Q&A with Robert Sarmast

Author of Discovery of Atlantis: The Startling Case for the Island of Cyprus
Origin Press, October 2003

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer

A lot of people say that the anomalies on the seafloor around the area you claim to be the Acropolis Hill are just underwater landslides.  What do you say to that?

Underwater landslides are common enough and it’s not like these ideas didn’t run through our minds when we saw the maps for the first time.  No conclusions are drawn without serious research and peer reviews from the world’s leading experts in the geological structure of the northeastern Mediterranean seafloor.  In fact, some of them wrote the book on the subject.  You will not find tougher critics, or more experienced scientists, than the ones we have on our own team.

The anomalies around the purported Acropolis Hill, particularly the three-kilometer long “wall” running along the base of the hill, stick out like a sore thumb on the maps.  What made it particularly interesting was that these anomalies were seen nowhere else anywhere in the vicinity, even though there were many other hills in the 15X15 mile area we mapped in detail.  At first we thought that it could have been a landslide, but as we looked closer it became apparent that it could not be so.  The three-kilometer ridge runs practically in a straight line for almost two kilometers before curving a bit.  It is almost exactly the same height throughout its entire course (25 feet), which is quite strange.  There is also no debris trail along the hillside.  This means that if the wall was a landslide, it would have had to have slid down the hill in a straight line measuring three kilometers long, remained exactly the same height throughout its travel down the hill, which measures over two kilometers, and all this without leaving a trail on the hillside itself.  That’s a bit like a human trying to walk over sand without leaving a mark.

Purported Acropolis Hill area, viewed from the north.

Acropolis Hill viewed from the west.

An underwater landslide looks a lot like, well, a landslide.  It follows gravity and leaves a trail, is not uniform, and makes quite a mess as one would expect.  Some of the bathymetric maps of submarine landslides shown below will familiarize you with what they typically look like.

Hawaiian landslide.

Underwater landslides leaving “scarps” or “cookie bites”

As these images and many others found in the public domain show, underwater landslides are quite similar to those on dry land.  There are many different types, but our purported Acropolis Hill looks similar to what is called a slump-rotational slide, where a landmass breaks free and slides down, sometimes a considerable distance.

As the debris flows down the hill, it sometimes creates what are called “scarps” or “cookie bites,” creating a graded or rough stairway look.  In the end, the leading edge of the landslide looks like the toes of a giant foot on the hillside (see below).

When you compare these typical landslides with the “wall” at the base of our hill, you can see how it is unique and independent, and is not related to any fallout coming down the hill.  In other words, if the “wall” is just the “toe” of a landslide, then it must be a footless toe because it’s out there on its own.  It simply sticks out in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason and is without natural explanation. 

When we first developed the map, I sent the close up image of the hill to the world’s leading expert in the geological structure of the eastern Mediterranean seafloor in order to get some feedback.  He knew well that it was not a mudslide and never gave that as an answer.  First he thought that it could be a salt deposit along a fracture, but then he saw the map of the entire area and it was clear that there was nothing else like it in the vicinity, so that answer was ruled out.  The next answer was that there must have been something wrong with the data that we used to create the bathymetric map, perhaps an error that had crept in during the filtering of the data.  But the data was newly acquired and had never been filtered, it was raw.  Still, a mistake with the data was the only thing that came to mind.  This gave me the impression that there was no simple way of explaining it away as a natural formation.  Our own geophysicist, one of the best in the world, the person had created the maps and models in the first place, also came to the careful conclusion that the hillside anomalies looked “more manmade than natural.”  After years of skepticism this final nod to go ahead with our own expedition was a major milestone for us.

The purported Acropolis Hill (middle of map) has the only anomalies in the otherwise typical seafloor formations of the northeastern Mediterranean.

Of course, this was all made even more interesting by the fact that I had published the exact coordinates of this hill the year before in my book, even before we saw it up close with the high resolution maps.  Back then it was just a blip on the older maps, but it was such a perfect match with Plato’s description of the location and placement of the Acropolis Hill that I was confident enough to point straight to it and say that that would be where the remains would be found.  Now, a year later, higher resolution maps were showing us the hill in intimate detail for the first time and all the anomalies happened to be in this area and nowhere else.  What’s more the anomalies came in shape of walls, canals and river paths, just as Plato had described them, down to the exact measurements.  How many coincidences does it take to make something real?

