The Claim
There is an ancient and powerful civilisation lost beneath the waves of the Atlantic ocean
Everyone has heard the name Atlantis, the magical underwater city that is home to mystical creatures and an advanced civilisation, but is there any truth in the claim or is this just the most famous mythical city in history.
Everything that we know about the city either comes from Legend, or from Greek philosophers, the most famous of which was Plato who claimed to have somehow found ancient texts he believed to be speaking of events 9000 years old. Since Plato lived just prior to 400 BC, this would make his story of Atlantis coming from around 11,400 years ago. He later wrote the following talking about the size of the continent:
“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 travellers 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 the continent of Atlantis to be as big as Plato claims would mean that when it submerged under the waves, the rest of the world would have lost several meters to rising sea levels. He goes on to talk about how the Atlantian fleet besieged ancient Athens but was repelled, something that no other nation at the time was able to do.
After the attack failed the Atlantians fell out of favour with the Greek gods who submerged the continent, killing all those who called it home. After this all traces of anything to do with Atlantis fell off the face of the earth, leaving only the word of Plato as testament to its existence.
After the story of Atlantis reached the rest of the world its popularity exploded, and has since been featured in hundreds of books and dozens of movies, all of which fed the myth that it might have actually existed.
But some do seriously question if it did exist or not, exploring the possibility that a civilisation lived on a series of islands that has since been submerged due to some kind of plate activity or a volcano, something that has happened numerous times since the days of Plato more than 2400 years ago.
Since all we have to go on for a possible location is “beyond the pillars of Hercules”, we don’t really know where to start looking. There has been pretty much everywhere suggested as a possible location, but the most common one is the Atlantic ocean.
Plato claimed to have translated ancient Egyptian texts that talked about the city, along with other historical records, all of which came from or close to European civilisations. The biggest problem with his claim is the size of the continent, which first of all wouldn’t really fit anywhere other than the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Also there’s the problem of how he could possibly knows it bigger than Asia, as the human eye can normally see no further than a few dozen miles, depending on the weather.
Since all the original stories of Atlantis come from one man, who claims to have based it on other peoples historic texts, we can safely assume that its nothing more than myth. One of the most interesting things about this story is that there is literally no evidence its real or ever was, but countless million’s have been spent over the years by various expeditions trying to find it, with everything from deep sea submersibles to fleets of scanner ships looking for anomalies on the sea bed, but as of yet no one has found a single trace of the city or even the continent.
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