6 Clues to the Location of Atlantis

by Rod Martin, Jr.

In modern times, the location of Atlantis has been the subject of great debate. In recent years, the number of locations chosen for that fabled land has reached some kind of critical mass bordering on the absurd. Anything or any location with even a slight resemblance to Plato's original description has fallen under the spell of Atlantis.

If Atlantis was a real place, then likely it matched Plato's original description. Why? Because in telling a tale of fact, it is likely that some things are impervious to embellishment or alteration. Things like compass directions, sizes, locations relative to known landmarks and the like, are perhaps resistant to change based on whim.

Other items of fact are more prone to alteration. Plato readily admits that the names of the Atlanteans in his tale had been changed to Greek names. It is likely, too, that Plato took an unknown and filled in the details with a known quantity — for instance, the Atlantean ships became "triremes," because those were the advanced ships of Plato's day and the Atlanteans were supposedly an advanced civilization.

There would, however, be no reason for the Greek philosopher to change "East" to "West" and "within" to "beyond." Such facts are not only unambiguous, but there is nothing in them to offend the Greek ear as with foreign sounding names, or to offend the sense of closure as with an unknown type of ship.

So where did Plato say that Atlantis once stood? He gives us several clues.

1. Atlantis was a large island. This eliminates the Sahara, South America, Antarctica, the Irish Shelf and the North Sea continental shelf as candidates for Atlantis. None of these were islands twelve thousand years ago.
2. Atlantis was beyond the Pillars of Heracles (today's Strait of Gibraltar). This eliminates Sardinia, Corsica, Crete, Thera, Cyprus or any other location in the Mediterranean.
3. Atlantis was in the Atlantic Ocean (the "true" ocean beyond the Mediterranean which Plato described as merely a lake with a narrow entrance). This eliminates Indonesia and any other locations outside of the Atlantic Ocean.
4. Atlantis succumbed to a violent cataclysm and was swallowed by the sea.
5. Atlantis was as large as Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined. This is rather inexact, but in rough figures it would be equivalent to a body of land between one and two times the size of Texas (the largest state in the contiguous United States).
6. The closest portion of Atlantis faced a region known as Gadira (a region in southwestern Spain, surrounding the city of Cádiz, the oldest European city on the Atlantic coast). This eliminates the South Atlantic and the recently publicized Spartel Island (Spartel is too close to Gibraltar to face Gadira, it succumbed far too slowly over thousands of years and it was far too small).

Perhaps Ignatius Donnelly came the closest to choosing a location which fits the above criteria. However, his late 19th century best seller, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, was rather over reaching in its conclusions. Most of his theories have been discounted by modern science, though his work was well within the boundaries of scientific acumen for its day.

Why are there so many other locations chosen for Atlantis? Perhaps the strongest push has come from science. Many scientists feel that the geology of the North Atlantic does not allow for Atlantis as described by Plato.

Yet there are a great many clues from geological science that suggest Atlantis may very well have been right where Plato puts the legendary lost island. The tectonic plate boundary between the Africa and Eurasia plates runs through the Strait of Gibraltar, through the Azores archipelago and toward the mid-Atlantic ridge. This is the region of Plato's Atlantis, and this is one of the most geologically enigmatic regions on the planet. However, the discussion of the geology of Atlantis is the subject of another article.

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