In Search of Lost Atlantis

Atlantis, the legend, has been turned into a Disney movie and a really bad sci-fi TV show. The sunken city/island has been reportedly found and then dismissed. It has been a mystery ever since the Greek philosopher Plato first mentioned it in his written works. But where is it? Is it fiction? Or a real island near Greece that met it's catastrophic fate?

From Life Magazine Special - "Strange But True: 100 of the World's Weirdest Wonders"
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This tale is often entitled The Legend of Atlantis, but that is doing the famous lost continent a disservice. Yes, it has never been irrefutably found, it has not been "discovered" a la ancient Troy. But its story was first rendered by one of the world's greatest-ever seekers—and purveyors—of truth. If Atlantis was an invention, Plato was the inventor. If it truly existed, then Plato was its historian.

In 360 B.C. the Greek philosopher wrote of an idyllic island "greater in extent than Libya and Asia," and of an advanced civilization that had become corrupted and was finally destroyed by an earthquake or tsunami. Atlantis was situated vaguely by Plato. Most analysts have posited that "those who dwelt beyond the Pillars of Hercules" existed somewhere in the Atlantic. And Atlantis has, over the years, been "found" in or around Cuba; on Antarctica; in the north Atlantic near Iceland. Famous believers have included everyone from the psychic Edgar Cayce (who listed toward Bimini) to ecologist Rachel Carson (who favored the north).

Few of the nominated places possess something close to what Plato described as Atlantis's fate, in their historical records. But there is a notable exception, and while it wasn't nearly as large as "Libya and Asia," it was in Plato's neighborhood.

We can only guess what precisely happened on the Mediterranean island of Thera since nothing about the event, which took place circa 1470 B.C., was written contemporaneously. After examining the evidence, though, archaeologists are certain that the ring of five islands now known as Santorini was once part of a single island that was to miles wide and dominated by a mountain nearly a mile high. The top of that mountain exploded in titanic fashion nearly 3,500 years ago, covering the island in ash and sending a tsunami as high as 300 feet crashing against the cliffs of Crete 70 miles to the south. The sonic boom emitted could be heard deep in the African jungle and along the Scandinavian shore. Thirty-two cubic miles of Thera were obliterated, and damage everywhere throughout the Mediterranean was surely tremendous.

Some have speculated that the enormity of the calamity might have contributed to the swift decline of Crete's sophisticated Minoan civilization. Others have theorized that stories of what occurred on Thera, handed down by word of mouth, found their way to Mato. And perhaps they did.

From Life Magazine Special - "Strange But True: 100 of the World's Weirdest Wonders"
Purchase here!