Narrator: A city of dreams.
Incredible architecture.
A massive navy.
Atlantis is thought to be one of the most
advanced societies of the ancient world.
Then, without warning, it literally vanishes
overnight.
An extraordinary civilization,
lost forever.
But its memory is not soon forgotten.
Legendary status has made Atlantis the holy
grail of modern archaeology.
Claudio: Listen, the whole cut of the
structure is human.
Juan: The city may not
necessarily be on the bottom of the sea,
but on the bottom of these flatlands.
Freund: Atlantis should be somewhere around
here.
But where?
And if it is here, how come we can't see it?
Narrator: This team of obsessed scientists
believes they've finally hit the
jackpot.
National Geographic Finding Atlantis Original Air Date on March 13, 2011
-- sync, corrected by elderman --
The extraordinary tale of Atlantis reaches
back to the very dawn of Western
civilization.
Freund: This city of Atlantis is seen by
many as the mother of Egypt, and Mesopotamia,
and Israel, and Europe, and all the other
civilizations that began in this area.
And if it began here we may be looking at the
single-most important site for humanity.
Narrator: The discovery of Atlantis would
completely rewrite the early chapters of
history.
Myth would become reality.
So finding this mysterious sunken city
has become the stuff of obsession.
Generation after generation has set out
in search of her, but every quest has ended
in failure.
Now, with the help of modern technology,
one team may finally beat the odds.
They're employing everything from
satellite photography, to ground penetrating
radar, to underwater archaeology in a
passionate bid to find the sunken city.
But does Atlantis even exist?
The legendary city may be just that: a legend.
Over millenia the story of the ancient city has
taken on a life of its own,
transformed into countless fantasylands.
To separate fact from fiction,
any search for Atlantis must begin with the
original source material.
And Angela Hobbs knows just where to look.
Dr. Hobbs: All we know about Atlantis comes
from a few pages of the book that I'm holding
in my hands, written by the Greek philosopher,
Plato.
He is the gold standard.
There is no other ancient source for the
myth of Atlantis.
This is it.
The records speak of a vast power that sprang
forth from beyond from the Atlantic Ocean for
at that time this ocean was passable since it
had an island in it in front of the strait
that you people say you call "The Pillars of
Heracles".
Narrator: Plato's descriptions of
Atlantis are incredibly intricate.
His writings provide any Atlantis seeker a
detailed road map.
According to Plato, Atlantis was an island
kingdom with land rings and circular harbors,
situated just beyond the Pillars of
Hercules.
Many believe that the "Pillars of Hercules"
describe the peaks that flank the entrance to
the Strait of Gibraltar,
the Northern pillar being the Rock of
Gibraltar, and the Southern pillar a
corresponding peak in North Africa.
This leads Dr. Richard Freund to begin his
search for Atlantis in Southern Spain.
Freund: The Pillars of Hercules was known by
every single ancient writer as being located
in what we call today the "Straits of
Gibraltar."
This bay is located just beyond those
ancient Pillars of Hercules.
Narrator: Freund focuses on the
Guadalquivir River Delta in Donana
National Park.
He believes a massive ancient bay once
existed here in antiquity.
Freund: Here we are in the largest marsh in
southern Spain, hundreds of square
miles.
It is massive.
We're talking about 40, 50 miles worth of just
marsh.
And archaeologists think that buried in
this marsh is the lost city of Atlantis.
Narrator: In 1922, archaeologists George
Bonsor and Adolf Schulten propose that
Atlantis is hidden under these mudflats.
But for decades, most scholars ignore the
theory.
Then in 2004 a young German physicist named
Rainer Kuehne makes headlines using
satellite photography to resurrect the
Bonsor/Schulten theory.
Kuehne: I am here within the mud flats of
the Doñana National Park.
It is exactly here where I think that
Plato's Atlantis was located.
Narrator: Kuehne observes strange
circular patterns in a satellite photograph of
the Doñana mudflats.
