Location hypotheses of Atlantis

Location hypotheses of Atlantis are various proposed real-world settings for Atlantis island, (Ατλαντιδι νησω) a lost civilization mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 B.C. In these dialogues, a character named Critias claims that an island called Atlantis was swallowed by the sea about 9,200 years previously. This story was passed down to him through his grandfather, Dropides who in turn got it from Solon, the famous Athenian lawmaker who translated it from Egyptian language. Plato's dialogues locate the island in the Atlantic Pelagos “Atlantic Sea”&lt;ref&gt;Babiniotis, Lexicon of the Greek Language. Pelagos Small "in front of" the Pillars of Hercules (Ηρακλεους στηλας) and facing a district called(modern Gades or Gadira (Gadiron), a location that many modern scholars associate with modern Gibraltar; however various locations have been proposed.
 * Atlantis Overview


 * Atlantis,which means "daughter of Atlas" in Greek, is first mentioned in Plato'sdialogues Timaeus and Critias, though Critias was never finished.Benjamin Jowett argues that Plato originally planned a third dialoguetitled Hermocrates. John V. Luce goes further arguing that Plato, afterdescribing the origin of the world and mankind in Timaeus and theallegorical perfect society of ancient Athens and its successfuldefense against an antagonistic Atlantis in Critias, would have madethe strategy of the Greek civilization during their conflict with thePersians a subject of discussion in the Hermocrates.

In his account, Atlantis was a naval power that conquered many parts ofWestern Europe and Africa 9,000 years (approximately 9600 BC) beforethe time of Solon, the great, great grandfather of Critias, who wastold the story by Egyptian priests of Sais, who translated the historyof ancient Athens and Atlantis, recorded on papyri in Egyptianhieroglyphs, into Greek.

For it is related in our records how once upon a time your State stayed thecourse of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in theAtlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe,and Asia to boot. For the ocean there was at that time navigable; forin front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, 'the pillarsof Heracles,' there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asiatogether; and it was possible for the travelers of that time to crossfrom it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of thecontinent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean. Forall that we have here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, isevidently a haven having a narrow entrance; but that yonder is a realocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in thefullest and truest sense, a continent. Now in this island of Atlantisthere existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power,which held sway over all the island, and over many other islands alsoand parts of the continent.

Accordingto Plutarch, Solon met with "Psenophis of Heliopolis, and Sonchis theSaite, the most learned of all the priests"; Plutarch refers here toevents that would have happened five centuries before he wrote of them.

InCritias, the Hellenic gods divided the land so that each god might owna lot; Poseidon was bequeathed the island of Atlantis. The island waslarger than Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined. The Egyptians, Platoasserted, described Atlantis as an island comprising mostly mountainsin the northern portions and along the shore, and encompassing a greatplain of an oblong shape in the south "extending in one direction threethousand stadia [about 555 km; 345 mi], but across the center inland itwas two thousand stadia [about 370 km; 230 mi]." Fifty stadia (9 km; 6mi) from the coast was a mountain that was low on all sides... broke itoff all round about... the central island itself was five stades indiameter [about 0.92 km; 0.57 mi].

InPlato's myth Poseidon fell in love with Cleito, the daughter of Evenorand Leucippe, who bore him five pairs of male twins. The eldest ofthese, Atlas, was made rightful king of the entire island and the ocean(called the Atlantic Ocean in his honor), and was given the mountain ofhis birth and the surrounding area as his fiefdom. Atlas's twinGadeirus, or Eumelus in Greek, was given the extremity of the islandtowards the Pillars of Heracles. The other four pairs of twins —Ampheres and Evaemon, Mneseus and Autochthon, Elasippus and Mestor, andAzaes and Diaprepes — were also given "rule over many men, and a largeterritory." Poseidon carved the mountain where his love dwelt into apalace and enclosed it with three circular moats of increasing width,varying from one to three stadia and separated by rings of landproportional in size. The Atlanteans then built bridges northward fromthe mountain, making a route to the rest of the island. They dug agreat canal to the sea, and alongside the bridges carved tunnels intothe rings of rock so that ships could pass into the city around themountain; they carved docks from the rock walls of the moats. Everypassage to the city was guarded by gates and towers, and a wallsurrounded each of the city's rings. The walls were constructed of red,white and black rock quarried from the moats, and were covered withbrass, tin and the precious metal orichalcum, respectively.

Accordingto Critias, 9,000 years before his lifetime a war took place betweenthose outside the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar andthose who dwelt within them. The Atlanteans had conquered the parts ofLibya within the Pillars of Heracles as far as Egypt and the Europeancontinent as far as Tyrrhenia, and subjected its people to slavery. TheAthenians led an alliance of resistors against the Atlantean empire,and as the alliance disintegrated, prevailed alone against the empire,liberating the occupied lands.

Afterthe failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in asingle day and night of misfortune" and became an impassable mud shoal,inhibiting travel to any part of the ocean.


 * }

In the Mediterranean


Most theories of the placement of Atlantis center on the Mediterranean, influenced largely by the geographical location of Greece from which the story is derived.

