Atlantis (Greek: Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, Atlantis Island) is a mythical island state first mentioned and described by the classical Greek philosopher Plato in the dialogues Timaeus and Critias. About what Atlantis is and where it is located, they have been arguing since the first mention of it. This concept represents a variety of ideas: for some, it is an object of archaeological research, waiting to be discovered, a lost source of supernatural knowledge and power, or perhaps nothing more than a philosophical treatise on the danger of civilization at its apogee. Whether Atlantis was real, or just Plato's invention, will probably never be known. Nevertheless, the idea of its existence continues to inspire and intrigue many, echoing the desire to achieve or return to an era of prosperity.
The description of Atlantis by Plato, which is considered the first, is found in the dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written in 360 BC. e. In the Socratic style of dialogue, the author conveys his story through the conversation of the politicians Critias and Hermocrates, as well as the philosophers Socrates and Timaeus. Critias speaks of the island state, first in the Timaeus, briefly describing the huge empire "beyond the Pillars of Hercules" defeated by the Athenians after it tried to conquer Europe, and then Critias proceeds to describe in detail a powerful civilization. The politician claims that his stories about ancient Athens and Atlantis stem from a visit to Egypt by the Athenian legislator Solon in the sixth century BC. e. There he met a priest from Sais, who translated the history of the ancient states, recorded on papyri, into Greek.
The story told by the priests was unknown to Solon. According to the records, the Athenians fought a war against the rulers of Atlantis about nine thousand years ago and won it.
The ancient and powerful kings of the mythical island formed a confederation, with the help of which they ruled it and other islands. Having started the war, the rulers sent troops to Europe and Asia. To counter this attack, the Athenians formed a pan-Greek alliance. At the first difficulty, it collapsed, and the Athenians fought the war alone. The invasion was stopped, and then Egypt and other countries conquered by the rulers of Atlantis were liberated.
Shortly after the victory, even before the Athenians returned home, the island nation suffered catastrophic earthquakes and floods until it disappeared under water. According to legend, all the brave men were consumed in one day and night of horror. That is why the Egyptians never thanked the Athenians.
In addition, Plato describes the history of Atlantis, which shows how the rulers got to the point where they wanted to conquer the whole world. The story was written down by Solon and passed down in his family from generation to generation.
According to the records of Solon, the history of the mythical island began at the beginning of time. It was then that the immortal gods divided the world among themselves and each controlled his part. God Poseidon got Atlantis. Where it is located was not specified, but it was an island, the size of which was larger than Libya and Asia combined. He chose the mortal woman Kleito as his wife and with her founded a dynasty of rulers of the state.
Poseidon built a house on a high hill, in the very center of the island. The building towered over a fertile plain bordered by the sea. To protect his beloved wife, Poseidon, with ease and divine art, surrounded her house with five concentric rings of water and soil. Hot and cold springs spouted from the ground. With the development of the city, its inhabitants have never lacked water.
Cleito bore Poseidon ten sons, five pairs of twins. Atlas, the first son of the first couple, became the lord of his father's vast land. His brothers were appointed archons, each of whom ruled over most of this territory. The most valuable part of the kingdom was the mother's house on top of the mountain and the land around it. Atlas had many sons, and the throne passed to the eldest of them.
For generations, Atlantis has remained peaceful and prosperous. Almost all the needs of the population were provided by the mines, fields and forests of the island. Everything that was not produced was imported. This became possible because a canal was built that passed through all the rings from the ocean to the center of the kingdom, the acropolis, where the royal palace stood near the house of Poseidon and Kleito. Each subsequent ruler tried to surpass his predecessor in creating a larger kingdom. Finally, the splendid metropolis and outer city extended beyond the great outer wall.
Poseidon established the laws of Atlantis, which the rulers had to abide by. The governing body was to meet regularly. It consisted of ten representatives of the first rulers - Atlanta and his brothers - who had absolute power over the life and death of their subjects. The meetings took place in the temple of Poseidon, where the first rulers inscribed the laws on an orichalcum pillar. First of all, in accordance with the requirements of the ancient ceremony, the archons exchanged gifts. Then the sacrifice of the sacred bull took place. The blood was mixed with wine and poured into the fire as an act of purification. The rulers were served wine in golden goblets, poured libations over fire, and swore to pass judgment in accordance with prescribed laws. Everyone drank wine and dedicated his cup to the temple. This was followed by lunch, for which the participants dressed in magnificent blue robes. In them, they resolved issues relating to the kingdom, in accordance with the laws of Poseidon.
As long as the rulers judged and lived according to the laws of Poseidon, the state flourished. When the laws began to be forgotten, trouble arose. The rulers began to marry mortals and behave like unreasonable people. Pride seized them, and they began to fight for more power. Then Zeus saw what happened: the rulers abandoned the laws of the gods and began to act in concert with the people. He gathered all the gods of Olympus and was going to make a decision about Atlantis. This concludes Plato's story.
Whether this was done on purpose or not, no one knows. Just like no one knows, Plato believed in the real existence of the island, or it was pure fiction. Many are convinced that the author, who used many details in his description, believed in him. Others reject this, arguing that it was precisely because the story is pure fiction that Plato was able to come up with as many details as he wanted. Its dating is also questionable. According to Solon, the island existed 9,000 years ago. This corresponds to the early Stone Age. During this period it is difficult to imagine the existence Agriculture, architecture and maritime navigation described in the story. One explanation for this inconsistency is Solon's misinterpretation of the Egyptian character 100 as 1000. If so, then Atlantis existed 900 years before the time of the story. This corresponds to the middle of the Bronze Age, when the tools and equipment necessary to achieve the described level of development already appeared.
Many ancient philosophers regarded Atlantis as a fiction, including (according to Strabo) Aristotle. Nevertheless, there were also philosophers, geographers, and historians who took Plato's story at face value. One of them was Krantor, a student of Plato's student Xenocrates, who was trying to find evidence for the existence of Atlantis. His work, the Timaeus commentary, is lost, but another ancient historian, Proclus, reports that Crantor went to Egypt and actually found columns with the history of the island written in Egyptian hieroglyphs. As in all works of antiquity, it is difficult to evaluate the ambiguous proclamations here, since no evidence other than written evidence has been preserved.
Disputes about the location of Atlantis, until the end of the nineteenth century, were not as violent as after the discovery in 1872 by Heinrich Schliemann of the lost city of Troy. He did this with the help of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, so it became clear that the classical sources, previously considered myths, actually contain some lost truths. Scientist Ignatius Donnelly published Atlantis: An Antediluvian World in 1882, which stimulated interest in the legendary island. The author took the mention of Plato seriously and tried to establish that all known ancient civilizations originated from a high Neolithic culture. Others have proposed more outlandish ideas, attributing supernatural aspects to Atlantis, combining them with stories of other lost continents such as Mu and Lemuria, popular figures in the theosophical movement, the occult, and the growing New Age phenomenon.
Most scholars have dismissed belief in Atlantis as the idea of a "new age" religion, considering the most plausible explanation that the island was a parable of Plato, or based on another known civilization, the Minoan. The fact that the Greek philosopher often told moral stories under the guise of fiction is cited in support of this view. "The Cave" is perhaps the most famous example in which Plato illustrates the nature of reality. Scientists warn that the literal understanding of the myth is its perversion. It is more likely that Plato sent a warning to his fellow tribesmen about the dangers of imperial expansion, political ambitions, praising nobility and the circulation of knowledge not for personal gain.
The truth about the intentions of the Greek philosopher will remain known only to himself, but no one can doubt the symbolic longevity of his story. If Atlantis cannot be a physical place, then it certainly has a place in the general human imagination.
Dozens, and maybe hundreds of assumptions were put forward about where Atlantis is located, until the moment when the name turned into a household name, not related to one specific (perhaps even genuine) location. This is reflected in the fact that many proposed locations are not located in the Atlantic Ocean at all. Most of the proposed locations share some of the features of the mythical island's history (water, cataclysmic end, appropriate time period), but it has never been definitively proven to be the true Atlantis. Where is located (we cannot provide a photo of it, for obvious reasons), the most likely location of its location can be found from the list of popular options. Some of them are scientific or archaeological hypotheses, while others have been created by pseudo-scientific means.
