The Great Flood?
As a side note, returning our attention again to geomythological study, if the proposed rapid subsidence of the extended NE margin of the Arabian Plate occurred about 11,566 – 11,602 years ago per Plato’s timeline, then it may have also caused a sudden inundation of sea-water through the Hormuz Strait adding to the formation of the modern Persian Gulf. Since ocean levels and adjoining gulfs were lower during the last ice age as evidenced by ocean bathymetric measurements, a rapid subsidence in the Persian Gulf would have allowed waters from the Indian Ocean’s Gulf of Oman to drain into the newly formed depression through the Hormuz, quickly flooding the surely densely inhabited coastlines in a scene reminiscent of mythologies involving Gilgamesh and Noah. These companion myths describe ancient settlements located in the Persian Gulf that were suddenly inundated with a great flood. After the initial catastrophic inflow, subsequent gradual glacial melting during the warming of the Holocene, which arguably increased with the thermally catalytic effects at the termination of the Younger-Dryas, would have continued to raise sea level in the Persian Gulf to a depth measured today.
The Great Bend of the Nile
Returning to the African Plate for our next anomaly, we want to focus attention on findings from a recent investigation using advanced space platform imaging equipment known as SIR-C/X-SAR flown on Space Shuttle Endeavor in 1994. This generation of imager, more capable of penetrating arid soils with good resolution, has revealed in conjunction with field data that the Nile River once may have flowed directly north through an extinct river valley known as the Wadi Gabgaba instead of bypassing it as it does today. The findings seem to indicate that the Nile was abruptly redirected as recently as 10,000 years ago by an apparent uplift of the Nubian Swell in Sudan which forced it to flow along neotectonic faults around the Nubian Swell. This perplexing section of the Nile is known as the Great Bend which makes a sweeping loop SW then gradually curves back on its northward journey toward the Mediterranean Sea ultimately rejoining the original valley about 250 miles (~402 km) further north. Since our model in Figure 7 incorporates uplift and deformation of the African Plate which could explain the uplift of the Nubian Swell, and since Plato’s time frame for the massive earthquake (11,566-11, 602 years ago) fits within the geologic-time range (10,000-100,000 years ago) suggested by the Nile study, then we submit that the Great Bend of the Nile could have been caused by the same catastrophic events evidenced at the end of the Younger-Dryas and implicated in the destruction of Atlantis-Bakhu.
Gauging the Tademait Plateau
The Tademait Plateau is located southeast of our proposed site for Atlantis-Bakhu and just west of the volcanic upwelling of the Hagar Mountains. This plateau’s surface topography may be suitable to act as a 
gauge by which we can measure our proposed uplifting easterly roll of the African continent (Fig. 8 – image on left, click to enlarge). With a strangely water-washed surface and an elevation rather similar to the former coastline ascribed by our theory, the plateau may actually be a seamount artifact left behind when the shallow Saharan-Atlantic drained into the Mediterranean Basin. If the plateau is a former seamount that has ridden on top of a continental uplift and roll, then precise elevation measurements across the surface may reveal a uniform eastward slope. And, by comparing the slope of the plateau to the current horizon, we may well find a tangible method to gauge the presumed macroscopic continental roll along the northern aspects of the African Plate.
In conclusion, is this hypothesis compelling?
The prevailing paradigm for Plato’s Atlantis insists the island sank…if it ever really existed at all. However, we have presented elementary geophysics models in this investigation which reveal that it is plausible Atlantis only appeared to have sunk and was actually uplifted, in an expansive hemispheric phenomenon similar to smaller epeirogenic models, which formed an illusory image in the inquisitive minds-eye of courageous sailors who struggled to comprehend what they were seeing. Their natural conclusion would have been that it must have sunk; yet, as we’ve shown, Atlantis-Bakhu was simply beyond the horizon rendering it invisible in the distance.
By adopting our paradigm shift of an island uplifted and following the map of Plato’s 10 specific macroscopic geographic measurements for his Atlantic Island, we have identified strong physical correlations with the Atlas Mountain Chain of northwest Africa. And, our findings include the identification of an exciting site on the steppe of the Saharan-Atlas at the western edge of the Sahara which seems to comply with the 10 special features detailed by Plato as well. Even the most demanding of Plato’s details are satisfied by our hypothesis, including: the three unique rings, an oblong plain with expansive canals that cross it, and natural means for the formation of the metal orichalcum. No other proposed location has ever exhibited the ability to match Plato’s descriptions with such exactitude – - none.
Clearly, it is rather compelling that scientists with wide ranging interests are finding evidence in field strata, in the ice and under the sea, that is consistent with a powerful global natural disaster at the exact point in prehistoric time that Mediterranean myths recount a fantastic story about angry gods (Zeus and He-Ra or Ra and Sekhmet) who chose to brutally punish humanity by setting upon the Earth from celestial throne, as it were, an extremely violent and unprecedented catastrophe which forced the people – expelled them – from their destroyed garden paradise. And, it’s revealing that during the Younger-Dryas period in geologic time (12,900-11,550 years ago) very hot, high-pressure, Earth impacting cosmic events of unknown origin - easily attributable to angry gods by simple observers – have been scientifically linked with the severe climatological changes marking its entrance and exit. Also, it’s substantive that an analysis of peat bogs, tree dendrochronology, lake sediment borings and ice boring samples reveals a sudden catastrophic warming climate change at the end of the Younger-Dryas about 11,550 +/-30 years ago, a date made familiar to us first by Plato in 360 BCE for the destruction of Atlantis. Moreover, it’s notable that tectonic anomalies along the northern margins of the African Plate from the MAR in the west, to the Arabian Plate and the Zagros Mountains in the east, are consistent with our suggested macroscopic shift of the Earth’s crust in this region.
