Atlantis: Plato, Legends and the Seach for It

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PLATO AND ATLANTIS


One possible Atlantis location

Our knowledge of the lost continent of Atlantis is based on what Plato wrote in relatively minor works around 360 B.C. when he was in his 70s. Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: Our sources for Atlantis are the philosophical dialogues of Plato (specifically the Republic, Timaeus, and Critias) in which characters in the fictional dialog have a hypothetical conversation about the ideal society. Atlantis, in Plato’s imagination, was a technologically advanced and harmonious society that gradually descended into corruption, disorder, and greedy warmongering. It was ultimately destroyed by a series of earthquakes that led to the city disappearing into the ocean. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, September 12, 2021]

In “Timaeus” and “Critias.” Plato described Atlantis like it was a real place and said it was a great naval power that sunk into the sea over 10,000 years ago in a catastrophic event. Some say the source of his information was a Greek historian who heard about the continent from an Egyptian priest in 590 B.C. Others say Plato heard about Atlantis from Socrates, who in turn said he was told about it by the Egyptians. According to the Egyptian priest the people of Atlantis fought a war with a group of pre-historic Athenians. The Athenians won the war. When the people of Atlantis were driven back to their island a great earthquake enveloped the Mediterranean, leveling Athens and submerging Atlantis. The Atlantic Ocean is named after Atlantis.

In Plato's story the Atlantis culture flourished on an island paradise near the Strait of Gibraltar. The city had temples "coated with silver save only the pinnacles and these were coated with gold" and roofs "all of irony in appearance, variegated with gold and silver." There were temples to the Greek gods, one of them with Poseidon and six winged horses in it. According to Plato, Atlantis disappeared in a "single day of earthquakes, floods and rain."

Atlantis: The Facts?

Dr Iain Stewart wrote for the BBC: “So what do we actually know about Atlantis and its demise? The answer is not much. Plato's story comes to us from two short pieces, Tinnaeus and Critias, believed to have been written in the decade or so before his death in 348 B.C. . In these, he presents an apparently true account of an ideal society that existed many millennia before the Classical Greek times in which he was writing. [Source: Dr Iain Stewart, BBC, February 17, 2011. Dr Stewart is a senior lecturer in Geography and Earth Sciences at Brunel University, with research interests in the geology and archaeology of earthquakes in the eastern Mediterranean. He co-edited a Geological Society of London special publication on 'The Archaeology of Geological Catastrophes', and was co-convenor of Brunel University's conference on Holocene Environmental Catastrophes and Recoveries. |::|]

“According to Plato, Atlantis was a great island (larger than Libya and Asia combined) in the Atlantic Ocean, but its control extended beyond the 'Pillars of Heracles' into the Mediterranean as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia (Italy). Its powerful and remarkable dynasty of kings arose directly from Poseidon, god of sea and of earthquakes, though this divine and heroic lineage gradually became diluted by mixing with mortal stock. |::|

“The resulting degeneration of this noble civilisation led it into a war with its former ally, Athens, and culminated in its cataclysmic destruction, which Plato dates as 9,000 years previously. Of the destruction itself, Plato simply notes, 'Some time later there were earthquakes and floods of extraordinary violence, and in a single dreadful day and night all your life [ie, Athenian] fighting men were swallowed up by the earth, and the island of Atlantis was similarly swallowed up by the sea and vanished'. |::|

“While the bulk of Plato's account of Atlantis details its physical and political layout, its location and the nature of its destruction warrant only a few hundred words. It is a meagre foundation for the weight of subsequent theories and speculations on which the modern controversy is based. |::|

Fascination with Atlantis and Theories About Its Existence


Atlantis continues to inspire the popular imagination in a way that is unrivaled by other archaeological mysteries. Dr Iain Stewart wrote for the BBC: “Quite why a story written 2,500 years ago by the Greek philosopher Plato continues to capture the public imagination is a mystery in itself - a mystery fed by countless books, films, articles, web pages, and” even “a Disney cartoon. It has spawned a rich populist sub-culture (much of it internet-based) which pits the passions and imaginations of committed 'Atlanteans' against the orthodox analysis of the scientific mainstream. [Source: Dr Iain Stewart, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

“Part of the contemporary appeal of the Atlantis story has no doubt been fed by scientists. Historians, archaeologists and geologists have also entered the debate to contest the various literary, historical or geographical elements of the story: including Bernhard Zangger's book “presenting the archaeological case for Troy as the true inspiration for Atlantis’ and the BBC Horizon documentary 'Helike - The Real Atlantis' staking the same claim for the Classical Greek city of Helike. Atlantis. |::|

“Today, the myriad of theories - many of them breathtakingly fantastic ('Atlantis was an exploded planet'!) - ensures that the true nature of Plato's story is as elusive as ever. For those committed Atlanteans that believe Atlantis existed much as Plato described, the possible locations of the lost city are becoming increasingly exotic. Recent candidates lie as far afield as the Caribbean, South America, Antarctica, Ireland and French Polynesia. |::|

“Many theories, however, contend that the Plato's Atlantis refers to the rise and fall of a known ancient civilisation, though one whose age or location differs from that expressed by Plato. Which ancient civilisation, of course, is a matter of vigorous debate. The Minoans of Crete have long been a popular choice, though there are plenty of other suggestions, one of which, Troy, has been given fresh support by Zangger. |::|

How Atlantis Took Its Place in the Public’s Imagination, Eugenics and Nazism

Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: For almost two thousand years after Plato’s death everyone read the story about Atlantis for what it was: a fictional account about an ideal city that lost its way and was being use by Plato as a foil for his hometown of Athens. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, September 12, 2021]

Interest in Atlantis as a real place first emerged, writes bioarchaeologist Stephanie Halmhofer, in the 1500s when early European explorers wondered if the indigenous people of Central America were the descendants of the Atlanteans. Interest in this theory continued to build over several centuries until, in 1882, Ignatius Donnelly published his highly influential book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World and inaugurated a new era of study. In it, Donnelly claimed that Atlantis was the origin point for human civilization. Others took up this cause and argued that the Atlanteans were the ancestors of a particular group of people: the “Aryan race.” This, as I imagine you have already guessed, is where things take a dark turn.

As Halmhofer writes on her blog the “history” of Atlantis has, since the nineteenth century, been interwoven with the study of evolution and eugenics. Plato ends the Critias with a discussion of how the divine nature of the Atlantides was corrupted when it was mixed with the inferior nature of mere human beings. The discussion lends itself well to 19th and 20th century eugenicist theories of the races. The Nazi Institute of Atlantis founded by Himmler aimed to find evidence for the theory that the Aryan race was descended from the biologically divine Atlantides.

Search for Atlantis


Archaeologists debate whether Atlantis really existed and sort out plausible location if it ever actually existed among the many sunken ruins discovered around the world in places such as the Bahamas, the Greek Islands, Cuba, and even Japan. Even without definitive proof,

In a book called “True History “, written in A.D. A.D., the Greek philosopher Lucian describes being pushed over the Atlantic Ocean in a waterspout propelled by the winds of the moon. After breaking up a fight between the Sun-King and the Moon-king over the planet Jupiter he traveled to the moon where he encountered people with artificial genitals, archers riding on fleas and birds with salad wings. In an earlier book called Icaramenippus , Lucian took a wing from an eagle and one from a vulture and flew from Mount Olympus to the moon where he saw the Earth was a sphere."

During the Middle Ages, maps often depicted Atlantis. In recent of centuries explorers, like those searching for Noah's Ark, have gone searching from Atlantis. One of the explorers was the grandson of a man who said he discovered Troy who said he found Atlantis with secret papers left by his grandfather."

Explorers have also searched for Atlantis in reed boats in Bolivia's Lake Poopo. According to Moscow Institute of Metahistory, Atlantis is located 100 miles off the southwest coast of England. The institute based their finding on "energetic readings" of Plato's Republic .

