Forget Atlantis - This Is More Realistic And More Fascinating :)

[Thurisaz]

So yesterday I took a look at the TV schedule to determine how I'd kill time throughout the day, still being stuck at home sick, and saw one title "Atlantis of the North". Whee, another turd about the "Atlantis = Heligoland" nonsense, I thought, and on our state-sponsored documentary channel for crying out loud! And I went on with my day.

 

Until I zapped through the channels in the afternoon and stumbled about that thing. Turns out that no, it's not the usual mix of myths-as-fact pseudoscience that usually awaits you in whatever's labeled "Atlantis (something)" - it's about something very real and not far from where I live. The vanished city of Rungholt (linky to the English wikipedia entry, the German one is much longer). And I just sat here in front of the screen going whoah.

 

Reminded me of Doggerland, once I had mentally tuned in. Man, to think that people are still doing "documentaries" about Atlantis which so painfully obviously was just a parable, while these places were for real...

 

...Scotty beam me up, there's no intelligent life down here!

[Eugene39]

Wow! That's interesting. Can you imagine what the news media would do today if an entire city was to "go beneath the waves?"

[Thurisaz]

No shit. Now add to that thought the fact that apparently, until its destruction by storm surge, Rungholt had about the same population as Hamburg (which of course was some 2000 to 3000 at that time but still).

 

Imagine not just a city but a world-famous metropolis about to slip under...

[Thurisaz]

Forgot to mention earlier... looks like (in contrast to the time the English wiki article refers to) they now not only found the site of Rungholt again, with traces of the levees, house walls et all visible with the naked eye, but also clearly identified when the killer storm struck (it marched across England before and there are a lot of reports on storm damage from exactly one day before Rungholt was sucked down by the sea) and why the city went under (built on a huge lump of peat which couldn't possibly stand that monster storm). The documentary I caught detailed all that. Mindblowing.