While the story of Atlantis is often attributed to a single philosopher, Plato, many scholars believe it originated as an oral tradition among ancient cultures.

Could The Eye of the Sahara The Lost City of Atlantis?

In the beginning, Poseidon was the Greek God of the Sea. However, his story begins in the clouds. The ancient Greeks thought that thunder and lightning occurred when Zeus hurled his bolts at someone who had done wrong.

The Eye of the Sahara, also known as The Eye of Africa, is a vast area in the Sahara Desert. It is about 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) wide and covers much of southeastern Algeria, northwestern Niger, and parts of northern Chad. The Sahara Desert is the world’s largest hot desert.

The Sahara is an arid region that stretches across North Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. It’s one of the hottest places on Earth. The Sahara has been home to humans for thousands of years.

Recently, some previously-classified CIA files became available to the public.

There were still some redactions that are classified, but they provided new information on the Eye of the Sahara.

In 1967, the CIA conducted a secret mission where aircraft were sent to about a dozen different locations in the world covertly to run surveillance in search of geomagnetic anomalies. Geomagnetic fields within the earth shield us from the vacuum of space, and scientists wanted to check for any differences or phenomena. The Richat Structure was one of the locations tested.

Now, while the fact that a mission happened is declassified, the results of the mission were not released. This is what was written about the findings from the Eye of the Sahara:

“The Richat Structure has been studied by geologists for more than 30 years. A paper published in 1973 described it as one of Earth’s strangest landforms: an elliptical dome-like structure with its center at 15°N 10°E in Mauritania’s Western Sahara desert region.”

 

Plato wrote about Atlantis as a real place.

But he was never clear about where it was located. He did say that the island was made up of nine concentric circles.

 

The center circle was where the king’s palace was located and all the buildings were made of gold. The other eight circles were divided into classes of people: farmers, craftsmen, and soldiers.

 

Plato also wrote about how Poseidon created Atlantis by striking his trident into the ground off the coast of Libya (not Egypt). That means that Atlantis would have been somewhere between North Africa and Europe in size.

 

One of the things Plato wrote about the location of the City of Atlantis is that it sits west of the Pillars of Hercules. That would put it in the Strait of Gibraltar, between Spain and Morocco.

 

Well, that’s not where the Eye of the Sahara is. It is, however, where an island city named Gades (now Cadiz) is located. There’s talk about that being one of the 10 Kingdoms of Atlantis named after one of Poseidon’s sons. That may be true, but why would Plato write about the location

What Do You Think?

Now that you’ve been presented with evidence on both sides, what do you think? Do you believe that the Eye of the Sahara could be the Lost City of Atlantis? Or is it too far-fetched?

Or maybe Atlantis is actually just a moral tale about society by Plato. That’s still the mystery. What we do know is that the Richat Structure is really freakin’ cool, no matter how it was formed.