About Atlantis...
Abstract
Plato’s tales of Atlantis as told in his Timaeus and Critias dialogues do not refer to some ancient super civilization that long predated the Egyptians and existed on an island located somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean or elsewhere. At best the tales refer to the Minoan civilization as remembered through Egyptian eyes and were used by Plato as a convenient framework to present a fictional account of a utopian city-state based on his political theories in his famous dialogue The Republic. The account of the fictional struggle between the vast Atlantean Empire and an ancient idealized Athens is modeled on the recent (to Plato) struggle between Athens and the Persian Empire. The story of the fall of Atlantis is a moral tale that relates to the collapse of Athenian power after achieving a measure of greatness in the wake of the Persian Wars.
The myth of Atlantis has become a popular icon and moral tale in the cultural imagination of Western civilization in the last century and a half. The romance of finding the remains an ancient, advanced civilization lost under the ocean waves is very alluring. The morality tale about a civilization favored by the Gods that reached great heights of achievement but fell from grace when they became too arrogant and ambitious and had to be destroyed, speaks powerfully to modern ears. This theme also resonates with the stories of Noah's Ark and the Tower of Babel in the Bible. The tale of the fall of Atlantis is especially relevant to these modern times when our society has produced advanced technologies like atomic weapons, computers, genetic engineering, air and space travel and other wonders undreamed of only a few centuries ago. Unfortunately the rising power and technology of man threaten us with our own self-destruction via nuclear war, environmental degradation, resource depletion and who knows what other unsavory consequences may arise from our recent rapid progress. The development of wisdom in modern man has not seemed to keep pace with these scientific and technical achievements and the myth of the fall of Atlantis stands as a stark warning from the past. Thus Atlantis is intriguing both as a meaningful myth and as a possible real lost civilization. Although most people know of the Atlantis myth, few have actually examined the myths source. Let us examine the possible reality of Atlantis and what the Atlantean story meant to the Greek philosopher Plato, from whose writings the myth originates.
Plato and Atlantis
The myth of Atlantis is found in two of Plato's dialogues, the Timaeus and the Critias. Near the beginning of the Timaeus, a brief description is given of a war fought between the Atlanteans and the ancient Athenians for control of the Mediterranean basin. The Atlantis story is supposed to have come down to Plato from Solon, the writer of the Athenian Laws, who originally heard it from an Egyptian priest. The rest of Timaeus is concerned with the creation and description of the Cosmos. The Timaeus and Critias dialogues immediately follow The Republic and are a continuation of the conversation begun there. In The Republic, Plato describes an ideal city-state. The conversation is supposed to finish in the Critias dialogue which tells the story of an ideal state like that portrayed theoretically in The Republic. That ideal state is a fictional ancient Athens and the dialogue describes a war between Atlantis and ancient Athens. However the dialogue is unfinished and Plato never actually gets to the war itself. The preliminary comments in Timaeus and Critias simply tell of the Atlanteans coming to woe when they became so arrogant and aggressive that they try to conquer the entire Mediterranean basin but are defeated single-handedly by ancient Athens. A disaster then engulfs both Atlantis and the fighting men of ancient Athens. Plato claims that knowledge of Atlantis and ancient Athens came to the present day Greeks from the Egyptians who had memories of events far older than Greek civilization, which indeed they did. Plato describes the Egyptians as claiming that Atlantis and ancient Athens (as well as ancient Egypt) existed 9000 years prior to his time.
Here is the brief description of the war between Atlantis with the city of ancient Athens from Plato's dialogue Timaeus. (see http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html)
"And what was the tale about, Critias? said Amynander.
About the greatest action which the Athenians ever did, and which ought to have been the most famous, but, through the lapse of time and the destruction of the actors, it has not come down to us.
Tell us, said the other, the whole story, and how and from whom Solon heard this veritable tradition."
[Solon, the writer of the Athenian Laws enacted in 594 BCE, in his younger days is visiting Egypt and talking with an Egyptian priest at the Egyptian capital of Sais in the Nile delta.]
Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valour. For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind. She was pre-eminent in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjugated, and generously liberated all the rest of us who dwell within the pillars. But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner
disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.
From a modern geologic perspective, with our current understanding of plate tectonics and continental drift, it is known that geologic processes do not involve large risings and sinkings of major landmasses. This idea was popular in pre-plate tectonic geology before continental drift became understood in the 1950's and 60's. When interest in Atlantis was revived in the 19th century, the idea of a continent or large island suddenly sinking could be somewhat plausibly entertained but now it is no longer tenable. The edges of continents can buckle and rise in the process that raises mountains, volcanic eruptions can cover fair sized areas with magmatic flows, the largest being in Washington State and the Deccan flats in India, but all these process take place at continental margins and last for millions of years. Small volcanic islands can rise or sink in the oceans as a result of a small number of eruptions as the example of Surtsey off the coast of Iceland demonstrates but they are far smaller than the reputed size of Atlantis. Continental landmasses themselves are very ancient and once formed are virtually immortal since they are made of low density crust that literally floats on the denser basalt of the underlying crust.
The Atlantic floor has been surveyed and it is known that there are no major mud banks in the Atlantic ocean nor any sign of a sunken continent or major sunken island. Indeed, geology is understood well enough these days that it is known that large islands do not and cannot simply vanish into the ocean in one night. They can be slowly weathered away over geologic time periods as one can see in the Hawaiian Island chain. Small volcanic islands can be disrupted by major volcanic explosions, but large islands cannot. So there is simply no geologic evidence whatsoever for a "lost island or continent of Atlantis" in the Atlantic or in any ocean. This also applies to other reputed sunken continents like Mu or Lemuria. The only possible way to suddenly sink or destroy a large island would be through a large asteroid strike. But a strike large enough to obliterate a major island would also sterilize the Earth of most life, at least any large life, as is believed to have occurred with the extinction of the dinosaurs. An asteroid strike would leave a large crater behind but no relevant craters have been found. So geologic evidence is decidedly negative when it comes to the possibility of a lost and sunken Atlantean island or continent. Thus the story about the sinking of Atlantis is purely mythical or it must be derived from some other lesser cataclysm.
To gain a better perspective on the significance of Atlantis to Plato, note that in the passage above, ancient Athens stands alone against the Atlantean assault and saves civilization by fending the aggressive Atlanteans off single handedly. Not unlike Athens at the battle of Marathon, eh? Apparently this passage was inspired by the recent history of Greece with the Persian Empire in Plato's day, although from Plato's somewhat biased Athenian perspective. The Atlanteans were a vast empire that threatened ancient Greece (and ancient Egypt) from the west, having conquered all of Europe and Africa up to the borders of Greece and Egypt. Likewise, the Persians had conquered a vast empire that had included Egypt and all of Asia (from the Greek perspective) and stood on the shores of the Aegean looming over mainland Greece like a giant shadow from the east. Basically a mirror image of the situation with the Atlanteans, but with the directions reversed. In the first "unprovoked" invasion of Greece by the Persians under Darius, the Athenians single-handedly (with their Platean allies) defeated the Persians in 490 BCE at the famous battle of Marathon with no help from any other Greek cities, just as the ancient Athenians are reported to have defeated the Atlantean assault 9000 years earlier. A fact the Greeks should not forget! If not for the heroic stand of Athens, the Greeks would be Persian subjects. Of course, the Persians invaded Greece a second time a decade after the battle of Marathon and were defeated by the combined forces of Sparta, Athens and a few other cities. Although again Athens played a pivotal role in that conflict.
