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Atlantis
Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained
COPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc.
Atlantis (/literature-and-arts/classical-literature-mythology-and-folklore/folklore-
and-mythology/atlantis)
More than 2,500 years ago, a legend rst began to spread about a society of the
past that enjoyed an abundance of natural resources, great military power,
splendid building and engineering feats, and intellectual achievements far
advanced over those of other lands. Called Atlantis, it was described as a
continent-sized area with rich soil, plentiful pure water, abundant vegetation and
animals, natural hot springs for health and vigor, and such mineral wealth that gold
was inlaid in buildings and was among the precious metals and stones worn as
jewelry. Slaves performed manual labor, allowing a large elite to pursue
knowledge, enjoy sporting events, and continually improve upon 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 and technological
feats that enhance its legendary status in the popular imagination. In 1882,
Ignatius Donnelly (1832–1901) published Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, arguing

that all civilization is an inheritance from Atlantis. Listing numerous parallels
between ancient cultures spaced far away from each other, Donnelly argued that
their commonness resulted from contact with Atlanteans.
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19/11/2017 Atlantis facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Atlantis
Similarities do indeed exist among various ancient cultures, as do signi cant

differences. Flood myths and sun worship, for example, might be based on a
shared teaching, or they might be separate reactions to bene cient and
destructive elements of nature. Pyramids were built in Egypt
(/places/africa/egyptian-political-geography/egypt) and the Americas, but they are
also signi cantly 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, the
walls reached a certain level upon which a platform was built and often a temple
erected. If Atlantis did indeed fall somewhere between 8500 and 9500 b.c.e.,
what accounts for the long time lag until the pyramids were erected in Egypt
(generally dated around 2500 b.c.e.) and North America (/places/oceans-
continents-and-polar-regions/oceans-and-continents/north-america) (generally
dated after 200 c.e.)?
Since the 1800s, Atlanteans have been credited for having had the technology to
generate electricity, build ying machines, and harness nuclear power for energy
and war-fare—all developed more than 9,000 years before such things came into
being in modern society. Other claims have Atlanteans knowledgeable about a
formidable death ray, secrets for levitation, and pure forms of energy through
crystals. Many Atlantis enthusiasts rmly believe that the inhabitants of the lost
continent had cosmic connections with extraterrestrials and may actually have
been a colony established on Earth (/earth-and-environment/geology-and-
oceanography/geology-and-oceanography/earth) by alien explorers.
Since Atlantis was rst described, claims have been made that certain members of
the civilization escaped destruction during its catastrophic nal days and

managed to impart their knowledge to other peoples of the world, helping civilize
primitive societies, passing on the secret of written language, and supervising
construction of some of the world's most mysterious structures of the ancient
world. The pyramids of Egypt and the Americas, the Sphinx in Egypt, and the
megaliths of western Europe (/places/oceans-continents-and-polar-

regions/oceans-and-continents/europe) are among the structures attributed to
the genius of Atlanteans.
According to most accounts, Atlantis was suddenly destroyed by a cataclysm of

earthquakes and oods and swallowed up by the sea. No de nitive remnants have
ever been found, and the exact location of the "lost continent" remains debatable.
The idea of Atlantis was rst expressed in the works of Plato (/people/philosophy-
and-religion/philosophy-biographies/plato) (c. 428–348 or 347 b.c.e.), the Greek
philosopher, who stressed that a perfect world exists in Ideas. For example, a shoe,
according to Plato, exists as an idea before a craftsperson makes the material
object identi ed as a shoe. The material world, then, is a re ection of ideas, never
quite reaching the perfection of ideas, 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 was imperfect in the world around him, he labeled the story of
Atlantis "literally true"—a signi cant declaration. For Plato was suspicious of
ction and art. If ideas are the primary reality, and the material world is a
re ection of ideas, then art, as a re ection of the material world, is twice removed
from reality, according to Plato. His claim that the Atlantis story is literally true
helps sustain the continuing legend of Atlantis. It remains a legend, or an Idea,
however, until some material proof shows that Atlantis existed in the material
world. Aristotle (/people/philosophy-and-religion/philosophy-
biographies/aristotle) (384–322 b.c.e.), another of the great Greek philosophers,
viewed the Atlantis legend as ction.

