Dwaashin conspiracy theory
The Dwaashin conspiracy theory is belief in the pseudoarchaeological hypothesis of Antonio Paredes Rojas or other variations from later adherents (known as Dwaashinitas), that speculate that an advanced civilization formerly covered the continent of Tierrasur and the island of Rakeo sometime in the past 20,000 years prior to the last ice age. The theory was taught in schools and used as an element of Rakeoian propaganda during the dictatorship period of Rakeo under Mateo Jozefo Sánchez García and later Ricardo Cornelio Huerta.
History of the concept
As academic theory
The theory that a prehistoric civilization existed in Rakeo prior to the last ice age was first formally hypothesized by Mateo Uniat into the school of Olino in 1623, based on the presence of archeological evidence and then unexplained rock and land formations throughout Rakeo. People had long observed throughout Northern Rakeo that holes would appear in what appeared to be firmly solid ground. These sites were often used as the basis of wells, but their unexplained appearance led some to stories of older societies that had lived in the same area who had dug them. Since often many of these new wells appeared within the same area, it was thought that these areas were the sites of major population centers that would’ve had the time, expertise, and surplus labor to dig many wells, as well as centers of agriculture that had major water requirements. As the geologic sciences progressed from the mid 17th to the mid-to-early 19th century, many of the formations became subject to new hypotheses that suggested that natural processes, rather than human intervention, had produced them. Eventually, it was determined that the new well phenomenon was the result of porous and soluble groundrock dissolving, leaving voids behind that created sinkholes. Features such as glacial smoothing became explained by the glacial action hypothesis.
As conspiracy theory
The widespread publication of papers regarding Rakeo’s ancient glaciations in the 1860s coincided with rising nationalist and anti-Creeperian sentiment stemming from the reign of Captain General Jorge Montt Álvarez. Indigenous stories of ancient civilizations, portions of scientific papers regarding glaciation, and pseudoscientific theories promoted by anti-imperialist nationalist thinkers became merged in this period in the writings of Antonio Paredes Rojas in his most popular book 1865, Through the Ice, alternatively titled in Rakoeian as Dwaashin, deriving from the old Rakeoian word for falling through ice. Paredes Rojas wrote of an advanced ancient civilization spanning all of Tierrasur and extending up through Rakeo, utilizing locomotives, kerosene distilleries, and embarking on construction of various megastructures. Those promoting the existence of this theoretical civilization became known as the Dwaashinitas, and became influential in the Rakeoian nationalist movement. Reykanes was theorized to be the descendent nation of a similar civilization centered on the north pole, but following the Reykani Revolution of 1949, prior Dwaashinita works outlining the proto-Reykani civilization were suppressed by the emerging Stratocratic Authority as the suggestion that a communist nation could be formed from such a history was deemed ideologically unacceptable by authorities.
