A0652: How did Plato know about Atlantis? – Part 6

Now we go back to the beginning in New Atlantis time. We told you that it took the New Atlantians 200 years to build their first great buildings on the archipelago, but we didn’t tell you how the New Atlantians were able to do it, nor did we tell you everything that happened in New Atlantian society in those first 200 years, so we’re going to spend most of this blog entry explaining the background to the social change of the New Atlantians, because society changed a lot when we consider where the New Atlantians came from. We told you that there was a group of Atlantians who, immediately after the fall of Atlantis, made plans to create a new Atlantis and we also used to say that there was a group of city founders who created New Atlantis. The six families of the city founders were the future queens and kings because that was the first big change in the New Atlantian culture that didn’t exist before in Atlantis. The Lemurians and also the later New Lemurians and Atlantians were always ruled by councils that were elected. The councils could also be replaced because that is indeed the most humane form of governing masses of people. No form of government that cannot be changed by the people really makes sense, so a state ruled by councils will produce the best social system your universe knows. Your governments are getting close to that, but they are still so far from it that it is not worth thinking at all about how your elected governments can be made better. The founding families decided among themselves that each family would be allowed to rule for six years and then the kingship would be passed on to the next family. The head of the family was then the sole ruler for another six years and only when the six years were up was the crown passed on. If the head of the family died during the reigning years, a replacement was chosen in the family to rule for the rest of the time. In this way, the families wanted to ensure that it would be unnecessary to assassinate the ruling head of the family, only for the next family to come to power more quickly. Power was all that the modern people of New Atlantis coveted, for those who possessed power were highly respected and only those who were highly respected really had a say. When the 800 New Atlantians set out to determine their form of society, most of the inhabitants of New Atlantis already knew that there would be ruling families who would form a monarchy temporally until it was replaced by another monarchy after six years. Each ruling family had different priorities because people are different. The first five families created New Atlantis as we have described and the sixth ruling family came later. The five family clans decided among themselves how the New Atlantian people should be governed. They made all the rules and they also decided how the accumulated wealth should be distributed among the people. The tributes collected by the New Atlantian ship crews in the Mediterranean were divided among the ruling families, and the ruling families then decided how much of it they wanted to give away. If a ruling family had many friends, then they could also give away a lot because it bought their support. A ruling family could be overthrown if the majority of the family clans were in favour. Then the ruling family was chosen by all the family clans to be the next ruling family. The overthrown ruling family had to wait again for its turn. Ruling families had the duty to do everything possible to ensure that the inhabitants did not lack entertainment, so some impressive underground arenas were created where there was always something to see. At first the new creatures were exhibited, but soon the display of monstrosities became boring, so the arenas were used, as in Atlantis, to let the creatures fight each other. The New Atlantians first created creatures that they had already created in Atlantis, but since the population always had to be presented with something new so that the incumbent ruling family did not have the influential family clans against them, the monarchs always had to ensure that the entertainment on New Atlantis had something new to offer. Now, when we tell you what inhumanities these ruling families created just to keep the population entertained, we are not exaggerating, we are just showing you what was done in New Atlantis to stay in power. When we told you that in Atlantis they created great spiders that were given the head of a human instead of a spider’s head, the New Atlantians went further. They created humans with non-human body parts who then also had to fight for their survival in the arena. Humans were a commodity in New Atlantis, so we can also report that the human trade had its heyday in New Atlantis times. Humans were kept in underground caves so that they could be used like a commodity to carry out bartering. Humans were bartered in the markets of the Orient because after the fall of Atlantis there was a power vacuum that the Eastern tribes of peoples used to fill the power vacuum. These tribes knew humanity, but only among their own kind, so all other cultures were treated like cattle. New Atlantians also traded with these tribes, and since these tribes traded humans, they traded humans for the healing stones from New Atlantis. New Atlantians also knew humanity, but only among their own kind, even if we think that the slaves were treated well. Slaves who turned against their masters were killed, or they were led to the slaughter in the arenas, as creatures pounced on these troublemakers, for the pleasure of the New Atlantians. The city founders never foresaw such a course of action, but we also say they would not have cared because the modern people of Atlantis have always sought power and since Atlantian society never envisaged such a thing, a megalomania has always germinated in the modern people of Atlantis. The New Atlantians were able to live out this megalomania to the full because there was no authority in New Atlantis that could do anything about it. A monarchy is only as human as the monarch pretends to be human. No monarch in New Atlantis wanted to change anything about the general procedure, so from your point of view everything only became more decadent and inhuman. Spider-like humans fought wolves as big as cattle. Wolves wearing human heads were commonplace, as were flying felines, even if the wingspan was barely sufficient for longer flights. Humans could still be transformed in adulthood, giving them a reptilian appearance. Hardly anyone today can really imagine