Atlantis

Atlantis is the subject of a legend about an advanced island civilization that was destroyed or lost. Stories about Atlantis are first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, in which characters say it was destroyed by an earthquake or a tsunami about 9,000 years before the time in which Plato wrote. The story claims Atlantis was somewhere outside the Pillars of Hercules. According to Plato, the story originated with Ancient Egyptian priests.

Legend of Atlantis: Legendary ancient island first mentions from the classical Greek philosopher Plato.

Some people believe that the stories are fictions made up to serve the purposes of Plato's dialogs. But others take them as if they were serious historical accounts. There have been dozens perhaps hundreds of locations proposed for the classical Atlantis. Some are more-or-less serious attempts at legitimate scholarly or archaeological works; others have been made by psychic or other pseudoscientific means. As continental drift became better understood and accepted during the 1950s, most "Lost Continent" theories of Atlantis have been proven conclusively false.

Some cultures have "lost civilization" myths. In some cases, it has been argued that there is a common historical event or real "lost civilization" at the root of some or all of these legends, but there is considerable disagreement between the competing hypotheses. It may be that these legends have arisen from many different historical events, and are only just now being associated by modern theorizers because of their similarity. It may also be that these legends are entirely fictional, but for some reason have arisen and remained popular in many different cultures at different times.

Plato's Account

Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written in 360 BC, contain the earliest known references to Atlantis. For unknown reasons, Plato never completed Critias; however, the scholar Benjamin Jowett, among others, argues that Plato originally planned a third dialogue titled Hermocrates. John V. Luce assumes that Plato — after describing the origin of the world and mankind in Timaeus as well as the allegorical perfect society of ancient Athens and its successful defense against an antagonistic Atlantis in Critias — would have made the strategy of the Greek civilization during their conflict with the Persians a subject of discussion in the Hermocrates. Plato introduced Atlantis in Timaeus:

The four persons appearing in those two dialogues are the politicians Critias and Hermocrates as well as the philosophers Socrates and Timaeus, although only Critias speaks of Atlantis. While most likely all of these people actually lived, these dialogues as recorded may have been the invention of Plato. In his written works, Plato makes extensive use of the Socratic dialogues in order to discuss contrary positions within the context of a supposition.

The Timaeus begins with an introduction, followed by an account of the creations and structure of the universe and ancient civilizations. In the introduction, Socrates muses about the perfect society, described in Plato's Republic, and wonders if he and his guests might recollect a story which exemplifies such a society. Critias mentions an allegedly historical tale that would make the perfect example, and follows by describing Atlantis as is recorded in the Critias. In his account, ancient Athens seems to represent the "perfect society" and Atlantis its opponent, representing the very antithesis of the "perfect" traits described in the Republic. Critias claims that his accounts of ancient Athens and Atlantis stem from a visit to Egypt by the Athenian lawgiver Solon in the 6th century BC. In Egypt, Solon met a priest of Sais, who translated the history of ancient Athens and Atlantis, recorded on papyri in Egyptian hieroglyphs, into Greek. According to Plutarch, Solon met with "Psenophis of Heliopolis, and Sonchis the Saite, the most learned of all the priests" (Life of Solon). Because of the 500+ year distance between Plutarch and the alleged event, and that this information is not provided by Plato in Timaeus and Critias, this identification is questionable.

According to Critias, the Hellenic gods of old divided the land so that each god might own a lot; Poseidon was appropriately, and to his liking, bequeathed the island of Atlantis. The island was larger than Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined, but it afterwards was sunk by an earthquake and became an impassable mud shoal, inhibiting travel to any part of the ocean. The Egyptians described Atlantis as an island comprising mostly mountains in the northern portions and along the shore, and encompassing a great plain of an oblong shape in the south "extending in one direction three thousand stadia [about 555 km; 345 mi], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about 370 km; 230 mi]."

Here lived a native woman, Cleito, the daughter of Evenor and Leucippe, with whom Poseidon fell in love and who bore him five pairs of male twins. The eldest of these, Atlas, was made rightful king of the entire island and the ocean (called the Atlantic Ocean in honor of Atlas), and was given the mountain of his birth and the surrounding area as his fiefdom. Atlas's twin Gadeirus or Eumelus in Greek, was given the extremity of the island towards the Pillars of Heracles. The other four pairs of twins — Ampheres and Evaemon, Mneseus and Autochthon, Elasippus and Mestor, and Azaes and Diaprepes — were also given "rule over many men, and a large territory."

Poseidon carved the mountain where his love dwelt into a palace and enclosed it with three circular moats of increasing width, varying from one to three stadia and separated by rings of land proportional in size. The Atlanteans then built bridges northward from the mountain, making a route to the rest of the island. They dug a great canal to the sea, and alongside the bridges carved tunnels into the rings of rock so that ships could pass into the city around the mountain; they carved docks from the rock walls of the moats. Every passage to the city was guarded by gates and towers, and a wall surrounded each of the city's rings. The walls were constructed of red, white and black rock quarried from the moats, and were covered with brass, tin and orichalcum (bronze or brass), respectively (Critias 116bc).

According to Critias, 9,000 years before his lifetime a war took place between those outside the Pillars of Hercules (generally thought to be the Strait of Gibraltar) and those who dwelt within them. The Atlanteans had conquered the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt and the European continent as far as Tyrrhenia, and subjected its people to slavery. The Athenians led an alliance of resistors against the Atlantean empire and as the alliance disintegrated, prevailed alone against the empire, liberating the occupied lands.

