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The Lost City of Atlantis: A Crime Scene Investigation
The Pillars of Heracles
“Tarifa, Estrecho de Gibraltar. Strait of Gibraltar” by jose rambaud is licensed under CC BY 2.0
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Plato tells us in his writing that Atlantis was sited outside and yet close to the ‘Pillars of
Heracles’ (also known as the Pillars of Hercules). The Pillars of Heracles is the name of two
promontories - high points of land sticking out into the sea - at the eastern end of the Strait
of Gibraltar, the channel between Africa and Spain that connects the Mediterranean Sea to
the Atlantic Ocean. The pillar on the Spanish side is the Rock of Gibraltar on the southern
coast of Spain. The exact location of the
second pillar on the African continent
View of the Strait of Gibraltar
is disputed, however, it is either the
from the Pillars of Heracles.
peak of Jebel Moussa or Mount Hacho.
In Greek mythology, the pillars were put
there by the hero Heracles to celebrate
his completion of his tenth labour, which
sent him to the edge of the world to
defeat the monster named Geryon.
The Lost City of Atlantis: A Crime Scene Investigation
Structure of Atlantis
Plato described the layout and structure of the land formation of Atlantis in great detail.
He stated that the city was arranged in concentric circles - circles of different sizes that
have the same centre point - of alternating land and water, with the zones of land rising
high above the water and connected
Layout of Atlantis
by roofed bridges that ships could
sail beneath.
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He stated that there was a hill covered
with lavish palaces and temples and a
large, flat, rectangular-shaped plain in
the centre. Plato described mountains
that descended down towards the
sea and that the island was southfacing and sheltered from the winds
to the north.
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The Lost City of Atlantis: A Crime Scene Investigation
Size of Atlantis
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Plato described the continent of Atlantis as being larger than Libya and Asia combined. In
ancient times, the Greeks were only familiar with a small region of the continent of Asia.
When Plato referred to ‘Asia’, he meant Asia Minor, a peninsula which is part of modern-day
Turkey with the Black Sea to the north, the Aegean Sea to the west and the Mediterranean
Sea to the south. This is the point where the continents of Europe and Asia meet and was
well known to travellers in ancient
times. The exact size of Atlantis has
been disputed for many years, as
Plato did not explicitly state how
big it was but it is thought to have
been approximately 700 kilometres
(435 miles) across its diameter from
other measurements that he gave.
The Lost City of Atlantis: A Crime Scene Investigation
Distance from Athens
The measure used by scientists is
the
maximum
distance
that
Alexander the Great travelled on
his military campaigns, which was
a distance of 5000 kilometres (over
3000 miles) from Athens. However,
some argue that the distance travelled
by the Atlanteans could have been
greater as they were described as an
advanced civilisation with superior
technology.
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Plato stated that the lost city of Atlantis was at war with the Athenians and that the
Atlanteans traded with various people groups throughout the Mediterranean region.
Therefore, Atlantis had to be located at a distance that was realistically reachable from
Athens, with the navigational skills and technology that existed in ancient times.
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The Lost City of Atlantis: A Crime Scene Investigation
Natural Disasters
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Natural disasters are catastrophic events that are caused by forces of nature that cannot
be controlled by humans, such as floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, wildfires and tsunamis.
Even today, cities around the world are devastated by several hundred natural disasters
each year. This was even
more the case in ancient times
when safety measures, such as
warning systems and humanlyconstructed defences, did not
exist. For example, the Greek
island of Thera, now known as
Santorini, was once home to a
Bronze Age Minoan settlement
that was destroyed by a volcanic
eruption c. 1500 BC.
The Lost City of Atlantis: A Crime Scene Investigation
Continental Drift
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All of Earth’s land and water sit on large, moving pieces of solid rock that make up Earth’s
outer crust called tectonic plates. Around AD 1800, a German scientist called Alexander
von Humboldt pointed out that it looks like the continents of Africa and South America
slot together like a jigsaw puzzle and that they were once joined together. In 1912, Alfred
Wegener further developed this idea and came up with the continental drift theory, the idea
that tectonic plates and the continents that sit on top of them, move over time. He theorised
that around 300 million years ago, all the
world’s continents were joined together in
one supercontinent called Pangaea. People
looking for the lost city of Atlantis often talk
about how the lands bordering the Atlantic
Ocean were much closer together in 10,000
BC than they are today, using continental
drift theory to support their ideas around
their proposed location of the lost city.