Case file · Folklore / legend
Plato places Atlantis beyond the Pillars of Hercules
In the dialogues Timaeus and Critias (about 360 BC) Plato described Atlantis, a great island power beyond the Strait of Gibraltar that sank into the sea in a single day and night, 9,000 years before Solon.
360 BCE · 35.50, -12.00 · status: legend
The account
Plato said the story came from Egyptian priests through Solon. It has since been placed in almost every ocean and on most continents. Position approximate (the Atlantic beyond the strait).
The sceptical view
Most classicists read Atlantis as Plato's own moral fable about a proud empire; no sunken continent exists in the Atlantic, whose floor is young oceanic crust.
Connections in the atlas
- Atlantis sinks in a day and a night
- Donnelly's Atlantis on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
- Spartel Bank as Atlantis
- The Black Sea deluge hypothesis
- Pavlopetri, the oldest drowned town
- The Azores 'pyramid'
- Thonis-Heracleion found under Abu Qir Bay