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All credits goes to the creators of all images and websites.  Thank you.

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All credits goes to the creators of all images and websites.  Thank you.

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In this picture you will notice a grid like pattern on google earth maps.  The image is supposedly the streets of the City of Atlantis.  Google became aware of this and quickly tried to fade the picture out.  This image does not mean that it’s the City of Atlantis.  There were numerous cities back in that time that was demolished by cataclysmic events and this could just merely be a sunken city of one of those.  However, the location does bare a striking resemblance of where the city might be.  Although, it might be in the correct location this could be a red flag such as red herring, deceiving photos of faulty camera leading believers to believe it’s really there.  This is definitely fake in my personal opinion.  It could be numerous things such as a bad camera lens, and Photoshop.  There is no factual evidence that one could believe that this is true.
https://www.google.ca/search?q=google+image+of+lost+city+of+atlantis&safe=active&biw=1920&bih=985&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwir0qa-tMrQAhVKxoMKHe4mAq0Q_AUIBigB#imgdii=9r0CKdbxWrh53M%3A%3B9r0CKdbxWrh53M%3A%3B3P17WlV0ji99_M%3A&imgrc=9r0CKdbxWrh53M%3A

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This is the legendary picture of the presumed geographical location of Atlantis.  Located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean between North America Continent and European Continent.  Plato’s only documented historical map imagery of the actual location.  This picture the author is saying it’s a mere legend.  However why would Plato go into such details about the location especially one that’s located specifically on a real map.  This drawing by Plato does not show any red flags in my opinion.  This is his true drawing of an actual real location not some fictional island located on fictional map.  This is definitely one of the unexplained theories of why people believe in weird things.  No red flags present in my opinion since it’s his historical drawing.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Atlantis-legendary-island

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Atlantis, also spelled Atalantis or Atlantica, a legendary island in the Atlantic Ocean, lying west of the Strait of Gibraltar. The principal sources for the legend are two of Plato’s dialogues, Timaeus and Critias. In the former, Plato describes how Egyptian priests, in conversation with the Athen…

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In this picture they are assuming that this is a road that led to the Lost City of Atlantis.  Since there is no factual evidence of the whereabouts of Atlantis, this could be any civilization that was wiped out by the cataclysmic events back in those days.  This picture says it’s located in the Bimini islands in the Bahamas region.  There is no other proof or relics other than a road which exists in many civilizations back in that era.  The red flag here is using ancient wisdom to make us think it’s historical evidence that it truly could be the road leading to the city.  My opinion is that it’s just a regular island that was sunk.
http://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/does-bimini-road-lead-lost-civilization-atlantis-002070

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Off the coast of Bimini lies an ancient stone formation submerged beneath crystal blue waters. The mysterious path makes many wonder if it is remnants of the mythical lost land of Atlantis.

Researchers, geologists, archaeologists, and scientists alike have visited and studied the huge, flat stones off the coast of Bimini, known as the Bimini Road . They have tried for years to discern whether the limestone blocks are a natural phenomenon, or evidence of an ancient lost civilization.

Bimini is an island in the Bahamas, part of a chain of islands 50 miles east of Miami, Florida. A mere 20 feet down in the blue waters off the coast, a stone path can be found; large, flat rocks cut at right angles, seemingly set purposefully in straight lines. This impressive formation stretches half a mile along, with a pronounced hook at one end. The stones can measure up to 13 feet (4 metres) across.
Strange Slab "Found by a research team off the coast of Bimini." Photograph by Zig Zag Productions and Ross Goodlass - National Geographic
According to Unsolved Mysteries in the World , "The origin and meaning of 'Bimini' are unknown. However, the name appears in the Ancient Egyptian language and Baminini, which means, 'Homage (ini) to the Soul (ba) of Min.' Min was the Egyptians' divine protector of travelers on far-off journeys, a particularly appropriate god to be worshiped at distant Bimini, if indeed the island had been visited by voyagers from the Nile Valley."
The Bimini Road, or Atlantis Stones - the rock formation mapped. ( HowStuffWorks)
In 1968, subsea archaeologist Joseph Mason Valentine and his diving party encountered the 'paved' road, now called the Bimini Road or Bimini Wall. After their initial discovery, the site was visited often by innumerable divers, researchers and scientists, further revealing the existence of two additional linear features laying nearly parallel to the enigmatic path.

