An Atlantis Miscellany
(Paul Dunbavin)
A collection of the author’s smaller webpages and articles on the subject of Atlantis in the Irish Sea
2017-2020. In 1995 the author published The Atlantis Researches, later republished in UK and USA as
Atlantis of the West. These more recent articles extend that earlier work and fill some of the gaps.
Central to the theories was the case that indicators of time and place (based on a comparison of the
ancient sources and modern science) pointed towards a location for Plato’s lost city in the eastern Irish
Sea; following a pole shift event that occurred towards the end of the fourth millennium BC. This event
submerged the low-lying plains around the British coast ‘in a single day and a night’. A summary and
links to other pages may be found in my article 15 Years on from Atlantis (of the West).
Current theories of Holocene climate and sea-level change are mired in the Milankovitch ice age
theory, whereby the vast Pleistocene ice sheet melted since 10,000 BC and theoretically raised the
sea level uniformly around world coastlines. On conventional eustatic modelling the North Sea
‘Doggerland’ was finally submerged around 6500 BC. However this same hypothesis demands that the
Irish Sea was flooded much earlier, cutting off Ireland from Britain while the climate was still cold.
However, the conventional theory of sea level change is at odds with Irish mythology, which recalls a
submerged flowery plain in the Irish Sea called Tír na nÓg (the Land of Youth) or even more revealing
is one of its many other names: Tír fo Thuinn (Land under the Wave). These myths recall an era that
was warm and idyllic. Welsh mythology recalls a similar lost land called Annwn, seemingly an extension
of the land area or Wales. Numerous legends describe sunken cities around the western coast and
both mythologies recall castles and towers lost to the sea. The only era that would fit the climate
description would be the mid-Neolithic or Atlantic pollen zone (8000 to 5000 BP). Of course, modern
science dismisses the testimony of ancient mythology, but it would tally completely with the
description of Atlantis as given by Plato and that of the Elysian Fields in Egyptian myth.
A sad progression in recent decades has been the building and proposed further construction of
windfarms on the shallow seabed of the eastern Irish Sea, creating an eyesore that destroys the view
from the tourist beaches along the North Wales coast. One hopes this will result in some sensitive
study of the post-glacial seabed and its structure before it is so carelessly damaged.
Three small articles relating to the Irish-Sea hypothesis are here aggregated from their original
webpages:
1) R.K. Gresswell and the Irish Sea Coast (2019)
2) Patterns on the Irish Sea Floor (2019)
3) Plato’s Impossible Plain (2020)
Inevitably, when bringing together originally separate articles there will be some overlap between
them, for which, apologies.
www.third-millennium.co.uk
**************************
R. K. Gresswell and the Irish Sea Coast
In his 1953 book Sandy Shores in Southwest Lancashire, Ronald Kay Gresswell summed-up his
investigations into the deposits of the South Lancashire Plain between Liverpool and the River Ribble.
He described a wave-cut notch in the flat coastal plain, which he termed the Hillhouse Coast after a
prominent landmark. Westward of this ancient shoreline he described the ancient forest of oak and
silver birch that lay beneath the onshore deposits and which also occur as submerged forest deposits
beneath the modern beach line from Liverpool to the Ribble. He went on to link this ancient shoreline
to deposits in the Fylde and Cumbria. In the pre-radiocarbon era he could only estimate that the wood
was of Neolithic age, correlated with the so-called 25-foot beach found in other parts of Britain.
Figure 6 from Sandy Shores in Southwest Lancashire (1953)
Across this emergent rectangular plain (as may be seen on his map) he discerned from navigation
charts where the ancient continuation of the rivers Ribble and Mersey-Dee had once flowed into a
much-reduced Irish Sea. He argued that east of the 10-fathom depth-line the drowned river valleys
had been smoothed by the sediment from the modern rivers; and he argued from his onshore borings
that the in-filling of the Ribble estuary could similarly be observed in the Lancashire deposits.
In chapter IV he devised the sequence of advances and retreats of the post-glacial Lancashire
coastline during the Holocene. On page 47 he illustrated this in the diagram reproduced here.
Figure 13 from Sandy Shores in Southwest Lancashire (1953)
In stage 1 (early Holocene/ post-glacial) the sea rose to 7ft OD forming the Hillhouse coast. It then
retreated in stage 2 towards the modern shore, allowing the growth of the oak and birch forests in
stage 3 (mid-Holocene) as the sea retreated further out to -40ft OD. In stage 4 the sea returned close
to modern shores, drowning the forests.
As a lifelong resident of Southport, Ronald Kay Gresswell M.A., PH.D., F.R.S.A., F.G.S. (1905-1969) was
a prominent member of the British Institute of Geographers, known best for his fieldwork on the
geomorphology of Lancashire during the 1940s and 50s. His work predated the radiocarbon and treering dating methods that came to the fore only in the 1960s and 70s; and also the Milankovitch theory
of ice-ages that gained acceptance around the same time. His research is therefore ‘pure’ and
unbiased by these later theories; he discusses the ‘eustatic’ variations of the post-glacial sea-level due
to ice-melt and the recovery from the ice-burden, solely in terms of their apparent local effects.
As in all such studies of ancient sea-levels, local ‘isostatic’ vertical movements of the land can be
conveniently conjured to make almost any theory fit the evidence – so long as one does not try too
hard to correlate them with the parallels from other parts of the world. This is not a criticism of
Gresswell for it is found in almost all such studies. Later researchers from the 1960s onwards, taking
on board the then-prevailing theories of glacio-isostatic modelling, would revise Gresswell’s theories
on the grounds that they did not correspond with the wider picture derived from the worldwide sealevel curves and the melting of the Laurentide icesheet. A summary of this later research may be found
in the Coastal Geomorphology Survey of Great Britain, chapter 7 (see the reference below, pp 4-5).
In the 1950s Gresswell could only date the period of lowered sea-level by the vegetation sequences.
The consensus at that era, based on the earlier work of Godwin and Steers, was that the deciduous
forests were of Boreal-Atlantic age. This view of a high sea level, followed by a regression below
modern sea level and finally a rise to modern shores, was often described as “the submerged forest
period”. Radiocarbon dates can now help to date these forests more reliably; see the feature here:
Submerged Forests around Britain and Ireland.
A stern critic of Gresswell’s work has been M. J. Tooley who would argue (1978) that the Hillhouse
‘cliff’ was actually the shore of a trapped inland lake; and that the true former coast lay somewhat
further west. From modern radiocarbon dates he and other researchers would now prefer a sequence
of more conservative advances and retreats around the modern shoreline. Up to five possible
transgressions of the present-day coast are envisaged between 9200 BP and 5000 BP; with subsequent
build-up of the deep sandy beaches that we see today. The idea of a submerged forest period was
quietly dropped. There remains general agreement however, that the sea only reached its modern
level around 5000 BP (c3000 BC).
It should be noted that none of this later work challenges Gresswell’s insight that the former river
channels could be discerned in the shallow bed of the eastern Irish Sea and therefore they must be
post-glacial; and it follows that at whatever era these rivers flowed, the Isle of Man must have been
linked to Cumbria. The divergence is that the later researchers, being constrained by the glacioisostatic models that they must cite, could not contemplate such huge advances and retreats of the
shoreline by as much as 30-40 km across the eastern Irish Sea; they would prefer to talk only of smallscale oscillations just offshore of the modern coasts. This is where Gresswell’s naïve and ‘pure’ insight
is so valuable.
In my own cross-disciplinary studies, I came at this problem from a world-wide pattern of
correspondence of sea level change in alternate quarter-spheres. This is the pattern expected to be
produced by a pole-shift that would have occurred during the mid-Holocene: the late fourth
millennium BC (see the feature here: Raised Beaches and Submerged Forests). This theory was first
published in The Atlantis Researches (1995) and Atlantis of the West (2002). We find emergence
around 5,000 years ago, by similar distances, along shallow East Asian and South American coasts; and
so we should not be surprised by submergence of the scale proposed by Gresswell.
The present author would continue to have serious issues with current models of sea-level change
since the ice age. The various vertical movements of land and seabed (or the collapsing ‘fore-bulges’
of more modern parlance) which are proposed to explain the sea-level anomalies around the world
would themselves constitute a change to the Earth’s figure; and must therefore trigger a wobble of
the rotation axis and a pole-shift. This would in turn feed-back as variations of sea-level and climate
very similar to those that the ‘isostatic’ movements are advanced to explain. Sea level researchers
seldom mention geodesy and fail to consider the rotational dynamics of the planet.
