We have all heard about Marco Polo (1254 – 1324) the Venetian/Italian traveller and explorer, but how many of us know about the Moroccan Ibn Battuta (1304 – 1368/69)? The latter travelled more extensively than Polo, and got deeply involved in the social and political fabric of the societies and cultures through which he travelled.

First, let’s start with a bit of context, so we can understand why it is important to understand the achievements of the medieval Moroccan scholar. It is an indication of our cultural insularity that we in Australia, similarly to other Anglophone societies, begin our understanding of history with European explorers. Vasco de Gama, Magellan, Van Diemen, Columbus, Cook – European ships form the essential core of our historical knowledge.

That is fine as far as it goes, but it does leave us with a very blinkered view of humanity’s origins and interconnections. It is not wrong to read about Marco Polo or Columbus, but we should stop elevating them into unparalleled heroes whose achievements have no equal.

To explain the story of Ibn Battuta, we have to understand that the medieval world did not consist solely of Crusades and Viking raiders. The Islamic world was a vast, culturally diverse and scientifically engaged society. Innovations from philosophy to mathematics were emerging.

Ibn Battuta, born in Tangiers, Marrakesh (today in Morocco), was a judge and scholar in the Marinid sultanate. The latter was a Berber Muslim polity in North Africa.

In June 1325, he set out for the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. He desired to see other cultures and peoples – he would not return to Morocco for another 29 years. While most people in medieval times did not leave the villages in which they were born, Ibn Battuta traveled extensively, going as far as Bukhara and Samarkand, Central Asia – ancient intellectual centres today in the nation of Uzbekistan.

His journeying was not just a travelogue, important though that was. He immersed himself in the cultures and peoples he encountered. Traveling through Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Mogadishu (Somalia), East Africa, Anatolia (Turkey), his writings detailed the local languages and customs of the people with which he interacted.

His writings and observations are those of what in modern times we would call a sociologist. Collected into a book called the Rihla (the formal title is A Masterpiece to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling) his observations provide a unique insight into the 14th century Islamic world. Not only did he write about cuisine and dress, he recorded information about gender relations, socioeconomic practices, holidays and artistic output.

For instance, he noted that in Anatolia (modern day Turkey), women frequently traveled and worked with men, rode horses, fought as soldiers, and participated in cultural life. Anatolia was divided into various principalities at the time, and was known as the Land of Rum (Rome).

Going on to Yemen, Oman and India, Ibn Battuta eventually reached the territories of the Mongol Khanates. He established cooperative relations with the Mongols, traveled to India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, and survived being shipwrecked off the coast of Calcutta. Journeying through Bengal and Burma, he reached China as well. Going south to Sumatra, he was one of the first people to record the expansion of Islam into the Malay Archipelago.

On his return journey, he ventured through Iran, Iraq and the Kingdom of Mali. Back in his native Morocco, he remained in Tangiers where he recorded his experiences, and died in 1368/69.

Overall, he had traveled 117 000 kilometres over an expanse of territory that today consists of at least 50 countries. He traveled by ship, camel, donkey, caravan and horse.

Here is a simplified map of his travel journey

The purpose of this explanation is not to disparage or ignore the achievements of the European explorers (who are more accurately described as conquistadors). The purpose is to widen our horizons, and realise that intercultural connections are vital if we are to solve our problems as a civilisation.

If you wish to admire Ferdinand Magellan or Captain James Cook, please do so; no-one can stop you. Please realise that nonwhite or non-European civilisations have accomplished remarkable achievements, and these should not be dismissed or disparaged. Indeed, knowledge of the Islamic world’s pioneering scientific and cultural accomplishments can help us to better understand what is worth preserving in European civilisation – presuming the latter is worth saving.

Ibn Battuta’s travelogue, the Rihla, is an unsurpassed premodern work of density and scope. It contains observations and insights of multiple cultures, from the Mongol Golden Horde, to the Anatolian Turkic people, to the Malian empire – insights and first-hand accounts unequalled by his contemporaries. The Islamic world he documented was a culturally diverse universalist society, held together by scholars, judges, scientists, philosophers as well as traders and merchants.

We have the opportunity to go beyond simplistic stereotypes and muddled thinking about other cultures.

Geologists and archaeologists are constantly looking for lost continents and civilisations. The allure of discovering a long lost ancient civilisation is particularly appealing. The glory that accompanies the discovery of lost continents and peoples is seductive. But please, stop searching for Atlantis – it is not real.

Geologists have only this year confirmed that they have found a long submerged continent – Zealandia, most of which is under water.

