Official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute and Weekly Webzine Site
Since 1996 ~ Over 10,000 Web Pages in Archive
Presents
Volume 3643

DOORWAYS TO PELLUCIDAR
ZANTHODON
By Rick Johnson

---

PREFACE

---

I recall when I was in College, I had a research project that I wished to study, something about dinosaurs in Africa.  My advisor asked, “What is your theory? What are you trying to prove?”

 “Nothing yet, I am just collecting data to see where it leads.”

“That is NOT the Scientific Method.  You ask a question (why do people describe dinosaur-like beasts in the Congo), then you develop a theory (Dinosaurs are alive in the Congo), then you look for data to PROVE that you are right (collect photos, etc.).  When you have enough data, you weigh your data and see if the plus pile outweighs the minus pile. If so, you have proven your theory.  If not, you modify your theory or reject as much negative data as you can.”

She may have been cynical but she WAS honest.  Scientists always look for data to prove their pet-theory and so ignore data that contradicts their beliefs.

---

History is written by the victors to justify their actions.

Growing up, we were taught about the courageous General Custer who was murdered by savages at the Little Big Horn.  The truth of the general and the incident were avoided at all costs.  And nowhere in American School books will you read about the American Invasions of Russia, China or Nicaragua,... because we lost and so those wars were carefully edited out of the history books. I fear for history when it records the current Iraq invasion.
 

---

Religion is NOT and has never been history. It is a collection of myths and fables designed to explain First Causes and to give a moral lesson to the worshippers.  And all religions are based on one uncomfortable fact.  Some guy got tired of his own religion so he attacked his Holy Book with a pen, scratching out whatever he disliked.  He then stole whatever he liked from other religions, added into the mixture his own hang-ups and kinks and presented it as a new revelation from god(s), carefully ignoring the original sources.   Henry did that to create the Church of England to justify divorcing yet another Queen, Paul did that to create Christianity by combining Judaism with Mithriasm, Moses did that to create Judaism by combining Midianite with Egyptian religions, Mohammed did that to create Islam by combining Judaism, Christianity and Arabic Goddess worship…  In fact only Paul Twitchell and Ron Hubbard can be seen as creating a truly New Religion, and the latter was based on a bar-bet between Hubbard and Philip Dick.

Religion takes myths (often stolen from another, earlier faith), rewrites and modifies them and presents them as ‘history’ to justify their own goals and history.
 

---

If you collect every article and book on the Bermuda Triangle and put them on a wall-board in order of publication, you will see a pyramid-effect.  If you read the books and draw a line to the other works credited or mentioned, you will see that almost everything we know about that location comes from one or two works, each person building on the previous work.  Like this:

FACT:  In Arizona there is a large wolf-spider called a tarantula.  The largest specimens have a body the size of a small child's fist with legs that can stretch as far as a grown man's hand!  The Tohono O’dham Indians fear the tarantula as they believe that it will leap from the ground to rip out their throats.  They are actually quite docile and make adequate pets.  If you don't mind them not coming when you call their names!

MYTH:  “Did you know that there are giant tarantulas that are the size of a man's hand?”
“I heard that tarantulas in Arizona have a body so large that you can't cover then with your hand!  And the eat people by ripping out their throats!”
“True fact, Tarantulas in Arizona are so big, they can rip a man's throat out to eat them!”
“I saw a movie about a giant tarantula in Arizona, it took the Air Force to stop it!”
“I heard about a species of tarantulas in Arizona that are so large, they can be killed only by Air-to-surface missiles from Fighter-aircraft!”
“There was an invasion of giant spiders in Arizona that took the entire Air Force and Army to stop! True fact, I know someone who heard it on CBS News!”

Stories and rumors take on a life of their own and build upon themselves until they reach Godzilla-like proportions.  And often, scientists have no choice but to use this questionable material as primary sources for their pet theory.
 

---

ZANTHODON

---

About 150 million years (near the end of the Jurassic Era) ago, a meteor of undetermined size but composed of anti-matter struck the Earth on a direct-line-to-the-core trajectory.

