Earlier, I mentioned that on the seabed chart, the original Arade riverbed is clearly seen stretching far out to sea. It gets increasingly deeper and wider where it took over a natural canyon until, at the furthest point on what would have been the original coastline, it is 7 kilometers wide and four thousand feet deep. From the sea, this would have appeared as a wide indentation in the Algarve coast. Even today, the mouth of the estuary is nearly 700 meters wide where it finally meets the coast. Up to that point, the indentation would have appeared as coastline, leaving Silves 9.25 kilometers upriver from the sea.
Further proof that this is correct can be deduced from careful analysis of Plato’s information. He recorded that the southern coastal plain was more than 100 kilometers deep and bordered the sea. The capital was said to be close to this plain, so that could only mean at the back (north) of it. How then could it possibly be 9.25 kilometers from the sea unless it was on a wide, deep inlet? It would also explain why Plato did not indicate that the site of the capital had survived. He had not thought through the implications of the information he inherited. Because the capital was only 9.25 kilometers from the sea, he assumed it must have sunk with the plain.
In Chapter Eight, I put forward the theory that the great plain could have been on an island that was separated from the mainland by narrow straits, though possibly only as far as Portimão and the Arade River. This would also have meant that Silves was 9.25 kilometers from the sea.
So, to sum up, Silves offers practically identical matches to clue after precise clue, eighteen in all. The odds of its being coincidental are too enormous to bother calculating. If the equivalent body of evidence was presented by the prosecution at a murder trial, the jury would barely take time for a quick coffee break before returning to consign the accused to life behind bars. The fact that its geographical location coincides with that given by Plato for the Atlantis homeland must also be considered; this could even be counted as the nineteenth clue match.
More than two thousand years of speculation and argument can at last be put to rest. There is overwhelming proof that Plato’s Atlantis has been found. It is extremely doubtful whether another site exists anywhere in the world with the same geographical and geological template as Silves.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that any remains from the Atlantis era could be found in Silves itself. The hill is now extensively developed, and the original bedrock is not far below the surface. There would have been little topsoil there originally, and parts of the bedrock have been quarried away. For millennia following the Atlantis period, each time the city was destroyed by earthquakes, or by enemies such as the Carthaginians, there would have followed a period when looting and carting away of building materials would have been rife. When the town was eventually rebuilt, the new structures would have made use of any remains. Most of the housing for the population outside the citadel would most likely have been built from wood.
Archaeologists have systematically examined large areas of the city and found that only remnants of the Moorish era still exist. A richer vein for Atlantis archaeological investigation is more likely to be the harbor and the seabed, an undersea world that is ripe for exploration today.
I can’t wait for someone to start. To see the first dateable evidence hauled to the surface. To see the faces of all those experts who have so resolutely denied the possibility of a great earlier culture. To witness the complete reevaluation of how civilization developed. But above all, to discover what secrets the Atlanteans took with them when their homeland plunged beneath their feet and the raging sea stole their last breath.
PART TWO
Further Mysteries Resolved
I was exhilarated to have finally nailed Atlantis, but still bursting with questions. What had really destroyed it? What was Silves when the Phoenicians set up a base there to trade with it? How far had the Atlanteans spread throughout the world? Where was their great empire that Plato alluded to? What were the people like, and could you or I even be related to them? What more could be discovered about that ancient alphabet? Perhaps most interesting of all, what about that great white egg that helped prompt the whole quest in the first place? Tall orders all; but the more I delved, the more fascinating were the discoveries.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Destruction … and What Remained
Her long, plaited golden hair trailed over one shoulder as she knelt on the rush mat outside her house. Each of the precious figs from the final harvest had to be delicately placed, ready for drying in the hot autumn sun. They would be especially enjoyed at the midwinter festival at the end of the year, together with the walnuts from the tree that shaded her two toddlers as they played with their new puppy. The children were fascinated by its big pointed ears, and their squeals of pleasure could be heard above the chattering of the birds.
She was happy; life was good. Much earlier that morning, her man had left in his boat to fish from the little bay and beach beyond the high sand dunes sheltering their home. They had enough to eat, and the gods from the glittering citadel, close to the mountains inland, ensured that the kingdom ran in an orderly manner. Everybody had a role to play and a job with a contribution to make to the overall well-being of the community.
The previous evening, her man had told her a strange tale he had heard. Apparently, during the day the river inland had welled up without any obvious reason, and there was general concern as to what could have caused it.
She had almost finished sorting the figs when suddenly she realized that the birds had gone quiet. Apprehensively, she slowly stood to look around. Suddenly, the deathly hush and stillness was broken by a loud, awful groaning-and-grinding noise. It seemed to be emanating from the very bowels of the earth beneath her feet.
A split second later, there was a huge jolt and she was thrown to the ground, squashing the figs. Suddenly, the earth took on a life of its own—it was moving and writhing like a huge serpent. Instinctively, she looked to her children, but her attention was drawn to the house just beyond them. Like the others in the village, it was sturdily constructed from timber, but it was now swaying drunkenly. She watched, hypnotized, as each movement became more exaggerated than the last, until it collapsed with a final shudder. She screamed and, with difficulty, rushed to gather the children into her arms. The tremors persisted for about six terrifying minutes, as did the horrible noise now mingling with the screams of her neighbors and the crashing of buildings.
