Atlantis and the Silver City (5 page)

Clues 16 and 17 refer to the sea being “impassable and impenetrable” after the catastrophe because a shoal of mud, caused by a subsidence of the island, was in the way. The Santorini explosion would have deposited a thick layer of volcanic ash on the sea, and it has been claimed that this complies with these clues. This is nonsense: any mariner encountering and recording it would have been able to tell the difference between the color and consistency of volcanic ash on the one hand, and mud caused by land sinking on the other. Plato was emphatic about this and twice used the word “mud.” Much of Akritori is still buried, and work still continues. In the meantime, it has become a fashionable port of call for cruise liners, helped in no small part by the Atlantis claims. Strangely, it is reported that not a single body has been unearthed in the excavation, yet Plato indicated that the disaster struck without warning.

That the disaster occurred on Santorini is not in dispute—but, as already indicated, much else is. There are no indications or records that the Minoans were aggressive or warlike until after the eruption when they had to defend themselves against the attacking Mycenaeans. They did not conquer parts of the Mediterranean, or even invade Egypt as the Atlanteans supposedly did. Like the Phoenicians, who appeared on the scene about half a millennium after the explosion, the Minoans were traders. Archaeological finds have led some historians to believe that they traded as far away as southern England. Recently, it has been claimed that some of the cargo of copper found in a Minoan shipwreck off the coast of Anatolia indicates that they were also trading as far afield as Canada. This intriguing discovery has fueled the theory that the Minoan civilization was the great maritime one Plato referred to as Atlantis.

More significantly for me, it is thought that Minoans also traded with southwest Iberia. This would hardly be surprising; it would have been much closer than Canada, for copper—or England, for tin. Southwest Iberia was already producing bronze, the much-prized alloy made from copper and tin. The Minoans would also have been attracted by the prolific amounts of silver, copper, and gold mined there. This trade was mostly carried out by the Minoans on the much larger island of Crete, which comprised the dominant part of the same confederation as Santorini. The Cretans also produced some bronze at Gournia, a town on the north coast, where there
was a substantial port for the island’s extensive fleet of ships. As was the case later with the Phoenicians, southwest Iberia could have contributed mightily to the growth and wealth of this unique seafaring civilization, as you will see in later chapters. Archaeological records indicate, however, that despite the scale of the eventual disaster on Santorini it did not completely kill off the Minoan civilization on Crete. It differs from Plato’s account of Atlantis in that it existed, although probably badly wounded, for at least another 150 years before succumbing to an assault by the Greek-speaking Mycenaeans.

The timing is also hopelessly wrong. The eruption occurred around 8,000 years after the date given by Plato. It has been suggested that when converting from Egyptian to Greek, either Plato or Solon got the figures wrong, inflating them by a factor of ten. But that has to be a contrived argument as it would also imply that the Egyptian civilization has only been in existence for a mere 800 years, a ludicrous notion that would certainly not have been uttered by the venerable priest. So many of the other clues don’t tie up either. Santorini was far too small and in the wrong part of the world altogether. Plato made it abundantly clear he was referring to the Atlantic, as will be explained in Chapter Seven. And where is the large lush plain, where are the heavily wooded mountains and valleys and the elephants he was so insistent about? The eruption was so cataclysmic the memory of it would have been embedded in the area’s psyche and inevitably documented. Plato would almost certainly have had knowledge of it and if he intended to imply it was Atlantis he would have been specific about the spot and the type of disaster.

A further strand of the argument for Santorini is that yet another piece of information from the Egyptian priest was misunderstood by Solon. It is suggested that the priest could really have been referring to straits at the
eastern
end of the Mediterranean, but that Solon thought he was indicating those at Gibraltar. There is as much evidence to support this theory of Solon’s misunderstanding as for the moon being made of cheese and inhabited by white mice. If Solon knew of several straits by the same name, surely he was intelligent enough to have queried it at the time. Also, the clue about “coming out of the Atlantic” to invade Egypt came out of the same priest’s mouth. In fact, the Atlantic is mentioned more than once, so Solon would have had to fudge the information several times.

One BBC documentary, shown on television in May 2011 and repeated in January 2012, stated that Plato claimed that Atlantis was surrounded by concentric rings of water and land. This was sloppy and simply not true, as it was only the capital—a very small part of a substantial country—that was ringed in this way. Sadly, such errors are typical of many books and television documentaries proposing Santorini or other sites as Atlantis—all following the same well-worn path. They treat Plato’s clues like a “pick and mix” sweet display: very selective about the Plato clues with which they agree, but completely ignoring the many that would preclude Santorini. They imply that poor old Solon or Plato got completely the wrong idea about where Atlantis was, when it sank, what the topography was like, how old it was, and much else. About the only thing they got right was that Atlantis, or somewhere like it, once existed. The authors’ and documentary makers’ own “correct” information is presumably a result of divine intervention. The reality is that it is fiction, nothing but a fanciful theory. It is incredible that so many historians and academics have embraced it while turning a blind eye to more than ninety percent of what Plato actually wrote. I suspect that they feel the need to adopt a theory that fits in with their accepted model of civilized human history and that also offers them an excuse to dissociate from something that suggests much earlier significant events. The thought of having to rewrite history simply terrifies them.

So, where else should we look for Atlantis? Over the years, the most suggested location has been in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, with the Azores Islands often cited as the remaining mountaintops of the unfortunate sunken island. It will become obvious from analyses later in Chapter Seven that these islands are, again, in the wrong geographical position for the main part of Atlantis. In geological terms, the Azores are currently rising, not sinking. There is, however, evidence that land in this region has consistently been heaved upward by as much as a thousand meters and subsequently sunk by six thousand meters.
⁶
The Azores were once much larger and there were more of them, but that itself is not an argument for their being the Atlantis homeland.

