The Lost Continent of Atlantis still remains one of the world’s greatest mysteries. Is it fact or fiction? There are many theories and it has been looked for in many places. The search for Atlantis, however, would never have begun if it had not been for the Greek philosopher Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.), who in two of his dialogues, the Timaeus and the Kritias, tells the following story:
Atlantis was a vast island, bigger than Asia Minor and Libya combined, lying beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar). Beyond Atlantis again, there lay an archipelago of lesser islands. Some 9,000 years before Solon (c. 640-559 B.C.), Atlantis had been a powerful kingdom, with a high civilization and an ideal political constitution, which dominated the Mediterranean. When it became aggressive and imperialistic, it had been, through the anger of the gods, overwhelmed by the sea.
Plato’s tale purports to come originally from Kritias who heard it when he was ten from his grandfather (then nearly 90), who heard it from his father. And Kritias’ great grandfather had been told it by Solon, who learned it in Egypt from the priests of Sais. Plato, being a philosopher and not a storyteller, wrote the account he received with a moralistic end in mind, not just for the sake of telling. How far is Atlantis Plato’s invention and how far is it based on facts of which no other record remains?
If the account of Atlantis is not fact, then it is not fable either--at least not Plato’s, for a similar tale was known in Egypt at the time of the Middle Kingdom (2000-1750 B.C.). The tale of a happy and prosperous island later submerged was evidently known to the Egyptians, as indeed it was elsewhere--it appears, for instance, in the Indian Mahabharata. It may even by a basic myth shared by different peoples. This does not mean that an Atlantis never existed--legends often consist of myth, supposition and invention laid on a hard core of fact.
Many seekers after Atlantis have recently come to believe they have found this core on the Greek island of Thera which was decimated by a great volcanic eruption in the Aegean Sea around 1520 B.C. The eruption is calculated to have been four times as powerful as that of Krakatoa, between Sumatra and Java, in 1883, which was heard in Australia. Thera’s volcano spewed out enough ash to cover parts of the island in a layer 98 feet thick and to bury the main city completely. Even though this eruption occurred about 1520 B.C., the ash is still 13 feet thick in some places. Some 40 years later, the volcano’s cone collapsed, causing the sea to rush in and leaving Thera the knife-edged arc it is today. Hugh tidal waves wreaked such havoc that they are thought to have destroyed Cretan civilization almost overnight. The area of fall-out was enormous. Much of the centre of Thera disappeared underwater, leaving the small group of islands visible today.
Was this the end of Atlantis? Many people think so. It is also possible that Crete itself was the site of the lost civilization, and idea first mooted in 1909. Crete’s contacts with Egypt were suddenly broken at the same time as the drowning of Thera. Egyptian tradition may well have combined what was known of Thera’s destruction with the abrupt and final break with Cretan civilization to explain the disappearance of this ‘world power’.
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Textual excerpts above taken from:
Mysterious Places
