Hurricane Katrina touched down in New Orleans in late August of 2005, with winds above 170 miles per hour the hurricane rose to a category 5. In return, the hurricane overwhelmed Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne with over ten inches of water by the storm surge. Structures were breached after they failed from the build-up of water pressure causing the beginning of the destruction of the city of New Orleans. Nine-year-old Nia Burnett and her family had decided to brave the storm and fled to a city full of corpses and rotting flesh and ended up at a nearby hospital. She realized her childhood home had been completely destroyed by the flood and she began to see her friends and family being swallowed up by the rising waters. As she sat on the crisp ruble of the hospital roof, she watched as her world was now a city under the destruction under the sea. Her body was covered with goosebumps and she felt her veins turn to ice as the waters rose (Richard). That year, hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans and claimed the lives of over 2,000 residents while leaving the injured and deceased toll to over 30,000.  Hurricane Katrina continued to leave a lasting impact years later. As New Orleans had become consumed by the waves of this massacre leaving mortality scattered along the coastline.  It similarly captured an old ritual tale of the city of Atlantis. Atlantis was destroyed because of the waves of a volcanic eruption led by the indiscretions of the Atlantean people, emphasizing how the Atlantean people were to be blamed for the destruction of Atlantis as a lesson for them. The producer of the YouTube video (15 real pieces of evidence that prove the existence of Atlantis) examines the findings that claim the existence of Atlantis. The main claim the speaker highlighted throughout the whole description of the video is despite the lack of evidence “there was once a palatial Kingdom in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean”. Concluding that Plato’s invention of Atlantis was real.  The speaker addresses and quotes Plato’s findings and builds off of them to twist the facts into a fable. Even though many historians and geographers disagree with the myths by saying that in all of Plato’s writings and scripts, he uses common and deceptive themes to get his point across in the most dramatic way.

There was not a highly desirable city that existed over a millennium ago with God-like humans.  

The producer of the video cites a background source by introducing us to the ancient Philosopher Plato. Plato’s invention of Atlantis was an unreal society built up of people whom Plato claimed to be “Half God and half human” (19:26). Who had created a “highly desirable society” (19:33) with land desirable because it was full of riches connected by rings of water canals surrounded by a deep vast ocean. The Producer then continues to refer to Plato as a background source by which the producer interprets Plato’s writing in his book the Critias which states, “Atlantis existed 9,000 years before his time” (19:47) Putting the existence of Atlantis around 9400 B.C. according to Plato’s book of Critias. Plato’s story continues by referring to Atlantis as a place of people with twisted morals who lived in a utopian society but when exposed to opportunity became greedy and bankrupt. The speaker then proposes that the legend of Atlantis is a logical one because throughout history catastrophic events and natural disasters such as flooding and volcanic eruptions are littered throughout the time-period.  He connects that to the story of Atlantis by stating that “Plato’s story mirrors that of the massive earthquake that devastated the Island Santorini” (20:13), which occurred about 3,600 hundred years ago. 

The producer of the video concurs that Plato’s idea of Atlantis follows the pseudohistory format as his claims only observe the face value which in return ignores empirical or logical evidence and claims of the ancients. These statements presented in the video which quote Plato’s findings are very alarming because there is no reference in any literature anywhere to the alleged civilization. The absence of the literary and mythological traditions of ancient Greece speaks volumes. Plato’s account is misdirected, Nicholas Tschoegl a researcher at California Technical College claims the existence of one of the earliest civilizations was not known to Solon or Plato. Meaning Solon or Plato had never heard of two of the earliest civilizations that developed in ancient Greece, Mycenaean and Minoan. Plato suggests that Solon is saying Atlantis existed around 9,000 years before his time, making it 12,000 years before Plato heard the story. 

