Theories About Atlantis

The greek philosopher, Plato, brought to the world, the story of the lost continent of Atlantis. His story began to unfold for him around 355 B.C. He wrote about this land called Atlantis in two of his dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, around 370 B.C.

Plato stated that the continent lay in the Atlantic Ocean near the Straits of Gibraltar until its destruction 10,000 years previous.



The Capitol of Atlantis

Plato described Atlantis as alternating rings of sea and land, with a palace in the center 'bull's eye'. [This seems to be a metaphor for the theory of consciousness spiraling around a central source of creation - Sacred Geometry - Phi Ratio.]


Plato used a series of dialogues to express his ideas. In this type of writing, the author's thoughts are explored in a series of arguments and debates between various characters in the story.

A character named Kritias tells an account of Atlantis that has been in his family for generations. According the character the story was originally told to his ancestor Solon, by a priest during Solon's visit to Egypt.

By Plato's account, Poseidon, god of the sea, sired five pairs of male twins with mortal women. Poseidon appointed the eldest of these sons, Atlas the Titan, ruler of his beautiful island domain. Atlas became the personification of the mountains or pillars that held up the sky.

The Greek word Atlantis means the 'Island of Atlas', just as the word Atlantic means the 'Ocean of Atlas'. The firstborn, Atlas, had the continent and the surrounding ocean named for him. Poseidon divided the land into ten sections, each to be ruled by a son, or his heirs.

The capital city of Atlantis was a marvel of architecture and engineering. The city was composed of a series of concentric walls and canals. At the very center was a hill, and on top of the hill a temple to Poseidon. Inside was a gold statue of the God of the Sea showing him driving six winged horses.

Around 9000 years before the time of Plato, after the people of Atlantis became corrupt and greedy, the Gods decided to destroy them. A violent earthquake shook the land, giant waves rolled over the shores, and the island sank into the sea never to be seen again.

At numerous points in the dialogues Plato's characters refer to the story of Atlantis as "genuine history" and it being within "the realm of fact." Plato also seems to put into the story a lot of detail about Atlantis that would be unnecessary if he had intended to use it only as a literary device.

Plato tells a more metaphysical version of the Atlantis story in "Critias." There he describes the lost continent as the kingdom of Poseidon, the god of the sea. This Atlantis was a noble, sophisticated society that reigned in peace for centuries, until its people became complacent and greedy. Angered by their fall from grace, Zeus chose to punish them by destroying Atlantis.

Plato's Timaeus conjectures on the composition of the four elements which the ancient Greeks thought made up the universe: earth, water, air, and fire. Plato conjectured each of these elements to be made up of a certain Platonic solid: the element of earth would be a cube, of air an octahedron, of water an icosahedron, and of fire a tetrahedron. Each of these perfect polyhedra would be in turn composed of triangles. Only certain triangular shapes would be allowed, such as the 30-60-90 and the 45-45-90 triangles. Each element could be broken down into its component triangles, which could then be put back together to form the other elements. Thus, the elements would be interconvertible, so this idea was a precursor to alchemy.

Plato's Timaeus posits the existence of a fifth element (corresponding to the fifth, remaining, Platonic solid) called quintessence, of which space itself is made.

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Atlas

By Egyptian record, Keftiu was destroyed by the seas in an apocalypse. It seems likely Solon carried legends of Keftiu to Greece, where he passed it to his son and grandson.

Plato recorded and embellished the story from Solon's grandson Critias the Younger. As in many ancient writings, history and myth were indistinguishably intermixed. Plato probably translated "the land of the pillars which held the sky" (Keftiu) into the land of the titan Atlas (who held the sky). Comparison of ancient Egyptian records of Keftiu identifies a number of similarities to Plato's Atlantis. It seems likely that Plato's Atlantis was a retelling (and renaming) of Egypt's Keftiu.

When Plato identified the location of the land he named Atlantis, he placed it to the west-in the Atlantic Ocean.

In reality, Egyptian legend placed Keftiu west of Egypt, not necessarily west of the Mediterranean. In describing Atlantis as an island (or continent) in the Atlantic Ocean, we suspect Plato was merely wrong in his interpretation of the Egyptian legend he was retelling.

Yet Plato preserved enough detail about the land of Atlantis that its identification now seems very likely, and rather less mysterious than many new-age advocates would like. It is likely that Atlantis was the land of the Minoan culture, namely ancient Crete and Thera. If this hypothesis is correct, Plato never realized that the land of Atlantis was already familiar to him. Let's have a look at the evidence which suggests that Minoan Crete and surrounding islands bear a striking resemblance to what Plato described as Atlantis.

Archaeological records show that the Minoan culture spread its dominion throughout the nearby islands of the Aegean, very roughly from 3000 years BC to about 1400 years BC. Crete, now part of Greece, was the capital for the Minoan people ‹ an advanced civilization with language, commercial shipping, complex architecture, ritual and games.

It seems very likely that related islands (e.g. Santorini/Thera) may have been part of the same culture. The Minoans were peaceful: very little evidence of military activity was found in their ruins. A 4-storied palace at Knossos, Crete, was said to be the capitol of the Minoan culture. Correspondence of Minoan cultural artifacts with aspects of the Atlantis legend make the identity of the two seem virtually certain. Perhaps the most unusual of these is the Minoan bull fighting.

By Egyptian legend, the inhabitants of Keftiu would engage in ritualistic bull fighting, with unarmed Minoan bullfighters wrestling and jumping over uninjured bulls. This same foolhardy practice is richly illustrated in remaining Minoan artwork.

Plato's (Egyptian) legend also holds that Atlantis was peaceful - this is confirmed by a virtually complete absence of weapons in Minoan ruins and in Minoan artwork - unusual for peoples of that time. Egyptian legend held that elephants were found on Keftiu - while there were presumably no elephants on Crete, the Minoans were known to deal in African ivory, and appear to have been the principal access to ivory for Egypt 20 centuries before Christ.

