There is certainly some evidence to support Thera, an island near Crete in the Mediterranean, being the location of an early civilisation. Professor Marinatos, under the auspices of the Archaeological Society at Athens, began a systematic excavation of a town on the island, Akrotiri in 1967, after evidence of early habitation had been discovered there in the second half of the 19th century.
However, it appeared that the town’s life came to an abrupt end in the last quarter of the 17th century BCE when the inhabitants were forced to abandon their homes as a result of severe earthquakes. An eruption of the island-volcano Thera followed, with volcanic materials covering the entire island and the town itself, preserving the buildings (above) and their contents forming an intriguing time capsule just like as at Pompeii.
A ceramic disc (right) had been found at Phaistos on Crete which was around 3700 years old, however made from a clay not indigenous to the island, indicating that Crete had certainly been visited by that time. Indeed, other evidence suggests that the island was in fact occupied at least by 6000BCE; indicating the existence of a sea faring people who had boats that could be rowed out into open sea.
These events appear to fit the story handed down by Plato of the island paradise, Atlantis. Indeed the volcano at Thera erupted exactly 900 years before Solon received the original story of Atlantis from Egyptian priests leading to some concluding that Plato might have got his figures wrong; he should have referred to Atlantis being destroyed 900 years previously, not 9000 years. There were other indications that Crete could have been the legendary Atlantis. Crete was well known to the Egyptians as ‘Keftui’, a land that was "the way to other islands and the continent beyond" exactly as Plato described Atlantis.
 "Deep sea soundings have been made by ships of
different nations; the United States ship Dolphin, the German frigate
Gazelle, and the British ships Hydra, Porcupine and
Challenger have mapped out the bottom of the Atlantic [Challenger map
below], and the result is the revelation of a great elevation, reaching from a
point on the coast of the British Islands southwardly to the coast of South
America, at Cape Orange, thence south-eastwardly to the coast of Africa and
thence southwardly to Tristan d’Acunha. … The submerged land … rises about 9000
feet above the great Atlantic depths around it, and in the Azores, St. Paul’s
Rocks, Ascension, and Tristan d’Acunha it reaches the surface of the ocean."
(3).
The then British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, was so impressed with Donnelly’s finding’s that he sent a letter of appreciation on publication of the book, and even went so far as to request that the British Parliament approve the use of the Royal Navy to search the area for evidence of the lost civilisation. Unfortunately for Donnelly, the fleet was engaged elsewhere at the time and so the search never took place. (Unfortunately for Shakespeare, Donnelly also became famous for discovering a cipher in the bard’s work suggesting that he had not written all that he was credited for, and that Francis Bacon was the true author of some of the texts.)
Volcanic activity cannot just make living conditions untenable, but is also known to have a significant impact on the land and seascape. For example, in 1808 a volcano rose in San Jorge to a height of several thousand feet, and in 1811 a volcanic outpouring created a large island which was called Sambrina during its short above-water existence before it sank again beneath the sea. The Azore islands of Corvo and Flores have also constantly changed shape over the centuries, with large parts of Corvo presently under the sea (5). More recently, on 14th November 1963, the skipper of a fishing boat off the south coast of Iceland radioed his base to report a large cloud of black smoke rising from the sea. He and his crew went on to watch as a huge explosion sent rocks hurtling into the sky, before a black land form emerged from the ocean depths. Within twenty-four hours the new island was higher than a house, and within a week its peak was 200ft above sea level.
