Atlantis and the Silver City (19 page)

During more recent episodes in the history of Silves, notably the Moorish and Roman eras, accounts indicate that even during those periods there was extensive water, at least to the west of Silves. One part of it was used for curing timber destined for boatbuilding, and it is thought that the Romans had a harbor there.

The account of the siege by the “anonymous Crusader” quoted in Jonathan Wilson’s book discussed in Chapter Six also mentions ditches
surrounding the fortress, which the besiegers had to negotiate. Today we usually understand a “ditch” to be small and narrow, but in those days it meant a substantial water hazard.

So, I had already ticked off seven of the clues as a match to Silves:

1.  It already had a connection to the sea.

2.  This was fifty stadia long (9.25 kilometers).

3.  It was on a small hill.

4.  The actual size of the hill is still very similar today.

5.  It was on a flat plain.

6.  It was once surrounded by water.

7.  It was close to the great agricultural plain.

I now switched my focus to several crucial clues relating to detail about the capital.

Today Silves is topped by an imposing castle, not unlike to the one that confronted the Crusaders. Just below it stands the town’s cathedral, although the Crusaders would have seen a mosque. In clue 70, the area given by Plato as being occupied by the temple was 185 meters by 92.5 meters (one stadium by half a stadium). That closely matches the current quadrant of space taken by the castle and cathedral … about 200 meters by 100 meters. As mentioned earlier, successive civilizations tend to build like over like.

Poseidon arranged for the town’s water supply to flow from two fountains he created just below the palace (clue 73). Today, not far below the castle, is the town’s museum. It was constructed in the 1990s around a huge, unusual well—dating back to the Moorish period—that had recently been uncovered. Apart from being surprisingly wide, it has a staircase winding down around its outer circumference. It is not known whether the Moors built it on the site of an earlier one. (
SEE IMAGE
22
IN THE PHOTO INSERT
.)

The earlier chapter on water detailed the frequency with which it naturally pops out of the ground or rock as springs. Most of the houses in the Algarve countryside today have a borehole to tap into the underground supply. Interestingly, in most cases the spot to drill is still pinpointed by a
traditional dowser. Hot or warm water is, even now, still flowing profusely in places like Caldas de Monchique.

Quite large
cisternas
for storing water have been found in Silves. One of them is in the castle grounds, and another was recently discovered between the castle and the cathedral. It was excavated and mapped, then recovered.

“Of the water which ran off, they carried some to the Grove of Poseidon, where were growing all manner of trees of wonderful height and beauty, owing to the excellence of the soil … while the remainder was conveyed by aqueduct bridges to the outer circles” (clues 76 and 77). On the west side of Silves, there are a park and gardens at the bottom of the hill. It well could once have been wider, as it is bounded by houses and tennis courts to the south and a technical college to the north. At its western extremity, it is bordered by a small river flowing north to south. Its current soil level is a little higher than the plain surrounding the town, particularly to the south, and it would have been even more so before the plain was reclaimed from water. This park has tall, handsome trees and shaded, fertile flower beds. We do not have exact information from Plato for the position of the
grove
, but this area fulfills his description. It could not have been on the steep sides of the hill, so it would have also distorted the size and the shape of the land imprint of the capital, making it more egg-shaped. That is exactly what the Silves hill is today.

Like everyone else, I don’t care to visit the local tax office more than absolutely necessary, but I have to admit that there is something there that fascinates me. One day while standing in line to pay our local council tax, I noticed a large painted tile panel on the back wall near the counter. It was obviously copied from an old print depicting Silves a good few centuries ago, and it was more or less what you would expect the town to have looked like, apart from one intriguing detail: emerging sideways from the town’s ramparts on the west side is what looks like a tall aqueduct. Unfortunately, it is chopped off by the end of the panel and only three arches are visible. Nothing remains of it today, so I turned to my historian friend, Jonathan Wilson, for more information. He said the archaeologists’ view was that it had been a defensive emplacement and had a tower on the end to enable the town’s defenders to fire arrows and hurl rocks and/or flaming fat at any enemy trying to scale or damage the town walls. It may well have
been used for that purpose eventually, but it is where Plato indicated that an aqueduct existed to take water out to the embankments in the direction of the grove. The arches and pillars supporting it are very slender, so demolishing one or two to bring it crashing down would not have been a difficult task for a besieging army. If it was going to serve that purpose, it would have needed to be more robust. Consequently, I doubt it was built originally as a defensive ploy; but, in later life after the outer reaches had been damaged by earthquakes, the remaining part abutting the town wall had been adapted for that purpose. It would be impossible for it to have survived ten or eleven thousand years, but it is quite feasible that later occupants, such as the Romans or the Conii, redeveloped it on the remnants and foundations of an original aqueduct.

In view of the many changes in the intervening millennia, it might seem presumptuous to claim the grove and aqueduct as exact clue “hits,” but they definitely demonstrate that there is an area and structure that could have fulfilled this purpose. They are both more likely to have been on this west side as fresh water from “upstream” would have been available for the other side, so water from the fountains would not have been necessary for irrigation.

So, four more clues measure up:

8.   The size given for the palace equates to the current space occupied by the castle and cathedral.

9.   There is freely available water.

10.   An area within the confines of the city that could have been Poseidon’s Grove.

11.   Vestiges of an aqueduct.

Silves was looking very promising indeed, but I still had to tackle both the most telling and most difficult facts. They would be very hard to comply with.

“The stone which was used in the work was quarried from underneath the central island, and from zones on the outer as well as the inner side … one kind was white, another black, and a third red” (clues 64 and 65). This refers to the buildings in the city and on the embankments.