Plato's writings comprise several letters and 25 dialogues. His views and those of
his mentor, Socrates (/people/philosophy-and-religion/philosophy-
biographies/socrates) (c. 470–399 b.c.e.), were presented as dramatic
conversations exploring such topics as truth, the origin of the world 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 the island continent and how Atlanteans
conquered all the known world except for the Athenians (Plato was an Athenian).
Critias, named after the primary speaker in the dialogue, Plato's great-grandfather,
presents a history of Atlantean civilization and describes the ideal society that
ourished there. Critias notes that the stories were originally passed on by an
ancestor, Solon (638–558 b.c.e.), a politician and poet who traveled widely. 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 (/places/africa/african-physical-geography/nile) delta, that
there was once a land even older in history than Egypt, which the Greeks
acknowledged as being centuries older than their own society. The priests
described a large island continent called Atlantis that prospered some 8,000
years earlier, which dates Atlantis before 8500 b.c.e. The continent was located
beyond "the Pillars of Hercules," the Greek term for the rocks that form the Straits
of Gibraltar, the westernmost point of the Mediterranean Ocean. Beyond the
straits is the Atlantic Ocean (/places/oceans-continents-and-polar-
regions/oceans-and-continents/atlantic-ocean).
There were several cities on the continent. The primary city, also called Atlantis,
was located in the center of a series of concentric rings that alternated between
rings of water and land. The water rings served as canals for trade and helped
form a series of natural defenses that made an invasion of Atlantis extremely
dif cult.

The city of Atlantis, in the innermost circle, had palaces and temples where wise
and powerful rulers lived. The ruling coalition descended from Poseidon
(/philosophy-and-religion/ancient-religions/ancient-religion/poseidon), the Greek
god of the sea. Poseidon and Clieto had ve sets of twin sons, according to Greek
mythology, each of which was given a region of Atlantis. Atlas, the rstborn son,
was given the largest province, which became the city of Atlantis, a name that
derives from Atlas. The nest structure on the island, the Temple of Poseidon,
honored the god and served as the home of the primary 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 land bountiful, beautiful, and
powerful. In addition to magni cent architectural structures, a network of bridges
and tunnels 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 irrigation systems ensured great
harvests.
In Plato's account, the people of Atlantis eventually became corrupt and greedy,
putting sel sh pursuits above the greater good. They began invading other lands
with the idea of world domination. Angered by these developments, Poseidon set
about destroying the civilization, battering the continent with earthquakes and
oods until Atlantis was swallowed up by the ocean.
That description of the destruction of Atlantis has been linked by some to other
cataclysmic events—stories of a great deluge in the Bible (/philosophy-and-
religion/bible/bible-general/bible), the Epic of Gilgamesh, and ood myths in
other societies. Some contend that the end of the Ice Age between 12,000 and
10,000 b.c.e. likely resulted in rises of water levels in various parts of the world
and that earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and climate changes, either incidental or
associated with the Ice Age, occurred during the time identi ed with the
destruction of Atlantis.
The location of Atlantis has been claimed on each of the seven continents, and in
several spots in the world's oceans and seas. Additionally, many of the ancient
world's wonders have been attributed to Atlanteans who, presumably, escaped
the destruction of their homeland and spread their advanced engineering skills
elsewhere.
The text of Plato's dialogue suggests the Atlantic Ocean "beyond the pillars of
Hercules" as the location of Atlantis. As late as the twentieth century, a belief
persisted that a landbridge once existed in the ocean and ran between Europe and
Africa and North and South America (/places/oceans-continents-and-polar-
regions/oceans-and-continents/south-america). Such a land-link concept helps
explain similarities in ora and fauna existing on continents spread thousands of
miles apart. The mid-Atlantic ridge, a series of undersea mountains, has been
presented as a remnant of the land bridge, or as the remains of Atlantis.
Jacques Collina-Girard of the University of the Mediterranean in Aix-en-

