Morocco and Eastern Atlantis

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The same expedition as in Berlitz's book (Above).



By 1981 an expedition lead by Pippo Cappellano found some mysterious basaltic ruins on the ocean
floor near the coast of Lanzarote.

At a depth of about 50 feet and over an area of 900 square feet, they found large flat stones that
look like they were carefully put into place.
These blocks were followed by wide stone steps. But that’s not all: an undersea wall also was disco-
vered which was formed by recular triangular blocks.
 
 

 

Mr. Cappellano and the structures found
undersea; as all good places where hypo-
thetic Atlantean buildings made of basalt
(...) have been found, also Tenerife has
its own misterious "constructions".





INFO: The basaltic rocks can form geometric structures when suffer high temperatures and pressures, as per example the formations of North Ireland.


http://atlantis.religionstatistics.net/



MORE:


http://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php/topic,4954.0.html

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                                                            S P A R T E L





Spartel Bank or Majuán Bank is a submerged former island located in the Strait of Gibraltar at 35°55' N 5°58' W near Cape Spartel, the top currently 56 meters below the surface. It vanished under the surface around 12,000 years ago due to rising ocean levels from melting ice caps after the last Glacial Maximum. It has been proposed as a site for the legendary lost island of Atlantis.
 
 


Spartel Bank as Atlantis hypothesis



The origins of this hypothesis are disputed. It may have been proposed in 2001 by French geologist Jacques Collina-Girard, but a similar hypothesis was first published by the Spanish-Cuban investigator Georgeos Díaz-Montexano in an April 2000 issue of Spanish magazine Más Allá de la Ciencia (Beyond Science), and later in August 2001 issues of Spanish magazines El Museo (The Museum) and Año Cero (Year Zero).

Collina-Girard first published his hypothesis in a September 2001 issue of Science Academy.

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Collina-Girard's hypothesis





Collina-Girard's hypothesis states that during the most recent Glacial Maximum of the Ice Age sea level was 135 m below its current height, narrowing the Gibraltar Strait and creating a small half-enclosed sea measuring 70 km by 20 km between the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean.

The Spartel Bank formed an archipelago in this small sea with the largest island measuring about 10 to 12 kilometers across. With rising ocean levels the island began to slowly shrink, but then at around 9400 BC (11,400 years ago) there was an accelerated sea level rise of 4 meters per century known as Meltwater Pulse 1A, which drowned the top of the main island.

A possible magnitude 9 earthquake proposed by marine geographer Marc-Andrè Gutscher as occurring in this region at about this time may have contributed to this relatively sudden disappearance by generating tsunamis.

Collina-Girard proposes that the disappearance of this island was recorded in prehistoric Egyptian tradition for 5,000 years until it was written down by the first Egyptian scribes around 3000–4000 BC, and the story then subsequently inspired Plato to write a fictionalized version interpreted to illustrate
his own principles. 

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Further reading





Collina-Girard, J., (2001).-L'Atlantide devant le Detroit de Gibraltar ? mythe et géologie. Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences de Paris, Sciences de la Terre et des Planètes. 333 (2001) 233-240 available on : http://www.sciencedirect.com

Collina-Girard, J., (2001-2002).-La crise finiglaciaire à Gibraltar et l'Atlantide : tradition orale et géologie. Prehistoire Anthropologie Mediterannees, Tome 10-11, p 53-60

Collina-Girard, J., 2003. La géologie du Détroit de Gibraltar et le mythe de l’Atlantide. Bulletin de la Société Vaudoise de Sciences Naturelles, 88.3: 323-341

Collina-Girard, J., (2004). Atlantide réelle et imaginaire dans le Detroit de Gibraltar. Chapitre III : l'Atlantide face à la Science, pages 110-121 in Atlantides imaginaires, réécriture d'un mythe, Centre International de Cerisy la Salle, Editions Michel Houdiart, Paris.

Collina-Girard, J., (2004).-Du vestige géologique au vestige litteraire, Gibraltar et l'Atlantide , LUKHNOS, Connaissance hellénique, n°100, Juillet 2004, Université de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, pp 9-21
 
Collina-Girard, J., (2004).-La transgression finiglaciaire, l’archéologie et les textes (exemples de la grotte Cosquer et du mythe de l’Atlantide) in : Human records of recent geological evolution in the Mediterranean Basin-historical and archaeological evidence. CIESM Workshop Monographs, n° 24, 152 pages, Monaco, www.ciesm.org/publications/Santorini04.pdf, page 63-70

Collina-Girard, J., (2004). Atlantide réelle et imaginaire dans le Detroit de Gibraltar. Chapitre III : l'Atlantide face à la Science, pages 110-121 in Atlantides imaginaires, réécriture d'un mythe, Centre International de Cerisy la Salle, Editions Michel Houdiart, Paris.