Plato's maps of Atlantis have even been argued to resemble the geography of ancient Crete.

Many ancient Greek myths take their location from Minoan Crete more than ten centuries before Plato. Daedalus, the ancient scientist, was supposedly the architect of the palace at Knossos.

There one can still find ruins alleged to be the labyrinth that housed the legendary Minotaur, the monster (half-human, half bull) haven been slain by Thesius.

So ancient myths were not new to Minoan Crete. Regardless of the legend, Minoan culture extended across the island of Crete, with most of its developments along the northern coast of Crete. But, after more than a thousand years of dominance, the Minoan culture came to an abrupt end, circa 1470 BC.

But what of the fabled apocalypse which, according to the Egyptians, swallowed Keftiu-Atlantis in one day and one night? This also has basis in historical fact. The trail of evidence leads to the small island of Santorini.

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Santorini (also known as Thera) lies 75 km north of Crete.

Santorini was also a Minoan land, and ruins can be found throughout the island. A mountain lay at its center, probably about 1500 meters in height until approximately 1500 BC. This mountain was a volcano; eruptions began about 1500 BC, and smoldered until a final climax about 1470 BC. Geologically, not all volcanoes are the same.

Some drip lava slowly for centuries, others explode cataclysmically. From tectonic location, composition, and physical structure one can identify similarities between volcanoes. The volcano at Santorini was geologically similar to the 19th century Pacific volcano Krakatoa, and quite different from (for example) the volcanoes on Hawaii. Krakatoa exploded violently in 1883, spreading unparalleled tidal waves (tsunamis) throughout the southwest pacific, and filling the atmosphere with ash that spread through the entire world.

Santorini was about 4 times larger than Krakatoa, and probably at least twice as violent. The fury of Santorini's final explosion is inferred from geologic core samples, from comparison to the detailed observations made on Krakotoa in 1883, and from the simultaneous obliteration of almost all Minoan settlements. The geologic record dates the final explosion of Santorini with remarkable accuracy. The likely picture then, is this.

In summer, circa 1470 BC, Santorini exploded. Volcanic ash filled the sky, blotted out the sun, and triggered hail and lightning. A heavy layer of volcanic ash rained down over the Aegean, covering islands and crops. Earthquakes shook the land, and stone structures fell from the motion. When the enormous magma chamber at Santorini finally collapsed to form the existing caldera, enormous tsunamis (tidal waves) spread outward in all directions.

The coastal villages of Crete were flooded and destroyed. The only major Minoan structure surviving the waves and earthquakes was the palace at Knossos, far enough inland to escape the tidal waves. But in the days that followed, volcanic ash covered some settlements, and defoliated the island.

In famine from the ash, with the bulk of their civilization washed away, the remaining Minoans were overrun by Mycaeneans from Greece, and Knossos finally fell.

The modern island of Santorini is now the rim of the volcano - the caldera is covered by the Aegean Sea. Mounds of pumice and volcanic ash mark its center, where the volcano remains. New inhabitants of Santorini mine the volcanic ash to make cement - and still find ancient ruins under the stone. The ash is now the soil, olive and fruit trees cover the landscape, and former Atlantis (Crete, Santorini, and perhaps other Aegean islands) is mostly buried. New inhabitants have rebuilt Crete, but the mute ruins of ancient Atlantis can still be seen.

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Aristotle's Theories

Aristotle wrote of a large island in the Atlantic Ocean that the Carthaginians knew as Antilia. Proclus, the commentator of "Timaeus" mentions that Marcellus, relying on ancient historians, stated in his Aethiopiaka that in the Outer Ocean (which meant all oceans, not just the Atlantic) there were seven small islands dedicated to Persephone, and three large ones; one of these, comprising 1,000 stadia in length, was dedicated to Poseidon. Proclus tells us that Crantor reported that he, too, had seen the columns on which the story of Atlantis was preserved as reported by Plato: the Saite priest showed him its history in hieroglyphic characters. Some other writers called it Poseidonis after Poseidon. Plutarch mentions Saturnia or Ogygia about five days' sail to the west of Britain. He added that westwards from that island, there were the three islands of Cronus, to where proud and warlike men used to come from the continent beyond the islands, in order to offer sacrifice to the gods of the ocean.


Other Greek Theories
An important Greek festival of Pallas Athene, the Panathenaea was dated from the days of king Theseus. It consisted of a solemn procession to the Acropolis in which a peplos was carried to the goddess, for she had once saved the city, gaining victory over the nation of Poseidon, that is, the Atlanteans. As Lewis Spence comments, this cult was in existence already 125 years before Plato, which means that the story could not be invented by him.

The historian Ammianus Marcellinus wrote that "the intelligentsia of Alexandria considered the destruction of Atlantis a historical fact, described a class of earthquakes that suddenly, by a violent motion, opened up huge mouths and so swallowed up portions of the earth, as once in the Atlantic Ocean a large island was swallowed up. Diodorus Siculus recorded that the Atlanteans did not know the fruits of Ceres. In fact, Old World cereals were unknown to American Indians. Pausanias called this island "Satyrides," referring to the Atlantes and those who profess to know the measurements of the earth.

He states that far west of the Ocean there lies a group of islands whose inhabitants are red-skinned and whose hair is like that of the horse. (Christopher Columbus described the Indians similarly.) A fragmentary work of Theophrastus of Lesbos tells about the colonies of Atlantis in the sea. Hesiod wrote that the garden of the Hesperides was on an island in the sea where the sun sets.

