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Table of Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 - THE ATLANTIS STORY

The Timeline of the Atlantis Story

The Transmission of the Atlantis Story

CHAPTER 2 - PLATO’S “ATLANTIC ISLAND”

The Time of the Atlantean Empire and Prehistoric Athens

The Ancient Greeks’ Worldview

Ancient Measurements of Length and Distance

The Location of the Atlantic Island

The Size of the Atlantic Island

An Atlantic Island in the Caribbean

The Caribbean Islands - Remnants of the Atlantic Island

The Venezuelan Basin is the “Plain of Atlantis”

The Mountains of the Atlantic Island

The Fully Emergent Atlantic Island

The Biology of the Atlantic Island

Early Humans in the Americas

CHAPTER 3 - HUMAN EVOLUTION AND INTELLECTUAL POTENTIAL

Human Evolution

Human Intelligence and Behavioural Modernity

Periods of Human Prehistory

Genius, Invention and Cultural Evolution

CHAPTER 4 - THE ANCIENT AMERICAS

Eastern North America

The Caribbean

Mesoamerica

South America

CHAPTER 5 - GODS AND “FOREIGNERS”

Poseidon and the Origin of Atlantean Civilisation

Poseidon’s Origin

The Foundation of Athens and Sais

The Gods of the Remnant Islands

Zeus

“Foreigners”

CHAPTER 6 - ATLANTEAN CIVILISATION AND ANCIENT TECHNOLOGIES

The “Royal City” of Atlantis

The Plain, the “ditch” and the Canals

Atlantean Agriculture

Atlantean Government and Laws

Atlantean Writing

The Azure Robes of the Atlantean Kings

Atlantean Mining and Metallurgy

Athletics, Horse and Chariot Racing

Ancient Ships and Sea Travel

The Royal City’s Military

CHAPTER 7 - THE ATLANTEAN EMPIRE AND THE PREHISTORIC MEDITERRANEAN

The “other islands” of the Caribbean

The “divers islands” of the North Atlantic

The Prehistoric Cultures of the Mediterranean

CHAPTER 8 - PREHISTORIC ATTICA AND ATHENS

The Origin of the Athenians

Attica

Prehistoric Athens and the “Acropolis Hill”

Climate and Vegetation in Prehistoric Greece and the Aegean

The Social Organisation of Prehistoric Athens

The “Mediterranean War”

CHAPTER 9 - THE SEPARATE DESTRUCTIONS OF THE ATHENIAN ACROPOLIS AND ATLANTIC ISLAND

The Decline and Fall of the Atlanteans

The Destruction of the Acropolis Hill

CHAPTER 10 - MANY CATASTROPHES OF “FIRE AND WATER” AND THE DARK AGES OF HUMANITY

Past Major Ice Ages

The Present Quaternary Ice Age

Destruction by Fire

Destruction by Water

CHAPTER 11 - THE “HYDRAULIC HYPOTHESIS” - THE EARTH’S INTERNAL HYDRAULIC SYSTEM

The Closure of the Panama Isthmus and Onset of the Quaternary Ice Age

Late Cenozoic Uplift

Late Cenozoic Volcanism

CHAPTER 12 - THE “CARIBBEAN HYPOTHESIS” - THE ATLANTIC ISLAND’S CREATION AND DESTRUCTION

Hydraulic Effects on the Caribbean Plate

The Emergence of the Atlantic Island

The Subsidence of the Atlantic Island

Prehistoric Seismic and Volcanic Events in the Caribbean

Present Seismicity and Volcanism in the Caribbean

CHAPTER 13 - SEARCHING FOR ATLANTIS

Lost Ancient Writings on Atlantis

Physical Evidence of the Atlantis Story

CONCLUSION

EPILOGUE

APPENDICES

Appendix 1 - Plato’s Atlantis Dialogues

Appendix 2 - The Hydraulic Hypothesis

Appendix 3 - The Caribbean Hypothesis

Preface

What is “Atlantis”? For most people who have heard the name, it is just a vague notion about a mythical land that existed somewhere long ago but then sank beneath the sea. Some people may have seen speculative stories about Atlantis in movies, television programmes, magazines or on the internet. They also may have seen claims about someone’s latest “discovery” of the location of Atlantis.

Regrettably, very few people who think they know something about Atlantis have read the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s written accounts of it. Plato wrote over two thousand years ago about a powerful prehistoric civilisation that existed more than eleven thousand years before the present. In great detail, Plato describes an advanced culture located on what he calls an “Atlantic island”, somewhere outside the Mediterranean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean.