Comparing the photograph to the
detailed descriptions in Plato,
Kuehne becomes convinced that the lost
city is here in Southern Spain.
In his writings, Plato describes a port city
with three rings of concentric harbors,
and gives exact dimensions for each.
Kuehne believes that the circular patterns
he sees fit Plato's measurements.
And there's more.
In his writings, Plato describes two temples
in the center island of Atlantis,
one dedicated to the god Poseidon.
Within the circular patterns on the Doñana
mudflats, Kuehne finds a rectangular anomaly.
When he calculates its dimensions,
it comes up a perfect match to Plato's
description of Poseidon's Temple.
Today Kuehne's theory has led to a full scale
expedition.
A team will determine whether the anomalies
detected from space actually correspond to
man-made structures under the mud.
It includes anthropologist Juan
Villarias, whose research is closely
followed by Richard Freund,
and Paul Bauman, an expert in sub-soil
sonar mapping.
Paul: Those shapes certainly do not
correlate with any possible geological
feature.
In my mind there's no question they're
man-made features.
Claudio: One of the big circles is connected
with several rectangular structures.
We think that those rectangular structures
have a wall below the shape in the soil,
and we are trying to find if we have a building.
Narrator: If there is a building,
or any other artefact, deep beneath this mud,
it could be the find of a lifetime.
Freund: If they can excavate,
and come up with just a few really good
artefacts that could be dated to 4000 years
ago, then we have evidence of one of the
great myths in civilization.
The myth of the beginnings of Atlantis.
Narrator: Even on this team,
there are skeptics who say the long lost
kingdom of Atlantis is just a myth.
But they need only look a thousand miles east
to a place the Turkish call Troia for proof
that myth can become reality.
Here lies Troy, one of the most storied cities
of the ancient world.
Pernicka: So, this is the main street of the
late-Bronze-Age citadel of Troia,
dated around the 13th century BC.
Narrator: For years people thought that the
city of Troy was a fantasy,
a made-up place described in Homer's
epic poem, The Iliad.
In the 3000-year-old story,
Troy is the setting for the Trojan War and the
legendary Trojan horse, where the warrior
Achilles fights for the beautiful daughter of
Zeus, Helen of Troy.
Like Atlantis, Troy was thought to be just a
myth.
Those who searched for it were ridiculed.
Pernicka: There were many voices that would
say that the story is pure fiction,
that Troy does not exist.
Narrator: Then, in 1870, amateur archaeologist
Heinrich Schliemann proves that Troy is a real place
after all.
He's able to unearth the fabled city by
simply reading one of the oldest myths in
Western literature as if it was fact.
Pernicka: He used the Iliad, as a tour guide.
He accepted it as a direct description.
Narrator: Homer describes a city with steep
rising walls and broad streets.
Schliemann found them.
The ruins here reveal a city
filled with impressive architecture.
Schliemann also needed to locate a city beside
two rivers.
Pernicka: Troy is described as a city
located at the conflow of two rivers,
Skamandros and Simoeis, which are here.
Narrator: Most importantly,
he needed to find evidence of the Trojan
War.
And indeed the archaeology here points
to a bloody battle.
Pernicka: This building was roofed with wooden
beams, and we know that it ended in a fire
because the beams were charred,
and if there was a Trojan War,
this is the best evidence that we have.
Narrator: For those searching for Atlantis,
Troy is an inspiration, proving that myth and
fact are sometimes one and the same.
Pernicka: When Schliemann came here,
he was successful; he excavated an
archaeological site that everybody agrees,
nowadays, is the site of Troia.
He wanted to solve an archaeological problem,
and he did.
Narrator: Now the team in Spain is taking an
even bigger gamble.
And no one knows if they'll be as lucky.
Narrator: This rich and strange marshland on
the Spanish Coast is part of a protected
park called Doñana.
In ancient times this area of southern Spain
was underwater and the Doñana Park was
essentially a large bay.
Freund: In the bay there were created,
over a long period of time massive sandbars
that allowed people to use these sandbars to
create cities.
