Thousands of books have been written on Atlantis since its existence was first disclosed by Plato, the prince of philosophers, some two and a half millennia ago. One may well wonder whether a new book on the subject is really needed. Can anything new actually be said about Atlantis? The answer is a most emphatic yes! After all, the riddle of Atlantis has never been solved thus far to the satisfaction of most people, the academic experts in particular. Hundreds of possible locations have already been proposed as the site of Atlantis. Some authorities think that Atlantis is located on an island such as Crete, the Azores, Ireland or Espartel, or even the Canary Islands or the Antilles, the Florida Keys, etc.. Other people think that it is a continental location such as Africa, America, Western Europe, Antarctica and so on. More recently – after we pointed out in detail the fact that Plato specifically speaks of Atlantis as definitively having sunk under the sea – some researchers have concentrated on submerged locations such as the Celtic Shelf, the North Sea Shelf, or sunken regions off Spain (Tartessos), off Cyprus, off Gibraltar and so on. We have also long been pointing out – for the first time ever in connection with Atlantis – that the sea level rose by 130 meters and more ever since the end of the last Ice Age and that, in consequence of this reality, Plato might well be right, after all. As a result of this enormous rise in sea level, several regions, often of a continental extension, sank in several regions of the world: in Indonesia (Sunda Shelf), in Europe (Celtic Shelf, North Sea Shelf), in the Americas (the Antilles Shelf), and so forth. Plato also gave the specific date of 11,600 BP [Before Present] for the Atlantean cataclysm of long ago. And this date exactly corresponds to that of the catastrophic end of the last Pleistocene Ice Age and the so-called Younger Dryas event. Now, such exact coincidences are highly unlikely in practice, as all physicists well know, notwithstanding the contrary opinion of many geological experts, who stolidly cling to the now sorely outdated Uniformitarian theories of Darwin and Lyell. It therefore stands to reason that it is in these now sunken regions of the world that people must begin their quest for Atlantis, if they really want to find it. This is far more logical than just relying on the ever-changing though often negative opinions of experts on the many disciplines directly or indirectly related to Atlantis: Geology, Climatology, Evolution, Anthropology, Archaeology, Linguistics, Comparative Religion and Mythology, Paleoanthropology, etc.. In other words, we must heed scientific facts and reason rather than mere opinions, no matter how authoritative. Scientific theories and expert opinions are no more than mere speculation, often very poorly founded and suggested as a mere working hypothesis of a tentative character. As Plato teaches in his remarkable Critias, one of his two dialogues on Atlantis, these opinions keep changing with time, and are hence unreliable, in contrast to Tradition, which is perennial. This constant evolution is really the essence of the Scientific Method, the one recommended for doing Science by epistemologists and philosophers such as René Descartes and a host of others. To put it otherwise, where Atlantis and its location are concerned, we must first look for and list all the possible candidates. Then, and only then, we must retrofit them to Plato’s words and statements, in order to verify if the two can be reconciled in some way. The non-conformities must be deemed unexplained paradoxes or anomalies, to be studied further and clarified with additional research and more reliable data. Do this for every possible candidate, and let the best candidate stand up, becoming the tentative starting point as the best prospect. Then, begin to gather further data, both traditional and new, and see which candidate best fits the new evidence. Then, try to predict what telltale features will probably be found. Repeat this over and over again, until all entries are exhausted. Above all, look for the confirmation of these specific predictions: past tropical climate in the Ice Age; Pleistocenic fauna and flora; archeological and geographical evidence, immense mineralogical and gemological riches, and so forth. Eventually, when the right candidate is finally found, all items will start to fall in place, as if by magic. In a sense, the present book is a dramatic break with the past reality where academics carefully avoided the subject of Atlantis. It is an attempt, by a professional scientist trained in the Scientific Method and in Epistemology – the philosophical science concerned with the framing of theories and their scientific analysis – to systematically study, perhaps for the first time ever, the various existing theories on Atlantis’ location and its unavoidable scientific reality. What is even more curious is the fact that my original intention was to dispel the physical reality of the myth of Atlantis and related traditions such as the reality of the Flood, of Eden and other such mythical Paradises which I, like most of my academic colleagues, deemed the result of religious zeal or sheer superstitions held by backward natives or extremely ignorant ancients. Much to my surprise, the vast sunken continent which I discovered in the region of Indonesia turned out to be the only candidate which consistently withstood all attempts at dismissal, even after all the other alternative candidates had been thoroughly eliminated for one or more reasons impossible to overcome in any reasonable way. In order to find the truth, you must first prepare yourself to cope with it. Otherwise, you will not be able to believe even your own findings. Truth might be so utterly unbelievable as to require an entirely new paradigm in both Science and Religion. In order to accept such novel truths, you must make your mind a razed board where new ideas might be written. This vast sunken continent, which we might call Sundaland or Australasia – or, even more appropriately, Atlantis or Eden – endured and refused to go away. This after a series of consistent failures to find discrepancies with either known geological facts or the traditional descriptions such as the ones given by