On the ferry boat to Stornaway, crossing a channel of turbulent water with the curious name of The Minch, he had spent some time looking over his collection of notes on the megalithic culture. No one knew what that culture had actually called itself and the word megalithic, meaning ‘great stone,’ was an English term indicating the primary characteristic of the ancient sites – basically lots of big rocks arranged in mysterious groupings. An intriguing fact about the megalithic culture is that its ruins were mostly found in the western regions of Europe, with some of the most ancient sites being the westernmost. He remembered how, ten years ago, one of his professors at Oxford had referred to the existence of megalithic sites in Western Europe as one of the great enigmas of contemporary archaeology. Where did the builders of the stone rings come from, he had asked the students? Yet he had given no answers.
Near the end of that particular course, when Toran had become friendly with the normally reserved professor and they would chat over beers in a local pub, he asked the question himself.
“Professor, you used to tantalize me and other students in class with that question of yours about the origin of the megalithic culture. Where do you think they actually came from?”
“Well, that is not something I’m allowed to speculate on in the orthodox setting of Oxford University,” he said with a slightly inebriated twinkle in his eye, “but my feelings are that it is certainly logical to suggest the possibility that the earliest megalithic people came from somewhere in the west, perhaps off the coast of the European landmass.”
“But,” Toran interrupted, there are no landmasses out there in the Atlantic and no evidence, at least as far as I know, of similar megalithic structures on the western coast of the ocean in the United States.”
“You are saying two things by that statement, Toran, do you realize that? One, that there is no large landmass currently existing in the mid-Atlantic region and two, that there are no megalithic structures in America. There are, however, many dozens of megalithic type structures in the northeastern United States, not as grand as you find here in England, but they are there nonetheless. I could show you photographs and drawings of those structures from a number of books in my library.”
“Yes, please show me those pictures when I’m in your office next week, but now, while we’re here having a few beers and letting our tongues and minds wander into academically forbidden territory, tell me what you think about the possibility of a large landmass ever having existed in the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Okay” the professor said, “but make sure that you don’t let the Dean of the Archaeology department know what I am telling you because he and certain other professors would criticize me severely for these ideas.”
“I have a sneaky suspicion that you are going to bring up the myth of Atlantis that Plato mentioned in those writings of his, the Timaeus and Kritias dialogues.”
“You guessed it, Toran. Plato, a fellow who is much misunderstood by most orthodox scholars, mentioned that the Athenian poet Solon had traveled to the Egyptian city of Sais, the capital of the 26th Dynasty, and while there he saw some hieroglyphs inscribed on the walls of the Temple of the goddess Neith. Enquiring into the meaning of those hieroglyphs, he was told by the temple priests that they told the story of the island country of Atlantis, located in the Atlantic, west of the Straits of Gibraltar.”
“But there is no such island there now and, if I remember correctly, didn’t Plato talk about Atlantis existing at some impossibly ancient time?”
“You’re right about there currently being no island around the area that Plato referred to, though oceanographic science cannot dismiss the idea that such an island may once have existed,” confirmed the professor, while taking another drink of beer, “but, I too, have been mystified by the apparently great antiquity that Plato was speaking about. Maybe you’ll solve that riddle one day Toran.”
“It’s a fascinating idea, you know, the possibility, however remote, that some lost or sunken island civilization could have given rise to, or at least influenced the development of, the Megalithic culture along the western coast of Europe,” Toran responded. “Who knows, maybe I will get to look more deeply into that matter in a few years?”
Finishing his beer, the professor laughed and, expressing a bit of cynicism, said “But you won’t get any support from the orthodox archaeological community. Sadly, they are sometimes blinded by their own theories and miss what is right in front of them. It often takes a scholar from outside the realm of orthodoxy to get the bigger picture.”
A loud horn sounded, signaling the approach of the ferry boat to the port workers of Stornaway, and Toran was disturbed from his reflections. Enough thoughts of Atlantis and early Megalithic sites, he said to himself; now it was time to find some lodging, get a good meal and a night of sleep. He wanted to be up early, before sunrise, in order to get photographs of the stone ring of Callanish in the golden light of morning. That is, if it wasn’t raining, as it so often did in these northern islands so close to the Arctic Circle.
In the morning darkness he found a taxi, its driver snoozing in the back seat, and was driven to the ring of stones a half hour before the first rays of light shown above the hill-surrounded horizon. Silhouetted against the pre-dawn skies, the standing stones looked like giant sentinels guarding the ancient site. As the minutes passed, the skies turned from deep purple to cobalt blue to wine red, and slowly the details of the individual stones came into view.
Callanish stone ring, Isle of Lewis, Scotland
