Tale of Solon
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Preface
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While every attempt has been made to be accurate and largely complete, this subject could itself require years of careful study to uncover every line of evidence that could be explored or researched. There might well be evidence there that simply has not been identified or further archaeological or geological work that needs to be performed. The present collection of analyses has been accomplished quickly and will no doubt suffer from omissions that others might well think obvious, but aspects have been explored as far as they can be given that this is not a subject to which a luxury of investigating in any length and detail has been possible, as against the contexts of a greater historical knowledge. This analysis only involves directly evidence drawn out of Plato’s two dialogues and makes no attempt to include other sources that show vague similarities to the Atlantis story, or at every turn to accumulate pages of dubious evidence to create a sense of verification or validity. It could be viewed as an introductory analysis, which might either be expanded upon in the future or might be picked up as a research topic for anyone who might wish to venture forth into the dawns of inelastic time and the depths of the unyielding sea. It does not end with a shrug of the shoulders and a collection of possibilities, rather reading through will provide a scrupulous analysis, albeit a diminutive one, and conclusions for verification. In this no attempt has been made to argue for or against any specific view put forth about Atlantis, it is only meant to provide a clear and unhindered analysis of the evidence. If anyone ever felt the initiative to fund meaningful searching along these lines, it would certainly be nice to be invited along for the ride, even if that’s all it turns out to be.
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Discovering the Past
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That the truth of the Vinland colony was eventually revealed through archaeological discovery has not made it any easier for those who today would make similar claims about different events, because the claims still require not merely evidence but proof. Sometimes one must pursue a matter and seek the facts without any academic interest supporting their endeavors. Recently speaking to a professional archaeologist Garrett Fagan, himself speaking against the dangers of pseudo-archaeology along the lines of Graham Hancock, when I asked him about the difficulties those face who exist beyond the walls of convention, said (and I paraphrase and rephrase) that ultimately for those who seek to gather real evidence, even as they are ignored by the scholarly community and when there are institutional barriers put up against it, the truth will eventually emerge, the facts will be brought to light, and this must be accepted as part of the process of discovery.
No doubt it is extremely important that archaeology be done properly, and not be undertaken with any specific find or proof in mind. Every aspect of the place excavated needs to be recorded meticulously, rather than just what happens to be significant to the person searching for the answer he seeks. This permits a proper evaluation of all remains, every artifact and regularity, since the only true facts uncovered are only those relating to the location of objects and other formations within the ground, all else arises from the assumptions and interpretations formed upon those objects and their placement, which is not always well appreciated at the time of the excavation. And as has often enough been said, archaeology is an experiment that can only be performed once.
The index case itself being the excavations at Hisarlik by Heinrich Schliemann, who was not doing archaeology but rather was digging specifically for Homer’s Troy, and as a result of his methods destroyed the very thing he was looking for, because the initial assumptions that guided him were wrong, and his notes do not permit a proper separation of the facts of the dig from the interpretations of Schliemann himself at the time. Today similar digs are taking place in Serbia relating to a specious interpretation of pyramidal hills as man-made pyramids, thus all artifacts recovered are being falsely categorized and uninteresting material is being dumped aside without regard. In addition, genuine archaeological sites such as the presumed House of St. Peter or the fortress by the Dead Sea, interpreted to be an Essene monastery in an attempt to prove that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written there. This work was done carefully by professional archaeologists, only their interpretations and conclusions were faulty.
The amateur seeking his facts must be guided by the same regard for skepticism, not jumping to conclusions, being careful and methodical in their excavations and other work as we expect from the professional archaeologist. Likewise, that not only property laws but laws relating to both the excavation and destiny of artifacts needs to be properly regarded, and this varies from state to state and country to country. There are state laws and certain national laws that restrict the excavation and sale of artifacts, even those uncovered on one’s own property and even when one gains permission from the land owner to excavate. It is not only the law that should guide one but a recognition of the role one holds in bringing to light a cultural heritage and an obligation to an essential regard for the significance of finds as they elevate all of mankind.
Likewise, one seeking the past cannot be the sort who falls so much in love with their theory as to begin to make excuses and allowances for it at every turn. Based upon other work of mine, on mythology, I have found it is not errors in the sources but the error of the interpretations and theories that should be more quickly recognized. People might wish to hold onto their theories because they can claim them as their own, giving it up means permitting someone else to reveal hidden meaning, while also feeling a loss of importance, losing a position one holds or a regard from their colleagues. All of these must be sacrificed to the ultimate truth. It is too easy to excuse conflicting content by suggesting it is due to omissions or other errors. If one is guided by the evidence and goes where it leads them, one can be led to the right conclusion, if one blends in some practical knowledge and imagination in order to secure it.
Archaeologists are notoriously financially starved, but if a significant archaeological site is uncovered eventually it should receive some professional attention. Until there is something to excavate, however, one can understand the lack of interest among professional archaeologists.
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Following the Evidence
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As I approach this subject with some reservation, as it seems that addressing the notion of Atlantis is rather as precarious as addressing the notion of Jesus. One must first prove an existence in history to say anything about it. However, even with lack of evidence one can always begin by assuming that if Jesus did actually exist what could we then say about the man. This is less an issue today among archaeologists than to use Jesus to generate interest in first-century Palestine archaeology and thereby acquire funding. Be that as it may, the same might be done for Atlantis. The evidence is against the existence of Atlantis, the lack of archaeological remains and the more relevant foible that Plato was no Tacitus or Herodotus, that is he was a philosopher and not a historian, his goal was not to tell history or even pseudo-history and no other of his works purport to tell of history. But does this mean that Plato did not decide to include an interesting tale in this particular case and wish to transmit it through the only means he could?
If the argument is made that Plato is not a historian, he is surely not a fiction writer either, and what is his philosophical point to telling the story of Atlantis? Given it ends abruptly it could simply have been an attempt to record the story Solon began writing that was in Plato’s possession or one of his cohorts. It is we who are inclined to limit Plato to being only a philosopher. The details and the specificity are uncannily like those that characterize a genuine account, down to the details of specific distances given, more like the Vinland voyages than fiction or fancy. Although it is more difficult to register what appears plausible to us when in the case of Vinland we are referring to events only 1,000 years ago, within historical times, but those regarding Atlantis lead us thousands of years into the past. Likewise, if we take Plato’s account literally, that the entire island was swallowed by the ocean.
There is a more relevant issue that should encourage a second look: that just as “Timaeus” and “Critias” tell of a land beyond the Pillars of Heracles in the real (Atlantic) Ocean, we in fact know that there is land not too far from there, which would have been less obvious during previous ages. We can likewise follow the descriptions and details in Plato’s account as far as they go to see whether there is enough evidence to equate Atlantis with the South American continent. This evaluation of evidence, not a proof of Atlantis, is what follows here.
Too often Atlantis is not merely used as a real location, but it is used as a basis for unsubstantiated theories about how this island was a cradle of civilization, with a highly advanced people who spawned the megalithic constructions or cultures of the world and any unexplained or eye-catching phenomenon that can be found and otherwise appears mysterious. Clearly the use or misuse of Atlantis over the past century, far from merely evaluating it according to the knowledge available, but trying to use it to explain the unexplained has turned it into something that is far more like the UFO phenomenon, which also supports its own little industry and adherents.
It should be expected that scientific interest will continue to be lacking until such time as any real physical evidence begins to emerge. This is the manner in which science operates and needs to operate in order not to promulgate belief as fact, as much as history is needed to prevent the acceptance of ideological myth as history, and a regard for accuracy and proper archaeological excavation against the driving human desire to acquire money, either by selling pilfered artifacts or hoping to attract tourism dollars to sites that receive sensationalist attention (ever heard of Loch Ness, Roswell, or the Holy Land), which stands in the way of clear analysis and investigations.
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Atlantian Reality?
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Apart from the fact that no physical evidence has been identified as coming from Atlantis, what is the nature of the objection to the textural evidence within Plato’s dialogues? On the surface, with knowledge that Plato’s works and our knowledge of him as a philosopher, what is the evidence from within the two dialogues themselves, being the only testament of Atlantis in any ancient source. Is there a water-tight case against it, such that one can now and forever more say that Atlantis and its descriptions are pure fictions, made up by Plato to make a philosophical point. While it is perhaps difficult to argue against this by stating all possible alternatives, it is perhaps more difficult in arguing for this case to say more than physical evidence itself is the absolute determiner of validity. This is in fact the case, any real and genuine artifacts with references to Atlantis or entire contexts that match exactly descriptions within Plato would definitely prove its existence, but what could prove its lack of existence?
First, although clearly Plato is not acting as a historian, can he simply be accepted as a fiction writer? What other works of Plato have come down to us where Plato indulged in telling pure fantastical tales and myths? Or was Plato merely duped into accepting it as true, as all history dished out in those times was garnished with the sauces of myth and legend. Taking this then, not along the lines of using a fictional environment or situation to illustrate a point, which is clearly achieved with Plato’s cave, but passing along what he merely might have known or been aware of. We could say that if Plato possessed such as story, or through Solon and Critias it was known to him, that would he not be interested in writing about it knowing full well that it was otherwise unknown. Critias says in the dialogue: “My great-grandfather, Dropides, had the original writing, which is still in my possession, and was carefully studied by me when I was a child…The tale, which was of great length, began as follows”.
While there might be an argument as to how far Plato’s dialogues recorded actual conversations he had knowledge of, this is difficult to answer, but is not necessary to continue the discussion. Within the context of the dialogue, the telling of the Atlantis story arises upon the conclusion of a discussion of the ideal state, which then is interpreted as offering a fictional verification of the hypothetical state, specifically of that city engaging in a war. The assumption is that the story is an invention to suit the philosophy, rather than the philosophy occurring with full knowledge of an illustration that was already known, the story known about Atlantis (in the way that reality influences philosophy).
Plato’s account is spoken by Critias, whose own grandfather had heard the story from his father Dropides, who heard it from Solon, who had himself learned of it from the priests in Sais, Egypt. The introduction of the Atlantis story does not arise upon the foundation that it exists as an imaginary representation of the ideal state, but that it was an “ancient tradition” that begins with Critias speaking: “Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange, is certainly true, having been attested by Solon, who was the wisest of the seven sages.” The Egyptians started by saying: “Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valour. For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end.” In speaking of these events that this is presented as: “The city and citizens, which you yesterday described to us in fiction, we will now transfer to the world of reality”, that “has the very great advantage of being a fact and not a fiction”, and “they practiced all the pursuits which we yesterday described as those of our imaginary guardians”. He even states that only the names but not the deeds have come down to their time, due to the passage of time, an odd comment within a purely fictional account. There are other references to names known prior to Theseus that do not actually arise within the dialogue but are purported to be within the Egyptian account of the war. Every reference to it is that it is a tradition recorded within Egyptian histories and kept in their “sacred registers”, not as one that arose out of someone’s mind.
And when you were speaking yesterday about your city and citizens, the tale which I have just been repeating to you came into my mind, and I remarked with astonishment how, by some mysterious coincidence, you agreed in almost every particular with the narrative of Solon.
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Setting the Stage
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In terms of the matter of years, the Egyptians say that “She [Athene/Neith] founded your city a thousand years before ours”. The event of the war occurred 9,000 years before the time of Solon, Plato existed around 400 BC, Critias was 10 when his grandfather was 90, and the time of Solon (640–560 BC) can be taken as 600 BC [2]. The presumed year of the Athens-Atlantis war is 9,600 BC, assuming solar years, which would take us back not only into the Stone Age but also to the end of the last Ice Age. This is an interesting timeframe, but it is not the only possible one. The years given were either reckoned by the Egyptians, or as the Egyptian names translated into Greek so perhaps were their years. So it could be based upon either the ancient reckoning of Egyptian years, or current (Solon’s time) reckoning of Greek years. Since arguments might unfold to support any interpretation, it seems best to investigate the outcome assuming solar years, seasons, or months, or potentially anything in-between. If the reckoning was in seasons, recognizing three Egyptian seasons per year, this would mean 9,000 divided by 3 or 3,000 years, so this would place it at 3600 BC [3], or if months, then about 700 years or 1300 BC. Conservatively, when looking for the Athens-Atlantis conflict within the strata of time, it could be anywhere from 3,000 to 12,000 years ago. With this in mind further evidence must be allowed to help narrow down the range of time, specifically do events occur within the Stone Age, the Copper Age or the late Bronze Age?
