On the High Geological Plausibility of Atlantis

[Richard Stanley]

During the mid 20th Century it ironically became the intellectual and academic vogue to pooh-poo the notion of Plato's description of Atlantis, because ... there is no evidence of such a claim in on the seafloor of the Atlantic, or any other alternative place that has been suggested. The 'irony' is that, at that very same time, people called 'scientists' were piling up paper after paper stating that there was indeed numerous geological evidences that provide plausibility that there was indeed either an island or microcontinent, especially around the Azores sub-surface plateau. None of them invoked the name Atlantis, and likely had no thought of such as they were performing their research.

Below are parts 3 and 4 of a series discussing these papers. I have not provided parts 1 and 2 which discuss Plato's account and the associated mythology, such as Phaeton's crash of Daddy's chariot, representing the comet which triggered the end of the last ice age ... at the very time when Plato states. Discussed in these introductiry works is that the Plato debunkers created straw man arguments such as converting Plato's 'island' into a 'continent'.

Of course, the implications of such make for a powerful existential motivation for the 'political' scientists of those days to deny this possibility / likelihood. Besides pure psychological reasons to obfuscate, there is also the elite issue of privileging ones kith and kin to increase their global odds of survival, as Plato stated that this phenomenon was repetitive and ... global in nature.

 

[Jerry Russell]

Discussed in these introductiry works is that the Plato debunkers created straw man arguments such as converting Plato's 'island' into a 'continent'.

Plato said that Atlantis was an island "bigger than Libya and Asia Minor together", which would be nearly continent sized. That is, Libya plus most of Turkey. And, Plato goes on to talk in a rather ambiguous way about some land mass that may "rightly be called, in the truest sense, a continent". It's not clear whether this latter land mass is Atlantis itself, or something beyond Atlantis. At any rate -- the idea that Atlantis was depicted by Plato as a rather large land mass, is not entirely a "straw man".

The 'irony' is that, at that very same time, people called 'scientists' were piling up paper after paper stating that there was indeed numerous geological evidences that provide plausibility that there was indeed either an island or microcontinent, especially around the Azores sub-surface plateau.

The Azores sub-surface plateau would be plausible as either a big island or a small continent, if it were above the surface. But, it's mostly anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 feet beneath the ocean. I traced the Azores Plateau = Atlantis theory back to Christian O'Brien's 1997 book "The Shining Ones". O'Brien was a petroleum geologist who served as a managing director of BP's Iranian Oil Operating Companies until he retired in 1970 to study ancient civilizations. O'Brien suggested that the terrain of the Azores Plateau appeared much like an island with river valleys.

 

[Richard Stanley]

The Azores sub-surface plateau would be plausible as either a big island or a small continent, if it were above the surface.

Right. I'm glad you agree.

 

[Seeker]

"The Shining Ones".

I was unfamiliar with this book and just visited the "The Golden Age Project" site that it is advertised on. Interestingly enough, this "Project" also supports the work of the late Laurence Gardner, whom if memory serves me correctly, was accused by the late Nicholas de Vere of appropriating his research and using it in writing his books, without giving de Vere due credit.

 

[Richard Stanley]

Plato said that Atlantis was an island "bigger than Libya and Asia Minor together", which would be nearly continent sized.

OK, so it's a big "island." And back then they didn't really know the difference between an island and a continent, they just used these words interchangeably and arbitrarily, sometimes with the word for 'boundless'.

This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia.​

https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/physis/plato-timaeus/atlantis-athens.asp?pg=5​

​

https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the/greek-word-for-7bd1a907a1ec4630d93ee9312f8964776fc659e5.html

In Greek the word 'hippo' means 'horse', but these people have their logo as a ... 'hippo'.

 

[Seeker]

and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt,

In other words, the area with the North African people known as "Berbers" by the outside world, with this conclusion also being promulgated by Robert Sepehr. If Ellis is correct in his identification of "Pantera" as Ptolemy of Mauretania, then "Jesus" may have been his secret son, with a male line North African pedigree to Atlantis. The father of Ptolemy, Juba II, claimed to be descended from the Hercules those columns were named for, depicting himself as a youthful Hercules on the obverse side of a coin wearing the Nemean lion skin, with the lion headdress, club, and bow and arrow of Hercules on the reverse side (below).
The stepmother of Ptolemy, Glaphyra, was twice the daughter-in-law of Herod the Great by other husbands, the first being Alexander, who was ordered to be strangled by Herod, and the other being Herod Archelaus, who was removed as ethnarch by Augustus at the time of the Census of Quirinius, and exiled to Gaul. These possible family connections of Jesus to the killing of a son (one of his Innocent children?) by Herod, and the banishment of another son at the time of the Census, seem to have been incorporated into his birth narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke by the Imperial writing team, probably (and successfully) to throw religious scholars and historians off from the AD 14 birth year that Ellis proposes.

 

[Jerry Russell]

I traced the Azores Plateau = Atlantis theory back to Christian O'Brien's 1997 book

Should've checked Wikipedia before jumping to this conclusion. They say that Congressman Ignatius Donnelly first suggested the idea, in his 1882 book "Atlantis: The Antediluvian World".

