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ATLANTIS & the Atlantic Ocean

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Author Topic: ATLANTIS & the Atlantic Ocean  (Read 35432 times)
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dhill757
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« Reply #240 on: December 27, 2008, 10:37:28 pm »

The map of the Atlantic Ocean bears it out graphically that the outlines of all the continental platforms facing the ocean, ideally fit in with the line of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, connected with the earth-crust rift, from which the continents "are sliding apart"; Africa, South and North Americas, Greenland, Scandinavia and Europe make up a perfectly fitting mosaic, in which there simply is no room for an allegedly lost fragment, particularly of such dimensions as Plato described (See map of the Atlantic Ocean). Besides, today there are no objective data that could give grounds for raising the question that there may have been a subsidence of the earth-crust in the Atlantic Ocean commensurate in scale with the sinking of a big island or a small continent, not only in the last dozens of thousands of years, but even in the whole time of the Atlantic Ocean's existence, which amounts to many dozens of millions of years.

On the other hand, as has already been mentioned, the time when Atlantis vanished, as given by Plato, precisely coincides with the end of the last Ice Age (I would like to remind the readers that Plato speaks of the 10th millennium B.C.). Meanwhile, the changes of the ice sheets volume are closely connected with the so-called glacio-eustatic changes of the sea level, and it is known that during the last glaciation the sea level was considerably lower than at present because a great amount of water was bound up in glaciers.

There are various methods making it possible to come to conclusions about the glacio-eustatic fluctuations in the sea level during the last glaciation, but there is no uniform, commonly recognized notion of the magnitude and the dynamics of these processes. According to the estimates of most researchers, during the maximum of the last glaciation (18-16 thousand years ago) the sea level was 100-170 meters lower than at present:

Due to problems of encoding and fonts, the titles of the Russian sources are given in English translation and marked with an asterisk. [ See table in original work.]

In my opinion, the reconstruction of the glacio-eustatic fluctuations of the sea level at the end of the last glaciation by Richard Fairbanks published in 1989 (9), is one of the most convincing ones. It is based on the radio-carbon datings of the remains of Acropora palmata corals, which develop only in the upper 5 meters of water, from the bottom samples taken at various depths in the area of Barbados Island. Fairbanks explains how he took into account the vertical movements of the earth crust in the area where the samples were taken, but makes a special stipulation that the only way to adequately verify these assumptions and the reconstruction as a whole, is to conduct similar research in other regions.

According to this reconstruction by Fairbanks, during the maximum of the last glaciation the sea level was 121+/-5 meters lower than at present.The graph of the rise of the sea level plotted on the basis of both 14C and 230Th/234U dating methods published by Fairbanks and his colleagues a year later (1), shows that at the time we are interested in, i.e. 11-12 thousand years ago, the sea level was lower than now by 90-95 meters, with a fairly fast rise of the sea level by about 35 m taking place precisely at this time.

Unfortunately, most geographical maps accessible to the public, as a rule, have neither the 100-metre nor the 150-metre isodepth lines. The 200-metre isodepth line on the map of the Atlantic Ocean gives only a very approximate idea of how the coastline must have looked at the time of the last glaciation. Even though an obviously lower sea level is taken, it can be seen that in the area of the present Azores and Canaries, which are most often pointed to as the remains of the sunken Atlantis, there had been no sizeable land. It can also be seen that in the west of Europe, where now the North Sea and the Celtic Shelf are situated, to the south of the British Isles, during the last glaciation, at the time when the sea level was lower, there had existed a vast area of land (See map of Northern Atlantic).

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