Introduction - Submergence: A special issue on Atlantis and related mythologies

Abstract

Over the last decade there has been a growing awareness of the current and likely future impacts of rising sea levels on low-lying islands and coastlines. For island nations such as Kiribati, there is a very real threat of submergence of habitable low-lying areas with a substantial proportion of the population requiring relocation to elsewhere, either collectively – allowing them to reconstitute as a single diasporic community – or else in fragmented and dispersed form. Similarly, the inhabitants of chars (temporary river islands) in Bengal may have to live with a more extreme volatility of emergence and submergence. 1 Such communities are also likely to suffer profound inter-generational shock and senses of dislocation. This of course true of all involuntary migrations but is arguably more so for such migrants in that submerged lands cannot be credibly imagined as places to return to and/or places in possession of residual cultural heritage that the displaced can identify with. As history makes apparent, displacement of populations due to changes in sea levels and/or other events has characterised human existence ever since our species’ initial movement out of Africa. 2 But while many archaeological, climatological and geographical histories have examined communities that have demonstrably accommodated this in their livelihood and habitation patterns, 3 speculation as to the likely socio-psychological impacts of these patterns have been minimal. In this regard, Jim Leary’s study The Remembered Land: Surviving Sea-level Rise after the Last Ice Age (2015) offers a valuable foray into the field. His volume describes the stages of progressive inundation of the area of land formerly lying between the east coast of England and the opposite coasts of Belgium and Holland. Referring to this region as ‘Northsealand’, 4 he initially sketches the nature of the inhabited region during the early Mesolithic period (based on his interpretation of fragmentary archaeological evidence) and then goes on to speculate as to how the human population of the low-lying region may have adapted to global warming and sea-level rise. Having characterised Northsealand as “a mostly lowlying, flat and fluvially dominated landscape... created by the processes of rivers and streams” (2015: 16) he goes on to contend that the impact of sea-level rise on ecosystems and on areas of stable dwelling land would have been gradual (rather than catastrophic), requiring groups to re-locate to areas of higher land and/or “led to groups inhabiting