06x10 - The Search for Atlantis

[bunniefuu]

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 these 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 time.

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
expand 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 beat.

Plato writes about this battle

as if it's like a true
tale of good versus evil,

and in the end,

the underdog Greeks
end up winning the day.

To make matters worse
for the Atlanteans,

after they lose the battle,
they are 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
almost as a parable,

but he references real
places in this story

that makes it sound like it
could be 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,

this story is true,

but maybe that itself
was a rhetorical device.

He tells stories
that have some sort

of a moral purpose to 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 of a
description for him

to have fictionalized
this place.

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 plane

that's 340 miles long.

The Atlanteans were sort

of a sophisticated
maritime trading community,

and on 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


There are naysayers of Atlantis,

but there are people
that read the description

and they go, "No,
it's got to be real."

And the first place that they
speculate as 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 what 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
puts Atlantis underwater

in the Atlantic Ocean

and for hundreds of
years moving forward,

people take
Kircher's map as fact

because he's got such
an incredible reputation

as this amazing scholar.

The map is very popular.

It's 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

what 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 from Greece

and we don't know
exactly where the Pillars

of Heracles were,

but this Strait of 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
Strait 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 being 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 lots 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 that
the 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 civilizations.

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 everybody.

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
believe 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.

This 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 Gronet de Vasse.

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 nine 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 part of that 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 2000 years
before Plato writes about it.

This is not the 9,000 years

before Plato as he
listed 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 these ancient
structures on Malta indicate

that it is the
legendary Atlantis

and he stakes his entire
reputation on this.

He even gets inscriptions

that were found in these
archaeological sites in Malta

that have the name Atlantis,

and so he thinks, "Here, this
is my smoking g*n 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 expl*si*n was
so massive that it shot rock

and ash up into the
air 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 expl*si*n is over,

the island of
Thera will rebuild,

and today 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 Marinatos joins
the search for Atlantis.

Marinatos 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."

Marinatos is also interested
in the Minoan world.

Now, the Minoans were
a pre-Greek population

that lived on the
islands of the 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
that 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 they might have built
structures in an effort

to be earthquake proof.

After that catastrophic
eruption, the Minoans continued

to persist and thrive in
other areas like Crete.

However, mysteriously
they vanish.

There's no historical record
or mention of them after that.

Marinatos's 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 earthquake, floods,

it begins to sound an
awful lot like Atlantis.

When Marinatos 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

concentric circles alternating
between land and water,

and in the center,
you've got this 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, Marinatos
and other archaeologists

make a spectacular
discovery 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 art,

incredible buildings,
and even indoor plumbing.

Marinatos 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 explorer,

decides that he is going

to explore around Santorini.

He is going to see
if he 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 no temple of Poseidon,

but this doesn't
stop the thinking

that this could
still be Atlantis

or that it's at least
out there somewhere.

For centuries,
explorers have been trying

to decipher clues
in Plato's writings,

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 writings,
describes Atlantis as an island,

but the word he uses
in 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 plain
on a peninsula.

In the 1920s, this
idea captures the attention

of a German archaeologist
named Adolf Schulten.

Schulten is known
for his work in Spain.

He's actually uncovered an
ancient Celtic territory

or settlement known as Numantia,

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 Strait of Gibraltar.

So if the Strait of Gibraltar
actually is the Pillars

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 have
affected civilizations

for a very long time.

In fact, in 1954,
there was an earthquake

that measured 7.8 on
the Richter 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, Schulten zeroes in

on a region known as Donana,

which is part of
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
Donana 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 dig 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
Schulten's failed attempts,

Atlantis researchers largely
ignore the southern tip

of Spain 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
Schulten was looking.

So, 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 that would seem

to fit Plato's
dimensions of Atlantis.

In 2009,
researchers set out to confirm

what these images seem to
show with astonishing results.

They use 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 ring-like shape.

Following the discovery of that,

you have marine archaeologists
that dive into 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 descriptions,

if not 9,000 years
before his time,

at least sometime
very far in the past?

These ruins are dated

and they only date back
to the first century CE,

thousands of years too late
for Plato's description.

Roman archaeologists
are pretty familiar

with first century stone
walls, so when they see it,

they know instantly that it
dates from the Roman occupation

of Spain, 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 hit 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 in
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
years before Plato.

His name is Homer.

Homer is best known for
"The Odyssey," his story,

which tells the voyages of
the young hero Odysseus.