Andalusia
Andalusia is a region in modern day southern Spain which once included the "lost" city of Tartessos, which disappeared in the 6th century BC. The Tartessians were traders known to the Ancient Greeks who knew of their legendary king Arganthonios. The Andalusian hypothesis was originally developed by the Spanish author José Pellicer de Ossau i Tovar in 1673, who suggested that the metropolis of Atlantis was between the islands Mayor and Menor, located almost in the center of the Doñana Marshes,&lt;ref&gt;Joseph Pellicer de Ossau y Tovar (Spaniard). Aparato a la mvonarchia antigua de las Españas en los tres tiempos del mundo, el adelon, el mithico y el historico : primera parte... / por don Ioseph Pellicer de Ossau y Touar... (En Valençia : por Benito Macè..., 1673 (the first extensive study about Atlantis in Iberia, with the hypothesis about Doñana) &lt;/ref&gt; and expanded upon by Juan Fernández Amador y de los Ríos in 1919, who suggested that the metropolis of Atlantis was located precisely where today are the 'Marismas de Hinojo'.&lt;ref&gt;Juan Fernández Amador de los Ríos (Spaniard). Antigüedades ibéricas / por Juan Fernández Amador de los Rios. Pamplona : Nemesio Aramburu, 1911. (first part about the Atlantis in Iberia, with the hypothesis about Doñana, Sea Peoples, etc.)&lt;/ref&gt; These claims were made again in 1922 by the German author Adolf Schulten, and further propegated by Otto Jessen and Richard Hennig in the 1920s. In 1997, supposedly independent of earlier research, the German teacher Werner Wickboldt also claimed this to be the location of Atlantis.&lt;ref&gt;Werner Wickboldt: Locating the capital of Atlantis by strict observation of the text by Plato. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on "The Atlantis Hypothesis: Searching for a Lost Land"(Milos island 2005). Athen 2007. ISBN 978-960-89882-1-7 pp.517-524&lt;/ref&gt; Wickboldt suggested that the war of the Atlanteans refers to the war of the Sea Peoples who attacked the Eastern Mediterranean countries around 1200 BC and that the Iron Age city of Tartessos may have been built at the site of the ruined Atlantis. In 2000, Georgeos Diaz-Montexano published an article explaining his belief that Atlantis was located somewhere between Andalusia and Morocco.&lt;ref&gt;Magazine Más Allá de la Ciencia, March-April of the 2000 (nº 134), where was published a report about the Georgeos Díaz-Montexano's theory of Atlantis between Andalusia and Morocco.&lt;/ref&gt; An Andalusian location was also supported by Rainer W. Kühne in his article that appeared in the journal Antiquity.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;Rainer W. Kühne: "Did Ulysses Travel to Atlantis?" in : "Science and Technology in Homeric Epics" (ed. S. A. Paipetis), Series: History of Mechanism and Machine Science, Vol. 6, Springer, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4020-8783-7&lt;/ref&gt; Kühne's theory says: "Good fiction imitates facts. Plato declared that his Atlantis tale is philosophical fiction invented to describe his fictitious ideal state in the case of war. Kühne suggests that Plato has used three historical elements for this tale. (i) Greek tradition on Mycenaean Athens for the description of ancient Athens, (ii) Egyptian records on the wars of the Sea Peoples for the description of the war of the Atlanteans, and (iii) oral tradition from Syracuse about Tartessos for the description of the city and geography of Atlantis." According to Wickboldt, Satellite images show two rectangular shapes on the tops of two small elevations inside the marsh of Doñana which he hypothesizes are the "temple of Poseidon" and "the temple of Cleito and Poseidon".&lt;ref&gt; &lt;/ref&gt; On satellite images parts of several "rings" are recognizable, similar in their proportion with the ring system by Plato.&lt;ref&gt;Werner Wickboldt: Locating the capital of Atlantis by strict observation of the text by Plato. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on "The Atlantis Hypothesis: Searching for a Lost Land"(Milos island 2005). Athen 2007. ISBN 978-960-89882-1-7 pp.517-524&lt;/ref&gt; It is not known if any of these shapes are natural or manmade and archaeological excavations are planned.&lt;ref&gt;&nbsp http://www.beepworld.de/members/archiv_rainer_kuehne_17/         &nbsp; Search for Tartessos-Atlantis in the Donana National Park&lt;/ref&gt; Geologists have shown that the Doñana National Park experienced intense erosion from 4000 BC until century IX AD, where it became a marine environment. For thousands of years until the Medieval Age, all that occupied the area of the modern Marshes Doñana was a gulf or inland sea-arm, but there was not even a small island with sufficient space to house a small village.&lt;ref&gt;A. Rodriguez-Ramirez et al., Recent coastal evolution of the Doñana National Park (SW Spain), in: Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol. 15 (1996) pp.803 -809&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;Paleogeografía de las costas atlánticas de Andalucía durante el Holoceno medio-superior : prehistoria reciente, protohistoria y fases históricas / Francisco Borja Barrera En: Tartessos : 25 años después, 1968-1993 : Jerez de la Frontera, 1995, ISBN 84-87194-64-8, pags. 73-97&lt;/ref&gt;

Sea of Azov
The Sea of Azov, located north of the Black Sea, between Ukraine and Southern Russia, was proposed as the location of Atlantis in the book titled Atlantis Motherland, by Eagle/Wind, published in 2003. This theory is based on tectonic evidence of catastrophic earthquakes and massive flooding which occurred at the end of the Younger Dryas Ice Age, in 9,600 BC. Atlantis is presented as a man-made island, which was created by excavating an incredible ditch around a vast fertile plain. The earthquake caused the plain to sink and it was then simultaneously inundated by tsunami waves from the Black Sea and overflow from the Caspian Sea, in an event called the Great Atlantis Flood.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; &lt;ref&gt; Eagle, Wind, Atlantis Motherland, Maui, HI: Cosmic Vortex, 2003 ISBN 0-9719580-0-9.&lt;/ref&gt; &lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

Black Sea
German researchers Siegfried and Christian Schoppe locate Atlantis in the Black Sea. Before 5500 BC, a great plain lay in the northwest at a former freshwater-lake. In 5510 BC, rising sea level topped the barrier at today's Bosporus. They identify the Pillars of Hercules with the Strait of Bosporus.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; They gave no explanation how the ships of the merchants coming from all over the world had arrived the harbour of Atlantis when it was 350 feet below global sea-level.

They claim Oreichalcos means the obsidian stone that used to be a cash-equivalent at that time and was replaced by the spondylus shell around 5500 BC, which would suit the red, white, black motif. The geocatastrophic event led to the neolithic diaspora in Europe, also beginning 5500 BC.

In 2000, the Guardian reported that Robert Ballard, in a small submarine, found remains of human habitation around 300 feet underwater in the Black Sea off the north coast of Turkey. The area flooded around 5000 BC. This flood is also believed to have inspired the Biblical story of Noah's Ark known as the Black Sea deluge theory.

Another candidate bordering the Black Sea, suggested by Hasan Umur in the 1940s, would be Ancomah, a legendary place near Trabzon.

Santorini


Soon after the discovery of the Minoan civilization at Knossos on Crete by Sir Arthur Evans in 1900, theories linking the disappearance of this advanced empire with the destruction of Atlantis were proposed.&lt;ref&gt; &lt;/ref&gt; More recent archaeological, seismological, and vulcanological evidence&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref name=BBCWave&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; (popularized on The History Channel show Lost Worlds episode "Atlantis"&lt;ref name=LostWorlds&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref name=LostWorldUK&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;) has expanded the asserted connection of Crete, the island of Santorini, and the Minoan civilization with Plato's description of Atlantis. Evidence said to advance this idea includes:


 * The Minoan palace and buildings discovered at the digs at Knossos on Crete and at Akrotiri on the island of Santorini have revealed that the Minoans possessed advanced engineering knowledge enabling the construction of three- and four-story buildings with intricate water piping systems, advanced air-flow management, and earthquake-resistant wood and masonry walls. This level of technology was, it is said, far ahead of that found on mainland Greece at the time.


 * Santorini (also called Thera) is the site of a massive volcanic caldera with an island at its center. Vulcanologists have determined that the island was engulfed by a volcanic eruption, the Thera eruption, around 1600 BC. The event, referred to as the Minoan eruption, was among the most powerful eruptions occurring in the history of civilization, ejecting approximately 60 km³ of material, leaving a layer of pumice and ash 10 to 80 meters thick for 20 to 30 km in all directions and having widespread effects across the eastern Mediterranean region.&lt;ref name=URI2006&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; Volcanic events of this magnitude are known to generate tsunamis and archaeological evidence suggests that such a tsunami may have devastated the coastal Minoan settlements on Crete.&lt;ref name=BBCWave/&gt; Plato did not describe a volcanic eruption, although the events he described as "sunk by an earthquake" or "violent earthquakes, and only a flood (in singular)", could perhaps be intrepreted as consistent with such an eruption and the resulting tsunami.&lt;ref name=decadevolc1&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;


 * Plato described quarries on Atlantis where "one kind of stone was white, another black, and a third red",&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; writing that these stones were quarried from the island and used in the construction. Rocks like this are found on Santorini.


 * Atlantis was described as being laid out in circular manner, surrounded by three circular concentric pits of seawater and two earth-rings, each connected to the sea by a deep canal. Docks for a large number of ships, with a causeway, were also mentioned. Scientists attempting to reconstruct the shape of the island prior to the eruption have concluded that the there was a ring configuration (but no similar to Atlantis acropolis) to that of present day Santorini.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; One fresco also shows a large city on the island, which some archaeologists think represent the center of the caldera.