Consider the complexity of such a writing, not unlike an account that combines elements of myth and tradition that characterizes much of Greek legend, from the Iliad to the Argonautica. These two are presumed to be traceable to historical events, though exist largely as poetic and dramatic fiction. The first is at least verified somewhat by the presence of the archaeological site at Hisarlik, the second rather based upon the ease with which the route can be traced through the Black Sea. However, the tale of Solon exists within this tradition, perhaps neither purely mythical nor purely historical. What is being proven within the Atlantis story is not the details of the origin myth of Atlantis or evidence for the war, but existence of the island itself. Though there might be a back-door to proving the story of Atlantis from archaeological evidence of a war or details relating to Athens included within the story or traces of the empire of Atlantis. For example, Plato’s dialogue states that in primitive Athens:
[I]ts mountains were high hills covered with soil, and the plains, as they are termed by us, of Phelleus were full of rich earth, and there was abundance of wood in the mountains.
[T]he hill of the Acropolis [where there was a fountain later blocked by an earthquake] extended to the Eridanus and Ilissus, and included the Pnyx on one side, and the Lycabettus as a boundary on the opposite side to the Pnyx, and was all well covered with soil, and level at the top, except in one or two places.
Evidence of these could also provide verification even if the island of Atlantis is never found, since after all, it was to have been lost beneath the ocean, where archaeological methods are difficult to render. [Addition: The following paragraph details the Aegean situation arising out of archaeological investigation:
Archaeologically, the Aegean region appears to be a picture of fairly good ecological balance for a time, but around 1450 B.C. we begin to see the good times run out, and fortified cities and warfare become the dominant form of social organization. During this long history, the Aegean Sea region became ecologically devastated. The once green islands and mainland Greece and Turkey were turned into barren rocks, and vegetation was cut down or eaten away by sheep and goats. Finally, over a period of about fifty years, between 1250 and 1200 B.C., fortifications were improved, but the palaces were soon all destroyed, some by catastrophic fires, and the entire Aegean was plunged into a “dark age.” While scholars have proposed many different explanations for these events, from this distance it looks like a classic case of overexploitation of the region coupled with considerable population growth, followed by an increase in warfare, then system collapse. (LeBlanc 2003: 174)
Thus the description in Plato recalls knowledge of the region prior to 1450 BC, already 1,000 years before his own time. The ecological situation he would have been familiar with would have developed after 1450 and thus the description also favors a Copper Age over a Bronze Age timeframe.]
Beyond this there are descriptions of the island of Atlantis itself, which might well be taken as entirely accurate, but is more likely only partially accurate or open to interpretation. Where it is entirely accurate, no other evidence is required. When one pulls the descriptions this way and that to match a theory, then this needs to be matched by evidence to support it. That is, if textural evidence correspondingly matches wherever is sought, then no further proof is required (i.e. if a text suggests there is a certain city at a certain location and having dug, one finds a city there), but if one expects to find proof but it is lacking, or contrasts significantly in details, one must then support one’s explanation for its absence or variance, beyond offering a plausible theory to explain why the text means something different than it says, or the reason something went missing. Without this an investigation can dissolve into increasingly wild speculations that grow to rely upon flimsy, non-existent, or discredited evidence. No doubt a lack of physical evidence can be compensated for by accurate and corroborating textural evidence within a certain circumstantial framework, but how far can this be accepted if there is no valid way of verifying textural evidence when it comes from a single source (or derives from a single source). This is especially at play within the paste & paper walls of Biblical archaeology. Many would like to accept accounts in the Bible to supplement sparse and impersonal physical findings from the field, but what occurs when the evidence seems to be at odds with what would be expected from literal readings of non-literal or politico-spiritual texts? Once one studies and digs and is unable to find the evidence one expects, one must reevaluate the text or throw it out as historically invalid. A reevaluation might include the attempt towards a developed method to parse out genuine information from later embellishments, myths, parables, and doctrinal illustrations.
This must be clear, that there might be sure and fundamental reasons why archaeologists would reject the existence of Atlantis: the lack of a site to excavate. Others might make interpretations of what Plato must have been doing, what purpose his dialogues served, but this only arises from attempts to prove that Atlantis does not exist to corroborate the lack of forthcoming physical evidence. If the arguments and proofs are artificially and crudely constructed they only serve to provide an easy rather than a reliable response that archaeologists can proffer whenever the topic arises in public.
It is not unusual for weak or slim evidence to lead to grand and extensive theories that must be entirely rethought upon the uncovering of new evidence, this among professional archaeologists and anthropologists which is merely how an entire field evolves through time. It causes none to imagine that if one has to entirely rethink their theories when a new hominid skull, for example, is uncovered that perhaps the thing most lacking within scientific theory is not new evidence but the wisdom to know how evidence should be interpreted. It shows how much trouble science encounters when evidence exists, but is too small to yet be meaningful, and leads to dominant theories that are quite wrong, but supported until other evidence forces their rejection or modification. The alternative is to not force a simple theory but to open one’s imagination up to a realm of possibilities, which might very well lack evidence, but might reveal a development of wisdom within the scientific field, that there is an acceptance that the knowledge we currently possess is not the full extent of that which can ever be known. However, it is not those who are willing to wait who get the attention and funding, but those who propose sure and definite theories, write papers, and get headlines who are going to define the field in the short term.
Can we say that Atlantis exists until it is disproven?, clearly not, anymore than one can claim the Bible is true history until someone proves it false, or anything else that was at one time accepted and needs then to be replaced. In order for the Bible to be accepted as history, one must manage to extract the parochial from the mythical aspects, then seek to prove that the parochial elements are actually historical with corroborating evidence of some kind. It is, however, much easier to prove the existence of a location but almost never of specific events without the intervention of other written histories. Archaeology “tells” us a great deal, if we have the knowledge and imagination to divine it, but needs always to be aware of our assumptions going in.
Requisite initial proof in this case is going to be geographical: to identify an island should not be difficult. Then there are all the circumstantial details which can either verify if found or not unverify if not found. Evidence that cannot be proven might only reveal a lack in our own knowledge, meaning that there is a limit to the extent of our knowledge from archaeology and history, and that absences can be filled in from other evidence. Not having it does not negate it, but this is where scientific fact requires the philosopher, who needs to be able to know how the facts might or might not be interpreted by as thorough an analysis as possible. To know what the facts include and what they exclude, rather than to presume it must lead us to a single theoretical choice or dominant theory. Imagination and intelligence provide us a way to break through our assumptions, with wisdom as a means to evaluate the value of our knowledge. Thus the scientific discipline is incomplete unless it is interpreted and evaluated by the philosopher – but who is willing to put up with him, apart from perhaps other philosophers?
Besides evidence of the Atlantian empire and the war with Atlantis, and descriptions of pre-Classic Athens, there is the island of Atlantis itself. What are the manner of the descriptions, and do any of them tally with real locations or suggest regions where it might have been located? This is obviously not a new question, and not all the options can be assessed here.
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Analysis of the Evidence
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So how far does the evidence we have regarding Atlantis take us now? Is there anything that helps to corroborate the details apart from the specific identification of the site itself that at least would lend it some measure of credence to it? As for the primary thrust of argumentation, I can only defer on the main points to Jim Allen, whose theories concerning the presence of Atlantis upon the South American continent have led to all the subsequent argumentation here. His website www.atlantisbolivia.org is a good first start, and his books present a fuller report. (Not to imply that I endorse every piece of evidence presented by him as a proof of Atlantis, only that the sum total of his evidence provides a convincing case deserving serious consideration and is soley the product of his own tireless efforts.)
South America is clearly on the continental scale of Libya and Asia, and Mr. Allen has revealed that the name Atlantis arises from the combination of two South and Central American Indian words: atl for water and antis (the same as Andes) meaning copper. It is perhaps a meaningful indication that the wealth of Atlantis arose from its wealth of copper: that copper was required especially during the copper and later the Bronze Age in growing amounts, while it is unclear that such deposits existed in suitable quantities in the Old World. The root atl also figures into the name of its first king Atlas and the Atlantic Ocean.
Now for the description:
This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable, and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean
Then going on to describe how the sea is small with a narrow harbor to the real ocean beyond which they believed to be an enormous continent.
Evaluating each of these, the existence of the Mediterranean Sea is clear, the narrow Pillars of Heracles are clearly the Straits of Gibraltar of today, the Atlantic Ocean is also there. Is there an island larger than Libya and Asia put together? The understanding of the appreciated extent of both Libya (northern Africa) and Asia (Asia Minor) to the Egyptians (or Greeks) is unknown, however, the implication incorporating an understanding of the vastness of the Atlantic, is that they knew the Mediterranean as just a “harbor”, and that the island the size of a half or whole portion of Africa and Asia Minor and perhaps further extensions of it is truly a continent. So looking for a continent beyond the straits there is one that exists, that of South America. This was the way to other islands, which could mean the Caribbean islands.
Continuing on it describes their empire as extending over the entire island of Atlantis including many others and even into the Mediterranean of Africa as far as Egypt and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia (Italy). Attempting to gain Greece and Egypt to occupy the entire Mediterranean, Athens led the Hellenes at first and then alone vanquished the invaders and freed all the areas within the Pillars from their rule.
There also is preserved a mythical origin myth for the island (with names translated by Solon from Egyptian into Greek) where the whole earth was divided amongst the gods and Poseidon’s share was the island of Atlantis. Within this is a description of the island itself:
Looking towards the sea, but in the center of the whole island, there was a plain which is said to have been the fairest of all plains and very fertile. Near the plain again, and also in the centre of the island at a distance of about fifty stadia, there was a mountain not very high on any side.
Returning to Poseidon, among the primitive men, Poseidon took the daughter of the couple who lived on the mountain there. Putting her in a hill he created alternate zones of land and sea around it, and here produced springs of hot and cold water. Had had ten male children, each a set of twins, for which the island wad divided. The eldest received the canal-surrounded hill and the largest allotment of land surrounding it. This king was Atlas from whom the names Atlantis and Atlantic arose. The next pair received: “the extremity of the island towards the Pillars of Heracles, facing the country which is now called the region of Gades in that part of the world”. Significantly, this region given to the second kings, what is now Brazil was considered to be the second most desirable location of the island. This second king was known among the Greeks as Eumelus and in the language of his own country was Gaderius, from whom the region of Gades received its name.
The other kings inherited various portions and other islands in the sea, as well as the empire that extended into the Mediterranean. Then it goes on to describe the region surrounding the major city on the island:
The whole country was said by him to be very lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea, but the country immediately about and surrounding the city was a level plain, itself surrounded by mountains which descended towards the sea; it was smooth and even, and of an oblong shape, extending in one direct three thousand stadia, but across the centre inland it was two thousand stadia. This part of the island looked towards the south, and was sheltered from the north. The surrounding mountains were celebrated for their number and size and beauty, far beyond any which still exist, having in them also many wealthy villages of country folk, and rivers, and lakes, and meadows supplying food enough for every animal, wild and tame, and much wood of various sorts, abundant for each and every kind of work.
This in every way describes, as Jim Allen has shown, the region of Alti Plano within the Andes in Bolivia: in terms of its location in the center of the island, the size, as well as looking towards the south and sheltered from the north, right where it is situated where a crook in the continent bends inwards.
The specifics of the city and of the meticulously described alternating zones of sea and land are not specifically important here, through intriguing for the detail in specifying their measurements so carefully.
And beginning from the sea they bored a canal of three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and fifty stadia in length, which they carried through to the outermost zone, making a passage from the sea up to this, which became a harbour, and leaving an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find ingress.
