The picture above belongs to a book called Atlantis: The Ancient World, written and published in 1882 by the American politician Ignatius Donnelly, who is a man with zero historical or archaeological experience.

Sunken City

Terrible earthquakes and floods
occurred. In a terrible day and night
, all the combat forces of your city sank into the underground of
, and Atlantis also sank into the seabed of
and disappeared. Plato , Timao, 13

His single quote to Plato is enough to shudder us, almost 2400 years after he was recorded in his writings called "Timeo." These 42 words alone inspired countless stories. They become movies, books and video games and become part of a living legend.

"Lost City Atlantis ".

No other myth in history can be as famous as Atlantis. As a symbol of a long-lost utopia, it still needs to be discovered. Its name has become synonymous with advanced knowledge, hidden paradise, huge natural disaster , and unique concepts of adventure beyond our craziest dreams! Unfortunately, our desire to adventure and explore the unknown, coupled with our passion for great stories, elevates Atlantis from the original fictional land (whose existence serves allegorical purposes) to a time when it exists in a real location somewhere in the fog.

There is no need to write another conspiracy theory claiming that secret societies, Vatican and even aliens are trying to hide the entire submerged continent under our noses in order to hold treasures hidden in the debts of the ocean. We will not use some "alien powder" to add interest to the old story, but instead examine Plato's words about Atlantis from a new historical perspective. After all, sometimes real history is more fascinating than fantasy…

Debunking the myth 0.1: Why Atlantis never existed

Show map of Atlantis location. The picture above belongs to a book called Atlantis: Ancient World, written and published in 1882 by the American politician Ignatius L. Donnelly, a man with zero historical or archaeological experience (Abbott, 2017). Donnelly was fascinated by conspiracy theories and—keep up his time—is a great supporter of the theory that civilization was given to humanity by an advanced white race. His book is one of the best pseudo-archaeological forms in which he uses misinformation and semi-historical facts to prove that Atlantis not only exists, but is “civilized zero,” which triggers all others (Abbott, 2017). Almost all conspiracy theories about Atlantis today are based on the arguments of this book,

To prove that Atlantis never exists, let us start by believing in the opposite viewpoint and accepting that the lost island is real. We are talking about advanced human civilization. We need to discover the impact of its existence on the historical world. Plato – the only written material about this civilization – mentioned Atlantis, “Timaeu​s” and “Critias” in two of his conversations. In the first part, he briefly mentions the sunken continent, its location, and its war with Athens, and the victory of the latter ends. In his second work, he provides us with additional knowledge about the history, culture, geography, daily life and wars of the country.

Atlantis is described as "an island that combines Bilibya and Asia, located in front of the pillar of Hercules" (Plato, Timaios, 13). In Ancient Greek , " Libya " is the name of North Africa land between Sahara Desert and Mediterranean . In modern terms, it includes Libya, Tunisia , Algeria and Morocco and other countries. The word "Asia" does not refer to the mainland, but to Asia Minor, and "Pillar of Hercules" is the Greek name of Strait of Gibraltar . Plato also mentioned that “the travelers of the time used it (Atlantis) to reach farther islands, from which they could enter the entire continent on the other side, i.e., the continent surrounding the real ocean” (Timius, 13).

If such land does exist, it will cover most of the North Atlantic , extending from Portugal to the Nova Scotia in the north or the Caribbean in the south, as these are the only major island group coordinates that match these geography. Unfortunately, if such an extreme proportion of land is submerged, the rise in the seabed will be obvious. This is the case with the submerged Doglands – before disappearing around 6500-6000 BCE, it covered much of the southern part of the North Sea , connecting Britain with Europe. As for Doggerland, we have not only geological evidence of its existence, but also animal and plant remains, with primitive human tools built on the seabed. Taking Atlantis as an example,

Germany Dogland map shows that (from right to left) the land is gradually submerged. This is due to the melting of glaciers in the last Ice Age, causing sea level rise

In addition to the complete lack of geological evidence, time is also another serious problem in the Plato story. The philosopher placed the Atlantis Foundation about 8,000 years before the era of Solon (Timaeus, 11) - the Athenian legislator who told him the story of Atlantis. Solon was born around 630 BC and died in 559 BC. Therefore, if Plato is taken seriously, Atlantis was founded around 8500 B.C. Surprisingly, if we exclude the advanced technology part, Plato is not historically inaccurate here! After all, Jericho—the first city of mankind—was built around 9600 B.C. But these early human societies were by no means ancient cities like Athens or Rome , and could not maintain an empire or even a small army.

