Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries

the island of Heligoland off the northwest German coast, Andalucia in southern Spain, the island of Spartel in the Strait of Gibraltar, Sardinia, Malta, the city of Helike on mainland Greece, an area in the Mediterranean between Cyprus and Syria, Israel, Troy in northwest Turkey, and Tantalis. Elsewhere in the world the Black Sea, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Bolivia, French Polynesia, the Caribbean, and Antarctica have all been suggested as locations of the lost city.
This vast array of wildly different theories has contributed to the scepticism of many researchers, who believe that Plato's Atlantis was merely a political allegory designed to glorify Athens as the perfect state fighting against a decadent and greedy Atlantean Empire. For them the story begins and ends with Plato. Solon never visited Egypt or heard the story from the priest at Sais. They reason that Plato located Atlantis in the Atlantic, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, because in his time this vast ocean represented the limit of the known world. Nevertheless, although there are no references to Atlantis in ancient literature prior to Plato, we do have a reference in The Histories by the Greek historian Herodotus (484 B.c.-425 B.C.), which states that Solon borrowed certain laws from Amasis of Sais in Egypt. This indicates that Solon was in Egypt during the time stated by Plato in his dialogues. It is obvious from Plato's writings that he was aiming in part to glorify Athens, and convey his political and philosophical ideas regarding the inability of wealth and power to overcome a perfectly formed and well-governed society. In order to color his account, Plato may well have added details from actual events involving a catastrophic destruction. For this, the philosopher would not have had to look far.
In the summer of 426 B.C. one of the most disastrous earthquakes in ancient history hit Greece just north of Athens. The tsunami from this colossal quake caused havoc along the coast north of Athens, destroying part of an island called Atalante. In 373 B.C. (only around 15 years before Plato wrote his Dialogues) a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami destroyed and submerged the wealthy ancient Greek city of Helike, on the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, on mainland Greece. Helike was known as the City of Poseidon, and contained a sacred grove of the terrible god of earthquakes and the sea, which was second only to that at Delphi. There are certainly parallels between these earthquakes and the destruction of Plato's Atlantis, which indicate the philosopher was drawing on his own country's recent history for much of his narrative. However, if Plato was
simply using recent disasters in Greece to make his point, why did he attribute his story to Egyptian priests? Surely his contemporaries would have recognized a description of a catastrophic earthquake in the area of Athens or Corinth, especially one that had occurred only a decade or two before. There still seems to be an element missing from Plato's sources for his story.
The most recent theory for the location of Atlantis was put forward in 2004 by Dr. Rainer Kuehne of Wuppertal University in Germany. Using satellite photographs, Kuehne identified an area of southwestern Spain that reveal features apparently matching Plato's description of Atlantis. The photographs, of a salt marsh region called Marisma de Hinojos, near the city of Cadiz, show two rectangular structures and parts of concentric rings that may once have surrounded them. Dr. Kuehne thinks that the rectangular features may be the remains of a silver temple devoted to Poseidon and a golden temple devoted to Cleito and Poseidon, as described by Plato in his Dialogues. He also believes that the area was possibly destroyed by a flood between 800 B.C. and 500 B.c. He supports this mainland-rather than island-location for Atlantis by suggesting that Greek sources may have confused an Egyptian word for coastline with one meaning island during translation of the story. Dr. Kuehne hopes to organize excavations at the site in the near future to test his theories. Will these excavations, in an area just beyond the Pillars of Hercules, finally solve the mystery of Atlantis?

Americas Stonehenge: The Puzzle of HlysIery Hill
© Stan Shebs (GNU Free Documentation License)
View of part of America's Stonehenge.
Mystery Hill, or America's Stonehenge, as it has become known, is situated in North Salem, New Hampshire, about 40 miles north of Boston. This enigmatic megalithic complex is scattered over roughly 30 acres and consists of a disordered mix of standing stones, stone walls, and underground chambers. Mystery Hill is not an isolated site, but one of hundreds of areas of unusual stone arrangements and underground chambers in North America, many of which are in New England. Examples from Massachusetts include the Upton Chamber,
stone-lined tunnels in Goshen, and a beehive-style stone chamber in Petersham. There are also stone chambers and walls at Gungywamp in Groton, Connecticut, and a large stone chamber in South Woodstock, Vermont. The exact functions of some of these unusual buildings are unknown, but many people have speculated that they were built by prehistoric European settlers for ceremonial meetings and astronomical events.
The recent history of Mystery Hill began with Jonathan Pattee, a farmer who lived on the site from 1826 to 1848. There are various accounts of Pattee, including suggestions that he ran an illicit alcoholic still on the site. A more supportable story is that he and his son Seth were abolitionists, who operated a way station on the underground railroad that helped slaves escape from the South. In fact, there is some evidence for this in the form of shackles discovered on the site, which are now displayed in the America's Stonehenge Visitor's Center. During the next 50 years, quarrymen bought and removed a large portion of the stone structures at Mystery Hill. It is thought that most of the stones were taken to the town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, to be used in the construction of the Lawrence Dam and for street curbing. In 1937, William Goodwin, an