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ATLANTIS FACT FILE
Following claims of an underwater 'city' being found off Cuba, what are the true facts?
Compiled by ANDREW COLLINS, author of GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS
Who wrote about Atlantis?
Plato, Athenian philosopher (429-347 BC)
In what books is it mentioned?
In two fictional dialogues - the 'Timaeus', c. 355 BC, and the 'Critias', c. 350 BC.
Didn't the story originate in Egypt?
Plato tells us through the words of one Critias, a member of his family from an earlier generation, that the story had been preserved in oral and written form by his family since it was given to them by Solon, an Athenian legislator, who lived in the sixth century BC. He was said to have obtained the story from an old temple priest at Sais in Egypt, who had consulted ancient records made over a period of 8000 years. Yet Solon's role in the Atlantis story is at best suspect, since it is clear that Plato could have taken the complete setting involving the temple of Sais and Solon's celebrated visit to Egypt from the works of Herodotus, the Greek historian and traveller who wrote c. 425 BC. Remember, Plato's dialogues were works of fiction mixed with scientific fact. A more likely origin for the Atlantis story is the Carthaginians of North Africa who, along with the Phoenicians of Spain, were responsible for the creation of many of the myths concerning the Atlantic 'sea'. They include the Elysian Fields, the Hesperides and Okeanos, the ocean river that encircles the ancient world. Only the time-frame in which Atlantis is said to have been destroyed (post 8421 BC in the 'Timaeus' and c. 9421 BC in the 'Critias') is likely to have derived from Egyptian source material.
What was Atlantis?
A large island/continent -
1. It was situated in front of, or beyond, the Pillars of Hercules in the Atlantic Sea.
2. It once accessed by voyagers who used 'other islands' to reach the 'opposite continent'.
3. It was said to have been the size of Libya and Asia put together.
4. It possessed a utopic city surrounded by a plain in size 3000 x 2000 stadia (552 kms by 364 kms).
5. It great plain was surrounded on all sides, except to the south, by 'mountain ranges' that came right down to the sea and had precipitous cliffs.
6. It was destroyed in 'one night of earthquakes and floods'.
7. Its former site is now occupied by a vast shallow sea of mud shoals.
Did any other classical writer mention Atlantis?
No, not in a primary context, independent to Plato's work.
Did any other writer mention it in any other context?
Only Pliny, the first-century naturalist. He mentioned an island called 'Atlantis' situated just off the west coast of Africa, but it was far too small to be the one alluded to by Plato. All other classical sources simply repeat the story told by Plato, including the biographer Plutarch who refers to it in his 'Life of Solon'.
What does Atlantis mean?
The name in Greek means 'daughter of Atlas', the hero-god and titan who governed the westernmost limits of the ancient world, including the depths of the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules, thus the Atlantic sea, first mentioned c. 425 BC by Herodotus. All islands in this sea were 'daughters of Atlas', or Atlantides, the plural of Atlantis.
How does the word Atlantis derive?
The usual solution is that Atlas derives his name from the Greek tlâo, 'to endure', or atlâo, 'to not ensure', as in Atlas' punishment of having to carry the weight of the heavens on his shoulders. It is more likely to derive from the West Semitic root atl, meaning 'to elevate' or 'to raise', as in Atlas' act of raising up, or elevating, the heavens on to his shoulders. Since the myth of Atlas stems most probably from the former Carthaginian region of Mauritania in West Africa, a Semitic root to the word Atlas, from which we derive Atlantis, makes complete sense.
Where has Atlantis been located through the ages?
