Sarah's Marathon Diary: 'Many People Do Not Believe In Bigfoot. But A Lot Of People Do.'

[Primetimer]

N...eat? The In Search Of Marathon Diary visits Atlantis, Egypt, and California.

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[spaceghostess]

So much love for these diaries. Thank you, Sarah.

 

I'm reasonably sure that the "Mummy's Curse' episode inspired the Curse of the Mummy's Tomb movie my brother and his friends made 'round about '77. It featured a protracted scene of one of them throwing up blood (collapsed lungs, dontcha know) and another's face being eaten by (rubber) rats. The lungs scene wasn't half bad f/x for 14 year olds. It certainly traumatized my six-year-old self. Big bro grew up to produce TV commercials, FWIW. Should Nimoy & Co. be held responsible? Perhaps.

 

As to the killer bees hysteria,  remember The Swarm?? It was one of those Irwin Allen disaster jobs, and EVERYONE was in it (much like all the other Irwin Allen disaster jobs). The fact that running from (and being overtaken by) large numbers of tiny bees has rather a different impact than a Towering Inferno or Poseidon Adventure-type situation makes it even better/worse. Hee-larious.

 

Bigfoot. Yeah, this is one of the ones that stands out in my In Search Of . . . memories. Also the Nessie episode. And, strangely, this other one about alternative medicine that featured someone having brain surgery with only acupuncture for anesthesia. 

[Constantinople]

I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for killer bees.

 

We were all supposed to be dead by now.

 

Or living in Canada.

[Merneith]

If it wasn't for the Killer Bees, we probably wouldn't have gotten The Blues Brothers, so there's that.

[Sarah D. Bunting]

"We were all supposed to be dead by now.

Or living in Canada."

I see you've been listening to my third album. hee.

[Latverian Diplomat]

Yes, the "Killer Bees" thing was way over-hyped, but they are an invasive species that are a PITA for beekeepers in the southwest to deal with. Fortunately, they don't seem to be able to survive cold or dry winters, so we can settle for fleeing north of the Mason/Dixon line if it comes to that :-)

I think the consensus is that Plato just made Atlantis up, but if one must believe he at least had a model, the Minoan civilization, and particularly, the island of Thera (now Santorini) is the best candidate, IMHO. I find the Minoan civilization much more interesting than Atlantis anyway.

There was a science fiction trope (going back at least to Wells' War of the Worlds) that the planets developed life, and ultimately civilization from the outside in. I'm not sure if that was supposed to be because the planets farther from the sun cooled down and solidified sooner or what. But yeah, Mars had an older civilization with a worn out ecosystem and Venus was a lush primitive world with a climate like the Jurassic or something. All demolished by 20th century astronomy, of course.

Mars did cool down a little faster, because it was smaller, which is probably also why it lost it's magnetic field and atmosphere. But life might have started there before Earth. There are some people who are fascinated by the idea that Martian life may have spread to Earth by meteor, but I don't see why that unlikely event is more plausible than life originating in two places under similar conditions.

I'm kind of glad Bigfoot doesn't exist; with those flat feet, I think a life of wandering the forests would be agonizing. The appeal of Bigfoot as a reaction to modern civilization is an interesting idea. I wonder if Enkidu was a similar invention for the new urbanites of Sumer.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Latverian Diplomat

[Arjay]

I don't remember the In Search Of episode, but I spent the late 70s being terrified of the killer bee invasion. I still remember those maps showing their migration, from Mexico, then covering Texas, and continuing their trek northward. Of course, it's possible these fears were fueled by my older brothers, who delighted in their ability to terrify me. They also managed to convince me that the apes from Planet of the Apes were going to invade (Boston??) sooner rather than later.

[raven]

 

I'm kind of glad Bigfoot doesn't exist

I'm sorry, what?

[Ubiquitous]

I think the consensus is that Plato just made Atlantis up, but if one must believe he at least had a model, the Minoan civilization, and particularly, the island of Thera (now Santorini) is the best candidate, IMHO. I find the Minoan civilization much more interesting than Atlantis anyway.

I thought the consensus is that Plato based it on the Minoan civilization.  Didn't someone predict around the time that Atlantis was going to rise out of the ocean in the 1990's?

[Latverian Diplomat]

I thought the consensus is that Plato based it on the Minoan civilization.  Didn't someone predict around the time that Atlantis was going to rise out of the ocean in the 1990's?

I'm not a Plato scholar, but my understanding is that the leading theory is that he meant it as an allegory, but later on people took it seriously. Among other things, the fact that Atlantis was outside the Mediteranean puts it in the same geographical category as, say, Hyperborea.

 

Among the people who think Plato would have had some factual basis in mind, the Minoan civilization is the leading candidate. Thera was a Minoan Island, with a big volcanic crater on it that would have been a match for the circular physical features Plato described (which have been used in support of other candidates too). FWIW, the Thera eruption would have caused a devastating tsunami at Crete, which may have destroyed the Minoan navy (really bad news for a naval power), and ended the Minoan empire as a whole.

 

Lots of people have predicted lots of crazy things about Atlantis, but Edgar Cayce may be the person your are thinking of. In the 1920s or 1930s he predicted the US would find the location of Atlantis and obtain Atlantean technology in 1958.