Other-waters

Atlantis was a legendary ancient culture and island, whose existence and location have never been confirmed. The first mentions we have are from the classical Greek philosopher Plato, who said that it was destroyed by a natural disaster (possibly an earthquake or tsunami) about 9,000 years before his own time. Plato did mention it was somewhere near Hyperborea, which is presumed to be somewhere near Iceland, though some think its location would have been more suitable in one of the cradles of civilization, the Mediterranean Sea.

There are many various hypothesis as to the location of Atlantis, some of which are listed below.

Crete and Santorini

Among those who believe in an historical Atlantis, one common hypothesis 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 hypothesis 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 hypothesis.

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, CNN reports. The site lies 1,500m deep in the Mediterranean Sea between Cyprus and Syria. Several geologists were quick to dispute the claim, as the place was deep under water during the period in question.

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 hypothesis.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 hypotheses 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 hypothesis 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 geoarchaeologist Eberhard Zangger has proposed the hypothesis that Atlantis was in fact the city state of Troy. He both agrees and disagrees with Rainer W. Kühne: He too believes 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

An hypothesis 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. Werner Wickboldt (2002) and Rainer W. Kühne (2003) claim that recent satellite photos show two rectangular structures, which they hypothesized to be 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. 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.

Finland

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

In 2004, this theory was presented and tested scientifically in the book Atlantis from a Geographer's Perspective: Mapping the Fairy Land by Swedish geographer Dr. Ulf Erlingsson from University of Uppsala. It hypothesizes that the empire Atlantis refers to the Neolithic Megalithic tomb culture, based on their similar geographic extent. The island Atlantis is deduced to be Ireland. The similarities of both size and landscape are found to be statistically significant to the 2% level, why the null hypothesis (that Plato invented Atlantis as fiction) is rejected.

The capital Atlantis is tentatively connected with Newgrange, Knowth, and Tara, Ireland. Ireland has not sunk beneath the sea, but the Dogger Bank shoal was an island that sank in the North Sea about 6100 B.C. While the world sea level rose gradually as the Ice Age ice sheets melted, there was a sudden rise at this time due to the final drainage of Lake Agassiz. At about the same a tsunami from the Storegga slide is believed to have devastated the island in the manner described by Plato.

Some related hypotheses place the location of Atlantis between Britain and France on the Celtic Shelf . This hypothesis 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 Florida–Bimini 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 (http://www.atlan.org).

Prof. Santos also identifies his Atlantis to Eden, the Judeo-Christian Paradise sunken in the Universal Flood. This event he dates at 11,600 BP [Before Present], the exact date of the catastrophic end of the last Pleistocene Ice Age, which also corresponds exactly to the date of Atlantis' demise as given by Plato and to the final sinking of Kumari Kandam, the sunken homeland of the Hindu Dravidas. Prof. Santos is presently planning an oceanographic expedition to the site in order to investigate several curious artefactual features he has already identified in the region he identifies with Atlantis-Eden.

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. 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. Furthermore, dating of the ice core taken at the Vostok station shows that the ice sheet there is at least 420,000 years old, and the continent is estimated to have been ice covered for 5 to 30 million years.

Ponza

Ponza has many similarities to the Atlantis legend.

Legend say that Ponza was the lost island of Tyrrhenia 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.

Text above is a slightly edited excerpt of something found somewhere sometime at Wikipedia and available under GNU Free Doc License.