Unexplained Mysteries writes of the connection between the discovery and American mysticist Edgar Cayce, who was said to predict future events during trances. "Another curious element of this mystery is a prediction made in 1938 by Edgar Cayce : 'A portion of the temples may yet be discovered under the slime of ages and sea water near Bimini... Expect it in '68 or '69 - not so far away." The Bimini Road was located in 1968, some propose as a fulfillment of the prediction that the history of Atlantis would be revealed to the world.
Illustration by Sir Gerald Hargreaves showing a utopian scene of the mythical land of Atlantis ( National Geographic )
Ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Plato was first to write of Atlantis. His records of a cursed island out of favour with the gods is referred to as a parable, warning that hubris and the abuse of power may be the undoing of a civilization. But what if the story is more than a teaching tool? What if there truly existed an advanced ancient civilization which was lost to the seas and wiped from our history? Since Plato's tale of Atlantis, many have searched for the doomed city's whereabouts.

The existence of a buried Atlantis is possible, and some would insist likely, as throughout history people and civilizations around the world have suffered terrible cataclysms of tsunamis, volcanic explosions, earthquakes and other disasters, and disappeared from the pages of history until rediscovered centuries later. Could Atlantis have suffered a similar fate?

Skeptics think not, and dismiss the connection between the Bimini Road and Atlantis. Consensus among conventional geologists who drilled core samples of the Bimini rocks is that it's a natural phenomenon. They explain that the beachrock has been weathered by erosion, the tides scouring and eroding lines and edges into the limestone along natural joints, as it does so in other locations around the globe. Further, they suggest that any 'tool marks' found on site are not evidence of ancient stoneworking, but instead the result of tourists and investigators chipping away at the rocks for souvenirs or research.
Featured image: A photograph of the so-called Bimini Road. References Image source .
Not all have been satisfied with the mainstream theories, and expeditions have been mounted to solve the riddle of the Bimini Road.

Sci Fi Channel did an investigation and documentary on the underwater formation in 2006. Wikipedia notes that Quest for Atlantis: Startling New Secrets focused on the legend of Atlantis, highlighting the Bimini Road. A team of researchers dived at Bimini Bay, and reported discovering "an entire second layer of square-cut rocks with similar dimensions beneath the stones." This suggested to the researchers that the 'road' may have been part of a larger wall or water dock.

Were the stones carefully and purposefully placed by an advanced civilization which was plunged into obscurity by cataclysm, or did the rocks erode into perfect shapes through the actions of time and the sea? Like the Bimini Road, the mystery endures.

Bimini Road - Unsolved Mysteries in the World

Bimini Road - CrystalLinks

Bimini Wall - Wikipedia

Atlantis-True Story or Cautionary Tale? - National Geographic

The Mystery of the Bimini Road - Unexplained Mysteries

By Liz Leafloor

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Does Bimini Road Lead to The Lost Civilization of Atlantis?

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Off the coast of Bimini lies an ancient stone formation submerged beneath crystal blue waters. The mysterious path makes many wonder if it is remnants of the mythical lost land of Atlantis. Researchers, geologists, archaeologists, and scientists alike have visited and studied the huge, flat stones off the coast of Bimini, known as the Bimini Road .

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This video the authors talk about the history of the story of Atlantis, and assuming that Atlanteans were involved with extraterrestrial beings.  Assuming that Poseidon was an alien and impregnated a human girl and founded Atlantis.  Asteria a goddess fell from the sky and became an island and assumed that Atlantis lifted off.  This video has so many red flags that really doesn’t make sense.  For instance: Appeal to authority, using scientists, marine biologists and a few others to come up with theories to confuse a person.  Ancient wisdom to make us believe it’s true.  Red Herring distracting us from the real truth of Atlantis.  Proof by verbosity, too much information to confuse us which makes us assume it’s real.  I think this video is very fictitious.
http://www.history.com/topics/atlantis/videos/myths-of-atlantis

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Atlantis, a likely mythical island nation mentioned in Plato's dialogues "Timaeus" and "Critias," has been an object of fascination among western philosophers and historians for nearly 2,400 years. Plato (c.424-328 B.C.) describes it as a powerful and advanced kingdom that sank, in a night and a day, into the ocean around 9,600 B.C. The ancient Greeks were divided as to whether Plato's story was to be taken as history or mere metaphor. Since the 19th century there has been renewed interest in linking Plato's Atlantis to historical locations, most commonly the Greek island of Santorini, which was destroyed by a volcanic eruption around 1,600 B.C.

