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News: Secrets of ocean birth laid bare 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5191384.stm#graphic
 
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ATLANTIS & the Atlantic Ocean 1 (ORIGINAL)

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Author Topic: ATLANTIS & the Atlantic Ocean 1 (ORIGINAL)  (Read 31957 times)
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Bianca
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« Reply #600 on: December 30, 2007, 01:59:03 pm »

Briwnys

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   posted 05-14-2006 04:43 PM                       
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More than any other culture, the people of Gaul and the British Isles have a rich tradition populated with uncanny visitations from the ocean's depths and cities sunken by the wrath of the sea, so it is easy to believe that something momentous must have happened to this land and its people, culminating in a series of events so catastrophic the memory still lingers in the myths and legends of the surrounding countryside. Recorded history tells us almost nothing for the people of this land came late to the written word; yet, it is possible to draw a broad outline of this distant past from the scant records, filling in the blanks with newly discovered genetic, archeological and geological data.

At the seaward end of the Dyfi Valley in Wales, you can sometimes see the ancient remains of a submerged forest. These decaying stumps of 3,500 year-old trees once surrounded the sunken cities of a great kingdom called Cantref y Gwaelod. Its many towns, farms and gleaming cities were protected from the sea by a series of sluices and dams but years of neglect weakened the defenses. One night in the depths of winter during the highest tides of the season, a gigantic storm produced a huge surge that swept over the dam as one great wave and the whole of the kingdom vanished beneath the sea. Some of the ancient roadways and part of the dam system, it is said, are still visible out in the bay during the lowest tides of the year.

Lyonesse, a kingdom that lay between Land's End and St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall, is another realm submerged beneath the waves in the blink of an eye. At certain tides, the muffled chiming of bells can still be heard, while it was reported for centuries that fishermen would sometimes snag roof tiles in their nets.

St Michael's Mount, a lofty pyramidal tidal island exhibiting a curious combination of slate and granite, rises just off the shore of Mount's Bay in Cornwall. Its name in Cornish means "the grey rock in the wood", which may stem from a time before the bay was flooded, since it is an accurate description of a mountain set in a woodland. Local legends tell of a forest that sunk at the same time as the flooding of Lyonesse.

Attempts have been made to place the sinking of Lyonesse somewhere at the end of the first millennium of the current era, but no entries related to the place have been found in any of the records of that period. We do know of other places lost to the sea around this time, though the process took much longer. The sinking of the central plain that once made the Scilly Isles one landmass began during the Bronze Age. More than five hundred Neolithic and Bronze Age sites above the present high water line have been excavated, and, at low tide, rectangular and square field walls, hut circles, graves and cists show clearly that the whole central area between the islands of St Mary, Tresco, Bryher and St Martin was once a fertile plain surrounded by the hills and crags that are now islands and rocks. Scilly was still one island in Roman times but most of it was marshy ground. It was not until the Tudor period that the last part of this marshland sank, leaving the islands as we know them today.

Across the antediluvian plain now covered by the waters of the English Channel, the sunken city of Ys lies in the Bay of Douarnenez off the coast of Brittany. The Brythonic Llydaw - the Breton Peninsula - shares a numinous heritage with the Gaelic Lochlann as the home of otherworldly creatures, for Brittany has always been regarded as a land of marvels where places like the forest of Brocéliande offer a home to fairies and wizards, and drowned cities hint at a mystical world, lost, like Atlantis, beneath the green waves of the Atlantic.

According to the legend, Gradlon, the King of Cornwall, made Ys his capitol. He owned a great fleet that he used to fight against his enemies, often in distant countries where the weather was cold. He was an excellent sailor and strategist and often won his battles, plundering the enemy boats and filling his chests with gold and trophies, so that the fame of his city spread throughout the world.

Ys was protected from the ocean by a strong dyke and by a gate built into the dyke to take the outflowing tidal water. Either by treachery or by accident, the gate was left open and the sea rushed in, inundating the city and the surrounding country. After the sinking of Ys, Gradlon moved his capitol to Quimper, which raises the question, why would the king of Cornwall move his capitol to Brittany unless Cornwall and Brittany were parts of the same kingdom? And did they also occupy the same geographic landmass before the sinking of Ys?

A possible answer may be found in The Mabinongion, a collection of medieval Welsh stories translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in the 19th century. The story of "Branwen, Daughter of Llyr" concerns the marriage of the sister of Bran and Manannan to the King of Ireland, her mistreatment at his hands and the war that ensued. When Bran set out to rescue his sister, the oldest translations state that he traveled primarily by land as he crossed between the islands of Britain and Ireland: "Bendigeidfran and the host… sailed towards Ireland, and in those days the deep water was not wide. He went by wading. There were but two rivers, the Lli and the Archan were they called, but thereafter the deep water grew wider when the deep overflowed the kingdoms."

http://www.geocities.com/blessed_isles/Lochlann/Images/Europe9560bc.jpg

 
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