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Atlantis

Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained | 2003 | Copyright

AtlantisMore than 2,500 years ago, a legend first began to spread about a society ofthe past that enjoyed an abundance of natural resources, great militarypower, splendid building and engineering feats, and intellectual achievementsfar advanced over those of other lands. Called Atlantis, it was described as acontinentsized area with rich soil, plentiful pure water, abundant vegetationand animals, natural hot springs for health and vigor, and such mineralwealth that gold was inlaid in buildings and was among the precious metalsand stones worn as jewelry. Slaves performed manual labor, allowing a largeelite to pursue knowledge, enjoy sporting events, and continually improveupon an already thriving society.

In the ensuing centuries, no conclusive evidence of Atlantis has been found,but its attributes have expanded to include additional engineering andtechnological feats that enhance its legendary status in the popularimagination. In 1882, Ignatius Donnelly (1832–1901) published Atlantis: TheAntediluvian World, arguing that all civilization is an inheritance fromAtlantis. Listing numerous parallels between ancient cultures spaced faraway from each other, Donnelly argued that their commonness resulted fromcontact with Atlanteans.

Similarities do indeed exist among various ancient cultures, as do significantdifferences. Flood myths and sun worship, for example, might be based on ashared teaching, or they might be separate reactions to beneficient and destructive elements of nature.Pyramids were built in Egypt and the Americas, but they are also significantly different in their structures.The walls of pyramids in the Americas did not converge to form a true point, as they did in Egypt; rather, thewalls reached a certain level upon which a platform was built and often a temple erected. If Atlantis didindeed fall somewhere between 8500 and 9500 b.c.e., what accounts for the long time lag until the pyramidswere erected in Egypt (generally dated around 2500 b.c.e.) and North America (generally dated after 200c.e.)?

Since the 1800s, Atlanteans have been credited for having had the technology to generate electricity, buildflying machines, and harness nuclear power for energy and warfare—all developed more than 9,000 yearsbefore such things came into being in modern society. Other claims have Atlanteans knowledgeable about aformidable death ray, secrets for levitation, and pure forms of energy through crystals. Many Atlantisenthusiasts firmly believe that the inhabitants of the lost continent had cosmic connections withextraterrestrials and may actually have been a colony established on Earth by alien explorers.

Since Atlantis was first described, claims have been made that certain members of the civilization escapeddestruction during its catastrophic final days and managed to impart their knowledge to other peoples of theworld, helping civilize primitive societies, passing on the secret of written language, and supervisingconstruction of some of the world's most mysterious structures of the ancient world. The pyramids of Egyptand the Americas, the Sphinx in Egypt, and the megaliths of western Europe are among the structuresattributed to the genius of Atlanteans.

According to most accounts, Atlantis was suddenly destroyed by a cataclysm of earthquakes and floodsand swallowed up by the sea. No definitive remnants have ever been found, and the exact location of the"lost continent" remains debatable. The idea of Atlantis was first expressed in the works of Plato (c.428–348 or 347 b.c.e.), the Greek philosopher, who stressed that a perfect world exists in Ideas. Forexample, a shoe, according to Plato, exists as an idea before a craftsperson makes the material objectidentified as a shoe. The material world, then, is a reflection of ideas, never quite reaching the perfection ofideas, but which serve as models for which the adepts might strive.

While Plato used the model of Atlantis to represent a world of perfect order in contrast to all that wasimperfect in the world around him, he labeled the story of Atlantis "literally true"—a significant declaration.For Plato was suspicious of fiction and art. If ideas are the primary reality, and the material world is areflection of ideas, then art, as a reflection of the material world, is twice removed from reality, according toPlato. His claim that the Atlantis story is literally true helps sustain the continuing legend of Atlantis. Itremains a legend, or an Idea, however, until some material proof shows that Atlantis existed in the materialworld. Aristotle (384–322 b.c.e.), another of the great Greek philosophers, viewed the Atlantis legend asfiction.

