About the Hypothesis.htm - Mystic Realms

The hypothesis suggesting that Plato's Atlantis was located on the Celtic Shelf, in the north-eastern part of the Atlantic Ocean, was put forward by Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev on the basis of analysis of descriptions of Atlantis in Plato's dialogues "Timaeus" and "Critias" and their comparison with the modern data of geology, oceanography, paleoclimatology and archaeology.

In June 1995, the original version of the paper was sent as a brochure "Returning to the Enigma of Plato's Atlantis" to Geographical Societies of many countries of the world, and to the Faculties of Ancient History of some universities. The Heidelberg University, the French and Portuguese Geographical Societies have included it in their libraries.

In February-March 1996, the second, revised version of the paper entitled "Atlantis: New Hypothesis" was published by Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev in several Internet newsgroups (sci.archaeology, sci.anthropology, sci.anthropology.paleo, sci.classics, soc.history) and mailing lists (ARCH-L, ARTIFACT, HISTARCH, SUB-ARCH) and evoked a lively interest and favourable response.

In May 1996, a magazine version of the original text of the paper was published in "Vokrug Sveta" ("Around the World", Magazine of Travels, Adventures, Tourism - a kind of Russian "National Geographic"), entitled "Address of Atlantis - the Celtic Shelf?".

Since August 1996, the third version of the paper in English has been accessible on WWW at a number of sites, including the Web page at http://www.glasnet.ru/~explor/atlantis.html maintained by the author himself, which was closed after the Institute of Metahistory Web site was created.

In September 1996, the Scientific and Technical Council of the State Reasearch Centre "Aerogeology" discussed the geological aspect of Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev's hypothesis from the viewpoint of its scientific substantiation, and recognized that the ideas and suggestions put forward by the author, did not contradict the data of the geological science.

On 21 November 1996, Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev made a report "Atlantis: New Hypothesis" to the Commission of History of Geographical Knowledge and Historical Geography at the Moscow Centre of the Russian Geographical Society. It was recognized that the hypothesis certainly deserved attention. The Commission approved of the plan of its experimental verification proposed by the author, and the author himself was recommended for election (and subsequently elected) a full Member of the Russian Geographical Society.

The paleogeographic aspect of Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev's paper was highly appraised by one of Russia's prominent paleogeographers, Professor Grosswald of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Science (Geography), in his comments on the paper.

Professor Gorodnitsky, Doctor of Science (Geology and Mineralogy), Full Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Head of Laboratory at the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the RAS, who has been studying the problem of Atlantis for several decades, considers Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev's hypothesis to be "one of the most promising hypotheses on Atlantis ever put forward".

At present an expert assessment of the paleogeographic aspect of the hypothesis is being prepared by several other leading experts in the field from the Institute of Geography and the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the RAS.

From most of the leading oceanographic and cartographic centres of the world (British Oceanographic Data Centre, UK Hydrographic Office, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, NOAA, NGDC, Defence Mapping Agency, IFREMER) confirmations have been received to the effect that they do not have data on the survey of the seabed in the area of the Little Sole Bank of sufficiently high resolution, usable for archaeological study.

At present, the Institute of Metahistory, is working to prepare an expedition to verify Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev's hypothesis, which is planned to be carried out in cooperation with the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the summer of 1998.