Atlantis: The Lost City, Culture, and Continent

Everyone has heard the bedtime story of the golden lost city of Atlantis. It has been a child’s dream to discover it for decades, maybe centuries. This city has often been compared to the Garden of Eden. The birth of this fairytale lies with the Greek philosopher, Plato. Atlantis was modernly made popular by writer and U.S. Congressman, Ignatius Donnelly, in 1882 (Martin 12). According to Greek mythological history, Atlantis was founded by the god Poseidon and ruled by Atlas, a descendant of Poseidon’s ten sons of five pairs of twins, thus, the name Atlantis and Atlantic Ocean (McMullen 28; Martin 9). Plato recorded that this great civilization was “230 miles wide and 340 miles long” (Martin 7). Many questions have haunted the fervent researchers and dreamers, starting the race for the discovery of Atlantis. Plato’s legend of Atlantis and its fate does seem to have viable proof culturally and geologically as well as a possible location.

Plato is the author of a legend that is at least 2,000 years old. The story of Atlantis was passed down in the only way the people in that day could: by telling its story to the next generation orally. The reliability of the story has long been questioned, even Plato’s student, Aristotle, thought that the story was meant to be used as an educational fable to show that mighty and unethical nations would not last (Martin 10). However, Plato himself emphasized that Atlantis was a realistic truth. In Plato’s document, the character Critias replies to Socrates when asked if the story is true by saying, “I will tell an old-world story which I heard from an aged man; for Critias, at the time of telling it, was as he said, nearly ninety years of age, and I was about ten” (Plato 205).Critiasalso states, “L...

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Christopher, Kevin. "Atlantis Behind the Myth: No Way, No How, No Where."Skeptical Inquirer. Jan./Feb. 2002: 44-45. SIRS Renaissance.Web. 12 Jan 2012.

Donnelly, Ignatius. Atlantis: The Antediluvian World.Ed. Egerton Sykes. Modern Revised ed. New York: Gramercy, 1949. Print.

Plato. "Appendix 1: Plato's Dialogs, Critias and Timaeus." Fire in the Sea: The SantoriniVolcano : Natural History and the Legend of Atlantis. By Walter L. Friedrich.Trans. Alexander R. McBirney. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. 205+. Print.

Martin, Michael. The Unexplained Atlantis. Mankato, MN: Capstone, 2007. Print.

McMullen, David. Atlantis: The Missing Continent. New York, New York: Contemporary Perspectives, 1977. Print.

Muck, Otto."The Geological Evidence."The Secret of Atlantis.Trans. Fred Bradley. London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1976. 134. Print.