Naked Science - Atlantis

a disaster is looming a fabulous city rich in culture and technological advances is about to be destroyed buildings people an entire civilization swept away by an overwhelming natural disaster for this is Atlantis the ancient land that legend has it was sunk beneath the waves eleven thousand years ago by a massive Cataclysm the story hasn't read scientists and scholars for centuries now naked science sets out to see if it can separate back from fiction in the enduring legend of Atlantis atlantis is one of the most fascinating of all historical mysteries stories about the disappearance of this legendary island city have echoed down the centuries since it was first written about by the Greek philosopher Plato over two thousand years ago but is the drowned city of Atlantis just a myth or is the legend based on a civilization that really did exist and why are so many of us so keen to believe in it it's like a perfect place a Garden of Eden the quintessential society it didn't exist and I think it's still there it seemed like it was a very advanced society and that they have a lot of technology it's heavenly and pretty and resort-like so if Atlantis did exist where is it now naked science travels the globe in search of the lost world and explores four possible sites for its watery grave our journey takes us to the shattered fragments of a Mediterranean island that 3,600 years ago was blown to pieces by a shattering volcanic eruption we see the remains of a civilization that built the most ancient temple structures in the world before mysteriously vanishing we then traveled to the Caribbean to investigate strange underwater formations recently discovered off the coasts of Cuba and the Bahamas along the way we meet optimistic amateurs who believe they have found the lost city and some serious researchers studying genuine archaeological mysteries but first we must go back to the very beginning and the source of the legend the story of Atlantis dates back to 350 BC and the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato of all the riders of classical Greece it's only Plato who mentions Atlantis and he gives us the key clue for our search he wrote that the island of Atlantis was annihilated by a massive destructive event and in a single day and night it disappeared into the sea it's a great story but before we set out on our quest we wanted to know is it really possible could a whole civilization be annihilated by a single catastrophic event and within hours at first it seems unlikely the destructive forces of nature that our planet has experienced in recent times don't appear to be that big in 1994 the Northridge earthquake shattered parts of Los Angeles and in 2004 hurricanes Charlie Ivan and Francis decimated Florida but they fell far short of wiping these places out however look back over a longer time scale and the earth is suddenly revealed as a truly explosive violent place tsunamis have obliterated whole coastlines killing hundreds of people and earthquakes have reduced towns and even cities to rubble all K nodes can explode with the force of nuclear bombs destroying whole cities the casualty list is impressive Pompeii Herculaneum Krakatoa so there are plenty of natural phenomena that could have been the basis for Plato's account a key test for each of our four sites will be to show that they were annihilated by a massive cataclysm early enough to precede Plato's writings to aid our search and assess the evidence we call in two eminent scientists geologist dr. Robert Schoch of Boston University this is very similar to catastrophe stories you see elsewhere around the world common to many mythologies common two main religious beliefs and I suspect has a basis in reality and Ken fader professor of archaeology at Central Connecticut State University people have tried to make these connections and it's been done so often between sites in off the coast of Cornwall on sites in the Mediterraneans and that's the story played it was talking about that's Atlantis even the strongest proponents of those those perspectives admit you have to change a lot of elements of the story in order to make it fit they have both studied the evidence for Atlantis and compared it to Plato's Clues but if we're going to find Atlantis we need to know what to look for here in the middle of our vast ocean is at last over the years our image of Atlantis has been colored by the imagination of Hollywood screenwriters Atlantis a world that worshiped strange gods of science a science gone berserk in the dread house of fear so for our search we must leave these science fiction fantasies behind and turn to Plato's original description exactly what clues has the Greek philosopher left us his description of Atlantis comes to around 40,000 words and is peppered with remarkable details he tells us that it was a vast city laid out in concentric circles of land and water it was built of red black and white rocks the people sacrificed Bulls the land was grazed by elephants and it existed around 9,000 BC but most important of all it was destroyed by a catastrophe and sank beneath the waves if any of our four locations is Atlantis it must match all or at least most of these descriptions the modern-day search for Atlantis owes its origins to one man Ignatius Donnelly a 19th century politician and writer Plato wrote this little tale about this fictional Kingdom Donnelly ran with it Donnelly was intrigued by the similarities between ancient civilizations on both sides of the Atlantic the pyramids of Central America he thought looked remarkably similar to the pyramids of Egypt could they have had a common origin in 1882 he published a best-selling book in which he proposed that the great technological advances of the ancient world all came from one earlier civilization Atlantis he argued that when Atlantis was destroyed its survivors spread their knowledge