PrometheusEarth — Answers to questions concerning Plato's Atlantis narratives.
PrometheusEarth — Answers to questions concerning Plato's Atlantis narratives.
PLATO’S ATLANTIS
Frequently Asked Questions
This will be an attempt to shed light on questions regarding Plato’s narratives on Atlantis. Many errors and misunderstandings abound concerning what Plato actually said, which has in turn contributed to the rejection of Atlantis in modern scientific circles. It is hoped that this will help correct some of those mistaken ideas, which should lead to a better understanding of Plato’s story.
Q. Since Plato lived circa. 350 B.C. and Atlantis sank circa. 9,700 B.C. (a gap of over 9,000 years), how did he happen to know about Atlantis?
A. According to Plato’s Timaeus, Critias learned through his family that the Greek statesman Solon (a distant ancestor of Plato) heard about it from Egyptian priests during a visit to Saïs, Egypt in about 590 B.C. The priests claimed to have access to records about Atlantis written on pillars within the temple. Plutarch writes: “His [Solon’s] first voyage was to Egypt … [where he] spent some time in study with Psenophis of Heliopolis and Sonchis the Saite, the most learned of all the priests; from whom, as Plato says, getting knowledge of the Atlantic story, he put it into a poem, and proposed to bring it to the knowledge of the Greeks." But a little further on: “Now Solon having begun his great work in verse, the history or fable of the Atlantic Island, which he had learned from the wise men of Saïs, and thought it convenient for the Athenians to know, abandoned it … because of his age, and being discouraged at the greatness of the task." (Life of Solon, 90 A.D.)
Plato, Greek Philosopher
Solon was said to have taken down notes during his visit to Egypt to be used as a basis for the poem—notes which might have been available in Plato’s day. Moreover, Plutarch is known to have utilized a vast number of manuscripts (many of which are now lost) when writing his “Lives"—the fact that he seemed to know the names of the priests (never mentioned by Plato) proves that Plutarch had sources other than Plato, raising the question of the possible survival of Solon’s notes down to his day as well.
Q. Did Plato ever use the words “continent," or “lost continent" to describe the land of Atlantis?
A. No. The word Plato uses to describe the landmass of Atlantis is nesos, the Greek word for “island". Even though he calls it a “large island," one must presume he meant an island, not a continent. We shall see shortly that he describes an extremely large island; but, judging from Plato’s account, there is no need to be looking for a continental sized landmass.
Q. Where did Plato locate Atlantis?
A. Although different researchers have located Atlantis just about everywhere on the face of the earth, Plato, in his Timaeus gives several distinctive indications of its true location.
1. “This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean." This gives the general location.
2. Plato also describes Atlantis as “an island (nesos) situated in front of (pro) the straits which are by you called the pillars of Heracles." The Greek word pro can be translated “before," or “in front of". (Some translators prefer to translate pro as “facing" or “opposite".)
3. Plato says both the island and the ocean were named after Atlas, the firstborn of Poseidon and Cleito. Even Herodotus, a hundred years before Plato, calls the sea outside the Pillars of Heracles the “Atlantis Sea". (History, Book I)
4. Plato describes the Mediterranean Sea which is “within the Straits of Heracles" as “only a harbour, having a narrow entrance," but the other sea (outside the Straits) as a “real sea".
5. Finally, Plato describes Atlantis as “the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent [America?] which surrounds the true ocean [the Atlantic]." Atlantis was situated just outside Gibraltar in the Atlantic Ocean—I find it difficult to interpret any other way.
In addition to Plato’s Timaeus (24e) locating Atlantis directly “in front of" (pro), or “facing," the Pillars of Heracles, Plato’s Critias (114b) describes Atlas as having a twin named Gadirus, who was allotted the portion of the island “closest to" (epi to) the Pillars. He says the ancient city of Gades (on the Atlantic shore of southern Spain, now called Cadiz) was named after that individual. The name, in itself, implies proximity. Plato’s description categorically eliminates any location other than the North Atlantic Ocean reasonably close to Spain. Yet, in spite of such precise details, many moderns seek to justify other far-flung locations.
