64 THE OCEAN RIVER 



crn Iceland and the winter Norwegian coast. If, as Brooks in 

 his study of chmate beheves, there was an optimum warm 

 chmate as the last icecap receded to the north, then the 

 warmer-than-present waters of the Arctic Sea would have, 

 according to him, helped maintain an oceanic circulation of 

 warm water from the tropics, and the general Atlantic climate 

 maintained by the great Gyre would have made a very favor- 

 able climate for an island of Atlantis, held so to speak in the 

 arm of that oceanic stream. Whether or not the continental 

 shelf of America was above water from Hatteras to the Ba- 

 hamas and West Indies would have made no real difference 

 in the general Atlantic circulation. There is no exclusive rea- 

 son why the present Gulf Stream would not still do business 

 much as usual with the Straits of Florida closed to traffic. 



With the basic physical problems sufficiently solved to 

 believe that an island continent off Gibraltar was possible 

 some ten to forty thousand years ago, the protagonists of this 

 intriguing theory go on to deduce evidence that it did exist, 

 and that it harbored a culture of which the Minoan, Egyptian, 

 Iberian, and even Mayan civilizations were but later manifes- 

 tations. In other words, if an Atlantean civilization did exist 

 previous to our knowledge of Minoan, Egyptian, or Phoeni- 

 cian cultures, the weather conditions for a spread of Atlantean 

 culture overseas, west or east to the Mediterranean, would 

 have been as favorable certainly as the conditions that per- 

 mitted Phoenicians to penetrate the Atlantic southward along 

 the coasts of Africa, northward to the British Isles and the 

 Baltic, and possibly — according to some — as far west as 

 South America. 



If such had been the case we would expect to find evidence 

 of these oversea invasions, or of friendly commerce with the 

 Atlanteans, in the legends and stories of the peoples along the 

 Atlantic coast. It is not our purpose to make ours a full case 

 pro or con for Atlantis, so we shall not tiry to digest the argu- 



