ATLANTIS: Discovery with Dan Snow Debunked
Atlantis: Discovery with Dan Snow Debunked (Transcript)
Transcript – Dan Snow’s Atlantis (Debunked)
Hello, this is my co-presenter Alice and this is my co-presenter Robert John Langton and this is Bob and Alice debunks another video
2 and 1 half thousand years ago, ancient Greeks told of a terrifying catastrophe the destruction of Atlantis it was a tale of utter Devastation and Carnage and it’s captivated the world for over 2,000 years Atlantis a once glittering City that had ruled the waves now sunk beneath them obliterated from the face of the Earth by a terrible natural disaster Atlantis was described as one of the greatest places on Earth luxurious rich and Powerful but for centuries people have wondered was it just a story or did such an amazing City ever exist before it sunk beneath the waves
So did Plato describe Atlantis as the greatest place on Earth luxurious rich and Powerful no I’m afraid Alex Plato never said all that it’s a lot of old nonsense and this is what we get in the 21st century we don’t get the true story of Plato’s Atlantis we get a new Hollywood version which is a load of old nonsense and people get the wrong idea about Atlantis so what we do today we’re going to stop this video every time they talk nonsense and we’ll actually give you the real version from Plato rather than the Hollywood 21st century version and that way you’ll get a better idea exactly what Atlantis was and was not and you’ll even find out where it was actually situated which he won’t do on this program.
Now now I’m on a journey through Greece to find out if there’s any fact buried amongst the fiction from Clues hidden at the tops of mysterious mountains to discoveries buried deep beneath the ground I’ll Chas the extraordinary story of the search for this legendary world he wants this to be Atlantis he really wants this to be Atlantic exploring today’s incredible hunt for the ancient Lost City I was determined to find it I’ll uncover a world of luxury and beauty and evidence of brutal destruction and I’ll dive beneath the waves to find remains of an ancient city buried beneath the Seas incredible archaeological discoveries extraordinary detective work this is the hunt for the real lost city of Atlantis [Music]
So why did you stop the video here Bob looked like Dan was going to take us for a lovely tour of the picturesque Mediterranean yes Alice Dan is going to go all the way around the Mediterranean showing some very picturesque scenes go diving under the water there’s only one problem with all this is that Atlantis has nothing to do with the Mediterranean sadly the most fundamental principle about alenas is missed and not even discussed in this documentary one would imagine why would you do this why would you not actually look at the basic principles of why is it called Atlantis in the first place is there anything that connects alenas today we can actually you see a connection but this program goes into a complete flight of fantasy and nonsense from the first moment so what we’re going to do is just take a look and I won’t even look I’ve actually asked my friend called ai ai is the most intelligent engine in the entire world it has the collective knowledge of everything and you can do things with AI which you can’t do with professors who only have a limited knowledge of a few hundred books why AI has access every single book that was ever published so there is a big difference between Ai and a professor and I’ve asked it a very simple question about the Atlantic Ocean now the Atlantic Ocean should to me be an obvious connection because of the spelling but no one talks about the Atlantic Ocean on these programs which is painful really when you come to look at the writings of Plato furthermore the second aspect which will not be discussed in this program is that he actually tells you where lentis is which really helps doesn’t it it really helps when someone says Hey guys if you actually read and understand and comprehend the words on the page in front of me I will tell you exactly where a lentis is and it’s beyond the pillars of Hercules cu the Mediterraneans inside or behind the pillars of Hercules so when you’re looking in the Mediterranean Dan you’re in the entire wrong place cuz if you have bother to read Plato the basics he will tell you this but the incredible aspect of it is that there is something Beyond the pillars of Hercules as we in exit from the Mediterranean and it’s called the Alantic ocean now one would say oh is that a clue Bob Bob is that a clue that something is called the Atlantic Ocean and if each of transposed the C in the S suddenly there’s an association this is what AI tells us about this Association and it says remember this is the the most comprehensive and most intelligent thing on the planet it says yes there is a connection between the word Atlantic and Atlantis lo and behold the name Atlantis comes from the Greek Atlantis nesos which means the island of Atlas in Greek mythology Atlas is a Titan condemned to hold up the sky for eternity and his name was later associated with the Atlantic Ocean reflecting the extent of the ocean span which seems to be as vast as the burden which Atlas had to bear so we have this direct Connection in Greek mythology between Atlantis and Atlantic the term Atlantic Ocean itself is derived from atlanticos pertaining to Atlas the legend of atlan as recounted by Plato places the island in the Atlantic Ocean which is said to have been named after the Titan Atlantis the story suggests that Atlantis was situated beyond the pillars of Hercules which is known today as the streets of gibralta the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean according to the myth when Atlanta sank itos ly made parts of the Atlantic impossible further trying the myth of the island to the name of the ocean thus both the ocean and the mythical Island derive their names from Titan Atlas creating a linguistic connection between them so AI says there’s a direct connection between the Atlantic Ocean and Atlantis
