A legendary island in the Atlantic west of Gibraltar, said by Plato to have been a utopia which sunk beneath the sea during an earthquake.
Some controversial theories have equated ancient Thera with Atlantis. Thera is a volcanic Greek island in the Aegean Sea which was devastated by a volcanic eruption in 1625 BCE. Until then it had been associated with the Minoan civilization on Crete.
The man who gave us the Bermuda Triangle and Noah's Ark [The lost ship of Noah : in search of the Ark at Ararat (New York: Putnam, 1987)] has also given us Atlantis: Charles Berlitz. The reader might want to check out Berlitz's Doomsday, 1999 A.D. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981). It comes complete with maps and drawings by J. Manson Valentine. But the serious investigator of the myth of Atlantis must read Ignatius Donnelly's Atlantis: the Antediluvian World (1882). He starts with the claim that Plato's myth is true history and "does little more than enumerate supposed evidence...."[Feder, p. 124] Nevertheless, Donnelly still has a following. Some of them have written to me telling me that this is the greatest book every written on Atlantis. Others, such as Kenneth L. Fedder, have ripped it to shreds. Naturally, we recommend the latter.
Atlantis is not just a lost continent. According to some, it was a place of advanced civilization and technology. Lewis Spence, a Scottish mythologist who used "inspiration" instead of scientific methods, attributes Cro-Magnon cave paintings in Europe to displaced Atlanteans. [Feder, p. 130] Helena Blavatsky and the theosophists of the late 19th century invented the notion that the Atlanteans had invented airplanes and explosives and grew extraterrestrial wheat. The theosophists also invented Mu , a lost continent in the Pacific Ocean. [Feder, p. 131] Then, of course, there was Edgar Cayce, who claimed to have psychic knowledge of Atlantean texts which assisted him in his prophecies and cures. And now there is J.Z. Knight's channeled spirit from Atlantis, Ramtha.
Unfortunately for the New Age Atlanteans, there is no archaeological or geological evidence for either Atlantis or Mu. To paraphrase Whitehead, the belief in Atlantis, the ancient and great civilization, is just another footnote to Plato.
Atlantis, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh (New York: New American Library, 1988).
de Camp, L. Sprague, Lost Continents: the Atlantis Theme (New York: Ballantine, 1975).
Feder, Kenneth L. Frauds, Mysteries and Myths, ch. 8, (Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1990).
Gardner, Martin. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1957), ch. 14.
Pellegrino, Charles. Unearthing Atlantis - An Archaelogical Odyssey, (New York: Random House, 1991).
Vitaliano, Dorothy B. Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origens (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1973).