Helike
Giovannini argued that the ancient submergence of the city of Helike might have inspired Plato to his story about Atlantis.&lt;ref name="Giovannini1985"&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

The claim that Helike is the inspiration for Plato's Atlantis is also supported by Dora Katsonopoulou and Steven Soter.&lt;ref&gt;http://www.helike.org/paper.shtml&lt;/ref&gt;

Turkey
Peter James, in his book The Sunken Kingdom, identifies Atlantis with the kingdom of Zippasla. He argues that Solon did indeed gather the story on his travels, but in Lydia, not Egypt as Plato states; that Atlantis is identical with Tantalis, the city of Tantalus in Asia Minor, which was (in a similar tradition known to the Greeks) said to have been destroyed by an earthquake; that the legend of Atlantis' conquests in the Mediterranean is based on the revolt by King Madduwattas of Zippasla against Hittite rule; that Zippasla is identical with Sipylus, where Greek tradition placed Tantalis; and that the now vanished lake to the north of Mount Sipylus was the site of the city.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

Near Cyprus
It has been argued by Robert Sarmast, an American architect, that the lost city of Atlantis lies at the bottom of the eastern Mediterranean Sea within the Cyprus Basin.&lt;ref name="Sarmast2006a"&gt;Sarmast, R., 2006, Discovery of Atlantis: The Startling Case for the Island of Cyprus. Origin Press, San Rafael, California. 195 pp. ISBN 1579830129&lt;/ref&gt; In his book and on his web site, he argues that images prepared from sonar data of the sea bottom of the Cyprus Basin southeast of Cyprus show features resembling man-made structures on it at depths of 1,500 meters. He interprets these features as being artificial structures that are part of the lost city of Atlantis as described by Plato. According to his ideas, several characteristics of Cyprus, including the presence of copper and extinct Cyprus Dwarf Elephants and local place names and festivals (Kataklysmos), support his identification of Cyprus as once being part of Atlantis. As with many other theories concerning the location of Atlantis, Sarmast speculates that its destruction by catastrophic flooding is reflected in the story of Noah's Flood in Genesis.

In part, Sarmast&lt;ref name="Sarmast2006a"/&gt; bases his claim that Atlantis can be found offshore of Cyprus beneath 0.9 mile (1.5 km) of water on an abundance of evidence that the Mediterranean Sea dried up during the Messinian Salinity Crisis when its level dropped by 2 to 3 miles (3.2 to 4.9 km) below the level of the Atlantic Ocean as the result of tectonic uplift blocking the inflow of water through Strait of Gibraltar.&lt;ref name=ClauzonOthers1996&gt;Clauzon, G., J.-P. Suc, F. Gautier, A. Berger, and M.-F. Loutre, 1996, "Alternate interpretation of the Messinian salinity crisis: Controversy resolved?". Geology. v. 24, no. 4, pp. 363–366. &lt;/ref&gt; Separated from the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea either partly or completely dried up as the result of evaporation. As a result, its formerly submerged bottom turned into a desert with large saline and brackish lakes. This area all was flooded when a ridge collapsed allowing the catastrophic flooding of through the Straits of Gibraltar. However, Sarmast disagrees with mainstream geologists, oceanographers, and paleontologists&lt;ref name="StanleyOthers1985"&gt;Stanley, D.J., and F.-C. Wezel, 1985, "Geological Evolution of the Mediterranean Basin" Springer-Verlag, New York, New York. 589 p. ISBN: 1-897799-66-7&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref name="HallOthers2005c"&gt;Hall, J.K., V.A. Krasheninnikov, F. Hirsch, C. Benjamini, and C. Flexer, eds., 2005, "Geological framework of the Levant, Volume II: the Levantine Basin and Israel", 107 MB PDF version, Historical Productions-Hall, Jerusalem, Israel. 826 p. Additional PDF files of a related book and maps can be downloaded from "CYBAES manuscript downloads"&lt;/ref&gt; in arguing that the closing of the Straits of Gibraltar; the dessication and subaerial exposure of the floor of the Mediterranean Sea; and its catatstrophic flooding has occurred "forty times or more times in its long and turbulent existence" and that "the age of each of these events is unknown."&lt;ref name=Sarmast2003&gt;Anonymous, 2003, ['http://www.discoveryofatlantis.com/questions.htm 'Q&A with Robert Sarmast], Discovery of Atlantis'' web site&lt;/ref&gt; In the same interview, he also contradicts what mainstream geologists, oceanographers, and paleontologists argue&lt;ref name="StanleyOthers1985"/&gt;&lt;ref name="HallOthers2005c"/&gt; in claiming that "Scientists know that roughly 18,000 years ago, there was not just one Mediterranean Sea, but three." However, he does not specify who these "scientists" are and where in the peer-reviewed scientific literature this idea has been proposed by any mainstream Earth scientist.

Marine and other geologists,&lt;ref name=ClauzonOthers1996/&gt;&lt;ref name="HubscherOthers2009aa"&gt;Hübscher, C., E. Tahchi, I. Klaucke, A. Maillard, and H. Sahling, 2009, Salt tectonics and mud volcanism in the Latakia and Cyprus Basins, eastern Mediterranean. Tectonophysics. v. 470, no. 1-2, pp. 173-182.&lt;/ref&gt; who have also studied the bottom of the Cyprus basin, and professional archaeologists completely disagree with his interpretations.&lt;ref name="Britt2004"&gt;Britt, R.R., 2004, Claimed Discovery of Atlantis Called 'Completely Bogus, Live Science.&lt;/ref&gt; Investigations by Dr. C. Hübscher of the Institut für Geophysik, Universität Hamburg, Germany, and others of the salt tectonics and mud volcanism within the Cyprus Basin, eastern Mediterranean Sea, demonstrated that the features which Sarmast interprets to be Atlantis consist only of a natural compressional fold caused by local salt tectonics and a slide scar with surficial compressional folds at the downslope end and sides of the slide.&lt;ref name="HubscherOthers2009aa"/&gt; This research collaborates seismic data shown and discussed in the Atlantis: New Revelations 2-hour Special episode of Digging for the Truth, a History Channel documentary television series. Using reflection seismology, this documentary demonstrated techniques that what Sarmast interpreted to be artificial walls are natural tectonic landforms.

Furthermore, the interpretation of the age and stratigraphy of sediments blanketing the bottom of the Cyprus Basin from sea bottom cores containing Pleistocene and older marine sediments and thousands of kilometers of seismic lines from the Cyprus and adjacent basins clearly demonstrates that the Mediterranean Sea last dried up during the Messinian Salinity Crisis between 5.59 and 5.33 million years ago.&lt;ref name=ClauzonOthers1996/&gt;&lt;ref name="HubscherOthers2009aa"/&gt;&lt;ref name="EmeisOthers2005a"&gt;Emeis, K.-C., A.H.F. Robertson, C. Richter, and others, 1996, ODP Leg 160 (Mediterranean I) Sites 963-973 Proceedings Ocean Drilling Program Initial Reports no. 160. Ocean Drilling Program, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. ISSN 1096-2158&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref name="CalonOthers2005a"&gt;Calon, T.J., A.E. Aksu, J. Hall, 2005, The Neogene evolution of the Outer Latakia Basin and its extension into the Eastern Mesaoria Basin (Cyprus), Eastern Mediterranean. Marine Geology, v. 221, no. 1-4, pp. 61– 94.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref name="HallOthers2005a"&gt;Hall, J., T.J. Calon, A.E. Aksu, and S.R. Meade, 2005, Structural evolution of the Latakia Ridge and Cyprus Basin at the front of the Cyprus Arc, Eastern Mediterranean Sea. Marine Geology. v. 221, pp. 261– 297.&lt;/ref&gt; For example, research conducted south of Cyprus as part of Leg 160 of the Ocean Drilling Project recovered from Sites 963, 965, and 966 cores of sediments underlying the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea at depths as shallow as 470, 1506, and 1044 meters (1540, 4940, and 3420 ft) below sea level. Thus, these cores came from parts of sea bottom of the eastern Mediterranean Sea that either lie above or at the depth of Sarmast's Atlantis, which lies at depths between 1460 and 1510 meters (4820 and 4950 ft) below mean sea level.&lt;ref name="HubscherOthers2009aa"/&gt; These cores provide a detailed and continuous record of sea level that demonstrates that for millions of years at least during the entire Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene epochs that the feature that Sarmast interprets to be Atlantis and its adjacent sea bottom were always submerged below sea level.&lt;ref name="EmeisOthers2005a"/&gt; Therefore, the entire Cyprus Basin, including the ridge where Sarmast claims that Atlantis is located, has been submerged beneath the Mediterranean Sea for millions of years.&lt;ref name="HallOthers2005c"/&gt; Since its formation, the sea bottom feature identified by Sarmast as “Atlantis” has always been submerged beneath over a kilometer of water.&lt;ref name="HubscherOthers2009aa"/&gt;