The question of whether the floor of the eastern Irish Sea was exposed during the warm mid-Holocene
period has wider consequences for archaeology. It is also related to the question of whether there
was a land-bridge between Britain and Ireland, and to the Isle of Man; and how the various flora and
fauna reached these islands after the ice age. It offers the possibility of Mesolithic and Neolithic
archaeology submerged offshore, compliant with Welsh, Irish and Mediterranean myths. Celtic myths
and legends recall sunken cities and lost lands around the coast of Britain; and if we are to properly
investigate these as memories of real events then the ‘submerged forest period’ prior to 5,000 years
ago is the only era when we find both submergence and a warm climate.
In the BGS Report (2015) we may see that Gresswell’s 10-fathom line would roughly correspond to
the Eastern Irish Sea Mud Belt and the older region as the Central Irish Sea Gravel Belt. In both these
regions however, the report describes the Holocene deposits as varying between 5m and up to 40m
depth. Therefore anything of archaeological interest that was formerly at sea level would now be
deeply buried.
In closing this review of Gresswell’s pioneering work, I can only express appreciation for the
painstaking work that he and other fieldworkers undertake; those who excavate in difficult locations
to give us the dated primary evidence of past regimes; and without whose work the secondary and
cross-disciplinary researchers could not progress. But specialists can sometimes be too close to a
problem; what we need is not more onshore work and theoretical models, but more data from
offshore.
The diagrams reproduced here from ‘Sandy Shores in Southwest Lancashire’ are believed to be out of
copyright. Should anyone object to their inclusion here then please contact the author.
References
The following will lead to all the relevant detailed coastal studies and papers.
http://archive.jncc.gov.uk/pdf/GCRDB/GCRsiteaccount1961.pdf
this is part of:
Geological Conservation Review
Volume 28: Coastal Geomorphology of Great Britain
Chapter 7: Sandy beaches and dunes – GCR site reports
Site: AINSDALE (GCR ID: 1961)
Gresswell, R.K. (1953b) Sandy Shores in South Lancashire: the Geomorphology of South-West
Lancashire, Liverpool Studies in Geography, Liverpool University Press, Liverpool
Tooley, M.J. (1978) Sea-level Changes in North-West England during the Flandrian Stage,
Clarendon Press, Oxford
Mellett, C., Long, D., Carter, G., Chiverell, R and Van Landeghem, K (2015) Geology of the seabed and shallow
subsurface: The Irish Sea. British Geological Survey Commissioned Report, CR/15/057.
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/512352/1/BGS_Report_Irish_Sea_Geology_CR-15-057N.pdf
Citation: Citation: Dunbavin, Paul, (2020) R. Kay Gresswell and the Irish Sea Coast, Prehistory Papers,
pp 118-124, Third Millennium, ISBN: 978-0-9525029-4-4
Patterns on the Irish Sea Floor
Ask a geologist to do a survey of the seabed and they will find geology. Any mark or feature in the
surface sediments will be interpreted in terms of the geomorphology that they expect to find. An
archaeologist looking at the same buried sub-sea features might see something different, as with crop
marks on land. But why would an archaeologist wish to investigate the seabed other than to seek,
perhaps, an ancient shipwreck?
The possibility of ancient human settlement on what is now the floor of the Irish Sea – or indeed
anywhere around the British or Irish continental shelf – is raised by the stories in Celtic mythology,
which variously suggest lost cities around the coast: Lyonesse off Land’s End, a submerged ‘Celtic
Otherworld’, or a lost land called Annwn; and other myths from Mediterranean sources also pose
questions. Welsh myths describe a plain “as large as the sea” off the coast of North Wales and Irish
myths would portray a submerged “flowery plain” in the vicinity of the Isle of Man. Irish and Welsh
legends speak of a golden tower in the sea explored by the earliest colonists. [1] To approach these
myths logically either they are just that: ‘myths’ in the sense of ‘fiction’ or they must be based on an
authentic root memory. If indeed they recall an ancient submergence then the next logical step is to
ask, when?
We need not debate here the various mechanisms of sea-level change. On all conventional theories it
must be remembered that the gradual eustatic rise of the sea since the ice age extended over
thousands of years; a period of time longer than that which separates us from Dynastic Egypt. It is a
failure of imagination to suggest that during these millennia there was no human settlement on the
now-submerged regions of the continental shelf. The consensus is that present-day sea-level only
stabilized around 5,000 years ago since which time there have been just minor fluctuations. In other
parts of the world we find the opposite phenomenon at this same era: emergence and raised beaches
rather than submerged features, together with evidence that people quickly colonised the newly
exposed land (see: Raised Beaches and Submerged Forests).
For Britain and Ireland, submerged forest deposits are found all around the modern coasts (see:
Submerged Forests around Britain and Ireland). These come from various ages, but most date from
either of two periods; the first roughly 5-6000 BC around the time that the North Sea land bridge was
flooded, while those around western coasts cluster around a later period closer to 3000 BC. So if we
should seek any submerged archaeology then, logically, it should date from these eras. The earlier
dates correspond to the Mesolithic period of supposed hunter-gatherers; the later dates correspond
to the transition between the Middle and the Late Neolithic. Again, logically, any memories of real
events in a legend would suggest that the former date is too early; and so we should be looking around
5,000 years ago to find underwater archaeology to match the legends.
We should expect that any submerged Middle Neolithic sites would look like those that we find on
land from this era, such as the Court Cairns found all around the Irish Sea or the dolmens found further
south; or perhaps settlements like those at Skara Brae; or field-walls such as those beneath Irish peat
bogs. Cornish legends about the loss of a land called Lyonesse speak of some 140 ‘churches’ drowned
in a sudden rise of the sea. [2] We would have to consider these as pagan religious sites and parishes.
What might such submerged cairns and settlements look like now, ruined and buried beneath metres
of silt on the sea floor? Imagination is required. And this is before we even consider looking for lost
cities.
Older studies of sea level change around the British coast would speak freely of a ‘submerged forest
period’ in the mid-Holocene (see: The Irish Sea Coast here above). The theory, before glacio-eustatic
modelling of world sea-levels forced it out of favour, was that there was an initial period of eustatic
sea level rise (i.e. melting of polar ice) which gradually drowned the coasts up to c.5500 BC. After this
rise a regression exposed western coasts again before a return of the sea to modern shores created
the second wave of submerged forests around 3000 BC. Disagreement then arises as to how far out
the sea may have receded during the warm mid-Holocene climate. Recent specialist studies would
prefer a conservative ‘somewhere west’ of the present shores (as they have no data from the seafloor
and decline to speculate) or that the submerged forests were created by trapped freshwater lakes
near the coasts.
The common-sense approach of archaeologists would be to seek submerged coastal sites such as we
find at Westward Ho, Devon and at Skara Brae. However for the Irish Sea the legends of submerged
plains, lost lands and towers are clearly pointing us further away from the shoreline than any
archaeologist would consider; into depths that require expensive expeditions that so-far have been
the preserve of geologists seeking oil and gas reserves or shallow sites for windfarms.
Much of the geological mapping that we have for the central Irish Sea is acknowledged to be the work
of just one man: the late Dr Robin Wingfield of the British Geological Survey (BGS) who, in the 1980s,
identified ice-wedge polygons and circular features in sonar reflections taken north of Anglesey. [3] In
the Strategic Environment Assessment (SEA) coastal resources survey of 2004 the Irish Sea region is
defined as SEA6 and various reports are available via the BGS Geoindex database. Another survey
investigated suitable sites for wind farms. This concentrated on an area closer to the Lancashire coast
where the Morecambe Bay gas field and wind farms are situated and it did not encounter the
patterned ground found in the older surveys; the seabed is instead described as mostly flat and
featureless. The authors noted that the older sonar techniques were largely obsolete and that
geophysical data was completely absent for large areas. [4] These results and subsequent studies are
now embodied in the BGS Geoindex and in the updated report by Mellet-et-al of 2015, which
summarises the state of knowledge as at that date.
