Jutting from the deep briny mists of the mid-Atlantic, some 800 miles (1287 km) due west of Portugal, the Azores strike one as bejeweled, fern and flower-encrusted baubles in an enormous expanse of blue oblivion. Largely a dormant volcanic archipelago right now, to most, the area is a well-liked unique getaway, however to some, these verdant islands symbolize the most effective case for a present-day fragment of the famed sunken landmass of Atlantis.                          

In a abstract of a 2014 keynote speech given by legendary ocean explorer Thor Heyerdahl and Dr. Dominique Görlitz in Oslo, Norway, occasion planners state;

“Within the final three years, the president of the Portuguese Affiliation of Archaeological Analysis, Nuno Ribeiro, has been claiming that archeological stays of buildings found on a number of Azorean islands are of pre-Portuguese origin. Along with the Portuguese archaeologist Anabela Joaquinito, he has recognized dozens of comparable pyramidal buildings within the Madalena space of Pico Island. Artifacts have been additionally discovered on web site which can predate the Portuguese settlement on the island. They consider the buildings could have been constructed in keeping with an oriented plan, aligned with the summer solstices , which suggests they have been constructed with an supposed function. In addition they consider that the Madalena pyramidal buildings are analogous to comparable prehistoric buildings present in Sicily, North Africa and the Canary Islands that are recognized to have served ritual functions.”

That is fairly fascinating in and of itself, however contemplate that if one takes Plato’s account as detailed in Critias and Timaeus at face worth, then geographically, the first Atlantean landmass from which sprang its sprawling seaborne empire would have been located nearly immediately the place the fashionable Azores island chain presently peeks out of the deep Atlantic. That’s, immediately “in entrance of the Pillars of Hercules,” i.e., Straits of Gibraltar. Ignatius Donnelly, the U.S. Congressman and pricey good friend of Abraham Lincoln who wrote the enduring 1882 e book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World , was among the many first to notice this, as have been the crew of the survey ship H.M.S. Challenger, whose 1877 article in Scientific American , entitled “Glimpses of Atlantis,” said;

“Whereas the brand new America was thus forming, the traditional Atlantis was little question sinking in addition to washing away. When its last disappearance occurred stays to be decided; fairly lately nevertheless, two or three traces of analysis appear to converge in help of the reality of the traditional story, lengthy thought of legendary, in regard to the geologically latest prevalence of that fantastic disaster. Archaeo-geology has sufficiently demonstrated that the reminiscence of man runs again vastly farther than historical past has been keen to confess; in order that there stays no inherent improbability within the story the Egyptian clergymen informed to Solon .”

Sao Jorge island within the Azores. Might or not it’s that the Azores are literally the situation of the legendary Atlantis? ( dudlajzov / Adobe Inventory)

Fairly a conclusion from among the most revered oceanographic pioneers, and one whose sincere and open tone struck me as essentially completely different from the snide and condescending assessments of many mainstream discussions right now, who within the ever-evolving debate surrounding Atlantis that we have now thus explored, largely preclude a severe dialogue of its historic or geographic actuality earlier than the dialog even begins. But till fairly lately, traditionally talking, this was not essentially the case.

In a lighthearted Washington Post article from 1988 entitled “São Miguel, the Azores: Misty Fragments of Atlantis,” for instance, journey correspondent David Yeadon flew to the Azores to fulfill with an area tour information in São Miguel to catalog some alternative sightseeing spots, solely to search out himself debating Atlantis over drinks together with his host, one thing I can definitely relate to as this e book was taking form over time. Within the article he writes;

“Most Azoreans haven’t any doubts on the matter in any respect.

‘After all, that is Atlantis!’ Antonio Pinero insisted.

We sat sipping espresso and aguardiente (Azorean firewater created from the remnants of grape pressings) in an out of doors café overlooking the broad harbor at Ponta Delgada, capital of São Miguel Island and largest city within the nine-island archipelago of the Azores.

Antonio had been a modest, soft-spoken companion throughout my first hours on this little outpost of Portugal, 800 miles due west of Lisbon within the North Atlantic Ocean. However about this specific topic he tolerated no ambiguity in any way. From inside his worn wool jacket, he pulled a much-thumbed e book titled Plato’s Historical past of Atlantis.

