Atlantis Found!
Posted by Kaora ana Aset on March 13, 2011 at 3:30am
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/12/us-tsunami-atlantis-idUST...
(Reuters)
- A U.S.-led research team may have finally located the lost city of Atlantis,
the legendary metropolis believed swamped by a tsunami thousands of years ago in
mud flats in southern Spain.
"This is the power of tsunamis," head researcher
Richard Freund told Reuters.
"It is just so hard to understand that it can
wipe out 60 miles inland, and that's pretty much what we're talking about," said
Freund, a University of Hartford, Connecticut, professor who lead an
international team searching for the true site of Atlantis.
To solve the
age-old mystery, the team used a satellite photo of a suspected submerged city
to find the site just north of Cadiz, Spain. There, buried in the vast
marshlands of the Dona Ana Park, they believe that they pinpointed the ancient,
multi-ringed dominion known as Atlantis.
The team of archeologists and
geologists in 2009 and 2010 used a combination of deep-ground radar, digital
mapping, and underwater technology to survey the site.
Freund's discovery in
central Spain of a strange series of "memorial cities," built in Atlantis' image
by its refugees after the city's likely destruction by a tsunami, gave
researchers added proof and confidence, he said.
Atlantis residents who did
not perish in the tsunami fled inland and built new cities there, he
added.
The team's findings will be unveiled on Sunday in "Finding Atlantis,"
a new National Geographic Channel special.
While it is hard to know with
certainty that the site in Spain in Atlantis, Freund said the "twist" of finding
the memorial cities makes him confident Atlantis was buried in the mud flats on
Spain's southern coast.
"We found something that no one else has ever seen
before, which gives it a layer of credibility, especially for archeology, that
makes a lot more sense," Freund said.
Greek philosopher Plato wrote about
Atlantis some 2,600 years ago, describing it as "an island situated in front of
the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Hercules," as the Straits of
Gibraltar were known in antiquity. Using Plato's detailed account of Atlantis as
a map, searches have focused on the Mediterranean and Atlantic as the best
possible sites for the city.
Tsunamis in the region have been documented for
centuries, Freund says. One of the largest was a reported 10-story tidal wave
that slammed Lisbon in November, 1755.
Debate about whether Atlantis truly
existed has lasted for thousands of years. Plato's "dialogues" from around 360
B.C. are the only known historical sources of information about the iconic city.
Plato said the island he called Atlantis "in a single day and night...
disappeared into the depths of the sea."
Experts plan further excavations are
planned at the site where they believe Atlantis is located and at the mysterious
"cities" in central Spain 150 miles away to more closely study geological
formations and to date artifacts.
(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Greg
McCune)