Summary

This article examines what is often called the Richat Structure Atlantis theory: the idea that Plato’s Atlantis corresponds to the Eye of the Sahara in Mauritania.

The central proposal is that the organisation of the Atlantean capital may be explained through the natural geology, habitat, and hydrology of the Richat Structure during the African Humid Period. A palaeolake within the basin may have hosted a large floating peat island, while the famous concentric canals described by Plato may have formed naturally from groundwater springs aligned with the structure’s concentric geology.

Beyond this physical model, the article also explores the full extend of Plato’s account, including textual interpretation of the city’s layout, the chronology of the Atlantean war to the extinctual flood, the viability of the fertile plain, and the possible extent of the Atlantean empire.

Introduction

Taken together, these elements suggest that Plato’s account may preserve evidence for a prehistoric cultural centre that emerged in North West Africa.

Genetic evidence has shown that early farming populations from the Levant expanded widely during the early Holocene. These groups mixed with indigenous populations in North Africa and Europe, contributing substantially to the ancestry of modern populations. Today, ancestry derived from these near eastern farmers forms a significant component of the genomes of both North Africans and Europeans.

These populations are known to have migrated westwards into North Africa during this period, but the full extent of their movement across the Sahara during the African Humid Period remains unknown.

This article explores the possibility that Atlantis relates to the city and later regional influence of a group of early farming peoples from the Levant, possibly related to the Natufian or early Neolithic populations of the Fertile Crescent. These peoples may have migrated deep into North West Africa during the African Humid Period in around 7500 BC.

Plato’s unusually detailed geographical description allows these idea to be examined in a systematic way.

Information from Plato.

The only descriptive account of Atlantis comes to us from Plato. Plato describes the account as originating from a shared relative of himself and Critias seven generations back, the famous statesman Solon. Plato describes Solon receiving the story in note form from Egypt during a visit, with the intension of setting it into an epic poem.

This is the only in-depth account we receive of Atlantis, nonetheless other classical era sources succeeding Plato weigh in on the topic, all of which corroborate the validity of Plato’s account with some providing snippets of additional information. These sources are:

• Crantor of Soli ~400BC – provides the name of the temple and priest Solon visited
• Poseidonius (Cicero’s teacher) ~200BC – states Atlantis was also called Poseidonis
• Strabo ~0AD – validates the account
• Pliny ~0AD – validates the account
• Diodorus Siculus ~0AD – provides a detailed account of the colonisation of Atlantis by the Amazons
• Claudius Aelianus ~200AD – provides a description of the royal Atlantean dress sourced from accounts from peoples of ‘Okeanos’
• Arobius, Ammianus Marcellinus, Syrianus ~400AD – validates the account
• Proclus ~400AD – validates the account

Plato’s account includes a description of:

• A war
• Atlantis the island city
• Atlantis the island country
• Atlantis the empire of kingdoms
• the demise of the city

The use of the same term, ‘Atlantis’, to describe city, country and empire has been the cause of confusion and the text requires the use of context to understand which term Plato is referring to at points. Nonetheless, the account is precise and can be even be broadly codified into the following descriptive statements:

[Notes: Rather than sea/lake and ocean I have left the original Greek words ‘thalassa’ and ‘pontos’. Sizes are translated using 185m = 1 Stadion]

War description:

• 9000 years before Solon/Plato
• Between “all those who dwelt within the Pillars of Hercules (the Mediterranean) and those who dwelt beyond the Pillars of Hercules”

Country description:

• Island (nesos also is also used for areas that require arrival by water even if constrained by geographic features beyond water)
• Larger extent than Libya and Asia (Minor)
• At/outside the Strait of Gibraltar (“pro the Pillars of Heracles”)
• Islands are placed between Atlantis and America (“from Atlantis you could sail to other islands and from these to the continent beyond which surrounds the true pontos”)
• Country was lofty and precipitous on the side of the thalassa.
• Described as the “Land under the sun”
• Mountains to the north of the plain “celebrated for number, size, and beauty,”
• Mountains descend towards the thalassa.
• Climate allowed for two harvests per year.
• Elephants were present in great number.
• Gold and red ‘orichalcum’ (copper alloy) were abundant.

City description:

• The inner citadel comprised of three canalized rings of water followed by a large ring of inhabited land surrounded by a citadel wall, all dimensioned. The complete diameter comes to 127 stadia (or 23.5km).
• Bridges connected zones leaving room for a trireme.
• The citadel was surrounded by a habitable zone of 50 stadia (9.25km) distance all around, busy with merchants of different languages day and night.
• This habitable zone was surrounded by wall coated in bronze itself surrounded by the Thalassa.
• There is another wall between the two walls coated in tin.
• The city was built with white, black, and red stone quarried from its bedrock.
• The center of the citadel contained temple and hot and cold springs.
• The city contained a race track with horses.

Fertile plain:

• Towards the thalassa, the middle of the land
• Around the city is a large, flat, fertile plain of an oblong shape, with dimensions 555 x 370km.
• The plain extended from the thalassa to the centre of the island.
• This whole region lies on the south side of the island (north side isn’t mentioned but from this description we can assume it should be at least the same size again)
• The plain contained a circular ditch, 1,850km long, receiving streams from the mountains “winding round the plain” before “touching the city at various points was let off into the thalassa”.
• The plain contained a circular ditch, 1,850km long, receiving streams from the mountains “winding round the plain” before “touching the city at various points was let off into the thalassa”.
• 1.85×1.85km areas allotted out to families. Total would be ~60,000.

Empire description:

• Founded by a race born of Poseidon and Cleito
• First kings called Atlas
• These kingdoms extend through ‘Gades’ (Cadiz) up to Tyrrhenia and Egypt
• Atlantis’s race was eventually diluted by mortal admixture and corrupted

Demise:

• Ended in a day and a night due to being covered by and sinking into an thalassa.
• This consequent mud prevented passage for boats sailing from Atlantis to the ocean from this time thereafter. ([Critias 108e]“an impassable barrier of mud to voyagers sailing from hence”)

As can be seen, even condensed into thirty three key descriptive statements there is a lot to understand but it’s important to assess a theory against the full extent of information we are provided with.

Chapter 1: The War

Chronology

This is quite a textual chapter but it’s essential to the narrative.

I had long assumed that the sinking of Atlantis was said to date to 9600 BC. This is very commonly asserted because it’s the only date we receive and because there is an alignment with this date to Meltwater Pulse-1B when sea levels rose, which seems like a convenient flooding means but this is not what the text says.

This 9600 BC date is the date of the war between “all those beyond the Pillars of Hercules” and those “within the Pillars of Hercules” and this is a separate event said to have happened in a time before, even, the creation the full Atlantean empire and also before the subsequent flooding event.

Let’s go through why.

These are the crucial parts of text mentioning the war and the timings:

Timaeus

[25b] Λιβύης μὲν ἦρχον μέχρι πρὸς Αἴγυπτον, τῆς δὲ Εὐρώπης μέχρι Τυρρηνίας. αὕτη δὴ πᾶσα συναθροισθεῖσα εἰς ἓν ἡ δύναμις τόν τε παρ’ ὑμῖν καὶ τὸν παρ’ ἡμῖν καὶ τὸν ἐντὸς τοῦ στόματος πάντα τόπον μιᾷ ποτὲ ἐπεχείρησεν ὁρμῇ δουλοῦσθαι. τότε οὖν ὑμῶν, ὦ Σόλων, τῆς πόλεως ἡ δύναμις εἰς ἅπαντας ἀνθρώπους διαφανὴς ἀρετῇ τε καὶ ῥώμῃ ἐγένετο: πάντων γὰρ προστᾶσα εὐψυχίᾳ καὶ τέχναις ὅσαι κατὰ πόλεμον,

[25c] τὰ μὲν τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἡγουμένη, τὰ δ’ αὐτὴ μονωθεῖσα ἐξ ἀνάγκης τῶν ἄλλων ἀποστάντων, ἐπὶ τοὺς ἐσχάτους ἀφικομένη κινδύνους, κρατήσασα μὲν τῶν ἐπιόντων τρόπαιον ἔστησεν, τοὺς δὲ μήπω δεδουλωμένους διεκώλυσεν δουλωθῆναι, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους, ὅσοι κατοικοῦμεν ἐντὸς ὅρων Ἡρακλείων, ἀφθόνως ἅπαντας ἠλευθέρωσεν. ὑστέρῳ δὲ χρόνῳ σεισμῶν ἐξαισίων καὶ κατακλυσμῶν γενομένων, μιᾶς

