It sounds a familiar enough yarn 鈥� a lone researcher claiming to have pinpointed the lost land of Atlantis famously described by Plato. But this time there is no mention of 鈥渟upercivilisations鈥�, UFOs or magic crystals. Instead, he has turned the clock back on ancient rises in sea level to reveal an island that matches Plato鈥檚 story.
Plato鈥檚 works Timaeus and Critias contain the first written descriptions of Atlantis and its watery fate, drawn from stories collected in Egypt. 鈥淭hese texts are the origin of a lot of speculation about Atlantis,鈥� says Jacques Collina-Girard of the University of the Mediterranean in Aix-en-Provence.
鈥淐uriously, nobody has really taken seriously the most obvious location,鈥� Collina-Girard adds. According to Plato, Atlantis lay just in front of the Pillars of Hercules 鈥� what we now call the Strait of Gibraltar 鈥� and disappeared around 9000 BC.
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Collina-Girard was interested in patterns of human migration from Europe into North Africa at the height of the last ice age, 19,000 years ago. To see if Palaeolithic people could have crossed the strait, he made a map of what the western European coastline looked like at that time, when the sea level was 130 metres lower than it is now. His reconstruction of the area reveals an ancient archipelago, with an island at the spot where Plato described Atlantis.
Rising tide
鈥淭here was an island in front of the 鈥楶illars of Hercules鈥�,鈥� says Collina-Girard. Named Spartel, it lay to the west of the Strait of Gibraltar just as Plato described. The Strait was longer and narrower than today, and enclosed a harbour-like inland sea that Plato mentions as the setting for Atlantis.
Just over 11,000 years ago, the slow rise of post-glacial sea levels accelerated briefly to more than two metres per century, according to records from coral reefs. This would have swamped the island, Collina-Girard suggests. 鈥淭he archipelago was engulfed 9000 years before Plato,鈥� he says.
There are a few facts that don鈥檛 match Plato鈥檚 story, however. Plato describes Atlantis as larger than Libya and Asia put together, whereas Collina-Girard鈥檚 island is 14 kilometres long by five kilometres wide. He argues that a mistake was made in converting Egyptian units of length into Greek units as the story was passed down.
Plato also reports that volcanic activity sank Atlantis, but this may have been a case of embellishment, says Collina-Girard. 鈥淭he Greeks were familiar with volcanic eruptions,鈥� he notes. To them, such a fate might have been more dramatic and plausible than a change in sea level.
As for an advanced Atlantean civilisation, Collina-Girard points to Plato鈥檚 own admission that he grafted these details onto the tale to present his ideas about a Utopian society.
Long yarn
The lower sea levels of 11,000 years ago would have exposed many islands, says Bill Ryan of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York.
Ryan has examined evidence for the Noah and Gilgamesh flood stories around the Black Sea. But he cautions that the story of Atlantis would have needed to survive down the generations for 9000 years in Egypt before being recorded by the Greeks. 鈥淭he difficulty here is correct translation of nouns and adjectives passed down by the oral tradition as languages change and evolve,鈥� he says.
Collina-Girard suggests that the archipelago could have provided stepping stones for primitive sailors to cross between Europe and North Africa. 鈥淭he coasts of Spain and Morocco were inhabited at the time, so certainly these islands were too,鈥� he says. A prehistoric culture spread rapidly in Morocco around 20,000 years ago. 鈥淭raditionally this came from the east, but why not from the north?鈥� he asks.
Journal reference: Comptes Rendus de l鈥橝cademie des Sciences (vol 333, p 233)