The Azors are nine islands in the Atlantic Ocean, sitting about a third of the way from Europe to North America. A history textbook will tell you that the Portuguese explorers discovered this beautiful archipelago in the 15th century. Until then, they were uninhabited. The islands still belong to Portugal, so there seems to be no controversy or mystery here, except for the fact that some researchers think the Azors were home to an ancient civilization from thousands of years ago. Others support the idea that the famous Atlantis itself was here. In 2010, archaeologists announced that they found some structures on the islands which looked like they were from the Stone Age. If that’s true, it would mean that there was a civilization back then which was advanced enough to travel this far and settle on the remote islands.
A special scientific commission studied the matter and concluded that those structures were natural rock formations or had a more modern origin. So, the first settlers were supposed to have been the Portuguese. It didn’t stop some enthusiastic scientists from further research. They analyzed the DNA of mice from the Azors and found that it had the same genetic characteristics as house mice from Northern Europe. The little rodents couldn’t have sailed this far without humans. So, it looks like the first people had arrived at the Azors before the Portuguese. And the plot thickens. Dr. Felix Rodriguez, who works at the University of the Azors, is determined to find out exactly when it happened. He’s studying the megalithic structures found in the Azors. Similar structures found in Western Europe and the Mediterranean date back to the Neolithic age. According to Dr. Rodriguez, the oldest findings are from 4,200 years ago.
It’s not clear when civilizations left them. The professor identified seven megalithic structures in one complex as dolmans for the deceased. The cavities are all cylindrical in shape and definitely don’t look like a natural formation. The material from the cavities turned out to be at least 2500 years old. There are also some pieces of ceramics that seem to be even older. It looks like the rocks in the area had been lifted. You can see it by the small waves left by lava. It’s thick and sticky, so it can’t leave vertical marks. Someone must have moved the rock from its horizontal position. Another interesting finding is some stone anchors with holes found by the sea. Similar ones were used in the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic coast of Europe, dating back to 1,000 and 2,000 B. CE.
The 15th century Portuguese were advanced sailors and never used stone anchors, only metal ones. The scientists also managed to find a structure built right in the volcanic top. It looks somewhat similar to the ones built in the Mediterranean that are at least 2,000 years old. These structures are called calariums and were used to store the ashes of the deceased. They also found something resembling an oven next to it, so they could be a part of one complex. There’s also a basin in the middle, and it’s not the only one on the island. It looks like they had a special meaning to their builders. There are channels around the construction. They connect the four basins and the sunlights each of them at different times of the year.
It was all carefully planned as they were lit the brightest during winter and summer solstesses and autumn and spring equinoxes. The water passed through all the basins and went directly into the sea. It could have been a purifying ritual. Now, some people are skeptical about the findings and believe they’re all parts of a fortress from the 16th century. Professor Rodriguez is determined to prove it’s all much, much older. There must have been some ancient civilization here that could have left because of the volcanoes that go crazy every 50 years. Antoneta Aosta, a post-doal student at the University of Porto in Portugal, is also sure that the first people came to the Azors in prehistoric times. She has studied standing stones with small openings explained as cuts for quarrying the stones. Costa believes they are part of a calendar system.
She noticed that none of the slits in the rocks were aligned with the cardinal east direction. The slits closest to it are smaller than the ones facing other directions. So, it can’t be just a coincidence. It also looks like the slits are aligned with the solstesses, and that’s what makes Costa think it could be a calendar. She also thinks the inscriptions left on slabs of bedrock on the islands are much like those maps that were left on the rocks during the stone age in mainland Europe. Another interesting theory about the Azors is that it could have been the location of the famous Atlantis which was lost under the sea. Since the Azor’s archipelago is in the middle of an ocean, it could technically be a perfect place for that. A 20th century scholar quoted Plato to prove this theory was right.
The Greek philosopher suggested that Atlantis was in between the continents. The coins and sculptures supposedly found in the Azors when the Portuguese just arrived also point that there was someone else present there. And way more recently in 2013, a sailor found a huge structure looking like a pyramid off the Azor’s coast. It was most likely a large submarine volcano. But it’s much cooler to think it was some big deal in Atlantis, right? Peru has its own mystery. Amid the desert, you can find some eerie marks called the Nazcal lines. They’re known as geoglyphs and were created more than 2,000 years ago by the people of the Nazca culture. Thanks to a dry climate and strong winds in the desert, most of the Nazca lines have reached our day.