[25b]“They ruled over Libya as far as Egypt, and over Europe as far as Tyrrhenia.
And this entire power, gathered together into one, once attempted in a single assault to enslave both your land and ours, and all the region within the mouth (of the sea).
Then, O Solon, the power of your city became manifest to all mankind in excellence and strength: for it surpassed all others in courage and in the arts of war…”

[25c]“Leading the Greeks on the one side, but later standing alone through necessity when the others had withdrawn, and having come to the utmost dangers, she [Athens] defeated the invaders and set up a trophy of victory. She prevented those who had not yet been enslaved from becoming enslaved, and she freely liberated all the rest of us who dwell within the boundaries of the Pillars of Heracles.
But afterwards, at a later time, when extraordinary earthquakes and floods occurred, in a single…” […day and a night all the Athenian warriors were swallowed by the earth and the Island of Atlantis likewise disappeared into the sea]

Critias:

[108e] πάντων δὴ πρῶτον μνησθῶμεν ὅτι τὸ κεφάλαιον ἦν ἐνακισχίλια ἔτη, ἀφ’ οὗ γεγονὼς ἐμηνύθη πόλεμος τοῖς θ’ ὑπὲρ Ἡρακλείας στήλας ἔξω κατοικοῦσιν καὶ τοῖς ἐντὸς πᾶσιν: ὃν δεῖ νῦν διαπεραίνειν. τῶν μὲν οὖν ἥδε ἡ πόλις ἄρξασα καὶ πάντα τὸν πόλεμον διαπολεμήσασα ἐλέγετο, τῶν δ’ οἱ τῆς Ἀτλαντίδος νήσου βασιλῆς, ἣν δὴ Λιβύης καὶ ̓Ασίας μείζω νῆσον οὖσαν ἔφαμεν εἶναί ποτε, νῦν δὲ ὑπὸ σεισμῶν δῦσαν ἄπορον πηλὸν τοῖς ἐνθένδε ἐκπλέουσιν

[109a] ἐπὶ τὸ πᾶν πέλαγος, ὥστε μηκέτι πορεύεσθαι, κωλυτὴν παρασχεῖν. τὰ μὲν δὴ πολλὰ ἔθνη βάρβαρα, καὶ ὅσα Ἑλλήνων ἦν γένη τότε, καθ’ ἕκαστα ἡ τοῦ λόγου διέξοδος οἷον ἀνειλλομένη τὸ προστυχὸν ἑκασταχοῦ δηλώσει: τὸ δὲ Ἀθηναίων τε τῶν τότε καὶ τῶν ἐναντίων, οἷς διεπολέμησαν, ἀνάγκη κατ’ ἀρχὰς διελθεῖν πρῶτα, τήν τε δύναμιν ἑκατέρων καὶ τὰς πολιτείας. αὐτῶν δὲ τούτων τὰ τῇδε ἔμπροσθεν προτιμητέον εἰπεῖν.

[108e] First of all we must recall the main point: that nine thousand years had passed since the war is said to have occurred between those dwelling outside the Pillars of Heracles and all those living within them.
This war must now be described.

“It was said that this city—Athens—took the lead of the one side and fought through the entire war; while the leaders of the other side were the kings of the island of Atlantis, which we said was once an island greater than Libya and Asia together.

But now this island, having sunk because of earthquakes, has become an impassable mass of mud for those sailing out from here,

[109a] preventing passage to the whole pelagos, so that it is no longer possible to travel there.

The many barbarian peoples, and whatever tribes of Greeks existed at that time, will each be revealed in the course of the story as the narrative unfolds wherever they happen to arise.

But it is necessary first to describe from the beginning the Athenians of that time and their opponents against whom they fought—both the power of each side and their political systems.

And among these matters we must first give priority to describing those that concern our own people here.”

Analysis

Firstly, on timings, we’re informed in the Timaeus passages that the floods happened at a later time than the war.

ὑστέρῳ δὲ χρόνῳ

“But afterwards, at a later time..”

and within the Critias the war continues to be treated as an event that happened in the past with the sinking later.

νῦν δὲ 

“But now..”

From this we can see there is a time interval of some unknown length between these events.

Returning to this time interval in a moment.

There is an odd discrepancy in the accounts regarding the territory of Egypt.

In the Timaeus we’re told that Atlantis ruled Parts of Europe as far as Italy and Egypt, and in the same breath, we’re then told that this power attempted to enslave Greece and Egypt and all the land within the Mediterranean basin.

This makes some sense on it’s own; if they had a strong foothold in the West Mediterranean already they might have wanted to take the rest, the mention of simultaneously having Egypt and attempting to capture Egypt could maybe be glossed over.

However, in the Critias we’re given a contrasting account, we’re told the war was between those who dwell outside the Pillars of Hercules and all those who dwell within the Pillars of Heracles.

“a war is said to have occurred between those dwelling outside the Pillars of Heracles and all those living within them.”

From other parts of the text we know that Plato is referring to the Strait of Gibraltar as the Pillars of Hercules, so all those who dwelt within them must include all of the Mediterranean basin. This is completely different to the previous passage which gives the impression that Atlantis was at the height of it’s power when attacking; already controlling territory up to Italy and Egypt but here we’re told that they’re not even within the Mediterranean and the war was actually between everyone within the Mediterranean, on one side, and those from outside the Mediterranean on the other side.

I think Plato himself doesn’t fully know the sequence of events and therefore is attempting to piece together what he has been told into a coherent narrative, and therefore had assumed Atlantis developed somewhat before a war broke out. However, I think it’s telling that in the Critias narrative where he writes “a war is said to have occurred between..” this is phrased as if he has had to just pass on what he has been told, in the phrasing it has been told, even though he doesn’t fully understand what he it writing.

In re-reading the Timaes passage we can see that actually the extent of the empire at the time of the war is not stated, these are two facts are merely pushed together into a sentence:

• a war happened between the Kings of Atlantis and Athens
• Atlantis once had an extend up to Italy and Egypt

These are two separate facts, Plato doesn’t claim that both these events happened at the same time presumably because he didn’t know, instead I think he put them together in a sentence because these are the two pieces of information he has.

Plato also tells us that the Atlantean power sets off from the Atlantikos Pelagos.

[Timaeus 24e] ἔξωθεν ὁρμηθεῖσαν ἐκ τοῦ Ἀτλαντικοῦ πελάγους.

“This power came forth out of the Atlantikos Pelagos,”

If it is true that the war was between people inside vs outside the Mediterranean, then here, we might this is an instance where Plato has made an assumption, because it would not make sense for a new force entering the Mediterranean from the west to travel to the far east side to attack Attica (Greece) and Egypt. Why wouldn’t they have first attacked, conquered and settled Spain and France and Italy?

Similarly, I think Plato made an assumption when stating the combatants were the “Kings of Atlantis” because it doesn’t quite make sense for them to be the kings before they had their Mediterranean kingdom.

There is a bombshell conclusion we’re reaching here. This fabled war that happened in 9600 BC just so happens to coincide with the same 9600 BC date that Anatolian Neolithic Farmers (ANFs) are found to have migrated from the Fertile Crescent into the Levant establishing settlements on the east Mediterranean coast there, we know this from the farming evidence we discover in that region at this time.

It makes a lot of sense to conclude that this arrival of ANFs and their displacement of the indigenous Hunter Gatherers (HGs) would have sparked conflict and war, and that this is the great pivotal war that is remembered.

Why would they be remembered as Atlanteans?

Perhaps these ANFs were remembered as being the Atlanteans because it was this group that did eventually found Atlantis. After giving up on displacing the HGs in Attica they perhaps redirected to settle Egypt and North Africa and as the African Humid Period ramped up they may have moved down into the new fertile regions, founded Atlantis and then from here have built their kingdom, colonising Spain, France and Italy.

Other interesting details from the text

A quirk of the account is that Plato states that he’ll tell us about various primitive people of this time but simply never gets back around to it.

