All language subtitles for Historys.Greatest.Mysteries.S06E10.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH[EZTVx.to]

Tonight, Atlantis, the lost island
kingdom that's baffled explorers for

centuries. When you think of lost
cities, you think of Atlantis.

Atlantis is hit with the earthquakes and
floods that ultimately sink the entire

island nation to the bottom of the sea,
never to be seen again.

Some say Atlantis is a myth. Others
insist.

It was a very real place, wiped out
thousands of years ago.

Finding Atlantis would not only be the
archaeological coup of this century, but

perhaps for all time.

Now, we'll explore the top theories
surrounding one of history's most famous

lost kingdoms.

Easily, a half -dozen sites fit the
profile of Atlantis.

Could Atlantis and this other lost city
be one and the same?

A major eruption could have easily wiped
out an ancient civilization like

Atlantis thousands of years ago.

Is Atlantis a real place?

And if so, where could it be?

circa 360 BCE, ancient Greece.

The philosopher Plato writes of an epic
battle waged long before his time.

This battle, according to Plato, took
place about 9 ,000 years before his

Plato writes about this battle between
the Greeks and a very highly

advanced civilization from an island.

called atlantis atlantis is this huge
island that is populated

by atlanteans who are incredibly
prosperous wealthy have huge

armies so with all their wealth and
prosperity the atlanteans are arrogant

they're proud they feel they can expand
and conquer others and this is what

brings them into contact with the greeks
when they invade their territories

Atlantis has basically been provoking
the Greeks. They've been trying to

their empire, and the Greeks finally
decide it's time to respond.

The nation of Atlantis is a military
juggernaut. They are technologically

advanced. They've got the better
military, better tech. They've got this

Plato writes about this battle as if
it's like a true tale of good versus

And in the end, the underdog Greeks end
up winning the day.

To make matters worse for the
Atlanteans, after they lose the battle,

then struck with even more tragedy.

As the story goes, Atlantis is hit with
these natural disasters, earthquakes,

floods, that ultimately sink.

the entire island nation to the bottom
of the sea, never to be seen again.

Today, Plato's work remains the only
known ancient record of Atlantis.

The big mystery here is, is this a true
story?

Was there actually an island nation
called Atlantis?

Plato is our singular source for the
story of Atlantis, and he's using it

as a parable.

But he references real places in this
story that makes it sound like it could

a historical account.

The reason why we can't tell if Atlantis
was meant to be completely true or

allegorical is that Plato used both
forms of writing.

And in the Atlantis story, he has the
main speaker say over and over again,

story is true. But maybe that itself was
a rhetorical device.

He tells stories that have some sort of
a moral purpose for them. So if it's an

allegory, it would be about the dangers
of power and wealth.

However, not everybody believes that the
story is made up.

People that read Plato's writing look at
it and go, there's no way that he made

this up. It's too vivid a description
for him to have fictionalized this

He describes these very lush, concentric
islands, all linked together by a canal

with massive waterways and surrounded by
mountains, as well as a rectangular

plain that's 340 miles long.

The Atlanteans were sort of a
sophisticated maritime trading

the central island, there is an
enormous, ornate temple of Poseidon.

But there are skeptics who point out
details in Plato's story that don't make

sense. There's some strange things about
Plato's account, including the fact

that it's 9 ,000 years ago. And 9 ,000
years ago, we did not have any major

human civilizations.

Humanity was still living in hunter
-gathering type situations.

Plato might have just been off in his
chronology. Or maybe there was some

problem in the transmission of Plato's
text.

Maybe there's a mistake and it was
supposed to be 900 years instead of 9

There are naysayers of Atlantis, but
there are people that read the

and they go, no, it's got to be real.
And the first place that they speculate

to the location of this lost city of
Atlantis is underwater.

It's the year 1500, and as the Middle
Ages draw to a close, Europeans are

venturing out and exploring the world.

The Age of Discovery is an era of global
exploration.

Columbus has already discovered the New
World.

Magellan has already circumnavigated the
globe.

The Portuguese have traveled all the way
over to what's now modern -day Japan.

The Dutch East India Company had already
made it all the way down to the shores

of New Zealand and Australia.

As reports come back of new lands found
and new cultures encountered, people

have this voracious appetite to learn
more about all of these new lands as

they're being discovered.

By the mid -1600s, the fascination with
undiscovered lands brings Atlantis to

the forefront.

During this whole period of discovery,
people are engaging with these ideas.

reading about Atlantis and wondering,
could that be any of the places that are

being discovered during all of these
excursions?

