that makes no sense either. Islands dont sink without warning.

There could have been some sort of massive geological disturbance that caused it to sink without any warning beforehand, so when it sank they may have panicked and tried to leave but couldn't because I'm sure that the ocean would've been too violent for them to get off the island in that point in time.

I disagree Kaz.

I think Atlantis is something like the fabled "land of Punt" to which Queen Hatshepsut (Egypt 18th Dynasty) is famous for having sent an expedition.

Atlantis and Punt were both ancient civilizations that were at the edges of the known world, at the time.

People knew they were out there because things were coming from there (trade goods, etc...), but it was sort of sketchy as to where exactly "there" was.

But both civilizations vanished long before classical Greek philosophers were telling stories about them.

Plato, Aristotle, and others are making use of an actual historical event, just toward their own purposes. Sort of like the Jews and later the Christians did with ancient catistrophic flood mythology.

It's completly possible, and even likely, that an ancient "advanced" civilization on the scale of the Minoans or Etruscans developed on one of the volcanic islands of the Mediterranean and was destroyed in a natural catastrophe, just like the Minoans or citizens of Pompeii.

I was about to mention Pompeii myself soot.

I think it's unfortunate that we don't know for sure whether or not Atlantis did actually exist. If they were really superior to other cultures at the time then there would be a lot of really good info to learn from them if we were able to research on site.

I don't think it would have been big enough to be considered a continent, but from theoretical maps I've seen it looks like it would have been just around a third of the size of Australia.



It would actually be possible for an "island" to sink. If there was a large cavity under the island that were to "cave in" due to an earthquake or something, the entire island could "sink" within moments. We've seen similar occurrence on smaller scales when the earth shifts. The fact that it would be a very rare occurrence doesn't rule it out. Obviously if it were happening all the time the earth would have changed a lot over recorded history.

I think one of the biggest reasons that nobody has ventured deep into the ocean to look for it is the cost of such an expedition. Underwater technology isn't ready for such a deep journey yet and I'm not sure if it ever will be. At least not anything that would hold humans.

I think that it's possible that it existed at one point, though I can't really say fact or fiction.

I hope that one day someone leads a large scale expedition to find it, though, it would be really interesting if it was real.
Though it could have been like the Everworld series.

Yeah, I heard about that too. I can't remember the name, but they found a strange figure underwater that had evidence of being man made, but I doubt that's the Atlantis that we've heard of.


And the Atlantis that I saw on the History Channel wasn't a huge island in the Atlantic like Kaz's map. It was a small island with possible islands clustered around it in the Mediterranean. So an earthquake caused tsunami could've easily swallowed it up within a matter of hours, and they couldn't do a thing about it. So I don't think it actually sank, but rather got flooded with ash and water.

As for the history channel's atlantis, after I saw this thread, I went there and searched for atlantis and there's actual a small video clip there where they've found the remains of what they believe to be the palace of the lost atlantis because of the dating of the architecture and the way it's more advanced than other civilizations architecture at the time.

I thought that was fairly interesting, though I'd like to see the whole video in order to decide if I think they actually found part of Atlantis or not.

Aristotle's mantra was "the truth is what you say it is". If they were using this to their advantage, how does that exactly make you disagree with me in the fact/fiction dichotomy.

I don't much care if there's a theorhetical possibility that a civilization existed on an island somewhere and was lost. Firstly, we don't have geological evidence to support it was Atlantis. Secondly, we're talking about the existence of Atlantis specifically, following the description and of the nature that Plato himself described, not a hypothetical civilization that did in fact once exist but does not fulfill the terms that Plato used.

It was probably just an island that was lost to the sea with exaggerated stories.

I think that Atlantis once existed, although I don't have any solid proof.