Discovery of Atlantis

 

Synopsis of Evidence Pointing to Cyprus

 

Robert Sarmast, September 2005

 

While the list of matches here cannot take the place of the full analysis in Discovery of Atlantis: the Startling Case for the Island of Cyprus (Origin Press, 2003), it will show the reader why this theory has received more attention from the world’s media than any other Atlantis theory ever presented in history.  In short, what completely separates it from any other Atlantis theory is that we have:

 

  1. Professionally created the world’s first detailed bathymetric maps and 3D models of the Eastern Mediterranean seafloor, as well as original software designed to accurately simulate the lowering of the Mediterranean Sea to its prehistoric levels.
  2. Extracted, listed and matched every physical description provided by Plato in The Critias about the island itself, the rectangular valley (“Great Plain”) at its foothills, and its capital city situated in the middle of this valley.
  3. Extracted, listed and matched every clue about the island’s geological composition, its flora and fauna, food supply, minerals and metals, animal life, and weather patterns.
  4. Extracted, listed and matched every clue about the nature of the flood, the associated seismic and volcanic activities, and the submergence of the island using only published and proven scientific knowledge from the world’s top geophysicists and oceanographers. 
  5. Found the remains of the island in the proximity of the heart of the ancient world, exactly where civilization is known to have originated, and where the legend of Atlantis and the great flood actually come from.  All mythological accounts from various great civilizations of the past have also been successfully matched.
  6. Conducted the most scientific Atlantis expedition in history (November 2004), using the world’s most experienced underwater research organizations and the latest sonar technologies available.
  7. Provided actual evidence of man-made structures exactly at the coordinates where we had predicted they would be found, and stumped the scientific world, which to this day cannot explain these formations as anything but man-made.

 

It’s important to realize that no other Atlantis theory has ever attempted to compile a complete list of physical clues about the island and its destruction from Plato’s work, much less to actually match it using real science and provide sonar evidence on top of it all.  Our work and its results are unique and unprecedented. 

List of Plato’s description of Atlantis Island itself

 

 

 

      Match with Cyprus
  1 Atlantis Island rose sharply from the sea.   X  
  2 The mountainous island rose to a very high level above the sea.   X  
  3 Numerous mountains on the mainland area surrounded Atlantis Island all around.   X  
4 There were smaller islands nearby that served as stepping-stones to an opposite continent. X
  5 Atlantis was to the north of the equator and had a tropical climate.   X  
  6 The island’s rivers originated on the highlands and watered the valley at its foothills.   X  
  7 The island provided almost all the requirements for human life.   X  
  8 The inhabitants mined solid materials as well as various metals.   X  
  9 Atlantis had gold, silver, and copper.    X  
  10 Atlantis had precious stones.   X  
  11 Timber was plentiful.   X  
  12 Atlantis had roots, herbs, bushes, gums, fruits and flowers.   X  
  13 There was a profusion of crops, cereals, pulse and oils.   X  
  14 There were elephants on the island.   X  
  15 Atlantis Island was composed of igneous rock.   X  
  16 Atlantis had hot and cold springs.   X  
  17 Atlantis was submerged due to a torrential flood.   X  
  18 Atlantis was prone to violent seismic activity and flooding.   X  
  19 Atlantis Island was submerged at the same time that a natural catastrophe hit the eastern Mediterranean area.   X  
20 The empire embraced three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. X
  21 Some of the island’s highest peaks may still be above water.   X  

List of Plato’s Description of the “Great Plain”

 

 

 

      Match with Cyprus
  22 The great plain of Atlantis was at the southern foothills of the island.     X  
  23 The island and the plain ran parallel with one another in an east/west direction.   X  
  24 Both the island and its plain were elongated.   X  
  25 The plain was in a valley.   X  
  26 The plain was at or near sea level.   X  
  27 The great plain was long and rectangular.   X  
  28 The plain was uniformly flat.   X  
  29 The plain faced south.   X  
  30 The cities on the plain were sheltered from the cold winds by a string of mountains to the north.   X  
  31 The plain was encircled by mountains that came right down to the sea.   X  
  32 The plain was very beautiful, fertile and adjacent to the sea.   X  
  33

 		 The plain was around 34 miles long and 22 miles wide (the report that it was 340 miles long and 220 miles wide is contradicted by the fact that the Acropolis Hill was repeatedly stated to be in the middle of the valley but only 7 miles from the sea).   X  

List of Plato’s Description of Atlantis City

 

 

 
     

Match with our Acropolis Hill, halfway between Cyprus and Syria
 

34

Atlantis City was situated near the middle of the rectangular valley.

