Collective Research

First Debate

Gaps in the theory / missing links

Sources/citations

Minecraft recreation of Richat-Atlantis

Opera: Atlas Chained

Documentary brainstorm

Atlantis Together Documentary Critiques

Structure of Documentary

Explore

Order of transmission of the story

Plato's dialogue context

Oral transmission Cureotis festival

PLATOS TEXT IS FRANKENSTEIN OF SEVERAL EMBELLISHED SOURCES BUT CAN STILL BE REVERSE ENGINEERED BACK TO THE ORIGINAL HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Plato mentioned atlantis to demonstrate ancient athens functioning irl

atlantis moral tale unlikely because ancient athens also destroyed (Thorwald Franke)

WHY ATLANTIS IS NOT A FICTION

1 - THE MYTH OF ATLANTIS BEING A MYTH

Since the time of the publishing of Plato’s Timaeus and Critias in the 4th century BC, Plato has been mocked by sceptics who claimed Atlantis to have been fictitious. Most significantly, this view was defended by Plato’s student, Aristotle (Ley, 1967). In 1882, the lawyer, politician and author Ignatius Donnelly published his book ‘Atlantis: The Antediluvian world’ (Donnely, 1882). The book contained many elaborate speculations, leaps of faith and overall pseudo-science, however it did pioneer some ideas that this video essay will prove to be true. His book gained world fame, and inspired many flawed amateur attempts at locating the lost city, as well as tickling the imagination of many people, and inspiring various fantasy and sci-fi stories, such as Disney’s 2001 movie: Atlantis, the lost empire. In her book ‘Plato Prehistorian’, Mary Settegast points out that Donnelly’s rather flawed Atlantis hypotheses were conceived too early, before the invention of some crucial archaeological and geological research technology, and more rigid scientific methods (Settegast, 1987, p.18). This bad first impression of Atlantis in academic historiography created a strong association between Atlantis and pseudoscience, myth and fantasy, thus making the mere utterance of the name Atlantis a risk of being banished to the fringe of archaeology.

Because of this unfortunate mythification in modern popular culture, the name Atlantis has gained the unjust association with a highly technologically advanced lost ancient empire that now lies at the bottom of the ocean, optionally still inhabited by the Atlanteans who evolved or adapted to survive underwater. Ironically, in the same sentence in which Plato states that Atlantis was swallowed up by the sea, he continues to say that the water has since retreated, and created a shoal of mud which is impassable by boat:

One grievous day and night befell them, when (...) the island of Atlantis (...) was swallowed up by the sea and vanished; wherefore also the ocean at that spot has now become impassable and unsearchable, being blocked up by the shoal mud which the island created as it settled down (Timaeus 25d)

Furthermore, Plato never stated that the Atlanteans were impossibly technologically advanced, let alone possessed more complicated technology than we possess today. As we will see later in this video, Plato claimed that the Atlanteans possessed weapons of iron, spears, arches, wooden ships, horses, chariots, defensive walls, towers, gates, temples, statues, simple stone houses, bronze, tin, gold, metallurgy, ivory, dyed clothing, mining, logging, river engineering, mythology, writing, social classes, royal imperial politics, seafaring trade, organised military warfare, cattle, orchards, plant products, seeds and foodstuffs. This is indeed quite impressive for a neolithic-bronze age society, but definitely not impossible to have developed under the circumstances of the then humid Atlantic Sahara during the Nouakchottian, which will be described later. It is indeed quite advanced, when compared to many other peoples around the world at this time, who were still living rather basic, nomadic lives as hunter-gatherers. One would expect this kind of advancement only somewhere around the Bronze age, but as I will demonstrate in this video, Atlantis was many millenia ahead of later Bronze age nations who reached comparable heights of development. This is also what created academic unwillingness to accept the idea of a civilisation with this degree of technology and organisation in such an early period.

