Atlantis

Atlantis (Greek: Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, "Island of Atlas") is the name of an island first mentioned and described by the classical Greek philosopher Plato in the dialogues Timaeus and Critias. In Plato's account, Atlantis, lying "beyond the pillars of Hercules", was a naval power which conquered many parts of western Europe and Africa 9000 years before Plato's own time—approximately 9400 B.C.E. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune." As a story embedded in Plato's dialogues, Atlantis is generally seen as a myth created by Plato to illustrate his political theories. Although the function of the story of Atlantis seems clear to most scholars, they dispute whether and how much Plato's account was inspired by older traditions. Some scholars argue Plato drew upon memories of past events such as the Thera eruption or the Trojan War, while others insist that he took inspiration of contemporary events like the destruction of Helike in 373 B.C.E. or the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 B.C.E.

The possible existence of a genuine Atlantis was actively discussed throughout the classical antiquity, but it was usually rejected and occasionally parodied. While basically unknown during the Middle Ages, the story of Atlantis was rediscovered by Humanists at the very beginning of modern times. Plato's description inspired the utopian works of several Renaissance writers, like Francis Bacon's "New Atlantis". To this day, Atlantis inspires today's literature, from science fiction to comic books and movies, its name having become a byword for any and all supposed prehistoric but advanced (and lost) civilisations.

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Athanasius Kircher's map of Atlantis, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. From Mundus Subterraneus 1669. The map is oriented with south at the top.

Plato's account

Plato's account of Atlantis is found in the dialogues Timaeus and Critias. These works, written in the year 360B.C.E., contain the earliest known references to Atlantis. The dialogue Critias was never completed by Plato for an unknown reason; 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 Hellenic civilisation during their conflict with the barbarians a subject of discussion in the Hermocrates. Plato introduced Atlantis in Timaeus:

Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valour. For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire... (from 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 B.C.E. 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 the priest was named Sonchis, but because of the temporal distance between Plutarch and the alleged event, this identification is unverified.

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 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 approximately 700 kilometres (435 mi) across, 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 600 km; 375 mi], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about 400 km; 250 mi]."

Fifty stadia inland from the coast was a "mountain not very high on any side." Here lived a native woman 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 inland 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, respectively.

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. On a side note, a new hypothesis states that this amount of time may have been "misinterpreted" by Solon. The Egyptians used a lunar calender based on months, and the Greeks a solar one based on years. It is therefore possible that the measure of time interpreted as 9,000 years may actually have been 9,000 months. This would place the destrucion of Atlantis within approximately 700 years beforehand, as there are 13 lunar months in a year. Returning to the story, 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. "But later there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea."

Receptions

Ancient

Detail of The School of Athens by Raphael, 1509, showing Plato (left) and Aristotle.

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

Many ancient philosophers viewed Atlantis as fiction, including (according to Strabo), Aristotle. However, in antiquity, there were 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 commentary 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. However, Plato did not write that Solon saw the Atlantis story on a column but on a source that can be "taken to hand". Proclus' proof appears 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 (Εὐσεβής, "Pious-town") and Machimos (Μάχιμος, "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 B.C.E., 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

A map showing a supposed location of Atlantis. From Ignatius L. Donnelly's Atlantis: the Antediluvian World, 1882.

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 19^th 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.

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Ignatius L. Donnelly, American congressman, and writer on Atlantis.

American psychic Edgar Cayce, 1910

The 1882 publication of Atlantis: the Antediluvian World by Ignatius L. 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 19^th 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, found by Dr.J Manson Valentine, was 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 B.C.E., 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. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/08/0819_040819_atlantis.html

The concept of Atlantis also attracted National Socialist (Nazi) theorists. 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 more widely accepted during the 1960s, most “Lost Continent” theories of Atlantis began to wane in popularity. 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.

Location hypotheses

Satellite image of the islands of Santorini. This location is one of many sites purported to have been the location of Atlantis.

Inside the Mediterranean

Since Donnelly's day, there have been dozens – perhaps hundreds – of locations proposed for Atlantis, to the point where the name has become a generic term rather than referring to one specific (possibly even genuine) location. This is reflected in the fact that many proposed sites are not within the Atlantic at all. Some are scholarly or archaeological hypotheses, while 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 has been proven conclusively to be a true 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.^{[citation needed]} The massive Thera eruption, dated either to the 17th or the 15th century B.C.E., caused a massive tsunami that experts hypothesise devastated the Minoan civilization on the nearby island of Crete, further leading some to believe that this may have been the catastrophe that inspired the story.