across the globe passing on the skills to build such diverse wonders as the Egyptian pyramids and the Mayan temples in Mexico it's really Donnelly who introduces the whole concept that Atlantis is this mother civilization this core culture from which everything else in the old in the ancient world derives Donnelly's theory sent Atlantis hunters rushing to the four corners of the earth the story of the mythical civilization even attracted the attention of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis they became so entranced with the legend that they started to include it as part of their own myth of an Aryan master race in one of the weirdest episodes of World War two the Nazis began searching for Atlantis next Naked science travels to the tiny Mediterranean island that fought the Nazis to save itself and its ancient treasures naked is hot on the trail of Atlantis the elusive ancient civilization rich in fine art technology and architecture described by the Greek philosopher Plato in 350 BC there are precious few facts to go on but Atlantis has spawned all sorts of weird and wacky suggestions about where and what it was possibly the strangest of all dates back to the Second World War in the 1930s the German High Command dispatched SS officers to search for proof of Atlantis some of Hitler's Nazi Party colleagues believe the fabulous civilization had really existed and that the German people were descended from it if they could find Atlantis they believed it would bolster their claims of being the master race one country that the Germans desperately tried to conquer was the strategically important Mediterranean island of Malta but despite a deluge of German bombs Malta bravely held out against the would-be invaders in doing so the island people prevented Hitler's Atlantis hunters from plundering their precious ancient treasures these treasures are what lure us to Malta shores could this island be the site of Atlantis only a few miles from Malta's capital Valletta lie some of the most intriguing ruins in Europe Malta's magnificent megalithic temples were built around 3,600 BC that's 1,000 years before the great pyramids in Egypt who the temple builders were and what became of their culture is a fascinating mystery Audrianna Cuchillo Tolo works for the Maltese tourist Authority and has studied the history of the islands temple sites she thinks the early civilization that lived here was so advanced that it could have been the basis for the Atlantis story at the time of further construction there were the most sophisticated and advanced architecture anywhere in the world five thousand years ago no one else was building structures like this they are unique and in terms of architecture they were very advanced some of these stones weigh 20 tons that's the weight of three double-decker buses it was an incredible feat of Engineering to move them across land and raise them into place and there are other signs here of an advanced civilization at work we have found very impressive examples of altarpieces with spirals carved in them also carvings of animals such as RAM pigs and sheep and fish but do the temples have anything to do with Plato's Atlantis cacciatore thinks they do we also have evidence that there were animal sacrifices carried out in these temples in one temple in particular they found bull horns instantly also mentioned in Plato but one animal Plato said lived in Atlantis appears to raise a problem for Malta's claim the Greek philosopher wrote that Atlantis was home to a great number of elephants but you won't find one on Malta today however in the past everything was different especially at the islands earliest archaeological site this is a cave of our dalam the cave of darkness the lowest strata of the cave dates back to about 500 thousand years ago in this layer archeologists found fossils of animals that are not native to Malta including dwarf elephants so how did the elephants get here the fossil suggests that in ancient times Malta was joined to both mainland Europe and Africa then over the centuries the sea level rose turning Malta into an island the animals were marooned and eventually died out there are other strange remains on Malta with echoes of Plato's Atlantis mysterious tracks have been found all over the island some experts believe they may have been highways used to transport agricultural produce and water for irrigation Plato described an intricate network of waterways on Atlantis could these be the same but if Malta is the site of Atlantis the ruins shouldn't be on dry land at all they should lie beneath the waves we know of 24 temple units on 14 sites in Malta and the sister island Gozo however no one knows how many other temples there could be under the water in the last five years divers have discovered what may be more temples off Maltese coast could this be another link with the submerged city of Atlantis since the temples were built 5,000 years ago the sea level has risen by almost 50 feet which could explain the underwater structures but this was caused by a gradual climate change and cannot explain the sudden disappearance of the temple builders themselves at 2500 BC the sophisticated culture simply disappeared we don't know how we don't know why the temples were simply abandoned what could have caused this civilization to just disappear geologists have found evidence of a major flood on malta at the end of the temple builders era at various ancient sites Mugg deposits have been found containing animal and human bones and soil washed in from the fields some enthusiasts now suggests that the temple builders were wiped out by a tsunami tsunamis are usually triggered by earthquakes or volcanic eruptions earthquakes in the crust under the sea can generate giant waves capable of traveling thousands of miles to devastate any coastline they reach if the people on Malta were destroyed by a tsunami it would certainly