Plato's Atlantis

Plato (through the character Critias in his dialogues) describes Atlantis as an island larger than Libya and Asia Minor put together, located in the Atlantic just beyond the Pillars of Hercules-generally assumed to mean the Strait of Gibraltar. Its culture was advanced and it had a constitution suspiciously similar to the one outlined in Plato's "Republic." It was protected by the god Poseidon, who made his son Atlas king and namesake of the island and the ocean that surrounded it. As the Atlanteans grew powerful, their ethics declined. Their armies eventually conquered Africa as far as Egypt and Europe as far as Tyrrhenia (Etruscan Italy) before being driven back by an Athenian-led alliance. Later, by way of divine punishment, the island was beset by earthquakes and floods, and sank into a muddy sea.

Did you know? In 1679 the Swedish scientist Olaus Rudbeck published "Atland," a four-volume work in which he attempted to prove that Sweden was the original site of Atlantis and that all human languages were descended from Swedish. Though considered authoritative in his homeland, few outside of Sweden found Rudbeck's arguments convincing.

Origins of the Atlantis Story

Plato's Critias says he heard the story of Atlantis from his grandfather, who had heard it from the Athenian statesman Solon (300 years before Plato's time), who had learned it from an Egyptian priest, who said it had happened 9,000 years before that. Whether or not Plato believed his own story, his intent in telling it seems to have been to boost his ideas of an ideal society, using stories of ancient victory and calamity to call to mind more recent events such as the Trojan War or Athens' disastrous invasion of Sicily in 413 B.C. The historicity of Plato's tale was controversial in ancient times-his follower Crantor is said to have believed it, while Strabo (writing a few centuries later) records Aristotle's joke about Plato's ability to conjure nations out of thin air and then destroy them.

Atlantis Reemerges

In the first centuries of the Christian era, Aristotle was taken at his word and Atlantis was little discussed. In 1627, the English philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon published a utopian novel titled "The New Atlantis," depicting, like Plato before him, a politically and scientifically advanced society on a previously unknown oceanic island. In 1882, former U.S. Congressman Ignatious L. Donnelly published "Atlantis: The Antediluvian World," which touched off a frenzy of works attempting to locate and learn from a historical Atlantis. Donnelly hypothesized an advanced civilization whose immigrants had populated much of ancient Europe, Africa and the Americas, and whose heroes had inspired Greek, Hindu and Scandinavian mythology. Donnelley's theories were popularized and elaborated by turn-of-the-20th-century theosophists and are often incorporated into contemporary New Age beliefs.

From time to time, archaeologists and historians locate evidence-a swampy, prehistoric city in coastal Spain; a suspicious undersea rock formation in the Bahamas-that might be a source of the Atlantis story. Of these, the site with the widest acceptance is the Greek island of Santorini (ancient Thera), a half-submerged caldera created by the massive second-millennium-B.C. volcanic eruption whose tsunami may have hastened the collapse of the Minoan civilization on Crete.

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Atlantis, a likely mythical island nation mentioned in Plato's dialogues "Timaeus" and "Critias," has been an object of fascination among western philosophers and historians for nearly 2,400 years. Plato (c.424-328 B.C.) describes it as a powerful and advanced kingdom that sank, in a night and a day, into the ocean around 9,600 B.C.

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In this video link, marine archaeologist found 39 ingots of red metal.  A professor Sebastiano claims that the ingots were used to carve the currency that was mined on the surface of Atlantis.  This ingot was a combination of copper, zinc, lead, iron and nickel.  The findings of the ingots were found on the coast of Sicily.  Author Donnelly claimed that all ancient cultures like Egyptians are descendants from Atlantis.  This video has too much information which is leading me to believe it’s a red flag, Proof of Verbosity.  The creator has too much information that jumps all over the place.  I think he is confused himself on the whereabouts of Atlantis.  The only important information I’m understanding from this video, is that the civilization that was on Atlantis fled to nearby mainland and formed descendants all over the globe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fjd5e0mZvk