Instead of exploding or burning up in the atmospheric surface as do so many others, this one penetrated the atmosphere, entered a volcano in Southern Algeria, traveled down a straight lava tube until it struck bottom at a depth of 350 miles.  Then it exploded!

The force of this matter/anti-matter explosion was so great it vaporized a hole at least 500 miles in diameter.  This void partially filled with rubble and water to form the mega-cavern of Zanthodon!  Professor Percival Potter talked to an astronomer named Franklyn at the Hayden Institute about this to work out the trajectory and impact time of the cee-tee event.  Cee-Tee being astronomer-talk for Counter-Terraine or Anti-Matter.

Over the next 150 million years or so, it became the home of migrating plants and animals from the surface to produce an ecosphere composed of Dinosaurs, extinct mammals, hominids and even societies of Barbary Pirates and Minoan peoples.

Finally, in the late 1970’s, Eric Carstairs and Professor Percival Potter entered this mega-cavern via Sikorsky Helicopter via Mt Zanthodon to reveal it to an entertained, though unbelieving world.

There is only one problem with this theory.  It isn't true.
 

---

PROBLEMS

---

The biggest problem here is that if the meteor was anti-matter, why did it not explode upon coming into contact with the atmosphere of the Earth?  It should have exploded dozens of miles above the surface (as in Tunguska, Siberia in 1908) to strip away the atmosphere and cause total extinction of life on Earth.  Instead, this anti-matter object managed to pass through the atmosphere, unharmed, and enter the volcano that Professor Potter named Mt Zanthodon.

Next comes the problem of the volcano itself.  Now I've explored the volcanic tubes in Oregon.  They go into the earth for miles, most are easily large enough to walk into and they are generally even in diameter and often straight as an arrow.  Strange thing is that I could enter one and be boiling hot, then exit and enter the next a few meters away and find the walls covered with ice for the entire distance.  But they eventually curve and narrow as the lava forces its way through soft earth and cracks in the rocks, choosing the easiest path.  To have a volcano opening that is uniform in diameter that goes down for hundreds of miles is.. unbelievable!  Or at best, inexperienced.

Then there is the internal crater itself.  Underground explosions are well-understood. Miners have been creating these for centuries (dig a well, drop some dynamite down, stand back, then after the dust settles, send people down to clear it out), even governments have created these with nuclear tests.  And what happens is simple…  The explosion vaporizes a certain amount of rock proportional to the force of the explosion.  It then shatters and pulverizes a greater sphere of dirt and rock. This sphere is not perfect as granite shatters less easily than does dirt. But the void is very roughly a sphere.  Much of the shattered rock and earth fall to the bottom of this void to create a rough floor.  Thus you have a half-sphere void and a rough floor.
 
 

Zanthodon is described to be circular about 500 miles in diameter.

Thus, the original explosion should thus have created a void at least 500 miles in diameter, with the fall leveling the floor.  Thus the roof should be between 400-250 miles above the floor, depending on how much rock was vaporized by the initial thermo-nuclear explosion.  It isn't!

Eric describes that he was napping when the Sikorsky exited the shaft and entered Zanthodon and that he awoke at impact with the floor.  An object falling on Earth accelerates at 32 feet-per-second-per-second until it reaches terminal velocity of about 125 miles per hour!  If Zanthodon is only a half-sphere, it would have taken the Sikorsky two hours to fall to the ground, plenty of time for Eric to awaken, take over the controls and land safely.  Instead he awoke at impact, alive!  (A chopper went down near my house earlier this year. It was flying at a very low altitude and there were no survivors).  Now it would take a really deep sleeper to sleep through two hours of a hysterical man screaming “Eric! Get your ass up here!”  Eric was a soldier-of-fortune and people like that sleep light and wake up fast… or they don't wake up at all!  Don't believe me?  Try sleeping hard in a war zone!  You wake up alert when someone breaks a pencil point writing home!

