Atlantis Continent: Legend or truth?

Image of the Atlantis continent, a great and mighty nation, that the dominance of the ancient world abruptly ended only after a disaster, most stimulated the imagination of mankind over two thousand last year. It all started from a legend about Atlantis.

Although Atlantis is considered to have reached its peak of more than 11,000 years ago, it only appeared in bibliography about 2,350 years ago, from 359 to 347 years BC. The sensual name Atlantis appears in dialogues by the famous Greek philosopher Plato, Timaeus and Critias, which are named after the characters in two imaginary exchanges between Socrates and students.

Atlantis through Plato's description. (Photo: unmuseum.org)

At the beginning of the dialogue with Timaeus, Socrates mentioned the previous day's discussion of a 'perfect' society . Here Plato mentions his most famous dialogue, The Republic, which he wrote many years ago. And Plato borrowed Socrates's words to present a series of essential features of a perfect government that he envisioned in the Republic: craftsmen and peasants separated from the army; High disciplinary soldiers, trained physically and music, live community and do not have private property.

Socrates did not stop the theoretical argument but asked students to judge on the aspect of practical philosophy. He argued that they need to consider the perfection of a society in line with the notions written in the Republic by placing it facing a war.

Critias examined the teacher's proposal by suggesting: 'Please (Master Socrates) hear a strange but true story' . Critias said that his grandfather, Critias, told him the story, and his grandfather heard his father Dropides recount. Dropides learned from the Greek sage Solon, while Solon was told by Egyptian monks when he was in Egypt around 600 BC. According to what Plato wrote in Critias, what we know is a version of the story that originated more than 200 years ago.

The country is complete, it is Athens, not Atlantis

The Egyptian monks told Solon the story of the ancient city of Athens, 'best managed of all cities in the world' . It was the ancient Athens from 9,300 years before Plato, which he used as a model of an ideal country. The monks told Solon about the most powerful feat of the Athens, they defeated a powerful force preparing to conduct an expedition against both Europe and Asia. They describe the expanding nation that is very far from the Atlantic (Atlantic). And that is the reason for the name Atlantis.

The Atlantis had swept across North Africa on their way to Egypt. But after the defeat to Athens, Atlantis was completely destroyed by the gods in terrifying earthquakes and cataclysm, according to Critias.

When recounting the story of Atlantis, Critias told Socrates: 'Yesterday when I talked about a city in a story that was deeply ingrained in my mind, I was surprised to find that I did not understand any mysterious coincidence. but his story matches Solon's account. In fact, Critias's description of ancient Greek society perfectly coincided - and not coincidentally - with Plato's ideal state conception of Republican work.

Historical origins of Atlantis?

Atlantis Island was partially destroyed by natural disasters. (Photo: occultopedia.com).

Plato describes the ancient island nation of Atlantis or Athens based on historical evidence or just based on fiction? In fact there is a brilliant civilization in the Mediterranean - Crete of the Minoan people, even older than Plato's Greek - and it was partly destroyed because of natural disasters.

Many modern scholars argue that, although Atlantis' size and position is less accurate in Critias (possibly due to wrong translation), Plato's story is based on the horrific volcanic eruption at Thera, the island on the side eastern Greece and north of Crete in the sea of ​​Aege. The crater of Thera's lava spray in XVII or XVI BC was about twice the size of the trail at Krakatoa, which, in 1883, killed tens of thousands of people. The disaster in Thera is certainly much more catastrophic, to the point that even in Egypt, where it is only indirectly affected, people are aware of it.

For some, Crete of the Minoan people is Atlantis and in Critias , Plato offers a somewhat inaccurate picture of its destruction as a consequence of the volcanic eruption at Thera. However, to confirm that, we need to ignore the practical details, or at least explain why Crete was wrongly placed in the wrong position, wrong in size, wrong with the war. Athens and not destroyed in a disaster. Archaeological evidence shows that, although Minoa communities live heavily along the coast after the tsunami in Thera, the Minoan civilization not only survived but also flourished in about two another hundred years.

Other authors claim that the magical Minoan colonial regime in Thera is the model of Atlantis. It is clear that the Minoan settlement here was devastated by volcanoes, but it was also quite clear that Plato did not talk about the decline of an ancient civilization. Meanwhile, Thera is also a wrong address, the size and the wrong date should not be a direct model of Atlantis.

Atlantis as imagined by modern times

No debate about Atlantis is considered complete without mentioning imaginative statements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of the missing continent. More than anyone else, Minnesota Ignatius Donnelly, who has twice failed to win the US vice presidency and is an amateur historian, has brought the legend back to life with Atlantis: one gender before the cataclysm in 1881.

According to Donnelly, Plato's Atlantis is the source of all cultural achievements and civilizations in Egypt, West Asia, India and Europe, as well as South and North America. Donnelly's argument is not based on archeology or geography and there is no evidence of the common origin of all cultures. However, compared to some other thinkers in the late nineteenth century, Donnelly is still a model of self-restraint.

Theosophy movement of Helena Blavatsky, a woman who calls the 'famous' American soul, assumes that Atlantis residents move by plane and cultivate fruits obtained from aliens. More recently, spiritualists in the twentieth century claimed contact with the souls from the continent was missing and advised them many good things to solve the deadlock of modern life. Of course, there is no evidence to support such illusory claims.

Plato's point of view

There have been many stories of natural disasters that ravaged a powerful nation more than 1,000 years before Plato. (Photo: occultopedia.com).

There is no doubt that Plato used historical knowledge to create dialogues about his Atlantis continent. It seems there have been many stories of natural disasters that ravaged a powerful nation more than 1,000 years before Plato, and he used them to convey his message.

However, supporters of Critias' discussion of literature alone also realized that Plato was not intended to write history, but some parts of the story were intentionally used as moral metaphors that he want to discuss. For example, in the destroyed Atlantis, Rodney Castleden said that Plato's Atlantis is a combination of the island nation of Crete and Thera, as well as to realize that part of the story is about telling the history of contemporary Greece, including the war between Athens and Sparta.

Finally, it must be seen that the description of Atlantis in Critias is very close to the reality of ancient societies, but it is outside of Plato's intention . With Plato, Atlantis is not a civilization, but a means of spreading thought. What he put into Critias's mouth was not created as historical evidence, but used for a more important function for him, a philosopher rather than a historian. In theory, Plato needed fictional Atlantis as an impassable opponent. A detailed description of Atlantis is how Plato impressed readers about material wealth, technological power and military force.

So the story of a smaller, poorer Athens, the backward technology and the weaker force that won the mighty island nation has given us the critias of Critias: The decision of the calendar history is not wealth or strength but more important is how people and society are managed. For Plato, the intellectual achievement of a society is more important and always exceeds wealth or physical strength. That's what Plato wants to tell us.