SometimesPlatocan be irritating , specially if you ’re one of those hoi polloi dedicated to uncovering the misplace civilisation of Atlantis . He wrote of its destruction some 9,000 years ago , but unfortunately for forward-looking historians , he did n’t distinguish us much . Was it a continent ? Was it a metropolis ? Plato can be maddeningly vague . He also has a disposition to muddy the amnionic fluid by weaving literary licence with fact . Characters he wrote of were real hoi polloi – for exemplar , Socrates , his instructor – but Plato slip in his own words . After all , he was a philosopher , not a documentarian .
Such is the display case with his description of Atlantis . In his Quran " Timaeus , " the classic Greek philosopher invitingly places the location of the lose civilisation in a real place , the Pillars ofHercules[source : Krystek ] . This is what we now call the Strait of Gibraltar , off the coast of Spain . On the other hired man , he lose some believability when he note that the city was also populated by blood descendants of the sea and earthquake god Poseidon .
But perhaps it was never Plato ’s design to deceive or to dispute others to search for the lose urban center ( continent ? ) . Perhaps it was n’t Atlantis that was drop off to the ages , but Plato ’s intent to present the story as allegory . At any rate , people have taken the egg and run with it .
What Plato name – a ringed befuddled urban center that was advanced in computer architecture , art and technology and was overwhelmed 9,000 geezerhood ago by a wave sent by Poseidon after its inhabitants had grown too wicked – dovetail nicely with the interests in archaeology and the occult that converge in the West in the late nineteenth one C . In 1882 , those interests were officially taken over by outer boundary dwellers when author , politician and scientist Ignatius Donnelly published his record book , " Atlantis , the Antediluvian World . " Since then , Atlantis ' caption has grow more marvelous : Plato was befuddle ; the residents were outlander , not condescend from idol ; the metropolis ’s advanced technology strain into the metaphysical and energy crystals in the drowned Atlantis accounting for occult activity in theBermuda Triangle . Atlantis is in the Caribbean . Atlantis is in the South China Sea . Atlantis is in Switzerland .
Psychic Edgar Cayce , the slumber prophesier of Virginia Beach , was deeply involve in the occultization of Atlantis . He auspicate that some of the city would rise off Bimini , or the westerly end of the Bahamas . Indeed in 1968 , a diver discovered an submerged rock constitution that ’s now known as the Bimini Road . Whether it ’s man - made or natural is still in question , but at any rate , the uncovering reignited interest in the lost urban center .
As far out as the caption of Atlantis has grow , some archeologist have quietly continued appear for something like it . Perhaps Atlantis was veridical – or some approximation of it , at least .
The Terrible Fate of Helike
credibly the most candid hint that Plato fabricated Atlantis is that he is the only individual to give an account of it . Prior to his tale , Atlantis had n’t been mention before and none of his contemporary describe the legendary city either . But this is not to say that there are n’t report of a location that very tight parallel Plato ’s verbal description of Atlantis . There are well - documented descriptions of a tangible place named Helike , which suffered a fate much like that of Atlantis .
The coastal urban center of Helike , located on the Gulf of Corinth in Greece , was the backside of power of the 12 - urban center Achaean League . The city was hundreds of years erstwhile by the time Plato rose to prominence ; it was wealthy , it ensure shipping in the domain and it had establish its own dependency in other field like Italy [ beginning : Helike Project ] .
It was also a major nitty-gritty for the worship of Poseidon , the god whom Plato line as the patron of Atlantis . Like Plato’slost city , Helike boast a big and far-famed statue of the god .
For five days in December 373 B.C. , witnesses in the area noticed that pocket-size animals like snakes , mice and insects weremigratingen masse away from the coast and to the mountains that form the southern border of the Helike Delta . Indeed , earthquakeresearchers have observe an ostensible ability among some animals to sense an impending quake and endeavor to escape the area . This held on-key for Helike as well . In the middle of the night on the 5th day , a major earthquake struck the area , followed by an enormous tsunami from the Gulf of Corinth . In a matter of minutes , the city of Helike was overcome by the ocean , just as Plato described Atlantis .
At dawn , a chemical group of recoverer amassed and hurried to help the residents , but there was no one to save ; the Ithiel Town was ruin by an earthquake and submerged beneath the ocean . Ten ships fromSpartathat had been moored just offshore had vanished . Only the treetops of Poseidon ’s tree woodlet still jab out from the water ’s control surface [ reservoir : Gidwitz ] . Beneath the pee , the statue of Poseidon built by the craze that worshipped him still tolerate erect . Local fishermen reported catching their net on it oftentimes .
And while the caption of the metropolis and knowledge of its fate endure , Helike did eventually become lost .
The Peculiarity of the Helike Delta: Making Lost Cities
It ’s almost as if the Helike Delta was custom - made to producelost city . The expanse provides an attractive site for human habitation : the Gulf of Corinth offers quick transit and an enormous source offood . The three rivers that form the delta bring fresh pee from the mountains and a source ofirrigationfor crops . The warm climate make hold up comparatively easy for a subtropical species like Homo sapiens . It ’s an intuitive place for people to live .