This passage is especially important, because it indicates that there was a waterway from the sea into the alternating zones of land and sea, which needs to be explained.
Civilization
Not dwelling upon the details, which are there to be seen should one wish to corroborate with any purported archaeological site for Atlantis, what is known of the society in which they lived: the king Atlas and his descendants (based on primogeniture) had great wealth, such that it exceeded any wealth known elsewhere. They had 1,200 ships in their navy, built temples, palaces, harbors and docks and the stone used was to have been quarried under the island zones, of the color white, black, or red.
Each of the ten kings too had a city over-which he ruled, guided by the laws that were said to be handed down from Poseidon (i.e. their sea god) and were incised upon a pillar made of orichalcum in the temple of Poseidon on the middle island. Orichalcum is a metal of reddish color used in various constructions, dug out of the earth and considered to be worth more than anything except gold. Most of this could never be proven, even for a known city, but orichalcum could be equated with an alloy of gold and copper, which is known to have been used at various locations around South America at the time of Spanish conquest circa 1500 AD. The site where the gold-copper mining took place was Urukilla or Uruquilla, which is itself linguistically related to the very name of orichalcum: the same word root uruquil/orichal.[5] Other materials used within the art and constructions of Atlantis were brass, tin, ivory, gold and silver.
Is there any evidence of such an empire? This can only be known if such an empire might have existed during the specified time-spread, but its absence might arise from the fact that archaeologists have never been looking for it, or that there is no means to identify such an empire. What would archaeologists expect to find to prove an empire? If we make the wrong assumptions as to what we should find, then we might believe we have proven an absence while staring directly at it. Even so, even more unusual is the claim both that the warrior men of Athens sank into the earth and that Atlantis went beneath the sea.
Flora and Fauna
(Sumerian war carts ca.3200 BC, source: wikipedia.com, "wheel")
The island itself is described as having great quantities of wood, many tame and wild animals, and those suited to various habitats including lakes, marshes, rivers, mountains and plains. Here were a great number of elephants as well as horses, paired for the 10,000 chariots of the army, with another number of horses managed without chariots. Along with the baths for the kings, men and women there were baths for cattle; also mentioned are bulls used in sacrifices. These things might be explained or explained away, but to do so would really require the offering of further evidence, such as a genuine archaeological discovery of horse, cattle, and elephant bones.
Did elephants ever exist on the South American continent? They are known to us as mastodons:
They had carried the evolutionary trend to a point where the lower tusks were completely lost and the skull and jaws were markedly shortened. This, in connection with their large, evenly curved upper tusks, must have given the wonderful stegomastodon a very elephantlike appearance in the flesh, although it was somewhat more stockily built than a modern elephant. With a shoulder height of about eight feet, this animal was close to a living Indian elephant in size. The American mastodon, largest of the zygodonts, may have stood one or two feet taller. (Kurten 1988 :27)
This animal is known to have lived in South America and believed to have survived until the end of the Pleistocene, about 9000 BC. (Kurten 1988: 28) Also in the Americas was the southern mammoth (Mammuthus meridionalis), which is not the woolly sort often known from northern climes. The tusks of the southern mammoths were straighter than those of the later forms, and in the flesh it would probably have resembled a modern Indian elephant, lacking the peaked head and sloping back so typical of advanced mammoths (Kurten 1988: 43) Although this animal is only known to have ranged as far south as the southern United States (Kurten 1988).
There is evidence that the mastadon survived much later than is typically accepted. There are some radicarbon dates which have suggested the tribe [mastadons] may have survived long after the end of the Ice Age, perhaps as late as 5,000 years ago. (Kurten 1988: 121) However, and perhaps because these are outliers have been readily discounted by experts, that this was the result of a contaminated sample.[7] However, there is more in artistic depictions, one which is still open to interpretation, the discovery of a Pre-Columbian stele, found by Preuss in Columbia shown in Figure 1 surely appears to show the form of an elephant-like creature, with tusks and proboscis, but while it is not difinitively so it is difficult to figure what else it might be. (Unfortunately, this is the only depiction I have been able to locate of it.)
Figure 1.
Pre-Columbian Stele showing what could be a mastadon
(from Kurten 1988, after Stromer)
As for horses, they too would have existed, although both of these animals became extinct in the Americas, although the precise time of extinction is uncertain (see Appendix 1) it appears to be some time around 5000 BC. The likelihood of a species existing really depends upon the timeframe of the events; currently it is certainly more plausible at the oldest time, least plausible at the most recent time. But how could the ancient South Americans have had horses, unless they learned to ride wild horses from the Americas (such as Hippidion)? This would fit the Neolithic, but it might also permit an extension into the Copper Age, unless horses were kept on the plain there longer when they otherwise had gone extinct elsewhere. Or perhaps they were referring to llamas. However there is another explanation, that the reference in Plato that the Atlantians brought things from all over their empire to their own island: “For because of the greatness of their empire many things were brought to them from foreign countries, and the island itself provided most of what was required by them for the use of life.” This could have included the horse and chariot (which first appeared in Asia around 3000 BC). Certainly it would have proven to be of significant interest to them, enough to bring it back with them in their own country. Merely a collection of a couple dozen horses brought back and bred there on the plain would have meant little to their long-term presence and survival on the continent.
The island, it is said, also provided them with every kind of food, root, herbage, the essences of fruits and flowers.
also the fruit which admits of cultivation, both the dry sort, which is given us for nourishment and any other which we use for food – we call them all by the common name of pulse [beans], and the fruits having a hard rind, affording drinks and meats and ointments, and good store of chestnuts and the like, which furnish both pleasure and amusement, and are fruits which spoil with keeping, and the pleasant kinds of dessert, with which we console ourselves after dinner, when we are tired of eating – all these the sacred island which then beheld the light of the sun, brought forth fair and wondrous and in infinite abundance.
None of these aspects contradict a location in South America.
Twilight of Atlantis
But then afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.
What might explain the extraordinary end to the island itself, the island sinking? If this can be taken as literally true, then everything that has proceeded must be false it seems. Since the island of Atlantis is almost certainly South America from the descriptions taken at face value, what then explains the sinking of the continent? The claim that an entire continent submerged without a trace can be put forth as a sure and definite proof that the story is fantasy only, making it easy to disregard any other evidence put forth. It can, of course, be explained in numerous ways, such as to presume that the story was combined with a flood story of some sort; this and other assumptions provide only speculations that cannot be proven in any way. Is there any explanation that relates specifically to South America? The description is that with an earthquake and floods came the sinking, leaving behind a muddy shoal that prevented navigation of the sea at this location. So if it can be taken for what it says, something sunk and produced such a submerged bank.
Figure 2.
The Amazon River and Delta
There could be an explanation that might also be verified, that just as with the Nile River in Egypt, that any large river produces a correspondingly large delta. The Amazon River would have played a significant role in the commerce and transportation across the continent at that time, since its tributaries spread everywhere (Figure 2). Although the Nile Delta has been preserved due to its location within the Mediterranean, the great Amazon River may have also produced a massive alluvial delta at its conclusion, extending out several miles, as an accumulation of sediments, but would have been especially vulnerable to heavy seismic activity. That this may have built up over tens of thousands of years and then submerged in a single day, perhaps many times through the past. Or even, rather than a proper delta, that the effective impact of the river upon the land mass at its outlet was such as to soften it and make it vulnerable to earthquakes and inundations pouring out from the river over millennia. This would not then have been the entire continent, but perhaps the most significant part of it: the port that led to the rest of the continent, through the Amazon.
The current currents from the straits send ships straight to the outlet of the river, as seen in Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Ocean Currents
European or African seafarers who arrived there expecting to find the edge of the continent only found an impassible barrier of mud and if not so willing as to continue their search too far might well have concluded and brought back the tale of an entire submerged continent, and would have been totally accurate according to what they had concluded, the accuracy dependent upon how it is perceived by those who tell of it (a common enough issue arising from lack of omniscience). This, without ever needing to suspect that the submergence of this one location was then confused with and applied to the entire continent through transmission of the story, which is also, of course, a possibility. A possible appearance of the South American coast before the submergence is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Postulated Prehistoric Amazon River Delta
(existing before c. 4000 BC)
The likely presence of an extra land segment here prior to the formation of the Amazon River is revealed in how the South American and African tectonic plates fit, as shown in Figure 5. Geological evidence suggests that the Amazon only started flowing east about 10 million years ago, rather than into the Pacific. It is unknown whether this created increased sedimentation along the outlet of the river, but accumulations might have occurred while at the same time the river softened the underlying soils at its outlet to produce geologically unstable strata that collapsed during early historic times, perhaps exacerbated in some way by the warming climate subsequent to the Ice Age. (The resultant mud bank mentioned in Plato was temporary and, of course, would have eventually subsided or been washed away creating the configuration around the Amazon delta that exists today, but in the meantime the entire Atlantian civilization would have collapsed.)
Figure 5.
Evidence for land present at Amazon River delta
At this location, the way to other islands may have indicated the subsequent path from this Atlantian port back to Europe via the trade winds, to the Caribbean islands and past North America (see Figure 3). This would mean, though, that it would be impossible to excavate anything like what is described in Plato as it would all have disintegrated into the sea.
[7] It is now well known that a species of dwarf mammoth continued to exist upon Wrangel Island within the Arctic Sea until at least 2000 BC.
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Summary and Conclusion
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Here Figure 6 summarizes the material evidence where a 1 indicates that there is actual proof for it, a 0 indicates that proof is lacking, and a -1 indicates that there is contrary proof for it (that is proof exists that verifies such a thing could never have been). (Those number in parenthases contain evidence that is lacking but show the timeframe it might be expected.)
Figure 6.
Summary and Evaluation of Evidence
|
Plato |
Correlation |
c. 9500 BC
Stone Age |
c. 3500 BC
Copper Age |
c. 1300 BC
Bronze Age |
Notes |
|
Geographical evidence |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Atlantic Ocean |
Atlantic Ocean |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
island larger than Asia and Libya |
South America |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
oblong plain in middle of island |
Alti Plano |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
other side of island, close to the Pillars |
Brazil |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
rivers, marches, mountains, plains |
South America |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
Anthropological evidence |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Atlantian kings |
written records |
0 |
0 |
0 |
No mention outside of Plato |
|
Atlantian empire |
artifacts |
0 |
0 |
0 |
No remains thus far identified |
|
Atlantian "cities" |
artifacts |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Some evidence at Alti Plano |
|
written laws on pillar of orichalcum |
written laws |
0 |
(1) |
(1) |
Sumerian writing arose ca. 3500 BC |
|
Linguistic evidence |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Atlantis |
Atl-Andes |
1 |
1 |
1 |
Atl is Aztec, Andes is Inca |
|
Orichalcum |
Urukill-a
(Orichal-a)
Orichana |
1 |
1 |
1 |
Urukilla is the source of mined “orichalcum” |
|
Zoological evidence |
|
|
|
|
|
|
wild animals |
abundant |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
tame animals |
llama, alpaca, etc. |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
elephants |
mastadon, southern mammoths |
1 |
1 |
0 |
Mastadons might have survived after 3000 BC |
|
tame horses |
horses |
1 |
1 |
0 |
Hippidion perhaps went extinct about 5000 BC |
|
cattle |
unknown species, llama |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
|
Botanical evidence |
|
|
|
|
|
|
wood |
|
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
fruit and flowers |
|
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
food |
|
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
Archaeological evidence |
|
|
|
|
|
|
buildings |
|
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
|
canals and ships |
|
0 |
0 |
0 |
Canals on Alti Plano of unknown date |
|
chariots |
chariots or carts |
0 |
(1) |
(1) |
Wheel arose in 5th Mill. BC |
|
chariot track |
|
0 |
(1) |
(1) |
|
|
Greek ecology |
|
1 |
1 |
0 |
|
|
Geological evidence |
|
|
|
|
|
|
orichalcum |
tumbaga (copper-gold) |
0 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
metals |
metals |
0 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
hot and cold water |
springs |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Hot springs are present on Alti Plano |
|
earthquakes and floods |
earthquakes and floods |
1 |
1 |
1 |
No specific earthquake or floods known |
|
island sinking |
Amazon delta |
0 |
0 |
0 |
No direct evidence yet uncovered |
|
Proportions |
|
55% |
72% |
62% |
|
The Copper Age date seems to be the most likely, given that it exists within the range of the formation of the Egyptian community around the Nile River and, in addition, there is specific reference to a metal that appears to be either copper or gold mixed with copper. It is also an age in which there would have been significant developments in seagoing craft. Thus it all points to changes in the world due to the arising of the Copper Age, at least as they existed along the coastal areas of the world, which could well have led to new empires based upon technology coming out of the use of copper. This is also a timeframe that is very little understood but perhaps one of the most fascinating times in human history, since it led humans into a sequence of events that we know as the historic age.