Atlantis in Gibraltar by Collina-Girard (in French)

Díaz-Montexano, Georgeos. (2000). Dossier: La Atlántida en España. Huellas Atlantes en la Península Ibérica. ¿La Atlántida de Platón? Revista "Más Allá de la Ciencia" nº 134 (Mar/Apri-2000) 20-31
 
Marc-André Gutscher. "Destruction of Atlantis by a great earthquake and tsunami? A geological analysis of the Spartel Bank hypothesis" in Geology Volume 33, Number 8, pp. 685–688 (2005). 

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Description



Español:
Estrecho de Gibraltar y Mar de Alborán


English:

Strait of Gibraltar (Morocco and border of Spain as seen from STS-59), image rotated by 90 degree.

The Atlantic Ocean, Straits of Gibraltar, and Alboran Sea (the westernmost portion of the Mediterranean Sea) separate Spain on the left from Morocco on the right.

Algeciras Harbor is the prominent notch cut out of the eastern end of the north shore of the Strait; the Rock of Gibraltar is the tiny arrowhead that separates the notch from the Alboran Sea.

The Sierra Nevada, farther away down the Spanish coast, lives up to its name in this April scene. The difference in elevation between the Sierra Morena and the Guadalquivir River valley is highlighted nicely by cumulus clouds.

Tangier, Morocco can be seen as a light-toned spot on the southern shore of the Strait, near the entrance to the Atlantic Ocean.



Source: NASA

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A view across the Strait of Gibraltar taken from the hills over Tarifa, Spain








Location

On the northern side of the Strait is Spain and Gibraltar, while on the southern side is Morocco and Ceuta, a Spanish exclave in North Africa. Its boundaries were known in antiquity as the Pillars of Hercules. There are several small islands, such as the disputed Isla Perejil, that are claimed by both Spain and Morocco.


Geology

About 6 million years ago, the Strait closed, effectively turning the Mediterranean into a huge salty lake that eventually dried up, in what is known as the Messinian Salinity Crisis. The Mediterranean then turned into a lake, known as the Mediterranean Sea. At the Miocene/Pliocene boundary, approximately 5.33 million years ago, the Strait opened up for the last time, and has remained open since.


Communications

The Straits are an important shipping route from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. There are ferries that operate between Spain and Morocco across the strait, as well as between Spain and Ceuta and Gibraltar to Tangier.


Tunnel across the strait

In December 2003, Spain and Morocco agreed to explore the construction of an undersea rail tunnel to connect their rail systems. The gauge of the tunnel would be 1435mm to match the proposed construction and conversion of significant parts of the existing broad gauge system to standard gauge.

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Description Mosaic of two astronauts' photographs of the Strait of Gibraltar, with arrows pointing out internal
waves caused by water flowing through the Strait.
 
Source http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16581
 
Date June 2, 2004
 
Author Earth Observations Laboratory, Johnson Space Center

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Inflow and outflow



 
Internal waves caused by the Strait of GibraltarOn a net basis, water continually flows eastward into and through the Strait of Gibraltar, due to an evaporation rate within the Mediterranean basin higher than the combined inflow of all the rivers that empty into it. The sill of the Strait of Gibraltar acts to limit mixing between the cold, less saline Atlantic water and the warm Mediterranean waters. The latter are so much saltier that they sink below the constantly incoming Atlantic water and form a highly saline (thermohaline, both warm and salty) bottom water, called the Mediterranean outflow.

A density boundary separates the layers at about 100 m depth. It flows out and down the continental slope, losing salinity, until it equilibrates after mixing at a depth of about 1000 meters. The Mediterranean outflow water can be traced for thousands of kilometers before losing its identity.

Internal waves (waves at the density boundary layer) are common in the strait. Like traffic merging on a highway, the water flow is constricted in both directions because it must pass over a shallow submarine barrier, the Camarinal Sill. When large tidal flows enter the Strait, internal waves are set off at the Camarinal Sill as the high tide relaxes.

The waves—sometimes with heights up to 100 m—travel eastward. Even though the waves occur at great depth and the height of the waves at the surface is almost nothing, they can be traced in the sunglint because they concentrate the biological films on the water surface, creating slight differences in roughness. The waves flow eastward, refract around coastal features; can be traced for as much as 150 km, and sometimes create interference patterns with refracted waves.



www.wikipedia.com

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Poseidon
Jr. Member

Posts: 38



     Re: S P A R T E L
« Reply #7 on: November 12, 2007, 12:13:49 pm » Quote 

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Great thread, Bianca, allow me to add the information that I had in my thread in it:




                                                   Atlantis Rises Again






Location is everything, and perhaps no location has been more debated than that of the legendary island of Atlantis. Now a scientist is arguing that a submerged landmass off the West African coast has a geological history that fits well with the first written accounts of the island.



