PILLARS OF HERACLES - LOCATION

Plato wrote of the Grecian islands:

"Many great deluges have taken place .... the consequence is that, in comparison of what then was, there are remaining in small islets only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be called, all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the country being left."

Obviously, these "bones" ARE the "many islands" of the Mediterranean. I leave it to the geologists to tell us how long Thera has been "above" water. Plato certainly may have meant at least the Cyclades here, since they paralleled the Minoan culture archaeologically (similar style of pottery, etc.) Plato states that there was an impassable barrier of mud for some time which prevented voyageurs from sailing to the OCEAN, i.e.some other large connected body of water. There is no evidence that Plato meant the present Atlantic Ocean. Indeed he did not. The ancients did not know that world was round, nor did they have a world globe on their desks. What was the "Atlantic" to them?

LANDS WITHIN THE PILLARS

It is known that Libya, Egypt, Tyrrhenia and Greece were ALL within the Columns of Herakles. The "pillars of Herakles", given the limits of Libya (surely similar geographically to modern Libya) and Terrine (Thera), were thus at the "bottleneck" of the Mediterranean between today's Tunisia and the island of Sicily. Many presume Plato's Libya referred to all of the north-African coast, but there is no evidence for this. Hence, the pillars of Herakles in my opinion were either between Tunisia and Sicily (this presumes that some of the Mediterranean in this area "sank" through earthquakes and tectonic plate activity at the time of Santorini's eruption) or that the only entrance at the time to the East half of the Mediterranean were Straits of Messina.

GADES (HADES, GATES) Tartessus = Carthage

Gades is near the Pillars of Heracles. Is this in Spain or elsewhere? Plato writes: [Atlas's] twin brother...obtained as his lot the extremity of the island towards the Pillars of Heracles, as far as the country which is still called the region of Gades [Hades, Gates]... in the language of the country which is named after him, Gadeirus. Spain was not intended, but rather the Sicilian Isole EGADI (= Gades) at the Western "extremity" of the island of Sicily, which in fact is across from Tunis. Hence ancient Tartessus (which was written in Phoenician as Kart-hadasht) was actually the predecessor city to Carthage on the other side of the Strait of Sicily. Plato reported that Tartessus was at the Pillars of Herakles. Mount Etna - the highest active volcano in Europe - is on Sicily, so this is a highly volatile volcanic region. If Thera exploded in 1628 BC, perhaps the region around Etna was also active at this time, since the neolithic culture there ended there sometime around 2000 BC - which could well have been 1628 BC.

Regarding Atlantis Elephants and a Continent
Which "Surrounds" the Ocean

Plato notes that were elephants on the island...in the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory... Obviously, this refers to Africa. The "island" outside the pillars of Herakles was the rest of Africa (BUT excluding Libya) Indeed, Carthage was later a city in the region of modern Tunisia from which Hannibal and his elephants came. So pre-Carthage Tartessus was at one of the pillars. Plato wrote further: "The island was larger than Libya and Asia together and was the way to the other islands, and from these islands you might pass through the whole of the opposite continent which surrounds the true ocean; for this sea which is within the straits of Heracles is only a harbor, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surround land may be most truly called a continent."

Crete and Cyrenaica

As one can read from the Encylopaedia Britannica under "Libya", the ancient Greeks affiliated Libya with that part of Africa "within" the Pillars of Herakles occupied by a tribe living in Cyrenaica, a region later affiliated with Crete and more or less close to the later location of Carthage. The "continent" referred to is the rest of Africa and Europe "outside" the Pillars of Herakles since these"surround the true ocean" - so that the land of Atlantis "surrounded" the "ocean" - which can then not be the Atlantic and this CAN ONLY BE the West half of the Mediterranean outside of a line running from Tunisia to Sicily.

Gadira = Cossyra = Pantelleria Island Magna Grande

According to Pseudo-Apollodorus, as a tenth labour Herakles was ordered to fetch the kine of Geryon from Erythia....Gadira... and set foot in Libya. Proceeding to Tartessus he erected as tokens of his journey two pillars [these were clearly obelisks] over against each other. Pantelleria Island, called Cossyra (Gadira?) by the Latins, is the tiny island in the Straight of Sicily and home of the Magna Grande, an extinct crater, though underwater eruptions near the island took place as recently as 1891, and "hot mineral springs and fumaroles testify to continued volcanic activity". The island is in a "strategic situation in the narrow passage separating the eastern and western Mediterranean".

The Mediterranean Sea

The Encyclopaedia Britannica writes prophetically: "The Mediterranean Sea is a remnant of the Thethy Sea, which formerly girdled the Eastern Hemisphere. The continental shelves are relatively narrow. The widest, off the Gulf of Gabes (compare to Gades) on the eastern coast of Tunisia, extends 170 miles .... [underwater outward from the shore]"

"The whole Mediterranean basin is tectonically active and earthquakes are common..... A submarine ridge between the island of Sicily and the African coast divides the Mediterranean Sea into eastern and western parts". This ridge is "submerged". Maps of the Mediterranean indicate that much of the distance between Tunisia and Sicily could once have been land. WHEN was the ridge between Sicily and the African coast submerged? At the explosion of Thera??? It is possible. The Encyclopaedia Britannica writes: "The floor of the Mediterranean consists of sediments made up of lime, clay, and sand, under which is blue mud."

On the evidence of the stone megaliths on Malta, which archaeologists say were constructed by prehistoric man - we must presume that Malta (as also Sardinian type tombs on Pantelleria Island) was once accessible by land, there being no evidence of seaworthy ships in neolithic times to get the settlers to the island to build these sites. Moreover, Malta is famous for wagon tracks in solid rock which just "end" at the edge of one of the Maltese cliffs. Did the rest of the island just "drop" into the ocean - around 1628 BC? The answer might be yes. This would explain why neolithic archaeological remains on Malta show pottery "that seems to be related to that of contemporary eastern Sicily".
The Britannica writes: "This culture came to a sudden end about 2000 BC".