Pliny the Elder recorded that this land was 12,000 km distant from Cádiz, and Uba, a Numidian king intended to establish a stock farm of purple Murex there. Diodorus Siculus declares that the ancient Phoenicians and Etruscans knew of an enormous island outside the Pillars of Heracles. He describes it as the climate is very mild, fruits and vegetables grow ripe throughout the year. There are huge mountains covered with large forests, and wide, irrigable plains with navigable rivers. Scylax of Caryanda gives similar account.

Marcellus claims that the survivors of the sinking Atlantis migrated to Western Europe. Timagenes tells almost the same, citing the Druids of Gaul as his sources. He tries to classify the Gallic tribes according to their origins and tells of one of these claiming that they were colonists who came there from a remote island.

Theopompus of Chios, a Greek historian called this land beyond the ocean as "Meropis". The dialogue between King Midas and the wise Silenus mentions the Meropids, the first men with huge cities of gold and silver. Silenus knows that besides the well-known portions of the world there is another, unknown, of incredible immensity, where immeasurably vast blooming meadows and pastures feed herds of various, huge and mighty beasts. Claudius Aelianus cites Theopompus, knowing of the existence of the huge island out in the Atlantic as a continuing tradition among the Phoenicians or Carthaginians of Cádiz.

Perhaps the Byzantine friar Cosmas Indicopleustes understood Plato better than the ancient and modern "Aristotelians", says Merezhkovsky.

In his Topographia Christiana he included a chart of the (flat) world: it showed an inner continent, a compact mainland surrounded by sea, and this was surrounded by an outer ring-shaped continent, with the inscription, "The earth beyond the Ocean, where men lived before the Flood." The Garden of Eden is placed in the eastern end of this continent.

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Byzantine Accounts

In the mid-6th century, the Byzantine writer Jordanes, who was no navigator himself, simply repeated common folklore of the eastern end of the Mediterranean when he said.


"This same Ocean has in its western region certain islands known to almost everyone by reason of the great number of those that journey to and from. And there are two not far from the neighborhood of the Strait of Gades, one the Blessed Isle and another called the Fortunate. Although some reckon as islands of Ocean the twin promontories of Galicia and Lusitania, where are still to be seen the Temple of Hercules on one and Scipio's Monument on the other, yet since they are joined to the extremity of the Galician country, they belong rather to the great land of Europe than to the islands of Ocean." - Jordanes, Getica, chapter 1:4.


More Current Theories

With rare exceptions, such as Francis Bacon's book

The New Atlantis, interest in Atlantis then languished, until, some 2,200 years after Plato, the 1882 publication of Atlantis: the Antediluvian World by Minnesota politician and sometime crankish writer Ignatius Donnelly. Donnelly took Plato's account of Atlantis seriously and attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from its high-neolithic culture.

Since Donnelly's day, there have been dozens - perhaps hundreds - of locations proposed for Atlantis. Some are more-or-less serious attempts at legitimate scholarly or archaeological works; others have been made by psychic or other pseudoscientific means.

In the 19th century, the Atlantis myth became conflated with Mu and Lemuria.

Occultist Helena Blavatsky (The Secret Doctrine, 1888) introduced the idea of the Atlanteans as cultural heroes (an aspect that is absent in Plato, who describes them mainly as a military threat to the Greeks), and described its inhabitants as the fourth "Root Race", succeeded by the "Aryan race".

Rudolf Steiner based much of his writings on occult revelations of Mu or Atlantis.

Edgar Cayce likewise proposed that Atlantis was an ancient, now-submerged, highly-evolved civilization. The metaphysical significance being that it was a land from which many of us continue to reincarnate, with Cayce adding that the Atlanteans also had ships and aircraft powered by a mysterious form of energy crystal. The work Toward the Light (1920) claims to describe Atlantis, including its exact geographical location.

Through Theosophy and Anthroposophy, the concept of Atlantis also entered Nazi Mysticism. Heinrich Himmler was inspired by Ferdinand Ossendowski to the belief that a remnant of the white Atlanteans were to be found in Tibet, the search for which was part of the mission of the Nazi expedition to Tibet in 1938-39 led by Ernst Schafer.

According to Julius Evola (Revolt Against the Modern World, 1934), the Atlanteans were Hyperboreans - Nordic supermen - who originated on the North pole.

Similarly, Alfred Rosenberg (The Myth of the Twentieth Century, 1930) spoke of a "nordic-atlantean" or "aryan-nordic" master race.

Aleister Crowley has also written an esoteric history of Atlantis, although this may be intended more as metaphor than as fact.

In the mid-1940s, J. R. R. Tolkien reshaped his legendarium to contain elements of an Atlantis myth . The Lord of the Rings (1954/5) contains only obscure references to this, and the myth was published only posthumously, in the Silmarillion (1977).

Jane Roberts' work also contains references to Atlantis.

Thule, in the Greek and Roman mythologies, is a place, usually an island, in the far north, perhaps Scandinavia. It was first mentioned by the Greek geographer and explorer Pytheas of Massalía (present-day Marseille) in the 4th century BC. Pytheas claimed that Thule was six days north of Britain, and that the midsummer sun never set there. Thule is sometimes seen to have some commonality with Atlantis.

Thule, in the Greek and Roman mythologies, is a place, usually an island, in the far north, perhaps Scandinavia. It was first mentioned by the Greek geographer and explorer Pytheas of Massalía (present-day Marseille) in the 4th century BC. Pytheas claimed that Thule was six days north of Britain, and that the midsummer sun never set there. Thule is sometimes seen to have some commonality with Atlantis.


