Essay, Research Paper: Atlantis: We Will Never Know

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.