Lost city of Atlantis 'buried in Spanish wetlands'

The lost city of Atlantis is buried under marshland on the South Atlantic coast of Spain, a new documentary has claimed.

Plato wrote Atlantis had been destroyed by a natural disaster in 9,000 BC Photo: HAMID REZA IRANI

The film, Finding Atlantis, screened by the National Geographic Channel in the US and fronted by Professor Richard Freund, from Hartford University in Connecticut.

Professor Freund explained how he led a pursuit to find the lost civilisation, believed by many to be an ancient Greek myth, by using deep-ground radar, digital mapping and satellite imagery.

"I think we found the best candidate for what was the beginnings of civilisation ... one of the largest and most ancient cities at the bottom of a huge marsh."

He contends that Atlantis, described by Plato in 360BC, in Spain's Donaña National Park, north of Cadiz, and was wiped out by a giant tsunami. Plato wrote it had been destroyed by a natural disaster in 9,000BC.

"This is the power of tsunamis," he said. "It is so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and that's pretty much what we're talking about."

 He said that some of Atlantis's inhabitants had fled a tsunami to establish similar "memorial cities" which he had identified in central Spain.

His film company, Associated Producers of Canada, added: "Besides identifying the location of the city, they discovered a stele that may have stood at the entrance to the ancient civilisation. It records the long lost symbol of Atlantis."

The film's claims however were dismissed as having no reliable basis in scientific fact and of misinterpreting partial results by an investigation by a team of distinguished Spanish scientists. Since 2005 they have been working on the site at a huge national park and bird sanctuary near Cadiz.

Juan Villarías-Robles, an anthropologist with the Spanish government's scientific research body, CSIC, says Professor Freund appeared sensationalised their work.

Mr Villarías-Robles was part of a team investigating ancient geomorphology and settlements in Donaña, Europe's largest wetlands.

He said satellite photos of Donaña's massive wetlands, west of Gibraltar, seemed to show buried rectangular buildings and concentric circles of a buried city near a beach.

"Richard Freund was a newcomer to our project and appeared to be involved in his own very controversial issue concerning King Solomon's search for ivory and gold in Tartessos, the well documented settlement in the Donaña area established in the first millennium BC.

"He became involved in what we were doing and provided funding for probes through his connections with National Geographic and Associated Producers.

"He left and the film company told us the documentary would be finished in April or May. But we did not hear from him and are very surprised it has appeared so soon and makes such fanciful claims."

Mr Villarías-Robles, who also dismissed claims of the "memorial cities", said his team planned to offer their own conclusions later this year

The theory that Atlantis is buried in the Spanish wetlands is the latest in a long line of suggested locations. In 2004, US ocean researchers said they were convinced they had found evidence of Atlantis off the coast of Cyprus. Others include various Mediterranean islands, Central America and even Antarctica.


Edward Owen   Reposted From The Telegraph

Atlantis: Myth or History?

Atlantis figures prominently in the novel ARIADNE:A Tale of the Minotaur, and had a part in MEDUSA as well. Plato describes Atlantis in his essay Critias and goes into great detail, describing the political structure, size, geography, and history of the island. Plato didn’t view the island nation as some type of utopia, but rather as a prior rival. The Atlanteans had conquered then world up into Egypt and Libya, but were finally cast out of much of Europe by the Athenian forbearers.  The Atlantis of Plato’s work was located west of the Pillars of Hercules (Gibralter). In other words, in the Atlantic Ocean, the ocean that was named for the fabled land. If Plato’s accounts are to be believed, Atlantis would be more properly termed a continent rather than an island.

Plato placed Atlanta’s zenith as several thousand years prior to his own. Other writers, including some older than  Plato, confirmed the existence of a powerful and advanced Island nation called Atlantis, with varying accounts of its size, dated,  and location. Oddly enough, some of these ancient writers point to existing hieroglyphics in Egypt which confirmed the accuracy of these stories. These hieroglyphics no longer exist or have not been rediscovered. The Egyptians themselves describe as being attacked by powerful “Sea People” and some equate these to the Atlanteans.

The story of an advanced island nation that was destroyed by the gods by either quake or catastrophic flooding is a common one through much of Europe, northern Africa, and the near East. The stories are too widespread and similar to be coincidental. Could there have indeed been an ancient Atlantis? 

Many scholars believe that the tales relate to the civilizations arising from Crete. Prior to the rise of classical Greece, the Minoan civilization (named for Minos) was the predominant power of the Mediterranean, both culturally and politically. These Island kingdoms were far advanced than their contemporaries and included the islands of Crete and Santorini (Thera). To the early inhabitants of the Greek mainland living in mud and thatch huts and fishing in primitive barks, the sight of a Minoan galley sailing into harbor with dozens or oars rhythmically splashing and its huge sail with a bull motif catching the breeze must have seemed magical. The traders and soldiers wearing fine woolens and linens dyed in beautiful patterns and bearing swords and armor of beautifully wrought bronze must have made them seem almost like gods. But somewhere in the 16th or 17th century BC the civilization abruptly vanished. The explanation seems to be the Thera volcanic eruption, a catastrophic volcanic event that devastated Crete and Santorini Island, another proposed location for events. Some researchers believe that Plato was working with mistranslations of ancient Egypt to report size and distance. If “hundreds” was substituted for “thousands”, his accounts would have been archeologically accurate.

Fresco at Santorini

But there are other explanations. Professor Freund from Connecticut has found ruins in Spanish Andalusia  submerged under swampy water which he claims could be the location of Atlantis. Tantalizingly close to the Pillars of Hercules, a program was devoted to his research on the National Geographic channel. Researchers have also pointed to ancient ruins in many other Mediterranean locations as well as Africa, Turkey, Ireland, and even North America. 

Did Atlantis exist? Probably. It was likely a civilization more sophisticated that its neighbors that was destroyed by a natural catastrophe. The take home lesion is the same today as it was in Plato’s day: Don’t get Poseidon mad at you!