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Atlantis - Location Hypothesis
Mediterranean

Crete and Santorini

Among those who believe in an historical Atlantis, one common theory holds that Plato's story of the destruction of Atlantis was inspired by massive volcanic eruptions on the Mediterranean island of Santorini during Minoan times. A main criticism of this theory is that the ancient Greeks were well aware of volcanoes, and if there was a volcanic eruption, it would seem likely that it would be mentioned. Solon got his information from Egypt; if we assume that an Ancient Egyptian symbol for "hundred" was mistakenly read as "thousand", that reduces the age and size of Atlantis by a factor of a tenth, and with that alteration Atlantis fits Minoan Crete well. Many people consider this to be the likeliest theory

Off the east coast of Cyprus

Robert Sarmast, an American architect, claims to have definitely found the lost city of Atlantis on November 14, 2004, saying that by using sonar scans he was able to find manmade walls that matched the description of the structures described by Plato. The site lies 1,500m deep in the Mediterranean Sea between Cyprus and Syria.

Sardinia

In 2002 the Italian journalist Sergio Frau in his book Le colonne d'Ercole hypothesized that the Pillars of Hercules could be identified not with Gibraltar but with the Sicily Strait between Africa and Sicily, so Atlantis was really Sardinia. A catastrophic event (with a big wave) eradicated from Sardinia the ancient and still enigmatic Nuragic civilization. The few survivors migrated to the near Italian peninsula, founding the Etruscan civilization, the base for the later Roman civilization.

Malta

Dr Anton Mifsud who, with co-authors Simon Mifsud, Chris Agius Sultana and Charles Savona Ventura, published Malta Echoes of Plato's Island also added another recent theory.Their book is the product of thoughtful and profound research about the archeological sites and ancient remains related to Atlantis. Frances Galea in his book Malta Fdal Atlantis also wrote about the results of his lifelong research on several ancient studies and known theories on Atlantis, particularly that of Giorgio Grongnet, the renowned Maltese architect, who in 1854 claimed that the Maltese Islands are the remnants of Atlantis.

Near Cape Spartel

Another recent theory is based on a recreation of the geography of the Mediterranean at the time of Atlantis' supposed existence. Plato states that Atlantis was located beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the name given to the Strait of Gibraltar linking the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean. 11,000 years ago the sea level in the area was some 130 metres lower, exposing a number of islands in the strait. One of these, Spartel, could have been Atlantis, though there are a number of inconsistencies with Plato's account.

Troy

The geologist Eberhard Zangger has proposed the theory that Atlantis was in fact the city state of Troy (See: The Flood from Heaven: Deciphering the Atlantis legend; Sidgwick & Jackson, 1992, ISBN 0688113508). He both agrees and disagrees with Rainer W. Kühne: He believes too that the Trojans-Atlanteans were the sea peoples, but only a minor part of them. He proposes that all Greek speaking city states of the Aegean civilization or Mycenae constituted the sea peoples and that they destroyed each other's economies in a series of semi-fratricidal wars lasting several decades.

Tantalis

(Manisa province in Turkey)British archaeologist Peter James took a clue from Plato's mention of king Tantalus, and investigated the city of Tantalis (also Tantalos) in the province of Manisa, Turkey. In addition to having very similar sounding anagram names, numerous inscriptions and ancient writings from the region matched the Atlantis story. Tantalis, formerly a wealthy city state, was destroyed when a powerful earthquake struck and caused a lake to flood the city.

Andalucia

A theory by Juan Fernández Amador de los Ríos (1919), Jürgen Spanuth (1953), Georgeos Díaz-Montexano (2000) Atlantis Discovery, Rainer W. Kühne (2003) suggests that the Atlanteans were the Sea Peoples who attacked the Eastern Mediterranean countries around 1200 BC. The city and state of Atlantis were located in Andalucia, 50 kilometers southwest of Seville. Recent satellite photos show two rectangular structures which may be interpreted by Werner Wickboldt (2002) and Rainer W. Kühne (2003) as the "temple of Poseidon" and "the temple of Cleito and Poseidon".


Black Sea
German researchers Siegfried and Christian Schoppe locate Atlantis in the Black Sea: Before 5500 BC there was a great plain in the northwest at a former freshwater-lake. 5510 BC the barrier at today's Bosporus broke due to the rising sea level of the world-ocean. The Pillars of Hercules are identical with the Strait of Bosporus. Oreichalcos means the obsidian stone that used to be a cash-equivalent at that time and was replaced by the spondylus shell around 5500 BC. The geocatastrophic event led to the neolithic diaspora in Europe, also beginning 5500 BC.

In 2000AD Robert Ballard in a small submarine found remains of human habitation around 300 feet underwater in the Black Sea off the north coast of Turkey. The area flooded around 5000BC. This flood may have inspired the Biblical story of Noah's Ark; but the area need not be Atlantis.


Findland
Finnish pseudohistorian Ior Bock locates Atlantis to the southern part of Finland where he claims a small community of people lived during the Ice Age. This is a small part of a large saga that he claims to have been told in his family through the ages. Dating back to the development of language itself.


Ireland
The most recent speculation is published in the book Atlantis From a Geographer's Perspective: Mapping the Fairy Land (ISBN 0975594605) by Swedish geographer Dr. Ulf Erlingsson from University of Uppsala. It proposes that Atlantis actually referred to Ireland which fits closely in geographic and landmark descriptions. Ireland has not sunk beneath the sea, but the Dogger Bank shoal was an island which sank in the North Sea about 6100 B.C. as the world sea level rose as the Ice Age icecaps melted. Some related theories place the location of Atlantis between Britain and France on the Celtic Shelf. This theory was first developed seriously by Lewis Spence and has been recently revived by some oceanographers.


Mid-Atlantic
Geological studies of the mid-Atlantic fail to demonstrate that the continent of Atlantis existed there. However, the geology of the Atlantic Ocean does not exclude the possibility of a sunken island. If such an island existed it would have been much smaller than the island continent of Australia. Plato never claimed that a whole continent disappeared. He referenced a sunken island in front of another continent. One of the more likely places then would be around the Azores Islands which are a group of islands belonging to Portugal located about 900 miles (1500 km) west of the Portugese coast. Some people believe the islands could be the mountain tops of Atlantis.