A. G. Galanopoulos argued that the time scale has been distorted by an error in translation, probably from Egyptian into Greek, which produced "thousands" instead of "hundreds"; this same error would rescale Plato's Kingdom of Atlantis to the size of Crete, while leaving the city the size of the crater on Thera. 900 years before Solon would be the 15th century B.C.E.

Outside the Mediterranean

Locations as wide-ranging as Andalusia, Antarctica, Indonesia, underneath the Bermuda Triangle, and the Caribbean have been proposed as the true site of Atlantis. 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. In Northern Europe, Sweden (by Olof Rudbeck in "Atland", 1672-1702), Ireland, and the North Sea have been proposed (the Swedish geographer Ulf Erlingsson combines the North Sea and Ireland in a comprehensive hypothesis).^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]} Even Cuba and the Bahamas have been suggested. Some believe that Atlantis stretched from the tip of Spain to Central America.^{[citation needed]} According to Ignatius L. Donnelly in his book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, there is a connection between Atlantis and Aztlan (the ancestral home of the Aztecs).^{[citation needed]} He claims that the Aztecs pointed east to the Caribbean as the former location of Aztlan. Some have considered the Philippines to be the possible site of Atlantis, and proposed that the islands were remnants of Atlantis's mountains.

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.^{[citation needed]} 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 even several Caribbean islands.^{[citation needed]} 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. Popular culture increasingly places Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean and perpetuates the original Platonic ideal.

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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.

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 1950's, 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.

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A 17th century artwork of researchers and scientists searching for Atlantis' location

In/Near the Mediterranean Sea

Hypothesized locations of Atlantis in the Mediterranean.

Many theories of Atlantis center around the Mediterranean. In part because of the Ancient Greek myth which is the first written record of Atlantis, but it was also a superhighway of transport in ancient times, allowing for trade and cultural exchange between emergent peoples of the region. The roots of Western civilization began in the Mesopotamia in nearby modern day Iraq. Some of the more popular theories include the Minoan civilization on Crete, the island of Sardinia as well as some other river valley civilizations.

Andalusia

Andalusia is a region in modern day southern Spain and host to the lost city of Tartessos, which disappeared in the 6th century B.C.E.. The Tartessians were traders and were known to the Ancient Greeks who knew of their legendary king Arganthonios. Some of the proponents of this theory suggest that the Atlanteans were the Sea Peoples who attacked the Eastern Mediterranean countries around 1200 B.C.E., or proto-tartessians atlantic peoples of the Bronze Age (1800-1300 B.C.E.). The Andalusian hypothesis was originally developed by the Spanish authors José Pellicer de Ossau i Tovar in 1673 and Juan Fernández Amador y de los Ríos in 1919, and afterwards by the German author Adolf Schulten in 1922, and further studied by Otto Jessen and Richard Hennig in the 1920's, and from 2000 is defended by Georgeos Diaz-Montexano. Satellite images of the area show two rectangular structures and concentric circles which have been hypothesized to be the "temple of Poseidon" and "the temple of Cleito and Poseidon". The original article by Rainer W. Kühne appeared in the "Journal of Antiquity". Geologists have shown that the Donana National Park experienced intense erosion around 600 B.C.E., where it became a marine environment (A. Rodriguez-Ramirez et al., Recent coastal evolution of the donana national park (SW Spain), in: Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol. 15 (1996) pp.803 -809). Due to alluvial sedimentation, the entire area has been above water again since the end of the Roman Empire. See these photos that appear in the Georgeos Diaz-Montexano's book and in the Atlantis Rising Forum.

The National Library of Norway and the Norwegian Institute of Palaeography and Historical Philology (PHI), assigned to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and to the University of Oslo, Norway, have decided to consider the hypothesis of Georgeos Díaz-Montexano, a Cuban investigator of Spanish origin on an epigraphical interpretation of one of the most ancient inscriptions of the world atal-tarte (atlas/atlantis-tartessos?)

