68 THE OCEAN RIVER 



tribution, but it makes interesting circumstantial evidence. 



Now let us go back a moment to bring this Atlantis time- 

 table up to date. The span is that of the postglacial period. It 

 is held by the scientists that the retreat of the northern icecap 

 began in earnest about twenty-five thousand years ago, though 

 more radical estimates bring that figure down to ten thousand 

 years. Brooks, an authority on climate, tells us that at this time 

 a warm and salubrious Atlantic climatic period set in that 

 enabled the icebound peoples of the Mediterranean areas to 

 move north in the path of the migrating animals they lived on. 

 Though somewhat modified today on the cooler side, this 

 Atlantic period was the beginning of modern climate. Now 

 the geological Atlantis sponsors bring up the fact that world- 

 wide legend tells of radical and widespread changes of the 

 level of the earth's crust in the Atlantic area. Meanwhile the 

 anthropologists give the following rough dates for the south- 

 western European migrations from an undetermined source: 

 the Cro-Magnons in the Aurignacian period some time be- 

 tween 40,000 and 20,000 b.c, then the Solutrian flint workers 

 some time between 30,000 and 20,000 b.c, and after them the 

 Magdalenian peoples with their refined art as the most recent 

 newcomers to Spain and southern France, perhaps as late as 

 9,000 B.C. Some say these migrations were caused by upheavals 

 in the islands and lands now lost to history which may have 

 existed west of Gibraltar. 



Another advocate of the Atlantis legend who brings long 

 years of archeological experience to her task is Mrs. Wishaw, 

 director of the Anglo-Spanish American school of archeology 

 in Andalusia. In 1929 she published a work on Atlantis in 

 Andalusia which set out to prove that the ancient seaport of 

 Tartessos was a center of the lost Atlantis empire. She has 

 made certain interesting finds at Niebla on the Rio Tinto: 

 ''My theor}^, to sum it up concisely, is that Plato's story is 

 corroborated from first to last by what we find here. . . ." 