A Greek symbologist who had made a special study on the Atlantic Ocean problem concerning volcanic activity in Eagan asserted, “Plato mentioned figures involving the number 1,000 they did not make any sense. [T]hey appeared too large by a factor of 10.”  The conjecture is that somewhere in the transmission of the record to Plato the number for 1,000 became confused with that for 100.” Concurring that Plato was given a numbering of 1,200,000, ten times larger than 120,000 which sets that date of Atlantis 900 years before Plato. Combating the issue of putting Atlantis 9,000 years before Plato. A world away from the timeline in which Plato described the destruction of Atlantis. Dr Steven Novella, a historical researcher from NeuroLogica Blog accounts,“Plato puts us in the stone age. There was no Athens at this time. There were no cities.” Dr Novella redirects the existence of Atlantis which Plato describes as before the first agricultural bloom and harvest and within the Stone Age. This defeats the purpose of a highly desirable society with a land full of riches when at the time the land was only first being harvested. The second claim addressed by the producer was Atlantis is a “highly desirable society” with “Demigods”. The producers refer back to the people of Atlantis being half God and half human implying that they are known as a Demigod. Josh Richard a researcher from Britannica expresses the ancient Greek myths that Plato expressed in his texts of the Critias and Timus which are “ myths [that] contained a considerable element of fiction.” Although many of these stories of ancient times are considerably false they stemmed from “oral tradition Greek myths likely evolved from stories told in the Minoan Civilization of Crete.“ Minoan was one of the first civilizations known to man where they built up stories and fables to be passed down from generation to generation. Addressing Plato’s account of a “highly desirable society”  Richard states that “people of all countries, eras, and stages of civilization have developed myths that explain the existence and workings of natural phenomena.” They developed these ideas “as sources of imaginative and appealing ideas”. A highly desirable society appeals to the imagination. An issue with these claims is that Plato intended Atlantis to be used as a rhetorical device in his books of the Critias and the Timaeus; all his contemporaries understood it to be a device and lesson, not a claim.

1. There is only a geological dome due to an eruption and concave of a volcano.

The producer of the video suggests that the blue eye of the Sahara desert is, “Very large with very similar measurements that Plato suggests Atlantis is” (1:50). They claim that before it was covered in sand, “the sea was to the south” (2:02) and the nearby mountains Plato described as represented by the Gods and located to the north was the exact location of the “Eyes” mountains. The producers then refer back to the eye of the Saraha desert claiming the “now argued to be the highly symmetrical geological dome that collapsed” (1:20). This implies that there used to be a man-made structure of a dome that held the city of Atlantis. In the video, the producer fails to mention any actual history or geologist point of view when talking about the past tense of the eye of the Sahara Desert. It is also noted in Plato’s book of the Critias that Plato described Atlantis to be surrounded by 3 concentric rings. N.S. Gill, a history researcher from the University of Minnesota examines the scripts of Critias gathering, “Atlantis was arranged in concentric rings of alternating water and land. The soil was rich, said Critias, the engineers technically accomplished, the architecture extravagant with baths, harbor installations, and barracks.” Researchers still agree that Atlantis was an island filled with concentric rings surrounded by an ocean, which is almost certainly fiction-based.

Evidence has been shown that the Sarhara had once been under the sea. An expedition led by Maureen O’Leary of the National Science Foundation conducted that, “Fossils found on the expeditions indicate that the sea supported some of the largest sea snakes and catfish that ever lived, extinct fishes that were giants compared to their modern-day relatives.” Although the Sahara desert had once existed under the sea, a newspaper in the bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History describes, “the Trans-Saharan Seaway that existed 50 to 100 million years ago in the region of the current Sahara Desert.” 