Receptions

Ancient

Other than Plato's Timaeus and Critias there is no primary ancient account on Atlantis, which means every other account on Atlantis relies on Plato in one way or another. There has not been found any proof for a non-Platonic tradition of Atlantis to this day. However, there is a lost work of the Greek logographer Hellanicus of Lesbos named Atlantis (or Atlantias), which is about the daughters of the titan Atlas (not the Atlas mentioned by Plato). Anyway, it is unlikely that this work was an inspiration to Plato, since he named Atlantis after the Atlantic Ocean (ancient Greek: "Sea of Atlas"), which is verified to be named such since Herodotus.

Many ancient philosophers viewed Atlantis as fiction. The most popular might be Aristotle, who is allegedly quoted by Strabo with the above mentioned commentary on Atlantis.

However, in antiquity, there were a also philosophers, geographers, and historians who believed that Atlantis was real. For instance, the philosopher Crantor, a student of Plato's student Xenocrates, tried to find proof of Atlantis' existence. His work, a comment on Plato's Timaeus, is lost, but another ancient historian, Proclus, reports that Crantor traveled to Egypt and actually found columns with the history of Atlantis written in hieroglyphic characters. Anyway, Plato did not write that Solon saw the Atlantis story on a column but on a source that can be "taken to hand". This basically makes Proclus' proof implausible.

Another passage from Proclus' 5th century AD commentary on the Timaeus gives a description of the geography of Atlantis: "That an island of such nature and size once existed is evident from what is said by certain authors who investigated the things around the outer sea. For according to them, there were seven islands in that sea in their time, sacred to Persephone, and also three others of enormous size, one of which was sacred to Pluto, another to Ammon, and another one between them to Poseidon, the extent of which was a thousand stadia; and the inhabitants of it — they add — preserved the remembrance from their ancestors of the immeasurably large island of Atlantis which had really existed there and which for many ages had reigned over all islands in the Atlantic sea and which itself had like-wise been sacred to Poseidon. Now these things Marcellus has written in his Aethiopica". However, Heinz-Günther Nesselrath argues that this Marcellus — who is otherwise unknown — is probably not a historian but a novelist.

Other ancient historians and philosophers believing in the existence of Atlantis were Strabo and Posidonius (cf. Strabo 2,3,6).

Plato's account of Atlantis may have also inspired parodic imitation: writing only a few decades after the Timaeus and Critias, the historian Theopompus of Chios wrote of a land beyond the ocean known as Meropis. This description was included in Book 8 of his voluminous Philippica, which contains a dialogue between King Midas and Silenus, a companion of Dionysus. Silenus describes the Meropids, a race of men who grow to twice normal size, and inhabit two cities on the island of Meropis: Eusebes ("Pious-town") and Machimos ("Fighting-town"). He also reports that an army of ten million soldiers crossed the ocean to conquer Hyperborea, but abandoned this proposal when they realized that the Hyperboreans were the luckiest people on earth. Heinz-Günther Nesselrath has argued that these and other details of Silenus' story are meant as imitation and exaggeration of the Atlantis story, for the purpose of exposing Plato's ideas to ridicule.

Somewhat similar is the story of Panchaea, written by philosopher Euhemerus. It mentions a perfect society on an island in the Indian Ocean. Zoticus, a Neoplatonist philosopher of the 3rd century AD, wrote an epic poem based on Plato's account of Atlantis.

The 4th century AD historian Ammianus Marcellinus, relying on a lost work by Timagenes, a historian writing in the 1st century BC, writes that the Druids of Gaul said that part of the inhabitants of Gaul had migrated there from distant islands. Ammianus' testimony has been understood by some as a claim that when Atlantis sunk into the sea, its inhabitants fled to western Europe; but Ammianus in fact says that “the Drasidae (Druids) recall that a part of the population is indigenous but others also migrated in from islands and lands beyond the Rhine" (Res Gestae 15.9), an indication that the immigrants came to Gaul from the north and east, not from the Atlantic Ocean.

Modern

Francis Bacon's 1627 novel The New Atlantis describes a utopian society, called Bensalem, located off the western coast of America. A character in the novel gives a history of Atlantis that is similar to Plato's, and places Atlantis in America. It is not clear whether Bacon means North or South America.

In middle and late 19th century, several renowned Mesoamerican scholars, starting with Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, and including Edward Herbert Thompson and Augustus Le Plongeon proposed that Atlantis was somehow related to Mayan and Aztec culture.

The 1882 publication of Atlantis: the Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly stimulated much popular interest in Atlantis. Donnelly took Plato's account of Atlantis seriously and attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from its high neolithic culture.

During the late 19th century, ideas about the legendary nature of Atlantis were combined with stories of other lost continents such as Mu and Lemuria by popular figures in the occult and the growing new age phenomenon. Helena Blavatsky, the "Grandmother of the New Age movement," writes in The Secret Doctrine that the Atlanteans were cultural heroes (contrary to Plato who describes them mainly as a military threat), and are the fourth "Root Race", succeeded by the "Aryan race". Rudolf Steiner wrote of the cultural evolution of Mu or Atlantis. Famed psychic Edgar Cayce first mentioned Atlantis in a life reading given in 1923, and later gave its geographical location as the Caribbean, and proposed that Atlantis was an ancient, now-submerged, highly-evolved civilization which had ships and aircraft powered by a mysterious form of energy crystal. He also predicted that parts of Atlantis would rise in 1968 or 1969. The Bimini Road, a submarine geological formation just off North Bimini Island, discovered in 1968, has been claimed by some to be evidence of the lost civilization (among many other things) and is still being explored today.