Why would anyone living in the 21^st century be interested in a story written over two thousand years ago about a long-lost civilisation? Even though there are many myths of “lost lands” that were preserved and retold by ancient cultures worldwide, why does Plato’s story of Atlantis intrigue people up to the present day? Possibly, the main reason people want to believe in something like Atlantis is to satisfy an inner need to know about our ancient ancestors’ capabilities and achievements. We want to imagine there was an advanced civilisation in the very distant past, but somehow it became lost to us.

This book analyses Plato’s detailed writings about Atlantis and attempts to give a plausible scientific explanation for all of his descriptions. If Plato’s Atlantis story is true, the people of Atlantis created the Earth’s first civilisation on their Atlantic Island, thousands of years before any known civilisation.

From an early age, I have been fascinated by ancient history and the achievements of past human civilisations. As I have Greek heritage, my initial interest was in the history of Ancient Greece, as well as its many myths and legends. As a child in the early 1960s, I was inspired by Hollywood epics such as Ben Hur and Spartacus; numerous Italian “sword and sandal” films set in Ancient Greece and Rome, and even the 1961 movie called Atlantis the Lost Continent. I first read Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad at about the age of thirteen and later read various histories by ancient writers such as Herodotus and Livy as well as modern historians who wrote about ancient civilisations. I learned of the archaeological discoveries at sites such as Troy in Asia Minor and the Minoan palaces of Crete, and also discoveries from the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and China.

My interest in ancient history continued into adulthood, but more recently, I began to wonder about the prehistory of our Homo sapiens species and its much more ancient predecessors. Recent archaeological discoveries about the origins of Homo sapiens have pushed back the time when we evolved into a separate species to well before two hundred thousand years ago. These discoveries started me thinking about the possibility that our human species had the intellectual potential to develop civilisations many thousands of years before those we now know.

In the last few years, the topical issue of global warming and a rising sea level made me think about whether past climate changes would have affected prehistoric cultures. When I began to look at current knowledge about the Earth’s past climate, I learned that we happen to live in a warm period of a continuing Ice Age that began two and a half million years ago. During that unimaginably long time, there were many huge cyclical changes in global sea levels when the enormous amount of water lost from the oceans was deposited as ice on land.

One surprising fact I came across was that the worldwide sea level had risen by one hundred and twenty-metres in only the past twenty thousand years. That means if any prehistoric civilisations did once exist, much of their material remains would probably now lie well underwater. Despite knowing little about the subject at the time, I began to think about the legend of Atlantis and how its prehistoric civilisation supposedly sank beneath the sea. I then read translations of Plato’s two written works on Atlantis, called the Timaeus and Critias, and realised that if Plato’s Atlantis story were true, it would force a revolutionary change in thinking about human prehistory and civilisations.

I began looking at a world map for a location that matched Plato’s geographical descriptions of the Atlantic Island in his writings. The Caribbean region appeared to be the only location that exactly matched Plato’s descriptions. Yet, my main problem was that the area I thought could once have been the Atlantic Island was much too far underwater to be covered just by the recent sea level increase of one hundred and twenty metres.

There had to be a geological cause for how a large landmass like Plato’s Atlantic Island could sink not merely hundreds but thousands of metres below the sea. It seemed possible that massive changes in the thickness of glacial ice sheets might have caused major geological changes on the Earth’s surface. After learning about the nature of the Earth’s geological structure, I developed an original “Hydraulic Hypothesis” that could explain many past rapid and large vertical movements of the Earth’s surface. When applied to the Caribbean region, it became the “Caribbean Hypothesis”, which could then explain the existence and destruction of Plato’s Atlantic Island.

This book uses existing scientific knowledge from various disciplines to explain the geography and cultures Plato describes in his Timaeus and Critias writings. Key subject areas include Classical Literature, Ancient History, Archaeology, Human Prehistory, Palaeontology, Geology and Climate Science. I attempt to provide a single accepted scientific opinion in each area of expertise. Still, when experts dispute the science, there may be two or more conflicting views on a particular topic.

Although there is some discussion of myths from ancient civilisations that may be relevant to parts of Plato’s Atlantis story, I have avoided extreme and unsubstantiated opinions and interpretations of them. Too often in the past, many fantastic theories have tainted and trivialised serious discussion of Atlantis. Those past distortions have lumped Atlantis together with fringe ideas like UFOs and aliens, the Loch Ness monster, Yeti, Bigfoot, and so on. For that reason, I have rejected any paranormal, occult, or extraterrestrial explanations for Atlantis or any speculation about lost super-advanced Atlantean technologies.

