Concept
Lost lands
Overview
Lost lands are islands or continents believed by some to have existed during prehistory, but have since disappeared as a result of catastrophic geological phenomena.
Legends of lost lands often originated as scholarly or scientific theories, only to be picked up by writers and individuals outside the academy. Occult and New Age writers have made use of lost lands, as have subaltern peoples. Phantom islands, as opposed to lost lands, are land masses formerly believed by cartographers to exist in the current historical age, but to have been discredited as a result of expanding geographic knowledge. The classification of lost lands as continents, islands, or other regions is in some cases subjective; for example, Atlantis is variously described as either a "lost island" or a "lost continent". Lost land theories may originate in mythology or philosophy, or in scholarly or scientific theories, such as catastrophic theories of geology.
With the development of plate tectonic simulation software, new lost land has been discovered and confirmed by the scientific community (like Greater Adria in 2019).
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
But in the primitive state of the country, its mountains were high hills covered with soil, and the plains, as they are termed by us, of Phelleus were full of rich earth, and there was abundance of wood in the mountains. Of this last the traces still remain, for although some of the mountains now only afford sustenance to bees, not so very long ago there were still to be seen roofs of timber cut from trees growing…
Plato, Critias
States what Lost lands is; the author is tied to Lost lands in the knowledge graph.
Ocean and Tethys were the progeny of Heaven and Earth; and from these sprang Phorcys, Kronos, and Rhea, and ever so many more with them;—and from Kronos and Rhea sprang Zeus, Hera (Jupiter, Juno), and all that we know are called their brethren, together with others still who were their progeny.[287] When therefore all such gods as visibly revolve, and show themselves when they please, were generated, the Artificer…
Plato, The works of Plato
States what Lost lands is; the author is tied to Lost lands in the knowledge graph.
The effects produced on the land by the later elevatory movements, namely, successively rising cliffs, lines of erosion, and beds of literal shells and pebbles, all requiring time for their production, prove that these movements have been very slow; we can, however, infer this with safety, only with respect to the few last hundred feet of rise.
Charles Darwin, Coral Reefs
Close in meaning to Lost lands; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Athens
- Geology
- H. P. Lovecraft
- Great Britain
- Italy
- India
- J. R. R. Tolkien
- Helena Blavatsky
- Archaeology
- Caribbean
- Madagascar
- Prehistory
- Mediterranean Sea
- Malta
- Theosophical Society
- Spiritualism (movement)
- North Africa
- New Age
- Atlantis
- Occult
- Linguistics
- Plato
- Pseudoscience
- Russia
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of New Age.