ATLANTIS DISCOVERED?
For centuries mankind has searched for the fabled lost continent of Atlantis. One man who's spent his life looking explains why he's convinced he has finally found it.

By Colin Wilson DAILY MAIL, London, Saturday August 21, 2004

From the days of ancient Greece man has been trying to unravel one of the most enduring of all historical mysteries--the legend of the lost continent of Atlantis, said to have vanished beneath the sea 10,000 years before the birth of Christ. For my part, I have been looking for Atlantis for 25 years, travelling the world to examine evidence that has been passed down through the ages, from the original descriptions of the continent found in Plato's writings to medieval maps which show mysterious islands that have long disappeared.

During my search, I have talked to eminent scientists and historians who are as bewitched by the continent as I am. I have come across theories, both plausible and implausible, as to its location and size.

I have been certain on occasions that I have found out where it is, only to be disabused of that certainty by arguments I have overlooked. Never, not once, have I had any doubt that one day man will find Atlantis.

And the extraordinary thing is that I believe that day is very close. In fact, so convinced am I by a new theory on the continent's whereabouts, that I am joining an expedition with a team of explorers to look for it next month. Our destination is not, as you might suppose on account of the name of the continent, the mid-Atlantic.

We are heading for Cyprus. For astonishing new evidence seems to indicate that long-lost Atlantis is the southern part of the island, which was dramatically submerged more than 11,000 years ago, when the Atlantic ocean burst through a dam of mountains that separated it from the Mediterranean.

But before I tell you why I am convinced we're on the verge of one of the greatest discoveries ever, it is necessary to examine the origins of the Atlantis story, and to look at some of the other theories put forward by those who, like me, have become obsessed by this most intriguing of mysteries.

Only by discounting those theories can we really make the argument for the existence of Atlantis.

The Greek philosopher Plato wrote the story of Atlantis in about 400 BC. He claimed that two centuries earlier, Egyptian priests had given an account of this flourishing civilization to the Greek statesman Solon.

Atlantis had been peopled by god-like beings, but there had been a terrible conflict between them and the Athenians and the continent--described as a large island with a great city in the south within a few miles of the sea--had been destroyed in 'a day and a night' in a great catastrophe that plunged it under the waves.

The priests blamed the corrupt populace of Atlantis for this disaster. They had, according to Plato, become so decadent that the gods decided to destroy them.

Inevitably, most historians have dismissed Atlantis as a myth--some have even called it the first science fiction story. Yet anyone who takes the trouble to read Plato's account will be struck by its minute detail. If it was simply some kind of moral fable about human corruption, why was such embellishment necessary?

For more than 2,000 years the story of Atlantis continued to fascinate historians. But the first really serious attempt to prove that it had, indeed, existed, was made in the 19th century by an Irish American congressman called Ignatius Donnelly, whose massive book, "Atlantis, The Antediluvian World," has been in print ever since and remains the basis for many of today's theories.

According to Donnelly, the 'great original race' from Atlantis invented gunpowder and paper. They were the first to manufacture iron and to make astronomy an exact science.

All this knowledge, he said, they imparted to people less advanced than themselves--such as those in Egypt, which was one of their colonies. He took the view that Atlantis had once been in the mid-Atlantic, since Plato had said that it was 'beyond the Pillars of Hercules'--generally assumed to mean the Strait of Gibraltar.

Donnelly speculated that the Azores are the only part of this great continent that now remains above water. But there is a powerful reason for rejecting this view. Underwater scans of the bed of the Atlantic reveal no sign of a sunken continent.

That seems conclusive enough, but not all Donnelly's ideas should be dismissed, as I discovered when, in 1979, I was drawn into the quest for Atlantis.

Someone sent me for review a book called "Serpent In The Sky" by John Anthony West, who was arguing, with a wealth of historical learning, that Ancient Egypt came into existence long before 3,000 BC--the date most historians accept.

He said that it inherited its civilization wholesale from a far older culture--Atlantis itself. The great Sphinx of Giza, West suggested, was built by survivors from the catastrophe of Atlantis.

It must therefore be thousands of years older than we believe. His reasoning was that the Sphinx was not weathered by wind-blown sand, as is generally accepted, but by rainfall.

And though the kind of heavy rain that might have caused such weathering did used to occur in Egypt, it hadn't happened for thousands of years.

