Myth of Atlantis all took place in Plato's mind
Amelia Hill
Sunday December 16, 2001
The Observer
The story of the lost city of Atlantis has fascinated academics and romantics for thousands of years. But despite the legend one leading expert has finally admitted the truth: it never existed.
Ever since Plato insisted that his tale of a seafaring civilisation consigned to the deep by earthquakes and floods was true, the search for the lost empire has spanned the globe - in September two explorers claimed simultaneously to have found it at the top of a volcano and at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
But now Alan F. Alford, one of the world's authorities on ancient mythology, claims to have uncovered the truth: the Greek philosopher invented Atlantis as a metaphor for the ancient version of our 'Big Bang' theory.
'My findings allow us, for the first time ever, to get inside Plato's mind and reconsider the story of Atlantis from an ancient, rather than a modern, perspective,' said Alford, who has spent the last five years investigating the story.
'Behind the tale lies a single secret of stunning simplicity: namely that although Atlantis was a lost paradise, it was not a lost city, island or continent, but a lost planet of the former golden age,' he added. 'The loss of Atlantis was meant to signify a totally profound event - the cataclysm of all cataclysms that disrupted the universe at the beginning of all time.'
It has long been acknowledged that there is strong scientific evidence for the explosion of one or more planets in our solar system from about 427 to 347BC (around the time Plato was writing), rationalised then by the creation of the 'exploded planet myth'.
'The myth held that the cosmos was born when a planet crashed on to a dead, dry Earth, spreading the seeds and water of life,' said Alford. 'I maintain that it is this myth that the tale of Atlantis was created to explain.'
According to Plato, Atlantis sank around 9600BC (by our modern-day system of dating). But extensive scientific investigations of the ocean floor have yielded no trace of the lost island.
The popular view is that Plato's story is historically accurate and he simply got his geographical facts wrong. The search, as a result, has spanned the globe, with the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and Tyrrhenian seas, as well as the English Channel and the Arctic coming under suspicion. Crete, Cuba, the Americas and Antarctica have also been claimed as the lost continent.
Alford dismisses such theories: 'Plato is the sole authority on the story of Atlantis and to ignore what he said is to invent a new myth of one's own.'
To search for Atlantis in the physical world, or in the physical universe, Alford believes, is contrary to Plato's most fundamental belief: that reality was not to be found in this world.
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"The schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight" -- Joseph Campbell (Mintz, 1983)
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