Plato's writings comprise several letters and 25 dialogues. His views and those of his mentor, Socrates (c.470–399 b.c.e.), were presented as dramatic conversations exploring such topics as truth, the origin of theworld and its composition, the purpose of humankind, and what an individual should choose as an aim of life.Atlantis is discussed in two of Plato's dialogues, Timaeus and Critias. Timaeus provides a description of theisland continent and how Atlanteans conquered all the known world except for the Athenians (Plato was anAthenian). Critias, named after the primary speaker in the dialogue, Plato's greatgrandfather, presents ahistory of Atlantean civilization and describes the ideal society that flourished there. Critias notes that thestories were originally passed on by an ancestor, Solon (638–558 b.c.e.), a politician and poet who traveledwidely. Critias and Solon were both ancestors of Plato.

Solon, as the story goes, was informed by Egyptian priests in the city of Sais, located in the Nile delta, thatthere was once a land even older in history than Egypt, which the Greeks acknowledged as being centuriesolder than their own society. The priests described a large island continent called Atlantis that prosperedsome 8,000 years earlier, which dates Atlantis before 8500 b.c.e. The continent was located beyond "thePillars of Hercules," the Greek term for the rocks that form the Straits of Gibraltar, the westernmost point ofthe Mediterranean Ocean. Beyond the straits is the Atlantic Ocean.

There were several cities on the continent. The primary city, also called Atlantis, was located in the center ofa series of concentric rings that alternated between rings of water and land. The water rings served as

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canals for trade and helped form a series of natural defenses that made an invasion of Atlantis extremelydifficult.

The city of Atlantis, in the innermost circle, had palaces and temples where wise and powerful rulers lived.The ruling coalition descended from Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. Poseidon and Clieto had five setsof twin sons, according to Greek mythology, each of which was given a region of Atlantis. Atlas, the firstbornson, was given the largest province, which became the city of Atlantis, a name that derives from Atlas. Thefinest structure on the island, the Temple of Poseidon, honored the god and served as the home of theprimary ruler.

Atlantis had a powerful army of professional soldiers, as did each of the other nine regions of the continent.The culture of Atlantis promoted learning, through which advances in engineering and science made the landbountiful, beautiful, and powerful. In addition to magnificent architectural structures, a network of bridges andtunnels linked the rings of land, and clever uses of natural resources provided security and abundance.Many groves provided solitude and beauty, racetracks were used for athletic competitions, and irrigationsystems ensured great harvests.

In Plato's account, the people of Atlantis eventually became corrupt and greedy, putting selfish pursuitsabove the greater good. They began invading other lands with the idea of world domination. Angered bythese developments, Poseidon set about destroying the civilization, battering the continent with earthquakesand floods until Atlantis was swallowed up by the ocean.

That description of the destruction of Atlantis has been linked by some to other cataclysmic events—storiesof a great deluge in the Bible, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and flood myths in other societies. Some contend thatthe end of the Ice Age between 12,000 and 10,000 b.c.e. likely resulted in rises of water levels in variousparts of the world and that earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and climate changes, either incidental orassociated with the Ice Age, occurred during the time identified with the destruction of Atlantis.

The location of Atlantis has been claimed on each of the seven continents, and in several spots in theworld's oceans and seas. Additionally, many of the ancient world's wonders have been attributed toAtlanteans who, presumably, escaped the destruction of their homeland and spread their advancedengineering skills elsewhere.

The text of Plato's dialogue suggests the Atlantic Ocean "beyond the pillars of Hercules" as the location ofAtlantis. As late as the twentieth century, a belief persisted that a landbridge once existed in the ocean andran between Europe and Africa and North and South America. Such a landlink concept helps explainsimilarities in flora and fauna existing on continents spread thousands of miles apart. The midAtlantic ridge,a series of undersea mountains, has been presented as a remnant of the land bridge, or as the remains ofAtlantis.