This is astonishingly precise information, and the chances of meeting it seemed daunting. The first two colors are prominently visible in most Portuguese towns, if not in buildings, then most certainly to be spotted in the traditional cobbled pavements and squares. The Portuguese call these paving stones
calçadas
, and white and black are often combined in intricate, attractive patterns or simple pictures such as boats, anchors, or birds. Silves is no exception.

Much less common is red stone.

Except, that is, in Silves, where you simply cannot get away from it. The mighty castle and town walls were built from it, as were many other buildings. Ricardo Tomé, the town’s geologist, informed me that a narrow stratum of this unusual lode runs from the western Algarve, near Lagos, through and behind Silves, then eastward in an arc through the foothills, before petering out in the region of the town of Tavira. It is red sandstone and was formed by the compression of an ancient beach. Nowhere, however, is it more prominent than in the Silves area—and nowhere else is it used so prolifically for building. (
SEE IMAGES
23
AND
24
IN THE PHOTO INSERT
.)

Before meeting Ricardo, I had mentally wrestled with Plato’s other assertion, that the three colors were all hewn from the small hill and some from the outer embankments. It would be unique and highly unlikely within such a small, closely defined area: that the red stone was available in Silves was indisputable, but the white and black were more problematic.

A short way downstream from Silves is a spot called Rocha Branca, which translates as “White Rock.” It is significant for another reason, which will be divulged later. Not far away, but not in the immediate vicinity, is the dark gray granite of the Foia and Picota Mountains.

About thirty kilometers west, along the coast at Praia da Luz, there is a visible remnant of the Algarve’s volcanic past. The tall, dramatic, honey-colored cliffs abruptly give way to rock formed from a black volcanic outflow, not surprisingly known as Rocha Negra or “Black Rock.” It would have been quarried, I reasoned, and brought by boat back along the coast to the Arade River and on up to Silves.

But this did not accord with the precise details of Plato’s clue. Had I hit a wall? The combination was so unusual, so specific. He obviously considered it significant in identifying the capital.

On several occasions, I have recounted my elation at discoveries that supported my theory. None of them compared with the thrill I experienced at Ricardo’s answer when I put the conundrum to him. His reply: “Simple. They were, indeed, all available on the hill!”

Apart from the red stone, the top of the hill consisted of white limestone, and down the eastern flank, there was a substantial outcropping of black volcanic rock.

In addition, Ricardo said that the elevated southern land encircling the town consisted of white limestone and that there were two other substantial outcroppings of the same lode a few hundred meters from the base of the hill—one to the east, the other to the west. These are perfectly positioned for the embankments Plato wrote about. Farther to the west was the Rocha Branca area. It was all as Plato recounted: all three colors of rock could have come from under the hill, with some from the inner embankments and the outer surrounding areas.

If confirmation was still needed that Silves undeniably complied with Plato’s clues, this was it. It felt like winning the lottery, except that I wanted to tell the world, not keep it secret. How many small hills of that size can there be on the planet, on a flat plain, surrounded by water, just over nine kilometers by water from the sea, and containing white, black, and red rock?

In total, thirteen clues had now been ticked off.

12.   A town built of white, black, and red rock.

13.   All three colors available on the hill or the surrounding embankments.

Ricardo also confirmed that many storage areas had been found all over the town and inside the castle. These would have been essential for storing food or water in case the town was besieged but could originally have been the result of earlier quarrying and put to good use as Plato had suggested. The original roofed docks adapted from the quarrying, mentioned in clue 66, would have been at great risk of collapsing during serious earthquakes.

Most of the other clues are impossible to check or verify due to the passage of time. The metal facings of the walls would long since have disappeared as plunder. The watchtowers, walls, guardhouses, and embankments
detailed in clues 25, 26, and 63 would not only have been seriously damaged by earthquakes during the destruction of Atlantis, but also demolished by later inhabitants to use the stone for building. Any remains would have crumbled long ago from more quakes and tsunamis sweeping up the river.

But what of those encircling embankments, I asked myself? They were supposed to loom large. Could any remnants have survived the successive disasters?

Surprisingly, the answer is yes.

Toward the end of the last century, a company owning land on what appeared to be a low, oblong hill about one kilometer west of Silves started to remodel it for agriculture.

It transpired that there was an order on the land, forbidding any work on it pending a thorough investigation by archaeologists. Phoenician, Carthaginian, and some Roman artifacts had been found there, and it was presumed to have been occupied from at least Phoenician times.

The local authority was slow to react, despite the land being right beside a main road. Many days passed before officials belatedly stopped the vandalism. By then, the evidence had been destroyed. I drove past the site almost daily and had always thought it was a curious situation. I had reasoned that a Phoenician base there was an anomaly. Why would they pick that spot, way upriver, where they could easily be trapped—and when they almost certainly had a coastal base nearby at Alvor—as well, it is thought, as another at the Arade River mouth around Portimão. They were not settlers, only maintaining bases for trading purposes. They also had a distinct preference for river mouths.

The only logical explanation is that there was another place close to that upriver base that was of overwhelming importance during the period when the Phoenicians were active, yet thousands of years after the date given by Plato for the demise of Atlantis.

If you look at the Phoenician site from a distance, it is clearly more like the remnant of a large embankment, sideways on to the town, with what might have been a small stepped pyramid-shaped mound on part of it and with water once lapping at its base. (
SEE IMAGE
25
IN THE PHOTO INSERT
.)

The main N124 road has cut through it, and vestiges of it continue on the other (north) side, swinging around toward Silves. I walked up this
part to investigate and was amazed that after the ridge along the top, there is a steep face on the other side, down to what is now a flat, fertile, cultivated area.