Discovery of Atlantis
Chapter 8 Excerpt

Figures 8:3 and 8:4 clearly show a long and rectangular submarine valley to the southeast of Cyprus, stretching toward the coast of Syria. It faces south and is sheltered from the north by the long arm of Cyprus, also known to locals as the “pan handle.” It also stretches in an east/west direction just as Plato described.

As noted in the last chapter, computer graphics technology has been crucial in this research. Using the special software developed for our project by the Scotia Group, we were able to depict the Mediterranean basin at different fill levels during its geologic history; this in turn permitted us to represent coastline and underwater formations as they may have appeared at various stages during an evaporative cycle. In order to see how Atlantis Island might have manifested itself at some point along the water level continuum, we studied the appearance of the basin at various sea levels.

The software allowed us to accurately animate the cycle of emptying and flooding in the easternmost part of the Mediterranean. There is little doubt that this work has resulted in the most detailed and realistic computer visualization of the great Mediterranean “salinity crisis” to date, including the inundation of Cyprus by Atlantic waters (Figure 8:6).

Simulating the progressively shrinking water levels in our computer model led to this result: when 1650 meters of water had been subtracted from current sea levels, the Cyprus Arc was raised completely above water. The consequences of this discovery were both exhilarating and puzzling. The exhilaration was immediate in that the Plain of Atlantis had seemed to materialize before our eyes. But a problem remained: By ‘draining’ the Mediterranean to the levels at which the Plain of Atlantis would have been an elevated surface, we also produced the rather unwelcome effect of rendering so much of the Cyprus Arc above water that our hypothesized Atlantis appeared as neither an island nor a true peninsula (see Figures 8:7 and 8:8).

What we had failed to account for in our computer simulation, we next discovered, were the regional sources of water input from rivers originating in the Turkish and Cyprus highlands. The mountains which surround the area between Cyprus and Turkey generate large amounts of precipitation that collect into extensive river systems and empty into the northeastern Mediterranean (Figure 8:9).

Figure 8:1 — Eastern Mediterranean basin