Many hundreds of technical papers were researched for the facts that support this book’s ideas and conclusions. All of that information is publicly available on the internet, and the only way I could have realistically found it all was by searching the internet. In the past, only large institutional libraries provided that relevant technical information; so physically finding all of it would have been a complicated process that might have taken a lifetime or more of study.

Amongst the many resources used, Wikipedia was especially useful as an initial search for general information on a topic. The Google Scholar website was essential for specialised papers on narrow technical subjects, particularly on Geology. Google Earth helped me visualise and represent the geography of the Caribbean and Mediterranean, which are the main regions in Plato’s Atlantis story. I have tried to acknowledge the sources for the many illustrations used to describe the details of the story. Unfortunately, some have eluded me, so my apologies to anyone who recognises one of their original works but is uncredited.

One problem in writing this book for the general reader is how to limit the amount of technical information contained in it. Too much information will overwhelm readers, mainly if it is in an academic field about which they know very little or nothing at all. On the other hand, too little technical information will not convince readers about the truth of Plato’s Atlantis story. This abridged second edition of Plato’s Caribbean Atlantis reduces much of the geological data that explains the creation and destruction of the Atlantic Island. Instead, that detailed information has been put aside in case any geologists become interested in the book’s technical contents.

Over the eight years or more it has taken to research and write about Plato’s Atlantis story, I have tried to be my greatest critic. If any scientific information contradicted my explanations, I would have discarded the whole project. That did not happen, so I carried on to my conclusions. Because some of those conclusions are very controversial, I expect and look forward to academics and scientific experts scrutinising and criticising those ideas.

Virtually from the time Plato wrote about Atlantis, he has been accused of fabricating all of it rather than writing the truth. Ultimately, this book’s purpose is to stimulate serious discussion about Atlantis. It aims to present enough circumstantial evidence for people to consider that Plato’s Atlantis story could be a true account rather than something he made up. If the scientific community considers the possible existence of Plato’s Atlantic Island and its remarkable civilisation, they might begin searching for some physical evidence of it.

To analyse Plato’s Timaeus and Critias dialogues, I deconstructed them and placed only relevant quotes in this book’s many sections. If you only read Plato’s scattered quotes, the Atlantis story will appear fragmented and lack any continuity. I strongly advise that before going further you take the short time to read the translations of the Timaeus and Critias included in “Appendix 1”. Then, after reading the entire Atlantis story, you will better understand the scope and relevance of Plato’s descriptions. Reading Plato’s actual works will also do away with the many false or outlandish ideas proposed about Atlantis since Plato’s time.

Introduction

Plato wrote his Atlantis story in two documents called the Timaeus and Critias. These writings date from about 360 BCE and are the only known works that give a detailed description of the Atlantean civilisation.

Anyone interested in Ancient History probably wonders what people like us created many thousands of years before any written records - in what we call “prehistory”. Plato’s Atlantis story provides graphic details of an advanced but long-lost civilisation that rose and fell in the very distant past. The thousands of books and articles written about Atlantis attempt to describe it and locations for it although none satisfy all of Plato’s detailed account. Nevertheless, this book gives rational explanations for every one of the many features contained in Plato’s Timaeus and Critias.

Plato based his Atlantis story on the writings of the Athenian statesman Solon. Solon was a well-known historical figure in Athens in the 6^th century BCE, almost two centuries before Plato lived, wrote, and taught philosophy in Athens. In the early 6^th century BCE, Solon travelled to the city of Sais in the Nile Delta in Egypt. While there, he met with Egyptian temple priests who possessed ancient historical records concerning Atlantis. The Egyptian priests showed Solon those records and recounted the story of Atlantis. They told Solon about events that had occurred nine thousand years before his time, which is over eleven thousand years ago. In the early 4^th century BCE, Plato accessed a document written by Solon about what he had seen and heard in Egypt concerning the Atlantis story. Plato then used the details in Solon’s document to write about Atlantis in the Timaeus and Critias.

In the Timaeus and Critias, Plato describes the Atlanteans as an aggressive imperial military power that originated on what he calls the “Atlantic island”, located outside the Mediterranean in the Atlantic Ocean. According to Plato, the Atlanteans conquered and enslaved Western Mediterranean cultures and then attempted to expand their empire by conquering the remaining free cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Atlanteans were defeated in a war against the free Mediterranean people and eventually were driven entirely from the Mediterranean region. Sometime after the war in the Mediterranean, the Atlanteans’ homeland on the Atlantic Island sank into the sea during devastating earthquakes and floods. Plato also describes a prehistoric society in Athens that fought against the Atlanteans but was also destroyed by natural disasters.

