a very ancient continental bond between northern Europe and
North America and ... another continental bond, also very
ancient, between the massive Africa and South America.... Thus
the region of the Atlantic, until an era of ruin which began
we know not when, but the end of which was the Tertiary, was
occupied by a continental mass, bounded on the south by a
chain of mountains, and which was all submerged long before
the collapse of those volcanic lands of which the Azores seem
to be the last vestiges. In place of the South Atlantic Ocean
there was, likewise, for many thousands of centuries a great
continent now very deeply engulfed beneath the sea.[20]
Later he refers to
collapses ... at the close of the Miocene, in the folded
Mediterranean zone and in the two continental areas, continuing
up to the final annihilation of the two continents ... then,
in the bottom of the immense maritime domain resulting from
these subsidences, the appearance of a new design whose general
direction is north and south.... The extreme mobility of the
Atlantic region ... the certainty of the occurrence of immense
depressions when islands and even continents have disappeared;
the certainty that some of these depressions date as from
yesterday, are of Quaternary age, and that consequently they
might have been seen by man; the certainty that some of them
have been sudden, or at least very rapid. See how much there is
to encourage those who still hold out for Plato’s narrative.
Geologically speaking, the Platonian history of Atlantis is
highly probable.[21]
FLORAL AND FAUNAL EVIDENCE OF CONNECTION WITH EUROPE AND AFRICA
Professor Schuchert, reviewing the paper of Termier above quoted,
agrees in part and partly disagrees. He says:
The Azores are true volcanic and oceanic islands, and it is
almost certain that they never had land connections with the
continents on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. If there
is any truth in Plato’s thrilling account, we must look
for Atlantis off the western coast of Africa, and here we
find that five of the Cape Verde Islands and three of the
Canaries have rocks that are unmistakably like those common
to the continents. Taking into consideration also the living
plants and animals of these islands, many of which are of
European-Mediterranean affinities of late Tertiary time, we see
that the evidence appears to indicate clearly that the Cape
Verde and Canary Islands are fragments of a greater Africa....
What evidence there may be to show that this fracturing and
breaking down of western Africa took place as suddenly as
related by Plato or that it occurred about 10,000 years ago is
as yet unknown to geologists.[22]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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