Enter a young Jesuit scholar by the name
of Athanasius Kircher. He is well

-versed in multiple languages, in
physics, in history. In the 1600s, he is

is called, like, a Renaissance man.

He's also really interested in mapping.
He takes Plato's writings, and he also

combines those with some ancient
Egyptian texts.

He puts these sources together and is
able to draw what he thinks is the

definitive map of the land of Atlantis.

Athanasius Kircher put Atlantis
underwater in the Atlantic Ocean.

And for hundreds of years moving
forward, people take Kircher's map as

because he's got such an incredible
reputation as this.

Amazing scholar.

The map is very popular, consistent with
what Plato says.

There are things out there that they
have yet to discover.

So it made sense that this is where
Atlantis is.

Kircher places the city of Atlantis near
what Plato called in his writings the

Pillars of Heracles. To the ancient
Greeks, the Pillars of Heracles mark

they see as the edge of the known world.

Historians have tried to decipher where
the Pillars of Heracles actually are,

and they believe that it actually is the
Strait of Gibraltar, which is this body

of water that connects the Mediterranean
Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.

It seems at first kind of
counterintuitive. That's awfully far

And we don't know exactly where the
Pillars of Heracles were, but this

Gibraltar, with its very narrow passage,
would make sense as being interpreted

in the Greek context as being the
Pillars of Heracles.

When people think of Atlantis, they
think, okay, it must be off the western

coast of Europe and Africa, somewhere
beyond the Straits of Gibraltar in the

Atlantic Ocean. That just becomes the
default notion of where Atlantis is.

One of the things that Kircher knows
he's looking for is the possibility of

mountains.

Plato, in his description of the
landscape of Atlantis, talks about there

mountains. And in fact, in the middle of
the Atlantic Ocean, there is what's

known as the Mid -Atlantic Ridge, which
is a series of underwater mountains.

Our entire planet is covered by oceanic
crust and continental crust.

If this happens to be an area that is
tectonically active, that will cause

of geological movement of the land.

Some goes under, some gets lifted up to
form mountains.

There are a number of island chains, for
example, the Azores and the Canary

Islands, which are the topmost peaks of
some of these volcanic ranges.

Thinking about this particular
underwater mountain range, it's possible

volcanic activity that's creating these
mountains underwater could in fact have

played a role in not just the creation,
but also the destruction of Atlantis.

A volcano eruption is definitely known
to wipe out civilization.

That could have lent itself to erasing
evidence of Atlantis from the surface.

Kircher's map influenced a lot of
people, but it didn't influence

Some experts who believe in Atlantis
don't think that we should be using

Kircher's map as the end -all answer.
They, in fact, think that Atlantis isn't

underwater.

It's hiding in plain sight.

For centuries, many European explorers
believed that the lost city of Atlantis

must be deep underwater.

But in 1839, a discovery on land
challenges that assumption.

Archaeologists excavating on the island
of Malta find the remains of a temple

believed to be older than 5 ,000 years.
That would make it one of the oldest

buildings on the planet.

The temple is so old that the builders
didn't even have metal tools at the time

to create it.

It's a marvel of engineering for ancient
history.

It has hugely large heavy rocks placed
on top of one another, fitted together

almost perfectly.

So this is evidence for a pretty
advanced civilization.

There's a Maltese architect by the name
of Giorgio Gronier de Vassay.

He's the one overseeing this dig, and he
comes to a conclusion. This has to be

the lost city of Atlantis.

Malta is a nation of five islands off
the coast of Sicily in the Mediterranean

Sea. The largest island is 17 miles long
and 9 miles wide. That makes it one of

the most densely populated areas on
planet Earth.

Scientists believe that there was more
to Malta than there is now, and that

of it was wiped out by an earthquake and
a tsunami that followed soon after.

This entire Maltese archipelago was only
part of a larger island chain that

started gradually sinking around 20 ,000
years ago.

To de Vasse, the evidence suggests that
this newly excavated temple was a part

of an advanced civilization that was
living in that time.

2 ,000 years before Plato writes about
it. This is not the 9 ,000 years before

Plato as he lists in his writings. But
it is still a considerable time before

him. So it is conceivable that the story
was actually passed down to him as

ancient history.

So de Vasse is convinced that the
ancient structures on Malta indicate

is the legendary Atlantis. And he stakes
his entire reputation on this.

He even gets inscriptions that were
found in these archaeological sites in

that have the name Atlantis. And so he
thinks, here, this is my smoking gun

evidence. There are lots of people who
did not in any way take him seriously.