Plato also mentioned that Atlantis began to enslave its neighbors with its supreme navy in the generations after its founding. In Timaeus (13), the Marine Empire is said to rule “the entire island, many other islands, and parts of the continent. They also rule some of the land within the strait—Libya until the border with Egypt, and Europe until Etruscan ”. In any case, we have a huge empire, which was the largest empire at the time, which ruled what seemed to be Atlantis, close to the Caribbean or Nova Scotia, the coast of the continent (most likely the newly discovered land of Canada or the north coast of South America) with Gulf of Mexico ), the entire coast of North Africa, Portugal, Spain, parts of southern France, and finally to the northern Italy of modern Tuscany (Etruria).

Considering the above information, there are two main problems. First, history can tell us that one of the greatest dangers a newly formed empire may face is over-expanding its territory. This in turn can lead to problems that your bureaucracy and military can’t handle on the territory that needs to be controlled. This fatal mistake was committed by the first real empire in history, the Akkads under the rule of Sargon I, and humans have been repeating it since then. The only way to solve overscaling is to introduce advanced technology to respond faster when needed. If the Atlantis really had such advanced technology, then they would not lose to Athens at all. Plato told us that Athens' technology is far less advanced. But for this theory, let us accept that the Atlantis protect their empire by using advanced (but also historically accurate) nautical technology. After all, their empire was a "maritime rule" and the ports of Atlantis were filled with warships (Plato, Critias, 116). If the Atlantis had successfully controlled their territory, why was there no archaeological evidence to prove their existence?

This is the second question of setting Atlantis completely as a fictional story. Many empires died due to natural disasters, famines or conquests. However, they always leave something behind. Pottery, words, broken tools, weapons, graves. Furthermore, when it comes to empires, conquered countries tend to adopt their overlord culture by choosing or forcing them to adopt.If the Atlantis existed, their culture, or at least some of these remains, would survive and pass on to conquered territory. It is human nature to adopt and copy what they think is useful or attractive to them. Therefore, by comparing contemporary Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age civilizations in the Americas and the Mediterranean, we should find fragments of the common culture that once united them,

Unfortunately, there is no Atlantis culture. To our disappointment, there is no archaeological evidence that any territory mentioned by Plato has proven that once prosperous ocean empires. There is also no evidence that “external culture” inspires or contributes to the culture of existing civilizations in these regions. But this does not mean that his story does not have real historical facts!

Debunking the Myth 0.2: What elements of Plato’s story are real?

Plato statue. Today, most people know that Plato is one of the greatest thinkers in Western philosophy. Few people know that he is also a great storyteller. Laertius and other sources tell us that before encountering Socrates , Plato was writing poetry, perhaps even a tragedy (Chelentis, 2018). After meeting with the famous Athenian philosopher, he burned down all his works and began to study philosophy with him. While we can’t be sure if this story is true, it provides us with interesting information about Plato’s writing skills. As a former poet and playwright, he was able to appeal to his readers by making his stories appear vivid and authentic. That's why we have such a detailed description of Atlnatis, which makes it look like it actually existed at some point in history.

To understand which elements of Plato's story are real or at least have some historical significance, we first need to understand how he and his contemporary Greeks wrote stories in the past. In a world without the internet, written records are almost a rare comfort, primarily for the king to use, and the only way to remember and retell something is through the oral way of songs, myths and stories. Because of the limited access to information, Plato's world is filled with infinite possibilities and infinite fantasies.

