Atlantis Rises Again

Location is everything, and perhaps no location has been more debated than that of the legendary island of Atlantis. Now a scientist is arguing that a submerged landmass off the West African coast has a geological history that fits well with the first written accounts of the island. Sinking feeling. The time line of events on Spartel Island according to Collina-Girard. By around 12,000 years ago, the island would have been almost completely submerged. CREDIT: Marc-Andrè Gutscher     Like a very long game of telephone, the Atlantis story was orally passed down for 9000 years before Plato immortalized it in writing. "There occurred violent earthquakes and floods," he wrote. "And in a single day ... the island ... disappeared in the depths of the sea." Plato reports Atlantis sat off the coast of North Western Africa, sank 12,000 years ago, and was inhabited by an advanced civilization. Since Plato's time, scholars and nonscholars alike have claimed to have deciphered the location of the lost continent. One popular theory suggests that Atlantis was in Greece and perished by volcanic eruption 3500 years ago. Yet, Plato never reported volcanic ash; plus, the location and timing are off.      A sunken land mass suggested to be Atlantis in 2001 by geologist Jacques Collina-Girard of University of Aix en Provence in France also seemed a promising candidate because of its location off the northwest coast of Africa. His work indicated that the island, known as Spartel, sunk slowly under the rising sea levels of a melting ice age starting 20,000 years ago and that by 12,000 years ago it was less than 500 meters across. But this timing and gradual sinking also does not resemble Plato's account. Now an analysis by marine ecologist Marc-Andrè Gutscher of the University of Brest, France, may give new life to the Spartel hypothesis. At first, Gutscher's work seemed to discount the Spartel-Atlantis connection. A high resolution map he made with sonar indicated that the island was even smaller than Collina-Girard had speculated, meaning it would have been uninhabitable as long as 14,000 years ago. But sediment gathered by Gutscher tells a different story. A magnitude 9 earthquake appears to have rocked the region around the believed time of Atlantis' doom, Gutscher reports in the August issue of Geology. At that time, the island would have been big enough to be inhabited. He also found evidence of subsequent earthquakes and tsunami's--apparently every 2000 years--that may have whittled the rest of the island away. Did people live there? So far, Gutscher has found no evidence to support an ancient culture. "I will admit I was hoping to find concentric structures or walls of some kind," he says, "but we didn't" The study provides more support for Plato's writings, says geoarchaeologist Renee Hetherington of the University of Victoria in Canada. But hard proof such as artifacts or structures needs to be found to confirm that a society actually inhabited this island, she says.

Science Now, July 22, 2005

The exact location of Atlantis is not known as the continent split into many sections that moved in different directions.

Many researchers believe that Atlantis is near the Azores Islands. The Azores are a group of islands belonging to Portugal located about 900 miles (1500 km) west of the Portugese coast. Some people believe the islands are the mountain tops of the sunken continent of Atlantis.

Plato and others wrote that Atlantis was a huge continent like Africa, stretching across the Atlantic. The Aztecs, Mayans, Incans and other Indian tribes told explorers of the sunken ATLAN in the Atlantic and the sunken MU (Lemuria) in the Pacific.

In the Pacific, ruins of an ancient city were explored on the ocean floor off Ponape Island. Another was underwater 30 miles off Easter Island. A ruined road on Karotonga Island goes into the ocean, runs underwater for many miles, and comes out of the ocean on another island in a straight line! Professor Menzies, from Duke University, photographed a ruined civilization on the sea bottom between Peru and Tahiti with unknown hieroglyphics on a column. Monolithic ruins from a lost civilization were found on a half dozen South Pacific Islands, which are said to be Lemurian mountain peaks above water.

Plato wrote a detailed account of Atlantis with its location, later history, culture, and destruction. The story of Atlantis begins quite literally with two of Plato's dialogues, Timaeus and Critias. These accounts are the only known written records which refer specifcally to a lost civilization called Atlantis. Many people believe the tale to be complete fiction, the creation of a philosopher's imagination used to illustrate an argument. Others believe that the story was inspired by catastrophic events which may have destroyed the Minoan civilization on Crete and Thera. Still others maintain that the story is an accurate representation of a long lost and almost completely forgotten land.

Other researchers believe that Atlantis was an exaggeration of the historical destruction of Thera and the Minoan empire and can now be found in the Aegean. The island of Thera, also known as Santorini, is a volcanic island located due north of Crete in the Aegean Sea. Sometime around 1500 BC is was devasted by a volcanic explosion that may have contributed to the sudden downfall of the Minoan civilization.

Ancient writings from the Aztecs and Mayans like the Chilam Balam, Dresden Codex, Popuhl Vuh, Codex Cortesianus, and Troano Manuscript were also translated into histories of the destruction of Atlantis and Lemuria.

The Oera Linda Book from Holland is said to be one of the oldest books ever found. It tells of the destruction of the large Atlantic island by earthquakes and tidal waves.

The ancient Greek historian Diodorus wrote that thousands of years earlier Phoenicians had been to the immense Atlantic island (where Plato wrote Atlantis was.

Phoenician hieroglyphics have been found on numerous ruins in the South American jungles that are so ancient that the Indian tribes nearby lost memory of who built these ruins.

Diodorus wrote that the Atlanteans had WAR with the Amazonians!

The Greek Kantor reported visiting Egypt where they saw a marble column carved with hieroglyphics about Atlantis.

Greek historian Ammianus Marcellinus wrote about the destruction of Atlantis.

Plutarch wrote about the lost continent in his book Lives.

Herodotus, regarded by some as the greatest historians of the ancients, wrote about the mysterious island civilization in the Atlantic and a city on it located in the region the Dr. Asher expedition found just that!

The Greek historian Timagenus wrote of the war between Atlantis and Europe and said tribes in ancient France said that was their original home.

Bright paintings in caves in France clearly show people wearing 20th century clothing: one painting led to an underground pyramid complex. French historian and archaeologist Robert Charroux dated them at 15,000 B.C.

Claudius Aelianus referred to Atlantis in his 3rd century work The Nature of Animals.

Theopompos - a Greek historian - wrote of the huge size of Atlantis and its cities of Machimum and Eusebius and a golden age free from disease and manual labor.

James Churchward wrote several volumes of books documenting ancient writings he claims to have translated in Southeast Asia concerning Atlantis and Mu, while geologist William Niven claimed to have excavated identical tablets in Mexico.

Dr. George Hunt Williamson, who authored several books on his Atlantean-Lemurian research in the 1950's, was an anthropologist explorer once listed in Who's Who in America. Williamson wrote how descendants of the Incas led him to an ancient manuscript in a temple in the Andes Mountains that told of the destruction of Atlantis and Mu, which had an advanced technology, by earthquakes and tidal waves. Williamson also visited dozens of Indian tribes in the United States and Mexico that told him of Atlantis and Mu, including the Hopi Indians.

Tablet from Lhasa. Tibet and also from Easter Island. It is clear from ancient writings that belief in Atlantis was common and accepted in Greece, Egypt, and Mayax {Mayan and Aztec Empires) by historians.

The Basques of Spain, the Guals of France, the tribes of the Canary and Azores islands, a tribe in Holland, and dozens of Indian tribes all speak of their origins in a large lost and sunken Atlantic land. Belief in the large sunken.

The Germans and the Nordic Scandinavians spoke of a vanished continent in the North Atlantic ocean called Thule with the civilization of Hyperborea located on it. Thule reportedly stretched into what is now the northern polar ice cap where it is buried underneath miles of ice so we cannot see It.

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