Crete and Santorini

Among those who believe in an historical Atlantis, a common hypothesis 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. Skeptics of an Atlantic Ocean location usually promote this theory. Some consider this to be the likeliest hypothesis, though investigators (such as Frank Joseph) discount this theory as misleading. A main criticism of this hypothesis 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. Additionally, Pharaoh Amenhotep III commanded an emissary to visit the cities surrounding Crete and found the towns occupied shortly after the time Santorini was speculated to have completely destroyed the area.

Part of this hypothesis proposes, because Solon received his information from Egypt, that we assume that the Ancient Egyptian symbol for "hundred" was mistakenly read as "thousand". If this was possible, the translation would reduce the age and size of Atlantis by a factor of ten. This alteration would make Atlantis fit Minoan Crete well in size and age. Though, a translation error is believed by some to be unlikely because there is highly destinguishable variations in the visual appearance of hieroglyphic symbols of Egyptian numeric values.

Near Cape Spartel

Another recent hypothesis 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.

Near 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, CNN reports. The site lies 1,500 m deep in the Mediterranean Sea between Cyprus and Syria. Several geologists were quick to dispute the claim, as the place was deep under water during the period in question.

On August 4 2005, a research has been done by Robert Sarmast in the Eastern Mediterranean sea between Cyprus and Syria. The sonar scans showed evidence of man-made structures one mile below sea level which is possibly a canal wall. Sarmast claims it is a 3 km-long straight wall intersected at right angles by another wall. Nevertheless, in January 2007 Hi-Tech Expedition At "Cyprus Atlantis" Concluded: Alleged "Stone Walls and Manmade Structures" Are A Huge Mud Pile—But It's Still Atlantis (Or Maybe Eden). Here is a detailed description: http://www.mysterious-america.net/cyprus-atlantis2.html

Middle east

The Sinai peninsula and present day Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian territories

Jaime Manuschevich argues that the real place of the mythical civilization is the territory that today corresponds to Israel and Sinai, and that this region was an island in the Great Rift Valley, surrounded by the Jezreel Valley on the north, the Dead Sea and Red Sea on the east and the Gulf of Suez and the Mediterranean Sea on the west until 5600 B.C.E.. In addition, Manuschevich proposes that Atlantean civilization corresponds to the Natufian peoples, the first food-producing people, whose main political and harbor center was Jericho. This people lived in the region in the dates established by Plato (11,600 B.C.E.).^{[citation needed]}

Malta

Anton Mifsud who, with co-authors Simon Mifsud, Chris Agius Sultana and Charles Savona Ventura, published Malta: Echoes of Plato's Island added another recent hypothesis. Their book is the product of a research about the archeological sites and ancient remains in Malta 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 hypotheses on Atlantis, particularly that of Girogio Grongnet, the renowned Maltese architect, who in 1854 claimed that the Maltese Islands are the remnants of Atlantis.

In addition, a supplementary linguistic research by the newcomer Alberto Nikas would further enforce this claim SuperAtlantis According to Nikas, Malta, if translated to Etruscan it amounts to Atlas. Malta boasts the oldest free-standing human structures on earth, predating the pyramids by a millennium.^{[citation needed]} FORUM

Furthermore, Doctor Hubert Zeitlmair, President of the Foundation “The Research project MALTA” & his wife Dagmar, are one of the few individuals who can decipher and translate proto-Sanskrit at high level. Findings and results of their research as their unique discovery of the sunken temples of Ğebel Ğol-Bahar which has been considered to be of great archaeological importance have been published in international newspapers and magazines. Their recent findings in Malta include the discovery of primeval characters carved out on stone blocks and ancient stone slabs, and the writings seem to point in the direction of Atlantis.

Ponza

Ponza has many similarities to the Atlantis legend. Legend say that Ponza was the lost island of Tyrrhenia which was large and had a city at its edge. It was connected by land to the Italian mainland near Naples. 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.^{[citation needed]}

Sardinia

In 2002 the Italian journalist Sergio Frau published a book, Le colonne d'Ercole ("Pillars of Hercules"), in which he states that before Eratosthenes, all the ancient Greek writers located the Pillars of Hercules on the Strait of Sicily, while only Alexander the Great's conquest of the east obliged Eratosthenes to move the pillars at Gibraltar in his description of the world.