Today, when we need to escape from reality, we tend to tell stories about the distant future of the Galaxy Empire, or the zombie apocalypse that is a few years away from our time. We have searched our planet and we have the honor of knowing most of its secrets. We stare into the endless universe and set new goals, observe the stars and think about “where to go next.” For the ancient Greeks , the "endless universe" began from the moment he sailed Aegean . "The unreachable stars" are the snowy plains in Russia, the sun-soaked Sahara Desert or the endless waters of the Atlantic Ocean. For them, the unknown is not in outer space, nor in post-apocalyptic earth. The unknown is hundreds of kilometers away...

Lucian of Samosa Tower. Not only is Lucian’s work A True Story considered one of the earliest (perhaps the first) science fiction works, it also provides us with valuable information on how stories like Atlantis were created and why they were so successful. In the preface to “The True Story,” the frustrated Lucian tells us about an embarrassing experience of his personal. When he was young, he believed in a story about the origin of amber . Amber is said to be made from the tears of poplar trees on the banks of the Heridanos River, a small stream in Athens. When he had the chance to visit the famous city, he asked the locals where they could find these magical trees that “can be called amber”. Of course, they laughed and told him that the story was nothing more than a fairy tale, which took place in Lucian's birth Cappadocia . Lucian was very embarrassed and decided to write "a true story" to revenge all the storytellers who use lies and myths to fuel people's thoughts, rather than telling them the truth.

Considering the above, it is no surprise that ancient storytellers placed mythical land on the edge of the world. Homera , Hesiod, Herod , each including monsters, mythical islands and monsters, living on the edge of the world. For most people, these stories are “ancient travel video blogs” that they can only see in their dreams. Plato followed the pattern of his predecessors, putting Atlantis on the edge of the known world. Therefore, the geographical location of the famous sunken city is allegorical, not the exact geographical direction.

In addition, in order to gain the trust of the audience and to establish credibility for his story, he claimed that the story of Atlantis was guarded by Egyptian priests and then passed on to the famous law enforcement officer Solon. These two numbers are not lucky. Solon was admired by all Athenians—Plato told them his story. As one of the seven ancient Greek sages, his words are beyond doubt. He is the equivalent of ancient Abraham Lincoln , and the Athenians had blind faith in him. But if Solon is regarded as the beloved president of the United States, then the priest of Egypt is the Einstein of their time. Before Greece and Rome established themselves as the cradle of Western civilization, Egypt had the title of the world's top advanced civilization, and its clergy were the guardians of these sacred knowledge. The Greeks admired Egypt very much and absorbed a lot of scientific knowledge, religious beliefs and social reforms from the land of the Pharaoh. Even in Plato's time, when Greece, and especially Athens, was the center of the world, traveling to Egypt was considered a great privilege because it was one's education.

If the story of Solon and the Egyptian priests were real, it would be passed on to other Athenians who studied the lives of famous saints with religious enthusiasm and might be integrated into part of Greek mythology. Myths and legends are important clues to discovering long-lost historical events that have been passed down as oral traditions and become immortal stories. The collapse of the Bronze Age and the decline of the Mycenaean civilization were captured in the Trojan War , while the once powerful Minoan civilization was immortalized by the Minoan King, the maze and the Niutou monster. If a huge sea empire had existed, enslaved the Western Mediterranean and then collapsed by a huge natural disaster, there would certainly be many myths that would retell the story throughout the region.

So, let's take the original story of Atlantis as an example. For all of the above reasons, we take off the geographical location, the stories of the once powerful evil empire, the exotic lands, and the stories of the Egyptian priests and Solon.

So what is left?

Answer is a marine country that was once powerful or at least known to the world until it suddenly lost due to natural disasters, along with its homeland, underwater. With this concept in mind, an idea without fictional elements and allegorical meaning, based solely on historical evidence, allows us to discover the true Atlantis now.

