tested with Google Earth

A report

by Walter Hain

 The Greek philosopher   Platon.  

From the Greek philosopher Platon (427 to 347 BC), we believe to know that already millennia before our time bill a technical culture existed ones those Atlantis was called. Since almost two one half millennia may puzzle scholars and writers next to it around. The ones take the story Platon´s as a bare allegory (a parable) while the others are convinced, that Atlantis existed in actual fact. They let Atlantis emerge again and again, in various places and at different times. Thousands publications were already published in different languages - the most ones in the last hundred seventy years.

Platon (also Plato) was a pupil of Sokrates (470 to 399 BC) and came from a distinguished noble family. He dedicated itself whole the philosophy. Already in youth years he wrote tragedies and he also studied the lesson of Pythagoras (Pythagoras of Samos 570 to 510 BC), which regarded number and measure as being of all things and which embossed the famous pythagorae theorem. After several adventurous trips to Egypt, Italy and Sicily, he attended to the philosophical teaching activity. The "ideas" are the heart of his lesson, that he as the eternal archetypes everything ends of be understands. Its supporters called themselves "Platonist" and its lesson is in by which 35 are received conversations, represented in dialogs. He wrote the story of Atlantis, which is  important for us to, probably in the years 365 to 354 BC in age of 62 to 73 years, in the dialogs ""Timaios" (Timaeus) and "Critias".

He describes an ideal state in these two dialogs and he leaves behind with it for Critias the younger one that speaks to Sokrates: "So learn, Sokrates, a really strange but quite true history as she one Solon, the wisest among the sieves, told has. He was indeed, known how, a relative and familiar friend of my great-grandfather Dropides as he too even repeat in its poems says; my grandfather however told Critias he in the case of some occasion, as it these as aged in turn me would inform, that it much before age admirable actions accomplished by our state would represent those take through the length of time and the fall of mankind in oblivion were ;.."(Timaios 20e).

Critias the younger one refers on it, that it "as a whole nine thousand years here are", as "before the Delta", that you (the Greeks) "columns of the Heracles" mentions (today the Street of Gibraltar, Spain) it was an island that was "larger than Libya and Asia together". It would then come in in an Atlantic quarrel power which could be turned away successfully by  the Greeks, that would be an overwhelming action of the Greeks because Atlantis was a powerful empire and had a great quarrel power. The island Atlantis by "enormous earthquakes and inundations" ought later, still 9000 years ago, "during a bad day and a bad night... have sunk in the Ocean" (Timaios 25d). Libya and Asia together in old Greece means about the size of North Africa today.

The god Poseidon (Bronce statue, National Museum, Athens).

When the Gods took the whole world through the lot in posession, Poseidon fell for the Greek sea God - as Critias the younger one reported - the island Atlantis to. The God settled his descendants which he create with a mortal woman there. The island is described as follows: "A plain was due to the sea, for instance in the middle of the whole island; one says the most beautiful one of all plains would be they and from ample fertility. At the edge of this plain, about fifty stages towards the interior of the island to, raised for itself an altogether low mountain" (Critias 113c). Those plain  formed "at the big and whole one, a long oblong; where the pages did not just run, they were straightened by a ditch which one had dug everywhere. The ditch was dug a Phletron deep; his width conducted everywhere a stadium, and since he moved be all around the plain, a length of ten thousand stages resulted". Therefore, the whole plain had a volume of ten thousand stages and it contained channels, the water absorbed by the mountains in which and guided into the sea was. These channels were "cut in straight direction of about hundred feet of width into the plain, those ended in the (large) ditch in the region of the sea again and hundred stages were removed from each other", (Critias 118cde).

From these information, we can reconstruct the size of the plain of Atlantis very precisely. The stadium (stage) is an old Greek way measure and was 160 meters and late (e.g. during the Olympic Games) 192 meters long in former times - therefore on average 176 meters: it becomes generally however with specified 184 meters. Accordingly, the plain with a length of 3000 stages, a width of 2000 stages and a volumne of 10,000 stages, was about 552 kilometers long and 368 kilometers broad.