Where is the legendary island, wondered a lot. Most of the proposed sites were located within or near mediterranean sea, or islands such as Sardinia, Crete, Santorini, Cyprus or Malta.
The volcanic eruption on Thera, dated to the seventeenth or fifteenth century BC, caused a massive tsunami, which, according to the hypothesis put forward by experts, destroyed the Minoan civilization on the nearby island of Crete. This catastrophe may have inspired the myth of Atlantis. Proponents of the idea cite the fact that the Egyptians used a lunar calendar based on months, while the Greeks used a solar calendar based on years. It is therefore possible that the time interpreted as nine thousand years actually corresponds to 9000 months, placing the demise of Atlantis within about 7 hundred years.
Volcanic eruptions on the Mediterranean island of Santorini during the Minoan civilization most likely caused the cataclysm that destroyed Atlantis. The main criticism of this hypothesis is that the ancient Greeks were well aware of volcanoes, and if there was an eruption, it would be likely that there was a mention of it. In addition, Pharaoh Amenhotep III ordered his emissary to visit the cities surrounding Crete, and he found them inhabited where everything was allegedly completely destroyed.
Another hypothesis is based on recreating the geography of the Mediterranean at a time when Atlantis still existed. Where she was, Plato points out - outside the Pillars of Hercules. So called the Strait of Gibraltar, which connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean. Eleven thousand years ago, the sea level was 130 m lower, and there were a number of islands in the strait. One of them, Spartel, is Atlantis, where she sank, although there are a number of inconsistencies with Plato's version.
In 2002, the Italian journalist Sergio Frau published the book "The Pillars of Hercules" in which he stated that before Eratosthenes, all ancient Greek writers placed them in the Sicilian Strait, and the campaign of Alexander the Great to the east obliged Eratosthenes in his description of the world to move the pillars to Gibraltar. According to his thesis, Atlantis was there, where Sardinia is today. Indeed, the tsunami produced catastrophic destruction on the island, destroying the mysterious Nuragic civilization. A few survivors moved to the neighboring Italic peninsula, establishing the Etruscan culture that became the basis for later Roman culture, while other survivors were part of the "Sea Peoples" that attacked Egypt.
Outside the Mediterranean Sea, Antarctica was placed in all corners of the world - from Ireland and Sweden to Indonesia and Japan. Many of these theories rely on weak evidence. Two of the most talked about areas are Antarctica.
Everyone seems to know where the Bermuda Triangle is located. Often associated with mysterious events, the Caribbean drew attention to underwater structures called the Bimini Road, discovered by pilots in the 1960s. The Bimini Road consists of large stones arranged in two parallel rows in shallow water for several kilometers from the Bimini Islands. Many expeditions went there to try to prove or disprove the technogenic origin of these formations and somehow connect them with Atlantis. Most scientists, in particular geologists, have found the evidence inconclusive or have concluded that it is a natural phenomenon. Others, however, strongly argue that rock too symmetrical and deliberate to be a simple creation of nature. In any case, no other remains have been found to confirm that the road leads to the sunken island.
The theory that Antarctica is the place where Atlantis (photo) once sank was especially popular in the 1960s and 1970s. It was fueled by Lovecraft's The Ridges of Madness, as well as the Piri Reis map, which allegedly shows Antarctica as it would be without ice, as far as knowledge of that period allowed. Charles Berlitz, Erich von Daniken, and Peter Colosimo were among the popular authors who made this suggestion. However, the theory of continental drift contradicts this idea, because during the lifetime of Plato, Antarctica was in its current location and retained its inhospitable climate. Nevertheless, the romance of unexplored regions gives rise to many ideas like Atlantis to this day.
The exploration and discovery of long lost cities and civilizations is a topic that in the popular imagination is not bound by space or time. Atlantis became that mythical island, the name of which turned out to be significant for all other lost cities. Mentions of it are present in all literary genres, from works of the Renaissance to modern science fiction, fantasy, archaeological and scientific works, New Age books. Television and cinema have also taken advantage of the charm of Atlantis. The myth turned out to be so enticing that one of the largest hotels in the Bahamas, the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort, has become a lost city-themed resort.
There are those in the New Age movement who believe that Atlantis, where there was a technologically advanced civilization, self-destructed due to rapid progress, or that extraterrestrial technology was used there. Similar ideas have been attributed to other ancient cultures, as many New Age believers seek to combine various mysterious phenomena into one idea. After all, the ongoing discussions about what Atlantis is, where this sunken island is located, is evidence of humanity's endless curiosity and desire not to be content with the current vision of the world, but to continue to search for secrets and discover the lost worlds of our past.
It is not necessary to assume that only seas and lakes disappear and appear. In the same way, islands appear and disappear. The best example of this is history of Atlantis, an island that was larger than Libya and Asia combined.
History of the island of Atlantis
Of course, in the time of Plato, (more:) they represented the size of both Libya and Asia in a different way, but still Atlantis island was not small.
The ancient Greek scholar Plato was the first to talk about Atlantis The Atlantis hypothesis begins with Plato's Timaeus and Critias. In them, the great ancient Greek scientist talks about a once-existing large island in the Atlantic Ocean, which was swallowed up by the abyss of water.
But what does Plato say? ancient legend or your own fantasy about a mythical island? Or maybe he reports the real facts of the existence of an ancient civilization, information about which came to him by chance? So what is this story of Plato - legend, hypothesis, reality? Since the first half of the 4th century BC, attempts have been made to answer this question. But there is still no definitive answer.
Legends of Atlantis inspired many writers and poets.
And this list could be continued almost endlessly, a list of beautiful fictions generated by an ancient legend.
There are about Atlantis literature and others. No less fantastic in content, but claiming the right to be called scientific literature.
One of these books was rather self-confidently called "The History of Atlantis".
And the author of the other was Schliemann - the grandson of a man who discovered the stones of the legendary Troy from under the layers of many centuries. Shamelessly speculating on the name of his famous grandfather, he titled the book rather pretentiously: "How I found the lost Atlantis." Both of these books are from the current of the so-called "occult literature", which shrouded the problem of Atlantis in such a thick mystical fog that for other scientists it still obscures scientific significance this problem.
However, real science is interested in the problem of Atlantis, because it has countless questions waiting to be solved:
It seems that these and many other questions do not give the right to an unconditional denial of the existence of Atlantis, although they do not give the right to assert that Atlantis existed. Therefore, again and again, researchers turn to the primary source of information about the sunken mainland, to two dialogues of Plato.
One of the first in modern times made an attempt to investigate the history of Atlantis by a remarkable Russian poet.
The history of Atlantis was described in his writings by the Russian poet Valery Bryusov This was amazing person, poet, writer, mathematician, great connoisseur of ancient history, connoisseur of research in various fields of natural sciences. The problem of Atlantis interested him literally from childhood. In his youth he worked on poem "Atlantis".
In the years of creative maturity, he wrote a cycle of poems dedicated to the same problem. He published a large scientific work "Teachers of teachers". The poet-scientist called the ancient inhabitants of Atlantis, in which
all knowledge originated
and in which
everything that is possible, comprehended the first children of the Earth.
(lines from the "Atlantic" cycle of Bryusov's poems are in quotation marks). He made an attempt to trace their influence on the most ancient peoples of the world, and first of all on the Cretan-Mycenaean culture.
After analyzing the stages of development of ancient cultures, including the Egyptian and Aegean, Bryusov comes to the conclusion that their initial stages are strange and incomprehensible.
Egyptian culture begins mysteriously: the most ancient pyramids are also the highest. The origins of their arts are unclear, they suddenly appear before the astonished world, like Pallas Athena, who arose in dress and weapons from the head of Zeus.
