What is The Myth of Atlantis

There is something about myths and legends that makes us want to believe in them. Or, perhaps, it is that we know that in many of them there is a real, historical background, and that is why We insist, consciously or unconsciously, on looking for what is really hidden in each case.

In these terms, perhaps one of the most fascinating myths, both for its remote origin and for what it explains, is that of Atlantis.

Atlantis explains the myth of a continent destroyed by natural causes in remote antiquity, whose inspiration could be due to some more technologically advanced society that would have coincided with archaic Greek peoples or other peoples who would have bequeathed the story to the Greeks.

And I mean the Greeks because whoever put the myth by written bequeathing it to us in this way was Plato.

This explains that Atlantis had a curious shape, formed from concentric circles of earth and Water, with a center where the capital of the Atlanteans would be located.

The description It does not fit but has a vague resemblance to the Mexican city of Tenochtitlan, present-day Mexico City, which has led some to enunciate the idea that the Atlanteans were, in fact, ancient settlers of the continent American, or that after the destruction of their society, they got there. However, Tenochtitlan was only built around the 14th century AD.

Atlantean society was, according to the Platonic text, very technologically advanced, and also very rich.

Some argue that its level of technological development would be higher, even, than what we humans have today in the most advanced societies.

According to the Platonic myth, Atlantis was also rich in raw materials, such as minerals and woods, and in animals, both wild and domestic.

Atlantean society was wise, and it was ruled by the wisest. In addition, it was a military power, although it had the virtue of not using the army to attack, only in defense.

According to Plato, Atlantis had ceased to exist nine thousand years before his era, and the story had been known to the Athenian statesman Solon through two Egyptian priests.

Plato places Atlantis somewhere in the Mediterranean, but without much precision.

A reference to the "Columns of Heracles" (the Roman Hercules) has made think to many that Atlantis would be situated in the ocean Atlantic and, more specifically, that the Canary Islands could be the remains of that continent. Or even the Azores.

We have painted the portrait of a magnificent, technologically advanced and rich Atlantis, so... What could have gone wrong for it to be wiped off the face of the earth?

The answer to this question is given to us again by Plato: a confrontation between this great civilization and Athens, in which the gods seem to have protected the capital of Attica.

In a single day and a single night, a series of earthquakes, tidal waves, tsunamis and other events, destroyed Atlantis, its armies, but also Greece. Few survived, and after generations, the memory of all that was lost, except in Egypt, which was through where history would come to Solon.

Here the legend ends and the story begins, since many have been, until now in vain, to locate the lost continent. But in vain at all?

The most commonly accepted hypothesis for the Atlantis myth is that it refers to the Minoan Empire of Crete and the hecatomb that ended it.

Crete is a Mediterranean island, at the time it hosted a civilization more developed than that of mainland Greece (with which it had some confrontations), and traded with Egypt. almost everything fits, although not the years (with some seventy centuries of difference).

But, as a historical background for the legend it is more than acceptable. The eruption of volcano on the island of Thera, present-day Santorini (and which destroyed the same island almost entirely), it was the phenomenon that abruptly and violently ended the Minoan civilization.

It has also been related to the Tartessian civilization, quite unknown, and which occurred in the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula, in present-day Andalusia, probably near Cádiz.

There are several candidates to host Atlantis, also the bed of the Atlantic Ocean (which does not take the name of the myth, but of the titan Atlas), where according to some his remains would rest.

Photos: Fotolia - Ratpack223 / AlienCat

Topics in The Myth of Atlantis