Douwe Osinga's Blog: The location of Atlantis

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

I'm on a roll - three postings in three days! The subject for today is atlantis and where it might have been. A lot of theories and the most likely theorie probably is that it never existed, but I have another, one I haven't seen published, but let me know if I'm wrong.

Atlantis is the Mediterranean. 10.000 years ago, around the time Plato places it, the world was just coming out of an Ice age. Sea levels were rising. Since the sea was so low that the street of Gibraltar was closed, sea levels in the Mediterenean where even lower, because the Mediterenean currently needs water from the Atlantic to keep up its current level. One day the street of Gibraltar opens and you have the sort of disaster Hollywood would love.

Now look at the map above. This is what the coast line would look like without Gibraltar blocking the Med. If it would, sea levels would drop. The pink area's would also become land.  That is where atlantis was. When the floods struck, civilisation is thrown back some thousand years and the people are left with some vague memories about great floods.

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