But he goes to his grave still believing
that Malta is Atlantis.

In the 1930s, 70 years after de Vasse's
death, some turned their attention to

another Mediterranean locale, a place
that's ground zero for one of the most

powerful natural disasters in human
history.

A new candidate arises for Atlantis, and
that's the island of Thera, which is in

the middle of the Aegean Sea. And we
know that there was a massive volcanic

eruption there in either the late 1600s
BCE or into the middle

1500s BCE.

This volcanic explosion was so massive
that it shot rock and ash up into the

almost six miles, and it was visible all
the way from Egypt. After the volcano

explodes, there is an entire ongoing
series of earthquakes, of tsunamis. The

island basically collapses in on itself.

Now, after the explosion is over, the
island of Thera will rebuild, and

The island of Thera is still around, but
we now know it by another name,

Santorini.

In the 1930s, a Greek archaeologist by
the name of Spyridon Maninatos joined

search for Atlantis.

Maninatos is a top Greek archaeologist.
Probably his biggest claim to fame is

that he found the site of the ancient
Battle of Thermopylae.

Probably best known from the movie 300.

Maranathos is also interested in the
Minoan world.

Now, the Minoans were a pre -Greek
population that lived on the islands of

Aegean, based in Crete, we think, and
even in some coastal settlements on the

mainland of Greece.

The Minoans are a culture we don't
really know a ton about, but we do know

they were living on the Greek island of
Thera around the time of the volcanic

eruption.

We also know that they were highly
advanced, and there's some evidence that

might have built structures in an effort
to be earthquake -proof.

After that catastrophic eruption, the
Minoans continued to persist and thrive

other areas like Crete.

However, mysteriously, they vanished.
There's no historical record or mention

them after that.

Mario Notos' theory is that the eruption
in 1600 was probably

not the only eruption that ever
happened.

A whole series of volcanic eruptions, of
earthquakes and floods and tsunamis

destroyed this area little by little.

So if you put all these elements
together about the Minoans, this highly

advanced civilization destroyed by a
volcano, by earthquakes, floods, it

to sound... An awful lot like Atlantis.

When Maranathos takes a closer look at
Thera's topography, he's pretty certain

that he's on the right track. For
starters, Thera is a series of

circles alternating between land and
water. And in the center, you've got

caldera that fills up with water because
that's where all the volcanic activity

took place.

And then on the sides, you've got these
steep cliffs that are surrounding it.

These steep cliffs could have possibly
been...

those mountains that Plato talked about
in his writing.

In 1967, Maranatos and other
archaeologists make a spectacular

on Santorini.

They find the remains of a city buried
under ash for 3 ,500 years. And it's an

example of an advanced culture with a
city that had a harbor, fine works of

incredible building, and even indoor
plumbing.

Maranata had to dig down through layers
of ash to find this incredible

settlement, which we call Akrotiri
today.

And that volcanic eruption, by dumping
all that ash on that settlement, it

preserved it like a time capsule.

It is the Greek equivalent of the famous
Pompeii from the Roman world.

Given what we know now, it's very likely
that a place like Santorini, could be

the representation of Atlantis.

In the 1970s, Jacques Cousteau, the
famed oceanographer and submarine

decides that he is going to explore
around Santorini. He is going to see if

can find proof that this is in fact
Atlantis.

In the end...

Cousteau does not find the conclusive
proof that he was looking for. There's

Temple of Poseidon. But this doesn't
stop the thinking that this could still

Atlantis, or that it's at least out
there somewhere.

For centuries, explorers have been
trying to decipher clues in Plato's

hoping to find the lost kingdom of
Atlantis.

But while the theory of Santorini as the
location of Atlantis is explored, other

experts wonder if they've been
misunderstanding the text all along.

Plato, in his writing, describes
Atlantis as an island. But the word he

Greek, nesos, doesn't just mean island.

It might refer to a peninsula.

An island?

is a body of land that is surrounded on
all sides by water whereas a peninsula

is only surrounded on three sides and a
peninsula is always attached to a much

larger landmass plato describes atlantis
as being an island with a large flat

area you don't usually find those on
islands so it's much more believable to

find such a plane on a peninsula in the
1920s This idea captures the

attention of a German archaeologist
named Adolf Schulten. Schulten is known

his work in Spain. He's actually
uncovered an ancient Celtic territory or

settlement known as Nantia. So he knows
Spain actually very well. He realizes,

of course, that Spain, all of it, is a
peninsula. So it occurs to him, maybe

this is the location of Atlantis.