The area is also plagued by tectonic activity . Two freestanding fault run parallel through the expanse and they are equal to of vehement drive . geologic grounds from thequakethat deflower Helike shows that the earth move up 6 feet ( 2 meter ) along one side of the fault line and sunk the delta about 9 infantry ( 3 metre ) low [ generator : Soter ] . These same quakes can bring forth massivetsunamis , which amount ashore at as much as 20 naut mi per hour ( 36 km / h ) at heights of 100 foot ( about 33 metre ) [ reservoir : Hyperphysics ] .
Coastal arena around the macrocosm are subject to this combination of violent force , but those three river that form the Helike Delta give the region a funny feature . The rivers bring silt to the sea-coast and over time have extended it further and further into the Gulf . One oft - reiterate example is of a family that was built along the shore in 1890 ; it is now a thousand feet ( 304.8 meters ) inland [ origin : Gidwitz ] . In a single night an temblor ruin the city of Helike , a jumbo wave plunge it underwater , and over the centuries the rivers have buried it .
But the research worker who discovered ancient Helike after 12 years of digging also found that this ravage of nature encounter more than once . The attractiveness of the area and its attendant destructiveness constitute a cycle where humans established a metropolis , nature removed it and , as thepassage of timecultivated fecklessness , another city was set up . Archaeologists found evidence of lost cities from the Byzantine menses , which ended in the 15th hundred A.D. , beneath that lie a ruin Roman urban center , from between the 2nd and fourth centuries A.D. Beneath the Roman ruin lay Helike , which was put down in 373 B.C. But the archaeologists were astonished to find an even to begin with ruined settlement from the Bronze Age of around 2600 to 2300 B.C. , The group excavating the land site also find signs of human inhabitation even further back , into the prehistorical Neolithic menstruation , which began as far back as 12,000 years ago .
In all , six clear-cut occupation purview have been get word at Helike . hoi polloi had been living in the Helike Delta for a long sentence , and nature had been destroying their settlements and then preserving the ruin .
Finding Ancient Helike
In much the same way as Atlantis , Helike long stood as a legendarylost city . But the citizenry who dedicated themselves to finding it had a distinct advantage over their counterpart who look for for Atlantis : in effect support .
For several centuries following its sudden destruction , Helike remained submerged but visible , which made it a bite of an early sorry tourism draw . For centuries travelers and writer inspect the area and reported back about what they saw . These ancient Greeks and Romans even documented the localization of the metropolis instadia , a unit of space adequate to roughly 600 infantry ( 183 meters ) [ source : Vincent , et al ] . Even with the river extend the shoreline outwards for the last two millennium , all of this made the chance of finding Helike slowly – compared to , say , Atlantis at least . But in pattern the city proved hard to locate . The legendary GreekarchaeologistSpyridon Marinatos made find oneself Helike the obsession of his former vocation , and when he died in the 1974 , his search had managed to bring the lost metropolis of Helike into broader awareness . In 1988 , two Cornell professors start searching for ancient Helike in earnest .
The lookup used sidescan sonar equipment to hoard an underseamapof the area just off the coast of Helike in the Gulf of Corinth . They found an ancient seawall bury beneath the deposit , as well what may be the ten Spartan ship that were deluge by the tsunami that destroyed Helike that night in 373 . But no mark of the city change by reversal up . It was n’t until one of the team leader , a Greek woman , reexamined the old reports of contemporary Greeks and found that previous searches had been mislead by an inaccurate translation for a body of water . Rather than being submerged in the gulf , Helike had been swallowed up by an inland lagoon .
Turning their search onto state , the labor team managed to find first the ruined Roman city , along with inviolate Roman cemeteries and the Roman road that ancient traveler used to take in Helike . Just 12 understructure ( 3.66 meter ) beneath the surface of the cultivated land in the area was the lost city of Helike . Indeed , when they examined the dirt , they found evidence that the now ironic dirt had once been the silt of a lagune .
dig have turn up industrial edifice , kiln and loom , intersecting streets flanked by edifice , the urban center ’s coins featuring a bust of Poseidon in near mint precondition , a depot of Bronze - old age jugful , some still with their contents intact , Greek cemeteries and fate of clayware and cock . Most exciting , however , is the promise of more : land - bottom radar has show that there are more buildings to be determine , that the majority of Helike still lay unexplored . What ’s more , it appear to be largely intact and frozen in time in that terrible moment when it was lost .
To intend that find oneself Helike will call off the hunt for Atlantis is folly . The hunting for the legendary lost urban center continues . One American archaeologist believe he ’s incur the drop off city in Spain , 60 miles ( 96.5 klick ) inland [ source : Howard ] . Ironically , the discovery of Helike supports the idea that if it does exist , the lost metropolis could be find submerge in soil rather than sea .
I grew up sharp-set for information on the fantastical , like ghosts and lost civilizations like Atlantis . I was equally concerned in archeology , it being the first word I could spell that impressed friends and instructor likewise . So the conception of an actual lost city has long been of with child pursuit to me . It combines the tremendous gruesomeness of an entire city being lost with its inhabitants pin within as the world swallows it with the charge of being discovered intact millennium subsequently by archeologist . I was plunge by stories and photos of Pompeii from the first clip I heard of it and it was the same when I lately follow across a small entryway on Helike . The more I dug , the more amazing the story became – it being the potential and probable inspiration for Atlantis ; there being more than one lose city in the same spot , separated by century . I require to write about it , ab initio as a blog C. W. Post , but then I realized that there was too much effective clobber here for a shortsighted post . That initial ambition became this clause and then later the companion Stuff You Should have a go at it podcast episode on the subject .