To create them, Nazca people remove the top layer of the pebbles and reveal the soil beneath the ground. The color of the soil changes from reddish brown to yellowish gray, so the lines always look different. Most of the geoglyphs depict plants and animals. You can clearly see a monkey, a whale, a condor, a hummingbird, a spider, various flowers, trees, and other plants. There are also some geometric shapes such as triangles, trapezoids, and spirals. Since they were discovered in the 1920s, scientists have offered different explanations for the lines. Some say that in Nazca culture, people ascribe special significance to these motifs. So, they probably created these shapes for deities in the sky to see. Others believe they were a sort of astronomical calendar and animal sketches were modeled after groups of stars. This theory was proved wrong. So the purpose of the lines remains a mystery.
Another place that leaves many questions is Nimmerit Mountain in Turkey. This mountain has a complex of monuments with temples and tombs. It was built by the kingdom of Komaini which ruled here around the 1st century B. C. E. There are statues of King Antiotis, two lions, two eagles, Zeus, Hercules, and Apollo. Archaeologists found the ruins of this complex at the end of the 19th century. They thought it had been built by the Assyrians. Then some of the most famous scientists of the time came here and found an inscription in Greek. It had details about the sculptures and the names of important members of the Komaini royal family. It looked like it had been put there for future visitors. The scientists established that the statues used to be full-size figures.
Changes in temperature, strong winds, snow, and the bright sun didn’t leave them a chance to last in all their original glory. Plus, the complex is in an earthquake zone. So, all you can see now is mostly the heads of the statues. They look incredibly complex and large for their time. The biggest question is, how did the people who lived thousands of years ago managed to create such huge sculptures on top of the mountain? It’s obvious that they worked on shaping the limestone blocks up there and not on the ground. So stay tuned. We’ll keep an eye on this. You’ve probably heard about the mysterious seastate of Atlantis. It was a high-tech utopia where people lived happily. But then something happened and Atlantis disappeared from the face of the earth. Many people believe that this city lies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
But what if we’ve been looking in the wrong place all this time? What if it’s somewhere different from where they’re trying to find it? What if all this time Atlantis was in the middle of the Sahara Desert? Well, this unexpected theory has some evidence. But to study this version, you first need to understand what Atlantis was and how we got to know about it. The very first mention of the mysterious city was in 360 B. CE. Ancient philosopher Plato wrote about Atlantis. His work Dialogues described Atlantis as a rich land with advanced technologies. Its inhabitants were powerful, intelligent, and beautiful like superhumans. He described in detail the structure of the city and this was the main reason why many people believed in the existence of Atlantis. According to his records, the Atlanteanss built this place in several concentric circles of black and red stone.
Then they covered these circles with brass, tin, and precious metals. In the city, there were water channels on which ships sailed. The Atlantanss were sailors, so they built a passage from their city to the open sea. On the internet, you can find many drawings of Atlantis created based on Plato’s descriptions. Take a look at these drawings and an actual photo of the eye of the Sahara. This place in the Sahara has a shape of several concentric circles. It looks as if a destroyed city left a trace on the sand. Many people have written online that the lost city was located there, but no one could prove it. Once upon a time, the Sahara was filled with rivers and lakes. In prehistoric times, there was only water there. So far, everything matches. The eye of the Sahara was first discovered in the 1930s.
This place was considered a crater from a fallen meteorite, but in the middle of the 20th century, scientists conducted a soil analysis and refuted the version with a fallen space rock. In the end, everyone agreed that this was a dome of molten rocks under which magma was raging. For millions of years, wind and water had been destroying the formed landscape and eventually made it look like perfect circles. But what if the Atlanteanss once came to this place and used natural circles to build a city? In this case, we would have many traces and artifacts from this developed civilization. And yes, archaeologists did find some arrowheads, spears, ores, and other things there. But this has nothing to do with Atlantis. In the eye of the Sahara, a multitude of Ashelan artifacts lies. It was an ancient tribe that frequented this place.
For the first time, Ashelan tools appeared more than 1 and a half million years ago. Some of the items found there may be 130,000 years old. And according to the records, Atlantis existed about 12,000 years ago. Archaeologists found no artificial structures in this place. There was also no debris or traces of a large city. People would have found some stuff if a big city with advanced technologies had existed here. The main supporter of this idea was one YouTube channel. It collected a million views and attracted the attention of many historians and anthropologists. The theory that the eye of the Sahara is Atlantis was quickly refuted. People found too many discrepancies between this place and the description of Atlantis. The author tried to catch the viewers’s attention by presenting external similarities between the natural landscape and the fictional ancient city.