Our expedition this November showed that the anomalies are not errors with data – they are there.  We will soon release the images and high resolution maps of the area as acquired by our side scan sonar.

Also worth noting, the canal or trench that runs alongside the middle of the hill is concave and not what can be considered a scarp, and meets two river paths along both extremities of the hill that are clearly concave and deeply cut into the surrounding land.  These anomalies simply do not look like an underwater landslide, but they do match up with Plato’s description of the Acropolis Hill and its rivers flowing down from the summit.  We even saw a river path meandering through this canal when we saw it on the ship’s computers. 

Interestingly enough, the Acropolis Hill, with its descending rings of canals and land, if covered by silt, would look similar to a slump-rotational slide. 

German physicist Christian Huebscher has gone on record saying that he has identified the phenomenon as 100,000 year-old volcanoes that spewed mud, and disputes that this is Atlantis.  What are you thoughts?

Mr. Heubscher is a geophysicist and marine geologist, not a physicist.  I’m not really sure how what Mr. Heubscher said is supposed to invalidate my theory, and I have to admit that I find the whole situation indicative of people’s propensity to give knee-jerk reactions.  According to the report that was published, all Mr. Heubscher said was that he and his colleagues had sailed to the same area as we had on our expedition, and that they had found evidence of underwater mud volcanoes in the region.  Is that supposed to be something new, and what exactly does it imply that would contradict what I am saying?  The whole area is surrounded by volcanoes as I published in my book last year.  The vivid description of the natural resources found in Atlantis Island, as well as its highly fertile land etc. connote a landmass composed of igneous rock.  In fact the Acropolis Hill itself was supposed to have hot springs.

Is it normal these days to make comments on theories without reading something about those theories first? The reason given for the submergence of the valley in the first place is a combination of rising coastlines due to the flood, and a sinking Mediterranean basin due to the massive subsidence caused by surrounding volcanic eruptions.  There are a string of mud volcanoes at the southern edge of the Cyprus Arc where it meets the Levantine Basin.  There are also underwater volcanoes on the rectangular valley itself, clearly visible and identifiable by the surrounding moat, the conical shape and complete with crater on top. 

The hill that I have been pointing to as the Acropolis Hill was never directly mentioned by Mr. Heubscher as a volcano.  He merely said that there are submarine volcanoes in the area.  Our purported Acropolis Hill is obviously a table-top mountain, nice and flat, with a two kilometer length and a half-kilometer width.  Submarine volcanoes look like, well, volcanoes.  I have gone back and forth over this hill for days with a side scan sonar unit flying just a few meters above the seabed, and along with a couple of specialists working the machinery, know that mountain better than anyone on earth, including Mr. Heubscher who has merely surveyed the general vicinity with multibeam sonar (much lower resolution).  I’ve seen every inch of that summit, it’s not a volcano, and our images once processed will put the matter to rest.

But this is all rather beside the point.  Let’s say that it indeed was a volcano that spewed mud 100,000 years ago and turned into a flat-topped mountain (extremely unlikely).  Does that mean that people couldn’t have inhabited it eighty thousands years later?  Or is this association with a volcano supposed to explain away the anomalies on our hill?  I hope not, as volcanic eruptions are not known to throw mounds of mud in straight lines two kilometers away from the summit. 

We have run these maps and models past many of the world’s most renowned experts in the field, and none of them has ever suggested that this hill may be a volcano.  Some skeptics are even trying to throw people off by saying that deep drilling in the area has proven that it has always been underwater, but those core samples were taken from areas south of the rectangular valley I point to. Our antediluvian maps show those drill sites as being underwater too.  People are often too quick to judge, and even scientists are susceptible to letting their preconceived notions lead them astray; they’re only human.  We’ll have our own report from a geophysicist and expert in the field coming soon.