I love being in Greece I love the landscape the rugged mountains and then the beautiful Coastline and the sea I love the fact there so many historic sites to visit here it’s a place of magic a place of mystery and really there’s no bigger mystery than the strange ancient Greek story of the city of Atlantis which lies underneath the waves it seems very unlikely any yet I’m of to visit a place now where I’ve been told that’s exactly what I’m going to see the first destination on my hunt for Atlantis is pava Petri an isolated spot on the barren southernmost tip of Mainland Greece where the ancient fragments of a destroyed lost city lie beneath the waves like the legendary Atlantis there is an air of mystery surrounding this beautiful stretch of Coastline the rocky Shore is covered with strange crater-like pits where human bones have been discovered the waves lap against huge stone blocks that look [Music] man-made but for thousands of years no one had really investigated what was going on here until a British archaeologist Nicholas Fleming arrived at pav Petri hunting for Sunken [Music] sights just like today the beach was scattered with shards of ancient Pottery you can see these two bits here actually this is a much better piece look it’s like the rim of a drinking vessel or a storage container and you could tell that this Potter had all been rubbed very smooth by the actions of the Waves it probably been washed ashore from somewhere just out there so he put on his scuba gear and went swimming and instantly he start to see wonderful things over the next year he would uncover a submerged ancient city had he found Atlantis these Waters can get quite rough shuring up the sand and burying everything so I’m really hoping that some of what Fleming saw back in 196 67 is still visible luckily I’ve got local diver George to guide me and he knows this seabed like the back of his hand okay here he goes let’s go and see what’s beneath the [Music] waves the sea is fairly shallow here so I don’t have to dive too deep to [Music] explore it’s amazing the water is beautifully [Music] clear and at first you look at shells or bits of rock then you swim it closer and you realize these are shards of broken watery from thousands of years ago although the water’s clear years of rough Seas have buried what Fleming saw back in the 60s and you have to look carefully to see any remains but when you do get your eye in you can see straight lines in the Rocks those rocks are far too need to line they’re far too straight to be put there by Nature they look like a wall and George tells me that this was once the wall of someone’s house shifting Sands have covered the rest but I’m swimming over the foundations of an entire neighborhood here by scanning the seabed archaeologists have been able to piece together the remains of the city and a sense of its layout you can make out rectangular shapes which they identified as buildings and Courtyards there are rows upon rows of them spreading across this sea floor and there’s not only the home of the living but the graves of the Dead they stretch all the way from the beach to under the [Music] water it looks like these these holes these I think this must be the cemetery these must be Graves [Music]
well I’ve visited ancient sites all over the world I’ve been high in the mountains I’ve been in deep jungles but I have never dived on an ancient site beneath the waves Marine archaeologists now think that pavla Petri vanished 3 and a half thousand years ago a century before the famous Pharaoh Tuton Kon ruled Egypt it’s thought that it was hit by an earthquake and then submerged Under the Sea as the waters Rose a real Echo of the Atlantis Story the legendary Lost City Beneath the Sea unless you know what’s beneath the waves here this just feels like a a lovely remote beach a beautiful spot but in fact down there there is the remains of a thriving a bustling ancient City the buildings would have been up to two stories high packed together they would have been trading with the aian islands round into the ionian this was a busy Dynamic place of life but now all that’s left are a few foundations beneath the waves and the graves of their dead so could this really be a match for the spectacular City and the events described in the Atlantis story well I think it’s a possibility but this is a region plagued by earthquakes and volcanoes so now my hunt for Atlantis is taking me to where the story began Athens home to some of the greatest ancient monuments and archaeological Treasures in the world 2 and a half thousand years ago it was here that one of its most famous residents first told the incredible story of Atlantis I’ve come to one of his favorite Hangouts the agura back then the central meeting place in Athens this place would have been a hive of activity people coming here to shop to chat to gossip day and night anyone who was anyone Beggars Tradesmen and politicians and of course philosophers and the most famous of them was Plato the man who first tells us about Atlantis and how it was destroyed to discover the real inspiration behind Atlantis I need to get to the bottom of exactly what Plato wrote all right come on then the big question Atlantis fact or fiction you had to start with the hardest question didn’t you let’s get into it Jasmine Elmer is an expert on ancient Greece I would say it’s definitely a story but with little reality sprinkles on top hang on that sounds a bit philosophical to me there wasn’t actually a city called Atlantis no there’s no real city called Atlantis it’s a mythical place that’s made up by the philosopher Plato but I can go looking for the places that might have inspired Plato yeah totally right what you will find is potentially these kind of places that have a similar story about them that could have inspired this the story of Atlantis and so how does he describe it well he talks about it being this kind of huge island that’s out in the Atlantic Ocean which the Greece is this kind of like vague space somewhere over there but it’s absolutely huge is it kind of a a flourishing civilization yeah absolutely I mean first of all it’s a land rich in resources so they had their own minerals and metals that they could mine they had fertile PLS so they could like grow loads of amazing fruit and vegetables they had exotic animals like even like elephants they also imported a lot of goods as well so it had lots of luxury around them colorful temples and palaces as well essentially what the Greeks would perceive is a very Advanced