Bryusov also sees something similar in the Cretan-Mycenaean culture. The legendary labyrinth appears as if suddenly. Before him, only the remains of people who had not yet left the Stone Age could be found on the island. Shouldn't this leap be explained by someone's influence that spread to the culture of peoples living on different continents? Does not all this testify to the existence in ancient times of a people who became a universal teacher,
teacher of teachers?
It was after these arguments that the poet-scientist moved on to that culture that could claim the honor of being called
teachers teachers.
Tradition told him desired name- Atlantis. And in search of an answer, Bryusov turns to Plato's Dialogues.
Based on contemporary data about Atlantis, analyzing the messages of Plato, Bryusov comes to the conclusion (lines from the work "Teachers of Teachers"):
If we assume that the description of Plato is a fiction, it will be necessary to recognize Plato as a superhuman genius who was able to predict the development of science for millennia ahead, to foresee that someday learned historians will discover the world of Aegeia and establish its relations with Egypt, that Columbus will discover America, and archaeologists will restore the civilization of the ancient Mayans, etc.
Needless to say, with all our respect for the genius of the great Greek philosopher, such insight seems impossible to us and that we consider another explanation simpler and more plausible: Plato had at his disposal materials (Egyptian) that came from ancient times.
The method adopted by Valery Bryusov is simple and logical: he read Plato's dialogues and compared them with the objective level of knowledge of the ancient philosopher as a man of his time. Based on this, the poet comes to the conclusion that Plato could have obtained most of the information contained in the Dialogues only from people who knew about the existence of Atlantis. Well, for example,
Plato, like all Greeks, knew nothing of the Aegean kingdoms, which preceded the Hellenic on Greek soil. Therefore, Plato could not have had any reason to imagine a strong state in Attica many centuries before the beginning of Greek history.
Plato writes that Atlantis was located on the islands beyond the Pillars of Hercules (i.e., beyond the Strait of Gibraltar) and from it it was possible, sailing further to the west, to get to another "opposite" mainland. But the ancient Greeks knew nothing about America! Does this not indicate that these data also reached Plato from some competent source?
Having established in such a way that on the very first pages of his dialogues Plato makes two brilliant discoveries in different fields of science - in history and geography, Bryusov is convinced that Plato turns out to be surprisingly close to the truth even in seemingly insignificant details. This applies, say, to the unknown metal orichalcum. After there was no place for him in the periodic table, his very existence became doubtful.
Bryusov believed, however, that this unknown metal could be aluminum. True, to obtain it, electricity which the Atlanteans did not know about. Or maybe they knew another method for obtaining aluminum?
To this we can add a historical fact reported by the ancient historian Pliny: in the first years of our era, an unknown master brought a metal bowl that shone like silver, but extremely light, to the Roman emperor Tiberius. The master said that he received this metal from clay earth. Tiberius, fearing that the new metal would devalue his reserves of gold and silver, ordered the master's head to be cut off. It is quite possible that we are also talking about aluminum.
Ancient historian Pliny Scientists believe that orichalcum could be a natural alloy of copper and zinc, according to modern brass. Occasionally there are ores containing both of these metals at once. Such an alloy also corresponds to the color of orichalcum - "red, having the color of fire." In Plato's "Dialogues" we learn about the flora and fauna of Atlantis. They are amazingly realistic.
Apparently, the most fantastic in the fauna of Atlantis can be considered elephants and horses. According to Plato, the Atlanteans had horses and elephants in their colonies in Africa and America. But this does not contradict the truth at all: both horses and elephants in America died out relatively recently.
In "Teachers of Teachers" Bryusov, getting acquainted with the description of the capital of Atlantis - the City of the Golden Gate, believes that he
also does not go beyond the scope of the possible ... The statue of Poseidon, described by Plato, was huge, but even it approaches in size the statue of Olympian Zeus, sculpted by Phidias ... And in general, in the whole description there is not a single feature that would reveal deliberate fiction ...
Bruce writes. Does Plato's description of Atlantis correspond to new scientific data? After Bryusov, scientists returned to this issue more than once, who found new amazing coincidences. Well, for example, the two springs that feed Plato's Atlantis - hot and cold water - could really be on an island associated with the active activity of volcanoes. Scientists also found a mysterious, maybe even for Plato himself, a tree,
which gives drink, and food, and ointment.
It could be a coconut palm, which really gives both "drink" - coconut milk, and "food" - the pulp of a nut, and "ointment" - semi-liquid coconut oil. Even Plato's remark that the walls and towers of the City of the Golden Gates were built of stone of three colors: white, black, red - found interesting confirmation: it is from such stones that cities are built on Azores; they are sometimes considered the mountain peaks of the sunken Atlantis.
Research carried out in last years, confirmed the date of the tragic catastrophe indicated by Plato, when the remains of a giant transatlantic island that once connected two great continents sank to the bottom of the ocean. What does not confirm such an ancient date? Changing currents?
Ocean currents to one degree or another determine the climate of the continents. Perhaps their appearance and disappearance is the rocket, at the signal of which the glaciers begin their movement? As the glaciers melt, they expose the earth's surface, leaving giant blocks of boulders, as if abandoned in a panic of retreat. Well, why do sea currents arise and disappear?
Atlantologist E. F. Hagemeister suggested that the end of the last ice age was caused by the outburst of the warm Gulf Stream into the cold Arctic Ocean. And it happened, she believes, this is because
Atlantis sank to the bottom of the ocean and opened the way for the Gulf Stream.
Academician fully agreed with this assumption. V. A. Obruchev. He wrote:
The sinking of Atlantis again cleared the way for the Gulf Stream, and in the north, its warm waters gradually stopped glaciation around the North Pole.
The remains of living beings found in sediments at the bottom of the ocean can tell a lot. Here, for example, is what foraminifers testify to. The coils of foraminiferal shell spirals are twisted to the left in heat-loving forms, and to the right in cold-loving forms. Studying the soil columns taken in the North Atlantic, scientists came to the conclusion that about 10-13 thousand years ago, the waters of the North Atlantic warmed sharply. This is also associated with the breakthrough of the warm waters of the Gulf Stream.
But when did it happen? Russian hydrogeologist , examining soil samples from the bottom of the polar seas, found that for the first time the hot flow of the Gulf Stream penetrated into the northern seas about 12 thousand years ago. This was shown by radioisotope analysis.
Russian hydrogeologist M. M. Ermolaev - conducted a radioisotope analysis of soil from the bottom of the polar seas Similar results were obtained by American scientists. They studied volcanic ash found in sediments at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. And it turned out that he appeared here about 12 thousand years ago. This once again confirmed the legendary date of the death of Atlantis: the island sank to the bottom of the ocean under the thunderous fireworks of volcanic eruptions.
Most of Bryusov's work is devoted to the connections between the most ancient civilizations of our planet. Special attention gives the poet-scientist Cretan-Mycenaean culture. His book was published when the excavations in Crete had not yet been completed. This gave her an additional interest, which the author could not ignore. Well, today, does science confirm the existence of such connections?
It is the question our oldest civilizations A. A. Gorbovsky's book "Mysteries of Ancient History" is dedicated to the planet. Some of Gorbovsky's conclusions may be questioned, but the facts he cites are, as a rule, accurate. And they most often relate to the most ancient ideas about the structure. Well, for example:
Our Earth is only one of thousands of millions of inhabited worlds similar to it, located in the Universe.
The idea that creatures like people live on distant stars was also common in ancient Peru.
"The earth was in front of me like a round ball"
This quote is from the Leiden Demotic Papyrus. The Aztecs depicted the planets as small circles or balls played by the gods.
They built a high tower... But their languages suddenly mixed up, they could no longer understand each other and went to live in different parts of the Earth.
And more, and more... You can often read that the legends about the "global flood" are common only among coastal peoples and that these are memories of previous floods. In reality there is no such ancient people who would not have this tradition.
Everyone knows the story of the Bible. Many people know that it is borrowed from the ancient Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh. But the English ethnologist reports that of the 130 Indian tribes of North, Central and South America, there is not one that does not have a myth of a great catastrophe.
