Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
was the story of the mythical Atlantis, and the source of this long-held myth, as unlikely as it may seem,
was Plato.
Most of what the world has thought about the existence of Atlantis as a superior culture that disappeared
during a sudden cataclysm comes from two of Plato's dialogues, Timaeus and Critias. Plato said he got the
story from Socrates, who heard it from Solon, who was told it by the Egyptians. You can see how the story
might have changed as it went along.
According to Plato's account, Atlantis once occupied a large island west of the Strait of Gibraltar (or
Pillars of Hercules, to the Greeks). In this legendary civilization, which Plato claimed had flourished nine
thousand years earlier, men descended from the sea god Poseidon had created an earthly paradise. Food
was plentiful, the buildings and temples were magnificent in architecture and embellishment. A temple,
for instance, was “coated with silver save only the pinnacles and these were coated with gold. As to the
exterior, they made the roof all of ivory in appearance, variegated with gold and silver. . . .” As Plato de-
scribed it, Atlantis was a great military power that could muster an army of one million and was preparing
to assault Athens and Egypt when the great disaster struck.
In Plato's version:
At a later time, there occurred portentous Earthquakes and floods, and one grievous day and night
befell them, when the whole body of your warriors was swallowed up by the Earth and the island
of Atlantis in like manner was swallowed up by the sea and vanished; wherefore also the ocean at
that spot has now become impassable and unsearchable, being blocked up by the shoal mud which
the island created as it settled down.
Over the centuries, the legend of Atlantis grew. While in Plato's account it was destroyed suddenly, the
mythical Atlantis lived on, prospering as life on the island miraculously continued under the sea. Even the
modern mystic Edgar Cayce spoke of the disappeared continent and prophesied the imminent reemergence
of Atlantis!
In fact, the legend of the lost continent of Atlantis is probably based on the fate of the island of Thera
(also called Santorini), about seventy miles north of Crete in the Aegean Sea. From geological and arche-
ological records, it is known that sometime between 1650 and 1500 BC , the volcano Santorini erupted and
destroyed most of this island, leaving a small rim of rock on one side of a large water-filled caldera (a large
basin-shaped crater, usually formed when a volcano subsides and all but the top is covered by water. In
North America such a caldera stands as a small island in Crater Lake, Oregon).
The eruption and ensuing tidal waves have been blamed for the eventual end of the civilization of the
Minoans, a people who lived on Crete at about this time and were named for their legendary King Minos.
The Minoans have been recognized as one of the richest, most powerful, and most advanced peoples of the
ancient world, a description that matches up nicely with Plato's account of the dwellers of Atlantis. It was
the Minoans who had elaborate religious ceremonies involving bull worship that gave rise to the familiar
myth of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth. After 1400 BC , the Minoan civilization vanished from the records.
One popular theory holds that Santorini's eruption signaled the onset of the demise of Minoan civilization.
Because of its likely date, the eruption of Santorini has also been suggested as a possible natural cause
of the biblical plagues on Egypt recounted in Exodus and the subsequent parting of the Reed Sea—not the
Red Sea, as we were taught for so long—by Moses. Although this theory is more controversial, it is an
intriguing one, with the volcanic ash and tidal waves spawned by the Thera eruption accounting for some
of the natural phenomena described in Exodus. The difficulty with this suggestion is in dating the Exodus.
Usually it is placed in the thirteenth century BC , rather than the sixteenth century BC , during which time the
volcano most likely erupted.
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