match plato's description of the floods that led to the end of Atlantis so how does malta shape up on our Atlantis checklist there is evidence of bull worship elephants did once exist here and the civilization may have been destroyed by a flood however the evidence for waterways is extremely weak the rocks are shades of brown not red black and white and the temples are only five thousand years old our experts remain unconvinced here you have a mysterious very ancient civilization that we don't understand we really know very little about they seem to be very advanced in some ways but just because we have these mysteries I don't think that makes it Atlantis and Plato's sense so the first of our four locations gets the thumbs down next on naked science we leave the Mediterranean behind and travel across the Atlantic we think the Bahamas was part of a maritime culture that was in operation during the Ice Age and that maritime culture for lack of a better term is called Atlantis could these stones be part of an ancient building naked science dives into the Caribbean to now next is it lightest fact or fiction and if it did exist does it now rest on the ocean floor as some believe a sunken city that has lain submerged for over 9,000 years naked science is on a search for the legendary lost city of Atlantis so far we've investigated the ancient ruins on the small Mediterranean island of Malta where the civilization was possibly wiped out by a tsunami although intriguing Malta's ruined temples don't offer any hard evidence that they were the site of Plato's Atlantis perhaps we need to broaden our search and look further afield maybe Atlantis doesn't lie in Europe at all but in America in recent years the idea that Atlantis lies in the Americas has become a new-age obsession the idea stems from the bizarre utterances of self-proclaimed psychic Edgar Cayce in the 1940s Casey made a whole series of astonishing claims about Atlantis even predicting that it would rise again expected he declared in 1968 in the area of Bimini in the Bahamas when in 1968 a pilot flying over the Bimini Islands noticed a line of rectangular stones beneath the sea Casey's followers thought his prophecy had come true the formation about 1200 feet long became known as the Bimini Road amateur sleuths and followers of Casey's psychic readings Laura and Greg little believe that it's part of a lost island of Atlantis there's two points of view on what the Bimini Road is one of the points of view which has been put forth by a handful of geologists is that the Bimini Road was a huge piece of natural beach rock and that it fractured in these straight lines forming squares and rectangular blocks and that's what we're looking at the second group of people believe that the Bimini Road was man-made and what it actually was was either a platform could be a breakwater or it may well have been a wall which collapsed Greg and Laura little figured that if the Bimini Road was part of Atlantis then there should be other structures nearby hearing of a similar formation off the coast of Andros the largest of the Bahamian Islands they started searching the area in 2003 Gregg little found an underwater formation that looked just like the Bimini Road at first I saw nothing water was quite deep and it just was sand everywhere and all of a sudden there this these stones were and I saw one after another after another and then I realized whether there's more layers and I kept going further and further and I couldn't find the end up didn't have much film left on his Camry only got two or three shots of the blocks and when we developed them and he showed them to me I couldn't see it so about a month later we went back and this time I got out and snorkeled with him and as we went along you know just regular seabed and then all of a sudden here's the blocks and it's unmistakable when you see them it's just too consistent the size the lines are very straight it's just unlike anything we've ever seen before and I had no doubt once I saw it I knew why he was excited and we were both excited then without a geological expert to guide them the littles have convinced themselves that they have found a harbor or Wharf many thousands of years old it sits right next to the tongue of the ocean and even if the ocean levels were 300 feet lower than this platform would have sat right on the edge of the tongue of the ocean you could have had massive structures on it and it would have had a commanding view of any ships moving up and down this very deep channel that's quite wide Greg and Laura little are not scientists but they have spent years for searching mysteries all over the world including many theories about Atlantis now they've returned to Andros to look for new evidence that the structures they found on man may if they can show that the stone blocks are the work of an ancient civilization Greg believes it will rewrite the history of this region archaeology says that there were no human beings anywhere in the Bahamas till about 1000 AD which is astonishing because we know that the rest of the Americas were settled thousands of years before that and that would mean if this was man-made it would mean that this area was settled far earlier than that so it would have to rewrite the history of the Bahamas we think the Bahamas was part of a maritime culture that was in operation during the Ice Age and that maritime culture for lack of a better term is called Atlantis in support of their ideas the littles have investigated another stone structure this time above water these rocks lie on a hill on Andros Island some Islanders suggest that they could be the remains of a hilltop fortification this site has a commanding view over the ocean and the interior of the island making it a perfect location for a fort or ceremonial building no one knows how old the site is but Laura little believes that it could have been built by