Provence had been studying patterns of human migration from Europe into North
Africa at the height of the last Ice Age, 19,000 years ago, when his reconstruction
of the area revealed an ancient archipelago with an island at the spot where Plato
wrote Atlantis existed. The island was named Spartel, and it lay in front of the
Pillars of Hercules to the west of the Strait of Gibraltar at a time when the sea
level was 130 meters lower than it is today. According to Collina-Girard (New
Scientist, September 2001), the slow rise of post-glacial sea levels would gradually
have engulfed 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 a viable theory, there is as yet no evidence discovered to
prove that a continent existed in the mid-Atlantic Ocean. The shallow waters
around the northwest coast of Africa and extending to the Canary Islands is an
area that may have been above the ocean at one time and has been suggested as a
location for Atlantis, but no physical remains of human habitation have been
located there.
Alan F. Alford, a leading authority on ancient mythology, spent ve years

investigating Plato's account of Atlantis, and, in December 2001, announced his
conclusion that the myth of the lost continent took place only in Plato's mind. In
Alford's theory, the Greek philosopher invented Atlantis as a metaphor for the
ancient version of the contemporary "Big Bang Theory." Atlantis, as a symbol for a
lost paradise, represented a kind of 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 believe in the physical reality of Atlantis. The Atlantic Ocean
location for the lost continent received renewed attention in the late 1960s,
speci cally the region near Bimini Island in the Bahamas, an island chain off the
coast of the United States (/places/united-states-and-canada/us-political-
geography/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 same point in time as
prophesied by Edgar Cayce (1877–1945), a psychic, whose "life readings" for
clients revealed that many of their present-life psychological traumas were being
caused by a terrible incident that the sufferer had experienced in a past life. Many
of the presentlife traumas of his clients, according to Cayce, 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, x-ray, anti-gravity 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 ve islands; another occurred in

28,000 b.c.e.; and the third, the one described by Plato, occurred around 10,000
b.c.e. Cayce claimed that he had been an Atlantean priest from around 10,500
b.c.e. who had foreseen the coming destruction and sent some of 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. In 1967, two pilots photographed a rectangular
structure in the ocean off the coast of Andros, the largest island of the Bahamas.
Another con guration of stone, in the shape of a "J," was found by divers off the
island of Bimini. The J-shaped formation was believed to be a road of stone.
Extensive diving expeditions became common in the area, and some divers
claimed to have seen remnants of temples, pillars, and pyramids. However, none
were documented by extensive excavations.
The J-shaped structure became popularly known as the Bimini Road and was a
cause of celebration among enthusiasts of Atlantis and Cayce. Geological tests,
however, show that the J shape is actually a limestone beachrock. Fractures in the
formation give it the appearance of a construction of blocks, but the entire
formation shows the same grains and microstructure—a quality dif cult to
replicate in a series of blocks. Radiocarbon testing of shells in the stone show that
the formation is relatively young—about two or three thousand years old, some
9,000 years younger than the alleged nal destruction of Atlantis. Finally, the
curve of the J parallels the beachline of the nearby island, showing it has been
shaped by the same currents affecting the island.
The rectangular structure off the coast of Andros, on the other hand, was indeed
manmade—it was a storage facility built in the 1930s where sponges could be
deposited after they were collected in the surrounding ocean. Despite these
explanations, enthusiasm over the Bahama site continues among believers.
Another theory suggests that Antarctica (/places/oceans-continents-and-polar-