civilization so it’s a sort of idealized picture of a of a society completely that exactly that it’s like a almost utopian Society everything kind of seems on the surface as being a perfect place that you’d want to live to begin with the picture Plato paints of Atlantis is idilic a sprawling prosperous City surrounded by olive trees a busy Port filled with ships magnificent squares and luxurious bathouses but it doesn’t stay that way for long in the story this perfect city is hit by a cataclysmic earthquake before a terrifying tsunami buries it beneath the waves and Plato had a moral to his tail it’s obviously a natural disaster but it comes from the gods as a punishment for being too big for your boots for trying to expand and be greedy the atlantans decide that they want to expand their empire and take over and they actually want to invade Athens as well and that’s a big no no for Plato So the message is if you are an advanced civilization and it’s all hunky dory and great don’t get too big for your boots cuz bad things can happen to you like what happens at Atlantis and Plato was living in a society where the Earth does move quite a lot exactly I mean this is what the reality sprinkles was I mentioned earlier on because absolutely the Greeks are living in a world where natural disasters are occurring that’s where you get this kind of modern idea that is a submerged City that we might be able to find CU it’s interesting I’ve just been to pav Petry so there are places around Greece that they would have known about which are underwater yeah exactly I mean that’s an amazing site fantastic like beautiful and so much you can take from it could it have influence Plato it’s possible but it kind of happened around a thousand years before Plato So would Plato know about it maybe but there are definitely these sorts of things happening over Greece that definitely could have inspired playo in his storytelling [Music] I’m going to rule out pava Petri as a candidate for Atlantis from what I saw it doesn’t feel Grand enough for Tales of its destruction to have survived a thousand years I need a new lead a place that sounds more believable more spectacular 150 years ago there was a breakthrough archaeological Discovery at a place that I think might fit the bill a place on Greece’s largest island to the south of here 99 M from Athens across the aan sea that island is creit and the extraordinary discovery made here late in the 19th century changed everything suddenly people began to wonder if CIT could have been the inspiration ation for Atlantis like Plato’s Island it’s massive covering over 3,000 square miles and in Plato’s time it was the setting for many epic [Music] tales in 1877 a man who was brilliantly called Minos after the legendary King who once ruled over this Island discovered some strange large stone blocks just down there in a place called kosas not much was made of at the time because the island was embroiled in a a bitter wall but word of it did get out and 20 years later a famous British archaeologist arrived in cre he was on a mission to investigate the mysterious finds his name was Arthur Evans Evans spent six years negotiating and haggling to gain permission to investigate the site finally in March 1900 with an army of 30 men he began to dig there was no more time to
waste almost at once their efforts were rewarded as they shoved away mountains of dirt from this section here they revealed these huge stone blocks which seemed to be forming a corridor this was the first Glimpse that something Monumental really lay beneath their feet a possible Atlantis with mounting anticipation They carried on digging and then just 3 weeks later on the 5th of April 1900 Evans came face to face with something incredible early that morning the team were clearing some dirt off the standing walls and they started to see what looked like an image painted beneath it was damaged but soon features were visible it was a human it was life-sized with Rich red skin slim waist eyes shaped almost like almonds and it was holding a cup nothing like this had been seen before Evan guessed that it was ancient in fact no one had looked into those eyes for 3 and a half thousand years this amazing Discovery was the first Glimpse that an ancient civilization lay lost and buried here just like Atlantis it was the start of a rapid succession of spectacular find after find painted corridors rooms full of magnificent jars and grand staircases and then on April the 13th after eight more days of frenzied back breaking digging the team worked their way to this spot Evans was about to uncover the most remarkable game-changing discovery of his life at first it wasn’t clear what he’d found it was a finely crafted room and there was evidence of beautiful paintings on these walls there were benches along the edges then there were steps leading down to this strange sunken pit that reminded Evans of a communal bath house that you might find in a Roman site but then he made an astonishing Discovery just opposite the pit there was a beautifully crafted chair in evans’s mind suddenly this was not a bathroom this was a throne room the heart of some ancient Royal Palace gradually an incredible lost world was coming back to life before their eyes news of the remarkable discoveries captivated the world with evidence of a royal Throne Room Evans was certain he’d found the Palace of King Minos the legendary Ancient King of creit the archaeologist named the civilization minan after the king but some people began to make another connection could this Lost World actually be the inspiration for Atlantis the Magnificent Island City that had been devastated and pl’s [Music] story there are some very interesting parallels between this place and Plato’s Atlantis first of all kosis is on a huge Lush Island that’s a big tick and then Plato describes a Royal Palace that befitted the greatness of the kingdom it was made up from buildings of Many Colors by blending the stones for the sake of ornament well that could be describing this Palace he also describes how sacred Bulls were allowed to roam free through the palace at Atlantis and there’s one thing you see plenty of here that’s images of [Music] bulls as Evans excavated he discovered images of bulls throughout the site even wall paintings of Menan people leaping over the back of charging bulls and this was just the beginning as Evans and his team excavated over 14,000 square meters the parallels between kosis and Plato’s story of Atlantis seemed to grow and [Music] grow Plato described that the size and beauty of Atlantis was astonishing to see just like the enormous complex of grand buildings here in Plato’s story The Royal Citadel in Atlantis is surrounded by Mighty mountains just like kosas and as local expert acrei Katy Georgio is showing me there was even more tantalizing evidence of the similarities the gods of Atlantis were also present here I would like to show you something which is very interesting look at here what we got here that’s like a a trident was the symbol of posidon it was used as an narrow as a symbol showing which way to go okay so like a signpost yeah oh let’s follow us come on let’s go