If you look at Spain on a map, you'll
notice that it's right there by the

of Gibraltar.

So if the Strait of Gibraltar actually
is the pillar of Heracles, you have

another geographical marker that aligns
with what Plato was saying.

And this region has had plenty of
earthquakes and tsunamis, which could

affected civilizations for a very long
time.

In fact, in 1954, there was an
earthquake that measured 7 .8 on the

scale.

Fortunately, that large earthquake was
mostly subterranean, and so it didn't do

a huge amount of damage. But still,
there are shifting plates there, so this

could be a place where you might expect
to find Atlantis.

In the 1920s, Scholten zeroes in on a
region known as Donyana, which is part

a national park, and it's this swampy
marshland south of the city of Seville.

There is some evidence of an ancient
site, but when they get to the site to

start digging, they run into a huge
problem.

The water table of Doniana is very high,
so as they start to dig down, pretty

soon the water starts to seep up, and
they have to abandon these attempts to

down any deeper.

It's kind of like Mother Nature's way of
saying, whatever's buried here, you're

not going to find it.

After Shultz's failed attempts, Atlantis
researchers largely ignore the southern

tip of space until the 1990s. Suddenly
we have this new ability to take

photographs from satellites. And that
really changes how we understand this

region. Because satellite photography
starts to show us these long rectangular

developments right in this same area
where Shulton was looking.

a physicist from the University of
Dortmund in Germany. He looks at these

pictures and is really intrigued by
them. And he thinks that maybe these

rectangular structures could be the
remains of the famed Temple to Poseidon.

He also believes that he sees some
evidence of perhaps circular structures

would seem to fit Plato's dimensions of
Atlantis.

In 2009, researchers set out to confirm
what these images seemed to show, with

astonishing results.

They used something called electrical
resistivity tomography, or ERT

as it's also known, which can actually
map beneath the surface to see large

structures. And what they find is...

confirmation that there are large
structures there and some of them have a

-like shape.

Following the discovery of that, you
have marine archaeologists that dive

the swamp.

And when they get down there, they end
up finding these stone structures that

look like walls.

Could these be the famed walls of
Atlantis?

One thing you would need to do is to
date these structures.

Do they fit with Plato's description, if
not 9 ,000 years before his time, at

least some time very far in the past?

These ruins are dated, and they only
date back to the 1st century CE,

of years too late for Plato's
description.

Roman archaeologists are pretty familiar
with 1st century stone walls. When they

see it, they know instantly that it
dates from the Roman occupation of

But there are at least 20 other sites in
this area that could still be

excavated. And those are probably much,
much older than the first century walls

of this particular site.

Archaeologists have also been able to
confirm that this region probably was

by natural disasters, both an earthquake
followed by a tsunami around 2000 BCE,

which is long before Plato.

So there are plenty of experts that
firmly believe that Atlantis is hiding

the marshes of southern Spain.

For centuries, explorers have been
searching for the lost city that Greek

philosopher Plato called Atlantis.

They've traveled the globe and studied
the text, endlessly searching for

overlooked clues.

But in the 1990s, a Swiss archaeologist
proposes that the key to the mystery

might lie in the work of another
legendary Greek author who lived 300

before Plato.

His name is Homer.

Homer is best known for the Odyssey, his
stories, which tells the

voyages of the young hero Odysseus.

But there's another work that Homer is
famous for that he writes actually

the Odyssey, and that's called the
Iliad. And the Iliad tells of an epic

between the Greeks and the inhabitants
of the city of Troy, the Trojan War.

Homer's account of the Trojan War
concerns a massive Greek expedition from

mainland of Greece to the city of Troy.

This is said to have taken place some
400 years or so before Homer's time.

After the Greeks defeat Troy, the city
is destroyed.

Now, how it's destroyed, we're not
entirely sure. It might have been by

might have been by earthquake.

That information is lost to us.

Archaeologists dream of finding this
place.

But after years of searching, many
people...

believe that ultimately maybe it just
never existed at all.

That changes in the late 19th century
when archaeologists zero in on a

site in western Turkey near the Aegean
Sea.

It so happens that this site is already
an archaeological legend. The city is

called Hazarlik, and in 1871
archaeologists uncover what is now

be the city of Troy.

Over 100 years later, in 1992, Swiss
archaeologist Eberhard Zanger makes a

shocking claim in his book Flood from
Heaven. He claims that Troy and Atlantis

are one and the same.