These numbers are not as precise as they appear to be and there is a great deal that can be said in argument on various sides; this is only intended to be a preliminary comparison rather than a full assessment. The positive aspect of this analysis, is that it does not emerge with any “-1” ratings, meaning that none of the material evidence has been decisively disproven, it either has been proven, is well suggested, or is awaiting (perhaps unattainable) direct physical evidence through excavation, imaging, and geological survey.[2]
Where there are remaining inconsistencies, how can these be explained? One for example is that the island with canal zones around it was to have been connected to the sea offering ingress to many vessels from all over, but can this be accurate for Alti Plano? Plato’s dialogue itself seems to be internally contradictory in this regard, saying on the one hand that a canal that surrounded the plain drained out into the sea, rather than being connected and used as a port. The ports and canals might have actually been located on the east coast rather than the west coast of the continent, which would have been at the end of the Amazon, or if concentric canals were a preferred construction method that both locations contained near-identical structures,and thus were easily conflated.
Secondly, and perhaps of equal significance, is the description of the location of the muddy shoal that is said to have made the entire Atlantic Ocean unnavigable, since it says that “The power came froth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable” and that after the submergence of the island that it “became an impassible barrier of mud to voyagers sailing from hence to any part of the ocean.” Does this mean that one could not sail out of the Mediterranean in Socrates’ day? Or is the implication here merely as it says, “For this reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island”, that this means it is only those who try to sail into its prior location that encounter it, that it need not be immediately outside of the Straits of Heracles. So the lack of needing to place Atlantis at a definite location just short of the pillars could conceivably place it anywhere in the Atlantic. Plato's rather puzzling statement is likely to be a confusion between the details of the Atlantis story and later knowledge of the Sargasso Sea. The poet Avienus related a voyage into the Atlantic Ocean by the Carthaginian admiral Himilco in 500 BC:
“…No breeze drives the ship, so dead is the sluggish wind of this idle sea…there is much seaweed among the waves, it holds back the ship like bushes…the sea has no great depth, the surface of the earth is barely covered by a little water…the monsters of the sea move continuously to and fro and fierce monsters swim among the sluggish and slowly creeping ships….” (Berlitz 1969: 52)
It is quite certain that the nature of the Sargasso Sea would vary over different eras, that it might expand or retract to some extent with the changing of currents, temperature, the nature and concentration of growth of bacteria and weed and so on.
This could clear up this matter concerning the persistence of the muddy banks in the Atlantic, presumably from the "sinking continent" into Plato’s own time. It might also present a further solution to the issue of how an entire continent might have been thought to have submerged: since the existence of the Sargasso Sea itself might well have led to theories, just as they entrapped Spence in more recent times, that it must be the remnants from a landmass that must have existed there at some time in the past. This is rather how ancient people hypothesized about how dinosaur or mammoth bones came to be where they were.
Regarding the identification of Atlantis with South America, and the correspondence with Plato's dialogues, the only genuinely convincing evidence is the character of Alti Plano itself, and how closely this matches the descriptions in Plato. All the accompanying evidence only acts to support this correspondence, or prevents a quick and easy dismissal of this fundamental evidence through the arising of contrary or contradictory evidence.
How might one excavate Atlantis when no archaeologist has properly located the likely location? If one could be steered to a very sure spot (for example, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar), that this is where Atlantis is to be and finding nothing there, it would be easier to prove that Atlantis was fiction. Merely to gainsay “believers” by challenging them to produce evidence cannot be confused with a clear and definite proof that Atlantis does not and never did exist, and the tale is a pure fiction; the evidence offered here is not against its existence. In fact, there is enough that corresponds to the descriptions within Plato’s dialogues to suggest that the actual city itself, buildings, and artifacts are yet to be discovered. However, the search for proof to support theory upon theory has turned up nothing for the intrepid seeker than disappointment. This might perhaps hint at a mixture of actual knowledge about the South American continent and its civilization, with some embellishments in terms of the actual events of empire and war, but then we do not even possess the full narrative out of Egypt, so the evidence we do have must be stretched to the limit, which has never been fully achieved it seems; we simply haven’t enough accumulated knowledge to fill in the missing requisite pieces.
Such discovery is still a possibility, but given the timescale it could be that only the remotest fragments and traces remain. If it did exist within the Copper Age it was probably less grand and advanced than that portrayed from the vantage of Iron Age Greece at the time of Plato. Upon the Amazon delta, if there were buildings or other artifacts, these too would potentially be buried beneath miles of sea bed, although new imaging technologies might be permitted to play a role here. If it turns out that evidence for Atlantis is never found at the most likely locations, and it is in fact a mere story or convoluted tale, against the indications within Plato and the evidence above, it is not anything that should be cause for concern, loss of sleep, or mourning.
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Sources
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Hutchins, Robert Maynard, editor in chief. Great Books of the Western World vol. 7: Plato. Jowett, Benjamin trans. Encyclopedia Britannica: Chicago 1952.
Kurten, Bjorn. Before the Indians. Columbia: NewYork 1988.
LeBlanc Steven A. Constant Battles. St. Martin's Press: New York 2003.
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Afterword
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From reading J.M. Allen's initial book I have assembled my evidence independently and where I offer alternate theories it has not been an attempt to contradict or supersede his own. I am dedicated to accumulating evidence from any reliable sources I find rather than merely restating his own evidence here. Some significant areas of disagreement is between my own emphasis on the eastern side of the continent and his own emphasis on the western side. His own approach does not require an explanation arising from a submerging Amazon delta (but Plato's account might well require one). For Mr. Allen the way to further islands would mean the Pacific Islands and the opposite continent meaning Asia, while an Amazon port would favor the Caribbean islands and the opposite continent meaning Central America; he favors an era around 1250 BC, equating the Sea People with the Atlanteans (which conventional evidence appears to disfavor), while I have rather settled on the era around 3500 BC, which corresponds with the Copper Age and the founding of Sais. Merely because these are contradictory does not imply that I am imaging they compete with Mr. Allen's. The greater amassing of evidence for Atlantis has arisen around the locus of Alti Plano, while the Amazon delta will remain only peripheral or irrelevant. It does seem odd if Plato wasn't able to associate the Atlantis story with that of the Trojan War, if they were in fact related or from the same era. However, it does no good to amass evidence some of which corresponds to 9500 BC and some of which corresponds to 1250 BC, and what evidence is presented must be clear, unambiguous, and not equated superficially.
As the evidence accumulates it has shown itself to be more convincing than ever, but seen within the context of prior attempts to locate or prove Atlantis, more skepticism than ever must be overcome. The most important future pursuit would be to attempt to identify what specific evidence is lacking amongst the more general evidence assembled, and to see if various supposition evidence can really be turned into hard evidence (which would include the establishment of clear dating of finds). However, the timeframe of the Copper Age is so long ago, and in the absence of any written records, it will take time for the archaeological knowledge to amass and for the generation of wide-ranging theories. Until it is known well enough it would be scientific folly to rule out entirely the existence of a South American copper-age empire. What remains most troubling is that anyone who might hope to gain from proving that Alti Plano housed the Atlantian civilization, esepcially to attract tourism dollars, would fake objects or plant evidence thinking they might help the proving process along. For the sake of preserving the value of our past anyone thinking along such lines should put them to rest.
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Bolivian Evidence
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| |
The purpose of this appendix section is to perform an assessment of J. M. Allen’s evidence, which will be further clarified after the publication of his new book, and should be considered for now a work in progress.
In order to better analyze the various aspects of the story, one fitting way is to break it down into its constituent parts, which aids in being able to compare various aspects of it with comparable evidence. In this, all of the dialogues that relate the Source of the story will be shown in blue, that which details the Descriptive elements in black, the Historical elements in green, and any Myth will be shown in red. Each of these would require a different approach, for example the descriptive elements would arise largely out of archaeology, the historical could be verified by archaeology but also could survive within written works, the mythical could be related to other known myths. The story of Atlantis begins within the dialogue of TIMAEUS:
Critias. Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange, is certainly true, having been attested by Solon, who was the wisest of the seven sages. He was a relative and a dear friend of my great-grandfather, Dropides, as he himself says in many passages of his poems; and he told the story to Critias, my grandfather, who remembered and repeated it to us. There were of old, he said, great and marvellous actions of the Athenian city, which have passed into oblivion through lapse of time and the destruction of mankind, and one in particular, greater than all the rest. This we will now rehearse. It will be a fitting monument of our gratitude to you, and a hymn of praise true and worthy of the goddess, on this her day of festival.
Socrates. Very good. And what is this ancient famous action of the Athenians, which Critias declared, on the authority of Solon, to be not a mere legend, but an actual fact?
Critias. I will tell an old-world story which I heard from an aged man; for Critias, at the time of telling it, was as he said, nearly ninety years of age, and I was about ten. Now the day was that day of the Apaturia which is called the Registration of Youth, at which, according to custom, our parents gave prizes for recitations, and the poems of several poets were recited by us boys, and many of us sang the poems of Solon, which at that time had not gone out of fashion. One of our tribe, either because he thought so or to please Critias, said that in his judgment Solon was not only the wisest of men, but also the noblest of poets. The old man, as I very well remember, brightened up at hearing this and said, smiling: Yes, Amynander, if Solon had only, like other poets, made poetry the business of his life, and had completed the tale which he brought with him from Egypt, and had not been compelled, by reason of the factions and troubles which he found stirring in his own country when he came home, to attend to other matters, in my opinion he would have been as famous as Homer or Hesiod, or any poet. And what was the tale about, Critias? said Amynander. About the greatest action which the Athenians ever did, and which ought to have been the most famous, but, through the lapse of time and the destruction of the actors, it has not come down to us. Tell us, said the other, the whole story, and how and from whom Solon heard this veritable tradition. He replied:-In the Egyptian Delta, at the head of which the river Nile divides, there is a certain district which is called the district of Sais, and the great city of the district is also called Sais, and is the city from which King Amasis came. The citizens have a deity for their foundress; she is called in the Egyptian tongue Neith, and is asserted by them to be the same whom the Hellenes call Athene; they are great lovers of the Athenians, and say that they are in some way related to them. To this city came Solon, and was received there with great honour; he asked the priests who were most skilful in such matters, about antiquity, and made the discovery that neither he nor any other Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about the times of old. On one occasion, wishing to draw them on to speak of antiquity, he began to tell about the most ancient things in our part of the world-about Phoroneus, who is called "the first man," and about Niobe; and after the Deluge, of the survival of Deucalion and Pyrrha; and he traced the genealogy of their descendants, and reckoning up the dates, tried to compute how many years ago the events of which he was speaking happened. Thereupon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you. Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you why. There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is a story, which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth, which recurs after long intervals; at such times those who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore. And from this calamity the Nile, who is our never-failing saviour, delivers and preserves us. When, on the other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, the survivors in your country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwell on the mountains, but those who, like you, live in cities are carried by the rivers into the sea. Whereas in this land, neither then nor at any other time, does the water come down from above on the fields, having always a tendency to come up from below; for which reason the traditions preserved here are the most ancient.