English ethnologist J. Fraser In the fifty post-Bryusov years, this list has lengthened almost to infinity.
It would be fair to consider that the work of Valery Bryusov "Teachers of Teachers" summed up the first period of studying the problem of Atlantis, turning the legend set forth in Plato's dialogues into a scientific document. Approximately this is how the author himself assessed the result of his work: “From now on, the “problem of Atlantis” goes out of the realm of fortune-telling, becomes a certain historical hypothesis and must share the usual fate of scientific hypotheses, depending on whether the newly discovered facts will refute or confirm it.”
And yet it will not be entirely fair if, having paid tribute to the merits of Bryusov's work, we keep silent about its fatal flaw: carried away by a charming legend, he recklessly considered the culture of the Atlanteans to be super-high.
Over the course of millennia, their power increased and their culture developed, reaching a height that, perhaps, was not reached after that by any of the earthly peoples.
This assessment, obviously, was also facilitated by the influence of the books of the occultists, who believed that the Atlanteans knew aeronautics, rocketry, etc.
Scientists in particular N. F. Zhirov, have carefully analyzed the question of how high culture Plato describes.
What metals is Plato talking about? About gold, silver, lead, iron, about the mysterious orichalcum? But gold and silver are found in native form, and their abundance in the capital of the Atlanteans does not indicate that these metals were widely used in the life of the city. Iron, which is mentioned only once in Plato, was probably meteoric.
Indeed, in the "Dialogues" there is no mention of iron or bronze weapons or tools. Metals were used only for facing giant stone walls or for decorating temples. All this cannot be considered evidence of the onset of the copper or, even more so, the bronze age. Both weapons and tools, say, for cultivating the land, and household products were made only of stone and bone, which is quite consistent with the Stone Age.
Plato does not mention lime, cement, gypsum as a binder either. building materials. To fasten the blocks of walls, obviously, metals were used, primarily copper. This also corresponds to the first period of the transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age. There is nothing contradictory in Plato's story about the gigantic size of the temples. It is at this stage of development that many peoples of the world gravitate towards gigantism in architecture.
A number of authors associate the Atlantean culture with megalithic structures scattered almost along all sea coasts of the globe. Especially a lot of them in the west of Europe. Megaliths are structures made of unhewn or semi-hewn giant blocks of stone, laid in rows or circles. They were built so long ago that even the legends about it are silent. But they are known in Europe, South America, Palestine, Ethiopia, India, Japan, Madagascar. There is only one doubt - these structures should have been built by people of the Stone Age.
Megaliths - structures made of unhewn or semi-hewn giant blocks of stone - scientists associate them with the culture of the Atlanteans The high culture of agriculture, by no means, does not contradict the general assessment of the level of development of the people of Atlantis, given by N. F. Zhirov. By the way, agriculture, apparently, arose 30-20 thousand years ago, which coincides with the date of the heyday and death of Atlantis.
The Russian scientist, Doctor of Chemical Sciences N. F. Zhirov, can rightly be considered the greatest atlantologist. He appeared with articles in newspapers and magazines, on radio and television, and published several books. The last of these, Atlantis, came out in 1964, a few years before his death. According to N. F. Zhirov, the question of the existence of Atlantis should be solved by science. In particular, oceanology has the final say here. It is she who must answer whether there could be and whether there was a sufficiently large island in the Atlantic Ocean, opposite Gibraltar, several millennia ago.
Yes, N. F. Zhirov answers these questions. Atlantis could exist. The data of modern science indicate that in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean there is an underwater North Atlantic Ridge, which could exist subaerially (above the surface of the water) at times close to those indicated by Plato in his legend. It is possible that some of these areas of land existed until historical time. So, maybe it makes sense to look for traces of Atlantis on these islands?
The islands of the Atlantic Ocean have long attracted the attention of atlantologists. Unfortunately, there was nothing like a large complex expedition that would conduct thorough archaeological excavations, record everyday rituals and legends, study flora and fauna in detail, etc., on these islands. Although, according to many assumptions, it is here that the key to Atlantis should be sought.
Curious legends are associated with some of the Azores.
Not a little interesting conceals the bottom of the ocean.
Unfortunately, so far, scientists have not been able to raise any statues of Poseidon, or even a fragment of his trident, from the site of the death of Atlantis. However, there have been findings...
N. F. Zhirov in his book mentions the custom that existed among some Caucasian peoples to sacrifice food to the spirits on the tops of the mountains. Maybe the found "sea biscuits" - plates for similar sacrifices made by the inhabitants of Atlantis?
These are the few pieces of evidence for the existence of Atlantis. They could have been cited incomparably more.
Well, in general, what can be said about the problem of Atlantis from the level of modern knowledge?
for all these places
Notes N. F. Zhirov, -
we do not exclude the possibility of the existence of islands even in historical time; some of them may have been inhabited.
there is every reason to assume the possibility of subsidence of individual islands and banks of the North Atlantic in our historical time, which had the character of a cataclysm.
By this Zhirov explains the impossibility of carrying out such an identification in a number of cases.
More than half a century has passed since Bryusov wrote the work “Teachers of Teachers”. Unfortunately, even today the general attitude of scientists to this issue has not essentially changed. Most still treat Plato's story as unsubstantiated fiction. Evidence of this is that "such fabulous tales, as you know, are full of narrations of ancient writers." New evidence for this past years not found. And the quotation given here refers to the very beginning of our century. Often there is an impression that the "opponents of Atlantis" did not read the works of Bryusov. However, this is also possible.
Bryusov's work was published only once, in 1917, in a magazine that was published in an insignificant circulation. Time did not contribute to his fame either: the world then shook World War. Russia stood on the eve of the revolution. The liveliest problems of modern life were incomparably more important than the history of the mainland that drowned thousands of years ago. And very soon the article "Teachers of teachers" became a bibliographic rarity. And she did not have the opportunity to convince readers that a particular "fabulous tale" contains too much information that Plato could not have, and this requires a more condescending attitude towards him. It remained the property of only specialist atlantologists who came to the same conclusion in their own ways.
But we must not forget another. The world has entered the era of the scientific and technological revolution, capturing ever new areas of knowledge. The ocean succumbed to this irrepressible pressure of science. Researchers have already reached its limiting depths in bathyscaphes. And without descending into the abyss of the ocean, scientists can already study its bottom in order to find the ruins of giant temples, the remains of city walls and surrounding canals. There is almost no doubt that these search for Atlantis will be undertaken in the near future.
What machines, devices, devices will they work with? Of course, clumsy, clumsy bathyscaphes are not very suitable for working on the ocean floor. But, perhaps, bathyscaphes will not be needed for this. Perhaps the search for Atlantis will be carried out by atlantologists-scuba divers.
Atlantologists scuba divers?! At a depth of more than 3 thousand meters?! Are such depths available for scuba diving? Or will they be available?
It is difficult to answer this question. After all, scuba gear as a means of underwater work appeared quite recently, in 1943, J.I. Cousteau believed at first that this invention of his would help a person master a maximum of two to three tens of meters of water. But…
Here are the record dives for the post-war 30 years. It must be said that in our time, today's record becomes a public value tomorrow. This can be confirmed, say, by an increase in the speeds of cars and airplanes. Probably, everyone remembers the story of overcoming the sound speed by aircraft. Was it a long time ago?! And today, supersonic passenger aircraft have become an everyday reality in many countries of the world. The same thing happens with the records of the diving depth achieved by scuba divers.
So, the first tens of meters are available for an amateur scuba diver who has put on an aqualung for the first time. But it is necessary not to cross the permissible physiological threshold. This threshold is breathing with highly compressed air. In this case, the blood is supersaturated with oxygen and nitrogen dissolved in it. Oversaturation with oxygen causes convulsions, and with nitrogen - intoxication and leads to decompression sickness. At the same time, nitrogen dissolved in the blood begins to be released directly in the veins and arteries. And people often die.
