Different Species
Most people know that in the last 100,000 years we mingled with another hominid species who may have been superior to us in some aspects – the Neanderthal. We even cross-bred with them and most modern humans have a bit of Neanderthal ancestry. (Or conversely, all of us Neanderthals have a lot of human in us – just like many native people identify with a background that is not the majority of their DNA).
According to Wikipedia, such other humans are known as:
Early modern human (EMH) or anatomically modern human (AMH) are terms used to distinguish Homo sapiens (the only extant Hominina species) that are anatomically consistent with the range of phenotypes seen in contemporary humans, from extinct archaic human species.
Keep in mind that the date ranges are determined by fossil finds, and such fossils are very rare – sometimes a species has been decided from just part of a single skull. Every species most likely lived more recently that the range suggests.
Estimates for the split between the Homo sapiens line and combined Neanderthal/Denisovan line range from 500K to 800K years ago. The most recent cousins of ours are
- Neanderthals (430 ka until 35 ka)
- Denisovans (217–14 ka)
- Homo erectus (2000 – 100 ka)
- H. rhodesiensis (300–125 ka)
- H. heidelbergensis (600–200 ka)
- H. longi (309–138 ka)
- H. floresiensis (nickname: Hobbits) (190-50 ka)
In 2012 remnants of the Red Deer Cave people were found in China, suggesting a different line of humans who were still around as recently as 10,000 years ago. From the one bone they are estimating that these people were small, weighing 50kgs.
Then, via DNA, we know that we humans interbred with two other species, for which we do not have fossils:
of the 4 hominin species modern humans have interbred with, only Neanderthals and Denisovans are already known, the other two hominin groups remain unnamed and have only been detected as traces of DNA.
https://set.adelaide.edu.au/news/list/2019/07/18/new-genetic-analysis-reveals-breeding-history-of-modern-humans
They were in SE Asia. So, most likely not a factor in our search for Atlanteans, but highly indicative of how many other human species there may have been recently.
The rarity of human fossils suggests that other modern human species will have existed, perhaps dozens more, yet escaped the fossil record. Which means it is entirely conceivable that an anatomically-similar species of human, small in numbers, could have still been living at the time of Atlantis, or even today.
They may have been giants, or small or had six fingers or red hair.
A different species could of course be smarter. Even if in just some aspects. Their knowledge could also have been different, even if simply and accidentally being in a good location or discovering something.
Which Race?
In looking for clues, we must consider that all of the Atlanteans through until today belong to the same race. It makes sense at the beginning, and makes sense if they were close-knit and secretive. Yes, they could have been a culture that included people of any race, but that would provide us with fewer clues.
A reasonable mid-point is the Phoenicians. They emerged from nowhere around 3000BC and quickly dominated via their seafaring skills. They are genetically the forefathers of modern Jews (via the Canaanites) and their location is spot-on if Cyprus was Atlantis. These genes also have a strong connection with people in modern-day Lebanon and Ibiza.
Majorca, also with a major Phoenician background, was where the Catalan Atlas was created in 1375, easily the best of its kind, with “a realistic depiction of geographic distances with a degree of accuracy that is astounding, even by modern standards.” It was created by Jews, so that doubles down on the Jewish/Phoenician thing.
This paragraph from Wikipedia packs in a lot of history:
The Canaanite culture that gave rise to the Phoenicians apparently developed in situ from the earlier Ghassulian chalcolithic culture. Ghassulian itself developed from the Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex, which in turn developed from a fusion of their ancestral Natufian and Harifian cultures with Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) farming cultures, practicing the domestication of animals during the 8.2 kiloyear event, which led to the Neolithic Revolution in the Levant. The Late Bronze Age state of Ugarit is considered quintessentially Canaanite archaeologically, even though the Ugaritic language does not belong to the Canaanite languages proper.
It basically means that they have been pretty much the same people since Neolithic times, but their name changed with pottery styles.
The Natufian Culture
According to Wikipedia, the Natufian culture dates to
around 15,000 to 11,500 years ago. The culture was unusual in that it supported a sedentary or semi-sedentary population even before the introduction of agriculture. The Natufian communities may be the ancestors of the builders of the first Neolithic settlements of the region, which may have been the earliest in the world. Some evidence suggests deliberate cultivation of cereals, specifically rye, by the Natufian culture at Tell Abu Hureyra, the site of earliest evidence of agriculture in the world. The world’s oldest known evidence of the production of bread-like foodstuff has been found at Shubayqa 1, a 14,400-year-old site in Jordan’s northeastern desert, 4,000 years before the emergence of agriculture in Southwest Asia In addition, the oldest known evidence of possible beer-brewing, dating to approximately 13,000 BP, was found at the Raqefet Cave in Mount Carmel near Haifa in Israel
Towns before agriculture, bread and beer. That is advanced, early. And right next-door to my Atlantis pick of Cyprus. The evidence for beer is 8,000 years before anywhere else.
They may have also established the first organised, long-term trading operations:
At Ain Mallaha (in Northern Israel), Anatolian obsidian and shellfish from the Nile valley have been found. The source of malachite beads is still unknown. Epipaleolithic Natufians carried parthenocarpic figs from Africa to the southeastern corner of the Fertile Crescent, c. 10,000 BC