Today on Science Mysteries… Explained!, we are going to tackle the “Big Momma” of all science mysteries. The mystery we’re going to solve today, or at least possibly shed a little light on, is the mystery concerning the mythical sunken island of Atlantis. Whoa! Atlantis is just a myth, isn’t it? It only exists in movies and in the imagination of a few crazy archaeologists, people who study the past and dig up objects from past civilizations). Doesn’t it?

Well, a surprisingly large number of scholars and scientists have taken the island of Atlantis very seriously in the past, and many do today as well. The story, which was first told thousands of years ago, goes something like this: There was once an island that lay in the ocean off the coast of North Western Africa. The people who lived on it had a very advanced civilization. But about 12 000 years ago the whole island tragically sank below the waves, never to surface again! And now to the mystery… Was the island really located of the coast of Africa? How could it disappear so quickly? Were the people living on it really part of an advanced culture?

Many people have taken up the search for Atlantis over the years. Some scholars suggested it lay off the coast of Greece, not Africa, and it disappeared in a fiery eruption. But that didn’t really match the stories that were passed down. Then in 2001, a geologist discovered a sunken island off the coast of Africa. The island seemed to have sunk into the sea when sea level began to rise after the last Ice Age. (The Ice Age was a period in Earth’s history when much of the planet was covered in ice! When the ice melted, the melt water caused the oceans to rise.) Unfortunately, this didn’t really match the story either, which said the island sank quickly.

Fast-forward a few years. Another scientist checks out the island with sonar and what do you think he found? He found evidence of a super-powerful earthquake that may have caused much of the island to sink into the sea very quickly indeed. So, has the mystery of Atlantis been solved?  It’s hard to say. The story mentions an advanced civilization lived there but no evidence has been found yet. It looks like the search for Atlantis may still be an unfinished story!