In Greek, Krypton means “hidden one” or “hidden thing”. Perhaps this reference to the planet was more than a myth created by two writers in the 1930’s, destroyed by a thermonuclear chain reaction in its uranium core. It’s possible Krypton existed, under another name, without any survivors. A mystery suggesting more complex factors at work led to the destruction of what was popularly thought to be a star system created from the imagination of Siegel and Shuster.
Very little was known about “Krypton” when its existence was initially revealed in the 1940’s. Most people believed it a fictional creation, conceived a decade earlier as the home planet of Kal-El borne to Earth in a rocket ship, sent by his father Jor-El, as its only survivor. A doomed civilization, perhaps by the weight of its scientific achievements and failure to address the nature of its oversights. It’s quite conceivable that American government specialists used writers Siegel and Shuster’s invention to cover the existence of a remarkable discovery that was made when a series of green-inscribed stone tablets, extra-terrestrial in nature, were excavated near the South Pole in 1947.
A select group of archaeologists, anthropologists, biologists, chemists and theoretical historians, led by the late Margaret Mead – the noted and highly respected anthropologist – were brought in secret to Roswell, New Mexico, to study the “glowing stones” and derive some hypothesis based on the facts they compiled from a multi-scientific approach. Notes documented and kept Top Secret, revealed an advanced culture of a planet we believe is the mythological Krypton.
Far more evolved and technologically advanced than Earth, figures inscribed on the stones indicated the inhabitants were humanoid in nature. No evidence of other forms of life could be definitively determined based on the analysis of the tablets . However, Ms. Mead contended in her paper, “Hypothetical Paradoxes of Mythological Krypton” – never presented to the scientific community because it was classified Top Secret – “that circumstantial evidence existed for the presence of other intelligent life on the planet that weren’t humanoid.” She goes on: “revealed within the secrets of the ‘Kryptonian hieroglyphics” are other causes that led to its annihilation from a thermonuclear chain reaction in its uranium core.
Although an advanced society, Krypton had social and political factors that contributed to its destruction by enhancing cultural apathy for its environment. One would think, she speculates, that a culture so far ahead of Earth’s technology would have had the knowledge to prevent such a catastrophe. However the evidence, she claims, indicated an insidious disassociation from the facts displayed by change in the planetary poles, caused by a deterioration in the crystalline nature of its geology, its main source of energy.”
Entirely devoted to scientific pursuits with a unitary government run by the Scientific Elite, without poverty, or social dissent, it lacked individualism, so much so that its monochromatic governmental leadership did not have the insight to consider the consequences of its actions. Little dissent existed to challenge the leadership, primarily because science was thought to be the solution to all problems. According to other experts of the conclave, “Kryptonians were aware of the laws of physics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism but their understanding differed by the gravitation of their two sun’s, a bi-polar star system.
No evidence of a theological basis for existence could be found anywhere in its language, and the afterlife was not a belief that the culture entertained. The primary source of all their energy were crystals that absorbed solar energy and contained limitless power. One crystal could provide all the energy needs for its cities . However the inscriptions indicated that the civilization was so focused on other scientific pursuits that its environment deteriorated as the structure of its crystalline mountains diminished from overuse. An insidious change in the planets polarity resulted which led to the thermonuclear reaction commonly believed within our collective myth as the catalyst for its destruction.
The unanimous conclusion of Mead and her colleagues was that “the fate that was to befall this remarkable culture was probably a surprise to their most ardent scientists, until it was too late to reverse the effects of its cataclysmic destiny, a karma not anticipated when one’s focus is so egocentrically defined.”
More on Krypton as the information revealed on the stone slabs and top secret documents become available and/or declassified.
Author’s note: For more on the life of Margaret Mead, noted anthropologist who also wrote “Continuities in Cultural Evolution”, see this entry in Wikipedia.