Researchers recently discovered Atlantis, the long-lost continent that was nearly twice the size of the UK, off the coast of Australia.
Kasih Norman, an Archaeologist at Queensland-based Griffith University and Lead Author of the study, confirmed the news in mid-January 2024, saying that nearly half a million people used to live on this vast landmass nearly 70,000 years ago. Now, Atlantis is submerged under 100mt of sea.
According to an article published in Live Science, the Australian Atlantis comprised a large stretch of continental shelf that would have connected the regions of Kimberley and Arnhem Land when above sea level. Now, a large ocean bay separates Kimberley and Arnhem Land. Norman stressed: ''We reveal details of the complex landscape that existed on the North West Shelf of Australia. It was unlike any landscape found on our continent today."
The study, published in the Quaternary Science Reviews journal, mentioned that the inhabitants of this lost continent used to speak similar languages and also created similar styles of rock art in the surrounding areas. As per the study, it was a "vast, habitable realm" and a "single cultural zone" with similarities in ground stone-axe technology, styles of rock art and languages. The study models show the continent (in fact a vast archipelago) off the northwest coast of Sahul might have been the home of 50,000-500,000 people. Sahul used to serve as the ancient land bridge between Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania.
Norman revealed that his team projected past sea levels onto high-resolution maps of the ocean floor before coming to conclusions. According to the Lead Researcher, low sea levels exposed a vast archipelago of islands on the Northwest Shelf of Sahul, extending 500km towards the Indonesian island of Timor. The study reads: "Our ecological modelling reveals the now-drowned North West Shelf could have supported between 50,000 and 500,000 people at various times over the last 65,000 years. The population would have peaked at the height of the last ice age about 20,000 years ago when the entire shelf was dry land." It adds: "Many large islands off Australia's coast - islands that once formed part of the continental shelves - show signs of occupation before sea levels rose."
Read the article published in Live Science
Norman claimed that rising sea levels drowned the shelf, forcing residents of the lost continent to flee at the end of this Ice Age. He stressed: ''Retreating populations would have been forced together as available land shrank. Rising sea levels and the drowning of the landscape is also recorded in the oral histories of First Nations people from all around the coastal margin."
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