Before the time of Eratosthenes about 250 BC, Greek writers located the Pillars of Hercules on the Strait of Sicily. This changed with Alexander the Great’s eastward expansion and the Pillars were moved by Eratosthenes to Gibraltar. This evidence has been cited in some Atlantis theories, notably in Sergio Frau's work. His theory, supported by scholars and archaeologists, is still studied by the UNESCO.

Nationalist and Socialist Ideas of Atlantis

Plato's Atlantis has been considered by some socialists as an early socialist utopia. British nationalists identified the British isles with Atlantis.

The concept of Atlantis also entered National Socialist (Nazi) theory through Theosophy and Anthroposophy. In 1938, Heinrich Himmler organized a search in Tibet to find a remnant of the white Atlanteans. According to Julius Evola (Revolt Against the Modern World, 1934), the Atlanteans were Hyperboreans -- Nordic supermen who originated on the North pole (see Thule). Similarly, Alfred Rosenberg (The Myth of the Twentieth Century, 1930) spoke of a "Nordic-Atlantean" or "Aryan-Nordic" master race.

Aleister Crowley has also written an esoteric history of Atlantis, although this may be intended more as metaphor than as fact.

Recent Times

As continental drift became better understood and accepted during the 1950s, most "Lost Continent" theories of Atlantis were shown to be impossible. In response, some recent theories propose that elements of Plato's story were derived from earlier myths.

Plato scholar Dr Julia Annas (Regents Professor of Philosophy, University of Arizona) has had this to say on the matter:

"The continuing industry of discovering Atlantis illustrates the dangers of reading Plato. For he is clearly using what has become a standard device of fiction - stressing the historicity of an event (and the discovery of hitherto unknown authorities) as an indication that what follows is fiction. The idea is that we should use the story to examine our ideas of government and power. We have missed the point if instead of thinking about these issues we go off exploring the sea bed. The continuing misunderstanding of Plato as historian here enables us to see why his distrust of imaginative writing is sometimes justified."

Theories

Atlantis, the legendary lost continent of antiquity, has haunted men’s minds for countless centuries. It was mentioned for the first time by Plato, a Greek philosopher. He wrote his thoughts and theories of Atlantis down in two dialogues: Timaeus and Critias. Hardly twenty pages are filled by his comment about Atlantis but 25,000 books have been written about this topic. In spite of almost no direct evidence of it's existence, it holds a great fascination on many people in the world, especially on scientists.

Many reasons indirectly point to the real existence of Atlantis, for example old maps of the world, comprehensive astronomical knowledge in the system of the calendar of the old Mayas. Therefore a lot of different theories about its location developed. Today so many exist that it is nearly impossible to get a clear overview of them. Some scientists claim that Thera or Santurinie, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, once was Atlantis, while others take their cue from Plato’s theory which located Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean. It has even been placed in the Pacific Ocean! Some of these theories are understandable to some extent, but there are also some views whose arguments seem to be far-fetched.

Four of the many theories concerning Atlantis, including:

• Atlantic Island Theory - This theory is the traditional point of view, placing Atlantis right where Plato said it would be, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. . .
• Minoan Thera Theory - This theory differs from the other theories in that it puts the Atlantis civilization in the exact opposite location of where Plato said Atlantis was. . .
• Bermuda Theory - This theory, favored by psychics positions the sunken Atlantis in the Bermuda Triangle. . .
• South American Theory - An old theory with relatively new support, drawing upon satellite photographs and reexaminations of ancient measurements. . .

Atlantis Was the Minoan Civilization

Could Atlantis also have been in the Mediterranean Sea? That is what the archeologist Charles Pellegrino advocates. Here is the evidence that supports his idea:

The island Thera is situated a little north of the Greek island Crete and east of the coast of Turkey. About thirty-six hundred years ago, it was a round-shaped island.

At about sixteen hundred B.C., a volcano eruption destroyed a couple of the cities, and broke the island apart. Part of it vanished into the sea, part of it remained. This eruption gave Thera its present shape. Not all cities on the island vanished into the Aegean Sea, but there's still at least one of them buried under thick layers of dust and earth.

Archeologists like Christos Doumas discovered the city in the south of Thera in 1967. What they discovered amazed them. The first building they excavated contained plumbing, toilets and bathtubs. They also discovered rattan beds and ceramic pipes, frescoes and lots of other luxury items. The archaeologists assumed that building to be a palace due to its richness, but they were wrong. As soon as they discovered and excavated the next building, they found the same richness, the same technology like the water systems as they had detected in the first house.

Digging further, it was discovered that the whole city was honeycombed by sewage systems and water supplies etc. It must have been a very well-developed culture that had inhabited. The more the archeologists dug and the more items they found (each room they discovered contained several hundred items), the more the idea developed that this might have been the famous Atlantis. Plato's descriptions fit well. He wrote in Timaeus, 112, about "a land carried round in a circle and disappeared in the depths below. By comparison to what then was, there are remaining in small islets only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be called,all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the country being left." Here, he only mentions the geography of Atlantis. In Critias, 113c-114a, 117a-c, he also describes the fortunate water supply of Atlantis. "They had fountains, one of cold and another of hot water, in gracious plenty flowing; [...] there were the baths of private persons [...] and to each of them they gave as much adornment as possible. [...] The remainder was conveyed by aqueducts."