According to his thesis, the Atlantis described by Plato could be identified with Sardinia. In fact, a tsunami eradicated Sardinia which destroyed the enigmatic Nuragic civilization. The few survivors migrated to the nearby Italian peninsula, founding the Etruscan civilization, the basis for the later Roman civilization, while other survivors were part of those Sea Peoples that attacked Egypt.

In April 2005, the theories of the Sergio Frau were debated in a high-level conference organised by the UNESCO in Paris. At the same time, an exposition with the major findings of the theory "ATLANTIKA" and its evidence was on display in the UNESCO building to confirm that the organization's experts took the hypothesis quite seriously, and that this seems not to be "just another Atlantis theory".

Troy

The geoarchaeologist Eberhard Zangger has proposed the hypothesis that Atlantis was in fact the city state of Troy. He both agrees and disagrees with Rainer W. Kühne: He too believes 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. British archaeologist Peter James proposed that Atlantis is a lost Lydian city in modern-day Turkey, which he names Tantalis and identifies with the existing city of Manisa.

Outside the Mediterranean

Hypothesized location of Atlantis in worldwide, click image for greater detail

When Plato spoke of the Ocean of Atlantis, he may have been speaking of the area that we now call the Atlantic Ocean. The ocean's name, derived from Greek mythology, means the "Sea of Atlas". Plato remarked that, in describing the origins of Atlantis, this area was allotted to Poseidon.

The prevalent opinion in scientific circles that "continents cannot possibly sink", delineated by the Isostasy theory. Geological studies of the mid-Atlantic fail to demonstrate that a large continent of Atlantis existed there. However, Atlantic Ocean geology does not exclude the possibility of a sunken island. If 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.

Antarctica

The theory that Antarctica was Atlantis was particularly fashionable during the 1960s and 1970s, spurred on partly both by the isolation of the continent, H. P. Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness, and also the Piri Reis map, which purportedly shows Antarctica as it would be ice free, suggesting human knowledge of that period. Charles Berlitz, Erich Von Daniken and Peter Kolosimo have been amongst those popular authors who made this proposal.

More recently Rand and Rose Flem-Ath have proposed this in their book, "When the Sky Fell"; the theory was revised and made more specific in Rand's work with author Colin Wilson, in "The Atlantis Blueprint" (published in 2002). The second workings theorised that Atlantis was to be found in Lesser Antarctica, near the coast of the Ross Ice Shelf. A geological theory known as "Earth Crust Displacement" forms the basis of their work. The Atlantis Blueprint uses both scientific and psuedoscientific (such as mere speculation and assumptions) means to back up the theory.

Charles Hapgood came up with the "Earth Crustal Displacement theory". Hapgood's theory suggests that Earth's outer crust is able to move upon the upper mantle layer rapidly up to a distance of 2,000 miles, placing Atlantis in Antarctica, when considering the movements of the crust in the past. It is to be noted that Albert Einstein was one of the few voice to answer Hapgood's theory. Einstein wrote a preface for Hapgood's book Earth's shifting crust, published in 1958. This theory is particularly popular with Hollow Earthers, and can be seen as a mirror of the Hyperborean identification.

The Earth Crust Displacement theory was only one of the theories presented in a more recent book by author Stel Pavlou, in his 2001 seminal bestselling novel Decipher. He proposed that a solar cycle caused a polar shift which led to the Earth/Crust displacement responsible for Atlantis's disappearance from warmer climates. He proposed that many ancient religions and languages, among others the Egyptian mythos surrounding Pyramids stemmed from an early universal language, including Aymara, that contained messages about what had happened in the past. These ideas have since been copied in later, lesser novels. Ideas such as these have also been entertained in the Stargate Universe.

Azores Islands

One of the suggested places for Atlantis is around the Azores Islands, a group of islands belonging to Portugal located about 900 miles (1500 km) west of the Portuguese coast. Some people believe the islands could be the mountain tops of Atlantis.

Ignatius L. Donnelly, an American congressman, was perhaps the first one to talk about this possible location in his book "Atlantis: The Antediluvian World".