Some scholars speculate that Atlantis was in reality the Minoan culture on Santorini and Crete that was destroyed in part by a Krakatoa-like volcanic eruption around 1,500 B.C. In 2004 professional Atlantis searcher Robert Sarmast found a big pile of amphorae and a three-kilometer-long wall and a deep trench which he said fit Plato's description of the Atlantis acropolis at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea between Cyprus and Syria and claimed it was Atlantis. He presented pictures of the amphorae and said the walls had been found with sonar scans. Archaeologists were skeptical and said more proof was necessary.

Atlantis as a Metaphor and Literary Device

Dr Iain Stewart wrote for the BBC: “However, the fact that each of these competing theories requires some degree of adjustment (or re-interpretation of Plato's original account) has led many scholars to adopt the view held by many of his contemporaries - that Atlantis is a piece of fiction and is arguably best summed up in the words of the American classical scholar Daniel Dombrowski: “'Atlantis was only a powerful literary device invented by Plato, which was to act as a means of highlighting the fate of the ideal state created in Plato's mind's eye. The only place in which Atlantis can be found, in addition to the writings of Plato, is in the minds of those with an imagination as vivid as that of Plato.' [Source: Dr Iain Stewart, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

“But if it was fictional, to what extent is the story drawn from or coloured by events in Classical Greek history? The story was written during a remarkable golden age of observation and discourse about the natural world. Through the writings of contemporary scholars like Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristotle and Callisthenes, historical seismologists have been able to piece together a picture of earthquakes affecting Greece at this time. That picture reveals that earthquakes struck with a frequency and ferociousness which far exceeds anything modern records have documented in recent centuries. Perhaps more significantly, several of these earthquakes assumed great political and cultural importance.” |::|

Did Earthquakes Inspire the Atlantis Myth


Dr Iain Stewart wrote for the BBC: “The first earthquake of 'epoch-making importance' struck Sparta in 469-464 B.C. occurring at a time when the balance of power between Sparta and Athens was in a delicate state. It took Sparta by surprise, killing more than 20,000 Spartans and immediately leading to internal and external uprisings by its subject peoples. The result was the so-called 'earthquake war' between the Spartans and their neighbours, during which Sparta's refusal to accept help from Athens resulted in increased hostilities between them. These hostilities festered for decades, culminating in 431 B.C. with the start of the Peloponnesian Wars, a 25-year bloody civil war between Sparta and her allies and Athens and her allies. [Source: Dr Iain Stewart, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

“Shortly after the start of the Peloponnesian War and the third in a series of epidemics that ravaged Athens, the summer of 426 B.C. brought one of the most disastrous earthquakes recorded in the ancient sources. Contemporary reporters tell of widespread building collapse, destruction caused by seismic sea-waves (tsunamis) and thousands of victims. Although its effects were concentrated north of Athens, near modern-day Lamia, there were wider ramifications. A Spartan army camped 100km west of Athens at the Isthmus of Corinth were poised to attack the city, but numerous violent earthquakes forced them to flee home. |::|

“Meanwhile the seismic sea-wave wreaked havoc along much of the coast north of Athens, including an island called Atalante where an Athenian fort and several warships were destroyed. Accounts by later writers such as Diodorus Siculus (first century B.C.) and Strabo (first century AD) actually report that the island of Atalante was created as a consequence of the seismic sea wave. The high death toll, widespread damage and dramatic coastline changes would no doubt have exacerbated the tense situation endured by an Athens besieged by war and epidemics. |::|

“The Peloponnesian Wars formally ended in 404 B.C. though intermittent hostilities continued between Sparta and Athens until a peace treaty in 387 B.C. . But shortly after this another calamitous earthquake event befell the region: in 373 B.C. a violent earthquake, accompanied by a seismic sea wave, destroyed Helike and Bura, two cities situated on the southern shores of the Gulf of Corinth, roughly 150 km west of Athens. |::|

“Other hallmarks can be found in the accounts of the two great earthquakes that preceded it, however. With the great Spartan earthquake of 464 B.C. that ushered in the frenetic wars between Sparta and Athens, and the seismic sea-wave that ripped apart Atalante island in 426 B.C. under the shadow of these warring superpowers, most of the ingredients for Plato's obliteration of Atlantis are there.” |::|

Real-Life Lost Sunken Cities of Ancient Egypt and Turkey.


