Atlantis, Real or Philosophical Utopia?
Here is a very brief version of the Story of Atlantis:
“It was a beautiful land. Its people, gentle and fair, artistic and intelligent, created the most wonderful society the world has ever known. Their cities were splendid places, interwoven with blue canals and framed by crystal towers gently arching skyward. ..The wondrous achievements of the archaic world can be traced to the genius of this singular ancient land.” (1)
But then the people of this great land became greedy and “morally bankrupt” (2), and the gods unleashed terrors upon the Atlanteans that destroyed the civilization in one day and one night, making it sink into the sea.
At least this is how the story goes. But it is a story written by Plato in order to convey his philosophical ideas to the masses in his writings of The Timaeus and Critias Dialogues. It was never real; a complete fiction by Plato. So why do people continue to insist that Atlantis was once real, and that “the cultures of the ancient Egyptians and the Maya, the civilizations of China and India, [and] the Inca and the Sumerians were all derived” from it? (1).
Robert Ballard, the explorer-in-residence for National Geographic, says that the belief continues because there is a possibility that the story is based on true past events. He states that the story of the cataclysmic destruction of an island civilization is a logical story because cataclysmic floods and volcanic eruptions have indeed happened in the past. In fact, there was an island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea near Greece that was devastated by a volcanic eruption approximately 3,600 years ago. On this island lived the advanced civilization of the Minoans, but after the volcano, Minoan civilization disappeared (2).
So why can’t this island of Santorini be Atlantis? Because the time of its destruction doesn’t fit with the timeline that Plato laid out for Atlantis. Plato claimed that the destruction of Atlantis occurred 9,000 years before his time, and he told that story in 360 B.C.! That’s a big time difference! So, considering that Plato made Atlantis up in the first place, shouldn’t the record of its existence match what he says? It is true that there is a possibility that Plato based his story of Atlantis off of Santorini (the event occurred before Plato’s time), but all in all, Atlantis was “a different vehicle to get at some of [Plato’s] favorite themes” (2).
Sources:
(1) Feder, Kenneth L. Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, Second Edition. London and Toronto: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1996. Print.
(2) Drye, Willie. "Atlantis—True Story or Cautionary Tale?" National Geographic, 2012. Web. 15 Apr. 2012. <website>
“It was a beautiful land. Its people, gentle and fair, artistic and intelligent, created the most wonderful society the world has ever known. Their cities were splendid places, interwoven with blue canals and framed by crystal towers gently arching skyward. ..The wondrous achievements of the archaic world can be traced to the genius of this singular ancient land.” (1)
But then the people of this great land became greedy and “morally bankrupt” (2), and the gods unleashed terrors upon the Atlanteans that destroyed the civilization in one day and one night, making it sink into the sea.
At least this is how the story goes. But it is a story written by Plato in order to convey his philosophical ideas to the masses in his writings of The Timaeus and Critias Dialogues. It was never real; a complete fiction by Plato. So why do people continue to insist that Atlantis was once real, and that “the cultures of the ancient Egyptians and the Maya, the civilizations of China and India, [and] the Inca and the Sumerians were all derived” from it? (1).
Robert Ballard, the explorer-in-residence for National Geographic, says that the belief continues because there is a possibility that the story is based on true past events. He states that the story of the cataclysmic destruction of an island civilization is a logical story because cataclysmic floods and volcanic eruptions have indeed happened in the past. In fact, there was an island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea near Greece that was devastated by a volcanic eruption approximately 3,600 years ago. On this island lived the advanced civilization of the Minoans, but after the volcano, Minoan civilization disappeared (2).
So why can’t this island of Santorini be Atlantis? Because the time of its destruction doesn’t fit with the timeline that Plato laid out for Atlantis. Plato claimed that the destruction of Atlantis occurred 9,000 years before his time, and he told that story in 360 B.C.! That’s a big time difference! So, considering that Plato made Atlantis up in the first place, shouldn’t the record of its existence match what he says? It is true that there is a possibility that Plato based his story of Atlantis off of Santorini (the event occurred before Plato’s time), but all in all, Atlantis was “a different vehicle to get at some of [Plato’s] favorite themes” (2).
Sources:
(1) Feder, Kenneth L. Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, Second Edition. London and Toronto: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1996. Print.
(2) Drye, Willie. "Atlantis—True Story or Cautionary Tale?" National Geographic, 2012. Web. 15 Apr. 2012. <website>