Narrator: Dr. Richard Freund believes that
the famous rings of Atlantis may have
existed in this bay thousands of years ago.
Freund and a team of archaeologists,
geologists, and anthropologists pour
over satellite photos of the area.
They find what may be circular shadows of an
ancient city.
Freund: Finally we've narrowed it down to a
very specific location around this mysterious
circle in the midst of the swamp.
Narrator: But in order to pick the best areas to
investigate, the team needs better images.
And a simple homemade contraption might just
fit the bill.
By attaching small cameras to a balloon
and a kite, the team can get higher
resolution images than the photographs taken
from space.
Freund: The aerial photographs we're doing
today can give us the clearest images that
we've ever had.
So today we'll get the best photographs of
this entire area with this balloon,
and see whether those rings really exist.
Paul: We're going to lift the balloon to at
least 100 meters, and then we'll probably
work at different increments of
elevation, 100, 150, 200, and so forth.
Narrator: Any patterns or anomalies in the
soil that appear in these new photographs
could indicate buried manmade structures.
But if there was once a mighty city here,
what happened to it?
According to Plato's final chapter,
the great city of Atlantis faced a
cataclysmic disaster.
Violent earthquakes are followed by great
flooding.
After just one day and one night the entire
island of Atlantis sinks below the sea.
In order to prove their theory,
the Spanish team must find evidence of such a
disaster.
Dr. Juan Antonio Morales finds
geological evidence of a long history of
massive tsunamis hitting this coastline.
Juan Antonio: You can see how the
displacement of some of these rocks along this
shelf is tens, even hundreds,
of meters long.
This suggests the displacement is not
caused by a single tsunami,
but by successive tsunamis.
Narrator: If the rings of Atlantis existed in
this ancient bay and were ravaged by
successive tsunamis, the city would have
been torn apart, or perhaps pulled into the
sea.
As a result, evidence of the lost
civilization might not just be under the
Doñana mudflats, it could be underwater,
off the modern coast.
So that's exactly where the team takes their
search.
Marine archaeologist Claudio Lozano and
Morales are equipped with the latest in
sonar technology.
The torpedo shaped "towfish" generates
sound waves that bounce off the seafloor.
When the signals return,
they're received by a computer on deck that
converts the sound waves into images.
Any formation that appears on the sonar
imaging system is mapped and its
coordinates recorded.
Juan Antonio: We have seen an anomaly,
which is a vertical wall.
This is very different to a geological
formation.
Claudio: Magnifico.
Juan Antonio: It is a vertical structure.
Claudio: Right now, we found an anomaly that
is not geological at all; it's very big,
very high.
Two walls.
One.
Two.
Completely vertical.
It's very nice.
The shape is not natural.
Juan Antonio: It's attractive.
Narrator: Claudio and Juan Antonio locate
what looks to be a large structure 39 feet
below the surface.
They'll have to return and dive the site.
But some think the Spanish team is looking
in the wrong waters entirely.
The search for Atlantis has plagued many great
minds over thousands of years.
Scholars have scoured the globe searching for
its ruins.
For some of these explorers,
Plato's description of the city's
sophisticated architecture and
society clearly points to just one location,
the islands of Greece.
And underneath the clay soil on this hilltop in
Crete lies evidence of an ancient civilization
way ahead of its time.
Archaeologists call it Minoa.
Driessen: Minoans were real master builders.
I'm walking on a four thousand year old
street, which was probably the main
access through this Minoan settlement.
Beautifully paved with very large slabs
especially cut for this building.
All over the island you find elaborate
architecture with major ceremonial halls with
frescos, with shrines and they really had a
very sophisticated life.
Narrator: Plato says Atlantis boasts gorgeous
temples and shrines with a highly ornamented palace
situated on the central island.
The Minoan architecture on Crete seems to
reflect the same blueprint.
Knappett: We're in the palace at Knossos,
the major site of Minoan civilization
with this massive palatial structure at
its core.