Middle East


Jaime Manuschevich argues that the real place of the mythical civilization is the territory that today corresponds to Israel and Sinai,&lt;ref&gt;"The Atlantis, the deciphered myth"; Jaime Manuschevich, (2002)&lt;/ref&gt; and that this region was an island in the Great Rift Valley,&lt;ref&gt;Ryan and Pitman&lt;/ref&gt; surrounded by the Jezreel Valley on the north, the Dead Sea and Red Sea on the east and the Gulf of Suez and the Mediterranean Sea on the west until 5600 BC. In addition, Manuschevich proposes that Atlantean civilization corresponds to the Natufian peoples, the first food-producing people, whose main political and harbor center was Jericho. These people lived in the region in the dates established by Plato (11,600 BC).

Malta
Malta, being situated in the Mediterranean sea, not far from Greece (even having at one point been influenced by Greek Minoan culture), having been invaded and ruled by countless powers, being home to the oldest structures in the world, and with a population, is considered a possible location of Atlantis. Anton Mifsud who, with co-authors Simon Mifsud, Chris Agius Sultana and Charles Savona Ventura, published Malta: Echoes of Plato’s Island, added another recent hypothesis. Their book is the product of a research about the archeological sites and ancient remains in Malta related to Atlantis.&lt;ref&gt;Anton Mifsud, Simon Mifsud, Chris Agius Sultana and Charles Savona Ventura; "Malta: Echoes of Plato's Island"&lt;/ref&gt;

Francis Galea in his book Malta Fdal Atlantis also wrote about the results of his lifelong research on several ancient studies and known hypotheses on Atlantis, particularly that of Giorgio Grongnet, the renowned Maltese architect, who in 1854 claimed that the Maltese Islands are the remnants of Atlantis. &lt;ref&gt;Francis Galea; "Malta Fdal Atlantis"&lt;/ref&gt; ''

&lt;!-- Deleted image removed:--&gt;

Doctor Hubert Zeitlmair, President of the Foundation “The Research project MALTA” & his wife Dagmar, are one of the few individuals who can decipher and translate proto-Sanskrit at high level&lt;ref&gt;http://www.maltadiscovery.org/en/#guided_journeys,03_Journeys/01.htm MALTADISCOVERY&lt;/ref&gt;. Their recent findings in Malta include the discovery of primeval characters carved out on stone blocks and ancient stone slabs, and the writings seem to point in the direction of Atlantis.&lt;ref&gt;http://www.metageum.org/Metageum07/HubertZeitlmair.htm&lt;/ref&gt;

A supplementary linguistic research by Alberto Nikas would further enforce this claim.&lt;ref&gt;Why Atlantis was never found! By Alberto Nikas. Atlantis conference 2008&lt;/ref&gt; According to Nikas, Malta, if translated to Etruscan it amounts to Atlas.&lt;ref&gt;http://atlantisinmalta.art.officelive.com&lt;/ref&gt;

Sicily
The concept of the identification of Atlantis with the island of Sicily is the idea that the Italians were involved in the Sea Peoples movement (a similar story to Plato's account), that the name "Atlas" may have been derived from "Italos" via the Middle Egyptian language, and Plato's descriptions of the city of Atlantis share several unlikely traits with the sanctuary of the Palici (Twin brothers, similar procreation myth, low mountain near to plain, two fountains etc.).&lt;ref&gt;Thorwald C. Franke: Conference Paper 2008 http://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_sicily.htm (English)&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;Thorwald C. Franke: Mit Herodot auf den Spuren von Atlantis, Norderstedt 2006 (German)&lt;/ref&gt;

Sardinia
In 2002 the Italian journalist Sergio Frau published a book, Le colonne d'Ercole ("Pillars of Hercules"), in which he states that before Eratosthenes, all the ancient Greek writers located the Pillars of Hercules on the Strait of Sicily between Sicily and Tunisia, while only Alexander the Great's conquest of the east obliged Eratosthenes to move the pillars at Gibraltar in his description of the world.&lt;ref&gt;Frau, Sergio, Le colonne d'Ercole, NurNeon, ISBN 88-900740-0-0&lt;/ref&gt;

According to his thesis, the Atlantis described by Plato could be identified with Sardinia. He argues that a tsunami once hit Sardinia which destroyed the enigmatic Nuragic civilization and that the survivors migrated to the nearby Italian peninsula, founding the Etruscan civilization (which is now thought to have come from the Eastern Mediterranean).

In April 2005, the theories of the Sergio Frau were debated at a conference organized by UNESCO in Paris. At the same time, an exposition of his findings was on display in the UNESCO building.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

Spartel Bank
Two hypotheses have put Spartel Bank, a submerged former island in the Strait of Gibraltar, as the location of Atlantis. The more well-known hypothesis was proposed in a September 2001 issue of Science Academy by French geologist Jacques Collina-Girard. The lesser-known hypothesis was first published by Spanish-Cuban investigator Georgeos Díaz-Montexano in an April 2000 issue of Spanish magazine Más Allá de la Ciencia (Beyond Science), and later in August 2001 issues of Spanish magazines El Museo (The Museum) and Año Cero (Year Zero).&lt;ref name="DiazAtlantis"&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; The origin of Collina-Girard's hypothesis is disputed, with Díaz-Montexano claiming it as plagiarism of his own earlier hypothesis, and Collina-Girard denying any plagiarism. Both individuals claim the other's hypothesis is pseudoscience.&lt;ref name="DiazAtlantis"/&gt;&lt;ref name="AtlantisInsider"&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

Collina-Girard's hypothesis states that during the most recent Glacial Maximum of the Ice Age sea level was 135 m below its current level, narrowing the Gibraltar Strait and creating a small half-enclosed sea measuring 70 km by 20 km between the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. The Spartel Bank formed an archipelago in this small sea with the largest island measuring about 10 to 12 kilometers across. With rising ocean levels the island began to slowly shrink, but then at around 9400 BC (11,400 years ago) there was an accelerated sea level rise of 4 meters per century known as Meltwater Pulse 1A, which drowned the top of the main island. A possible magnitude 9 earthquake proposed by marine geographer Marc-Andrè Gutscher as occurring in this region at about this time may have contributed to this relatively sudden disappearance by generating tsunamis.&lt;ref name="Ornekas 2005"&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

Collina-Girard proposes that the disappearance of this island was recorded in prehistoric Egyptian tradition for 5,000 years until it was written down by the first Egyptian scribes around 3000–4000 BC, and the story then subsequently inspired Plato to write a fictionalized version interpreted to illustrate his own principles.