Thera, respectively the city that's being excavated, is such a complex structure that it will take a long time to being fully discovered. Charles Pellegrino describes how the crew excavated one city block in twenty years. He estimates three hundred years being necessary to excavate the whole city.

Atlantic Island Theory

What are the effects a huge island like Atlantis could have on the geography of the Atlantic and on the climate of the northern hemisphere? Since there is no real scientific proof of the existence of Atlantis, one possible way to indicate that Plato’s story is true to some extent, is to find out the effects a huge island like Atlantis could have on the geography of the Atlantic and on the climate of the northern hemisphere. The following picture shows the present way the Gulf Stream runs:

If we look at the way the Gulf Stream is shaped, caused by northern and southern trade winds, it gets clear that it affects the climate of Northwest Europe a lot: Through the warm water and the humid air masses the climate is much warmer than it would be without the Gulf Stream. The isotherms develop from the way of the Gulf Stream: Because of its course it diverts the ten- and zero degree isotherm to the North, so that the ten degree isotherm is on the same height as Great Britain / Germany and the zero degree isotherm runs above Greenland to the North of Scandinavia. If the Gulf Stream did not exist, the isotherms would have their way nearly parallel to the latitudes which means that the zero degree isotherm would approximately take the way of the present ten degree isotherm. In that cage the climate of Northwest Europe would be much colder.

As research work showed, at the time of Quaternary the oceanographic circumstances at the place of the Gulf Stream’s origin were the same as today and also a northern and a southern trade wind existed. So effects of the Gulf Stream on the climate of Northwest Europe would have been the same, too, and that is the point!!! Warm tropical water rushed along the Brazilian and Middle - North - American coast, and we can be sure that the Gulf Stream also entered into the North - Atlantic ocean, like today. But it did not get into the direction of the European continent, otherwise the freezing of West Europe would not have happened! This might have been caused by a huge obstacle like an island, because after the “Würm Ice Age”, the climate in North - West - Europe radically changed (it became much warmer), which means that the Gulf Stream got to Europe for the first time. The Gulf Stream has a width of 600 - 800 kilometres, so the obstacle had to be, measured crossways to the current, ca. 800 - 1,000 km long, otherwise it would not have been able to stop it. An island dimensioned in a way like this cannot disappear without leaving any traces of it. And if you have a look at the cross-section of the Atlantic seafloor it seems like a sunken land with high mountains. Sharp mountain tops loom above the surface of the sea - the Azores.

If we imagined that the sea level would sink around 3000 metres, an enormous land-mass with high mountains and steep slopes would appear. It would be in the way of the Gulf Streams which flowed directly across the Atlantic Ridge. At the west coast of this island its waters became back-ups and in long stretched bow it would stream back to the West. So, Northwest Europe would be exposed to cold, rough climate and in a period of strong freezing tendency, it would led to a full ice again. Exactly this full freezing over occurred during the Quaternary - a proof of the fact that the following figure reconstructs the former real situation of the North - Atlantic!

Why do make people contacts between Atlantis and this part of seafloor in the Atlantic ocean? Well, the question remains, how and when the disappearance of the island happened. The answer is situated in the fact that the sea level did not change, but the ocean bottom, together with the land-mass of the island put in it, descended. So, the only remaining things are today’s well-known Azores. At the end of the Quaternary, and also with the end of the “Würm Ice Age” the climate in Northwest Europe radically changed, caused by the arrival of the Gulf Stream. So we can assume that the island had sunken by that time, otherwise the Gulf Stream wouldn’t have had the chance to arrive there. Today we believe that this incident happened approximately 12,000 years ago. That means that the island must have sunk about 10,000 years B. C.

If we compare everything we know so far with the ideas presented by Plato, there are three points which are to be compared: Localisation, dimensions and the moment of the island’s disappearance. All three are results of the research corresponding with Plato’s descriptions about Atlantis, but we will deal more exactly with the comparison of the extent and moment of its fall.

Plato describes Atlantis in his dialogue “(...) as an island greater in extent than Libya and Asia (...)”, but we have to bear in mind that in Plato’s time Asia was the today’s Middle East and Libya was the part of Africa well-known in the antiquity. But in spite of this fact, Atlantis had to be a really large island. According to Plato there was a plain in the south of the island 6,000,000 square stages big, corresponding to 20,0000 square kilometres. If we assume this level constituted approximately half of the island, we calculated a total volume of 400,000 square kilometres. This extent was also calculated by the submarine contours of the Azores space. The time of Atlantis’ fall must have been according to Plato’s description approximately 9,500 B. C.- the sinking of the “Gulf Stream Island” before 12,000 years. With the comparison of these two descriptions one receives a difference from only 500 years, so the moment of Atlantis’ fall corresponds nearly exactly with that of the “Gulf Stream Island”.

Since a lot of information of these two “Test Objects” corresponds, it is probable that the two islands were in reality the same. That would mean that today’s Azores were a remainder of Atlantis. The question of its former existence would no longer be asked. However, till today there is still no generally accepted proof that this theory is correct.

Atlantis: The Cause of Bermuda Triangle

Another often supported theory about the place of the existence of Atlantis is that it was once located at the place of the Bermuda Triangle. Reasons that point to this theory base a lot on the esoteric section.

