UCHRONIA?-ATLANTIS REVEALED
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DISTINGUISHED
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The Younger Dryas event could not have destroyed all prehistoric civilizations!
by CHRISTOS A. DJONIS
Recently, I have watched an interview of two renown authors (Graham Hancock & Dr. Robert Schoch) discussing the Younger Dryas hypothesis. Both agreed, more or less, that a meteor impact in North America during our prehistory may have been the event that ultimately destroyed every prehistoric civilization on the planet (including that of Atlantis.) Since, I emailed to both the following letter (see below), not only to debate their particular meteor hypothesis but also to offer an alternative explanation that is based primarily on established scientific research. As a fellow author, I also agree that humans have advanced much earlier than previously thought (in fact, that is the basis of my book). On the other hand, my research, which concluded with the detection of an underwater landmass, one that matches Plato's description of Atlantis, led me to a different and more down to earth conclusion. While theories such as the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis may ultimately prove to be more rousing as well as entertaining, sometimes traditional scientific work, when available, works just as well when trying to piece together a historical puzzle!
Dear Graham,
I am a fellow author. My recent book "Uchronia? - Atlantis Revealed" touches on several controversial topics including Plato's Atlantis.
I have recently watched your discussion with Dr. Schoch in regards to Solar Radiation, Comets and Lost Civilizations, including that of Atlantis. Although I have the same opinion as you that humans have advanced much earlier than previously thought, with all due respect, I disagree with you and Dr. Schoch on the "Younger Dryas" hypothesis as being the cause that destroyed early human civilizations around the planet, especially that of Atlantis. Unlike your conclusion on the subject, which seem to revolved around speculative prehistoric civilizations that were ultimately destroyed by a meteor or due to the effects of the impact afterwards, my research and conclusions as noted in my book revolve around a real site I have discovered after four years of research.
In-depth analysis of Plato's text directed me to look for Atlantis in the Mediterranean Sea. There, 400 feet below sea level lie a prehistoric island that flawlessly matches Plato's Atlantis. I am sure you will agree that any credible discovery on Atlantis should be accompanied with a real site that in every way matches Plato's physical description. Without a matching site at hand, all proposals, no matter how "credible" or believable they appear to be, in the end, are just speculations. Indeed, over the last several decades, although we had several such proclaimed discoveries and scientific projects on Atlantis (some more scientific in nature than others), in the end, none of them produced a matching site. The closest we ever came in the past to have anything tangible on Atlantis was when archaeologists proposed that Santorini and the Minoans could have been what Plato was talking about. A huge problem with the original Santorini hypothesis, however (as with the case of many other theories), is that Plato's given chronology of 9600 BC had to be discarded. There is another bigger problem with that theory, though. Santorini alone never perfectly matched Plato's entire description. While the island of Santorini matched the site where the crown city of Atlantis once stood (talking about the concentric rings of earth and water) the primary island of Atlantis, one Plato said was suppose to be 9 Km away, is missing from the particular Santorini setting of 1600 BC. So, when comparing the evidence from the original Santorini hypothesis to a winning lottery ticket, is like having only 3 out of 6 winning numbers. Not exactly a jackpot!
To avoid some of the problems associated with the story details, I started my research on Atlantis quite differently than others. While most researchers ignore Plato's given chronology of 9600 BC (given the fact that Athens, Egypt, and several other story details did not exist so early in time) I decided to set aside the story particulars (as those often could be fictional - see Homer's Troy for example) and focus on searching for a submerged island that had all physical characteristics given by Plato in the period of around 9600 BC. First, to ensure that the original meaning of the Greek story was not lost during translation, the English adaptation of Plato’s account was thoroughly compared to the Greek format which has a different syntactic structure. This evaluation revealed that simple errors and flawed interpretations by early translators led many researchers in the past to look for Atlantis in all the wrong places.