What are the elements that convinced you to concentrate your researches in a little area of the eastern Mediterranean region?  

The main elements revolve around these facts:  The high, mountainous island that is described in Plato’s “Critias” could not have been submerged unless it was in a basin that was flooded, and that of course is now associated with the Mediterranean Sea.  The water levels of oceans simply do not rise and fall dramatically.  We know directly from the text that the disaster which sunk Atlantis was connected to an event that transpired in the eastern Mediterranean. We know that the legend comes from the Eastern Mediterranean.  We know that civilization was founded in the eastern Mediterranean. And we know that the original written text (which was translated by the Egyptians and later by Greeks) could have only been authored in the vicinity of the eastern Mediterranean.  Cyprus is at the very heart of the ancient world, directly in the middle of all ancient civilizations.  Cypriot mythology to this very day says that the home of the so-called gods was to the south of their island.  All of the concentrated forms of ancient mythologies about this unique race and the flood stories came from this part of the world.  We now know that the Mediterranean did indeed experience a catastrophic flood in association with violent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. When you put all this together the question becomes: why would people be looking anywhere else?

What was the process in the map making of the seafloor?

I searched the world for good data for the eastern Mediterranean in the late 1990’s, without success. By chance I lived in Boulder, Colorado at the time and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) had a presence there. I arranged for a meeting with their geophysicists.  These scientists showed me their own master database and available maps, but their data was not adequate for creating high resolution maps. Then they remembered than an Israeli geophysicist, Dr. John K. Hall, who is the world’s foremost expert in the eastern Mediterranean region, had sent them data which had been collected by a Russian vessel in the late 1980’s. They showed me the area that the vessel had obtained the data and it was exactly the area I was interested in, which happened to be the least studied part of the northeastern Mediterranean. These geophysicists sent me the digital data a few weeks later and thus the map-making process began in earnest. The process of creating maps and 3d models took place between the years 2000 and 2003.

The next sets of maps were produced using the latest data acquired by IFREMER in November of 2003  or (http://www.ifremer.fr/sismer/catal/campagne/campagne.htql?crno=3020140).  This data was acquired using newer technology and allowed us to create much higher resolution models that showed the area believed to be the Acropolis in greater detail, ultimately giving us a close up look at the hill and all its distinct features.  The next sets of maps and models will be created using the side scan sonar instruments we used in our own expedition this November, and will show the area with even more detail.  They should be ready by late December 2004.

Cynics may accuse you of merely trying to make a lot of money from the sales of your book.  What do you say?

Ignorance breeds suspicion.  I have already been accused of being a spy for America (I kid you not), creating a hoax, or else looking for oil disguised as an Atlantis researcher, and of course, trying to make money.  The humor is not lost on me.  This project had a humble origin. No book was ever planned when the research began. As time went on and the evidence began to accumulate to an unusual degree, it became apparent that a book was necessary to reveal the information in a methodical fashion. Nonfiction Atlantis books are not mass market material, and are rarely money makers.  The fourteen years of research and the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on this project have put an enormous strain on me in everyway imaginable.  Is it so impossible to believe that I’m simply looking for the ancient world’s description of Atlantis? 

It was generally believed that Atlantis was somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. What convinced you that it was in the Mediterranean?

When you think of Plato's account, it is absolutely vital to keep its original source in mind. The original account could not possibly have mentioned an "Atlantic Ocean” since this is a relatively modern name. Before that it was known as the “Sea of Atlas.” The incredibly detailed records which the Egyptian priests gave to Solon were reportedly handed down for nine thousand years (counting from 2,600 B.C.). Obviously, the people who recorded the intricate details of the island must have been around to see it before the flood, which means that the original authors were living in what we call prehistoric times. After all, Atlantis was considered by the ancient world to be the source of all civilization, which existed in the so–called Golden Age.