according to Plato Poseidon was the main god on Atlantis he ruled the waves and made Atlantis a Mighty Sea power Plato tells us that its vast Harbor was crowded with Merchant ships and there was a constant D of noise and shouting day and night in the heart of kosas a magnificent building shows that the Minoans also dominated the Seas this is a grand staircase one of the Miracles of the minan architecture that is magnificent it’s huge yes this is the big staircase the grand staircase they made a deep cut to this side of the hill in order to be able to construct two floors lower on this level where we yeah it was a big Warehouse a big economic Center so it’s a place of trade exactly goods from all over the Eastern Mediteranean came in this building from Egypt they imported cotton wheat copper was imported from the island of Cyprus the Greek name Kus Miss copper the island of copper also elephant TKS we found whole elephant TKS they are at the Museum as well as gold from Nubia were the minds of the Egyptian Empire so North Africa the EAS exact southern Europe all coming here yeah exactly this was a crossroad the minow clearly had a vast Trade Network just like the atlantans from Plato’s story and like Atlantis the archaeologists also began to realize this was a huge place they estimated that between 25 and 30,000 people lived here and by delving into canosa’s magnificent buildings it also became clear these people lived a life of luxury just like the inhabitants of Atlantis we know from the discoveries is that the upper classes loved the beautiful things women were dressed with elaborated garments juler was worn by both men as well as women they loved wine they loved good food so lots of fish from the sea exactly we found Seafood shells we found fishing hooks so they loved Seafood so if you had wealth it was a good place to live exactly so this was a rich luxurious place there was magnificent buildings here it was powerful it sounds so similar to the way that Plato writes about Atlantis the discoveries at kosas had put creit on the map and they’ also made Atlantis a Hot Topic on February the 15th 1909 an anonymous article was published in the times the title was simply Atlantis and it gives all source of detail about the excavations here in cree and the Atlantis story and draws a direct connection between them it says if the account of Atlantis is to be compared with the history of cre it seems almost certain that here we have an echo of the Minoans and the times said this may very well engaged the serious attention of Scholars and archaeologists and it was absolutely [Music] right creit was now firmly in the spotlight to prove that this really was the inspiration for the legendary lost city of Atlantis you can see why people thought they were walking through Atlantis there’s a tickle of a seab breeze coming off the ocean you can see the mountains over there in the background and everything seems to grow here it’s just so abundant Plato describes Atlantis like this he said that it produced and brought to Perfection all those sweet scented stuffs which the Earth produces now Roots herbs trees fruit vegetables all these that hallowed Island as it lay beneath the sun produced in marvelous Beauty and endless abundance reads a bit like a guide book to cre [Music] in his story of Atlantis Plato tells us that Vineyards and Olive Groves flourished producing olive oil and wine for the enjoyment of its people today creit is also a thriving olive oil and wine producer and there’s evidence that’s been this way for thousands of years this isolated Little Chapel is only around 100 years old but it’s built on the foundations of something far older this is a remarkable and ancient wine press and the fields around here are still covered in Vineyards this day and so they’ve been pressing wine up here for Generations it’s unclear exactly how old this is some people locally think it is minoan that means the same era as the palace at kosas but the wine making process is pretty straightforward you bring your grapes in here and people with nice clean feet uh press The Grapes stand on top of them jump on top of them and all of that liquid flows out into the surrounding tubs through this hole here for example and then that grape juice comes pouring out in a huge Torrent from here into this tub ready to be turned into [Music] wine creit is believed to be the birthplace of Greek wine production made here on the island for around 5 and a half thousand years I’m visiting one of the Region’s modern Vineyards to find out more about Creek’s wine producing Heritage and why it links this island to the Atlantis story let’s start from the Harvest the Harvest here in crat starts about August to September it’s by hand so you still pick the grapes with your hands there’s no machine yeah we still do it by hand we just scissors yeah and so that’s a tradition that’s been going on for thousands of is maybe they have not scissors maybe they have another way to cut the The Grapes but uh this is the same go the landscape with the heels and the small properties it’s impossible to have Harvest machines but of course there are some parts of the wine making process that have changed a little since the minow so here we have the press machines now this is different for what would have been done in the past because this was all humans doing this in the past right exactly the same idea but no electricity just food footwork just it I don’t think you want my feet anywh near so I think this is a very good system today once the wine is pressed it is stored in these vast stainless steel Vats before it’s bottled and shipped around the world at kosas 3 and a half thousand years ago they used enormous clay jars and there’s evidence they also exported it far and wide Min arms were great exporters so from the ports they went uh in Egypt in Lebanon in Israel especially in these uh countries we found a lot of uh uh paintings uh especially in Egypt uh paintings with uh the appearances of Vineyards or uh jars or wine making and wine life so cron wine is one of the big secret of menow and success is bringing them wealth through trade exactly so they were making a lot of wine a lot of wine and Brilliant wine of course the best the more I learn about ancient creit with its magnificent architecture and its abundant Fields producing all of Nature’s Bounty the more I think it really could be inspiration for Plato’s Atlantis in his story Plato tells us that Atlantis had close contact with Egypt just like the ancient minan on cre this link was yet another detail mirroring the Atlantis story.
