Interview with Rand Flem-Ath

His name may not sound familiar to most. Rand Flem-Ath is the author of When the Sky Fell, a book which details the existance of Atlantis, and its location as being Antarctica. His sources have been quoted and used numerous times in the book Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock (see the threads BOOK REVIEW: Fingerprints of the Gods, and Antarctica WAS the Hub of Civilization, both by soothsayer, for more related information).

I have scored an interview with Rand Flem-Ath, and am taking questions. You can review his works here if needed.

I shall be taking questions within this thread for about a week, and will post the completed interview as soon as possible.

Do I get any browny points for this?

Sent Rand Flem-Ath the list of questions, should hear from him sometime soon, and will post the Q&A when available.

My thanks to all who sent U2U's with questions.

As some of you may already know, over the past few weeks I have been in contact with author Rand Flem-Ath, in the hopes of getting a chance to ask him some questions concerning the Atlantis-Antarctica connections and about his book When the Sky Fell. What follows is the completed question/answer interview I had the opportunity of having with Mr. Flem-Ath.

I posed Rand a few questions broken up into "sub questions", all grouped together within categories. For ease of reading, the categories will be in bold, the questions in italicize, and the answers in plain text.

Now, without further ado, may I introduce to the ATS community... Rand Flem-Ath.






*****

BIO


1.Name: Rand Flem-Ath

2.Current address (city/county): Ladysmith, British Columbia, Canada

3.Education: BA (Sociology/Anthropology) from Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia; MLS (Master of Library Science) University of British Columbia

4.Credentials pertaining towards your line of research: I have published in the scientific literature using the theory of earth crust displacement to explain the sudden global rise of agriculture (see below). I corresponded with Charles H. Hapgood for the last five years of his life. Hapgood in turn corresponded with Albert Einstein (about the earth crust displacement theory) for the last three years of the great physicist's life.

5.A list of your works, and interviews which were aired over television: Key writings:

Flem-Ath, Rand "A global Model for the Origins of Agriculture", lead article in The Anthropological Journal of Canada, Volume 19, Number 4, pages 2-7, 1981

Flem-Atyh, Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, When the Sky Fell: In Search of Atlantis, published in twelve languages, originally in Toronto by Stoddart in January 1995

Flem-Ath, Rand and Colin Wilson, The Atlantis Blueprint, published in six languages, originally published in London by Little, Brown, and Co., October 1999

I appeared in NBC's Mysterious Origins of Man and also appeared on CBS, BBC, the Discovery Network and shows in Japan, Germany and the Netherlands.

I appeared several times on Laura Lee and Art Bell radio shows as well as numerous Canadian and British shows.


ANTARCTICA


1A.What first got you interested in the idea of Antarctica having been populated?
When I discovered that Athanasius Kircher's Egyptian map of Atlantis was a remarkably accurate depiction of the subglacial geography of Antarctica I began a twenty year investigation that culminated in the book my wife Rose and I wrote: WHEN THE SKY FELL.

1B.How did your ideas evolve (as far as Antarctica and Atlantis being the same)?
After reading Plato's account I became convinced that the lost island continent was exactly what he wrote it was: a real place, at a real time and destroyed by a real event.

1C.Had you to make any changes towards your basic theories, and if so, what or how?
In the beginning I thought that the entire earth's mass had been dislocated because of passage of a nearby extraterrestrial object. When I discovered Charles Hapgood's theory of earth crust displacement and read why Albert Einstein dismissed the poleshift notion I quickly became interested in advancing Hapgood's idea. I expanded his argument to the problem of the origins of agriculture because it is widely recognized that the earliest experiments with domesticated plants and animals occured around 11,600 years ago and this was the date that Plato had set for the destruction of Atlantis. After reading widely in world mythology I discovered a global motif which I call the Sun-Deluge Myths all of which referred to a dramatic change in the path of the Sun immediately before the Flood. It seemed to me that the Egyptian priest in Plato's account had focused on this very motif by pointing to the Greek myth of Phaeton. I spent years reading in the history and philosophy of science (much of the reading done at the British Museum in London) trying to understand why Hapgood's theory was being ignored. Much later, I came to recognize that what Hapgood and Einstein's theory lacked was a convincing physical force that could dislocate the earth's crust and at the same time provide for a mechanism for the crust to come to rest. I found this in Jared Freedman's theory of a Solar Typhoon (see his article under Articles on my website).

