World History

You are here: / Education / K - 12 / …where is Atlantis?

…where is Atlantis?

The Greek island of Crete is one of the locations speculated as being the lost island of Atlantis.
December 15, 2010 New York Post Robin Wallace

SCIENTISTS and seafarers have searched for ruins of Atlantis for centuries. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato wrote at length about Atlantis, and almost every culture on Earth retains the legend of a once-great land lost to the sea. Many scholars insist the colony never existed, while others insist it did.

Atlantis was allegedly larger than Asia and Europe combined, and the civilization that rose on the island was a technological and architectural marvel, a beautiful, thriving, utopian metropolis.

Atlantis capital city rose up on a mountain in the center of the island. The mountain was ringed with spiraling canals and walls, and at the very top of the mountain sat a temple to Poseidon with a golden statue of Poseidon inside.

According to Plato, the people of Atlantis became corrupt, concerned only with material wealth and ambition. The gods punished them by triggering a series of earthquakes and floods that sunk Atlantis to the bottom of the sea.

Plato located the island of Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean off the southern coast of Europe, and claimed the flood occurred around 9,000 B.C.

As an ancient Greek, Plato believed the Greek gods were real, so he believed this story was true. But Greek mythology is not the only religion that tells the story of a great flood wiping out a corrupt civilization. The Bible also tells a similar story, and some people believe Atlantis was the Garden of Eden.

Another theory places Atlantis on the Greek island of Crete. Thousands of years ago, around 1500 B.C., Crete was home to the Minoan empire, a highly advanced civilization known for its agricultural technology, architecture, art and civil laws.

Around 900 BC, a volcano on the nearby island of Santorini erupted, triggering a massive tsunami that completely flooded nearby Crete. The Minoan civilization vanished from the Earth, and many historians believe they were wiped out by the tsunami that hit Crete. This theory places Atlantis in the Mediterranean Sea. But archeologists have never proven that the Minoans were the Atlantians.

Scientists have searched for Atlantis in almost every corner of the Earth, from South America to Africa, from Europe to New Zealand. In the past decade alone, respected scientists have offered evidence that Ireland was the Atlantis Plato described, that remnants of the civilization were found under the sea off the coast of Spain, and that Atlantis was swallowed along with other islands off the coast of Spain during the melting of an ice age 11,000 years ago.

Others have suggested that archeological discoveries in India and the Bahamas were remnants of Atlantis.

PureHistory.org ℗ is your source to learn about the broad and beautiful spectrum of our shared History.