So why did you stop the video here Bob we’ve stopped here Alice at halfway because we need to do a small recap because we’ve seen lots of nonsense in the last half hour the main items you should take into consideration is one that Atlantis was not in the Mediterranean we can see that very clearly from the writings actually stated that in the writings but it’s not being quoted or understood this is both by archaeologists and by documentary makers because it’s not good Telly and for archaeologists they’ve got nothing to see because they don’t really understand the location of Atlantis and they sell books about the Mediterranean because it’s easy it’s not right it’s not good science it’s just media garbage sadly now if you actually look at the sites they’re seeing you can comes very very clear that they’re looking at sites of about 3 and a half thousand years old well that’s 6,000 years after Plato stated that Atlantis sunk or started to sink uh it’s not even it’s not even close when it comes to historical timelines the second aspect and which is confuses the more and drives me completely Bon because when I watch these sort of programs is the size of Atlantis Atlantis is huge it’s vast it’s not a small island the city is probably bigger than most of the SW Islands unless Plato is making it all up then the proportions are completely wrong and if he was making it up if it was a story a political story as they ke keep trying to to allude to why make the dimensions of this place enormous why don’t they have risible Dimensions which would fit a small island like cre the other thing that doesn’t make sense is that PL actually wrote a political book about an ideal society and it’s called Plato’s Republic now if you want to put a message and that Society they’re in is wrong then you put that message into Plato’s Republic and he did so why talk about atanas at was written after Plato’s Republic now if there’s a political message there which academics seem to be convinced about why didn’t you put it into Plato’s Republic it was a book about politics for goodness sake it’s a complete nonsense so what we got here is we’re looking at Islands which are far too small Atlantis is the size of Libya and and Asia combined now the Asia that Greeks knew at the time was Asia Minor which is turkey basically so Atlantis is the size of turkey and Libya they know Libya quite well they traded with Libya they know Libya is a very big vast country Plato understood the size of Libya and it understood the size of Asia Minor because they traded and knew about them well so when he came to do the proportions he would had to mind the right size and he actually gives exact sizes of the island and the size of the city and one of the aspects when he does do he actually describes the city of valentus which is concentric circles none of the places that they went to are cities of concentric Circle but they don’t talk about that they take in very small parts of the book rather than the book as a whole and come up with a narrative we’re going to now continue on with this not and at the end I’ll summarize and then tell you exactly where the island of Atlantis is so stay tuned.