Narrator: Could this be the great central
palace that Plato describes?
Knappett: This is a mega-structure covering
about 10,000 square meters.
Now this kind of architecture required
incredible planning to get the stones from the
quarry, to transport them here,
to have the skilled masons work them,
to create this kind of straight line and the
different kinds of shapes would have been
very, very difficult.
Narrator: Walking amongst the
breathtaking remnants of their ancient world
it's easy to imagine the Minoans calling
their city by another name: Atlantis.
To match the descriptions of
Atlantis, the Minoan city also has to have
an acropolis with dwellings and halls.
And it's all here at Knossos.
According to Plato, the bull is a central part
of Atlantian culture.
In Atlantis sacred bulls roam free around
the temples.
They're worshipped by priests and sacrificed
in honor of Poseidon.
Here in Knossos, it's obvious bulls were once
a powerful symbol.
Knappett: I'm above the northern entrance
passage at Knossos, and behind me is this
imposing bull fresco.
Now, it really seems as if the bull was a very
significant part of Knossian political
propaganda.
There's a bull-leaping scene,
found in fresco fragments over in the
east part of the palace as well.
Narrator: The cultural importance of the bull,
the stunning architecture,
the depictions of a utopian lifestyle,
together paint a familiar picture.
It seems possible that the people we call
Minoans are really the long lost people of
Atlantis.
But Atlantis famously came to an end.
Plato says the city was destroyed in a single
day and night.
Evidence suggests the Minoan people may have
suffered a similar fate.
Driessen: It's from this kind of
archaeological evidence that we can deduce some
kind of a crisis situation.
A lot of things went bad.
Narrator: On the southern coast of
Spain, researchers have discovered buried
structures they believe may be the lost city of
Atlantis.
Claudio: It's not geological at all.
Narrator: But there are those who think the
Spanish team is way off course,
that Atlantis was actually located in the
Greek Islands.
The archaeology here is convincing.
There is evidence that the Minoan people of
Crete suffered a terrible disaster,
an ancient cataclysm that may have wiped out
this advanced civilization just as
Plato describes.
Clues to this catastrophe can be
found 85 miles north of Crete on the Greek
island of Santorini, also known as Thera.
The disaster that occurred here nearly
defies description.
Knappett: It's a volcanic island and the
volcano exploded very, very spectacularly
about 3600 years ago.
And we have here evidence with this very
impressive architecture,
not even excavated; it's just been exposed
as it's eroded by the sea.
And you can see here evidence of the Theran
eruption with ash layers and pottery
showing this building was destroyed at
exactly this time.
Narrator: The ash cloud from Thera blocks out
the sun for days.
For the people of Crete,
the effects are devastating.
Driessen: You had these huge ash clouds
arriving on the island of Crete and they
deposited sort of like, thick packages of
volcanic ash that must have caused tremendous
problems in their agriculture,
in their shipping, in their commerce.
A lot of people probably lost their
houses.
You had volcanic winters.
A lot of things went bad.
Narrator: The earthquakes and massive
volcanic activity on Santorini likely
produce tsunamis, gigantic waves that
crash onto the north coast of Crete.
These waves would carry with them volcanic
pumice, a very porous and solidified
lava-rock.
Evidence of pumice on Crete could be proof
that an ancient tsunami hit here.
Driessen: There are some spots along the
north coast of the island where you find
pumice deposition that is probably related to
the Santorini eruption.
Knappett: And there's been recent activity
from archaeologists suggesting that those
deposits could really only have been caused
by something like a tsunami.
Narrator: Minoan architecture, temples,
art, culture, it's all wiped out by one of the
most powerful eruptions in human history.
The case linking the Minoans to Atlantis is
strong.
But the legend of Atlantis hinges on its
sinking and overnight disappearance.
And for the Minoans the eruption of Thera is
not the end.
Some manage to survive.
Knappett: We have clear continuity in the
Minoan civilization after the Theran
eruption.