Thus the Sikorsky fell from the shaft to the ground within moments, certainly less than a couple minutes!  Definitely not enough time to reach or even approach any velocity that would be fatal.

PLUS, the shaft was of generally uniform diameter and about 200 feet in diameter.  Upon looking up after the crash, Eric was able to see the opening overhead with no difficulty and even noticed the ragged appearance of the opening.  So, let us do a thought experiment.  How far away must you be before you cannot see a 200’ object clear enough to make out rough details?    12 foot 6 inches is the current standard per floor for a tall building, floor to floor.  That is head-room plus false ceiling for vents and wiring and the thickness of the roof/floor above you.  Thus take a 16 story building and walk backwards until it becomes too fuzzy to see clearly!  I am thinking that the distance from the ground to the roof of Zanthodon is maybe a couple thousand feet, absolutely no more than a half-mile up!

I'm no geologist but I am certain that no 500 mile void created by an anti-matter explosion could be filled in with almost 500 miles of fall and lava!

Yet, there is that residual radioactivity that was detected by Professor Potter's instruments, exactly as he expected.  And there is the light below that appears to be the result or residual radioactivity reacting with photo-luminiscent rock in the ceiling.  Obviously something happened there.  It just wasn't that overly large meteor of anti-matter described by Professor Potter.

And finally, if the mega-cavern was created 150 million years ago by a nuclear explosion, it would have taken centuries to cool down (thermally and radioactively) enough to allow any life to inhabit.  Thus the biology of Zanthodon MUST be post Jurassic!  I'm willing to fudge a bit and allow very late Jurassic life to enter as the Jurassic-Cretateous boundary was at 140 million years ago. Why quibble over a few million years?

YET!  The area directly underneath the opening (supposedly in the exact center of Zanthodon according to the explosion-theory) was Jurassic!  A few miles south, the duo entered a Devonian life-zone.  The Devonian started at 516 million years ago and ended about 360 million years ago… 210 million years BEFORE Zanthodon was formed!  How could life that became extinct 210 million years migrate to a mega-cavern that didn't even exist until long after they had become extinct?

And there is the problem of the Barbary Pirates and the Minoans!  Have you any idea of the support required to sustain a civilization of those sorts?  Consider that were I to take a cruise ship (the Carnival cruise ship Conquest can fit 3400 passengers) and dump it down a hole into a cavern.  And if I were generous and allow for 90% survival (probably less than 50% in reality), could they rebuild American Civilization?  No!  Blacksmiths were seen as magical beings because the skills necessary to turn lump iron into useful tools took years or decades to learn.  Unless the Barbers and Minoans actually took a couple Smiths (and if they lived), the chances are that that skill would be lost!   And even then, Smith's have no idea of where to find iron ore.  Early Smiths purchased meteors as base metals (there are no meteors that far underground) and mining engineers had to learn to find iron ore after the meteors ran out!  Yes, you will find carpenters and women who weave as a hobby and a few people who, like me, grew up on a ranch or farm and so know how to shear sheep and grow crops…  So you can take that cruise line and create a simple society, cannibalizing the ship for metal and ruining a lot of it before you learned to forge.  But to create even a Medieval technology would be impossible!

Quick, off the top of your head, what is the difference between bronze and brass?  What does raw zinc or tin ore look like in the wild?  How much carbon must be added to iron to produce sword-grade steel.  Did you even know that you had to add carbon to iron to create steel or did you think that you could just go out and find a big mine of pure 2020 steel sticking out of the ground?  Would you recognize a meteor if you saw one!  Would you know the difference between a Stony-Iron meteor and an iron one?  Did you know that meteors come in two forms?

Really, although I was raised on a farm and ranch and trained to me a metal-worker, most of what I know comes from deliberate research for these papers and stories I send in.  Were I not a writer, of sorts, I'd not know this stuff either.

The Minoans and Barbary Pirates would be no different.  Unless they had a slave who had been a blacksmith, they would have had to learn to find and forge metal.  Unless they had someone who knew how to shear a sheep, or had hauled a bottle of silkworm eggs (AND found something for the caterpillars to eat as insects are very specific in their diet), those skills simply would NOT exist in a small group of lost refugees.

