An artist's conception shows the city of Atlantis as it has been envisioned in legend.

 

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — A U.S.-led research team may have finally located the lost city of Atlantis, the legendary metropolis believed swamped by a tsunami thousands of years ago, in mud flats in southern Spain.

 

"This is the power of tsunamis," head researcher Richard Freund told Reuters.

 

"It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and that's pretty much what we're talking about," said Freund, a professor at the University of Hartford who led an international team searching for the true site of Atlantis.

 

To solve the age-old mystery, the team analyzed satellite imagery of a suspected submerged city just north of Cadiz, Spain. There, buried in the vast marshlands of the Dona Ana Park, they believe that they pinpointed the ancient, multiringed dominion known as Atlantis.

 

The team of archaeologists and geologists in 2009 and 2010 used a combination of deep-ground radar, digital mapping and underwater technology to survey the site.

 

Freund's discovery in central Spain of a strange series of "memorial cities," built in Atlantis' image by its refugees after the city's likely destruction by a tsunami, gave researchers added proof and confidence, he said.

 

Atlantean residents who did not die in the tsunami fled inland and built new cities there, he added.

 

The team's conclusions are detailed in "Finding Atlantis," a National Geographic Channel special.

 

While it is hard to know with certainty that the site in Spain is Atlantis, Freund said the "twist" of finding the memorial cities makes him confident Atlantis was buried in the mud flats.

 

"We found something that no one else has ever seen before, which gives it a layer of credibility, especially for archaeology, that makes a lot more sense," Freund said.

A computer graphic shows the concentric rings that may have existed during Atlantis' ancient heyday. Scientists have seen evidence of such submerged structures beneath the vast marshlands of southern Spain's Dona Ana Park.

 

Greek philosopher Plato wrote about Atlantis 2,600 years ago, describing it as "an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Hercules," as the Straits of Gibraltar were known in antiquity.

 

Using Plato's detailed account of Atlantis as a map, searches have focused on the Mediterranean and Atlantic as the best possible sites for the city. Researchers have previously proposed that Atlantis was located on the Greek island of Santorini , the Italian island of Sardinia or on Cyprus .

 

Tsunamis in the region have been documented for centuries, Freund says. One of the largest was a reported 10-story tidal wave that slammed Lisbon in November 1755.

 

Debate about whether Atlantis truly existed has lasted for thousands of years. Plato's "dialogues" from around 360 B.C. are the only known historical sources of information about the iconic city. Plato said the island he called Atlantis "in a single day and night ... disappeared into the depths of the sea."

 

Experts plan further excavations at the site where they believe Atlantis is located and at the mysterious "cities" in central Spain 150 miles away to more closely study geological formations and to date artifacts.

 

This report includes information from Reuters and msnbc.com. "Finding Atlantis," a documentary about the search for the city's ruins, will air on Tuesday on the National Geographic Channel.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42072469/ns/technology_and_science-science/

awesome

interesting...

Very interesting, thanks for posting. I want to watch the special.

WHWHWH

Cool. :surprised:

herm.

^That's kind of the point of the article....

In my previous life I lived there!!! believe it or not =)

I go caravaning there regularly, next.

In my previous life I lived there!!! believe it or not =)

 

wow cool :surprised:

how was it there?

wow cool :surprised:

how was it there?

 

the architecture was pretty much like on that image in the article.

some of the people were able to use supernatural powers, like me.

we all saw that the planet changes though we did not have the knowledge of today.

we did know that our home will disappear from the surface and so it did.

atlantis was somewhere in the alantic ocean, north was south and south was north.

if you know where 'the azores' are then you know where approximately atlantis has been.. :wacky:

 

 

okay - enough bla bla..

i am really interested in atlantis but i think everything has been destroyed by vulcanism and other geological matters.

nobody will ever find something real.

by the way.. nice article! i like myths!

Archaeology at it's best.

does it have a stargate!? :)

^haha, someone asked that in the comments section of the article.

Atlantis went down because of earthquakes that lowered the land. Pyrmids have been found in the Atlantic Ocean on the ocean floor. The rest of it has been destroyed. An underground city was found near Cuba.

^That was all speculation you know. You talk as if it were a fact, but there is no hard proof that it was really Atlantis. :dozey:

That's great, obviously they don't know for sure but wouldn't it be great if one of Earths myths got uncovered in our lifetimes, is this docu only on in the US?.

I always thought it was a metaphor. :thinking:

who knows? i think this myth will never get busted :nice:

If I got a penny every time someone claimed to have found Atlantis...:dozey:

People who believe that Atlantis existed are stupid and I have nothing more to say on this matter :dozey:

Yeah now let's go back to the important issue of the alien eggmen. :dozey:

I don't get it :thinking: