at the diffusionest theory on two counts. One was the very existence of Atlantis. The second was the issue of how survivors could have gotten from Atlantis to such remote locations around the world. In response, Nagoya pointed to the fact that modern scholars, sailing on reconstructed vessels, had crossed both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Whether it was a balsa-wood raft of Polynesian design named Kon Tiki or the longship of the Vikings, the ocean had been crossable in ancient times.
There were archeological facts to support the theory that the ancients had indeed crossed those oceans. Artifacts found in places where they had not originated. There was an entire group of people devoted to the field of what was known as forbidden archeology’. Investigating things found in places where conventional archeology said they shouldn’t be.
Nagoya, as a scientist, had not been overly surprised to learn that there were many discoveries made by archeologists that were suppressed. He knew that scientists tended to bury evidence that contradicted their own theories. There were locked rooms in almost every museum around the world where artifacts that could not be logically explained were hidden away from the public’s eyes.
Nagoya believed that if one accepted that there was an Atlantis- a civilization 7,000 years before the accepted rise of civilization- many of those hidden objects could be explained.
Even the destruction of Atlantis around 10,000 BC was recorded in almost every culture around the world. There were many records of a great flood at about that time. Not only in the Bible but in such tomes as the Tibetan Book of the Dead which described a large land mass sinking into the sea at that time. The Mayans called Atlantis Mu. The northern Europeans- Thule. And a large land mass sinking into the ocean would produce tsunamis- waves- hundreds if not thousands of feet high that would race around the world’s oceans inundating low-lying coastal planes with such devastation that it could easily be interpreted as a world-wide flood.
There was no doubt in Nagoya’s mind that Atlantis had existed and there was also no doubt that the world was now facing the same threat that had destroyed it. He thought it was important to study as much as was known about that ancient culture and how it was destroyed.
While many modern scholars and scientists scoffed at ancient writings as more fiction than fact, Nagoya took the opposite view. He’d read translations of the early documents, such as Solon’s dialogue which first mentioned Atlantis, placing it in the Atlantic. The description of the destruction of Atlantis fit in with what would happen if tectonic plates were manipulated to unleash their terrible force, resulting in earthquakes, volcanoes, giant waves and ultimately disappearance under the waves. The Greeks even said that where Atlantis had been, parts of the ocean were blocked by mud and underwater plants.
“Another five minutes and we will have the complete read-out,” Ahana interrupted Nagoya’s thoughts.
He acknowledged the information with a nod. Nagoya- and Foreman- believed the latter part about the impassable sea might refer to the Sargasso Sea which was north of the Puerto Rican Trench and in which they now knew close to where the Bermuda Triangle gate opened.
Beyond Atlantis, Nagoya had read extensively about any theory regarding earlier civilizations. The Vikings had had a land they called Thule, a land of fire and ice where creatures and gods lived, separated from the real world by a deep chasm. Another interesting legend was that of Mu, a lost continent of the Pacific Ocean. Some claimed that Mu predated even Atlantis. A French scholar in 1864, translating one of the few surviving texts of the vanished Mayan civilization of Central America uncovered references to a place called Mu- which the text described as an ancient landmass with a bustling civilization that sunk into the sea after catastrophic volcanic explosion.