Atlantis and the Silver City

by Peter Daughtrey

  But I do not think the solution is that simple. As already discussed, the seabed map for the area off the Algarve coast shows several large, very flat areas that are separated by sudden drops in levels and are called planalto (plains). In the sea off the western end of the Algarve, 210 kilometers southwest of Cape St. Vincent, is the area known as the Gorringe Bank (or Ridge). It is a substantial area, 60 kilometers by 180 kilometers, and is much shallower than the surrounding seabed, parts of it only 30 meters deep. There are other similar areas to the west and south before the Canary Islands, some of which could have been above sea level before the great glacier melt—as would parts of the Gorringe Bank.

  At some time in the past, all these could possibly have been linked as one or several landmasses above water. Maybe they even connected to Cape St. Vincent; but in this case, some areas would have to have sunk considerably, as the sea plumbs great depths in parts. Geologists are now beginning to accept that sudden movements up or down, of thousands of feet, have taken place in various parts of the world (see Chapter Fifteen). The area around the submerged Gorringe Bank is a highly volatile seismic region. This is where the 1755 earthquake originated and, combined with others, caused the dramatic sinking of parts of the seabed, with some parts thrust upward.38

  The possibility cannot be discounted that there was once also a long island, or what could have been mistaken for one, off part of the Algarve and Andalucía, which housed the great Atlantis plain. In front of the Algarve, particularly, and stretching east in front of the Costa de la Luz as far as Huelva, there are many narrow tidal lagoons from 100 meters to around 400 meters wide, fronted by long strands of sand bearing some fauna. A few of these strands are connected to the mainland by narrow isthmuses, particularly at river mouths. The central Algarve, from the capital, Faro, for 30 kilometers or so east, also has substantial offshore sandbank islands farther out to sea beyond the lagoons.

  Some of these islands have shanty settlements inhabited by hardy fishermen, with the occasional café and bar to welcome the hordes of sun-worshipping tourists who are ferried across to the pristine sands in the summer months to enjoy their calming, away-from-it-all atmosphere. The sea in front of Faro is also a cobweb of mud shoals and narrow, treacherous channels, as anyone flying into Faro airport can see as the plane circles before making its final approach.

  These islands and sandspits may well have been much larger and more prevalent in 500 or 600 B.C., when Greek mariners started venturing that far, during the period between the demise of the Phoenicians and the rise of the Carthaginians. There are several historical accounts by Portuguese and Spanish authors stating that there were once more islands than there are now. The area has been seriously affected by large earthquakes and tsunamis since Plato’s era, which must have resulted in significant changes to the coastline and islands in the immediate coastal waters.

  It is also credible that other areas of the western end of the Algarve coast, in the few places where there are sand dunes rather than cliffs, once had similar lagoons or straits. One example runs west from Galé to Armação de Pêra. An inland lagoon still exists, and part of the eastern end of Armação de Pêra is built on land below the level of the beach, which was reclaimed at some stage. Another runs from Alvor west to Lagos. Part of this has several pure links-style golf holes on it and is within the Palmares golf course. Any of these low-lying islands and spits would have been devastated by the 1755 tsunami, let alone all the earlier ones. Their size and shape would have been significantly altered. Layers of the sandy topsoil would have been successively ripped off.

  The visiting Greek sailors may only have been afforded glimpses during their brief stay—not daring to journey into the straits between these islands and the coast—and brought back tales, which Plato picked up and wove into his story. If the islands and sandspits were much larger then, they may also have supported considerable habitation. The mariners could have been told by the locals that they were the remnants of a much larger combined area.

  Dr. Ulf Richter has perceptively pointed out that Plato never used the words “high cliffs,” although the general assumption has been that this is what he meant.39 Clue 84 reads: “very lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea.” Dr. Richter suggests that the coast could just as easily have been composed of high dunes. These can be formed by persistent westerly winds at a slight angle to the shore. The southwest Iberian coastline is perfectly situated for that, with a prevailing southwesterly wind almost every day.