Mid-Atlantic Ridge

This is related to the Azores theory, as the Azores could be mountaintops of Atlantis. During the last ice age, the sea levels could have been much lower, up to 500 feet less, and a large section of the Atlantic is in fact less than 500 feet deep.

Bahama Bank and Caribbean

There is some evidence of sunken island off Central America, which have been pushed by Z.A. Simon as an Atlantis site ^{[citation needed]}. In the area, peat and caves with stalactites and stalagmites were found, both of which only form in the open air and were dated between 5600 B.C.E. and 10,000 B.C.E. The surrounding topology has also been suggested to be submerged valleys of ancient rivers and mountain ranges with a tectonic history. A problem with this theory is that Atlantis was supposed to have submerged rapidly, following an earthquake, while the area shows a slow submerging^{[citation needed]}.

Bolivia

A hypothesis by Jim Allen, argues that Plato's description exactly fits South America because he describes a level rectangular-shaped plain which he said lay in the centre of the continent, next to the sea and midway along the longest side of the continent. He also described the capital city of Atlantis which was built on a small volcanic island and also called Atlantis. The city lay on the level rectangular plain, five miles from the sea and according to Plato the whole region was high above the level of the ocean sea, rising sheer out of the ocean sea to a great height on that side of the continent. Thus we have both a lost city of Atlantis as well as a lost continent of Atlantis.

Mexico

Mexico has also been subject to Gene Matlock hypothesis who argues that he found Atlantis there. Basing on etymology, he suggest in his "The last Atlantis book" that the Sanskrit language spoken in the Indian subcontinent is the father of most world-class languages to explain the meaning of "Atlantis" and from there he makes a connection between Mexico and India.

Black Sea

German researchers Siegfried and Christian Schoppe locate Atlantis in the Black Sea. Before 5500 B.C.E., a great plain lay in the northwest at a former freshwater-lake. In 5510 B.C.E., rising sea level topped the barrier at today's Bosporus. They identify the Pillars of Hercules 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 5500 B.C.E., which would suit the red, white, black motif. The geocatastrophic event led to the neolithic diaspora in Europe, also beginning 5500 B.C.E.

In 2000, the Guardian reported that 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 B.C.E. This flood may have inspired the Biblical story of Noah's Ark; but the area need not be Atlantis.^{[citation needed]}

Another candidate bordering the Black Sea, suggested by Hasan Umur in the 1940s, would be Ancomah , a legendary place near Trabzon.^{[citation needed]}

British Isles

In his book Atlantis of the West: The Case For Britain's Drowned Megalithic Civilization, Paul Dunbavin argues that the British Isles were once one island and that this island was Atlantis. He argues that this Neolithic civilization in Europe was partially drowned by rising sea levels caused by a comet impact that caused a pole shift and changed the earth's axis around 3100 B.C.E..

Canary Islands

The Canary Islands are also considered a candidate, as they are beyond the Pillars of Hercules and the Atlas mountains. One of the mysteries of the islands are the presence of "pyramids", and also the Guanches, who were a primitive people, who did not use boats, but whose ancestors appear to have built great structures.

England

On December 29, 1997, Russian scientists believed to have found Atlantis in the ocean 100 miles off Land's End, England. Little Sole Bank, a relatively shallow area, is believed to be the capital of Atlantis. This may have been based on the myth of Lyoness.

Indonesia/Sundaland

File:Last glacial vegetation map.png

Areas unsunk before end of last ice age.

Several groups independently advocate the seas around peninsula Malaysia as a site for Atlantis, which was a large unsubmerged plain known as Sundaland during the Wisconsin glaciation, which ended around 10,000 B.C.E., and connected also to Indonesia and Singapore. Key to this argument is that the Ocean of Atlantis refers to the ocean which encircles Eurasia and Africa, which was the historical understanding until Christopher Columbus. Natives of Sundaland who fled the rising waters or volcanic explosions eventually had contact with Ancient Egyptians, who later passed the story onto Plato who gets some but not all of the details correct, including location and time period. Some proponents argue that Atlantis myth is seen as a growth of, or in combination with Lemuria and other eden myths. The main advocate of this theory is the Brazilian professor of nuclear physics Arysio Nunes dos Santos.

A "lost city" Kota Gelanggi has been found in Johor, Malaysia, but it has not been directly tied with Atlantis.