an ancient Indian tribe from the Americas it does remind us an awful lot of what we've seen with Mayan ruins the Mayans from Central America could have crossed the ocean to the Bahamas trading and establishing communities in theory people could have settled these islands long before we thought but if they did what became of them if the littles theory is and up they have to explain why there is no sign of people living on these islands before 1000 AD it's possible that if people were here they were wiped out by a natural disaster but if some terrible event did obliterate them what was it Greg and Laura little believed their end may have come from outer space their evidence comes from the eastern part of the United States here between Delaware and Florida like thousands of oval depressions known as the Carolina bays according to the littles around eleven thousand years ago a massive comet entered the Earth's atmosphere it fractured into two major parts and millions of tiny pieces the pieces smashed into the eastern half of the United States creating the Carolina Bay's while the larger parts landed in the Atlantic Ocean according to this theory on land the impacts cause flash fires that burned everything to a crisp at sea they created giant waves when those two big pieces of the Comets struck the Atlantic Ocean they caused tsunami waves that I believe wipe these islands clean of everything that was on that's why we can't find evidence of humans here before the Year 1000 but that's why we can find something like the Bimini Road and this Andros platform these are massive built right at the edge of the water and while everything on top of them may be swept away the foundations themselves remain there's just one problem with this theory scientists studying the Carolina bays have found no evidence of a comet impact instead they suggest that they were formed by glaciation or wind erosion but they don't know for sure even though what created the Carolina bays remains a mystery Greg and Laura resolutely hang on to the belief that the Bahamas is the most likely site of atlantis in their hunt for new evidence they troll the area around the underwater stones they found last year but this latest search is proving frustrating well we were here four times last year and since then the bottom has been covered with sand there's a lot more turtle grass on the bottom - nevertheless we did see a lot of areas that we didn't we didn't see it all last year actually the formation is larger than we thought I managed to clean off several seams between stones but I can't tell whether they're man-made or not I'm not really disappointed but I can say this that if we don't find out what the next next few years what this is we probably won't know because it'll be covered with coral by then so what do mainstream scientists make of the littles claims dr. Robert Schoch is a geologist at Boston University does he think the Bimini Road could be the remains of Atlantis I have to admit I've not been to Bimini to look at firsthand but what I've seen of the photographs what I've seen of the best technical reports which I have scoured through I'm not even convinced it's artificial much less Atlantis and I have had experience diving on other sites that were said to be artificial and I found were absolutely natural maybe unusual natural formations but natural you can get patterns in nature also so how do the Bahamas rate on our Atlantis checklist the underwater rocks are probably natural not man-made structures destroyed by a catastrophe we have no firm evidence of a catastrophic event pre Plato around 9,000 years BC and there is no evidence of canals red black and white buildings bull sacrifices or elephants if Atlantis ever existed it almost certainly wasn't here despite Greg and Laura's passion naked science has once more drawn a blank so could our next location offer more hope in 2000 a team of scientists searching the seabed off Cuba made an intriguing discovery deep below the waves they found huge structures that may have been the work of an ancient civilization many people have claimed they have found the site of the mythical lost city of Atlantis now naked science puts those claims to the test so far we've looked in the Mediterranean Sea and visited the Bahamas to dive down to unusual but unremarkable underwater formations next we travel to the nearby island of Cuba in deep waters off the Cuban coast we've learned of other mysterious structures which appear at first sight much harder to explain marine engineer paulina zelitsky and her husband paul wine swag work together surveying the oceans of the world but atlantis was the last thing on their minds when they set off to search the seabed in december 2001 they had been hired by the Cuban government to search for sunken galleons containing treasure from the Spanish colonies the seabed is 2,000 feet deep way too deep to scuba dive so they survey the area with side-scan sonar a device that uses sound waves to produce images of the seafloor they don't find Spanish galleons but they do find something unexpected so huge submarine very large submarine we don't know whose symbol but it was right there in area on ocean bottom they had stumbled upon modern military activity in progress but their encounter was brief the submarine moved away before it could be identified but a little later their side-scan sonar lights up with another startling image the graphics where had symmetry and and geometry and architecture to it things that did not look natural the structures look man-made almost like something out of a James Bond movie we decided that it's probably something related to submarines maybe it is a world underwater submarine terminal you know very large nearly a large one like International Airport they take the data back to their laboratory for analysis for months so let's keep Lau's through the scientific literature trying to find