The Geoindex shows the Holocene mud and sand deposits to vary between 5m and 40m thickness,
with the deepest deposits lying off the Cumbrian coast. [5] Shipwrecks and modern pipelines are
clearly identifiable from trailing sand patterns formed by the prevailing currents. Also noted are subsurface features and ‘pock-marks’; once those defined as escaping methane (marsh gas) are excluded
there still remain some interesting sites to explore. Of particular interest is a feature lying off
Morecambe Bay described as a pingo (on land we might call these kettle-holes). This reveals a
rounded-rectangular feature, which would be football-field-sized; and were it on land it would be
about the same size as a typical Neolithic henge. Some of the pockmarks nearby are described as
unknown and ‘possibly man-made’. [6] This location would at some prehistoric era have been a river
valley flowing into a lake that is now the Lune Deep. Another potential pingo is noted to the north of
the Isle of Man.
To summarise the surface geology of the eastern Irish Sea as it is described would be as follows. The
rectangular shelf slopes gently away from the English coastal dunes out to a depth of 50m between
Anglesey and the Isle of Man. Close to the coast lies the Eastern Irish Sea Mud Belt overlaying the
Central Irish Sea Gravel Belt that becomes exposed further west; this is mostly comprised of diamicton
(a glacial till of mud and boulders). The smooth surface gives way to gravelly rough ground as the
seabed becomes deeper between Mann and Anglesey, where areas of bedrock are exposed. These
rocks are a continuation of the onshore geology of Anglesey. Here the seabed has just a thin covering
of Holocene mud and sand and it is in this region that the glacially patterned ground and polygons are
described. This description may be investigated on the maps in the BGS database and its various
options as linked here; together with the interpretive reports that have been published by the
geologists. A summary map of the areas of ‘patterned ground’ and the other unexplained features is
offered below as an introduction, since the BGS geological overlays give little indication of depth.
Seabed contours can be investigated via UK Admiralty chart 1826, or via the Admiralty online
database.
The highlighted area shows the regions where
glacially patterned ground has been identified.
Thumbnail of Admiralty chart 1826 for the
eastern Irish sea, showing the depth contours.
The public domain database of the British Geological Survey (BGS) can be found at:
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/GeoIndex/offshore.htm and click on ‘view the offshore Geoindex’.
The Admiralty wrecks and pipelines database plus a contour map (password required) is at:
https://data.admiralty.co.uk/portal/apps/sites/#/marine-data-portal
Geologists would deduce all of the patterned ground to be glacial scour features similar to those
studied on land. In his 1987 paper, Wingfield had interpreted the polygons and near-circular features
north-west of Anglesey as collapsed pingos, which typically occur in formerly glaciated areas. The small
undulations on the seabed are interpreted as drumlins and flutes. It is important to note that there
has been little examination of these features other than by sonar reflection and whatever they are
formed-of lies buried beneath the sand and gravel. Another discovery from the DTI surveys is that the
only place where hard bedrock penetrates the Holocene deposits lies to the north-west of Anglesey
and it is interesting that the two highest peaks on the seabed at 32m and 35m depth correspond to
areas where the bedrock is exposed. [7] The Holocene sand and mud varies in depth as shaped by the
prevailing currents and it is likely that much has been scoured away in this region.
In 2002 I was given permission to reproduce some of the sonar interpretations as an appendix to
Atlantis of the West. I do recall in the 1990s speaking by telephone to a representative at the BGS
(who may have been the late Dr Wingfield) who told me there was no other evidence then available.
Later, in 2002, I spoke to his colleague Ceiri James who informed me that Dr Wingfield had died; and
that he alone would have known on what evidence he described the patterned ground (as published
in 1995 and cited in the later SEA6 reports). Recent enquiries of BGS could not identify precisely which
surveys the published evidence of ‘polygons’, in areas other than those near Anglesey, had actually
originated. The public database shows numerous sonar tracks crossing these areas.
However, it is not really the relic features from the ice age that should interest us; rather we should
ask: what lies hidden beneath the sand and mud layers? Another interesting feature from the DTI
Environmental Assessment was a straight north-south ‘wall’ about 3m (10-feet) high where the mud
has piled-up against it. [8] This lies close to the mapped boundary between the mud and diamicton.
The survey describes the straight feature as unidentified and probably man-made – as it was not at
that time shown on the Admiralty databases of wrecks or pipelines. However, it does correspond to
where the sonar track crosses the modern pipeline between the Morecambe Bay gas platform and its
outlying northern well! This shows us how quickly the modern currents can pile-up sediment over
even a recent man-made structure; so who knows how much archaeology might lie buried deeper
beneath the Holocene mud and gravel.
In this analysis I would seek only to open minds to what is possible in order to reconcile the
incompatible cross-disciplinary picture that arises when the same evidence is approached from
contradictory specialist viewpoints: geology, archaeology and mythology, each offering us a different
perspective. Archaeologists are only now waking-up to the likelihood of Mesolithic human activity on
the submerged ‘Doggerland’ of the North Sea (Sunday Times 8-Sept-2019), so perhaps the Irish Sea is
worthy of equal consideration:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/doggerland-the-fertile-paradise-that-joined-uk-to-europe-emerges-fromsea-bed-t5t389ktl
I was reminded by all this of the story recorded by the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea. In
the fifth century AD he recorded the legend of a long wall built by the people of ancient Brittia
(northern Britain) to separate the land of the living from the land of the dead to the west. [9] To this
same place, we are told, the souls of the dead were ferried! Were a man or any wild creature to
venture beyond the wall they would surely be struck down dead within half an hour by the foul air.
This would be quite a fair description of dense methane gas escaping from muddy pools. After all
swamp gas, we are told, can also catch fire and create UFOs to confuse the credulous observer; so
perhaps we should not be taken aback by a little bit of potentially explosive archaeology on the
seabed!
Notes
1) For a discussion of all these legends see Towers of Atlantis. The legends of a submerged tower in
the Irish Sea are found in Nennius and in the Irish Book of Invasions.
2) As described by William of Worcester (fifteenth century) in his Itinerary of Cornwall.
3) See Wingfield 1987 and later citations.
4) See page 52 of the Kenyon & Cooper Sandwindfarms report.
5) Various overlay-maps are publicly available online via the BGS Geoindex offshore website, of which
many are reproduced in the Mellet et al report of 2015.
6) See figure 16 on page 33 of the Holmes and Tappin 2005 report.
7) See the summary map ‘static bedforms’ as Figure 13 on page 28 of Holmes and Tappin 2005, which
lists the sources from which it was compiled.
8) See Figure 17.5 on page 34 of the Holmes and Tappin 2005 report.
9) Procopius, History of the Wars, VIII, xx
References and Sources:
Wingfield, R T R. (1987) Giant sand waves and relict periglacial features on the seabed west of Anglesey.
Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 98, 400–404.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016787887800809
James, J.W.C. and Wingfield, R.T.R. (1987) Aspects of the seabed sediments in the southern Irish Sea.
Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 98, 404-406.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016787887800810
D.I., Jackson & R.T., Wingfield & D, Evans & R.P., Barnes & M, Arthur & M, Howells & R, Hughes & Petterson,
Michael. (1995) The Geology of the Irish Sea, London: HMSO for the British Geological Survey.
2004 Strategic Environmental Assessment SEA6 SV Lia SEA6 Survey - seabed sampling survey with video and
photography (Irish Sea)
https://portal.medin.org.uk/portal/start.php?tpc=004_aba64100-c149-4de3-e044-0003ba6f30bd&step=0014
Kenyon, N. and Cooper, W. (2005) Sand banks, sand transport and offshore wind farms.
10.13140/RG.2.1.1593.4807.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285584613_Sand_banks_sand_transport_and_offshore_wind_far
ms
Download available via researchgate
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjItf6Cm8PkAh
WVTRUIHRMyDy4QFjADegQIABAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F285584613_Sand_ban
ks_sand_transport_and_offshore_wind_farms&usg=AOvVaw2NrTWnMJ_cr5NKBJnppIZH
Holmes, R. and Tappin, D. R. (2005) DTI Strategic Environmental Assessment Area 6, Irish Sea, seabed and
surficial geology and processes, British Geological Survey Commissioned Report, CR/05/057.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/194659/
SEA_6_Section_5_web.pdf
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/11259/
Mellett, C. Long, D. Carter, G. Chiverell, R. and Van Landeghem, K. (2015) Geology of the seabed and shallow
subsurface: The Irish Sea. British Geological Survey Commissioned Report, CR/15/057.