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In this youtube link, it has two farsight individuals that is given a case number, and they identify what they see and draw out images of what they investigate through their visions.  I’m very skeptical when it comes to farsight investigators.  There’s a number of red flags that is present.  Red Herring for one, by distracting us to believe that they are telling the truth.  Appeal to Authority, a farsight individual makes us believe that the source that they are referring to is credible, because they are an authoritative figures. Confirmation bias, we think that these events coincide with our believes and we can’t see the real truth.  I do believe that these farsight individuals are given more information about their case files so they can deceive the audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eN6Fsbcz3c

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History Channel Atlantis Found Dodumentary

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Atlantis: The True Story (Revised 2016 Full Version)

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http://farsight.org/FarsightPress/Atlantis_The_True_Story.html Atlantis: The True Story (Revised 2016 Full Version) Subscribe links: FarsightPress (the science channel): http://www.youtube.com/user/FarsightPress?sub_confirmation=1 FarsightPrime (the vlogging sexy cool channel) http://www.youtube.com/c/FarsightPrime?sub_confirmation=1 Not long ago, a technologically advanced human civilization thrived on Earth. This was Atlantis, the real Atlantis, not a mythological story. Here-documented with new scientific data-is the true story of their demise.

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This website explains that Atlantis might be Crete.  An explosion that happened that was more powerful than the volcanic explosion that happened on the Island of Krakatoa in 1883.  They are assuming that the explosion that happened at Santorini was four times as powerful as Krakatoa. Therefore, they think that Crete is Atlantis.  They are relating the story to the Minoans and how did Plato get the location and timeline wrong.  This website has several red flags the first one being Red Herring, leading the readers on a wild goose chase thinking it could be something other than what Plato described.  The other is Proof of Verbosity, there’s too much information to confuse the reader to think that the facts could be true.

http://www.unmuseum.org/atlantis.htm

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The Lost Continent:

The capital of Atlantis as described by Plato. (Copyright Lee Krystek 2006)

The idea of a lost, but highly advanced civilization has captured the interest of people for centuries. Perhaps the most compelling of these tales is the story of Atlantis. The story appears again and again in books, television shows and movies. Where did the story originate and is any of it true?

Plato's Atlantis

The story of the lost continent of Atlantis starts in 355 B.C. with the Greek philosopher Plato. Plato had planned to write a trilogy of books discussing the nature of man, the creation of the world, and the story of Atlantis, as well as other subjects. Only the first book was ever completed. The second book was abandoned part way through, and the final book was never even started.

Plato used dialogues to express his ideas. In this type of writing, the author's thoughts are explored in a series of arguments and debates between various characters in the story. Plato often used real people in his dialogues, such as his teacher, Socrates, but the words he gave them were his own.

In Plato's book, Timaeus, a character named Kritias tells an account of Atlantis that has been in his family for generations. According to the character, the story was originally told to his ancestor, Solon, by a priest during Solon's visit to Egypt.

There had been a powerful empire located to the west of the "Pillars of Hercules" (what we now call the Straight of Gibraltar) on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. The nation there had been established by Poseidon, the God of the Sea. Poseidon fathered five sets of twins on the island. The firstborn, Atlas, had the continent and the surrounding ocean named for him. Poseidon divided the land into ten sections, each to be ruled by a son, or his heirs.

The capital city of Atlantis was a marvel of architecture and engineering. The city was composed of a series of concentric walls and canals. At the very center was a hill, and on top of the hill a temple to Poseidon. Inside was a gold statue of the God of the Sea showing him driving six winged horses.

About 9000 years before the time of Plato, after the people of Atlantis became corrupt and greedy, the gods decided to destroy them. A violent earthquake shook the land, giant waves rolled over the shores, and the island sank into the sea, never to be seen again.

So, is the story of Atlantis just a fable used by Plato to make a point? Or is there some reason to think he was referring to a real place? Well, at numerous points in the dialogues, Plato's characters refer to the story of Atlantis as "genuine history" and it being within "the realm of fact." Plato also seems to put into the story a lot of detail about Atlantis that would be unnecessary if he had intended to use it only as a literary device.

On the other hand according to the writings of the historian Strabo, Plato's student Aristotle remarked that Atlantis was simply created by Plato to illustrate a point. Unfortunately, Aristotle's writings on this subject, which might have cleared the mystery up, have been lost eons ago.

