It happened only a few days after Google Ocean was launched. The UK tabloid The Sun published an article, titled Is this Atlantis? Bernie Bramford (38), an aeronautical engineer living in Chester, had spotted the mythical lost city here (co-ordinates 31 15′15.53N 24 15′30.53W), on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, near the Canary Islands, 620 miles off the coast of north west Africa. Bramford claimed that the network of criss-cross lines, forming a perfect rectangle about the size of Wales, looked like an “aerial map” of a city.

Image by swanksalot via Flickr

Image by swanksalot via Flickr

Here is a very impressive video of the find – but please don’t look at the sequel yet, it would be a spoiler:

Atlantis experts said that the perfect rectangle of criss-cross lines was located at one of the possible sites of Atlantis, as described by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. After a failed effort to conquer Athens, around 9000 BC, the fabulous city with its advanced civilisation was destroyed by earthquakes and floods, and sunk with all its citizens beneath the Atlantic Ocean.

Image via Wikipedia

The legend of the lost Atlantis – which could be a city, an island or even a whole continent – excited the human imagination for centuries. Some thought to have found Atlantis off the coast of Cyprus our in southern Spain. Plato however described it as an island larger than Libya and Asia, situated in front of the Pillars of Hercules, now known as the Straits of Gibraltar.

Dr Charles Orser, an archaeologist from the New York State University, told The Sun that further inspection was needed, because this find sure was fascinating. And now you can watch the spoiler:

A few days after the discovering of Atlantis, Google explained the criss-cross lines as sonar data collected  by boats mapping the ocean floor. The lines reflected the path of the boats gathering the data. But there still  were blank spots between the lines that the spokesmen couldn’t explain.

If you watched the “spoiler”, it’s possible that Bernie Bramford has discovered something completely different from the lost continent of Atlantis… As Youtuberculosis stated: a chart from the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences shows us “survey tracks”, or the routes taken by ships using sonar equipment to assess the suitability of the Madeira Abyssal Plain Grid as a potential radioactive waste dumping ground…

More Historical Mysteries here!