The capital of Atlantis as
described by Plato. (Copyright Lee Krystek 2006)
The idea of a lost, but highly advanced
civilization has captured the interest of people for
centuries. Perhaps the most compelling of these tales
is the story of Atlantis. The story appears again and
again in books, television shows and movies. Where did
the story originate and is any of it true?
Plato's
Atlantis
The story of the lost
continent of Atlantis starts in 355 B.C. with the
Greek philosopher Plato. Plato had planned to write a
trilogy of books discussing the nature of man, the
creation of the world, and the story of Atlantis, as well
as other subjects. Only the first book was ever completed. The
second book was abandoned part way through, and the final
book was never even started.
Plato
used dialogues to express his ideas. In this type of
writing, the author's thoughts are explored in a series
of arguments and debates between various characters in the story.
Plato often used real people in his dialogues, such as his
teacher, Socrates, but the words he gave them were his
own.
In Plato's book, Timaeus, a
character named Kritias tells an account of Atlantis
that has been in his family for generations. According
to the character, the story was originally told to his
ancestor, Solon, by a priest during Solon's visit to
Egypt.
There had been a powerful empire located to
the west of the "Pillars of Hercules" (what we now
call the Straight of Gibraltar) on an island in the
Atlantic Ocean. The nation there had been established
by Poseidon, the God of the Sea. Poseidon fathered five
sets of twins on the island. The firstborn, Atlas, had
the continent and the surrounding ocean named for him. Poseidon
divided the land into ten sections, each to be ruled by a son,
or his heirs.
The capital city of
Atlantis was a marvel of architecture and engineering.
The city was composed of a series of concentric walls
and canals. At the very center was a hill, and on top of
the hill a temple to Poseidon. Inside was a gold statue of the
God of the Sea showing him driving six winged horses.
About 9000 years before the time of Plato, after
the people of Atlantis became corrupt and greedy, the gods
decided to destroy them. A violent earthquake shook
the land, giant waves rolled over the shores, and the
island sank into the sea, never to be seen again.
So, is the story of Atlantis just a fable used by
Plato to make a point? Or is there some reason to think
he was referring to a real place? Well, at numerous
points in the dialogues, Plato's characters refer to
the story of Atlantis as "genuine history" and it being
within "the realm of fact." Plato also seems to put
into the story a lot of detail about Atlantis that would
be unnecessary if he had intended to use it only as a literary
device.
On the other hand according to
the writings of the historian Strabo, Plato's student
Aristotle remarked that Atlantis was simply created by
Plato to illustrate a point. Unfortunately, Aristotle's
writings on this subject, which might have cleared the
mystery up, have been lost eons ago.
Location,
Location, Location
If we make the assumption that Atlantis
was a real place, it seems logical that it could be
found west of the Straight of Gibraltar near the Azores
Islands. In 1882 a man named Ignatius Donnelly
published a book titled Atlantis, the Antediluvian World.
Donnelly, an American politician, had come to the belief that
Plato's story represented actual historical fact. He
located Atlantis in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean,
suggesting the Azores Islands represented what remained
of the highest mountain peaks. Donnelly said he had
studied zoology and geology and had come to the conclusion
that civilization itself had begun with the Atlantians and had
spread out throughout the world as the Atlantians
established colonies in places like ancient Egypt and
Peru. Donnelly's book became a world-wide best seller,
but researchers could not take Donnelly's theories
seriously as he offered no proof for his ideas.
As
time when on it became obvious that Donnelly's
theories were faulty. Modern scientific surveys of the bottom
of the Atlantic Ocean shows it is covered with a blanket of
sediment that must have taken millions of years to
accumulate. There is no sign of a sunken island
continent.
Are there any other candidates
for the location of Atlantis? People have made cases
for places as diverse as Switzerland, in the middle of
Europe, and New Zealand, in the Pacific Ocean. The
explorer, Percy Fawcett,
thought that it might be located in Brazil. One of the
most convincing arguments, though, came from K.T.
Frost, a professor of history at the Queen's University
in Belfast. Later, Spyridon Marinatos, an
archaeologist, and A.G. Galanopoulos, a seismologist,
added evidence to Frost's ideas.
The
Minoan Connection
Frost
suggested that instead of being west of the Pillars of
Hercules, Atlantis was east. He also thought that the
catastrophic end of the island had come not 9000 years before
Plato's time, but only 900. If this was true, the land of
Atlantis might already be a well-known place even in
Plato's time: the island of Crete.
Crete
is now a part of modern Greece and lies just south of
Athens across part of the Mediterranean Sea. Before 1500
B.C. it was the seat of the Minoan Empire. The Minoans dominated
the eastern Mediterranean with a powerful navy and probably
extracted tribute from other surrounding nations.
Archaeological excavations have shown that Minoan Crete
was probably one of the most sophisticated cultures of
its time. It had splendid architecture and art. A code
of laws gave women equal legal status to men. Agriculture
was highly developed and an extensive irrigation system existed.
Then, seemingly in a blink of an eye, the Minoan
Civilization disappeared. Geological studies have shown
that on an island we now know as Santorinas, located
just ten miles to the north of Crete, a disaster
occurred that was very capable of toppling the Minoan
state.
Santorinas today is a lush Mediterranean
paradise consisting of several islands in a ring shape.
Twenty-five hundred years ago, though, it was a single
large island with a volcano in the center. The volcano
blew itself apart in a massive explosion around 1500
B.C.
To understand the effect of such an
explosion, scientists have compared it with the most
powerful volcanic explosion in historic times. This
occurred on the Island of Krakatoa in 1883. There a
giant wave, or tsunami,
120 feet high raced across the sea and hit neighboring
islands, killing 36,000 people. Ash thrown up into the
air blackened the skies for three days. The sound of
the explosion was heard as far away as 3,000 miles.
The explosion at Santorinas was four times as
powerful as Krakatoa.
The
tsunami that hit Crete must have traveled
inland for over half a mile, destroying any coastal towns or cities.
The great Minoan fleet of ships were all sunk in a few
seconds. Overnight the powerful Minoan Empire was
crushed and Crete changed to a political backwater. One
can hardly imagine a catastrophe more like Plato's
description of Atlantis' fate than the destruction of
Crete.
Many of the details of the Atlantis story
fit with what is now known about Crete. Women had a
relatively high political status, both cultures were
peaceful, and both enjoyed the unusual sport of
ritualistic bullfighting (where an unarmed man wrestled
and jumped over a bull).
If the fall of the
Minoans is the story of Atlantis, how did Plato get the
location and time wrong? Galanopoulos suggested there
was a mistake during translation of some of the figures
from Egyptian to Greek and an extra zero added. This would mean
900 years ago became 9000, and the distance from Egypt to
"Atlantis" went from 250 miles to 2,500. If this is
true, Plato (knowing the layout of the Mediterranean
Sea) would have been forced to assume the location of
the island continent to be squarely in the Atlantic
Ocean.
Not everyone accepts the Minoan Crete
theory of the story of Atlantis, but until a convincing
case can be made for some other place, it, perhaps,
remains science's best guess.
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