The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost or of summer does not prevent, mankind exist, sometimes in greater, sometimes in lesser numbers. And whatever happened either in your country or in ours, or in any other region of which we are informed-if there were any actions noble or great or in any other way remarkable, they have all been written down by us of old, and are preserved in our temples. Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves. As for those genealogies of yours which you just now recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children. In the first place you remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones; in the next place, you do not know that there formerly dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, and that you and your whole city are descended from a small seed or remnant of them which survived. And this was unknown to you, because, for many generations, the survivors of that destruction died, leaving no written word. For there was a time, Solon, before the great deluge of all, when the city which now is Athens was first in war and in every way the best governed of all cities, is said to have performed the noblest deeds and to have had the fairest constitution of any of which tradition tells, under the face of heaven.
Solon marvelled at his words, and earnestly requested the priests to inform him exactly and in order about these former citizens. You are welcome to hear about them, Solon, said the priest, both for your own sake and for that of your city, and above all, for the sake of the goddess who is the common patron and parent and educator of both our cities. She founded your city a thousand years before ours, receiving from the Earth and Hephaestus the seed of your race, and afterwards she founded ours, of which the constitution is recorded in our sacred registers to be eight thousand years old. As touching your citizens of nine thousand years ago, I will briefly inform you of their laws and of their most famous action; the exact particulars of the whole we will hereafter go through at our leisure in the sacred registers themselves. If you compare these very laws with ours you will find that many of ours are the counterpart of yours as they were in the olden time. In the first place, there is the caste of priests, which is separated from all the others; next, there are the artificers, who ply their several crafts by themselves and do not intermix; and also there is the class of shepherds and of hunters, as well as that of husbandmen; and you will observe, too, that the warriors in Egypt are distinct from all the other classes, and are commanded by the law to devote themselves solely to military pursuits; moreover, the weapons which they carry are shields and spears, a style of equipment which the goddess taught of Asiatics first to us, as in your part of the world first to you. Then as to wisdom, do you observe how our law from the very first made a study of the whole order of things, extending even to prophecy and medicine which gives health, out of these divine elements deriving what was needful for human life, and adding every sort of knowledge which was akin to them. All this order and arrangement the goddess first imparted to you when establishing your city; and she chose the spot of earth in which you were born, because she saw that the happy temperament of the seasons in that land would produce the wisest of men. Wherefore the goddess, who was a lover both of war and of wisdom, selected and first of all settled that spot which was the most likely to produce men likest herself. And there you dwelt, having such laws as these and still better ones, and excelled all mankind in all virtue, as became the children and disciples of the gods.
Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valour. For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind. She was pre-eminent in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjugated, and generously liberated all the rest of us who dwell within the pillars. But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.
I have told you briefly, Socrates, what the aged Critias heard from Solon and related to us. And when you were speaking yesterday about your city and citizens, the tale which I have just been repeating to you came into my mind, and I remarked with astonishment how, by some mysterious coincidence, you agreed in almost every particular with the narrative of Solon; but I did not like to speak at the moment. For a long time had elapsed, and I had forgotten too much; I thought that I must first of all run over the narrative in my own mind, and then I would speak. And so I readily assented to your request yesterday, considering that in all such cases the chief difficulty is to find a tale suitable to our purpose, and that with such a tale we should be fairly well provided.
And therefore, as Hermocrates has told you, on my way home yesterday I at once communicated the tale to my companions as I remembered it; and after I left them, during the night by thinking I recovered nearly the whole it. Truly, as is often said, the lessons of our childhood make wonderful impression on our memories; for I am not sure that I could remember all the discourse of yesterday, but I should be much surprised if I forgot any of these things which I have heard very long ago. I listened at the time with childlike interest to the old man's narrative; he was very ready to teach me, and I asked him again and again to repeat his words, so that like an indelible picture they were branded into my mind. As soon as the day broke, I rehearsed them as he spoke them to my companions, that they, as well as myself, might have something to say. And now, Socrates, to make an end my preface, I am ready to tell you the whole tale. I will give you not only the general heads, but the particulars, as they were told to me. The city and citizens, which you yesterday described to us in fiction, we will now transfer to the world of reality. It shall be the ancient city of Athens, and we will suppose that the citizens whom you imagined, were our veritable ancestors, of whom the priest spoke; they will perfectly harmonise, and there will be no inconsistency in saying that the citizens of your republic are these ancient Athenians. Let us divide the subject among us, and all endeavour according to our ability gracefully to execute the task which you have imposed upon us. Consider then, Socrates, if this narrative is suited to the purpose, or whether we should seek for some other instead.
Socrates. And what other, Critias, can we find that will be better than this, which is natural and suitable to the festival of the goddess, and has the very great advantage of being a fact and not a fiction? How or where shall we find another if we abandon this? We cannot, and therefore you must tell the tale, and good luck to you; and I in return for my yesterday's discourse will now rest and be a listener.
Critias. Let me proceed to explain to you, Socrates, the order in which we have arranged our entertainment. Our intention is, that Timaeus, who is the most of an astronomer amongst us, and has made the nature of the universe his special study, should speak first, beginning with the generation of the world and going down to the creation of man; next, I am to receive the men whom he has created of whom some will have profited by the excellent education which you have given them; and then, in accordance with the tale of Solon, and equally with his law, we will bring them into court and make them citizens, as if they were those very Athenians whom the sacred Egyptian record has recovered from oblivion, and thenceforward we will speak of them as Athenians and fellow-citizens.
The tale of Atlantis picks up again with the dialogue CRITIAS:
Timaeus. How thankful I am, Socrates, that I have arrived at last, and, like a weary traveller after a long journey, may be at rest! And I pray the being who always was of old, and has now been by me revealed, to grant that my words may endure in so far as they have been spoken truly and acceptably to him; but if unintentionally I have said anything wrong, I pray that he will impose upon me a just retribution, and the just retribution of him who errs is that he should be set right. Wishing, then, to speak truly in future concerning the generation of the gods, I pray him to give me knowledge, which of all medicines is the most perfect and best. And now having offered my prayer I deliver up the argument to Critias, who is to speak next according to our agreement.
Critias. And I, Timaeus, accept the trust, and as you at first said that you were going to speak of high matters, and begged that some forbearance might be shown to you, I too ask the same or greater forbearance for what I am about to say. And although I very well know that my request may appear to be somewhat and discourteous, I must make it nevertheless. For will any man of sense deny that you have spoken well? I can only attempt to show that I ought to have more indulgence than you, because my theme is more difficult; and I shall argue that to seem to speak well of the gods to men is far easier than to speak well of men to men: for the inexperience and utter ignorance of his hearers about any subject is a great assistance to him who has to speak of it, and we know how ignorant we are concerning the gods. But I should like to make my meaning clearer, if Timaeus, you will follow me. All that is said by any of us can only be imitation and representation. For if we consider the likenesses which painters make of bodies divine and heavenly, and the different degrees of gratification with which the eye of the spectator receives them, we shall see that we are satisfied with the artist who is able in any degree to imitate the earth and its mountains, and the rivers, and the woods, and the universe, and the things that are and move therein, and further, that knowing nothing precise about such matters, we do not examine or analyze the painting; all that is required is a sort of indistinct and deceptive mode of shadowing them forth. But when a person endeavours to paint the human form we are quick at finding out defects, and our familiar knowledge makes us severe judges of any one who does not render every point of similarity. And we may observe the same thing to happen in discourse; we are satisfied with a picture of divine and heavenly things which has very little likeness to them; but we are more precise in our criticism of mortal and human things. Wherefore if at the moment of speaking I cannot suitably express my meaning, you must excuse me, considering that to form approved likenesses of human things is the reverse of easy. This is what I want to suggest to you, and at the same time to beg, Socrates, that I may have not less, but more indulgence conceded to me in what I am about to say. Which favour, if I am right in asking, I hope that you will be ready to grant.
Socrates. Certainly, Critias, we will grant your request, and we will grant the same by anticipation to Hermocrates, as well as to you and Timaeus; for I have no doubt that when his turn comes a little while hence, he will make the same request which you have made. In order, then, that he may provide himself with a fresh beginning, and not be compelled to say the same things over again, let him understand that the indulgence is already extended by anticipation to him. And now, friend Critias, I will announce to you the judgment of the theatre. They are of opinion that the last performer was wonderfully successful, and that you will need a great deal of indulgence before you will be able to take his place.
Hermocrates. The warning, Socrates, which you have addressed to him, I must also take to myself. But remember, Critias, that faint heart never yet raised a trophy; and therefore you must go and attack the argument like a man. First invoke Apollo and the Muses, and then let us hear you sound the praises and show forth the virtues of your ancient citizens.
Critias. Friend Hermocrates, you, who are stationed last and have another in front of you, have not lost heart as yet; the gravity of the situation will soon be revealed to you; meanwhile I accept your exhortations and encouragements. But besides the gods and goddesses whom you have mentioned, I would specially invoke Mnemosyne; for all the important part of my discourse is dependent on her favour, and if I can recollect and recite enough of what was said by the priests and brought hither by Solon, I doubt not that I shall satisfy the requirements of this theatre. And now, making no more excuses, I will proceed.
Let me begin by observing first of all, that nine thousand was the sum of years which had elapsed since the war which was said to have taken place between those who dwelt outside the Pillars of Heracles and all who dwelt within them; this war I am going to describe. Of the combatants on the one side, the city of Athens was reported to have been the leader and to have fought out the war; the combatants on the other side were commanded by the kings of Atlantis, which, as was saying, was an island greater in extent than Libya and Asia, and when afterwards sunk by an earthquake, became an impassable barrier of mud to voyagers sailing from hence to any part of the ocean. The progress of the history will unfold the various nations of barbarians and families of Hellenes which then existed, as they successively appear on the scene; but I must describe first of all Athenians of that day, and their enemies who fought with them, and then the respective powers and governments of the two kingdoms. Let us give the precedence to Athens.
In the days of old the gods had the whole earth distributed among them by allotment. There was no quarrelling; for you cannot rightly suppose that the gods did not know what was proper for each of them to have, or, knowing this, that they would seek to procure for themselves by contention that which more properly belonged to others. They all of them by just apportionment obtained what they wanted, and peopled their own districts; and when they had peopled them they tended us, their nurselings and possessions, as shepherds tend their flocks, excepting only that they did not use blows or bodily force, as shepherds do, but governed us like pilots from the stern of the vessel, which is an easy way of guiding animals, holding our souls by the rudder of persuasion according to their own pleasure;-thus did they guide all mortal creatures. Now different gods had their allotments in different places which they set in order. Hephaestus and Athene, who were brother and sister, and sprang from the same father, having a common nature, and being united also in the love of philosophy and art, both obtained as their common portion this land, which was naturally adapted for wisdom and virtue; and there they implanted brave children of the soil, and put into their minds the order of government; their names are preserved, but their actions have disappeared by reason of the destruction of those who received the tradition, and the lapse of ages. For when there were any survivors, as I have already said, they were men who dwelt in the mountains; and they were ignorant of the art of writing, and had heard only the names of the chiefs of the land, but very little about their actions. The names they were willing enough to give to their children; but the virtues and the laws of their predecessors, they knew only by obscure traditions; and as they themselves and their children lacked for many generations the necessaries of life, they directed their attention to the supply of their wants, and of them they conversed, to the neglect of events that had happened in times long past; for mythology and the enquiry into antiquity are first introduced into cities when they begin to have leisure, and when they see that the necessaries of life have already been provided, but not before. And this is reason why the names of the ancients have been preserved to us and not their actions. This I infer because Solon said that the priests in their narrative of that war mentioned most of the names which are recorded prior to the time of Theseus, such as Cecrops, and Erechtheus, and Erichthonius, and Erysichthon, and the names of the women in like manner. Moreover, since military pursuits were then common to men and women, the men of those days in accordance with the custom of the time set up a figure and image of the goddess in full armour, to be a testimony that all animals which associate together, male as well as female, may, if they please, practise in common the virtue which belongs to them without distinction of sex.
