ATLANTIS - Much more than a Myth.

Atlantis was a bronze age culture situated in the Black Sea, towards the southern shore near Trabzon, on the volcanic fault line which exists there and is now under water. At that time, about 9000 years ago, the sea level was far below today's level because the Black Sea was isolated from the Mediterranean at the shallower Bosporus Strait and only received fresh water inflow from the rivers Don, Dneiper, Volga and others. The lowest depths of the sea were vast salt brines from evaporation of original sea water and overlaid by the fresh water from the river inflows. They did not mix due to the different densities of salt and fresh water. The lowest depths of the Black Sea are still devoid of life, much as the Dead Sea is.

The volcanic soil around Atlantis was fertile and extensive, timber was abundant and agriculture and ship building advanced. The volcano, around and upon which Atlantis was built, provided vents which were used as furnaces for the smelting of copper and tin into bronze for tool making 3000 years before the Bronze Age as we understand it today. The ores for the bronze came from the volcanic fault line and gold was also abundant there. The knowledge needed for smelting was kept aloof from the general populace by the priest elite and so could not be used for making war weaponry by less scrupulous individuals. Peace and prosperity reigned for thousands of years, and all the resources needed for it were close by and abundant. Science, astronomy, mathematics and writing first arose within the prosperous Atlantean culture in what were Neolithic times in the rest of Europe.

When the ice age became the big melt, the sea level in the Mediterranean Sea rose rapidly as the Atlantic Ocean poured into it via the Strait of Gibraltar and then into the Black Sea via the Bosporus Strait, which became an enormous waterfall at its Black Sea end. The level in the Black sea rose about 40 cm per day, or 146 metres per year. This event was the Great Flood mentioned in so many different cultures, testament to the migration of people from Atlantis. A volcanic eruption closed the final days of Atlantis and destroyed the city. 

The ruling priesthood could see the impending disaster approach and hastily wrote down their accumulated knowledge of agriculture, stone masonry, architecture and building, metal smelting, astronomy etc., on gold tablets (durable but not heavy like stone). Ten copies in all were packaged into 10 boxes (later referred to as the Arc of the Covenant in the Old Testament) which were given to 10 different groups of Atlanteans, led by priests, to make their way by sea or land to other places to resettle and take Atlantean knowledge with them. They took their breeding animals and crop seeds with them in numerous smaller boats rather than one large boat as depicted in the legend of Noah's Ark.

The most numerous group went to Crete in the Aegean Sea and became the advanced civilisation of the Minoans much later destroyed by a volcanic eruption about 4000 years ago. (They shared the symbolic Bull's Head with their Atlantean forebears.)This eruption event is mentioned in the book of Exodus in the Old Testament, and was the obliteration of an island now known as Santorini in the Aegean Sea. The resulting tsunamis wrecked Minoan ships and most were drowned with no means of escape. The Minoan culture never recovered from this event.

Others Atlantean emigrants went to Egypt, Greece, the Indus Valley (India), Italy, the Middle East, Spain and eventually Britain. (The Druids who built Stonehenge in England had the Atlantean knowledge of astronomy and the purpose was to use the positions of the sun and moon to resolve the 12 month solar cycle with the 13 month lunar cycle, important in agriculture and fishing). It was only later that the descendants of the elite Atlantean priests allowed general access to the bronze smelting technology and it then spread with its attendant downside - war weaponry – to be known as the Bronze Age.

The linguistic commonality of all the Eurasian languages goes back to the common source of the languages and script, which was Atlantean. The similarities are there but unaccounted for by modern archaeology, which only looks back as far as the Sumerians for the source of writing, and who were another group of Atlanteans who settled on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern Iraq. Modern archaeology refers to the Tigris – Euphrates area as the cradle of agriculture, but that knowledge came from the knowledge originating from Atlantis before its destruction.

Atlantis was not only more than a myth, it was the source of many of the Eurasian cultures we have today, and the source of the advanced technology and architecture of ancient Egypt, which also has no explanation in modern archaeology. Scriptures from ancient cultures, such as Sanskrit from the Indus Valley, the scriptures from the Israelites, ancient Egyptian texts, and ancient Greek texts all tell a similar story from the past. The location of Atlantis was critical to the spread of its advanced knowledge just before its destruction. The climate and geology of the Black Sea itself was the catalyst for both the rise of the extraordinary civilisation of Atlantis and for its demise.