Ostensibly, the motivation for the first Persian invasion was due to the military assistance the Athenians had given to the Greek cities of Asia Minor in an unsuccessful revolt against their Persian overlords. But the second assault by the Persian Great King Xerxes was mainly for revenge and for the sake of pure conquest. In the second Persian invasion, Xerxes gathered forces from all over the Persian Empire and assembled them into a great army and flotilla, a "vast power, gathered into one" just like the Atlanteans, and with the same purpose: the subduing of Greece in a single blow thus opening up all the rest of the Mediterranean basin and Europe to Persian conquest. The Greeks would repeat the role of a bulwark protecting Europe from Asian conquest many times in the future as they did when the Byzantine Empire protected a weak Christian Europe from Islamic conquest, but these events for future centuries long after Plato's time.
After the Persian Wars, Athens "generously" led the Delian league, which was an alliance of Greek city-states dedicated to liberating all the Greek areas under Persian domination. The Athenians did most of the fighting while the other city states mainly supplied money, ships and sometimes men. In the cold war decades following the repulsion of the Persians, the league was fairly successful at this process and freed most of the Ionian coastal cities from Persian control. The financial contributions supplied by the other Greek members in the Delian league, for Athens "generous" help, led to the enrichment of Athens under Pericles and made Athens a major naval power. The rising power of Athens gradually led to the conversion of the Delian league into an Athenian Empire. The Athenians were brought low by their own ambitions when they engaged their rival Sparta in 431 BCE in a long war for supremacy in Greece that became known as the Peloponnesian War. The Athenians endured a plague early on and lost many troops and ships in a failed attempt to conquer the city of Syracuse in Sicily in 413 BCE. Ultimately the Athenians were defeated after 27 years of warfare and the Athenian army and navy was disbanded. The Spartans achieved hegemony over Greece. This was the political situation in Plato's time.
So Plato's Atlantis stories appear to be in part a political allegory and in part an attempt to illustrate the ideal society portrayed theoretically in The Republic. The Egyptians seemed to have been employed as a literary device, much like the time machine of the science fiction writer H. G. Wells, in order to allow Plato to access a distant past beyond current Greek memory, wherein he could set his ideal society. Undoubtedly, the Greeks did realize the antiquity of Egyptian civilization relative to their own and the knowledge of the ancient past that the Egyptians actually possessed. The paragraphs preceding the description of the Atlantean War, (quoted below) in the Timaeus contains a lively and amusing description of the youthfulness of the Greek civilization compared to that of the Egyptian and a reminder that whole societies can rise, then fall, and simply disappear. The Egyptians were undoubtedly well aware of the rise and fall of their neighbors the Minoans, the Myceneans, the Hittites, the Mitanni, the Assyrians, etc. The Minoans and Myceneans, of the Aegean and Greek mainland respectively, did indeed have a written language, but after the Dorian invasion of the Aegean area, knowledge of writing was lost. The conquering barbarian Greeks learned about writing centuries later from the Phoenicians. We quote these passages from the Timaeus:
Tell us, said the other, the whole story, and how and from whom Solon heard this veritable tradition.
He replied:-In the Egyptian Delta, at the head of which the river Nile divides, there is a certain district which is called the district of Sais, and the great city of the district is also called Sais, and is the city from which King Amasis came. The citizens have a deity for their foundress; she is called in the Egyptian tongue Neith, and is asserted by them to be the same whom the Hellenes call Athene; they are great lovers of the Athenians, and say that they are in some way related to them. To this city came Solon, and was received there with great honour; he asked the priests who were most skillful in such matters, about antiquity, and made the discovery that neither he nor any other Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about the times of old. On one occasion, wishing to draw them on to speak of antiquity, he began to tell about the most ancient things in our part of the world-about Phoroneus, who is called "the first man," and about Niobe; and after the Deluge, of the survival of Deucalion and Pyrrha; and he traced the genealogy of their descendants, and reckoning up the dates, tried to compute how many years ago the events of which he was speaking happened. Thereupon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you. Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you why. There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is a story, which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth, which recurs after long intervals; at such times those who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore. And from this calamity the Nile, who is our never-failing saviour, delivers and preserves us. When, on the other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, the survivors in your country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwell on the mountains, but those who, like you, live in cities are carried by the rivers into the sea. Whereas in this land, neither then nor at any other time, does the water come down from above on the fields, having always a tendency to come up from below; for which reason the traditions preserved here are the most ancient.