regions/antarctic-physical-geography/antarctica) was once located in the mid-
Atlantic and had a more temperate climate where a civilization once thrived.
Antarctica, thus, has been claimed as the site of Atlantis and of a similar type of
advanced civilization.
The question of where Atlantis was located still persists. Among the many
possible sites for Atlantis on the seven continents or under the seas, two popular
locations are based on areas that, like Atlantic Ocean regions "beyond the pillars
of Hercules," can be related to Plato's time. One site is the island of Crete, where
the thriving Minoan civilization fell into disarray around 1400 b.c.e. The other site
is in present-day Turkey (/places/asia/turkey-political-geography/turkey-republic),
known in ancient times as Anatolia, where associations with Atlas and his
descendants were strong.
Little was known about Minoan culture before the discovery in 1900 of a great
palace at Knossos on the island of Crete by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur
Evans (1851–1941). He named the culture that created Knossos and thrived on
Crete "Minoan civilization" after Minos, the legendary king of Crete. The palace at
Knossos was probably damaged by an earthquake about 1700 b.c.e., a date that
marked the end of one phase 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, quali es 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 to Solon.
Archaeological excavations early in the twentieth century unearthed remarkable

artifacts of Minoan civilization. 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, a nearby
island. The eruption was reported in ancient histories. The explosion would have
created

havoc on Crete and perhaps a tidal wave that swept over the island. To
illustrate that possibility, Marinatos likened the Thera explosion to the 1886
eruption of Mt. Krakatoa that could be heard a thousand miles away and created
tidal waves that killed 36,000 people. The volcanic ash on Crete helped preserve
excellent artifacts of Minoan civilization, including whole streets and houses as
well as frescoes and pottery.
However, while Plato's text cites earth (/earth-and-environment/geology-and-

oceanography/geology-and-oceanography/earth)-quakes and oods as having
destroyed Atlantis, there is no mention of a volcano. The date of the Thera
volcano, around 1500 b.c.e., does not match the period of the downfall of Atlantis,
which Egyptian priests told Solon had occurred 8,000 to 9,000 years earlier. The
1500 b.c.e. date does coincide if the claim of 8,000 years is reduced to 800 years.
That tactic was suggested by Greek geologist Angelo Gelanpoulous in 1969: he
theorized that all dates and measurements related by Solon were exaggerated
and were actually one-tenth as large as claimed. Gelanpoulous' theory provided
some neat correlations, but they work only in a few circumstances.
Another problem with identifying the fall of Atlantis with the destruction of
Minoan civilization is an inexact correlation between the eruption of Thera and
the demise of ancient Crete, where Minoan civilization continued on for another
century after the volcanic eruption. In fact, during twentieth-century excavations,
some volcanic ash was found beneath an elaborate palace, showing that
construction soon continued after the 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 Agean area and traded extensively with Egypt. The
subsequent destruction of Knossos and the collapse of Minoan culture coincided
with the beginning of the most ourishing period of Mycenae civilization in
Greece (/places/spain-portugal-italy-greece-and-balkans/greek-political-
geography/greece); this coincidence suggests that it may have been the warlike

Mycenae who attacked and destroyed Minoan civilization.
Lydia, an ancient country of Asia Minor (/places/asia/turkey-physical-

