by David Hatcher Childress

Atlantis Rising Issue 9

from AtlantisRising Website

When it comes to questions regarding the actual physical location of the fabled lost civilization of Atlantis, the answers usually depend on with whom you are speaking. Everyone seems to have a favorite candidate for which a convincing case can be made. Whether in Antarctica or the Aegean, the Bahamas or the North Atlantic, intriguing clues are to be found everywhere, and sorting it all out can be confusing.

In his Lost Cities series, real-life Indiana Jones, David Hatcher Childress has written prolifically about ancient civilizations, and his life-long quest for their remains in some of the most remote and dangerous places of the world. Lately he has become something of a regular on national television with appearances on Fox-TV’s Sighting & Encounters, Discovery, and A&E, as well as the NBC specials Atlantis and The Mysterious Origins of Man. In his latest book, Lost Cities of Atlantis, Ancient Europe & the Mediterranean, Childress’ search for obscure evidence has turned up a vast array of fascinating material previously unavailable from any single source. So we asked him to bring some order to the subject and compile us a Top 10 List of possible locations for Atlantis. He agreed. Of the sites listed below some are covered in his book and some are not.

ED

1. AZORES

Plato quoting Egyptian Priests through his uncle Solon says that Atlantis was beyond the Pillars of Hercules fought a war with the ancient Mediterraneans, and sank in 9,400 B.C. Atlantis was a land of great seafarers, many elephants and a large plain with a gigantic harbor city of concentric circles. Because Atlantis was said to be a large island in the true ocean that surrounds the continents, it was thought to be in the mid-Atlantic. Atlantis was said to have colonized much of the world and fought a war with Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean. The sinking of Atlantis left only a few scattered islands, it is believed, islands such as the Azores.


2. SAHARA

The Sahara Desert, usually the Tassili and Ahaggar Mountains in southern Algeria, Tunisia or both, has been proposed as the actual site for Atlantis. When the French colonized North Africa they soon discovered a lost world existed in southern Algeria and that the ancient harbor of Carthage was an exact miniature of the capital of Atlantis as described by the Egyptian priests, novels such as Atlantide (1923) were popular in France, promoting the idea of Atlantis in the Sahara. The Sahara however, did not vanish beneath the ocean, but rather dried up and became a sandy seabed. Does Atlantis lie beneath the drifting sands and strange stone formations of the Sahara Desert?


3. MALTA

Malta has huge ancient structures that are now dated as 9000 years old or older and are said by orthodox archaeologists to be the oldest stone ruins in the world. Malta is now a small rocky island that once had elephants and shows evidence of having been destroyed in a huge cataclysmic wave. Joseph Ellul and others have proposed that Malta was part of a great civilization of the past, possibly Atlantis. Malta was probably connected to other parts of the Mediterranean when a huge wave from the Atlantic filled the Mediterranean, causing the Biblical Flood. Was Malta Atlantis? The island is far too small to have been Atlantis, but it shows that the Mediterranean was a very different place 12,000 years ago.


4. BIMINI

With the discovery in 1968 of what appeared to be a huge polygonal stone road in the shallow water off Bimini, Atlantis was thought to have been found in the Ca-ribbean. A lost pyramid underwater staircases, fallen pillars, all seemed sunken ruins indeed. Atlantis could have spread over a large portion of the Atlantic, from the Azores to the Bahamas and possibly even Florida. Recently, Indiana archaeologist Jackson Judge has suggested that Portsmouth, Ohio was the site of Atlantis.


5. SOUTH AMERICA

Because of the gigantic ruins in Peru and Bolivia and the evidence that Tiahuanaco was destroyed in a cataclysm. South America has been proposed as the site of Atlantis by number of early writers, including the British colonel Percy Fawcett, who vanished in the jungles of Brazil in 1925 while searching for a lost city of Atlantis. South America does have huge ruins and is across the Atlantic, but it seems to have risen from sea level, rather than sinking into the ocean.


6. ANTARCTICA

When Charles Hapgood resurrected the Pin Ri’is map, a map copied from older maps by a Turkish admiral and which showed Antarctica as an ice-free continent, the concept of Atlantis in the frozen polar wasteland was born. Since Atlantis may have been destroyed in a pole shift, Antarctica was probably at a more temperate climate 10,000 years ago, and may hold megalithic ruins such as South America. Antarctica seems a long way away from the Mediterranean with which it fought a war. Also Atlantis supposedly sank beneath the ocean in a day and night. Antarctica rather accumulated ice for thousands of years. Does Atlantis lie beneath the Antarctic ice?


7. CANARYS

While no ancient ruins have ever been discovered in the Azores, the mountain tops of the mid-Atlantic ridge, ancient ruins have been discovered in the Canary islands off the coast of Morocco. The native Guanche people of the Canaries had no knowledge of boats when first discovered by Spanish explorers, circular stone ruins have been found on the islands, leading some to propose that the Canaries are a remnant of ancient Atlantis.


8. NORTH SEA

The shallow areas of the North Sea off Holland, Germany, England and Scandinavia have been proposed as the site of a sunken civilization that may have been Atlantis. The Oera Linda Book discovered in Holland in the 1700’s spoke of a sunken land off the Frisian islands of Holland. Jugen Spanuth, a German Pastor, took photos of underwater ruins off northern Germany in the early 1950s. Recently, researcher Paul Dunbavin has proposed that the citadel of Atlantis was located underwater between Wales and Ireland, this area being the "Plain of Atlantis" as described by Plato. Major Dutch cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam are 40 feet or more below sea level even as you read this. They may well be the sunken cities of near future.


9. MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East and Arabia has some of the largest and most baffling stone ruins in the world. The largest stone blocks in the world are to found at Baalbek in Lebanon. They weigh an amazing 2,000 tons each and are worthy of Atlantean architecture. Similarly, it is said that the Temple Wall in Jerusalem also has a foundation of gigantic stones, similar to Baalbek. Recent authors such as Stan Deyo have suggested that Saudi Arabia, with its strange ruins in the central desserts, is the site of ancient Atlantis. Port cities can be found in the interior of Arabia, and while it is clear that Arabia and the Middle East have many lost civilizations to be discovered, this is obviously not a sunken area at all. The Biblical Flood did sweep over the Middle East at some time in prehistory. Did it destroy Atlantis, or did Atlantis cause the catastrophe?


10. THERA & CRETE

According to the tourist literature in Greece, the explosion of the Aegean island of Thera destroyed Crete and at the same time, Atlantis. While Plato is quite explicit in his time frame and location for Atlantis (9,400 B.C. and in the Atlantic), Greek archaeologists seem certain that Atlantis can be found only a few hundred miles from Athens. Thousands of tourists come to Thera every year and drink the local Atlantis wine while they discuss Atlantis. For them, Atlantis will never be found anywhere else.