[Note in the passage above that Solon tries to draw the Egyptian priests into talking by recounting the Greek version of the story of Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark (purple text). Sounds just like the stories in Genesis, eh! But the Egyptian priest, as will we hear below, considers these "baby stories". ]
The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost or of summer does not prevent, mankind exists, sometimes in greater, sometimes in lesser numbers. And whatever happened either in your country or in ours, or in any other region of which we are informed-if there were any actions noble or great or in any other way remarkable, they have all been written down by us of old, and are preserved in our temples. Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves. As for those genealogies of yours which you just now recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children. In the first place you remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones; in the next place, you do not know that there formerly dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, and that you and your whole city are descended from a small seed or remnant of them which survived. And this was unknown to you, because, for many generations, the survivors of that destruction died, leaving no written word. For there was a time, Solon, before the great deluge of all, when the city which now is Athens was first in war and in every way the best governed of all cities, is said to have performed the noblest deeds and to have had the fairest constitution of any of which tradition tells, under the face of heaven.
[Undoubtedly, their form of government and constitution would be that described by Plato in The Republic for his ideal city-state, but Plato never gets to the point of telling us about these details.]
Solon marvelled at his words, and earnestly requested the priests to inform him exactly and in order about these former citizens. You are welcome to hear about them, Solon, said the priest, both for your own sake and for that of your city, and above all, for the sake of the goddess who is the common patron and parent and educator of both our cities. She founded your city a thousand years before ours, receiving from the Earth and Hephaestus the seed of your race, and afterwards she founded ours, of which the constitution is recorded in our sacred registers to be eight thousand years old. As touching your citizens of nine thousand years ago, I will briefly inform you of their laws and of their most famous action; the exact particulars of the whole we will hereafter go through at our leisure in the sacred registers themselves. If you compare these very laws with ours you will find that many of ours are the counterpart of yours as they were in the olden time. In the first place, there is the caste of priests, which is separated from all the others; next, there are the artificers, who ply their several crafts by themselves and do not intermix; and also there is the class of shepherds and of hunters, as well as that of husbandmen; and you will observe, too, that the warriors in Egypt are distinct from all the other classes, and are commanded by the law to devote themselves solely to military pursuits; moreover, the weapons which they carry are shields and spears, a style of equipment which the goddess taught of Asiatics first to us, as in your part of the world first to you. Then as to wisdom, do you observe how our law from the very first made a study of the whole order of things, extending even to prophecy and medicine which gives health, out of these divine elements deriving what was needful for human life, and adding every sort of knowledge which was akin to them. All this order and arrangement the goddess first imparted to you when establishing your city; and she chose the spot of earth in which you were born, because she saw that the happy temperament of the seasons in that land would produce the wisest of men. Wherefore the goddess, who was a lover both of war and of wisdom, selected and first of all settled that spot which was the most likely to produce men likest herself. And there you dwelt, having such laws as these and still better ones, and excelled all mankind in all virtue, as became the children and disciples of the gods.
Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our histories....
Unfortunately none of these great deeds are described other than the ancient Athenian defeat of the Atlantean invasion. Now we know that Egyptian civilization started around 3000 BCE or about 2500 years before the time of Plato. So no written records go back before that time and certainly none go back 9000 years earlier. Nor is there any archaeological evidence for an ancient Athens existing so far back in time. So we can conclude that the timescales are exaggerated and that the existence of an ancient Athens existing thousands of years before Plato’s time is pure fiction.
Description of Atlantis
Now consider the Atlantean civilization as described in detail in the Critias dialogue. Plato tells us that the isle of Atlantis was very fertile and produced abundant crops of all sorts, harboured many animals and was well watered. The island supported a large population that lived in harmony with each other. Over time the rulers and people of Atlantis gradually improved their island by building canals, towns, villages, etc. The capital city became a great and bustling center of trade both with the rest of the island and with many regions of the Earth.