Ireland

This idea was presented in the book Atlantis from a Geographer's Perspective: Mapping the Fairy Land (2004) by Swedish geographer Dr. Ulf Erlingsson from Uppsala University. It hypothesized that the empire of Atlantis refers to the Neolithic Megalithic tomb culture, based on their similar geographic extent, and deduced that the island of Atlantis then must correspond to Ireland. The similarities of size and landscape were found to be statistically significant, while the null hypothesis (that Plato invented Atlantis as fiction) was rejected.

Based on this result, the speculation was made that the capital of Atlantis could be connected with Newgrange, Knowth, and Tara, Ireland. As regards the sinking of Atlantis, it was suggested that it is a memory from another time and place, notably the Dogger Bank area. It was an island that sank in the North Sea about 6100 B.C.E. While the world sea level rose gradually as the Ice Age ice sheets melted, there was a sudden sea level rise at this time due to the final drainage of Lake Agassiz. At about the same time a tsunami from the Storegga Slide is believed to have devastated the island in the manner described by Plato. (See also entry on North Sea below.)

Other hypotheses place the location of Atlantis between Britain and France on the Celtic Shelf. This hypothesis was first developed seriously by Lewis Spence and has been recently revived by some oceanographers.

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.

Finland

Finnish pseudohistorian Ior Bock locates Atlantis in 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. Ior also believes that he is a descendant of an ancient Finnish god Lemminkäinen.

North Sea

The North Sea is known to contain lands that were once above water. The medieval town of Dunwich in East Anglia, for example, has since crumbled into the sea, and prehistoric remains have been dredged up from the Dogger Bank. Atlantis itself has been identified with the island of Heligoland off the north-west German coast by the author Spanuth, Jürgen, who postulates that it was destroyed during the Bronze Age around 1200 B.C.E., only to partially re-emerge during the Iron Age. Ulf Erlingsson hypothesized that the island that sank referred to Dogger Bank, and the city itself referred to the Silver Pit meteorite impact crater at the base of Dogger Bank. There is also the Oera Linda Book, which states that a land called Atland once existed in the North Sea, but was destroyed in 2194 B.C.E.

Sea of Azov

Atlantis Motherland, by authors Flying Eagle and Whispering Wind, published in 2003, locates the Island of Atlantis beneath the Sea of Azov and on the adjacent fertile plains to the west in Ukraine and to the east in Krasnodar Kray, Russia. Their research is based on tectonic evidence of a massive earthquake centered at Kerch, at the end of the Pleistocene and evidence of a great flood at the end of the Younger Dryas ice age, in 9600 B.C.E. This date corresponds with the date set by an aged Egyptian priest for the destruction of Atlantis, as recorded in the dialogues of Plato. A massive earthquake caused the island to sink, creating a new sea, which according to Eagle/Wind is the Sea of Azov. The violent earthquakes and floods left the new sea “impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way.” The aged priest refers to the shoals of mud as still existing at that time. The Sea of Azov was blocked by shoals of mud at that time, and would still be today without regular dredging.

The Eagle/Wind team has published a theory regarding the destruction of Atlantis, which they call "The Great Atlantis Flood"; One terrible day and night of misfortune; the extraordinary inundation of Atlantis and Attica. Their theory proposes that, with over one third of Europe draining into the land-locked Black Sea, and over-flow from the Caspian Sea at the end of the Younger Dryas, the level of the Black Sea rose to within 20 meters of its current level. A devastating earthquake and resulting tsunami increased the hydraulic pressure on a proposed subterranean outflow channel, flowing beneath the Bosporus land bridge and the present day Sea of Marmara and northern Aegean Sea, causing this subterranean channel to catastrophically rupture, generating the “extraordinary inundation” of ancient Attica. The Island of Atlantis, Attica and lands of the ancient Hellenes were all destroyed by the catastrophe. The survivors fled the treacherous sea shores and widespread disease and began founding new settlements.

Estremadura, Portugal

This theory states that Atlantis was no other than the Chalcolithic civilization of Vila Nova de Sao Pedro and that Mycenean Greeks would have fought against them for the control of tin routes in alliance with neighbour Iberian civilization of El Argar, which shows some clear Hellenization in its B phase. The catastrophe described would be an earthquake with tsunami like the one suffered by Lisbon in 1755.