Location, Location, Location

If we make the assumption that Atlantis was a real place, it seems logical that it could be found west of the Straight of Gibraltar near the Azores Islands. In 1882 a man named Ignatius Donnelly published a book titled Atlantis, the Antediluvian World. Donnelly, an American politician, had come to the belief that Plato's story represented actual historical fact. He located Atlantis in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, suggesting the Azores Islands represented what remained of the highest mountain peaks. Donnelly said he had studied zoology and geology and had come to the conclusion that civilization itself had begun with the Atlantians and had spread out throughout the world as the Atlantians established colonies in places like ancient Egypt and Peru. Donnelly's book became a world-wide best seller, but researchers could not take Donnelly's theories seriously as he offered no proof for his ideas.

As time went on it became obvious that Donnelly's theories were faulty. Modern scientific surveys of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean shows it is covered with a blanket of sediment that must have taken millions of years to accumulate. There is no sign of a sunken island continent.

Are Pyramids a Clue?

Lewis Spence, a Scottish writer, published several books on Atlantis in the early 20th century. He was fascinated by the pyramids constructed by ancient races in different parts of the globe. Spence wondered if the creation of pyramids in diverse areas such as South America and Egypt indicated that these places had all been colonies of the Atlantis and if the Atlantians were the original pyramid makers. While the idea is interesting, most historians today believe the trend toward building pyramids occurred independently in different locations.

Are there any other candidates for the location of Atlantis? People have made cases for places as diverse as Switzerland, in the middle of Europe, and New Zealand, in the Pacific Ocean. The explorer, Percy Fawcett, thought that it might be located in Brazil.

Atlantis in Spain?

Recently a research team led by Professor Richard Freund at the University of Hartford, has claimed that they have found evidence that the city may be buried not under the ocean, but along the coast of Spain in marshlands of the Doana National Park. Geological studies have shown that at one time this marsh was a huge bay connected to the Atlantic Ocean. The team, using radar technology, digital mapping and satellite imagery believes that they can see signs of a ringed city that once occupied the bay with canals similar to those described by Plato. There is evidence that a number of tsunamis have swept this area over the centuries and Freund thinks that it is one of these destroyed the city. After the disaster survivors may have moved inland and created a number of what Freund thinks are memorial sites to Atlantis.

Other scientists that have explored the area do not agree with Freund's conclusion, though they admit that a city by the name of Tartessos occupied the area around the 4th century B.C.. Freund believes that Tartessos and Atlantis may just be different names for the same city. As far back as the 1920's historian Adolf Schulten had suggested that Plato had used the real city of Tartessos as the source for his Atlantis legend.

The strongest evidence for a real Atlantis, however, is not in Spain, but closer to Plato's home in Greece. This idea started with K.T. Frost, a professor of history at the Queen's University in Belfast. Later, Spyridon Marinatos, an archaeologist, and A.G. Galanopoulos, a seismologist, added evidence to Frost's ideas.

The Minoan Connection

Frost suggested that instead of being west of the Pillars of Hercules, Atlantis was east. He also thought that the catastrophic end of the island had come not 9000 years before Plato's time, but only 900. If this was true, the land of Atlantis might already be a well-known place even in Plato's time: the island of Crete.

Crete is now a part of modern Greece and lies just south of Athens across part of the Mediterranean Sea. Before 1500 B.C. it was the seat of the Minoan Empire. The Minoans dominated the eastern Mediterranean with a powerful navy and probably extracted tribute from other surrounding nations. Archaeological excavations have shown that Minoan Crete was probably one of the most sophisticated cultures of its time. It had splendid architecture and art. A code of laws gave women equal legal status to men. Agriculture was highly developed and an extensive irrigation system existed.

The island of Santorini in a satellite photo that clearly shows the ring left by the volcanos explosion.

Then, seemingly in a blink of an eye, the Minoan Civilization disappeared. Geological studies have shown that on an island we now know as Santorinas, located just eighty miles to the north of Crete, a disaster occurred that was very capable of toppling the Minoan state.

Santorinas today is a lush Mediterranean paradise consisting of several islands in a ring shape. Twenty-five hundred years ago, though, it was a single large island with a volcano in the center. The volcano blew itself apart in a massive explosion around 1500 B.C.

To understand the effect of such an explosion, scientists have compared it with the most powerful volcanic explosion in historic times. This occurred on the Island of Krakatoa in 1883. There a giant wave, or tsunami, 120 feet high raced across the sea and hit neighboring islands, killing 36,000 people. Ash thrown up into the air blackened the skies for three days. The sound of the explosion was heard as far away as 3,000 miles.