Atlantis itself was described as a rectangular island with a long axis along the east-west direction. The interior of the island contained a perfectly rectangular, well watered and fertile plain, 3000 stadia in length and 2000 in breadth. The central plain was surrounded on all sides by high mountains that ran to the sea, making a steeply sloping shoreline. Probably not too many good beaches there! Along the interior boundary of the mountains ran a great canal that entirely enclosed and watered the central plain. Auxiliary canals ran from the main outer canal across the central plain, watering the interior. From this basic description, the size of the central plain is 341 miles by 227 miles, assuming one stadia equals 600 feet. This is an area slightly less than the size of England and Scotland. If we assume the coastal mountain range is 30-40 miles in depth from the plain to the coast, then the total area of the isle of Atlantis is about equal to that of the British Isles. A large island certainly, but no continent. The isle of Atlantis is much smaller than the size of Libya and Asia combined, even assuming Asia is just Asia Minor, so Plato's different size descriptions are inconsistent. But that would only be expected in a day when people in general had only the haziest idea of the true size of the Earth and its features.
The capital city of Atlantis was located along the east-west centerline of the island near the southern sea coast. The great city was enclosed by a circular landwall close to 400 stadia in circumference (or 45 miles) giving the city a size comparable to modern Paris. The perimeter of the landwall bordered on the southern sea coast and was pierced by a great canal that ran from the sea to the city center. In the center of the city was a perfectly circular island 5 stadia in diameter surrounded by a ring of water. A second and third concentric ring of water enclosed the first ring, creating two circular islands 2 and 3 stadia across respectively. Each circular island was enclosed by a wall on its outer rim. On the central island was a large hill or acropolis where stood the palace of the king and the ornate temple of Poseidon and other more minor temples. The central island was enclosed by a wall made of the metal oreichalkos, a metal described as like red-gold copper and unknown to the Greeks. The temple of Poseidon contained a stele of oreichalkos on which the early Atlantean kings had engraved their most important laws as well as a large gold statue of Poseidon himself that reached up to the ivory ceiling. Gold and silver covered the temple walls and there were gold statues of one hundred nereids as well as many other statues. Plato says there was something "barbaric" about the appearance of the temple.
Atlantis was ruled by a high king who lived in the palace on the central island and ruled in conjunction with nine other kings, each of whom ruled a district of the island. The ten kings would meet every 5 or 6 years in alternation at the Temple of Poseidon to discuss their laws, reaffirm oaths to each other and make judgments upon each other after sacrificing a bull and pouring its blood on the central stele. The ten kings were descended from five sets of twins that were the progeny of Poseidon and a mortal woman named Clito in the first days of Atlantis.
Plato only gets to the story of the fall of Atlantis near the end of the Critias dialogue, but stops abruptly in midsentence after only a few paragraphs. The basic reason for the fall is attributed to the gradual decrease in the mortal nature of the Atlantean kings as their divine nature was diluted over time by interbreeding with ordinary mortals. The early Atlantean kings were indifferent to the wealth and abundance of their island and ruled peacefully and in harmony with the divine order. But apparently as the Atlantean kings became more mortal, the mortal part of their nature began to dominate the divine and this situation did not continue. Their love for material things and for power increased and they no longer maintained the sense of equanimity of their ancestors. That led Zeus to a desire to punish the Atlanteans. But then the story ends. All that is known otherwise is that the Atlanteans ruled a great empire that included most of Europe and tried to finish their conquest of the Mediterranean basin but were defeated by the ancient Athenians. Then Atlantis sank into the ocean and earthquakes destroyed the victorious Athenian army.