Accordingly, Plato wrote in the Critias that the original account of Atlantis was written in a language even older than the Egyptian tongue, and that the Egyptian priests had translated the original text to their own language long ago. As is always the case with translations (particularly the translation of geographical terms), name changes and errors must have been inevitably imported into the Atlantis legend. Then Solon got a hold of it and changed things around even more when he translated the text to Greek, which explains why the name Atlantis is not commonly found before his era. We do not even have the Egyptian records so it’s impossible to trust the integrity of the geographical terminology, but it's safe to say that people living 11,600 years ago in the Near East didn't have the remotest clue as to what or where "Atlantic Ocean" was. These primitive people could not have even known the difference between a sea and an ocean and modern translations still reflect this common confusion.

To say that the Pillars of Hercules and the Sea of Atlas are synonymous with the Strait of Gibraltar and the Atlantic Ocean is careless assumption, not fact. Even Strabo, the ancient world’s most authoritative geographer, said it could be in many different places.

  http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/3E*.html. 

The original authors of the legend lived at a markedly primitive time when the earth was considered to be flat and have an "edge,” enclosed within a giant bubble that was floating in a cosmic ocean. It's vital to project back to these ancient people's conception of the world and see things through their eyes. Even in Solon and Plato’s day “the world” meant little more than the southern parts of Europe, the northern parts of Africa, and the Near East, all of which were surrounded by the Sea of Atlas. In other words, the Atlantic as they knew it was not only to the west, but also to the north, east and south.

In short, to say that the Pillars of Hercules is the Strait of Gibraltar is the same as saying that people living 11,000 years ago in the Near East were not only aware of the Gibraltar Strait but also had a name for it, and used it as a common point of reference! That would be like saying that prehistoric men in the Near East knew what existed at the westernmost edge of the European continent at a time when nothing remotely close to a civilization existed anywhere near the region. The common association with the Atlantic Ocean and the Strait of Gibraltar is illogical and based on faulty conjecture.

There are many other clues in my book that point to the Mediterranean as the place where the disaster took place, and they are studied in-depth. In any case, I’m certainly not the first author to say that Atlantis could not have possibly been in the Atlantic; the most popular theory today places Atlantis in Santorini, just north of Crete in the eastern Mediterranean. Cyprus is only a few hundred miles away.

I would like to know how you prepared the expedition. What type of work did you do and what research did you conduct to lead you to the discovery?

This research has been ongoing for at least ten years and has taught me about things I never imagined I would study.  Deep sea surveys are incredibly complicated and I spent years studying the logistics and potential problems associated with multibeam and side-scan sonar readings, the collection and analyzing of the raw data, its conversion to maps and models, and the interpretational skills required to make sense of the whole thing.  There is good reason why we know more about the surface of Mars than about our own seas and ocean floors.  The main obstacles are the fact that radar does not penetrate water and only sonar can be utilized for surveys, which requires long voyages aboard research vessels, specialized equipment, experienced professionals, and of course, huge budgets. 

To solve the mystery of Atlantis, this bathymetric mapping knowledge has to be intelligently combined with an in-depth understanding of life and viewpoints in so-called prehistoric times, comparative world mythology, ancient history, geophysics, oceanography, biblical studies, archaeology, and of course, a microscopic analysis of Plato’s “Critias.”  The archaeologists and geologists who so casually form opinions about Atlantis usually have no training in the multiple disciplines needed for this research.  A person could study the subject for decades and still have things to learn, and those who have know that a degree in earth sciences will not even come close to adequately preparing someone to reach conclusions about it.  If it was easy to figure out, it wouldn’t be the world’s most perplexing mystery.

I would like to have information about the undersea research. What did you do and with what equipment? Did you meet with difficulties?

The expedition was not easy to put together, mainly because the equipment and specialists we needed for the job are not readily found in this part of the world.  For deep sea surveys you need a fairly large ship with an A-frame, a huge winch, thousands of meters of triple-armored cable for lowering the sonar, a side-scan sonar unit that is specially designed for working a mile or more below water as it is dragged behind the ship, the computers needed to collect and analyze the data, and the specialists to work the equipment and make a very complicated project succeed.  Going to those depths is a bit like going to the moon and the task is fraught with various dangers.  Because you have to assemble each of these parts from various places, and in this case from far away locations (except for the ship), the main challenge is to get them all in one place at one time for the minimum amount of money and the least probability of complications.  I think we had at least several dozen delays and problems before everything came together, and even though people had told me how difficult this kind of thing is, it was still really unbelievable.  The expedition was finally conducted by combining three companies from Cyprus, England and America.  EDT in Cyprus provided the vessel and crew, GSE in UK provided the winch, cable and sonar along with a specialist, and Phoenix International from the US provided three sonar specialists who were also experts in the use of the Remote Operated Vehicle.  Some of these companies have worked on the Titanic discovery/recovery operations and they are among the most professional and experienced underwater researchers in the world.