Therefore, the Barbary and Minoan civilizations would not be from a lost ship or two, but must have been a carefully planned colony-migration!    But who plans to migrate 100 miles or more underground?
 

---

ZANTHODON REVISITED

---

Everything that we know about Zanthodon comes from the records of Eric Carstairs (as revealed by Lin Carter) in five volumes:  Journey to the Underground World (1979), Zanthodon (1980), Hurok of the Stone-Age (1981), Darya of the Bronze Age (1981) and Eric of Zanthodon (1982). The entire epic lasted about three years or so!

Everything that led to the discovery of Zanthodon comes from the studies of one Professor Percival Penthesileia Potter, Ph.D., aged 60ish!  He had asked the question, “Why do so many religions describe an underground world?”  Even the Navajo Indians of Arizona refer to coming from below.  So Professor Potter read numerous ancient religious texts and fairy-tales and travelers reports (that supported his pet theory) until he was able to pinpoint the location of this ‘hades’.

The obvious answer is that ‘underground’ is a symbol of the womb and every generation of religions took that idea and myth, building on and adding to the original myth until it spread over the world.  Unfortunately, for that thought, Professor Potter was, in this case, correct!  Despite the hundreds of false leads and conflicting religious and historical writings he had to peruse, there WAS an underground world!  However, it was a place, not from which humanity sprang, but one where man could go.  This will teach me to laugh at science.

After reading numerous reports, Professor Potter believed that the opening to this place lay in the Ahaggar Mountains of southern Algeria near Mt Tamanrasset, roughly at Latitude 25 Degrees North by Longitude 66 Degrees East.  It must have taken his entire life to learn just these few facts.  See the intro as to why.

Algeria and Ancient Africa per Sorgel

Interestingly enough, a few thousand years ago, the Sahara was grassland, supporting a plethora of veldt animals.  Rome built an empire on wheat raised in the Sahara as Roman Grain ships crossed in fleets. There was even a river (the Sahara River) that flowed north, passing within a hundred miles of Mt Zanthodon until it turned east entering the Mediterranean through Tunisia. The northern shore of the ancient Chad Sea was even closer!  This is trivia, but relevant to later arguments.  Those mountains on the Sorgel Map where the Sahara River exits the Chad Sea are the Ahaggar Mountains where we find Mt Zanthodon.

My early map of Zanthodon (click)

As I read the series of Zanthodon novels, I created a map but soon found that with minimal differences, it was the same as the one created by Steve Servello. He has the Sogar-Jad going south where I believe that it turns east just south of the Peaks of Peril.  He has the lagoon on the north of the Gorpak Peninsula while I have it to the south.  Still, the thing is close enough to use his map as a base and is the best made map so far.

         .

The Servello Map of Zanthodon

---

GEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY

---

Here is what we know, but the facts come from Eric and Professor Potter, neither of which did a survey but were popping info off the tops of their heads based on initial observation and questionable historical/religious records.  So we must accept their observations but question their conclusions.

Professor Potter claims that the mega-cavern was formed by a gigantic nuclear explosion 150 million years ago.  If so, then the opening to Mt Zanthodon must be in the center of the cavern!  As the Servello Map has the opening near the bottom, all we see mapped is the central part of the Northern Quadrant of Zanthodon.  Since it took a few sleeps to reach the Peaks of Peril, and we can assume that Eric still is biologically attuned to a 24-hour-day, and as a decent day's march is about 20 miles, assume the Opening to the Peaks to be about 50-60 miles.  Thus, the coast here at the Northern Sea is only a dozen or so miles from the edge of the mega-cavern.

We know that Zanthodon is volcanically active.  And that is about it!

We only have Eric's word that Zanthodon is circular and 500 miles across and he doesn't tell us how he knows.  Because Professor Potter told him?  A guess at best since none of the peoples Eric met had explored the entire place. The Barbary Pirates stated that they never sailed as far south as did Barborosa.  Darya’s people never explored far from home either.