Q. Were the two rocky prominences jutting out from Attica into the Mediterranean Sea ever known to anyone in ancient times as the “pillars of Heracles"? (One might ask if they would even qualify as being components of a true strait.)
A. In a word, No! If there existed a single shred of evidence, an inscription, a writing, or a reference calling these features the “pillars of Heracles," the proponents of the Minoan Hypothesis would be touting it from the highest hilltops—but no such evidence is ever brought forth.
Q. Isn’t it possible that Plato originally stated that Atlantis was “in between" (as opposed to “larger than") Libya and Asia? The difference in the two statements is only one letter in Greek.
A. The reference is to Plato’s Timaeus (25) where the following statement is made: “The island [Atlantis] was larger than Libya and Asia combined." Should we favor “in between" over “larger than" the sentence would look like this: “The island was in between Libya and Asia." (The word “combined" is added by the translators, and does not appear in the Greek text.) The idea is truly ingenious, but does it have any factual basis? Let’s take a closer look.
The Greek word for “between" is meson. From this we get Meso-potamia (a land “between rivers") and Meso-america (a land “between [North and South] America"). On the other hand, the Greek word mega means “big" or “large" (as in mega-lithic, or “large stone"): its comparative form, mezon, means “larger than" [something else]. And, yes, the difference between meson and mezon is only one letter.
So what about this “one letter"? Since our s and z look something alike, the argument sounds plausible from this point of view. But we must ask ourselves, how did this look in the Greek of Plato’s time; or even later for that matter? (Such a scribal error may have occurred hundreds of years after Plato originally penned his account.) The argument doesn’t hold water in either case.
In Plato’s time (4th century B.C.) he would have written in large (all-capitals), continuous (no spaces between words), Athenian characters. The old Greek word meson would look like 
in the Athenian script of Plato’s time. But mezon would look like 
—the ancient Z closely resembled our modern capital letter I—the difference between the S and Z in the large Athenian script is obvious. (The Greek Z resembling our Roman Z is modern and does not apply to the older Attic scripts.)
But even in the later minuscule script the s and z in no wise resemble each other. A minuscule z looks like ζ while a medial s looks like σ (absolutely nothing alike). The final backbreaker is that Plato included the same comparison in his Critias (108), in which his copyists would have to have made an identical mistake in that work as well. The odds are against the same identical mistake occuring in two separate works.
Q. During his interview with the temple priests at Saïs, could Solon have mistranslated the Egyptian hieroglyph meaning “100" mistakenly as “1000" as the advocates of the Minoan Hypothesis have suggested?
A. Not likely. In the first place, contrary to the claims of the advocates of the latter, the glyphs look nothing alike (Budge, 1966). In the second place, Solon was not reading the story from the Egyptian records. It was the Egyptian priests—expert in hieroglyphics—who were relating to Solon what their own temple records said about the lost Atlantis. In the third place, if such an error in translation had occurred, other dates involved in Plato’s account would also have been skewed by the same amount. For example, Plato’s “8,000 years of Egyptian history" would be reduced to a mere 800, which would barely carry Egyptian civilization back to the time of Moses. To reduce thousands of years of Egyptian history to a few hundred would be ludicrous, to say the least!
Q. How big was Atlantis?
A. Although Plato writes “the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together …" which sounds big, we should not imagine that Plato meant what we today call Asia and Africa. Since Plato insists on calling Atlantis an “island," we must realize that his knowledge of Africa most likely consisted of the southern Mediterranean coastland familiar to Herodotus and other Greeks of his day. The “Asia" of Plato’s time was what we now call Asia Minor. From the answer to the next question we can estimate that Plato’s Atlantis is an island ranging in size between 250,000-500,000 square miles.
