Set your DVRs, Discovery Channel has green-lighted a new series that will send modern-day Indiana Joneses in search of the Lost City of Atlantis.
“Hunting Atlantis” follows British novelist and expert Stel Pavlou and volcanologist Jess Phoenix as they set out “on a quest to solve the greatest archaeological mystery of all time— the rediscovery of Atlantis.”
Armed with new evidence, the team will travel throughout the world, unearthing sunken cities, ancient artifacts and geological catastrophes as they seek to unravel the mysteries behind what Plato once described as a utopian civilization.
WATCH THE TRAILER
Plato told the story of Atlantis around 360 B.C. The founders of Atlantis, he said, were half god and half human. They created a utopian civilization and became a great naval power. Atlantis was made up of concentric islands separated by wide moats and linked by a canal. The lush islands contained gold, silver, and other precious metals and supported an abundance of rare, exotic wildlife. There was a great capital city on the central island.
There are many theories about where Atlantis was— in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Spain, even under what is now Antarctica.
“Pick a spot on the map, and someone has said that Atlantis was there,” Charles Orser, curator of history at the New York State Museum in Albany, said in a National Geographic interview. “Every place you can imagine.”
Plato said Atlantis existed about 9,000 years before his own time, and that its story had been passed down by poets, priests and others. But Plato’s writings about Atlantis are the only known records of its existence.
Pavlou is the author of a groundbreaking new theory on the date for Atlantis’ destruction near the beginning of the fifth millennium BCE.
Phoenix’s expertise is in volcanic hazards and her work has taken her to six continents, where she has organized and led more than 25 scientific research expeditions.
Their expedition leads them to locations including the Black Sea, where they investigate a 7,000-year-old skeleton buried in gold treasure; a mysterious Greek island where an advanced ancient civilization built a massive marble pyramid; and unexplored archeological sites along the Adriatic coast of Croatia where underwater relics from an ancient bridge system lead them to an age-old legend of a lost city and into a massive sinkhole that could swallow a city whole.
The show is set to premiere at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Wednesday, June 2.