Though there are several English translations of Plato’s original works on Atlantis, only two are used here - Thomas Taylor, who published the Timaeus in 1793 and Critias in 1804; and Benjamin Jowett, who published both translations in 1871. These two translators had opposing views on whether Plato’s account of Atlantis was truth or fiction. Taylor believed that someone who valued truth as much as Plato would not have invented the story; whereas Jowett was sure it was fiction. Regardless of their opposing beliefs, they each translated Plato’s original Ancient Greek text into English. Both translations have a similar substance, but Taylor uses an older, more dated version of English than Jowett. This book mainly uses Jowett’s translation but occasionally adds Taylor’s if it offers a slightly different meaning for Plato’s descriptions. If any Classics scholars are interested, they can still study the original Greek texts to find additional or different meanings to those of the English translations used here.

Both of Plato’s English translators wrote at a time when most Christians believed the Bible’s Old Testament was an accurate history of the Earth. For devout Christians, God supposedly created the entire Universe in six days about six thousand years ago. Plato’s descriptions of anything at all that existed thousands of years before then, let alone advanced human civilisations, would have been considered heresy by many Christians in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Science has only recently understood geological time or “Deep Time”, which began with the writings of James Hutton in the 1780s and Charles Lyell in the 1830s. Lyell was one of the first people to believe that the Earth was more than 300 million years old, and he based his belief on geological evidence. Lyell’s writings influenced Charles Darwin, who in 1859 published his radical book, On the Origin of Species, which described the concept of evolution.

In both the Timaeus and Critias, Plato repeatedly describes his Atlantis story as fact and not fiction. Yet, almost from the time Plato wrote about Atlantis in the 4^th century BCE, many philosophers and scholars have argued that he created the Atlantis story as a fiction or “noble lie”. They claim Plato fashioned a fictitious Atlantis and prehistoric Athens as a metaphor and moral message for a discussion about ideal societies. But in all of his many philosophical writings, Plato never wrote anything we would call “fiction” genre. Plato believed the purpose of all “philosophy” was the search for “truth” and his writings are devoted to seeking the truth of the way the world works.

In the Timaeus and Critias, Plato writes the Atlantis story in the form of conversations or “dialogues” between various characters. Plato makes the Greek philosopher Socrates the central character who presides over the dialogues and questions the other characters to seek the “truth” in their discussions. The historical Socrates was Plato’s mentor and intellectual hero. In both dialogues, the Socrates character never seems to doubt the truth of the Atlantis story. One can assume that if the Socrates character in the Timaeus and Critias dialogues appears to believe the Atlantis story without question, then Plato as their author also believed it.

When I first read the Timaeus and Critias, I found the extraordinary degree of detail that Plato uses, particularly for the geography of the Atlantic Island and prehistoric Athens, is much more than he would have needed for a philosophical metaphor. Plato’s Atlantis story contains vivid descriptions of a sophisticated Atlantean civilisation that used at least a Bronze Age level of technology. It was a civilisation centred in a grand capital city on an enormous island located in the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlanteans controlled a vast maritime empire that included parts of a continent that lay beyond their Atlantic Island and they also controlled much of North Africa and Southern Europe within the Mediterranean.

When Plato wrote the Timaeus and Critias dialogues, he was a successful philosopher in the latter stage of a fifty-year professional life. His written works had been studied by philosophers in the Greek world for decades while he was still alive, and would be for centuries after his death. Why would Plato open himself to criticism and ridicule from those philosophers and others if he had fabricated the Atlantis story and did not believe it was fact? As to whether the Atlantis story is true or not, perhaps part of Thomas Taylor’s introduction to his 1804 translation of the Critias dialogue best describes my attitude towards Plato’s story.

“That the authenticity of the following history should have been questioned by many of the moderns, is by no means surprising, if we consider that it is the history of an island and people that are asserted to have existed NINE THOUSAND years prior to Solon; as this contradicts the generally-received opinion respecting the antiquity of the world. However, as Plato expressly affirms, that it is a relation in every respect true, and, as Crantor, the first interpreter of Plato, asserts, ‘that the following history was said, by the Egyptian priests of his time, to be still preserved inscribed on pillars,’ it appears to me to be at least as well attested as any other narration in any ancient historian. Indeed, he (Plato) who proclaims that ‘truth is the source of every good both to Gods and men,’ and the whole of whose works consists in detecting error and exploring certainty, can never be supposed to have wilfully deceived mankind by publishing an extravagant romance as matter of fact, with all the precision of historical detail.”

