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Atlantis in Spain

As reported in Bill’s news update today, there’s a lot of attention being given to the discovery of a location ‘resembling’ Atlantis, and reported in the journal Antiquity. Found by Dr Rainer Kuehne of the University of Wuppertal, in this case the “island” of Atlantis is actually a region of the southern Spanish coast destroyed by a flood between 800 BC and 500 BC.

Satellite photos of a salt marsh region known as Marisma de Hinojos near the city of Cadiz show two rectangular structures in the mud and parts of concentric rings that may once have surrounded them.



“Plato wrote of an island of five stades (925m) diameter that was surrounded by several circular structures – concentric rings – some consisting of Earth and the others of water. We have in the photos concentric rings just as Plato described,” Dr Kuehne told BBC News Online.



Dr Kuehne…believes the rectangular features could be the remains of a “silver” temple devoted to the sea god Poseidon and a “golden” temple devoted to Cleito and Poseidon – all described in Plato’s dialogue Critias.

Certainly making waves (pardon the pun) in the academic world (front page of BBC News no less), it will be interesting to see how this one pans out.

Editor
  1. Atlantis in Spain
    The skeptics on the net are already condemning this discovery without additional investigation. The name “Atlantis” is enough to cause them to raise their defensive shields. Real scientists, huh?

    Bill

    1. More on the article
      The BBC report has links to both the author’s details (he is primarily a physicist but it appears that he is a well respected one) and to the website of the publishing body. “Antiquity” is not a fringe publication, but is very much mainstream archeology, with one Cambridge academic writing in the letters column that their editorial scrutiny is usually of the highest order. If they felt able to publish this article then it deserves to be taken seriously by academics.

      On a sidenote, theres an interesting little piece on possible origins of the many Flood legends on their website:

      http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/jeck/index.html

      Thank again Bill and Greg for bringing this to our attention. You both, along with Jameske, do great work.

      To sit in silence when we should protest makes cowards out of men

    2. Circles…
      Hi Bill,

      Only if they reject due to the name alone would they be poor scientists.

      The timeframe of this potential discovery is way off by around 9000 years and is not an Island – unless Plato or Solon or Priests meant the term Island very loosely and were very poor at dating.

      It is likely there would have been communities all along the older coasts of Spain of greater and lesser size, and all throughout the Mediterranean, and all along France and Holland and all throughout the British Isles, and all along the Baltic.

      So far I don’t see anything concentric at all, other than the artificial lines superimposed on the maps. The maps themselves show nothing even remotely resembling concentric circles. Perhaps it is the scale of the map and the limits of the internet and my computer that prevents some kind of patten emerging. So far, I think this is just a rehash of the Gades Cadiz Tartessos stuff.

      1. Possible Atlantis
        Hi Jameske,

        I don’t see the concentric circles either, but we are looking at a poor resolution reproduction of a hi-res satellite image. Further, you are correct that it does not meet all the criteria described by Plato.

        That being said, dismissing the entire discovery because someone mentions Atlantis and it does not meet all the criteria is science at its worst. Archaeology is a soft-science as opposed to the hard-sciences like chemistry and physics. Soft-sciences are forced to make assumptions and make conclusions based on conjecture.

        Evidence in the hard-sciences is gathered through experiment and calculation. The experiments are repeatable; the calculations are verifiable. Archaeology must rely on sparse evidence to draw conclusions, but it can be enhanced and improved by employing hard-science technologies such as satellite imagery and enhancement, carbon-dating, chemical analysis, and so on.

        In the hard-sciences, ignoring data can kill people. In data analysis, if data fails to comply with expectations, the worst possible mistake a scientist can make is toss the data before determining if is real rather than an equipment fault or test error. Often, anomalous data can lead one to an entirely different conclusion than was preconceived.

        Archaeology should be based on similar techniques. This site might well be Tartessos, some previously unknown site, or even Atlantis. The location, the concentric circles, the two rectangular structures, the possible confusion of “island” and “coast”, perhaps a mistranslation in the order of magnitude of the dating, leads one to believe that this may be what Plato described. But mentioning the A-word is a terrible reason to dismiss the discovery.

        An archaeological investigation based on science is the only way to determine what this site really is. It doesn’t matter if it is Atlantis, we’ll learn something along the way.