However, the article states "in Wikipedia voice" that "Cores taken from the plateau and other evidence shows that this area has been an undersea plateau for millions of years." They provide three references to journal articles. The use of this authoritative tone indicates that no editors have come up with any peer-reviewed scientific paper stating anything to the contrary.

One of the linked articles was summarized by Wikipedia as follows:

Ancient indicators, i.e. relict beaches, marine deposits, and wave cut-terraces, of Pleistocene shorelines and sea level show that the Azores Islands have not subsided to any significant degree. Instead, they demonstrate that some of these islands have actually risen during the Late and Middle Pleistocene. This is evidenced by relict, Pleistocene wave-cut platforms and beach sediments that now lie well above current sea level. For example, they have been found on Flores Island at elevations of 15-20, 35-45, ~100, and ~250 meters above current sea level.​

​

The full paper is here;

https://estudogeral.sib.uc.pt/bitstream/10316/3946/1/file17718df487be4ee2aeecf0831f503c88.pdf

The paper is very technical and I found it difficult reading. I couldn't find any such explicit statement as postulated by the Wikipedia editors. It discusses processes of volcanism, tectonic subsidence, hydroelasticity, and sea level changes as contributors to the morphology of the islands and the plateau. But there's no support in this paper for the idea that the entire plateau was once above sea level.

 

[Richard Stanley]

You know my opinion of the peer-review process. Once again, we have scientists, whose independent (from each other) efforts over a range of issues present a coherent picture of a mechanical process that explains not only why such a phenomenon would occur, but show why it would happen precisely in that location. We can dub this Astheno's Law: What goes up over here, must go down over there. Like squeezing a water balloon, or an asthenosphere balloon.

The weakest point is likely at the Azores Triple Junction and the Azores microplate. Your excerpt already admits to vertical displacement of 250 meters, and such above surface observations necessarily are restricted to much smaller bounds. Unless they are reporting that observations were extensively made and at the boundaries of the microplate then I would have no faith in the relevance of these claims. Furthermore, if the entire microplate was to subside in a cataclysmic fashion, just what evidence should we expect to find of relict shorelines?

Note also, that there is an elevation gap of 150 meters between the upper two shorelines allowed for.

Also discussed in the video are the transverse fracture ridges of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and that the geometrical collapse of this portion of the greater spherical process would seem to be the most likely cause of these features, rather than the tectonic spreading process outwards from the MAR. Again, a paper is cited in support of this.

 

[Jerry Russell]

You know my opinion of the peer-review process.

Right. And as bad as it is, the Wikipedia process is worse. I question whether the editors provided an accurate summary of the cited article.

Furthermore, if the entire microplate was to subside in a cataclysmic fashion, just what evidence should we expect to find of relict shorelines?

This might be why the Azevedo & Ferreira paper didn't specifically conclude that the plateau was never raised to sea level, or that cataclysmic subsidence never happened.

But, they do trace a timeline from 750,000 years BP to the present, describing a series of intervals that encompass that entire period, bracketed by events. The cataclysmic subsidence must have been preceded by a similarly cataclysmic elevation, with the entire series slipping unnoticed in between the intervals described by Azevedo & Ferreira.

We also need to consider the alleged "cores taken from the plateau" which are supposedly documented in two other papers. One of them is hidden behind a paywall here, The other, another paywall, here. The visible part of those articles don't look like smoking gun proof of Wikipedia's position to me.

I'm not meaning to foreclose on the possibility that Donnelly, O'Brien, and Carlson might be correct. All I'm saying is that I'm not finding much "mainstream" support.

 

[Richard Stanley]

Below are some talks by Randall Carlson, the first on Canadian impacts and craters:

Another person discussing massive impacts:

What were these supposed 'primitive' people, all around the world, up to?

 

[Richard Stanley]

This recently posted discussion discusses contemporary features of the Azores Islands that echo what Plato mentioned.

This is the immediately preceding discussion focusing more on aspects of the Canary Islands that reveal cataclysmic landslides.

 

[Richard Stanley]

The following video discusses the 19 mile wide crater under Greenland's Hiawatha Glacier, and that it is inline with the center of Hudson Bay's Nastapoka Arc and the Saginaw Bay Crater. Through the ice imaging reveals the Greenland impact to be young, as well as ice layers within it, thus making it highly likely to have been one impact of several to have occurred at this time and causing rapid ocean level rise.

 

[Sgt Pepper]

Not to discount anything, just an observation that some things that Randall expresses are seemingly Theosophic.

[…] the fourth Root Race appeared, living on the continent of Atlantis; they had physical bodies but also psychic powers and advanced technology.[62] She claimed that some Atlanteans were giants, and built such ancient monuments as Stonehenge in southern England, and that they also mated with "she-animals", resulting in the creation of gorillas and chimpanzees.[61] The Atlanteans were decadent and abused their power and knowledge, so Atlantis sunk into the sea, although various Atlanteans escaped, and created new societies in Egypt and the Americas.[61]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophy

 

[Richard Stanley]

If you watch enough of his presentations, especially on esoteric matters, he occasionally mentions Theosophy and Blavatsky. As well, he is a Freemason.