Archaeologist Says He's Found Atlantis in Groundbreaking Discovery
An archaeologist says he's found the lost city of Atlantis in what would obviously be a groundbreaking find.
The claim was made by archaeologist Michael Donnellan at the Cosmic Summit 2025 conference, according to Diario AS. He also played a documentary at the summit "featuring images obtained through underwater technology," the site reported. He repeats the claim in the trailer for that documentary.
However, History.com notes that scholars aren't sure whether Atlantis was a myth or real; over the years, other theories have pegged it as being at different locations, including Santorini, Greece.
According to Diario AS, Donnellan claims "he has identified three submerged concentric walls carved into the seabed," and that "the dimensions and layout match the city described by Plato in the dialogues Timaeus and Critias," describing Atlantis.
Donnellan claims he discovered Atlantis two miles off the coast of Cadiz, Spain, according to LADBible.
"If anyone had told me six years ago that I would go in search of Atlantis, I would have said they were crazy," Donnellan says in a documentary trailer that he posted on Instagram. "And yet, here we are. Knowing what we know; not a myth. Not a legend. Atlantis was real. The lost empire Plato described in such precise detail. It actually existed. I have seen these structures with my own eyes. I have touched them with my own hands. These years of field research are about to write a whole new chapter in human history. They will help resolve those eternal questions of where we came from."
Cosmic Summit 2025 describes itself as a "live, four-day event where truth-seekers from 14 different countries and 45 U.S. states came together to learn from each other, having life changing conversations, party and laugh together and challenge what we think we know about human history, earth history, science, and the hidden patterns shaping our world."
Other theories have the lost city located in Santorini, North Africa, or Sweden, according to LADBible. Some scholars don't believe Atlantis ever existed, the site also noted.
????BREAKING NEWS: Could this be Atlantis?
— History Content (@HistContent) July 3, 2025
Atlantis may have just surfaced—beneath the waters near Cádiz, Spain! Renowned archaeologist Michael Donnellan unveiled groundbreaking sonar scans today revealing ancient circular submerged structures eerily aligned with Plato’s… pic.twitter.com/JJoLrP8KMx
“It matches everything Plato says verbatim,” Donnellan said of the structures he found underwater, according to LADBible. “He says it came from outside the straits in the region known by the Greeks, 2,400 years ago, as Gades. We know that perfectly well to this day that Gades is the modern-day Cádiz, which happens to be the oldest city in western Europe.”
LADBible noted that the structure discovered by Donnellan also has "carved canals and a rectangular ruin in the middle."
According to History.com, Atlantis was "a likely mythical island nation mentioned in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias" that "has been an object of fascination among western philosophers and historians for nearly 2,400 years. Plato (c.424–328 B.C.) describes it as a powerful and advanced kingdom that sank, in a night and a day, into the ocean around 9,600 B.C."
That site says ancient Greeks were divided as to whether Atlantis was "history or metaphor."
According to History.com, Plato described Atlantis as having an advanced culture and "an island larger than Libya and Asia Minor put together, located in the Atlantic just beyond the Pillars of Hercules—generally assumed to mean the Strait of Gibraltar."
Related: Archaeologists Say They've Found a Legendary Pirate Ship, Rewriting History