Atlantis

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~ a land that men never forget ~

The more lost continents are discovered, the more they are likely to be created in the minds of men.
Plato started it, writing around 359BC about a Utopian superstate of immense power and influence whose archipelago was overwhelmed 9,000 years earlier by earthquakes and floods. Plato probably intended the tale of the lost world of Atlantis as nothing more than a moral allegory but ever since Crantor took the myth seriously in 300BC people have been expending vast amounts of effort in trying to find its remains. In 1882, for example, Gladstone backed (unsuccessfully) an attempt to get the Cabinet to fund an Atlantis exploration vessel. Last year the Russians were looking for Atlantis off the Isles of Scilly, even while Colonel John Blashford-Snell, the British explorer, was seeking it high on the Bolivian Altiplano.
Blashers was following up suggestions that what Plato had heard about was possibly floods 12,000ft above sea level in which some pre-Inca Andean culture was swallowed up by waters that are now lakes Titicaca and Poopo.
Atlantis has been sought in Sweden, in inland Turkey, off Libya, in Palestine, Central Asia, Carthage, Mexico, Cornwall, Wessex, Spain and Nigeria. The Japanese fancy it might be in the South Pacific, and another theory suggests that it has slipped under the ice of Antarctica.
Someone, doubtless, had already sited Atlantis in the Indian Ocean, too, but the favourite identification has traditionally been with the earthquake-prone island of Thera (modern Santorini) whose volcanic eruption in 1520BC created tidal waves which overwhelmed the Minoan civilisation of Crete.
Mystics and occultists would believe that Atlantis lies beneath the "Bermuda Triangle", the fire crystals which powered the city still emitting energy beams that send ships and aircraft to their doom.
Adherents of that school recently claimed to have found ancient pillars on the sea floor off the Bermudian island of Bimini, only the Atlantean ruins turned out to be merely barrels of cement. by Robin Young

A lost continent has been identified by geologists working in the southern Indian Ocean. It was formed 110 million years ago by a huge volcanic eruption, then sank back beneath the sea 20 million years ago.
In its heyday it would have been covered with forests of fern and conifers, and home to early mammals. It could have played a part in the migration of some forms of life between the drifting land masses of Australia, India and Antarctica.
Cores drilled from the seabed by the research vessel Joides Resolution show that much of the Kerguelan Plateau, which now lies more than 6,000ft below the ocean surface, once protruded to form a continent. "We found abundant evidence," said Mike Coffin of the University of Texas, co-chief scientist on the expedition.
"Wood fragments, a seed, spores and pollen recovered in a 90 million-year-old sediment from the central plateau unambiguously indicates that much of this region was above sea level."
Helen Coxall, a palaentologist from the geology department at Bristol University, was a member of the team, examining fossil plankton brought up in the drill cores and using them to calculate the age of the underlying basaltic rocks.
"We found that the plateau had formed in three successive phases of volcanic eruption" she said. "The southern part formed 110 million years ago, the central part and a western salient called Elan Bank 83 million years ago, and the youngest part, to the north, 40 million years ago."
Drilling in the southern oceans was a fantastic experience, she said. "It's a really wild part of the world.
"At times, the waves were 15 metres high while we were trying to look through our microscopes."
The plateau, which is about a third of the size of Australia, was formed in the same way as Iceland or Hawaii, by an undersea eruption driving huge amounts of material from the mantle into the sea where it quickly solidified and built up to form islands.
Such episodes were common between 150 and 50 million years ago, but have been much less common in the past 50 million years. The scale of the eruption that created Kerguelen is beyond human imagining.
One of the greatest eruptions in historical times, at Laki in Iceland in 1783-84, created a lava field only a hundredth the size of Kerguelen, yet the Laki eruption lasted six months, killed three quarters of Iceland's livestock and a quarter of the people, and altered Europe's climate for several years.
How much of the plateau ever broke above the surface is not known, but it is likely to have been at least as large as Britain.
As the magma plume that formed it cooled and contracted, the crust slipped back below the waves.
The cores show seeds, conifers, and ferns, as well as the shells of shallow-water animals, says Ms Coxall.
No evidence was found of terrestrial animals, but they could have existed among the forests of ferns and larger trees.
To geologists, the most extraordinary find was a piece of rock containing the mineral garnet at Elan Bank. This can form only at the tremendous pressures found in continental rocks, so the conclusion is that this is a fragment of one of the continental plates.
Fred Frey, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is co-chief scientist. He called this find spectacular.
"Understanding how pieces of an ancient continent were incorporated into the oceanic environment of Elan Bank will have significant impact on our understanding of the break-up of Australia, India and Antactica 130 million years ago," Professor Frey said.
Drilling in the rough seas is possible only because of the design of the Joides Resolution, which is named after the ship in which Captain Cook explored the oceans 200 years ago. Twelve thrusters controlled by computers keep the ship still while cores are being drilled using a derrick standing more than 200ft above the waterline. It can drill in water more than 27,000ft deep.