- 1500 - Francesco Lopez de Gomara, Spanish scholar, the American continent -
- 1570s, John Dee, astrologer, mathematician and scientist, North America -
- 1670s, Athanasius Kircher, Austrian Jesuit priest, mid-Atlantic -
- 1794, Paul Felix Cabrera, Guatemalan doctor, Haiti -
- 1882, Ignatius Donnelly, US Congressman, Mid-Atlantic -
- 1909, K. T. Frost, Belfast scholar, Crete
- 1922, Adolf Schulten, German scientist, Tartessos, Spain
- 1920s, Lewis Spence, Scottish mythologist, Bahaman landmass as 'Antillia' (final remnant of Atlantis)
- 1933, Edgar Cayce, American psychic, Bimini and the Bahamas as 'Poseidia', a fragment of Atlantis that stretched across to the African coast
- 1969, A. G. Galanopoulos & E. Bacon, Aegean historians, Crete
- 1991, Emilio Spedicato, Professor at Bergamo University, Haiti
- 1995, Rose and Rand Flem-ath, Canadian writers, Antarctica
- 1997, Viatscheslav Koudriavtsev, Russian scientist, off west coast of Britain
- 2000, Andrew Collins, British historical writer, Cuba
Atlantis has also been located in West Africa, North Africa, Norway, the North Pole, India and Indonesia.
What were the current most popular theories prior to most recent discoveries off Cuba?
1. Antarctica.
2. Mid Atlantic.
3. Bahamas.
4. Crete.
What are the current most popular theories in the advent of recent discoveries?
1. Cuba and the Bahamas.
2. Antarctica.
3. Mid-Atlantic.
4. Crete.
5. A small submerged island Off Gibraltar.
Popular misconceptions about Plato's Atlantis story
1. That Plato's account in non-fiction. It's not, its fictional dialogue, whereby fictional or historical characters are used to convey controversial opinions and scientific speculation. Atlantis was one of the subjects debated in this way.
2. That Plato, Solon or the original source of the story obtained a first-hand account of Atlantis in its hey day. This is wrong. Plato constructed his account most probably from stories and legends reaching the Mediterranean world during his own day.
3. That the story of the destruction of Atlantis was preserved on a column in Egypt and that these were witnessed by a neo-Platonist named Crantor c. 300 BC (after Proclus, c. AD 500). The account of Crantor's visit to Egypt is vague, and it could easily have been Plato himself whom Proclus suggests witnessed this column (the wording is vague). Moreover, no record or inscription from ancient Egypt has produced even a shred of evidence to support the idea that a knowledge of Atlantis was preserved in its records.
What facts can be gleamed from Plato's account about the historical reality of Atlantis?
1. It thrived in the Atlantic Ocean thousands of years before recorded history.
2. 'Voyagers' were able to travel from Atlantis via 'other islands' to an 'opposite continent', identified tentatively as the Americas.
3. It was accessible to ancient 'voyagers' who were once able to cross the outer ocean (and thus may have been responsible for introducing knowledge of the Atlantic realm to the ancient world).
4. It was destroyed by a natural cataclysm involving 'earthquakes and floods', and, finally.
5. An 'impassable sea' of mud and shoals occupies the former position of the sunken island, preventing any further navigation to 'the opposite continent'.
What is the so-called 'impassable' or 'shallow' sea spoken of by Plato as existing where once Atlantis could be found?
1. The 'impassable' or 'shallow' sea of mud and shoals is mentioned by other classical writers (Himilco, c. 425 BC, after Avienus c. AD 400, Pseudo-Scylax, c. 350 BC, Aristotle, c. 350 BC).
2. Two writers (Himilco, Pseudo-Scylax) state that it is covered in sea-weed.
3. One writer (Himilco) adds that it is an area of great calm.
4. All writers were unquestionably alluding to the Sargasso Sea, the vast region of free-floating seaweed. which exists between the Azores and the Bahamas.
5. The shallow sea may also be a reference to the shallow waters of the Bahamas, which takes its name from 'baha mar', Spanish for the 'shallow sea'.
6. This makes the most likely location of Atlantis somewhere in the region of the Bahamas and Caribbean.
What about the incredible size of Atlantis? How can anyone explain this?