Troy
The geoarchaeologist Eberhard Zangger has proposed the hypothesis that Atlantis was in fact the city state of Troy. He both agrees and disagrees with Rainer W. Kühne: He too believes that the Trojans-Atlanteans were the sea peoples, but only a minor part of them. He proposes that all Greek speaking city states of the Aegean civilization or Mycenae constituted the sea peoples and that they destroyed each other's economies in a series of semi-fratricidal wars lasting several decades.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

In the Atlantic Ocean


It has been claimed that when Plato wrote of the Ocean of Atlantis, he may have been speaking of the area now called the Atlantic Ocean. The ocean's name, derived from Greek mythology, means the "Sea of Atlas". Plato remarked that, in describing the origins of Atlantis, this area was allotted to Poseidon. But in Ancient Greek times the terms "Ocean" and "Atlas" both referred to the 'Giant Water' which surrounded the main landmass known at that time by the Greeks, which could be described as Eurafrasia (although this whole supercontinent was far from completely known to the Ancient Greeks), and thus this water mass was considered to be the 'end of the (known) world', for the same reason the name "Atlas" was given to the mountains near the Ocean, the Atlas Mountains, as they also denoted the 'end of the (known) world'.

Azores Islands
One of the suggested places for Atlantis is around the Azores Islands, a group of islands belonging to Portugal located about 900 miles (1500 km) west of the Portuguese coast. Some people believe the islands could be the mountain tops of Atlantis. The Azores are steep-sided volcanic seamounts that drop rapidly 1000 metres (about 3300 feet) to a plateau.&lt;ref name=RyallOther1983&gt;Ryall, J. C., Blanchard, M.-C., and Medioli, F., 1983, A subsided island west of Flores, Azores. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. vol. 20, pp. 764-775.&lt;/ref&gt; Cores taken from the plateau and other evidence shows that this area has been an undersea plateau for millions of years.&lt;ref name=HuangOther1979&gt;Huang, T.C., N.D. Watkins, and L. Wilson, 1979, Deep-sea tephra from the Azores during the past 300,000 years: eruptive cloud height and ash volume estimates. Geological Society of America Bulletin. vol. 90, no. 2, pp. 131-133.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref name=DennielouOther1999&gt;Dennielou, B. G.A. Auffret, A. Boelaert, T. Richter, T. Garlan, and R. Kerbrat, 1999, Control of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Gulf Stream over Quaternary sedimentation on the Azores Plateau. Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences, Serie II. Sciences de la Terre et des Planetes. v. 328, no. 12, pp. 831-837.,&lt;/ref&gt; Terrestrial indicators, i.e. relict beach and marine deposits, abrasion platforms, and wave cut-terraces, of Pleistocene coastlines and sea level show that the Azores Islands have not subsided to any significant degree. Instead, they demonstrate that some of these islands have actually risen during the Late and Middle Pleistocene as evidenced by relict, Pleistocene wave-cut platforms and beach sediments that now lie well above current sea level. For example, they have been found on Flores Island at elevations of 15-20, 35-45, ~100, and ~250 meters above current sea level.&lt;ref name=AzevedoOther1999&gt;Azevedo, J.J.M., M.R., Ferreira, 1999, Volcanic gaps and subaerial records of palaeo-sea-levels on Flores Island, Azores: tectonic and morphological implications. Geodynamics. vol. 17, pp 117-129.&lt;/ref&gt;

Ignatius L. Donnelly, an American congressman, was perhaps the first one to talk about this possible location in his book "Atlantis: The Antediluvian World".&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

South Morocco
According to Michael Hübner, Atlantis core region was located in South-West Morocco. In his papers&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; a approach to the analysis of Plato's dialogues Timaios and Critias is described. By means of a hierarchical constraint satisfaction procedure, a variety of geographically relevant indications from Plato's accounts are used to infer the most probable location of the island of Atlantis. The outcome of this is the Souss-Massa plain in today's South-West Morocco. This plain is surrounded by the High Atlas, the Anti-Atlas, the Atlantic Ocean and the Sahara in the further South and East. Because of this isolated position, the Amazigh (Berber) People actually call the Souss-Massa plain island. Of major archaeological interest is the fact that in the North-West of the Souss-Massa plain a large circular caldera-like geomorphologic structure was discovered. This structure fits the dimensions of Plato's capital of Atlantis and is covered with hundreds of large and small prehistoric ruins of different types.

Canary Islands, Madeira and Cape Verde
The Canary Islands have been identified as remnants of Atlantis by numerous authors. For example in 1803, Boy de Saint-Vincent in his Essai sur les iles fortunees et l'antique Altantide proposed that the Canary Islands, along with the Madeira, and Azores, are what remained after Atlantis broke up. Many later authors, i.e. Lewis Spence in his The Problem of Atlantis, also identified the Canary Islands as part of Atlantis leftover from when it catastrophically sank.

Detailed geomorphic and geologic studies of the Canary Islands clearly demonstrate that over the last 4 million years, they have been steadily uplifted, without any significant periods of subsidence, by geologic processes such as erosional unloading, gravitational unloading, lithospheric flexure induced by adjacent islands, and volcanic underplating.&lt;ref name="MenendezOthers2009"&gt;Menendez, I., P.G. Silva, M. Martín-Betancor, F.J. Perez-Torrado, H. Guillou, and S. Scaillet, 2009, Fluvial dissection, isostatic uplift, and geomorphological evolution of volcanic islands (Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain) Geomorphology. v. 102, no.1, pp. 189-202.&lt;/ref&gt; For example, Pliocene pillow lavas, which solidified underwater and now exposed on the northeast flanks of Gran Canaria, have been uplifted between 46 and 143 meters above sea level.&lt;ref name="MenendezOthers2009"/&gt; Also, marine deposits associated with lavas dated as being 4.1 and 9.3 million years old in Gran Canaria, ca. 4.8 million years old in Fuerteventura, and ca. 9.8 million years old in Lanzarote demonstrate that the Canary Islands have for millions of years undergone long term uplift without any significant, much less catastrophic, subsidence.&lt;ref name="Perez-TorradoOthers2002"&gt;Perez-Torrado, J.F., F. Santana,A. Rodríguez-Santana, A.M. Melian, A. Lomostchitz, D. Gimeno, M.C. Cabrera, and M.C. Baez, 2002, Reconstrucción paleogeográfica de los depósitos volcano-sedimentarios Pliocenos en el litoral NE de Gran Canaria (Islas Canarias) mediante métodos topográficos. Geogaceta. v. 32, pp. 43–46.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref name="MecoOthers2007"&gt;Meco J., S. Scaillet, H. Guillou, A. Lomoschitz, J.C. Carracedo, J. Ballester, J.-F. Betancort, and A. Cilleros, 2007, Evidence for long-term uplift on the Canary Islands from emergent Mio–Pliocene littoral deposits. Global and Planetary Change. v. 57, no. 3-4, pp. 222 – 234.&lt;/ref&gt; A series of raised, Pleistocene marine terraces, which become progressively older with age, on Fuerteventura indicate that it has risen in elevation at about 1.7 cm per thousand years for the past one million years. The elevation of the marine terrace for the highstand of sea level for the last interglacial period shows that this island has experienced neither subsidence nor significant uplift for the past 125,000 years.&lt;ref name="ZazoOthers2002"&gt;Zazo, C., J.L.Goy, C. Hillaire-Marcel, P.Y. Gillot, V. Soler, J.A. Gonzalez, C.J. Dabrio, and B. Ghaleb, 2002, Raised marine sequences of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura revisited – a reappraisal of relative sea-level changes and vertical movements in the eastern Canary Islands during the Quaternary. Quaternary Science Reviews. v. 21, no. 18-19, pp. 2019–2046.&lt;/ref&gt;. Within the Cape Verde Islands, the detailed mapping and dating of 16 Pleistocene marine terraces and Pliocene marine conglomerate found that they have been uplifted through out most of the Pleistocene and remained relatively stable without any significant subsidence since the last interglacial period.&lt;ref name="ZazoOthers2007"&gt;Zazo, C., J.L. Goy, C.J. Dabrio, V. Soler, Cl. Hillaire-Marcel, B. Ghaleb, J.A. Gonzalez-Delgado, T. Bardajıf, and A. Cabero, 2007, Quaternary marine terraces on Sal Island (Cape Verde archipelago). Quaternary Science Reviews. v. 26, no. 7-8, pp. 876–893.&lt;/ref&gt; Finally, details studies of the sedimentary deposits surrounding the Canary Islands have demonstrated, except for a narrow rim around each island exposed during glacial lowstands of sea level, a complete lack of any evidence for the ocean floor surrounding the Canary Islands having ever been above water.&lt;ref name="WeaverOthers1998"&gt;Weaver, P.P.E., H.-U. Schmincke, J. V. Firth, and W. Duffield, eds., 1998, LEG 157—Scientific Results, Gran Canaria and Madeira Abyssal Plain Sites 950-956. Proceedings Ocean Drilling Project, Scientific Results. no. 157, College Station, Texas doi:10.2973/odp.proc.sr.157.1998&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref name="AcostaOthers2003"&gt;Acosta, J., E. Uchupi, A. Munoz, P. Herranz, C. Palomo, M. Ballesteros, and ZEE Working Group, 2003, Geologic evolution of the Canarian Islands of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria and La Gomera and comparison of landslides at these islands with those at Tenerife, La Palma and El Hierro. Marine Geophysical Researches. vol. 24, pp. 1–40.&lt;/ref&gt;