But there's another work
that Homer is famous for

that he writes actually
before "The Odyssey,"

and that's called "The Iliad."

And "The Iliad" tells of an
epic battle between the Greeks

and the inhabitants of the
city of Troy, the Trojan w*r.

Homer's account
of the Trojan w*r

concerns a massive
Greek expedition

from the 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've been by fire, it
might've 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 potential site

in western Turkey
near the Aegean Sea.

It so happens

that this site is already
an archaeological legend.

The city is called Hisarlik,

and in 1871,
archaeologists uncover

what is now believed
to be the city of Troy.

Over 100 years later in 1992,

Swiss archaeologist Eberhard
Zangger makes a shocking claim

in his book, "Flood
From Heaven."

He claims that Troy and
Atlantis are one and the same.

Zangger'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 Zangger, 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 Zangger uses

to make his case for this.

One, both Troy and Atlantis
are said to be very windy.

They're also both said to
have a lot of waterways,

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.

Zangger uses satellite
images of Troy

and the area 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 Zangger,

there is also a major
geographic feature of the region

that 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,

Zangger 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.

Zangger 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've 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 the ancient Greek word nesos

that Zangger 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.

Zangger'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 is a widely held belief that

if Atlantis is real,

it's somewhere at the
bottom of the ocean.

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

In the mid 2000s,

Michael Hubner is a 40-year-old
German software engineer,

but his true passion
is trying to find

and locate the lost
city of Atlantis.

Hubner 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 Hubner's analysis

of Plato's writings about
the geographical features

of Atlantis, he comes up
with 51 characteristics

of Atlantis that he puts
into a computer program

and then applies to a map
of the Mediterranean region

to see if there are any places

that match those


So Hubner basically
lays out a grid

with these 400 little squares

and looks for 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,

Hubner'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 edge
of the Sahara Desert,

a region called Souss-Massa
outside of Marrakesh, Morocco.

This place just looks
way too dry to be Atlantis,

but Hubner insists
that this is the place.

Hubner believes 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 Hubner is talking about,

but the word nesos that Plato
uses in his writing comes up.

And this time another
interpretation is created.

The word nesos can be expanded

beyond island into
peninsula or into beach.

So Hubner takes an even
more expansive definition

of that term and says it's
any region that's bounded

by mountains or an ocean.

The region that Hubner
is talking about,

Souss-Massa is surrounded by
mountain ridges on two sides

and the Atlantic Ocean on one.

So he suggests this one region

of Morocco fits
the bill as nesos.

So Hubner plugs in
these geographic features

into other locations,
but none get as many hits

as the Souss-Massa region.

Case in point, he
tries Santorini,

but the computer program tells
'em that there are only 23

of the 51 geographic features,

whereas Souss-Massa,


Proponents
of Hubner's theory say

his most convincing
evidence comes

from his research on the ground.

In 2012, Hubner goes out
to this particular area

of Morocco and in the sands,

he actually finds kind of
a bowl-shaped depression.

In the center of
this bowl is 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 as 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 the famed temple
of Poseidon in the center.

And sure enough, these
rings that he identifies

in Souss-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 water there

and you had the concentric rings

that Plato describes
for Atlantis.

Tragically before
he's able to continue

or finish his research, Hubner
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
location of 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 2000-year-old search

for Atlantis takes another
unexpected turn in 1949.

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 broke 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 land masses
move much faster than we

actually think they did?

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 Poles.

And he says that
this is something

that may have happened
innumerable times

over the last


According to this theory,

at one point, Atlantis
was in a warm climate,

but these 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 him back

and he tells him that
he finds his theories

actually really very convincing.

Hapgood 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 foreword
for his book.

When Albert Einstein writes
the introduction to your book,

that's a pretty
strong endorsement

from one of the greatest
minds of all time.

Suddenly, people are gonna
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,

despite the acclaim it may
have at one time received

from Albert Einstein.

But a 2012 book called

"Atlantis Beneath the Ice"
researcher Rand Flem-Ath

revisits Hapgood's ideas
about the lost kingdom.

He goes ahead and
takes these maps

of Antarctica from pre-9,600 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,

it's gonna be one

of the most amazing
discoveries of all time.

Perhaps Plato really was
inventing the story of Atlantis

for literary effect,

and 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 Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching
"History's Greatest Mysteries."