Such advance in civilization, such elaboration of organization, such splendor and power would certainly have overflowed abundantly on the islands intervening between Atlantis and the continental shore. It is not written that these all shared the same fate; and in point of fact the Azores, Madeira and her consorts, the Canary Islands, and the Cape Verde group are still in evidence. Some of them must have been within fairly easy reach of Atlantis if Atlantis existed. There is no indication that they have been newly created or have come up from below since that time. Even allowing for great exaggeration and assuming only a large and efficient population in a vast insular territory without the ascribed superfluity of magnificence, such a people would surely have left some kind of lasting memorial or relic beyond their own borders. Nothing of the kind has ever been found either in these islands of the eastern Atlantic archipelagoes or elsewhere in that part of the earth.
The advocates of a real Atlantis try to pile up proofs of a great land mass existing at some time in the Atlantic Ocean, a logical proceeding so far as it goes but one that falls short of its mark, for the land may have ascended and descended again ages before the reputed Atlantis period. It is of no avail to demonstrate its presence in the Miocene, Pliocene, or Pleistocene epoch, or, indeed, at any time prior to the development of a well organized civilization among men, or, as Plato apparently reasons, between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago. Also what is wanted is evidence of the great island Atlantis, not of the former seaward extension of some existing continent nor of any land bridge spanning the ocean. It is true that such conditions might serve as distant preliminaries for the production of Atlantis Island by the breaking down and submergence of the intervening land; but this only multiplies the cataclysms to be demonstrated and can have no real relevance in the absence of proof of the island itself. The geologic and geographic phenomena of pre-human ages are beside the question. The tale to be investigated is of a flourishing insular growth of artificial human society on a large scale, not so very many thousands of years ago, evidently removed from all tradition of engulfment and hence dreading it not at all but sending forth its conquering armies until the final defeat and annihilating cataclysm.
Termier’s Theory of an Ancient Atlantic Continental Mass
Nevertheless, inquiries as to an ancient Atlantic continental mass have an interest. We may cite a few of the recent outgivings. Termier tells us of an east-and-west arrangement of elevated lands across the Atlantic in earlier ages, as opposed to the present north-and-south system of islands and raised folds. By the former there was
a very ancient continental bond between northern Europe and North America and ... another continental bond, also very ancient, between the massive Africa and South America.... Thus the region of the Atlantic, until an era of ruin which began we know not when, but the end of which was the Tertiary, was occupied by a continental mass, bounded on the south by a chain of mountains, and which was all submerged long before the collapse of those volcanic lands of which the Azores seem to be the last vestiges. In place of the South Atlantic Ocean there was, likewise, for many thousands of centuries a great continent now very deeply engulfed beneath the sea.[20]
Later he refers to
collapses ... at the close of the Miocene, in the folded Mediterranean zone and in the two continental areas, continuing up to the final annihilation of the two continents ... then, in the bottom of the immense maritime domain resulting from these subsidences, the appearance of a new design whose general direction is north and south.... The extreme mobility of the Atlantic region ... the certainty of the occurrence of immense depressions when islands and even continents have disappeared; the certainty that some of these depressions date as from yesterday, are of Quaternary age, and that consequently they might have been seen by man; the certainty that some of them have been sudden, or at least very rapid. See how much there is to encourage those who still hold out for Plato’s narrative. Geologically speaking, the Platonian history of Atlantis is highly probable.[21]
Floral and Faunal Evidence of Connection with Europe and Africa
Professor Schuchert, reviewing the paper of Termier above quoted, agrees in part and partly disagrees. He says:
The Azores are true volcanic and oceanic islands, and it is almost certain that they never had land connections with the continents on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. If there is any truth in Plato’s thrilling account, we must look for Atlantis off the western coast of Africa, and here we find that five of the Cape Verde Islands and three of the Canaries have rocks that are unmistakably like those common to the continents. Taking into consideration also the living plants and animals of these islands, many of which are of European-Mediterranean affinities of late Tertiary time, we see that the evidence appears to indicate clearly that the Cape Verde and Canary Islands are fragments of a greater Africa.... What evidence there may be to show that this fracturing and breaking down of western Africa took place as suddenly as related by Plato or that it occurred about 10,000 years ago is as yet unknown to geologists.[22]