Bahama Bank and Caribbean
There is some evidence of sunken island off Central America, which have been pushed by Z.A. Simon as an Atlantis site. In the area, peat and caves with stalactites and stalagmites were found, both of which only form in the open air and were dated between 5600 BC and 10,000 BC. The surrounding topology has also been suggested to be submerged valleys of ancient rivers and mountain ranges with a tectonic history. A problem with this theory is that Atlantis was supposed to have submerged rapidly, following an earthquake, while the area shows a slow submerging.

Cuba
Author Andrew Collins has advocated a Cuban connection to Atlantis in his book Gateway to Atlantis: The Search for the Source of a Lost Civilization. Collins supports his hypothesis with indirect historical and geographical evidence. He suggests Isle of Youth and the shallow sea bottom that surrounds it as a possible location for Atlantis.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

Northern Spain
According to Jorge Maria Ribero-Meneses,&lt;ref&gt;"Cantabria cuna de la Humanidad", 1985. "Sant'Ander es Bizcaya, la fuente de la vida". "El verdadero origen de los vascos, la primera humanidad". "El origen cantábrico del homo sapiens". "El euskera madre del castellano" "Genealogical Tree Language"&lt;/ref&gt; Atlantis was in northern Spain. He specifically argues that Atlantis is the underwater plateau, known internationally as "Le Danois Bank" and locally as "The Cachucho". It is located located about 25 kilometers from the continental shelf and about 60 km off the coast of Asturias, and Lastres between Ribadesella. Its top is now 425 meters below the sea. It is 50 kilometers from east to west and 18 km from north to south. Ribero-Meneses hypothesized that is part of the continental margin that broke off at least 12000 years ago as the result of tectonic processes that occurred at the end of the last ice age. He argues that they created a tsunami with waves with heights of hundreds of meters and that the few survivors had to start virtually from scratch.&lt;ref&gt;Retablo de la Atlántida&lt;/ref&gt;

Detailed studies&lt;ref name=ViejoOther2005&gt;Viejo, G.F., and J.G. Suarez, 2005, The ESCI-N Project after a decade: A synthesis of the results and open questions. Trabajos de Geología. no. 25, pp. 9-25.&lt;/ref&gt; of the geology of the Le Danois Bank region have refuted the hypothesis proposed by Jorge Maria Ribero-Meneses that the Le Danois Bank was created by the collapse of the northern Cantabrian continental margin about 12,000 years ago. The Le Danois Bank represents part of the continental margin that have been uplifted by thrust faulting when the continental margin overrode oceanic crust during the Paleogene and Neogene periods. Along the northern edge of the Le Danois Bank, Precambrian granulite and Mesozoic sedimentary rocks have been thrust northward over Miocene and Oligocene marine sediments. The basin separating the Le Danois Bank from the Cantabrian continental margin to the south is a graben that simultaneously formed as a result of normal faulting associated with the thrust faulting.&lt;ref name=ViejoOther2005/&gt;&lt;ref name=FugenschuhOther2003&gt;Fugenschuh, B., N. Froitzheim, R. Capdevila, and G. Boillot, 2003, Offshore granulites from the Bay of Biscay margins: fission tracks constrain a Proterozoic to Tertiary thermal history. Terra Nova. v. 15, no. 5, pp. 337-342.&lt;/ref&gt; In addition, marine sediments that range in age from lower Pliocene to Pleistocene, cover large parts of Le Danois Bank, and fill the basin separating it from the Cantabrian continental margin demonstrate that this bank has been submerged beneath the Bay of Biscay for millions of years.&lt;ref name=ErcillaOther2008&gt;Ercilla, G., D. Casas, F. Estrada, J.T. Vázquez, J. Iglesias, M. García, M. Gómez, J. Acosta, J. Gallart, A. Maestro-González, and Marconi Team, 2008, Morphsedimentary features and recent depositional architectural model of the Cantabrian continental margin. Marine Geology. v. 247, no. 1-2, pp. 61-83.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref name=Hernandez-MolinaOther2008&gt;Hernandez-Molina, F.J., J. Iglesias, D. Van Rooij, G. Ercilla, M. Gómez-Ballesteros, D. Casas and E. Llave, 2008, The Le Danois Contourite Depositional System: an exceptional record of the MOW circulation off the North Iberian margin. Geo-Tema. v. 10, pp. 535-538.&lt;/ref&gt;

Irish Sea
In his book Atlantis of the West: The Case For Britain's Drowned Megalithic Civilization, Paul Dunbavin argues that a large island once existed in the Irish Sea and that this island was Atlantis. He argues that this Neolithic civilization in Europe was partially drowned by rising sea levels caused by a comet impact that caused a pole shift and changed the earth's axis around 3100 BC.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

England
On December 29, 1997, the BBC reported that a team of Russian scientists believed they found Atlantis in the ocean 100 miles off Land's End, England. The BBC stated that Little Sole Bank, a relatively shallow area, was believed by the team to be the capital of Atlantis. This may have been based on the myth of Lyoness.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

Ireland
The idea of Atlantis being located in Ireland was presented in the book Atlantis from a Geographer's Perspective: Mapping the Fairy Land (2004) by Swedish geographer Dr. Ulf Erlingsson from Uppsala University. It hypothesized that the empire of Atlantis refers to the Neolithic Megalithic tomb culture, based on their similar geographic extent, and deduced that the island of Atlantis then must correspond to Ireland. Erlingsson found the similarities of size and landscape to be statistically significant, while he rejected his null hypothesis that Plato invented Atlantis as fiction.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

Based on this result, the speculation was made that the capital of Atlantis could be connected with Newgrange, Knowth, and Tara, Ireland. As regards the sinking of Atlantis, it was suggested that it is a memory from another time and place, notably the Dogger Bank area. It was an island that sank in the North Sea about 6100 BC. While the world sea level rose gradually as the Ice Age ice sheets melted, there was a sudden sea level rise at this time due to the final drainage of Lake Agassiz. At about the same time a tsunami from the Storegga Slide is believed to have devastated the island in the manner described by Plato. (See also entry on North Sea below.)