To consider whether Plato’s Atlantis story is true or not, one must understand two crucial factors about the existence of prehistoric humans on Earth. One is that “modern” human intellectual and physical capability existed for much longer than was once thought. The other is that over the relatively recent past, the Earth’s climate and geography have been much more unstable than previously thought.

Recent scientific opinion is that our species of anatomically modern humans, which we call Homo sapiens, was fully evolved in Africa by at least 200,000 years ago. It is essential to appreciate that these people were virtually identical to us in body and mind. That means if you or I were born into a group of our species, say 100,000 years ago, we would fit in with the others in that group, both physically and intellectually. We would look like them and be able to participate in the same physical activities as them. We would be communicating with each other in the language of the group; co-ordinating essential activities; and raising families to ensure the survival of the group.

The main academic objection to Plato’s descriptions of Atlantean civilisation is that it existed several thousand years before any recognised civilisation developed anywhere on Earth; therefore, it is impossible. Current academic belief claims that the highest level of human culture at any time before 12,000 years ago was small groups of primitive hunter-gatherers. Those people are assumed to have lived just before or at the very start of the “Neolithic Period” - defined as the time when farming began and the first settled communities formed.

Members of our species Homo sapiens seem to have left Africa before 100,000 years ago and migrated all over the Earth in the course of tens of thousands of years. We are the same as those people, including the people of Plato’s Atlantis story. Given the right environmental conditions, one can argue that extremely ancient but “modern” humans like us were mentally and physically capable of creating advanced civilisations many thousands of years ago. Therefore, we possessed the ability to develop the features of Atlantean civilisation much earlier than the beginning of the known Neolithic Period 12,000 years ago.

As for the Earth’s climate - for about the last 12,000 years, the Earth has been in a relatively stable climatic period. Before then, the climate was much more unstable, with an abrupt climate change that occurred over a few thousand years. Plato’s Atlantean civilisation developed more than 11,000 years ago, after what is called the “Last Glacial Maximum” or “LGM” about 20,000 years ago. At the LGM, vast glacial ice sheets were at their greatest extent, with ice thousands of metres thick covering much of North America, Eurasia, and all of Antarctica. After the LGM, the Earth warmed and much of the glacial ice rapidly melted.

It is often mistakenly believed that the LGM marked the end of the Ice Age”. Yet, we still live in an Ice Age that began about 2.5 million years ago - it is called the “Quaternary Ice Age”. The LGM of 20,000 years ago merely marks the most recent peak of glaciation, but there have been many regular climate cycles during the 2.5 million years of the Quaternary Ice Age. Numerous times in the distant past, the Earth’s climate cooled, the glacial ice sheets increased and the sea level fell; then, the Earth warmed, the ice sheets decreased and the sea level rose. These climate cycles will likely continue for millions of years as there is little likelihood that the Quaternary Ice Age has ended.

At present, we happen to be in the middle of the latest warm period. It started after the LGM of 20,000 years ago when the Earth warmed and massive quantities of glacial ice melted. That melting caused a huge rise in the worldwide sea level of about 120 metres before it stabilised to its present level from 8,000-6,000 years ago. Such an extreme increase in sea level flooded many millions of square kilometres of previously dry land all over the Earth. Coastal plains that once extended tens and hundreds of kilometres from present shorelines are now many metres underwater.

The period of the first known ancient civilisations coincides with the stabilisation of global sea level about 8,000-6,000 years ago. Nevertheless, it is possible that any number of prehistoric civilisations, including that of the Atlanteans, may have existed before 8,000 years ago. The 120-metre increase in sea level after 20,000 years ago and the long-term effects of erosion could have concealed or destroyed any physical evidence of them.

Flood myths exist in many ancient cultures worldwide. In virtually all of these myths, most of humankind is destroyed, with any survivors having to restart their culture. What is now generally accepted as the beginning of human civilisations in Mesopotamia, Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Americas may be a recovery from a “Dark Age” of planet-wide cultural destruction on the “Antediluvian” or “Pre-Flood” Earth. Advanced civilisations did eventually emerge in all of those regions, and they developed many of the same technological features of the Atlantean culture. Later sections will present some of those known ancient technologies and how they evolved. They can demonstrate how the Atlanteans might have developed similar technologies thousands of years before those we know.

