Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science newsAtlantis: the legendary island that sank beneath the waves in the distant past, taking down with it an advanced civilization. Is it possible that we will ever find it? Or, more importantly: Did it even exist?
The short answer to both: No. All available evidence indicates that the philosopher Plato, sometime around 360 BCE, invented the island nation in order to illustrate a point about the dangers of aggressive imperialism. In Plato’s telling, Atlantis was no utopia. Rather, it was a foil for an idealized version of Athens from long before Plato’s time. This ancient Athens “was very similar to Plato’s notion of the ideal state,” says Jyl Gentzler, a professor of philosophy at Amherst College.
So how did Atlantis come to represent a lost utopic civilization? For that, you can mostly blame Ignatius Donnelly. In 1882, the former U.S. Congressman published. The book laid out 13 hypotheses, centered on the idea that Atlantis had truly existed, and indeed represented a place “where early mankind dwelt for ages in peace and happiness.” According to Donnelly, Atlantis was the original source of many ancient civilizations around the world.
Donnelly was inspired, says Adams, by a remarkable discovery in the early 1870s. An amateur archaeologist had used Homer’sto purportedly unearth the legendary city of Troy. If Troy, long thought to be fictional, was real, why shouldn’t Atlantis be, too?In the years after Columbus brought news of the New World back to Europe, many claimed that America was the fabled Atlantis. But the search really gained steam in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Say what you need to say…..even if it’s total bologna.
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