‘Was Plato a sensible man?’ he challenged, clearly making ready for an prolonged semantic foray.

‘Sure, he definitely was,’ he responded. ‘Now please take heed to what he wrote.’

He turned the grubby pages with solemnity.

‘For in these days,’ he started, ‘the Atlantis (sic) was navigable from an island located to the west of the straits, which you name the Pillars of Hercules.’

He paused. ‘That is Gibraltar – the way in which out from the Mediterranean.’

 I nodded; he nodded.

‘… and from it might be reached different islands and from the islands you may cross by means of to the alternative continent.’

He paused once more. ‘That’s America.’

‘Plato knew about America?’ I laughed (a little bit).

Tony was not amused.

‘Plato knew all the things. ’”

Again in Athens, 2,345 years earlier than this little change on the São Miguel cafe was unfolding, Plato wrote in his Timaeus, describing a portion of the Atlantean capital metropolis;

“Within the subsequent place, they used fountains each of hot and cold springs; these have been very considerable, and each sorts splendidly tailored to make use of by motive of the sweetness and excellence of their waters. They constructed buildings about them, and planted appropriate timber; additionally, cisterns, some open to the heaven, different which they roofed over, for use in winter as heat baths, there have been the king’s baths, and the baths of personal individuals, which have been stored aside; additionally, separate baths for girls, and others once more for horses and cattle, and to them they gave as a lot adornment as was appropriate for them.”

Whereas this may increasingly seem to be a trivial side of our investigation, contemplate that right now, one of many Azores’ principal vacationer sights is its quite a few therapeutic springs. As a journey information lately defined, “São Miguel Island is house to an distinctive array of mineral scorching springs positive to raise you to unmatched ranges of rest. The Azores’ distinctive volcanic origins make these islands a thermal paradise, that includes steamy, iron-rich swimming pools tucked amid lush inexperienced vegetation and tropical timber, and even a pure ocean pool heated by a volcanic vent and cooled by the ebbing tides of the Atlantic.”  Sounds fairly good.

The Azores have been additionally briefly within the highlight in 2013 when an opportunity discovery revealed a wierd object on the backside of the ocean. Diocleciano Silva, a Portuguese fisherman, observed an uncommon picture on his yacht’s depth-finder whereas trolling between the islands of São Miguel and Terceira. In keeping with his devices, the pyramidal construction’s base measured a whopping 86,111 sq. ft (8,000 sqm.), and its apex was submerged solely 40 ft (12.2 m) beneath the floor, whereas the construction itself stood practically 200 ft tall (61 m) from its base. It was additionally decided to be immediately oriented to the 4 geophysical cardinal instructions.

Reporting the findings to the Portuguese authorities in brief order, they started their very own investigation which naturally led to the official pronouncement that Silva had merely been utilizing low cost and inaccurate gear which gave an artificially sharp contour to what they claimed was a long-known pure volcanic formation within the space regardless of the enduring picture of what’s clearly a pyramid, which Portuguese tv confirmed in a stay broadcast on the time.

2021 oceanographic chart of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. (Dorokhova, E. V. et. al. / CC BY 4.0 )

Geographically, relating to the working speculation – and outline by Plato –  that the area we name the Azorean Archipelago is the true geographical location of a former Atlantean home-island, in last lowered dimension after the continent´s earlier two destructions as detailed by Edgar Cayce and others like Rudolf Steiner and William Scott-Elliott, what is actually astounding to me is that when one views a contemporary chart of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, one can clearly see the virtually similar define of the remaining Atlantean landmass hand-drawn by a teenage Frederick Oliver round 1886 throughout his clairaudient dictations of the previous lifetime of his muse Phylos in Atlantis in 11,160 BC on the island of Poseid.

This was contained in a free assortment of notes that later grew to become the e book A Dweller on Two Planets , privately printed by his mom in 1904, years after Oliver’s early loss of life in 1899, and never reaching wider audiences till a second publishing in 1920. Oliver’s channeled sketch is uncannily correct on condition that he didn’t have entry to detailed maps of the ocean flooring on the time his manuscript was written in 1884-86, as none existed.

To my information the one map he might have seen, had he visited a analysis library, would have been a fundamental contour map made by Sir Wyville Thomson in 1877 and launched shortly after the H.M.S. Challenger survey, which incorporates no specific particulars of the total boundaries and form of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. In comparison with a contemporary oceanographic or bathythermic chart, there isn’t any comparability relating to the extent of element, making Oliver’s sketch a weird and statistically inconceivable coincidence.