Isla de la Juventud near Cuba
Recent underwater discoveries off the west coast of Cuba have led some to speculate on an Atlantean connection. However, even before these discoveries were announced, author Andrew Collins had explored the Cuba connection in a book titled "Gateway to Atlantis." Collins supports his hypothesis with a great deal of indirect but compelling historical and geographical evidence. He finally suggests present-day Isle of Youth and the shallow sea bottom that surrounds it as a possible location for Atlantis.


Bahama Bank and Caribbean
Not all geologists deny the possibility of a sunken island in Central America. After the Charles Berlitz book The Mystery of Atlantis, a Canadian Hungarian geologist-topographer's book was published, entitled Atlantis: The Seven Seals. The author, Z.A. Simon, called the attention to these controversies. He included some supporting conclusions of Dr. J. Manson Valentine, M. Dmitri Ribikoff, E. Umland and C. Umland, Robert B. Stacy-Judd, Dr. David Zink, John P. Cohane, Peter Tompkins, Pino Turolla, Captain Alexander, Francis Hitching, James Bailey, Dr. C.J. Cazeau, Dr. S.D. Scott, Brad Steiger and William R. Fix.

The June 1981 edition of Marine Geology shows some radiocarbon dates on mangrove peat, based on the estimate of Broecker and Kulp, listing dates between 5590 and 3680 BC, with connection of the gradual sinking of the Florida­Bimini region. Most recently the rate of the sea level's rise has slowed to 4.5 in (114 mm) per century. Prior to that time it was one foot per century. Near Andros Island, underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau found a huge submerged cave 165 ft (50 m) beneath the surface. There are stalactites and stalagmites in it, that can be formed in the open air only. Marine sediments on the walls of the grotto enabled scientists to estimate its submersion around or after 10,000 BC. The submarine topography of the Bahamian region shown in the huge Russian Atlas Mira by detailed isobaths, catches the attention of a topographer. The sea floor on the northern side of Cuba, Haiti and Puerto Rico indicates a definite system of submerged valleys of ancient rivers, combined with sunken mountain ranges. The "Tongue of the Ocean" at Andros Island is undoubtedly an underwater ravine caused by terrible tectonic forces, surrounded by almost vertical walls, as a "memento" of the catastrophe. The main problem with this theory is that Atlantis was supposed to have submerged rapidly, following an earthquake.

Z.A. Simon offers an "accurate" map of Plato's rectangular island with its given dimensions as 2,000 by 3,000 stadia, overlaying its outline on the suspected ancient irregular shoreline of that traditional island in the Bahamas region. (An Attic stadium corresponds to 177.6 m)


Indonesia
Prof. Arysio Nunes dos Santos, Ph. D. in Nuclear Physics; Free-Docent, and Professor of Nuclear Physics at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, has been researching on Atlantis for almost 30 years now, pointing out that "Atlantis was never found because we have all been looking in the wrong places". The reason for this, according to Prof. Santos, is that when Plato spoke of the Ocean of Atlantis, he was not speaking of the ocean that we today call Atlantic Ocean, but of the whole ocean that encircles Eurasia and Africa.

Prof. Santos hence concludes that Atlantis is really located in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, which was considered to be the eastward extension the modern Atlantic Ocean. The modern Atlantic Ocean was once deemed to extend all the way to the East Indies, a conception which lasted down to the times of Christopher Columbus and other Renaissance explorers and geographers. Despite the prevalent opinion of experts of all sorts that "continents cannot possibly sink", Prof. Santos managed to discover a whole sunken continent in the region of Indonesia, which he identifies with the Lost Continent of Atlantis, as can be seen in the detailed map published in his Atlantis site.

Prof. Santos hence concludes that Atlantis is really located in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, which was considered to be the eastward extension the modern Atlantic Ocean. The modern Atlantic Ocean was once deemed to extend all the way to the East Indies, a conception which lasted down to the times of Christopher Columbus and other Renaissance explorers and geographers. Despite the prevalent opinion of experts of all sorts that "continents cannot possibly sink", Prof. Santos managed to discover a whole sunken continent in the region of Indonesia, which he identifies with the Lost Continent of Atlantis, as can be seen in the detailed map published in his Atlantis site.

In February 2005, Canberra-based independent researcher Raimy Che-Ross, announced to the world that he had found a lost city in the unsunken Malaysian portion of the lost continent. A well funded expedition is now underway involving a large ground team of experts and Malaysia Centre For Remote Sensing (Macres) satellites. The Malaysian Department of Museums and Antiquities has been instructed to report their findings by August 2005.


India and Sri Lanka
In South India and Sri Lanka there is a reputed "Kumari Kandam" (kandam means "continent" in Tamil), believed to be submerged under the sea. This continent is surrounded by legendary stories similar to those of Atlantis. It has been called the "cradle of Dravidians". Also, there has been some people linking the "Kumari continent" to Lemuria.

In the Gulf of Cambay, there is an archeological submarine site of a former island named Dwaraka, which is mainly associated with locations in Indian mythology (especially in the Mahabharata), which has also appeared in discussions about Atlantis. But its date (about 1,500 BC) is too recent to correspond to the real site of Atlantis, according to Plato's date of 9,600 BC.


Antarctica
A seemingly bizarre hypothesis that the city of Atlantis was in Antarctica has typically received incredulous reactions from the scientific community. Under this theory, all continents and oceans shifted as one, causing the ancient south pole to be over ocean, liberating a considerable portion of Antarctica from its current ice sheet, yielding ideal conditions for human habitation. To back up this theory, controversial claims of precipitation-ice sheet thickness mismatches; new methods of translating Plato's text; and native flood stories from all sorts of different cultures around the world back up this controversial claim. However, due to the nature of finding and then excavating sites in Antarctica, not much followup research is immediately possible with such limited funding given public awareness of this hypothesis. Also, it is questionable that such a widespread ecological catastrophe in the form of an extreme geologic process could occur in such a short time period and leave relatively little evidence.


