A huge mysterious island or even the mainland, which went under water along with the brilliant powerful civilization of the Atlanteans as a result of an earthly cataclysm, has been looking for a very long time and in the most diverse regions of the World Ocean, but so far the search has not yielded any unequivocal positive result.
Is it just Plato's invention?
Strikingly, centuries of searching for Atlantis are based on Plato's story, which is about 25 printed pages long. Apart from him, almost no one else mentioned Atlantis. Did Atlantis really exist? Skeptics suggest that Plato could well have invented the story of Atlantis and its sad fate for the edification of his contemporaries, who were proud and mired in vices. They say, you will misbehave, you will be mercilessly punished from above … Of course, enthusiasts looking for Atlantis reject the version of Plato's invention with indignation. They also do not support historians, many of whom have already found Atlantis in … the Aegean Sea.
According to the supporters of this version, Plato wrote about the tragedy in Santorini, which led to the death of the Critomino civilization. The center of this civilization was located on the volcanic island of Santorini (Thira), which has a concentric structure, which, incidentally, was mentioned by Plato. In addition to Santorini, its representatives settled on smaller islands in the southern part of the Aegean Sea, including the largest of them - Crete.
Alas, this civilization, which built magnificent palaces, created its own writing system, had a mighty fleet, was in for a terrible fate. 3.5 thousand years ago, a dormant volcano woke up on Santorini, there was a strong earthquake and a powerful eruption of lava and ash. There was a tsunami. Civilization and all its achievements were destroyed. Even the island was shattered into pieces, some of them plunged into the abyss.
On the site of the large island, an archipelago of a number of islands arose, the largest of which is Thira. The eruption was so powerful that it had a disastrous effect on many other Mediterranean civilizations, which was reflected in a number of ancient written sources. According to some historians, such a tragedy served as the real basis for the legend of Atlantis.
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The Mystery of Mount Ampere
The opponents of the version linking the appearance of the legend of Atlantis with the dramatic cataclysm in the Aegean Sea have their own iron argument - Plato wrote that it was behind the Pillars of Hercules (the ancient name of the Strait of Gibraltar), which means - in the Atlantic! And in time, Atlantis died several millennia earlier.
In the early 80s. XX century, articles with sensational headlines appeared in the world media - "Russians have found Atlantis!" The basis for this sensation was the pictures of the underwater volcanic mountain Ampere, located 500 km west of Gibraltar.
Pictures of the top of this mountain, located at a depth of 70-140 meters, were taken in 1979 by Soviet oceanologists and marine geologists. So, the pictures showed some geometrically correct vertical ledges, reminiscent of the ruins of some building. In the early 1980s, Soviet oceanologists continued to study this area. In the summer of 1984, new pictures of Mount Ampere were taken, in some of them it was even possible to distinguish some kind of "masonry".
Most importantly, the location of Mount Ampere was quite consistent with the area where, according to Plato, the legendary Atlantis was located. It was this circumstance that attracted such public interest in the resulting images. However, the official conclusion of Soviet scientists reduced all "artificial buildings" to natural formations, and the question of the discovery of Atlantis was closed.
Perhaps the representatives of Soviet science, who were afraid of accusations of adherence to any “anomalousness” like plague, overcaused and decided to disown such a “slippery” topic.
Doctor of Science and the famous bard Alexander Gorodnitsky, who took a direct part in that expedition, believes that they then discovered Atlantis.
In 2008, in an interview with one of the publications, he said the following: “On the Argus1 underwater vehicle I myself went down to the top of the mountain, and since it was impossible to make high-quality photographs of the ruins, my colleagues and I made sketches of individual fragments. Definitely once upon a time it was a city! Of course, Mother Nature could have created everything, but in that case, why some "rooms" in destroyed buildings have the same size and shape? No, it was an inhabited archipelago, which for some reason went under water … Our expedition managed to show that this country was once on the surface, was a system of islands. By the composition of the basalt taken from the tops of the mountains, we came to the conclusion that it froze in the air."
Ancient metropolis on the seabed
It should be noted that over the centuries of searching for Atlantis, it was "found" in various parts of the world - in Antarctica, South America, Africa, at the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle and even in the Caspian Sea. The lost homeland of the Atlanteans, thanks to dozens of hypotheses, “travels” literally all over the planet. What can we say about the Atlantic, in which almost a dozen places are designated, where, according to the hypotheses of various researchers, Atlantis sank.
Relatively recently, the engineers of the Google Ocean project, which allows you to virtually study the ocean floor, discovered in the Canary Islands region at a depth of about a thousand meters an almost perfect geometry rectangle with an area of about 20 thousand square meters. m. According to experts, such straight lines, their intersection at right angles, can only be explained by human activity. The mysterious object at the bottom is located in a place that fits Plato's description. By the way, not far from the Canary Islands is the Ampere seamount. It is worth considering that it has long been suggested that the Canary Islands were once part of the island (mainland?) Atlantis. Experts believe that the mysterious object at the bottom must be investigated.
Another "Atlantis" was discovered on the seabed off the coast of Cuba by Canadian explorers, marine engineer Pauline Zalitzki and her husband Paul Weinzweig, the owners of the Canadian company Advanced Digital Communications, which, under an agreement with the Cuban government, is mapping the seabed relief in Cuban territorial waters. First, in 2001, using an echo sounder, geometrically regular rock formations were identified on an area of about 200 hectares of the seabed, which were located at a depth of about 600 meters.
“This is incredible! We see high-resolution images on the screens of our locators. appearing one after another. Smooth white sand, and in the middle of this beautiful sandy space there are large architectural structures clearly created by man. It looks as if you were flying over city buildings on an airplane and saw main roads, tunnels and buildings,”Zalitzki said at the time.
Only in 2012, Canadian researchers were able to use a remotely controlled underwater robot with a video camera to study mysterious underwater structures. As reported by the Prensa Latina news agency, the pictures taken from the video show various monumental structures, among which there are four huge pyramids, one of which seems to be made of glass. A sculpture resembling a sphinx was also discovered, upright processed blocks with some kind of inscriptions. It became apparent that there is actually a sunken ancient city on the seabed.
According to journalist Luis Fernandez Marian, this city was discovered by the Americans back in the 60s of the XX century during the Cuban missile crisis, but the information about the find was classified. There is no consensus about this city yet. Some believe that the legendary Atlantis has finally been discovered, while others consider the ancient Indians to be the creators of the city. One thing is certain - the sunken city needs further active research.