ATLANTIS & the Atlantic Ocean

Phenomenon Of Atlantis

Hardly anyone in the world knows exactly how many books have been written about Atlantis by the proponents and opponents of the idea that it existed once in the past. Those who have attempted to count them, come up with widely diverging, albeit invariably four-digit numbers. I, for one, have seen bibliographies containing over 500 titles. No doubt, the topic of Atlantis could claim its place among he best-selling topics of the current century.

The special attention that Plato's narration about Atlantis gets can be accounted for by the fact that the country described in "Timaeus" and "Critias" does not fit in with our present-day ideas of the history of humanity, and the date of its vanishing, as recorded by Plato, goes back to unprecedentedly early times. If we treat this narration as trustworthy, a new and more comprehensive model of the history of mankind's development is essential. The idea seems attractive to many, in view of the numerous blank spots and contradictions in the existing concept of the history of humanity (for instance, such as the vast span of time between the emergence of an anatomically modern Homo Sapiens and the development of the first civilizations, the dating of which, by the way, is receding into the past, coming ever closer to the time when Atlantis existed according to the dialogues, as new archaeological data emerge), all the more so, that the text which could bring about a revision of the existing model is authored by Plato, who stands with Socrates and Aristotle as one of the shapers of the whole intellectual tradition of the West.

At the same time, most scholars believe that Plato's narrative about Atlantis stands by itself, that it is not directly corroborated or indirectly echoed by anything, and in itself does not give sufficient grounds for such a revision. The mention of Atlantis by the ancient historian Diodor of Sicily in his "Historical Library" is not considered by most scholars to constitute a reliable cross-reference, since it was made three centuries after Plato, whose works Diodor must have been familiar with.