When it finally subsided, she crouched with the children, stunned, too frightened to move. After what seemed an age, her eyes weakly began to focus on odd things around her. The children were agape as they pointed to the dunes that had once towered high above them but were now reduced to such an extent that parts of the sea could be seen. Gradually it dawned on her that her parents had been inside the house. An inner strength surmounted her terror and fear for her own safety, and she began to frantically claw at the rubble, momentarily oblivious of the bawling babes.
Twenty minutes later, she was still agitatedly digging in the debris, trying to pull clear some of the timbers, when another noise impinged on her consciousness. It was a strange whooshing noise, growing stronger by the second and coming from the direction of the beach. Then a curtain of gray dramatically rose over the dunes, rapidly gaining height to at least ten times that of a house, obliterating the blue sky. In the instant when it dawned on her that it was water, it was upon her. She did not drown. The impact killed her.
The terrible sequence of events that overwhelmed and obliterated the Atlantis homeland and its civilization in southwest Iberia had begun. The foregoing is my fictional account of what it would have been like for one of the victims.
Was it that dangerous fault line close to the southern coast that caused the sinking and destruction, or was something else responsible? Of one thing I am sure: a cataclysmic event of the size indicated by Plato could well have occurred there. (SEE IMAGE 29 BELOW.)
(IMAGE 29) Chart of the tectonic fault line running
in front of the Algarve and the Costa de la Luz.
We can get some idea of how and why it may have happened from the clues and information available from the great 1755 quake detailed in Chapter Four. Geological seabed research has also demonstrated that there was one such event around the very time frame given by Plato: 9600 B.C.
The great southern plain that now lies off the Algarve coast, beneath the waves, may not have subsided immediately. Like that fateful quay that sank in Lisbon in 1755, the subsidence could have coincided with after-tremors. It would not have needed to sink to great depths. Plato’s account of “mud and low bottoms obstructing passage in the region” confirms this as a fact. In some places, as far as 30 kilometers out to sea, the seabed is still only 130 meters deep, and we have to factor in rising sea levels and subsequent quakes.
The next chapter on the Atlantis Empire details just some of the geological research that indicates areas of land in the mid-Atlantic that had sunk to incredible depths—as deep as six thousand feet. Chunks of the seabed plummeting that distance would have caused mayhem, not the least consequence being towering tsunamis circling the globe. It is, therefore, not beyond the realm of possibility that the land off southwest Iberia has sunk a significant amount. Some of the chasms around the Gorringe Bank are testament to tremendous geological activity in the area. It has been estimated that an area of three hundred kilometers’ radius around the epicenter sank thirty meters in the 1755 event alone.
The initial violent tremors would have killed much of the population, burying bodies under demolished buildings. Any homes left standing would have been devastated by further tremors over the next few hours. If you survived the first tremor, imagine then being in the path of a gigantic wall of water, up to a hundred feet high, traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. Time for horror and panic would have been brief. The first tsunami would have battered and vaulted the Algarve cliffs, torn up the estuaries, and, farther east along the coast, swept over sand dunes as far as Cádiz. Debris, rocks, and soil would have been carried inland, quite possibly as far as the mountains in places. Trees and vegetation would have been ripped up and intermingled with the general detritus, dead animals, and human bodies.
An inferno would have raged through the mountains. It would have started in the villages as a result of the quake, and quickly spread to the wooded hills. It would have devoured everything in its path. Nothing would have stopped it until it reached the flooded coast—or until there was no more left for it to engulf. I have experienced and witnessed such an event, when our house was saved with literally seconds to spare. My neighbors had evacuated with my wife, and I had stayed to try to dampen down the garden. I was preparing to escape by jumping into the river, as I helplessly watched the huge flames tear down the mountain behind the house at an incredible speed I had not bargained for. Thankfully, two helicopters arrived to swiftly scoop water out of the river on their approach, then swooped low to dump it over our garden and surrounding woodland to frustrate the fire. As quickly as they had arrived, they disappeared into the swirling smoke to save someone else. Brave men. In all, the fire burned for more than two days and devastated fourteen thousand hectares.
In 1755 and all earlier similar massive upheavals, the River Arade and its valley would have acted as a funnel for the tsunami, directing the full force toward Silves. The harbor would have felt the first impact. The multitude of boats would have been flung around, with many pounded to matchwood and others left broken and marooned on high ground. However, surprisingly, the city itself might have escaped the full force—and maybe it had been deliberately planned that way.
On reading the accounts of the 1755 quake, I was struck by the statement that Faro, the current Algarve capital situated in the center of the coast, was spared the worst of the tsunami, as it was protected to a degree by offshore sandbanks and Faro Island. A good deal of the impact was absorbed and dissipated. This sparked a train of thought. Perhaps those two huge embankments and wide water channels protecting ancient Silves were not designed just to keep people out, but also to break the surge of any tsunami cascading up the river. If Atlantis had been in existence for a few thousand years, the ruling elite would certainly have been aware of the danger and its frightening, destructive potential.
