Map of Bermuda Triangle (or one version of it anyway) – public domain image in Wikipedia article “Bermuda Triangle”

(16) EARTH MYSTERIES –
ATLANTIS, BERMUDA TRIANGLE & TUNGUSKA

“The time when the oceans drank Atlantis”

Atlantis – myth, allegory, Egyptian priestly gossip…

Not to mention empire of so-called Earth mysteries – that modern mythology of beliefs about geographical locations or monumental architecture and their “energy”. Ley lines, megaliths, pyramids, Stonehenge. Geomancy and feng shui.

But back to Atlantis, it is representative not only of ‘earth mysteries’ but of all mythic lost or sunken continents, lands and kingdoms, including phantom islands and even hollow earth or subterranean realms.

All of which could readily round out their own top ten – Lemuria or Mu, Hyperborea or Thule, Ys or Lyonesse, Agartha, Avalon or Tir Nan Og, Eldorado, Hy-Brasil, Shambhala or Shangri-La.

And they’re just the big names, although the biggest name of all in lost lands is course Atlantis itself, thanks to Plato. Ironically, Plato used Atlantis as a minor allegory (and counterpoint to Athens), set 9000 years or so before his time, one which concludes with “Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean”, but it subsequently assumed a mythic significance after him.

“Atlantis has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations and continues to inspire contemporary fiction”. To its mythic archetype of lost continent or land, one might also add its fantasy role as sunken, submerged or submarine kingdom – with the Atlanteans adapting to their new marine habitat.

Foremost in Atlantean mythology, at least as my personal favorites, are the so-called “location hypotheses” – the historical (or pseudohistorical) speculations as to the location of Atlantis, if only as possible sources of inspiration for Plato’s allegory.

Although not as wild as they used to be – with modern understanding of continental drift and plate tectonics putting paid to any actual lost continent (foremost among them Ignatius Donelly’s nineteenth century revival of the Atlantis myth) – there are still some wild theories proposed for America or even Antarctica as Atlantis.

Personally, I’d like to see more speculation for the United States as Atlantis – not as an allegory by Plato but a premonition (or both, the United States kinda fits the Atlantis allegory as well). Not to mention the Atlantean cold war against Lemuria-Mu.

Seriously, however, I lean more towards Plato creating a mostly fictional account, from more plausible sources of inspiration from the Mediterranean – my favorite being the volcanic eruption on Thera and the fall of Minoan civilization on Crete, although close runner-up is more contemporary (and personal) events to Plato in Sicily.

And then there are the more literary influences or interpretations – from utopias (or dystopias), including the definitive Utopia of Thomas More, to the lost land of Atlantis as metaphor for something no longer obtainable

Or again, personally I’d like to see more speculation for Atlantis as premonition by Plato, not to the future but as deep atavistic memory to the distant prehistoric past, when we were all happy little trilobites in Pangaea, or Gondawana, or whatever prehistoric supercontinent it was back then

“We can’t tell where we are… everything is… can’t make out anything…It looks like we are entering white water… We’re completely lost.”

The Bermuda Triangle is one of my personal favorite modern myths – hence its inclusion as earth mystery in this special mention – despite it being, you know, complete crap.

Firstly, it’s a pretty loose triangle, often more of a Bermuda Trapezoid, even extending as far as Ireland in some variations – although it usually includes the Sargasso Sea, which I find almost as fascinating.

Secondly, the idea of the area as uniquely prone to disappearances is only recent, arising in the mid-20th century, albeit with a bang with my favorite myth within the myth, the disappearance of Flight 19 quoted above. (It happened, but not as part of any larger triangular mystery).

Thirdly and most fundamentally, there’s no mystery. “The number of ships and aircraft reported missing in the area was not significantly greater, proportionately speaking, than in any other part of the ocean” – and “the number of disappearances that did occur were, for the most part, neither disproportionate, unlikely, nor mysterious”.

Also the claims of writers who contributed to the Bermuda Triangle legend, Charles Berlitz foremost among them for me, “were exaggerated, dubious or unverifiable” – including just straight out misreporting accounts of meteorological conditions or omitting the belated return to port of ships reported missing.

But who cares about all that – it’s just fun, particularly in fantasy, where the underlying reason for the mystery usually “will turn out that something really weird is involved with the area, such as aliens, paranormal activity, Eldritch Abominations, Atlantis, or something even weirder”. Perhaps Cthulhu or other dimensions. Even if human activity is involved, it’s some ancient conspiracy or cult.

Also this entry is intended to be representative of mysterious disappearances and “vile vortices” in general. There’s the similar Devil’s Sea (or Dragon’s Triangle) near Japan, as well as a few other triangles. The lost colony of Roanoke. The Mary Celeste. Ambrose Bierce. Amelia Earhart

And there’s also my personal Bermuda Triangle, because whenever I lose things, they vanish completely from the face of the earth – perhaps into Charles Fort’s Super-Sargasso Sea.

And then there’s the third of my holy trinity of Earth mysteries – the Tunguska Event. Although I feel a little trepidation ranking the Tunguska Event with the Bermuda Triangle and Atlantis – because unlike those latter two, the Tunguska Event is more grounded, less earthly or mysterious.

It’s also a less enduring phenomenon – an explosion in Siberia usually reckoned at 10-15 megatons on 30 June 1908. As to what caused the explosion – there’s the mystery, but again it’s usually reckoned to be a meteorite. The only catch is that an impact crater or meteorite has never been found, so the leading hypothesis is that it exploded as an air burst rather than from direct impact.

