Plato told the story of Atlantis around B. The founders of Atlantis, he said, were half god and half human. They created a utopian civilization and became a great naval power.
Their home was made up of concentric islands separated by wide moats and linked by a canal that penetrated to the center. The lush islands contained gold, silver, and other precious metals and supported an abundance of rare, exotic wildlife. There was a great capital city on the central island. There are many theories about where Atlantis was—in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Spain, even under what is now Antarctica. Plato said Atlantis existed about 9, years before his own time, and that its story had been passed down by poets, priests, and others.
But Plato's writings about Atlantis are the only known records of its existence. Few, if any, scientists think Atlantis actually existed. Ocean explorer Robert Ballard, the National Geographic explorer-in-residence who discovered the wreck of the Titanic in , notes that "no Nobel laureates" have said that what Plato wrote about Atlantis is true.
Still, Ballard says, the legend of Atlantis is a "logical" one since cataclysmic floods and volcanic explosions have happened throughout history, including one event that had some similarities to the story of the destruction of Atlantis. About 3, years ago, a massive volcanic eruption devastated the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea near Greece.
At the time, a highly advanced society of Minoans lived on Santorini. The Minoan civilization disappeared suddenly at about the same time as the volcanic eruption. But Ballard doesn't think Santorini was Atlantis, because the time of the eruption on that island doesn't coincide with when Plato said Atlantis was destroyed.
Romm believes Plato created the story of Atlantis to convey some of his philosophical theories. Atlantis was a different vehicle to get at some of his favorite themes. The legend of Atlantis is a story about a moral, spiritual people who lived in a highly advanced, utopian civilization. But they became greedy, petty, and "morally bankrupt," and the gods "became angry because the people had lost their way and turned to immoral pursuits," Orser says. As punishment, he says, the gods sent "one terrible night of fire and earthquakes" that caused Atlantis to sink into the sea.
The debate on the existence of Atlantis is still far from over. Plato described this ancient city around BCE and for centuries historians considered his writing as an allegory. Many philosophers, including Aristotle, also viewed Atlantis as fiction. Their argument is backed by the fact that Plato often told fictitious tales.
In the story of the Atlantis, such scholars believe that Plato was sending a warning to the Greeks on the dangers of political ambitions, and promoting nobility for personal gain. Interestingly, most of the proposed sites are not within the Atlantic Ocean. Also, some of the sites are scholarly hypothesis while other sites have been made by pseudoscientific means. Most of the proposed sites share similar characteristics of the Atlantis story including time period, water, and the catastrophic end.
Most of the proposed sites are in or near the Mediterranean Sea because of the location of Egypt from where the story was allegedly derived. In his book "Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis to the Walam Olum" Greenwood, , Feder found 53 specific descriptions of Atlantis in Plato's dialogues, including that the city had bridges connecting rings of land, as well as a central island surrounded by a stone wall on every side.
Descriptions also said that Poseidon's temple in Atlantis had a roof of ivory, walls of silver and pinnacles of gold. It's common for amateur scientists to check off a few of these boxes but rare for anyone to go through the entire checklist, Feder said. Archaeologists have known for years that southern Spain was a maritime-trading hotspot in antiquity, Adams told Live Science. I can't say for sure, 'no,' but I'm not seeing any new evidence that sways me" toward yes, Adams said, after watching the new "Atlantica" trailer.
Like Feder, Adams said that a few aspects of the site meet the Atlantis checklist, including that the region experienced cataclysmic earthquakes and floods, but that other aspects are missing. Adams said he would take an Atlantis proposal more seriously if it had key details from Plato's dialogues, including the city's unique layout of concentric circles like a bull's eye of sea and dry land.
These concentric circles are different than the polka dot-like circles that Merlin Burrows found on the landscape. Or, perhaps, archaeologists will find an inscription about Atlantis in an Egyptian temple , where, according to Plato's writing, the original description was found, Adams said. In reality, it's likely that Plato twisted together elements of different stories and myths he had heard, sculpting that source material into the likely fictional story of the society of Atlantis, the advanced, yet-corrupt society that the gods destroyed.
Put another way, "People very often claim to have found Atlantis," a classical archaeologist in England, who declined to be named, told Live Science. Editor's Note : This article has been updated to indicate that Plato's dialogues describing Atlantis were written sometime around B. Originally published on Live Science.
Laura is an editor at Live Science. She edits Life's Little Mysteries and reports on general science, including archaeology and animals. She has won multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association for her reporting at a weekly newspaper near Seattle.
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