The explosion at Santorinas was four times as powerful as Krakatoa.

The tsunami that hit Crete must have traveled inland for over half a mile, destroying any coastal towns or cities. The great Minoan fleet of ships were all sunk in a few seconds. Overnight the powerful Minoan Empire was crushed and Crete changed to a political backwater. One can hardly imagine a catastrophe more like Plato's description of Atlantis' fate than the destruction of Crete.

A fresco from the Minoan palace at Knossos showing the sport of "bull leaping." The Minoan civilization is also the source of the legend of the haf man/half bull Minotaur.

Many of the details of the Atlantis story fit with what is now known about Crete. Women had a relatively high political status, both cultures were peaceful, and both enjoyed the unusual sport of ritualistic "bull leaping" (where an unarmed man wrestled and jumped over a bull).

If the fall of the Minoans is the story of Atlantis, how did Plato get the location and time wrong? Galanopoulos suggested there was a mistake during translation of some of the figures from Egyptian to Greek and an extra zero added. This would mean 900 years ago became 9000, and the distance from Egypt to "Atlantis" went from 250 miles to 2,500. If this is true, Plato (knowing the layout of the Mediterranean Sea) would have been forced to assume the location of the island continent to be squarely in the Atlantic Ocean.

Not everyone accepts the Minoan Crete theory of the story of Atlantis, but until a convincing case can be made for some other place, it, perhaps, remains science's best guess.

Was Atlantis located on the Island of Sardinia? Check Robert Ishoy's website.

According to Plato the temple in the center of Atlantis was dominated by a statue of Poseidon driving six winged horses (Copyright Lee Krystek, 2006).

Copyright Lee Krystek 1997-2006. All Rights Reserved.

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The UnMuseum - The Lost Continent of Atlantis

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The Lost Continent: The capital of Atlantis as described by Plato. (Copyright Lee Krystek 2006) The idea of a lost, but highly advanced civilization has captured the interest of people for centuries. Perhaps the most compelling of these tales is the story of Atlantis. The story appears again and again in books, television shows and movies.

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This website the author is talking about all the theories that man has come up with for the assumption of the location of Atlantis.  His article jumps too many places and confuses the reader.  This really strikes me as the red flag Proof by Verbosity, there’s just too much information and everything that I read I want to believe.  It was hard to decipher what the truth is.  Another red flag would be Red Herring, just steering me away from what the main topic is.  I really got lost reading this article and got bored.  I would really like to know his theory on and it not reading about everyone’s theory but his.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/150318-atlantis-morocco-santorini-plato-adams-ngbooktalk/

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Type the word "Atlantis" into Google and 120 million results pop up. Like El Dorado or Shangri-la, the legendary sunken city of Atlantis hovers on the horizon of our imagination, tantalizing, mysterious, unreachable. Meet Me in Atlantis: My Obsessive Quest to Find the Sunken City pulls together the tangled web of conjecture-and sticks a new locator pin in the map.

Talking from his home in Pelham, New York, author Mark Adams explains why he thinks Atlantis may have been off the coast of Morocco; how an Irishman created the world's largest database of Atlantis lore; and how the parting of the Red Sea, in the biblical story in Exodus, may be connected to Atlantis.
You're best known as a travel writer who has covered real places like Machu Picchu. Why did you choose to write a book about a subject usually discussed in the same breath as UFOs and Bigfoot?
[Laughs] I was writing the Machu Picchu book, and I read this headline in the New York Times: "German discovers Atlantis in Africa." I was like, what? The fact that someone could actually search for Atlantis and be taken seriously was weird.

A year or two after that, I was working on a magazine story about the greatest philosophers of all time, so I started reading about Plato. And the one thing that came up again and again was that Plato is our sole reputable source for the story of Atlantis.
Your interest in Atlantis began with a series of movies you saw as a boy in the 1970s. Take us back in time.
You can tell from Machu Picchu that I have an interest in lost cities. [Laughs] I think a certain personality loves that type of thing. The germ for me was a series of movies that came out in the late 1970s. They were these super-cheapo pseudo-documentaries, like Beyond and Back or In Search of Noah's Ark. There was also this show called In Search Of... hosted by Leonard Nimoy. If you get two people in a room and one finds out the other one loves In Search Of... as well, they'll end up having this Vulcan mind-meld, and talking about it for the next three hours. [Laughs]