Debunking the Myth 0.3: Helike, the real life Atlantis

The murals of the Akrotiri ruins show a Minos town. Many believe that Atlantis was inspired by the Minoans' fallen by the eruption of Mount Thira. This theory is wrong, and it is a perfect example of how we tend to ignore actual historical facts and support a good story

We are looking for a maritime country, a navigator, once known to the world, and then suddenly disappear. The question is: how far should we search and who will we include in our research?

No surprise, there are many navigators in the Mediterranean whose cities are destroyed by floods, earthquakes and tsunamis. The answer to this puzzle will be obvious only if the possible limitations of knowledge in Plato's era is taken into account. Remember, Plato wrote this story, not us. In a world where history was born only 100 years ago with Herodotus, disasters, wars, or any event cannot be widely spread.Plato himself was a philosopher, not a historian. He traveled much more than the average person of his time, but his travels were limited to Greece, Sicily, and perhaps Libya or Egypt. Therefore, we must narrow the scope of research to these parts of the world.

At first glance, becoming the most obvious candidate for the true Atlantis is the famous Minoan civilization. They were a powerful marine empire, and archaeological evidence of their existence was found in Greece, Levant and Egypt until the eruption of Mount Santorini from 1642 to 1540 B.C., causing a huge tsunami to attack Crete and destroying their civilization. All the clues are correct! Even the myth seems to support the theory that Minos, the first king of Crete, was the son of Poseidon, , just like Atlas, the first king of Atlantis. Moreover, Egyptian historical records record the disaster caused by the volcanic eruption of to Egypt, which at least provides some basis for the story of Egyptian priests and Solon. Everything looks perfect except for one thing: the theory of

is wrong!

First of all, Plato – and his contemporaries – could not have known that the Thira eruption really happened! In a world where there was no written record before the 9th century B.C. (the earliest Greek letters were created at some time in the early days of ancient times), myths and legends that were passed down verbally were the only sources of information about the past. We have not found the existence of a volcanic eruption in Greek mythology, nor have stories about its huge impact. This is because during the collapse of the Bronze Age and the fall of the Mycenae people, any knowledge about how to read and write was lost. If the Mycenaeans living during the eruption wrote down these events, their documents (written in Linear B) would not have been deciphered by their descendants. Neither Hesiod nor Homer, who lived closer to events than Plato, were aware of the eruption and its impact. Without any verbal or written evidence, the disaster was forgotten. As for Egypt's records, they only mentioned the impact of the eruption on Egypt, without explaining the situation of the Minos. If you want to know how such a disaster was forgotten, please note that 400 years after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, no one remembers Pompeii, its name and horrible fate disappeared!

Since the Minoans were excluded from potential candidates, we need to look for destruction near the Greek world and in the Plato era so that the memory of its impact remains.

Imagine that modern historians would be surprised when they discovered that a huge natural disaster occurred in Greece on a winter night in 373 BC, and the entire city sank into the sea! The story goes like this:

Peloponnese The northern coast was once a rich city of Helic (Ελίκη). In ancient times, Hlic evolved into the main maritime force in the region. Its powerful fleet sailed in known seas, and its ports became a place where people from all over the Mediterranean gathered to exchange goods. Its sailors headed to the edge of the then famous world and established colonies in Asia Minor and Sicily, most notably Prien and Sibaris. Helic’s patron saint was Poseidon, who was carved on the coins of the city and the Helics built a large temple for him. Ancient sources mention that this temple dedicated to the "Helikonian Poseidon" is an amazing work of art that attracts tourists from all over the Greek world, and its religious importance is second only to the famous oracle of Delphi!

On a winter night in 373 BC, Helic encountered bad luck, and a major earthquake sank the entire city to the bottom of the sea! Overnight, Helic, one of Greece's most powerful maritime powers, disappeared from the earth along with his famous temple! The disaster was so great that even after a large-scale rescue mission of more than 2,000 people, there was no way to retrieve the dead's bodies, nor the wealth of the city. The entire area is covered with sea water and a large layer of mud.Over the next few centuries, celebrities such as Pausanias, Strabo, Ovid and Eratosthenes visited the sunken place, where you can still see some monuments rising from the dirt. Eventually, they are all covered by it, and the city, along with its golden years and tragic ending, disappears into the sand of time.