Initially proposed by scientists in 1995, this continent, also known as Te Riu-a-Māui or Tasmatis, broke away from Gondwana millions of years ago. After thirty years of painstaking investigation, scientists have confirmed the location and size of this submerged continent.

That is exciting news – finding a lost continent only adds to our sense of wonder regarding the Earth. You know what is still fictional after centuries? Atlantis.

This mythical continent, (and its associated putative advanced civilisation) first conceived as a morality tale by the Greek philosopher Plato, was meant as a metaphorical warning about the dangers of hubris. After approximately 2300 years since its initial appearance in literature, the myth of Atlantis has inspired countless theories and speculations about its location and nature.

We have had false starts over the centuries…..

There are multiple sites around the world that have been nominated as the site of the mythical Atlantis. Rather than address each one of these claims (which have been comprehensively rejected) let’s examine the common generalised pattern of each claim. A geographic feature, be they concentric circles, a hitherto unidentified mountain or underwater structure, is located. Geologists and archaeologists try to explain said structure.

If their explanations have any gaps or leave doubts unresolved, the Atlantis enthusiasts step up, and lay claim to the structure or site. Proposing that an ancient and technologically advanced civilisation is responsible for creating said structure, Atlantis pops up as an equivalent god-of-the-gaps fallacy.

Undersea technologies are indispensable in identifying long lost cities, continents and peoples. Numerous sites across the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and even Antarctica have been proposed as sites of the mythological Atlantis. Natural processes produce harmonious, orderly structures all the time. From snowflakes to complex hydrocarbons, material and metabolic systems produce what we see as ‘orderly’ structures throughout the natural world.

What was Plato driving at when he first wrote about Atlantis thousands of years ago?

Plato’s discussion of Atlantis is contained in two of his dialogues; Timaeus and Critias. Plato was a philosopher, but he was a distinctly political thinker. His Socratic dialogues were concerned with constructing an ideal, just state. His discussion came with warnings about hubris; the arrogant belief that the society in you live is invincible and the best.

Plato was using the myth of Atlantis as a cautionary historical tale: a long lost utopia that was catastrophically destroyed by its own sense of hubris. In the Critias dialogue, for instance, Plato relates what the ancient Egyptians told Solon the Greek ruler from generations ago, and what he then relayed to Plato’s grandfather – a hearsay parable about an advanced semi-maritime civilisation that tried to conquer the world, but failed when it battled Athens.

Certainly, Plato knew about the giant rivals of the Greeks, the Persians, and Carthaginians. He constructed a metaphorical tale on the demise of ancient Atlantis as a modern day warning for his fellow Greek politicians and philosophers.

Explaining catastrophes that befall strong, seemingly invincible empires was a preoccupation of Athenian philosophy. Plato’s description was part of this ongoing dialogue, not a specific geological or archaeological reference.

The philosophers of Ancient Greece were certainly aware of the demise of Minoan civilisation, a Bronze Age society that flourished on the island of Crete. Its longstanding prosperity, followed by a cataclysmic collapse, was still being discussed in Athens. Archaeologists and geologists have confirmed the existence of Minoan civilisation – no need to keep searching for the fictional Atlantis.

The fact that we are only gradually realising that there were culturally and technologically sophisticated civilisations and peoples outside the Western canon makes us search for these long-vanished cultures.

Sub-Saharan Africa, indigenous nations in the Americas and Australia, ancient India and China – all have their archaeological mysteries and unresolved questions. They have also contributed, each in their own way, to a greater understanding of ourselves and the cosmos. Pursuing a fictional Atlantean civilisation is not just harmless fun, it is derailing attempts at genuine intercultural understanding.

No, not every person who believes in Atlantis is racist. This belief in a superior ancient culture is deployed to divert our attention from the very real cultural and scientific contributions of civilisations from the nonwhite world.

The romantic allure of ancient worlds kept book sales going in the pre-Internet age. Currently, social media recycles and amplifies long-debunked speculations as alternative hypotheses. The mystery of Atlantis will never be completely laid to rest, but it can be rejected in favour of more fruitful searches for lost cultures.

Hicham el-Gherrouj is not a household name in Australia, but he should be. A retired athlete, he is considered by sporting commentators to be one of the greatest middle distance runners in the works. His career is an example of resilience and the overcoming of obstacles.

First of all, I say middle distance, but to me, anything beyond 100 metres is long distance. I could run 200 metres when I was young, but only with great exertion, huffing and puffing, and going red in the face from physical exhaustion.