West had persuaded a professor of geology named Robert Schoch to accompany him to Egypt to look at the Sphinx. And Schoch had agreed, the wear and tear was due to water-weathering, not sand-weathering, he declared.

Schoch though that the Sphinx might well have been built nearly 5,000 years earlier than anyone had supposed--not 2,500 BC, at the same time as the Great Pyramids, but closer to 7,000 BC, long before Egyptian civilization was supposed to have started.

I went to meet West, and travelled with him to Egypt. As we stood in the Sphinx enclosure, I saw that its walls are clearly weathered by water that ran down the rock face, cutting channels.

West had to be right. The builders of the Sphinx came from elsewhere--and the likeliest place was Atlantis.
My search for evidence of Atlantis has taken me to many distant shores--Egypt, Mexico, Bolivia, where on the roof of the Andes I saw the massive ruins of the 10,000 year old city of Tiahuanaco.

I have heard and been entranced by probably a dozen theories of the location of Atlantis. It has been suggested that it's in Costa Rica, that it is hidden in the rain forests of Brazil, that it lies buried deep under the sea off the coast of Spain--even that it was north of the British Isles.

In the Sixties, a new theory emerged when archaeologists discovered an underground city on the island of Santorini, in the Mediterranean. Santorini was destroyed in a giant volcanic explosion around 1,500 BC, which ripped the core out of the island and turned it into little more than a gigantic crater.

The theory's proponents argued that Santorini was Atlantis. But they pointed out that the figures and dimensions Plato used to describe the capital city were too large to be credible.

They pointed out that there was a huge plain south of the city, which contained a harbour consisting of concentric circles of canals, all 100 ft deep and 300 ft wide. But who would dig a canal that deep? One hundred feet is the size of five average houses piled on top of one another, and no ship would have that much draught, or even a quarter of it. As to that enormous width, it would take several aircraft carriers.

A Greek professor named A. G. Galanapoulos argues that Santorini is indeed Atlantis, but some copyist had added a nought to many of Plato's figures--after all, 10 ft deep and 30ft wide is perfectly adequate for any canal. And the same, he suggested, is true of the date. Plato said the catastrophe that wiped out Atlantis occurred 9,000 years before the Greek statesman Solon was living.

But if you take a nought off 9,000 you get to 900 years--add 900 years to the date of Solon and that would take us back to 1,500, the approximate date of a great volcanic eruption that devastated the Mediterranean.

I went off to look at Santorini in the Seventies, and had to agree that Galanapoulos's theory made sense. The devastation had obviously been total and abrupt, as Plato said.

But what about his statement that Atlantis lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules? To that, Galanapoulos replies that the ancient Greeks also referred to the twin capes of Maleas and Taenarum, in southern Greece, as the Pillars of Hercules, and that Santorini is, indeed, beyond these.

My final feeling, however, was that Santorini is too small to have been the continent of Atlantis that Plato described and neither was I convinced by the professor's argument about dates. Although I could accept his views on the measurements of canals and so on, I still felt that the ancients knew the difference between 900 and 9,000 years.

And this explains why I have found the theory of Cyprus the most convincing so far. First of all, Plato says that Atlanteans were at war with Athens, and that is unlikely unless the continent was in the Mediterranean.

But the key to this theory, put forward by American explorer Robert Sarmast, is that Atlantis was lost under the sea some 11,000 years ago when, he says, the Mediterranean as we know it was formed.

This view, propounded by Sarmast, will provoke violent reactions among earth-scientists, who have always taken it for granted that the Mediterranean was formed five million years ago, when the Atlantic broke through a gap in a land mass and mountain range running form southern Spain to north Africa forming a giant pond.

How do they know? They don't. It is just an informed guess based upon the fact that in geology, most changes take a million years of so.

But what we do know is that the last great ice age began about one and a half million years ago, and came to an end about 15,000 years ago. We know, too, that there were many tremendous floods at this time, as the ice melted and vast northern lakes poured billions of gallons of fresh water into the sea.
Sarmast believes, therefore, that the Mediterranean is a much younger sea than previously thought, formed at the end of the last ice age. But before that happened a great civilization flourished on the floor of the basin at a time when the area was still protected by a range of low mountains between what is now Gibraltar and north Africa. The civilization was Atlantis.

The floodwaters from the melting ice meant that the Atlantic eventually began to leak through a gap near Gibraltar, and into the Mediterranean, though at first the leak was but a trickle.