  Dunes, such as those near Arcachon on the west coast of France, can reach more than a hundred meters in height. The area behind this huge dune wall is normally lower and features a series of lagoons. Seen from the sea, the dunes would give the impression that the coast rises sheer from the sea. Perhaps the existing offshore Algarve islands and lagoons are remnants of such a phenomenon, and the original coastline involved a combination of high dunes and cliffs. (SEE IMAGES 9, 10, AND 11 IN THE PHOTO INSERT.)

  While mulling this over, I was agreeably surprised to discover yet another error in the translation of Plato’s original account. It made the hairs rise on the back of my neck, as it substantially supported my hypothesis.

  It is in the section of Plato’s account where the sea is described as being navigable before Atlantis had sunk, but not after (clue 3). The accepted translation reads: “The Atlantic was navigable” (referring to before the sinking). This has been disputed. The critical word here is pelagos, which Plato specifically used to denote the actual area of the sea, past Gibraltar, where Atlantis sank.

  Pelagos means, literally, “A strait of low bottoms and islands” (“archipelago” is derived from it).40 It was also used at that time to refer to “salt marshes and lagoons.” Plato’s Dialogue should have been translated as “then the strait was passable (or navigable).” I must reiterate that he is not referring here to the Straits of Gibraltar, but to an area starting outside.

  This lends significant support to other facts indicating that Plato was referring to the area immediately in front of the Andalucía and Algarve coasts as the area that sank. Even today, “straits” would exactly describe the channel or channels between the many existing offshore islands, sandbanks, and the mainland and is accurately depicted by the precise meaning of pelagos. That the strait was originally passable implies that it separated two pieces of land.

  It is not unusual for a narrow strip of water to separate an island from the mainland. I am fortunate to have once lived in a house perched on a large rock outcropping overlooking the beautiful Menai Straits that separate the Island of Anglesey from mainland Wales, in Great Britain. These straits vary in width but are never very wide, being only a hundred meters or so across at their narrowest. Anglesey is indisputably an island, and a similar situation could have existed in southwest Iberia.

  There are other references by classical writers to the area of the sea being blocked by mud shoals in the vicinity of the southwest Iberian coast:

  • The geographer Scylax described in his Periplus: “the ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules is not navigable because of shoals of mud …”41

  • The Phoenician administrator Himilco mentioned having to avoid them during his voyage around Iberia to Britain. This is significant, as he was reported to be sailing specifically “around Iberia.” In other words, he would, as usual, have been keeping close to the coast, and therefore clearly encountered the obstacles not far offshore.42

  • The Roman author and administrator Pliny the Younger referred to sandbanks immediately outside the Pillars of Hercules.43

  • Plutarch also described the ocean just outside the Pillars of Hercules as “difficult of passage and muddy.”44

  These reports are far more recent than 9,600 B.C. and most likely indicate that the whole area did not sink completely at the same time. We know earthquakes of sufficient immensity to cause serious subsidence were repeated every few thousand years or so after 9,600 B.C. and could have accounted for recurring problems.

 
All these accounts of mud and impediments in the area also confirm that Plato was referring to this region rather than the volcanic ash around Santorini.

  Further hard evidence tying in with the use of the word pelagos is provided in the area immediately to the north of Cádiz, starting at Puerto Real and El Puerto de Santa María, which initially consists of waterways before giving way to marshy land. An old Roman map shows a large lagoon there, penetrating deep inland. The famous protected Doñana nature reserve, northwest toward Huelva—now one of the few refuges for the almost extinct Iberian lynx—was also once underwater.

  As mentioned earlier, it is also accepted that there was once a smattering of small, low-lying islands immediately outside the Straits of Gibraltar, all of which are now submerged. Spartel Island, the best known, has been explored for evidence that it was Atlantis by the team that discovered the Titanic. In such a critical position, commanding sea traffic in and out of the Mediterranean, it would inevitably have been part of the Atlantis Empire, but in no way could it have qualified as Atlantis per se. If, however, this and other islands close by sank or were inundated with the rest of Atlantis, they could well have formed very low-lying blockages or shoals of mud and precisely fit with Plato’s use of the word pelagos.