This link was yet another detail mirroring the Atlantis story and as those parallels grew and grew in the 1960s One Man became
captivated he would become one of History’s Greatest Atlantis Hunters his name was spiran marinatos he was a local archaeologist and the curator of the museum in town he became obsessed he spent much of the rest of his career trying to prove this minoan civilization was the basis for Plato’s Atlantis the city that have been wiped off the map marinatos had first visited kosis while while archaeologists excavated in the 1920s he’d been blown away by their beautiful discoveries but he’d also been fascinated by something else they’d [Music] Unearthed as the team excavated the palace they realized that it had been repaired changed at various points in its lifetime it had obviously been through quite a lot like Atlantis the minoan civilization had vanished almost without trace for thousands of years no one knew why in the story Atlantis had been the victim of a terrible natural disaster but had a natural disaster also wiped out the civilization here marinatos was now on a mission to find out his investigations have been Stu sted by Menan expert Steve Kershaw and what I mean what do you think happened here there’s a palace here that’s been inhabited for 450 years going through all sorts of different phases of Destruction and rebuilding and modification and some of those destructive events were natural the kind of things are earthquakes uh some of them may have been man-made as well and so some of that could just be Accidental Fire it could indeed but marinat really wanted to get to the bottom of this and he’s found traces of volcanic dust on the island so he thinks it’s something volcanic but he doesn’t think that the volcano is on cre he thinks it’s on a nearby Island marinatos wants to prove that a volcanic eruption from a nearby Island had destroyed the minoan civilization here and he had a very specific Island in mind Santorini which lies to just 60 M away and it’s home to an enormous volcano so is marinat looking for this volcano solution a little bit because of his obsession with the story of Atlantis it’s very possible he he knows that story he likes that story and he in a sense wants that story to be true he wants this to be Atlantis he really wants this to be Atlantis but there’s also another reason why marinatos was fascinated by the possible link between CIT and nearby Santorini and that’s because in his story of Atlantis Plato says that Atlantis wasn’t just one Island but made up of several islands he said that the Royal Center was on atlantis’s main island but the docks and harbor were on another could sorini be one of the other Islands mentioned in the story marinatos was thrilled with this Theory and he thought if he could prove it the link between the Minoans cre and Atlantis would be stronger than ever could it be that an enormous eruption out there on Santorini had inspired the story of Atlantis in 1967 he set out on a hunt to find out following Marin aros’s search for Atlantis I’m now heading to the island of Santorini 60 M away across the [Music] sea Santorini is home to the biggest and most volatile volcano in the region if you look look at these rock formations this whole island is basically one enormous volcano just 17 years before marinatos arrived Santorini’s volcano had erupted spewing Ash and Fireballs a thousand MERS into the sky in just 6 days 90 billion tons of molten rock was thrown into the air what if an even more violent eruption would occurred 3 and a half thousand years before at the time when the minoan civilization discovered on cre reached its height that could mean that there was a city buried here beneath the [Music] rock a busy City with docks and harbors but where should marinata start his hunt for this lost Port there are 42 Mi of Coastline on this island and that wasn’t his only challenge it’s a fairly daunting Prospect because that Mighty volcanic eruption had blasted millions of tons of volcanic debris into the sky that then fell blanketing this island in layer upon layer of pmus and rock and volcanic ash you can see some of those layers etched out in this Cliff face here so that meant that if there were any ancient ruins here the chances are they’d be under meters and meters of this stuff it must have seemed like Mission imp possible but little did marinatos know on the coast of Santorini he was about to make the greatest archaeological discovery of his life the island of Santorini 1967 the hunt was on to find out if a port city had been buried beneath the ground following a gigantic volcanic coruption 3 and a/2 thousand years ago if they found it it would help prove spiron Marin atos’s theory that this island and neighboring cre could have been the inspiration for the story of Atlantis where a whole series of islands had been obliterated by natural disaster he was on a mission to investigate and now he pin appointed an area to Target 70 years ago an intriguing clue had been found buried near this spot under meters of Ash in 1899 some laborers in a quarry just in land from here started finding some mysterious objects they didn’t know what they were but they thought they looked ancient marinatos was intrigued this was the per perfect position for a port city right on the coast so gathering together a team he started to investigate here he had no idea how deep they’d have to dig the volcanic ash and rock is 30 m high in some places on the island but remarkably on the very first day they made a breakthrough they were digging through stuff just like this here and he was ecstatic when about 4 m down he started to make out the shape of pots and his expert eye they were clearly storage chars and storage chars that look to be exactly the same type and date as the ones he was so familiar with from kosas in [Music] cre but that was nothing because a few days later he would discover an entire buried city he called it aceri
