Ancient Earth

Atlantis — We Now Have Proof!

Something Very, Very BIG Happened 9600 BCE

In a murder mystery, not having the body does pose problems. But if we have the smoking gun, a puddle of blood, and a host of other evidence, we can guess that there may have been a murder.

According to Plato, the famous Greek philosopher, Atlantis collapsed into the ocean approximately 9600 BCE — 9000 years before Solon, the Athenian statesman, spoke to an elderly Egyptian priest of Saïs (the former capital of Egypt) about Atlantis.

Possible Proof of Atlantis?

• Approximately 9600 BCE, a major climate change occurred worldwide. There is still no consensus as to the cause of the end of the Younger Dryas — a 1300-year mini-"Ice Age."
• Coincident with the sudden end to the Younger Dryas (~9600 BCE), a 1989 graph of sea level change over the last 17,000 years shows a 2-meter drop in sea level.
• And, from the Greenland ice cores, we discover a moderately large trace of volcanic debris occurring at about 9620 BCE.

Graph from the 1989 article, Fairbanks, R., "A 17,000-year glacio-eustatic sea level record: influence of glacial melting rates on the Younger Dryas event and deep-ocean circulation," Nature, Vol. 342, 7 December 1989. It shows Barbados sea level curve based on radiocarbon-dated A. palmata (filled circles) compared with A. palmata age-depth data (open circles) for four other Caribbean island locations.

The 2-meter drop in sea level worldwide is particularly interesting. This was after thousands of years of relatively steady rise and followed by an equally steady rise to modern levels. The entire graph includes approximately 120 meters of rise from the end of the last major Ice Age. Certainly, there are other bumps in the graph. Data points from nature are rarely smooth on a graph, but the simultaneity of this 2-meter drop with the mysterious and sudden end to the Younger Dryas calls attention to itself.

Nowhere else on the graph would such a hiccup in the data raise any suspicions. The blip on the graph could be nothing more than error in reading or the result of some unrelated phenomenon. Then again, the 2-meter drop could have been the result of thousands of cubic kilometers of ocean rushing to fill in the volume evacuated by the tectonic collapse of Atlantis. After all, a 2-meter drop worldwide is consistent with the 3000-meter collapse of a Texas-sized plot of land.

Each of these could be a happy coincidence with Plato's "myth." All three together, on the other hand, raise a suspicion that there may have been something to Plato's controversial tale.

The region between the mid-Atlantic ridge and Gibraltar is filled with geological anomalies. An abrupt turn in the plate boundary 36 million years ago is only one tell-tale clue. And geologists know that most mountains are formed near tectonic plate boundaries from the actions known as subduction and crustal folding. The traditional location of Atlantis, at the Azores, lies at the Africa-Eurasia plate boundary. Was there subduction and crustal folding in this region millions of years ago? Many of the geological anomalies can be explained by the tortuous formation of Atlantis and its equally tortuous demise.

Naturally, these not the only evidence gathered on the subject. A new book about Atlantis is currently in the works — Mission: Atlantis.

If Atlantis was only myth, then all these happy coincidences will disappear into insignificance. Yet, if it was real, then a powerful adventure is about to begin.

More about geology on the current "Mission: Atlantis" hypothesis of Atlantis.