Atlantis: We Will Never Know

Fantasy is a tough sell in the twentieth century. The world has been

fully discovered and fully mapped. Popular media has effectively

minimized the legend and the fantastic rumor, though to make up for

this it has generated falsities not as lavish but just as interesting.

Satellites have mapped and studied the earth, leaving only a space

frontier that is as yet unreachable. But standing out is a charming

fantasy the modern world has yet to verify or condemn: the lost

continent of Atlantis. The father of the modern world's perception of

Atlantis is Plato (circa 428-circa 347 b.c.). The Greek philosopher

spoke in his works Timaeus and Critias of a continent in the Atlantic

ocean larger than Africa and Asia Minor combined which rivaled

Athens as the most advanced in the world. According to the legend

surrounding Plato's dialogues, the island of Atlantis was violently

thrown into the sea by the forces of nature, and its few survivors

managed to swim ashore and relate their story. There the legend was

passed by word of mouth until an Egyptian priest related the story to

Solon, a character in Timaeus. The priest admired the achievements

of prehistoric Athenians, because when the rulers of Atlantis

threatened to invade all of Europe and Asia the Athenians, on behalf

of all Greeks, defeated the Atlanteans to avoid enslavement.

The works of Plato opened the floodgates to endless speculation on

whether the continent described was fact or fiction. Atlantis has

since been placed in Spain, Mongolia, Palestine, Nigeria, the

Netherlands, Brazil, Sweden, Greenland and Yucatan. Every nook and

cranny of the globe has been hypothesized; mountain peaks, desert

lands, the ocean floor and even the barren wasteland of Antarctica

have been mentioned in theories. While some of these theories are

compatible with Plato's works and are within relative reason,

numerous crackpot theories have been developed using the lost

continent as a basis. One of these theories, posted on the computer

internet where it has access to over fifteen million people, talks in

twenty-one pages of pre-historical lands with names like Oz and

Luxor. These world wide web pages list over two hundred separate

articles of proof for the existence of Atlantis, as in the following:

"Most all ancient civilizations believed in the TITANS, the race of

giant humans that inhabited Earth long ago. Different races knew

them by different names. These 7 to 12 foot humanoids were thought

to be legendary until the excavation of over a dozen skeletons 8 to

12 feet tall, around the world, shocked archeologists. These

skeletons were positively human. Some of these skeletal remains are

on Maui in lava caves near Ulupalakua and Olowalu. The Spanish

Conquistadors left diaries of wild blond-haired, blue-eyed 8 to 12 foot

high men running around in the Andes during the conquest of the

Incas. A couple were reportedly captured but died en route to

Europe. If giant animals (dinosaurs) were possible then why not giant

men? And why are these goliaths populating both Eurasia and the

Americas? Only on a land bridge created by the vast continent of

Antarctica can there be a sufficient bridge for the spread of these

giants."

This text, written by self-proclaimed Atlantologist Steve Omar,

represents Plato's text taken to the extreme- using his ideas as a

basis for outlandish and unfounded ideas.

These unverified fantasies make a dubious complement to the other

dark side of the Atlantean fantasy: hoaxes. Atlantis has been

"discovered" many times, but most notably in the fall of 1912 by Dr.

Paul Schliemann. Schliemann introduced himself as the grandson of

the famous Heinrich Schliemann, the archeologist who discovered the

ruins of ancient Troy in 1873.

His "discovery" made front page news (The New York American,

October 1912.) and boasted of an advanced civilization with aircraft,

power-driven boats and the like. Schliemann said his grandfather told

him on his deathbed of the family's secret: the location of Atlantis.

Schliemann's claims made waves, but didn't hold water; when pressed

for details, Schliemann was unresponsive and eventually disappeared

from public view.

Unfortunately, the falsities concerning Atlantis frequently overshadow

the possibilities. The subject has gathered its share of honest

journalists as well. Ignatius Donnelly wrote the first extensive study

of the possibility of existence in 1882, and his views have not been

found to be false with twentieth century technology. Donnelly

believed in Atlantis, but believed it to be worldly; his reasons for

Atlantis's existence are unable to be proven, but make sense. Some

examples: -There is nothing improbable in Plato's narrative; it

describes rich, cultured and educated people but doesn't mention

things of fantasy like giants, hobgoblins etc.

Plato speaks of hot and cold springs in the center of Atlantis, a

feature common to islands with volcanic activity. Chances are Plato

didn't know this -Plato says in his stories that the Poseidon, the

Greek god of the sea, is always seen on a chariot with horses

because he was originally the god of Atlantis, where horses were

domesticated. But when Atlantis fell to the sea, the Greeks believed

Poseidon brought his horses with him. Responding partly to

Donnelley's theories and partly to the urge to discover, some 20th

century archeologists have used twentieth century technology to

look for Atlantis. But many have dismissed Atlantis as glorified myths

of volcanic eruptions in the island of Thera in 1450 b.c. The eruption

may have destroyed that island and caused a small earthquake and

tsunamis that ruined the civilization of Crete, but didn't sink a

continent. Therefore, none of Donnelley's theories can be proved

without the actual discovery of the continent. The legend of Atlantis

is only a huge collection of theories and guesses, but theories and

guesses also led to the discovery of the lost Roman cities of Pompeii

and Herculaneum, discovered after being buried and preserved by the

volcanic ash of nearby Mt. Vesuvius. Because of this, the mystery of

Atlantis's existence will tantalize the world until the continent is

either proven or disproven.