Frederick Oliver’s sketch of Poseid, 1886 (oriented). (Creator offered)

But if one traces the form of Oliver’s channeled drawing, the curvature and geographical indentations of the landmass of Poseid are uncannily just like the precise trendy picture of the Azorean seabed. In actual fact, it suits over the fashionable chart like a puzzle piece if exploded to equal dimension and oriented. “Pitach Rokh,” the best level in Poseid in keeping with Frederick Oliver’s e book, was an unlimited snow-capped energetic volcano in 11,160 BC.

Now word its location in his hand-drawn map’s excessive southeast quadrant. That is very near the place the Azores jut out of the mid-Atlantic, straight “in entrance of the Pillars of Hercules ” as Plato said. And from Plato’s description of the famed round capital of Atlantis, whose central characteristic was a monumental statue of Poseidon surrounded by the Nereids, it could make sense that Oliver and Cayce each confer with the island as Poseid, and the tradition as Atlantis.

Don’t neglect that right now, Mount Pico – a dormant stratovolcano and the best level within the Azores which formally towers over the countryside at nearly 7,700 ft (2,347 m) – when measured from its base deep within the ocean the place as soon as possible stood dry land some 13,000 years in the past, is even taller; in reality, it could be one of many tallest mountains on earth. And so we’re left with one other fascinating clue in our survey of those fragments of Atlantis, one other piece of the puzzle because it have been. Are Pitach Rokh from A Dweller on Two Planets and Mt. Pico one and the identical? Time will inform, I suppose.

Athanasius Kircher’s map of Atlantis, turned the wrong way up, which situated Atlantis in the midst of the Atlantic Ocean. ( Public domain )

Even the map the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher claims to have discovered within the Vatican Library throughout the Renaissance (above), copied from an alleged authentic dropped at Rome from Egypt throughout the time of Octavian within the 1st century B.C., when flipped the wrong way up in order that Spain is oriented to the correct, does, should you concentrate, present a more-similar-than-not, fin-shaped prime portion of Atlantis  divided by two rivers the place the true-north compass image was positioned.

And Edgar Cayce, probably the most studied clairvoyants in trendy historical past, whose over 500 hypnogogic trance readings on Atlantis we have now already explored at size, claimed that after many destructions and disturbances, however earlier than the ultimate separation into the separate islands of Poseid, Aryan and Og, the Atlantean landmass was crisscrossed by mentioned rivers, even giving a date of 28,000 BC for this second of three destructions resulting from an unintended over-tuning of the huge Tuaoi crystal powering the civilization, which fractured the substrata. Maybe that is the part portrayed in Kircher’s map, whose higher portion too encompasses the Azores, and the place our oceanographic chart shows that curious triangular seamount beneath the ocean.

On the finish of the day, it’s all fairly a coincidence if skeptics and debunkers declare unequivocally that  Plato’s account of Atlantis was a pure fiction designed to glorify Athens, or at greatest, merely a fantastical reprise of extra mundane Mediterranean disasters just like the volcanic eruptions on the island of Thera in historic instances, each of which I categorically reject based mostly on the proof thus offered all through this e book, in addition to on Plato’s personal frank and particular account from his dialogues which, prefer it or not, appears to level to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge because the nucleus of the huge and highly effective last iteration of the empire of Atlantis, whose imperial ambitions in opposition to the peoples of the Mediterranean have been checked by its notorious and catastrophic destruction round 9,600 BC in keeping with his seminal account.

However don’t take my phrase for it; it was Critias himself who defined in Plato’s Timaeus, “Let me let you know this story then, Socrates. It’s a really unusual one besides, each phrase of it’s true. It’s a narrative that Solon, the wisest of the seven sages as soon as vouched for.”

This text is an extract taken from the e book Visions of Atlantis: Reclaiming our Misplaced Historical Legacy by Michael Le Flem. View it on Amazon.

High picture: The verdant Azores islands symbolize the most effective case for a present-day fragment of the famed sunken landmass of Atlantis. Picture depicts Mount Pico within the Azores. Supply: rvdschoot / Adobe Inventory

By Michael Le Flem