Some other more extreme examples about Atlantis put it in the North Sea between Britain and Scandinavia, or southwest of Britain or Ireland. The mythical lost St. Brendan’s Isle is frequently trundled out as a possible
location. The fact that the climate around Britain is and was far removed from that indicated by Plato is conveniently overlooked.

In 1996, a scholarly book by Peter James was published.
⁷
His hypothesis was that a city in Anatolia was swallowed by a lake and that this was the Atlantis capital. A submerged city may well be there; but for much the same reasons as I have already marshaled about Santorini, it could not possibly be the ancient Atlantis capital.

Another more recent and intriguing theory revolves around crustal plate science. Rand Flem-Ath has carried out meticulous research on the subject over a long period and claims that startling, substantial movements of individual earth surface plates have occurred. His theory had many members of the academic community foaming at the mouth, but he does make some telling points. He cites precise evidence proving, for example, that the magnetic North Pole has moved dramatically and substantially several times. To learn more on this subject, consult
The Atlantis Blueprint
by Rand Flem-Ath and Colin Wilson.
⁸

The link with our quest is their theory that Antarctica was Atlantis and was once much farther north in a more temperate zone, before suddenly and dramatically moving south to its current position. However, even allowing for the possibility that Antarctica did suddenly move enormous distances in a very short time span (rather than the few millimeters per year that continents now move), it would still originally have been a long way from where Plato indicated Atlantis was.

More recent claims by Dr. Sunil Prasannan and others propose large submerged areas in Southeast Asia as the Atlantis location. They make a strong case for a lost civilization in that area, and I have little doubt that there are many of these submerged around the globe.
⁹
This doesn’t say, however, that any of them are Plato’s Atlantis. One, a large city recently discovered off the west coast of India in the Gulf of Cambay, must be at least seven to eight thousand years old, due to its depth under the water and rising sea levels since the last Ice Age.
¹⁰
Initial carbon dating from artifacts of wood, beads, teeth, pottery, et cetera, confirms a date of around 9500
B.C.
This discovery has caused a very public spat between archaeologists who were not involved in the discovery and the Indian authorities. The archaeologists, mostly Americans, pointed out that the finds had not been
confirmed with the usual rigorous, painstaking research required. The Indians had discovered the site using side scanners when examining the area in a pollution survey. Subsequently, the authorities instigated a dredging operation to see what they could trawl up. Unfortunately, this method can also destroy a lot of the surrounding evidence. They excused themselves by pointing out that the quality of water there is so bad that conventional, careful examination by divers was just not possible.

The archaeologists, who the authorities suspect are somewhat miffed to have to reconsider their accepted view of where the first ancient civilization materialized, say that the artifacts found could have been washed there in far more recent times and that the pottery shards could be no more than an aggregate of naturally formed materials. The extraordinary accounts of ancient Indian civilizations in some of their old Vedic literature, however, would seem to support the Indian case, as would the position of the site on the banks at the mouth of a great river submerged by rising meltwater at the end of the Ice Age. It is exactly where you would expect an old city to be. Remains of another submerged city, including ancient temples, have been discovered elsewhere in India. Graham Hancock has contributed significantly to this development.
¹¹
These intriguing discoveries certainly demonstrate that Atlantis was not the only ancient civilization. Indeed, Plato alludes to this when he talks of the ships from other places crowding the harbor front of the Atlantis capital. His many other clues, however, completely rule out a site for Atlantis in the Far East.

Andrew Collins has written many fascinating and groundbreaking books. He recently added an exhaustively researched one propounding Cuba as Atlantis.
¹²
The basic location arguments again rule it out as the main part of the Atlantean Empire, but, as will be revealed later, it does have a definite link with the conclusions of this book. The same applies to the predictions of the famous American “sleeping prophet,” Edgar Cayce. His family and their foundation are the most active continuous searchers for firm evidence of Atlantis, particularly around the Bahamian islands of Bimini and Andros, where Cayce predicted that remains of Atlantis would be found.
¹³
Among what they have claimed to discover are submerged harbor installations and breakwaters not far beneath the water’s surface. I
will return to these later, in Chapter Fifteen; like Cuba, they have a definite resonance with this book’s hypothesis.

Intriguingly, closer to home, the area around Cádiz has been suggested. Dr. Rainer Kuehne from the University of Wuppertal, in Germany, claimed to have spotted, on a NASA satellite image, rectangular-shaped buildings beneath the land surface—and maintained that these formed the famous Atlantis citadel. The area cited, the Marisma de Hinojos, is north of Cádiz and is also very marshy. Old maps indicate that it was once a huge lagoon extending inland. At the time of this writing, it has been widely reported that Spanish archaeologists have started excavations in the area, based on aerial photography showing outlines under the surface. The National Geographic television channel made a documentary about it, fronted by an American, Professor Freund. He also made sensational claims that they had found the Atlantis capital, much to the consternation of the archaeologists involved. On analysis, all these claims simply do not pass the Plato clues test. Let’s apply just three of them.

•  Plato said that the citadel was close to the center of Atlantis, an area quite a bit bigger than this eastern extremity. This corner of the supposed kingdom couldn’t possibly have been in the proximity of the center of the country.

•  The area around the citadel was given to Poseidon’s first-born, Atlas. The area close to Cádiz was given to the second-born son and could, therefore, hardly have housed the capital.

•  As mentioned earlier, the citadel was reported by Plato to be backed by a huge swath of mountains. The area north of Cádiz is as flat as a drum skin for kilometer after kilometer. There are mountains to the east, but none at all close to the north.