Atlantis is the mythological land said to have sunk more than 12 thousand years ago and home of alien superhumans or a utopian society. It has been written about in countless legends and essays through eons of time. What Plato and Verne’s Captain Nemo described, Google Earth supposedly found. Or at least, so it was thought for a few hours until the search engine sent an official explanation that the structure that appeared below the sea level is actually the trails left by the sonar used for detection of the seabed.”

Google’s supposed discovery was thought to be the most important archaeological discovery of all time, thanks to the technology of Google Earth with its new Google Oceans extension that allows one to “surf” along the oceanbeds.

At coordinates: 31° 15′15:53 N and 24° 15′30.53W, one is able to see what appears to be the top view of a city. The description: “An almost perfect rectangle, with a grid that appears as a lattice road of a city. A structure which is located about 5.5 kilometers at the bottom of the ocean, at the front portion of the Canary Islands, a little less than a thousand kilometers from the coast of Africa.” The supposed discovered “city” measures about 170 kilometers by about 125 kilometers. With these dimensions, it may be comparable to a modern metropolis.

In the end it was a mistake, though. On its latest update, Google has refuted any reference to Atlantis, saying that the images in that area on Google Earth is in fact referring to tracks left by boat sonar used to detect the seabed. “It’s true that many amazing discoveries have been made in Google Earth – a pristine forest in Mozambique that is home to previously unknown species, a fringing coral reef off the coast of Australia, and the remains of an ancient Roman villa, just to name a few.

In this case, however, what users are seeing is an artifact of the data collection process. Bathymetric (or seafloor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the seafloor. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data. The fact that there are blank spots between each of these lines is a sign of how little we really know about the world’s oceans.”

In the meantime, we let the myth stay as it is.

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Via Yahoo! News