Everything about Atlantis totally explained
Atlantis (in
Greek, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, "island of
Atlas") is the name of a
legendary island first mentioned in
Plato's dialogues
Timaeus and
Critias.
In Plato's account, Atlantis, lying "beyond the
Pillars of Heracles", was a
naval power that conquered many parts of
Western Europe and
Africa 9,000 years before the time of
Solon, or approximately 9500 BC. 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 from contemporary events like the destruction of
Helike in 373 BC or the failed
Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BC.
The possible existence of a genuine Atlantis was actively discussed throughout
classical antiquity, but it was usually rejected and occasionally parodied by later authors. While little known during the
Middle Ages, the story of Atlantis was rediscovered by
Humanists in modern times. Plato's description inspired the utopian works of several
Renaissance writers, like
Francis Bacon's "
New Atlantis". Atlantis inspires today's literature, from
science fiction to
comic books and
films, its name having become a byword for any and all supposed prehistoric but advanced (and lost) civilizations.
Plato's account
Plato's dialogues
Timaeus and
Critias, written in 360 BC, contain the earliest known references to Atlantis. For unknown reasons, Plato never completed
Critias; however, the scholar
Benjamin Jowett, among others, argues that Plato originally planned a third dialogue titled
Hermocrates.
John V. Luce assumes that Plato — after describing the origin of the world and mankind in
Timaeus as well as the allegorical perfect society of ancient
Athens and its successful defense against an antagonistic Atlantis in
Critias — would have made the strategy of the
Greek civilization during their conflict with the
Persians a subject of discussion in the
Hermocrates. Plato introduced Atlantis in
Timaeus:
For it's related in our records how once upon a time your State stayed the course of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot. For the ocean there was at that time navigable; for in front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, 'the pillars of Heracles,' there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together; and it was possible for the travelers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean. For all that we've here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, is evidently a haven having a narrow entrance; but that yonder is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power, which held sway over all the island, and over many other islands also and parts of the continent.
The four persons appearing in those two dialogues are the politicians
Critias and
Hermocrates as well as the philosophers
Socrates and
Timaeus, although only Critias speaks of Atlantis. While most likely all of these people actually lived, these dialogues as recorded may have been the invention of Plato. In his written works, Plato makes extensive use of the
Socratic dialogues in order to discuss contrary positions within the context of a supposition.
The
Timaeus begins with an introduction, followed by an account of the creations and structure of the universe and ancient civilizations. In the introduction, Socrates muses about the perfect society, described in Plato's
Republic, and wonders if he and his guests might recollect a story which exemplifies such a society. Critias mentions an allegedly historical tale that would make the perfect example, and follows by describing Atlantis as is recorded in the
Critias. In his account, ancient Athens seems to represent the "perfect society" and Atlantis its opponent, representing the very antithesis of the "perfect" traits described in the
Republic. Critias claims that his accounts of ancient Athens and Atlantis stem from a visit to
Egypt by the Athenian lawgiver
Solon in the 6th century BC. In Egypt, Solon met a priest of
Sais, who translated the history of ancient Athens and Atlantis, recorded on papyri in Egyptian hieroglyphs, into
Greek. According to
Plutarch, Solon met with "Psenophis of Heliopolis, and Sonchis the Saite, the most learned of all the priests" (Life of Solon). Because of the 500+ year distance between Plutarch and the alleged event, and that this information isn't provided by Plato in Timaeus and Critias, this identification is questionable.
According to Critias, the
Hellenic gods of old divided the land so that each god might own a lot;
Poseidon was appropriately, and to his liking, bequeathed the island of Atlantis. The island was larger than Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined, but it afterwards was sunk by an
earthquake and became an impassable mud shoal, inhibiting travel to any part of the ocean. The Egyptians described Atlantis as an island comprising mostly mountains in the northern portions and along the shore, and encompassing a great plain of an oblong shape in the south "extending in one direction three thousand
stadia [about555 km; 345 mi], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about370 km; 230 mi]."