Q. How big was the plain?
A. Plato says that the capital city of Atlantis was near a plain measuring 2,000 x 3,000 stadia, which in modern figures is about 230 by 340 miles (slightly larger than the state of South Dakota in the United States). There were mountains surrounding this plain on three sides. The size of Atlantis depends on the extent of these mountain ranges, and Plato doesn’t specify how wide these mountain ranges were.
Q. Plato seems to place the capital city near the ocean, but also in the center of the island. If Atlantis is as large as you say it is, then how could both be true?
A. The reference is probably that found in Plato’s Critias where he writes: “Looking towards the sea, but in the center of the whole island, there was a plain which is said to have been the fairest of all plains and very fertile. Near the plain again, and also in the center of the island at a distance of about fifty stadia, there was a mountain not very high on any side." This does present a knotty problem, but I think the answer lies in the two shades of meaning in the Greek word mesos, which can indeed mean “center". And it would seem at first glance that he intended to locate the mountain (and the city built on it) in the center of Atlantis. But had Plato really meant the geographical center of the island, he could have wrote eis to kheniron tou nesou ("in the middle of the island").
However, mesos can also mean the “mid-point" in a linear distance, such as a shoreline. It’s obvious that for both the city and the plain to be in the center of Atlantis, the city would have to be located in the center of the plain itself, which it is not. Plato locates it “near the plain," but at a distance of about six of our miles. It cannot be both. Notice that Plato begins by saying, “looking towards the sea". It is highly possible that Plato is using mesos in this case to indicate that it is located in the midpoint of the shoreline of the islandlaterally (that is, looking from left to right), yet being located, at the same time, some six miles south of the plain. This would place the city near the ocean. With its harbor, docks and other port associations, surely Plato’s intention was to place the capital city between the plain and the south shoreline of Atlantis (i.e., near the ocean).
Q. Did Plato say that Atlantis sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in one day and night?
A. No he didn’t. Let’s look at the text of Plato’s Timaeus where he appears to say this: “But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea." Since the Egyptian priest was speaking to an Athenian (Solon), “your warlike men" refers to the Athenian army, which was fighting on the mainland of Europe—possibly in Greece itself. In other words, Plato is saying that not only did portions of Europe suffer an inundation, drowning the Athenian army in a single day; but during the same catastrophe Atlantis was likewise inundated! Read it carefully. If this convulsion of nature resulted in a catastrophic flood (and/or subsidence) in Europe over a thousand miles from Atlantis, then this cataclysm was no local affair. Apollodorus says: “Poseidon was very wrathful, and flooded the Thraisian plain, and submerged Attica under sea-water." (Bibliotheca, III, 14, 1.) One of the Books of Thothdescribes a pyramid as standing on the sea-shore, “the waves of which dashed in powerless fury against its base." This is a strong indication that the geographical situation of Egypt has also changed drastically, involving either sea-level rising or land subsidence at some point. There is abundant geological and paleontological evidence supporting our opinion that this catastrophe—ending the ice age and resulting in the Pleistocene extinction—was no mere local disturbance, but was most probably global in nature.
Q. But doesn’t Plato’s statement imply that Atlantis sank to the bottom in a day and night?
A. If you read Plato carefully it will be clear that Atlantis sank just below sea level during the cataclysm. Plato says merely that it “disappeared beneath the sea." Even though the Atlantean civilization was destroyed in the horrendous catastrophe, after the geological event was over the land itself ended up just barely covered by the sea. This left the sea outside the Pillars unnavigable because it was extremely shallow. In Plato’s own words: “For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island." We have the statements of several Phoenician and Carthaginian sailors which say the Atlantic was extremely shallow and difficult to navigate because of this. Such stories may have been kept alive long after the fact for political and economic reasons, but these conditions could well have been accurate for an extended period after the disappearance of Atlantis. At least Plato said this was so. Geologists take note: Atlantis has had 12,000 years to settle a distance of approximately two miles to the present position of the ocean bottom.
