A scientist says he may have found remains of the lost city of
Satellite photos of southern Spain reveal features on the ground
appearing to match descriptions made by Greek scholar Plato of the
Dr Rainer Kuehne thinks the "island" of Atlantis simply referred
to a region of the southern Spanish coast which was destroyed by a flood
between 800 BC and 500 BC.
The research has been reported as an ongoing project in the
online edition of the journal Antiquity.
Satellite photos of a salt marsh region known as Marisma de Hinojos
near the city of Cadiz show two rectangular structures in the mud
and parts of concentric rings that may once have surrounded them.
"Plato wrote of an island of five stades (925m) diameter that was
surrounded by several circular structures - concentric rings - some
consisting of earth and the others of water. We have in the photos
concentric rings just as Plato described," Dr Kuehne said.
Dr Kuehne believes the rectangular features could be the remains
of a "silver" temple devoted to the sea god Poseidon and a "golden"
temple devoted to Cleito and Poseidon - all described in Plato's
Temples of the sea god
The identification of the site with Atlantis was first proposed
by Werner Wickboldt, a lecturer and Atlantis enthusiast who spotted
the rectangles and concentric rings by studying photographs from
across the Mediterranean for signs of the city described by Plato.
The sizes of the "island" and its rings in the satellite image
are slightly larger than those described by Plato. There are two
possible explanations for this, says Dr Kuehne.