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/512352/1/BGS_Report_Irish_Sea_Geology_CR-15-057N.pdf
Tags: sea level change, submerged forest, catastrophism, sea-level change, ancient climate, ice ages, Irish Sea,
pingo, sonar scans, Lancashire, Wales, pole shift
Citation: Dunbavin, Paul (2020) Patterns on the Irish Sea Floor, in Prehistory Papers, pp 125-133 Third
Millennium Publishing, Beverley, ISBN: 978-0-9525029-4-4
Plato’s Impossible Plain
We have surely all heard that old saying that if we had some bacon then we could have bacon and
eggs – if we had some eggs! This is a warning for us not to nest too many ‘ifs’; not to go beyond the
facts and venture too far into speculative territory. But sometimes as long as you admit what you are
doing then the results can be interesting – especially when the subject is Plato’s Atlantis and the vast
dimensions that he specifies for the lost ’continent’.
Author Tony O’Connell in his book Joining the Dots (pages 82-87) and on the excellent Atlantipedia
website draws our attention to the huge dimensions that Plato gives for the rectangular plain at the
centre of Atlantis and for the size and depth of the surrounding ditch. When you consider these huge
proportions, it is easy to see why Plato compared Atlantis to a lost ‘continent’! There should be no
need to repeat in detail here the discussion of the units and solutions suggested by other authors and
which are amply explored at http://atlantipedia.ie/samples/dimensions-of-atlantis/
In Critias, the scale of the central plain is given as three thousand stadia by two thousand stadia; a
natural rectangle bounded by broad straight canals that diverted the rivers as they came down from
the surrounding mountains. The fields within were irrigated by ditches that drew off the larger
channels. The impression given is rather similar to the Dutch canals and dykes, or to the modern
irrigation of the Cambridgeshire Fens.
Like everyone else I assumed, in my own earlier books: Towers of Atlantis and Atlantis of the West,
that the dimensions were unreliable due to a mistranslation of smaller units at an early stage in the
transmission of the story. Even Plato found it hard to believe the measurements that he inherited, but
he duly passed them on for us to consider. This should negate any suggestions that the story was
Plato’s own invention – for why would he not have chosen more credible dimensions?
Consider the following ancient measures:
UNIT
Egyptian Cubit
Egyptian Khet
Egyptian ‘River measure’
Egyptian Stadium
Athenian Stadium
Greek Plethron
MULTIPLE
100 cubits
20,000 cubits
100 Greek feet
METRIC EQUIVALENT
52.5 centimetres
52.5 metres
10.5 kilometres
157 metres
185 metres
30 metres
The length of a Greek Stadium (Stadion) varied from place to place between 157m and 209 m – but it
doesn’t help us much whichever unit we choose. As O’Connell points out, a canal width of a Greek or
Egyptian stadium is excessive for purpose; the further detail that they were wide enough for ships to
pass gives us a better idea of adequate dimensions from which we may scale down the other measures
appropriately. However, we don’t have to accept that all the channels were quite so wide, or so deep,
perhaps only those parts that needed to be; after all, we are also told that bridges spanned the various
canals!
If you consider a plethron as roughly the width of a Greek running track then you would have an
adequate breadth for a canal, with perhaps wider passing places. However, this same dimension is
also given as the depth of the channels. Why would the channels need to be so deep?
Firstly, let us assume that we have a memory of a real place and not Plato’s own fiction. If we posit
that Solon or his source mistranslated Egyptian khet as stadia then this would give us a rectangle
(approximately) 150 km by 100 km, still huge, but slightly more plausible. We cannot be sure that the
exact same units of length were used in the most archaic Egyptian dynasties. Regardless of how the
original story came to be recorded by the priests of Sais, they too must have translated the dimensions
from a native (Atlantian) source. The chain of preservation goes something like this:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Recorded in unknown local units of measure
Transmitted by traders or colonists to archaic Egypt
Recorded by the Saite priests when the temple was built
Transcribed numerous times up to the era of Solon
converted to Greek units by/for Solon
Interpreted by Plato for his narratives
Translated for modern readers by Greek scholars
Errors could have been introduced at any of these intermediate stages in the preservation of the
history. Therefore other than to conclude that the measurements are sensibly too large by a huge
multiple then it becomes fruitless to seek a submerged rectangular plain of any precise scale; be it in
the Atlantic or Mediterranean. We can better trust the invariable statements that ships could pass on
the canals, and that the plain was roughly a 3 by 2 rectangle, as details more likely to have survived as
‘fossils’ through the various stages of transmission.
Most theorists, in discussing diverse locations, from Thera, to Spain, to the Altiplano and beyond will
simply ignore or bend Plato’s dimensions to suit their own pet theory. All we can really say is that
there was a rectangular 3:2 plain at the centre of a large island. The plain was dissected by broad rivers
which were controlled and diverted into the straight canals; it was surrounded by hills and mountains
with another hill towards the centre; and a part of it faced south towards the open sea. So where
might we find this combination of natural features?
On the floor of the eastern Irish Sea, we do find a
submerged rectangular plain at the centre of a large
island (Britain and Ireland together) that would
make a good match for Plato’s description. Actually,
we can see two such rectangles. The larger rectangle
is bounded by the modern shores of the Irish Sea,
with the mountain of Mann at its centre. Between
the Isle of Man and Anglesey lies a smaller
submerged rectangle known as the Manx-Furness
Basin. Separating this from the northern Solway
Basin is a rise known as the Manx-Furness Ridge.
UK Admiralty Chart 1826
The eastern Irish Sea is a relatively shallow
submerged shelf, as shown here on the
navigation chart. As a guide the road
distance from Liverpool to Holyhead is
around 63 km and from Liverpool to Carlisle
78 km
If you would like to use some imagination and make some figurative ‘bacon and eggs’ then we do
know that at some stage between the end of the Ice Age and modern times, the eastern Irish sea was
exposed and the Isle of Man was linked to the Lancashire coast. We know this because various animals
reached the island. The only point of dispute is precisely when this was. Conventional sea-level
theories require the Irish Sea basin to have flooded early in the Holocene as the northern icecap
melted and thus it would have had at best an icy tundra climate. It is generally agreed that the sea had
gradually settled to its present shores by the mid-Holocene warm period, around 5,000 years ago.
The submerged floor of the eastern Irish Sea slopes only gradually away from the Lancashire coast and
reaches 50m depth, roughly along a line drawn from Anglesey via Mann to Galloway; and then drops
away steeply to the west. To fulfil Plato’s description of a flat plain requires a relative tilt to have
occurred. The Manx-Furness Ridge lies at a depth of 15-20m with two gaps where the depth falls to
25-30m If we assume the basins to north and south to have been formerly close to sea level (rather
like the present-day Cambridgeshire Fens) then in order to link the basins across this ridge at sea level
would have required a ‘canal’ of perhaps 20-30m depth to be dug in the soft glacial till – perhaps by
deepening a natural river valley. Therefore, the most extreme depth of cutting specified by Plato (a
plethron) would have been needed in only this one location. There is no point in trying to be precise
with such estimates!
Consider the labour that would have been required for such an irrigation scheme? Plato writes that
the canals of Atlantis were a task over many generations for a large population of farmers. We may
compare it to other civil engineering projects from the ancient world such as the lakes of Aztec Mexico,
the lagoons of Angkor Wat, or even closer to home the digging of Offa’s Dyke or Hadrian’s Wall. We
may see that the task becomes far more credible if the exaggerated dimensions of the canals and
channels applied to only small sections of an otherwise naturally flat plain.
If you would like to review more of the pattern of evidence that points to the Irish Sea as a likely
location for the lost city then you will find this in my Towers of Atlantis and Atlantis of the West. These
books contained quite enough new ideas to absorb, without frying any bacon and eggs! However, I
hope the possibilities were always apparent to some of the more imaginative readers. Where else
could you find a location that fits so well to Plato’s description and his impossible dimensions?
References:
UK Admiralty Charts 1121 and 1826
O’Connell, Tony (2018) Joining the Dots, ISBN: 978-1-9993626-0-7
Dunbavin, Paul (2017) Towers of Atlantis, Third Millennium Publishing, ISBN: 978-0-9525029-3-7
Dunbavin, Paul (2003) Atlantis of the West, Constable & Robinson, ISBN: 978-1-84119-716-5
Citation: cite this article on the Academia website
**********************************
An Atlantis Miscellany
(Paul Dunbavin)
A collection of the author’s smaller webpages and articles on the subject of Atlantis in the Irish Sea
2017-2020. In 1995 the author published The Atlantis Researches, later republished in UK and USA as
Atlantis of the West. These more recent articles extend that earlier work and fill some of the gaps.
