Atlantis Rediscovered?

Atlantis is one of the stories of our collective past upon which the Western civilization was built. Every modern society has origin myths, that define and describe the character of the people themselves. Stories of the Old and New Testaments of the Judeo-Christian bible, medieval tales of Robin Hood, and the Gilgamesh epic are examples of the west’s historical background that have been investigated archaeologically. The study of archaeology owes a lot to the process of seeking the truth of the tales in the historic and religious documents of our past.

More recently, scientific methods have been used to identify places or events in the past. Consider the studies indicating that poisonous gases created the visions of the Oracle at Delphi, or the studies concerning evidence for ancient floods in the Black Sea that may have been the basis for Noah’s flood from the bible. It’s what we do. We’re interested in our past, we want to know the truth of those stories our ancestors told us. Few people would argue that the stories might have some truth to them, fewer still would argue that they have a lot of folderol in them as well. To effectively seek the past, you have to figure out what works in those stories and what doesn’t.

The Atlantis Hypothesis

In July 2005, a conference entitled The Atlantis Hypothesis presenting multidisciplinary papers on the potential for the geological truth of Plato’s tale of Atlantis took place on the Greek island of Milos. One of the papers presented was a report by Marc-Andre Gutscher, a geologist of the prestigious French research institution Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). The original hypothesis came from Jacques Collima-Girard, who took selected elements of Plato’s story, and identified a sunken island west of the Straits of Gibraltar as a potential candidate for the location of Atlantis. Dr. Gutscher followed through on the argument, completing a bathymetric investigation of the island, and producing quite an interesting paper, Destruction of Atlantis by a Great Earthquake and Tsunami to be published in the journal Geology in August 2005.

Atlantis, for those of you visiting from another planet, is the legendary utopian society that sank below the surface of the ocean, never to be seen again. As described in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias, around 12,000 years ago, there were two great civilizations: Athens and Atlantis. Both of these societies were what anthropologists call socially-stratified—there were classes of people, including artisans, farmers, warriors, and royalty. Both societies farmed and raised cattle. They both built temples and meeting halls. They both mined silver and gold; they both made bronze and tin as well as silver and gold objects. They had horse-drawn chariots, they built bridges, aqueducts, canals and roads, and had ships to conduct international trade. Atlantis, so Plato said, was a trading and commercial center with an urban lifestyle and a ruling class. The city-state was located on an island the size of Libya and Asia combined, outside of the Pillars of Hercules (believed to refer to the Straits of Gibraltar). Athens ruled the eastern side of the Pillars of Hercules—the Mediterranean Sea. The people of Atlantis were directly descended from Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. An extended war broke out between Atlantis and Athens. The civilization fell into decadence and Zeus punished them, sending a great earthquake, and Atlantis sank beneath the waves of the ocean in the space of a day.

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