Gherrouj, born in 1974 in Morocco, displayed remarkable courage and persistence in taking on what I consider long distance running – 1500 metres, Gherrouj’s speciality, would take me half a day. The Olympic marathon, where competitors run approximately 42.1 kilometres (26 miles and 385 yards in the imperial measurement) is not a run, that is deportation to me.

In the 1996 Atlanta summer Olympics, Gherrouj experienced a dramatic incident, one which would impact him greatly. Running alongside his fellow athletes in the 1500 metre race, he was accidentally tripped by Algeria’s Noureddine Morceli, with only 400 metres left to go.

Morcelli had been a staunch rival of Gherrouj’s, and was a multiple world record holder in middle distance running.

Gherrouj, collapsing, nevertheless got up and finished the race. He quickly retreated from the main athletic arena, and broke down in tears. His career as an athlete appeared to be over.

Gherrouj, while in the depths of inconsolable despair, was handed a mobile phone. It was the Moroccan King, Hassan II, on the phone. The king expressed his admiration for Gherrouj, and said that the latter was the pride of the Moroccan nation.

That call lifted Gherrouj’s spirits. He never looked back. He went on to defeat all his competitors, establishing world records, winning gold medals, and retiring as a sporting champion of his nation in 2006. From Moroccan sands to Olympic glory, Gherrouj’s example is still an inspiration to athletes today.

It is important to remember and understand the experiences of high profile athletes, and how they are handled in the media.

Nadia Comaneci, the Romanian-American gymnast, was a superstar of the Romanian gymnastics team in the 1970s and 80s. A showcase for the Eastern bloc’s athletes and sporting programmes, her score of a perfect 10 at the 1976 Montreal Olympics was a coup for Ceausescu’s administration in Romania.

Born in 1961, Comaneci showed exceptional talent from a young age, and won numerous European gymnastic competitions before going on to compete for her country at the international level.

Awarded the Hero of Socialist Labour medal, Comaneci’s star was cemented as one of the greats for Romanian sport. In 1989, she, along with several others, did the unthinkable. She defected to the West, and was welcomed in the United States. This journey to asylum seeking freedom was undertaken in the days when imperialist nations welcomed high profile defections, especially from Communist nations, for their propaganda value.

Comaneci was not the only one to defect in November 1989. Her trainers, Bela and Mary Karolyi, also defected. A body blow to the Ceausescu’s government’s credibility, Comaneci’s defection was widely publicised in the West as an example of the indomitable human yearning for freedom from tyrannical regimes.

The Karolyis were soon recruited into the American gymnastics team, and through their training methods, were responsible for the US team’s first ever gold medal in all-round gymnastics by one of their star students, Mary Lou Retton, The latter won the gold medal for her nation at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

In recent years, the training methods of gymnastics coaches has come under renewed scrutiny, especially with regard to the treatment of underage girls. Stories of physical and verbal abuse, diet policing to the point of starvation, and aberrant use of medical treatment have all been alleged. Whether there is any truth to these allegations, I do nor know, and cannot comment.

There were no such questions raised in 1984, when the US team were happily accepting the gold medal in women gymnastics by Retton. Her success was hailed in the media, and Retton’s image became a marketable commodity.

What I do see is the vitriolic campaign of hatred directed at a particular underage girl, at least since 2022, Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva. A sporting prodigy in the world of figure ice skating, her ascent has been marred by a vicious and sustained media attack on her person as a ‘Russian cheat.’

Valieva, an Olympic and world champion, was fifteen in 2022. Yet her tender years did not stop a relentless and hurtful effort of humiliation on the part of the corporate media. It is difficult enough for adults to handle the scrutiny and excessive pressure of media attention. A fifteen year old girl, talented and resilient as Valieva is, would be incapable of handling the pointedly accusatory campaign of vilification directed against her as a purported ‘cheat.’

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) found that Valieva did not actually cheat. The prohibited substance found in her system, a particular heart medication, was the result of accidental contact, not wilful cheating. Yet, after her success in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, the accusations against her flowed, and the tsunami of hostile press coverage followed.

The medication in question, trimetazadine, is for people with heart problems, not young athletes. Such a medication would cause heart palpitations in a young, healthy person, hardly a motivating factor for a figure skating champion who requires nerves of steel in the heat of competition.

Politics intersecting with sport can be an ugly business. Geopolitical hostility to Moscow has resulted in targeting an innocent person, Kamila Valieva. How about we respect athletes for their achievements, and not use them as pawns in geopolitical conflicts.

Sometimes, it is the seeming footnotes in modern history that turn out to contain the most important lessons.

Adolf Hitler committed suicide in April 1945, but that was not the end of his government. His successor, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, relocated the German government to Flensburg, in the north of the country near the Danish border. Lasting about three weeks, his administration controlled only isolated patches of territory, what with the Soviets and American forces rapidly closing in on the Third Reich.