In the south, at the end of the plain, to the sea to, was the mother city of Atlantis, which Critias the younger one describes as follows: "They first bridged the water rings around the old mother city and cleared with it a way outwards and back to the royal palace. They dug up from the sea a pierce from three Phletren at width, hundred feet at depth and fifty stages (50) at the length up to the utmost ring and cleared on this way from the sea to it an entrance like to a port where they opened the emptying far enough that the biggest ships could also arrive." The other rings broke it through, "namely so far, that an individual Trieres could move from a water ring to the others and they roofed the transition." From the sea to usual was the biggest belt; "he measured three stages (3) at width and the subsequent earth belt was equally broad (3) and from the two nearest, the water ring was broad two stages (2) and the dry one in turn resemble as the fluid one in front of it (2); the ring which ran directly in the middle around the island measured a stadium (1) finally. The island on that the royal palace was had a diameter of five stages (5). This island and the rings around the bridge, it conducted its width a Phletre, surrounded they from both pages with a stone wall and constructed ones on the bridges towers and gates, everywhere where the transitions from the sea were " (Critias 115c to 116a;). I inserted the numbers for the better sense. A Triere (Trireme) was a Greek ship with three strings of paddles on both sides. A Phletre (Phletron) is a sixth of one stage (stadium), about 30 meters.

We can also calculate precisely the size of the mother city of Atlantis that measured 127 stages at the diameter from this (50 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 2.5  times 2 = 127) therefore an equivalent of for instance 23.3 kilometers. Platon has Critias the younger one reported that the buildings of the middle island partially was colored and on the other hand they were formed with different foreign currencies of stone "in colored colors from nothings as games". The wall that ran around the external ring was coated "in its whole vicinity" with ore, the inner wall with tin and the one around the castle in the middle with gold copper ore excessive. The temple of Poseidon was a stadium long and three Phletren broad, the interior of the castle had a little barbaric appearance and golden ornamented columns were set up and the God as a car driver with six winged horses. The statue was so large that it osculated the ceiling and it was surrounded by hundred nereides, riding on dolphins (Kritias 116e).

This fantastic empire, this wonderful island, attempted as one of the first in modern times the American newspaper publisher and politician Ignatius Donelly to be detected. He released a wave of Atlantis investigations in 1882 and he was of the opinion that a large island  "in the Atlantic ocean compared to the Mediterranean Delta once which the remains of an Atlantic continent in the Antiquity" have existed.  Donelly interpreted the similarities of the buildings on this side of the Atlantic and on the other side of the Atlantic as a indication of a common origin on Atlantis. The new Greek writer I. Kampanakis drews the island Atlantis as a sunken "bridge continent" between the old and the new world. The grandson of the Troja discoverer Heinrich Schliemann, Paul Schliemann, had published a card in the year 1912, on what is to be seen Atlantis on the dolphin back, the average Atlantic threshold on the ocean ground. The jesuit pater Athanasius Kircher, projected in his "Mundus subterraneus", in the year 1665, a rough draft with his "Insula Atlantis", which is for instance there, where itself the contemporary Azores islands. Also Otto Muck was one of the most important Atlantis researchers, which also represented the Azores hypothesis in the fifties of the 20th century. This place comes in actual fact nearest to the description of Platon.

The American Lewis Spence represented in 1925 in its book "Atlantis in America" the opinion, that this fabulous continent consisted of several islands, where existed the biggest near America, in the contemporary field of the Antilles. The Spain Francesco López Gómara already regarded in the year 1553, soon after the discovery of America through Colombus (1492), this continent as "the whole opposite mainland", that Platon describes. Too others and Charles Berlitz also followed this opinion; he sees the mysterious "Bermuda triangle" in this area, wherever in mysterious manner ships and airplanes may disappear. In its book "The Mystery of Atlantis" of 1974 Berlitz came to the opinion, that "the Bahamas, Cuba and Florida before the end of the last Ice Age, before the oceans increased after fusion of the polar ice, a landmass were". Ruins which refer to Atlantis should supposedly exist under water at the Bimini islands. Nevertheless these "ruins" have a natural origin.

Left hand image: The plain of Atlantis. "Meer" means Ocean, "Gebirge" means Mountains.

Almost everywhere where in the last centuries ruins were found, was immediately written for Atlantis - especially if there are ruins in coast proximity below the sea level. The archeologist Adolf Schulten has identified Spain with Atlantis, where the contemporary city Gadiz is, in Portugal, the former Tarschisch or Tartessos lie, the mother city of Atlantis, "the true Poseidonis", it should have been. The former directress of Anglo-Ibero-American school for archaeology, E. With Wishaw, means in her book "Atlantis in Andalusia" that the old Tartessos is possibly in a buried manner under the streets of Sevilla. She has discovered ruins of an old temple into nine meters of depth. Ms. Wishaw took Tartessos as a colony of Atlantis however only.