2A.What initially led you to believe Antarctica was Atlantis? See answer to 1A.

2B.Other then the accounts of Plato, has your research uncovered other takes on Atlantis (that were not influenced by Plato)? After discovering the Sun-Deluge motif focused on worldwide Flood myths that spoke of a time before the catastrophe. Again and again the idea of a lost island paradise came up. Chapter Five of WHEN THE SKY FELL.

2C.Why Antarctica? What kind of evidence is there? There are a series of maps depicting the earth's geography as it was prior to 9,600 BC. These are touched upon in Chapter 8 of WHEN THE SKY FELL and of course in Charles Hapgood MAPS OF THE ANCIENT SEA KINGS. The geography of Atlantis as described by Plato is an accurate depiction of the entire earth's surface as seen FROM Antarctica (see Chapter 7 of WHEN THE SKY FELL). More recently I have described how significant pyramids and sacred sites in Latin America and Asia are linked by 10 degree intervals from the Great Pyramid in Egypt and this suggests the existence of a long lost advanced civilization unrecognized by archaeology (see Chapter 3 of THE ATLANTIS BLUEPRINT).

2D.There are many indications that point to South America as being Atlantis. What is your take of this? On the positive side South America is a continent beyond the Pillars of Hercules and this fits with what Plato wrote. On the negative side South America is not an island and I doubt that the Atlanteans wouldn't know that about their homeland. It seems absurd to me that Plato's account of Atlantis is accurate and at the same time to assume that they couldn't tell the difference between a peninsula and an island.


*****

That's it for now... I have over 20 more questions and answers to type up, but my wife needs the phone right now. I shall finish these up tonight or tomorrow at the latest.

In continuation from last night under the topic of Antarctica...

*****

3A.In your letter to Graham Hancock (author, Fingerprints of the Gods), you stated that there was much support for the theory of earth crust displacement. For those not familiar with this, could you explain?

This is the center of my research in both WHEN THE SKY FELL and THE ATLANTIS BLIEPRINT. The best thing the reader can do is to read those books, however, I will give a thumbnail here: An earth crust displacement is a rapid shifting of the ENTIRE outer shell of the Earth over its molten inner layers. It is NOT a movement of continents in relation to each other as in the theory of plate tectonics. In an earth crust displacement all the continents and the OCEAN basins that they are connected to move AS A SINGLE UNIT over the inner layers of the planet. Prior to the last displacement the part of the earth's surface that was directly over the North Pole was the ocean-covered part of North America known as Hudson Bay. During this time most of the present-day eastern USA was within the Arctic Circle. Most of Alaska on the other hand was outside the polar zone and was capable of providing the grasslands and climate capable of sustaining millions of very large mammals, none of which could survive there today. So we had an ice sheet covering Ohio (for example) but much of Alaska and eastern Siberia were temperate while position relative to the earth's climate zones. Alaska and eastern Siberia were temperate while Ohio was polar. When we look at the exact opposite side of the globe we soon see that Lesser Antarctica (the "tail" pointing to South America) was temperate like eastern Siberia while Greater Antarctica (the largest part towards Australia) was polar like Ohio. Lesser Antarctica was the location of what Plato called 'Atlantis'.


3B.How does the theory of crustal displacement relate to continental drift?

The theory of earth crust displacement and continental drift (or plate tectonics) share the common assumption a mobile layer beneath the crust called the asthenosphere (weak zone) which permits the crust to move. In plate tectonics the various plates of earth are moving very gradually in relation to each other. In an earth crust displacement, on the other hand, ALL of the plates (including both continents and ocean basins) shift AS A SINGLE UNIT over the asthenosphere in a rapid motion that is lightning speed compared to plate tectonics.


3C.How does the theory of crustal displacement differ from the polar shift theory?

A pole shift involves the entire Earth's mass moving so that the northern and southern poles end up pointing at different stars. A crustal displacement involves only one third of one percent of the earth's mass (the crust or what scientists call the lithosphere) is dislocated. The rest of the earth's mass (the 99.6% below the crust) remains unaltered and so the poles still point at the same stars as it did before the displacement.

