For many years, researchers have been trying to answer the question of where Atlantis is located – a mysterious and mysterious country. Already in 1920, there were more than 1,700 articles and books devoted to this topic. All sources of information about Atlantis can be divided into archaeological and geological studies, ancient maps, myths and legends. Having compared all these data, it is possible to come to a conclusion about the location of its location.
Ignatius Donnelly is an American politician who has studied the topic of Atlantis for many years, describing it in his book as an island state. Many other researchers studying the topic of Atlantis mark it on maps in the Atlantic Ocean, in the area of the Azores. Let's take a closer look at this area, it is very unusual. Three geological plates touch here: European, North American and African. In this place, there is a thickening of the oceanic crust up to 14 km, and topographic maps indicate a significant elevation of the relief – this is quite unusual.
According to Plato, Atlantis was a large rectangular island, protected from the winds by mountain ranges on three sides. A large canal with a length of almost 1 km, a width of 100 m and a depth of 25 m ran through the middle of the island. In addition, there were small rivers on the island of Atlantis. Plato also located the island of Atlantis between America and Europe. And this is what the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean looks like now in the area of the Azores Archipelago.
The Mid-Atlantic ridge with its large fault in the center is very similar to the channel described by Plato, around which mountains rise.
The modern relief of Iceland includes the same channel, which is a continuation of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge on land.
What is unusual in this place is that at a depth of 3,000 meters, scientists discovered coastal sand, which forms only on the surface, as well as volcanic formations. This means that there used to be land here. Geologists are still unable to explain other anomalies in the region.
During the research by scientists of the oceanic depths in the area of the Azores, corals were discovered at around 1,200 meters. These corals love light and live at a depth of no more than 50 meters, and a whole clearing was discovered here. Unusual, isn't it?
This indicates that the land in this place has dropped by more than 1000 meters in a fairly short period of time.
Also, at a depth of more than 3 km, scientists found the remains of plants living in fresh waters, which also indicates the absence of an ocean in these places in the past.
Some amateur researchers claim that it was not this area that went under water, but the level of the world's oceans rose after the ice age. This opinion is erroneous, otherwise the coastline would have changed a lot and we would have lost not only Atlantis, but also other islands from the maps, and the mainland would have greatly changed its outlines.
A strange thing happens with archaeological expeditions in the area of the Azores. This area is very interesting to explore, but there are practically no expeditions, although they could accurately give an understanding of where Atlantis is located. Researchers cannot obtain permits for archaeological research for political reasons – on the one hand, this is the territory of Portugal, on the other hand, on the very border with America. Therefore, there are supposedly some obstacles.
In 2013, fisherman Dioclesiano Silva, sailing on his yacht between two islands of the Azores archipelago, noticed something unusual on the radar – a pyramidal structure with a base area of 8000 sq.m and a height of 60 m, oriented with faces to the cardinal directions in the same way as the Egyptian pyramids.
The Portuguese media released a story about this event. But scientists did not pay much attention to him, saying that the Azores is a seismically active region, and Silva's radar is of low accuracy and he discovered not a pyramid, but an ordinary underwater volcano. This was the end of the investigation of the sensation.
Another group of Spanish and American researchers in 2001 discovered an underwater temple at a depth of about 1,200 meters with nine columns, having five circular channels. There were four groups of buildings between the channels.
Plato described a temple very similar to this structure. After the information was made public, further archaeological research was stopped, and the data already obtained was classified. Interesting, isn't it?
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote about the Atlanteans in about 460 in one of his works. They live near a salt lake, which is adjacent to a mountain called Atlas. The locals got their name from the name of the mountain. It is very high, and in winter and summer its peak is shrouded in fog.
According to the map, next to the Atlantic Sea (the current Atlantic Ocean) we see Atlas Mountain. In addition, Herodotus mentions the Pillars of Hercules — on modern maps they correspond to the Strait of Gibraltar. That is, according to this scientist, Atlantis was located in the west of Africa.
The German Jesuit monk Athanasius Kircher, a famous cartographer, also studied the theme of Atlantis and searched for its location. He studied ancient languages, including ancient Greek and read Plato's works in the original. He also got acquainted with the works of other Jesuit monks. In his book «The Underworld», he was one of the first to present a map according to which Atlantis is an island located in the Azores.
The north on Athanasius Kircher's map is located at the bottom, so the location of the continents is unusual for us: Africa on the left, and America on the right.
Ignatius Donnelly, whom we mentioned earlier, devoted so much time to studying the topic of Atlantis that he is called the «father of Atlantology». As a result of his comprehensive research, he, like A. Kircher, determined the location of Atlantis in the area of the Azores Archipelago, as he wrote in the book «Atlantis: the world before the flood».