Regarding the main difficulties we encountered during the trip, they largely revolved around the fact that water and electricity simply do not mix.  The first major problem of the expedition was a busted hydraulic pump for the winch, which miraculously was fixed overnight. The real problem however, came during the second day of the expedition.  The generator for the winch, which sits on deck and is about the size of a huge walk-in closet, blew out dramatically during the night and there was no way of fixing it.  I came out of my cabin in the morning and found everyone looking down at the floor so I immediately knew something terrible had occurred.  This happened while the sonar was dangling in the water with 2,500 meters of cable out and now there was no way of bringing it to surface, which meant that we couldn’t go back to the port or else the unit would crash on the seafloor.  Eventually we had to keep moving to keep the sonar afloat while another ship came dangerously close to us and used its crane to pick up the old generator and replace it with a new one, with both ships in motion!  If the huge generator spun too much at the end of the line it would have snapped our sonar cable and that would have cut people to pieces, not to mention the loss of very expensive equipment.  The crew was extremely nervous as it was very risky, rarely done, and as the experienced sonar specialists told me later, something they had never seen before.  I was told that they said they had never seen an expedition survive the problems we encountered so I consider us quite lucky.

You claim that at a depth of 1,500 meters you found evidences of human buildings. What are these?

We have never claimed to have found buildings, but rather prominent structures surrounding what we believe to be the Acropolis Hill.  These include protective walls, river paths, canals and other prominent features that one would expect to find underwater after so many thousands of years of sedimentation.  The point is that these formations on the seabed match Plato’s description of the Acropolis Hill with such precision that it is truly astounding – it’s all there including the exact measurements.  All of these anomalies on the seafloor happen to be on and around a particular hill that I have been pointing to for years, and even provided exact coordinates for in my book which was published before we had the new maps and saw the hill up close.  Finding actual buildings and the like will require another expedition and the utilization of very specialized machines that can look under the silt.  That will be the next phase of operation.

In your opinion the hillside territory matches Plato's description of the Acropolis hill with perfect precision. Could you explain me what you mean when you say that your discovery matches the nearly 50 clues in Plato's descriptions?

If you bother to read Plato’s “Critias” and focus on the listed physical clues instead of the account about the gods etc., the first thing that strikes you is that the document reads like a treasure map.  It’s important to understand that Atlantis Island looked very peculiar, and was anything but your usual flat and disc-shaped island, with many unique and outstanding features that would have made it stick out like a sore thumb.  The description focuses largely on the shape and nature of the island, a rectangular valley at its foothills, and the capital City.  The island itself rose dramatically from the sea and shot up to a great height with a peak that was considered to be one of the highest elevations in the ancient world.  The landmass was elongated and stretched in an east/west direction, with lots of trees and flowers, a lot of minerals and precious metals, great weather year-round and very fertile ground for farming all kinds of fruits and vegetables.  It was the world's most beautiful garden.  At its southern foothills there was a flat and rectangular valley that also stretched in an east/west direction.  This valley faced south, was near sea level and it was where all the cities of the island were located.  This “great plain of Atlantis” was sheltered from the cold winds by a high mountain range to the north.  In the middle of this valley was the capital of Atlantis Island, which was called Atlantis City, and it was about seven miles from the sea to the south.  The ancients literally listed dozens of dimensions about this area including the exact diameter of this walled city and how it was protected by three concentric canals which surrounded the Acropolis Hill at its center. You can actually draw a city plan based on these detailed descriptions as I have in my book. 

