The Real Atlantis-In the Eye of the Sahara (The Weird Ancient History Series)

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Oral story telling is not even one tenth as unreliable as people assume with the false analogy of the game of telephone. Besides this structure, you can also visit some tourist attractions nearby, including Ben Amera, Terjit, Diawling National Park, Chinguetti Mosque, and Banc d’Arguin National Park. Is Mauritania’s Richat structure the lost city of Atlantis? Jimmy makes a lot out of the surrounding geography, that there were mountains to the north, the city was surrounded by flat plains, and opened to the Atlantic ocean to the south. There are mountains to the north, but this is hardly an amazing match. Surrounded by flat plains is not much of a precise description – surrounded by how much, and what kind of geography? The Richat is in the Sahara, so there is desert sands where there aren’t mountains, but they are not plains, nor is it surrounded. He further has to use some creative imagination to argue that the Richat structure, if it were fed by rivers and therefore filled with water, would have two rings of land and three of water. But that is not obvious at all. The rings are not discrete, not complete in places, and it’s unclear how water would fill the structure. You could count four rings of water if you look at the whole structure. Interestingly enough, the Sahara wasn’t always a desert. Though humanity has speculated this in the Qur’an far before climate researchers used ‘science’ to prove this, the Smithsonian estimated that it was a fairly tropical region prior to 11,000 years ago (Boissoneault, 2017). Additionally, topographical and gravitational studies conducted in the Sahara uncovered a vast network of rivers and lakes, lost to climate change. For example, the rivers Senegal and Niger had vast river basins that could give credence to the idea of a green Sahara (Klokocnik, 2017). Most interestingly, researchers found in their data evidence of a river far larger, named the Tamanrasset. Much like the Nile, the magnitude of this river would easily sustain a community capable of agriculture, transportation, and trade. This river is said to start from the Atlas mountains, flowing south towards the Richat Structure before turning west and depositing into the Atlantic ( Figure 2) . Though there is no evidence of this river on the surface of the desert, the location mentioned in Timaeus regarding the capital would line up considering the lost river.

In the case of Morocco, a German computer expert, Michael Hübner, became obsessed with “Timaeus” and “Critias” because he’s mathematically inclined. He set up what’s called a Hierarchical Constraint Satisfaction and looked at every one of Plato’s clues in “Timaeus” and “Critias.” He weighted them and came up with an area on the map that was within 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) of Athens, Greece.In his work Critias, Plato wrote, “This tale of Atlantis, though strange, is certainly true, having been attested by Solon who was the wisest of the Seven Sages.” If you’re not familiar with the myth of Atlantis, let me explain: The greek god Poseidon had five sets of twins. He then gave them ten kingdoms to rule over, one for each, but the entirety of the empire was ruled by Atlas, his oldest son. Atlantis (which literally means the city of Atlas) was a very powerful empire with a fierce navy and plenty of gold, but it disappeared beneath the ocean in one night and has never been seen since. Now, most people wouldn’t buy the stuff about Poseidon, but the possibility of there being an empire called Atlantis is perfectly plausible. Something important to note is that the city of Troy was believed to only be a myth until it was found in Turkey, as was Dwarka until it was discovered in the ocean. The point is, a city cannot be considered mythical because we haven’t found it. If somebody found concentric circles and an ancient Egyptian inscription mentioning a story like Plato says he found about Atlantis—and those two things are by no means impossible—I think we’d have a pretty good case that there’s a lot of truth in the story. And nobody would be happier than me if we did. I would be over the moon. The only mention of Atlantis by name in historical texts is in Plato’s Dialogues (written around 360 B.C.), which gives dozens of precise details about what Atlantis looked like, and where it may have been located in relation to other landmarks in the ancient world. It was this level of detail that has set many people off thinking that Atlantis actually existed. And that, in part, explains why the myth of an ancient, lost civilisation is so useful. It is a basic tale of a rise and fall that can be corralled and exploited for all sorts of causes. Plato meant his tale to be an allegory. Atlantis was destroyed by the gods who had grown angry with the hubris displayed by its inhabitants and so destroyed it. Don’t get too big for your boots, in other words. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean … an island larger than Libya and Asia put together … 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.”

The proper analogy would be a group of professors teaching a limited selection of top students to replace them where the metric is their ability to recite and memorize accurate information and where the best memorizers get chosen as new priests/elders who still have the benefit of their precessors correcting them. Also, while indeed many of these artifacts have been found on the outermost depression of this structure, they are generally absent in its innermost depressions. In fact, neither recognizable midden deposits, nor man-made structures have been recognized and reported from the Richat Structure so far. The location of the Eye (Atlas Mountains): The Richat Structure lies around 700 km (440 miles) south of the Atlas Mountains, which are associated with the legendary Atlas of Greek mythology. Atlas was said to have been the first king of Mauretania (meaning ancient Maghreb or north-west Africa, rather than the modern country). According to Plato, Atlas was the first king of Atlantis and the son of Poseidon. So there appears to be some sort of link between Atlantis and the Atlas Mountains, which aren’t that far away from the Richat Structure. More recently, in a viral, and rather convincing (at least for many), video published in September 2018, the YouTube channel Bright Insight claimed that the features of the Richat Structure, otherwise known as the Eye of the Sahara, perfectly match Plato’s description of Atlantis.

6. The local stones are a match

The idea that Atlantis was an actual historical place, and not just a legend invented by Plato, didn’t surface until the late 19th century. In his 1882 book, Atlantis, the Antediluvian World, the writer Ignatius Donnelly argued the accomplishments of the ancient world (such as metallurgy, language and agriculture) must have been handed down by an earlier advanced civilization, as the ancients weren’t sophisticated enough to develop these advances on their own. Solon, Plato’s relative, was an Athenian statesman and poet who traveled to Egypt and learned about Atlantis first-hand. It’s these stories that Solon relayed to Plato. A video is making the rounds claiming “proof” that Atlantis existed in norther Africa. This video is by Jimmy from Bright Insight and it is an excellent example of crank pseudoscience. Jimmy has made himself into a social media brand, with lots of conspiracy and pseudohistory nonsense to sell, but let’s focus on this one video for now. It is also significant that there is absolutely no evidence of a city in the Richat structure 12,000 years ago. Plato wrote about an advanced large city. Where is the archaeological evidence of the civilization that built Atlantis? Where are the remains of a city’s worth of artifacts, of the technology, even a shard of clay pot, something? There is no evidence of engineering, of actual walls, of any improvements to the natural structure. You simply cannot have an entire city and leave nothing behind.