Zanger's premise is that Atlantis is
based on the city of Troy.

and that Plato is actually giving us a
garbled description of the city of Troy.

Are they in fact the same place?

For Zanger, Troy turned out to be real.
If that's the case, Atlantis can be

real, given the fact that these places
were prosperous, wealthy, and powerful,

and then were destroyed and disappear
from history.

Perhaps it's the same story.

So there are a number of things that
Zenger uses to make his case for this.

both Troy and Atlantis are said to be
very windy. They're also both said to

a lot of water waves.

But maybe more telling is that the king
of Troy claims to be a descendant of

Atlas, an Atlantean, which is basically
the same word that Plato uses to

describe the people of Atlantis, the
Atlanteans.

Zenger uses satellite images of Troy and
the areas surrounding it and makes the

argument that a lot of things line up.
The plains, the mountains, the general

shape of the city match up with what
Plato describes about Atlantis.

According to Zenger, there is also a
major geographic feature of the region

bolsters his case.

Troy is located next to a major
waterway, which today is known as the

Dardanelles, which separates the Black
Sea and the Sea of Marmara from the

Aegean Sea, although not precisely the
same as how Plato described Atlantis.

Zonger believes that he can find enough
similarities to equate the two.

Plato writes that Atlantis is near the
Pillars of Heracles, which has been

presumed to be the Strait of Gibraltar.

Zanger claims it's not Gibraltar, but
it's the Dardanelles Strait.

Today, the two sides of the strait have
highly developed port towns, but in

ancient times, these sides of the strait
would have been nothing but just empty

land filled with woods.

Atlantis is clearly on an island, and
Turkey is not an island.

So here you find another kind of
creative translation of this ancient

word, nesos.

that Zanger argues doesn't exactly mean
island. It really means any kind of a

place that has a coastline. So if you
look at it like that, then Turkey would

qualify.

Zanger's theory is still pretty hotly
debated.

There are people who insist Plato made
this up. It is not a real place.

But there are people equally devoted to
the idea that Troy is Atlantis.

Those who discount the Troy theory
entirely take their hunt to even more

unexpected locations, like places that
barely have any water at all.

It's a widely held belief that if
Atlantis is real, it's somewhere at the

of the ocean. But in 2008, new research
turns that assumption on its head.

In the mid -2000s, Michael Huebner is a
40 -year -old German software engineer.

But his true passion is... trying to
find and locate the lost city of

Huebner scours Plato's writings for any
geographical features associated with

Atlantis. The mountains, the plains, the
concentric islands, the water,

the temple in the center of it.

In Huebner's analysis of Plato's
writings about the geographical features

Atlantis, he comes up with 51
characteristics of Atlantis that he puts

computer program and then applies to a
map of the Mediterranean region to see

there are any places that match those 51
characteristics.

So Huebner basically lays out a grid
with these 400 little squares and looks

which attributes each of those squares
might have so that he can zero in on the

places that are most like Atlantis,
according to Plato.

Months into his research, Huebner's
program reaches a shocking conclusion.

One of the squares on his grid lights up
as a place that has a ton of these

geographic features, but it's in a place
that you would never expect.

The most likely candidate that his
program comes up with is right on the

the Sahara Desert, a region called
Susmata outside of Marrakesh, Morocco.

This place just looks way too dry to be
Atlantis, but Huebner insists that this

is the place.

Huebner believed that there was a great
earthquake in the North Atlantic and a

resulting tsunami that swept up the
coast of Morocco before sweeping back.

It's not an island in the literal sense
that Huebner is talking about, but the

word Nessos that Plato used in his
writing comes up, and this time another

interpretation is created.

The word Nessos can be expanded beyond
island into peninsula or into beach. So

Huebner takes an even more expansive
definition of that term and says it's

region that's bounded by mountains or an
ocean.

The region that Huebner is talking
about, Susmasa, is surrounded by

ridges on two sides and the Atlantic
Ocean on one. So he suggests this one

region of Morocco fits the bill as
Nessos.

So Huebner plugs in these geographic
features into other locations, but none

as many hits as the Zeus -Massa region.

Case in point, he tries Santorini, but
the computer program tells him that

are only 23 of the 51 geographic
features, whereas Zeus -Massa, 44

up.

Proponents of Huebner's theory say his
most convincing evidence comes from his

research on the ground.

In 2012...

Huebner goes out to this particular area
of Morocco, and in the sand, he

actually finds kind of a bowl -shaped
depression. In the center of this bowl

a hill and the remains of an ancient
temple.