1946 five US - aeroplanes disappeared in this area. The air rescue service sent disappeared likewise and the following rescue operation was unsuccessful.

This phenomenon has occurred for centuries: Remarkably many airplanes and ships have disappeared, without even one section of them having been seen again and this makes the difference to normal accidents.

Some ships even returned , but with the excepting of animals any life on them had disappeared. Pilots often still report of good weather and only seconds later these ships or airplanes disappeared. Some pilots tell about an extremely strong suction downward, when they pass the Bermuda Triangle. In some cases still weak radio calls were received after the affected person had already disappeared. The question arises, where the survivors could dispatch the messages - perhaps from a parallel space?

It is additionally remarkable that nowhere on Earth so many UFO-messages are announced as in the area of the Bermuda Triangle. Regularly they submerge under water there, perhaps because a secret landing station exists on the bottom of the sea?

On old Egyptian wall paintings we can find cones which seem to light up like bulbs and they are also connected by a cable to a type of generator. In Egyptian caves no soot remainders of torches were found contrary to Greek and Roman buildings. It could be concluded from this fact that the ancient Egyptians knew electricity. Also wooden airplane - models were found including most of the presently known aerodynamic aspects.

In 1967, systems of tremendous extent were found. Scientists estimate their age at 7,000 - 12,000 years B.P. According to that the buildings were older than those of the culture of Sumerers , which was the oldest advanced culture known to us. That probably means that a high educated culture existed before them - the Atlanteans.

Information about this theory is also given in the book ”Das Bermuda Dreick” written by Charles Berlitz (1975 London, Wien)

Atlantis is South America

We found another very interesting theory about the former existence of Atlantis in the Geographical Magazine from March 1997. Here, Jim Allen describes his research on Atlantis and some results of it:

In July 1995 Jim Allen travelled to the Bolivian altiplano, a plateau that sits between two ranges of the Andes. There, he drove out into the desert to look for possible remains of an ancient canal which might confirm the location as being the site of Plato’s Atlantis. He found remains of an enormous channel which reminded him of Plato’s description of an irrigation channel that he said existed at the site of Atlantis. According to Plato the width of the channel was 184 metres, the exact width of the altiplano channel.

A few years before, Jim Allan had made a study of the origins of ancient systems of measurement. Plato’s description of Atlantis’ extent, of its rectangular-shaped plain enclosed by mountains and of its fall took his attention. He was not keen on believing that an island as large as Libya and Asia combined should have sunk into the sea in just one night and day. According to him that was definitely impossible.

So he wondered if Atlantis might have been America and if the rectangular plain Plato was talking about lay somewhere in that continent. The shape of the altiplano almost fits the description if one takes South America to be an island which it almost is. He constructed a topographical model of the region, building up the levels. The 4000 metres contour encloses the whole rectangular-shaped altiplano, the largest level plain in the world. The altiplano corresponds to Plato’s description of a plain that borders on the sea and extends through the centre of the whole island. It is enclosed by mountains so that, according to Plato, the region rose sheerly out of the sea and only the part about the city was a smooth plain. Jim Allan imagines that it was not the whole island Atlantis that sank into the sea but only its city. "What if it was not the island continent of Atlantis that sank into the sea as Plato believed, but only the island city of Atlantis, built around the lava rings of an extinct or dormant volcano, which sank beneath an island sea, or what is now Lake Poopo?" (Geographical Magazine, March 1997, Vol. 69 Issue 3, page 44, 2 pages)

All the metals which the people of Atlantis needed for their buildings, according to Plato, are found around Lake Poopo. Numerous gold and copper mines still exist there. There is the possibility that orichalcum, a metal unknown to the modern world, may have occurred in the Andes. From December to March is the wet season when the altiplano gets flooded. Drought conditions for the rest of the year are in the south of the plain. To construct a perimeter canal, like the one Plato described, would have been feasible. The perimeter canal Plato thought about would drain water away during the wet season and store it for irrigation for the dry periods.

The altiplano is described to be an enclosed basin and therefore a period of torrential rain could produce within it an inland sea. If you re-examine Plato’s statement about the end of Atlantis, a period of torrential rain is described as a result of earthquakes and floods, in a single day and night of rain. And the altiplano is an area prone to earthquakes.

The suggested end of Atlantis, in Plato’s view, was around 9,600 B. C. At that time, the altiplano was indeed flooded. But it may also be that the end took place at a time when the confederation of Atlantis was engaged in a war against Egypt. It is possible that the story of Atlantis came from one of these people who were taken prisoners after the war, and was handed on by temple priests to the visiting Greek statesman Solon.

Atlantis Location Hypothesis

There have been dozens - perhaps hundreds - of locations proposed for Atlantis. Some are more or less serious attempts at legitimate scholarly or archaeological works; others have been made by psychic or other pseudoscientific means.

Many of the proposed sites share some of the characteristics of the Atlantis story (water, catastrophic end, relevant time period), but none have been proven conclusively to be the historical Atlantis.

Most of the historically proposed locations are in or near the Mediterranean Sea, either islands such as Sardinia, Crete and Santorini, Cyprus, Malta, and Ponza or as land based cities or states such as Troy, Tartessos or Tantalus (in the province of Manisa), Turkey, and the new theory of Israel-Sinai or Canaan as possible locations.

The massive Thera eruption, dated either to the 17th or the 15th century BC, caused a massive tsunami that experts hypothesize devastated the Minoan civilization on the nearby island of Crete, further leading some to believe that this may have been the catastrophe which inspired the story.

