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The Lost Atlantis
Everyone has heard of lost Atlantis but did it really exist? Was it an island in the Atlantic Ocean or in the Mediterranean? Was it to be found on land in Africa, America or Europe? 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 BC), who in two of his dialogues, the Timaeus and the Kritias, tells the story of a vast island, bigger than Asia Minor and Libya combined, lying beyond the Pillars of Hercules Straits of Gibraltar). Atlantis, wrote Plato, had been a powerful kingdom, with a high civilisation and an ideal political constitution, which dominated the Mediterranean as far as Egypt and Tuscany; when it became aggressive and imperialistic, it had been, through the anger of the gods, overwhelmed by the sea.
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 BC). A papyrus now in Leningrad tells the tale of the Shipwrecked Traveller, an Egyptian on his way to the Pharaoh’s mines when his ship was hit by a big wave and broken to matchwood. All board were drowned except the traveller, who clung to timber and was cast upon an unknown island. Here lived a golden dragon that carried him to its lair but did not harm him. The dragon told him that the island, a land of heart's desire where wealth abounded, was formerly home to 75 happy dragons of whom he himself was the lone survivor. The rest had been burned to a risp by a star that had fallen there in his absence. The dragon prophesied that an Egyptian ship would soon rescue the traveller, but said that 'never more shall you see this island because it will be swallowed by the waves.'
The tale of a happy and prosperous island later submerged was evidently well know to the Egyptians, as indeed it was elsewhere--it appears, for instance, in the Indian Mahabharata. It may even be 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 of Atlantis have recently come to believe they have found this core on the Greek island of Thera. After the Renaissance, attempts were made to rationalise the myth of Atlantis; it was identified with America, Scandinavia, the Canaries, or Palestine.
Today, some scholars believe that the Greek volcanic island of Thera (also known as Santorini) located in the Mediterranean Sea, which was decimated by a great volcanic eruption in the Aegean Sea around 1520 BC, was originally Atlantis. The area of the fall-out from this volcanic eruption--calculated to be four times as powerful as that of Krakatoa and capable of being heard more than 1,875 miles away--was enormous with much of the centre of Thera disappearing underwater, leaving the small group of islands visible today. 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 BC, the ash is till 13 feet thick in some places today. 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 civilisation overnight was this the end of Atlantis? Many people think so. It is also possible that Crete itself was the site of the lost civilisation, an 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 civilisation to explain the disappearance of this 'world power'.
The American psychic and healer Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) prophesied that Atlantis would soon begin to rise again. In June 1940 he predicted: 'Poseidia will be among the first portions of Atlantis to rise again. Expect it in '68 and '69; not so far away!' He even specified a location--in the Bahamas. By an extraordinary coincidence, airline pilots photographed in 1968 what appeared to be buildings off the cost of North Bimini in the Bahamas. Undersea exploration has revealed stone formations resembling hugh cobbled roads on the seabed, and mention has also been made of cyclopean walls, pyramids and stone circles. So far such descriptions lack tangible evidence--underwater archaeologists have yet to be convinced that the Bimini Roads' are manmade.
Nevertheless, anything resembling a submerged manmade structure will sooner or later be linked with the idea of a 'sunken city'. The powerful impact of Plato's Atlantis has had much to do with this. As for Atlantis itself--the search goes on.