an explanation for what they have found every day I studied for six eight hours with six months later I lifted my face to the wall and there was this Mayan calendar the Mayan building on the calendar appears to match the images on the side scan sonar to her eyes the underwater formation has a similar layout to ancient Mayan cities in Central America could the objects be man-made curious to learn more wines wagon zelitsky sail back to the site this time they send down a submersible camera the images they capture are highly unusual there are regular shaped rocks some of them forming structures almost 150 feet high and they stretch over an area of 8 square miles these artists impressions based on the side scan sonar reveal what the structures might look like they appear man-made but geologists Robert Schoch is not so sure what some people see as pyramids maybe other types of buildings maybe some kind of regular pattern suggesting some kind of urban layout and maybe if you want to call the city very interesting very intriguing but is it definitive I don't think so what concerns shock is that most ancient ruins lie at depths of less than 100 feet no one has ever seen anything this deep to have structures under 2,000 feet of water and to suggest that their artificial you have to explain that somehow could they be artificial conceivably yes if there was some kind of tectonic activity maybe a catastrophe like Plato describes that caused them to sink so deep but still this is something that really needs to be investigated if there was a violent event that caused the land here to sink no one knows what it was but from circumstantial evidence he's collected whole wine swag thinks the structures could once have stood on an island when our consulting geologists went out with us he showed us he showed us the outlines of an existing island that had sunk could the structures at the bottom of the sea have once looked like this according to wine swag a story uncannily similar to the atlantis tale appears in the oral legends of the Yucatan province of Mexico it describes origins of the native people these origins were traced to an island that sank to the east of Mexico in a great Cataclysm in a single night and this silent had been people by a tall white race that had seeded the advanced forms of culture architecture astronomy agricultural science and so on so is there any possibility that this is Plato's Atlantis how does the Cuban site veyron The Naked Science checklist if the structures are man-made then they must have been sunk by a catastrophe but there is no indication of when it was or any sign of red black and white rocks and hardly surprisingly there is no evidence of circular canals bull worship or elephants intriguing absolutely science still has a lot of work to do in Cuba's deep sea but is this Atlantis probably not I'm not convinced that they're artificial much less Atlantis but do I leave the possibility open yes it deserves a lot more investigation wine swaggin zelitsky have already planned their next expedition with manned submersibles and vastly improved lighting and photographic equipment they hope that next time they will bring back conclusive proof of a great ancient civilization that once thrived in the Caribbean having had little success here we head back once more across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean our last candidate and perhaps the strongest contender for Atlantis is an island that lies close to ancient Greece here one of the most sophisticated cities ever truly risen in the ancient world was blown to smithereens in one of the worst natural disasters in human history perhaps this is once and for all the origin of the legend of Atlantis naked science is on the trail of Plato's lost city of Atlantis although explorers and cranks have claimed dozens of sites to be the remains of the lost civilization probably the best candidate of all is the Greek island of Santorini here in 1967 archaeologists sensationally discovered a beautifully preserved ancient city buried deep below the earth they quickly established that it belonged to an advanced civilization the Minoans based on the nearby island of Crete famous for the Magnificent palaces and beautiful frescoes the Minoans control the vast empire long before the rise of classical Greece but about 3400 years ago they suddenly and mysteriously disappeared might this be the civilization of which Plato spoke the stunning discovery drew the attention of scientist and writer Charles Pellegrino the city itself is a very fascinating find when they started finding internal plumbing through the walls of the homes very advanced technology advanced use of water and aqueduct systems the like of which we did not really see again till about time of the Roman Empire like many others Pellegrino began to wonder if Santorini was the site of Plato's Atlantis there are several similarities for instance the island circular outline is reminiscent of the circular shape Plato describes and from the small statues of bulls and the Fresco's of bull leapers it's clear that the Minoans like plato's Atlanteans worship the bull and there's more Plato says Atlantis was made up of rocks which were black white and red the same is true of Santorini if you pull rocks out of here rather randomly you'll find the original bedrock limestone the original bedrock volcanic rock interestingly just as Plato had described the rocks of Atlantis but there's one thing above all else that makes people sit up and take the idea seriously Santorini and its city were destroyed by a massive volcanic eruption we're right now on the very edge of an eight-mile-wide blowhole in the earth all of it going off right in this spot the explosion was 90 times bigger than the eruption of Mount st. Helens as the volcano erupted it's viewed out a massive pyroclastic flow a terrifying avalanche of hot rocks and scalding guests races