Helic's destruction shocked the entire Greek world. This is blamed on Poseidon's revenge, as its citizens refused to give his statue to some Ionian colonists in Asia, or - according to some claims - even killed them because they dared to ask for it. Its tragic fate is most likely to inspire Plato to write the story of Atlantis about 10 years later, around 360 B.C. Helis and Atlantis have so much in common: they are both maritime powers, and the entire Greek world knows their ability to navigate. Both established colonies in remote areas. Their patron saint was Poseidon, and both of them built a huge temple for him, with a huge statue inside which became a famous religious landmark (Plato, Critias, 115)! Finally, both were destroyed by earthquakes and floods one night, which was attributed to the wrath of the gods, because of their sins, and some additional information further proves that Atlantis was inspired by Helic. First, Helic is located in the Gulf of Corinth, thus acting as its bridge between Sicily and Asian colonies, just as Plato mentioned Atlantis is a bridge from where people from the coast of Europe can travel and head to nearby western islands and from there to a large tract of land to the west. Helic is an Achaean city, naturally an ally of Sparta , so it is both an enemy and an economic and maritime threat to Athens. This may explain the origin of the war between Atlantis and Athens. Finally, there is the famous "Plato Mud", a world that has puzzled people who search for Atlantis for decades. Plato wrote that after the disaster, Atlantis sank into the sea and no one was able to leave the Strait of Gibraltar because the entire area was covered with a thick layer of mud. Of course, we know this is scientifically impossible. Although Plato had never been to the Atlantic Ocean, he knew very well (like any Greek who had been to the sea) that the sea could not be covered with mud. But Hlik is indeed covered in mud! Just like Atlantis, after sinking, the entire area became a huge muddy lagoon. This must have bothered sailors who entered isthmus and hoped to cross the narrow Bay of Corinth into Ionian Sea.

Conclusion

To this day, Atlantis is still a most popular and related story for many reasons. Most importantly, Atlantis succeeds in evoking a feeling that is often overlooked in our modern life: our desire for the unknown. We are attracted to mystery, whether we realize it or not. We are all curious people, each of us is a voyager who desires to explore the world, a storyteller who seeks new inspiration. In a world where every piece of information is easily accessible on the internet, and every corner of the land can be seen through satellite , Atlantis offers us an opportunity to discover exciting new things, a huge mystery hidden in our own waters.

Whether reality and fantasy are very different, Atlantis' story will continue to bring us surprises and inspiration. It's natural because it's actually a very good story!

When we read the story of Atlantis, it is easy to lose our minds against the famous sea empire and ignore the weak who successfully defeated it, the true protagonist of the story Athens. Surprisingly, Plato wrote Atlantis not to beautify its story, but to emphasize its moral depravity. The story is not about Atlantis, but about Athens. It basically tells the victory of a small, morally legitimate Athens, whose men and women manage to destroy a once powerful dirty country, are now in absurdity.Plato wrote this story to educate young Athenians who considered them “people with outstanding wisdom” (Timaeus, 112), and prove that a clear mind and a clean soul are more important than power, luxury and excess.

It’s great to see how much the original purpose of the story has been changed. In the newer adaptation, the demise of Atlantis is described as unjust, or a byproduct of their advanced technology and desire for knowledge. The former villain became a symbol of heroes, pioneers of knowledge and a symbol of possibilities that humans could achieve, while the real hero was concealed by the same factors Plato warned the Athenians to avoid (Atlantis' unlimited power, huge wealth, endless desire to pursue life, etc.). Maybe we - the people today - are not very different from the ancient Athenians... Who knows what stories would come to modern Plato think of lost civilizations to guide us back to the path of justice and morality!