In all honesty, when I started my research I never thought in a thousand years that I would be lucky enough to find a matching place, but as it turned out, I did. The prehistoric super-island of the Cyclades Plateau matches Plato's description perfectly (see image attached below). The various regions are found to be in the right order and size as Plato claimed. Most importantly, though, there is the island of Santorini (an island within an island setting) which not only matches Plato's description but falls precisely 9 Km away from the primary island as Plato claimed. How significant is that? One by one, all the physical aspects described by Plato, including the volcanic geology as well as the flora and fauna, ALL point to a textbook match. Furthermore, archaeological artifacts in the immediate area also confirm that the super-island of the Cyclades Plateau was occupied by some "unknown" prehistoric civilization that predated the Minoans. Just as Plato depicted in his story, the Cyclades Plateau was ultimately lost to the sea during the rapid rise of the Mediterranean and just before the flooding of the Black Sea at around 8000 BC (See 2009 published study sponsored by UNESCO).
Plato's Atlantis
In contrast to the Younger Dryas Meteor Impact theory, an unsettled scientific study many proponents of Atlantis lately use to explain how Atlantis was lost, there is a more verifiable scientific explanation behind the flood that is said to have destroyed (the Cyclades Plateau) Plato's Atlantis. A study published in Science News (December 4, 2010) titled “Global Sea-Level Rise at the End of the Last Ice Age Interrupted by Rapid Jumps”, indicated that after the end of the last Ice Age (18000 BC), the period between 9000 BC to 7000 BC was characterized by abnormal sea level rise. In effect, as the glaciers began to melt over thousands of years prior to this period, and the temperatures progressively began to increase with each passing century, thus causing the melting process to accelerate, we can easily see why this must have been the most active period in sea-level rise. The absolute worst period was between 8500 BC - 8000 BC, the critical “flood cycle” that preceded the flooding of the Black Sea, which marked the end of this violent period. Around this time, in addition to the glacier meltwater that heavily flowed into the Atlantic, two enormous glacial lakes in North America burst open, first Lake Agassiz and later Lake Ojibway, and began to drain heavily into the northern Atlantic. Lake Agassiz alone, covering an area larger than all of the modern Great Lakes combined (440,000 square kilometers), at times it contained more water than all the lakes in the world today. It is estimated that the outburst flood caused by the collapse of Lake Agassiz alone may have been responsible for sea levels to rise globally by as much as nine feet. The total fresh water outflow from both lakes was so immense that not only quickly raised sea levels worldwide by several feet, but this incident and not a meteor impact was what caused the “8.2 kilo-year event” that followed approximately 8,200 years ago, a mini ice age that lasted up to four centuries. (Note: Recent studies suggest that Lake Agassiz was fully intact during the Younger Dryas period and could not have contributed into that event.)
According to the diagram above, the phenomenon associated with the Younger Dryas seem to have began at around 12900BC and ended at around 11600BC. Plato's given chronology on Atlantis, at 9600BC, and all other archaeological discoveries found so far (e.g. Gobekli Tepe, the submerged city off the coast of west India in the Gulf of Cambay, and others) all indicate that known human growth started at around 11500BC and immediately after the Younger Dryas period (in other words, the Younger Dryas phenomenon itself could not have disrupted this particular period of human development, especially the one Plato refer to as Atlantis).
Just like in the case of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, it only took few feet of water at the outset to turn the flat terrain of Atlantis (the Cyclades Plateau) into "a shoal of mud", as Plato depicted. Of course, unlike the flood from Katrina, this sudden global flood was irreversible. The oceans kept on rising for another 400 feet. This particular flood was the flood that destroyed Atlantis and scattered its people around the mountaintops of the surrounding islands or even further away as far as the Middle East". This worldwide deluge which ultimate swallowed millions of square miles around the globe is also what destroyed all early coastal civilizations around the planet (see submerged city off the coast of West India in the Gulf of Cambay) and the event that literally erased our early history.
While remnants of this relatively unknown Cycladic civilization, few thousand years later, helped give rise to the Minoans, those who escaped the inundation and fled eastwards into the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, eventually descended onto the Mesopotamian region to help give rise yet to another great civilization, like that of the Sumerians. The mysterious Proto-Eufratean people who came into the Mesopotamia from a region unknown, could be none other but Eastern Mediterranean refugees who brought with them their technological skills as well as the story of the Great Flood (see also a study published in Current Anthropology on December 2010, titled “New Light on Human Prehistory in the Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis,” by Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist and researcher with the United Kingdom’s University of Birmingham.)
