Atlantis was Sardinia

[Duncan Head]

That's this week's theory, anyway - http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/15/bronze-age-sardinia-archaeology-atlantis

[valentinianvictor]

One theory that came out a few years ago I feel supplies the basis behind the Atlantis legend. Most of the Mediterranean was dry land up to the end of the last Ice Age. There was a land bridge between the Med and the Black Sea which was breached when the water level in the Black Sea rose due to the ice water melt when the ice sheet retreated. This resulted in large scale flooding in the Med area. There have been a number of discoveries recently of submerged remains in the Med, recently there was a broken monolith found off the coast of Sicily which supports the theory that there was a civilisation that was submerged due to rising water levels thousands of years ago- http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/underwater-stonehenge-monolith-found-off-coast-of-sicily-150806.htm

[Erpingham]

That's this week's theory, anyway - http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/15/bronze-age-sardinia-archaeology-atlantis

It should be testable - the buried settlements should be covered in marine sediments.  Such impact events would also cause a circular wave, so there should be similar sediments in other areas of the Western Mediterranean.

[Jim Webster]

And obviously the Sardan were Atlanteans displaced by the sinking who rampaged round the Med until they ended back where they'd started

There's bound to be at least one Chronology which makes this possible 

Jim

[Tim]

Maybe these were the 'Sea Peoples' - mystery where they came from would be solved if their land had flooded...

[Sharur]

I love the way the "geophysicist and tidal-wave expert" just casually drops a comet into the sea at a nice, low velocity, at precisely the correct angle and exact place required, a convenient, if lazy, deus ex machina explanation for something he can't instantly account for otherwise. Oddly, he doesn't go on to explain why there's no evidence for widespread depopulation and massive destruction for hundreds to thousands of kilometres around said impact zone, had a comet genuinely been responsible (an object liable to produce a massive airburst, aside from any surface impact - see for instance the effects of a, by contrast to a comet, tiny object which produced a smaller-scale airburst, but little sign of an impact, that devastated a forest area about the size of modern Greater London in the Stony Tunguska region of Siberia in 1908 on this Wikipedia page; not the last word, but a handy summary).

[Yes, I appreciate 20 km/sec may not seem "low velocity", by comparison to, say, the archetypal "speeding bullet" (which would be left like the proverbial tortoise in the hare's wake by such a speed), but as bodies orbiting within the Solar System in the Earth's vicinity have a velocity range which runs from roughly 11 to 72 km/sec, 20 km/sec is remarkably slow!]

Slightly confused by your comment Adrian, as my understanding was it was the Med which flooded the Black Sea at some stage in the late to post-glacial period, c.5600 BC, not the other way round. How massive and sudden such a flood may have been, remains open to debate. Couple of useful summaries on Wikipedia, for the Black Sea "deluge", and massive outburst flooding concepts more generally (this latter also has notes on the Med during the last glacial period, suggesting sea level there had dropped by just 110-120 metres; that monolith off Sicily was only about 40 metres below modern sea level).

Problem in all the "Atlantis" scenarios - and there are a good many more stories than just Atlantis about lands reclaimed by the sea - is that there are plenty of genuinely-identifiable examples, some of which are still happening now, so claiming a specific place as "Atlantis" is never really going to work. Until somebody finds clear inscriptions identifying it as such, at least!

[The "Lost lands" Wikipedia page here has an interesting list of such real and mythological places, including many lost to the sea, for instance.]

[Mark G]

Didn't Herodotus place it off Cyrenaica?

[Patrick Waterson]

Didn't Herodotus place it off Cyrenaica?

Not exactly.

"After another ten days' journey there is again a hill of salt, and water, and men living there. Near to this salt is a mountain called Atlas, whose shape is slender and conical; and it is said to be so high that its heights cannot be seen, for clouds are always on them winter and summer. The people of the country call it the pillar of heaven.

These men get their name, which is Atlantes, from this mountain. It is said that they eat no living creature, and see no dreams in their sleep."  - Hdt IV.184

This tribe is named after the Atlas mountain and not the Atlantic continent, which is principally mentioned in Plato's dialogue Critias.