“The many barbarian peoples, and whatever tribes of Greeks existed at that time”

However, this does at least suggest a time before the farming takes hold corroborating the 9600 BC date.

Another important detail is that both Attica and Atlantis were flooded by the same rain event. I was ignorant of this fact before but whatever caused this massive climatic rain event affected both Atlantis down in Mauritania as well as up into Europe.

Plato tells us that this flooding of Attica happened when it was ruled by “people sprung from the earth”, aka Hunter Gatherers (HGs).

It is Attica that is said to have been so badly flooded that much of the mud was scourged from the land rendering it less favourable to the local people, the HGs, after this they left for better pastures leaving only scattered peoples in the mountains with little memory of their past. This event is also said to have taken place before the flood of Deucalion (the Black Sea Deluge, separate article) so before 5600 BC.

This is shown in the extracts below:

[Critias 109d] τὸ γὰρ περιλειπόμενον ἀεὶ γένος, ὥσπερ καὶ πρόσθεν ἐρρήθη, κατελείπετο ὄρειον καὶ ἀγράμματον, τῶν ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ δυναστῶν τὰ ὀνόματα ἀκηκοὸς μόνον καὶ βραχέα πρὸς αὐτοῖς τῶν ἔργων. τὰ μὲν οὖν ὀνόματα τοῖς ἐκγόνοις ἐτίθεντο

[Critias 109d] “For the race that remained, as was said before, was always left living in the mountains and without writing, hearing only the names of the rulers who had once been in the land, and knowing little besides of their deeds.”

[Critias 112a] τότε οὐχ ὡς τὰ νῦν ἔχει. νῦν μὲν γὰρ μία γενομένη νὺξ ὑγρὰ διαφερόντως γῆς αὐτὴν ψιλὴν περιτήξασα πεποίηκε, σεισμῶν ἅμα καὶ πρὸ τῆς ἐπὶ Δευκαλίωνος φθορᾶς τρίτου πρότερον ὕδατος ἐξαισίου γενομένου: τὸ δὲ πρὶν ἐν ἑτέρῳ χρόνῳ μέγεθος μὲν ἦν πρὸς τὸν Ἠριδανὸν καὶ τὸν Ἰλισὸν ἀποβεβηκυῖα καὶ περιειληφυῖα ἐντὸς τὴν Πύκνα καὶ τὸν Λυκαβηττὸν ὅρον ἐκ τοῦ καταντικρὺ τῆς Πυκνὸς ἔχουσα, γεώδης δ’ ἦν πᾶσα καὶ πλὴν ὀλίγον ἐπίπεδος ἄνωθεν.

[Critias 112a] “First, the Acropolis of Athens was not as it is now.

For now a single night of extraordinary rain washed away the soil and left it bare, accompanied by earthquakes and an extraordinary flood occurring before the destruction in the time of Deucalion.

But formerly, in another age, its size extended as far as the rivers Eridanus River and Ilissus River, enclosing within it the hill of Pnyx, and having as its boundary Mount Lycabettus opposite the Pnyx.

The whole area was composed of earth and was level on top, except for a small portion.“

The abandonment of Attica would have created a vacuum finally allowing the ANFs to move in, as farming can be sustained on less naturally verdant land. We see evidence of ANFs moving into this area in 6700 BC. This then perhaps is a good proxy for the time shortly after the major flooding event that made the land less verdant happened, this being the same date as sinking of Atlantis, just prior to 6700 BC.

This is not in contradiction to Plato, as stated before, the only date we receive is the date of the prior war in 9600 BC before the arriving farmers from Mesopotamia even had a foothold in the Mediterranean.

Chapter 2: The City

Mapping Plato’s measurements of the city using the typically agreed conversion of 1 Greek Stadion to 185m results in the following diagram:

As can be seen, there is an inner citadel, an acropolis (ἀκρόπολις), this includes one of the most memorable features of the city the three ringed canals or harbours, this is surrounded by a wall (plated in orichalcum (copper alloy)) itself surrounded by a massive habitable zone spanning 9.25km from the inner citadel, this zone contains a wall (plated in tin) and is surrounded by a wall (plated in brass). This final wall is meets at a thalassa (θάλασσα), a term which is explained in the next section. A channel connects the thalassa to the third harbour/ringed canal through the habitable zone.

Already this configuration is contentions. The three walls shown in the habitable zone outside the inner city are most commonly shown inside the inner city. This error is due to a couple of textual misinterpretations and assumptions, understanding why involves a deep, nerdy dive into the text which we’ll do in a following section but first it’s important to understand what is meant by thalassa.

Pelagos, pontos, thalassa

Ancient Greek terms for sea include pelagos, pontos, thalassa and oceanos, Plato uses pelagos, pontos and thalassa in his account. The lists below name which bodies of water each of these terms were used for by Ancient Greek writers.

The headings denote a commonality to each water body list. Pelagos implies coastal water, pontos an expansive or uncertain body of water and thalassa a saline and enclosed body of water. It is important to note that thalassa was also a term used for salty lakes such as Lake Van, the Sea of Galilee and Lake Mareotis.

In Plato’s account there is only one mention of pontos, three mentions of pelagos, and the rest of the mentions are to thalassa. Below are instances from Timeus and Critias that stand out for including seas other than the thalassa connecting to the city:

ἔξωθεν ὁρμηθεῖσαν ἐκ τοῦ Ἀτλαντικοῦ πελάγους. τότε γὰρ πορεύσιμον ἦν τὸ ἐκεῖ πέλαγος·

“This power came forth out of the Atlantikos Pelagos, for in those days the Atlantikos Pelagos was navigable..”

An unknown coastal sea is termed: Atlantikos Pelagos

[Timaeus 24e-25a] ἐξ ἧς ἐπιβατὸν ἐπὶ τὰς ἄλλας νήσους τοῖς τότε ἐγίγνετο πορευομένοις, ἐκ δὲ τῶν νήσων ἐπὶ τὴν καταντικρὺ πᾶσαν ἤπειρον τὴν περὶ τὸν ἀληθινὸν ἐκεῖνον πόντον.

“..From it [Atlantis], passage was possible for those travelling at that time to the other islands, and from the islands to the entire continent lying opposite, which surrounds that true pontos.”

The Atlantic Ocean is termed: true pontos

 [Timaeus 25a] τάδε μὲν γάρ, ὅσα ἐντὸς τοῦ στόματος οὗ λέγομεν, φαίνεται λιμὴν στενόν τινα ἔχων εἴσπλουν

“.. For these regions here—everything within the strait of which we speak—appear like a harbour having a somewhat narrow entrance”

The Mediterranean Sea isn’t actually termed with a sea here, although commonly in other work the Mediterranean is referred to as a thalassa. The comparison of the Mediterranean to a harbour supports the true pontos being a reference to the Atlantic Ocean.

 [Timaeus 25a] ἐκεῖνο δὲ πέλαγος ὄντως ἥ τε περιέχουσα αὐτὸ γῆ παντελῶς ἀληθῶς ὀρθότατ’ ἂν λέγοιτο ἤπειρος.

“..but that expanse there is truly a pelagos, and the land that surrounds it could most rightly and accurately be called a continent in the fullest sense.”

Here, confusingly, Plato refers back to the pontos as now instead a ‘pelagos’, conflating pontos and pelagos. To my reading this implies that the boundary between the coastal pelagos sea and true pontos Atlantic Ocean is undefined and that the pelagos is interchangeable with pontos possibly because it continues out indefinitely.

τῷ μὲν πρεσβυτάτῳ καὶ βασιλεῖ τοῦτο οὗ δὴ καὶ πᾶσα ἡ νῆσος τό τε πέλαγος ἔσχεν ἐπωνυμίαν, Ἀτλαντικὸν λεχθέν, ὅτι τοὔνομ’ ἦν τῷ πρώτῳ βασιλεύσαντι

“But all names were given to him who was the eldest and king of this place, and the whole island, and the pelagos, were called Atlantic, because it was the same as the first king.”

The pelagos is named Atlantic (meaning ‘of Atlas’) after Atlas, the first king.

ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς χαλεπῆς ἐπελθούσης, τό τε παρ’ ὑμῖν μάχιμον πᾶν ἁθρόον ἔδυ κατὰ γῆς, ἥ τε Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος ὡσαύτως κατὰ τῆς θαλάττης δῦσα ἠφανίσθη: διὸ καὶ νῦν ἄπορον καὶ ἀδιερεύνητον γέγονεν τοὐκεῖ πέλαγος, πηλοῦ κάρτα βραχέος ἐμποδὼν ὄντος, ὃν ἡ νῆσος ἱζομένη παρέσχετο.

“After a single terrible day and night had come upon them, all your warriors sank together into the earth, and the island of Atlantis likewise sank beneath the thalassa and vanished. For this reason that pelagos is even now impassable and unexplorable, because very shallow mud obstructs it — mud which the island, as it settled, supplied.”

Reference to the city sinking into a thalassa and thus a palagos becoming impassable

translations from ChatGPT

What can we say from this? Firstly, Plato refers to open Atlantic Ocean only as an unnamed ‘true pontos’ (expansive body of water). It is clear Pontos is used to refer to the Atlantic Ocean in this passage given the description of the thalassa Mediterranean Sea as “only a certain narrow harbour” in comparison. There’s also a description of what sounds like America as the continent beyond.

Plato’s use of the name Atlantikos Pelagos must refer to a coastal sea within this Atlantic Pontos, as Pelagos are always coastal.

Interestingly, prior to Plato, Herodotus referred to the Ocean of the Atlantic as the ‘Atlantis Thalassa’ using the same Ancient Greek word that Plato uses for Atlantis, Ἀτλαντὶς. In the context of Herodotus, when paired with thalassa, Atlantis means ‘of Atlas’. Whereas Atlantikos is inferred to mean ‘of the Atlantic’.

Plato’s use of pelagos rather than thalassa indicates a regional, coastal sea rather than the full pontos/thalassa of the Atlantic Ocean. The context of this passage is to say the Atlantean fleet came forth from this sea and that this sea was once navigable. Had Plato meant the sea were separated by the open ocean the fleet would have needed to navigate through this pontos as well and therefore the pontos should have been described as once navigable as well, not just the pelagos. To me this is suggestive that there is a direct connection between the Atlantikos Pelagos and the Pillars of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar).

The rest of the references are made to the body of water immediately around the city of Atlantis opposed to the country, these are all termed as a thalassa. This is a reference to an enclosed body of salty water, and because the Atlantic is termed differently as pontos this thalassa must be outside the Atlantic, as thalassas do not occur within other seas and oceans such as pelagos and pontos can. Most relevantly to the Richat, they are also, on occasion, salty or brackish lakes.

Walls of the city

If you search for diagrams of Atlantis you’ll find that there’s a lack of consistency with exactly how the walls are placed, most often three walls are shown inside the inner city, in front or behind zones of water, with an additional outer wall surrounding the full city.

This is an error and partially the result of another translational error, the placement of the acropolis. In this section we examine Plato’s placement and description of the walls and the acropolis.

Left: Conventional organisation of Atlantis, placing walls between inner rings with a separate outer wall

Right: Corrected organisation of Atlantis with the three walls outside the central rings

The acropolis initially crops up right at the beginning of the Critias during which Plato is describing the founding, origin story that the Atlanteans had towards the creation of their city. Poseidon falls in love with the earth born woman Clieto and makes love with her, where he finds her living on a small hill in the centre of the island, the hill is described as being 50 stadia from the thalassa and as being turned into an acropolis by Poseidon when he carved the signature rings around this hill. This detail of the original hill being 50 stadia from the thalassa is the first indication of where the the position of the acropolis is, as later on in the text we’re told that the outer zone of water of the inner city is also 50 stadia from the thalassa, therefore immediately is would appear that the outer habour of water marks the edge of this original hill acropolis.

We then pass through a lot of description before encountering a mention of the walls or acropolis again. Plato has just finished describing the sizes of the zones of land and water before making this statement:

[Critias 116a] ἡ δὲ νῆσος, ἐν ᾗ τὰ βασίλεια ἦν, πέντε σταδίων τὴν διάμετρον εἶχεν. ταύτην δὴ κύκλῳ καὶ τοὺς τροχοὺς καὶ τὴν γέφυραν πλεθριαίαν τὸ πλάτος οὖσαν ἔνθεν καὶ ἔνθεν λιθίνῳ περιεβάλλοντο τείχει, πύργους καὶ πύλας ἐπὶ τῶν γεφυρῶν κατὰ τὰς τῆς θαλάττης διαβάσεις ἑκασταχόσε ἐπιστήσαντες.

[Critias 116a] “the island, in which the royal palace was, had a diameter of five stadia. This, then, and the rings, and the bridge (being a plethrum in width), they surrounded on both sides with stone wall(s), placing towers and gates upon the bridges at each of the passages of the sea.”

Importantly, sometime nouns in Ancient Greek can be either plural or singular so it reads as “a stone wall” or “stone walls”. This is where confusions have arisen, as all current translations translate the passage to the singular “a stone wall”.

However, the nouns for bridge and towers are specified as either plural or singular, and the terms for bridges are very illuminating. Firstly, Plato describes the central island and surrounding rings, and a singular γέφυραν (bridge), as being surrounded by wall(s). This is important as had the wall(s) and gate towers and bridge been within these rings it should instead be correct to state bridges as plural, unless the only bridge tower within the ringed inner city was the bridge tower of the very last wall.

Next we hear what the island, rings and single bridge are surrounded by; Plato says they are surrounded by γεφύρας (bridges) and πύργους (towers) specified as plural. Towers, ok, there would have been towers on either side of each opening so this information is not useful but multiple bridges wouldn’t make sense for a water channel passing through a single wall. Therefore this implies that we’re talking about multiple walls in general here. But we’ll return to this in a moment.

The passage also describes the wall(s) as “surrounding/enclosing” the rings. To me, this suggests the wall(s) are outside of the third ringed zone of water, but in fairness this is not definitive by this statement alone as it would still be possible for the walls to be between as well as around the zones. However, the following passage clarifies that they are indeed around the zones.

Plato now sets out to describe the walls in detail, stating:

[Critias 116b-c]καὶ τοῦ μὲν περὶ τὸν ἐξωτάτω τροχὸν τείχους χαλκῷ περιελάμβανον πάντα τὸν περίδρομον, οἷον ἀλοιφῇ προσχρώμενοι, τοῦ δʼ ἐντὸς καττιτέρῳ περιέτηκον, τὸν δὲ περὶ αὐτὴν τὴν ἀκρόπολιν ὀρειχάλκῳ μαρμαρυγὰς ἔχοντι πυρώδεις.

[Critias 116b-c] “And of the wall around the outermost ring they covered the whole circuit with bronze, as if applying an ointment; and the inner one they plated with tin; and the one around the acropolis itself with orichalcum having fiery gleams.”

Here, Plato is telling us that there are three different walls, with the inner wall enclosing the acropolis.

Plato follows a logic to his description; having first described an overview of the organisation of walls and their locations and gate towers collectively Plato then sets out to describe the specifics.

This justifies why it makes sense to interpret the first mention of “wall” as plural, not singular. Rather than singling out one wall for no apparent reason Plato is first describing them collectively in broad terms; made of stone, enclosing the city, each with a tower letting the channel to the thalassa pass through, before then describing the specific appearance of each. Ancient authors do this overview-then-specifics ordering frequently, this is important, as it helps us understand the logic of the description.

Also importantly, Plato hasn’t used the word acropolis since far earlier in the script to describe where Poseidon broke ground around Cleito, but this line assumes that we’re aware that there is an acropolis. It makes sense that the zones of land and water Plato had just finished describing are this acropolis.

Remaining on this passage, the conventional interpretation has been to assume the “outermost ring” is a reference to the outer zone of water of the inner city.

This is inconsistent with the references to the bands of water used previously, Plato instead always refers to them with διώρυξ (ditch) ζώνη (water) and/or θάλασσα (thalassa). Here, he uses τροχὸν alone, τροχὸν translates to wheel, circle, ring, course or circuit, it is a more general circular term and would be unconventional to how Plato has been referring to this zone of water, which makes it less likely that he is referring to the circuit of this zone of water here. The direct implication is that he’s referring to the outermost circuit of the city. We’ll return to this passage in a moment.