Plato’s account of the city also mentions the involvement of some Greek gods and Atlantean demi-god twin kings, adding to the mythological character. As I will argue in this video, this is not the result of the city and its story being fictional, but rather of its memory having survived through a long oral and written tradition of 9600 years before reaching Plato, who then ended up to be the only surviving author who reproduced the story, allowing it to be passed onto us, but since then his account has been wrongly taken to be metaphorical or straight out fictional. The marvellous size and advancement of this city, its supposed divine founding, its catastrophic destruction after the degradation of the minds of its citizens, and the supposed old age of the city all contributed to its misunderstanding as myth rather than fact. It is because of this prejudice of the story being a fiction, that nearly all modern historians don’t even consider seriously looking into the case at all, thus making them miss out on some abundant and obviously convincing pieces of evidence (Janssens, 2023).

Neither is the situation helped by the fact that there have been more than 100 proposed locations of Atlantis, which all fell short in some sense, weakening the academic trust in the idea that the city did once exist, and creating a wide-spread stigma (Wikimedia Foundation, 2023b). To make matters even worse, the Atlantists who defend the position that Atlantis was real, often suffer from various problems. To begin with, most Atlantists are not trained archaeologists or ancient history scholars, but rather they are often amateurs, from various professional backgrounds, ranging from electricians and computer scientists to authors and economists (O’Connell, 2023). Because of the famously legendary status of Atlantis, many different Atlantists are often quite competitive, over-protective of their own ideas and unwilling or unable to systematically collaborate. Some Atlantists have been developing their theories for many years or even decades, and have sometimes poured vast amounts of time, money, faith and expectation into their research. While this in itself is noble and laudable, it also commonly creates situations of sunk cost fallacy, where the sheer investment into the idea psychologically prevents Atlantists from facing the possibility that they might be wrong, and therefore not fairly and critically assessing the flaws of their own theories or counter-arguments to them, or other alternative Atlantis theories. On social platforms, there is also quite a bit of sensationalism and often a lack of fact-checking or source-citation.

2 - ACADEMIC PARADIGM SHIFTS

The few academics who do respond to Atlantis claims are often quite mocking and patronising in their tone, which is understandable if we consider the prevalent stigma and the vast amount of poor pseudo-archaeology, however this also often leads them to be too confident in dismissing Atlantis altogether, without having done their own independent reading of Plato or fairly considering some evidence and arguments that point to conclusions that fall outside of their present paradigm.

Although academic scholars are generally open-minded and constantly try to challenge the mainstream consensus by examining counterarguments and new archaeological evidence, there still remains a certain degree of bias towards the reinforcement of the consensus paradigm. This consensus worldview is slowly and meticulously constructed and refined, but also has the effect of programming scholars to interpret new data in a way that doesn’t violate the consensus model too much. When it encounters a piece of evidence that vastly contradicts the current model, it is often explained away in a way that does fit the old model, and the seeming contradiction that the new evidence poses is attributed to coincidence, myth, psychological bias, etcetera. We know from the history of science, however, that new theories that end up being correct, are initially met with harsh criticism, disbelief and sometimes even censorship. One of the reasons for this might be the fact that scholars often rely on external and university funding for their often expensive research, as well as having to keep themselves afloat financially and their career within the academy, making them biased towards researching and defending ideas that are well established and in which they can safely solve more specific and delineated sub-tasks, rather than ideas that are wildly controversial and paradigm-challenging. Two famous examples are the introduction of the idea of heliocentrism by Copernicus, in a society that up to then was geocentric, and the emergence of the evolution theory in an academic climate that still held the belief of creationism. I claim that the paradigm shift from Atlantis as a myth or parable, to Atlantis as a real mesolithic West-African pre-agricultural hub, is a historic event of great significance. For this reason, I ask the sceptical audience for their temporary suspension of disbelief, and to judge only after having assessed all the claims that will be presented in this video essay, and not before.

