Atlantis

Atlantis (in Greek, "island of Atlas") is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's
dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC. According to Plato, Atlantis was a naval
powerlying "in front of the Pillars of Hercules" that conquered many parts of Western Europe
and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. After a failed
attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune".
Scholars dispute whether and how much Plato's story or account was inspired by older
traditions. In Critias, Plato claims that his accounts of ancient Athens and Atlantis stem from a
visit to Egypt by the legendary 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. 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 415413 BC.

Platos Description of Atlantis

The myth of Atlantis was first described by Plato (427-347 BCE), citing his
source as Solon. He apparently got his information from Egypt. The Egyptian
priests informed Solon that around 9570 BCE, there was already a great
civilization at Athens that the present Greeks have already forgotten. The
society was ruled by warriors who loved the simple, communal lifestyle and
had no interest in great wealth. They had been able to defend the city
against the island continent of Atlantis, which lay west beyond the Pillars of
Heracles (Straits of Gibraltar) and was ruled by a coalition of kings
descended from the sea god, Poseidon, and whose chief king was Poseidons
son, Atlas.
The Atlanteans were at one point almost godlike in their purity of heart, but
they became greedy and corrupt over time. They ruled an empire stretching
as far as central Italy in Europe to the borders of Egypt in Africa, but grew
even greedier and sought to conquer the Athenians, but were defeated. As
the war ended, the gods decided to punish the Atlanteans for their pride,
and over the course of a day and a night, violent earthquakes and floods
swept the island and destroyed it.
The account Plato gives in Critias describes the Atlantean society. The island
had virtually everything the Altanteans needed to remain self sufficient from
fresh water, abundance in metal ores, luxuriant vegetation, and animals
including elephants. As a result, the kings of Atlantis were quite wealthy.
Each had its own royal city, but the greatest city was that ruled by the
descendents of Atlas.
Plato told the story of Atlantis around 360 B.C. 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.
Plato said Atlantis existed about 9,000 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.

Location hypotheses of 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, Santorini, Sicily, Cyprus, and Malta;
land-based cities or states such as Troy,Tartessos, and Tantalus (in the
province of Manisa, Turkey); Israel-Sinai or Canaan; and northwestern
Africa.The Thera eruption, dated to the 17th or 16th century BC, caused a
large tsunami that some experts hypothesize 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.
A. G. Galanopoulos argued that Plato's dating of 9,000 years before Solon's
time was the result of an error in translation, probably from Egyptian into
Greek, which produced "thousands" instead of "hundreds". Such an error
would also rescale Plato's 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 area of the Black Sea the following locations have been
proposed: Bosporus and Ancomah (a legendary place near Trabzon).

In the Atlantic Ocean and Europe

In 2011, a team, working on a documentary for the National Geographic
Channel, led by Professor Richard Freund from the University of Hartford,
claimed to have found evidence of Atlantis in southwestern Andalusia. The
team identified its possible location within the marshlands of the Doana
National Park, in the area that once was the Lacus Ligustinus,[61] between
the Huelva, Cdiz and Seville provinces, and speculated that Atlantis had
been destroyed by a tsunami,extrapolating results from a previous study by
Spanish researchers, published four years earlier.
Spanish scientists have dismissed Freund's speculations, claiming that he
sensationalised their work. The anthropologist Juan Villaras-Robles, who
works with the Spanish National Research Council, said, "Richard Freund was
a newcomer to our project and appeared to be involved in his own very
controversial issue concerning King Solomon's search for ivory and gold in
Tartessos, the well documented settlement in the Doana area established
in the first millennium BC", and described Freund's claims as "fanciful".
A similar theory had previously been put forward by a German researcher,
Rainer W. Khne, but based only on satellite imagery and placing Atlantis in
the Marismas de Hinojos, north of the city of Cdiz. Before that, the historian
Adolf Schulten had stated in the 1920s that Plato had used Tartessos as the
basis for his Atlantis myth.

The location of Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean has a certain appeal given the
closely related names. Popular culture often places Atlantis there,
perpetuating the original Platonic setting. Several hypotheses place the
sunken island in northern Europe, including Doggerland in the North Sea,
and Sweden (by Olof Rudbeck in Atland, 16721702). Some have proposed
the Celtic Shelf as a possible location, and that there is a link to Ireland.
The Canary Islands and Madeira Islands have also been identified as a
possible location, west of the Straits of Gibraltar but in relative proximity to
the Mediterranean Sea. Various islands or island groups in the Atlantic were
also identified as possible locations, notably the Azores. However detailed
geological studies of the Canary Islands, the Azores, Madeira, and the ocean
bottom surrounding them found a complete lack of any evidence for the
catastrophic subsidence of these islands at any time during their existence
and a complete lack of any evidence that the ocean bottom surrounding
them was ever dry land at any time in the recent past, with the exception of
what appeared to be beaches. The submerged island of Spartel near the
Strait of Gibraltar has also been suggested.
In 2013 an investigator published a book naming the Algarve, in southern
Portugal as the location of Atlantis, this was also the case made by Dr Roger
Coghill in 2002.