To prevent this from happening, divers rise from the depth extremely slowly, and then the blood has time to free itself from excess nitrogen. At the same time, the ascent from a depth of a hundred meters is delayed for 5-6 hours.
The witty idea of a Swiss scientist helped to defeat decompression sickness Hansa Keller a. The essence of this idea is to use various gas mixtures when lifting from great depths. Once, while testing his idea, he rose from a depth of 222 meters in just 53 minutes! But the record for diving in a diving suit was only 180 meters, and the ascent from this depth took 12 hours.
Keller descended to a depth of 400 meters. It was in 1960-1962.
In 1970, English scuba divers descended to a depth of 457 meters. But at the end of the same year, the French moved it beyond the half-kilometer mark, they reached 520 meters! And in 1972, an even greater depth was taken - 565 meters.
The next step is striking in courage and magnitude. Four American volunteers descended to a depth of 1520 meters, spent 4 hours at the indicated depth and rose to the surface without any harm to themselves. True, the last experiment was carried out in a pressure chamber, but the essence of the matter does not change from this.
Depth reached!
It remains to double, triple it, and the depths of Atlantis will be in the power of scuba divers. They will be able to search for sunken land and, without returning to the surface of the ocean, relax in special underwater houses. Today underwater houses different designs tested in the USA, Holland and Italy, Japan and Cuba.
G. ALEKSANDROVSKY.
In the dialogues of the ancient thinker Plato, there is still a grain that speaks of the reality of the legendary island. The legend of Atlantis has been alive for more than two thousand years. But only a few decades ago, people, desperate to find traces of a once prosperous state, ranked Plato's writings as utopias. And here is a sensational twist: in our days, some historians and archaeologists have recognized that Plato's dialogues do contain a grain of real facts. We present three newest hypotheses suggesting where and when Atlantis died.
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
In 421 BC. e. the Greek philosopher Plato in his two writings - Timaeus and Critias - outlined the history and the sad end island nation Atlantis. The story in the form of a dialogue is conducted by Plato's great-grandfather, Critias: he conveys the content of the conversation with his grandfather, who heard the story about Atlantis from a contemporary, Solon, an Athenian legislator and poet, who, in turn, learned about Atlantis from an Egyptian priest. And Plato in his texts repeatedly emphasizes that this is not a myth, but a true story of historical events.
Atlantis, according to Plato, is a huge island that lay in the ocean behind the Pillars of Hercules, that is, behind Gibraltar. In the center of the island there was a hill, on which temples and the royal palace stood. The Acropolis - the upper city - was protected by two rows of earth embankments and three water ring channels. The outer ring was connected to the sea by a 500-meter canal through which ships entered the inner port. The life of Atlantis appears to be full of prosperity.
The temple of the main deity of the islanders - Poseidon, the ruler of the seas, was, says Plato, lined with gold, silver and orchilac (a recently unraveled word means an alloy of copper and zinc). Another temple dedicated to Poseidon and his wife Kleito, the progenitor of all Atlanteans, is surrounded by a golden wall. There were also a golden statue of Poseidon and golden statues of Nereids - numerous daughters of the sea deity. The Atlanteans had bronze weapons and thousands of war chariots. The bowels gave copper and silver.
The people had fun with horse races, thermal baths were at their service: two sources beat on the island - cold and hot water. Ships hurried to the harbor of Atlantis with ceramic dishes, spices, and rare ores. To supply the port with fresh water, the river bed was turned.
The island belonged to a powerful union of kings. And then the moment came when he decided to subjugate other countries, including Greece. However, Athens, having shown valor and strength in the war, won. But, as Plato says, the Olympic gods, dissatisfied with the warring peoples, decided to punish them for their greed and violence. A monstrous earthquake and flood "in one terrible day and one night" destroyed the Athenian army and all of Atlantis. The ocean waters swallowed the island.
47 years after the death of Plato, an Athenian citizen, Krantor, went to Egypt to see if the origins of the information used by the philosopher were really there. And he found, according to him, in the temple of Neith hieroglyphs with a text about the events described.
The search for Atlantis began already at the very beginning of a new era - in the 50th year from the birth of Christ. Almost two thousand years since that time, there have been many hypotheses about the location of Atlantis. Many were attracted by the wealth mentioned by Plato. Just think: take possession of the golden walls and statues! Most of the interpreters of Critias and Timaeus pointed to the present-day islands of the Atlantic Ocean. But there were other guidelines as well. Among the 50 points on Earth identified by enthusiasts for the search for Atlantis, there are also quite fantastic, for example, Brazil or Siberia, the existence of which ancient philosopher and did not suspect.
A new surge of interest in the search for the legendary island arose after the First World War. Underwater technology, improved in wartime, prompted adventurous businessmen to organize companies in several countries to search for the mysterious Atlantis. For example, in the French newspaper "Figaro" there was such a note: "A society for the study and exploitation of Atlantis has been created in Paris." Companies, of course, burst one after another, but the Russian writer Alexander Belyaev found in a newspaper publication the plot for his fantastic story "The Last Man from Atlantis."
More than 50 thousand publications are devoted to the problem of the sunken island. Movies and television have also contributed to this story. Over 20 expeditions explored the places where, according to their organizers, the people of Atlantis once prospered. But they all returned empty-handed.
To two main questions - where? and when? - already in our century, the objections of archaeologists were added, who considered the story of the abundance of gold and silver on the island a fantasy. They attributed to the inventions of Plato the network of canals - circular and leading to the sea, the inner port and others. hydraulic structures: beyond our strength, de, there were such large-scale cases in those days. Researchers of the philosophical and literary heritage of Plato considered that, telling about the prosperous Atlantis, the ancient idealist thinker called on his contemporaries to build an exemplary state without dictatorship and tyranny. And in this sense, Plato is called the creator of the utopian genre. (In fact, in some of his writings, Plato called for the construction of an ideal state based on goodness and justice. He traveled from Athens to Syracuse three times, the last time as a very old man, hoping in vain to inspire humane ideas in the tyrants there.) As for the time of the death of the island in deep ocean, Plato named a date that contradicts all the data of modern science: according to his information, the catastrophe occurred 11,500 years ago to the present day, or 9,000 years, counting up to the time of Plato himself. 12-10 thousand years ago, humanity was just emerging from the Paleolithic, the ancient Stone Age, and it is difficult to imagine that a people lived somewhere, in its development ahead of the human race by many thousands of years. The primary source of such an error could be incorrect determinations of the age of the Egyptian state, carried out in ancient times. For example, Herodotus counted Egypt 11340 years.
"The Russians have found Atlantis!" - with such sensational full houses, many newspapers of Western Europe accompanied in 1979 photographs of the seabed. In the photographs, vertical ridges were clearly visible under a layer of sand, reminiscent of the walls of a destroyed city. The impression of ancient city ruins was enhanced by the fact that other ridges ran along the bottom at right angles to the first ones.
Underwater images were taken by the research vessel of the Moscow University "Akademik Petrovsky". Actions unfolded where Plato pointed out - "behind the Pillars of Hercules." Out in the Atlantic Ocean, the ship stopped over the shallows to test its underwater equipment. Pure chance helped to choose a parking spot just above the underwater volcano Ampère. It was possible to establish that the Amper volcano once protruded from the water and was an island.
In 1982, the Soviet ship "Rift" lowered the underwater vehicle "Argus" into the ocean. "The panorama of the ruins of the city opened up to us, since the walls very similarly imitated the remains of rooms, streets, squares," commander of the "Argus" V. Bulyga reported to the Institute of Oceanology of the Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately, the next Vityaz expedition, which took place in the summer of 1984, did not confirm such encouraging impressions of the aquanaut. From one of the walls they lifted up two stones quite correct form, but their analysis showed that this is not a creation human hands, but a volcanic rock. The commander of the Argus crew, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences A. Gorodnitsky, writes: "Most likely, the stone is a frozen lava that once poured out through the cracks of the volcano." Another seamount, Josephine, was also surveyed, also an ancient volcano, and in the past an island.