Jacques CollinaGirard of the University of the Mediterranean in AixenProvence had been studying patternsof human migration from Europe into North Africa at the height of the last Ice Age, 19,000 years ago, whenhis reconstruction of the area revealed an ancient archipelago with an island at the spot where Plato wroteAtlantis existed. The island was named Spartel, and it lay in front of the Pillars of Hercules to the west of theStrait of Gibraltar at a time when the sea level was 130 meters lower than it is today. According to CollinaGirard (New Scientist, September 2001), the slow rise of postglacial sea levels would gradually haveengulfed the island and the archipelago 9,000 years before Plato.

While the concept of an island being swallowed by the sea in the area before the Pillars of Hercules seems aviable theory, there is as yet no evidence discovered to prove that a continent existed in the midAtlanticOcean. The shallow waters around the northwest coast of Africa and extending to the Canary Islands is anarea that may have been above the ocean at one time and has been suggested as a location for Atlantis, butno physical remains of human habitation have been located there.

Alan F. Alford, a leading authority on ancient mythology, spent five years investigating Plato's account ofAtlantis, and, in December 2001, announced his conclusion that the myth of the lost continent took placeonly in Plato's mind. In Alford's theory, the Greek philosopher invented Atlantis as a metaphor for the ancientversion of the contemporary "Big Bang Theory." Atlantis, as a symbol for a lost paradise, represented a kindof cataclysm of all cataclysms that brought about the beginning of all time.

The discouraging theories of the skeptical do little to diminish the enthusiasm of those who earnestly believein the physical reality of Atlantis. The Atlantic Ocean location for the lost continent received renewedattention in the late 1960s, specifically the region near Bimini Island in the Bahamas, an island chain off thecoast of the United States. Fueling the excitement over what appeared to be discoveries of actual roadways,walls, and buildings under the water was the fact that they were found in the exact location and at the samepoint in time as prophesied by Edgar Cayce (1877–1945), a psychic, whose "life readings" for clientsrevealed that many of their presentlife psychological traumas were being caused by a terrible incident thatthe sufferer had experienced in a past life. Many of the presentlife traumas of his clients, according toCayce, were due to the sufferings they had experienced as people who lived in Atlantis in a previous life.

Cayce helped popularize a modernized view of Atlantis as a superior civilization that had developed planes,submarines, xray, antigravity devices, crystals that harness energy from the sun, and powerful explosives.He theorized that an explosion in 50,000 b.c.e. blew Atlantis up into five islands; another occurred in 28,000b.c.e.; and the third, the one described by Plato, occurred around 10,000 b.c.e. Cayce claimed that he hadbeen an Atlantean priest from around 10,500 b.c.e. who had foreseen the coming destruction and sent someof his followers to Egypt. Those followers directed the building of the Sphinx and the pyramids.

In 1940 Cayce predicted that remnants of Atlantis would rise again near the Bahamas in the late 1960s. In1967, two pilots photographed a rectangular structure in the ocean off the coast of Andros, the largest islandof the Bahamas. Another configuration of stone, in the shape of a "J," was found by divers off the island ofBimini. The Jshaped formation was believed to be a road of stone. Extensive diving expeditions becamecommon in the area, and some divers claimed to have seen remnants of temples, pillars, and pyramids.However, none were documented by extensive excavations.

The Jshaped structure became popularly known as the Bimini Road and was a cause of celebration amongenthusiasts of Atlantis and Cayce. Geological tests, however, show that the J shape is actually a limestonebeachrock. Fractures in the formation give it the appearance of a construction of blocks, but the entireformation shows the same grains and microstructure—a quality difficult to replicate in a series of blocks.Radiocarbon testing of shells in the stone show that the formation is relatively young—about two or threethousand years old, some 9,000 years younger than the alleged final destruction of Atlantis. Finally, thecurve of the J parallels the beachline of the nearby island, showing it has been shaped by the same currentsaffecting the island.

The rectangular structure off the coast of Andros, on the other hand, was indeed manmade—it was a storagefacility built in the 1930s where sponges could be deposited after they were collected in the surroundingocean. Despite these explanations, enthusiasm over the Bahama site continues among believers.

