I found this to be a very interesting video on the theories of Atlantis. It has five parts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTEOM_ZzKKk"]YouTube - Atlantis Uncovered Part 1
As far as whether or not Atlantis actually existed. I saw a show on this with an historical investigator named Olly Steeds. On the show he went through and analyzed Plato's writings on Atlantis and at the end he came to the conclusion that Plato's Atlantis may have been about the Minoan culture. He believes that the Minoan island of Santorini was the island of Plato's Atlantis. This Minoan island culture shared several similarities with Plato's description of Atlantis as far as culture and architecture and it did experiance destruction from a sever volcanic eruption.
Where's Atlantis? Plato said the Atlantis was a days sail beyond the pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar). He also stated that Atlantis was larger than asia minor and Libya combined. that doesn't sound to me like the island of Santorini. During the last ice age the ocean was 400 feet lower. Imagine how much further out the beach was back then. Incredible. What parts or island of the Atlantic Ocean could have been dry land? With the ice cap melting came a 400 foot rise of the ocean. Flooding many lands around the would. 10th millennium BC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10th_millennium_BC Check out under: Events c. 10,000 BC; end of the most recent glaciation. and In popular culture 9564 BC: Destruction of Atlantis, according to theosophic tradition. 436 years. that's the difference. And c. (circa meaning around) 10,000 BC is an approximation only. So, there ya go. Here's a fair overview. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis Pick up a copy of Ignatius L. Donnelly's Atlantis: the Antediluvian World
Plato was speaking in allegory as the book makes clear but unlike other interpretations of Plato's tale this reveals precisely what it was that Plato was making reference to....In fact he is making the same reference as the authors of the flood tales in the religious books. There in fact were a series of floods on earth and in the heavens...read Genesis 1:7 for confirmation of the notion of a sea in the heavens, this is seen in other religions and explains why Ra, the Egyptian sun god, required a boat for his daily travels...(Don't worry I'm not much of a bible reader and i googled the verse but for this it was essential :\)...
atlantis may or may not be a complete fantasy. it may or may not be based on minoen crete. the infuence of the STORY of atlantis, has of course been considerable. many cultural concepts have influenced many others. people don't need flying saucers for trade goods to travel far and wide, and cultural concepts to travel with them. (just as a btw, the pilars of hercules was NOT gibralter, it was, i can't remember for sure now, but i think it was what is called the bosporus or something like that, where the waters from the black sea flow into the mediteranian, there between grece and turkey. a day's sail beyond there would still be very much within the mediteranian. making cypris and crete likely candidates. i nominate minoen crete because of the sophistication of the ruins that remain of that time. as for the size of the island(s) involved, he is more likely refering to what the supposed travellers impressions were, as nothing quite that large would actually fit in the available space. i would guess people liked adventure stories then as the did now. and plato was as much a popular writer of his time as anything else. it is very likely he was writing for entertainment value as much as anything else. stories today, like dinotopia, are in a similar vein.)
