The quest for the Holy relic of archaeology: part eight

Speculative drawing of Atlantis (cropped) from an unpublished
cultural history of Atlantis by Géza Maróti (1875-1941)

When I was very young the history taught at my schools seems, now, to have consisted mainly of remembering the dates of various battles, all of them British. But when I was about twelve I had a history teacher who stressed what life was like for the average person in the past. What would we be doing if we had no television? he asked. Now, of course, we know the answer to that question, we would be watching Netflix. About two years later, and at a different school outside London, I was taught "religious education" by a teacher who had us only draw maps of the Holy Land. Perhaps she had other things planned for us, but after punching one of us (irreligious) kids in the face, she was fired and was replaced by an Anglican priest who stressed kindness to one's fellow man as his main religious theme. I really liked the history teacher and thought that his approach to the past was surely the right one. I did not understand, at the time, that what had attracted me to it was mostly its novelty, but also that after years of battles but no explanations about why, there was at last some talk of cause and effect. The matters of cause and effect with the later changing of my religious education teachers was obvious to me at the time, but neither of the two teachers had really explained religion to me.

Thus it was no small wonder that, at the age of fifteen, Bertrand Russell's essay Nice People had a major impact on the way that I viewed the world and its people. Kids, of course, are naturally materialistic and everything is a simplistic series of causes and effects; rewards and punishments; rights and wrongs. If they happen to be extraverted types, this gets becomes enhanced over the years, but their analyses can become far more sophisticated if they do not fall prey to some neurosis. If they are introverted types then the Bertrand Russell effect does not last very long and can often switch to its opposite with the dangers of considerable teenage angst. So after moving to Calgary, I found myself reading the works of another Englishman who had also moved to Calgary: Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, the "pen-name" of Cyril Henry Hoskin who was a plumber from Devon. His books turned out to be both fraudulent and not anything true to Tibetan Buddhism, but he certainly did raise public awareness to the plight of Tibetans. About thirty years later I came to know a true Tibetan, also in Calgary, who had done some real work in that cause: Tashi Phuntsok who was not a monk, but had served at one time as the Dalai Lama's accountant in Dharamsala, India. He was born in Tibet near the Nepalese border and speaks that language as well as Tibetan and English. I have wanted to write his biography as he is the bravest person I have ever met, but his work in politics makes that a problem for him, at least it was the last time I spoke to him. His approach to the Chinese/Tibetan problem is more conciliatory and bringing up the past is perhaps not the best way to achieve this. He is respected by the Chinese community in Calgary.

Unlike history, archaeology, by its very nature is materialistic, so the fringe archaeology that includes such things as the lost continent of Atlantis is just too far removed to be considered by it. The historian, however, can consider it in a different light: from an expression of Plato's politics or that combined with various mythological and historical metaphors. The more extraverted materialist historian will see the political and think the mythological to have been an invention of Plato's.  The more introverted historian will look at the unconscious archetypes expressed in Plato's world view of his time. You can read Plato's work Critius online. Which way do you view it? The closest that a very materialist archaeologist can get to this sort of thing is in considering a physical equivalent such as looking at Homer's Odyssey a representing a real  voyage and trying to trace its steps in geographical terms instead of ignoring all of that and seeing the work as defining the ideal hero; husband; wife; and son.

But the believer who is really looking for a real continent beneath the waves is also a materialist, and thus closer to the archaeologist than either would want to admit. So we will look at that aspect of the psychology tomorrow.


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