Ancient writings of the Greek philosopher Plato launch thousands of years of intense debate and archaeological investigation.
THOUGHTS OF ATLANTIS—the mystical place once home to a highly advanced island culture—have captivated archaeologists, ethnographers, novelists and psychics for more than two millennia. The origin of the Atlantis story comes from a single source—the famed Greek philosopher Plato. Plato claimed his source of the story was the politician and poet Solon, who in turn heard the story from an Egyptian priest. The priest described a vast island, larger than present day Turkey and Libya combined, lying beyond the Pillars of Heracles (Straits of Gibraltar), that had existed 9,000 years earlier. Plato provided details of the island's physical makeup: an ancient urban metropolis surrounded by three concentric rings of water with canals, bridges, a massive harbor and defensive walls encased in an unknown metal called orichalcum that "sparkled like fire." The island teemed with forests, orchards, exotic animals and an abundance of fresh water. The main Temple of Poseidon was covered in silver and gold. The Atlanteans possessed an empire that stretched eastward from the Atlantic Ocean to Italy and Egypt. Eager to extend their domain further
throughout the Mediterranean, the Atlanteans invaded Athens, but were soundly defeated. Wishing to punish the Atlanteans for their avarice, the gods sent a host of devastating earthquakes and floods upon the kingdom of Atlantis, sinking it beneath the waters. "In a single dreadful day and night ... the island of Atlantis disappeared into the depths of the sea," wrote Plato. The legend of Atlantis was largely ignored until the late 19th century when Ignatius Donnelly, an American congressman, published Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882), a treatise that claimed all ancient civilizations descended from Atlantis. Later writers, including mystic Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine (1888) and psychic Edgar Cayce in the early 20th century, described Atlantis as a highly technological culture with flying machines whose inhabitants possessed mysterious supernormal abilities. To this day magazine articles, television programs and Internet chatter continue to fuel the legend of Atlantis. For scientists and scholars, however, the "lost civilization" is not lost: It simply never existed.
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