According to the Greek philosopher, Plato, approximately 9,600 years before the Common Era, a large island was swallowed by the sea. Atlantis is the subject of popular fiction, an icon of fanatical debate, and the name of one of America's space shuttles.
Is there any truth behind the myth?
In 2002, while researching the background for a novel, I found three items of scientific evidence that may help to answer that question. They may not yet prove Atlantis was real, but they do prove that something big happened when Atlantis supposedly sank.
Proof? Incredible! Yes and each item of proof supports the hypothesis that the destruction of Atlantis was a real event. Each item of evidence could have been caused by the destruction of Plato's legendary island empire.
1. 3 Items that Prove Something Big Happened 9620 BCE An abrupt and major change to climate worldwide.
2. A moderately large trace of volcanic debris in the Greenland ice cores.
3. A sudden, 2-meter drop in sea levels worldwide.
The first item refers to the Younger Dryas, a 1300-year return to Ice Age conditions, after thousands of years of gradual warming. The abrupt start of the Younger Dryas has one widely accepted theory regarding a large, freshwater flood from the deglaciation of North America. The end of this period, however, is not as readily understood. If the Younger Dryas mini-Ice Age was caused by a cap on the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic, what could have broken that cap?
Most current estimates place the end of the Younger Dryas at about 9620 BCE. If Atlantis existed, and if it was between one and two times the size of Texas, an overnight collapse would likely have created a mega-tsunami as much as a kilometer or two high at landfall. It is easy to imagine such a wave stirring up the Atlantic with sufficient force to break the freshwater cap that started the Younger Dryas. Are there other possible sources? Of course there are. This one item does not prove Atlantis.
The second item comes from the GISP2 survey -- ice cores that detail the content of air over the last tens of thousands of years. About 9620.77 BCE volcanic debris found its way to Greenland from somewhere in the world. Perhaps a chemical signature might tell the source location, but it might be difficult to know for certain what flavors volcanoes were belching so long ago. This moderately large volcanic trace tapers off over the next two or more years. Was this from Atlantis? The date is close enough to be a match. And such an event as the collapse of Atlantis would likely have been accompanied by volcanic eruptions. The traditional location of Atlantis, at the Azores, is a field of volcanic activity astride the Africa-Eurasia tectonic plate boundary.
The third item is from a 1989 article in Nature magazine (Vol. 342, 7 December 1989). A graph of 17,000 years of sea level change shows a sudden drop in sea level at the end of the Younger Dryas (approximately 9620 BCE). On the original chart, the date was different, but the dates were less accurately known then. However, the slowdown in sea level rise during the Younger Dryas is quite apparent on the graph. Right before sea level rise accelerated (at the end of the Younger Dryas), there was approximately a 2-meter drop in sea levels worldwide.
Anywhere else on the graph, such a small blip would have remained unnoticed. Is this drop a proxy for some real tectonic collapse? Certainly this needs corroboration. What is significant about the magnitude of this drop in sea level is that it is equivalent to the drop one would expect from a Texas-sized plot of land collapsing 3000 meters somewhere in the oceans of Earth. In our Goldilocks fairytale, this amount is "just right" -- a perfect fit for Atlantis.
Was Atlantis geologically feasible? Yes, but that is the subject of another article.
R. Carl Martin
http://www.MissionAtlantis.Com
http://www.CarlMartin.Net
We now have proof that something very, very BIG happened 9600 BCE. Find out more by visiting Mission: Atlantis at the link, above.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=R_Carl_Martin
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