Plato wrote 35 Dialogues but
two of his late Dialogues, “Timaeus” and “Critias”,
are quite unique as they relate the history of Egypt to around 9,000 years before
his time! That is where and when Atlantis is mentioned. Timaeus was a philosopher and astronomer from Locris in southern Italy,
and Critias was an Athenian
politician.
Atlantis is, was, and will be very controversial. Yet, Plato’s tale is all we have to go by. As in every story or legend,
there is always a base for some truth. To bring the Athenians in contact with Atlantis sounds far searched, but there is hope for the skeptics.
In February
2022, Sotirios Sofias of the National Technical University of Athens published
a very revealing study on the matter under the title “Atlantis:
A real continent and not fiction according to the dialogues Timaeus and Critias of Plato”, which I will try to summarize hereafter. The author has
analyzed the original ancient Greek text as recorded by Plato to match it with Google Earth's screenshots - with surprising
results. Please remember that Plato was a pupil of Socrates (see: Plato,
more than a philosopher).
Critias, during a meeting with Socrates, Timaeus, and Hermocrates (general of Syracuse), describes the visit of Solon of Athens to Egyptian priests around 600
BC. On this occasion, the priests honored Athens in all its glory including the city’s victory over the people of Atlantis.
The Atlanteans, they continued, lived on an island beyond the Pillars of Heracles
and had conquered all the islands of the Atlantic Ocean and many others in the
Mediterranean Sea, including Egypt.
Yet, all the countries revolted against the aggressive Atlanteans, led by the Athenians, who were victorious. Atlantis suddenly disappeared after
a terrible natural catastrophe.
Modern
technology shed a new perspective on Atlantis when in 2009 Google Earth revealed
the outlines of a submerged formation about 600 kilometers
northwest of the Canary Islands. The main
feature appears as a manmade grid, which matches Solon’s “square” or “plain”,
the capital Atlantis
as recorded by Plato.
Studying these
images, Sotirios Sofias found that all the measurements of Atlantis noted by Plato are consistent with those visible
in the Google Earth pictures. The stunning underwater square, whose sides are 140 kilometers long, is
divided by channels following a perfectly recognizable Hippodamian plan. The water from
the surrounding mountains flowed through the city’s canals to serve its needs in
fresh water and as a transportation system for the Atlanteans.
This city and
the island of Atlantis disappeared after a severe cataclysm, destroying Athens at the same time, and the city's glory was forgotten. The large island
of Atlantis sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, five kilometers deep!
After an
in-depth study of Plato’s text, Sotirios
Sofias established that Atlantis was sitting on a super
volcano similar to Yellowstone National Park in the US including the same kind of hot
springs and therapeutic sources. Both sites have more
in common than one would imagine as Critias
describes a landscape resembling modern Yellowstone's beauty.
He praises the fertile soil of Atlantis with its abundance of
trees, fruit plants, and the variety of tamed and wild animals that populated
the island! The island was also known for its minerals like gold, silver,
copper, tin, etc. The inhabitants of Atlantis did not know they lived on
top of a volcano, very much as the people of Pompeii did not know that the mountain on
their horizon was a volcano.
The global
cataclysm mentioned by Critias was, in
fact, the eruption of this supervolcano in combination with the violent
rotation of the earth's axis. Plato attributes this event to a meteorite or comet (which he calls Phaethon) that
hit the earth. It caused the destruction of Atlantis, Athens, and
all the nearby coastal cities and islands. The Egyptian priests told Solon that their country was saved
thanks to the Nile. This is how the ancient
texts of Atlantis were spared for 9000 years! Solon’s notes on Atlantis survived and were passed on
to Plato via his uncle Critias.
Plato clearly mentioned
that the city was protected on the North side by high mountains. Google Earth
has indeed located three submerged mountains of 4,000-4,500 meters that have
moved 75 degrees counter-clockwise after these violent forces of nature
occurred, erasing the island from view and memory.
Another
controversial subject is the shape and size of Atlantis. Solon mentioned that the island was
narrow and extended from the coast of Spain
to the present-day Antilles. It included
islands like the Azores, which are the
mountain peaks of the submerged Atlantis mentioned above. Critias
provides details stating that the island's eastern end was opposite the
Pillars of Heracles (Gibraltar), at Gadiriki (modern Cadis in Spain). At the opposite end, it
almost automatically takes us to the Lesser and Greater Caribbean Antilles and
the Americas.
Based on the measurements of Critias as compared to the
geographic layout of Google Earth, Atlantis had an elongated shape like
a banana. It was 4,500
kilometers long and 760 kilometers wide
in its center. The western end of the island was only 1,000 kilometers away
from the coast of South America, i.e., the distance an ancient ship could cover in one week.
This reminds me
of the news that made headlines several years ago about artifacts of Phoenician
origin discovered in South America.
Highly improbable, it was thought, and the wildest speculations followed!
Presently, in light of the shape and size of Atlantis, the find is not
outlandish at all! Sailing from the Mediterranean across the Atlantic Ocean along
the south coast of Atlantis was extremely
convenient as the ships could stop at so many ports on their way! When Atlantis disappeared, this communication route vanished and all memory of this once so-powerful
kingdom was erased at the same time.
Now there is the
story of Atlantis everybody is familiar with a series of successive circles
around a central island. Based on Critias’
account, this central island had a diameter of 1,000 meters. It was
surrounded by two circles of land and three of water. This is the location of
the Palace of Atlantis. The ditch around the
central island was connected with a 9,500-meter-long canal to the sea. The
total diameter of these combined circles was 5,000 meters! Hard to
imagine!
The Palace of Atlantis was the residence of the
Major King. Critias noted that it was
of astonishing size: 200
meters wide and 200 meters long, standing 100 meters tall. It was
bigger than St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Atlantis was divided into ten kingdoms, each with its own king, subordinate to
the Major King, the direct descendant of Atlas, son of Poseidon, and founder of Atlantis. Solon said that the god was held in
high esteem by the Atlanteans, as quoted by Critias:
“They placed golden statues, the god
(Poseidon) to be upright in his chariot, holding the reins of six winged
horses, and this complex was so tall that it almost touched the top of the roof
of the temple. Around him, seated on dolphins, there were a hundred Nereids along
with innumerous other statues around, dedicated to exceptional individuals.”
All the above
takes me to Alexander, as I so often
speculate about his knowledge of the world when he set out to conquer Asia. He, and his selected circle of friends, had been
tutored by Aristotle, a
pupil of Plato. In this light,
history deserves to be rewritten. We should be aware that besides Alexander, all of his Companions and
later generals and kings in their own right, were aware of a world much larger
than we generally assume!
[All details with clear drawings and maps are made available by Sotirios Sofias in his study Atlantis: A real continent and not fiction according to the dialogues Timaeus and Critias of Plato]
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