  X  
  35 It was surrounded by a 14 mile diameter wall which met the sea to the south.   X  
  36 The Acropolis Hill was a low mountain at the center of Atlantis City.   X  
  37 The Acropolis Hill was situated roughly 7 miles from the sea to the south.   X  
  38 The Acropolis Hill was about 3 miles in diameter.   X  
  39 It had a flat summit, with descending rings of protective canals.   X  
  40 The summit was about ˝ mile wide.   X  
  41 The canals were used for both protection and irrigation purposes.   X  
  42 The canals were fed by two springs that originated on the summit of the Acropolis.   X  
  43 The rivers flowed down first to a canal dug around the summit, which was 600 feet wide.   X  
  44 They were then led further down to the outermost canal which was 1.5 miles from the summit.   X  

 

List of Plato’s Description of the Great Flood

Match with the scientifically proven fact about the great flood that came in through the
Strait of Gibraltar and flooded the Mediterranean basin, and Cyprus

  45

 		 The Great Flood occurred at least 12,000 years ago (recent scientific discoveries have proven that a tsunami came into the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar about 12,000 years ago, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4153008.stm   X  
46 The earthquake which precipitated the flood happened during a war that took place in the eastern Mediterranean. X
  47
 		 The fighting armies were “swallowed up by the earth” (seismic studies have shown that the eastern Mediterranean is a “sunken continent,” see Malovitskiy, 1978)   X  
48
 		 The flood was of such proportions as to nearly engulf a mountainous island that reached thousands of feet into the air (oceans can never rise that dramatically, meaning that the island had to be in a basin that was flooded. X
  49
 		 The flood was of such magnitude that the ancient Egyptians called it the greatest of all floods, and of course the story of the great flood is a product of the Mediterranean people.   X  

 

Discrepancies with Plato’s Description

 

Plato said Atlantis was in the Atlantic Ocean

 

            Plato was merely relaying a legend and a description that had come down from prehistoric times; he never actually saw the island.  The name of “Atlantic Ocean” is a relatively modern term that could not have been the original designation used by prehistoric people, who could not have know what or where an Atlantic Ocean was.  Since we do not know the original name used by the Egyptians, much less the original name used by the people who saw the island (the Egyptians said they had translated the legend from an even earlier language), then the Atlantic Ocean designation is no more than hearsay.  This is particularly true when we take into account the scientific fact that oceans can never rise thousands of feet and engulf a mountainous island due to a flood or any other natural phenomenon.  Also, an earthquake that struck the eastern Mediterranean area could never have simultaneously submerged an island three thousand miles away in the Atlantic Ocean; any geophysicist would balk at such a ludicrous assertion.  Moreover, since nothing more than mud huts existed in Western Europe during those prehistoric times, the notion that civilization started there and somehow miraculously displaced itself by thousands of miles to the Near East, the known cradle of civilization, is nonsense. 

 

Plato said that Atlantis was opposite the Strait of Gibraltar

          Plato never said that it was opposite the Strait of Gibraltar but the Pillars of Hercules.  The Pillars of Hercules is a Greek name and we do not know what the Egyptians called it, much less what the original authors called it.  We don’t even know what the original language was!  Also, even in Plato’s time the ancient world placed the Pillars of Hercules in numerous locations all around the Mediterranean.

(see Strabo’s “Geography” at http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/3E*.html).

 The assumption that the Pillars of Hercules is synonymous with the Strait of Gibraltar is based on multiple errors in deduction and rests on no more than hearsay. 