The Thera Theory

In the late 1960s Professor Spyridon Marinatos discovered the remains of
a Bronze Age city near Akrotiri, on the island of Thera (Santorini). The city's
streets, buildings, pottery, and colorful wall paintings prove that it was a
wealthy society much like the Minoan civilization of nearby Crete. But
around 1500 B.C.E., a devastating volcanic eruptionfar greater than the
one that covered Pompeiiburied the city under 15 feet of ash.
Was Thera the land of Atlantis? Some believe that Plato was indeed
describing Thera, but that he was wrong about its location and the date of
its destructionor that translations of his writings have been
misunderstood. If Plato did not completely make up the story of Atlantis, it
probably has its origins in ancient Egyptian records that told of the events at
Thera.

Description of the island

The texts of Plato placed Atlantis in front of the Pillars of Hercules and
described as an island larger than Libya and Asia together. It is noted
as rugged geography, except for a large oblong plain 3000 by 2000
stadia surrounded by mountains to the Mk.9 to half the length of the
plain, the story of a low mountain located everywhere, distant 50
stadia from the sea, noting that was home to one of the first
inhabitants of the island, Evenor, soil born.
According to Critias, Evenor had a daughter named Cleitus. This
written account Poseidon was the lord of the Atlantean land, since,
when the gods had divided the world, luck had wanted him to

Poseidon appropriate, among other places, Atlantis. Here is the reason

of his great influence on this island. This god Cleitus fell in love and to
protect her, or hold her captive, created three water rings around the
mountain that inhabited his beloved. The couple had ten children, to
whom the god respective divided the island into ten kingdoms. The
eldest son, Atlas or Atlante, handed the mountain kingdom
comprising circles surrounded by water, giving further authority over
his brothers. In honor of Atlas, the entire island was called Atlantis
and the sea that surrounded, Atlantic. His twin brother named Gadiro
(Eumelus in Greek) and ruled the end of the island stretching from the
Pillars of Hercules to the region by derivation of its name is called
Gadrica.
Favored by Poseidon, the island of Atlantis was abundant in resources.
There were all kinds of minerals, highlighting the orichalcum
(mountain copper) more valuable than gold to the Atlanteans and
religious uses (it is speculated that the story refers to a natural alloy
of copper). There were great forests that provided unlimited wood,
numerous animals, domestic and wild, especially elephants, large and
varied food from the earth.
Such prosperity Atlanteans gave momentum to build great works.
They built on the mountain surrounded by a splendid water circles full
of remarkable Acropolis buildings, including especially the Royal
Palace and the Temple of Poseidon. They built a large canal, 50 stadia
in length, to communicate the coast with the outer water ring
surrounding the metropolis, and a smaller, covered, for connecting
the outer ring with the citadel. Each trip to the city was guarded from
gates and towers, and each ring was surrounded by a wall. The walls
were made of red rock, black and white taken from the pits, and
coated brass, tin and orichalcum. Finally, they dug around the plain
oblong, a giant pit from which created a network of straight canals
that irrigated the whole of the plain

Fall of the Atlantean Empire

The kingdoms of Atlantis were a confederation ruled by laws, which
were written in a column of orichalcum, in the Temple of Poseidon.
The main laws were those which provided that the various kings had
to help each other, not attack each other and make decisions
concerning war and other common activities, by consensus under the
direction of the line of Atlas. In turn, every five to six years, the kings
met to make arrangements and to prosecute and punish those among
them had broken the rules that tied.
Justice and virtue were themselves the government of Atlantis, but
when the divine nature of kings descended from Poseidon was

diminished, pride and lust for domination became features of the

Atlanteans. According to Timaeus, began a policy of expansion that
led to control the peoples of Libya to Egypt and Europe to Tirrenia.
When they tried to subdue Greece and Egypt were defeated by the
Athenians.
The Critias states that the gods decided to punish the Atlanteans for
their pride, but the story is interrupted at the time of Zeus and the
other gods meet to determine the penalty. Usually, however, it is
usually assumed that the punishment was a great earthquake and
subsequent flooding that wiped out the island in the sea, "in a day
and a terrible night," according to Timaeus dialogue.