"Now first of all we must recall the fact that 9000 is the sum of years since the war occurred, as is recorded, between the dwellers beyond the pillars of Heracles and all that dwelt within them; which war we have now to relate in detail. It was stated that this city of ours was in command of the one side and fought through the whole of the war, and in command of the other side were the kings of the island of Atlantis, which we said was an island larger than Libya and Asia once upon a time, but now lies sunk by earthquakes and has created a barrier of impassable mud  which prevents those who are sailing out from here to the ocean beyond from proceeding further. Now as regards the numerous barbaric tribes and all the Hellenic nations that then existed, the sequel of our story, when it is, as it were, unrolled, will disclose what happened in each locality; but the facts about the Athenians of that age and the enemies with whom they fought we must necessarily describe first, at the outset,—the military power, that is to say, of each and their forms of government. And of these two we must give the priority in our account to the state of Athens.

[various divine doings and a long digression on the state of very early Greece omitted]

But before I begin my account, there is still a small point which I ought to explain, lest you should be surprised at frequently hearing Greek names given to barbarians. The reason of this you shall now learn. Since Solon was planning to make use of the story for his own poetry, he had found, on investigating the meaning of the names, that those Egyptians who had first written them down had translated them into their own tongue. So he himself in turn recovered the original sense of each name and, rendering it into our tongue,  wrote it down so. And these very writings were in the possession of my grandfather and are actually now in mine, and when I was a child I learnt them all by heart.

... Poseidon took for his allotment the island of Atlantis and settled therein the children whom he had begotten of a mortal woman in a region of the island of the following description. Bordering on the sea and extending through the center of the whole island there was a plain, which is said to have been the fairest of all plains and highly fertile; and, moreover, near the plain, over against its center, at a distance of about 50 stades, there stood a mountain that was low on all sides. Thereon dwelt one of the natives originally sprung from the earth, Evenor by name, with his wife Leucippe; and they had for offspring an only-begotten daughter, Cleito. And when this damsel was now come to marriageable age, her mother died and also her father; and Poseidon, being smitten with desire for her, wedded her; and to make the hill whereon she dwelt impregnable he broke it off all round about; and he made circular belts of sea and land enclosing one another alternately, some greater, some smaller, two being of land and three of sea, which he carved as it were out of the midst of the island; and these belts were at even distances on all sides, so as to be impassable for man;  for at that time neither ships nor sailing were as yet in existence. And Poseidon himself set in order with ease, as a god would, the central island, bringing up from beneath the earth two springs of waters, the one flowing warm from its source, the other cold, and producing out of the earth all kinds of food in plenty. And he begat five pairs of twin sons and reared them up; and when he had divided all the island of Atlantis into ten portions, he assigned to the first-born of the eldest sons  his mother's dwelling and the allotment surrounding it, which was the largest and best; and him he appointed to be king over the rest, and the others to be rulers, granting to each the rule over many men and a large tract of country. And to all of them he gave names, giving to him that was eldest and king the name after which the whole island was called and the sea spoken of as the Atlantic, because the first king who then reigned had the name of Atlas.

[family tree excursus omitted]

So all these, themselves and their descendants, dwelt for many generations bearing rule over many other islands throughout the sea, and holding sway besides, as was previously stated, over the Mediterranean peoples as far as Egypt and Tuscany.

Now a large family of distinguished sons sprang from Atlas; but it was the eldest, who, as king, always passed on the scepter to the eldest of his sons, and thus they preserved the sovereignty for many generations; and the wealth they possessed was so immense that the like had never been seen before in any royal house nor will ever easily be seen again; and they were provided with everything of which provision was needed either in the city or throughout the rest of the country. For because of their headship they had a large supply of imports from abroad, and the island itself furnished most of the requirements of daily life,—metals, to begin with, both the hard kind and the fusible kind, which are extracted by mining, and also that kind which is now known only by name but was more than a name then, there being mines of it in many places of the island,—I mean "orichalcum," which was the most precious of the metals then known, except gold. It brought forth also in abundance all the timbers that a forest provides for the labors of carpenters; and of animals it produced a sufficiency, both of tame and wild. Moreover, it contained a very large stock of elephants; for there was an ample food-supply not only for all the other animals which haunt the marshes and lakes and rivers, or the mountains or the plains, but likewise also for this animal, which of its nature is the largest and most voracious. And in addition to all this, it produced and brought to perfection all those sweet-scented stuffs which the earth produces now, whether made of roots or herbs or trees, or of liquid gums derived from flowers or fruits. The cultivated fruit also, and the dry, which serves us for nutriment, and all the other kinds that we use for our meals—the various species of which are comprehended under the name "vegetables"—  and all the produce of trees which affords liquid and solid food and unguents, and the fruit of the orchard-trees, so hard to store, which is grown for the sake of amusement and pleasure, and all the after-dinner fruits that we serve up as welcome remedies for the sufferer from repletion,—all these that hallowed island, as it lay then beneath the sun, produced in marvellous beauty and endless abundance."

