A Begrudged Dive Into the Psyche of the History Channel — A Critique

Mystery Quest: The Lost City of Atlantis

Critiqued by Matthew Neiman

Aug 29, 2021

According to the History Channel the goal of this series, Mystery Quest, is to ‘dispatch teams of experts throughout the world to try to solve some of mankind’s strangest and most persistent mysteries.’ The first confliction with this thesis arises only a minute into the show when Greg and Lora Little are introduced with the trust inspiring credentials of ‘explorer’. This is particularly interesting because after a quick spot of research, both Greg and Lora turn out have doctorate degrees. Intuitively, I assumed that if the subject matter of their research had the slightest thing to do with their role in this documentary, they would have used that to accredit them. Sure enough, this intuition was confirmed when I ran into a blurb that labeled Greg as ‘a psychologist turned explorer and documentary maker,’ while Lora shares similar credentials; an Ed.D that practices psychotherapy and also moonlights as an explorer. To the credit of the History Channel, the Little’s were never addressed as ‘dr.’, and thereby avoided the misguided trust that title would ascribe to them as their scholarly research did not overlap with their current occupation as ‘explorers’.

According to the Little’s, the ‘Bimini Road’ found in the Bahamas was supposed to be irrefutable evidence for Atlantis — until a rock pulled from the site was carbon dated to be 8,000 years younger than their own supposed date of Atlantis’s existence. This fact eventually gets chalked up by Greg as evidence of a later civilization by the offspring of Atlanteans, completely disregarding any reasonable question that might arise from such a claim. Swiftly moving on from that disappointment, they travel to some formations on another coast of Bimini that were supposedly undeniably man-made because they were ‘evenly spaced’ — thought the video showed nothing remarkable — and ‘perfectly rectangular’ — thought the video also failed to show any ungraphically aided evidence of such a fact. The whole show ended with a word from Mr. Little saying that a seemingly natural chunk out of one of the rocks that had a rough and poorly shown 90 degree angle was the best evidence ever found towards the existence of Atlantis, and his tone and demeanor portrayed the message that this was a breakthrough verging on truth, while the actual evidence seems to completely contradict such a claim.

The documentary also throws in an anecdote about Edgar Cayce, an American clairvoyant, that mentioned in one of his mystical trances the year 1968 along with some talk suggesting Atlantis. This ramble only becomes television worthy when noted that 1968 was the date that ‘Bimini Road’ was ‘discovered’. Now, I deliberately use quotations around these words as there is no compelling argument that would prove that the ‘Bimini Road’ was just that, an actual road or harbor off the coast of Bimini Island. The quotation around ‘discovery’ is added because said discovery was simply the first person to look at the formation and think that it might be something and then bother to tell the wider world. This whole anecdotal side quest was only added for televisions sake, which I am usually all for — absolutely, show me related things for the sole purpose of interest, anecdotes are fun after all — but this was portrayed in a way that probably gave too much validity to the thought.

Contrasting the theories of the exploring Little’s, the show also introduced Costas Synolakis, a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, with a doctoral degree in just that, but crucially, along with his degrees, he has also conducted dozens of research projects on the impact of tsunamis and extreme flooding, which ties into his theory of a plausible event that could have inspired the myth of Atlantis. The Hypothesis put forward by Synolakis is that the explosion of Santorini in +/- 1600 BC caused a Tsunami that could have impacted the neighboring Island of Crete enough to have devastated a civilization that existed there. His argument is that Plato would have known about the devastation of this island, and assumes that it must have been rather advanced and wealthy for the day and therefore could have served as an inspiration for his story on the city of Atlantis, though assumption and correlation between similar cities of the day is all that can be drawn from that hypothesis. This all seems like a very reasonable and crucially unprovable hypothesis. There is no way to prove that Plato was talking about Crete, but there are ways to analyze the probability of the eruption of Santorini causing a large enough tsunami to wreak havoc on it. After some computer modeling input from geophysicist Steven Ward, it appears plausible that Plato could have used the destruction of Crete as inspiration for his tale of the lost city of Atlantis, but that is as close to a reasonable conclusion that this film will offer.

Of course, this being the History Channel, the mystical Little’s played the definitive main role and closed the show out with the aforementioned ‘proof of Atlantis’ via a rock formation that looked peculiar to them, though probably is insignificant. It appears, however, in reality, the world is a large, beautiful, and wonderful place, and if you want to find patternicity and correlation you most certainly can — the coordinates of pi landing on the pyramids of Giza and a right angle in a rectangular rock — and as humans we see patterns, but weighing belief-based anecdotes responsibly against data, especially when that data feels contrary to belief, is essential for honest research into anything. That the show ended with a psychologist spewing rhetoric about a normal rock formation in the Bahamas was as close to irrefutable of the existence of Atlantis as is needed, is telling of the intended audience of such a show — people that just want to believe and know something that others do not. The ‘proof’ language that is so loosely thrown around by this show is reckless at best, as the truth is a convincing person can make anything look like anything to anyone, and acknowledge the fault in that when found, but crucially not launch chest-motivated attacks against ‘fake news’ and her perpetrators, but rather lovingly present a hopefully informed counter rational. This maxim is certainly difficult to live by, mind you. I found myself yelling at this documentary in frustration, imposing logic on supposed illogic, and felt in myself that self-justified need to be right hedging ahead of the just want for truth and unity.