The access channel from the outer embankment by the harbor to the next inner ring of water could have been positioned where the river still runs today—that is, to the south, up against the surrounding ridge. The next channel into the inner ring of water could have then been considerably offset farther north, or even on the other side of the city altogether. This would have had the effect of forcing the surge of water to largely bypass the town to the south, pouring on around the high embankment and on up the river. The embankments themselves would have broken a lot of the impact, and the wide rings of water between each one would have helped dissipate it. Repeated tsunamis since then might also explain why only the parts of the embankments now remaining are those embedded in rock. If the rest had been artificially heaped up, using earth and rock cut out to form the deep channels for the rings of water, they would have been battered and devastated over the years.
Remember that, according to Plato, the area depended on a vast irrigation system. Without one, agriculture certainly would not have flourished. The effect of the flooding would have been disastrous for such an elaborate scheme if any of it had survived above the sea. Salt water would have polluted it, and the complete emptying and flushing of what was left of the whole system would have been required before it could have served its purpose again. Some points would also have been breached by the earthquakes, and others blocked by the debris dumped by the receding sea. Its use for transport would have been nullified. Life for any lucky survivors would have been virtually impossible.
The capital itself may have been capable of supporting life, as it had an abundance of fresh water, not least from that flowing down the River Arade as well as springs within the city. If the ruling elite had not had forewarning of the looming disaster and not fled in advance, they could well have survived the quakes in their stone homes built in the ancient polygonal style to absorb the tremors. However, with most of their homeland now forming the seabed and what was left uninhabitable and unproductive, they would eventually have been forced to seek new pastures.
Apart from this local scenario, the possibility cannot be ignored that the destruction of Atlantis could have been linked to a global disaster. In his groundbreaking book Fingerprints of the Gods, originally published in 1995, Graham Hancock chronicles how there are accounts from many parts of the world of a truly immense disaster occurring around twelve thousand years ago. The legends invariably recount huge floods, often reaching mountaintops, and indescribable shaking of the land, with mountains collapsing and new ones thrust skyward. The sun took fright and disappeared behind darkened skies for long periods. Temperatures plummeted, crops would not grow, and livestock died.
Our school history books neglected to teach us about catastrophism, as the establishment had set its face firmly against it, embracing uniformitism instead. Big words for simple concepts. Uniformitism is the theory that the world has slowly developed in a uniform way and has not been affected by worldwide catastrophes that have stop-started or drastically changed the environment and the development of man. This dogma is ingrained, despite many scientists’ drawing attention to geological discoveries indicating a combination of the two. The discoveries last century in Alaska and Siberia of whole ice fields of frozen mud full of remains of thousands of horses, bears, bison, mammoths, lions, and wolves are apt examples. In the 1940s, Dr. Frank C. Hibben, professor of archaeology at the University of New Mexico, dramatically recounted the unbelievable sight of bulldozers heaving around the remains. He described tusks and bones being rolled up in front of the blades “like shavings before a giant plane.”63 The carcasses were a terrible mangled sight, most of them pulled apart by what must have been a catastrophic but unexplainable disaster. Other remains, particularly m
ammoths, recovered from the permafrost in Siberia have undigested vegetation—such as buttercups, bluebells, and wild beans—in their mouths and stomachs.64 Clearly, they were not grazing in a cold climate at the time the catastrophe befell them, but, like those in Alaska, they were washed there by a huge flood of global and apocalyptic proportions. For further evidence, look at R. Cedric Leonard’s web site.65
That all sounds even more serious than the major quakes affecting southwest Iberia. Various explanatory scenarios have been suggested. One of the most plausible, prompted by accounts and legends of a fiery dragon traversing the sky and falling to earth, is an asteroid strike. Even a small asteroid of tens of meters in diameter can have disastrous results.
Exactly how dramatic can be gauged from the Tunguska incident that some readers may have heard of. It occurred at around 8 A.M. on June 30, 1908.66 Tunguska is a remote, inhospitable, and fortunately uninhabited region of Siberia. Eyewitness reports from a long way away spoke of a kind of fire that produced an unbearable heat, then brief darkness, followed by an explosion that threw people to the ground. In northern Europe, the sky was illuminated for nine days. In England, people were able to play cricket and read the papers at midnight. The explosion has been estimated to have been the equivalent of a forty- to fifty-megaton bomb.
It was a full nineteen years before Russian scientists were finally able to visit, as the site was so remote. What they found was awesome. The area of the forest affected was between twenty-four and thirty-two kilometers in diameter. The landscape was badly scorched, and all the trees were flattened—but side by side, the tops facing outward, fanning out from the center. And, where they had expected to find a meteorite crater, there stood an area of denuded trees. The scientists concluded that an object had exploded in the air.
Atlantis and the Silver City Page 15