Anyone wishing to read further can continue the account here.  Suffice to say the description is not of Sardinia.

I love the way the "geophysicist and tidal-wave expert" just casually drops a comet into the sea at a nice, low velocity, at precisely the correct angle and exact place required, a convenient, if lazy, deus ex machina explanation for something he can't instantly account for otherwise.

Rationale for a favoured viewpoint can indeed be extremely selective, especially when it comes to ignoring the consequences of proposals posited in such rationale.

Problem in all the "Atlantis" scenarios - and there are a good many more stories than just Atlantis about lands reclaimed by the sea - is that there are plenty of genuinely-identifiable examples, some of which are still happening now, so claiming a specific place as "Atlantis" is never really going to work. Until somebody finds clear inscriptions identifying it as such, at least!

Or we find buildings, roads etc. on the Atlantic seabed, considering there are probably not all that many competing cultures in that particular region.  If inscriptions in Atlantean script turn up, who would be able to read them?

[valentinianvictor]

I got my information from a couple of books on the topic Alstair, the view was it was the land bridge between the Black Sea and the Med which broke, leading to the flooding of the Med.

[aligern]

Then they may well be wrong about the direction of flooding Adrian. The Mediterranean is much bigger than the Black Sea and is fed by the Atlantic as well as by many rivers including the mighty Nile. I think its accepted that the Med breaks through to the Black Sea.
Roy

[valentinianvictor]

But was there not a land bridge near where the Straits of Gibraltar are which was breached as well? There was not enough water in the Med for it to be open to the Atlantic before the Black Sea land bridge was breached, if there was then those buildings and monoliths would not have been on dry land at the time. One theory has it that the Black Sea land bridge fell, causing a tsunami that then swept down the Med, drowning the civilsation there and the on-rushing water also breached the land bridge near the Atlantic end and this then completed the destruction of the Med civilisations.

[Erpingham]

I thought that the low water levels in the Mediterranean were for a similar reason to those in the English Channel - an Ice Age.  If the English channel could have a land bridge and be attached to the Atlantic, then surely the Med could?

[valentinianvictor]

I'll try and check the source books I have about this Anthony, although I have a recollection that most of the water in the Med basin pre-wall breach was in the form of lakes and rivers.

[Duncan Head]

But was there not a land bridge near where the Straits of Gibraltar are which was breached as well?

The Med (re)filled from the Atlantic about 5 million years ago (the "Zanclean flood"), quite a bit earlier than the 5600 BC date for the Black Sea episode.

[Sharur]

But was there not a land bridge near where the Straits of Gibraltar are which was breached as well?

The Med (re)filled from the Atlantic about 5 million years ago (the "Zanclean flood"), quite a bit earlier than the 5600 BC date for the Black Sea episode.

Thanks Duncan. Been offline for a couple of days, and assumed the links I gave earlier (including this "Black Sea deluge" one) had answered these which-sea-level-was-lowest questions, but apparently not in all cases!

Quoting a key passage from the "massive outburst flooding" Wikipedia link in my Aug 17 posting:

The Mediterranean did not dry out during the most recent glacial maximum. Sea level during glacial periods within the Pleistocene is estimated to have dropped only about 110 to 120 metres (361 to 394 ft). In contrast, the depth of the Strait of Gibraltar where the Atlantic Ocean enters ranges between 300 and 900 metres (980 and 2,950 ft).

[You can find references for these points on that Wikipedia page.]

I've been following the whole "Black Sea deluge was the Biblical flood" story, with variants, in geological academia and less reliable places, since it first appeared about twenty years ago on and off, but it's tended to become a bit circular and tedious over time, often arguing without sufficient evidence either way, so I've not kept up with it in recent years as closely as I once might. The Wiki pages seem the most useful quick summaries to me certainly, and they are helpfully referenced.