What we have is a very large mega-cavern that may by 500 miles in rough diameter but is only a couple thousand feet high.  This cavern has a number of openings to the surface, Mt Zanthodon for one, at least one easy system that allowed the Minoans to enter in a large group, maybe another that allowed the Barbary Pirates to enter from the north.  It has fresh water, air and light. And most of the place is unknown territory.

Zanthodon with the Servello map added in place

When I placed the Servello Map over a circular pattern to get a look at the size (locating the volcanic opening in the center), a number of things became clear, but many more questions were asked.

The land area is central but there is a LOT of water to the west.
Does the Northern Sea go to the edge of the cavern, thus ending the sea against a cliff?
Does the land extend to the east to the cliff walls?
Does the Sogar-Jad extend to the west to the cliffs or is there land, perhaps a ‘lost continent’ beyond Gondor Isle?
Does the Sogar-Jad extend straight south to the cliffs or turn west or east?
Obviously, none of the animals that inhabit Zanthodon came through the volcano, save maybe a few birds and bats and bugs.  So where did the Dinos come from?
And while we are at it, how did the people arrive?
Did the fall collapse and compact and collapse the land in the west, then the mega-cavern fill with water to create the sea?

Map of Africa c. 10,000 bce from Sorgal and corrected by me.

Zanthodon and pal-ul-Don added.

Let us look at the Sorgel Map again.  It was created by a German Engineer who had planned to dam the Congo River and return Africa to its ancient state when it contained two large fresh-water seas.

Prior to 10,000 years ago, central Africa was flooded by two seas, the Chad Sea and the Congo Sea.  About 10,000 years ago, the Congo River broke through to the Atlantic and Africa drained, turning the Sahara into a desert.  This didn't happen overnight, it took thousands of years and even into historical times, we have evidence of this water in the Sahara.  Not all of that water went to the Atlantic!  If you want to learn more, read Engineers Dreams by Willey Ley.  This is the book I used to find Opar!.

---

BIOLOGY OF ZANTHODON

---

As mentioned before, how can Devonian life exist in Zanthodon when it became extinct hundreds of millions of years before Zanthodon was created?

Then there is the Triceratops!  Ceratopsins are vegetarians.  They are designed to eat plants. The entire family is a part of the lizard-hipped branch of dinosaur evolution, ALL of whom are plant-eaters.  The bird-hipped dinosaurs started out as meat-eaters then the Plateosaurs branched off, grew too large, and became sauropods which were forced to become plant-eaters by virtue of size.  But all lizard-hipped dinosaurs are plant eaters.  All large land animals are plant-eaters because they quickly become too big to chase prey (elephants cannot run!)  Even in Pellucidar, the triceratops is a plant-eater.  In fact, there is only one place where the ceratopsin eats meat and that place is Pal-ul-Don!

Problem is that Tarzan never mentioned any dinosaurs in Pal-ul-Don other than the Gryf and (maybe) a few swamp saurians.

There is Devonian life, Mesozoic life and Cenezoic life and it has people!  Neanderthals, Cro-magnum and even modern man!  None of which evolved naturally, though once there, evolution would do some quirky things.

What we have is a mixture of biological specimens but not the variety one would expect.  How many pterosaurs and birds are described?
Lake Patagonia an hour south of my house covers 250 acres and there are more than 200 species of birds there.  I even had a pelican hitch a ride on my kayak and we were hundreds of miles from the sea.

Where is the diversity you would expect of a thriving, ancient eco-system?

If you actually look at the diversity of life in Zanthodon, you are impressed with how few species there are.  And they are all ‘normal’ sized when Den Valdron, in his essay Zanthodon, repeats the adage that animals restricted to a small area generally shrink in size.  Yet these did not?