Helike ruins

Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: The port of Naukratis, sometimes dubbed the “Hong Kong of the ancient world,” lies under a lake in the Nile Delta and, today, is covered by fields. Thonis-Heracleion, which currently lies in the Mediterranean off the coast of Egypt, is another story. It was first identified in World War II when a British fighter pilot glimpsed the outline of buildings under the water. In its heyday Thonis-Heracleion was a bustling port, which featured a huge temple dedicated to the god Amun-Gereb. A series of earthquakes between 323-1303 CE forced the coastal cities in the Canopic branch of the Nile into the Mediterranean.[Source:Candida Moss, Daily Beast, April 3, 2022]

Discoveries at Heracleion have been astonishing. In 2000, divers located the head of the god Hapi, one time protector of the city, in the silt-darkened waters on the seabed. Speaking to Archaeology.org the same year, Franck Goddio, the lead archaeologist on the expedition, described Heracleion as “an intact city, frozen in time.” It was almost like a sub-aquatic Pompeii. Heracleion’s former neighbor, Alexandria has also taken by residence with Ariel et al under the sea: Both the famous lighthouse and Cleopatra’s former palace have been identified by diver-archaeologists.

Egypt is not the only Roman-era city in the Mediterranean waters. The Lycian city of Simena (often known as Kekova-Simena) in modern day southern Turkey lies half submerged in the harbor of the fishing village of Kaleköy. The Lycians were ruled by a succession of foreign rulers from the Persians to the Greeks, Romans, and finally the Ottomans. The city was partly sunk by a second-century earthquake. The beauty of the region and the ease of access to the ruins (you could hypothetically paddle around in them) means that they are vulnerable to destruction from tourism. As a result, in 1990, the Turkish government had to ban swimming and diving off the coast. Kekova currently sits on a list of sites under consideration for UNESCO status.

Given the number of ancient cities poking their heads out of the world’s waterways and beckoning visitors down their mostly submerged steps it is truly remarkable that we continue to obsess over Atlantis — the one mythical city that never existed. What all these sunken cities point to, however, is the same essential point: whether divinely directed or not, human engineering is no match for nature’s power.

Destruction of Helike: Source of the Atlantis Myth?

Dr Iain Stewart wrote for the BBC: “At the time of its destruction, Helike was the flourishing capital of the Achaean League, a confederation of city states, and revered throughout the ancient world as the cult centre for worship of Poseidon. The sacred grove of Poseidon was second only to the oracle at nearby Delphi in terms of sanctuary sites at that time, and in promoting a spirit of harmonious co-existence and collaboration with neighbouring states, Helike ensured that it largely remained uninvolved in the turbulent political upheaval around it. This state of political and social harmony, and the healthy economic growth that it encouraged, ended one winter's night in 373 B.C. . [Source: Dr Iain Stewart, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

“Numerous contemporary and later sources provide dramatic testimony to what happened to Helike and Bura that night. The Greek writer Pausanius, visiting the site of the devastation almost 500 years later, recounted how, 'An earthquake struck the country and destroyed every single building, until the very foundations of the city were lost for all time.'

“The accompanying seismic sea-wave '...flooded in far over the land and overwhelmed the city and its surroundings, and the swell of the sea so covered the sacred grove of Poseidon that nothing could be seen but the tops of the trees. A sudden tremor was sent by the god, and with the earthquake the sea ran back, dragging down Helike into the receding waters with every living person.'

“After the disaster, whatever was left of Helike's land was divided amongst its neighbours. The nearby city of Aegion assumed control of the Achaean League, and Helike went into political obscurity. A tradition sprang up amongst its Achaean neighbours that Helike had been punished by Poseidon for defiling the sanctuary, though it was perhaps more its unrivalled supremacy amongst the other city states that sealed its ultimate downfall. |::|

“Nevertheless, its removal from the political scene was mirrored by the physical removal of the city, believed by most ancient writers to now lie deep below the waters of the Corinthian gulf. Travellers like Strabo and Pausanius, searching out the city several centuries later, were shown only a few sunken ruins and accounts of a submerged bronze statue of Poseidon that snagged the nets of local fishermen.” |::|