3D.In your own words, why do you believe that archaeologists and others of more scientific fields shy away from any involvement with Atlantis, especially with the discoveries of numerous OOPAs (Out Of Place Artifacts), the discovery of Troy and biblical cities, etcetera?

In 1962 Tomas Kuhn wrote a book entitled THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, which explains how scientists actually deal with radically new ideas. Contrary to popular opinion, most scientists don't change their minds regardless of the evidence. Scientific revolutions take place as old scientists die and new ones who have not become fixed in the prevailing paradigm take their place. The topic of Atlantis has a lot of baggage and that's why Hancock (for instance) decided not to use it. I felt that it was dishonest not to include the best evidence of a lost and advanced civilization of the past and that evidence is Plato's remarkably accurate depiction of the earth's ENTIRE geography as seen FROM Antarctica.


3E.How do you respond to the comments concerning ancient maps showing Antarctica (ice-free) as being fakes?

This question was asked in May of 1998:

5/20/98
From: T.J. Allen, Southampton, ENGLAND

Comments: I have read your book, which I found very useful, thought provoking and intelligent, and many of my friends, to whom I lent the book, agree with me. One question - how is it proven that all the maps you use as evidence are not faked?

Each map has a different story so I will restrict my comments to the Kircher map of Atlantis, which we believe is an accurate depiction of Antarctica prior to the displacement. The map was published in 1665 yet the actual configuration of Antarctica beneath the ice was not known until 1958. At the British Museum in London there is a copy of Mundus Subterraeous by Kircher which reveals that the map was in print centuries before any modern map of ice-free Antarctica had been drawn. It's a question of sequence: since the maps are often published centuries before European sailors reached these areas then they must be real. Some have argued that there were actually many more secret expeditions by European sailors who mapped the regions before the official age of exploration and that's how the maps showed up before Columbus. The problem with this argument is two fold:

1) Europeans weren't capable of determining longitude at sea until the invention of the marine chronometer in the 18th century and thus even if they visited America of Antarctica they couldn't have mapped either continent;

2) They certainly could not have known the subglacial features of Antarctica nor the glacial features of North America yet maps of both these continents showing their pre-Deluge configurations were in print centuries before this knowledge was obtained since World War II using sophisticated technologies (seismic surveys, archaeological excavations, etc.).

3F.Your current website shows an interesting chain of events concerning Antarctica through the Egyptian point of view (of the world). For those not familiar with your site or what I am talking about, could you please explain?

For the Egyptian South was "up" whereas for Europeans (and Americans), north is "up". The Egyptians regarded South as the top of the world because that was where the Sun and the Nile River were linked. What Rose and I have been doing with our interpretation of the Atlantis legend is to adopt two ideas that would not have been upsetting to the ancient Egyptians but which seen difficult for people of the West to comprehend. First we accept that a perspective that puts the South Pole rather the North Pole at the 'top' of the world. Second, and even more difficult for we smug 'northerners' ther may have been in the past a civilization that was just as 'advanced' (or even more advanced) as we are today. I believe that Plato's account of Atlantis, which he claimed came from survivors of the lost land, is a MORE advanced conception of the Earth's geogrpahy that is taught today in our schools and even most of our universities. For one thing it accepts that oceanographic understanding that our planet has ONE ocean. Take a globe off its hinges and out Antarctica in front of you and ask yourself what ocean is this island coninent in? It's in what Europeans call the South Atlantic, South Pacific and South Indian "oceans". In reality there is only ONE Ocean, an idea accepted by both the ancient Egyptians and Greek alike.


4.What are your opinions and views on the following:

4A.The magnetic anomalies around Lake Volstok, Antarctica?

Lake Volstok is in Greater Antarctica an area that was polar both before and after the last time and was thus not an area when the Atlanteans could have lived. It is, of course, possible that they were melting ice for fresh water in this area but generally my focus has been on Lesser Antarctica.

4B.Global trends repeating various myths and legend cycles concerning a new age, global destruction, etcetera?

The Lost Island Paradise is the title of Chapter Five of WHEN THE SKY FELL and that's what it's about.

