Around 355 BC C., Plato described an ancient and exotic island kingdom buried catastrophically under the sea when his people, once virtuous, angered the gods with their indulgence in sin and corruption. The city of Atlantis was a marvel of architecture and engineering. The city was made up of a series of concentric walls and canals some 9,000 years before Plato’s time. When the people of Atlantis became corrupt and greedy, the gods decided to destroy them. A violent earthquake shook the land, giant waves washed over the shores, and the island sank into the sea, never to be seen again. In Plato’s book Timaeus, a character named Kritias describes that an account of Atlantis has been in his family for generations. According to the character, an Egyptian priest told the story to his ancestor, Solon.

The first thing to realize is that it would be surprising if Plato’s description of Atlantis is precise and accurate, not because Plato was not accurate, but because the story has been passed down over thousands of years, initially verbally. and not in writing. This description came to Plato through the Egyptian priests. It would be difficult to pin down the exact date of the immersion of Atlantis for the same reason. However, there is little doubt that any truth to the story predates 3300 BC. There is no case of full descriptions being written before 3300 BC. Some evidence of writing a short description with pictorial symbols of shipments is all that exists in the form of writing from a period before 3300 BC. The names, sizes, and time spans are possibly inventions or modifications as the story was passed down through the centuries.

However, the gist of the story, that of a prosperous and well-planned ancient city that preceded known civilizations on earth, may be true. In fact, archaeologists and historians have postulated the existence of such a civilization. Planned cities and other technologies suddenly began to appear in the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia and Egypt in the period 3500-3000 BC as if they had fallen from the sky. Since the design and construction of these cities involved engineering skills that take time to develop, they are suspected to come from an already developed civilization that has yet to be discovered. Various suggestions have been made as to where Atlantis might be located, from Antarctica to South America and even other planets.

A relevant line of research is to find out where the Egyptian priests got the story of Atlantis. The most likely direction is Sumer or ancient Mesopotamia. There is also the possibility that the first dynastic priests of Egypt were actually Sumerian-Akkadians. Egypt’s first dynastic pharaoh, Menes, united Upper and Lower Egypt and built a new capital at Memphis by diverting part of the Nile. The engineering skills required for all of this seem to be from Mesopotamia as well. It takes a lot of time and learning to develop the required engineering skills, even if one is very bright. There is no evidence that these abilities existed in Egypt before Menes (or Manas, the Egyptians did not write vowels and these are to be guessed at). Menes, as well as his priests and engineers, were probably all Mesopotamian, although the workforce was local. In any case, even if it is disputed that Menes and his engineers were not from Mesopotamia, it cannot be denied that ancient Egypt had various links with ancient Mesopotamia that went beyond trade.

Furthermore, the likelihood that the Atlantean stories are of Sumerian origin is strengthened by the fact that the immersion of ancient cities was an important part of Sumerian mythology. It dominates its historical tradition. The destruction of the ancient city as a result of sin was also part of their beliefs. Therefore, there is a high probability that the ancient city of Atlantis is an ancient sunken city of the Sumerians.

If one traces the origin of the story of Atlantis back to the Sumerians, one may wonder who the Sumerians were and where they came from. They were not local people because they spoke a foreign language to the parties. For a long time it was thought that their language was isolated, unrelated to other languages. However, the picture has now changed as a result of further studies. The study of their language together with the anthropological examination of the Sumerian skeletons helps to trace their origins.

The Sumerian language has been found to be an Austrian language spoken by a group of ancient Australoids found in India, Southeast Asia, and Australia (The Austric Origin of the Sumerian Language, Language Form, vol. 22, no.1 -2, January-December 1996). An examination of ancient Sumerian skulls has further confirmed that the ancient Sumerians belonged to the Australoid race. An evolved branch of the same tribe appears to have established the Indus and Sumerian civilizations after the submergence of their coastal cities. In northwestern India they would have encountered Neolithic peoples of Indo-European origin with whose labor they established the Indus cities. An analysis of skeletal remains from the Indus Valley confirms this mix. The Sumerian language persisted along with the local languages, as the official language of the rulers was Sumerian. In the Indus Valley, Sumerian would have persisted alongside the local Aryan languages. Until now, scholars have been trying to decipher the Indus script based on a comparison with the Dravidian and Aryan languages, and have failed. A more fruitful attempt can be made if they used Austric for this purpose. Just as in Mesopotamia, ancient Sumerian was eventually replaced by the language of the majority (the Akkadians), in the Indus Valley it would have been eventually replaced by an Indo-Aryan language.

If we assume for the moment that the Sumerians originated on the west coast of India and that their ancient capital city was submerged, then we have to wonder if such evidence has been found. The recent discovery made in the Gulf of Cambay caused some to sit up and watch with interest. It clearly established the existence of an ancient civilization that was submerged in the sea. The methodologies adopted to study this finding were novel and different, with advanced marine technologies and the most modern scientific applications from various disciplines were put into practice. Most of the structures that were discovered in the Gulf of Cambay had many similarities with the Citadel, the Great Bath, the grid room, the barn, etc. of the Harappan civilization. But many of the artifacts and typology were different and distinctive and, with the presence of many microtools, appeared to be much older than Harappan. The northern metropolis has well-made pottery pieces, adobe bricks, etc. from around 7506 BP onwards. Indicates a well-organized urban life. Therefore, it is possible that this metropolis arose after 8450 BP but well before 7506 BP. After the sinking of the southern metropolis, the ancients seem to have changed and founded the northern metropolis. This wonderful twin prehistoric metropolis of Cambay lasted from about 13,000 B.C. C. until approximately 3000 a. C., which makes it the oldest and largest urban civilization, not only in Asia but also in the entire world. Scientists described, similar to Plato, the sinking of the city due to violent earthquakes and subsequent floods. The existence of a submerged circular port as described by Plato has also been found in a neighboring site. In addition, the area has gold, elephants and coconuts as in Plato’s Atlantis. The existence of other cities in the region can still be discovered through further underwater explorations.

An important question to ask is if Atlantis really existed in the Indian subcontinent, then there should be some records of it in India itself, as India has had written literature since ancient times. In the Mahabharata, an ancient and well-known Hindu scripture, there is a specific account of a city sinking by the sea that goes like this:

“The sea, which had been beating against the shores, suddenly broke the limit that nature had imposed on it. The sea rushed into the city. It ran through the streets of the beautiful city. The sea covered everything in the city. Even as everyone looked on Arjuna saw the beautiful buildings submerge one by one. Arjuna took one last look at Krishna’s mansion. The sea soon covered it. In a matter of moments it was all over. The sea was over. Now so placid like a lake. There was no trace of the beautiful city that had been the favorite place of all the Pandavas. Dwaraka was just a name, just a memory.”

The important thing to note here is that Arjuna, who is of Aryan origin, describes the city as a city of Krishna that was dark like the dark Sumerians. Thus, based on this study, the author feels that ancient Atlantis is a submerged city on the west coast of India. Not all the evidence and arguments for this analysis could be presented here due to the brevity of this article. The actual capital city of Atlantis has probably yet to be discovered and may require further exploration of the coastal region.