Sunken city of Atlantis `found’ – on a volcano
present-day village of Quillacas, Bolivia
It was lost, feared drowned for 11,000 years, but a British explorer claims to have located the capital of Atlantis – 3,700m above sea level in Bolivia.
After devoting 20 years of his life to his theory that South America is home to the lost continent described by Plato in 360BC, a few days ago, former RAF cartographer Jim Allen walked into the village of Quillacas, 300km south of the Bolivian capital La Paz.
He had located the village, on the tip of a volcano, through comparing the latest satellite imagery of the region with Plato’s detailed measurements.
Within minutes he had found enough evidence on the ground to convince him that his 20-year quest had come to an end.
“My geologist colleague came running out of the local church, and he was very excited,” he told the Independent on Sunday. ” The pillars inside the church are all of red and black stone with a white mortar, exactly as Plato wrote.”
As the two explored the site, to the bewilderment of villagers celebrating a Catholic feast-day, they became increasingly convinced that they had cracked a mystery that has eluded everyone since Plato.
“South Americans shouldn’t call themselves South Americans but rather Atlantans,” declares Mr Allen. “It is time to officially declare to Bolivia and the rest of the world that Bolivia is where the legendary city most probably existed out of any site in the world.”
Since his declaration, the country has feted him as a hero. Congressman Jose Luis Paredes and the Bolivian geologist Carlos Aliaga – who travelled with Allen to the village – announced that Allen’s find “transcends international borders”. Doubtless they were also anticipating a potential explosion in tourism to boost the country’s economy.
Allen, a Scotsman living in Torquay, has amassed what he claims are 50 pieces of evidence proving that Plato’s description of an island city on a plain encircled by mountains fits the Bolivian Altiplano like a glove.
The city was said to be plated in gold, silver, bronze, tin and a mysterious metal called “orichalcum” – all metals only found together in great profusion in Bolivia near Lake Poopo.
He believes his strongest proof is the discovery of the remains of an enormous channel 183m wide that exactly matches Plato’s description of Atlantis’s irrigation canal.
It was his training as an RAF photographic interpreter that enabled him to make the crucial discovery when he accidentally came across a 1986 satellite image of the volcano. In that year the region had been flooded by heavy rains and it provided his moment of revelation. “In this image the volcano is seen as an island surrounded by water, just as Plato described.”
Even the conservative magazine of the Royal Geographical Society has conceded that Allen’s painstaking arguments, combining ancient measuring systems and modern satellite imagery, make the Bolivian Altiplano “the most promising candidate for the lost world of Atlantis”.
As if to bolster his theory further, last weekend, British explorer Colonel John Blashford Snell arrived in Buenos Aires after an epic 2,770km voyage through inhospitable jungle and piranha- infested rivers in three primitive reed boats. The Kota Mama (“Mother of the Lake”) expedition is bidding to prove that pre-Inca civilisations like Allen’s Atlantans traded with Europe and the rest of the world.
“The remains of a hitherto unidentified culture may well be discovered in this region,” says Blashford Snell. “Allen has certainly found something.”
But has Allen really found Atlantis – or is he one of a number of quasi- historians promising to rewrite the history of the world on the basis of hunches and hopes?
The legend of Atlantis has only one source: Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias, where he describes the island nation in the middle of the Atlantic populated by a noble and powerful race. Its people possessed great wealth and its rulers held sway over their own island and well into Europe and Africa. It was lost about 9,000BC after being devastated by floods and earthquakes.
His description spawned a 2,000-year controversy: Atlantis has been located in Antarctica – before the ice age – Indonesia, Crete, Africa and, even Outer Space.
Unfortunately for the explorers, most reputable students of ancient history don’t believe Plato meant to suggest Atlantis really existed at all. They all think it was a parable, Plato’s description of a utopian society, sparked by the demise of his own city, Athens.
“You can never disprove these people,” said John Ray, Reader in Egyptology at Cambridge University. “You ask them for the palaces and temples and they say they haven’t found them yet. It’s like people who put ancient Egypt in Antarctica, you can’t prove them wrong.”
Allen, who has given up his career and home to search for Atlantis, is used to ridicule from the academic community. For the moment he is staying in Bolivia and trying to raise funds to “do the geology”. He has no doubt he is right on the trail of Atlantis.
“It’s always been a battle, people want tangible evidence. Well, I can’t go back to England after this – we’ll find it.”
Source: The Independent
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