Can continents sink?
No. Continents float isostatically over the molten magma, more or less like a ship over the seas. But the seas can rise — as they did at the end of the Ice Age — submerging large portions of the low-lying lands. As a matter of fact, Plato’s sunken continent of Atlantis is the large extension of continental dimensions to the south of Southeast Asia called Australasia by geographers. This vast Pleistocenic continent was known of old by many legendary names such as Elysian Fields by the Greeks, Field of Reeds (Sekhet Aaru) by the Egyptians, Aztlan by the Mayas, Rutas by the Hindus, and so on. As the seas rose by 100-150 meters at the end of the Pleistocene and, as these lands were very low, they sunk away, and now form what we call the South China Sea. This sea is very shallow, and its depth averages under 60 meters or so. Hence, is easy to reckon that this unique region was indeed subaerial during the Pleistocene.