But for a civilisation, there would not only have to be land but lost artefacts discovered on that land, and, again there is some evidence that such artefacts have been found. One such find was made by the crew of the SS Jesmond, a British merchant vessel of 1,495 tons that set off for New Orleans from Messina in Sicily at the end of the nineteenth century. In March 1882 the ship passed through the Straits of Gibraltar into the open sea. Some 200 miles west of Madeira, and a similar distance south of the Azores, the crew observed numerous dead fish and muddied waters. Later the same day smoke was observed, although it was assumed to be from another vessel. The following day, there were even thicker dead deposits of fish and the smoke was more visible, appearing to come from a land mass where charts and maps indicated there should be open waters. The Captain of the Jesmond, David Robson, (Master’s Certificate No 27911 in the Queen’s Merchant Marine), cast anchor about 12 miles from the newly formed landmass, but far from sinking thousands of fathoms as the maps indicated, the anchor hit the sea floor after only seven fathoms. Robson subsequently took a landing party ashore the new island to explore. When the ship ended its journey and docked in New Orleans and Robson gave an account of his findings to a reporter from the Times Picayune. He described how they had uncovered crumbling remains of massive walls and recovered artefacts including "bronze swords, rings, mallets, carvings of heads and figures of birds and animals, and two vases or jars with fragments of bone, and one cranium almost entire … [and] what appeared to be a mummy enclosed in a stone case… encrusted with volcanic deposit so as to be scarcely distinguished from the rock itself (6). Robson advised the reporters who examined his finds that he intended to donate them to the British Museum, however at that point verification of these claims becomes difficult for the log of the SS Jesmond along with the offices of the ship’s owners, ‘Watts, Watts and Company’ was destroyed during the London blitz of September 1940. The British Museum now has no record of any such donation from Robson (7). Despite this lack of corroboration, there is other supporting evidence of Robson’s discoveries. The unfortunately named Captain James Newdick of the steam ship Westbourne was sailing from Marseilles to New York during the same period when it reported sighting a large uncharted island in the area where Robson had landed. Other captains also reported floating fish which were eaten by the sailors, indicating that the fish’s demise was sudden and not the result of some epidemic disaster (8).
TAGS: Atlantis Theories, Atlantis Theories Explored, Legend of Atlantis, Plato's Account of Atlantis, Original Story of Atlantis, Lost Civilisation Theories
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Nearly all of the ‘lost civilisation’ theories have become
associated with the legend of Plato’s ‘Atlantis’, thus the concept and its study
have been largely ignored by the serious academic community.
Yet ironically it is probably the legend of Atlantis
itself, however fanciful, that has provided the foundation for the belief in the
existence in a pre-historic civilisation to account for the out-of-place
knowledge and artefacts detailed in previous chapters. 
These excavations confirmed that Akrotiri had been one of the most
important prehistoric settlements of the Aegean, and the various imported items
discovered indicated a wide network of external relations. Not only as Akrotiri
in contact with nearby Crete but it also communicated with mainland Greece, the
Dodecanese, Cyprus, Syria and Egypt.
Despite evidence of early civilisation, the evidence was
not early enough, with the first signs of habitation being from the late
Neolithic times (c. 4th millennium BCE.) Attention therefore turned
to Crete itself, Thera’s much larger neighbour, and a popular choice for the
home of the ‘missing’ civilisation.
Whenever the civilisation started, history records that by
1500BCE Crete had become the centre of a seafaring empire. However, within a
very short time, this empire collapsed along with its infrastructure. In all
probability this collapse was caused by the eruption of a volcano (left) that
destroyed the nearby island of Thera and also deposited layers of ash that would
have destroyed harvests for decades. The eruption is also known to have
triggered off a substantial tidal wave.
Not so, retorted Dr. Jurgen Spanuth, who was familiar with
Plato’s account of Atlantis. "Neither Thera nor Crete lies in the Atlantic …
Neither island lies at the mouth of a great river, neither was swallowed up by
the sea and vanished … in fact this great breakthrough in archaeology is a
bubble that burst long ago." 
"Evidence
that this elevation was once dry land is found in the fact that the
‘inequalities, the mountains and valley’s of its surface, could never have been
produced in accordance with any laws for the deposition of sediment, nor by
submarine elevation; but, on the contrary, must have been carved by agencies
acting above the water level." (4) Donnelly concluded that the area was the
probable location of the missing Atlantis. 
The Azores, themselves, are constantly subject to volcanic
activity; the picture, below, was taken by the Space Shuttle and shows volcanic
smoke over Pico Island. Altogether there are five active volcanoes situated in
the Azores area, and it may well be that such volcanic activity could account
for the disappearance of an entire civilisation just as it had in Crete. 
Whilst searching for the cable, the sea floor in the area
was found to be composed of rough peaks, pinnacles and deep valleys, more
reminiscent of land than the expected sea bottom. Grappling irons brought up
rock specimens from a depth of 1700 fathoms. These rocks proved to be tachylyte
– vitreous basaltic lava that cools above water under atmospheric pressure
(9).