Plato, Homer, Virgil, Pindar, Diodorus, Pliny, and a host of other authorities, from Greece and other places both European and otherwise. Suddenly, as if by magic, the pieces of the giant jigsaw puzzle all began to fall in place. The more facts I adduced, the more I researched this region of the world, the more the predictions of Plato and other mythographers started to come out as true: a tropical climate in the Ice Age; a vast continental extension now sunken, but formerly subaerial, inhabited and crisscrossed by many rivers and canals, etc.. Even the Four Rivers of Paradise – running along the Four Cardinal Directions as they should – were present there, in the very location I discovered, the Sunda Shelf. This unique site also had an abundance of canal networks built in order to control these torrents; a luxuriant agriculture of most extreme antiquity; vast forests and fauna and flora; abundant mineral resources including gold, silver, tin, copper and precious gemstones of all sorts, and so on. Moreover, this unique location also included a huge agricultural plain of exactly the rectangular shape and enormous size given by Plato; as well as coconuts, bananas, elephants and other resources both biological and mineral described by the great philosopher in his remarkable dialogues. Above all, the actual topography of the region exactly conformed to Plato’s detailed description in every essential detail. Even the names and the local traditions on Paradise and its destruction invariably matched Indonesia, once properly decoded and properly understood and translated. Moreover, the whole region is attended by all sorts of submarine supervolcanoes and tsunami-engendering earthquakes fully capable of causing the terrible events described by Plato, as the recent Indonesian earthquake cogently attests. When I first proposed my theory and my Indonesian location, as well as the possible connection of the Flood with giant volcanisms and earthquakes, my fellow scientists merely scoffed and walked away hurriedly, under some ill cooked excuse or the other. Nowadays, they listen with utmost seriousness when I speak of Atlantis-Eden and its demise, or whenever I mention the word “tsunami”. The great philosopher himself connects the Atlantean events with the Flood or Universal Deluge. The reality and date of this event I have scientifically proved in a way that no one can validly deny anymore, according to both Science and Religious and Mythical Tradition. And it is this fascinating story that, after fully thirty years of dedicated study, I now offer to the dear reader in the present book and in the sequels of books and documentaries already programmed to follow it. The recent earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia and other nations in its vicinity – one of the greatest such human tragedies ever to occur with perhaps as many as 400,000 fatalities – compels belief that such huge catastrophes of global extent are an inherent feature of Nature, contrary to what many academics even today stolidly maintain. Oddly enough the Indonesian disaster took place precisely at Christmas time, when the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (“the Birthday of the Invincible Sun”) has been universally feasted since remotest antiquity. As we shall see, the Dies Natalis commemorates not the Day Star itself, but its terrestrial counterpart, the ferocious volcano of Atlantis-Eden. After all, Indonesia lies at the very heart of the “Pacific Fire Belt”, the world’s most active tectonic region. Indonesia is located at the boundary of three converging Continental Plates whose motion causes terrible stresses in the earth’s crust, leading to the frequent disasters there. As such, Indonesia harbors hundreds of active or quiescent volcanoes, and is seismically most active. It is quite possible that the Indonesian tsunami was ultimately caused by atmospheric pollution due to the unbridled burning of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and petroleum. This type of pollution leads to an increased CO2 level in the atmosphere, which leads to global warming. This global warming in turn results in the melting of the circumpolar glaciers, so that the sea level rises and increased stresses are induced on the earth’s crust by a process the specialists call “positive feedback”. A rise in sea level of a mere meter or so results in an overload of 1 ton/m2. Over 1 km2 this overload becomes 1 million ton/km2, a huge pressure, even by geological standards. These stresses further trigger a great series of huge earthquakes and volcanic activities such as the several aftershocks currently witnessed in Indonesia. These events occur as the earth’s crust moves in order to accommodate and support this increased loading. And they may again lead to a supervolcanism or a giant earthquake large enough to start a chain reaction of volcanisms and earthquakes of global extent. These volcanisms may also be explosive and able to darken the atmosphere sufficiently to drive the earth into a new Ice Age, killing so many people as to literally render humans “as rare as the gold of Ophir”. And this is no sheer metaphor. This kind of thing has happened several times in the past, and certainly will again, in the course of geological time. Ask any competent geologist or climatologist and see for yourself. Or read the Internet on supervolcanoes and giant tsunamis. Dear reader, while reading this book please remember what Max Planck once said of scientific theories. This genial German scientist – the discoverer of the quantization of radiation – pointed out that all revolutionary theories sound a bit ridiculous when first presented. It was thus with Heliocentrism; with Columbus’ proposed western navigation to the East Indies; with Relativity and Quantum Mechanics; with the Nuclear Bomb, and so forth. In time, people get used to the novel ideas presented by the fresh theories, which often grow to become the new scientific paradigm for the younger generations. We are quite sure that this is what will happen to Atlantis, now that its reality and true location are pointed out in detail here and in other works of ours, and now that the Indonesian catastrophe has hopefully sobered us all considerably to the dire consequences of polluting the planet as unreasonably as we are currently doing.