Also, although you will find dinosaurs on Dragon Isle (Zealandia), Island of the Skull, Pal-ul-Don and Maple White Land, Only Pal-ul-Don is close enough to effect a decent transfer. But Pal-ul-Don is filled with modern, though modified, animals and boasts few dinosaurs.  Plus, the triceratops was a North American species, not African or European (how the [bleep] did the Gryf reach Pal-ul-Don?).  So the only real surface place they could have come from is Pal-ul-Don and that Land-of-Man doesn't have the diversity of ancient life required to populate Zanthodon.  Had the dinos and mastodons arrived from the surface, they would long ago have adapted to their new home by shrinking.  So they MUST be recent arrivals!

Ok, we know that there are entrance routes to Zanthodon from the surface.  And these are probably leading north to where the Minoans and Barbers lived.  There are or were probably routes that allowed dinos to enter, big routes.  I cannot see a mastodon or triceratops trying to squeeze itself through a tiny cave for no reason other to see what's beyond. That is a human trait.

We also know that animals stampede easily.  Ever see a herd of cattle run into oblivion because they heard thunder?  It's a terrifying sight.  They just run and never look or think, they just run!

So where did these things come from and what, exactly IS Zanthodon?

---

MY THEORY

---

I think that Professor Potter is wrong.  His theory simply does not fit the questions.  How could an anti-matter asteroid survive atmospheric entry and still detonate below ground YET leave a flat void instead of a sphere?

I think Zanthodon is a natural megacavern.  Created by tectonic stresses and retreating lava, the place was a large lava cavern that had the floor mostly leveled by two things, lava settling and erosion from water rushing in as the Chad Sea emptied.

I think that Zanthodon was always there, only uninhabitable until recently (in geologic terms).

I am not refuting the meteor theory, I just think that it was a catalyst, not the event itself.  The asteroid that impacted Yucatan at the KT-boundary did not exterminate the dinosaurs, they were on the way out long before and many survived past the event.  BUT, the impact 65 million years ago accelerated their demise and prevented their recovery.

I think that Zanthodon was already a cave but so filled with lava that it was impossible to inhabit until a meteor that contained a large amount of uranium entered the atmosphere of the Earth.  This rock burned up in entry, but was large enough so that much of it was able to survive as it entered the Zanthodon Mountain crater.  As it rushed down to the center, it cleared the sides, burning away rock to form a nearly perfect shaft!  Then it hit the lave pool that fed Mt Zanthodon.

Yes it exploded!  But not with the violence of an anti-matter blast.  The impact shook the African plate and caused fractures that allowed the lava to drain away, thus creating the mega-cavern that would later become Zanthodon.

It probably took a few million years for the cavern to cool enough to support life.  But as the lava retreated, tubes opened, fissures cooled and openings extended up… and down!  One led to the Chad Sea and allowed fresh water and fish to enter.

Plants were the first to colonize.  Seeds, spores, whatever fell through Mt Zanthodon, whatever blew down the hundreds of miles of gigantic caves that connected Zanthodon to the surface, both of them.  We are not talking about small caves that you have to crawl through like a worm, no these cave-tunnels were so large that a mastodon could walk them easily.  And with openings that large, with the Sahara baking Mt Zanthodon and causing heated air to rise, air flowed in from the other openings, bringing in seeds, bugs, small animals.  Millions of years later, there was a thriving ecosphere of mostly plants.  Photosynthesis adapted to the cavern which contained photo-sensitive minerals activated by the uranium in the meteorite.  Not much light, but enough.

And somehow, larger animals found their way in.  Oh not the ‘hey, a cave, let's explore.”  More like a storm hit and a terrified herd entered to escape the fury, continuing on because the predators were following, eating the slower ones.  Maybe some entered to escape the KT strike?  Most died, but as they rotted, plants grew from their bodies, mold and fungus and undigested seeds.  Perhaps other animals, centuries later, also seeking refuge from a storm entered and finding food, continued on.  Eventually they would reach Zanthodon and settle in.  Predators followed.

And these cave tunnels that led up, also led down.