Q. If Atlantis once existed in the mid-Atlantic as Plato described, why isn’t there geological evidence for it?
The question implies that there is no geological evidence for it. I suggest you take a good look at the Geological and Paleontological pages of this site where geological evidence is presented in abundance. In addition, features discovered on the ocean floor (which Plato could not have known about) conform so closely to Plato’s account that such coincidences go far beyond mere chance. Look at the color-coded bathemetric chart showing mountains (Azore Islands) in the north, a flat area (Plain of Atlantis) to the south, and even a long chain of seamounts trailing off toward North America ("other islands … [passage] to the whole of the opposite continent"). The latter is a relatively late discovery, reaching right up to the continental shelf itself (which would have been above water during the ice age). The only way Plato could have known of such things is if they were once an ancient reality and the information was someway passed down to him.
Q. Why did Plato describe Atlantean technology as being basically on the level of the Bronze Age?
A. In general, Plato’s description of Atlantean technology did not exceed that of the Bronze Age. Actually, Plato was at a loss. Solon, on his visit to Egypt, had asked the priests at Saïs about his own Athenian ancestors; not about Atlantean technology. They answered Solon’s inquiries, and in doing so it was necessary for them to explain about the cycles of world catastrophes and their consequences; but to answer his queries it was not necessary for them to go into Atlantean technology. It would be natural for Plato “fill in" certain details using familiar technology and terminology when describing the prehistoric Atlanteans.
Since Atlantis was an island empire located some distance from the mainland, it would have to be assumed that they had ships and the associated knowledge of sailing in order for them to attack the mainland successfully. Plato uses such terms as “triremes" (a triple-decked, oar-driven warship) because that’s the technology he was familiar with. It has recently been learned that ice age man throughout the world had boats and ships capable of taking him just about anywhere he wanted to go (Thorndike, 1977). This comes as somewhat of a surprise to some anthropologists.
However, there is one element which appears in Plato’s Critias involving a technology not re-discovered until almost a thousand years after the passing of the Bronze Age (and some three hundred years after Plato!). He uses the term orichalcum, “which is now only a name, but (kai) was then something more." Some authorities have chosen to rendered it as “mountain copper" (‘oros, “mountain," and chalcos, “copper"). The “brass" mentioned just before orichalcum in the Critias is a mistranslation of chalcos, the Greek word for “copper", not “brass". (Likewise, biblical references to brass during Iron Age times is a mistranslation of the Hebrew original.)
Whatever Plato meant to call it, his use of the term in no way implies that he actually understood anything about it. In fact, the “ori" in orichalcum could just as easily reflect a Greek verb meaning “to dig," so mountain may not even belong here. However, professional etymologists have offered the most sensible derivation as follows:
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, aurichalcum, the Latin word for “brass" (literally “golden copper"), is etymogically the direct descendant of orichalcum. Brass is more golden-colored than either copper or bronze (both of which are reddish). Therefore, it is likely that “orichalcum" meant simply a golden-colored metal containing copper, and the metal which fits this description is brass.
Bronze is a copper-tin alloy, but brass is a copper-zinc, and the metallurgical technique for combining zinc with copper was not re-discovered until almost a thousand years after the Bronze Age. Strabo is the earliest classical writer to mention brass (40 B.C.); and the earliest known archeological artifact made of brass is a Roman coin dated 20 B.C. But if Plato is accurate, the Atlantean civilization had mastered this metallurgical technique at least 10,000 years earlier. (He couldn’t have made it up, since brass was not “discovered" until three hundred years after his lifetime.)
Q. Professional anthropologists and archeologists do not see evidence of “ancient Athenians" living 12,000 or more years ago: if such a culture did exist, shouldn’t there be archeological remains?
A. This is a problem, but not one without a viable explanation. First of all, the Acropolis is “sacred ground" so to speak, and archeological excavation cannot be carried out underneath the present day temple complex. If any evidence of an earlier society exists, it cannot be uncovered by modern archeological investigators.
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