across the land slashing down trees ripping up buildings acting more like a fluid than a gas and it's also very very hot it's hard to believe that a single volcanic blast can wipe out an entire city in minutes but there have been many cases where this has happened this is Sal Pierre on the Caribbean island of Martinique above the town sits Mount Pele the volcano is peaceful now but on May 8th 1902 it blew its top a superheated cloud of gas and volcanic ash surged down the volcano and tore into the town of San Pierre the inhabitants stood no chance twenty-nine thousand people were killed only two survived in more recent times pyroclastic flows destroyed Plymouth the former capital of the volcanic island of Montserrat when they roared down the slopes of the volcano and buried the town the ash and debris are so deep that today only the tops of the houses are visible but the eruption on Santorini was much bigger than this from the layers of rock and ash laid down in the blast Charles Pellegrino is able to paint a detailed picture of the events surrounding the eruption that creamy layer act there on top of that splinter of land that's left at the rim of the crater is about two hundred feet of white pumice which is mocking the eruption as it was building and building and building toward the final explosion the great alkane this eruption was going on and on emptying the magma chamber creating a weak spot in the earth and building up to at the top here until finally the thing collapsed released the pressure exploded after blowing it stopped the volcano collapsed creating a hole the size of Manhattan in the center of the island in the immediate aftermath of that explosion you would have seen the water coming in over these cracks in what was left of the island and one of these ships would have looked like just a mere twig going over the edge of Niagara Falls and this would have made Niagara Falls look like a little trickle almost 4,000 years of history was derailed in an entirely new direction it was pretty much the end of Minoan civilization and that's what we're looking at up here it was the end of their world so could Santorini itself be the true site of Atlantis it had a sophisticated culture and it was certainly wiped out by a lethal Cataclysm but there's just one problem Plato says that Atlantis was destroyed 9,000 years earlier and the explosion at Santorini happened around 1630 BC only 1300 years before Plato was writing it's a major drawback but it doesn't change Charles Pellegrino's conviction that this may well be the site of Atlantis there are scholars who've been arguing for years over whether Plato really meant 9,000 years ago or whether he meant 900 years ago what Plato says is he says it's a story based on something real and you have to give him the right to be able to exaggerate if what he was creating was a kind of fable so how does Santorini fare on our Atlantis checklist admittedly it isn't as old as Plato said and there are no signs that elephants lived here but the rocks are the color Plato described it had the circular shape there was definitely a strong cult of bull worship and a huge part of the islands sank beneath the waves but is this enough to make it Atlantis two ancient Greeks like Plato the legends of the Minoans must have made them sound like a kind of super race and their dramatic demise would certainly have inspired the poet in him but some of our experts believe that too many of the facts about the Minoans have been twisted to fit plato's story having elements of the story are you allowed to change and still say well they're the same story well in some cases we have to change how long ago it happened where it's located how large it is I can make a rat a cat by changing elements of that rat but that doesn't really make a rat and a cat the equivalent the Minoans were an advanced civilization but was it Landis one of their cities perhaps we shall never know on our journey we've traveled the world in search of Plato's Atlantis examining some of the sites that enthusiasts and believers consider to be the leading contenders on Malta we discovered a forgotten civilization of temple builders they're phenomenal feats of engineering predating even those of ancient Egypt in the Bahamas we found mysterious structures that some people linked to Atlantis but are probably natural stones deep under the sea off the coast of Cuba we saw ghostly images of what could be an entire island with buildings intact apparently sunk into the ocean depths and on the island of santorini we learned of the Minoans a sophisticated culture on Plato's own doorstep wiped out in one of the worst volcanic eruptions in history in each place we have seen fascinating parallels with plato's description of Atlantis but none fits the story perfectly naked science concludes that based on the evidence we have Atlantis must remain a mystery no more than a myth but one thing is for certain in the future more thrilling archaeological discoveries will be made in the world's oceans and who knows maybe naked science could yet be proved wrong maybe somewhere out there waiting to be discovered is the place that Plato called Atlantis you

Channel: Naked Science

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Keywords: mystery, continent, island, disappeared, lost, world, submerged, fact, facts, fiction, period, underwater, drowned, exists, garden, eden, advanced, society, mayan, mayans, watery, grave, volcanic, eruption, remains, temples, temple, strange, found, researchers, archeological, mysteries, source, key, clue, annihilated, divers, diving, deep, sea, ocean, classical, greece, event, catastrophic, earthquake, hollywood, film, pyramids, proof, master, race, treasure, incredible, engineering, artifacts, evidence, animals, mysterious, ruins, tsunami, age

Id: FqauNqFwt5I

Length: 49min 58sec (2998 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 03 2013