Rocks add weight to Atlantis debate
A submerged island near the Straits of Gibraltar has rock formations that may make it a candidate for the lost city of Atlantis (Image: iStockphoto)
Plato's account of how the fabled city of Atlantis sank below the surface of the ocean has scientific grounding, according to a seafloor survey of an island west of the Straits of Gibraltar.
Dr Marc-André Gutscher of the University of Western Brittany in France performed a detailed mapping of the seafloor on Spartel Island, already proposed as a candidate for the origin of the Atlantis legend in 2001 by French geologist Professor Jacques Collina-Girard.
Lying 60 metres beneath the surface in the Gulf of Cadiz, the island is right "in front of the Pillars of Hercules", or the Straits of Gibraltar, as stated by Plato.
Analysis of sedimentary deposits reveals a large earthquake and a tsunami hit the island about 12,000 years ago.
This is roughly when the Greek philosopher's writings indicate the city was destroyed, Gutscher reports in the current issue of the journal Geology.
"Geological records revealed that in the geographic region chosen by Plato for his narrative, there are recurrent great earthquakes [magnitude 8.5-9] which create enormous tsunamis, with waves 5-15 metres in height. One such catastrophic event occurred around 10,000 BC," says Gutscher.
Even though explorers have searched for the sunken island in no less than 40 different places, no evidence of Atlantis has ever been found. Every clue about the fabled island goes back to Plato's account, written in about 400 BC.
The words of Plato
The philosopher claims that two centuries earlier, Egyptian priests had told the Greek statesman Solon of a flourishing civilisation outside "the pillars of Hercules".
When the people of Atlantis became wicked and decadent, the gods punished them by sending "violent earthquakes and floods".
"The power came forth out the Atlantic Ocean ... In a single day and night of misfortune ... the island of Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea," writes Plato.
Gutscher says the type of destruction Plato describes is a very accurate description of a "sudden, catastrophic destruction associated with a great earthquake", like the famous Great Lisbon earthquake that ravaged the southern Iberian region in 1755, with associated tsunami heights reaching 10 metres.
Indeed sedimentary records reveal that catastrophic events like the 1755 Lisbon earthquake occur every 1500-2000 years in the Gulf of Cadiz.
An unusually thick turbidite, a thick, coarse-grained deposit resulting from sand and mud shaken up by underwater avalanches, was dated to around 10,000 BC, around the same time as Plato's account.
Layers of turbidite also reveal that eight earthquakes occurred in the area after Atlantis sunk.
Each earthquake would have resulted in a drop of the sea floor by several metres, making Spartel higher by 40 metres by 12,000 years ago. The island could have measured five by two kilometres.
"If inhabited, it would have probably been by simple fishermen, certainly not the advanced Bronze Age culture described by Plato," says Gutscher.
"Atlantis is a myth," Professor Christos Doumas, director of Akrotiri Excavations in Santorini, summarised at the conference on Atlantis on the Greek island of Milos, last month.
The conference highlighted 24 criteria that a geographical area must satisfy to qualify as a site where Atlantis could have existed.
Among several other oddities, the island must have sheltered a literate population with metallurgical and navigational skills, hot springs, northerly winds, elephants, enough people for an army of 10,000 chariots and 1200 ships, and a ritual of bull sacrifice.
"No single proposed location in the world satisfies all these 24 criteria. At least the Spartel hypothesis offers a geologically plausible scenario for the type of catastrophic destruction described by Plato in this region of the world," Gutscher says.
