My Quest for Atlantis

I love the story of Atlantis but is their any way that the city of Atlantis might be in the Atlantic trench I mean no one has ever bin to the very bottom of the trench so I was just wondering if there is a chance that I might be in the Atlantic trench?

hahaha gorgeous travel article, fun to see how Mr. Adams tries to give grand excuses for visiting beaches and enjoying seafood. XD

Mark Adams wrote a masterpiece of a reality treasure hunt for Atlantis. He visited an enormous number of academicians as well as amateurs who have to contribute to the topic. This is like Dan Brown's Robert Langdon, yet here it is a real search with real clues and real informants and maybe a real Atlantis in the end? Mark Adams combined an unprejudiced open-mindedness with a reasonable skepticism and a good sense of humour, and the result is a very interesting and enjoyable book. Congratulations!

A beautifully-written travelogue. As to the Atlantis part, however, I think he's looking in the wrong place. Plato clearly states (in Timaeus) that Atlantis is an island in the vast Atlantic Ocean, to which the Mediterranean is a mere "harbor." I think it is highly possible that his "Atlantis," allowing for embellishment through legend, was what we now call Doggerland, a large land area in the North Sea that was inundated through sinking land levels and rising sea levels around 5000 BCE, a consequence of the last Ice Age. That sort of catastrophe would have resonated through generations. Plato describes it perfectly as a "subsidence" of land that left shoals and mud, though it would not have occurred in a day. Archaeologists are now finding evidence of ancient human occupation of this region, and mammoth bones, on the bottom of the relatively shallow sea in that area. And we must remember that names of places Plato mentions may in fact have applied to other locations in that prehistoric time. He himself (in Critias) describes ancient "Athens" as looking completely different from the Hellenic city he knew in his own time, and even alludes to the transpositioning of names from other places.

just a figment of the imagination of Plato, nothing more.

To locate the lost Atlantis one need look no further than Crete. It had an empire with a navy that is believed to have controlled the Mediterranean, and possibly traveled far beyond the Pillars. It had an advanced civilization and palaces with running water. The civilization was destroyed by the eruption of Santorini and consequent tsunami. While the island did not disappear the civilization and many of its works did. It does not match all of what Plato said, but it appears to come the closest.

No doubt Mr Doumas has the correct notion of Atlantis. "Make sure you know where the best food is available. Never hunt on an empty stomach"

You have forgotten that it could be the Sardinia, agree with recent studies and theories that suggest this interpretation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0gCpo8JDik&t=131

Unless memory fails me, Plato reported that Atlantis was situated outside the Pillars of Heracles (i.e., the Straits of Gibraltar). Since the "wisest Greek of all" located it there, why did the author look for it in the Mediterranean?

And by the way, in 360 BCE the Greeks no longer saw the Straits of Gibraltar as the end of the known world. They were dimly aware of the British Isles, for example. And they knew that the Carthaginians had sailed down the west coast of Africa.

I was driven by the same curiosity in July of 1969. Only travel clubs could book charter flights back then so I joined the Turkish American Society and flew from NY to Frankfort on (Too true to make up) Atlantis Airlines. Hitchhiking down the continent we tracked the Neil Armstrong crew as they flew out of earth's gravity. We took the ferry from Brindisi to Santorini (still called thera then, too), deck passage populated with a generation of seekers, guitar music and Afghanistan hash smoke wafting overhead. At Santorini the engines cut and a motor launch came from the little port. We climbed overboard and were taken to the landing dock, and there conveyed by MULE up the spiral stone staircase to the topThe bus ran from the little town once per week. The three hour drive to Akrotiri left us at the brand new dig. I had anticipated hundreds of people scurrying around the and cries of Eureka! There were three guys and a wheelbarrow. They had dug, not a pit but a cave in order to preserve the Santorini wine vineyards. We were shown the few artifacts they had unearthed, huge oil cisterns, some smaller items. We did not find Altantis. The bus would return in an hour. The choice was to stay or take the same bus back. In Athens a few nights later, on a B&W TV in an appliance store window, I watched Neil Armstrong stand on Tranquility. Above and behind, was the 3000 year old parthenon, bathed in light of that moon.

Plato may have been taking a real, hazily remembered event like the eruption of Santorini or some other event or maybe he just made the whole thing out of whole cloth. At any rate like any good fiction writer he threw in enough details to aid the suspension of disbelief and in doing so spawned a thousand wild goose chases in the process.

The great thing about his Atlantis story is that it satisfies on so many levels especially the idea of a great civilization brought down by hubris--something that we might want to think about ourselves. Global warming anybody? We have our own mini-Atlantises right here in the New York Metro area.

Somewhere the old philosopher is probably sitting down with his old Athenian friends and a crater of very lightly watered wine and having a good chuckle at our expense.

Very interesting research, but I agree it should not have left out Crete and the Minoan civilization, the main candidate for being lost Atlantis.
Also, the etymology of the name Atlantis and each relevance to the name Atlantic Ocean should be discussed.