Sinking feeling. The time line of events on Spartel Island according to Collina-Girard. By around 12,000 years ago, the island would have been almost completely submerged.

CREDIT: Marc-Andrè Gutscher   

    Like a very long game of telephone, the Atlantis story was orally passed down for 9000 years before Plato immortalized it in writing. "There occurred violent earthquakes and floods," he wrote. "And in a single day ... the island ... disappeared in the depths of the sea." Plato reports Atlantis sat off the coast of North Western Africa, sank 12,000 years ago, and was inhabited by an advanced civilization. Since Plato's time, scholars and nonscholars alike have claimed to have deciphered the location of the lost continent. One popular theory suggests that Atlantis was in Greece and perished by volcanic eruption 3500 years ago. Yet, Plato never reported volcanic ash; plus, the location and timing are off.

     A sunken land mass suggested to be Atlantis in 2001 by geologist Jacques Collina-Girard of University of Aix en Provence in France also seemed a promising candidate because of its location off the northwest coast of Africa. His work indicated that the island, known as Spartel, sunk slowly under the rising sea levels of a melting ice age starting 20,000 years ago and that by 12,000 years ago it was less than 500 meters across. But this timing and gradual sinking also does not resemble Plato's account.
Now an analysis by marine geologist Marc-Andrè Gutscher of the University of Brest, France, may give new life to the Spartel hypothesis. At first, Gutscher's work seemed to discount the Spartel-Atlantis connection. A high resolution map he made with sonar indicated that the island was even smaller than Collina-Girard had speculated, meaning it would have been uninhabitable as long as 14,000 years ago.

But sediment gathered by Gutscher tells a different story. A magnitude 9 earthquake appears to have rocked the region around the believed time of Atlantis' doom, Gutscher reports in the August issue of Geology. At that time, the island would have been big enough to be inhabited. He also found evidence of subsequent earthquakes and tsunami's--apparently every 2000 years--that may have whittled the rest of the island away.

Did people live there? So far, Gutscher has found no evidence to support an ancient culture. "I will admit I was hoping to find concentric structures or walls of some kind," he says, "but we didn't"

The study provides more support for Plato's writings, says geoarchaeologist Renee Hetherington of the University of Victoria in Canada. But hard proof such as artifacts or structures needs to be found to confirm that a society actually inhabited this island, she says.

--GENEVRA ORNELAS
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2005/722/1

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Poseidon
Jr. Member

Posts: 38



     Re: S P A R T E L
« Reply #8 on: November 12, 2007, 12:14:21 pm » Quote 

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July 22, 2005

Seafloor survey buoys Atlantis claim
Earthquake debris shores up evidence for lost city.
by Andreas von Bubnoff
news@nature.com

"There occurred violent earthquakes and floods. And in a single day and night of misfortune... the island of Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea."

This account, written by Plato more than 2,300 years ago, set scientists on the trail of the lost city of Atlantis. Did it ever exist? And if so, where was it located, and when did it disappear?

In a recent paper in Geology, Marc-Andre Gutscher of the European Institute for Marine Studies in Plouzané gives details of one candidate for the lost city: the submerged island of Spartel, west of the Straits of Gibraltar.

The top of this isle lies some 60 metres beneath the surface in the Gulf of Cadiz, having plunged beneath the waves at the end of the most recent ice age as melting glaciers caused the sea level to rise.

Geological evidence has shown that a large earthquake and a tsunami hit this island some 12,000 years ago, at roughly the location and time indicated in Plato's writings.

Gutscher has surveyed this island in detail, using sound waves reflected off the sea floor to map its contours. His results bring mixed news to Atlantis hunters.

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Ups and downs



“With the information we have from the ancient text, it may never be found, if indeed it ever existed.”
Floyd McCoy, geologist
University of Hawaii, Kaneohe

At first, his conclusions seemed disappointing. At the time identified by Plato for the city's loss, the sea level would have been fairly high on the island's banks.

According to sea-level measurements alone, Gutscher estimates the island "would have been reduced to wave-swept rocky islets" and would have been less than 500 metres in diameter, making it impossibly small for a sophisticated city.

But there is a saving grace. Gutscher says the island might have sunk further since those times from seismic activity.

Layers of turbidite, the sand and mud shaken up by underwater avalanches, suggest that eight earthquakes have happened in the area since Atlantis sank. Each earthquake could have resulted in a drop of the sea floor by several metres.

So 12,000 years ago, Spartel might have been 40 metres higher than expected, and could have measured five by two kilometres.

"This is an interesting contribution to the discussion," says Jacques Collina-Girard, a geologist at the University of the Mediterranean in Aix-en-Provence, who suggested Spartel as a candidate for Atlantis a few years ago.