One of the most unique descriptions of
Atlantis that comes to us from Plato is

its organization. It has a series of
concentric circles with the Temple of

Poseidon in the middle.

He's absolutely convinced that he has
not just found Atlantis, he has found

famed Temple of Poseidon in the center.

And sure enough, these rings that he
identifies in Sus Massa

are wadis, which are ancient water
gullies and valleys.

And so perhaps then they might be
evidence that at one time there was more

there and you had the concentric ring
that Plato describes for Atlantis.

Tragically, before he's able to continue
or finish his research, Huebner dies in

a bicycling accident.

But other scholars are continuing his
work and looking in the same place and

hoping to prove that this Moroccan
desert location is the unexpected

Atlantis.

When it comes to unlikely locations for
where we should be looking for Atlantis,

there are people who say we should be
digging not in sand, but in ice.

The 2 ,000 -year -old search for
Atlantis takes another unexpected turn

at Springfield College in western
Massachusetts.

A class discussion piques the curiosity
of anthropology professor Charles

Hapgood. Hapgood and his students are
talking about the idea of continental

drift, this theory that the different
continents on our planet, once they

apart from being a central unified mass,
drifted really slowly over time

to their current locations where we know
them to be now.

Hapgood tries to challenge those ideas
during this conversation. He tells the

students, what if it's possible that
some of these landmasses move much

faster than we actually think they do?

Hapgood argues that the crust of our
planet can actually move freely over the

core and the mantle.

And he suggests that it can move fairly
quickly, even so far as flipping

the north and south.

And he says that this is something that
may have happened innumerable times over

the last 100 ,000 years.

According to this theory, at one point
Atlantis was in a warm climate. But

massive land shifts cause another polar
shift, which causes the South Pole to

move closer and closer to this island.
As it gets closer, it starts to get

colder. Nothing can survive there
anymore.

And Atlantis becomes known.

as the continent of Antarctica.

In 1953, Hapgood actually writes to one
of the most brilliant men in

Western history, Albert Einstein.

And he tells Einstein about his shift
theory, and to his great surprise and

delight, Einstein writes them back, and
he tells him that he finds his theories

actually really very convincing.

Papgood decides to put out his theories
into a book in 1958 entitled Earth's

Shifting Crust, and he even manages to
get Albert Einstein to write the

for his book.

When Albert Einstein writes the
introduction to your book, that's a

strong endorsement from one of the
greatest minds of all time.

Suddenly, people are going to take
Hapgood seriously.

Hapgood contends that these incredibly
fast changes in these land masses would

lead to these incredible natural
disasters.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, melting ice caps,
mass extinctions, anything...

that we would be looking for would be
buried underneath the ice.

That's why, he contends, we can't find
Atlantis.

From about 1960 on, Hapgood's career
takes kind of a weird twist.

He meets up with a psychic medium by the
name of Elwood Babbitt.

And Babbitt channels various historical
figures from antiquity, everybody from

Jesus to Mark Twain. And he records
these with Hapgood

in a series of interviews.

This really casts a shadow on Hapgood's
scholarly credibility, that this is the

direction his career takes, makes a lot
of people look quite differently at his

earlier work,

The acclaim may have at one time
received from Albert Einstein.

But a 2012 book called Atlantis Beneath
the Ice, researcher Rand Flemoth

revisits Hapgood's ideas about the Lost
Kingdom.

He goes ahead and takes these maps of
Antarctica from pre -9600 BCE

and lines them up with maps from
Athanasius Kircher.

and makes an exciting discovery, which
is that the shapes found on both of the

maps are a near -perfect match, proving
that Atlantis is Antarctica.

Some people will still hold that as
climate change continues and the ice on

Antarctica begins to melt, once and for
all we will find the lost ruins of

Atlantis beneath the ice.

The reason why people get excited about
looking for Atlantis is because it

really is the world's greatest unsolved
mystery.

Did it exist?

Was it all made up? And if somebody
finds out whether that was true or not,

going to be one of the most amazing
discoveries of all time.

Perhaps Plato really was inventing the
story of Atlantis for literary effect

the details were just inspired by real
places.

But the search is far from over.

Teams of investigators continue to hunt
for clues all over the world. In

Ireland, the mountains of Belize, the
waters of the Caribbean and beyond, all

operating on the assumption that
Atlantis did exist.

Maybe someday one of them will dig up
the Temple of Poseidon, and that's when

we'll know the kingdom of Atlantis was
no myth at all.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching history's
greatest mysteries