I think it's fair to say that almost every myth has it's origins in a certain reality. The myths simply distort and aggrandize that reality. I support the theory that the Minoan culture on Crete is the basis of the Atlantis myth, but I'm all for continued research to either confirm that theory or replace it with another.

"“Now in this island of Atlantis,” he wrote, “there was a great and wonderful empire” that “endeavored to subdue the whole of the region within the straits.”"

It doesn't really have to be a physical place, just the same way HADES is not a physical place, and yet some people believe it exists., there are lots of illustrations, and books about it.

"Malta is not well known to Americans, which is a shame, because its waters are crystal clear and the food, heavily influenced by proximity to Italy, is excellent."
Thank God for that. We'd probably trash the place with more Mcwhatevers.

sounds like you are on the right path, great story. thank you!

March 21, 2015
Seek the inner Atlantis - that has never left our collective mind - just take a nice dream nap and find all humanity's history and more -
Plato was more a novelist then a true dreamer - that's why the world needs Aristotle, Carl G. Jung and the New York Times cultural portal to all times fit to print. For truth with beautiful dreams online never to be lost but safe in the archive underground mountain somewhere.

jja Manhattan, N.Y.

Could ancient mariners have reached what is now Central and South America and met the civilizations there? Many of the things Plato mentioned existed in the various 'American' civilizations long before Plato's time.

Is Plato's “Republic,” as Adams claims, "widely considered to be the most important book in the Western canon"? No, it is not.

The most important book of . . . political philosophy? Okay, I'll take that, though I don't think it's exactly a shoo-in there either.

I read Plato's book about Timeu and Critias, and it's amazing what he says about technology. It seems they have flying cars!

" About 9000 B.C. the land vibrated and trembled and great fissures appeared;
Atlantis disappeared into the surrounding water with eighty-eight million inhabitants "

With his previous book, "Turn Right at Machu Picchu", Mark Adams inspired me to travel to Peru in a quest to untangle the secrets of the Lost City of the Incas. With much thanks to Mr. Adams, it looks like I will be undertaking another travel adventure, perhaps one like no other.

Steve
www.travelingprofessor.com

Plato is not the earliest ancient source on Atlantis - there's Hellanicus of Mytilene who died around 405 BCE: http://www.strangehistory.net/2010/12/05/platos-atlantis-before-plato/

Well it is obvious that Mssr. Adams has indeed found Atlantis.

Great article, but if you want to visit Atlantis, go the the Canary Islands.

You should try Crete next time.

The caption of the Santorini picture is in error; the island
was not formed by a volcanic eruption in 1600 B.C.
Traces of human habitation from still more ancient times
continue to be discovered:
https://www.santorini.com/archaeology/akrotiri.htm

I enjoyed reading the similarly themed book by
Charles R. Pellegrino, "Unearthing Atlantis: An Archaelogical Odyssey"
--- perhaps others might also.

To anyone who has stood on the top of the San Rafael Knob in the San Rafael Swell overlooking the San Rafael Reef in Utah, it is obvious that Atlantis sits frozen in time in the maze of canyons and mesas at his feet, forever violated by our search for uranium in the Fifties and for off-road dirt to deface with our rubber, ever feeding the Colorado with enough red silt to fill Glen Canyon in another generation and sink the Colorado Plateau.

If Plato meant Atlantis as allegory he would have said so!

Very fun read, thanks. You mentioned the "1,400 foot slab of limestone familiar to Prudential customers" and I couldn't help but point out that the original rock that inspired the eventual use of the Rock of Gibraltar is actually Snake Hill (aka Laurel Hill and Fraternity rock.) Snake Hill is that huge rock that NJ Transit riders know sits near the Secaucus Junction station and NJ Turnpike drivers ride along on the eastern spur. I'm no geologist, but perhaps Atlantis was just Plato's vision of Manhattan??? "There was a great and wonderful empire.....endeavored to subdue....the whole of the region within the straits." Where else (besides Washington D.C.) can you find all five of Plato's regimes?

Why not the Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis as an explanation for both Atlantis and Noah's Ark?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis

Maybe Plato just wanted to stimulate interest to become engaged. It's amazing what can be found when people pose questions and look for answers.

My vote is for Santorini, truly a dream of a place, beautiful beyond description, at peace with its world. Take a tour and see for yourself.

I realize that this adapted from a book, but the author or editor should have done a better job of making it clear from the beginning that the narrator wasn't actually expecting to find Atlantis and that the real point was just to write a travelogue. It does work nicely, though, as a little travel column about some pleasant spots in the Mediterranean.

Sounds like seeking Atlantis is a good quest to have since it is the gift that will keep on giving.

Its curious that the author didn't mention the Minoan civilization of Crete that was quite advanced for its time and was destroyed about the same time as Akrotiri, witch was likely a Minoan outpost.

Some compelling evidence in Portugal.

