theweekmagazine:

Where might the lost city of Atlantis be?

Plato wrote that Atlantis had been destroyed around 9,000 B.C. after its inhabitants attempted to take over Athens. Plato placed the island city-state near the modern-day Strait of Gibraltar, and claimed it “disappeared into the depths of the sea” in a single day and night, leading many to speculate that a tsunami destroyed it. Ever since Plato’s tantalizing hints, many a treasure hunter has gone in search of Atlantis, but nobody has ever definitively located it.

The latest theory: It was off the coast of Spain. In 2011, a U.S.-led research team announced it had pinpointed an ancient city it believes to be Atlantis. Using a satellite image of a submerged site near Cadiz, in southern Spain, the researchers used radar and data mapping to survey the area, which they believe was flattened thousands of years ago. Head researcher Richard Freund is particularly confident that he has found the genuine article because of his discovery of a series of nearby “memorial cities” built in Atlantis’ image by refugees who had fled the sunken island. 

Three more theories

attolences:

Jarlshof, Scotland, Bronze Age settlement

lostsplendor:

West Palm Beach, c. 1910 (via)

books0977:

Rembrandt’s Mother Reading (c. 1629). Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (Dutch painter and engraver, 1606-1669). Wilton House, Wiltshire, England.

“Of all the Baroque masters, it was Rembrandt who evolved the most revolutionary technique and who seemed to grow into the Italians’ spiritual heir. By the middle of the 1630s he had long since abandoned conventional Dutch smoothness and his surfaces were already caked with more paint than was strictly necessary to present an illusion.”

thestuartkings:

A 17th-century compound microscope.

(click on image for larger view)

mothernaturenetwork:

Vintage zoo pamphlets feature now-extinct animals, odd exhibits
The materials show how zoos have changed from the amusement park attractions to the institutions focused on education and conservation of today.