Welsh legend speaks of a long - lost deep-set realm known as Cantre’r Gwaelod , once found off the stony shores of Cardigan Bay in the Irish Sea . While hard grounds of the “ Welsh Atlantis ” has been lacking , a clean analysis of one of the oldest surviving maps of Great Britain suggests there may be an component of truth to this much - loved myth .

As cover in the journalAtlantic Geology , researchers from the University of Oxford and Swansea University have latterly been analyse the Gough Map , a famous Medieval mapping of Britain , and discovered that it appears to depict two mystical island off the west seacoast of Wales .

you may view the Gough Map atthis nexus here .

No one is sure who made the map , how it was create , or even when it was published , although most current estimates say it was made around the 13th or 14th C CE . The Gough Map is a minuscule unelaborated on particular ( to say the least ) , but it ’s one of the earliest single-valued function to show Britain in a geographically - recognisable form .

“ The Gough Map is inordinately exact considering the surveying tool they would have had at their electric pig at that sentence , ” Simon Haslett , subject writer and an honorary professor of strong-arm geography at Swansea University , tell theBBC .

“ The two islands are clearly differentiate and may confirm contemporary accounts of a lost land mentioned in the Black Book of Carmarthen . ”

Along with dissect the function , the researchers also looked at coordinates tape by the Roman map maker Ptolemy , which suggest the Welsh coastline at the time was some 13 kilometers ( 8 miles ) further west than it is today .

With these two strands of grounds , the duet believe they have find the murky lineage behind the tale of Cantre’r Gwaelod .

It ’s unmanageable to know where fact and fiction begin and end , but it ’s potential to argue that Cardigan Bay was once home to two sunken island whose fate became grace in local folklore .

The investigator believe that these two islands may have been made of silt and corpse leave behind from the end of the last frosting age around 10,000 year ago . Eventually , these indulgent glacial deposits finally became washed forth from pee erosion , storms , and so on .

Cantre’r Gwaelod has inspired 12 of verse form , songs , and tarradiddle over the centuries . harmonize tothe fable , the land was made up of as many as sixteen city governed by a supposed rule discover Gwyddno Garanhir .

So the story go , the king ’s friend Seithennyn was tasked with shutting the closure ’s ocean gates each night . However , Seithennyn had a few too many drink at the king ’s palace one tempestuous eve and forgot to complete his duty , causing the island to deluge .

Whether these two island were really home to a magisterial old kingdom seems extremely unlikely given the lack of reliable physical evidence .

However , unnumberable human cultures from around the world contain a mythical story featuring the archetypes of a cracking deluge and a long - mislay ocean civilization . It’sbeen arguedthat these stories are the collective memory of the colossal flood that followed the end of the last ice old age when elephantine Methedrine - dam lake in Eurasia and North America give way and meet the land with waves .

Just likeChina ’s Gun - Yu rising tide mythand the Genesis story of Noah ’s electric arc , perhaps the caption of Cantre’r Gwaelod is just another re - imagining of a historical sea floodlight .