Ponza
Ponza has many similarities to the Atlantis legend.

Legend say that Ponza was the lost island of Tyrhenia which was large and had a city at it's edge. It was connected by land to the Italian mainland near Naples (Napoli). A volcano exploded and the island sunk leaving only the mountain top which is now called Ponza. Near Naples is Pozzuoli where Roman Temples in the harbor rose above water in the late 1960's due to volcanic processes.

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A News Article

BBC - August 15, 2005

A submerged island that could be the source of the Atlantis myth was hit by a large earthquake and tsunami 12,000 years ago, a geologist has discovered.

Spartel Island now lies 60m under the sea in the Straits of Gibraltar, but some think it once lay above water.

The finding adds weight to a hypothesis that the island could have inspired the legend recounted by the philosopher Plato more than 2,000 years ago.

Evidence comes from a seafloor survey published in the journal Geology.

Marc-André Gutscher of the University of Western Brittany in Plouzané, France, found a coarse-grained sedimentary deposit that is 50-120cm thick and could have been left behind after a tsunami.

Shaken sediments

Dr Gutscher said that the destruction described by Plato is consistent with a great earthquake and tsunami similar to the one that devastated the city of Lisbon in Portugal in 1755, generating waves with heights of up to 10m.

The thick "turbidite" deposit results from sediments that have been shaken up by underwater geological upheavals.

It was found to date to around 12,000 years ago - roughly the age indicated by Plato for the destruction of Atlantis, Dr Gutscher reports in Geology.

Spartel Island, in the Gulf of Cadiz, was proposed as a candidate for the origin of the Atlantis legend in 2001 by French geologist Jacques Collina-Girard.

It is "in front of the Pillars of Hercules", or the Straits of Gibraltar, as Plato described. The philosopher said the fabled island civilisation had been destroyed in a single day and night, disappearing below the sea.

Sedimentary records reveal that events like the 1755 Lisbon earthquake occur every 1,500 to 2,000 years in the Gulf of Cadiz.

But the mapping of the island carried out by Dr Gutscher failed to turn up any manmade structures and also showed that the island was much smaller than previously believed.

This could make it less likely that the island was inhabited by a civilisation.

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Earthquake debris shores up evidence for lost city.

Nature - July 22, 2005

"There occurred violent earthquakes and floods. And in a single day and night of misfortune... the island of Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea." This account, written by Plato more than 2,300 years ago, set scientists on the trail of the lost city of Atlantis. Did it ever exist? And if so, where was it located, and when did it disappear?

In a recent paper in Geology, Marc-Andre Gutscher of the European Institute for Marine Studies in Plouzane gives details of one candidate for the lost city: the submerged island of Spartel, west of the Straits of Gibraltar.

The top of this isle lies some 60 metres beneath the surface in the Gulf of Cadiz, having plunged beneath the waves at the end of the most recent ice age as melting glaciers caused the sea level to rise. Geological evidence has shown that a large earthquake and a tsunami hit this island some 12,000 years ago, at roughly the location and time indicated in Plato's writings.

Gutscher has surveyed this island in detail, using sound waves reflected off the sea floor to map its contours1. His results bring mixed news to Atlantis hunters.

At first, his conclusions seemed disappointing. At the time identified by Plato for the city's loss, the sea level would have been fairly high on the island's banks. With the information we have from the ancient text, it may never be found, if indeed it ever existed.

According to sea-level measurements alone, Gutscher estimates the island "would have been reduced to wave-swept rocky islets" and would have been less than 500 metres in diameter, making it impossibly small for a sophisticated city.

But there is a saving grace. Gutscher says the island might have sunk further since those times from seismic activity. Layers of turbidite, the sand and mud shaken up by underwater avalanches, suggest that eight earthquakes have happened in the area since Atlantis sank. Each earthquake could have resulted in a drop of the sea floor by several metres.

So 12,000 years ago, Spartel might have been 40 metres higher than expected, and could have measured five by two kilometres."This is an interesting contribution to the discussion," says Jacques Collina-Girard, a geologist at the University of the Mediterranean in Aix-en-Provence, who suggested Spartel as a candidate for Atlantis a few years ago.

At a conference of Atlantis researchers in Greece this month, he became convinced that the sophisticated city described by some could not have existed this long ago. "If inhabited, it would have probably been simple fishermen and not a Bronze Age culture as described by Plato," he says.

The Bronze Age is usually described as beginning just 5,000 years ago. Gutscher adds that his sound reflection data revealed no unusual geometric structures that could suggest an extinct civilization.He says that the Egyptians who told Plato the Atlantis story may have used a different definition of 'years', meaning the destruction of Atlantis happened more recently than thought.

The conference in Greece came to no firm conclusions about the city's existence. But researchers managed to agree on 24 criteria that a geographical area must satisfy in order to qualify as a site where Atlantis could have existed. The place must have accommodated such oddities as hot springs, northerly winds, elephants, enough people for an army of 10,000 chariots, and a ritual of bull sacrifice.

At present there are half a dozen candidates for Atlantis's location, each one with its own shortcomings. Some say that settling on a final answer may prove impossible."The geophysics is well done, the geology excellent," says geologist Floyd McCoy of the University of Hawaii, Kaneohe, of Gutscher's study. "But most of Plato's description of Atlantis is so ambiguous and open to interpretation. With the information we have from the ancient text, it may never be found, if indeed it ever existed."

