Alantropa

My eldest son, What’s-His-Name, was helping me install a security camera in the backyard.  Hidden behind a mass of English Ivy climbing the back wall, it was so camouflaged than if either of us turned to pick up a tool, it took us a few seconds to relocate where in the mass of dense green leaves we had hidden the camera.

Finished, the two of us sat down at the patio table to enjoy a couple of beers, (respectively, root and Tecate), as a reward for our work just as my younger son, The-Other-One, came home from school.  

“Hey,” he said, “When did we get a security camera?”

The-Other-One is red/green colorblind, and this was another example of how most forms of camouflage simply didn’t work on him.  There were a lot of things he couldn’t see—like the large piece of red cellophane he hit with the lawn mower, that scattered red confetti all over the front yard—and evidently, things he could see that we couldn’t.  I’ve often wished I could briefly see through his eyes, to see the world differently.

Fresh viewpoints challenge our assumptions and offer new ways of looking at the world.  They can spark creativity and innovation by breaking us out of conventional thinking.

Sometimes, the most important discoveries come from those who see things differently.  Eccentric thinkers might notice patterns or connections that others miss, leading to breakthroughs in science, art, or problem-solving.

Or to put it succinctly, the nut point of view is frequently valuable.  People who see the world differently and come up with new ideas are the essential yeast that keeps society rising.

Herman Sörgel, a German architect in the 1920s, was an entire cake of such yeast.  He came up with a brilliant plan on for preventing another cataclysmic world war by providing so much wealth and resources to Europe that such a war would never again be necessary.  His plan was to provide sufficient Lebensraum by damming up the Straits of Gibraltar and substantially draining the Mediterranean Sea.

Sörgel forsaw a future world that was dominated by the Americas and by an inevitable Pan-Asian Union.  For Europe to compete in such a world, it would be necessary for Europe to acquire more land and resources.  By damming up certain key points around the Mediterranean, and allowing evaporation to lower the water level, there would be  substantially more land in both Europe and North Africa available to colonize.  Sörgel’s plan called for the creation of three large freshwater lakes in the Sahara with canals linking the new farmland to the now smaller Mediterranean Sea.  

At right is an artist’s drawing of what the area would look right after the sea had dropped sufficiently.  If you have a little trouble orienting yourself, slightly to the left of the center is an enlarged Sicily connected to what is now the boot-turned-galosh of Italy.  Greece, upper right, is substantially bigger.

A little over 5.3 million years ago, the sea first crashed through the Straits of Gibraltar, creating a tidal wave that roared across the Mediterranean area in what geologists call the Zanclean Flood.  What Sörgel had in mind was to reverse most of that flood.

The plan had five major components.  A massive hydroelectric dam across the Straits of Gibraltar that would, over the course of the next century, allow the sea level east of the dam to drop by more than 600 feet.  Three additional dams, one located at the Dardanelles to hold back the Black Sea, a second on the Congo River creating the freshwater lakes in the Sahara, and the last between Sicily and Tunisia creating a highway between Italy and North Africa and lowering the water level even more to the east.  Lastly, the Suez Canal would have to be deepened and extended northward through the new area uncovered by the receding water.  The Suez Canal would cease to be a sea level canal, but one requiring a series of massive locks to lower the ships down to the level of the Mediterranean.

Not only would there be new land, prompting new settlements along the newly created coast, there would be expanded canals linking the newly created arable farmland in the Sahara to ports along the sea.  Highways and railroads that crossed the dams at Gibraltar and Sicily would promote trade between the two continents.  Imagine bullet trains connecting Paris with the Congo or Berlin with Kenya.

For Sörgel, the project, which he named Alantropa, had almost endless benefits.  The new land would help alleviate overpopulation, the construction would provide jobs, and the expansion of European political culture into Africa would promote stability and peace.  How could it miss?—after all, since as we all know, Europe has a history almost free from warfare.

Though Sörgel first introduced his plan shortly after the first World War, it was later supported by Adolf Hitler, who firmly believed in acquiring new territory and frequently justified the war by Germany’s need for lebensraum.

Okay, it is a great and ambitious project, but there are a few small problems.  First, it just assumes that all of Africa would go on cheerfully content to be the colonial possession of European powers.   Nor is it likely that every coastal town along the Mediterranean Sea would have been happy to find themselves miles inland.

The scope of the project is enormous, perhaps impossibly so.  When Sörgel first proposed his series of massive dams, there was not enough concrete in the world to complete the project.  Even today, a century later, it would be a massive project, one that would dwarf even the American undertaking of landing a man on the moon.

There are also a few other problems.  It would, of course, be an ecological nightmare, destroying vast numbers of ecosystems.  It would alter enough land that it would change worldwide climate patterns and probably alter the Gulf Stream.

Sörgel passed away in 1952, and with his death the popularity of the project slowly vanished.  Today, the only place where Alantropa is mentioned is in a few Science Fiction books, particularly those that deal with alternative realities.  If such a book interests you, I suggest  “The Atlantropa Articles” by Cody Franklin and Joseph Pisenti.  In their book, the second World War never occurs, and after Hitler creates Alantropa, the protagonist travels through a Europe united under the swastika

There is, of course, one last problem with the plan.  Sörgel was not entirely correct in his belief that most wars are fought over resources, such as land, oil, or (as becomes increasing likely for the near future), water.  Sörgel believed that if he created more resources, this would end the need for conflict, but he failed to realize that what nations really fight over is not the resources, but the control of those resources.