Winston Churchill, British PM, had a plan – to recognise the Flensburg administration. Why? So that all the millions of demobilised German soldiers of the Wehrmacht could be reconstructed into a new fighting force. His objective? To launch an attack on the Soviet Union. Two distinct yet related plans were drawn up for that purpose; codenamed Operation Unthinkable.

Churchill, while opposed to Nazi tyranny, maintained that the real threat was Soviet Bolshevism. The Wehrmacht, its soldiers overwhelmed by successive defeats, could be reconstituted as a fighting machine, footsoldiers in a new Cold War. But there was a problem; the German army was guilty of horrendous war crimes, and its senior officers were being arrested and charged for multiple offences.

Eisenhower, the Supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe, vehemently rejected Churchill’s proposal. The Flensburg government, already reduced to rump status, could barely be considered a credible authority given that it was basically a continuation of the criminal Nazi regime. Collapsing in a heap by the end of May 1945, it was officially dissolved in June by the victorious powers.

Rehabilitating former Wehrmacht officers, while officially rejected, was revived in a way by the 1950s. West Germany, occupied by the western powers, could be turned into a military bastion against the Communist East. That objective, demanded by the exigencies of the Cold War, dovetailed nicely with a domestic West German project initiated by former Nazi military officers – the rehabilitation of the ‘clean Wehrmacht.’

Rearming West Germany was going to be difficult, given the memories of the monstrous crimes of the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Nazi military. Former Wehrmacht officers, as well as civilian personnel in the West German bureaucracy, began the myth of the ‘good Wehrmacht’, German soldiers reluctantly carrying out the orders of the Fuehrer and his inner circle.

German officers were noble, motivated by patriotism and love of homeland – the SS and Gestapo were made the alibis of a nation. In 1950, invited by then West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, a meeting of former Wehrmacht officers issued the Himmelrod memorandum. A forty page document, this statement exonerated the German military of its crimes, laid the blame for the genocide of the European Jews at Hitler’s door, and elaborated the intent of the German military to rearm.

In this objective, they found a surprising ally in US President Dwight Eisenhower. The latter made clear his respect and admiration for the German officer corps, unsullied by the worst crimes of the Nazi regime. By placing a strong distinction between the German military hierarchy and the Nazi party echelons, Eisenhower assisted in cultivating a collective amnesia regarding the German military’s criminal conduct and massacres, especially in the war against the Soviet Union.

The Himmelrod memorandum was so named after the 12th century monastery where the attendees met. If the honour and reputation of the German military was restored, and the stains of the Holocaust and mass slaughter of ethnic minorities removed, then the US and Britain could supply the West German military with all the armaments they needed. A new bulwark against the Soviet bloc was born.

One of the thousands of Wehrmacht officers rehabilitated and put in charge of West Germany’s rearmament programme was General Hans Speidel (1897 – 1984). Chief of staff of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, Speidel had a long and fruitful career carrying out the Nazi military’s mission in occupied Europe.

While conspiring with the coup plotters in the July 1944 scheme to assassinate Hitler, he was unaware of the actual bombing of Hitler’s headquarters. Using his connections with the anti-Hitler officers as anti-Nazi credentials, Speidel surrendered to Allied troops at the conclusion of the war.

One of the post-war architects of West Germany’s rearmament, Speidel along with his former Wehrmacht colleagues, waged an incessant propaganda campaign to rehabilitate the honour of the German army. Here was a German officer, ready and willing to be used as a weapon against the Soviets in the Cold War.

In May 1955, the West German state was officially declared as having the authority of a sovereign state – the Federal Republic of Germany. Its armed forces were now known as the Bundeswehr.

Speidel’s efforts in rearming Germany, and aligning with NATO, were handsomely rewarded. In 1957, barely twelve years after the end of the Second World War, Speidel was appointed commander in chief of NATO Allied forces in Central Europe. Speidel was one of numerous officers who managed the integration of the Bundeswehr, the reconstituted armed forces of West Germany, into the NATO command structure.

Why is all this relevant today?

Current German chancellor Friedrich Merz announced, earlier this year, that Germany will embark on a massive rearmament programme, with thousands of new troops to be recruited for a confrontation with Russia. European nations, such as Germany, will increase their proportion of GDP on military spending to five percent of the national budget. Merz pledged that Germany will have the strongest conventional forces in Europe.

In a way, Churchill’s original proposal for the Flensburg government as a militarised sledgehammer against Russia is coming to fruition.