This partial world map shows (in red) how much land was lost due to the rising seas from around 10000BC onward. All coastal civilizations on the planet were claimed by the rising seas. The rising seas after the end of the last Ice Age is what erased our early history and not the Younger Dryas "event" which preceded this period by more than a thousand years.
By the way, there is another unresolved scientific mystery that supports Plato's story and given chronology of 9600 BC and further validates that Plato's Atlantis (or whatever that civilization was called) emerged out of the Mediterranean. When Plato's text is properly translated (more details in my book on that), not only it places Atlantis in the Mediterranean at the doorstep of Greece, but at around 9600 BC, Plato explained the Atlantians were capable traveling outside the Pillars of Hercules and via island hopping were able to reach another grand island/continent on the other side of the Atlantic, one big enough that encircled the Atlantic Ocean. Which continent is located on the other side of the Atlantic across from the Pillars of Hercules, and is big enough to encompass the Atlantic Ocean from pole to pole. The American continent of course! The revelation of the Americas across the Atlantic was Plato's poetic attempt to illustrate the MIGHT of Atlantis and its capacity that stretched around the world to a "distant point" and another continent across the ocean. Then he proceeded to describe their audacious war like character and their plans to use that great power to insolently attack the whole Europe and Asia. Of course, Plato's revelation of America would have been a farfetched claim or a lucky guess, except that there is no better scientific explanation today in how Haplogroup X (a Mediterranean gene) found itself around the region of the Great Lakes twelve thousand years ago.
While the mainstream position today is that X must have followed the 4 Asian haplogroups via the Bering Strait, unfortunately, that explanation does not hold water. At first, if the X walked eastwards to North America, as we are told, we must ask why there are no traces of haplogroup X between southern Russia (the Altai Republic) and the region of the Great Lakes in North America, a span of several thousand miles (See Genetic Map of haplogroup X.)
Furthermore, if one European bloodline migrated to America on foot, why not more European bloodlines, out of at least a dozen, did not follow X via the same route? Finally, how do we explain that the highest concentration of Haplogroup X in North America exists around the Great Lakes, in essence, the east coast of the United States and not in Alaska or the west coast where according to science the X infiltrated America. Even more importantly, how else do we explain that high concentrations of X also exist in Scotland, the Orkney Islands, Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland, essentially every island stop on the way to America from Europe? In short, when you follow DNA migration patterns, it becomes clear that there was a migration to America from the region of the eastern Mediterranean and not the other way around. No traces of haplogroups A,B,C or D are found eastwards of the Americas to support the notion that ten thousand years ago people from the Americas, or another region of the Atlantic, was advancing on a regular basis against countries in the Mediterranean. While those who defend Plato's story seem to disagree with each other on just about everything, there is one thing for certain everyone agrees with. The Atlantians were crossing the Atlantic via island hopping, just as haplogroup X did. I believe the fact that Scotland, Orkney Islands, Faroe Islands and Greenland retain high traces of haplogroup X prove that may be something more to Plato's claim.
Genetic map of Haplogroup X
As a final point, having found Atlantis in the period of 9600 BC (Athens, Greece, and Egypt among other details of the story did not exist so early in time) it leaves no doubt that Plato based his story on a real setting and a prehistoric civilization known to ancient Greeks, which in order to successfully communicate some of his philosophical ideas (divine vs. human, ideal societies vs. corrupt,) he filled with familiar matter from later times, including details from the Minoan era of which he was more familiar with. The existence of a matching site at around 9600 BC, in essence, proves that Plato did exactly what Homer did with the ancient city of Troy 400 years earlier. (Homer's Iliad was an entirely fictional story that revolved around a real setting and a historical incident that took place 600 years before Homer himself.)
In conclusion, I wanted to say that if you are ever in the Atlanta area and wanted to discuss this further, please look me up.
Thank you,
Christos A. Djonis