Central to the theories was the case that indicators of time and place (based on a comparison of the
ancient sources and modern science) pointed towards a location for the lost city in the eastern Irish
Sea; following a pole shift event that occurred towards the end of the fourth millennium BC. This event
submerged the low-lying plains around the British coast ‘in a single day and a night’. A summary and
links to other pages may be found in my article 15 Years on from Atlantis (of the West).
Current theories of Holocene climate and sea-level change are mired in the Milankovitch ice age
theory, whereby the vast Pleistocene ice sheet melted since 10,000 BC and theoretically raised the
sea level uniformly around world coastlines. On conventional eustatic modelling the North Sea
‘Doggerland’ was finally submerged around 6500 BC. However this same hypothesis demands that the
Irish Sea was flooded much earlier, cutting off Ireland from Britain while the climate was still cold.
However, the conventional theory of sea level change is at odds with Irish mythology, which recalls a
submerged flowery plain in the Irish Sea called Tír na nÓg (the Land of Youth) or even more revealing
is one of its many other names: Tír fo Thuinn (Land under the Wave). These myths recall an era that
was warm and idyllic. Welsh mythology recalls a similar lost land called Annwn, seemingly an extension
of the land area or Wales. Numerous legends describe sunken cities around the western coast and
both mythologies recall castles and towers lost to the sea. The only era that would fit the climate
description would be the mid-Neolithic or Atlantic pollen zone (8000 to 5000 BP). Of course, modern
science dismisses the testimony of ancient mythology, but it would tally completely with the
description of Atlantis as given by Plato and that of the Elysian Fields in Egyptian myth.
A sad progression in recent decades has been the building and proposed further construction of
windfarms on the shallow seabed of the eastern Irish Sea, creating an eyesore that destroys the view
from the tourist beaches along the North Wales coast. One hopes this will result in some sensitive
study of the post-glacial seabed and its structure before it is so carelessly damaged.
Three small articles relating to the Irish-Sea hypothesis are here aggregated from their original
webpages:
1) R.K. Gresswell and the Irish Sea Coast (2019)
2) Patterns on the Irish Sea Floor (2019)
3) Plato’s Impossible Plain (2020)
Inevitably, when bringing together originally separate articles there will be some overlap between
them, for which, apologies.
https://www.academia.edu/85268409/An_Atlantis_Miscellany
www.third-millennium.co.uk
**************************
R. K. Gresswell and the Irish Sea Coast
In his 1953 book Sandy Shores in Southwest Lancashire, Ronald Kay Gresswell summed-up his
investigations into the deposits of the South Lancashire Plain between Liverpool and the River Ribble.
He described a wave-cut notch in the flat coastal plain, which he termed the Hillhouse Coast after a
prominent landmark. Westward of this ancient shoreline he described the ancient forest of oak and
silver birch that lay beneath the onshore deposits and which also occur as submerged forest deposits
beneath the modern beach line from Liverpool to the Ribble. He went on to link this ancient shoreline
to deposits in the Fylde and Cumbria. In the pre-radiocarbon era he could only estimate that the wood
was of Neolithic age, correlated with the so-called 25-foot beach found in other parts of Britain.
Figure 6 from Sandy Shores in Southwest Lancashire (1953)
Across this emergent rectangular plain (as may be seen on his map) he discerned from navigation
charts where the ancient continuation of the rivers Ribble and Mersey-Dee had once flowed into a
much-reduced Irish Sea. He argued that east of the 10-fathom depth-line the drowned river valleys
had been smoothed by the sediment from the modern rivers; and he argued from his onshore borings
that the in-filling of the Ribble estuary could similarly be observed in the Lancashire deposits.
In chapter IV he devised the sequence of advances and retreats of the post-glacial Lancashire
coastline during the Holocene. On page 47 he illustrated this in the diagram reproduced here.
Figure 13 from Sandy Shores in Southwest Lancashire (1953)
In stage 1 (early Holocene/ post-glacial) the sea rose to 7ft OD forming the Hillhouse coast. It then
retreated in stage 2 towards the modern shore, allowing the growth of the oak and birch forests in
stage 3 (mid-Holocene) as the sea retreated further out to -40ft OD. In stage 4 the sea returned close
to modern shores, drowning the forests.
As a lifelong resident of Southport, Ronald Kay Gresswell M.A., PH.D., F.R.S.A., F.G.S. (1905-1969) was
a prominent member of the British Institute of Geographers, known best for his fieldwork on the
geomorphology of Lancashire during the 1940s and 50s. His work predated the radiocarbon and treering dating methods that came to the fore only in the 1960s and 70s; and also the Milankovitch theory
of ice-ages that gained acceptance around the same time. His research is therefore ‘pure’ and
unbiased by these later theories; he discusses the ‘eustatic’ variations of the post-glacial sea-level due
to ice-melt and the recovery from the ice-burden, solely in terms of their apparent local effects.
As in all such studies of ancient sea-levels, local ‘isostatic’ vertical movements of the land can be
conveniently conjured to make almost any theory fit the evidence – so long as one does not try too
hard to correlate them with the parallels from other parts of the world. This is not a criticism of
Gresswell for it is found in almost all such studies. Later researchers from the 1960s onwards, taking
on board the then-prevailing theories of glacio-isostatic modelling, would revise Gresswell’s theories
on the grounds that they did not correspond with the wider picture derived from the worldwide sealevel curves and the melting of the Laurentide icesheet. A summary of this later research may be found
in the Coastal Geomorphology Survey of Great Britain, chapter 7 (see the reference below, pp 4-5).
In the 1950s Gresswell could only date the period of lowered sea-level by the vegetation sequences.
The consensus at that era, based on the earlier work of Godwin and Steers, was that the deciduous
forests were of Boreal-Atlantic age. This view of a high sea level, followed by a regression below
modern sea level and finally a rise to modern shores, was often described as “the submerged forest
period”. Radiocarbon dates can now help to date these forests more reliably; see the feature here:
Submerged Forests around Britain and Ireland.
A stern critic of Gresswell’s work has been M. J. Tooley who would argue (1978) that the Hillhouse
‘cliff’ was actually the shore of a trapped inland lake; and that the true former coast lay somewhat
further west. From modern radiocarbon dates he and other researchers would now prefer a sequence
of more conservative advances and retreats around the modern shoreline. Up to five possible
transgressions of the present-day coast are envisaged between 9200 BP and 5000 BP; with subsequent
build-up of the deep sandy beaches that we see today. The idea of a submerged forest period was
quietly dropped. There remains general agreement however, that the sea only reached its modern
level around 5000 BP (c3000 BC).
It should be noted that none of this later work challenges Gresswell’s insight that the former river
channels could be discerned in the shallow bed of the eastern Irish Sea and therefore they must be
post-glacial; and it follows that at whatever era these rivers flowed, the Isle of Man must have been
linked to Cumbria. The divergence is that the later researchers, being constrained by the glacioisostatic models that they must cite, could not contemplate such huge advances and retreats of the
shoreline by as much as 30-40 km across the eastern Irish Sea; they would prefer to talk only of smallscale oscillations just offshore of the modern coasts. This is where Gresswell’s naïve and ‘pure’ insight
is so valuable.
In my own cross-disciplinary studies, I came at this problem from a world-wide pattern of
correspondence of sea level change in alternate quarter-spheres. This is the pattern expected to be
produced by a pole-shift that would have occurred during the mid-Holocene: the late fourth
millennium BC (see the feature here: Raised Beaches and Submerged Forests). This theory was first
published in The Atlantis Researches (1995) and Atlantis of the West (2002). We find emergence
around 5,000 years ago, by similar distances, along shallow East Asian and South American coasts; and
so we should not be surprised by submergence of the scale proposed by Gresswell.
The present author would continue to have serious issues with current models of sea-level change
since the ice age. The various vertical movements of land and seabed (or the collapsing ‘fore-bulges’
of more modern parlance) which are proposed to explain the sea-level anomalies around the world
would themselves constitute a change to the Earth’s figure; and must therefore trigger a wobble of
the rotation axis and a pole-shift. This would in turn feed-back as variations of sea-level and climate
very similar to those that the ‘isostatic’ movements are advanced to explain. Sea level researchers
seldom mention geodesy and fail to consider the rotational dynamics of the planet.