Wow and these are the pots these are the storage jars that he discovered so early on as he started digging he didn’t just discover one or two look there were three rooms full of them so different shapes and sizes different designs on the outside maybe just to look nice and pretty but maybe to indicate that they were designed to store different food stuff some olive oil some perhaps wine what a fantastic start to the excavation over the next 7 years the archaeologists feverishly excavated wall after wall room after room and building after building slowly began to appear from beneath the 3 and a half thousand year old Ash and Rubble and as they dug they began to reveal striking similarities with the story of Atlantis located by the Sea it was almost certainly a port city and just like Atlantis there was evidence that its destruction had started with an earthquake this staircase here look at that finely crafted strongly built stairs and yet they’ve just been snapped in half in an Instant by the shock wave that the earthquake sent through this entire settlement little did the survivors know after that earthquake as they tried to put their lives back in order that was worse to come like Atlantis a once thriving City had been obliterated minow and expert Steve Kershaw is giving me a guided tour of the ruins to show me its past Splendor Steve I always love an archaeological site where you look up at this this was a multistory city wasn’t it it was indeed it’s uh it’s now buried beneath meters and meters of volcanic debris so it’s all it’s all looking a bit gray now but presume would it would it have been whitewash would it been colorful insides and things it would indeed yes the the exteriors would have been plasted over on the inside you’ve got colorful frescos and and what have you amongst the devastation are also details showing the true horror that the people here experienced what an earth of is yeah a couple of beds the imprints of beds and what happened was before the eruption there was an enormous earthquake and the people of the Town were tidying it up so they were stacking the beds trying to tidy the house up maybe pick up loose bricks and things very much so and some of them are protecting bits of pottery as well you’ve got a little tripod cooking pot down there so this is the repair work on the town before the eruption that they never knew was coming what’s happened is that the wood has decayed in the volcanic material and the archaeologists have poured plaster into it to recreate the bed out of the space so the archaeologist found a vacuum they poured plaster in it was a bed shape absolutely absolutely that’s was a moment in time really captured from 3 and a half thousand years ago very much so it takes you right to the heart of people’s real lives and that’s one of the wonderful things that archaeology can do for us I think with its impressive multi-story buildings actii had clearly been wealthy just like Atlantis and as more and more of the ancient cities surfaced from the ash the similarities grew even stronger so what what are we looking at here so this is one of the main streets of of the town and you’ve got houses on either side you can just see the remains of the walls then a main street that would have been paved with beautiful flagstones and then the most remarkable thing I think underneath it you’ve got a drainage system but that gutter there that gutter yes that humble gutter is actually a mark of extremely high civilization amazing there’s flushing lavatory systems and that would have all gone into that and flush it out into the sea I mean that wasn’t normal at the time presumably no that is highly sophisticated there’s there’s not many cultures have got that level of water Engineering in their states at this time and and these people have got it down so well and that I guess allows everyone to live together in this crowded way without getting terrible diseases it’s going to help one of the reasons that people have drawn parallels between here and Plato’s Atlantis is precisely this facility with water engineering because the atlantans are kind of the ultimate water Engineers they create bath houses with both cold and hot not just for their Elite classes but for the the rest of the population and indeed not just for the human population but for the horses the beasts of burden and the animals so we have cleanliness pervading atlan so in Plato Atlantis even the animals are clean they are so for Plato and the ancient Greeks Water Management that said you’re an advanced civilization it does indeed yeah and they’re doing it here they’re doing it right there after digging up Acer marinatos was now convinced that his theory was right the combination of kosas Palace on cre and this port city was inspiration for Atlantis it was like Atlantis itself had been found in stone you no longer had to imagine it you could walk through the streets almost sense the people that have once lived [Music] here today many of Acer’s finest Treasures lie in Santorini’s archaeological Museum in the town of Thea each one gives a fascinating insight into that lost world and the parallels with the story of Atlantis I love these murals this was painted onto the wall of one of the grandest houses in AC creran it’s such a special thing to have an image of their world painted by the people who actually lived in it just look at this wonderful Island here it’s Lush youve got fantastic detail it’s like trees deer perhaps a lion up there and then my favorite bit this Armada of ships and boats heading out across the sea some of them under oil some of them sail powered some some of them look ceremonial like it’s almost a kind of Festival experience dolphins all around them and they’re arriving in some way that I think looks quite like Santorini Barren Red Cliffs a sense of the volcanic with colored buildings people greeting them this is a wealthy Maritime world a world of color and vibrancy could this settlement at the end here actually be aceri was this what it looked like before it was destroyed in that volcano the other thing that really strikes me when you look at this you look at the animals the richness of the colors the buildings the ships if you did want a picture of Plato’s Atlantis this is pretty much [Music] it many of aqua’s buildings were covered with beautiful frescos that incredibly survived the disaster each and every one seems to strengthen the connection with Atlantis there fisherman proudly holding their catch linking the Minoans to the Sea just like the atlantans in the story like Atlantis and cre aceri was clearly a rich and luxurious place we can see that from their hairstyles their Fashions their jewelry there are exotic animals native to Africa and in Atlantis Plato mentions elephants [Music] the more I read about Atlantis the more I explore the wonderful archaeology on these islands the more I get a real sense of why people got so excited about the apparent similarities between the Minoans and the story of Atlantis marinatos had discovered that like the atlantans who ruled over several islands the real life Minoans flourish both here and on cre the Minoans too were clearly a massive sea power with connections as far away as Egypt and they suffered an epic natural disaster the idea that these places were the inspiration for Plato’s Atlantis is compelling the problem I have with it is it took place over a thousand years before Plato was writing and we’ve got absolutely no evidence that Plato had ever heard about it in fact there is no account no mention of the destruction Baker in any ancient source at all possibly we’ve lost those sources over the years and possibly it was such an enormous event that it was just talked about handed down from parent to child over the generations so despite all the incredible similarities with Atlantis I’m going to continue my search and luckily there is another Contender through an incredible piece piece of detective work archaeologists have just discovered another lost city on the coast of Mainland Greece perhaps the inspiration for Atlantis lies closer to Plato’s home of Athens and much closer to Plato’s time the archaeologist discovered that Not only was this city destroyed but that destruction was big news in Greece during Plato’s lifetime could this city be the real Atlantis [Music]
