The History Scrutineer

Jean-Sylvain Bailly, an eighteenth-century French astronomer and polymath, elaborated an original interpretation of the prehistoric origins of civilization which anticipated many of the details of the “Aryan myth.” Bailly argued that Atlantis was the root civilization of mankind, which had invented the arts and sciences and civilized the Chinese, Indians, and Egyptians. He situated this primordial people in the far north of Eurasia, and argued that as the cooling of the Earth buried their ancestral home beneath sheets of ice, the Atlanteans were lost to history. Bailly drew eclectically upon science, classical mythology, linguistics, and orientalism to substantiate his case, and argued that the Brahmans who shaped Indian civilization were Sanskrit-speaking Atlanteans. His theories reflected many of the prevailing ideas of the age, such as the climate determinism of Montesquieu and Buffon and the superiority of the dynamic West over the decadent Orient. Though Bailly did not racialize the Atlanteans, his works laid the foundations for the subsequent emergence of the Aryan myth.

Core Tenets of the Theory

• The Nordic Atlanteans: Proponents believed Atlantis was a real, ancient continent in the North Atlantic inhabited by “Nordic God-Men”. These people were described as white, blonde, and blue-eyed “supermen” possessing advanced technologies and civilization.
• The Great Migration: According to this myth, when Atlantis was destroyed by a cataclysm (often linked to the “World Ice Theory” or divine thunderbolt), survivors fled to other regions.
• Aryan Ancestry: The survivors were believed to have settled in the Himalayan mountains (Tibet), the Andes, or Scandinavia, becoming the “proto-Aryans” who established advanced civilizations such as ancient India, Egypt, and Japan.
• Germanic Supremacy: The Nazi Ahnenerbe aimed to prove that modern German Aryans were the purest descendants of these noble Atlanteans.

Key Influences and Proponents

• Helena Blavatsky and Theosophy (Late 19th Century): Theosophists introduced the idea of “root races,” identifying Atlanteans as the fourth and Aryans as the fifth, laying the groundwork for interpreting Atlantis through a racial lens.
• Guido von List and Ariosophy: Early 20th-century occultists who merged Germanic mythology with theosophical concepts to push for “Aryan” supremacy.
• Herman Wirth and Heinrich Himmler: As leader of the SS, Himmler created the Ahnenerbe (1935) to scientifically prove this Aryan-Atlantean connection. Wirth, a Dutch scholar, was a founding member who promoted the idea of a North Atlantic Aryan homeland.

The 1938 Tibet Expedition

To validate this theory, Himmler funded an 1938 SS expedition to Tibet led by Ernst Schäfer. The aim was to find biological or historical evidence—including physical measurements of Tibetans—suggesting they were distant cousins of the Atlantean master race. The team collected artifacts and conducted cranial measurements to try to prove the link.