The question of whether the floor of the eastern Irish Sea was exposed during the warm mid-Holocene
period has wider consequences for archaeology. It is also related to the question of whether there
was a land-bridge between Britain and Ireland, and to the Isle of Man; and how the various flora and
fauna reached these islands after the ice age. It offers the possibility of Mesolithic and Neolithic
archaeology submerged offshore, compliant with Welsh, Irish and Mediterranean myths. Celtic myths
and legends recall sunken cities and lost lands around the coast of Britain; and if we are to properly
investigate these as memories of real events then the ‘submerged forest period’ prior to 5,000 years
ago is the only era when we find both submergence and a warm climate.
In the BGS Report (2015) we may see that Gresswell’s 10-fathom line would roughly correspond to
the Eastern Irish Sea Mud Belt and the older region as the Central Irish Sea Gravel Belt. In both these
regions however, the report describes the Holocene deposits as varying between 5m and up to 40m
depth. Therefore anything of archaeological interest that was formerly at sea level would now be
deeply buried.
In closing this review of Gresswell’s pioneering work, I can only express appreciation for the
painstaking work that he and other fieldworkers undertake; those who excavate in difficult locations
to give us the dated primary evidence of past regimes; and without whose work the secondary and
cross-disciplinary researchers could not progress. But specialists can sometimes be too close to a
problem; what we need is not more onshore work and theoretical models, but more data from
offshore.
The diagrams reproduced here from ‘Sandy Shores in Southwest Lancashire’ are believed to be out of
copyright. Should anyone object to their inclusion here then please contact the author.
References
The following will lead to all the relevant detailed coastal studies and papers.
http://archive.jncc.gov.uk/pdf/GCRDB/GCRsiteaccount1961.pdf
this is part of:
Geological Conservation Review
Volume 28: Coastal Geomorphology of Great Britain
Chapter 7: Sandy beaches and dunes – GCR site reports
Site: AINSDALE (GCR ID: 1961)
Gresswell, R.K. (1953b) Sandy Shores in South Lancashire: the Geomorphology of South-West
Lancashire, Liverpool Studies in Geography, Liverpool University Press, Liverpool
Tooley, M.J. (1978) Sea-level Changes in North-West England during the Flandrian Stage,
Clarendon Press, Oxford
Mellett, C., Long, D., Carter, G., Chiverell, R and Van Landeghem, K (2015) Geology of the seabed and shallow
subsurface: The Irish Sea. British Geological Survey Commissioned Report, CR/15/057.
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/512352/1/BGS_Report_Irish_Sea_Geology_CR-15-057N.pdf
Citation: Citation: Dunbavin, Paul, (2020) R. Kay Gresswell and the Irish Sea Coast, Prehistory Papers,
pp 118-124, Third Millennium, ISBN: 978-0-9525029-4-4
Patterns on the Irish Sea Floor
Ask a geologist to do a survey of the seabed and they will find geology. Any mark or feature in the
surface sediments will be interpreted in terms of the geomorphology that they expect to find. An
archaeologist looking at the same buried sub-sea features might see something different, as with crop
marks on land. But why would an archaeologist wish to investigate the seabed other than to seek,
perhaps, an ancient shipwreck?
The possibility of ancient human settlement on what is now the floor of the Irish Sea – or indeed
anywhere around the British or Irish continental shelf – is raised by the stories in Celtic mythology,
which variously suggest lost cities around the coast: Lyonesse off Land’s End, a submerged ‘Celtic
Otherworld’, or a lost land called Annwn; and other myths from Mediterranean sources also pose
questions. Welsh myths describe a plain “as large as the sea” off the coast of North Wales and Irish
myths would portray a submerged “flowery plain” in the vicinity of the Isle of Man. Irish and Welsh
legends speak of a golden tower in the sea explored by the earliest colonists. [1] To approach these
myths logically either they are just that: ‘myths’ in the sense of ‘fiction’ or they must be based on an
authentic root memory. If indeed they recall an ancient submergence then the next logical step is to
ask, when?
We need not debate here the various mechanisms of sea-level change. On all conventional theories it
must be remembered that the gradual eustatic rise of the sea since the ice age extended over
thousands of years; a period of time longer than that which separates us from Dynastic Egypt. It is a
failure of imagination to suggest that during these millennia there was no human settlement on the
now-submerged regions of the continental shelf. The consensus is that present-day sea-level only
stabilized around 5,000 years ago since which time there have been just minor fluctuations. In other
parts of the world we find the opposite phenomenon at this same era: emergence and raised beaches
rather than submerged features, together with evidence that people quickly colonised the newly
exposed land (see: Raised Beaches and Submerged Forests).
For Britain and Ireland, submerged forest deposits are found all around the modern coasts (see:
Submerged Forests around Britain and Ireland). These come from various ages, but most date from
either of two periods; the first roughly 5-6000 BC around the time that the North Sea land bridge was
flooded, while those around western coasts cluster around a later period closer to 3000 BC. So if we
should seek any submerged archaeology then, logically, it should date from these eras. The earlier
dates correspond to the Mesolithic period of supposed hunter-gatherers; the later dates correspond
to the transition between the Middle and the Late Neolithic. Again, logically, any memories of real
events in a legend would suggest that the former date is too early; and so we should be looking around
5,000 years ago to find underwater archaeology to match the legends.
We should expect that any submerged Middle Neolithic sites would look like those that we find on
land from this era, such as the Court Cairns found all around the Irish Sea or the dolmens found further
south; or perhaps settlements like those at Skara Brae; or field-walls such as those beneath Irish peat
bogs. Cornish legends about the loss of a land called Lyonesse speak of some 140 ‘churches’ drowned
in a sudden rise of the sea. [2] We would have to consider these as pagan religious sites and parishes.
What might such submerged cairns and settlements look like now, ruined and buried beneath metres
of silt on the sea floor? Imagination is required. And this is before we even consider looking for lost
cities.
Older studies of sea level change around the British coast would speak freely of a ‘submerged forest
period’ in the mid-Holocene (see: The Irish Sea Coast here above). The theory, before glacio-eustatic
modelling of world sea-levels forced it out of favour, was that there was an initial period of eustatic
sea level rise (i.e. melting of polar ice) which gradually drowned the coasts up to c.5500 BC. After this
rise a regression exposed western coasts again before a return of the sea to modern shores created
the second wave of submerged forests around 3000 BC. Disagreement then arises as to how far out
the sea may have receded during the warm mid-Holocene climate. Recent specialist studies would
prefer a conservative ‘somewhere west’ of the present shores (as they have no data from the seafloor
and decline to speculate) or that the submerged forests were created by trapped freshwater lakes
near the coasts.
The common-sense approach of archaeologists would be to seek submerged coastal sites such as we
find at Westward Ho, Devon and at Skara Brae. However for the Irish Sea the legends of submerged
plains, lost lands and towers are clearly pointing us further away from the shoreline than any
archaeologist would consider; into depths that require expensive expeditions that so-far have been
the preserve of geologists seeking oil and gas reserves or shallow sites for windfarms.
Much of the geological mapping that we have for the central Irish Sea is acknowledged to be the work
of just one man: the late Dr Robin Wingfield of the British Geological Survey (BGS) who, in the 1980s,
identified ice-wedge polygons and circular features in sonar reflections taken north of Anglesey. [3] In
the Strategic Environment Assessment (SEA) coastal resources survey of 2004 the Irish Sea region is
defined as SEA6 and various reports are available via the BGS Geoindex database. Another survey
investigated suitable sites for wind farms. This concentrated on an area closer to the Lancashire coast
where the Morecambe Bay gas field and wind farms are situated and it did not encounter the
patterned ground found in the older surveys; the seabed is instead described as mostly flat and
featureless. The authors noted that the older sonar techniques were largely obsolete and that
geophysical data was completely absent for large areas. [4] These results and subsequent studies are
now embodied in the BGS Geoindex and in the updated report by Mellet-et-al of 2015, which
summarises the state of knowledge as at that date.