        Bill

        1. Hi Bill
          Hi Bill,

          Well, I suspect that things aren’t as straight forward as they would seem on that front. One of the guys behind the theory is Georgeos Diaz-Montexano whom I encountered through one of his promoters, Maria Fdez-Valmayor – his theory is Atlantis is exactly where this guy Dr. Kuehne says it is. I had a bit of banter on scientific method and justification on GHMB a bit of a while back regarding the way one obtains Atlantis from Seville – I mentioned the lost pillars of hercules and my theory of their place in Ireland and Scotland – and got a tirade of abuse which varied around fanatic and liar and so forth – even though I had 80000 pillars that pre-date mankind that actually exist and people visit every year as tourists 🙂 There was an outright denial that I even had a point which included historical justifications, did not fill me with any confidence the Georgeos work had any reasonable method at all, or that there was someone with a scientific attitude behind it. So, barring a better set of images that actually show concentric circles I suspect these concentric circles are nothing of the sort otherwise why are they missing even on a low resolution image? Surely the point of releasing an image to a news agency would be to make it easy to see the features involved and thus convince a sceptical public of the simple reality. I reckon there is a great deal of pattern completion going into this.

          Was it Velikovsky that suggested Plato had made a mistake on timeframes? 9000 becoming 900 or something to that effect? Well, I think that isn’t really credible. Since the supposed sources are from some of the wisest and knowledgeable ancients I think it much more likely that the story itself is a mixture or palimpsest of oral histories merged into one story: A 9000 year and a bronze age one of 900 years before Plato. The bronze age one might very well involve this Spanish site, if there are the concentric circles claimed, and may be a source for Plato’s city description. But it cannot be the only site given the issue of the Atlantean kingdoms. The origin of Orichalchum, if a name for bronze, is more likely to be Cornwall, where natural bronze exists and would have been the inspiration for the development of man-made bronze – St. Michael’s Mount itself has elements befitting an Atlantean description, and there are plenty of others and other claims…

          Jameske

          1. Sorry to butt in, but not on
            Sorry to butt in, but not only can I not see the concentric circles, but even the rectangles barely look like rectangles to me. Has anybody managed to find the original satellite images anywhere?

    3. well this wouldnt surprise me
      well this wouldnt surprise me if it comes to be true. i remember reading edgar cayce one time and he mentioned that the present day azores were the only remaining part of atlantis, and that they were the highest point of the civilization. the azores are not that far from spain.

    4. Atlantis
      Dr. Kuhne has made very substantual posts on his theory of the location of Atlantis. His purported discovery was in tandum with minor discoveries of artifacts by a spaniard named Georogeos Diaz Mextano. Of course the nay sayers are coming out of the woodwork. It seems this suject is dominated by the most egotistical bunch of scientists and psydoscientists on planet Earth. Even if Dr. Kuhne or one of the other theorists came up with absolute proof of the existance and location of the sunken city; many of the others would turn a blind eye and dispute it. Instead of working together, these people insist on lambasting each other. There is one expedition in progress. There are vague promises of possibly 3 more (two in Dr. Kuhnes general vicinity) one off the coast of Cuba. The one in progress is due to start soon and explore the area of sea, just south east of Cyprus. Perhaps one of these expeditions will actually find something we can all sink our teeth into.

  2. atlantis
    its imposible for atlantis to have been in ireland,cornwall(england) or any other country of the north because they are too fresh windy and cloudy.plato said that the weather of atlantis was exelent and not too cold in winter and always sunny and hot most of the year.you can only get that type of weather in the south mediteranean countrys and north of africa.and between these countries they have found lots of objects of a lost culture,most of them in spain portugal morroco and libia.the most important of them was found in spain a few years ago that is called “dama of elche” and is a little statue from at least 10.000 years old and they believe it was an atlantis priest,its funny to see that its a kind of a mix between an egypcian and maia priest but with white skin,nothing seen before.nope…

    1. atlantis
      I think atlantis might have been the city before the flood the bible talks about. The bible talks about a world before the universal flood. Who knows were this city was, but spain makes sense. between spain and morroco was the only passage by water to the mediterranean sea. This must have been a very important place in the past. Hercules is also part of atlantis. The bible talks about angels that rebeled against god and had children with the daughters of man. These children were half human and half demon. The bible describes them as tall and strong. Hercules could have been one of these. Then, the flood destroyed atlantis. Only noah and his family survived… and the stories of atlantis were passed on generation to generation up to today.

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