4C.With Antarctica having gone through a rapid climate shift, how did you find the movie Day After Tomorrow?

I have met with one of the producers of this show. It's a fun movie, which has an important message, but it has nothing to do with the kind of catastrophe that I have been writing about.

4D.With sudden and massive glacial formations, if you were to guess, where do you think would be the most likely site or area in which artifcats could be discovered?

The galciation formations were not sudden. The snow still had to fall for ages to accumulate. I have given a very specific location in Lesser Antarctica where I think artifacts might be found in the conclusion to THE ATLANTIS BLUEPRINT. The coordinated of the remarkably circular (the city of Atlantis was designed as a series of concentric circles) object is located northwest of the Whitmore Mountians at coordinates 81:52:05S and 111:18:10W. To understand why this very specific location has been selected one would have to read THE ATLANTIS BLUEPRINT.

*****

Once again I am going to pause, give my fingers a break and put the kids to bed. There are two more distinct groups of questions remaining... PEERS and WHEN THE SKY FELL... so please, bear with me!

Barbara Walters, eat your heart out...

[edit on 8-12-2004 by soothsayer]

Twist and take

I did enjoy your version of reality - do you really believe in it????
For my opinion: we (I mean human, eart, 21st century) are quite stupid one
-I guess time will tell who was right and who was wrong...
(If you were selling some stock I might buy sth )

[edit on 8-12-2004 by jazzgul]

In continuation from sleepy kids and jamming fingers...

*****

PEERS


1.The following is a small list of authors with similiar [backings and interest groups] as yourself. I will go down the list from 'most in common' to 'least in common'. Please give your opinions of each and their works.

1A.Graham Hancock, author of Fingerprints of the Gods, believes Antarctica had been a center for teaching, whose survivors after a worldwide disaster re-taught the world.

I sent the manuscript of WHEN THE SKY FELL to raham Hancock on July 19th 1993 (see page 465 of FOTG). At that time Rose and I had already spent 17 years developing the Atlantis in Antarctica theory explained by Hapgood's earth crust displacement theory. Graham Hancock had no clue (as he explained in Chapter 50) that Antarctica might be the site of a lost civilization. I was surprised when I eventually was sent a copy of his book that it followed our research from page 1 and that we were only acknowledged some 465 pages later.

One sentence was very telling:

On page 35 of When the Sky Fell: In Search of Atlantis we tell the story of Ossip's Mammoth:

"In the summer of 1799, while searching for ivory in the isolated wilderness of Siberia, a Tungus chief named Ossip Shumakahov encountered, complete with preserved hair and flesh, the ice-encapsulated carcass of a mammoth. The chief was terriefied. Legend foretold that any whose gaze fell upon one of these creatures would soon die. As predicted, within a few days Ossip grew ill. However, to his own and everyone else's surprise, he made a complete recovery.

"With renewed courage, Ossip set out to revisit the frozen mammoth, this time taking along several curious Russian scientists. Excited to discover that Ossip's fantastic account was true, they shipped the remains of the incredible creature to St. Petersburg, where it can be seen today."

In our unpublished manuscript of WHEN THE SKY FELL that we sent to Graham in the summer of 1993 we mentioned Ossip again on page 99. The sentence in the unpublished manuscript read:

"Of the thirty-four species known to have lived in Siberia before 9600 BC, including Ossip's mammoth, giant deer, cave hyena, and cave lions, twenty-eight were adapted to temperate conditions."

During the editing of the book in late 1994 we moved the "Ossip" sentence to a new location and because it was further from the story about the Tungus Chief we dropped the word "Ossip" so that the sentence in the first edition read:

"Of the thirty-four species known to have lived in Siberia before 9600 BC, including mammoths, giant deer, cave hyena, and cave lions, twenty-eight were adapted to emperate conditions." [8] pages 80-82. (there's a map on page 81)

On page 215 of FOTG, Graham wrote:

"Researchers have confirmed that of the thirty-four animal species living in Siberia prior to the catastrophes of the eleventh millennium BC - including Ossip's mammoth, giant deer, cave hyena and cave lions - no less than twenty-eight were adapted only to temperate conditions." [17]

Nowhere in FOTG does Graham explain who "Ossip" is.