The Geoindex shows the Holocene mud and sand deposits to vary between 5m and 40m thickness,
with the deepest deposits lying off the Cumbrian coast. [5] Shipwrecks and modern pipelines are
clearly identifiable from trailing sand patterns formed by the prevailing currents. Also noted are subsurface features and ‘pock-marks’; once those defined as escaping methane (marsh gas) are excluded
there still remain some interesting sites to explore. Of particular interest is a feature lying off
Morecambe Bay described as a pingo (on land we might call these kettle-holes). This reveals a
rounded-rectangular feature, which would be football-field-sized; and were it on land it would be
about the same size as a typical Neolithic henge. Some of the pockmarks nearby are described as
unknown and ‘possibly man-made’. [6] This location would at some prehistoric era have been a river
valley flowing into a lake that is now the Lune Deep. Another potential pingo is noted to the north of
the Isle of Man.
To summarise the surface geology of the eastern Irish Sea as it is described would be as follows. The
rectangular shelf slopes gently away from the English coastal dunes out to a depth of 50m between
Anglesey and the Isle of Man. Close to the coast lies the Eastern Irish Sea Mud Belt overlaying the
Central Irish Sea Gravel Belt that becomes exposed further west; this is mostly comprised of diamicton
(a glacial till of mud and boulders). The smooth surface gives way to gravelly rough ground as the
seabed becomes deeper between Mann and Anglesey, where areas of bedrock are exposed. These
rocks are a continuation of the onshore geology of Anglesey. Here the seabed has just a thin covering
of Holocene mud and sand and it is in this region that the glacially patterned ground and polygons are
described. This description may be investigated on the maps in the BGS database and its various
options as linked here; together with the interpretive reports that have been published by the
geologists. A summary map of the areas of ‘patterned ground’ and the other unexplained features is
offered below as an introduction, since the BGS geological overlays give little indication of depth.
Seabed contours can be investigated via UK Admiralty chart 1826, or via the Admiralty online
database.
The highlighted area shows the regions where
glacially patterned ground has been identified.
Thumbnail of Admiralty chart 1826 for the
eastern Irish sea, showing the depth contours.
The public domain database of the British Geological Survey (BGS) can be found at:
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/GeoIndex/offshore.htm and click on ‘view the offshore Geoindex’.
The Admiralty wrecks and pipelines database plus a contour map (password required) is at:
https://data.admiralty.co.uk/portal/apps/sites/#/marine-data-portal
Geologists would deduce all of the patterned ground to be glacial scour features similar to those
studied on land. In his 1987 paper, Wingfield had interpreted the polygons and near-circular features
north-west of Anglesey as collapsed pingos, which typically occur in formerly glaciated areas. The small
undulations on the seabed are interpreted as drumlins and flutes. It is important to note that there
has been little examination of these features other than by sonar reflection and whatever they are
formed-of lies buried beneath the sand and gravel. Another discovery from the DTI surveys is that the
only place where hard bedrock penetrates the Holocene deposits lies to the north-west of Anglesey
and it is interesting that the two highest peaks on the seabed at 32m and 35m depth correspond to
areas where the bedrock is exposed. [7] The Holocene sand and mud varies in depth as shaped by the
prevailing currents and it is likely that much has been scoured away in this region.
In 2002 I was given permission to reproduce some of the sonar interpretations as an appendix to
Atlantis of the West. I do recall in the 1990s speaking by telephone to a representative at the BGS
(who may have been the late Dr Wingfield) who told me there was no other evidence then available.
Later, in 2002, I spoke to his colleague Ceiri James who informed me that Dr Wingfield had died; and
that he alone would have known on what evidence he described the patterned ground (as published
in 1995 and cited in the later SEA6 reports). Recent enquiries of BGS could not identify precisely which
surveys the published evidence of ‘polygons’, in areas other than those near Anglesey, had actually
originated. The public database shows numerous sonar tracks crossing these areas.
However, it is not really the relic features from the ice age that should interest us; rather we should
ask: what lies hidden beneath the sand and mud layers? Another interesting feature from the DTI
Environmental Assessment was a straight north-south ‘wall’ about 3m (10-feet) high where the mud
has piled-up against it. [8] This lies close to the mapped boundary between the mud and diamicton.
The survey describes the straight feature as unidentified and probably man-made – as it was not at
that time shown on the Admiralty databases of wrecks or pipelines. However, it does correspond to
where the sonar track crosses the modern pipeline between the Morecambe Bay gas platform and its
outlying northern well! This shows us how quickly the modern currents can pile-up sediment over
even a recent man-made structure; so who knows how much archaeology might lie buried deeper
beneath the Holocene mud and gravel.
In this analysis I would seek only to open minds to what is possible in order to reconcile the
incompatible cross-disciplinary picture that arises when the same evidence is approached from
contradictory specialist viewpoints: geology, archaeology and mythology, each offering us a different
perspective. Archaeologists are only now waking-up to the likelihood of Mesolithic human activity on
the submerged ‘Doggerland’ of the North Sea (Sunday Times 8-Sept-2019), so perhaps the Irish Sea is
worthy of equal consideration:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/doggerland-the-fertile-paradise-that-joined-uk-to-europe-emerges-fromsea-bed-t5t389ktl
I was reminded by all this of the story recorded by the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea. In
the fifth century AD he recorded the legend of a long wall built by the people of ancient Brittia
(northern Britain) to separate the land of the living from the land of the dead to the west. [9] To this
same place, we are told, the souls of the dead were ferried! Were a man or any wild creature to
venture beyond the wall they would surely be struck down dead within half an hour by the foul air.
This would be quite a fair description of dense methane gas escaping from muddy pools. After all
swamp gas, we are told, can also catch fire and create UFOs to confuse the credulous observer; so
perhaps we should not be taken aback by a little bit of potentially explosive archaeology on the
seabed!
Notes
1) For a discussion of all these legends see Towers of Atlantis. The legends of a submerged tower in
the Irish Sea are found in Nennius and in the Irish Book of Invasions.
2) As described by William of Worcester (fifteenth century) in his Itinerary of Cornwall.
3) See Wingfield 1987 and later citations.
4) See page 52 of the Kenyon & Cooper Sandwindfarms report.
5) Various overlay-maps are publicly available online via the BGS Geoindex offshore website, of which
many are reproduced in the Mellet et al report of 2015.
6) See figure 16 on page 33 of the Holmes and Tappin 2005 report.
7) See the summary map ‘static bedforms’ as Figure 13 on page 28 of Holmes and Tappin 2005, which
lists the sources from which it was compiled.
8) See Figure 17.5 on page 34 of the Holmes and Tappin 2005 report.
9) Procopius, History of the Wars, VIII, xx
References and Sources:
Wingfield, R T R. (1987) Giant sand waves and relict periglacial features on the seabed west of Anglesey.
Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 98, 400–404.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016787887800809
James, J.W.C. and Wingfield, R.T.R. (1987) Aspects of the seabed sediments in the southern Irish Sea.
Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 98, 404-406.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016787887800810
D.I., Jackson & R.T., Wingfield & D, Evans & R.P., Barnes & M, Arthur & M, Howells & R, Hughes & Petterson,
Michael. (1995) The Geology of the Irish Sea, London: HMSO for the British Geological Survey.
2004 Strategic Environmental Assessment SEA6 SV Lia SEA6 Survey - seabed sampling survey with video and
photography (Irish Sea)
https://portal.medin.org.uk/portal/start.php?tpc=004_aba64100-c149-4de3-e044-0003ba6f30bd&step=0014
Kenyon, N. and Cooper, W. (2005) Sand banks, sand transport and offshore wind farms.
10.13140/RG.2.1.1593.4807.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285584613_Sand_banks_sand_transport_and_offshore_wind_far
ms
Download available via researchgate
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjItf6Cm8PkAh
WVTRUIHRMyDy4QFjADegQIABAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F285584613_Sand_ban
ks_sand_transport_and_offshore_wind_farms&usg=AOvVaw2NrTWnMJ_cr5NKBJnppIZH
Holmes, R. and Tappin, D. R. (2005) DTI Strategic Environmental Assessment Area 6, Irish Sea, seabed and
surficial geology and processes, British Geological Survey Commissioned Report, CR/05/057.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/194659/
SEA_6_Section_5_web.pdf
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/11259/
Mellett, C. Long, D. Carter, G. Chiverell, R. and Van Landeghem, K. (2015) Geology of the seabed and shallow
subsurface: The Irish Sea. British Geological Survey Commissioned Report, CR/15/057.
