The story of Atlantis, the island city that disappeared beneath the waves, has fascinated people throughout history.
The story of Atlantis, the island city that disappeared beneath the waves, has fascinated people throughout history.
The Greeks believed it had been a large island situated in the Western Ocean near the pillars of Hercules — their name for the straits of Gibraltar.
They said that Atlantis was engulfed when the sea rose following an earthquake.
The disaster is said to have taken place over a single day and night.
The tale was certainly taken seriously in ancient Greece, so much so that Atlantis features in two surviving works by the great Athenian philosopher Plato.
In the first, called Timaeus, an Egyptian priest says the island of Atlantis was huge — larger, in fact, than Asia Minor and North Africa combined.
He claims that around 10,000 BC the people of Atlantis had an advanced civilisation.
The Egyptian says Atlantis ruled a vast empire that took in all of the lands around the Mediterranean.
In a second work, called Critias, Atlantis is represented in rather poetic terms as the perfect state — an ideal political institution to which man can now only aspire.
In Critias, Plato also tells how Atlantis was originally part of the kingdom of the sea god Poseidon.
Apparently, Poseidon fell in love with a woman named Cleito and built a home for her on top of a hill at the centre of the island.
The god surrounded the home with alternating rings of land and water to protect Cleito.
Plato says that Cleito gave birth to five sets of twin boys.
The island was divided among the boys, who became the founders of a splendid, sophisticated race.
But after centuries of peace, the people of Atlantis became greedy and smug and no longer paid the gods their due reverence.
Zeus, the chief of the gods, became so angry he decided to punish the people of Atlantis by destroying the island.
Critias also claims that a war was fought between Athens and Atlantis in the distant past.
Fewer than 20 pages in Plato’s combined works deal with the Atlantis story.
But such is the fascination for the subject, it was recently estimated that more than 25,000 books have been written on the Atlantis legend since.
Today, some scientists believe the legend sprang from the destruction caused by a huge volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Thira, nowadays known as Santorini.
Much of the isle seems to have been destroyed in the catastrophe in 1628 BC.
The modern island of Santorini is the rim of the volcano.
The rest of the isle is still buried beneath the sea.
Santorini also has an abundance of volcanic ash which its modern inhabitants use to make cement.
During their diggings they regularly turn up ancient ruins.
Other writers believe the Canary Islands, Crete or America to be the inspiration behind the legend of Atlantis.