Other hypotheses place the location of Atlantis between Britain and France on the Celtic Shelf.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; This hypothesis was first developed by Lewis Spence and has been recently revived by some oceanographers.

North Sea
The North Sea is known to contain lands that were once above water. The medieval town of Dunwich in East Anglia, for example, has since crumbled into the sea, and prehistoric remains have been dredged up from the Dogger Bank.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; Atlantis itself has been identified with the island of Heligoland off the north-west German coast by the author Jürgen Spanuth,&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; who postulates that it was destroyed during the Bronze Age around 1200 BC, only to partially re-emerge during the Iron Age. Ulf Erlingsson hypothesized that the island that sank referred to Dogger Bank, and the city itself referred to the Silverpit crater at the base of Dogger Bank. A book by Oera Linda claims that a land called Atland once existed in the North Sea, but was destroyed in 2194 BC.

Denmark
In his book The Celts, author Gerald Herm links the origins of the Atlanteans to end of the ice age and the flooding of eastern coastal Denmark.

Finland
Finnish eccentric Ior Bock locates Atlantis in the Baltic sea, at southern part of Finland where he claims a small community of people lived during the Ice Age. According to Bock, this was possible due to Gulf Stream which brought warm water to the Finnish coast. This is a small part of a large saga that he claims has been told in his family through the ages, dating back to the development of language itself. The family saga tells the name Atlantis comes from Swedish words allt-land-is ("all-land-ice") and refers to the last Ice-Age. Thus in the Bock family saga it's more a time period than an exact geographical place. According to this the Atlantis disappeared in 8016 BC when the Ice-Age ended in Finland and the ice melted away.&lt;ref&gt; See also: Bock, Ior. Bockin perheen saaga. Helsinki 1996. ISBN 952-5137-00-7&lt;/ref&gt;

Sweden
Olaus Rudbeck wrote Atland (Atlantica), where he argues that Scandinavia, specifically Sweden, is identical with Atlantis.

Other locations
There have been suggestions for Atlantis to be placed outside of the Mediterranean Sea or the Atlantic Ocean. Such locations would tend to fall outside of the known world of the original sources of the legend.

Antarctica
The theory that Antarctica was Atlantis was particularly fashionable during the 1960s and 1970s, spurred on partly both by the isolation of the continent, H. P. Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness, and also the Piri Reis map, which purportedly shows Antarctica as it would be ice free, suggesting human knowledge of that period. Charles Berlitz, Erich Von Däniken and Peter Kolosimo have been amongst those popular authors who made this proposal.

More recently Rand and Rose Flem-Ath have proposed this in their book, When the Sky Fell; the theory was revised and made more specific in Rand's work with author Colin Wilson, in The Atlantis Blueprint (published in 2002). The second workings theorized that Atlantis was to be found in Lesser Antarctica, near the coast of the Ross Ice Shelf. A geological theory known as "Earth Crust Displacement" forms the basis of their work. The Atlantis Blueprint uses both scientific and pseudoscientific (such as mere speculation and assumptions) means to back up the theory.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

Charles Hapgood came up with the "Earth Crustal Displacement theory". Hapgood's theory suggests that Earth's outer crust is able to move upon the upper mantle layer rapidly up to a distance of 2,000 miles, placing Atlantis in Antarctica, when considering the movements of the crust in the past. It is to be noted that Albert Einstein was one of the few voices to answer Hapgood's theory. Einstein wrote a preface for Hapgood's book Earth's shifting crust, published in 1958. This theory is particularly popular with Hollow Earthers, and can be seen as a mirror of the Hyperborean identification.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; In his book "Fingerprints of the Gods", author Graham Hancock argues for the Earth Crustal Displacement theory in general, and the Atlantis/Antarctica connection specifically, then goes on to propose archaeological exploration of Antarctica in search of Atlantis.

What is now known about the Quaternary and Holocene history of Antarctica completely discredits any hypothesis about it being the location of Atlantis. Mapping and dating of the edges of the Antarctic ice sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum; mapping and dating of glacial erratics, tills, and striations within now ice-free areas; microfossils from post-glacial lake deposits; coring and analysis of glacial tills and marine sediments underlying the Ross and Wedell seas; coring and analysis of ice cores; and other research has accumulated an enormous amount of data that has disproved the various hypotheses that any sizable part of Antarctica was sufficiently ice-free and temperate in climate during the last 100,000 years and earlier to have supported any civilization.&lt;ref&gt;Anderson, J.B., S.S. Shipp, A.L. Lowe, J.S. Wellner, J.S., and A.B. Mosola, 2002, The Antarctic Ice Sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum and its subsequent retreat history: a review. Quaternary Science Reviews. vol. 21, pp. 49-70.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;Ingolfsson, O., 2004, Quaternary glacial and climate history of Antarctica, 2 MB PDF file, in: J. Ehlers and P.L. Gibbard, eds., pp. 3-43, Quaternary Glaciations - Extent and Chronology, Part III. Elsevier, New York. &lt;/ref&gt; This research soundly refutes Flem-Ath’s proposal that lesser (West) Antarctica was ice-free and temperate prior to 9,600 B.C. (11,600 B.P.)&lt;ref&gt;Evans, J., C.J. Pudsey, C. O´Cofaigh, P. Morris, and E. Domack, 2005, Late Quaternary glacial history, flow dynamics and sedimentation along the eastern margin of the Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet. Quaternary Science Reviews. vol. 24, pp. 741–774.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;Ingolfsson, O., C. Hjort and O. Humlum, 2003, Glacial and Climate History of the Antarctic Peninsula Since the Last Glacial Maximum, 392 KB PDF file, Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research. vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 175-186. &lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;Bentley, M.J., C.J. Fogwill, P.W. Kubik, and D.E. Sugden, 2006, Geomorphological evidence and cosmogenic 10Be/26Al exposure ages for the Last Glacial Maximum and deglaciation of the Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet. Geological Society of America Bulletin. vol. 118, no. 9-10, pp. 1149–1159.&lt;/ref&gt;

Bolivia
A hypothesis by cartogropher Jim Allen argues that Plato's description exactly fits Bolivia because he describes a level rectangular-shaped plain which he said lay in the center of the continent, next to the sea and midway along the longest side of the continent.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; He also described the capital city of Atlantis which was built on a small volcanic island and also called Atlantis. The city lay on the level rectangular plain, five miles from the sea and according to Plato the whole region was high above the level of the ocean sea, rising sheer out of the ocean sea to a great height on that side of the continent. Allen contends that Bolivia meets these characteristics.

