At the present time, other explorers place Atlantis as far off as the South China Sea. The search for Atlantis has led archaeologists to the Caribbean, the Azores, Canaries, Iceland, Crete, Tunisia, Sweden, the coast of Western Africa and even the Sahara.

As said by Edgar Cayce (Doug Yurchey, "Psychic Flyby over Atlantis,” Feb 2009), Atlantis with its ten kings governed a great network of sea peoples in what is now the Atlantic Ocean between the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean Sea: “In America, traces of Atlantean rituals and ceremonies are to be found among many of the Indian tribes. In Central America and Egypt ancient ruins show definite Atlantean influences, while in both places there will be uncovered records of Atlantean history, duplicate accounts of the early civilizations that will explain much of the early Jewish records as found in the Bible.”

Plato said the kingdoms of Atlantis were larger than Libya and Asia combined and "aggressed wantonly against the whole of Europe and Asia." Perhaps Plato’s Atlantis was one consolidated empire from Egypt to Peru. St. Clement, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, also claimed that there were other worlds beyond the ocean. A 2006 documentary by filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici called “The Exodus Decoded” suggested that the eruption of the Santorini volcano caused the biblical plagues described against Egypt, re-dating the eruption to c. 1500 BC. The film claimed the Hyksos were the Israelites and that some of them may have originally been from Mycenae.

Bearing in mind that human remains weren’t discovered at the Santorini-Akrotiri excavations, we might picture a Bronze Age migration towards Mesopotamia (perhaps current with the birth of Terah) generations before the last major eruption. As it happens, Ignatius Donnelly tried to evaluate a key climate condition he coined “the Antediluvian World.” In 1882, the Representative from Minnesota argued that Plato’s end of Atlantis represents the doomed kingdoms of the Deluge or Great Flood (submerged by falling atmospheric moisture, sea level changes, and perhaps a massive first eruption of Thera).

More recently, French scientist Jacques Collina-Girard, from the University of the Mediterranean in Aix-en-Provence, said Atlantis could have been sited on an island close to the Strait of Gibraltar, and would have vanished below the waves about 11,000 years ago - just as Plato said it did, because the melting and gradual retreat of glacial ice sheets produced a change in sea level.

"There was an island in front of the 'Pillars of Hercules'," what we would now call the Strait of Gibraltar, Collina-Girard told New Scientist magazine. Named Spartel, this island lay to the west of the Strait just as the Greek philosopher described. The Strait was longer and narrower than today, and enclosed a harbor-like inland sea.(Atlantis 'obviously near Gibraltar,' BBC News, September 20, 2001)

Collina-Girard's evidence was based on a study of sea levels that prevailed as the last Ice Age was ending. His assessment of the coral reef data showed the coastline off the tip of Spain and around Gibraltar 19,000 years ago to have been 130 meters (422 feet) below what it is today. This would have exposed an archipelago, with an island at the spot where Plato reported Atlantis to be.

The closing stages of the Ice Age marked the end of Neanderthal populations and the emergence of modern man. Researchers nowadays suppose that Neanderthal was a clever sea-faring species drawn into extinction when the last Ice Age was winding up. In 2006, Spanish investigators said that they found proof that Neanderthal man reached Europe from Africa not just via the Middle East but also by sailing, swimming or floating across the Strait of Gibraltar:

Although the scientists have not yet reached definite conclusions, they say the evidence that Neanderthal man mastered some primitive techniques for crossing the sea into Europe from the coast near Ceuta looks promising. If the theory could be proved, and a two-pronged arrival of Neanderthal man accepted, it would help solve some of the mysteries thrown up by prehistoric sites around Europe. (Giles Tremlett, “Neanderthal man floated into Europe, say Spanish researchers,” Guardian, January 18, 2006)

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