Next, Plato returns his focus to the inner city, the acropolis:

[Critias 117d] τὰ δὲ κατὰ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν βασίλεια ἐντὸς οὕτω κατεσκεύαστο.

[Critias 117d] “And the royal buildings at the acropolis inside were constructed thus.”

Having previously told us the sizes and positions of the ringed zones of water and land Plato now embarks on setting out the specifics, following the same overview-then-specifics ordering as with the walls. It’s important to note the language here, ἐντὸς literally meaning ‘within’, he is about to discuss the structures within the acropolis.

Plato then describes structures across all three inner ringed zones of land and water, these being:

• the central temple to Poseidon
• fountains
• altars
• bath houses (for both king and subjects)
• buildings about them
• suitable trees
• cisterns
• a stadium
• houses for body-guard

After this, to move on, Plato makes the following remark:

[Critias 117d] καὶ τὰ μὲν δὴ περὶ τὴν τῶν βασιλέων οἴκησιν οὕτω κατεσκεύαστο·

[Critias 117d] “And the arrangements concerning the royal palaces had thus been constructed”

Plato has just described, not only the temple on the central island, but structures across all three zones of land and water and to move on has now just labelled all of these as “royal palaces”.

These two beginning and end statements suggest that the acropolis encompasses all these structures and all zones of land and water, not only the very central island as has conventionally been assumed.

Let’s now return to Plato’s description of the walls, remember he states:

“and the [wall] around the acropolis itself with orichalcum having fiery gleams.”

If the acropolis includes all three zones of land and water this last, inner wall of orichalcum is clearly defined as being around the whole inner city.

However, most interpreters tended to assume that acropolis refers to only the central island with the temple to Poseidon, because most common instances of acropolises were elevated and of a certain small size, but not all, and the literal translation of acropolis as ‘higher city’ has metaphorical rather than literal meaning, a ‘spiritually higher’ precinct; it does not necessitate a raised, hilltop, precinct. Equally, although they tended to be a certain small size, much smaller than the 5km wide inner city of Atlantis, their sizes were relative to their surrounding urban city, and there is no size limit on acropolises. Atlantis, as a whole, was far bigger than ancient cities, therefore there is a logic that the central acropolis should be proportionally larger to match. Additionally, acropolises were not used exclusively for temples but all manner of buildings within an inner city, with pedestrian habitation typically being outside this area. Atlantis matches this organisation, the much larger habitable zone lies outside of the three inner ringed zones of water. This takes us to our last wall description:

[Critias 117e] τῆς θαλάττης ᾔειν ἐν κύκλῳ τεῖχος, πεντήκοντα σταδίους τοῦ μεγίστου τροχοῦ τε καὶ λιμένος ἀπέχον πανταχῇ, καὶ συνέκλειεν εἰς ταὐτὸν πρὸς τὸ τῆς διώρυχος στόμα τὸ πρὸς θαλάττης. τοῦτο δὴ πᾶν συνῳκεῖτο μὲν ὑπὸ πολλῶν καὶ πυκνῶν οἰκήσεων, ὁ δὲ ἀνάπλους καὶ ὁ μέγιστος λιμὴν ἔγεμεν πλοίων καὶ ἐμπόρων ἀφικνουμένων πάντοθεν, φωνὴν καὶ θόρυβον παντοδαπὸν κτύπον τε μεθ’ ἡμέραν καὶ διὰ νυκτὸς ὑπὸ πλήθους παρεχομένων.

[Critias 117e] “From the thalassa there ran a wall in a circle, fifty stadia distant everywhere from the largest ring and harbour, and it met together at the mouth of the canal on the thalassa side. And all this area was inhabited by many and densely packed dwellings; and the inlet and the greatest harbour were filled with ships and merchants arriving from every direction, producing voices and all kinds of noise and din by day and through the night because of the multitude.”

In this last passage Plato describes the outer wall of the three walls mentioned earlier. The wall encloses the full habitable zone which is a distance of 50 stadia (9.25km) from the last ringed zone of water, all around.

With this information we know the position of the outer-wall and, from the previous description, we know that the walls begin by encompassing of the zones of water with the inner wall surrounding this acropolis. Therefore the only wall we don’t know the position of is the second wall, but we do know that it is between the outer and the inner walls.

—

As a side note I’ve heard it argued that these walls couldn’t be outside of the inner rings because they are plated with different metals and it would require far too much metal to coat such large walls.

If we place the walls inside the rings, their circumferences would still come to 6km, 18km and 31km. In no scenario would any of these walls have been able to be fully coated in metal. Rather, I propose that it’s the towered entrances on each wall that you pass through as you precess into the city that are coated in different metals.

Comparing Atlantis to the Richat Structure

Theories connecting the Richat Structure to Atlantis have circulated online for a long time however not many have correctly observed the description Plato provides for the city, as shown again in the diagram below, and therefore most theories myopically focus on only the iconic, memorable inner citadel rings of water and have resorted to stretching the inner citadel to make it fit the rock ridges of the Richat. Below is a diagram of the Richat with subterranean structures labelled (these will come in relevant later) to matching scale beside the diagram of Plato’s city.

As can be seen comparisons are striking. The three stone circular ridges of the Richat are correctly sized to be the, often forgotten, three walls of the city of Atlantis, the inner citadel aligning entirely within the innermost ring of the Richat. The basin of the structure with salt deposits, if filled with water, would become an enclosed body of brackish water, a thalassa. And this was the case in the past, the Richat existed as a lake for millennia during the African Humid Period (see Chapter 2).

A problem occurs though, if the structure was a lake how could the area within the walls have remained a habitable zone? And how could the citadel and ringed harbours have formed in the centre if this was below water level?

This leads to an incredible logical corollary; the entire city was constructed on a floating island/mat of peat. Please bear with me and don’t abandon this article midway, I describe exactly how this works and actually how common this phenomenon is, later on. For now, take my word for it.

Combining the Richat with Plato’s description of the city along with this central peat structure and following George Sarantitis’ observation of the canal route through a gap in the second ring, we arrive at the following organisation:

Morphology and Hydrology of the Richat Structure

Alone, the surface-level alignment of the three stone ridged rings of the Richat with the three walls of Atlantis already makes a very strong case for this site as Atlantis but such speculation invites further inquiry. Can we find alignments to Plato’s rings of water in the morphology of the structure as well?

To start, let’s explore the structure beneath the surface, the geological morphology of the Richat Structure, and what this may imply about it’s groundwater hydrology.

The Richat Structure was caused by a magmatic uplift that bulged the earth’s crust millions of years ago, causing the different layers of rock to arch upwards, even cracking layers closer to the surface. Erosion then revealed these different layers like a slice through an onion.

Below is a geological diagram of the structure from:

Abdeina, E. H., Bazin, S., Chazot, G., Bertrand, H., Le Gall, B., Youbi, N., Sabar, M. S., Bensalah, M. K., & Boumehdi, M. A. (2021). Geophysical modelling of the deep structure of the Richat magmatic intrusion (northern Mauritania): insights into its kinematics of emplacement. Journal of African Earth Sciences, 43(1–3), 347–362.

The green circles denote what were initially considered dykes (cracks due to magma intrusion) but have been more recently considered stone cills; simply where harder layers of rock meet the surface. The black lines indicate assumed karsts (cracks formed by chemical dissolution of the rock) locations.

The whole structure is referred to as a hydro-alkaline complex given that the blue zone within the central green circle is a breccia (debris rock type) with up to 4m of this cracked rock at the surface formed by hydrothermal activity at some distant point in the past. The alkaline reference (of hydro-alkaline complex) is given due to the slight alkalinity of the rock.

Satellite imagery of the structure shows the presence of large evaporative salt flats as a bluey-white sheen, these can be seen in the lower areas of the basin. The white area across the mountains on the north west side of the plateau is from another past lake, however in this case the white marking comes from a combination of diatomaceous earth and salt.

The salt flats indicate these must have been at least a largely endorheic lake, aka it must have held water without leaking, this is because these salt flats form when a large amount of slightly saline water evaporates away. If water could have simply leaked out through the many karsts in the structure than these salt flats wouldn’t have been able to form. The salt remains water would have been slightly brackish, consistent with the term thalassa.

