Atlantis is Santorini

Many experts insist on placing Atlantis midway in the Atlantic Ocean, claiming this location makes it a bridge between the Old World and the New and helps to explain some striking similarities between early Egyptian and American Indian cultures, as shown, for example, by the fondness each civilization had for pyramid-like structures.

But now, two scientists persuasively argue that Atlantis was not in the Atlantic at all, but was a Mediterranean island off the coast of Greece. In their new book "Atlantis, the Truth Behind the Legend," A.G. Galanopoulos and Edward Bacon present convincing evidence that the original Atlantis is really the Island of Santorini, 78 miles northeast of Crete. Atlantis, they insist, was really a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern civilization—a culture mysteriously destroyed around 1500 B.C. They think they have even found a reason for its destruction: a massive volcanic eruption similar to the explosion which destroyed Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883, which sent most of Santorini plunging under the sea and triggered huge tidal waves that swept up against Middle Eastern shorelines and through the Mediterranean, washing away life in the Minoan city of Knossos on Crete, just a little under 100 miles away.

There can be no doubt that Santorini was destroyed by a huge volcanic eruption in approximately 1450 B.C. Today, it remains as five islands, clearly composing the nearly perfectly circular walls and central cone of a volcano which has exploded and collapsed in on itself.