Was Atlantis real? 6 Theories for Lost Culture

In his Socratic dialogues called Timaeus and Kritia, he describes this Atlantis, who was beyond the columns of Hercules (today's Gibraltar Strait) as a huge, rich empire with brilliant architecture, advanced technology and powerful army.

This great civilization, according to dialogues, was eventually destroyed in a cataclysmic event after a social moral decline and sank into the ocean around 9,600 BC.

But is the history of Atlantis in reality?

1. Atlantis was a mid -Atlantic continent that suddenly sank into the ocean

The idea that Atlantis was a real historical place and not just a legend invented by Plato did not appear until the end of the 19th century according to With History.com

In his book Atlantis, The Antifaluvian World released in 1882, author Ignatius Donnelly argued that the achievements of the ancient world (such as metallurgy, language and agriculture) should have been transmitted by an earlier advanced civilization, as the ancients were not enough to develop them.

Assuming that the Atlantic Ocean was only a few hundred meters deep, Donnelly described a continent that was flooded with changing ocean waters and sank right into the position that Plato said.

2. Atlantis was absorbed by the triangle of Bermuda

Inspired by Donnelly, many later writers expanded his theories and added their own speculations about where Atlantis could be.

One of these authors was Charles Berlitz who in the 1970s claimed that Atlantis was a real continent that was off the Bahamas and had fallen victim to the infamous « Bermuda triangle », an Atlantic area where they were supposed to have disappeared.

Supporters of this theory point out the discovery of walls and roads that look like artificial walls and roads and have been off the coast of Bimmy, although scientists have evaluated these structures and found that they were natural rock formations.

3. Atlantis was the Antarctic

Another theory – that Atlantis was actually a much more temperate version of today's Antarctic – is based on the work of Charles Hapgood, whose book « Earth's Shifting Crust » in 1958 had a preface by Albert Einstein. According to Hapgood, about 12,000 years ago the earth's bark shifted, shifting the continent that became Antarctica from a position far further north than it is today.

This more temperate continent was hosting an advanced culture, but the sudden shift to its current cold position condemned the inhabitants of Culture – the Atlantic – and their magnificent city was buried under layers of ice.

This theory appeared before the scientific world acquired a complete understanding of the tectonics of the plates, which largely abolished its idea of ​​ »shifting the crust ».

4. Atlantis' story was a mythical reconstruction of the Black Sea flood

This theory presupposes that Atlantis itself was fantastic, but the history of its destruction was inspired by a true historical event: Bosporus' burglary by the Mediterranean Sea and the subsequent flood of the Black Sea, around 5600 BC.

At that time, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake with half of its current size.

The flood flooded the cultures that were known to flourish along its coast with hundreds of meters of seawater in a short period of time.

As the locals scattered, they spread stories about the flood and may have led – thousands of years later – to Plato's narrative about Atlantis.

5. Atlantis is the story of Minoan civilization

One of the most recent theories about Atlantis concerns the culture that flourished in the Greek islands of Crete and Thira more than 4,000 years ago: the Minoans.

The Minoans, considered Europe's first major culture, built beautiful palaces, built asphalt roads and were the first Europeans to use written language (linear A).

At the height of their power, however, the Minoans suddenly disappeared from history – a constant mystery that has fueled faith in a link between this great, doomed civilization and Plato's Atlantis.

Historians believe that around 1600 BC, a huge earthquake shook the volcanic island of Thira, causing an explosion that fired 10 million tonnes of rocks, ash and gases in the atmosphere.

The tsunami that followed the explosion were large enough to eradicate Minoan cities across the area, disasters that could have made the Minoans vulnerable to invaders from mainland Greece.

6. Atlantis did not exist at all

Most historians and scientists throughout history have come to the conclusion that Plato's narrative of the lost kingdom of Atlantis was fantastic.

According to this argument, the Greek philosopher invented Atlantis as his vision of an ideal culture and intended the history of its destruction to be a warning story about the punishment of human insults by the gods.

There are no written references to Atlantis other than Plato's dialogues, nor in any of the numerous other texts that are preserved from ancient Greece.

In addition, despite the modern developments in oceanography and mapping of the oceanic bottom, no trace of such a submerged culture has ever been found.