If so, it was a lucky day for St Petersberg at the same latitude, as a few hours difference might have made it the site rather than a remote and sparsely populated region of Siberia.

However, that doesn’t stop wilder hypotheses, ranging from the still relatively mundane such as a comet or exploding leak of subterranean natural gas, to the bizarre – “a deuterium-rich meteorite causing an all-natural thermonuclear explosion; a chunk of antimatter; a miniature black hole passing through the Earth; an alien spacecraft crashing or discharging some kind of superweapon; psychic experiments or magic rituals gone wrong”.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Frame 352 from the Patterson Gimlin Bigfoot film – public domain image Wikipedia article “Bigfoot”

(15) CRYPTIDS & CRYPTOZOOLOGY

As “the biological equivalent of UFO sightings”, cryptids and cryptozoology are the other modern mythology par excellence, albeit without the same depth or grand unification theories of UFOs and ufology.

You could say cryptids have been part of mythology from its prehistoric origins, since mythology has always featured fabulous beasts or monsters.

However, the modern mythology of cryptids and cryptozoology is somewhat different. Typically, it does look at creatures of legend, folklore or rumor – not in any magical or supernatural sense, but as biological possibilities “in the wild”, in isolation or in hiding, yet unrecognized or regarded as implausible by more mainstream biology.

“Some may be relict survivors of species believed to be extinct, or known organisms displaced into inappropriate habitats; others are unlike any known species.”

And yes – there’s enough cryptids for their own top ten. Indeed, many top tens – you could even categorise them, as Wikipedia’s list of cryptids does, by aquatic or semi-aquatic, terrestrial or winged.

There are the big stars of cryptozoology. The Yeti and Bigfoot or Sasquatch (with similar creatures elsewhere, such as the Yowie in Australia). The Loch Ness Monster – standing in for all the various monsters of lakes or lochs around the world, which again could be their own top ten, again with Wikipedia having a list of lake monsters as well as an Australian representative in the bunyip.

As for other star cryptids – the Jersey Devil and Mothman, sea serpents (and mermaids, particularly thanks to that Animal Planet ‘mockumentary’), various living dinosaurs (such as Mokele-Mbembe), living megalodon, various misplaced big cats, and my personal favorite, the chupacabra, because I love that goat-sucking beastie.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Werewolves just chilling by a wall in “Les Lupins” by Maurice Sands, 1858

(14) LYCANTHROPY

“You hear him howling around your kitchen door.

You better not let him in.

Little old lady got mutilated late last night.

Werewolves of London again.

Ah-hoo, werewolves of London!”

Not just London, as werewolves are a widespread concept in European folklore.

And not just werewolves either, as I’m opening up this special mention entry to the concept of werebeasts throughout the world. Technically that would be therianthropy, as the better-known term lycanthropy is specifically for werewolves (literally from the Greek for wolf and man). Although werewolfism and werebeastliness would be more amusing to use.

You all know the basic concept – a human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf, or some sort of wolf-human hybrid, either on purpose or involuntarily by some sort of curse or affliction (often spread by the bite or scratch of a werewolf), with such transformations typically (but not always) by the light of the full moon.

The concept has a long history. Personally, I think it has one of the longest in human history – or prehistory – originating with animal powers, totemism or transformation in shamanism.

As the use of the Greek term lycanthropy might signify, the more recognizable predecessors of the concept originated in classical history, with references to men transforming or being transformed into wolves in Greek literature or mythology. One of the most famous was the myth of Lycaon, whom Zeus – styled as Zeus Lycaeus, translated by Robert Graves as Zeus of the she-wolf – transformed into a wolf (as divine punishment).

However, while the term lycanthropy itself was used by the Greeks in classical literature, it was apparently only in later classical history, used rarely, and in a clinical sense for a particular form of insanity rather than transformation.

The term werewolf was more recognizably used for the concept. And as that term might signify, the even more recognizable predecessors of the concept originated with the role and totemism of the wolf in pre-Christian or Iron Age Germanic paganism, itself often traced further back to proto-Indo-European mythology – where lycanthropy is apparently reconstructed as an aspect of the initiation of the warrior class.

This heady mix clashed head on with Christianity, leading to the concept of the werewolf in medieval Europe – although that concept reached its definitive height in the early modern period, hopelessly intertwined with the overlapping concepts of vampires and witchcraft, so much so for the latter that there were werewolf trials among witch trials.

And like vampires, the elements of werewolves in folklore are also worthy of their own top ten, from the underlying causes of lycanthropy, the nature of their transformation, and other characteristics – including, most crucially for those European peasants up to their necks in fangs, their weaknesses or possible cures.

And as for wider therianthropy or werebeasts – “Until the 20th century, wolf attacks on humans were an occasional, but still widespread feature of life in Europe. Some scholars have suggested that it was inevitable that wolves, being the most feared predators in Europe, were projected into the folklore of evil shapeshifters. This is said to be corroborated by the fact that areas devoid of wolves typically use different kinds of predator to fill the niche; werehyenas in Africa, weretigers in India, as well as werepumas (“runa uturuncu”) and werejaguars (“yaguaraté-abá” or “tigre-capiango”) in southern South America.”

Although I think that overlooks bears in Europe. There’s also the plethora of werebeasts in the modern fantasy genre, most notably in Dungeons and Dragons, where basically were-anything goes.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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