The recent location of a sea branch reaching Zambujal (the main city of this culture) and the evidence that it was silted somehow when VNSP ended [1], seem to add some weight to this theory.

Atlantis in art, literature and popular culture

The legend of Atlantis is featured in many books, movies, television series, games, songs, and other creative works. Recent examples of Atlantis on-screen include the television series Stargate Atlantis and the Disney animated movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Ancient sources

• Plato, Timaeus, translated by Benjamin Jowett; alternative version with commentary.
• Plato, Critias, translated by Benjamin Jowett; alternative version with commentary.

Modern sources

• Bichler, R (1986). 'Athen besiegt Atlantis. Eine Studie über den Ursprung der Staatsutopie', Canopus, vol. 20, no. 51, pp. 71-88.
• De Camp, LS (1954). Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature, New York: Gnome Press.
• Donnelly, I (1882). Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, New York: Harper & Bros. Retrieved November 6, 2001, from Project Gutenberg.
• Ellis, R (1998). Imaging Atlantis, New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-679-44602-8
• Erlingsson, U (2004). Atlantis from a Geographer's Perspective: Mapping the Fairy Land, Miami: Lindorm. ISBN 0-9755946-0-5
• Flem-Ath, R & Wilson, C (2000). The Atlantis Blueprint, London: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-85313-5
• Frau, S (2002). Le Colonne d'Ercole: Un'inchiesta, Rome: Nur neon. ISBN 88-900740-0-0
• Gill, C (1976). 'The origin of the Atlantis myth', Trivium, vol. 11, pp. 8-9.
• Görgemanns, H (2000). 'Wahrheit und Fiktion in Platons Atlantis-Erzählung', Hermes, vol. 128, pp. 405-420.
• Griffiths, JP (1985). 'Atlantis and Egypt', Historia, vol. 34, pp. 35f.
• Heidel, WA (1933). 'A suggestion concerning Platon's Atlantis', Daedalus, vol. 68, pp. 189-228.
• Jordan, P (1994). The Atlantis Syndrome, Stroud: Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-3518-9
• Martin, TH [1841] (1981). 'Dissertation sur l'Atlantide', in TH Martin, Études sur le Timée de Platon, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, pp. 257-332.
• Morgan, KA (1998). 'Designer history: Plato's Atlantis story and fourth-century ideology', Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 118, pp. 101-118.
• Nesselrath, HG (1998). 'Theopomps Meropis und Platon: Nachahmung und Parodie', Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 1, pp. 1-8.
• Nesselrath, HG (2001a). 'Atlantes und Atlantioi: Von Platon zu Dionysios Skytobrachion', Philologus, vol. 145, pp. 34-38.
• Nesselrath, HG (2001b). 'Atlantis auf ägyptischen Stelen? Der Philosoph Krantor als Epigraphiker', Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 135, pp. 33-35.
• Nesselrath, HG (2002). Platon und die Erfindung von Atlantis, München/Leipzig: KG Saur Verlag. ISBN 3-598-77560-1
• Nesselrath, HG (2005). 'Where the Lord of the Sea Grants Passage to Sailors through the Deep-blue Mere no More: The Greeks and the Western Seas', Greece & Rome, vol. 52, pp. 153-171.
• Phillips, ED (1968). 'Historical Elements in the Myth of Atlantis', Euphrosyne, vol. 2, pp. 3-38.
• Ramage, ES (1978). Atlantis: Fact or Fiction?, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-10482-3
• Settegast, M. (1987). Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C.E. in Myth and Archaeology, Cambridge, MA, Rotenberg Press.
• Spence, L [1926] (2003). The History of Atlantis, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-42710-2
• Szlezák, TA (1993). 'Atlantis und Troia, Platon und Homer: Bemerkungen zum Wahrheitsanspruch des Atlantis-Mythos', Studia Troica, vol. 3, pp. 233-237.
• Vidal-Naquet, P (1986). 'Athens and Atlantis: Structure and Meaning of a Platonic Myth', in P Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 263-284. ISBN 0-8018-3251-9
• Wilson, C (1997). From Atlantis to the Sphinx, London: Virgin Books. ISBN 0-88064-176-2
• Zangger, E (1993). The Flood from Heaven: Deciphering the Atlantis legend, New York: William Morrow and Company. ISBN 0-688-11350-8