Now the country was inhabited in those days by various classes of citizens;-there were artisans, and there were husbandmen, and there was also a warrior class originally set apart by divine men. The latter dwelt by themselves, and had all things suitable for nurture and education; neither had any of them anything of their own, but they regarded all that they had as common property; nor did they claim to receive of the other citizens anything more than their necessary food. And they practised all the pursuits which we yesterday described as those of our imaginary guardians. Concerning the country the Egyptian priests said what is not only probable but manifestly true, that the boundaries were in those days fixed by the Isthmus, and that in the direction of the continent they extended as far as the heights of Cithaeron and Parnes; the boundary line came down in the direction of the sea, having the district of Oropus on the right, and with the river Asopus as the limit on the left. The land was the best in the world, and was therefore able in those days to support a vast army, raised from the surrounding people. Even the remnant of Attica which now exists may compare with any region in the world for the variety and excellence of its fruits and the suitableness of its pastures to every sort of animal, which proves what I am saying; but in those days the country was fair as now and yielded far more abundant produce. How shall I establish my words? and what part of it can be truly called a remnant of the land that then was? The whole country is only a long promontory extending far into the sea away from the rest of the continent, while the surrounding basin of the sea is everywhere deep in the neighbourhood of the shore. Many great deluges have taken place during the nine thousand years, for that is the number of years which have elapsed since the time of which I am speaking; and during all this time and through so many changes, there has never been any considerable accumulation of the soil coming down from the mountains, as in other places, but the earth has fallen away all round and sunk out of sight. The consequence is, that in comparison of what then was, there are remaining only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be called, as in the case of small islands, all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land being left. But in the primitive state of the country, its mountains were high hills covered with soil, and the plains, as they are termed by us, of Phelleus were full of rich earth, and there was abundance of wood in the mountains. Of this last the traces still remain, for although some of the mountains now only afford sustenance to bees, not so very long ago there were still to be seen roofs of timber cut from trees growing there, which were of a size sufficient to cover the largest houses; and there were many other high trees, cultivated by man and bearing abundance of food for cattle. Moreover, the land reaped the benefit of the annual rainfall, not as now losing the water which flows off the bare earth into the sea, but, having an abundant supply in all places, and receiving it into herself and treasuring it up in the close clay soil, it let off into the hollows the streams which it absorbed from the heights, providing everywhere abundant fountains and rivers, of which there may still be observed sacred memorials in places where fountains once existed; and this proves the truth of what I am saying.
Such was the natural state of the country, which was cultivated, as we may well believe, by true husbandmen, who made husbandry their business, and were lovers of honour, and of a noble nature, and had a soil the best in the world, and abundance of water, and in the heaven above an excellently attempered climate. Now the city in those days was arranged on this wise. In the first place the Acropolis was not as now. For the fact is that a single night of excessive rain washed away the earth and laid bare the rock; at the same time there were earthquakes, and then occurred the extraordinary inundation, which was the third before the great destruction of Deucalion. But in primitive times the hill of the Acropolis extended to the Eridanus and Ilissus, and included the Pnyx on one side, and the Lycabettus as a boundary on the opposite side to the Pnyx, and was all well covered with soil, and level at the top, except in one or two places. Outside the Acropolis and under the sides of the hill there dwelt artisans, and such of the husbandmen as were tilling the ground near; the warrior class dwelt by themselves around the temples of Athene and Hephaestus at the summit, which moreover they had enclosed with a single fence like the garden of a single house. On the north side they had dwellings in common and had erected halls for dining in winter, and had all the buildings which they needed for their common life, besides temples, but there was no adorning of them with gold and silver, for they made no use of these for any purpose; they took a middle course between meanness and ostentation, and built modest houses in which they and their children's children grew old, and they handed them down to others who were like themselves, always the same. But in summer-time they left their gardens and gymnasia and dining halls, and then the southern side of the hill was made use of by them for the same purpose. Where the Acropolis now is there was a fountain, which was choked by the earthquake, and has left only the few small streams which still exist in the vicinity, but in those days the fountain gave an abundant supply of water for all and of suitable temperature in summer and in winter. This is how they dwelt, being the guardians of their own citizens and the leaders of the Hellenes, who were their willing followers. And they took care to preserve the same number of men and women through all time, being so many as were required for warlike purposes, then as now-that is to say, about twenty thousand. Such were the ancient Athenians, and after this manner they righteously administered their own land and the rest of Hellas; they were renowned all over Europe and Asia for the beauty of their persons and for the many virtues of their souls, and of all men who lived in those days they were the most illustrious. And next, if I have not forgotten what I heard when I was a child, I will impart to you the character and origin of their adversaries. For friends should not keep their stories to themselves, but have them in common.
Yet, before proceeding further in the narrative, I ought to warn you, that you must not be surprised if you should perhaps hear Hellenic names given to foreigners. I will tell you the reason of this: Solon, who was intending to use the tale for his poem, enquired into the meaning of the names, and found that the early Egyptians in writing them down had translated them into their own language, and he recovered the meaning of the several names and when copying them out again translated them into our language. My great-grandfather, Dropides, had the original writing, which is still in my possession, and was carefully studied by me when I was a child. Therefore if you hear names such as are used in this country, you must not be surprised, for I have told how they came to be introduced. The tale, which was of great length, began as follows:-
I have before remarked in speaking of the allotments of the gods, that they distributed the whole earth into portions differing in extent, and made for themselves temples and instituted sacrifices. And Poseidon, receiving for his lot the island of Atlantis, begat children by a mortal woman, and settled them in a part of the island, which I will describe. Looking towards the sea, but in the centre of the whole island, there was a plain which is said to have been the fairest of all plains and very fertile. Near the plain again, and also in the centre of the island at a distance of about fifty stadia, there was a mountain not very high on any side.
In this mountain there dwelt one of the earth born primeval men of that country, whose name was Evenor, and he had a wife named Leucippe, and they had an only daughter who was called Cleito. The maiden had already reached womanhood, when her father and mother died; Poseidon fell in love with her and had intercourse with her, and breaking the ground, inclosed the hill in which she dwelt all round, making alternate zones of sea and land larger and smaller, encircling one another; there were two of land and three of water, which he turned as with a lathe, each having its circumference equidistant every way from the centre, so that no man could get to the island, for ships and voyages were not as yet. He himself, being a god, found no difficulty in making special arrangements for the centre island, bringing up two springs of water from beneath the earth, one of warm water and the other of cold, and making every variety of food to spring up abundantly from the soil. He also begat and brought up five pairs of twin male children; and dividing the island of Atlantis into ten portions, he gave to the first-born of the eldest pair his mother's dwelling and the surrounding allotment, which was the largest and best, and made him king over the rest; the others he made princes, and gave them rule over many men, and a large territory. And he named them all; the eldest, who was the first king, he named Atlas, and after him the whole island and the ocean were called Atlantic. To his twin brother, who was born after him, and obtained as his lot the extremity of the island towards the Pillars of Heracles, facing the country which is now called the region of Gades in that part of the world, he gave the name which in the Hellenic language is Eumelus, in the language of the country which is named after him, Gadeirus. Of the second pair of twins he called one Ampheres, and the other Evaemon. To the elder of the third pair of twins he gave the name Mneseus, and Autochthon to the one who followed him. Of the fourth pair of twins he called the elder Elasippus, and the younger Mestor. And of the fifth pair he gave to the elder the name of Azaes, and to the younger that of Diaprepes. All these and their descendants for many generations were the inhabitants and rulers of divers islands in the open sea; and also, as has been already said, they held sway in our direction over the country within the Pillars as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia.
Now Atlas had a numerous and honourable family, and they retained the kingdom, the eldest son handing it on to his eldest for many generations; and they had such an amount of wealth as was never before possessed by kings and potentates, and is not likely ever to be again, and they were furnished with everything which they needed, both in the city and country. For because of the greatness of their empire many things were brought to them from foreign countries, and the island itself provided most of what was required by them for the uses of life. In the first place, they dug out of the earth whatever was to be found there, solid as well as fusile, and that which is now only a name and was then something more than a name, orichalcum, was dug out of the earth in many parts of the island, being more precious in those days than anything except gold. There was an abundance of wood for carpenter's work, and sufficient maintenance for tame and wild animals. Moreover, there were a great number of elephants in the island; for as there was provision for all other sorts of animals, both for those which live in lakes and marshes and rivers, and also for those which live in mountains and on plains, so there was for the animal which is the largest and most voracious of all. Also whatever fragrant things there now are in the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or essences which distil from fruit and flower, grew and thrived in that land; also the fruit which admits of cultivation, both the dry sort, which is given us for nourishment and any other which we use for food-we call them all by the common name pulse, and the fruits having a hard rind, affording drinks and meats and ointments, and good store of chestnuts and the like, which furnish pleasure and amusement, and are fruits which spoil with keeping, and the pleasant kinds of dessert, with which we console ourselves after dinner, when we are tired of eating-all these that sacred island which then beheld the light of the sun, brought forth fair and wondrous and in infinite abundance. With such blessings the earth freely furnished them; meanwhile they went on constructing their temples and palaces and harbours and docks. And they arranged the whole country in the following manner:
First of all they bridged over the zones of sea which surrounded the ancient metropolis, making a road to and from the royal palace. And at the very beginning they built the palace in the habitation of the god and of their ancestors, which they continued to ornament in successive generations, every king surpassing the one who went before him to the utmost of his power, until they made the building a marvel to behold for size and for beauty. And beginning from the sea they bored a canal of three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and fifty stadia in length, which they carried through to the outermost zone, making a passage from the sea up to this, which became a harbour, and leaving an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find ingress. Moreover, they divided at the bridges the zones of land which parted the zones of sea, leaving room for a single trireme to pass out of one zone into another, and they covered over the channels so as to leave a way underneath for the ships; for the banks were raised considerably above the water. Now the largest of the zones into which a passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth, and the zone of land which came next of equal breadth; but the next two zones, the one of water, the other of land, were two stadia, and the one which surrounded the central island was a stadium only in width. The island in which the palace was situated had a diameter of five stadia. All this including the zones and the bridge, which was the sixth part of a stadium in width, they surrounded by a stone wall on every side, placing towers and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in. The stone which was used in the work they quarried from underneath the centre island, and from underneath the zones, on the outer as well as the inner side. One kind was white, another black, and a third red, and as they quarried, they at the same time hollowed out double docks, having roofs formed out of the native rock. Some of their buildings were simple, but in others they put together different stones, varying the colour to please the eye, and to be a natural source of delight. The entire circuit of the wall, which went round the outermost zone, they covered with a coating of brass, and the circuit of the next wall they coated with tin, and the third, which encompassed the citadel, flashed with the red light of orichalcum.
The palaces in the interior of the citadel were constructed on this wise:-in the centre was a holy temple dedicated to Cleito and Poseidon, which remained inaccessible, and was surrounded by an enclosure of gold; this was the spot where the family of the ten princes first saw the light, and thither the people annually brought the fruits of the earth in their season from all the ten portions, to be an offering to each of the ten. Here was Poseidon's own temple which was a stadium in length, and half a stadium in width, and of a proportionate height, having a strange barbaric appearance. All the outside of the temple, with the exception of the pinnacles, they covered with silver, and the pinnacles with gold. In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, curiously wrought everywhere with gold and silver and orichalcum; and all the other parts, the walls and pillars and floor, they coated with orichalcum. In the temple they placed statues of gold: there was the god himself standing in a chariot-the charioteer of six winged horses-and of such a size that he touched the roof of the building with his head; around him there were a hundred Nereids riding on dolphins, for such was thought to be the number of them by the men of those days. There were also in the interior of the temple other images which had been dedicated by private persons. And around the temple on the outside were placed statues of gold of all the descendants of the ten kings and of their wives, and there were many other great offerings of kings and of private persons, coming both from the city itself and from the foreign cities over which they held sway. There was an altar too, which in size and workmanship corresponded to this magnificence, and the palaces, in like manner, answered to the greatness of the kingdom and the glory of the temple.