You can see that we have a lot of information about Atlantis, and anyone who says they found it has to at least match a good portion of these clues. Most of the time, however, people who claim they've found Atlantis don't bother to match any of them.  What I have done is match them one by one with Cyprus and its environs, something that has never been done before.  If you read the material you will see that the idea that dozens upon dozens of perfect matches regarding the shape and nature of the island, the plain and the city could all be coincidental is even more bizarre than the claim that Atlantis has been found.

In your opinion, what remains of Cyprus today is just the mountaintop of the old Atlantis peninsula. In your hypothesis, how did Atlantis sink beneath sea level?

Just a couple of decades ago, scientists began to realize that the Mediterranean Sea has a highly unusual history.  They found a thick layer of crystallized salt under the silt on the seafloor, up to a kilometer thick, which along with additional evidence showed that the Mediterranean had experienced numerous periods of desiccation.  In fact, the salt layer was so thick that some estimated that the Mediterranean must have dried up and refilled up to forty times in the last few millions years.  Through the years of studies it became apparent that the Gibraltar Strait is at times a dam, closing up when the European and African tectonic plates move closer together.  These huge pieces of the earth’s crust are alternately being pushed apart and then being pulled toward one another again.  When they move close together the Gibraltar becomes a dam and the Mediterranean evaporates within one to four thousand years, leaving only shallow lakes and lagoons and a thick layer of salt on the basin floor.  When the tectonic plates move apart again, there is tremendous seismic activity, volcanic activity, and the Gibraltar dam breaks and creates a waterfall that is described as being one thousand times larger than Niagara Falls, bordering on the unimaginable.  The Atlantic Ocean then pours into what is virtually an empty basin like a faucet filling an empty bathtub, racing across the basin floor and then rising slowly until the whole Mediterranean basin is filled to its current level.  The Mediterranean basin is 2,500 miles long and 500 miles wide, so this is a huge area which requires several hundred years to completely fill up with water, even when there’s literally an ocean of water rushing in.  Again, this is not hypothesis but fact, it has been proven to have happened numerous times and we know that someday in the future it will happen again. The scientists who describe the scene are almost bewildered by the spectacle, but then we are talking about one of the most geologically active areas in the world (see the work of Dr. Kenneth Hsu).

My research consisted of first mapping the eastern Mediterranean seafloor, which took our geophysicists several years to complete using the best data and the latest cutting-edge technology available.  We then created special software that allowed us to accurately simulate the lowering of the Mediterranean water level in order to see what would appear in the region when the sea was much lower than today.  And this is how we found a perfect match with Plato’s description.  The island of Atlantis sunk below the waves through an almost unimaginable set of geological events, including massive earthquakes that rocked the Mediterranean world, volcanic eruptions that displaced millions of tons of rock, and a torrential flood that filled the Mediterranean basin with a tremendous body of water.  The displacement of mass through volcanic eruptions, along with the tremendous weight of the water that filled the Mediterranean basin, conspired to push down on the mantle causing the subsidence of the eastern Mediterranean seafloor.  So in effect the island went under the waves through the combined effects of rising coastlines and sinking basins. 

Getting more technical, the Atlantis city kingdom is said to have flourished from around 11,000 BC and to have been destroyed by 'an epochal flood' somewhere between 9600-9550 BC. You claim this to have been the result of the breach of the so-called 'Gibraltar Dam'. However, there is now a high level of agreement among earth scientists that this final breach took place 5.3 million - repeat, million years ago - with the subsequent and final re-flooding of the basin taking place in the century that followed.

There is a whole chapter dedicated to this topic in Discovery of Atlantis, but I will provide a few basic points here. First, it should be noted that gathering knowledge about the geological history of the Mediterranean is a brand new science, barely in a stage of infancy. Just twenty years ago even the notion that the Mediterranean was ever devoid of water would have been rejected and ridiculed as nonsense. It was authoritatively asserted that the Mediterranean had continually been a sea for the last 90 million years.  Now we know that the real story is quite different and that it may have dried up and refilled again up to forty times since that time.