Another popular theory claims that Atlantis was a real continent located off the Bahamas, but then this city was swallowed up by the Bermuda Triangle. According to this legend, the city ruins still lie at the bottom of the triangle, but there’s no confirmation of this theory either. Writer Charles Burlet invented it. Adherence of this theory claimed that the walls and streets in the western part of the Bahamas might be the ruins of Atlantis, but scientists disagree. They have proven that these walls are natural formations of coastal rocks. There are also rumors that the story of Atlantis was inspired by an actual historical catastrophe, the Black Sea flood. This is the Bosorus, a straight in Turkey connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Marura. Around 5,600 B. CE, the Black Sea was twice as small as it is now and had many cities on its shores.
Unfortunately, a huge flood destroyed this flourishing civilization. Within a year, cities descended underwater and surviving inhabitants moved to foreign lands and spread stories about the flood. Maybe these stories inspired Plato to come up with Atlantis. In the 1950s, people came up with another version. Atlantis was the continent that is now Antarctica. Tens of thousands of years ago, a warm continent with the developed city shifted to the northern part of our planet because of the movement of Earth’s crust. The Atlanteanss couldn’t adapt to the cold conditions and Atlantis was covered with a thick layer of ice. This theory was refuted when scientists began studying the tectonic plates nature. It turned out that Earth’s crust couldn’t have moved such a huge continent as Antarctica. The tectonic plates don’t behave this way at all. But the main question is, was Atlantis real? No one had described it before Plato.
Perhaps the philosopher came up with it. Maybe he did this to emphasize the correctness of his views on life and to identify his philosophical theories. In his works, he wrote a lot about divine and human nature and how people can destroy this nature. He spoke of decaying ideal societies because of immoral behavior and vices. The Atlanteanss were once moral spiritual people who created a utopia. But then they became greedy and mean. They destroyed their inner nature and for this they had to witness the destruction of their city. One night fires and earthquakes hit Atlantis and plunged the city into the sea. The higher powers punished people for their immoral behavior and Plato also wanted everyone to be afraid of moral decay.
But judging by the descriptions of the earthquakes and fire, it may seem that Atlantis was destroyed by a volcanic eruption as it was with the ancient Roman city of Pompei. And such destructions have happened pretty often throughout history. Natural disasters ruined many developed cities. One of the most famous cases occurred in 1100 B. CE in the Mediterranean Sea when a volcanic eruption destroyed the highly developed Menoan society. The Menowan society existed for about 2,000 years. These people mostly lived on the islands of Cree and Santorini located north of Cree. The Menowans had beautiful houses, a sewage system, and a developed economy. They were engaged in agriculture, grew fruits and vegetables, painted fresco, and made jewelry. They were the first people to found thethaloscracy, an empire based on the sea. They lived off of fishing, piracy, and maritime trade.
At the time, they performed cruel rituals, and their way of life was far from moral. They were used to earthquakes on the island of Santorini, so they reinforced the walls of the city with wooden beams. But they didn’t know what a volcanic eruption was. And when the sulfur smell appeared in the air, they didn’t suspect the impending catastrophe. When the volcano spilled out tons of lava and ash, all the residents of Santorini abandoned their homes and tried to escape, but they couldn’t. The eruption and earthquake triggered a tsunami. A large wave flooded the coastal part of the island of Cree. This hit the economy of the Manowans hard and destroyed their port harbor. Then foreigners attacked Cree and finally destroyed the developed civilization. Some historians think that Plato could have referred to the Menoan Empire when describing Atlantis.
Using their example, he showed how immoral actions could destroy people. Scientists discovered something Atlantislike near Australia. There used to be an entire continent that’s now underwater. Here’s what happened to it. Around 70,000 years ago, during the last ice age, there was a huge land mass called Sahul. It was located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. This ancient superc continent connected what we now know as Australia, New Guinea, Tasmania, and the Aru Islands into one giant piece of land. Imagine lush tropical rainforests surrounded by beautiful mountains. Sahul’s tallest mountains were in the New Guinea Highlands with peaks reaching over 13,000 ft. This beautiful place was home to a variety of unique animals, most of which were pouched creatures. But back then, they weren’t just koalas and kangaroos. Sahul was filled with different types of grazers, burers, scavengers, and predators.
