Atlantis ‘found’ in Spain 11,000 years after tsunami

Scientists say they have discovered Atlantis, the legendary island and mighty military power destroyed by a tsunami 11,000 years ago, in mudflats in southern Spain.

The site claimed by lead researcher Professor Richard Freund of the University of Hartford, Connecticut, is Dona Ana Park, a mudflat and nature reserve near Cadiz on the Atlantic side of the Strait of Gibraltar - known to ancient Greeks as the Pillars of Heracles.

Speaking to Reuters about his discovery, Freund said: "This is the power of tsunamis. It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out [a city] 60 miles inland, and that's pretty much what we're talking about."

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Depending on land elevations, a tsunami of that scale would presumably dwarf the 10-metre wave that hit Japan on March 11 and travelled six miles inland.

Atlantis is periodically "found" by scientists and eccentrics hoping to make a name for themselves. They have placed the mythical city in a number of locations, including the Dogger Bank in the North Sea and Thera (the Greek island known better to tourists as Santorini) in the Mediterranean.

However, the latest candidate does at least have the advantage of being pretty much exactly where the Greek philosopher Plato said it would be in the fourth century BC - although he was writing 9,000 years after Atlantis was destroyed.

Circa 360BC, Plato wrote in Timaeus that Atlantis was located "in front of the mouth which you Greeks call the Pillars of Heracles".

He said Atlantis was "an island which was larger than Libya [the Greek name for Africa] and Asia together".

Plato claimed that 9,000 years previously Atlantis had been struck by earthquakes and floods and that in one day and night "the island of Atlantis was swallowed up by the sea and vanished".

Freund's team of archaeologists and geologists surveyed potential sites using deep-ground radar and digital mapping. Freund also says his team has found a series of "memorial" cities, built 150 miles inland in the style of Atlantis, by the survivors of the tsunami.

He believes these cities are further evidence that his site near Cadiz is Atlantis: "We found something that no one else has ever seen before, which gives it a layer of credibility, especially for archeology, that makes a lot more sense." Freund is planning further studies, including dating of artifacts, to add weight to his theory.