The location of the Pillars of Hercules and of Atlantis has been discussed rather extensively by Sergio Frau in a 2002 book ("Le colonne d'ercole, un inchiesta" - unfortunately only available in Italian). He has presented convincing evidence that the Greeks never meant them to be in Gibraltair and that most likely they were located between Sicily and Tunisia. My understanding is that most scholars agree on this point.
He also suggests that if Atlantis ever existed, Plato may have referred to the island of Sardinia, one of the largest island of the Mediterranean and the site of one of the most ancient Mediterranean civilizations. The evidence supporting this claim is not as strong as that supporting the idea that, for the ancient Greeks, the Pillars of Hercules were not in Gibraltair.

My bet is on Santorini for being the Lost City of Atlantis. According to some historians Santorini was a Phoenician city. At the time the Phoenicians traded along the eastern Mediterranean. They established the city on Santorinin so as to trade directly between the Greek peoples and the Egyptians, among others. The volcanic eruption (c. 1500 BC) buried the island in ash and was a disaster for the Phoenicians and led them to sail further west to establish more trading partners.

Maybe the author should take a sport diving course, and plan his next Atlantis hunt by scuba diving the areas surrounding the destinations he visited. Sounds like fun.

Natural disasters over the course of ancient history must have affected quite a number of cities and settlements that were advanced relative to their peers. Samtorini (aka Thera) does seem to be an excellent candidate for Plato's story. If not, my guess would be that the Atlantis reference is to a much more ancient settlement in the Black Sea basin, whose flooding must have inspired a great many myths, including that of Noah, and maybe what initially spread the Indo-European languages across Europe and down into India.

Couldn't all of the evidence of Atlantis along the Mediterranean cost cited by Adams have just as easily been the product of refugees fleeing sinking continent in the Atlantic as sinking in the Mediterranean Sea?

And what of the parallels between ancient underground structures in Ireland and North America which could indicate similar cultural origins between Mediterraneans and Native Americans? The attribution of both to early Irish missionaries seems more farfetched than Atlantans of different ethnic origins who had similar methods of construction of what appear to be solar-based timepieces.

Actually, Mr. Adams, there are several hundred million 'free-roaming primates in Europe' and nearly all of them are intent upon frisking tourists for snacks.

A compelling and fascinating piece by a distinguished, articulate, wondering, humble and informed traveler! It handles the mythic and the archeological/geological with sureness and finesse. I was greatly informed and enlightened, in away which is quite rare for a random meeting with an article. Many thanks!

For me, the decisive fact is that there is absolutely no hint of Atlantis anywhere before Plato. Nothing in older Greek literature, nothing in Linear B, nothing from Egypt, nothing at all. And Plato's works contain a lot of stories that are clearly not intended to be taken literally.

You are looking in the wrong place-and blinded by both what is called 'contemporary conceit' and the limited outlook of so many you are missing it. Just a hypothetical question-What if it had existed in many forms over several hundred thousand years self destructing through its misuse of power and then rebuilding while giving birth to many of the civilizations that we know of today in successive migrations of survivors. And what if that which Plato referred to was just an element or part or outpost of a huge civilization that covered much of what is the South Atlantic today?

I'm surprised the author isn't mentioning the common theory that the volcanic explosion on Santorini/Thera caused tsunamis that wiped out the Minoan civilization on nearby Crete. It would be easy to conflate the two: The center of Santorini sunk below the waves and a great civilization (centered on Crete) was destroyed. As the story was retold, "Atlantis" was described as so large that it could only fit into the Atlantic. I read about this as a child, and I was so thrilled to visit both islands years ago.

While it is possible that Akrotiri could have been the inspiration for Plato, for the writer and philosopher, metaphor and fiction has always been useful to express ideas. I feel certain Atlantis is a metaphor, a beautiful tempting fiction like Avalon, the existence of which resides in the mind and stands for those utopian values many of us aspire to as human beings.

Thera (Santorini) has always seemed to me an obvious candidate for any number of reasons, including the cataclysm known to have destroyed it and the fact that Atlantis was said to be a rival of Athens -- improbable at the time for the relatively distant Malta and Gibraltar!

I vote for Santorini Everywhere you go you see remnants of ancient cultures It is also a place that Plato could have visited The views are truly amazing and your imagination takes over while having a wonderful Greek meal with excellent local wine! Tell Mark Adams to look for more vanished civilizations we will enjoy the trip!

I have not read your book however I find it interesting that you did not visit Sardinia which in some texts is thought to be Atlantis.

Oh, Yeesh, I just went to Peru after reading Mark Adams's Turn Right at Machu Picchu. Looks like I'll be heading to the Mediterranean in search of Atlantis soon! Love how Adams makes a journey a story. I just wish he'd write about someplace closer to home, like Jersey.

Atlantis sits on the bottom of the Long Island Sound at its confluence with the Nissequogue River. in low tide the seagulls sit on the rising rooftops which break the water line. Everyone knows this.

To Times Readers:

Perhaps Plato's intent was to have us aspire to that utopia he called "Atlantis". Nevertheless, we do know that Akrotiri achieved levels of sophistication and comfort unparalleled in the West until the Renaissance. Certainly its image in the tribal memory of the eastern Mediterranean was still alive in Plato's time.

Submitted by ROGER LATZGO www.rogerlatzgo.com Germansville PA