  In those days, mariners would not have sailed or rowed straight out into the open sea, quickly losing sight of land. They would invariably have kept a coast in view. Spartel Island and the rest of the cluster of little islands (or their sunken remains) would also have forced navigators up the Iberian coast or south along the African one. If they were under sail, the prevailing southwesterly winds would have made the African coast a hazardous option. It would have been far easier to tack up the Iberian one. But the submerged plain extends right up to the entrance to the Mediterranean; so if it initially just sank a little below the surface, anyone trying to sail northwest up to Cádiz would have encountered mud. Land on the north coast of Morocco would also have sunk or been inundated at the same time as Atlantis disappeared, and that would have caused mud and sediment problems.

  So, if the main plain described by Plato was the part that sank and now forms the seabed south of the Algarve and southwest of Andalucía, perhaps it was originally largely separated from the coast by a narrow strip of water, a strait, and the current islands and sandbars are the remnants of what would have been its north coast. Another possibility is that this narrow strait could have only extended partway west in front of the Iberian coast, as far as a great river such as the Arade, which it then joined to wend back out to sea. The result would have been a low-lying island that stretched back to Cádiz and Gibraltar, but which could have had high dunes on its south coast. Judging by Plato’s account, mentioning a swath of protective mountains immediately to the north of the plain, he was referring to the whole area (that is, the submerged part together with the remaining Algarve and Costa de la Luz), whether or not part of it was technically an island by virtue of a narrow strip of water. The mountains are still there today, starting from around three to thirty kilometers inland in the Algarve but farther inland as you travel east into Spain. Plato indicates that they survived by stating that they are not now as numerous or as large as they were, presumably as a result of the original upheaval that destroyed Atlantis with earthquakes, erosion, and subsidence. Clue 89 reads: “The surrounding mountains were celebrated for their number and size and beauty, far beyond any which still exist.…” (SEE IMAGES 12A, 12B, 12C, 12D, AND 13 IN THE PHOTO INSERT.)

  If, as others have suggested, Plato was referring here to a comparison of the original Atlantis mountains to any existing in the whole of the then-known world, then the Atlantis mountains would presumably have disappeared together with the rest of the land. That would have meant subsiding the enormous amount of more than ten thousand feet, as the Greeks were aware of mountains elsewhere of that proportion. There are none on the region’s existing seabed until well out into the Atlantic and the Gorringe Bank, and even then they are nowhere near as deep.

  Judging by Plato’s description of the huge area of mud and low bottoms where the land sank, it did not subside to any great depth. This would presumably have applied equally to the mountains, leaving them still visible—evidence again that Plato was not referring to just a large island, as the mountains are on the mainland.

  The mysterious land of “Tartessos” is discussed in several parts of this book. It is broadly accepted that this was somewhere in southwest Iberia, but there is no historical account pinpointing it exactly. In Chapter Sixteen, the hypothesis is put forward that it was the whole region from Gibraltar to Cape St. Vincent and therefore mirrored the remnants of Atlantis. Reginald Fessenden pointed out that at some stage in ancient Greek, Ta also roughly translated as “the land of.” Combine that with nesos to give Tanesos, which could credibly have evolved into Tartessos. The meaning would then have been “the land of the islands/peninsulas,” which also accords well with Plato’s use of the word pelagos to describe that area.

