The location of the Eye (Atlas Mountains): The Richat Structure lies around 700 km (440 miles) south of the Atlas Mountains, which are associated with the legendary Atlas of Greek mythology. Atlas was said to have been the first king of Mauretania (meaning ancient Maghreb or north-west Africa, rather than the modern country). According to Plato, Atlas was the first king of Atlantis and the son of Poseidon. So there appears to be some sort of link between Atlantis and the Atlas Mountains, which aren’t that far away from the Richat Structure. Richat structure is visible from space due to its large size and absence of vegetables, and it resembles an eye, especially an ox’s or bull’s eye. Some people describe its ridges as half-cut onion-like layers or an outsized ammonite fossil in the Sahara Desert. a b Sao, Ousmane; Giresse, Pierre; de Lumley, Henry; Faure, Olivier; Perrenoud, Christian; Saos, Thibaud; Rachid, Mouamar Ould; Touré, Ousmane Cherif (2008). "The Sedimentary Environments of the Pre-Eulean and Aeulean Deposits of the Akerdil and Bamouéré Wadis (Guelb er-Richât, Adrar, Mauritania), A First Approach". L'Anthropologie. 112 (1): 1–14. doi: 10.1016/j.anthro.2008.01.001. This is also an example of ignoring details that don’t fit. Plato also described a canal that ran through all the walls to the inner structure, connecting the rings. No such canal is evident. It is also significant that there is absolutely no evidence of a city in the Richat structure 12,000 years ago. Plato wrote about an advanced large city. Where is the archaeological evidence of the civilization that built Atlantis? Where are the remains of a city’s worth of artifacts, of the technology, even a shard of clay pot, something? There is no evidence of engineering, of actual walls, of any improvements to the natural structure. You simply cannot have an entire city and leave nothing behind.

Because of its enormous size, the Eye of the Sahara is best appreciated from great distances-preferably from space-so for the time being; satellite images will have to suffice. The entire terrain surrounding the Eye was raised by volcanic activity from deep below the surface of the Earth millions of years ago. These areas weren't like the deserts of today. Instead, they probably had much flowing water and were much cooler. Communications and Publishing (2013, March 3). EarthView–Eye of the Sahara. USGS. https://www.usgs.gov/news/science-snippet/earthview-eye-sahara. He then argues that the size of the Richat structure matches Plato’s description, which translates to about 23 kilometers. But again – what do you count as the outer edge of the structure? NASA puts the size of the structure at 45 kilometers. Jimmy just forces a fit to what he needs, and declares victory. Netto, A.M.; Fabre, J.; Poupeau, G.; Champemmois, M. (1992). "Fission Trace Dates of the Richats Circular Structure". Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences de Paris. 314: 1179–86. The traditional front-runner and the only one so far that has gotten a lot of traction with mainstream academics is the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea. There is real archaeological evidence there. The island has a bull’s-eye shape with a ring around its center, and it has a relatively new volcano, which we know erupted in ancient times.

As previously mentioned, the sea destroyed Atlantis 9,000 years prior to Solon’s visit outlined through a 2,500-year-old book. If these accounts were accurate, this would have occurred roughly 11,500 years ago. Now, the only way for water to rush in and over the region of the Richat Structure would logically be a rapid rise in sea level. How could this happen? The video follows a familiar format – gather together lots of circumstantial evidence, exaggerate its significance and specificity, ignore anything that doesn’t fit, ignore all genuine scholarship, and create the impression that you’re onto something. Essentially – blow a lot of smoke to convince the naive that there’s a fire.