“The destructive force and the vicinity of the great cultural centres of the Greek world, undoubtedly made the earthquake at Helike a momentous scientific event. It led to Aristotle formulating his theory that earthquakes and accompanying seismic sea-waves were the physical product of contrary meteorological conditions rather than supernatural actions, a theory subsequently accepted for more than 1,800 years. It must have also made had a major impact on Aristotle's contemporary, Plato - born around 427 B.C. and in his mid 50s when Helike was lost. The destruction in a single night of the revered city of Poseidon by an earthquake and seismic sea-wave and its disappearance into the sea bear the main hallmarks of Atlantis's sudden demise. |::|


One view of the earthquake that submerged Atlantis


Television Psuedoarchaeology on Atlantis and the True Believers

Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: In summer of 2021 a new documentary TV series premiered on the Discovery Channel. “Hunting Atlantis” follows a pair of experts “on a quest to solve the greatest archaeological mystery of all time — the rediscovery of Atlantis.” There’s just one problem: there’s not an ancient historian or archeologist working in the field today who believes Atlantis was a real historical city. Criticism of the show’s attempt to be factual and scholarly spilled over onto social media things turned ugly. A well-respected archaeologist was verbally abused by a flood of true believers who were committed not just to Atlantis, but also to white supremacy and eugenics. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, September 12, 2021]

Hunting Atlantis is co-hosted by Stel Pavlou and volcanologist Jess Phoenix. Phoenix is an expert in natural disasters (specifically volcanic eruptions), who has spent a great deal of time in the field as a geologist. In 2018 she even ran for Congress. Pavlou is a successful TV host, producer, screenwriter, and bestselling author: one of his films is a cult classic and his children’s books have won awards. The basis for their show is Pavlou’s argument that the date of Atlantis’s destruction should be placed at the beginning of the fifth millennium B.C..

That the show has something of a sensational bent is to be expected; making archeology TV friendly often involves inflating or sensationalizing what can otherwise be quite dry material. There are also certain ancient artifacts and locations — like the Holy Grail or Noah’s Ark — that hold the attention of viewers and will always be evergreens for documentary history-telling.

Halmhofer said everybody loves Atlantis, “thanks to things like Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire, DC’s Aquaman, and the popular television show Stargate: Atlantis.” People are broadly familiar with it as a cherished part of their childhood imagination. To his credit, when challenged on social media, Pavlou offered to share what he described as the “academic” paper on which the show was based. Having been volunteered by a colleague, Dr. Flint Dibble, a Mediterranean archeologist and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at Cardiff University, rose to the challenge.

Dibble was unimpressed: “I read the paper carefully, refreshed my own research on Plato and the archaeology of Athens in the 5th millennium B.C. and wrote a Twitter thread. This thread debunked the paper and exposed its logical faults in some places where scholarly research was cited, explored examples where conclusions were drawn from uncited statements.”The scholarly consensus, he told me, is very clear: Atlantis was not a real place. After watching the show, Dibble said, he remained unpersuaded. He was concerned by the way that the credible research of legitimate archaeologists was being used to prop unfounded claims about Atlantis. If you watch carefully, he explained, you’ll notice that “scholars never mention the name ‘Atlantis’ nor ‘Plato’ on air. At no times on air do the two co-hosts …ask the scholars any questions about Atlantis or bring it up in front of them.”

Dibble, in turn, contextualized his objections by exploring the problematic ways that Atlantis has been utilized throughout history. By the next day, Dibble said, both he and Pavlou were engaged in a full-on Twitterstorm. He woke up to “hundreds of colleagues and supporters” defending him to Pavlou and similar numbers of Atlantis-believers trying to dispute his claims and insulting him. “At one point,” he said, “Robert Sepehr, a pseudoarchaeologist who has a YouTube channel called ‘Atlantean Gardens’ and praises Nazi research, began targeting colleagues and friends who were tweeting about the situation.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, "The Discoverers" and "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin. "Greek and Roman Life" by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated September 2024


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