We can see archaeological layers
showing the occupation at the time of the
eruption, and then rebuilding,
and reoccupation straight away
afterwards.
Narrator: It seems that despite compelling
evidence, this is not the place that Plato
describes.
The Minoan civilization did not sink into the
sea.
It persevered.
Ultimately this triumphant story of
survival is the greatest evidence
against the theory.
But back on the mudflats of Spain,
the jury is still out.
Dr. Freund and his team believe they're on the
verge of uncovering a city that fits all the
criteria laid out by Plato.
Freund: We're standing here at the outskirts
of the Doñana National Park,
the source of tremendous speculation
that perhaps this was the place where
Atlantis was located, and this was the place,
the mud, the shoal, into which it
disappeared.
Narrator: In Doñana Park,
the team reviews the new aerial photographs
taken from their kite and balloon cameras.
Paul: Oh, this is interesting,
right there.
Juan: The feature right here,
at a higher altitude you may see the
rectangle that we were talking about.
Narrator: Any circular or rectangular patterns
could provide strong evidence of a footprint
of a lost city.
Juan: This particular feature was not
included in our list, so this is new,
that Paul's photography has revealed to us.
Paul: And this area has been cleared by the
grass cutters for thatch.
And even after clearing,
the feature was still visible from the kite
photos.
It's clearly not just a feature that's visible
in the vegetation, but visible in the earth.
Narrator: These traces may be the last markers
of Atlantis.
Freund: This is I think the most important
feature in the aerial photography that's been
done.
It's the one that most resembles anything like
Atlantis.
It has an area that looks like a port
leading into a large circle where the
concentric circles would have been.
Narrator: Freund is convinced that the
photographs reveal a pattern that matches
Plato's description, a series of circular
harbors with a central canal connecting them
to the ocean.
The team also identifies other
supporting features.
Paul: Circular features,
linear features, parallel features,
all in the order of a human scale.
For instance, things that look like
pathways, or roadways that are a meter to two
meters across.
Features that look like buildings that are four
to eight meters across.
Narrator: The team now uses ERT,
electrical resistivity tomography,
to record images of what lies underneath
the circular patterns.
Jennifer: What we're doing here is we're
running a bunch of current through the
ground, and we're measuring what comes
back from that, and we'll be able to get a
picture of what's in the subsurface,
up to about twelve meters below the ground
surface.
Narrator: The crew frantically searches
for any remnants, the lost city of Atlantis
may finally be in their grasp.
But another ancient mystery also looms
large: The biblical story of the lost city
of Tarshish.
Tarshish is a city mentioned many times in
the Bible.
Many scholars believe that it's simply
another name for the ancient and famous city
of Tartessos.
Freund: Most scholars agree that Tartessos
was located in southern Spain,
and that Tarshish was located in southern
Spain.
Tartessos was Tarshish.
Narrator: In the written sources,
Tartessos and Tarshish are famous for their
metals.
Trade ships would travel for years,
from as far away as the Middle East,
to fill their holds.
But Tartessos and Tarshish abruptly
disappear from the historical and Biblical
records, it's as if the cities suddenly
cease to exist.
Freund believes that's because in ancient days
Tartessos and Tarshish went by another name:
Atlantis.
Freund: We have two remarkably similar
stories being told in antiquity: the story of
Tarshish in the Bible, and the story of
Atlantis in Plato and Roman sources.
In the story of Plato, Atlantis is a port city
located on an island at the far end of the
known world, where deepwater ships would
come, taking three years to arrive at the
end of their journey.
In the Bible, Tarshish was that city that may
have been built on an island,
a deepwater port, at the end of the known
world for the Bible, and it was a place that
took three years, according to the Book
of Chronicles, for them to arrive at the end of
their journey.
Narrator: Tartessos is Tarshish is Atlantis.
It's an interesting theory.
Each city is documented as a famous port that
mysteriously disappears from the written
record.
And the similarities don't end there.
Each of the three cities is said to have
great mineral wealth with access to massive
amounts of gold, silver or copper.
