So the bares bones of the story are these: a research team using ground-penetrating radar has found evidence of a city in a swamp in Southern Spain. The team has identified these remains as Atlantis; all is revealed in a National Geographic Channel special. But here's the catch: the site is 60 miles inland.

Atlantis was first mentioned by Plato, who described it as an island lying "in front of the pillars of Hercules," or the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. Its days of splendor and empire came to an abrupt end when it sank beneath the sea in "a single day and night of misfortune." There have been countless possible sites identified for Atlantis, but in keeping with Plato's description, they've almost all been at sea. So it's interesting to see a completely alternate viewpoint based on the idea that rather than sinking, the city was swamped by a tidal wave.

Strangely enough, once you get past the positive headlines, there's a lot of 'ifs and maybes' in the reporting. And there are a whole pile of people greeting the news with, well, shall we politely say, 'skepticism.' Certainly, the attention-grabbing power of the name Atlantis in a headline, especially when combined with the word "tsunami" right now, is a sub-editor's dream. But how much science is there to back the PR? Well you'll have to decide for yourself. But I'd read Curtis' excellent article on The Importance of Logic and Critical Thinking first, as there doesn't seem to have been a great deal of either used in the reporting at least.

The Reuters story on which most of the others are based is here, BoingBoing has some interesting comments (and some not) here and a good 2004 article about a German scientist who says the same thing without National Geographic Channel coverage is here.