Recent studies of the ice cap at Sajama suggest the level of Lake Titicaca has been subject to periodic changes of level over the last 11,500 years with alternating periods of drought and flooding.
When the lake is at its maximum level, the water overflows down the river Desaguadero where it then continues to flood the level Altiplano and Lake Poopo.So, just as people build cities on volcanoes or valley floors subject to flooding, the people occupying the Altiplano next to Lake Poopo have been just as much at risk to be submerged under the waters of the lake as those ancient people whose constructions have now been found under the waters of Lake Titicaca.
And there remains one great city or civilisation known only by legend and which people continue to doubt ever existed. It is the story of a city destroyed by earthquakes and overwhelmed by a great flood, all of which took place in the space of a single day and night.
The name of this city is Atlantis.
Remains of coca have been found in the mummy of Ramses II in Egypt dating to 1200BC.And the island described above (Plato account)is the island of Cerro Santos Villca at the village of Pampa Aullagas on the southern shore of Lake Poopó.
Anyone visiting the island will see that it has been destroyed by the earthquakes mentioned above and is still covered in white, sedimentary lake deposits from the time when the lake was at a higher level.Behind the village of Pampa Aullagas they will see the remains of an outer ring of land with a gap between for the ships to sail through – exactly as Plato described it.
They will also see the wall of stone enclosing the island, the black, red and white stones and the site has been inhabited for a long time by successive cultures. It has a natural source of water as mentioned above and the water is still conducted by channels to concentric cultivated plots – according to a study by a vulcanologist even the soil has been imported to the island to improve the cultivation.
So up to this point, there is nothing outrageous in Plato's story, although Plato said the island sank into the sea, the English philosopher Sir Fancis Bacon said in fact it was the rising waters of the lake which submerged the island – and isn't that just like what happened with the ruins found under Lake Titicaca?
In fact all around Pampa Aullagas are underground springs, so when it rains in another part of the country it can rapidly flood the level Altiplano. And the system of canals Plato mentioned is quite appropriate to the region, indeed when the system of raised fields was restored in the vicinity of Lake Titicaca the presence of water in the small channels raised the local temperature and vastly increased crop production.
The date of Plato's Atlantis has always been a problem since Plato made an error and gave the same date for the founding of Atlantis as he did for the ending of Atlantis (about 9,500BC). But he talked about a war between a confederation of nations which invaded Greece and Egypt and this could correspond to the invasion by the "Sea Peoples" of Egypt around 1220 BC, also the attack by the Greeks upon Troy in 1260 BC which was "the finest of the achievements of the Greeks" which Plato wanted to record – in fact he gives the same number of ships for the fleet of Atlantis as Homer did for the Greek fleet against Troy suggesting that this part of the story was based upon Homer and if we substitute lunar months for years in Plato's account then the "9,000 years" before Solon" becomes 1263BC – the date of the Trojan war.
So it is probable that either Atlantis existed in the period after 9500BC up to 1200BC when the Altiplano had varying water levels due to the climatic changes or alternatively it was overwhelmed by the waters of Lake Coipasa when the entire Altiplano became a giant inland sea in 11,000BC, since prior to that the land would have been cultivable, free of the salt salars and the climate 6 degrees warmer.
Finally, it is easy to dismiss Atlantis as merely a "co-incidence" on the Altiplano, but there is one further factor regarding the site at Pampa Aullagas -
from the native Aymara and Quechua the name actually means sunken pampa or sunken level plain.Atlantis never was a sunken continent in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, or some imaginary creation of Plato or cinematic fantasy of Hollywood, but in reality is based upon an indigenous Andean culture.
And at the end of the day, Atlantis was simply overwhelmed by climate change and natural disasters typical of the Altiplano.
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