Indonesia

Published May 28, 2010

Indonesia in recent years has seen an increasing number of supporters for the idea of Atlantis being located in the vicinity of today’s archipelago, prior to the ending of the last Ice Age, on the submerged continental shelf now frequently referred to as Sundaland. The redating of cave paintings on the island of Sulawesi suggests that they are as old as any in Europe^(h), possibly stretching back as far as 40,000 years. A 2016 report^(j)has now pushed back the earliest human occupation on Sulawesi to 100,000 years ago.

As far as I can ascertain the earliest suggested linkage between Atlantis and Indonesia came from the leading Theosophist, C. W.Leadbeater (1854-1934). In a booklet, The Occult History of Java^[1094], published in 1951 he proposed that Java had been an Atlantean colony.

However, it is reported^(g) that Sukarno (1901-1970), the first president of Indonesia, spoke of Atlantis nearly half a century ago when he located it in the Atlantic

William Lauritzen was probably the first to advocate this idea of a Sundaland connection on his website, but it seems that the concept was given a huge boost by the publication of the late professor Arysio Nunes dos Santos’ book Atlantis: The Lost Continent Finally Found^[320].

The idea was given a boost in February 2012 when it was reported^(a) by a somewhat incredulous Jakarta Post that the Indonesian president had given his support to a search for an ancient sunken civilisation in Indonesian waters following meetings with researchers including British author Stephen Oppenheimer.

May 2013 saw The Jakarta Post report^(b) the publication of a book by local geologist, Danny Hilman Natawidjaja in which he claims that Atlantis was part of prehistoric Indonesia. In the book, entitled Penemuan Atlantis Nusantara (The Discovery of Atlantis in the Archipelago) he claims to base his theory on Plato’s text. However, commenting on the book the Indonesian archaeologist Daud Aris Tanudirjo said that Natawidjaja’s claim was ‘premature’, pointing out that the author had only an English translation of Plato’s text to work with and suggesting that Natawidjaja had no knowledge of ancient Greek. Further background information was subsequently made available^(c).

Natawidjaja also claims that a site at Gunung Padang, 120 km southwest of Jakarta may be more than 9,000 years old! Graham Hancock has expanded on this idea^(e). Nevertheless, a recent assault on Natawidjaja’s theories in an open letter^(m) from Rebecca Bradley, has laid bare the weaknesses in his contentions.

In 2015 Dahni Irwanto published Atlantis: The lost city is in Java Sea^[¹⁰⁹³^], in which he located the biblical Garden of Eden and the legendary island of Taprobane on the Indonesian island of Kalimantan (Borneo) and placed Atlantis off its coast. Irwanto has built on the work of Santos, expanding Santos’ 32-checklist to 60 headings. In his well-illustrated book, Irwanto goes further with the suggestion that Atlantean Indonesia was a cultural centre from which post-diluvian refugees spread throughout the world influencing the great civilisations of Asia, the Mediterranean and the Americas.(p.143) He subsequently published Sundaland: Tracing the Cradle of Civilization (1618) in which he develops his idea that ancient Indonesia was a hyperdiffusionist hub. Although I found this book interesting, I thought it was over speculative.

Coincidentally, Delisle de Sales, writing in the 18th century cited an anonymous source who placed Atlantis in Taprobane, considered at the time to be a reference to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), not Irwanto’s Indonesian Kalimantan.

A short April 2016 blog^(k) suggests that Quranic Archaeology may be used to support the idea of an Indonesian Atlantis, a sentiment expressed again a month later^(l).

The ‘Atlantis in Indonesia’ bandwagon became more crowded in 2019 when an entire group climbed aboard. They are known as Turangga Seta, whose founder and spokesman Timmy Hardati claims that Atlantis was submerged in the Java Sea. They also claim that there is a 300-metre-high pyramid inside Bandung’s Mount Lalakon! However, the twist in the tale is that the group has no interest in conventional science preferring to depend on psychic ‘conversations with ancestors’.^(o)While Irwanto’s theories may be hard to accept, at least he presents them in a rational coherent manner, the same cannot be said of the Turangga Seta⁽ⁿ⁾.

Also See: Zia Abbas, Sunil Prasannan and Panji R. Hadinoto

^(a) See: Archive 3629

^(b) https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/05/28/ri-was-home-atlantis-says-geologist.html

^(c)See; https://web.archive.org/web/20140306231657/https://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2013/05/indonesian-geologist-says-region-perfect

^(d)https://www.dailygrail.com/Sacred-Sites/2013/7/Indonesian-Megalithic-Site-Could-Be-More-9000-Years-Old-And-Part-Ancient-Pyramid

^(e)https://www.sott.net/article/271881-Gunung-Padang-The-lost-records-of-Atlantis

^(f)https://theosophists.org/library/books/occult-history-of-java/

^(g) https://web.archive.org/web/20170725051521/https://www.berdikarionline.com/ketika-bung-karno-membicarakan-atlantis

^(h)https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rockart-ages-indonesian-cave-paintings-are-40000-years-old-180952970/?no-ist

⁽ⁱ⁾ https://atlantisjavasea.com/tag/plato/

^(j)https://www.uow.edu.au/media/2016/earliest-human-occupation-of-sulawesi-pushed-back-dramatically.php *

^(k) https://www.islamsejati.com/2016/03/ahli-arkeologi-fakta-dari-al-quran.html (offline Jan. 2017)