Paul Standar, age 13, of Tilley, Alberta, Canada, for his question:
Was Atlantis a real place?
Plato, the philosopher of ancient Greece, claimed that he learned about Atlantis from somebody who heard the story from his grandfather, who heard it from some priests in Egypt. He described its major city in fantastic detail, and also related how the lost island continent sank beneath the sea about 9000 years before his time. Plato's hard nosed student, Aristotle, claimed that his teacher invented the mythical place to convey his theories of 4:z ideal society.
Most of us long to believe in an earthly paradise, such as some ancient Utopia. If an ideal society existed once, it is possible again. This no doubt explains why the legend of Atlantis has persisted from the time of Plato, who reported the story around 300 B.C. According to him, an island about three times the size of Texas existed beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which would be out in the Atlantic Ocean.
The sophisticated Atlanteans built a fantastic walled city amid three circular canals. The waterways joined the sea and gathered river water to irrigate fertile fields that yielded two crops a year. But these prosperous people grew greedy and conquered the civilized countries around the Itediterranean. This angered the god Zeus, who destroyed the Atlanteans and submerged their island in one devastating day of wrath. At least, this is how Plato reported the story.
The legend was kept alive through the centuries, and countless investigators sought for evidence of lost Atlantis. Modern geologists can use echo devices to chart the ocean floor. But there is no evidence that a submerged continent exists or could have existed in that part of the Atlantic. Other scholars suspect that Plato also misread older records and greatly exaggerated the dimensions of the lost continent.
This does not mean there is no truth behind the legend. It is most likely based on vague memories of some ancient disaster. Many sites have been suggested, but the most likely spot seems to be in the Mediterranean, north of Egypt. Modern researchers suspect that the watery grave is midway between the shores of Greece, Turkey and Crete, around a handful of volcanic isles called the Santorini Group.
The two larger islands of Thera and Therasia encircle three small isles, still bearing ancient names that meant "burning." There also is evidence that around 1500 B.C., this region sufferer' 1. catastrophic disaster.
In 1883, the island of Krakotoa was demolished by the greatest volcanic explosion of recorded history. Geologists estimated that the Santorini eruption of prehistory was three times more devastating. A large populated area was submerged and tidal waves swamped faraway shores. Possibly vague memories of this disaster survived to found the legend of lost Atlantis. But only a few pots have been found on the surviving isles of volcanic pumice and they cannot tell us very much about what the Atlanteans, if any, were really like.