A. Gorodnitsky proposed his own model of a grandiose geological catastrophe of the distant past. It arose due to a sharp shift in the northern direction of the African tectonic plate. Its collision with the European plate caused the eruption of the Santorin volcano in the east, and the sinking of the mentioned volcanic islands into the ocean in the west. This hypothesis does not contradict the geological and geophysical data of modern science. However, once again, Atlantis turned out to be not a fascinating hypothesis, but only a myth: scientists did not find any traces of the remains of the material culture of the Atlanteans.
Atlantis has not disappeared, it exists and lies in the depths of the sea. A lot has been said about Atlantis, thousands of research materials have been written. Historians, archaeologists, searchers have proposed fifty versions of a possible location around the world (in Scandinavia, in the Baltic Sea, in Greenland, North and South America, in Africa, the Black, Aegean, Caspian Sea, in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, etc. ), but the exact location is not named. Why such confusion?
Starting to figure it out, you discover one pattern that all sentences initially have a binding from some kind of similarity, a find of antiquity, a single description under which (which) subsequently “materials were adjusted”. As a result, nothing worked. There is a similarity, but Atlantis cannot be found.
"We'll go the other way"!
Let's look for Atlantis in a different way, which in this case (judging by the well-known proposals), has not been used by anyone before. - First, let's take the method of elimination, where Atlantis could not be. As the circle narrows, we will use all the “benchmarks” that were proposed by the ancient Greek scientist, the sage (428-347 BC) Plato (Aristocles) in his writings - Timaeus and Critias. In these documents, the only and rather detailed description of Atlantis, its inhabitants and historical events related to the life of the legendary island is given.
“Aristotle taught me to satisfy my mind only with what reasoning convinces me, and not just the authority of teachers. Such is the power of truth: you try to refute it, but your very attacks elevate it and give it great value. (XVI century, Italian philosopher, physicist, mathematician Galileo Galilei).
So, let's start "cutting the ends." - Atlantis could not be in any far corner of the world and even in the Atlantic Ocean. The war (according to the history of the story) between Athens and Atlantis - could not be anywhere except in the Mediterranean Sea on this "patch of civilization" due to the limitations of human development. The world is great - but developed is narrow. Athens simply would not have been able to reach the limits of Atlantis with her army and navy. Water and vast distances were an insurmountable obstacle. - "This barrier was insurmountable for people, because ships and shipping did not exist then." (Plato, Critias).
In ancient Greek mythology, which arose many thousands of years later than the time of the death of Atlantis, the only (!) hero Hercules (according to Homer - XII century BC) performed a feat, traveling to the farthest western point of the world - to the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. “When the Atlas Mountains arose on the path of Hercules, he did not climb them, but made his way through, thus paving the Strait of Gibraltar and connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic. This point served as a border for navigators in the ancient era, therefore, in a figurative sense, “Hercules (Hercules) pillars”, this is the end of the world, the limit of the world and the expression to reach the pillars of Hercules” means “to reach the limit”. What western limit Hercules reached (“end of the world”) was unattainable by other mortals.
Thus, Atlantis was closer to the center of the ancient civilization - it was in the Mediterranean Sea. But where exactly?
The Pillars of Hercules (according to Plato's story, behind which lay the island of Atlantis) in the Mediterranean Sea, there were seven pairs! (Gibraltar, Dardanelles, Bosporus, Kerch Strait, Nile Mouth, etc.). The pillars were located at the entrances to the straits and had the same names - Hercules (later the Latin name - Hercules). The pillars served as landmarks and beacons for ancient sailors.
“First of all, let us briefly recall that, according to legend, nine thousand years ago there was a war between those peoples who lived on the other side of the Pillars of Hercules, and all those who lived on this side: we will have to tell about this war ... How we have already mentioned that it was once an island that exceeded the size of Libya and Asia (not their entire geographical territory, but rather areas inhabited in antiquity), but now it has failed due to earthquakes and has turned into impenetrable silt, blocking the way for sailors who would try to sail from us to the open sea, and making navigation unthinkable. (Plato, Critias).
This information about Atlantis, dating back to the 6th century BC. came from the Egyptian priest Timaeus from the city of Sais (on the coast of Africa, the western Nile Delta, the current name of the village of Sa el-Hagar). When Timaeus said that the barrier from the remains of the sunken Atlantis blocked the way - "from us to the open sea", this clearly testified to the presence of Atlantis on the route from the Egyptian mouth of the Nile to the wide waters of the Mediterranean Sea. In ancient times, the Pillars of Hercules also called the entrance to the main (western) mouth of the Nile, nicknamed the mouth of Heracles, that is, Hercules, where the city of Heracleum and the temple in honor of Hercules were located.
Over time, the silt and floating material from the sunken Atlantis was blown across the sea, and the island itself went even deeper into the abyss. “Since in nine thousand years there have been many great floods (namely, so many years have passed from those times to this day), the earth did not accumulate in the form of any significant shallow, as in other places, but was washed away by waves and then disappeared into the abyss. (Plato, Critias).
We exclude impossible locations further.
Atlantis could not be located in the Mediterranean Sea north of the island of Crete. Today in that area there are countless small islands scattered over the water area, which does not correspond to the story of flooding (!) and by this very fact excludes the entire territory. Moreover, there would not have been enough space for Atlantis (according to the description of its size) in the sea north of Crete.
Expedition of a famous explorer sea depths French scientist-oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau in the area north of Crete on the periphery of the islands of Thira (Strongel), Fera discovered the remains of an ancient sunken city, but from the above it follows that it belongs to another civilization rather than Atlantis.
In the archipelago of the islands of the Aegean Sea, earthquakes are known, disasters associated with volcanic activity, which led to local subsidence of the earth, and according to new evidence, they occur in our time (for example, a sunken medieval fortress in the Aegean Sea near the city of Marmaris in a bay on the coast of Turkey).
Narrowing the search circle, we come to the conclusion that Atlantis could only be in one place opposite the mouth of the Nile - to the south and east of the island Crete. She, there, today at a depth and lies, having fallen into a deep basin of the sea. The collapse of an almost oval water area with influxes from the coast, horizontal wrinkling (from sliding) of sedimentary rocks to the center of the "funnel" is clearly visible from the Internet survey of the seabed from space. The bottom of the sea in this place resembles a pit, sprinkled with soft sedimentary rock on top, there is no solid “crust-mantle” below. A hole not overgrown with a “bone” inside - on the body of the Earth, “poke your finger and you will fail.”
The Egyptian priest Timaeus, in a story about the location of the silt from the flooded Atlantis, gives a link to the Pillars of Hercules (nearest to him at the mouth of the western Nile). In another case (later), already when Plato described the power of Atlantis we are talking about other pillars (as already mentioned above, there were seven of them in the Mediterranean). Later, when Plato expounded the text of his essay on the retelling, Timaeus had not been around for 200 years by that time, and there was no one to clarify information about which pillars the conversation was about. From this arose all the subsequent confusion with the location of Atlantis.
“After all, according to our records, your state (Athens) put an end to the insolence of countless military forces that set off to conquer all of Europe and Asia, and kept their way from the Atlantic Sea. [...] On this island, called Atlantis, there arose a kingdom of amazing size and power, whose power extended over the whole island, to many other islands and to part of the mainland, and moreover, on this side of the strait they took possession of Libya right up to to Egypt and Europe up to Tirrenia (west coast of Italy). (Plato, Timaeus).
The sea that washed the island of Atlantis (between Crete and Egypt) was called the Atlantic in ancient times, it was located in the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the modern Aegean, Tyrrhenian, Adriatic, Ionian seas. Subsequently, due to an error in tying Atlantis not to the Nile, but to the Gibraltar pillars, the name "Atlantic" also spread to the ocean beyond the strait. The once inland Atlantic Sea, due to inaccurate interpretation and description (of Plato, Critias or Solon), became the Atlantic Ocean. As the Russian proverb says: - “We got lost in three pines” (in seven pairs of pillars). When Atlantis went into the abyss of the sea, the Atlantic Sea disappeared with it.