The cracks (karsts) are important to the hydrology of the structure as they create the potential for connected groundwater routes forming a subterranean aquifer (this type of aquifer known as a fracture aquifer) as well as acting as conduits for this water to daylight into the lake. It could therefore be hypothesised that a network of karsts were charged with rainwater from the flat, higher elevation of the surrounding sedimentary stone plateau, (which is about 50km x 100km in area).

This diagram below shows this hypothesised flow direction of groundwater. The diagram is exaggerated in the vertical axis to illustrate the arrangement of geological layers.

The above diagram shows a colour difference between brown and grey rock, the sedimentary/sandstone outer layers are shown in brown and the igneous core rock is shown in grey. These are important.

As igneous rock is less permeable it could therefore more effectively act as an aquitard trapping deep groundwater and channelling it through it’s layer contact boundaries.

Areomagnetics Plan. (Abdeina et al., 2021, Fig. 4)

The above magnetics plan shows the changes in magmatism. The colourful subsurface rings indicate layer contact boundaries in the bedrock, boundaries where groundwater could have emerged.

The outer stone ridge ring has no corresponding subsurface contact boundary but the next two rings do. Both of these colourful boundaries in the magnetics plan could have acted as favourable conduits for groundwater as the different layers leave small gaps for water to permeate. The inner ring is a contact boundary between igneous rock whilst the larger outer ring is a contact boundary between more permeable rock.

Returning to the previous diagram again, deep groundwater may become trapped below the igneous layers and directed into this centre ring to daylight.

With this water being directed from deep underground it may also have become thermally warmed.

The inner cill ring is referred to as the central karst-collapse breccia, a geological term for a vertical ringed crack.

There is an alignment in the size of Plato’s third ring of water and this central karst-collapse breccia. The full mechanism of how springs could have resulting in a ring of water will be explored in a moment but first let’s observe this alignment in more detail and also look for alignments of spring water for the first and second of Plato’s rings of water. 

The first 5km dimeter ring aligns with a different structure, it alignment the perimeter of the intrusive igneous core. This is a confirmed observed structure in the Richat; a past column spout of magma once emerged at the centre as a volcano to relieve pressure millions of years ago. The magma and volcano structure have since eroded away but the below ground vertical shaft remains as rock stratified in a vertical direction and, like the central karst-collapse breccia.

This is a simplistic diagram to explain what an intrusive igneous core is. This one has since been eroded almost flat almost there is still a small central hill.

Cracks would have formed along this past core following the vertical strata of the rock, and much like the vertical cracks within the layer contact boundaries these would have also acted as favourable conduits for groundwater. Springs emerging and flowing down off this central hill would therefore trickle into the position Plato provides for the first ring of water. Therefore, here we also find an alignment of spring water to the first ring, again assuming there was once groundwater emerging through these cracks.

The alignments to crack structures of these first two rings is clear and certain. The second (middle) ring’s alignment to springs is less observable. If this pattern of cracks matching Plato’s rings is correct it is worth using the data we have to test whether any third crack can be seen here. We’re looking for another layer contact boundary in the igneous layers of rock that meets the surface form another cill and water conduit for this intermediate ring. Like the first cill, the layer contact boundary would act as a preferential conduit for groundwater.

The diagrams below show both the topography and magnetics plans at the same scale to allow for observations between the two. When doing this we can see indications, albeit see subtle and non-definitive but nonetheless indications of this intermediate layer contact boundary.

I draw where I hypothesise an inner layer contact boundary ring could is hinted to be with the middle dashed lines on the image on the right. The other other dashed line being the known layer contact boundary of the central karst-collapse breccia and the grey circle in the centre being the hill of the intrusive igneous core.

Putting the hypothesis all together, the diagram below shows how we can assume groundwater would channel to each of these three zones to emerge as springs in the bedrock; the karst-collapse breccia vertical ring crack, the intermediate layer contact boundary ring and the intrusive igneous core.

Springs and Peat

It has now been shown how the topography of the Richat matches the three walls of Atlantis and how the subsurface cill structures align with Plato’s rings, and that springs might have emerged at these cill locations but I haven’t explained how springs could have caused the matching clear water zones to occur within a peat mat above, or why there should even be a surface of peat on this paleolake.

Why and how would peat accumulate here? And how would springs have created the signature ringed canals?

 

Peat

Peat is a term for the accumulation of half decayed or undecayed plant matter. It is most commonly found as an organic layer on the surface of lakes or marshes and can over time become incredibly deep. In fact, it can be one of the fastest forms of organic matter accumulation with some peat bogs able to exceed 2mm of gain per year.

The phenomenon is triggered when certain habitat conditions are met and then, to a degree, self perpetuates through feedback loops. The key is for there to be a discrepancy between the rate of new plant growth and the rate of decomposition; growth high, decomposition low.

Decomposition rates are naturally lowered when conditions are acidic, anoxic and/or cold, as all of these reduce bacteria grow. Once a peat bog has initiated, the backlog of slow decaying matter produces acid and uses up oxygen, these conditions exacerbate if water is stagnant. A surface mat of peat can then further reduce water’s ability to dissolve new oxygen from air contact. Thus, a shift into a peat dominated system is intensified. 

 

The Effect of Spring Water on Peat

Spring water is often more oxygen depleted and can also be colder than rainwater. The colder temperature is due to evaporative loss of heat during the process of seeping into the earth and the loss of oxygen is due to the water’s oxidation of rocks whilst it’s flowing underground. Therefore, spring water can act as a catalyst for the formation of peat.

There is an example of this very phenomenon happening in a lake in Italy, Lake Posta Fibreno. The lake is broadly stagnant but receives cold spring water, this has resulted in the formation of a 4m deep, 30m wide floating peat island supporting a small woodland. The top 1m of the island formed in the last 50 years ago. Granted, this layer isn’t true, dense peat but rather a spongy mass of S. palustre moss, but still nonetheless demonstrates the speed of potential matter accumulation.

 

A Lake in and the Richat

Before moving on to its potential habitat for peat, we should first further establish the evidence we have that the Richat was indeed a lake. As I mentioned earlier on there are clear salt flats within the structure, to elaborate on this the salt is chemically and nutritionally distinct from seawater salt deposits, of which there are some in the Sahara from an ancient sea millions of years ago. The salt here shows clear signs of being an evaporative lake deposit. 

Other evidence of water comes from the indentation of a water outlet channel on the south side. Lastly, many crustacean and mollusc shells have been found within the structure.

 

Spring Water in the Richat

I’ve stated my geological reasons for how spring water could have emerged at the centre of the structure. To recap the reasons for this; the many karsts and dykes apparent on the surface of the structure’s basin indicate the potential for a fracture aquifer below, charged with water from the massive, 50x100km surrounding raised carbonate/sandstone plateau.

Firsthand evidence of springs can also comes from Professor Michael Jébrak, a co-author of

Matton, G., Jébrak, M. & Lee, J.K.W. (2005). Resolving the Richat enigma: Doming and hydrothermal karstification above an alkaline complex. Geology, 33(8), pp.665–668.

who observed evidence of past alkaline springs near the side of the basin via evidence of zeolite deposits (this testimony is via personal communication, September 2025). This spring evidence is at a different location to the centre but it demonstrates water was seeping through the plateau and emerging as springs.

Theirs is also firsthand testimony of present day spring water being discovered when digging into the centre of the structure from the team involved in making the documentary Visting Atlantis. 

 

Peat in the Richat

Would the conditions of this lake have favoured the production of peat? The basin’s fairly unique topology of concentric rock ridges means that water within these ridges would have been almost entirely contained and thus would have been stagnant. The water outside these ridges would instead receive rainwater streams down from the banks of the plateau.

This stagnant water fulfils one of the means for slowing decomposition, as stagnant water, with organic matter in it, becomes depleted in oxygen and increased in acidity. The spring water I hypothesise entering this zone may also have been oxygen depleted and potentially slightly colder than rainwater. There is also plenty of limital zones where the rocks meet the surface to act as substrates for peat to initially take hold. Together these factors would have made this central zone very susceptible to falling into a peat system, which as I’ve said before creates a self perpetuating cycle of increased acid and decreased oxygen.