British researcher James Churchward assumed the existence of not only Atlantis, but also the continent of Mu. During his trip to Lhasa, while collecting information for his book, he saw an ancient map from Tibetan monks, on the basis of which he later made a hand drawing.
On his map there is both Atlantis and the continent of Mu, which, in his opinion, disappeared several millennia earlier than the island of Atlantis. Churchward claims that Atlantis was located between America and Spain, and served as a transit point for travelers from the Mu continent to Africa and Europe.
In the 1980s, in Ecuador, in the La Mana region, scientists found an ancient map inscribed on a stone block. Her age is estimated at 12-18 thousand years. Scientists note the authenticity of the map, and what is most interesting is that they find on it not only all the continents that exist now, but also some others.
If we consider that 12,000 years ago there was an ice age and a huge amount of water on earth was in glaciers, then, accordingly, the level of the world's oceans was slightly lower. According to scientists, about 125 meters. This is due to a slightly different outline of the continents on the stone map of Ecuador, nevertheless they are all very recognizable.
So, on this map, there is a large island to the east of North America. If you compare this ancient map with a modern topographic map of the seabed, it becomes clear that just at this place, a little south of the Azores, there was most likely a hill earlier.
Some researchers claim that Atlantis was located in the Mediterranean Sea, and islands such as Crete and Cyprus were parts of it before the death of Atlantis. Then an earthquake or a worldwide flood occurred and part of the huge island went under water.
Why the Mediterranean Sea? Because there is a description of the war between Athens and Atlantis. According to ancient Greek myths, the only person who managed to travel to the edge of the Mediterranean Sea was Hercules. From this, the researchers conclude that the inhabitants of those times were so underdeveloped in technical terms that they could only fight with their nearest neighbors, and they had no opportunity to sail somewhere far away with their army. So Atlantis had to be somewhere near Athens.
But there are a number of inconsistencies. Firstly, according to the descriptions, the island of Atlantis was larger than Libya and Asia of those times, where could it fit in the Mediterranean Sea?
Secondly, Hercules performed his exploits several centuries after the death of Atlantis, which means that it is unreliable to judge the technological development of the civilization of the Atlanteans and their contemporaries on the basis of myths about the exploits of Hercules. Perhaps, along with the death of Atlantis, advanced technologies also disappeared. Thirdly, the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea has been studied quite well and no evidence has been found that there was once a huge technologically advanced civilization there.
In the early 1980s, not far from Kerch, on the seashore in the sand scree that separates Lake Janysh from the Black Sea, an ordinary schoolboy found more than a hundred antique coins and took them to the Kerch Museum. This was the impetus for the exploration of the seabed of the area. At a depth of 3-4 meters, archaeologists found a city with an area of about 3.5 hectares built around the VI century BC. The find was immediately dubbed the Crimean Atlantis. Why Crimean? Because researchers quickly came to the conclusion that this was not Atlantis at all, but the ancient Bosporan city of Acre, which, judging by the preservation of the structures, slowly but surely sank to the bottom of the sea. Nevertheless, despite the opinion of historians and archaeologists, some still consider this underwater city to be a real Atlantis.
Another theory says that under the ice of Antarctica are the remains of an ancient Atlantean civilization. So say the research writers Graeme Hancock, Rand Fleming and Professor Charles Hepgood. The latter in his theory assumes that the Earth's crust can move entirely relative to the center of the Earth. Thus, the continent of Antarctica was previously located in warmer and more life-friendly latitudes and was inhabited by Atlanteans. But such a movement of the earth's crust is always catastrophic and is accompanied by earthquakes, tsunamis, glaciations and other natural disasters. This is exactly what led to the death of Atlantis.
The Russian Vostok Scientific Station is located in Antarctica and is engaged in various studies, including ice cores. So, according to the studied ice cores, Antarctica acquired its modern appearance 12 million years ago, and began to be covered with ice even earlier. This means that she could not be any blooming paradise Atlantis.
These are just a few theories regarding the location of the Atlantean civilization. In fact, there are many more of them, and many of them are obviously absurd, and do not stand up to any criticism.
Thus, if we take into account all the available evidence, it is safe to say that Atlantis is now at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in the area of the Azores archipelago. Of course, researchers still have many doubts even about the very fact of the existence of this civilization. We are confident that in the near future other evidence will become available to the public, not only of the existence of Atlantis and its exact location, but also of the causes of its death. And this is a much more interesting question, but for another article.