Timaeus, narrating the history of Atlantis, noted that the victory of Athens brought freedom from slavery to all other peoples (including the Egyptians), who had not yet been enslaved by the Atlanteans - "on this side of the Pillars of Hercules" (speaking about himself - about Egypt).
“It was then, Solon, that your state showed the whole world a brilliant proof of its valor and strength: all, surpassing all in fortitude and experience in military affairs, it first stood at the head of the Hellenes, but because of the allies it turned out to be left to itself, alone met with extreme dangers and yet defeated the conquerors and erected victorious trophies. Those who were not yet enslaved, it saved from the threat of slavery; all the rest, no matter how much we lived on this side of the Pillars of Heracles, it generously made free. But later, when the time came for unprecedented earthquakes and floods, in one terrible day, all your military strength was swallowed up by the cracked earth; likewise, Atlantis disappeared, plunging into the abyss. After that, the sea in those places has become unnavigable and inaccessible to this day due to the shallowing caused by the huge amount of silt that the settled island left behind. (Plato, Timaeus).
You can even more clarify the place of Atlantis from the description of the island itself.
“Poseidon, having received the island of Atlantis as his inheritance ..., approximately in this place: from the sea to the middle of the island, a plain stretched, according to legend, more beautiful than all other plains and very fertile.” (Plato, Timaeus).
“Firstly, it was said that this whole region lay very high and steeply cut off to the sea, but the whole plain that surrounded the city (capital) and itself surrounded by mountains that stretched to the sea itself, was a flat surface, three thousand in length. stages (580 km.), and in the direction from the sea to the middle - two thousand (390 km.). All this part of the island was turned to the south wind, and from the north it was closed by mountains. These mountains are praised by legend because they surpassed all the present ones in their multitude, size and beauty. The plain ... was an oblong quadrangle, mostly rectilinear. (Plato, Critias).
So, following the description - approximately to the middle of the island stretched a rectangular plain 580 by 390 kilometers, open to the south and closed from the north by large and high mountains. Fitting these dimensions into the geographical map of the "Atlantic" Sea north of the mouth of the Nile, we get that the southern part of Atlantis could adjoin Africa (in the area of \u200b\u200bthe current Libyan cities of Tobruk, Derna, Egyptian cities on the coast west of Alexandria), and its northern mountainous part could be ( but, not a fact) - the island of Crete.
In favor of the fact that Atlantis in earlier times (than its mention in the ancient Egyptian papyri), namely tens of thousands of years ago, was connected with Africa - says the story of the animal world of the island.
“Even elephants were found on the island in great abundance, for there was enough food not only for all other living creatures that inhabit the swamps, lakes and rivers, mountains or plains, but also for this beast, of all the animals, the largest and voracious.” (Plato, Critias).
It should also be taken into account that with the end of the ice age, with the beginning of the melting of the northern glaciers, the level of the world's oceans rose by 50-70 meters and the part of the land that once connected Atlantis and Africa was gradually flooded. Elephants and, by the way, people - the inhabitants of the island (by the name of their king Atlanta - the Atlanteans) who came here earlier from the depths of Africa remained surrounded by the sea. The Atlanteans were ordinary people of a modern look, and not four-meter giants, otherwise Athens would not have been able to defeat them. The island, isolated position of the inhabitants prompted civilization to separate (without wars and external enemies), active, ahead of external warring barbarians - development (fortunately, everything needed was on the island).
On Atlantis (in its capital, similar to the hill of an extinct volcano) there were hot springs of mineral water, this indicates the high seismic activity of the territory and the “thin” mantle of the earth's crust ... amazing both in taste and healing power. (Plato, Critias).
I will not now assume what caused the “internal hiccups of the Earth”, as a result of which Atlantis sank into the basin of the Mediterranean Sea in a day, and later even deeper. Exactly in that place along the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea there is a border between the African and European continental tectonic plates. The depth of the sea there is very large - about 3000-4000 meters. It is possible that a powerful impact of a giant meteorite in North America in Mexico, which, according to the US National Academy of Sciences, occurred 13 thousand years ago (about that time) caused an inertial movement of plates in the Mediterranean.
Just like the continents, crawling on top of each other, breaking the edges, uplift mountains - the same process, but in the opposite direction, when diverging, forms depressions. The African plate slightly moved away from Europe, and this was quite enough to lower Atlantis into the abyss of the sea. The fact that Africa earlier in the history of the Earth moved away from Europe and Asia is clearly evidenced by the visible huge intercontinental fault from the Mediterranean Sea in two directions - the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, the Gulf of Aqaba, the Aden, Oman and Persian Gulfs.
It is possible (but not a fact) that the current island of Crete - previously the northern highest mountainous part of Atlantis, did not fall into the abyss of the sea, but, breaking away, stayed on the "European continental cornice". On the other hand, if you look at Crete by geographical map, then it does not stand on the very cliff of the mantle of the European mainland, but about 100 kilometers from the basin of the Mediterranean (Atlantic) Sea. This means that there was no catastrophic landslide fault of Atlantis along the current coastline of the island of Crete, it was only, as an independent unit, part of the archipelago of island Atlantis.
Historians, archaeologists write: - “Excavations in Crete show that even four or five millennia after the alleged death of Atlantis, the inhabitants of this Mediterranean island sought to settle away from the coast. (Memory of ancestors). Unknown fear drove them to the mountains. The first centers of agriculture and culture are also located at some distance from the sea”…
The former proximity of the location of Atlantis to Africa and to the mouth of the Nile is indirectly evidenced by the extensive Kattara depression (minus 133 meters below sea level), in the Libyan Desert in Egypt, 50 km away. from the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, also a lowland west of Alexandria. In addition, along the line of a tectonic fault - the lowland of the Dead Sea (minus 395 meters) in Israel. All of them speak of a territorial catastrophe that once occurred near the earth, connected with subsidence.
What gives the establishment of the exact location of Atlantis?
Perhaps not much. The Mediterranean basin is too deep. At first, silt, earth, subsequent sedimentary deposits and landslide rocks, which first rose and then settled to the bottom, densely covered Atlantis. The golden capital, with its countless treasures in the temple of Poseidon, was located closest to Africa and turned out to be at the very depths (in the center of the depression). It is possible that searches in the southern part of the coast of Crete will bring something, but this is unlikely, since the South Cretan European mainland "ledge-cornice" for millennia has literally been "licked by the sea to bare stone", and everything that was from the Atlanteans - long washed away into the basin. Who will dig in the depths of the sea, who will look for the fallen “necklace in the mouth of a volcano”? “Because nothing from Atlantis has been found so far.
But the only inspiring thing is that the confusion with the "Pillars of Hercules" has been successfully resolved, and the location of Atlantis has finally been established.
Atlantic Ocean
From the text of Plato's dialogues it is absolutely clear that Atlantis was located in the Atlantic Ocean. According to the priest, the Atlantean army "led its way from the Atlantic Sea." The priest says that opposite the Pillars of Hercules lay a large island, larger than Libya and Asia put together, from which it was easy to cross the other islands "to the entire opposite continent", in which America is easily guessed.
Therefore, many of the atlantologists, especially those who believe the date of 9500 BC, believe that Atlantis was once located in the Atlantic Ocean, and traces of it should be sought either at the bottom of the ocean or near the existing islands, which were 11500 years ago high mountain peaks. The main hypotheses related to the Atlantic Ocean will be considered in more detail below.
Mediterranean Sea
About two and a half thousand years ago, the worst catastrophe in the history of mankind occurred in the Mediterranean Sea. The explosion of the Strongile volcano was three times stronger than the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano. This explosion generated a tsunami wave several tens or even a hundred meters high, which hit the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Scientists believe that this catastrophe was the cause of the death of the Cretan-Mycenaean culture that existed 3000 years ago. It is not surprising that such a grandiose natural cataclysm attracted many researchers, some of whom came to the seemingly strange idea that when describing Atlantis, Plato described Thira (where the Strongile volcano was located) or Crete.