Fifty stadia (10 km; 6 mi) from the coast was a
mountain that was low on all sides...broke it off all round about
...
the central island itself was of a stade's breadth [607feet]
Here lived a native woman, Cleito, the daughter of
Evenor and
Leucippe, with whom Poseidon fell in love and who bore him five pairs of male
twins. The eldest of these, Atlas, was made rightful king of the entire island and the ocean (called the Atlantic Ocean in honor of Atlas), and was given the mountain of his birth and the surrounding area as his
fiefdom. Atlas's twin
Gadeirus or
Eumelus in Greek, was given the extremity of the island towards the Pillars of Heracles. The other four pairs of twins —
Ampheres and
Evaemon,
Mneseus and
Autochthon,
Elasippus and
Mestor, and
Azaes and
Diaprepes — were also given "rule over many men, and a large territory."
Poseidon carved the mountain where his love dwelt into a palace and enclosed it with three circular
moats of increasing width, varying from one to three stadia and separated by rings of land proportional in size. The Atlanteans then built bridges northward from the mountain, making a route to the rest of the island. They dug a great canal to the sea, and alongside the bridges carved tunnels into the rings of rock so that ships could pass into the city around the mountain; they carved docks from the rock walls of the moats. Every passage to the city was guarded by gates and towers, and a wall surrounded each of the city's rings. The walls were constructed of red, white and black rock quarried from the moats, and were covered with
brass,
tin and
orichalcum (bronze or brass), respectively (Critias 116bc).
According to Critias, 9,000 years before his lifetime a war took place between those outside the Pillars of Hercules (generally thought to be the
Strait of Gibraltar) and those who dwelt within them. The Atlanteans had conquered the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt and the European continent as far as
Tyrrhenia, and subjected its people to slavery. The Athenians led an alliance of resistors against the Atlantean empire and as the alliance disintegrated, prevailed alone against the empire, liberating the occupied lands.
But at a later time there occurred portentous earthquakes and floods, and one grievous day and night befell them, when the whole body of your warriors was swallowed up by the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner was swallowed up by the sea and vanished; wherefore also the ocean at that spot has now become impassable and unsearchable, being blocked up by the shoal mud which the island created as it settled down.
Reception
Ancient
Other than Plato's Timaeus and Critias there's no primary ancient account of Atlantis, which means every other account on Atlantis relies on Plato in one way or another.
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's 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. Plato never mentioned these columns. According to the Greek philosopher, Solon saw the Atlantis story on a different source that can be "taken to hand".
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 [200km]; 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". Marcellus remains unidentified.
Other ancient historians and philosophers believing in the existence of Atlantis were Strabo and
Posidonius.
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 (Cos?):
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.
Zoticus, a
Neoplatonist philosopher of the 3rd century AD, wrote an epic poem based on Plato's account of Atlantis.
The 4th century AD historian
Ammianus Marcellinus, relying on a lost work by Timagenes, a historian writing in the 1st century BC, writes that the
Druids of
Gaul said that part of the inhabitants of Gaul had migrated there from distant islands. Some have understood Ammianus's testimony as a claim that at the time of Atlantis's actual sinking 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.
A
Hebrew treatise on computational
astronomy dated to AD 1378/79, apparently a paraphrase of an unknown earlier Islamic work, alludes to the Atlantis myth in a discussion concerning the determination of zero points for the calculation of longitude:
Some say that they [theinhabited regions] begin at the beginning of the western ocean [theAtlantic] and beyond. For in the earliest times [literally:the first days] there was an island in the middle of the ocean. There were scholars there, who isolated themselves in [thepursuit of] philosophy. In their day, that was the [beginningfor measuring] the longitude[s] of the inhabited world. Today, it has become [coveredby the?] sea, and it's ten degrees into the sea; and they reckon the beginning of longitude from the beginning of the western sea.