1. The size of Atlantis as Libya and Asia combined makes no sense as a single landmass, and so Plato may have been alluding to the extent of the Atlantean empire, and not the geography of its landmass. This makes sense when we realise that Plato records that Atlantis was an island empire governing a series of islands, not just one
2. In the Critias the size of the island based on the dimensions of its great plain and the extent of its mountain ranges implies a size in the range of 600 X 400 kms, and no bigger. This could therefore apply to one of the larger Caribbean islands.
What other clues suggest Atlantis might have been in the Caribbean?
1. Plato states that 'other islands' enabled 'voyagers' from his own world to travel from Atlantis to the 'opposite continent'. If the 'opposite continent' is North and South America, then the 'other islands' are the islands of the Bahamas, the Mid-Caribbean group and the Lesser Antilles used since prehistoric times to travel between the principal islands of the Caribbean and the mainland.
2. The description of Atlantis' fertile plain fits Cuba's great western plain very well, although in size it was only ever 540 x 160 kms
3. Plato says that 'mountain ranges' protected the Atlantean plain from cold northerly winds. Between November and February each year Cuba's great western plain is protected by the Cord de Guaniguanico mountains from the cold winds known as Los Nortes, which come in from the north.
4. Atlantis' medieval form is Antillia, identified in 1922 as Cuba by US geographer W. H. Babcock.
5. Cuba is represented on the 1513 Piri Reis map in a truncated form that resembles the island called Antillia on medieval maps.
6. Cuba has always held great strategic importance to ships travelling to and from the Gulf of Mexico
7. Over 60 sites of possible archaeological interest have been detected in the shallow waters of the former Bahaman landmass, mostly in the south-west corner facing out towards Cuba.
8. An underwater 'city' has been detected in 600-700 metres of water in the Yucatan Channel, just a few kilometres off the west coast of Cuba
Is there any evidence that voyagers from Plato's world did once reach Atlantis?
1. The Roman geographer Statius Sebosus, c. 100 BC recorded that it was 40 days sail between the Gorgades and the Hesperides, legendary isles beyond the Atlantic Ocean. The Gorgades can be shown to be the Cape Verde Isles and the only islands west of here are those of the Caribbean. On his third journey to the New World it took Columbus 33 days to sail between the Cape Verde Islands and the Caribbean, 7 days less than Statius Sebosus' own sailing time. This suggests that transatlantic voyages were taking place by this early age
2. Marcellus, a Roman geographer c. 100 BC, after the neo-Platonist Proclus c. AD 500, recorded that there were three islands of immense extent in the Atlantic Ocean, and that the inhabitants of the centre island recalled the presence thereabouts of the former Atlantean landmass. The size of the central island makes it clear that they were not one of the island groups on the eastern Atlantic seaboard. Marcellus' reference to the presence thereabouts of seven other islands sacred to Proserpine, led British historian Geoffrey Ashe to speculate that the islands of immense extent were the principal islands of the Caribbean - Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Cuba.
3. There is archaeological and literary evidence that both the Carthaginians of North Africa and the Phoenicians of Spain explored the outer ocean prior to the age of Plato.
What evidence is there for the destruction of Atlantis?
1. 500,000 elliptical craters known as the Carolina Bays, found in six states from New Jersey down to Florida have been identified since the 1930s. Modern theories suggest they are the result of a comet impact c. 8500 BC (+/-500 years).
2. The distribution of the Carolina Bays indicates that a considerable percentage of the fragments would also have fallen into the West Atlantic Basin. This would have caused severe devastation, including super-tsunamis that would have drowned, temporarily at least, all low-lying regions of the Bahamas and Caribbean.
3. The Carolina Bays event could well have terminated the last Ice Age (after Emilio Spedicato), resulting eventually in a rise in sea and land temperature. This would have melted the ice sheets, causing a rapid rise in sea level. This would now have drowned, on a more permanent basis, certain low-lying regions of the Bahamas and Caribbean, sometime post c. 8000 BC (+/- 500 years). This is confirmed from core samples taken from beneath the edges of submerged land banks.