Locations as far-flung as Antarctica, Indonesia and the Caribbean have been proposed as the true site of Atlantis. The submerged island of Spartel near the Strait of Gibraltar would coincide with some elements of Plato's account, matching both the location and the date of submersion given in the Critias.

In the area of the Black Sea at least three locations have been proposed: Bosporus, Sinop and Ancomah (a legendary place near Trabzon).

The nearby Sea of Azov was proposed as another site in 2003. Various islands or island groups in the Atlantic were also identified as possible locations, notably the Azores (Mid-Atlantic islands which are a territory of Portugal), and several Caribbean islands.

In Northern Europe, Sweden (by Olof Rudbeck in "Atland", 1672-1702), Ireland, and the North Sea have been proposed (Swedish geographer Ulf Erlingsson combines the North Sea and Ireland in a comprehensive hypothesis).

Areas in the Pacific and Indian Ocean have also been proposed including Indonesia, Malaysia or both (i.e. Sundaland) and stories of a lost continent off India named "Kumari Kandam" have drawn parallels to Atlantis. Even Cuba has been suggested.

The Canary Islands have also been identified as a possible location, west of the Straits of Gibraltar but in close proximity to the Mediterranean Sea. Some believe that Atlantis stretched from the tip of Spain to Central America.

Mediterranean

Crete and Santorini: Among those who believe in an historical Atlantis, one common theory holds that Plato's story of the destruction of Atlantis was inspired by massive volcanic eruptions on the Mediterranean island of Santorini during Minoan times. A main criticism of this theory is that the ancient Greeks were well aware of volcanoes, and if there was a volcanic eruption, it would seem likely that it would be mentioned. Solon got his information from Egypt; if we assume that an Ancient Egyptian symbol for "hundred" was mistakenly read as "thousand", that reduces the age and size of Atlantis by a factor of a tenth, and with that alteration Atlantis fits Minoan Crete well. Many people consider this to be the likeliest theory

Off the East Coast of Cyprus: Robert Sarmast, an American architect, claims to have definitely found the lost city of Atlantis on November 14, 2004, saying that by using sonar scans he was able to find manmade walls that matched the description of the structures described by Plato. The site lies 1,500m deep in the Mediterranean Sea between Cyprus and Syria.

Sardinia: In 2002 the Italian journalist Sergio Frau in his book Le colonne d'Ercole hypothesized that the Pillars of Hercules could be identified not with Gibraltar but with the Sicily Strait between Africa and Sicily, so Atlantis was really Sardinia. A catastrophic event (with a big wave) eradicated from Sardinia the ancient and still enigmatic Nuragic civilization. The few survivors migrated to the near Italian peninsula, founding the Etruscan civilization, the base for the later Roman civilization.

Malta: Dr Anton Mifsud who, with co-authors Simon Mifsud, Chris Agius Sultana and Charles Savona Ventura, published Malta Echoes of Plato's Island also added another recent theory.Their book is the product of thoughtful and profound research about the archeological sites and ancient remains related to Atlantis. Frances Galea in his book Malta Fdal Atlantis also wrote about the results of his lifelong research on several ancient studies and known theories on Atlantis, particularly that of Giorgio Grongnet, the renowned Maltese architect, who in 1854 claimed that the Maltese Islands are the remnants of Atlantis.

Near Cape Spartel: Another recent theory is based on a recreation of the geography of the Mediterranean at the time of Atlantis' supposed existence. Plato states that Atlantis was located beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the name given to the Strait of Gibraltar linking the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean. 11,000 years ago the sea level in the area was some 130 metres lower, exposing a number of islands in the strait. One of these, Spartel, could have been Atlantis, though there are a number of inconsistencies with Plato's account.

Troy: The geologist Eberhard Zangger has proposed the theory that Atlantis was in fact the city state of Troy (See: The Flood from Heaven: Deciphering the Atlantis legend; Sidgwick & Jackson, 1992, ISBN 0688113508). He both agrees and disagrees with Rainer W. Kühne: He believes too that the Trojans-Atlanteans were the sea peoples, but only a minor part of them. He proposes that all Greek speaking city states of the Aegean civilization or Mycenae constituted the sea peoples and that they destroyed each other's economies in a series of semi-fratricidal wars lasting several decades.

Tantalis: (Manisa province in Turkey) British archaeologist Peter James took a clue from Plato's mention of king Tantalus, and investigated the city of Tantalis (also Tantalos) in the province of Manisa, Turkey. In addition to having very similar sounding anagram names, numerous inscriptions and ancient writings from the region matched the Atlantis story. Tantalis, formerly a wealthy city state, was destroyed when a powerful earthquake struck and caused a lake to flood the city.

Andalucia: A theory by Juan Fernández Amador de los Ríos (1919), Jürgen Spanuth (1953), Georgeos Díaz-Montexano (2000) Atlantis Discovery, Rainer W. Kühne (2003) suggests that the Atlanteans were the Sea Peoples who attacked the Eastern Mediterranean countries around 1200 BC. The city and state of Atlantis were located in Andalucia, 50 kilometers southwest of Seville. Recent satellite photos show two rectangular structures which may be interpreted by Werner Wickboldt (2002) and Rainer W. Kühne (2003) as the "temple of Poseidon" and "the temple of Cleito and Poseidon".