The amount of data compiled over the last few decades and the number of comprehensive surveys conducted by scientific expeditions are few and far in between. The bathymetric maps and models we’ve developed for the book constitute humanity’s first relatively detailed peek at the eastern Mediterranean seafloor. For heaven’s sake, we’ve just begun to be able to even see it, much less understand everything that has gone on here, one of the world’s most geologically active areas.  The process of accumulating solid data has barely just begun. There is very little scientific data, and lots of room for conjecture.

Scientists know that roughly 18,000 year ago, there was not just one Mediterranean Sea, but three. Furthermore, we know for a fact that the Mediterranean has been subject to repeated floodings, occurring forty times or more times in its long and turbulent existence. The age of each of these events is unknown. Our technological means are simply not at a level where we can reach concrete conclusions about such complex phenomenon. Nor do we have the technological wherewithal to date the break of the Gibraltar dam, even though we know the European and African plates often meet and diverge.  An article published by the Encyclopedia Britannica puts it this way: “Where plate boundaries adjoin continents, matters often become very complex and have demanded an ever denser thicket of ad hoc modifications and amendments to the theory and practice of plate tectonics in the form of microplates, obscure plate boundaries, and exotic terrains. A good example is the Mediterranean where the collisions between Africa and a swarm of microcontinents have produced a tectonic nightmare that is far from resolved. More disturbingly, some of the present plate boundaries especially in the eastern Mediterranean appear to be so diffuse and so anomalous that they cannot be compared to the three types of plate boundaries of the basic theory.”

Finally, I would submit what may be the most intriguing question of all. We have records from ancient geographers stating that they knew about the Gibraltar disaster. I repeat, ancient people knew about the Gibraltar disaster that turned what was once a dam into what is presently a strait, allowing the Atlantic and the Mediterranean to meet.  The very reason that the Strait of Gibraltar is associated with the Pillar of Hercules is that the ancients believed that Hercules had pushed those pillars apart, thus connecting the Atlantic with the Mediterranean. Pray tell, how did our ancestors know that this present eight-mile wide strait was once a dam?  All the science in the world will never be able to explain how our ancestors knew about this event if they were not around to see it. Logic dictates that without actually witnessing the break of the Gibraltar and the tragedy that followed, such knowledge would not have been available to the ancients. This means that the last ensuing flood may not have happened five million years ago as some believe, but could have occurred at a much later date when humans lived in and around the Mediterranean basin. 

None of this is new.  Listen to H.G. Wells tell the story in “The Outline of History”

(1921) as he gave a chilling account of the disaster at the Gibraltar and the Mediterranean flooding, which he dated as an event which happened 10-30 thousand years ago: “Now, this may seem all the wildest speculation, but it is not entirely so, for if we examine a submarine contour map of the Straits of Gibraltar, we find there is an enormous valley running up from the Mediterranean deep, right through the Straits, and trenching some distance out on to the Atlantic shelf. … This refilling of the Mediterranean, which by the rough chronology we are employing in this book may have happened somewhere between 30,000 and 10,000 B.C., must have been one of the greatest single events in the pre-history of our race. … Suddenly the ocean waters began to break through over the westward hills and to pour in upon these primitive peoples—the lake that had been their home and friend became their enemy; its waters rose and never abated; their settlements were submerged; the waters pursued them in their flight. Day by day and year by year the waters spread up the valleys and drove mankind before them. Many must have been surrounded and caught by the continually rising salt flood. It knew no check; it came faster and faster; it rose over the tree-tops, over the hills, until it had filled the whole basin of the present Mediterranean and until it lapped the mountain cliffs of Arabia and Africa. Far away, long before the dawn of history, this catastrophe occurred.”

When contemplating the incredibly active Mediterranean region, consider that there was an international dispute in 1831 over a small island that appeared in connection with an earthquake, rising from the sea near the strategically desirable Sicilian Channel between Europe and Africa. Britain, France, Spain and Sicily all laid claim to the tip of this submerged volcano, now known as Graham Island. In about a month the island was two hundred feet high and three miles in circumference. Conflict raged for five months as nations fought over the small island, situated nineteen miles south of Sicily, while visitors climbed to its summit and investors frantically prepared to set up holiday resorts on its beaches. Their high hopes were dashed, however, as the disputed territory sank beneath the surface again, thus extinguishing the little brushfire of nationalist bickering. Interestingly enough, Graham Island made headlines again in November of 2002 as it is once again expected to rise from the depths due to seismic activity associated with the eruption of Mt. Etna.  When someone claims omniscience about something as geologically complicated as the Mediterranean, ask them when this island will come up again, whether it will stay up, and how long it will be before it submerges again? 