Dr. Hobbs: Plato certainly does talk
about mines, which the Atlantians have access
to, and one of these mines being for this
probably fantastical metal called
"orichalc".
Some archaeologists think they know what it
might be or what it might be like.
All we know is that it glows like fire.
Narrator: Scholars translate orichalc as
"mountain copper".
Today, just up-river from the Doñana
mudflats, the hills shadowing the Rio Tinto
are mined for gold, silver, and copper.
And there's evidence to suggest there's been
mining here for over 5000 years.
The mudflats' proximity to these deposits of
valuable ore make any ancient city located
here a strong candidate for Atlantis.
It's just one more clue that points to the
coast of Southern Spain as the best location
for the lost city.
But the only way to know for sure is to get
a closer look.
Juan Antonio: The anomalies we have seen
and the structures are completely square.
This is curious because these four are forming
a line two meters high.
For me, this is the most interesting stone
in this area.
My best option is to go there to dive.
Narrator: Using side scan sonar,
the team isolates five areas off the southern
coast of Spain that may hold remnants of the
lost city of Atlantis.
The sonar images show what looks like
man-made structures on the sea floor.
Claudio: Right now we are sailing to one of
the points that we want to check.
We call it the Cathedral,
it's is really big, it's about 40 meters
long.
The main characteristics that we
are looking for is if it's human made or not.
Narrator: It's the beginning of storm
season.
High winds and foul weather pick up at the
end of September and continue through the
winter.
The divers have only a small window of
opportunity to investigate the site
before the weather turns ugly.
Claudio: We have good news!
Strong winds from yesterday blew [away]
the dark water that came from the river.
We will have better visibility than we
expected.
Narrator: Nearly 39 feet below the surface,
the divers discover some unusual formations:
stones that seem to have been cut,
maybe by the men of Atlantis.
These stones may have once been part of the
great city walls that Plato describes.
Vlad: Man-made, yeah.
It's, too perfect to be casual.
Take a second look, yeah?
Claudio: Listen, I don't want to use the
radio to say these things.
But Vlad has found a beam,
a circular man-made rock,
and the whole cut of the structure is human.
Narrator: As each diver surfaces,
more details of the unique discovery are
revealed.
Diver: There was a stone,
but it wasn't square.
It was, on the end it has,
it looked like it was worked as well.
On the end was a point, it was a cone.
Some places it's like a wall, no?
And there are like steps, from a stairway.
Very mysterious, no?
Incredible!
What a day!
Claudio: Incredible.
Narrator: The dive is a success.
But the team's geologist,
Juan Antonio, doesn't want to jump to any
hasty conclusions.
First he needs to review the hours of
underwater footage.
Any discoveries from the diving expedition
could be linked to potential finds in
Doñana, so the team continues their search
on land.
Archaeologists conduct a careful survey of the
surface hunting for any cultural remains.
Freund: When we're looking for Atlantis,
we're not just looking for the buildings of
Atlantis.
What we're looking for is the culture of
Atlantis.
We may not find all of the contours of the
city.
You could find a wall, you could find two
walls, you could find rectangles.
It still doesn't connect it directly
with the ancient near east and all of the
great civilizations from the Aegean through
the Mediterranean.
Every once in a while in archaeology you come
upon a smoking gun, something that connects
all the dots for you.
Narrator: While searching within the large circular
patterns in the soil, Freund and his colleagues suddenly
discover two incredible artefacts.
Freund: Look at that, look at that.
Oh my gosh people wait a whole career to find
one of these little figurines,
and to find two, it's just magnificent.
It's an ancient statuette,
probably at least 2000 years old.
She is one of the most spectacular kinds of
goddesses.
Is she Astarte, or Ishatar?
Narrator: If they are Astarte or Ishatar,
it would make them Bronze Age icons,
dating as far back as 4000 years.
The beautiful figures may represent a direct
connection between this area and the great
civilizations of the ancient world,
from the ancient near east,
through the Aegean, to the Mediterranean.