 The problem with this claim is that the eye of the Sahara desert was under the sea “50 to 100 million years ago[,]” and the story of Atlantis originated “ about 9,000 years before his own time[.]” The claim of the ocean surrounding the desert can’t be correct even when we establish that Plato was talking by a factor of ten. Over time the Sahara desert may have experienced fluctuations and climate in geological time scales including periods of increased rainfall and greener landscapes. The Sahara desert’s arid climate is believed to have developed gradually over millions of years due to changes in global climate patterns including the shifting of the continents, the changing in ocean currents and the variation of the Earth’s orbit and axial tilt. By examining multiple lines of evidence including geological forms, fossil records paleoclimate data scientists have confidently concluded the Sahara Desert was not an ocean at the time of Atlantis, but rather a terrestrial environment with its own unique history and ecological evolution. The producer of the video suggests that Atlantis was “argued to be the remains of a highly symmetrical geological dome that collapsed ” (1:20). Implying that Atlantis was a symmetrical man-made dome that had collapsed following the story of a gigantic volcano that in return had destroyed the dome and left the eye of the Sahara as evidence.  On October 7, 2000, NASA satellite team concluded that, “the Richat Structure formed when a volcanic dome hardened and gradually eroded, exposing the onion-like layers of rock.” The Eye of the Sahara desert was formed due to a volcano that had eroded and eventually exposed layers of rock. Secondly, the producer of the video claims the eye of the Sahara to be  “Very large with very similar measurements that Plato suggests Atlantis is” (1:50). According to Plato’s book of the Critias he describes Atlantis to be 3000 stadia in diameter. Since Plato does not use metric or imperial units we can measure out that 1 stadia is around 600 feet, which means Atlantis works out to be around 350 miles in diameter. NASA satellite team concluded that “the structure [which has a diameter of almost 50 kilometers (30 miles)].” The structure is the eye of the Sahara being around only 30 miles in diameter compared to Plato and video producers’ inference of Atlantis being close in size to the eye of the Sahara desert proving false in that inference. Lastly, Plato continually describes Atlantis to be surrounded by concentric rings filled with water. However, researchers of the Richat structure from Geology Science concluded that after the volcanic eruption, “The structure is believed to have formed as a result of the uplift of rock layers, possibly caused by magmatic activity or tectonic forces.” Subsequent erosion by wind and water then sculpted the landscape, exposing the concentric layers of rock and creating the circular structure. Researchers conclude that the rings around the Richat Structure are mainly due to erosion of wind and over geological time. Concluding that they would be unable to hold water due to their erosion and soft rock formation that does not form complete rings around the structure which can be seen on the right of the picture below.

The eye of the Sahara Desert is compared to an example of Atlantis’s rough shape.

1. The Black Sea did not flood with marine waters and destroy Atlantis. 

The producer of the video refers to a background source with this claim. The producer quotes Willam Ryan and Walter Pitman, “suggested that the city of Atlantis was lost following a catastrophic flood about 7150 B.C.E”(16:50). They proposed “that the Black Sea was flooded with marine waters from the Mediterranean”(16:21). As a result, they concluded that a dam had broken in the Bosphorus causing marine waters to flood the present freshwater lake, causing the lake in return to increase in sea level. They proposed that “Atlantis was a settlement on the edge of that lake [known as the black sea] and when that flood came through the city was destroyed” (17:23).  Walter Pittman is a marine technician for Columbia University who measured oceanic floor activity along with Ryan following in similar footsteps by publishing evidence in 1997 of the Massive expansion of the Black Sea.

Researchers over various time periods disagree with the statements of Walter and Pittman concluding that the “flood” likely never occurred and was more of a slow rising of sea level over time.  A group of geologists led by Ali Aksu of the Memorial University of Newfoundland Canada suggests, that there was no black sea flood during the time of Atlantis: “Instead, they see evidence that 7,500 years ago the Black Sea was already full, that it wasn’t very salty, and more water was running out of the Black Sea than was pouring in through the Bosporus”. They believed that the flood of the Black Sea was more of a trickle than a flood: “[T]hey said, the narrow strait carried a two-way flow 7,500 years ago, with salty water going in via the bottom, and less-salty water coming out on the surface”.  Ali Aksu and his coworkers traced for the past, “12,000 years, brackish water has been streaming out of the freshwater lake and into the Mediterranean Sea”.  The studies Asku and his team had conducted over time of seafloor and oceanic remains of sea life show no drastic disastrous flood that could have wiped out a civilization. Many researchers believe that around 9,000 years ago the rising global sea levels pushed an undercurrent of salt water throughout the Bosporus. Causing fresh water to flow out and salt water to sink and fill the black sea from the bottom up. Because of these scenarios regarding the ocean levels, researchers believe it was impossible for the black sea to flood when water was constantly being pushed out from one ocean to another. 

 IV. Metals were found at the bottom of the Atlantic but that doesn’t mean they are ancient. 

In the video, the producer illustrates the claims of Satellite researcher Tim Ankers from Merlin Burrow. Ankers “collected samples and sent them to Medina, Italy so that they were able to test ancient Roman metals.” (4:39). Ankers believes that a series of ancient metals were found in southern Spain on the Spanish coast. These metals supposedly date back to the time of Atlantis where they found an “ancient combination of metals described in detail by Plato by being the building material that constructed the kingdom of Atlantis” (4:52).  The producer emphasizes that, “Merlin Burrows were not the first to lay claim that Atlantis is in southern Spain and won’t be the last” (4:58). In 2015 archaeologists recovered 39 ingots of metal called orichalcum. Orichalcum is a metal that Plato described as a second to gold. The metal was supposedly 2,600-year-old ingots found at the bottom of the ocean in Sicily. Satellite researcher Tim Ankers capitalizes off that and claims that the metal found was the one that constructed Atlantis. This is partially true in Plato’s books of the Critias and the Timaeus Plato describes orichalcum as the ancient metal that had constructed most of Atlantis Making Anker’s claims to an extent true. 

