Totally unsnarky here. If you’ve wended your way through my site, you know one of my little peculiarities is a fascination with the legend of Atlantis.
There was big archeological news this week: a U.S. research team believes they have substantial evidence to place the lost city’s location 60 miles inland in Southern Spain, beneath the Dona Ana National Park, a vast marshland.
Here’s National Geographic’s depiction of what Atlantis looked like before it was covered in mud.
The most compelling indicator is the proximity of several “memorial cities” in the area. They’re believed to have been built by survivors, and are similar in design to Plato’s description of Atlantis’ urban layout, which he wrote about in 360 B.C.E.. The theory is thus: Atlantis was buried by ocean and debris from a tsunami, and its refugees built replicas with concentric walls and mounted temples to preserve the memory of their fabled great city. Here’s a link to Reuters’ article about the find.
I just watched the National Geographic special last night—a little hokey as these things tend to be, and pretty short on archeological “evidence.” They used aerial photography and underground radar to create a gloppy sketch of a ringed wall below the earth, and it’s carbon-dated as up to 5,000 years old. But for real proof, they will have to excavate—a very gradual endeavor since the site is also filled with underground pools of water.
So, such “finds” tend to come up every few years. In 2009, an anonymous group of “undersea archeologists” released grainy photos that became a brief Internet sensation. They claimed the pics, taken at an undisclosed location in the Caribbean Sea, revealed city structures, including Egyptian style pyramids, that predated recorded history.
In 2000, ruins of an ancient city were found in the Black Sea, off the coast of Turkey.
Also in 2009, an Internet rumor spread that you could see urban grid lines in the Atlantic Ocean off the north coast of Africa, a lost city buried under water. It turned out to be a “digital artifact.”
Is the Dona Ana site a publicity stunt for National Geographic or a promising lead to uncovering our greatest enduring legend? Time will tell, and meanwhile, “my” Atlantis slugs along: getting deeper into revising Act II. Anyone want to finance a sabbatical so I can finish this thing off?
