More than once in his dialogs, Timaeus and Critias, Plato says that the story of Atlantis is a true one. Did he lie? Too bad we cannot interview the ancient Greek philosopher. Scholars, like Sir Desmond Lee, think Plato made up the story, but they offer only educated guesses. Their arguments are well-reasoned, but not entirely convincing. If we could ask anyone, perhaps we should talk to Solon, the Athenian lawgiver who supposedly imported the story from Egypt roughly two centuries earlier.
It seems every few months, some researcher “discovers” a new resting place for the lost island empire. If Plato made up the story, then it could have been inspired by one of many of those “new” locations, if Plato had known about it. But if Atlantis was a real place, then all of those recent researchers are wrong.
Some aspects of Plato’s story could be embellishments subject to the story teller’s art or to translation, like the names of people, or the term used for their most advanced ships. But some facets are less prone to such changes. We’re talking about compass directions and positions relative to known landmarks. Perhaps to a lesser degree, this would include sizes and distances.
Plato located Atlantis just outside the Strait of Gibraltar and facing a portion of Southern Spain known in Plato’s time as Gadira – modern Cadiz. Based on his wording, Atlantis was between one and two times the size of Texas (the largest state in the contiguous United States). From this, we can estimate that Atlantis included most of the tectonic plate boundary between Gibraltar and the mid-Atlantic ridge. This could have included most, if not all, of the Azores archipelago. The date Plato gives for the subsidence is approximately 9600 BCE.
Geological Foundation of Atlantis
There is a great deal about this location that makes sense. Millions of years ago, as the then island continent of Africa moved toward Eurasia, this region was experiencing plate subduction – the sliding of the Africa underneath the Eurasia. Any geologist will tell you that most mountains and volcanoes form near tectonic plate boundaries from subduction. Given the proper impediment, all of the northward motion of Africa could have been converted to crustal folding (mountain building), locally. Several telltale signs point to this possibility, including the indistinct and damaged nature of the plate boundary in the Northeast Atlantic, the persistent underwater plateau at the Azores, and the Northwest trending bend in the boundary called, the Terceira Ridge. In fact, the current Euler pole (pole of rotation) of the Africa relative to the Eurasia plate could have been established because the Africa’s northward movement had been deflected around this region after the new island had reached its maximum uplift. The start of this rotation occurred roughly 36 million years ago (Mya), according to R. Searle.
With such deflection, the region of this supposed, mountainous island would no longer be receiving the maximum support of Africa’s movement. In fact, the new angular motion could have started weakening the fresh landmass.
Now, what happens when you have a paper jam in a printer. The paper catches on something (an impediment), and crumples, extending the region of impediment, creating more crumpling, further extending the region of impediment. Without protective sensors, the printer could permanently damage the delicate pathway. Something like this may have happened to the Africa-Eurasia plate boundary in the North Atlantic. Counterclockwise rotation around Atlantis would have extended the area of crustal folding eastward along the plate boundary. Over millions of years, this region of damage could have extended all the way to Gibraltar. And 5.9 Mya, Gibraltar closed for roughly 700,000 years, leading to the Messinian Salinity Crisis. During much of that period, Gibraltar was blocked and the Mediterranean became a mile-deep desert.
Plate boundaries are regions of instability. They have frequent earthquakes and occasional volcanic eruptions. Yet this may not have been the primary cause of Atlantis’s demise. We may be able to peg the blame for this on the climate.
Atlantis Killed by the Climate
When Atlantis supposedly sank, the Earth was undergoing the end of the last Ice Age. For thousands of years, ice had been melting, removing millions of tons of frozen water from both North America and Northern Europe.
Imagine sitting on your bed. When you get up, the mattress springs back. When all of that ice melted off of America and Europe, the tectonic plates sprang back, only much more slowly. There are two phases of this post-glacial rebound or glacial isostatic adjustment – the elastic (more energetic) period and the viscous (more slowly moving) period. The most energetic period was thought to have been about eleven or twelve thousand years ago, right about the time Atlantis sank.
Now imagine your bed is a waterbed. When you get up on one side of the waterbed, the mattress goes up, but on the other side the mattress goes down. The same effect happens with the continents. In fact, we are still in the viscous phase of adjustment, over nine thousand years later. Currently Scotland is rising slowly, while Southern England is descending. In North America, the Northern Great Lakes are still rising while the Southern region around Chicago is descending.
Atlantis had already been weakened by the plate rotation of the Africa around the fateful island. Glacial isostatic adjustment found its weakest link and sucked it down to compensate for the rising Northern Europe and North America on either side of the Atlantic. This would explain the rapid subsidence as described by Plato – in a day and a night.
Evidence!
Three pieces of scientific evidence, each from a different discipline, prove an Atlantis-like event happened 9620 BCE.
- An abrupt and dramatic change to climate worldwide
- A moderately large volcanic event
- A 2-meter drop in sea levels worldwide
The last of these, if corroborated to be a proxy for a real event, would prove to be our “smoking gun” in the death of Atlantis.
Complex Puzzle
In this article we’ve only briefly touched on three of the disciplines involved in our Atlantis quest – geology, oceanography and paleo-climatology.
At least four others are critical to understanding the scope of this twenty-four hundred year old mystery.
- Archaeology
- Linguistics
- Cultural Anthropology
- Genetics
We now have archaeological evidence that signs of civilization existed 9500 BCE. Linguistic evidence shows that there may have been a swap between mothers and fathers in prehistoric times amongst the children of Atlantis. Combined with cultural data, the linguistic clues suggest that Atlantis and its refugees may have been matriarchal – ruled by women. And genetic evidence links two sides of the Atlantic about twelve thousand years ago – about the same time Plato’s lost island empire was swallowed by the sea.
About the Author
A Hollywood artist with screen credit, an award-winning essayist, a published author, and a software engineer, with training in electronic engineering, a diploma cum laude with honors in systems analysis and programming, as well as a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in information technology. His passions include spirituality, science and Atlantis. http://www.AncientSuns.com/fwd/mia/