In the next place, they had fountains, one of cold and another of hot water, in gracious plenty flowing; and they were wonderfully adapted for use by reason of the pleasantness and excellence of their waters. They constructed buildings about them and planted suitable trees, also they made cisterns, some open to the heavens, others roofed over, to be used in winter as warm baths; there were the kings' baths, and the baths of private persons, which were kept apart; and there were separate baths for women, and for horses and cattle, and to each of them they gave as much adornment as was suitable. Of the water which ran off they carried some to the grove of Poseidon, where were growing all manner of trees of wonderful height and beauty, owing to the excellence of the soil, while the remainder was conveyed by aqueducts along the bridges to the outer circles; and there were many temples built and dedicated to many gods; also gardens and places of exercise, some for men, and others for horses in both of the two islands formed by the zones; and in the centre of the larger of the two there was set apart a race-course of a stadium in width, and in length allowed to extend all round the island, for horses to race in. Also there were guardhouses at intervals for the guards, the more trusted of whom were appointed-to keep watch in the lesser zone, which was nearer the Acropolis while the most trusted of all had houses given them within the citadel, near the persons of the kings. The docks were full of triremes and naval stores, and all things were quite ready for use. Enough of the plan of the royal palace.
Leaving the palace and passing out across the three you came to a wall which began at the sea and went all round: this was everywhere distant fifty stadia from the largest zone or harbour, and enclosed the whole, the ends meeting at the mouth of the channel which led to the sea. The entire area was densely crowded with habitations; and the canal and the largest of the harbours were full of vessels and merchants coming from all parts, who, from their numbers, kept up a multitudinous sound of human voices, and din and clatter of all sorts night and day.
I have described the city and the environs of the ancient palace nearly in the words of Solon, and now I must endeavour to represent the nature and arrangement of the rest of the land. The whole country was said by him to be very lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea, but the country immediately about and surrounding the city was a level plain, itself surrounded by mountains which descended towards the sea; it was smooth and even, and of an oblong shape, extending in one direction three thousand stadia, but across the centre inland it was two thousand stadia. This part of the island looked towards the south, and was sheltered from the north. The surrounding mountains were celebrated for their number and size and beauty, far beyond any which still exist, having in them also many wealthy villages of country folk, and rivers, and lakes, and meadows supplying food enough for every animal, wild or tame, and much wood of various sorts, abundant for each and every kind of work.
I will now describe the plain, as it was fashioned by nature and by the labours of many generations of kings through long ages. It was for the most part rectangular and oblong, and where falling out of the straight line followed the circular ditch. The depth, and width, and length of this ditch were incredible, and gave the impression that a work of such extent, in addition to so many others, could never have been artificial. Nevertheless I must say what I was told. It was excavated to the depth of a hundred, feet, and its breadth was a stadium everywhere; it was carried round the whole of the plain, and was ten thousand stadia in length. It received the streams which came down from the mountains, and winding round the plain and meeting at the city, was there let off into the sea. Further inland, likewise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut from it through the plain, and again let off into the ditch leading to the sea: these canals were at intervals of a hundred stadia, and by them they brought down the wood from the mountains to the city, and conveyed the fruits of the earth in ships, cutting transverse passages from one canal into another, and to the city. Twice in the year they gathered the fruits of the earth-in winter having the benefit of the rains of heaven, and in summer the water which the land supplied by introducing streams from the canals.
As to the population, each of the lots in the plain had to find a leader for the men who were fit for military service, and the size of a lot was a square of ten stadia each way, and the total number of all the lots was sixty thousand. And of the inhabitants of the mountains and of the rest of the country there was also a vast multitude, which was distributed among the lots and had leaders assigned to them according to their districts and villages. The leader was required to furnish for the war the sixth portion of a war-chariot, so as to make up a total of ten thousand chariots; also two horses and riders for them, and a pair of chariot-horses without a seat, accompanied by a horseman who could fight on foot carrying a small shield, and having a charioteer who stood behind the man-at-arms to guide the two horses; also, he was bound to furnish two heavy armed soldiers, two slingers, three stone-shooters and three javelin-men, who were light-armed, and four sailors to make up the complement of twelve hundred ships. Such was the military order of the royal city-the order of the other nine governments varied, and it would be wearisome to recount their several differences.
As to offices and honours, the following was the arrangement from the first. Each of the ten kings in his own division and in his own city had the absolute control of the citizens, and, in most cases, of the laws, punishing and slaying whomsoever he would. Now the order of precedence among them and their mutual relations were regulated by the commands of Poseidon which the law had handed down. These were inscribed by the first kings on a pillar of orichalcum, which was situated in the middle of the island, at the temple of Poseidon, whither the kings were gathered together every fifth and every sixth year alternately, thus giving equal honour to the odd and to the even number. And when they were gathered together they consulted about their common interests, and enquired if any one had transgressed in anything and passed judgment and before they passed judgment they gave their pledges to one another on this wise:-There were bulls who had the range of the temple of Poseidon; and the ten kings, being left alone in the temple, after they had offered prayers to the god that they might capture the victim which was acceptable to him, hunted the bulls, without weapons but with staves and nooses; and the bull which they caught they led up to the pillar and cut its throat over the top of it so that the blood fell upon the sacred inscription. Now on the pillar, besides the laws, there was inscribed an oath invoking mighty curses on the disobedient. When therefore, after slaying the bull in the accustomed manner, they had burnt its limbs, they filled a bowl of wine and cast in a clot of blood for each of them; the rest of the victim they put in the fire, after having purified the column all round. Then they drew from the bowl in golden cups and pouring a libation on the fire, they swore that they would judge according to the laws on the pillar, and would punish him who in any point had already transgressed them, and that for the future they would not, if they could help, offend against the writing on the pillar, and would neither command others, nor obey any ruler who commanded them, to act otherwise than according to the laws of their father Poseidon. This was the prayer which each of them-offered up for himself and for his descendants, at the same time drinking and dedicating the cup out of which he drank in the temple of the god; and after they had supped and satisfied their needs, when darkness came on, and the fire about the sacrifice was cool, all of them put on most beautiful azure robes, and, sitting on the ground, at night, over the embers of the sacrifices by which they had sworn, and extinguishing all the fire about the temple, they received and gave judgment, if any of them had an accusation to bring against any one; and when they given judgment, at daybreak they wrote down their sentences on a golden tablet, and dedicated it together with their robes to be a memorial.
There were many special laws affecting the several kings inscribed about the temples, but the most important was the following: They were not to take up arms against one another, and they were all to come to the rescue if any one in any of their cities attempted to overthrow the royal house; like their ancestors, they were to deliberate in common about war and other matters, giving the supremacy to the descendants of Atlas. And the king was not to have the power of life and death over any of his kinsmen unless he had the assent of the majority of the ten.
Such was the vast power which the god settled in the lost island of Atlantis; and this he afterwards directed against our land for the following reasons, as tradition tells: For many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and well-affectioned towards the god, whose seed they were; for they possessed true and in every way great spirits, uniting gentleness with wisdom in the various chances of life, and in their intercourse with one another. They despised everything but virtue, caring little for their present state of life, and thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to them; neither were they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control; but they were sober, and saw clearly that all these goods are increased by virtue and friendship with one another, whereas by too great regard and respect for them, they are lost and friendship with them. By such reflections and by the continuance in them of a divine nature, the qualities which we have described grew and increased among them; but when the divine portion began to fade away, and became diluted too often and too much with the mortal admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand, they then, being unable to bear their fortune, behaved unseemly, and to him who had an eye to see grew visibly debased, for they were losing the fairest of their precious gifts; but to those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice and unrighteous power. Zeus, the god of gods, who rules according to law, and is able to see into such things, perceiving that an honourable race was in a woeful plight, and wanting to inflict punishment on them, that they might be chastened and improve, collected all the gods into their most holy habitation, which, being placed in the centre of the world, beholds all created things. And when he had called them together, he spake as follows-
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Thonapa and the Destruction of Yamquesupa
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As has been mentioned by J. M. Allen and others, the sinking of Atlantis is similar to an Andes tale from the region around Alti Plano, which is here told from the Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Incas about the god Thonapa, also sometimes known as Wiracocha:
They say that this man came to the village of a chief called Apo-tampu (this Apo-tampu is Paccari-tampu) very tired. It was at a time when they were celebrating a marriage feast. His doctrines were listened to by the chief with friendly feelings, but his vassals heard them unwillingly. From that day the wanderer was a guest of Apo-tampu, to whom it is said that he gave a stick from his own staff, and through this Apo-tampu, the people listened with attention to the words of the stranger, receiving the stick from his hands. Thus they received what he preached in a stick, marking and scoring on it each chapter of his precepts. The old men of the days of my father, Don Diego Felipe, used to say that Cafi-cafi were the commandments of God, and especially the seven precepts; so that they only wanted the names of our Lord God and of his son Jesus Christ our Lord; and the punishments for those who broke the commandments were severe. This worthy, named Thonapa, is said to have visited all the provinces of the Colla-suyu, preaching to the people without cessation, until one day he entered the town of Yamquesupa. There he was treated with great insolence and contempt, and driven away. They say that he often slept in the fields, without other covering than the long shirt he wore, a mantle, and a book. They say that Thonapa cursed that village, so that it was covered with water. The site is now called Yamquisupaloiga. It is a lake, and nearly all the Indians of that time knew that it was once a village, and was then a lake. They say that, on a very high hill called Cacha-pucara, there was an idol in the form of a woman, and that Tonapa was inspired with a great hatred against it, and afterwards burnt it, and destroyed it with the hill on which it stood. They say that to this day there are signs of that awful miracle, the most fearful that was ever heard of in the world. (Markham 1873: 72)
This is much shorter than the descriptions and content of the full dialogue of Plato, but how does this compare to the only the mythical or mythologized elements from the dialogues? These sections in the dialogue can be broken into three parts: Greek creation myth, Atlantian creation myth, and Atlantian eschatological myth. The latter two are the ones of interest for now. That the correspondence is only a resemblance is actually quite noteworthy for two reasons: first that Plato’s story, according to the dialogue, is an Egyptian account of the presumed original Bolivian one, that was then translated into Greek and recalled from memory by Critias, and second that the myths of the Incas arrived to us in rather fragmentary or embellished form when recorded after the conquest. Here is not a situation where there is in either case a pristine or original version that could be compared to each of these two derivatives, rather they might only be compared to one another. It is possible, however to gain further insight by investigating other aspects of Peruvian mythology, specifically dealing with the creation myth. For example, as Allen points out, that Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala in his The First Chronicle and Good Government writes:
[The first generation of Indians] did not die, and they did not kill. People say that they gave birth in pairs, boy and girl. From these there multiplied all the generations of Indians that were known as Pacarimoc Runa [founding people]. (Poma 2006: 25)
But here the twins are male and female, whereas in Plato they are male twins. Guaman Poma’s chronicle is highly politicized, but does contain traces of original Andean mythology.
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Plato’s Critias |
Narrative of the
Rites and Laws of the Incas |
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Cleito is daughter of Evenor and Leucippe in mountain |
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Cleito lived on a hill with springs encircled with circular canals |
Idol in the form of a woman on a very high hill |
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Poseidon begat with Cleito five pairs of twin male children, distributed lands among them |
(First generation of Indians gave birth in pairs, boy and girl.) |
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Poseidon’s law (inscribed upon pillar of orichalcum) |
Tonapa inscribed his law upon a stick |
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Divine to mortal decline |
Tonapa treated with insolence and contempt by people of Yamquesupa |
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War between Atlantis and Athens |
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Gods cause Atlantis to sink beneath the sea |
Tonapa causes Yamquesupa to be submerged |
An interesting question to consider, from the Greek perspective, is which came first: did the idea of the god Atlas and the island upon which he stood get applied to the land of South America when it was discovered by seafaring people from the Old World (or related to the Old World by people from the New World), or did knowledge of that continent and its high mountains that appeared to support the very sky lead to the myth of Atlas in the first place.[1] It appears that either could be the case, or there could have been repeated confusions through time, a real island that became the subject of myth, then rediscovered became the subject of history again, and such. Certainly this was the case when the American continents were rediscovered in the 15th century, that they were very quickly associated with the continent of Atlantis again.