This second version, one of the two most popular, I will also consider in more detail.
The Iberian Peninsula
The name of one of the first ten kings of Atlantis - Gadir - has come down to our time in the name of the Gadir region. Gadir is a Phoenician village, the current Cadiz. This name gave reason to individual atlantologists to believe that all of Atlantis was located on the Iberian Peninsula near the mouth of the Quadalquivir River.
Near Gadir lay another famous city, Tartessus. Its inhabitants were Etruscans and claimed that their state was 5,000 years old. The German H. Schulten (1922) believed that Tartessus is Atlantis. In 1973, near Cadiz, at a depth of 30 meters, the remains of an ancient city were discovered.
About a million Basques now live in northern Spain. Their language is not like any of the known languages peace. There is a certain similarity between it and the languages of the American Indians. This suggests that the Basques are direct descendants of the Atlanteans.
Brazil
In 1638, the English scientist and politician Francis Bacon of Verulam in his book "Nova Atlantis" identified Brazil with Atlantis. Soon a new atlas with a map of America was published, compiled by the French geographer Sanson, in which the provinces of the sons of Poseidon in Brazil were even indicated. The same atlas was published in 1762 by Robert Vaugudi. It is said that at the sight of these cards, Voltaire was shaking with laughter.
Scandinavia
In 1675, the Swedish atlantologist Olaus Rudbeck argued that Atlantis was located in Sweden, and Uppsala was its capital. According to him, this was evident from the Bible.
Herodotus, Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder and some other ancient historians write about the Atlantean tribe living in North Africa near the Atlas Mountains. Atlanteans, they say, don't dream, don't use names, don't eat anything alive, and curse the rising and setting sun.
Based on these reports, P. Borchardt claims that Atlantis was located on the territory of modern Tunisia, in the depths of the Sahara Desert. In its southern part there are two lakes, which, according to modern data, are the remains of ancient sea. In this sea was supposed to be the island of Atlantis.
AT late XIX century, the French geographer Etienne Berlu placed Atlantis in Morocco, in the region of the Atlas Mountains.
In 1930, A. Hermann stated that Atlantis was in the Shatt-el-Jerid lowland, between the city of Nefta and the Gulf of Gabes. True, this territory does not fall, but rises ...
German ethnographer Leo Frobenius found Atlantis in the Kingdom of Benin.
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In 1952, German pastor Jurgen Spanut discovered Atlantis on the island of Helgoland in the Baltic Sea.
In general, Atlantis was found in all parts of the Earth. We will not dwell on these theories in detail, but it was found in Central America, in the English Channel (F. Gidon), in the Pacific Ocean, in Cuba, in Peru, in Great Britain, in the Great Lakes region in the USA, in Greenland, in Iceland, Svalbard, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Persia (Pierre-André Latreille, France, 19th century), Bermuda, Bahamas, Canaries, Antilles (John McCulloch, Scotland), Azores, Azov , Cherno, the Caspian Seas, in Palestine and in many other places.
An advanced civilization once existed on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. The inhabitants of this country taught the ancient Egyptians and Mayans how to measure time, build pyramids and much more. It was the Atlanteans who laid in Pyramids of Egypt many of the most different numbers, as if addressing this message to posterity.
But 11,500 years ago, a meteorite (or comet) fell to Earth, causing the death of Atlantis. The fall of the meteorite awakened dormant volcanoes. Eruptions and earthquakes began. The fall of the meteorite and the sinking of Atlantis caused a giant wave that temporarily flooded Europe, Egypt, Asia Minor, America, South and East Asia. This wave killed mammoths in distant Siberia, laying them in "cemeteries". Due to the fall of the meteorite, the earth's axis shifted, which caused strong climatic changes. The surviving Atlanteans scattered around the world, spreading the story of the death of Atlantis.
This is the version of the death of Atlantis, which can be considered canonical for the supporters of Atlantis in the Atlantic.
In 1665, in his book "Mundus subterraneus" (" Underworld") the German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher showed that Atlantis existed in the Atlantic Ocean and gave a map with its outlines. It is very interesting that these outlines exactly correspond to the lines of the depths of the ocean, unknown at that time.
In the 19th century, I. Donelly wrote the book "Atlantis, the antediluvian world", which was considered the "bible" of atlantologists. He places his Atlantis in the same place as Kircher, but reduced in size. For him, Atlantis was a biblical paradise, the seat of the Greek gods and the country of the cult of the Sun!
Donelly considers mythology to be one of the main pillars of the version of the existence of Atlantis. Fairly objectively the mythological aspect of Atlantis is described in the book by L. Stegeni.
Mythological evidence for the existence of Atlantis
Flood legends
They are found in almost all mankind, with the exception of Africa, except for Egypt, Australia and the northern part of Eurasia. In almost all these myths, the gods (God) once flooded the whole earth with water (beer) (usually for sins), a fire starts (the sky falls, the earth cracks, a mountain appears, spewing flames) and all people drowned (turned into fish, turned into stones ), except for one (two) people whom the gods (God) usually warned about the flood, because they led a righteous life. These people (or one person), usually a husband and wife (or brother and sister, or Noah and family), get into a boat (box, ark) and swim. Then they (not always) sail to the mountain, release the birds for reconnaissance (this is in many cases a skillful introduction of biblical motifs by Christian missionaries into pagan myths).
Legends about aliens from the West (Old World)
They are found among some peoples of the Old World, in particular, among the Egyptians and Babylonians.
An unknown person arrives from the West, speaking in an incomprehensible language. He taught people how to make tools (build cities, use the calendar, make wine, brew beer).
Legends about coming from the East (New World)
Found in some peoples of America.
They say that this people once came from the East (from the island), perhaps some cataclysms occurred at that time (the gods punished humanity), but someone from humanity escaped and came to the West, where he founded this country (city , people).
Legends of space disasters
Found in some nations.
A stone fell from the sky (Moon, Sun, Serpent, Dragon, something else), after which a fire started (flood, the earth shook, something else). Then it all ended and people dispersed around the world.
Encountering such a legend, atlantologists begin to look for (and find) in it proof of the existence of Atlantis. For example, having learned that the Kalevala mentions an earthquake and high tides (usually the height of the tides in the Baltic is several centimeters), atlantologists concluded that a long time ago the Earth captured the Moon, which caused high tides, which people remember. Myths often give atlantologists the opportunity to "prove" any, even the most insane, statements, adjusting ancient myths to suit them.
Similarity of cultures on both sides of the Atlantic
Atlantologists pay attention to the fact that in Egypt and Mexico they build pyramids, make stone sarcophagi, mummify the dead, use a similar hieroglyphic script, in Egypt and Mexico there is a separate caste of priests, the cult of the Sun, a similar time number system and quite developed astronomy.
Some Atlantologists have decided that the Aztecs, Incas, Mayans and Egyptians were students of the Atlanteans who flew (or sailed) to them after the disaster. (Osiris in Egypt, Quetzalcoatl in America)
The eel mystery
Even Aristotle drew attention to the fact that only female eels can be found in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. There have been many theories about the origin of eels, "fatherless fish". Even at the end of the 19th century, it was believed that eels are born alive, and females of one of the fish species produce them. (!?) Only in 1904, the Danish ichthyologist I. Schmidt solved the riddle of eels. Eels hatch from eggs in the Sargasso Sea. In the second year of life, they set sail for the shores of Europe. There, the females go up the rivers, spend about two years in the rivers, return to the sea and swim into the Sargasso Sea. There is a mating season and the females lay their eggs. This behavior of eels can be easily explained if we assume that thousands of years ago, on the site of the Sargasso Sea, there were the shores of Atlantis, where they spent their childhood. The warm current of the Gulf Stream carried them to the shores of Europe, and then the countercurrent brought them back.
