The climatic upheavals and the technological revolutions that occurred eleven thousand five hundred years ago in some areas of the Mediterranean basin, combined with the timing of the alleged destruction of Plato’s Atlantis, raise the possibility that the legend may have drawn inspiration from these events, passed down through Egyptian mythology. The changes in climate concerned the whole northern hemisphere and several Mediterranean areas, including the Nile delta, could have hosted an early Neolithic society sharing some of the innovations recorded in the Middle East, whose traces would have been later erased by the rise in sea level.
Thanks to its geographical position, the archipelago that then lay in the Strait of Sicily experienced the same climatic change endured by the Middle East. The traces of an early occupation of the region are admittedly weak, consisting of the recent discoveries of an underwater pre-Neolithic processing site at Pantelleria and a few obsidian blades scattered in Sicily. Nevertheless, they support the possibility of finding similar traces (for example the remnants of an obsidian industry) on the seafloors that were emerged twelve thousand years ago, a discovery that would prove beyond doubt that the Strait was inhabited at the end of the Younger Dryas.
Obviously, such a discovery would not demonstrate that such proto-Neolithic settlement actually inspired the myth of Atlantis, but it would show that the Strait of Sicily was inhabited much earlier than is believed today, which would represent a considerable archaeological result in itself. All in all, there may have been more than one “Atlantis” in the Mediterranean and beyond: although historically their existence may never be proved, from a geological and environmental perspective, their presence is a strong possibility. Such prehistoric Atlantises could never have been as advanced as the one described by Plato, but could well have contained the seeds that inspired the myth.
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