When I first read this sentence in FOTG I had a sense of deja vu. I recall discussing with Rose which animals we should use and she suggested 'mammoths, giant deer, cave hyena and cave lions' in that sequence. Graham uses the same four animals and the same sequence. And he gave as 'his' citation the same one that we did:

A.P. Okladnikov, Yakutia Before its Incorporation into the Russian State, ed. H. N. Michael (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1970).

This book was never exactly a best seller and it would be very difficult to get a hold of outside Canada, especially in the early 1990s when inter-library loans weren't as automated as they are today.

What Graham didn't know was that I had made a mistake. In the rush to finalize the footnotes I had improperly quoted Okladnikov. In the paperback we rewrote the sentence to more accurately reflect what Okladnikov had actually written:

"Early Russian investigations of animals in northern Siberia before 9600 BC (including mammoths, giant deer, cave hyena and cave lions) show that only eight percent were 'purely' Arctic species."

Since I had made this mistake I knew for certian that Graham had not read the Okladnikov book and the real source of "his" sentence was our unpublished manuscript.

1B.Zacharia Sitchin, author of the Earth Chronicles Series, believes that aliens brought civilization to man, and that it was only through alien involvement that we advanced as we had, as told through Sumerian texts.

I have enjoyed Sitchin's books but remain convinced that our unexplained past can still be explained without the need to bring in extraterrestrials. This is not to say that this was not possible. I am simply trying to hold up a terrestrial explanation for our ignored past. It's my niche. On the other hand there is much about Sumeria that we don't understand and Sitchin is addressing real issues.

1C.Richard Hoagland, author of The Monuments of Mars (a City on the Edge of Forever), showing evidence of alien artifacts on Mars and similiar strucutres on Earth.

Sorry - I'm not convinced.


WHEN THE SKY FELL


1A.How was your book first recieved?

We got great coverage in Canada when it was released in January 1995. Graham Hancock, however, beat us to the punch in every other market around the world beginning in the UK in April 1995 when his bok was first released. We found ourselves in the odd situation of seeing our arguments being presented in each country months before our own work was published.

1B.Has the book's status increased at all since first coming out?

WHEN THE SKY FELL has been translated into a dozen languages and it remains something of a classic about Atlantis. We have a small but dedicated following.

1C.Was it difficult in getting it published?

We had some luck finding a Canadian publisher after many others had turned it down.

1D.How has WHEN THE SKY FELL affected your life? Outlooks towards future plans/works?

The theory of earth crust displacement and sub-theory of Atlantis in Antarctica preoccupied me from 1976 to 1999. My current research has nothing to do with Atlantis or earth crust displacement but it equally radical in its conception (and hopefully in its impact).

1E.Are there any current works? If so, what?

Rose and I have completed another book but I would rather not talk about it until it is in print.

1F.What are the pros and cons which have come about since WHEN THE SKY FELL?

On the positive side it has been rewarding to see my ideas developed (with Rose's writing talent) and published around the world. I believe that our theory has 'staying power' and will one day be more widely accepted as events unfold on Antarctica. On the negative side I have found that I never found the intellectual companions amongst any writers that I could - in the end - respect. This was especially disappointing in light of the wonderful correspondence I had had with Charles Hapgood. Can't have everything


I believe I have covered all the bases, but as is normal with such cases, once I send this, I know a few more questions will pop up! So please, feel free to add anything you deem necessary. Any and all insights you can provide would be much appreciated. Upon receiving your answers, I shall post the Q&A on Above Top Secret, and provide you with a link for your acceptance. Thank you.

Sincerely-

Mike Strandt

aka soothsayer, Above Top Secret

*****

And that concludes my interview with Rand Flem-Ath, whose website, once again, can be reached by simply clicking on this.

When I get my fingers to unbind again, I will add the link to my on-going ATS thread, Antarctica WAS the Hub of Civilization. Right now, however, I am going to google that location Mr Flem-Ath gave... the one northwest of the Whitmore Mountians.