There are much adverse criticisms for your hypothesis. Many archaeologists here in Italy and elsewhere are skeptical. What can you answer to people that doubt of your discovery?   

As I have said many times a degree in archaeology or geology, or any one field, is not sufficient to give you an understanding of something as complicated as Atlantis.  You will need to understand many more fields before you can get a proper perspective on the subject, and many of the prerequisites are not taught in universities.  Keep in mind that the most you can learn in universities about ancient history goes no further than ancient Greek and Egyptian history, which is usually no more than two or three thousand years ago.  When we look at the most ancient records from humanity’s primordial past we find that the story of this epochal event, known by different names by different civilizations, was already considered to be old news – something that had happened long before even the Sumerians living five thousand years ago.  

The subject of Atlantis is not an easy one; casual reading will not prepare you for it.  Many of the world’s greatest minds have been obsessed by it, and the people responsible for relaying the legend are none other than Plato, Solon (the father of democracy), and the high priests of ancient Egypt who were known as the best keepers of ancient history.  These people were no fools, and the ancient world did not relay to this legend to us as myth but as real history.  If you study the topic long enough you will understand that this was actually considered to be sacred text, and the legend was revered around the ancient world.  Think of the last three thousand years as the latest chapter of human history, with Moses, Jesus and Mohammed and the effect they left on the “holy land.”  If you go back one chapter to an earlier time and study life in that era, you will come to understand that Atlantis or Eden or Hesperides, whatever you want to call it, was their “holy land,” and was treated as such.  Imagine if our holy land was wiped out due to natural disasters and people living ten thousand years from now rejected that it ever existed because they couldn’t find the actual landmass.  Well, when they look at its effect on our history and how it played such a central role in so many different ways, then they would be able to infer that it must have been a real place.  Atlantis can be viewed in the same fashion, but we will find its physical remains to prove the point.

My problem with some modern scientists is that they fail to follow the scientific process and come to conclusions without proper testing – the very thing science was set up to insure against.  People expect them to know everything and they are compelled to put on an air of omniscience even though every few years they have to rewrite everything, particularly when it comes to geological knowledge which is basically a new science.  The oldest civilization we know of belongs to the Sumerians, who appear suddenly on the world stage with a fully developed culture embracing an established alphabet, agriculture, social laws, religion, architecture, pottery, weaving, and everything else we consider to be civilization.  And yet we know not where they sprung from.  In other words, we currently do not know where civilization began.  Now, the ancient world was quite adamant that they did know where it started, and even provided highly detailed accounts of the island including even its dimensions.  We have barely begun to chart the seafloors.  Do you not think it would be prudent to search the seafloors before coming to conclusions?  How can scientists say on one hand that they don’t know where civilization started, and on the other hand just outright reject the ancient world’s answer without even bothering to look first?  Is this science, or prejudice? 

Nevertheless, such has always been the way.  We know so little about our ancient history and so much of it has been mixed up with fantasy that people are at a loss.  A couple of hundred years ago Babylon and many of those biblical sites that we now know as real places were considered to be no more than fairy tales.  And everyone knows about Troy.  The source of the problem seems insurmountable: science cannot go beyond known facts, and the prerequisite for finding Atlantis is to venture into unknown territory.  So science has a line in the sand that it cannot cross.  Only someone with a multidisciplinary understanding and freedom from the establishment’s indoctrination about taboo subjects can venture there, and not surprisingly, many of the biggest discoveries have been made by precisely these types of people.

Opinions are just opinions, they’re cheap and everybody has one.  I care only about facts.  This is not about forming a hypothesis and just leaving it at that – Atlantis is either there or it is not there, and I aim to find out. 

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