The story of Atlantis

The story of Atlantis has been examined from a variety of perspectives, with some viewing the story as myth and some as history waiting to be proven true. For those who are going to try to prove the truth of Atlantis, though, the evidence they offer must be of a compelling nature to overcome skepticism and to demonstrate that what appears to be only an ancient morality tale has a basis in reality. Many of those who believe most strongly in the story of Atlantis as fact, however, do so as a matter of faith rather than because of any stringent historical or scientific analysis. They also may begin their investigation not by asking whether the story is true or not but by assuming that it is true and then shaping the evidence to fit this preconception. One instance of this sort of presumptive analysis is found in the book Atlantis: The Eighth Continent by Charles Berlitz. An analysis of this book along with a look at the story of Atlantis and some of the other writers to address the issue will show how Berlitz fails at proving his conclusions in an objective way. Berlitz is better at framing the issues involved than he is at offering compelling evidence. In the final analysis, his book does little more than retell many of the details of the story as they have been developed over the centuries and point to the bottom of the sea as the repository of the ultimate solution to the issue, which is precisely where the matter stood before this book was written. The

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lization managed to do and have left behind these cultural artifacts and techniques. Kukal notes speculation about contact between pre-Columbian America and the Old World, for instance, and further indicates the problem with much of this speculation when he discusses the possibility of a voyage from the Old World to the new: "The voyages of Thor Heyerdahl on the raft Ra built of papyrus following an ancient Egyptian model would seem to show that even the Egyptians could have made it to America. However, is this a proof?" (p. 171). Even if there seem to be connections between art in the Old World and art in the ancient Americas, is this proof that there really is a connection, let alone that Atlantis is responsible? Luce (1969) discusses two of the major theories offered to explain the Atlantis legend, theories that assume that there is some basis in fact for the legend. One suggestion has identified Minoan Crete as the location of Atlantis, and the Minoan civilization was destroyed in a cataclysmic event (usually identified as a tidal wave brought about by an earthquake or volcanic eruption). Plato could not have known about Cretan civilization as such because it was not rediscovered until this century (p. 46). Another can

Category: History - T