IT SOUNDS a familiar enough yarn鈥攁 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鈥攚hat we now call the Strait of Gibraltar鈥攁nd
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.
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 2 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 5 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.
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
(快猫短视频, 4 October 1997, p 24).
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.
In the earth and planetary sciences issue of the French journal Comptes
Rendus de l鈥橝cademie des Sciences (vol 333, p 233), 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.