I suspect that Zanthodon only became inhabitable in the last 50-100 thousand years ago.  Mammals probably came down from Earth but dinos came up from Pellucidar.  The Devonian life was the clue!  The Devonian Era ended a couple hundred million years before Zanthodon was created so that form of life must have come from someplace else and Pellucidar is the only possibility.

So, just as a Migration Route was established from the surface, so was another from below!
 

The Gryf could not have evolved in Pal-ul-Don.  Such an apex predator would have quickly exterminated everything in Pal-ul-Don.  And Tarzan, himself, describes the Pellucidarian Gyor as a smaller, vegetarian triceratops of subdued colors and lesser disposition than the Gryf.

I think that the Gryf evolved in Pellucidar from the true triceratops that immigrated via the polar openings.  Then one branch shifted to a partially meat-diet.  This isn't unusual as the Green Iguana of Mexico starts out as a meat-eater then as an adult it gives up meat and becomes the gentle vegetarian that people love as a pet.  So the partially omnivorous Pellicudarian Gyor, for some reason, entered one of these Migration-Route tunnels and reached Zanthodon as the Grymp.  Then, later, somehow migrated to Pal-ul-Don to become, very quickly, the Gryf (note the similar names).  It must have entered Pal-ul-Don long after the Don had evolved (or arrived) as the locals would have been unable to establish a civilization facing such a beast.  (see my future paper on Skull Island for more on this).

The Thipdar of Pellucidar, a monstrous pterosaur capable of predating upon a full-sized man, is so similar (even in name) to the Zanthodon Thakdol that we must not only presume a migration from Pellucidar, but also of the people as well.  Are the Neanderthals of Zanthodon descended from or ancestor to the Sagoth?  Are the Cro-Magnon Giliks or are Giliks simply cousins?  The languages of both Zanthodon and Pellucidar are so similar that we must consider contact!  Or migration!
 

So we had dinosaurs from the Mesozoic and Devonian life entering from below and mammals and people from above.

Was the Chad River still flowing when the Minoans arrived?  The Egyptians stated that there were only two civilized races on Earth, the Egyptian and the Minoan.  I suspect that the Minoans had decided to colonize Africa.  Was this a colony similar to the one at Opar, Onthar? Thenar?  Regardless, they became trapped in a Migration Route.  Maybe a storm?  Maybe local Africans resenting these pale-skinned invaders?  Who knows?  They were driven down, possibly for months,. Loosing teeth to scurvy and personal to whatever lived in that tunnel until they reached Zanthodon and, unwilling to make ‘that hellish trek’ back, decided to stay.  Since they were a colony, they had all the tools and skills necessary to carve civilization from the wilderness.

The Barbary Pirates may have entered another tunnel, but one that an earthquake opened, sucking a batch of the Mediterranean and the Barbary fleet into a tunnel cavern, closing afterwards.  Rushing down this trapped water for days until they entered the Sogar-Sad, their galleys barely afloat, trapped.  So they built a fortress and began to capture slaves from the local peoples, occasionally a Minoan, to rebuild what they could.  Without captured Minoan slaves to recover technology, they would have soon reverted to savagery.  (Eric refers to the Barbarys as having steel swords, but then, he also refers to his Colt .45 sometimes as a revolver and often as an automatic so his observational or recording skills may be a bit... lacking.)

And so Zanthodon grew.  Most of the animals that entered are too new to adapt, so the sizes remain constant.  But adapt they will. Some have already evolved, those leech-things that so enslaved the underground peoples probably came down with the Chad Sea.  Others are or will.  But one thing is clear,

Zanthodon is still another Doorway to Pellucidar!

---

PAPERS OF INTEREST

---

Zanthodon Overview by Steve Servello
http://www.erbzine.com/mag17/1717.html

Lin Carter’s Literary Pellucidar by Den Valdron
http://www.erbzine.com/mag17/1738.html

Zanthodon by Den Valdron
http://www.erbzine.com/mag17/1739.html

Linguistic Zanthodon, Pellucidar, Mangani, Pal-ul-don by Den Valdron
http://www.erbzine.com/mag17/1740.html