4. Folk-tales from across the Bahamas and Caribbean tell of a catastrophe that caused waters to rush in and drown a former great landmass, leaving behind the thousands of islands and cays seen today.
5. The same stories could conceivably have been told to ancient 'voyagers', who brought them back to the Mediterranean world of Plato. This seems borne out by the statements of Marcellus, c. 100 BC, who spoke of the inhabitants of the central of the three Atlantic islands of 'immense extent' recalling the former presence thereabouts of the Atlantean landmass
What are the implications if the discoveries of a deep-water 'city' made off Cuba by a Canadian scientific research last year do pan out?
1. If it were true that a lost city does exist in 600-700 metres of water off the coast of the Cuban mainland, then it would be the deepest archaeological site discovered underwater.
2. For around 40,000 years the sea level was around 300-400 metres lower than it is today because the ice fields absorbed so much of the oceans' water. Over a period of several thousand years the melting of the ice raised the sea levels by 300-400 metres maximum, meaning that any ruins beneath this depth must date to an even earlier epoch. Thus according to conventional oceanographic geology Cuba's underwater city is impossible since it would imply that it was constructed when the river and volcano around which it is situated was above sea level, and for this we must go back to perhaps 100,000 to 150,000 years ago.
3. If the Carolina Bays event did involve the fragmentation of a comet nucleus, as many scientists now believe, then it would have created a catastrophe on an unparalleled level. This might have included the buckling of the sea bottom, meaning that some landmasses would have risen upwards whilst others sank downwards. If this is so, it might explain why any 'urban development' off Cuba was plunged to a depth many hundreds of metres deeper than the lowest reported rise in sea-level following the end of the last Ice Age.
Why was this underwater 'city' not found earlier?
1. The Canadian scientific research team that first detected the underwater 'city' uses hi-tech sonar equipment that penetrates to depths in excess of 700 metres. This is the first time that such sophisticated equipment has been used in Cuban territorial waters.
2. Because Cuba has been a communist country since the late 1950s, the only surveillance of the Cuban sea-bottom until relatively recently was undertaken by Soviet research vessels and submarines, and any results they might have achieved are unlikely to have been broadcast world-wide. In the 1970s there were reports that Soviet submarines were investigating sunken cities off the coast of Cuba, but nothing came of these claims.
3. US, or indeed other, submarines might well have been in the same area, but they are unlikely to have broadcast any discovery of possible archaeological remains found in Cuban waters as this would have been seen as a violation of Cuban laws.
Could the Cuban underwater 'city' be linked with the origins of Central American cultures such as the Olmec and Maya?
Even though Cuba is likely to have been the island homeland of the ruling elite that helped found key Mesoamerican civilisations, the great depth of the sea-shelf or plateau on which the city is located makes this idea impossible. The depth of the site would suggest that any archaeological features present there must have existed for at least 11,000 years and plausibly even earlier still. In no way whatsoever can we justify the presence of archaeological features which post date the end of the last Ice Age, meaning that the city is not the product of Olmec, Mayan, Aztec or any other recorded Mesoamerican civilisation.
Suggested Reading List
Collins, Andrew, GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS, Headline, London, 2000; Carroll & Graf, US, 2000 for a full and comprehensive study of the Cuba-Atlantis theory.
Allan, D. S., and J. B. Delair, WHEN THE EARTH NEARLY DIED, 1995.
Babcock, William H., LEGENDARY ISLANDS OF THE ATLANTIC, 1922.
Braghine, Col. A., THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS, 1940.
Camp, L. Sprague de, LOST CONTINENTS, 1954.
Donnelly, Ignatius, RAGNAROK: THE AGE OF FIRE AND GRAVEL, 1886.
Irwin, Constance, FAIR GODS AND STONE FACES, 1963.
Savage, H., jnr., THE MYSTERIOUS CAROLINA BAYS, 1982.
Spence, Lewis, ATLANTIS IN AMERICA, 1925.
Stacy-Judd, Robert B., ATLANTIS - MOTHER OF EMPIRES 1939.
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