SEARCHING FOR ATLANTIS
A good look at four of the Med’s most beautiful spots failed to shed any light on the mysterious city, but it was still worth trying
There’s nothing like a vigorous sea-to-summit hike up the Rock of Gibraltar to clear the jetlagged mind, especially when you’re trying to solve a nearly 2,500-year-old mystery. Following the zigzagging lines on the colourful paper place mat I’d been handed at the Gibraltar welcome centre when I’d asked for a map, I climbed a steep set of concrete and stone stairs high into the green solitude of the Upper Rock Nature Preserve.
As the path cut through a thick tangle of scrub, the southern coast of Spain appeared to the west, far below. A little farther on, the view widened to take in the cinched waist of the Strait of Gibraltar. A few steps later, the northern shore of Africa emerged through the last of the morning’s light mist.
If I stared hard in the direction of Morocco and held my hands to the sides of my head like horse blinders to block out the cargo ships and condo towers, I could imagine why the ancient Greeks considered this spot the limit of the known world. And perhaps why one Athenian, arguably the wisest Greek of all, had hinted that the solution to one of antiquity’s greatest mysteries might be visible from this very spot.
Most visitors come to the Mediterranean looking for sun, seafood and relaxation. While those were on my to-do list, I was primarily hoping to find something slightly more elusive: the lost city of Atlantis.
That might sound like a fool’s errand. But modern searches for lost cities have often unearthed before-you-die travel destinations; Machu Picchu and Angkor Wat, after all, were both once jungle ruins hidden to the outside world. For archaeology fanatics like myself, raised on Indiana Jones movies and basement stacks of old National Geographic magazines, nothing could top finding Atlantis.
Contrary to what you may remember from reading comic books, the original Atlantis wasn’t a technologically advanced underwater city populated by Aquaman and mermaids. The first mentions of it were by none other than Plato, in his dialogues Timaeus and
Critias, about 360BC. “Now in this island of Atlantis,” he wrote, “there was a great and wonderful empire” that “endeavoured to subdue the whole of the region within the straits.”
In recent years, a group of mostly amateur researchers has emerged who treat the search for Atlantis as a serious topic. Surprisingly, almost none of them think it sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean; indeed, most believe the original Atlantis was hit by a tsunami or other cataclysm and therefore might still be found on solid ground somewhere around the Mediterranean. (According to Plato’s account, “there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea”.)
I studied their theories and drew up a shortlist of promising suspects to inspect in person. If this required taking a solo off-season journey to examine clues in some of the nicest spots around the Mediterranean — Spain’s Andalusian coast, Malta, the Greek island of Santorini — that wasn’t my fault. A good detective simply follows where the evidence leads him.