One previous paradigm shift which bears the most similarity to the discovery of Atlantis, was the discovery of the ancient city of Troy. This legendary city which is described in Homer’s Iliad had long been viewed by many as a fictitious and mythical place because the story that tells of it contains gods and demigods, and there was no known exact location where the city might have been situated (Lesley & Villing, 2019). If an academic archaeologist would have proposed to excavate a site which they claimed was the location of Troy, they would have potentially been ridiculed and might never have received funding for an excavation. In 1871, the real city of Troy was excavated by the rich German tradesman Heinrich Schliemann. He visited Turkey and Greece, and funded a team to excavate a hillside which he believed to be the location of Troy, a different place from where some academics at the time hypothesised the city to be located. The site was rather peculiar, because in the story, Troy was located at sea, however this place was four kilometres from the coast. It lies on a hill in a flat plain, which turned out to be the dried up seabed resulting from the lowering of the sea level since the time of the story. This fact is supported by the discovery of various sea-shells and sediment around the area. The ancient city was identified and burnt wood was found, matching the fact that, in the story, the city had been burnt down by the Greeks in the Trojan war. In fact, several layers were found, belonging to different cities that were built on top of each other in the same location throughout time, before having been abandoned. Sadly, because Schliemann was so keen to uncover the city, and he led the excavation by himself, parts of the ruins were destroyed by explosive excavation methods, making some evidence lost forever.

3 - PLATO’S CREDIBILITY

Before I endeavour to prove that the Richat structure was Atlantis, I must first demonstrate that Plato in fact intended his tale to be taken as a real, historical account, rather than a fiction or a mere allegory. The single oldest and most detailed source mentioning Atlantis is found in the late writing of the Greek Philosopher Plato’s, in his joint dialogues Timaeus and Critias (translation employed in this essay: Bury & Thorwald, 1929). He often wrote his philosophical and other ideas in the form of fictional dialogues between real historic figures, discussing different philosophical topics (Kraut, 2022). The texts of the dialogues Timaeus and Critias describe the individuals taking turns in reciting their thoughts and memories on metaphysics, political philosophy and the ancient history of the Greek peoples. At the beginning, Critias gives a brief outline of his story of Atlantis which is to follow, but then Timaeus is the first to hold his full speech, which he does on the metaphysical nature of reality, by presenting a Pythagorean creation myth, which is most likely the fruit of Plato’s own philosophical system, the theory of forms and the immortality of the soul. See my other video on metaphysics, where I give a rigorous philosophical reasoning to demonstrate that this basic Platonic model is in fact very close to how our reality most probably actually functions.

A common argument given by those who believe that Plato invented the story, is the claim that Plato never directly expresses his own beliefs through the characters of the dialogue, but rather only writes what those individual characters believed. These sceptics take this to argue that Plato only intended the story to be the personal belief of Critias, but not of Plato himself. This argument, however, is rather weak, since anyone who has ever read any of Plato’s dialogues will agree that quite the contrary is true: Plato often places his own ideas into the mouths of historical individuals, often resulting in long monologues of Plato’s own thinking, recited by the character in the fictional dialogue, which from time to time is interspersed with short replies of agreement from the other participants of the fictional dialogue. In some instances, Plato even makes some characters utter ideas which those historical individuals themselves would probably never even have actually believed in. Plato generally uses the format of fictional dialogues as a vehicle for his own ideas: the ideas might be fictional, but the ideas presented in them are most often not.

In fact, some of Plato’s other dialogues even contain references to actual historical events, places or people. Even the Timaeus contains some references to real historical contexts, as shall be discussed shortly: the sources of the story as mentioned in the dialogues, the statesman Solon who lived in the 6th century BC, and the Egyptian temple complex at Sais, are verified to have actually existed (Stanton, 1990) (Dodson & Hilton, 2004). For example, in another dialogue, ‘Apology’, Plato mentions the Thirty Tyrants, a pro-Spartan oligarchy which took control of Athens in 404 BCE (Plato & Stokes: Apology 24a), and in the dialogue ‘Menexenus’, he alludes to the Persian Wars with the Greek city-states in the 5th century BCE (Plato & Shawyer: Menexenus 242a-b).