Plato said that Atlantis was bigger than Asia and Libya combined

 

           Again, the original authors lived in prehistoric times and could not have known what was a few hundred miles beyond their borders at best, much less know the size of Asia or Libya.  Nor would they have called them those names even if a country named Libya existed 12,000 years ago, which it certainly did not.  We have no idea about the size of the island since the original account has been long lost.   The mistake of taking this Asia and Libya size literally can only be made by modern people who forget just how limited our ancient ancestor’s conception of world geography was.  In short, names such as the Atlantic Ocean, the Pillars of Hercules, and Asia or Libya are utterly unreliable when the original text from prehistoric times is not available and multiple translations are known to have occurred.  All the circumstantial clues point to the Eastern Mediterranean and that is precisely where a perfect match has been made with a landmass directly in the very heart of the ancient world.

 

Scientific Objections

Scientists say that the flood which devastated the Mediterranean happened five million years ago, long before humans were around to see it. How can you say the flood happened only 10-30 thousand years ago?
 
The data currently used for this mistaken conclusion is based on core samples taken from only a few locations in the Mediterranean basin, none of which are related to our target area known as the Cyprus Arc. These samples have shown that the areas “cored” were last above water about five million years ago and their results are indisputable; however, these results in no way contradict the Cyprus/Atlantis theory.

The Cyprus Arc, upon which the island of Atlantis once stood, is an elevated plateau situated in the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean basin. The few areas that have been cored in the Mediterranean are in deeper areas and far from the Cyprus Arc. The island of Atlantis appears when we merely lower the Mediterranean Sea level by about one mile (the deeper areas of the Mediterranean which have been cored can be as much as two or three miles deep), and this landmass was still surrounded by inland lakes and lagoons which indeed have been below water for the last five million years. In other words, the deeper areas that have been sampled thus far were lakes that surrounded Atlantis and the fact that they were last dry five million years ago in no way connotes that Atlantis, situated on the higher Cyprus Arc plateau, has also been submerged for five million years. Until and unless the Cyprus Arc itself is cored then there is no scientific evidence to disprove our case and the assumptions drawn about the age of the flood are based on incomplete data and guesswork, not proven fact. The Cyprus Arc has never been cored.

Also, it’s important to realize that ancient geographers knew about the breach in the Strait of Gibraltar and the fact that the Atlantic Ocean broke through and flooded the Mediterranean basin. The very reason that the Strait of Gibraltar is associated with the Pillars of Hercules is that ancient people believed that Hercules had destroyed the Strait of Gibraltar (Pillars of Hercules) with his giant mace and caused the Atlantic Ocean to flood the Mediterranean. The question then becomes: how could ancient people have known about the destruction of the eight-mile-wide Strait of Gibraltar if, as scientists claim, the catastrophe occurred five million years ago? This knowledge has become available through cutting-edge science only in the last twenty years, so how could ancient people have known about this event unless it had happened at a time when the Mediterranean was indeed populated by people?

This all means that every part of the Cyprus theory has now been substantiated and successfully matched with the story of Atlantis using accepted scientific facts and academic proposals, through the work of the world's leading scientists in their respective fields and the most advanced technologies available to humankind. That includes the precise landscape match, anomalies around the purported Acropolis Hill, the earthquake, the flood, and the sinking basin.


A scientist has claimed that the mountain you point to is a mud volcano. What do you say to that?

Denial is not a river in Egypt. There is no such thing as a rectangular, craterless volcano - period. I’m sure the scientist who made that claim wishes he had thought more before speaking, as his colleagues certainly do not agree with such an inane assertion. To date, not a single scientist has been able to explain the anomalies around this mountain as natural formations and even the most ardent skeptics among them say that it appears man-made.

Keep in mind that when I published the book in 2003 and provided the exact coordinates for what I believed was the Acropolis Hill, our maps were still crude in comparison to what we have now and the Acropolis appeared as no more than a blip on the map. We could not see any of the features of this mountain at that time but its location and size matched Plato’s description with such uncanny precision that I felt sure enough to point to this sole mountain (there are dozens of other underwater mountains in the area) and say that the vestiges of Atlantis would be found there and nowhere else.

A year passed before we acquired more complete bathymetric data for the area and were able to create high resolution maps and 3D models which showed the mountain in detail for the first time. The results shocked the world, but it was no surprise to me. The anomalies such as straight walls that make 90 degree turns, river paths and canals etc. were found on this mountain and nowhere else. We then conducted an expedition and viewed the area with deep-sea sonar systems and the results confirmed what I have been saying all along: these are man-made structures and the images speak for themselves

Can any sane person claim that all of this is mere coincidence?