It was Plato's "Critias" that set people off thinking that Atlantis actually existed.
When is Atlantis first mentioned in the historical record?
The only mention of Atlantis by name is in Plato's Dialogues (written around 360 B.C.): " Timaeus," which was a very complicated attempt to explain the universe, and " Critias," which has dozens of precise details about what Atlantis looked like, and where it may have been located in relation to other landmarks in the ancient world. It was "Critias," in particular, that set people off thinking that Atlantis actually existed.
I am taken with the theory of Atlantis being in Morocco. Tell us why it could be right-or wrong.
One of the things I've found with people reading this book is that different people find themselves sympathizing with different theories. I have four main theories, and I talk to the people behind the theories and visit the locations.

In the case of Morocco, a German computer expert, Michael Hübner, became obsessed with "Timaeus" and "Critias" because he's mathematically inclined. He set up what's called a Hierarchical Constraint Satisfaction and looked at every one of Plato's clues in "Timaeus" and "Critias." He weighted them and came up with an area on the map that was within 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) of Athens, Greece.

What a lot of people forget is that the story of Atlantis is actually a war story where Athens defeats Atlantis. Hübner plugged in the clues-essentially it was like a game of Battleship, [in which] whatever area had the most pegs sinks the battleship, or in this case discovers Atlantis. He theorizes that Atlantis was a little bit south of Casablanca in modern Morocco.

One of the best clues that Plato gives about Atlantis is that there was a series of concentric circles around the city, black and red stone, and of course it was a seafaring society.

Michael Hübner and I walked across the desert and, sure enough, there was black and red striped stone. Then he took me to the edge of the Sahara desert, and walked me up the hillside. Lo and behold, there were these concentric circles on the edge of the desert, and just a few miles away was the Atlantic Ocean. He makes a really compelling case that Atlantis was located in Morocco, and that's a relatively new theory. Not a lot of people have come up with his hypothesis.
What are the other three front-runner locations?
The traditional front-runner and the only one so far that has gotten a lot of traction with mainstream academics is the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea. There is real archaeological evidence there. The island has a bull's-eye shape with a ring around its center, and it has a relatively new volcano, which we know erupted in ancient times.

Santorini was also the site of an important maritime city called Akrotiri, which was discovered in 1967. There is a lot of evidence that it was a flourishing naval center. There were frescoes showing ships, very similar to the details that Plato gives about the Atlantis story. In the mid-1970s, Santorini was major news. Jacques Cousteau went to Santorini to look for Atlantis. It was taken pretty seriously.

The other two are Tartessus, in southern Spain, another lost city from antiquity, which is not too far from the modern-day city of Seville. Finally, there is Malta. Malta has the most ancient temples in the Mediterranean area, and Malta's culture was destroyed by a tsunami and earthquake.
Jose Maria Galan, a naturalist, says the real story of archaeology and Atlantis is that "no matter how big and powerful you get, you can disappear like that." Explain.
Jose Maria Galan worked at Doñana National Park [on the southern coast of Spain]. He took me out to the shore there and said: "In the summer, you'll see thousands of people lying out on the beach. Now imagine that there's a wave 60 meters high coming in, and you can see how a civilization could get wiped out right away."

Then he took me out to this area of dunes and we started digging into the hills, and Jose starts plucking out all these various pieces of pottery: Roman pieces, Muslim pieces from the Middle Ages, Greek, all the way back to Phoenician. It was amazing that so many cultures in this quiet spot had come and gone over the millennia. He says: "The only thing we know for sure is that everything gets wiped out in the end."

I think that is one of the main messages Plato was trying to get across: Time is cyclical, and even a very powerful, technically advanced civilization like Atlantis is going to get wiped out eventually.
You use the term "geo-mythology." Are there any reliable maps that show Atlantis?
No, though there have been people who have tried to place it on maps. There was a sort of odd, brilliant polymath named Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit who lived in Germany in the 17th century. He did what's probably the most famous map of Atlantis, where he placed it in the Atlantic Ocean. But there's no way of knowing whether he based this on any reliable information or whether he just made it up. The oldest maps we have don't go back much past 1500. They're post Christopher Columbus.
Your search for Atlantis took you all over the world, even to Ireland. Tell us about Tony O'Connell and how he started Atlantipedia.
Tony is one of those wonderful people that I got to meet. He and his longtime partner, Paul Evans, moved to the country outside of Dublin to take care of Tony's ailing mother. Being a very intelligent busybody, Tony was looking for something to fill his time and started getting into serious Atlantis research. He realized there was no single compendium to look for information about Atlantis, so he started this thing called Atlantipedia online. There are thousands of entries-everything you could ever want to know about Atlantis is there! [Laughs]

