Wargaming Atlantis Part 4 - Aftermath (Memories of Atlantis)

 

Quiet and peaceful, just having a cold drink while sitting on the balcony of a hotel overlooking the Caldera. A bit different from the last time I was here.

Back then, it was one island and it wasn’t called Santorini. Then, Atlantis was a bustling seaport. Wooden ships rowed by half naked slaves came and went to far off places such as Egypt and Thule. We existed for trade. That’s what the place was about. Beef and grain from Egypt – a breed of white cows with black spots were a favourite. Bulls though came from Crete. They were great Northern breeds originally imported to Crete for the Games. Then there was… well, you get the idea.

Trade and Science.

Seems funny to think of science being ‘advanced’ nearly four thousand years ago. Atlantis was pretty good at genetics and some of the earth sciences – we didn’t drill for oil, our drills were about geothermal energy. We were very good at harnessing geothermal energy.  Lots of heat near the surface on a volcano – they didn’t need to go down far.

And immortality. Did that once. Science then was about individuals. No sharing of knowledge. So when Chronos developed his immortality serum and started passing it round his ‘friends’, well, someone thought they didn’t want too many people in on the act.  Couple of days before Chronos took the treatment himself he was found with a knife between his ribs, secret lost. Later, Greeks would call the surviving immortals ‘gods’.

For a while.

Back then women were looked on a bit differently. Fact is, not all our scientists were men. Artemis went down in history as the Huntress, but she dabbled in selective breeding and genetics.  She was fond of monkeys. Bred some that were blue. Look them up, they appear on quite a few friezes, jumping about all over place. Now of course people don’t believe that they really existed. All gone. There were never more than thirty of them and they were all on Atlantis when it happened.

It happened?

Suppose we’ll never know what. The surviving Immortals were all in Greece when it happened. Big bang, Tsunami, Atlantis gone.

Until today I’ve never been back. Wandered everywhere but. Even had stories told about me. They got it wrong of course. Thought I came from Palestine . Today, sitting on a hotel veranda on Santorini, drinking Mythos and just thinking about it.

Perhaps we were just stupid.

At least, that’s what I think.

Geothermal energy.

Was it really a good idea to keep drilling as many holes around an active volcano?