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Simple folk



"This does not mean the island was inhabited," Gutscher cautions. At a conference of Atlantis researchers in Greece this month, he became convinced that the sophisticated city described by some could not have existed this long ago. "If inhabited, it would have probably been simple fishermen and not a Bronze Age culture as described by Plato," he says.

The Bronze Age is usually described as beginning just 5,000 years ago. Gutscher adds that his sound reflection data revealed no unusual geometric structures that could suggest an extinct civilization.

He says that the Egyptians who told Plato the Atlantis story may have used a different definition of 'years', meaning the destruction of Atlantis happened more recently than thought.

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Candidate city



The conference in Greece came to no firm conclusions about the city's existence. But researchers managed to agree on 24 criteria that a geographical area must satisfy in order to qualify as a site where Atlantis could have existed. The place must have accommodated such oddities as hot springs, northerly winds, elephants, enough people for an army of 10,000 chariots, and a ritual of bull sacrifice.

At present there are half a dozen candidates for Atlantis's location, each one with its own shortcomings. Some say that settling on a final answer may prove impossible.

"The geophysics is well done, the geology excellent," says geologist Floyd McCoy of the University of Hawaii, Kaneohe, of Gutscher's study. "But most of Plato's description of Atlantis is so ambiguous and open to interpretation. With the information we have from the ancient text, it may never be found, if indeed it ever existed."


1 Gutscher M. A., et al. Geology, 33. 685 - 688 (2005).

Article Copyright © 2005 MacMillan Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=1908

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Poseidon
Jr. Member

Posts: 38



     Re: S P A R T E L
« Reply #9 on: November 12, 2007, 12:14:54 pm » Quote 

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Since 2000 years, the history of the atlantide, swallowed up 9000 years before our era, was the object of the speculations more various.  According to Plato (IV° century before our era) this narrative would originate archives of the Egyptian priests of the city of Saïs. 

In the "Timée" Plato insists to present the narrative of the engloutissement of the atlantide as a true history.  The moralist serves himself next of this event to develop a city utopia ideal … Since two thousand years, in the absence of data archeological or geological, the innumerable speculations on the myth of the atlantide are based only on the testimony of the Greek philosopher.  After debating during centuries of the serious one information, the majority of the hellénistes treat now this testimony as a fabrication (vidal-naquet, 2000).  It true that none of locations proposed by the favoring Atlantide real one does not correspond, or in place or in dates, to the matter of the Egyptian priest.  Too much ramblings ésotériques have besides, discredited the research of an anchorage in a geological one besides untraceable reality (Kukal, 1984). 



The universal myth of the swallowed one up city always exercises such a fascination that it is difficult to do leaves it imaginary one and reality. 



At first of our era, the philosopher neo Platonic Proclus enumerates the envisaged hypotheses to his era (Festugières, 1966) : total philosophical utopia? does real? does partially real?  For lack of factual arguments, two thousand years of exegesis not nothing brought of more to the analysis of Proclus, resumed, to the letter, by Brisson in his introduction to the Critias (Brisson, 1999).  We will evoke here the two positions more extreme before approaching the intermediary position than the Geology now could confirm. 

A special forum celebrates Science with Jacques collina-girard will be opened of the 3 to October 21 you will be able to put him all your questions. 

Brief

Three different positions THE geological HISTORY of the straits of Gibraltar The end of the paléodétroit The geological reality heart of
the myth?  Before the writing: the oral tradition?  Conclusion Bibliographie

http://www.futura-sciences.com/comprendre/d/dossier549-1.php

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Poseidon
Jr. Member

Posts: 38



     Re: S P A R T E L
« Reply #10 on: November 12, 2007, 12:15:41 pm » Quote 

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Jacques collina-girard THE atlantide and Gibraltar - 25/09/2005 following preceding Carte blanche to:  Jacques collina-girard Geologist To Discover his trade To Read his bibliographie His dedicates

Position 1:  All imaginary east in the narrative of Plato

Leaving a tradition, presented as authentic, Plato develops the fiction of an Ideal Republic, opposed victoriously to an invader Atlantic.  As a novelist that, from a does various, constructs his matter, the philosopher puts together a moralistic fable.  The complex corporation atlantidienne of the "Critias", transposed utopia in the past of a history presented as true, is very confession of his author, imaginary (this is we that let us underline) :  "The citizens and the city that yesterday you represented us as a fiction, we will transpose them now in the order of reality: we will suppose that it is a matter of the city that here: the citizens that you had imagined, we will say that this are these, the true ones, our ancestors, those of which had spoken the priest.  There will be agreement completes, and we not at all will wander if we assert that they are well those that existèrent in those times.  "





Plato