But, above and beyond the gradual revelation by scientific study of a tragic catastrophe so long ago, it becomes remarkably inspirational when one realizes the legends concerning Atlantis-Bakhu (Eridu, Enochos, and Olympos) appear to have indeed been based on the horrific memories of prehistoric peoples desperately attempting, with the astronomical knowledge available to them, to warn future generations of a jealous, angry, and powerfully wrathful god in the heavens who has punished humanity in the past and thus may choose to kill again. This warning, this recitation, transcended time orally from generation to generation until eventually set in stone near the beginning of the Egyptian dynastic period.
Since the search for the lost isle of Atlantis has been actively commercialized in the last century, and unfortunately permeated by many so-called “Atlantologists” who offer ridiculous vacuous arguments, in our experience it has been difficult to garner interest from the requisite accredited research teams even for what we consider to be a noteworthy hypothesis such as that defined by this paper. But, without the involvement of these scholars and their colleges, we as independent researchers at WRL are prevented by protocol from initiating even the most preliminary of physical on-site surveys. It is within our expectation that when the merit of our hypothesis is at last realized, many academics, scientists, and scholars will join united in the careful meticulous scientific excavation of environs in and around the ancient craters.
After presenting our hypothesis and arguments at the conference in Athens in November of 2008, the dawn of that day appears to be on the horizon–pending funding by our nonprofit organization WRL, Inc., several geophysicists have offered their expertise in performing a series of tests at the proposed location for Atlantis-Bakhu. Hopefully, in addition to those researchers who have generously offered me their time and expertise for field work, the wide spectrum of multidisciplinary observations detailed in this manuscript will sufficiently stimulate serious and active debate among academic circles to ultimately provide additional research teams and grants for future exploration of the expansive site. Prior to these preliminary surveys, people can begin their own dialogue questioning this controversial work by scrutinizing and studying its far reaching implications; by testing them in the court of scholarly public opinion.
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Note on accelerated epeirogenesis: You will remember, it was from the Eye of Ra in the Egyptian tale of the celestial cow that Sekhmet, a powerful and violent feminine aspect of Ra, was sent to Earth with a vengeance to destroy insubordinate humanity. Sekhmet’s strike was said to have scorched the Earth with such force as to have nearly killed all of humanity. The description is reminiscent of Earth’s atmospheric lightning, an electro-static discharge (ESD), but on a much larger scale. At first blush, the only local energy source within our solar system that could be potentially capable of generating such a large electromagnetic discharge (EMD) would have to be our star, the Sun. If such a theoretical solar EMD, something natural resembling a giant lightning-bolt, if you will, came in discharging contact with the Earth at the end of the Younger Dryas, and its impact site is still extant measurable today, what would it look like? Indeed, what physical effects on our planet’s surface, its global environment, and its magnetic field, might be expected if a highly concentrated, but dissassociated solar magnetic field line, densely laden with charged and uncharged particles (which have been accelerated to near light speed) made a sustained contact with Earth? The Al Jafr desert basin in Jordan, which is described as having a centripetal drainage pattern with stepped side walls, is a location on Earth identified during this project which appears to have physical artifacts, scorched signatures, consistent with electron-flows of known high-energy ESD impacts found in the environment and those routinely generated in the laboratory; these electron-flows form a pattern described by fractal geometry (We’ll be adding to this site the proposed Al Jafr impact imagery, the natural ESD-lightning impact formation, and the laboratory generated ESD in an acrylic medium, for your visual convenience by January 2010). So the question here may resemble the question, ‘” Which came first, the chicken, or the egg?” That is to say, did pluvial conditions form the centripetal drainage, or did the rains simply follow the channels cut down into the K/T boundary by the proposed electron flows radiating from the focus of the impact? Whereas the fractal geometry tree created by Earth impacting lightning-ESD burns its pattern about 4 or 5 meters radius across the surface from the point of impact, the visible topography of the proposed crater-like depression reveals an apparently similar fractal tree carved in the crust which has a 60 mile (~100 km) radius, that is a depression about 120 miles (200 km) in diameter. We will present theoretical argument subjectable to scientific measurement that there exists a form of solar magnetic field anomaly similar to planetary magnetic reconnection which, on rare occasion and while heavily laden with charged particles, makes a discharging impact with the Earth, thereby transferring the load of electrons , protons, and neutrons, in-a-sustained-contact until the charges dissipate. Crustal seismic vibrations generated by such contact are suspected by this researcher to have provided a sufficient dynamic to drive the Earth’s plates in the Mediterranean region accelerating epeirogeneis, perhaps much as seismic actions cause localized liquefaction effects the surface strata. As a general example of the dynamic, consider children’s games which remain static until a vibration moves game pieces about a playing surface; or, in manufacturing and heavy construction, where similar generated vibrations on a much larger scale are used to move stubborn aggregates. Widespread sustained downthrust vibratory forces from the theoretical EMD could provide additional kinetic action seemingly missing from the combined tectonic forces equation mentioned earlier, causing the proposed accelerated form of epeirogenesis. And, if the dynamic event was witnessed as it occurred, beginning first in the vicinity of local space occupied by planet Jupiter (Zeus, or the Eye of Ra?), then the origin of destruction lore from several Mediterranean cultures can be arguably directly attributable to a seemingly supernatural, though actually natural, solar event.