He was crucial for my research because when I talked to archaeologists, historians, or philosophy professors, a lot of them didn't want to talk about Atlantis. The subject is like kryptonite for serious academics. You're not allowed to take it seriously. So I went to Tony, hat in hand, and asked if he could help me out. He said, "Come to Ireland and spend a week, and we'll talk about it." Basically, he played Socrates to my Plato. He talked me through all the possibilities; and at the end of the week, I had my four candidates.
I was intrigued by the explanation of the biblical story of the parting of the Red Sea being a tsunami and the Santorini explosion theory-can you tell us more about that?
A lot of the information from Exodus lines up with things that might have happened during the volcanic eruption: the ten plagues, the sky darkening, the sea turning to blood, locusts. If you compare what happens during a volcanic blast, you can see how the effect of a volcanic blast would get translated into the ten plagues that hit Egypt.

One of the more interesting points he makes is that what is commonly known as the Red Sea parting may have actually been the Sea of Reeds, which is a lagoon in northern Egypt. When a tsunami occurs, as we know from what happened in Thailand, the sea recedes. It can go out a half mile or so. This may be what happened when the Jews reached safety on the other side. Then the water came crashing back and wiped out the Egyptians in pursuit.

It would be an incredible coincidence if all these things happen to fall into place. But in ancient history things are often described as happening in a short period of time that may actually have transpired over hundreds of years. So we don't really know.
Socrates said, "Everything I had done hinged on the truth or falsity of a statement about truth or falsity." Explain.
Before Plato started writing about Atlantis, he mentions some of the things that are going on in The Republic. But Socrates says: There are stories that we use to teach children. Some of these stories are true; some of these stories are not true. And then there are stories that have some truth and some falsity. The falsity is put in for teaching purposes.

The problem with Atlantis is that we have to figure out whether it's all true or all false. Plato wrestled with the idea of what's true and what's not true. The question is: Does Atlantis actually exist or does it fall somewhere in between? Part true. Part false.
So, Mark, will we meet in Atlantis one day? Or is it all a lot of hooey?
If somebody found concentric circles and an ancient Egyptian inscription mentioning a story like Plato says he found about Atlantis-and those two things are by no means impossible-I think we'd have a pretty good case that there's a lot of truth in the story. And nobody would be happier than me if we did. I would be over the moon.
Follow Simon Worrall on Twitter or at simonworrallauthor.com.

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Does New Theory Pinpoint Lost City of Atlantis?

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Type the word "Atlantis" into Google and 120 million results pop up. Like El Dorado or Shangri-la, the legendary sunken city of Atlantis hovers on the horizon of our imagination, tantalizing, mysterious, unreachable. Meet Me in Atlantis: My Obsessive Quest to Find the Sunken City pulls together the tangled web of conjecture-and sticks a new locator pin in the map.

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This website link has scientists that is using deep-ground radar to digitally map and find the location of the lost city of Atlantis which was located north of Spain by Cadiz under mud flats.

This website is unusual it really makes sense of where the location might be.  The scientists used digital technology and came across a city buried under mudflats directly where Plato presumably assumed the city would be located.  The only red flag I could see this to be is Ancient Wisdom. The reason why I think this is because maybe Plato could not pinpoint the location exactly, whereas modern day technology could map where it is based off Plato’s description of the general vicinity.  I do believe although these scientists are using deep ground radar to map the area, could it be another island that sunk? Since back in those days, there has been many tidal waves that destroyed large islands.  I do believe it’s missing more evidence, perhaps the scientist could use under water cameras to substantiate their findings.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1365824/Has-real-lost-city-Atlantis-finally--buried-mud-flats-Spain.html

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Has the real lost city of Atlantis finally been found... buried under mud flats in Spain?

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A U.S. led team of archaeologists and geologists believe they have pinpointed the exact location of the legendary metropolis under mud flats in southern Spain, north of Cadiz.