Atlantis and the Minoan Civilization
Plato's portrayal of Atlantean society and its eventual extinction could conceivably be an idealized and magnified description of Egyptian memories of contact with the Minoan civilization that thrived in the Aegean basin several hundred years before the people who were to become the Greeks actually arrived in Greece. The Egyptians had extensive trade and cultural contact with the Minoans in the 2nd millennium BCE as well as the Minoan's contemporaries in Asia Minor, the Hittites. The Minoans lived on the island of Crete and had developed a relatively peaceful and prosperous maritime civilization. The island of Crete is a roughly rectangular with the long axis situated along an east-west line.
The Minons were subjected to a massive volcanic eruption on the island of Thera just 80 miles due north of Crete around 1400 BCE. The eruption probably devastated the Aegean basin at the time. The strong memory of that disaster may well have been enshrined in myth, much as memories of very large floods of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers may have been preserved in the myth of Noah in Mesopotamia. Earthquakes also occurred at about the same time and may have been related to the volcanic eruption. Tidal waves would certainly have been created that would have devastated any nearby coastal cities as well as the Cretan capital city of Knossos, located on the northern Cretan coast due south of Thera. Archaeological evidence shows that earthquakes caused the palace of the Minoan king at Knossos to collapse and probably many other buildings on Crete as well at about the same time. The devastated Minoans were conquered shortly thereafter by the Myceneans from the Greek mainland. The palace at Knossos was rebuilt but then suffered a second earthquake induced collapse 50 years later and was never rebuilt. The Myceneans were in their turn conquered by invading Greek tribes coming from the north a few centuries later. The Hittite Empire in Asia Minor was also destroyed at this time. With the invasion of the barbarian Greek tribes, the high civilization of the Aegean basin collapsed, writing was forgotten and the area entered into a dark age for several centuries. Later the Greeks received information about their predecessors in the Aegean from the Egyptians and this may have become the Atlantis myth. The conquest of the Minoans by the Myceneans may have inspired Plato's tale of ancient Athens defeating the Atlantean invasion, while the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions were recalled in the sinking of Atlantis and the destruction of the ancient Athenian army. He then reworked these legends based on the recent Greek conflict with the Persian Empire.
The Greeks did retain dim legends of their own about the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations that preceeded them. These were preserved in the stories about the Trojan War and of King Minos on Crete. King Minos ruled over a Cretan thalassocracy that held ancient Athens in tribute, which may be a memory of when the Minoans were the dominate Aegean power. The stories about Troy and the Trojan war have found some vindication in the fact that there actually was a thriving city of Troy at the reputed location on the Hellespont. Further corroboration comes from Hittite records that do mention a struggle between the Hittites and the Myceneans for control of a city that is probably Troy and archaeological evidence shows that Troy was destroyed and rebuilt several times. The Trojan culture was Iluwian, neither Mycenaean nor Hittite, but a separate culture with its own written language. Since the legends of Troy are apparently based on entirely plausible historical events and real places, that gives some support that the Atlantis myth may be as well. But that basis is mostly likely the real historical Minoan civilization itself rather than some ancient "super civilization" located in the Atlantic Ocean, of which no evidence has yet been found. But there is ample evidence for a powerful and peaceful island civilization in the Aegean that suffered a geological disaster as well as military defeat and conquest by the inhabitants of the Greek mainland. Although basing the myth of Atlantis on a distorted historical memory of the Minoan civilization is not as romantic as the idea of a great advanced island civilization in the Atlantic Ocean, it is far more plausible and is consistent with the mytho-historical pattern of remembrance followed by Homer regarding the Trojan War.
The Revival of the Atlantean myth in the 19th Century
The Atlantis myth was revived in the late 19th century in a series of popular books, the most popular being Ignatius Donnelly's "Atlantis, The Antediluvian World" published in 1882. The theosophical and spiritist movement picked up on the Atlantis theme and produced a whole set of "channeled" literature in which people purported to speak with spiritual beings who told them of the past history of an Atlantean supercivilization. Expanding on that theme, several other "lost continents" were reported including Mu, in the south Pacific Ocean, and Lemuria in the Indian Ocean.