June 6, 2004 - BBC

Satellite photos of southern Spain reveal features on the ground appearing to match descriptions made by Greek scholar Plato of the fabled utopia.

A scientist says he may have found remains of the lost city of Atlantis.

Dr Rainer Kuehne thinks the "island" of Atlantis simply referred to a region of the southern Spanish coast destroyed by a flood between 800 BC and 500 BC.

The research has been reported as an ongoing project in the online edition of the journal Antiquity.

Satellite photos of a salt marsh region known as Marisma de Hinojos near the city of Cadiz show two rectangular structures in the mud and parts of concentric rings that may once have surrounded them.

"Plato wrote of an island of five stades (925m) diameter that was surrounded by several circular structures - concentric rings - some consisting of Earth and the others of water. We have in the photos concentric rings just as Plato described," Dr Kuehne told BBC News Online.

Dr Kuehne believes the rectangular features could be the remains of a "silver" temple devoted to the sea god Poseidon and a "golden" temple devoted to Cleito and Poseidon - all described in Plato's dialogue Critias.

Temples of the sea god

The identification of the site with Atlantis was first proposed by Werner Wickboldt, a lecturer and Atlantis enthusiast who spotted the rectangles and concentric rings by studying photographs from across the Mediterranean for signs of the city described by Plato.

The sizes of the "island" and its rings in the satellite image are slightly larger than those described by Plato. There are two possible explanations for this, says Dr Kuehne.

First, Plato may have underplayed the size of Atlantis. Secondly, the ancient unit of measurement used by Plato - the stade - may have been 20% larger than traditionally assumed.

It is claimed that concentric rings surround the temple site


If the latter is true, one of the rectangular features on the "island" matches almost exactly the dimensions given by Plato for the temple of Poseidon.

Mr Wickboldt explained: "This is the only place that seems to fit [Plato's] description."

He added that the Greeks might have confused an Egyptian word referring to a coastline with one meaning "island" during transmission of the Atlantis story.

Commenting on the satellite image showing the two "temples", Tony Wilkinson, an expert in the use of remote sensing in archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, UK, told BBC News Online: "A lot of the problems come with interpretations. I can see something there and I could imagine that one could interpret it in various ways. But you've got several leaps of faith here.

Metal trading

"We use the imagery to recognise certain types of imprint on the ground and then do [in the field] verification on them. Based on what we see on the ground we make an interpretation.

"What we need here is a date range. Otherwise, you're just dealing with morphology. But the [features] are interesting."

The fabled utopia of Atlantis has captured the imagination of scholars for centuries. The earliest known records of this mythical land appear in Plato's dialogues Critias and Timaios.

Article continued.....

This reconstruction of the city of Atlantis is based on Plato's description
His depiction of a land of fabulous wealth, advanced civilisation and natural beauty has spurred many adventurers to seek out its location.

One recent theory equates Atlantis with Spartel Island, a mud shoal in the straits of Gibraltar that sank into the sea 11,000 years ago.

Plato described Atlantis as having a "plain". Dr Kuehne said this might be the plain that extends today from Spain's southern coast up to the city of Seville. The high mountains described by the Greek scholar could be the Sierra Morena and Sierra Nevada.

"Plato also wrote that Atlantis is rich in copper and other metals. Copper is found in abundance in the mines of the Sierra Morena," Dr Kuehne explained.



The rectangles: What interpretation can be put on the satellite images?
Dr Kuehne noticed that the war between Atlantis and the eastern Mediterranean described in Plato's writings closely resembled attacks on Egypt, Cyprus and the Levant during the 12th Century BC by mysterious raiders known as the Sea People.

As a result, he proposes that the Atlanteans and the Sea People were in fact one and the same.

This dating would equate the city and society of Atlantis with either the Iron Age Tartessos culture of southern Spain or another, unknown, Bronze Age culture. A link between Atlantis and Tartessos was first proposed in the early 20th Century.

Dr Kuehne said he hoped to attract interest from archaeologists to excavate the site. But this may be tricky. The features in the satellite photo are located within Spain's Donana national park.

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Plato Treasure Map Leads Atlantis Hunter to Cyprus


October 29, 2003 - Reuters

Atlantis was in Cyprus and ancient philosopher Plato is about to be vindicated, according to Robert Sarmast.

"The island of Cyprus was, or is, part of Atlantis - a mountaintop," Sarmast said from his home in Los Angeles. "This region is at the heart of the ancient world."


Drawn from accounts by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Solon, Plato's description of a powerful civilization destroyed by the wrath of God has fired the dreams of explorers for centuries.


Of late, it has inspired fantasies of webbed-limbed people living in glass bubbles on the sea bed; of old, it was thought by some to be the Garden of Eden, where mankind fell from God's grace.


Geologists say the land mass of Cyprus's central mountain range once formed the ocean floor. Sarmast says the mountainous island was the tip of the civilization submerged in a devastating earthquake and flood thousands of years ago.


Using deep-sea imagery, simulations of the sea bed, and following some 50 clues found in Plato's Critias and Timaeus Dialogues, Sarmast said he has discovered a sunken rectangular land mass stretching northeast from Cyprus, toward Syria.


"Everything matches the descriptions in the dialogues of Atlantis to an uncanny degree," said Sarmast.


Using scientific data collected a decade ago, Sarmast said he came up with detailed three-dimensional maps and simulated models of the eastern Mediterranean basin.


"We lowered the sea level by 1,600 meters (5,250 feet) and an island popped up," he said.


Having written a book about his discovery, Sarmast now hopes to organize an expedition to the region for further research.

Scholars Skeptical

His theory has been challenged by archeologists, who say the Atlantis story is a myth.


Sarmast, however, says the sheer volume of detail found in the dialogues is proof enough that something is lurking in the watery deep. The dialogues read like a treasure map," he said.