Black Sea

German researchers Siegfried and Christian Schoppe locate Atlantis in the Black Sea: Before 5,500 BC there was a great plain in the northwest at a former freshwater-lake. 5,510 BC the barrier at today's Bosporus broke due to the rising sea level of the world-ocean. The Pillars of Hercules are identical with the Strait of Bosporus. Oreichalcos means the obsidian stone that used to be a cash-equivalent at that time and was replaced by the spondylus shell around 5,500 BC. The geocatastrophic event led to the neolithic diaspora in Europe, also beginning 5500 BC.

In 2000 AD Robert Ballard in a small submarine found remains of human habitation around 300 feet underwater in the Black Sea off the north coast of Turkey. The area flooded around 5000 BC. This flood may have inspired the Biblical story of Noah's Ark; but the area need not be Atlantis.

Findland

Finnish pseudohistorian Ior Bock locates Atlantis to the southern part of Finland where he claims a small community of people lived during the Ice Age. This is a small part of a large saga that he claims to have been told in his family through the ages. Dating back to the development of language itself.

Ireland

The most recent speculation is published in the book Atlantis From a Geographer's Perspective: Mapping the Fairy Land by Swedish geographer Dr. Ulf Erlingsson from University of Uppsala. It proposes that Atlantis actually referred to Ireland which fits closely in geographic and landmark descriptions. Ireland has not sunk beneath the sea, but the Dogger Bank shoal was an island which sank in the North Sea about 6100 B.C. as the world sea level rose as the Ice Age icecaps melted. Some related theories place the location of Atlantis between Britain and France on the Celtic Shelf. This theory was first developed seriously by Lewis Spence and has been recently revived by some oceanographers.

Mid-Atlantic

Geological studies of the mid-Atlantic fail to demonstrate that the continent of Atlantis existed there. However, the geology of the Atlantic Ocean does not exclude the possibility of a sunken island. If such an island existed it would have been much smaller than the island continent of Australia. Plato never claimed that a whole continent disappeared. He referenced a sunken island in front of another continent. One of the more likely places then would be around the Azores Islands which are a group of islands belonging to Portugal located about 900 miles (1,500 km) west of the Portugese coast. Some people believe the islands could be the mountain tops of Atlantis.

Isla de la Juventud near Cuba

Recent underwater discoveries off the west coast of Cuba have led some to speculate on an Atlantean connection. However, even before these discoveries were announced, author Andrew Collins had explored the Cuba connection in a book titled "Gateway to Atlantis." Collins supports his hypothesis with a great deal of indirect but compelling historical and geographical evidence. He finally suggests present-day Isle of Youth and the shallow sea bottom that surrounds it as a possible location for Atlantis.

Bahama Bank and Caribbean

Not all geologists deny the possibility of a sunken island in Central America. After the Charles Berlitz book The Mystery of Atlantis, a Canadian Hungarian geologist-topographer's book was published, entitled Atlantis: The Seven Seals. The author, Z.A. Simon, called the attention to these controversies. He included some supporting conclusions of Dr. J. Manson Valentine, M. Dmitri Ribikoff, E. Umland and C. Umland, Robert B. Stacy-Judd, Dr. David Zink, John P. Cohane, Peter Tompkins, Pino Turolla, Captain Alexander, Francis Hitching, James Bailey, Dr. C.J. Cazeau, Dr. S.D. Scott, Brad Steiger and William R. Fix.

The June 1981 edition of Marine Geology shows some radiocarbon dates on mangrove peat, based on the estimate of Broecker and Kulp, listing dates between 5590 and 3680 BC, with connection of the gradual sinking of the Florida­Bimini region. Most recently the rate of the sea level's rise has slowed to 4.5 in (114 mm) per century. Prior to that time it was one foot per century. Near Andros Island, underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau found a huge submerged cave 165 ft (50 m) beneath the surface. There are stalactites and stalagmites in it, that can be formed in the open air only. Marine sediments on the walls of the grotto enabled scientists to estimate its submersion around or after 10,000 BC. The submarine topography of the Bahamian region shown in the huge Russian Atlas Mira by detailed isobaths, catches the attention of a topographer. The sea floor on the northern side of Cuba, Haiti and Puerto Rico indicates a definite system of submerged valleys of ancient rivers, combined with sunken mountain ranges. The "Tongue of the Ocean" at Andros Island is undoubtedly an underwater ravine caused by terrible tectonic forces, surrounded by almost vertical walls, as a "memento" of the catastrophe. The main problem with this theory is that Atlantis was supposed to have submerged rapidly, following an earthquake.

Z.A. Simon offers an "accurate" map of Plato's rectangular island with its given dimensions as 2,000 by 3,000 stadia, overlaying its outline on the suspected ancient irregular shoreline of that traditional island in the Bahamas region. (An Attic stadium corresponds to 177.6 m)

Indonesia

Prof. Arysio Nunes dos Santos, Ph. D. in Nuclear Physics; Free-Docent, and Professor of Nuclear Physics at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, has been researching on Atlantis for almost 30 years now, pointing out that "Atlantis was never found because we have all been looking in the wrong places". The reason for this, according to Prof. Santos, is that when Plato spoke of the Ocean of Atlantis, he was not speaking of the ocean that we today call Atlantic Ocean, but of the whole ocean that encircles Eurasia and Africa.