And yes, in case anyone was wondering, I did ask Rand Flem-Ath to read over my thread, and he will be going over this one as well, so please, be respectful in comments (I know I know, we are always respectful on ATS... )

[edit on 8-12-2004 by soothsayer]

Let me start by saying that was an excellent interview. I thought in "Fingerprint of the Gods", it was said that the earth actually tilted on its axis a few degrees, which caused the icing over of Antarctica as the continent moved further away from the sun. I beleive the book said that we go through a cycle every 27000 years. The "Great flood" could've been caused by all the ice melting on Antarctica and raising levels of water everywhere. From nice to ice. I just don't see the map changing that much in the past 14000 years due to crust displacement. Thought I would throw my two cents in - I really love this topic.

Jazzgul- why yes, I actually do believe in this stuff, or at least, the majority of it. I don't know if I am ready to except that Antarctica was Atlantis; I still feel that the Canary Islands are its remains, and the roads discovered off of the Bahamas kinda go off in that direction... but the more I read about this subject, and the more I discover, I am starting to lean in that direction. For a while, I was even thinking that Eden and other various myths detailing man's origin could have happened in Antarctica as well... irregardless of the how's or what's, I do feel that something is there.

Growling Lion- Thanks for your words. In regards to you thought on the map changing... it hasn't, that's what crust displacement is all about. I don't remember if it was in the interview or on his site, but Flem-Ath explains it as an orange peel sliding across the entire orange... the insides remain correct, it is just the outer layer that shifts as one big mass. Maps and such wouldn't change, with the exception of latitudes and longitudes/temperature zones... all the directions would be the same, all the locations of areas relative to another would remain the same...

I do feel rather bad, though. I had told Rand that I never read his books, and have never even heard of him until reading Hancock's FOTG. After reading what Rand had to say about Hancock... man, I wish I had read his book before doing this question and answer thingy!

What I had found interesting, though, is where Rand believes we can find remains of this civilization. I, too, had felt that this is the general area to look for items (see the Antarctica Civilization Hub thread, link above)... and if you were to read my later posts on that thread, you'd see that I never even read Hancock's FOTG book until recently... so for me, it is a rather cool feeling knowing my petty little amatuerish 'investigation' is so similiar to that of professionals in direction and thought.

Oh sweet! I'm a devout Rand Flem-Ath admirer. My favorite of his books was the Atlantis Blueprint. It's extremely good. Anyway...let me think of a question...I'll U2U once I formulate a good one.^_^

Edit: Maybe I should have read the whole thread...you've already conducted the interview?

[edit on 12-12-2004 by iceofspades]

Great interview...my hat is off to you for bringing it to us...especially in this manner because it gives the person interviewed an untrammeled opportunity to express him/herself without the bothersome necessity of proving various points before answering all the questions. In this way we are treated to the entirety of what they have to say and then we can go on to debunk at our leisure, if that is our intent.
I also have had "When the Sky Fell" in my bookcase for many years and have looked to Antarctica for many interesting revelations.

I'm sure this thread will attract many posts.

[edit on 12-12-2004 by masqua]

Soothsayer, thanks for bringing us this interview. I've seen Flem-ath's name mentioned by Hancock, but with this information I will make a real effort to find his books and read them.

Well done!

great stuff!! The Atlantis Blueprint is one of the best books I have read, and some of flem-ath's arguments and points are pretty much undisputable! I particularly am fascinated by the fact that so many ancient and religious sites round the world all line up to precise co-ordinates on a common meridian.

Thanks for doing this, soothsayer. I picked up The Atlantis Blueprint a few days ago, then remembered this forum when I came back from holiday. And what do I find? Something better than my #ty trip!

This is rather odd... my copy of the Atlantis Blueprint just got to the library today... hmm.

With my own hobby of Antarctica, what I liked most about Flem-Ath's works is his dealings with agriculture; sure, it could be explained by survivors of a Great Deluge (or the like)... but like I've said before, I haven't read any of his books yet, so it's probably already been dealt with.

But, from what I have seen, talked about, and read on other sites, I am very much looking forward to his new book. Just wish he'd have given some info!

I can understand why he wouldn't want to, having been burned in the past. I have read a lot about authors passing copies around before their books were released. Doesn't make sense to me.

The thing I like most about the book, is the readability. Makes it easy for duds like me to understand

Earth crust displacement theory is definitely fascinating.....