Are we not going to watch the program to the very end no Alice we’ve seen enough I think for another half hour Dan will walk around going to other sites in Mainland Greece and suggest this could be the inspiration for Atlantis it’s quite interesting they use the word inspiration inspiration isn’t proof or evidence it just piggy packs on this strange belief that Plato made the whole thing up so are you going to tell us where Atlantis really is Bob okay Alice I shall tell you for any person to claim they know the location of Atlantis they have to qualify by answering five simple questions question one is it in the Atlantic Ocean question two is it bigger than Libya and turkey question three is it 9,000 years ago question four did the landscape have elephants and tigers and question question five was it an advanced civilization and do you have a particular site and location in mind then and the answer to that question Alice is doggerland so does doggerland meet these five criterias doggerland was an ancient L mass that is currently under the North Sea I can’t imagine that Bob how do you know it’s there well Alice now that takes a lot of imagination but it’s absolutely true no one believed it until the middle part of last century when we sered the seabed looking for oil and as well as finding oil we found dog so why do academics still believe Atlantis is in the Mediterranean and this is where we get these strange ideas about Atlantis being in the Mediterranean because the historians at the time of the 20th century had no idea that there was a civilization and a land mass under the North Sea so they thought that Plato made it all up which clearly he did so does doggerland meet all your criteria Bob doggerland qualifies on all five points it is in the Atlantic Ocean because doggerland would incorporate all of what we call Great Britain in the past 10,000 years ago the sea levels were much much lower and therefore the North Sea the Irish Sea and the English Channel did not exist it was one large peninsula in the Atlantic ocean the combined landscape of Great Britain and Europe is actually larger than Libya and Asia Minor it had massive flat Plains and mountains as described by Plato we also in northern Europe have things called causeways camps cosway camps are concentric Circle settlements as described Again by Plato doggerland began to sink into the waters 9 and a half thousand years ago it became a small island before it finally vanished under the water some 6,000 years ago which again matches Plato’s timeline for nearly a 100 years the fishing trollers have been collecting Bones from animals of the seabed of doggerland now these bones include would you believe elephants mammoths lions tigers bears all manner of animals which we don’t see in the northern hemisphere today and the icing on the cake for the five aspects that needed to be met before we find Atlantis is an advanced civilization a culture so distinct so unique that it could only be the story portrayed by the Egyptians to Solon and then Plato these were the megalithic builders this civilization existed 10,000 years ago it built monuments that are still visible today around the Northern Hemisphere we know one of its great structures as one of the great wonders of the world called Stone Henge this civilization used boats to take the stones to the locations they traded around the world we can see that within the artifacts they traveled throughout Europe this was an advanced civilization for its time and the Greeks would appreciate that because it was very similar in communication skills and building skills to the Greeks and the Greeks saw themselves as an advanced civilization and so Ellis we now know the location of Atlantis and that is doggerland which is now currently under the North Sea this makes a lot more sense for the location of Atlantis which is in the northern hemisphere because the Greeks have this belief system that states that their gods from the north see ceeded their civilization and actually there’s Lines within Plato’s Atlantis that says exactly the same the Egyptian priests tell solom that the alantin came down to the Mediterranean and seated themselves in both the Greek and the Egyptian civilization many years before the Pharaohs they also have this great belief that there was a place called hyperboria where again based in the northern hemisphere where the Greek gods lived this is all this Association that the atlantans were the children of the Gods we also see this in other tows such as Troy this is why the Trojan characters are blue-eyed blonde redheaded these are not Mediterranean people these are people from the north and Atlantis is a tow about a civilization from the Northern Hemisphere about a country that was called Atlantis that was in the Atlantic Ocean and they’re mostly submerged under the North Sea well that’s all we got time for you today I hope you en enjoyed the video and a little chat about archaeology come to our website where you can find essays and liar investigations or come and visit us on YouTube where we have a video channel where we have more videos for you to browse so it’s goodbye from me and it’s goodbye from Alice
Further Reading
For information about British Prehistory, visit www.prehistoric-britain.co.uk for the most extensive archaeology blogs and investigations collection, including modern LiDAR reports. This site also includes extracts and articles from the Robert John Langdon Trilogy about Britain in the Prehistoric period, including titles such as The Stonehenge Enigma, Dawn of the Lost Civilisation and the ultimate proof of Post Glacial Flooding and the landscape we see today.
Robert John Langdon has also created a YouTube web channel with over 100 investigations and video documentaries to support his classic trilogy (Prehistoric Britain). He has also released a collection of strange coincidences that he calls ‘13 Things that Don’t Make Sense in History’ and his recent discovery of a lost Stone Avenue at Avebury in Wiltshire called ‘Silbury Avenue – the Lost Stone Avenue’.
Langdon has also produced a series of ‘shorts’, which are extracts from his main body of books:
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