Indonesia/Sundaland
 The South China Sea north of Indonesia have been advocated as a site for Atlantis. Key to this argument that Sundaland was the location of Atlantis is that the Ocean of Atlantis refers to the ocean which encircles Eurasia and Africa, which was the historical understanding until the time of Christopher Columbus. Proponents of this idea claim that natives of Sundaland who fled the rising waters or volcanic explosions eventually had contact with Ancient Egyptians, who later passed the story onto Plato who gets some but not all of the details correct, including location and time period. The main advocate of this theory is the Brazilian professor of nuclear physics Arysio Nunes dos Santos.&lt;ref name="dosSantos2005"&gt;dos Santos, A.N., 2005, Atlantis, The Lost Continent Finally Found. Atlantis Publications, North Miami Beach, Florida. 367 pp. ISBN 0-9769550-0-8&lt;/ref&gt;

During the Last Glacial Maximum, what is now known as the Sunda Shelf was the location of a large subaerial coastal plain that was part of Sundaland. During the Last Glacial Maximum, Sundaland extended northward from Indonesia to Borneo and northwestward to the coast of Southeast Asia.&lt;ref name="Ben-Avraham1969"&gt;Ben-Avraham, Z., 1969, Structural Framework of the Sunda Shelf and Vicinity. Unpublished PhD. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, Massachusetts, 269 pp.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref name="PelejeroOther1999"&gt;Pelejero, C., M. Kienast, L. Wang, and J.O. Grimalt, 1999, The flooding of Sundaland during the last deglaciation: imprints in hemipelagic sediments from the southern South China Sea. Earth Planetary Science Letters. v. 171, pp. 661–671.&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref name="VorisOther2000"&gt;Voris, H.K., 2000, Maps of Pleistocene Sea Levels in Southeast Asia: Shorelines, River Systems and Time Durations. Journal of Biogeography. v. 27, no. 5, pp. 1153-1167.&lt;/ref&gt; Sundaland is quite tectonically stable lacking any known prehistory of any significant, much less cataclysmic, tectonic subsidence.&lt;ref name="Ben-Avraham1969"/&gt;&lt;ref name="HanebuthOther2000"&gt;Hanebuth, T.J.J., K. Stattegger,  and P.M. Grootes, 2000, Rapid Flooding of the Sunda Shelf: A Late-Glacial Sea-Level Record. Science. v. 288, no. 5468, pp. 1033-1035.&lt;/ref&gt; Numerous studies by petroleum and Quaternary geologists have found a complete lack of any evidence for any Neogene and Quaternary volcanic activity within the Sunda Shelf despite its proximity to Indonesia.&lt;ref name="HanebuthOther2000"/&gt;&lt;ref name="HanebuthOther2004"/&gt;&lt;ref name="Hutchinson2004"&gt;Hutchinson, C. S., 2004, ''Marginal basin evolution: the southern South China Sea. Marine and Petroleum Geology.'' v. 21, no. 9, pp. 1129–1148&lt;/ref&gt;

Detailed studies&lt;ref name="HanebuthOther2000"/&gt;&lt;ref name="HanebuthOther2004"&gt;Hanebuth, T.J.J., and K. Stattegger, 2004, Depositional sequences on a late Pleistocene–Holocene tropical siliciclastic shelf (Sunda Shelf, southeast Asia). Journal of Asian earth Science. v. 23, pp. 113-126.&lt;/ref&gt; of late glacial and postglacial sea level rise for the this part of the Sunda Shelf demonstrates that the first significant submergence of Sundaland by rising sea level occurred between 14,000 and 15,000 years ago. Periods of abrupt rise in sea level submerged a significant part of Sundaland beneath the South China Sea between 13,000 and 14,000 years ago. Between 14,300 and 14,600 years ago, a period of 300 years, sea level rose 16m (62 feet). Between 12,000 and 13,000 years ago, the submergence of Sundaland by rising sea level was relatively minor. A final period of rapid flooding of Sundaland by the South China Sea occurred between 11,000 to 12,000 years ago. The submergence of Sundaland during this period was minor in extent relative to the area submerged between 13,000 and 14,000 years ago. Evidence for any significant or cataclysmic submergence of Sundaland as the result of tectonic processes is completely lacking.&lt;ref name="HanebuthOther2000"/&gt;&lt;ref name="HanebuthOther2004"/&gt;&lt;ref name="Zoology2006"&gt;Department of Zoology, 2006, Pleistocene Sea Level Maps - Sunda Shelf The Field Museum, Chicago Illinois.&lt;/ref&gt;

Mexico
Author Gene Matlock claims that he found Atlantis in Mexico. He claims in his The last Atlantis Book You'll Ever Have to Read! that the Sanskrit language spoken in the Indian subcontinent is the father of most world languages, that this explains the meaning of the name "Atlantis", and that this suggests a connection between Mexico and India and a Mexican location for Atlantis.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;

==Most Likely==

1.Marvel Comics-Prince Namor,Namor MacKenzie,Sub-Mariner

2.DC Comics-Aquaman

''3.King Kull,The Hyborean Age,

References and notes
&lt;div class="references-small" style="-moz-column-count:2; column-count:2;"&gt;

&lt;References/&gt;

&lt;/div&gt;

Providing general information or theory

 * Atlantipedia
 * ATLANTIS LINK LIBRARY
 * Atlantis article from about.com
 * The Atlantis Archives
 * lost-civilizations.net
 * International ConferenceAtlantis 2005 , Milos/Greece
 * International ConferenceAtlantis 2008 , Athens/Greece
 * Atlantis: No way, No how, No where''" — Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
 * Skeptics dictionary

Supporting a specific location

 * Antarctica was Atlantis
 * Atlantis in the Atlantic based on writings of Helena Blavatsky
 * Atlantis was near Cyprus - Robert Sarmast's website
 * Atlantis was inspired by Ireland - Ulf Erlingsson's website
 * Atlantis = Sicily (Franke 2008)
 * Bolivia was Atlantis - Jim Allen's arguments
 * Atlantis in Malta
 * Plato's Atlantis: an Iberian-Mauretanian Emporium. The Metropolis before of the mouth of Gibraltar
 * Indonesia/Sundaland was Atlantis - Prof. Arysio Nunes Santos' website
 * Tartessos was Atlantis
 * Google Ocean: Has Atlantis been found off Africa? by Matthew Moore, The Daily Telegraph, February 20 2009
 * Atlantis in The Black Sea
 * Atlantis in Israel
 * Atlantis-Bakhu

News

 * ANSA News, "Archaeology: Search for Tartessos-Atlantis in southern Spain". Jul 17, 2007.
 * BBC News, "Tsunami clue to 'Atlantis' found". August 15, 2005.
 * BBC News, "Satellite images 'show Atlantis' in Spain". June 6, 2004.
 * BBC News, "Have scientists really found the lost city of Atlantis?". November 15, 2004.
 * BBC News, "Atlantis 'obviously near Gibraltar'", September 20, 2001.
 * PRGB News, "Tartessus - Atlantis. They look for its rests in Andalusia. The search of Tartessus in Doñana, Huelva, and a concentric circular city - identical to the Acropolis of the Atlantis - found in Jaen, could throw tracks for the Atlantis.". May 14, 2007.
 * PRWeb News, "Atlantis and Tartessus--Norway Scientific Institutions Recognize Spanish Paleographical Hypothesis". July 20, 2006.
 * PRWeb News, "The Arab Authors Located to the Atlantis Island and the Amazonian Island in Andalusia". July 20, 2006.

Lokalisierungshypothesen zu Atlantis Hipótesis sobre la Atlántida '''