how many humans were transformed into monstrosities in the laboratories of the New Atlantians, and whenever the result did not meet the New Atlantians’ expectations, the misshapen human entered the arena. Giants were also bred, but the primates did not provide the spectacle that the spectators of the arenas hoped for, so human children were again used to create these giants and train them for the fights. These giants grew in size, but even giants have a limit when it came to body dimensions. Giants that got between three and six metres in height were good to train for fighting. All giants who were to become even taller later suffocated under their own weight, because not only could the lungs no longer work properly, but all the body organs were no longer able to cope with the strain after a short time. A six-metre tall human being is extremely impressive, especially if the body shapes still guaranteed a human approach. Like in Atlantis, the giants were changed more and more so that they were terrible to look at. There were also giants with only one or even more than two eyes. The giant spiders were gladly let loose by the New Atlantians against the giants because humans have always been afraid of spider-like creatures and this has something to do with an alien species from which the human species received characteristics that excelled in the alien species. This species has always had to fight another intelligent species that look like giant spiders. The fear is unfounded, but since the human body predetermines all fears, the fear of spiders is inherent in you, and once a human being acts out a fear, it is difficult to overcome. If you were to stand in front of a giant spider, your body would do something that the alien species has developed over a long time as a protective mechanism. You would freeze so that the spider would not recognise your movement. Believe us, even the greatest spider lover could do nothing about this protective mechanism if a huge spider came at him. The New Atlantians were used to the sight of these huge spiders, but they still feared these creatures. How could the New Atlantians ensure that the creatures did not attack the spectators of the arena, we ask? They adopted a system from Atlantis. The system had several safety mechanisms. Firstly, the creatures were given a crystal that controlled them and secondly, animals and therefore creatures could be trained. Creatures that could pose a danger to the population were trained because animals and creatures could feel mortal fear, so there were guards everywhere in the arenas that immediately stopped any attempts to escape. The arenas were also netted, which most creatures could hardly penetrate. However, the nets were not stretched over the entire arena, but only attached to the sides. The spiders were the most obedient creatures because spiders are very intelligent. You don’t think at all that spiders are very good to train, but since most people don’t want to see spiders, it’s hard to find someone who wants to train spiders professionally. The creatures came and went, so there were never any heroes among them who were admired by the New Atlantians. There were also fights among slaves, but since a slave against a creature provided better entertainment, there were no gladiator fights, as in the later Roman Empire. The slaves did not have to fear for their lives if they did what the New Atlantians told them to do. If a New Atlantian sought the company of a woman or man for pleasure, there were countless pleasure houses that could be visited in the underground caves. There were not only slaves who had to be of service, but also New Atlantians who voluntarily offered their services there. New Atlantians who did something that New Atlantian society absolutely disapproved of could also be sentenced to be at the disposal of New Atlantians there. If New Atlantians denounced the social structures and the general actions of the New Atlantians because they no longer wanted to stand idly by and watch society become more and more inhumane, then that New Atlantian could be sentenced to death, banished to the labour colony or the pleasure houses. Whether they were later allowed to participate in social life again always depended on what the monarch had in mind for these New Atlantians. The monarchs were people who were consumed by power and greed, so that there were also murder victims who were hardly avenged because there was so much ill will even among family members that life in a ruling family was never easy. All monarchies will develop in this direction, whether there are ruling families or whether there is only one family ruling over a territory. The process in ruling families is always the same. We want to tell something else about the monarchs in New Atlantis. Family members of one ruling family were not allowed to marry family members of another ruling family, even though there was no such thing as marriage at that time. But ruling families were forbidden to ally, so couples formed from different ruling families were sentenced to death. This often happened, especially when there was a change of power and the next ruling family took over the government of New Atlantis. Then it was ruthlessly revealed who had entered into a love affair with whom. The tragedy of these family feuds can hardly be described, so that the hatred between the ruling families grew ever greater, just like the buildings on the archipelago. The New Atlantians did not always live in the underground caves, but the climate on the archipelago drove them underground again and again. The underground caves were set up like palaces to be admired on the surface and we also think that you could see there a lot of what the Greek culture was producing at that time. The New Atlantians were not artistically gifted because they also had to constantly occupy themselves with other things, so that many art objects were not created by New Atlantian hands, but artists from all over the world lived there and practised their craft. These artists were not slaves, but neither were they part of the middle class of New Atlantians. These kinds of visitors were given a special status and they were occasionally allowed to leave the island of Atlantis to report on the magnificent achievements of New Atlantis. We would have liked to report much more about the society, but this blog entry has become much longer than the writer allowed us, so you can look forward to the next blog entry, because then we will tell something about the battles between the New Atlantians and prehistoric Greece.