 

The Mechanism 

Finally, we can assume that groundwater emerging at the first, outer cill layer contact boundary ring, in the image below, was not as deep underground as the subsequent inner rings, because each is stacked atop the next. If this groundwater wasn’t as deep it would be less likely to be geothermally warmed, water generally needs to be xxm deep to receive geothermal heat. Therefore, it might be that cool springs emerged at this ring which would have aided the production of peat as described previously.

Water emerging at the following cill contact boundaries would have needed to past deeper underground, with more likelihood of picking up geothermal heat. If so, warm spring water would immediately rise to the surface and warm the immediate above area before the warmth can dissipate via evaporation. The slight increase in temperature would deter peat from forming in these areas, as discussed previously, this would increase decomposition flipping the balance of rate of decomposition to rate of new organic litter in favour of decomposition. Thus the formation of the matching pattern of clear water in the surface above the pattern of springs in the central rings.

Chapter 3: The Country

I’ve written this article backwards in a way, by starting first from only the city itself and before now affirming the location of this region as a whole, but I thought it would be more exciting to address the city first with it being the most memorable and elucidating part of the story. Nonetheless, the regional descriptions are just as rich and make for perhaps even more alignments again.

“The land under the sun”

Plato makes plentiful descriptions of country which we will briefly remind ourselves of again here. Plato describes the land as follows:

• Island (nesos has also occasionally been used for island-like peninsulas)
• Larger extent than Libya and Asia (Minor)
• At/outside the Strait of Gibraltar (“pro the Pillars of Heracles”)
• Islands are placed between Atlantis and America (“from Atlantis you could sail to other islands and from these to the continent beyond which surrounds the true pontos”)
• Country was lofty and precipitous on the side of the thalassa.
• Described as the “Land under the sun”
• Mountains to the north of the plain “celebrated for number, size, and beauty,” and surrounding the southern region of the island
• The island was open to the south
• Mountains descend towards the thalassa.
• Climate allowed for two harvests per year.
• Elephants were present in great number.
• Gold and red ‘orichalcum’ (copper alloy) were abundant.

Below is a map of the topography and water bodies of approximates 7000 BC. The area was host to a swath of now extinct lakes and rivers due a climatic event called the African Humid Period (AHP) that will be discussing in a following section. Marked in pink is a geographic boundary line of encircling northern and eastern mountain with the past ‘Megreb Sea’ in-land lake in between. The rectangle below is the size Plato gives us of the fertile plain with the Richat Structure within this on the left, the plain’s placement here will be discussed in later sections.

In this conferment we can see geography that is reflective of the description we receive; a region larger than Libya (North Africa) and Asia (Turkey), the distance from the Atlas Mountains to below the plain is indeed larger (accounting for the slight warping of flat projection maps, shrinking equatorial regions). The region of the plain and city is said to lie towards the south of the island, this region is surrounding by mountains and open to the south. The mountains are, all-be-it, far away from the plain but relative to the vast scale of this land and plain this description makes sense.

The images below show Africa today and a model of the biomes during the height of the African Humid Period in approximately 7000 BC. The image is from this 2020 paper:

Cerny, V., Fortes-Lima, C. and Tříska, P., 2020. Demographic history and admixture dynamics in African Sahelian populations. Human Molecular Genetics, 30. https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddaa239

These are more images actual comparing biomes today to the height of the African Humid Period from a more recent 2023 paper:

Armstrong, E., Tallavaara, M., Hopcroft, P.O. and Valdes, P.J., 2023. North African humid periods over the past 800,000 years. Nature Communications, 14, 5549. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41219-4

Overlaying the 2023 paper’s model onto a clearer map of the world results in the following diagram:

Sinking of the island

I want to start off by addressing the least conducive geographic descriptions to Mauritania, as of course the country is described as an island, moreover an island that sank! How can this be?

Here we address both the term island and the sinking of said island in turn. The term island was a strange misnomer that the region gained (I don’t make the rules). We have evidence that the close-by region of the Maghreb has long been referring to as an “island” ( Jazīrat al-Maghrib ) in Arabic as a geographic metaphor, this is real and attested. Here, the island metaphor is due landlocked nature of the fertile region; with a sea barrier to the north and west and barren mountainous barriers to the south and east.

If we look at the lower region below the Atlas mountains a similar picture can be seen; mountainous barren regions aligned the north and east (even during the AHP these were dry, impassable regions), to the west is the sea and although it is open to the south the descent into the topics was neither favourable for farming or a connecting route back to Europe.

The only viable method of travelling to this region would have been by sea.

Side note: There is also hearsay, unverified rumour that the native Berber people of this region today, the Amazigh, have been known to term a region below the Atlas Mountains as an island. This claim was made by the late German independent researcher Michael Hübner. Hübner claims that the Souss–Massa plain, an area in Morocco below the Atlas Mountains, was locally called “the island” by Amazigh people.

So why hasn’t it sunk?

This is another linguistic issue. As discussed in the previous chapter, the city of Atlantis was also an island, a true island, and is also referred to with the same term, Atlantis.

African Humid Period and Timings

Contrary to common awareness the AHP did not result in a sudden, uniform verdant North Africa from 12000 BC to 6500 BC but was intermittent and slowly develop. The region I’m interested in the Adrar region of Mauritania. Here, like much of North Africa, the AHP only took significant effect after the Younger Dryas, ramping up over the millennia from 9500 BC onwards.

Ornographic Lift

Plato describes the country and a large 555km x 370km fertile plain with seasonal rain but still sufficient water to maintain a river annually and for the land to be used for two harvests per year. He also describes meadows supporting a range of animals.

There’s no way this kind of verdant landscape could form with less than 600mm of rain per year. For reference:

Left image: Spain with 300mm/year. Right image: Spain with even 700mm/year.

Left Image: Spain with 900mm/year. Right image: Spain with 1000mm/year

900 or 1000mm/year look like the closest matches to Plato’s description. So it’s strange that even at the peak of the African Humid Period the rough rainfall estimates found online suggest the area around the Richat are often predicted at around 300-400mm/year, in 7000 BC (the peak) that’s not enough.

The below table contains (my own crowd sourced reference) approximations for annual precipitation ranges for the Adrar region in 500 year increments created using AI to reference available studies.

Large Prediction Range

You might note that the error bar range is very high, this is because for this region of Africa there is limited precipitation data. Precipitation data is most reliably obtained from measuring past paleolake levels and is this region few have been measured.

The other two data sets we have are pollen samples and off-shore Sahara dust deposits. Pollen samples indicate whether grasses or closed-canopy tree cover are dominant, this region fluctuates between desert and grassland but never entering closed-canopy tree cover. Sahara dust deposits indicate how arid the region was and therefore this is a good proxy for approximating the rainfall during the more arid periods.

It is really only the pollen sample data that provides an upper limit to the rainfall, as beyond a certain amount of annual precipitation closed-canopy tree cover becomes inevitable. However, we also know that for this region, like much of North Africa, rainfall was seasonal due to paleoclimate physics models and evidence of fire adapted ecosystems.

Concentrating annual rainfall into a wet season greatly increases the annual precipitation threshold required for closed-canopy tree cover dominance, raising it to approximately 1000mm/yr. This might explain why researchers tend to cautiously assumed averages towards the lower range; as without factoring in strong seasonality the default assumption is that woodland biomes start at around 500mm/yr; half of the 1000mm/yr seasonal limit.

In the table the upper rainfall mean estimates are placed well below 1000mm/yr at a maximum of 780mm/yr, this is because rainfall broadly increases as longitudes approach the equator and there continued to be hundreds of kilometres of grass dominated biome before closed-canopy forest biome began.

Rainfall and Ornographic Lift

These estimates are regional averages. Local conditions can vary significantly.
Areas with sudden topographic rise induce rainfall through orographic lift, often increasing precipitation well above the regional mean.

As shown in this images of the UK below. Average annual rainfall in England is 875mm/yr, this happens to match the upper end of the potential average annual rainfall in Adrar Mauritania in 7000 BC (potential range assumed to be 350 to 1000mm/yr of highly seasonal rainfall).

This effect would also have applied to the mountains/hills just south of the Richat which quickly assend from 50m to 550m. In such areas rainfall will often double or triple. Therefore, the region generally could have received 800mm/year average with a dry season preventing widespread woodland establishing, and mountains that rise suddenly could have received more like 1600-2400mm/year. This sounds a lot more like the environment Plato describes.

