Atlantis and the Lost Continent Legend: Myth or Reality?

Introduction: The Enduring Legend of the Lost Continent

Among the catalog of earthly wonders, only a few exist in that realm of unsubstantiated rumor upheld by the broadest variety of sources. The Lost Continent is, truly, one of these wonders — a place made of both earth and sea, said to have been created by Triton, Poseidon, Atlas, or whatever ancient god fashioned it as a point of union between the earthly and the divine, between the surface and the depths beneath. What is striking is that within Western culture, Plato is among the first known sources to mention Atlantis in a theoretical discourse — a completely fictional account used to explain the nature of the physical universe. Yet the concept of the Lost Continent, whatever name is assigned to it, is one that has been shared across scientific exploration, philosophical discourse, mythology and legend, religious and spiritual writing, and science fiction. It remains embedded in popular culture, as evidenced by the semi-annual announcements that some explorer has discovered what may be evidence of a city lost beneath the ocean's surface.

While the legend of a Lost Continent — brought low by natural, divine, alien, or other forces — is certainly part of our general popular culture, facts about such a place and evidence of its existence are non-existent. However, this does not necessarily mean that science has proven there was never a Lost Continent. Scientific exploration can generally only explain what we know about something, what we can see, feel, or hear. Science is necessarily silent about things that have not yet been found or simply do not exist. One cannot prove that something no one has found is absent — but the absence of discovery is not itself evidence that something does not exist. Rather, that is the realm of faith and of legend, of believing something to be true even when there is no rational basis for doing so. Atlantis, Rutas, Lemuria — whatever the name — truly exists in the imagination of the world. But did any of them ever truly exist?

One of the most persistent and pervasive legends in human history involves the concept of the Lost Continent. In these legends — and the specific name is essentially unimportant — an island, part of a peninsula, or some other landmass of varying size, depending on the account, once existed above the surface of the ocean. The legends typically hold that in ancient history, a civilization of people lived on that landmass or "continent." These peoples are generally believed to predate written history and, in many accounts, were an "advanced" civilization producing works of art, music, philosophy, and science far beyond their time. At some point a catastrophic natural disaster struck the continent, reducing it to rubble, and either gradually or suddenly it fell beneath the surface of the water, never to be seen or heard from again. The origins of these tales can be found in both Western and Eastern traditions.

Plato and the Western Origins of Atlantis

Plato is among the first writers of the European world to articulate the idea of a Lost Continent called Atlantis. In his telling, Atlantis served as a vehicle for expressing his understanding of the nature of the physical and moral world. Two Platonic dialogues involve accounts of Atlantis: in both Critias and Timaeus, he refers to Atlantis as the cradle of ancient civilizations. Atlantis is the center of a Socratic demonstration of the "failed society" — one set up in direct opposition to Athens, which, in Socratic thought, represents the "perfect society."

Atlantis, in Plato's dialogues, serves as the theoretical counterbalance to Athens and takes on the role of its polar opposite, particularly as described in relation to the ideals of the Republic. For Socrates — whom many have argued is himself a fictional character, given that the only accounts of his existence are provided by Plato — Atlantis is the evil foil in the story, the immoral pole against which Athens is measured.

About 9,000 BC, one of the greatest catastrophes had occurred — a destruction by water. At this time, Solon was told (in Timaeus) that Athens already existed, and that out in the ocean, beyond the Pillars of Hercules (now known as the Straits of Gibraltar), there was an island-continent called Atlantis, "as large as [North Africa] and Asia combined" (Wilson, Flem-Ath, & Flem-Ath, The Atlantis Blueprint 4).

Plato's work in Timaeus asserts that Socrates had traveled to Egypt and received word of the Lost Continent from a translation of an ancient Egyptian/Athenian history engraved on a particular set of columns (Joseph, 150). While a student of Plato named Crantor claimed to have found and confirmed the existence of these columns, such artifacts either never existed or are lost to history. Because, at least in the Western tradition, while the broad descriptions of the Lost Continent do not shift much from Plato, the "known" facts about it vary widely across later accounts.

Many authors have sought to support Plato's account of Atlantis on the basis that his narrative is plain and reasonable rather than fantastical. Ignatius Donnelly wrote:

"If Plato had sought to draw from his imagination a wonderful and pleasing story, we should not have had so plain and reasonable a narrative. He would have given us a history like the legends of Greek mythology, full of the adventures of gods and goddesses, nymphs, fauns and satyrs.... There is no ideal republic delineated here. It is a straightforward, reasonable history of a people ruled over by their kings, living and progressing as other nations have lived and progressed since their day" (Atlantis: The Antediluvian World 22).

The problem with this reading is that Donnelly is clearly misreading Plato. Plato's use of Atlantis was to showcase Athens — to provide an ideal counterexample within his moral narratives so that his rhetoric would have force without directly challenging anyone. Socrates may have been put to death for his philosophy and for challenging the status quo, but Plato took a more careful approach.

For philosophers, explorers, religious thinkers, and scientists alike, the concept of Atlantis has spread widely to encompass nearly every possible permutation of a societal origin story. The problem, then, is knowing whom to believe. The majority of widely published accounts of a Lost Continent in Western history have been produced by fiction writers, philosophers, occasional religious thinkers, and the odd scientist. What we can read from the sheer volume of written accounts, theories, and supposed firsthand experiences with Atlantis is that some concepts simply do not go out of style.

If we accept that the earliest recorded history of Atlantis comes from Plato, then it follows that all Western accounts of that place derive in some significant part from the Timaeus and Critias dialogues. As such, all post-Platonic accounts of Atlantis have been written or constructed in direct relation to a work of very questionable factual basis. We must question Plato's scientific knowledge of the natural world before asking whether any history he conveys is reliable. What makes more sense: that Atlantis actually existed as a landmass and fell wholesale into the ocean, or that it was a creation of Plato — or any number of his predecessors — as a device to establish a sense of moral balance, to provide a devil's advocate within rhetoric designed to promote a particular social ideal? If we take the following into consideration, the answer seems relatively clear: (1) there is no physical evidence that any such continent ever existed — no geographic, archaeological, or other tangible proof; (2) the first major Western account appears in Plato, who was not a historian, geologist, archaeologist, or scientist, but a philosopher specializing in rhetorical arguments using entirely fictional characters to enact his moral dramas; and (3) all subsequent Western accounts are derived from Plato.

Conclusion: Truth, Myth, and the Limits of Evidence

The truth about the Lost Continent is that there is no truth. Proving a negative is harder than writing a fictional account or believing a myth. What we must do is look at the possibilities honestly. Could an entire continent have sunk beneath the ocean? No — tectonic plates do not shift in precisely that manner. Could a coastal city have gradually tilted into the ocean during tectonic shifts? Probably not, as the billions of years required for such shifts predate humanity entirely. Could a civilization have been built upon a soft stratum of earth and subsequently sunk into the ground or been buried by ash or lava? Certainly. But the truth is that none of these possibilities proves or disproves the existence of Atlantis.

If we accept that the myth, legend, or cautionary tale of the Lost Continent exists across nearly every known civilization throughout recorded history, we must also accept that the human imagination is extraordinarily powerful and consistent in the stories it tells. Whether or not Atlantis ever truly existed as a place — and the preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that it did not, at least not in the form most legends describe — it exists, and will continue to exist, in the shared imagination of humanity. That, perhaps, is the most honest conclusion available to us.