Did The Lost City of Atlantis Exist?
Atlantis is the legendary city that sunk beneath the waves many moons ago. We’ve all seen the movie, Atlantis: The Lost Empire loosely based on the original story by Plato. It seems that our society can’t stop talking about Atlantis.
So, did Atlantis really exist? To find out, let’s look at the clues hidden in the mythology and see what some scholars and historians are beginning to find.
The Story of Atlantis
The tale of Atlantis doesn’t start with Plato, but with an Athenian law maker called Solon. Plato tells us in his dialogue Critias and Timaeus that he read the tale from the writings of Solon. 150 years before Plato’s time, Solon travelled to Egypt and was told the story of Atlantis by the priest, Sonchis of Saïs.
In Plato’s original writings, the story can be summarised to the story we know today. An island existed in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. It was rich and fertile, trading with the surrounding civilisations. The people there were virtuous and did not care too much for earthly pleasures. But one day they became corrupted and sunk into depravity. That was when Zeus sent punishment upon them and sunk the city into the ocean, reducing it to mud.
The Lost City of Atlantis in Egypt
“I can recollect and recite enough of what was said by the priests and brought hither by Solon.”
A common argument used to dismiss the tale of Atlantis is to poke holes in Plato’s source. Plato got the story from Solon who got it from Egypt, so why don’t the Egyptians tell us anything about Atlantis?
One thing to remember when studying ancient cultures is that we actually know very little about them. For instance, we mostly know about ancient Egyptian funerary customs and religious rituals because that’s what was left behind. We don’t really know that much about their daily life, or even what happened to the body of Queen Nefertiti.
You would think that if Atlantis was a worldwide catastrophe, then surely Egypt would have a reference to it somewhere? In recent years, cutting-edge archaeologists and other speculative writers have found interesting inscriptions in the Edfu temple. The Edfu temple is one of the best preserved shrines in Egypt and preserves important mythology on its walls.
From the fragments that remain at Edfu, archaeologists have been able to reconstruct the following tale; the “primeval ones” or the “seven souls” came from an island called “the homeland of the primeval ones” who were alive in the time called “Zep Tepi” or “the first times.” They came to Egypt when the “divine ones” were killed suddenly by a flood. The few that survived became “the Builder Gods, who fashioned in the primeval time, the Lords of Light... the Ghosts, the Ancestors... who raised the seed for gods and men... the Senior Ones who came into being at the beginning, who illumined this land when they came forth unitedly...”
If they were looking for evidence of Atlantis in Egypt, then this seems to be it.
When was Atlantis destroyed?
“Let me begin by observing first of all, that nine thousand was the sum of years which had elapsed since... (the) island greater in extent than Libya and Asia...sunk by an earthquake.”
Another argument used against Atlantis is the date. Plato tell us that Solon said the flood occurred 9000 years before their current time. In our current time, that puts the sinking of Atlantis at 9600 BC, which is roughly 11,600 years ago. For many people, this is impossible to conceive that an advanced civilisation could have existed at this time.
Anatomical humans existed at this time — they were our Paleolithic ancestors. Although we have an image of our ancestors as “cave men” the science shows us that actually these people were quite advanced. We have evidence of a mesolithic boat building yard and ancient water houses called “crannogs” build around 3600BC. Our ancestors were anything but uncivilised.
We don’t have any written records that survive from that time, but we do have geology.
Preserved in the earth’s bedrock we have evidence of a cataclysmic event that happened roughly 11,500 years ago. The Younger Dryas. The records show us that the ice sheets that covered North America and Europe during the last ice age collapse and crumble. This caused the ice sheet to rapidly melt and add freshwater to the ocean, causing flooding. This would have no doubt been enough to destroy a civilisation.
What caused the Sinking of Atlantis?
“Zeus, the god of gods... perceiving that an honourable race was in a woeful plight, and wanting to inflict punishment on them, that they might be chastened and improve...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...an impassable barrier of mud to voyagers sailing from hence to any part of the ocean.”
Scientists don’t quite know yet what caused the Younger Dryas, but there is a theory. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis is a theory that suggests a comet hit the Earth and fragmented across the northern part of the globe. The impact of the comet is dated to roughly 12,800 years ago.
We know something hit the Earth during that time because in the earth’s crust an impact is recorded. There are peak concentrations of platinum, high-temperature spherules, meltglass, and nanodiamonds. These only occur when something like a comet hits the Earth.
A comet hitting the Earth really would be enough to destroy a whole continent and reduce it “to mud” as Plato describes. It would also explain why the megafauna die off at the end of the Younger Dryas. Since a comet killed the dinosaurs, it’s not a stretch to say a comet would have killed these large creatures, and Atlantis, too.
So, is Atlantis real?
One of the main reasons why the mysteries of Atlantis are not unpacked and dissected by modern archaeologists and historians is because they sneer at the possibility of Atlantis ever existing in the first place. I think to truly know whether or not Atlantis is real, we have to make a detailed inquiry into it. We have to examine what Plato puts forward and see if we can back it up with archaeology.
When archaeologists study ancient cultures, they make educated guesses based off science. It is impossible to ever know if we got something 100% right when it comes to ancient history, but we can do our best to reconstruct the past and head its warnings.
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