Atlantis :: essays research papers

Atlantis We will never know Fantasy is a tough sellin the twentieth century. The world has been to the full discoveredand fully mapped. Popular media has effectively minimizedthe legend and the fantastic rumor, though to make up forthis it has generated falsities not as lavish but just asinteresting. Satellites grant mapped and studied the earth,leaving only a space frontier that is as yet unreachable. Butstanding out is a charming fantasy the new(a) world has yetto verify or condemn the lost continent of Atlantis. Thefather of the modern worlds perception of Atlantis is Plato(circa 428- circa 347 b.c.). (1) The Greek philosopherspoke in his works Timaeus and Critias of a continent in theAtlantic ocean larger than Africa and Asia Minor combinedwhich rivaled Athens as the most advanced in the world. (2) jibe to the legend surrounding Platos dialogues, theisland of Atlantis was violently thrown into the sea by theforces of nature, and its few survivors managed to swimashore and rel ate their story. (3) There the legend waspassed by script of mouth until an Egyptian priest related thestory to Solon, a character in Timaeus. The priest admiredthe achievements of prehistoric Athenians, because when therulers of Atlantis threatened to invade both of europium and Asiathe Athenians, on behalf of all Greeks, defeated theAtlanteans to avoid enslavement. (4) The works of Platoopened the floodgates to endless speculation on whether thecontinent described was fact or fiction. Atlantis has sincebeen placed in Spain, Mongolia, Palestine, Nigeria, theNetherlands, Brazil, Sweden, Greenland and Yucatan. Everynook and cranny of the globe has been hypothesizedmountain peaks, desert lands, the ocean floor and even thebarren wasteland of Antarctica have been mentioned intheories. (5) While nearly of these theories are compatiblewith Platos works and are within relative reason, numerouscrackpot theories have been developed using the lostcontinent as a basis. One of these theori es, posted on thecomputer internet where it has access to over fifteen millionpeople, talks in twenty-one pages of pre-historical lands withnames homogeneous Oz and Luxor. These world wide web pages listover two hundred separate articles of proof for the existenceof Atlantis, as in the following (6) Most all ancientcivilizations believed in the TITANS, the race of gianthumans that inhabited Earth long ago. Different races knewthem by different names. These 7 to 12 foot humanoids were position to be legendary until the excavation of over a dozenskeletons 8 to 12 feet tall, around the world, shockedarcheologists. These skeletons were positively human.