Helike, the Real Atlantis

The account

One winter night in 373 BC the sea rose and took Helike whole, every soul, a rescue fleet of fifty ships finding only a drowned city below the surface. For centuries it was the model many believe Plato reshaped into Atlantis. The sea later retreated and the silt closed over it; in 2001 archaeologists found it not under open water but sealed in a buried lagoon, a city pressed flat in the mud near Rizomylos.

Known intelligence

• Helike was a leading city of the Achaean League on the Gulf of Corinth, famed for a great sanctuary of Poseidon.
• In one winter night in 373 BC an earthquake and tsunami dropped the entire city beneath the sea.
• Plato, alive at the time, is widely thought to have drawn on Helike's fate for his Atlantis, a sea-trading city of Poseidon swallowed by the waves.
• Sought for centuries in the open gulf, the city was finally found in 2001, buried in the coastal plain after its lagoon silted over.

Theories of the hunt

• The classic Atlantis inspiration: a real Poseidon city drowned in a single night.
• More of the city, and its temple treasures, may still lie under the plain and the gulf.

Leads, where the trail points now

• Pin down the most specific last-known position in the record before going; the search centers on Near Rizomylos, Gulf of Corinth, Greece.
• What you are chasing is The city Plato may have drawn Atlantis from. Work the documented record of Helike, the Real Atlantis back to primary sources and separate what is attested from folklore.
• Greek antiquities excavation, a protected dig, not open to the public.

The trail, in order

• 373 BC: an earthquake and tsunami sink Helike in a single night
• Antiquity: travelers still report its drowned walls beneath the water
• 2001: the Helike Project rediscovers the city in the coastal plain

Sources and the record

• Helike (Wikipedia)
• The Archaeologist: the lost city of Helike