Below is the topography of the area around the Richat. The fertile plain is 3000 x 2000 stadia which at 1 stadion = 185m equates to 550 x 370km. Each square is 200 x 200km so this fertile plain would be 2 and a half by one and a half squares.

We can infer similar peak rainfall areas to be in these elevated areas shown on the map on the right in blue. These areas may have received 2x to 3x region average rainfall. If the regional average is 700mm/yr in 7000BC then these areas could have received 1400-2100mm/yr.

I had previous suspected that this fertile plain would be in the large flat rectangular brown area just to the right of the Richat but I now think it more likely aligned to the valley from the green zone to the brown zone.

We can assume streams paths down from these regions as shown and the placement of the fertile plain around this most naturally irrigated area. Placed here so that during the dry season this area would have continued to receive stream water.

We are also given the information that the stream that continues through the plain is 10,000 stadia long in total. This equates to 1850km when using 1 stadion = 185m, approximately the length of nine squares. I’ve shown this length for comparison. The length of the river in this area looks slightly smaller but is pretty close. Of course if you measure every bend of a river the measured length can increase massively.

Zooming further in again below is a more accurate topographical map I was kindly sent by someone. It’s a bit greyed out so increased the saturation in the next image to make subtle changes in the area of the plain more obvious.

This next image includes speculative watercourse routes taking the assumption that the high areas would have received more than twice the rainfall than the lower areas. I also assume that the diagonal indentation we see in the topography may have been the route of a extinct river fed by streams from the hill to the south.

The next image zooms back out to look more broadly at where the full 555 km x 370 km fertile plain may have been located.

Due to the heat, evaporation of open water in this region is 4m per year. Therefore, to maintain lake levels in the Richat annual rainwater inflow would need to exceed this amount.

25% of the of the lake surface would be covered by peat reducing evaporation by about 20%. Reducing total evaporation to 3.2m/yr.

The catchment area on the plateau is about 4.5 times the size of the lake itself. Normal runoff coefficient can be assumed to be 25%.

In this case some water permeating in the soft carbonate/sandstone would also reach the lake as spring water, we could assume this to be approximately 15% of rainwater in the catchment zone.

Combined rainwater coefficient could therefore be assumed as 40%.

Plugging in the numbers; to maintain water levels in the Richat 1780mm/yr would be required to fall on the plateau. This is high but would within the range of possibilities if regional average was equal or greater than 712mm/yr and if the plateau received 2.5x the regional average.

This is the same topography diagram again, zoomed in, with slightly more detail on topography and potential stream paths.

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Plato describes a “1850km” long river meandering around the plain touching the city on side and side and then making it’s way towards the thalassa, what we can see int the topography aligns with these descriptions, apart from the 1850km as the diagonal length in the image would be a mere 300km. 1850km would align more precisely with the entire length of this river to where is would have connected to the Atlantic Ocean. You can see the full course this past river would have take in the image below.

These are the passages from Plato with descriptions of the river, plain and landscape:

“many wealthy inhabited villages, and rivers and lakes, and meadows supplying food enough for every animal, wild or tame, and wood of various sorts, abundant for every kind of work.“

“It was excavated to the depth of a hundred feet, and its breadth was a stadium everywhere; it was carried round the whole of the plain, and was ten thousand stadia in length“

“[the plain] was rectangular, and for the most part straight and oblong; and what it wanted of the straight line followed the line of the circular ditch.“

“[The ditch] received the streams which came down from the mountains, and winding round the plain“

“they brought down the wood from the mountains to the city, and conveyed the fruits of the earth in ships, cutting transverse passages from one canal into another, and to the city.“

“Twice in the year they gathered the fruits of the earth–in winter having the benefit of the rains, and in summer introducing the water of the canals.“

To be continued..

Chapter 4: The Empire

We’ve established the misconception of the war and dating of Atlantis, where the city was, how it came about, it’s demise and details of the country.

It might appear that a section on the empire is an unnecessary add-on, a speculative guess, however it’s not, we can be incredibly precise about the locations of the ten kingdoms of Atlantis with the information we are provided.

The most relevant passage from Plato on these kingdoms is below.

“He also begat and brought up five pairs of male children, dividing the island of Atlantis into ten portions: he gave to the first-born of the eldest pair his mother’s dwelling and the surrounding allotment, which was the largest and best, and made him king over the rest; the others he made princes, and gave them rule over many men and a large territory.

And he named them all: the eldest, who was king, he named Atlas, and from him the whole island and the ocean received the name of Atlantic. To his twin-brother, who was born after him, and obtained as his lot the extremity of the island toward the Pillars of Heracles, as far as the country which is still called the region of Gades in that part of the world, he gave the name which in the Hellenic language is Eumelus, in the language of the country which is named after him, Gadeirus.

Of the second pair of twins, he called one Ampheres and the other Evaemon. To the third pair of twins he gave the name Mneseus to the elder, and Autochthon to the one who followed him. Of the fourth pair of twins he called the elder Elasippus and the younger Mestor, And of the fifth pair be gave to the elder the name of Azaes, and to the younger Diaprepes.

All these and their descendants were the inhabitants and rulers of divers islands in the open sea; and also, as has been already said, they held sway in the other direction over the country within the Pillars as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia (Italy).“

from Critias, Translated by Benjamin Jowett

Analysis

Each name has linguistic associations, they are listed here:

• Atlas = Atlas Mountains
• Gadeirus = Cadiz
• Ampheres = Double sided
• Evaemon = Blessed
• Mneseus = Mnemosyne (Titaness)
• Autochthon = Indigenous people
• Elasippus = Horse rider/chariot culture
• Mestor = Plan/Council
• Azaes = Angel Azazel
• Diaprepes = Distinguished

Paring these regions as five sets of twins was not a random choice, rather, this might signify geographic similarities for each pair.

The ordering of the pairs I also don’t believe was random but set out by their geographical order in a radial arc stretching out from Atlantis.

With this in mind starting with Atlas:

Atlas is king of the ‘island’ of Atlantis; Mauritania to the Atlas Mountains.

Of Gadeirus Plato writes:

“To [Atlas’] twin-brother, who was born after him, and obtained as his lot the extremity of the island toward the Pillars of Heracles, as far as the country which is still called the region of Gades in that part of the world”

Plato himself points out that etymologically Gadeirus maps to Gades the root name of modern day Cadiz, this is another match that we’re given.

The next set of twins are Ampheres and Evaemon, we’re now arcing into Iberia.

Evaemon meaning “blessed” nicely links to Portugal and the Azores given that the western reaches and islands of Europe have long been associated with the fabled ‘land of the blessed’.

Ampheres means double-sided, this maps very well onto the neck connecting Spain to France, Basque Country, the double-sided name relating to this region’s reach from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.

The next twins are Mneseus and Autochthon, a word related to the Greek word for “memory tradition” or Titaness Mnemosyne and a word meaning “indigenous people”. Autochthon maps very well to Sardinia and Corsica given their strong cultural connection to district Pre-Indo-European peoples and settlement continuing into relatively recent times. Which leaves Mneseus as Italy. This sort of fits given that Mnemosyne is a very important Goddess who births a series of the gods in the Greek pantheon, so you’d expect them to be somewhere close to Greece.

Mestor and Elasippus.

Mestor means master/planner/council, this is well placed as Tunisia given it’s central position between all other regions, therefore being well placed as a meeting point or council between peoples.

Elasippus means horse-driver, so horses or chariots. Libya has some of the oldest horse rock art and evidence of ancient chariot in the world, so of anywhere, this location fits very well.

Lastly Azeas and Diaprepes.

Azeas is the only word without an etymology but I think the word links to Azazel, one of the Watches or fallen angels in Israelite tradition. Azazel is associated with the desert and brings knowledge of metallurgy to the the Israelites. Pre-dynastic Egypt has links to early metallurgy and is deserty, so this works well.

Diaprepes means distinguished which could map to south Levant. An area with some of the most ancient settlement and association to Hyperion or Elioun both meaning ‘Highest’, highest/distinguished are sort of similar in meaning.

Hence, it’s actually very easy to define the extent of the Atlantean empire, and this matched the description we receive from Plato, that the kingdom “once had an extent up to Tyrrhenian (Italy) and Egypt.”

Short animation

to be continued..