Further reading

• Gene Matlock, The last Atlantis book you’ll ever have to read: the Atlantis-Mexico-India connection. Tempe, AZ: Dandelion Books, 2001.
• Joseph, Frank, "The Destruction of Atlantis: Compelling Evidence of the Sudden Fall of the Legendary Civilization". Bear & Company, 2002. ISBN 1-879181-85-1
• Zangger, Eberhard, "''The Flood from Heaven: Deciphering the Atlantis legend". Sidgwick & Jackson, 1992, ISBN 0-688-11350-8.
• Mifsud, Anton, Simon Mifsud, Chris Agius Sultana, and Charles Savona Ventura, "Echoes of Plato's Island". (2nd edition) Malta, 2001. ISBN 99932-15-01-5
• Ashe, Geoffrey, "Atlantis : lost lands, ancient wisdom / Geoffrey Ashe". New York, N.Y., Thames and Hudson; 1992. ISBN 0-500-81039-7
• Zeilinga de Boer, Jelle, et. al., "Volcanoes in human history : the far-reaching effects of major eruptions". The Bronze Age eruption of Thera : destroyer of Atlantis and Minoan Crete?. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press; 2002.
• Ley, Willy, "Another look at Atlantis, and fifteen other essays". Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday; 1969. LCCN 69011988
• Galanopoulos, Angelos Geōrgiou, and Edward Bacon, "Atlantis; the truth behind the legend". Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill; 1969. LCCN 71080738 //r892
• Donnelly, Ignatius L., "Atlantis: The Antediluvian World". New York, Harper, 1882. LCCN 06001749
• Erlingsson, Ulf, "Atlantis from a Geographer's Perspective: Mapping the Fairy Land". Lindorm Publishing, 2004. ISBN 0-9755946-0-5
• Flem-Ath, Rand & Wilson, Colin, The Atlantis Blueprint, 2000.
• Flem-Ath, Rand & Flem-Ath, Rose, When The Sky Fell.
• Shirley Andrews, Atlantis. Llewellyn Publications, 2002. ISBN 1-56718-023-X
• Charles Berlitz, The Bermuda Triangle
• Atlantis of the West: The Case For Britain's Drowned Megalithic Civilization, ISBN 0-7867-1145-0 , Paul Dunbavin

External links

• Atlantis: the Myth from Encyclopedia Mythica

General information

• The Atlantis Archives
• Atlantis Channel
• lost-civilizations.net
• about.com
• International Conference Atlantis 2005 , Milos/Greece
• [http://www.atlantis-scout.de/charter.htm Atlantis Research Charter about methods of Atlantis research
• Atlantis: Myth or Memory ? from UnXplained-Factor

Support a specific location

• Real Expedition Nov. 2006
• Atlantis in the Atlantic based on writings of Helena Blavatsky
• Antarctica was Atlantis
• Atlantis was in the Black Sea
• Atlantis was near Cyprus
• Bolivia was Atlantis
• Indonesia/Sundaland was Atlantis
• Atlantis was inspired by Silver Pit / Dogger Bank / Ireland / West Europe
• Atlantis Iberian-Mauretanian; the Acropolis before Gibraltar
• Israel was Atlantis (In Spanish)
• Tartessos was Atlantis
• Sea of Azov was Atlantis site

Support invention hypothesis

• Atlantis: No way, No how, No where" — Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
• Skeptics dictionary

News

• PRWeb News, "Atlantis and Tartessus—Norway Scientific Institutions Recognize Spanish Paleographical Hypothesis". July 20, 2006.
• PRWeb News, "The Arab Authors Located to the Atlantis Island and the Amazonian Island in Andalusia". July 20, 2006.
• BBC News, "Tsunami clue to 'Atlantis' found". August 15, 2005.
• BBC News, "Satellite images 'show Atlantis' in Spain". June 6, 2004.
• BBC News, "Have scientists really found the lost city of Atlantis?". November 15, 2004.
• BBC News, "Atlantis 'obviously near Gibraltar'", September 20, 2001.
• Radford, Tim, The Guardian, "Evidence found of Noah's ark flood victims", September 14, 2000.

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