Secret History
"This is the power of tsunamis," head researcher Richard Freund told Reuters.
"It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and that's pretty much what we're talking about," said Freund, a University of Hartford, Connecticut, professor who lead an international team searching for the true site of Atlantis.
To solve the age-old mystery, the team used a satellite photo of a suspected submerged city to find the site just north of Cadiz, Spain. There, buried in the vast marshlands of the Dona Ana Park, they believe that they pinpointed the ancient, multi-ringed dominion known as Atlantis.
The team of archeologists and geologists in 2009 and 2010 used a combination of deep-ground radar, digital mapping, and underwater technology to survey the site.
Freund's discovery in central Spain of a strange series of "memorial cities," built in Atlantis' image by its refugees after the city's likely destruction by a tsunami, gave researchers added proof and confidence, he said.
Atlantis residents who did not perish in the tsunami fled inland and built new cities there, he added.
The team's findings will be unveiled on Sunday in Finding Atlantis, a new National Geographic Channel special.
While it is hard to know with certainty that the site in Spain in Atlantis, Freund said the "twist" of finding the memorial cities makes him confident Atlantis was buried in the mud flats on Spain's southern coast.
"We found something that no one else has ever seen before, which gives it a layer of credibility, especially for archeology, that makes a lot more sense," Freund said.
Greek philosopher Plato wrote about Atlantis some 2,600 years ago, describing it as "an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Hercules," as the Straits of Gibraltar were known in antiquity. Using Plato's detailed account of Atlantis as a map, searches have focused on the Mediterranean and Atlantic as the best possible sites for the city.
Tsunamis in the region have been documented for centuries, Freund says. One of the largest was a reported 10-story tidal wave that slammed Lisbon in November, 1755.
Debate about whether Atlantis truly existed has lasted for thousands of years. Plato's "dialogues" from around 360 B.C. are the only known historical sources of information about the iconic city. Plato said the island he called Atlantis "in a single day and night... disappeared into the depths of the sea."
Experts plan further excavations are planned at the site where they believe Atlantis is located and at the mysterious "cities" in central Spain 150 miles away to more closely study geological formations and to date artifacts.
Reader Comments
described an island in front of the Pillars of Hercules (Gibralter) then the only island/s nearby are those of the Canaries which had the several kings of Tenerife and Gran Canaria....the Guanches...come from the area of the near east and being tall dark blond haired people with green eyes...actual descendants can still be seen in G Canaria, before the islands were conquered by the Spanish and other racial influences took the toll on these handsome people.
Alternatively the whole zone of Macaronesia (so named after the Greeks) being the "Afortunate Isles" could be contenders though I doubt that Cabo Verde is sufficiently in front of the Pillars...but certainly the Salvage Ils, Madeira or even the southernmost isles of the Azores.
I dont believe the charts show any relatively shallow land mass beneath the sea in that area close enough to Gib...is there the remotest possibility that Cadiz was once and island ? It certainly has areas of high platform especially near the harbour and along the westerly cost.
All the way north upto Sta Maria there are low lands with quite a few bridges and long built up sections across the inland waterways to traverse before getting into the town of Cadiz. As a low lying area it could well have been subject to a massive tsunami, but upto now the implication has been that Atlantis was well off-shore. Its all very intruiging.
Several underwater & unusual grids & structures have been sighted , thru google earth for eg, have been found EXACTLY where Plato said it would be.......in the ATLANTIC, beyond the Pillars, etcetc. The really ANNOYING thing - like with this new research by the Judaic Center , no less ha!, of the Hartford University department is to continually try to put Atlantis within the FLAWED current historical timeline.
That civilization was for centuries & thousand of years influenced by and remnants of this "LOST" mother culture continued to exist in the twilight of it's great loss in lore & myth - Minoan, Carthage , Mayan etc etc is only natural in a post - cataclysm even as their immediate connections were lost shows the resilience and the importance of whatever the message/history , culture & technology that "Atlantis" left for us their inheritors.
These "scientist" & "archeologist" seriously have to started thinking outside of their sandbox and truly begin to question the wonderous and numerous signs, indications, evidence of this greater technology and truly advanced civilization whose human remains must exist even thou their were wiped out b 95%.
Our time is running out as we see in the current World situation ! we are racing against the clock.
A truly new thing , I found , is that if the poles flip 40 degrees as expected the new Equator would be directly over "ruins" at the bottom of the Atlantic , "Atlantis". Did they foresee our World and it's current situations!!!!!!
...with this story is that it makes some unfounded assumptions. For one, it speaks of a lost "city" of Atlantis. Plato's account speaks of a large island of Atlantis that had a confederation of many powerful Kings that held sway beyond their island. Doesn't really sound like a city, does it?
Another assumption is that any hitherto unknown great city must be the fabled Atlantis. Archaeologists seem to just hate the idea that there could have been a great world-wide civilization of which Atlantis was only a part, and that digging deeply enough in the right places, they might find remnants of it all over the place. Seems to me that saying "we've found the lost city of Atlantis" is just an underhanded way of propagating the myth of continual progress in human civilization.