Although theories on where Atlantis was are many and varied, most believers agree the ancient city was probably destroyed in the biblical flood, which has its parallel in the history of the Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Egyptians and South Americans.


Plato describes a series of worldwide floods culminating in the deluge of the Deucalion, dated by Greek historians to the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 BC.


According to those ancient texts, Atlantis was a powerful nation whose residents became so corrupted by greed and power that Zeus, the king of the gods, destroyed it.



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Explorers View 'Lost City' Ruins Under Caribbean

December 6, 2001 - Reuters

Explorers using a miniature submarine to probe the sea floor off the coast of Cuba said on Thursday they had confirmed the discovery of stone structures deep below the ocean surface that may have been built by an unknown human civilization thousands of years ago.

Researchers with a Canadian exploration company said they filmed over the summer ruins of a possible submerged ``lost city'' off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula on the Caribbean island's western tip. The researchers cautioned that they did not fully understand the nature of their find and planned to return in January for further analysis, the expedition leader said on Thursday.

The explorers said they believed the mysterious structures, discovered at the astounding depth of around 2,100 feet and laid out like an urban area, could have been built at least 6,000 years ago. That would be about 1,500 years earlier than the great Giza pyramids of Egypt.

``It's a really wonderful structure which looks like it could have been a large urban center,'' said Soviet-born Canadian ocean engineer Paulina Zelitsky, from British Columbia-based Advanced Digital Communications (ADC).

Zelitsky said the structures may have been built by unknown people when the current sea-floor actually was above the surface. She said volcanic activity may explain how the site ended up at great depths below the Caribbean Sea.

In July 2000, ADC researchers using sophisticated side-scan sonar equipment identified a large underwater plateau with clear images of symmetrically organized stone structures that looked like an urban development partly covered by sand. From above, the shapes resembled pyramids, roads and buildings, they said.

This past July, ADC researchers, along with the firm's Cuban partner and experts from the Cuban Academy of Sciences, returned to the site in their ship ``Ulises.'' They said they sent a miniature, unmanned submarine called a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) down to film parts of the 7.7-square-mile area.

Those images confirmed the presence of huge, smooth, cut granite-like blocks in perpendicular and circular formations, some in pyramid shapes, the researchers said. Most of the blocks, measuring between about 6.5 and 16 feet in length, were exposed, some stacked one on another, the researchers said.

Others were covered in sediment and the fine, white sand that characterizes the area, the researchers said.

The intriguing discovery provided evidence that Cuba at one time was joined to mainland Latin America via a strip of land from the Yucatan Peninsula, the researchers said.

``There are many new hypotheses about land movement and colonialization, and what we are seeing here should provide very interesting new information,'' Zelitsky said.

ADC's deep-water equipment includes a satellite-integrated ocean bottom positioning system, high-precision side-scan double-frequency sonar, and the ROV. The company currently is commissioning what it calls the world's first custom-designed ocean excavator for marine archeology to begin work both at the Guanahacabibes site and at ship wrecks.

ADC is the deepest operator among four foreign firms working in joint venture with President Fidel Castro (news - web sites)'s government to explore Cuban waters containing hundreds of treasure-laden ships from the colonial era.

The Canadian company already has discovered several historic sunken Spanish ships.

In an earlier high-profile find, ADC was testing equipment in late 2000 off Havana Bay when it spotted the century-old wreck of the American battleship USS Maine. The ship had not been located since it blew up mysteriously in 1898, killing 260 American sailors and igniting the Spanish-American War.

The rush of interest in Cuba's seas in recent years is due in part to the Castro government's recognition that it does not have the money or technology to carry out systematic exploration by itself, although it does have excellent divers.



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Ancient trees may explain story of Atlantis

September 14, 2000 - Associated Press

Researchers say ancient pine tree stumps found in a Swedish peat bog may hold a record of the great volcanic blast that some historians link with the end of the fabled Atlantis.

Using radiocarbon dating, a team of researchers determined that the trees had been alive between 1695 B.C. and 1496 B.C., and a study of their growth rings showed a four-year period of severely depressed growth about 1636 B.C.

Major volcanic eruptions have been known to blast enough dust into the atmosphere to cause frosts and limit crop growth, and one of the most powerful such blasts occurred when the Greek island of Santorini blew up in the mid-1600s B.C.

That disaster destroyed a culturally developed island and some historians believe it gave rise to the legend of the lost continent Atlantis.

"Our dating and the severe magnitude of this phenomenon suggest that it can be ascribed to the 1628-27 B.C. event, hence providing new evidence of a wider, more northerly area of influence," the team of Swedish scientists reports in the Sept. 15 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

While the team led by Hakan Grudd of the Climate Impacts Research Center in Kiruna, Sweden, dated the Santorini blast to 1628, other scholars use different dates, though all are within a few years.

The Swedish team said their tree ring dating had a margin of error of plus or minus 65 years.

Other scientists studying tree rings have found periods of frost damage and slow growth in the mid-1600s B.C. affecting Irish, English, and German oaks, pine trees in California and trees in Turkey.

This is the northernmost evidence of an effect from the volcanic blast, the researchers said of the new Swedish find.

"The evidence is consistent with the hypothesis of a major Northern Hemisphere volcanic eruption in 1628 B.C., which may have been Santorini in the Aegean Sea," they concluded.

The climate impact of volcanoes has long been a topic of discussion, going back at least to Benjamin Franklin. The eruption of the Indonesian volcano Tambora was blamed for a worldwide cooling in 1816 - known as the "year without a summer" in New England, where snow fell in June.

Today Santorini is a popular tourist spot, where visitors can see the great caldera formed when the ancient volcanic island blew up and view excavations uncovering the remains of the ancient town.

The first mention of Atlantis occurs in Plato, who discusses an ancient island or continent destroyed by earthquakes and sunk into the sea.