So has anything been proven here? It appears that there is a notable correspondence between the story in Plato and Andean myth, but did these both derive from the original oral tradition of a sunken continent, or were both based upon first person accounts, one that was taken back to the Mediterranean and one that remained in the Andes? Again it is impossible to tell. Plato clearly has precise descriptive knowledge of the lands, but the part that is absent from the Andes version is that there is no link between the myth of the submergence, “the most fearful that was ever heard in the world” and the war between Atlantis and Athens. This introduces a several alternatives, ranging from the notion that it never occurred to its having not been coincident to the submergence of the village. As yet there is no evidence of any sort that there was an empire in the Mediterranean 5,500 years ago, nor any surviving mention of the war this empire had with Athens and Egypt outside of Plato. It is perhaps not unusual, if it were not for the Iliad we would perhaps never know that the Trojan War ever took place, and certainly definitive verification for this has remained absent. It could be said, however, that the site of Illium is a real place on the map, despite the lack of evidence, and a collection of circumstantial evidence can be provided to lend support to the notion that the Trojan War took place, and the same thing could be said of Atlantis. That all the evidence need not be immediately verified, but some of it could be, such as the correspondence between South America and Alti Plano and various others with the descriptive characteristics of the dialogue, even if the historical aspects remain elusive.
More perhaps could be learned from a broader study of Andean and Mesoamerican mythology, however this could also lead to greater and greater feats of supposition and speculation that becomes increasingly valueless. What is required is what has always been required, direct physical identification of a site, which it must be recalled might or might not match well Plato’s description.
[1] The location of Atlas is given in Apollodorus as Hyperborea, which makes more sense, given that the axis of the heavenly sphere is located above the North Pole. This does not mean that there were not alternate versions, but if knowledge of mountains were discovered that were to have supported the sky, that this could then be remebered as an alternative location for Atlas, a real place that became remembered as a name combination of each of these Atlas-Andis. The only question is whether the god Atlas himself was not originally a Mesoamerican god Quetzalcoatl, who Spence has shown bears some resemblance to the Greek god: 'As a single example – consider the similarities he points out between Quetzalcoatl, the Toltec god who brought civilization to Mexico and who went back to Tlapallan, his original home in the eastern sea – and Atlas, so important in the memory legends of Atlantis. The father of Atlas was Poseidon, Lord of the Sea while the father of Quetzalcoatl was Gucumatz, a diety of the ocean and earthquake – “the old serpent…who lives in the depth of the ocean.” Quetzalcoatl and Atlas were each one of twins, both were represented as bearded and each holds up the sky.' (Berlitz 1969: 125-26)
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Across the Atlantic
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There is a great limit on the amount of documentation we have from before the Iron Age, and even during the Iron Age the texts come from civilizations. Even with the great deal of knowledge that has been lost about the Roman Empire, we know far more about the Romans than we do about the Germans from the same time, and so even less about cultures that were not known to the Romans. Much of this of course has to do with the loss of histories in Europe, in the Near East, and in Central America, either oral or written histories. These losses have affected us profoundly in terms of what clues they might have provided about other areas of the world that in the absence of significant knowledge about them are either ignored or slowly being filled in through archaeology and other research. This is the main reason why the study of mysteries is so significant, since it is based upon an attempt not to mythologize the past but to reclaim what really happened in the past using only the remnant clues and scraps of evidence. However, one must be cautious to draw too much from too little evidence. Although we rely upon written records from the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Hittites and others to illuminate the past, this is essentially the civilized world, and in the absence of documented evidence from other societies there would be numerous peoples, episodes, and expeditions that have been lost to history.
Consider the hypothesis about the Sea Peoples from the late Bronze Age having been a remnant group from Atlantis. This association is usually made because the proliferation of these people corresponds to the supposed Bronze Age date for the destruction of Atlantis around 1200 BC. Allen’s presentation of a headdress shown on the Egyptian wall at Medinet Habu being similar to the Amazonian natives could just be coincidence, but it could also reveal something quite different: that some of the sea people that came to the Mediterranean were from the Amazon culture, or that some of the sea people eventually traveled to and settled in Amazonia. Either of these is plausible, however, merely because there was interaction between people in South America and the Mediterranean does not mean that it has anything to do with Atlantis; they might not even be from the same areas or eras. Nor would the mention of an island in the fifth book of Diodorus, discovered in the Atlantic by Phoenician sailors who had been blown westward by immense winds, mean that they were seeing anything other than South America. It cannot ever prove that South America was Plato’s Atlantis. Although it is more clear now that Amazonia supported a vast and populous network of societies, who could very well have reached Africa and the Mediterranean, a telling indicator is the presence and spread of diseases, since most often isolation between the two halves of the world could be proven by the lack of the spread of some diseases. However, were there not episodes of rampant diseases spreading prior to Columbus?
The difficulty with any evidence presented, is that what might be provided as evidence of contact and exchange between Africa and South America before Columbus is a separate issue to the existence of Atlantis. So while it is certainly valid to argue that similarities exist between the Old and New world, this appears to only suggest a trans-Atlantic communication of some kind. It could even be that expeditions like the Welsh one by Prince Madoc in the 11th century (Berlitz 1969) or Alexander the Great’s fleet that sailed out of the Mediterranean and never returned might well have ended up in the Americas (Berlitz 1969). However they might have ended up somewhere in Europe, Africa or sunk somewhere in the Atlantic; there is no way to do anything more than speculate until specific evidence is found. There is also an account of red Indians having made it to Germany and in the first century and were promptly enslaved (Berlitz 1969). It is certainly plausible to presume that small numbers did at times become aware of the opposing continents, and perhaps heard stories from one another, which could have led to the story of Atlantis but still hasn’t been proven.
Kantor (5th century B.C.), a follower of Plato, reported that he too had seen the columns on which was preserved the story of Atlantis as reported by Plato. Other ancient writers wrote of a continent in the Atlantic, sometimes with names other than Atlantis and sometimes calling it Poseidonis after Poseidon, the god of the sea and the lord of Atlantis. (Berlitz 1969: 34-35)
Proclus (410-485 A.D.), a member of the neo-Platonic school, said that not far to the west of Europe there were some islands whose inhabitants still kept the memory of a larger island which once ruled them and which had been swallowed up by the sea. In commenting on Plato, he wrote “…that such and so great an island once existed, is evident from what is said by certain historians regarding the external sea. According to them, there were seven islands in that sea. According to them, there were seven islands in the sea, in their times, sacred to Persephonë, and three others of great size, one of which was sacred to Pluto, one to Ammon, and one to Poseidon, this last being a thousand stadia in area. They also say that the inhabitants of this island sacred to Poseidon preserved the remembrance of their ancestors, and of the Atlantic island that existed there, and was truly wonderful; and which had for centuries dominated all the islands in the Atlantic Sea, and was also sacred to Poseidon…” (Berlitz 1969: 35)
In the Odyssey Homer tells of Scheria, an island far in the ocean where the Phaecians “…dwell apart, afar on the unmeasured deep amid its waves – the most remote of men….” (Berlitz 1969: 36)
A Greek historian, Timagenes (1st century B.C.), commenting on the inhabitants of ancient Gaul, makes mention of a story current with them that they had once been invaded by a people from an island which sank. He further states that some of the Gauls themselves believed that they came from a remote land in the middle of the ocean. (Berlitz 1969: 38)
At another point in his histories Herodotus speaks of a tribe called the Atarantes and also of still another tribe, the Atlantes, “…who take their name from a mountain called Atlas, very tapered and round; so lofty, moreover, that the top, it is said, cannot be seen, the clouds never quitting it, neither summer nor winter….” (Berlitz 1969: 37)
What Diodorus Siculus mentions is a war between the Amazons and the Atlantioi. The Amazons from an island in the west Hespera, which was in the Tritonis Marsh “near the ocean which surrounds the earth” and the mountains “called by the Greeks Atlas” and “The story is also told that the marsh Tritonis disappeared from sight in the course of an earthquake, when parts of it which lay towards the ocean were torn asunder” (Berlitz 1969) clearly refers to locations in Africa, the Atlas mountains in western North Africa. Diodorus continues his myth:
“…The kingdom was divided among [t]he sons of Uranos, the most renowned of whom were Atlas and Kronos. Of these sons Atlas received as his part the regions on the coast of the ocean, and he not only gave the name of Atlantioi to his peoples but likewise called the great mountain in the land Atlas. They also said that he perfected the science of astrology and was the first to publish to mankind the doctrine of the sphere; and it was for this reason that the idea was held that the entire heavens were supported upon the shoulders of Atlas….” (Berlitz 1969: 39-40)
“For there lies out in the deep off Libya, an island of considerable size, and situated as it is in the ocean it is distant from Libya a voyage of a number of days to the west. Its land is fruitful, surpassing beauty. Through it flow navigable rivers which are used for irrigation, and the island contains many parts planted with trees of every variety and gardens of great multitudes which are traversed by streams of sweet water; on it also are private villas of costly construction, and throughout the gardens banqueting houses have been constructed in a setting of flowers, and in them the inhabitants pass their time during the summer season….There is also excellent hunting of every manner of beast and wild animal….
“And, speaking generally, the climate of this island is altogether so mild that it produces in abundance the fruits of the trees and the other seasonal fruits of the year, so that it would appear that the island, because of its exceptional felicity, were a dwelling place of the gods and not men….” (Berlitz 1969: 40)
What is unusual about Diodorus’ account is that it presents very similar details to Plato’s story, and the mention of Atlas and the Atlantioi. Merely because there are references to Atlantis after Plato does not mean they are independent and not derivatives of this story of Solon in Timaeus or Critias. Diodorus’s descriptions and tone are similar to Plato’s but are not clearly based directly upon them. In fact his information is not about a war between Atlantis and Athens but the Atlantioi and Amazons. What is curious is the reference to the submergence of the Tritonis Marsh resembles the description of Athens’ warriors being swallowed up by the earth as described in Plato.
Thucydides mentions an altogether different location when, after mentioning the inundation of the Orobiai sea in Euboia, he states: “A Similar inundation occurred in the neighborhood of Atalantë, an island on the coast of the Opuntian Locri….” This would an island off the coast of the east side of Greece. There is not enough here to go by, since regardless of what these descriptions say or mean, the existence of Atlantis does not hinge upon them, since if a physical site is located it would be proven to have existed despite stories and myths that might have been the orally transmitted knowledge of it in the Mediterranean region.
It is far more difficult to substantiate descriptions of lands to the west or names within mythology, since claiming relationships to places to the east or west can arise merely from an association with the direction of the rising or setting sun. A greater number of similarities, like those that show how Quetzalcoatl is a very similar figure to Atlas, cannot yet be suitably explained. One might suggest a connection therefore between certain Old World and New World peoples, even through linguistic similarities, but how then do we conclude what it indicates that can be taken as factual? If something lends itself to a dozen different plausible theories, it is clear that we have too little evidence to say anything conclusive yet, nor does it make too much sense to detail every interpretation put forward or even every possible interpretation. It is usually only because Atlantis is well known that it appears to some authors to provide an easy explanation to any otherwise mysterious or unexplained findings or phenomena.
So here then there is nothing that can at all corroborate with Atlantis. There are numerous historical episodes that lack suitable proof and our knowledge of the yet unproven Atlantis cannot be used in the way it sometimes is, despite the tremendous number of pages in books about Atlantis dedicated to evidence of cross-Atlantic contact prior to Columbus. These pursuits however have certainly acted to accumulate examples of correspondences, and do often times hint about interesting possibilities, but while an interesting pursuit it fails to do anything to lend support to the existence of Atlantis nor that Atlantis is equatable with South America.
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Sources
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Berlitz, Charles. The Mystery of Atlantis. Grosset & Dunlap: NY 1969.
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