It was home to a huge deprodon, a powerful hunter thiolio, and a horrifying megalania, a creature that’s much larger than any living lizard today. It was a unique place because the rest of the world was filled with placental animals at the time like wolves, elephants, and humans. In Sahul, the only normal mammals were bats and rodents. But not all its parts were the same. The Teeyor, Arafura, and Carparia regions were covered by hot savannah and dry forests. It looked kind of like modern Australia, hot air deserts with scrubland, step and temperate forests along the eastern coast. Back then, people were migrating all across the world. They made an incredible journey from Southeast Asia to Sahul and first arrived here from 60 to 45,000 years ago. They mostly traveled by foot and crossed the sea using bamboo rafts and simple boats.
They came there from an ancient land mass called Sunda which includes parts of Southeast Asia. They traveled across a series of islands known as Walayatia and eventually spread across Sahul. And it wasn’t a small journey. Sahul was huge around 4. 1 million square miles. That’s bigger than the USA or Canada. It stretched from the equator to around the southern part of New Zealand. So they arrived in what is now Australia and became Australia’s first people. Scientists think that Sahul had a population of half a million. We’ve discovered cave paintings that date back around 40,000 years. It’s a hunting scene depicting an anoa or miniature buffalo facing figures of humans and animals. Researchers are trying to figure out how these early settlers moved across Sahul and where we might find archaeological evidence of their journey. To do this, they created a landscape evolution model.
The simulation showed how Sahul changed between 75,000 and 35,000 years ago. It showed potential migration routes and archaeological sites. Humans likely traveled along coastlines and rivers. But how did Sahul get submerged off the coast of Australia, similar to the mythical Atlantis? During the last ice age, much of the Earth’s water was locked up in large ice sheets and glaciers. The sea levels were much lower than they are today. After that, the global temperatures increased. The ice sheets melted and the sea levels rose, flooding the land bridges that once connected different parts of Sahul together. About 8,000 years ago, New Guinea separated from mainland Australia. And then about 6,000 years ago, Tasmania did the same. We still can explore the underwater parts of Sahul thanks to new technology. Divers explore and collect samples directly from the ocean floor.
Underwater drones can go to places that are too deep or dangerous for humans to explore. And with sonar mapping, scientists use sound waves to create maps of the ocean floor. It’s like using an echo to see what’s underwater. The sound waves bounce off the seabed and come back, helping us create a picture of what it looks like. Deep underwater, archaeologists have found stone tools and other artifacts. They also discovered fossils of animals like dipperodon and thyloio. By studying the underwater terrain of Sahul, they learned about the ancient rivers, lakes, and coastlines that existed during the ice age. But Sahul isn’t the only underwater continent. Sahul isn’t the only hidden gem of Southeast Asia. Take Sundand, a place made up of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and some other islands. This place was crazy huge during the ice age, but now almost fully underwater. Almost, but not entirely.
The parts above the ocean are teeming with life. If you like birds, check this place out. It has almost a fifth of the world’s bird species. You can spot colorful birds like the Java hawk eagle and the Bali Starling among the lush forests. It’s also a home to a fourth of Earth’s fish species. Sundaland’s waters are a haven for marine life, even the most exotic animals like the Asian arowanas. It’s also a treasure trove of flowers. That’s where you can find raphlesia and titan arum, the world’s largest flowers. This makes it very similar to Zealandia. Zealandia is a long narrow piece of land about half the size of Australia. It broke from Antarctica about a 100 million years ago. Just like Sundand, it isn’t fully underwater. 7% of it stayed above sea level.
This sticking out little piece is what we now call New Zealand along with Stewart Island and some smaller islands. These pieces of Zealandia are lush and warm. They’re packed with volcanoes, mountain ranges, beautiful natural geysers, and hot springs. Local people, Maui, use these hot springs for cooking. People place corn, eggs, and vegetables in baskets and lower them directly in the hot springs. Sometimes they cook food in a pit oven using heated rocks. Another hidden world is known as Argoland. This mysterious landmass was once part of Australia back when dinosaurs chilled around. It drove scientists crazy for decades. They knew it existed because it left a huge stretch on the ancient seafloor. The Argo abyssal plane. About 155 million years ago, it broke off from Australia, saying bye-bye. The continent drifted somewhere north, and when it reached Southeast Asia, it just vanished.