First discovered in the 1930s, the Richat Structure was originally thought to be an impact crater. However, research in the 1950s and 1960s has since eliminated the possibility of it having been made by extraterrestrial impact (a meteor, for example) in favor of terrestrial causes (such as volcanic activity). Jose Maria Galan worked at Doñana National Park [on the southern coast of Spain]. He took me out to the shore there and said: “In the summer, you’ll see thousands of people lying out on the beach. Now imagine that there’s a wave 60 meters high coming in, and you can see how a civilization could get wiped out right away.” Interestingly enough, the Sahara wasn’t always a desert. Though humanity has speculated this in the Qur’an far before climate researchers used ‘science’ to prove this, the Smithsonian estimated that it was a fairly tropical region prior to 11,000 years ago (Boissoneault, 2017). Additionally, topographical and gravitational studies conducted in the Sahara uncovered a vast network of rivers and lakes, lost to climate change. For example, the rivers Senegal and Niger had vast river basins that could give credence to the idea of a green Sahara (Klokocnik, 2017). Most interestingly, researchers found in their data evidence of a river far larger, named the Tamanrasset. Much like the Nile, the magnitude of this river would easily sustain a community capable of agriculture, transportation, and trade. This river is said to start from the Atlas mountains, flowing south towards the Richat Structure before turning west and depositing into the Atlantic ( Figure 2) . Though there is no evidence of this river on the surface of the desert, the location mentioned in Timaeus regarding the capital would line up considering the lost river.The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, dubbed ‘the greatest desert’. It stretches across much of present-day north Africa, and is comparable in size to the area of the United States or China. So how come some people think that the Sahara was once the location of the lost island of Atlantis?

The processes that formed the structure has been theorised to be the result of either a meteoric impact, or a deep magmatic intrusion, the latter of which is supported with high-resolution airborne magnetic data and gravity data to reinforce the intrusion hypothesis.Regarding the YouTube channel’s primary ‘piece of evidence’, according to which the Richat structure is a series of concentric rings that precisely matches Plato’s description of Atlantis, Novela points out that the simple fact that both are concentric rings is not unlikely at all, and since the rings are not discrete and not complete in places, it’s unclear how water would have filled the structure. The Richat structure was first described as a Richât crater or buttonhole in the 1930s-1940s, with Richard-Molard (1948) concluding its formation was due to a laccolithic uplift. The discovery of Aouelloul, Temimichat-Ghallaman, and Tenoumer impact craters during the 1952 geological expedition in Mauritania led to the conclusion that the Richat structure formed from a meteor impact.

Now, the sheer age of this writing opens the gates to translation errors and misunderstanding. Specifically, two quotes (referenced as Exhibit A and Exhibit B ) show just how this could happen (Plato, 1925). He further has to use some creative imagination to argue that the Richat structure, if it were fed by rivers and therefore filled with water, would have two rings of land and three of water. But that is not obvious at all. The rings are not discrete, not complete in places, and it’s unclear how water would fill the structure. You could count four rings of water if you look at the whole structure. For answers we only have to look at the works of Tolkien, CS Lewis, HP Lovecraft, Conan Doyle, Brecht and a host of science fiction writers who have all found the myth an irresistible inspiration.And it isn’t just a case of analogies, majority of ancient stories when comparing retellings to written accounts are astonishingly accurate over millennia. Jimmy claims that an event that lasted 1,200 years “precisely” matched an event that was supposed to have happened in one day 100 years after the Younger Dryas ended. Also – there is no reason to think that the Younger Dryas affected the equatorial regions (the Richat structure is at 21 deg latitude). So really, it was in the wrong place and the wrong time for the Younger Dryas to be significant. This is a forced fit that is not compelling at all, but Jimmy thinks it is too amazing a coincidence not to be evidence. King Atlas, aka King of Atlantis, and namer of the Atlantic Ocean is the same person as Atlas of Mauritania. Herodotus’s map from 450 BC places Atlantis in the same place as the Eye. The Egyptians, the first tellers of the Atlantis story, were colonized by Atlantis. It’s through their lineages that we came to learn about Atlantis and its precise location. Solon, Plato’s relative, was an Athenian statesman and poet who traveled to Egypt and learned about Atlantis first-hand. It’s these stories that Solon relayed to Plato.