The
Lost Continent of Atlantis
Plato
gave the world the oldest remaining written account of
Atlantis, in Critias, recorded circa 370 BC. By his account,
Poseidon, god of the sea, sired five pairs of male twins
with mortal women. Poseidon appointed the eldest of these
sons, Atlas the Titan, ruler of his beautiful island domain.
Atlas became the personification of the mountains or pillars
that held up the sky. Plato described Atlantis as a vast
island-continent west of the mediterranean, surrounded
by the Atlantic ocean. The Greek word Atlantis means the
island of Atlas, just as the word Atlantic means the ocean
of Atlas. Atlantis was governed in peace, was rich in
commerce, was advanced in knowledge, and held dominion
over the surrounding islands and continents. By Plato's
legend, the people of Atlantis became complacent and their
leaders arrogant; in punishment the Gods destroyed Atlantis,
flooding it and submerging the island in one day and night.
In
a sense, Atlantis actually existed, and was indeed destroyed
by the sea in a cataclysmic event, very plausibly lasting
a day and a night. Plato's account was wrong in several
essential ways, but was derived from correct, if garbled,
historical accounts. Plato's writings embodied the now
lost words of Solon, a Greek ruler who visited Egypt circa
590 BC. Plato's account of Atlantis was thus a retelling
of the story of Solon, who in turn told the stories that
he had heard during his trip to Egypt.
In
Egypt, Solon heard of the ancient land of Keftiu, a island-nation
named for holding one of the four pillars that supported
the Egyptian sky. Keftiu was, according to the Egyptians,
an advanced civilization that was the gateway to and ruler
of all of the lands to the far west of Egypt. Keftiu traded
in ivory, copper, and cloth. Keftiu supported hosts of
ships and controlled commerce far beyond the Egyptians
domain. By Egyptian record, Keftiu was destroyed by the
seas in an apocalypse. Solon carried this story to Greece,
and passed it to his son and grandson.
Plato
recorded and embellished the story from Solon's grandson
Critias the younger, translating the land of the pillars
which held the sky (Keftiu) into the land of the titan
Atlas. Keftiu-Atlantis was Egypt's gateway to the "western"
lands (Greece, Libya, and beyond), and was the home of
a civilization that held dominion over the surronding
lands. But Plato mistook the location of Atlantis: Atlantis
was not west of the Mediterranean, but was merely west
of Egypt. Yet Plato preserved enough detail about the
land of Atlantis that its identification is now unmistakeable.
Plato never realized that the land of Atlantis was already
familiar to him: Atlantis was the land of the Minoan culture,
namely ancient Crete. The Minoan culture spread its dominion
throughout the nearby islands of the Aegean, more than
1500 years BC.
Crete,
now part of Greece, was the capital for the Minoan people
— an advanced civilization with language, commercial shipping,
complex architecture, ritual and games. The Minoans were
peaceful: very little evidence of military activity was
found in their ruins. Daedalus, the ancient scientist,
was the architect of the 4-storied palace at Knossos,
said to be the capitol of the Minoan culture. At Knossos
one can still find the ruins of the labyrinth that housed
the legendary Minotaur, slewn by Thesius. Minoan culture
extended across the island of Crete, with most of its
developments along the northern coast of Crete. But after
800 years of dominance, the Minoan culture came to an
abrupt end, circa 1470 BC.
Correspondence
of Minoan cultural artifacts with aspects of the Atlantis
legend make the identity of the two seem virtually certain.
Perhaps the most unusual of these is the Minoan bullfighting.
By legend, the inhabitants of Keftiu would engage in ritualistic
bullfighting, with unarmed Minoan bullfighters wrestling
and jumping over uninjured bulls. This foolhardy practice
is richly illustrated in remaining Minoan artwork. Legend
also holds that Atlantis was peaceful — this is confirmed
by a virtually complete absence of weapons in Minoan ruins
and in Minoan artwork — unusual for peoples of that time.
Egyptian legend held that elephants were found on Keftiu
— while there were presumably no elephants on Crete, the
Minoans were known to deal in ivory, and appear to have
been the principal access to ivory for Egypt 20 centuries
before Christ.
But
what of the fabled apocalypse which, according to the
Egyptians, swallowed the Keftiu-Atlantis in one day and
one night? This also has basis in historical fact. The
trail of evidence leads to the small island of Santorini.
Santorini
(also known as Thera) lies 75 km north of Crete. Santorini
was also a Minoan land, and ruins can be found throughout
the island. A mountain lay at its center, probably about
1500 meters in height until approximately 1500 BC. This
mountain was a volcano; eruptions began about 1500 BC,
and smoldered until a final climax about 1470 BC. The
volcano at Santorini was geologically similar to Krakotoa
in composition, structure, and tectonic location; Santorini
was about 4 times larger in diameter than Krakotoa, and
probably somewhat more violent. The fury of its final
explosion is inferred from geologic core samples, from
comparison to the detailed observations made on Krakotoa
in 1883, and from the simultaneous obliteration of almost
all Minoan settlements.
In
summer, circa 1470, volcanic ash filled the sky, blotted
out the sun, triggered hail and lightning, and rained
down over the Aegean. Earthquakes shook the land, and
stone structures fell from the motion. When the enormous
magma chamber at Santorini finally collapsed to form the
existing caldera, enormous tsunamis (tidal waves) spread
outward in all directions. The coastal villages of Crete
were flooded and destroyed. The only major Minoan structure
surviving the waves and earthquakes was the palace at
Knossos, far enough inland to escape the tidal waves.
But in the days that followed, volcanic ash covered some
settlements, and defoliated the island. In famine from
the ash, with the bulk of their civilization washed away,
the remaining Minoans were overrun by Mycaeneans from
Greece, and Knossos finally fell.
The
island of Santorini is now the rim of the the volcano
— the caldera is covered by the Aegean sea. Mounds of
pumice and volcanic ash mark its center, where the volcano
remains. New inhabitants of Santorini mine the volcanic
ash to make cement — and still find ancient ruins under
the stone. The ash is now the soil, olive and fruit trees
cover the landscape, and former Atlantis is mostly buried.
New inhabitants have rebuilt Crete, but the mute ruins
of ancient Atlantis can still be seen.
References
This
page is a summary of: J V Luce: The End of Atlantis: New
Light on an Old Legend, 1969, Thames and Hudson. Reprinted
1993 by Efstathiades Group.
Copyright
© 1996 Lakeshore Technologies Incorporated. All rights
reserved
