The Donana Atlantis

The Daily Telegraph of March 15th 2011 had a report on a National Geographic Channel film screened in the US and promoted by Professor Richard Freund. The film and the professor made the claim Atlantis lies beneath the Donana wetlands in Spain – not far from Cadiz. It is a national park famous for its birds and animals but a satellite photograph appeared to reveal what looked like rectangular buildings and concentric circles – and archaeologists have since been digging holes to find out what they were. It seems Freund is claiming Atlantis was wiped out by a tsunami and this has caused great surprise among the archaeologists on the ground. It may well be the fabled Tartessos and it seems Freund arrived in Donana offering to fund some of the research but he was primarily motivated by a search for a connection with King Solomon and the Phoenician merchant boats plying the Mediterranean, end to end. In the film this has developed into Atlantis – so what is National Geographic playing at? Is it science going on as the Spanish archaeologists are bemused by the film – and have reached quite a different opinion from what they have found (but as yet not publicly revealed).