ATLANTIS TIME LINE

560 BC: according to Plato, a famous Greek statesman, Solon, visits Egypt and hears from the priests at Sais, then the capital of Egypt, the story of an ancient civilization that was destroyed 9000 years earlier.

360 BC: Plato first writes Solon’s story and calls the civilization “Atlantis.”

300 BC-100 AD: various classical Mediterranean authors such as Crantor, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Pliny the Elder, and Plutarch mention Atlantis. Belief in the lost continent is divided.

1553: a Spaniard, Francesco Lopez de Gomara, makes the suggestion that Atlantis was in America. However, in many ways America does not match the description given by Plato.

1860: Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, a French scholar, travels through Middle America for many years. He feels that Mayan glyphs document the volcanic destruction of Atlantis. I think Brasseur was partly right about the Mayan glyphs documenting destruction, but I do not feel that this was the destruction of Atlantis. I feel it was the destruction of local villages and cities in Mayan America.

1879: famous Mayan archeologist, Edward Herbert Thompson, defends the idea that the Maya were descendants of an Atlantean race. (Of course, if Atlantis was the first civilization, or first place that Homo sapiens evolved, then all civilizations would be descendants of Atlantis.)

1880s-1890s: Augustus Le Plongeon publishes Sacred Mysteries Among the Mayans and Quiches (1886) and Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx (1896) after ten years of study in the Yucatan with his wife. He claims that Egyptian civilization, as well as all other civilizations, came from the Mayan. He states that Queen Moo was originally from Atlantis (which Le Plongeon calls Mu and situates in the Atlantic Ocean), but when Queen Moo seeks refuge there, she finds it gone, and goes on to Egypt were she was known as Isis and founded the Egyptian civilization. Le Plongeon’s work is interesting, but he made some fundamental errors. We shall see that Atlantis was probably not in the Atlantic. Although there may have been limited contact between Egyptian and Mayan cultures, a point that has yet to be proved, it appears that the two cultures evolved largely separately.

1883: Ignatius Donnelly, a former member of the US Congress writes Atlantis: the Antediluvian World, a popular book which went through fifty editions and is still in print after 100 years. He claims Atlantis was the source of all cultures of the world. Many scientists call his approach slanted and find technical errors in his work. Donnelly was a lawyer and took a lawyer’s approach to his writing. Instead of presenting the pros and cons, he stated all the pros only. We shall see that his location for Atlantis was probably wrong. Whether different cultures developed independently or by diffusion is a hotly debated question. I tend to think there were minute amounts of communication.

1880s: Madam Blavatsky, sometimes called the Grandmother of the “New Age” movement, includes Atlantis in her occult and bizarre reconstruction of history. For example, because of humanities widespread preoccupation with dragons, she believes that humans existed at the time of the dinosaurs. In 1908, Rudolf Steiner, a cohort of Blavatsky, continues with his bizarre version of Atlantis. He eventually breaks away from Blavatsky, and forms his own schools. Today, they are known as Waldorf schools.

1909: In an anonymous letter to the London Times, classical scholar K. T. Frost points out similarities between the Mediterranean culture of Crete (also known as Minoan after King Minos who lived on Crete) and Plato’s “Atlantis.” Although there are similarities, Plato’s description of Atlantis does not match well that of ancient Crete.

1930s: Edgar Cayce becomes famous in the US for going into a trance and then prescribing remedies for ill people. During these trance states he sometimes mentions living in Atlantis in a past life. He predicts that a mysterious “Hall of Records” will be found near the Sphinx describing Atlantis. He also predicts Atlantis would rise again from the ocean. He makes mostly bizarre guesses that are often interpreted by followers as somehow correct. For example when certain symmetrical rocks, probably natural formations called “beach rocks,” were found near Bihimi Island in the Bahamas, followers claimed that these were evidence of Atlantis “rising again.”

1931: author James Churchward writes, The Lost Continent of Mu. He claims to have seen “sacred” tablets in India, which described the creation of the world and the lost continent, which he calls Mu. He places Mu in the Pacific. His work seems to be largely derived from that of Le Plongeon. No one ever saw these ancient tablets, and people wonder if they really ever existed. Although interesting to read, his work remains in the category of questionable speculation.

1939: a Greek archeologist, Spyridon Marinatos, suggests that the destruction of the island of Thera (near Crete and now part of Greece), in 1500 BC, and the resulting tsunami was what caused the collapse of the Minoan civilization. In 1950, he suggests the Atlantis myth derives from this event. His paper is not published in English until 1969. Many modern scientists accept Thera as a possible Atlantis; however, we shall see that Plato’s description is not a good match with Thera.

1954: L. Sprague de Camp first publishes Lost Continents, a Dover classic. However, De Camp is probably better known for his science fiction writing about “Conan: the Barbarian.” De Camp is a firm skeptic when it comes to Atlantis. He flatly states that Plato made up the story. Interestingly, he also says that Wagner’s Continental Drift Theory is “very doubtful.” (A 1970 edition, however, corrected this statement.)

1973: Geologist Dorothy Vitaliano writes Legends of the Earth and includes a chapter on Atlantis. She correctly points out that there is nowhere in the Atlantic Ocean that Atlantis could have existed. An excellent scientific book, even though somewhat dated geologically.

1974: James Bramwell writes Lost Atlantis, perhaps one of the most rational and balanced accounts of the controversy ever published. Though parts of it are dated, his book often amazes one with in its insight and depth.

1975: Indiana University hosts a panel discussion “Atlantis: Fact or Fiction,” including several notable scholars. While most of them dismiss the Atlantis story as pure fiction, John V. Luce (Professor of Classics, Dublin University) presents the view that Plato’s Atlantis story is part fiction, part fact, and based on ancient legends.

1960s-1970s: seismologist A. G. Galanopoulos, another Greek, also tries to link “Atlantis” to the volcano on the island of Thera. He claims that an error in translation made all numbers in Plato’s text multiplied by 10, and that this is why Thera is ten times smaller than Plato described. This “ten error” has been effectively refuted by scholars (Vitaliano, Luce). Also, there are many other mismatches between Thera and Atlantis (Vitaliano).

1992-present: William Lauritzen, the author of this text, based on his study of oceanography, geology, mythology, and religion, develops and presents the idea that periodic massive explosion-eruptions of the volcano Krakatau, on the Sunda Shelf between Sumatra and Java, may have developed into the legend that eventually became the Atlantis story. Mr. Lauritzen first publicly stated his hypothesis on a newsgroup in 1995.