In the fifties of the last century the North German clergyman Juergen Spanuth whireld up some dust, as he represented his opinion in 1953 in his book "Das enträtselte Atlantis", the mother city of Atlantis might be on the northern sea island Helgoland, close to the coast of Schleswig Holstein. The "Basileia with its radii of 50 stages (= 9.2 km), a diameter of 100 stages (18.4 km), fits exactly into the field between the rock massif of Helgoland and the old course of the Hever", according to Spanuth. With Basileia is meant the mother city of Atlantis.

   The mother city of Atlantis.

While some searched for the island and/or for the Kontinet in Italy, South Africa, northern Africa for Atlantis, and searched it even on Ceylon, were already many a little closer to the target and would look up according to possible models of Atlantis in the area of the Aegaeis.  Between 1450 and 1500 BC a tremendous natural catastrophe happened that sinking almost a whole island let - it concerned the island Thera and/or Santorin. A tremendous outbreak then almost destroyed completely the island so that a fragment of the former island exists today only. The representatives of this theory, the Greek seismologist A. G. Galanopoulos, the Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos and the two Americans Edwin S. Ramage and John V. Luce, went out from that, that Platon would be mistaken in the case of his numerical data and itself the Atlantis catastrophe it happened in reality 900 and not 9000 years before the Greek philosoph has written down his dialogs Kritias and Timaios. The Greek philosopher would interpret the Egyptian sources on what the Atlantis story should go back wrongly. The island Thera and/or Santorin might be to be compared with Atlantis, as the supporters of this theory means.

However, all these theories removed themselves to the one or other manner in the air. An island and/or a continent which would correspond to the information of Platon is up to now not found and there are strong indications for it that this is for ever so. One keep up the Greek philosopher that examined mathematics of a Pythagoras not assume he specified wrong numbers. He knew precisely why and how he applies his data. Platon ladled from the Iranian world teach after what "the world materialized 9000 years ago and then a paradisiac state was there. After Iranian introduction, 3000 years passed by for the disaster and annihilation of the first world. Platon on the other hand does not express itself so precisely. He speaks of much human being ages of a paradisiac state and after that a gradual degradation followed finally" (Brandenstein W.: Atlantis, 1951).

Paradisiac states and periods passed by for a long time happen in the case of Platon in some millennia and not in few centuries. That also show his remark in the Timaios (22d), dating back after what "the varied movement of the celestial bodies orbiting the earth" the long one events around Atlantis should engage. Therefore, he means clearly 9000 years, therefore precisely 9354 to 9365 BC starting from the record of his two dialogs.

Therefore, Atlantis is a pure fiction of Platon; the most historians and archaeologists go out today of it. The name Atlantis comes from Platon themselves. It defaults an old Greek word "antlos" what means the "splashing, in motion (sea) water" and would be allowed prae-hellenic. It makes whom one from it the word form "antl-ant", that can soon become "atlant" because the two "n" disturb themselves mutually as the word "lanterna" that became "laterna". That automatically shows that Atlantis is the island that "in the splashing sea water stands". The "splashing sea water", the "Oceanos", was the sea converting the entire world then: the Atlantic sea as cards from this time by 500 BC (e.g. of Hecataios) shows (Brandenstein, W.: Atlantis, 1951). In that cards are also clearly drawn in the "columns of Heracles" on the same place as the Street of Gibraltar is today.

   The Greek world 500 BC.

The situation specified very clearly Platon with "before the columns of the Heracles", the contemporary Street of Gibraltar. Therefore in the "Oceanos" where the Azores are for instance there. Therefore, Atlantis was, after Platon, not ""opposite the columns of the Heracles" nor on the other places indicated by some Atlantis researchers." In the Greek one (Alto Greek), in the language in that they were written the two dialogs Critias and Timaios, it is called clearly pro toi stomatoz; what means in a translated manner "BEFORE the Delta" that you (the Greeks) call "columns of the Heracles" (H. Grabowsky in Weyl, R.: Atlantis entraetselt?, Atlantis unraveled?, 1953)

The Atlantis story of Platon is so fantastic and fascinating that further will also be dealt probably again as a good stuff for books and movies. It is like "Utopia" of Thomas Morus or Francis Bacon´s "Nova Atlantis" who also presents blissful conditions of states. The French writer Voltaire (1694 to 1778) already means that one would have Atlantis may have devise, if it would not already have done Platon. It is no doubt, it will give again and again further some people those believe, that into Platons Atlantis plugs a grain thruth - however, they will be disappointed historically. Atlantis is a story with parables and experiences from the world at that time known of the Greeks. Platon conceived an ideal state however, he failed in the final analysis. He has broken off his story in the year 354 BC off suddenly and one continued no more.