The Atlantis mythos has been a continuing cultural theme in the 20th century as well, inspiring many stories, books, movies, comics, etc. including H. P. Lovecraft's story "The Temple" in which a U-boat captain stumbles upon Atlantis. Edgar Cayce and George Gurdjieff carried on the Atlantean myth in the spiritual movements of the early 20th century, with Cayce channeling Atlantean information from spiritual beings and Gurdjieff simply writing about Atlantis with no claims as to whether the information he was describing was purely from his imagination or from some unknown mystical source. The Atlantis mythos continues to have a strong presence in the modern New Age movement in which Atlantis has become the source for an ancient supercivilization that nowadays interacts with humans via UFO's.
The fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien included an Atlantean myth in his fictional history of Middle Earth, "The Silmarillion". Atlantis was clearly equated with the island of Numenor by Tolkien. The isle of Numenor was inhabited by special men that were superior to ordinary mortals and who had been given the island by the Gods as a reward for the help the men had provided the elves in their war against the rebel God Morgoth in the First Age of Middle Earth. Numenor thrived and prospered in the Second Age but gradually became corrupt. The Numenorians began to invade and conquer much of mainland Middle Earth and even defeated the dark lord Sauron. But the isle of Numenor was itself sunk into the ocean when the Numenorian men became so powerful and arrogant that they attempted to invade the realm of the Gods to wrest from them the secret of immortality. Refugees from the sinking of Numenor founded the kingdom of Gondar that was later to play a big role in his masterpiece of fantasy, “The Lord of the Rings”.
The idea of Atlantis has stimulated the human imagination in the last century and a half to a large degree. But the Atlantean myth is based solely on Plato's dialogues (there appears to be no other source barring all the claimed "channeled" information). Given these two facts, we can see some interesting inconsistencies in the weight given to the different portions of Plato’s account in the modern reworking of the Atlantean myth. For example, in Plato's account, an ancient "super" Athens also exists as the rival of Atlantis as well as an ancient Egyptian civilization. However, in the modern Atlantean mythos there is no mention of either a very ancient Athens or Egypt. In fact, ancient Egypt is said to have been founded by Atlantean refugees! Clearly the idea of the possible existence of an ancient Egypt and an ancient Athens do not stimulate the imaginations of people to the same degree. Or perhaps they are simply taken as obviously fictional accounts. Apparently no one cares about finding a "lost Athens". But if one is to take Plato’s story of Atlantis seriously, then for consistency, the stories of an ancient Athens and Egypt should be taken seriously as well. But if the account of an ancient super Athens is fictional, then there is no reason to believe that the account of Atlantis is anything but fictional as well.
Plato does raise an interesting point regarding cultural memories of the distant past. Egypt would certainly be the place to go for such information given the continuity and longevity of their civilization that stretches back to at least 3000 BCE. One wonders what information about prehistoric society was preserved in Egypt? Perhaps there were records of a pre-Egyptian Atlantean civilization. If so, then those records have all been lost except for the stories Plato records. But if stories from events 9000 years in the past could be preserved one has to wonder why there are no tales of the ice ages, the drying up of the Sahara, the megalithic civilization of Western Europe, etc., things one would also expect to have been remembered. There are not even records or stories about how hieroglyphics or any real aspects of Egyptian culture arose! Given that no trace of these real past events can be found in Egyptian records one has to wonder how they could have preserved any memory of a civilization that collapsed over 6000 years before the known start of historic Egypt. So from these considerations, it also appears that the Atlantean myth is just pure fiction. Until some real tangible traces of Atlantis are found in the Atlantic basin, as Troy was found, then there is no reason to believe in an ancient supercivilization that existed thousands of years ago, in spite of what "channeled" accounts or wishful thinking may lead one to believe.
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For a comparable article at the Skeptical Inquirer with a somewhat different emphasis see this Atlantis article.