Another theory suggests that Antarctica was once located in the midAtlantic and had a more temperateclimate where a civilization once thrived. Antarctica, thus, has been claimed as the site of Atlantis and of asimilar type of advanced civilization.

The question of where Atlantis was located still persists. Among the many possible sites for Atlantis on theseven continents or under the seas, two popular locations are based on areas that, like Atlantic Oceanregions "beyond the pillars of Hercules," can be related to Plato's time. One site is the island of Crete, wherethe thriving Minoan civilization fell into disarray around 1400 b.c.e. The other site is in presentday Turkey,known in ancient times as Anatolia, where associations with Atlas and his descendants were strong.

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Little was known about Minoan culture before the discovery in 1900 of a great palace at Knossos on theisland of Crete by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans (1851–1941). He named the culture that createdKnossos and thrived on Crete "Minoan civilization" after Minos, the legendary king of Crete. The palace atKnossos was probably damaged by an earthquake about 1700 b.c.e., a date that marked the end of onephase of the early history of Crete. Minoan civilization had regular contact and trade with ancient Egypt,which lies southeast, across the Mediterranean, from Crete. Crete, then, qualifies as a land far to the west(in those days) of Egypt where Atlantis was said to be by the Egyptian priests who spoke of the continent toSolon.

Archaeological excavations early in the twentieth century unearthed remarkable artifacts of Minoancivilization. Then, in 1939, Greek archaeologist Sypridon Marinatos (1901–1974) discovered pumice,volcanic ash, on Crete. Marinatos connected the ash to the tremendous eruption of a volcano on Thera, anearby island. The eruption was reported in ancient histories. The explosion would have created havoc onCrete and perhaps a tidal wave that swept over the island. To illustrate that possibility, Marinatos likened theThera explosion to the 1886 eruption of Mt. Krakatoa that could be heard a thousand miles away and createdtidal waves that killed 36,000 people. The volcanic ash on Crete helped preserve excellent artifacts ofMinoan civilization, including whole streets and houses as well as frescoes and pottery.

However, while Plato's text cites earthquakes and floods as having destroyed Atlantis, there is no mentionof a volcano. The date of the Thera volcano, around 1500 b.c.e., does not match the period of the downfallof Atlantis, which Egyptian priests told Solon had occurred 8,000 to 9,000 years earlier. The 1500 b.c.e. datedoes coincide if the claim of 8,000 years is reduced to 800 years. That tactic was suggested by Greekgeologist Angelo Gelanpoulous in 1969: he theorized that all dates and measurements related by Solon wereexaggerated and were actually onetenth as large as claimed. Gelanpoulous' theory provided some neatcorrelations, but they work only in a few circumstances.

Another problem with identifying the fall of Atlantis with the destruction of Minoan civilization is an inexactcorrelation between the eruption of Thera and the demise of ancient Crete, where Minoan civilizationcontinued on for another century after the volcanic eruption. In fact, during twentiethcentury excavations,some volcanic ash was found beneath an elaborate palace, showing that construction soon continued afterthe eruption. Furthermore, there was no apparent disruption in trade between the Minoans and Egyptians.The volcanic eruption caused havoc on Crete, but it did not destroy Minoan civilization.

The kings of Knossos attained their greatest power about 1600 b.c.e., when they controlled the entire Ageanarea and traded extensively with Egypt. The subsequent destruction of Knossos and the collapse of Minoanculture coincided with the beginning of the most flourishing period of Mycenae civilization in Greece; thiscoincidence suggests that it may have been the warlike Mycenae who attacked and destroyed Minoancivilization.