geography/asia-minor) (now Turkey), was located in the valleys of the Hermus and
Cayster rivers (now the Gediz and Büyükmenderes rivers). Known earlier by the
name Maeonia, it had fertile soil, rich deposits of gold and silver, and a magni cent
capital, Sardis. Lydia prospered as a powerful dynasty beginning about 685 b.c.e.
During the sixth century b.c.e., Lydia attained its greatest splendor under the rule
of King Croessus. The empire ended when the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great (c.
585–c. 529 b.c.e.) captured Sardis about 546 b.c.e. After the defeat of Persia
(/history/asia-and-africa/ancient-history-middle-east/persia) by Alexander III (c.
356–323 b.c.e.), king of Macedonia (/places/spain-portugal-italy-greece-and-
balkans/former-yugoslavian-political-geography/macedonia), Lydia was brought
under Greco-Macedonian control, and then in 133 b.c.e. it became part of the
Roman province of Asia (/places/oceans-continents-and-polar-regions/oceans-
and-continents/asia).
Lydia was across the Agean Sea from Greece. A legendary king of Lydia was
named Tantalis: his name sounds similar to Atlantis, and he shared many mythic
attributes among Lydians that the god Atlas had among Greeks. Like Atlas,
Tantalis was a leader of the Titans, the group of gods who were overthrown by
Zeus (/philosophy-and-religion/ancient-religions/ancient-religion/zeus). 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 that includes Turkey).
According to that myth, Tantalis ruled over a fabulously wealthy city he founded
on Mt. Sipylus in Lydia. His city was shattered by earthquake and ood and was
reputed to have sunk when he lost the favor of the Olympian gods.
During the 1990s ruins were found on the northern slope of Mt. Sipylus. The area
had undergone several phases of change through the centuries. Among the ruins
was a statue of the goddess Cybele that was dated around 1400 b.c.e., a time
when the Hittite rule over the area was overthrown by locals af liated with the
Mycenae civilization of Greece. The area of Tantalis had been conquered, and
perhaps razed. Or, it subsequently was buried during an earthquake, and
eventually submerged by a lake. The area is in a major fault zone, and heavy
earthquake damage to the cities of Lydia was documented in 17 c.e. Among the
hardest hit of twelve ancient Lydian cities was Magnesia at Sipylus, in the region
where Tantalis was located.
Lake Saloe in Turkey has long been identi ed with the lost city of Tantalis. The lake
was pumped out in modern times to provide more land for farming. It is now a
fertile plain with nearby rivers. An old caravan route was found, certainly not a
remnant of a mighty empire, but the tantalizing prospect that Tantalis was Atlantis
remains.
Enthusiasts of the lost continent were tantalized once again in December 2001
when explorers using a miniature submarine to probe the sea oor off the coast of
Cuba (/places/latin-america-and-caribbean/cuban-political-geography/cuba)
announced their discovery of stone structures deep beneath the ocean surface
that were suggestive of ruins left by an unknown human civilization thousands of
years ago. Representatives of the Canadian-based Advanced Digital
Communications, together with experts from the Cuban Academy of Sciences,
said that the structures were discovered at a depth of around 2,100 feet and were
distributed as if remnants of an urban area. Estimates of the ancient city under
the sea were somewhere in the vicinity of 6,000 years, thereby making them
about 1,500 years earlier than the great Giza pyramids of Egypt. Whether this
new intriguing site proves to be Atlantis or evidence of a land bridge that once
linked Cuba to mainland Latin America (/places/latin-america-and-
caribbean/south-american-political-geography/latin-america), it is certain to be
controversial.

Delving Deeper
Cawthorne, 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 (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp? id'ns99991320).
Donnelly, Ignatius. Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. 1882. evised Edition. Ed. by
Egerton Sykes. New York (/places/united-states-and-canada/us-political-
geography/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 (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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19/11/2017 Atlantis facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.

com articles about Atlantis

Select Source: Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained ▾

Similarities do indeed exist among various ancient cultures, as do signi cant

megaliths of western Europe (/places/oceans-continents-and-polar-

According to most accounts, Atlantis was suddenly destroyed by a cataclysm of

composition, the purpose of humankind, and what an individual should choose as

Jacques Collina-Girard of the University of the Mediterranean in Aix-en-

Alan F. Alford, a leading authority on ancient mythology, spent ve years

The discouraging theories of the skeptical do little to diminish the enthusiasm of

Cayce helped popularize a modernized view of Atlantis as a superior civilization

Another theory suggests that Antarctica (/places/oceans-continents-and-polar-

Archaeological excavations early in the twentieth century unearthed remarkable

However, while Plato's text cites earth (/earth-and-environment/geology-and-

Lydia, an ancient country of Asia Minor (/places/asia/turkey-physical-

Cawthorne, Andrew. "Explorers View 'Lost City' Ruins under Caribbean."

Learn more about citation styles 

© 2016 Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved.

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