May 16, 2023
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The world is full of mysteries. Despite outstanding achievements in the field of science, we human beings remain clueless about many things around us.
Rather than the land we live in, what seems stranger to us is the ocean, which is home to many myths, legends and mysteries. While scientists have successfully explained many of these mysteries, quite a few remain unexplained.
Lost cities, hidden treasures, and mystic ships are part of the alluring marine world. Of all these, the lost city of Atlantis tops the list.
The Lost City of Atlantis, first mentioned by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato more than 2,300 years ago, is known as one of the oldest and greatest mysteries of the world.
According to Plato, the utopian island kingdom existed some 9,000 years before his time and mysteriously disappeared one day. Famed for having been the exhibit of all worldly pleasures in the world, this city is as enigmatic as it is inviting.
Even after years of research, the exact truth about this city has not been found, and that adds even more to all the folklore attached to it. Read on to find out what’s so fascinating about this city.
The biggest question that boggles the minds of all scientists is where Atlantis is. The narrations suggested that the city is believed to have sunk into the sea after an earthquake or tsunami. According to him, the so-called Atlantis was a large island near the Rock of Gibraltar and consisted of a Poseidon statue, concentric walls and canals.
Plato added that the city under the sea should have been somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. However, no technology has revealed any such town on the ocean bed.
While some theories suggested that the Atlantis is located in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Spain, few also argued that it could be even under Antarctica.
For a long time, the Azores was believed to be the site of the city of Atlantis. However, the new research has revealed a new place, and the scientists are sure that Atlantis can be found in Cadiz, somewhere between the Spain and Morocco waters.
The extent of truth in this story is a mystery in itself. Questions like where are Atlantis or do it even exist for real are still unanswered. But until the truth beneath it can be unravelled entirely, the world will continue speculating about the existence of the greatest city of all times.
Plato, talking about the mysterious underwater kingdom, wrote:
“For the ocean, there was at that time navigable; for in front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, ‘the pillars of Heracles,’ there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together; and it was possible for the travellers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean.”
Agreeing with Plato over the size of the island, Tertullian, an early Christian author who believed that Atlantis once existed in the Atlantic Ocean, said it would be bigger than today’s Libya and Asia combined.
Since many others proposed the location of the city of Atlantis in the Mediterranean Sea, narrations have come out scaling the size of the city to Crete, Greece’s largest island.
However, in many stories after Plato’s era, Atlantis was described as a giant city, missing anything specific about the size of the city. Edgar Cayce, an American Christian mystic, suggested that Atlantis and Eurasia were equal in size.
Legend says that the Atlantis city was built by Poseidon- the God of Sea, of storms and earthquakes- when he fell in love with a mortal woman Cleito. He made this city on top of a hill, on an isolated island in the sea, to protect her and named it Atlantis.
According to the story, Poseidon walked through the world to find the biggest island until he reached the biggest of them all, Atlantis and found it inhabited by people who were more beautiful and intelligent than the rest of the world. There he met and fell in love with a woman called Cleito.
The new home built by Poseidon for his love in the City of Atlantis was surrounded by rings of water and land. The five rounds of water were connected to the ground with the help of five tunnels, where a vast canal connected the outer rings of water to the ocean.
The tunnels could accommodate ships, and every route to the city was guarded by gates and towers. Moreover, the wall surrounding the rings was built using red, white and black rock and decorated with precious metals.
Meanwhile, there was another hill called the ‘Hill of Cleito’ where, it is believed, Poseidon captivated his wife because he distrusted her loyalty. Huge moats and pillars surrounded this hill.
The fable tells that Cleito had five pairs of twin sons with Poseidon, the eldest of which was named Atlas. The ten sons inherited the great city and the first child, Atlas, became the first ruler of Atlantis.
However, it is believed they also built a massive temple for their father with a giant statue of Poseidon riding a chariot carried by winged horses.
The statue was utterly built-in gold and placed in a temple with its spiral roof so high that the clouds drifted through the spirals of the temple.
The fertile and beautiful city of Atlantis, where half-god and half-human lived, is believed to have been an autonomous region where people grew their food and reared animals.
Farmers in the city used to grow crops in the fertile plains on the outskirts with the help of a well-maintained irrigation system.
They also built beautiful buildings and other architecture from black and red stone materials. They also had access to rare metals and even alloys like brass made, used crystals extensively for leisure and experimental purposes, and had a lot of free time to play with volcanoes.
Other than the legend of the lost city of Atlantis and other fables, the fact about the city remains unknown. Among historians and other researchers, the findings of Edgar Cayce had something different to tell.
Edgar Cayce believed in the rising of the lost city once again like ‘the sun rises from the sea. He predicted a new land would appear off the east coast of North America.
He also suggested that the souls of many people who lived in Atlantis had been incarnating to America to usher in a new era of enlightened human consciousness.
Stories also claim that the original inhabitants of the lost city of Atlantis are believed to be of extra-terrestrial origin and reached there about 50,000 years ago from the Lyrian star system.
Despite being much taller and fairer than today’s average human being, the average life span of these people is believed to have been 800 years, making them robust prototypes of the existent human race then.
As some claim that the Lost City of Atlantis was on Mars or just a colony of an alien civilization, the inhabitants of Atlantis city are believed to possess exceptional powers such as the ability to control the weather and modify volcanic eruptions.
Some accounts also mention possessing a device that allowed them to channel energy from time and space.
Even though the myth says that the inhabitants of Atlantis City were superior beings, there are some opinions that it is just a fictional representation of a brutal fashion of life.
While many still consider the Lost City of Atlantis a conspiracy theory, many studies doing the rounds suggest that the fable is based on actual events.
Ocean explorer Robert Ballard finds logic in the story as it has similarities with a massive volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea near Greece.
Ballard says a highly advanced society that lived there disappeared suddenly, as with Atlantis. Similarly, Ignatius Donnelly also confirms the existence and disappearance of a mid-Atlantic continent in the exact location that Plato mentioned.
As the debate continued, few researchers claimed that this utopian kingdom was a whole continent located off the Bahamas, and the Bermuda Triangle later swallowed it up. At the same time, another group suggested current Antarctica is the newer version of Atlantis.
Meanwhile, James Romm, a professor at Bard College in Annandale in New York, says Plato created the story to convey some of his philosophical theories, mostly about his vision of an ideal civilization.
Researchers had previously proposed that Atlantis was located on the Greek island of Santorini, the Italian island of Sardinia or Cyprus. However, recent research has shown that the city may be found between Spain and Morocco waters in Cadiz. The region is quite prone to Tsunamis, one of the largest ones that occurred in November 1755 and is documented in historical accounts.
According to mythological accounts, the city of Atlantis fell as the people became greedy and immoral, which angered the gods, who sent them a night of fire and earthquakes that led to the city being drowned. According to researchers, the cause of its fall was also a terrible earthquake which swallowed the civilization in no time.
Plato’s writing is the only proof of the existence of such a city. He mentioned that it existed 9000 years before his own time, and its stories were passed down by artists, poets and writers.
According to legend, the lost city of Atlantis was a utopian civilization and a great naval power. It was made of concentric islands separated by wide moats connected by canals that reached its centre. The islands were rich in metals and minerals like gold and silver and supported exotic wildlife.
As per legend, Cleito had five pairs of twin sons with Poseidon; the eldest was named Atlas. He later inherited his father’s kingdom and became the great king of Atlantis.
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