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/512352/1/BGS_Report_Irish_Sea_Geology_CR-15-057N.pdf
Tags: sea level change, submerged forest, catastrophism, sea-level change, ancient climate, ice ages, Irish Sea,
pingo, sonar scans, Lancashire, Wales, pole shift
Citation: Dunbavin, Paul (2020) Patterns on the Irish Sea Floor, in Prehistory Papers, pp 125-133 Third
Millennium Publishing, Beverley, ISBN: 978-0-9525029-4-4
Plato’s Impossible Plain
We have surely all heard that old saying that if we had some bacon then we could have bacon and
eggs – if we had some eggs! This is a warning for us not to nest too many ‘ifs’; not to go beyond the
facts and venture too far into speculative territory. But sometimes as long as you admit what you are
doing then the results can be interesting – especially when the subject is Plato’s Atlantis and the vast
dimensions that he specifies for the lost ’continent’.
Author Tony O’Connell in his book Joining the Dots (pages 82-87) and on the excellent Atlantipedia
website draws our attention to the huge dimensions that Plato gives for the rectangular plain at the
centre of Atlantis and for the size and depth of the surrounding ditch. When you consider these huge
proportions, it is easy to see why Plato compared Atlantis to a lost ‘continent’! There should be no
need to repeat in detail here the discussion of the units and solutions suggested by other authors and
which are amply explored at http://atlantipedia.ie/samples/dimensions-of-atlantis/
In Critias, the scale of the central plain is given as three thousand stadia by two thousand stadia; a
natural rectangle bounded by broad straight canals that diverted the rivers as they came down from
the surrounding mountains. The fields within were irrigated by ditches that drew off the larger
channels. The impression given is rather similar to the Dutch canals and dykes, or to the modern
irrigation of the Cambridgeshire Fens.
Like everyone else I assumed, in my own earlier books: Towers of Atlantis and Atlantis of the West,
that the dimensions were unreliable due to a mistranslation of smaller units at an early stage in the
transmission of the story. Even Plato found it hard to believe the measurements that he inherited, but
he duly passed them on for us to consider. This should negate any suggestions that the story was
Plato’s own invention – for why would he not have chosen more credible dimensions?
Consider the following ancient measures:
UNIT
Egyptian Cubit
Egyptian Khet
Egyptian ‘River measure’
Egyptian Stadium
Athenian Stadium
Greek Plethron
MULTIPLE
100 cubits
20,000 cubits
100 Greek feet
METRIC EQUIVALENT
52.5 centimetres
52.5 metres
10.5 kilometres
157 metres
185 metres
30 metres
The length of a Greek Stadium (Stadion) varied from place to place between 157m and 209 m – but it
doesn’t help us much whichever unit we choose. As O’Connell points out, a canal width of a Greek or
Egyptian stadium is excessive for purpose; the further detail that they were wide enough for ships to
pass gives us a better idea of adequate dimensions from which we may scale down the other measures
appropriately. However, we don’t have to accept that all the channels were quite so wide, or so deep,
perhaps only those parts that needed to be; after all, we are also told that bridges spanned the various
canals!
If you consider a plethron as roughly the width of a Greek running track then you would have an
adequate breadth for a canal, with perhaps wider passing places. However, this same dimension is
also given as the depth of the channels. Why would the channels need to be so deep?
Firstly, let us assume that we have a memory of a real place and not Plato’s own fiction. If we posit
that Solon or his source mistranslated Egyptian khet as stadia then this would give us a rectangle
(approximately) 150 km by 100 km, still huge, but slightly more plausible. We cannot be sure that the
exact same units of length were used in the most archaic Egyptian dynasties. Regardless of how the
original story came to be recorded by the priests of Sais, they too must have translated the dimensions
from a native (Atlantian) source. The chain of preservation goes something like this:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Recorded in unknown local units of measure
Transmitted by traders or colonists to archaic Egypt
Recorded by the Saite priests when the temple was built
Transcribed numerous times up to the era of Solon
converted to Greek units by/for Solon
Interpreted by Plato for his narratives
Translated for modern readers by Greek scholars
Errors could have been introduced at any of these intermediate stages in the preservation of the
history. Therefore other than to conclude that the measurements are sensibly too large by a huge
multiple then it becomes fruitless to seek a submerged rectangular plain of any precise scale; be it in
the Atlantic or Mediterranean. We can better trust the invariable statements that ships could pass on
the canals, and that the plain was roughly a 3 by 2 rectangle, as details more likely to have survived as
‘fossils’ through the various stages of transmission.
Most theorists, in discussing diverse locations, from Thera, to Spain, to the Altiplano and beyond will
simply ignore or bend Plato’s dimensions to suit their own pet theory. All we can really say is that
there was a rectangular 3:2 plain at the centre of a large island. The plain was dissected by broad rivers
which were controlled and diverted into the straight canals; it was surrounded by hills and mountains
with another hill towards the centre; and a part of it faced south towards the open sea. So where
might we find this combination of natural features?
On the floor of the eastern Irish Sea, we do find a
submerged rectangular plain at the centre of a large
island (Britain and Ireland together) that would
make a good match for Plato’s description. Actually,
we can see two such rectangles. The larger rectangle
is bounded by the modern shores of the Irish Sea,
with the mountain of Mann at its centre. Between
the Isle of Man and Anglesey lies a smaller
submerged rectangle known as the Manx-Furness
Basin. Separating this from the northern Solway
Basin is a rise known as the Manx-Furness Ridge.
UK Admiralty Chart 1826
The eastern Irish Sea is a relatively shallow
submerged shelf, as shown here on the
navigation chart. As a guide the road
distance from Liverpool to Holyhead is
around 63 km and from Liverpool to Carlisle
78 km
If you would like to use some imagination and make some figurative ‘bacon and eggs’ then we do
know that at some stage between the end of the Ice Age and modern times, the eastern Irish sea was
exposed and the Isle of Man was linked to the Lancashire coast. We know this because various animals
reached the island. The only point of dispute is precisely when this was. Conventional sea-level
theories require the Irish Sea basin to have flooded early in the Holocene as the northern icecap
melted and thus it would have had at best an icy tundra climate. It is generally agreed that the sea had
gradually settled to its present shores by the mid-Holocene warm period, around 5,000 years ago.
The submerged floor of the eastern Irish Sea slopes only gradually away from the Lancashire coast and
reaches 50m depth, roughly along a line drawn from Anglesey via Mann to Galloway; and then drops
away steeply to the west. To fulfil Plato’s description of a flat plain requires a relative tilt to have
occurred. The Manx-Furness Ridge lies at a depth of 15-20m with two gaps where the depth falls to
25-30m If we assume the basins to north and south to have been formerly close to sea level (rather
like the present-day Cambridgeshire Fens) then in order to link the basins across this ridge at sea level
would have required a ‘canal’ of perhaps 20-30m depth to be dug in the soft glacial till – perhaps by
deepening a natural river valley. Therefore, the most extreme depth of cutting specified by Plato (a
plethron) would have been needed in only this one location. There is no point in trying to be precise
with such estimates!
Consider the labour that would have been required for such an irrigation scheme? Plato writes that
the canals of Atlantis were a task over many generations for a large population of farmers. We may
compare it to other civil engineering projects from the ancient world such as the lakes of Aztec Mexico,
the lagoons of Angkor Wat, or even closer to home the digging of Offa’s Dyke or Hadrian’s Wall. We
may see that the task becomes far more credible if the exaggerated dimensions of the canals and
channels applied to only small sections of an otherwise naturally flat plain.
If you would like to review more of the pattern of evidence that points to the Irish Sea as a likely
location for the lost city then you will find this in my Towers of Atlantis and Atlantis of the West. These
books contained quite enough new ideas to absorb, without frying any bacon and eggs! However, I
hope the possibilities were always apparent to some of the more imaginative readers. Where else
could you find a location that fits so well to Plato’s description and his impossible dimensions?
References:
UK Admiralty Charts 1121 and 1826
O’Connell, Tony (2018) Joining the Dots, ISBN: 978-1-9993626-0-7
Dunbavin, Paul (2017) Towers of Atlantis, Third Millennium Publishing, ISBN: 978-0-9525029-3-7
Dunbavin, Paul (2003) Atlantis of the West, Constable & Robinson, ISBN: 978-1-84119-716-5
Citation: cite this article on the Academia website or the individual articles in Prehistory Papers 1 & 2
https://www.academia.edu/85268409/An_Atlantis_Miscellany
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