The argument that Plato probably did not invent the story himself is further corroborated by the fact that he emphasises multiple times that the story is historical fact, and not fiction. Perhaps he anticipated that his audience might take the story to be mythological or allegorical, making him feel the need to clarify repeatedly that the tale was factual and historical.

Listen then, Socrates, to a tale which, though passing strange, is yet wholly true, as Solon, (20e) the wisest of the Seven, once upon a time declared. Now Solon—as indeed he often says himself in his poems—was a relative and very dear friend of our great-grandfather Dropides; and Dropides told our grandfather Critias as the old man himself, in turn, related to us. (Timaeus 20d-e)

Come now, what was this exploit described by Critias, following Solon's report, as a thing not verbally recorded, although actually performed by this city long ago? (Timaeus 21a)

Tell us (...) what Solon related and how, and who were the informants who vouched for its truth. (Timaeus 21d)

Hence it is, for these reasons, that what is here preserved is reckoned to be most ancient. (Timaeus 22e)

Upon hearing this, Solon said that he marvelled, and with the utmost eagerness requested the priest to recount for him in order and exactly all the facts about those citizens of old. (Timaeus 23d)

It seems incredible that it should be so large as the account states, (...) but nonetheless we must report what we heard. (Critias 118c)

One of the most common arguments of Atlantis sceptics revolves around the idea that Plato only invented Atlantis to serve as an allegory, a moral tale to warn of the dangers of a nation’s pride and materialism. Although Plato did indeed employ literary tools such as allegory, myth and analogy to explain philosophical ideas, the problem with the claim that the story of Atlantis was such a fiction is that only the very last section of the Critias deals with the moral degradation of the Atlanteans and their demise as a punishment from the gods (Critias 120d-121c). The vast majority of the text that deals with Atlantis and the Ancient Athenians is spent by meticulously enumerating various details and facts about their cultures, armies, mythologies, cities, the geology of their lands, and Plato even provides numerous specific geographic markers, measurements and demographics. Later in this video essay, we will use all these particular details to prove that the Richat structure matches all of the descriptions provided by Plato. All of these specific contingencies would not have served any purpose in the context of an allegory. Seeing the large amount of text dedicated to such specific and detailed descriptions, relative to a very short final section dealing with the moral degradations of the Atlanteans, it seems improbable that Plato was just trying to ‘paint the scenery’ of some fictional, allegorical state. Amazingly, Plato himself actually states in the Timaeus that the story of Atlantis is not a fable:

The fact that it is no invented fable but genuine history is all-important. (Timaeus 26e)

How more explicit of a statement that Plato did not invent Atlantis do the sceptics want? I am not even making this up, and I invite anyone who is still not convinced to go and check these citations themselves. Interestingly, Plato did already invent a fictional ideal state once named ‘Magnesia’, in his last and longest dialogue ‘Laws’. Throughout the text, he develops a description of the political and cultural organisation of this city, but he explicitly mentions that it is purely his own invention, and never before actually carried out by any lawgiver (Plato, Schofield, Griffith; Laws, IV 722b-e). This clearly tells us that when Plato invented a fictional state for philosophical purposes, he would explicitly clarify this, but if he was describing an ancient historical city, he went out of his way to repeat many times in different ways the claim that the city was once real and not a fiction. Also, why should a historical intention and a moral intention preclude one another? Wouldn’t it have been possible for Plato to have wanted to mention the city as a historical fact, as well as commenting on the story of the city from a philosophical perspective to deduce some moral wisdom from their mistakes? In modern times this happens as well, when analysing the downfall of empires or famous individuals, we often reflect on what these historical events can teach us about our own problems and shortcomings in the present (Janssens, 2023).

4 - THE IDEAL STATE AND THE PANATHENAEA

Within the context of the dialogues, the island of Atlantis is initially mentioned because of a legendary war that was held between them and the mesolithic Athenians. The original focus, however, is not on Atlantis, but rather on Athens. This is because according to the text, the mesolithic Athenian state was organised in a fashion that bore great similarity to the hypothetical ideal utopian state which was sketched out earlier in the dialogue.