Freund: Those two small figurines can connect
it, because if we find the culture that fits
into that context, then we found Atlantis.
Narrator: Meanwhile, now back on land,
Claudio, Juan Antonio, and the team of divers
carefully review their footage,
analyzing what seems to be the ruins of a
man-made structure.
Juan Antonio: This surface looks like the
top of a block, like a sidewalk made by man.
It looks like a wall, but I see lines.
So, for me, this isn't a wall,
it's a fissured stratum.
These occur because of geological forces.
Claudio: I can't say for certain,
that's difficult for me to believe.
Even if it's a natural formation it may have
been modified.
It looks man-made.
Juan Antonio: Naturally formed rocks might have
been used to build a wall.
That is possible.
Narrator: Each stone raises new questions.
Although they appear to have been formed
geologically, it's possible they were
later used as building materials.
Claudio: When we examine the deposits in
the area of Doñana we see that many of these
rocks, or other kinds of rectangular rocks,
have been re-used in construction.
Narrator: If the stones were transported and
used as building blocks,
the most likely location for a
construction site is under the Doñana
mudflats.
For three days now, the team has been
conducting advanced imaging across the
geometric patterns first seen in the
aerial photographs.
Freund: Let's get Juan over here,
just let him look at this.
This is the big circle.
Narrator: Any structures below the
soil will show up as distinct breaks in the
so-called density and conductivity graph.
If there are evenly spaced breaks that
match the circular patterns on the
surface, it will be strong evidence that
there are buried structures under the
mud that could be the city of Atlantis.
Paul: Ok, so here's the results from the
electrical imaging across the large circle
that is particularly reminiscent of Plato's
description of Atlantis.
The section is 160 meters long and 12
meters deep.
Richard: We have breaks here,
and breaks again at.
Paul: 60 meters.
Richard: 60 meters.
Narrator: The results look positive.
The images show breaks consistent with the
circular patterns seen from above.
Juan: In my view, the pattern of resistivity
to electricity matches the pictures,
matches the shapes of the borders of the
features.
Richard: We can explain the circles because
they really are there.
There is some kind of representation in the
soil.
Narrator: If a city was suddenly buried here,
all of the organic material associated
with that civilization would also be trapped.
Over the centuries this material would
decompose and produce gas.
While retrieving core samples the team taps
into just that.
Richard: We have a mysterious methane
layer that could indicate flora and
fauna and human activity that were
sealed in one single layer in a catastrophic event.
Narrator: Freund is feeling optimistic.
Early lab results from the finds at the Donana
mud flats are in, and so far they look
positive.
Freund: Carbon-14 dating has told us that
artefacts found inside of the marsh go from
the period of 5000 BCE all the way down to
approximately 2000 BCE.
We have a coring that tells us there was a
deep-water port that continued in to the
center of this marsh.
Electrical resistivity tomography identifies
that there were actual signatures of walls
that were located below the surface.
And we have a mysterious methane
layer that was sealed about six to nine
meters below the surface.
It goes down deep, what is it?
It must be about five meters?
Narrator: Methane is created by the
decomposition of organic matter.
If the entire Atlantis civilization was
suddenly buried, it could create a huge
deposit of trapped methane like the one
found by the research team.
Although other explanations for the
gas are possible, its unique location coupled
with the history of tsunamis on this coast
together make a strong case that a tsunami
crashed onto this site and buried a city.
The surrounding flora, fauna,
and people would have all died.
The researchers are anxious to excavate,
but there's ground water right below the
surface.
And that poses serious problems.
Juan: Going deeper than seven meters is
technically very complex.
And very expensive.
Narrator: It could be years before anything
is unearthed here.
But further inland, other Spanish
archaeologists have recently made a
discovery that could lend further evidence
to the Donana theory and point the way to
Atlantis.
Freund: This is Cancho Roano,
one of the greatest archaeological
discoveries of the 20th century.