  To add to the confusion and uncertainty, there is one other intriguing possibility thrown up by the famous ancient “Piri Reis” map. Controversy rages over claims made by Charles Hapgood who, together with his students, made a prolonged and exhaustive study of it. Turkish admiral Piri Reis, the man who made it, indicated that he used parts of several other much-older maps to make a complete chart of the Western Hemisphere, including Europe and the Americas. Hapgood pointed out that the coast of South America is shown in reasonably accurate detail, apart from an area where two of the source maps for South America overlapped. Amazingly, Antarctica’s ice-bound coast is also shown, plus inland mountain ranges now indistinguishable, buried beneath thick ice.45 Hapgood claims that the mountains shown on the map have been proven to be more or less accurately placed by a survey conducted by a U.S. Navy exploratory team, thus indicating that the original source map was drawn many thousands of years ago when the ranges were last ice-free. This has frequently been cited as an argument for a lost civilization which had the ability to sail the oceans and produce maritime charts. The professor has a letter from the leader of the team to prove the existence of the mountains and that they concord with the map. This could possibly place the original map before Plato’s date for the sinking of Atlantis, yet it shows no large island off Portugal, in the region of the Canary Islands or the Azores.

  It does appear to show Cape St. Vincent extending farther out into the sea, but the map’s scale is too small to assess whether the southern Iberian coast is also farther south. It must be remembered that Piri Reis produced it from an amalgam of maps. He was trying to produce a map of the world as it was then and did not know that the ancient source maps he used for Antarctica were rendered out of date by a layer of ice that was many thousands of years old and miles deep. He could, however, have used more recent maps of Europe, including Iberia, drawn by his contemporaries. The map does, though, show two very wide rivers on the Iberian Peninsula. One of these is the Tagus, which flows east to west and out to sea past Lisbon, Portugal’s capital. The other is the Guadalquivir, flowing north to south into the sea by Cádiz. On the Piri Reis map, they are shown to meet up in midwestern Spain at a series of lakes, effectively making all the land to the south and west of them an island, completely surrounded by water.

  That it could have been considered as such is not so far-fetched. Today, for instance, just over the border from the Algarve, in Spain at the mouth of another large river, the Guadiana, is an area called Isla Canela. It now boasts golf courses and a marina, as well as kilometers of beaches backed by drifted dunes. Isla means “island” in Spanish, and Isla Canela effectively is one, by virtue of a waterway that cuts across it from its west coast and winds south to join the sea again.

  Yet one further translation correction is critical, as the original error has led to the search being for an island of huge proportions, thus narrowing the choice of potential sites. The English translation reads: “the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together” (clue 6). E
ven allowing for the fact that, in Plato’s day, the regions referred to as Libya and Asia meant areas somewhat different from the ones we recognize today, it still meant a mighty chunk of land, almost too large to fit in any ocean. For an island, or land, of that vast size to have sunk completely in only twenty-four hours is just not credible. It is like America disappearing. Imagine boarding a flight headed there and when you arrive there’s nothing—just sea. It would have been a catastrophe that would have had unthinkable effects on the rest of the planet.

  Yet the translation into Latin by Chalcidius, one of Plato’s students at his academy who, it must be assumed, was more competent in ancient Greek than any modern-day professor translating from later questionable versions of Plato’s Greek manuscripts, reads: “a peninsula/island, at the same time, of Libya and of Asia, the greater (or hugest) one.”46 In other words, he appears to be intimating that the peninsula/island was “larger than any that existed” in Libya and Asia at that time. With that more logical complexion, the Iberian Peninsula accords well with that description.

  Other researchers have pointed out that in using the word meson, which translates as “greater,” Plato may have meant “of much greater importance as a power,” not in size. The word was often used in that context.

  Another very plausible theory has been put forward by researcher Georgeos Diaz-Montexano. He translated fragments of the oldest samples of Plato’s works he could find in universities and European libraries. He came to the conclusion that Plato meant that Atlantis was an island/peninsula outside the Straits of Gibraltar, that was bigger than Asia and almost joined to Libya (Morocco).47 Like others, Georgeos pointed out that to the Greeks, “Asia” only referred to Anatolia (Turkey, approximately, also known as Asia Minor), which was not a very large area. If Atlantis was southwest of Iberia and it ruled other islands and lands, northern Morocco would inevitably have been included. It is apparent that large areas of its coast were also inundated and sank, forming part of today’s seabed. Before the disaster, the straits would have been longer and the two shores even closer together, making a hop across to Morocco a routine event.