If you like, you can test Atlantis with Google Earth by clicking on the menu achieve "Tools" than "Lineal" an than go to "Kilometer" and then go to the mother city you like (e. g. Thera) make a short click on the left one mouse key draw a line upright to 368 or horizontal to 552 and click again briefly. So you can see the original size of the plain of Atlantis as Platon describes. You can doe that with any city around the world. Don´t forget to draw the map to North.

Some Coordinates:

Thera: 36°25'11.99"N  25°25'48.00"E (Thira, Greece).

Gadiz: 36°31'47.79"N  6°17'32.67"W (Cadiz, Spain).

Azores Islands: 36°31'40.10"N  27°50'58.00"W

(click on minus "-" and see the Atlantic back enlarged).

Helgoland: 54°10'48.76"N   7°53'20.47"E (Helgoland, Germany).

Some underwater ruins (perhaps?):

Andros-Islands, Bahamas:

25° 9'52.52"N 78° 0'45.75"W 

25°10'33.15"N 78° 3'5.80"W 

25° 9'30.80"N 78° 5'2.08"W 

Great Bahamas Island:

26°33'29.90"N 78°30'20.80"W 

Neukaledonia:

20°22'56.00"S 164° 7'39.00"E

Marisma de Hinojos, Spain:

(natural rectangular structure, see the BBC report ):

36°57'59.99"N 6°26'58.98"W

False traces in the Atlantic:

(Ship tracks from Sonar orting >> ,see THE SUN report ):

31° 21'16.75"N 24° 23'25.15"W

Walter Hain, November 2006.

Sources:

Books:

Berlitz, Charles: Das Atlantis-Rätsel (The Atlantis Riddle), Vienna-Hamburg, Germany 1976.

      -"-             : The Mystery of Atlantis, USA 1974.

Brandenstein, Wilhelm (Hrsg.): Atlantis, Vienna, Austria 1951.

Donelly, Ignatius: Atlantis die vorsintflutliche Welt, Esslingen, Germany 1911.

         -"-            : Atlantis, the Antediluvian World, London, United Kingdom 1882.

         -"-            :                        -"-                       , New York, USA 1949.

Galanopoulos, A. Georg; Bacon, Edward: Die Wahrheit über Atlantis (The Truth about Atlantis),

Munich, Germany 1977.

Hain, Walter: Irrwege der Geschichte (Wrong Ways in the History), Vienna, Austria 1981.

Henning, Richard: Von rätselhaften Ländern (From mysterious Countries), Munich, Germany 1925.

Kircher, Athanasius: Mundus subterraneus, Biel, Germany 1665.

Luce, John V.: Atlantis, Bergisch Gladbach, Germany 1970.

     -"-      : The End of Atlantis, London, United Kingdom 1969.

Muck, Otto: Alles über Atlantis (All from Atlantis), Düsseldorf-Vienna, Germany-Austria 1976.

Platon: Spätdialoge II, Zürich-Munich, Swiss-Germany1974.

  -"-   : Timaios und Kritias, Leipzig, Germany 1942.

Ramage, Edwin S. (Hrsg.): Atlantis - Mythos, Rätsel, Wirklichkeit? (Atlantis - Mythos, Riddle,

Reality?), Frankf. a. M., Germany 1979.

Schulten, Adolf: Tartessos, Hamburg, Germany 1922.

  -"-       : Atlantis, Berlin, Germany 1930.

Spanuth, Jürgen: Das enträtselte Atlantis (The unraveled Atlantis), Stuttgart, Germany 1953.

         -"-          : Die Atlanter, Tübingen, Germany 1976.

Spence, Lewis: Atlantis in America, New York, USA 1925.

        -" -          ; The Problem of Atlantis, New York, USA 1925.

Weyl, Richard (Hrsg.): Atlantis enträtselt? (Atlantis unraveled?), Kiel, Germany 1953.

Internet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokrates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critias_%28dialogue%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timaios

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by Walter Hain

Site constructed by Walter Hain in November 2006. Revised February 2009. - Contact