Yesterday, in fact, immediately after our return from you to the guest-chamber at Critias where we are lodging—aye, and earlier still, on our way there—we were considering these very subjects. (20d) Critias here mentioned to us a story derived from ancient tradition; and now, Critias, pray tell it again to our friend here, so that he may help us to decide whether or not it is pertinent to our prescribed theme. (Timaeus 20c-d)

You have now heard, Socrates, in brief outline, the account given by the elder Critias of what he heard from Solon; (25e) and when you were speaking yesterday about the [ideal] State and the citizens you were describing, I marvelled as I called to mind the facts I am now relating, reflecting what a strange piece of fortune it was that your description coincided so exactly for the most part with Solon's account. (Timaeus 25d-e)

Atlantis is only described in detail later in the text, in order to sketch the marvellous size and advancedness of the state whose army was defeated by the Ur-Athenians. During the dialogue, the Greek festival of Athena is referenced, as being the day on which the dialogue ceremonially takes place. For this reason, the characters of the dialogue deem the story fit for recounting at this festival, since it describes the greatness of their patron goddess who helped their ancestors to be victorious in battle against the Atlanteans. Most likely, Plato was referring to the so-called Panathenaea, a multi-day annual festival in ancient Athens, which was periodically celebrated at an even larger scale every four years, completely dedicated to the celebration of the Athenian patron goddess Athena (Shear, 2021). This tradition was alive and well during the time of Plato. In the dialogues, he alludes to the festival and the goddess as follows:

The exploits of this city in olden days, the record of which had perished through time and the destruction of its inhabitants, were great and marvellous, the greatest of all being one which it would be proper (21a) for us now to relate both as a payment of our debt of thanks to you and also as a tribute of praise, chanted as it were duly and truly, in honor of the Goddess on this her day of Festival. (Timaeus 20e-21a)

And the [ideal] city with its citizens which you described to us yesterday, as it were in a fable, (26d) we will now transport hither into the realm of fact; for we will assume that the city is that ancient city of ours [Athens], and declare that the citizens you conceived are in truth those actual progenitors of ours, of whom the priest told. In all ways they will correspond, nor shall we be out of tune if we affirm that those citizens of yours are the very men who lived in that age. (...) This story will be admirably suited to the festival of the Goddess which is now being held, because of its connection with her. (Timaeus 26a-e)

Then, in accordance with the word and law of Solon, I am to bring these before ourselves, as before a court of judges, and make them citizens of this State of ours, regarding them as Athenians of that bygone age whose existence, so long forgotten, has been revealed to us by the record of the sacred writings; and thenceforward I am to proceed with my discourse as if I were speaking of men who already are citizens and men of Athens. (Timaeus 27b)

Now as regards the numerous barbaric tribes and all the Hellenic nations that then existed, the sequel of our story, when it is, as it were, unrolled, will disclose what happened in each locality; but the facts about the Athenians of that age and the enemies with whom they fought we must necessarily describe first, at the outset,—the military power, that is to say, of each and their forms of government. And of these two we must give the priority in our account to the state of Athens. (Critias 109a)

What was related about our country [Athens] was plausible and true. (Critias 110d)

In her book ‘Plato: prehistorian’, Mary Settegast rightly remarks that it would have been impious for Plato to contrive a political fiction and put it in the mouth of Critias, who attributes the story to his grandfather, who received it from Solon himself, given the occasion of the dialogue, a celebration of Athena’s festival day (DNA Consultants, 2020). She comments:

It seems highly unlikely that Plato would have jeopardised his own reputation, that of his Academy, the credibility of the remainder of the Timaeus (which contains his views on the origin of the universe and the nature of man), and the standing of the deceased Solon, one of the most respected of Greek statesmen, with an exercise in pure fancy. Nor, on the celebration of Athena’s festival day, the setting of the two dialogues, would he have Critias offer to the goddess as ‘‘a just and truthful hymn of praise’’ (Timaeus 21a) an intentional misrepresentation of Athena’s own past history with the Greeks, for it is she who is said to have founded the Ur-Athenian society (Timaeus 23, Critias 109). (Settegast, 1987, p.18-19)

Having observed all these facts, I believe it is safe to conclude that, whether or not Atlantis ever existed, it is quite unlikely that Plato made it up, and rather it is most probable that Plato himself was convinced that the story was true. I hypothesise that the actual reason why the consensus around Atlantis became the view that Plato made it up, did not originate from any grounded philological argument about Plato’s literary intentions, but rather from the fact that the story sounded too marvellous to be true, the exact location of the city was unknown and there existed no other memory of it beside the tale brought forth by Solon. Sadly, this interpretation stuck with the academic community up to the present, making scholars almost unanimously and confidently dismiss the very idea of the existence of Atlantis, while never actually having critically read the source texts themselves (Janssens, 2023). Assuming that Plato was convinced of the historical facticity of the story of Atlantis, what was the source of the tale which he regarded as trustworthy?

5 - THE TRADITION OF THE RHAPSODES

Plato mentions that the story of Atlantis as recorded by Solon existed in Greece for a while as an oral tradition. In ancient Greek culture, this practice was performed by individuals known as rhapsodes, who recited epic poems such as those written down by Homer, in front of gathering crowds. From this word the modern word rhapsody is also derived. Rhapsodes were able to sing these long poems from memory, sometimes accompanied by a lyre, by using rhyme and rhythm, also known as metre, as a mnemonic tool (Emeriaud, Oszolak & Scott, 2021). If a sentence rhymed with the previous, and had the same rhythmic structure, it was significantly easier to memorise, just like how in our time the lyrics of songs are often easily memorable for these same reasons. Rhapsodes were known to have participated in recitation contests for prizes at religious festivals such as the Panathenaea, a tradition which was already well-established by the 5th century BC (Hesiod, 1966). Plato claims that such a rhapsode contest, in which the unfinished poems by Solon were recited, was responsible for transmitting the tale from ancient Egypt to him:

I will tell you: it is an old tale, and I heard it from a man not young. For indeed at that time, as he said himself, (21b) Critias was already close upon ninety years of age, while I was somewhere about ten; and it chanced to be that day of the Apaturia which is called “Cureotis.” The ceremony for boys which was always customary at the feast was held also on that occasion, our fathers arranging contests in recitation. So while many poems of many poets were declaimed, since the poems of Solon were at that time new, many of us children chanted them. (Timaeus 20d-21b)

So it was that, as Hermocrates has said, the moment I left your place yesterday I began to relate to them the story as I recollected it, (26b) and after I parted from them I pondered it over during the night and recovered, as I may say, the whole story. Marvellous, indeed, is the way in which the lessons of one's childhood “grip the mind,” as the saying is. For myself, I know not whether I could recall to mind all that I heard yesterday; but as to the account I heard such a great time ago, I should be immensely surprised if a single detail of it has escaped me. I had then the greatest pleasure and amusement in hearing it, (26c) and the old man was eager to tell me, since I kept questioning him repeatedly, so that the story is stamped firmly on my mind like the encaustic designs of an indelible painting. (Timaeus 26a-c)

Later in the text, when Critias is about to start recounting his tale, he utters a final prayer to the titaness Mnemosyne, the mythical mother of the muses from Greek mythology, who is responsible for memory (and not for the invention of fictional fables!) (Hesiod, Theogony 135).

In addition to the gods you mentioned I must call upon all the rest and especially upon Mnemosyne. For practically all the most important part of our speech depends upon this goddess; for if I can sufficiently remember and report the tale once told by the priests and brought hither by Solon, I am wellnigh convinced that I shall appear to the present audience to have fulfilled my task adequately. (Critias 108d)

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