And Atlantis was able to thrive for many thousands of years before the trickle became the flood that eventually proved its undoing.

Furthermore, Sarmast argues that years of that research has convinced him that Cyprus fits Plato's detailed specifications of Atlantis more than any other site--but only if you remember the main argument of Galanopoulos: that Plato's measurements for the city of Atlantis are obviously too big.

Plato says there was a fertile plain in front of the great city, 340 miles long by 230 wide, on which farmers grew food for the Atlanteans. But that is about half the size of England, and would certainly provide more food than any city could eat, even London.

Plato says there was a rectangular ditch around the whole plain, into which several rivers were diverted to collect water. But that would provide enough water for ten cities. Anyone can see that this would be more convincing if it was all divided by ten.

Besides, Sarmast bases his theory on maps of the Mediterranean sea bed to the south and west of Cyprus, and which show a vast undersea plain 23 miles long by 34 miles wide. Knock off the two noughts from Plato's Atlantis plain and you have the exact dimensions of the Cyprus plain. As to the Pillars of Hercules, Sarmast points out that the entrance to the Bosphorus was also known by that name, and Cyprus is beyond this to the East.

If we also take into account the fact that civilization began in the Middle East, we have one of the most convincing theories of Atlantis that, in my opinion, has ever been suggested.

Which is why I have decided to travel to Cyprus next month with a group of Atlantis enthusiasts, then sail with Sarmast on the ship that will photograph the seabed.

What he is hoping to find are the remains of temples, monuments and ancient artifacts and the huge circular canals. 'Atlantis City' itself would have been on the edge of this plain, and even 10,000 years of submersion cannot have destroyed the magnificent architecture, described by Plato, with its bridges, palaces and inner-harbours.If the giant stone blocks of Tiahuanaco can survive 10,000 years, then those of Atlantis certainly can. And I think it likely that, before long, we shall find them.

They found Atlantis again?

They haven't found a new Troy for a while, why don't they focus on that for a while. While they're at it they can go in search of Isengard or Champion City.

I don´t think you take the time and read the article, but anyway, they are saying that this is the best and more plausible theory so far and that they, MAYBE, found what could be the remais of the lost city of Atlantis.

This is a 2 years old article and this mission is still investigating the Cyprus island and Have found many, many interesting things these days, including man made structuers 1 mile below water.

heres the link with more info (IF you are interested in reading):
Atlantis expedition reveals structures

Just a PS on this: For you to understand a bit about measures and other technical info on Atlantis and compare with the Sarmast discoveries, it would be interesting for you to Read the Plato´s account on Atlantis.

If you are interest of make fun of something that could be an interesting discussion, I have nothing to say to you.

Hehe, sorry, I didn't mean to come off so bitter. It's just that this has got to be the fifth time Atlantis has been discovered.

But you're right, I didn't read it before posting (just started afterwards). I'll finish off the rest later on after the movie

Its ok. I know that there is a lot of arguments on finding Atlantis and this is boring.
But I found this one interesting, plausible and promissing.

I believe that Atlantis really existed and one day, men kind will find it. Who knows!? Maybe its close than we can imagine.

Cya!

I see no reason to believe that Atlantis ever existed. Plato himself was a great proponent of making up false historical accounts that could be used as vehicles for teaching morals to children. There are several problems with the story, the first of which being that the Egyptians didn't have records reaching back to the time when Atlantis was supposed to have been destroyed, even though according to the legend it was a story recorded by the Egyptians at the time it had occured.

I have to agree with Mad Manfred on this. Every year at least, someone claims to have found Atlantis. I can't generate any interest in such declarations anymore. In fact, it has come to the point where claiming to have found Atlantis can actually undermine the importance of a find, by causing archaeologists to ignore what they would otherwise find fascinating.

-Pilgrim

Nuh, I still find Otto Muck's theory (that Atlantis was in the middle of Atlantic) much more convincing.

Read his book 'The Secret of Atlantis'. Lots of credible proofs and theories.

But, I'll have to look into this theory more deeply as well, I think.

Plato used to make false historical accounts indeed, but the one of Atlantis is more than that. Its too detailed, he attained more to details, descriptions than moral teachings. I do believe in this.

They are claiming that it could be Atlantis, not that it is Atlantis. Let´s wait and see.




I will for sure. Thx for this information.

SO Atlantis was in the Med sea the whole time, and not in the Atlantic Ocean
wait until Jerrod heres this!