In the 1970's and 1980's archaeologists
discovered a series of different villages that
preserved Tartessan culture.
This Tartessan culture was so different than
all the other culture around it.
It was the culture of the south.
Narrator: Freund believes Tartessan
culture was really Atlantian culture.
But these twenty-five hundred year old ruins
are 125 miles from the coast,
a long way from home.
Freund: Why did they come here?
Some cataclysmic event on the coast pushed
them out of their homes in the 9th century.
Narrator: Freund believes this place is
not the remains of a once bustling village,
rather it's a memorial to the lost kingdom of
Atlantis.
He calls it a ritual city and says that this
site is actually a miniature replica of
Atlantis built in homage.
Cancho Roano is just one of several ritual
cities found in this area.
The people who built these sites were
commemorating something, but was it
the legendary seaside kingdom of Atlantis,
hundreds of miles away?
Freund: Detectives say you follow the money.
Archaeologists say you follow the stone.
Slate is the key.
This room it's paved with slate.
This slate room may have been the residence
of the High Priest for the entire memorial
city.
And slate is not indigenous to this area
but 250 kilometres to the south on the coast
it's very famous.
The people would have brought slate all the
way up to this Cancho Roano site.
Narrator: Freund believes the slate in
the temple connects this inland site with
the coastal city of Atlantis.
On its own, it's not enough to establish a
solid link.
But there's something else.
Freund: It was an altar.
Narrator: A secret symbol that helps make
his case.
Freund: Another clue is the holy of holies.
Located at the centre of the entire city,
just like Poseidon's temple that's mentioned
in the writings of Plato.
This was the place where the most sacred
rituals would take place,
sacrificing of animals.
Ritual objects were found here,
gold and silver, bronze.
Narrator: According to Plato,
the story of Atlantis came down to him from
the Greek Legislator Solon who heard it from
the priests of ancient Egypt.
It seems the Egyptians had direct contact with
the Atlantians.
And in the most holy space of Cancho Roano,
there's a 3500 year old Egyptian symbol.
Freund: In this place, in the centre,
was found a symbol.
A symbol that goes back to Pharaoh Ahmose in
the 16th century BCE.
It's a symbol of holy metallurgy.
Narrator: This symbol links the site to the
metalworkers so revered by the ancient
Pharaohs.
In the historical record there are three
cities famous throughout the world
for their mastery of metals: Tarshish,
Tartessos, and Atlantis.
This symbol could connect this place to
all of them and may be the ultimate proof that
the three cities were one and the same.
But there's one more piece of evidence
connecting Cancho Roano to Atlantis,
the most remarkable artefact of all,
an ancient carving that seems to preserve the
very emblem of Atlantis.
Freund: It's a stone indicator of what they
were memorializing.
Who they were.
And what is it?
It's a symbol of concentric circles,
one inside the other, and they're found right
at the threshold.
Narrator: At the entrance of Cancho
Roano ,and in many other ritual cities,
are large stone stele.
Freund: As you would come up to the city you
would see this standing stone in front of a
warrior with his sword drawn and here we have
the concentric circles of the city that he's
guarding.
This sign post points to a city with one
entrance in, coming in and coming out.
And in the centre, the same thing that Plato
was describing in Atlantis,
central shrine of Poseidon.
It's their memory of the past,
and the symbols that we find on this,
is the way they remember Atlantis.
Narrator: If this structure was built by
refugees from Atlantis, then this is the shared
memory of their sunken home,
a scale model of the lost city,
still buried perhaps, beneath the mud of
southern Spain.
In a deserted patch of marshland may lie the
secret that explorers have been seeking for
more than 2000 years.
Advanced imaging technology has detected
circular patterns like those described by
Plato.
The same design that's repeated on a
2500-year-old memorial.
New science seems to have revealed a guarded
island city of circular canals with a central
shrine and a waterway that leads to its
heart.
Maybe this is where our civilization was born,
home to an ancient and advanced people,
a culture of extraordinary
achievement.
-- sync, corrected by elderman --