Lydia, an ancient country of Asia Minor (now Turkey), was located in the valleys of the Hermus and Caysterrivers (now the Gediz and Büyükmenderes rivers). Known earlier by the name Maeonia, it had fertile soil,rich deposits of gold and silver, and a magnificent capital, Sardis. Lydia prospered as a powerful dynastybeginning about 685 b.c.e. During the sixth century b.c.e., Lydia attained its greatest splendor under the ruleof King Croessus. The empire ended when the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great (c. 585–c. 529 b.c.e.) capturedSardis about 546 b.c.e. After the defeat of Persia by Alexander III (c. 356–323 b.c.e.), king of Macedonia,Lydia was brought under GrecoMacedonian control, and then in 133 b.c.e. it became part of the Romanprovince of Asia.

Lydia was across the Agean Sea from Greece. A legendary king of Lydia was named Tantalis: his namesounds similar to Atlantis, and he shared many mythic attributes among Lydians that the god Atlas hadamong Greeks. Like Atlas, Tantalis was a leader of the Titans, the group of gods who were overthrown byZeus. In Greek mythology, Zeus punished Atlas by banishing him to the west and made to hold up the sky.A similar fate was shared by Tantalis in myths of Anatolia (an old name for the region in Asia Minor thatincludes Turkey).

According to that myth, Tantalis ruled over a fabulously wealthy city he founded on Mt. Sipylus in Lydia. Hiscity was shattered by earthquake and flood and was reputed to have sunk when he lost the favor of theOlympian gods.

During the 1990s ruins were found on the northern slope of Mt. Sipylus. The area had undergone severalphases of change through the centuries. Among the ruins was a statue of the goddess Cybele that wasdated around 1400 b.c.e., a time when the Hittite rule over the area was overthrown by locals affiliated withthe Mycenae civilization of Greece. The area of Tantalis had been conquered, and perhaps razed. Or, itsubsequently was buried during an earthquake, and eventually submerged by a lake. The area is in a majorfault zone, and heavy earthquake damage to the cities of Lydia was documented in 17 c.e. Among thehardest hit of twelve ancient Lydian cities was Magnesia at Sipylus, in the region where Tantalis waslocated.

Lake Saloe in Turkey has long been identified with the lost city of Tantalis. The lake was pumped out inmodern times to provide more land for farming. It is now a fertile plain with nearby rivers. An old caravanroute was found, certainly not a remnant of a mighty empire, but the tantalizing prospect that Tantalis wasAtlantis remains.

Enthusiasts of the lost continent were tantalized once again in December 2001 when explorers using aminiature submarine to probe the sea floor off the coast of Cuba announced their discovery of stonestructures deep beneath the ocean surface that were suggestive of ruins left by an unknown humancivilization thousands of years ago. Representatives of the Canadianbased Advanced DigitalCommunications, together with experts from the Cuban Academy of Sciences, said that the structures werediscovered at a depth of around 2,100 feet and were distributed as if remnants of an urban area. Estimatesof the ancient city under the sea were somewhere in the vicinity of 6,000 years, thereby making them about1,500 years earlier than the great Giza pyramids of Egypt. Whether this new intriguing site proves to beAtlantis or evidence of a land bridge that once linked Cuba to mainland Latin America, it is certain to becontroversial.

Delving DeeperCawthorne, Andrew. "Explorers View 'Lost City' Ruins under Caribbean." abcNews.com, December 6, 2001.[Online] http://abcnews.go.com/wire/SciTech/reuters20011206_346.html.

Copley, Jan. "Sea Level Study Reveals Atlantis Candidate." New Scientist, September 19, 2001. [Online]http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp? id'ns99991320.

Donnelly, Ignatius. Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. 1882. evised Edition. Ed. by Egerton Sykes. New York:Harper & Row, 1949.

Harpur, James, and Jennifer Westwood. The Atlas of Legendary Places. New York: Konecky & Konecky,1997.

Hill, Amelia. "Myth of Atlantis All Took Place in Plato's Mind." The Observer, December 16, 2001. [Online]http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story /0,6903,619567,00.html.

Muck, Otto. The Secrets of Atlantis. New York: Times Books, 1978.

Plato. The Timaeus and Kritias. Trans. by Desmond Lee. London: Penguin Books, 1977.

Spence, Lewis. The History of Atlantis. New York: University Books, 1968.

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