Prof. Santos hence concludes that Atlantis is really located in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, which was considered to be the eastward extension the modern Atlantic Ocean. The modern Atlantic Ocean was once deemed to extend all the way to the East Indies, a conception which lasted down to the times of Christopher Columbus and other Renaissance explorers and geographers. Despite the prevalent opinion of experts of all sorts that "continents cannot possibly sink", Prof. Santos managed to discover a whole sunken continent in the region of Indonesia, which he identifies with the Lost Continent of Atlantis, as can be seen in the detailed map published in his Atlantis site.

Prof. Santos hence concludes that Atlantis is really located in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, which was considered to be the eastward extension the modern Atlantic Ocean. The modern Atlantic Ocean was once deemed to extend all the way to the East Indies, a conception which lasted down to the times of Christopher Columbus and other Renaissance explorers and geographers. Despite the prevalent opinion of experts of all sorts that "continents cannot possibly sink", Prof. Santos managed to discover a whole sunken continent in the region of Indonesia, which he identifies with the Lost Continent of Atlantis, as can be seen in the detailed map published in his Atlantis site.

In February 2005, Canberra-based independent researcher Raimy Che-Ross, announced to the world that he had found a lost city in the unsunken Malaysian portion of the lost continent. A well funded expedition is now underway involving a large ground team of experts and Malaysia Centre For Remote Sensing (Macres) satellites. The Malaysian Department of Museums and Antiquities has been instructed to report their findings by August 2005.

India and Sri Lanka

In South India and Sri Lanka there is a reputed "Kumari Kandam" (kandam means "continent" in Tamil), believed to be submerged under the sea. This continent is surrounded by legendary stories similar to those of Atlantis. It has been called the "cradle of Dravidians". Also, there has been some people linking the "Kumari continent" to Lemuria.

In the Gulf of Cambay, there is an archeological submarine site of a former island named Dwaraka, which is mainly associated with locations in Indian mythology (especially in the Mahabharata), which has also appeared in discussions about Atlantis. But its date (about 1,500 BC) is too recent to correspond to the real site of Atlantis, according to Plato's date of 9,600 BC.

Antarctica

A seemingly bizarre hypothesis that the city of Atlantis was in Antarctica has typically received incredulous reactions from the scientific community. Under this theory, all continents and oceans shifted as one, causing the ancient south pole to be over ocean, liberating a considerable portion of Antarctica from its current ice sheet, yielding ideal conditions for human habitation. To back up this theory, controversial claims of precipitation-ice sheet thickness mismatches; new methods of translating Plato's text; and native flood stories from all sorts of different cultures around the world back up this controversial claim. However, due to the nature of finding and then excavating sites in Antarctica, not much followup research is immediately possible with such limited funding given public awareness of this hypothesis. Also, it is questionable that such a widespread ecological catastrophe in the form of an extreme geologic process could occur in such a short time period and leave relatively little evidence.

Ponza

Ponza has many similarities to the Atlantis legend. Legend say that Ponza was the lost island of Tyrhenia which was large and had a city at it's edge. It was connected by land to the Italian mainland near Naples (Napoli). A volcano exploded and the island sunk leaving only the mountain top which is now called Ponza. Near Naples is Pozzuoli where `Roman Temples in the harbor rose above water in the late 1960's due to volcanic processes.

From Atlantis to the Sphinx by Colin Wilson
Publisher: Weiser Books (July 2004)

Atlantis: The Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly, Egerton Sykes
Publisher: Kessinger Publishing (March 2003)

Atlantis External Links

Atlantis in Ireland
Atlantis has for a long time been considered a purely fictional tale by Plato. However, a new scientific study has revealed that the tale is based on an historic tradition. The empire of Atlantis is shown on the map to the right.

Atlantis: The Lost Continent Finally Found
This site presents a new theory on Atlantis by a Brazilian scientist, Prof. Arysio Santos, which he discovered in the Indian Ocean. It presents a series of articles, periodically renewed.

Atlantis: Fact, Fiction or Exaggeration?
The story of Atlantis begins quite literally with two of Plato's dialogues, Timaeus and Critias. These accounts are the only known written records which refer specifcally to a lost civilization called Atlantis...

World Mysteries: Atlantis
Mystic Places, Atlantis. Explore few most popular speculations about this lost continent.

Atlantis: Timaeus and Critias
Timaeus and Critias, two of Plato's dialogues, are the only existing written records which specifically refer to Atlantis...

An Atlantis Civilization: Lemuria
An ancient civilization which existed prior to and during the time of Atlantis. Physically, it is believed that Lemuria existed largely in the Southern Pacific, between North America and Asia/Australia.

The Voyage to Atlantis
The Lost World of the Maya.

Discovering Atlantis by Rand Flem-Ath
I'd like to be able to say that I've been fascinated by Atlantis since I was a child. But the site of the great lost civilization unfolded itself to me quite by accident...

Quest for Atlantis
An ancient paradise revealed! by R. Cedric Leonard

Atlantis Insights
Topics such as Atlantis in the Caribbean, vibrational healing methods, human-animal hybrids known as "Things," the crystal skull, the influence of extraterrestrials in prehistory, other civilizations in prehistory...

Atlantis: New Hypothesis by Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev
Everyone will have heard at one time or another the name of Atlantis mentioned, we can come across it in various contexts. Almost any encyclopedia these days is sure to have an article on Atlantis, which usually reads something...

Atlantis History
Descendants of Legendary Atlantis: Are Northern Europeans more pure descendants of the Atlanteans than their Mediterranean counterparts?

The lost city of Atlantis
The lost city of Atlantis may exist only in the minds of believers, but you can learn about Atlantis' history here.