The Orichalcum that was “found off the coast of Sicily most likely originated from the Greek island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean. Historically the production of Orichalcum can be traced back to the 4th millennium”. Christo Djonis an ancient metal researcher from ancient origins found that, “Cyprus is known to have produced every copper variation known to man, including orichalcum”(Djonis). Orichalum can be linked back to the 7th century when the bronze age was taking place. Ankers disregards the fact that Orichalcum was traced back to the 4th millennium whereas Atlantis as Plato had described around 9400 B.C. disregards that Atlantis was not a part of the bronze age. A 2018 History Article suggests, “Archaeological evidence suggests the transition from copper to bronze took place around 3300 B.C. The invention of bronze brought an end to the Stone Age.” We established earlier that Plato described Atlantis as being even before the rise of the Stone Age causing Anker’s belief of the building material of Atlantis to be unrealistic.  In Plato’s Critias, he supposedly describes Orichalcum as flashing “with the red light of Orichalcum” whereas the metals, researchers and Ankers describe off the coast of Sicily to be a warm golden tint mirroring the color of golden currency which can be seen in the picture below. Orichalcum has been proven to have originated from millennia before us however, no research points to these rare metals being the building blocks of Atlantis. 

The golden ingots found on the shipwreck off the coast of Sicily.

V. The remains of Atlantis are not hiding Under the Atlantic Ocean

  In the video, the producer makes assumptions as to where the lost city of Atlantis is located under the sea. He concludes that Atlantis is somewhere near the Canary Islands but “may well still be hiding below the Atlantic sea” (10:10), assuming Atlantis is still being hidden under the sea as well as go further and claim that it is somewhere hidden in the Atlantic sea: “Historians believe that the Canary Islands may have once been linked together with the much larger piece of land sinking below the land causing a rise in sea levels because of a huge earthquake” (10:29). An Amazon Prime show “Proof That Left Historians Speechless” “reveals that Atlantis remains, may well still be hiding under the Atlantic sea, However, the strong gulf stream makes the waters too treacherous to check”(10:48). By stating this the speaker assumes but does not validate their claims, because there is no possible way they can verify them. Although they have no evidence it fits Plato’s description of Atlantis, “then the volcanic activity of  Canary Islands fit a great deal of these descriptors” (11:08). 

The issue with this claim is that there is no trace of oceanography that supports the thesis of the speaker. Dr. Steven Novella, a historical researcher from NeuroLogica Blog, says it would be “hard to miss something larger than Asia and Libya combined on the ocean floor.” The tectonic plates demonstrate that Atlantis is impossible. The continents have drifted, and the seafloor has spread over time, not contracted. Elizabeth Knowles, a researcher from Gale asserts, “The Canary Islands is an area that may have been above the ocean at one time and has been suggested as a location for Atlantis, but no physical remains of human habitation have been located there.”It is hard to believe that “There are no artifacts, There is no cultural history, There are no ruins.” To be asserted into helping a thesis along the way. Yes, Atlantis did exist hundreds of thousands of years ago but some of the oldest sculptures can be traced back to 33,000 B.C.E such as the Venus of Hohle Fels, the so-called Lion-Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel. That is even older than the existence of Atlantis and the Stone Age. The fact is that no research or evidence has pointed to the existence of Atlantis.

Conclusion.

Furthermore, it is important to address claims and falsies with facts. Atlantis while shrouded in mystery and speculation will continue to captivate the imagination of enthusiasts. Atlantis as a myth or a symbolic representation of a lesson allures lies in endless possibilities; it serves as a reminder of the eternal quest for knowledge and the understanding of the past. Plato continues to deceive people with his writing and fables and it is important to note that it was never his intention to. It was the imagination and the hope of others to turn a rhetorical device into something exquisitely false. To conclude in the murky waters of time, amidst the whispers of speculation. Atlantis persists as a tantalizing enigma challenging us to discern truth from fiction.