Modern
Francis Bacon's 1627 novel
The New Atlantis describes a utopian society, called Bensalem, located off the western coast of America. A character in the novel gives a history of Atlantis that's similar to Plato's and places Atlantis in America. It isn't clear whether Bacon means
North or
South America.
Isaac Newton's 1728
The Chronology of the Ancient Kingdoms Amended studies a variety of mythological links to Atlantis.
In middle and late 19th century, several renowned
Mesoamerican scholars, starting with
Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, and including
Edward Herbert Thompson and
Augustus Le Plongeon proposed that Atlantis was somehow related to
Mayan and
Aztec culture.
The 1882 publication of 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 19th century, ideas about the legendary nature of Atlantis were combined with stories of other
lost continents such as
Mu and
Lemuria.
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 submerged rock formation that resembles a road 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.
It has been claimed that before the time of
Eratosthenes about 250 BC, Greek writers located the
Pillars of Hercules on the
Strait of Sicily, but there's little evidence for this. According to Herodotus (c. 430 BC) a Phoenician expedition had circumnavigated
Africa at the behest of
pharaoh Necho, sailing south down the
Red Sea and Indian Ocean and northwards in the Atlantic, re-entering the
Mediterranean Sea through the Pillars of Hercules. His description of northwest Africa makes it very clear that he located the Pillars of Hercules precisely where they're located today. Nevertheless, the belief that they'd been placed at the Strait of Sicily prior to Eratosthenes, has been cited in some
Atlantis theories.
Nationalist ideas
The concept of Atlantis attracted
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.
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's 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
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.
In or near the Mediterranean Sea
Most of the historically proposed locations are in or near the Mediterranean Sea—islands such as
Sardinia,
Crete and
Santorini,
Sicily,
Cyprus, and
Malta; land-based cities or states such as
Troy,
Tartessos, and Tantalus (in the province of
Manisa),
Turkey; and
Israel-
Sinai or
Canaan. The massive
Thera eruption, dated either to the 17th or the 16th century BC, 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. In the area of the
Black Sea the following locations have been proposed:
Bosporus and
Ancomah (a legendary place near
Trabzon). The nearby
Sea of Azov was proposed as another site in 2003. 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 BC.
In the Atlantic Ocean
The location of
Atlantis in the
Atlantic Ocean has certain appeal given the closely related names. Popular culture increasingly places Atlantis there which perpetuates the original Platonic ideal. Several hypotheses place the sunken island in Northern
Europe, including
Sweden (by
Olof Rudbeck in
Atland, 1672–1702), or off the coasts of countries adjoining the
North Sea. Some have proposed
Ireland, the
Celtic Shelf and
Andalusia as a possible locations. 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. Various islands or island groups in the Atlantic were also identified as possible locations, notably the
Azores. The submerged island of
Spartel near the Strait of Gibraltar has also been suggested.
Other locations
Other locations include
Antarctica,
Indonesia, underneath the
Bermuda Triangle, and the
Caribbean Sea have been proposed as the true site of Atlantis. Areas in the
Pacific and Indian Ocean have also been proposed including
Indonesia,
Malaysia or both (for example
Sundaland) and stories of a lost continent off
India named "
Kumari Kandam" have drawn parallels to Atlantis. So has the
Yonaguni monument of Japan. Even
Cuba and the
Bahamas have been suggested. According to
Ignatius L. Donnelly in his book, there's a connection between Atlantis and
Aztlan (the ancestral home of the Aztecs). He claims that the Aztecs pointed east to the Caribbean as the former location of Aztlan.
Art, literature and popular culture
Stargate Atlantis and the Disney animated film . The video game
Tomb Raider features Atlantis as the basis of its plot and the location for its climactic ending. It is also featured prominently and somewhat philosophically in Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's epic
Illuminatus! trilogy.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Atlantis'.
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