From Plato’s precise geographical descriptions of the “Atlantic island”, it had to be located in the Caribbean region because no other location satisfies all of his exact details. The Atlantic Island would have been a vast landmass that once lay above sea level, but according to Plato, it eventually “sank” beneath the sea. This book proposes that most of the Atlantic Island did sink below sea level and now lies on the floor of the Caribbean Sea.

If an Atlantic Island in the Caribbean were once above sea level over 11,000 years ago and the known increase in sea level covered it since then, most of it would only be fifty to sixty metres underwater. Instead, much of the Caribbean Sea floor is now up to three thousand metres below sea level so the Atlantic Island would have had to sink rapidly by hundreds or thousands of metres sometime after 11,000 years ago. The only way it could sink so far is through a series of major subsidences of parts of the Caribbean Tectonic Plate on which the Caribbean Sea rests. Tectonic plates are the many large separate segments of the Earth’s solid outer shell.

There is no currently accepted geological mechanism that can explain the rapid subsidence of any tectonic plate, including the Caribbean Plate. However, a novel geological hypothesis is presented that could explain the submergence of the Atlantic Island sometime in the past 11,000 years. The geological mechanism is called the “Hydraulic Hypothesis”. It is a radical departure from conventional thinking about the vertical movements of the Earth’s tectonic plates.

The Hydraulic Hypothesis functions by the transfer of hydraulic pressure from one tectonic plate to another through a fluid layer known to lie below the solid tectonic plates. The basic concept is that during the current Quaternary Ice Age, the weight of massive volumes of glacial ice on the tectonic plates of North America, Eurasia and Antarctica, forced those plates down. That downward movement caused pressure to pass through the fluid layer to distant tectonic plates not covered by ice, which forced those plates up. The opposite movement occurred when glacial ice melted; then the distant plates were pulled down. Up to now, academic geologists have not thoroughly peer-reviewed this hypothesis. On the other hand, several academic geologists who have looked at the concept have not rejected it outright. Regardless of whether they think the idea is theoretically possible, it requires further analysis to either confirm or discard it.

The Caribbean Plate can be thought of as one of those tectonic plates affected by changes in underlying hydraulic pressure. Millions of years of accepted geological evidence confirm many large vertical movements of parts of the Caribbean Plate. Those vertical plate movements seem to match changes in glacial ice thickness, and they could explain both the creation and destruction of Plato’s Atlantic Island. This book’s “Caribbean Hypothesis” describes those extremely long geological processes and their effect on the Caribbean Plate.

Plato provides many details of the Atlanteans’ civilisation. It was a culture where human intellectual and technological potential thrived long before the conventional view of history considers it possible. If the Caribbean region were the centre of an advanced Atlantean civilisation, then the first human civilisation developed in the “New World” of the Americas, not in the “Old World”. Discovering the truth of Plato’s Atlantis story could help answer several questions about humanity - for how long have we behaved the way we do; what are we capable of achieving in the future; and what could prevent us from realising that potential?

More than once, Plato writes that the Atlantis story is true and not a myth. This book’s primary purpose is to vindicate Plato. It analyses Plato’s writings as if they represent actual places and events the very early Egyptians recorded and Plato eventually found in Solon’s translation. There is currently no physical proof of the Atlanteans or their empire. Still, if there is enough convincing circumstantial evidence, it could inspire exploration in the most likely places where someone may find traces of Atlantean civilisation.

The main questions investigated and answered are:

Did Solon visit Egypt and discuss Atlantis with Egyptian temple priests?

Did the Egyptians correctly copy and transmit the Atlantis story over thousands of years?

Did Solon have an accurate translation of the Atlantis story from Egyptian to Greek?

Did Plato believe that Solon’s story of Atlantis was true?

Were Plato’s dialogues on Atlantis precisely transmitted from Plato’s time to the present day?

Was there a final missing part of Plato’s Critias dialogue, and what could it have contained?

Assuming Plato’s geographical descriptions are accurate, where was the Atlantic Island and what did it look like?

When did humans settle on the Atlantic Island, and how did they get there?

Did our human ancestors of over 11,000 years ago have the physical and intellectual capacity to develop the civilisations and cultures Plato describes?

What technologies did known ancient civilisations have that can compare with Atlantean technology?

Is there any archaeological evidence that the prehistoric civilisations and cultures of the Atlantean Empire and the Mediterranean developed into later known civilisations?

What prehistoric climate events could have caused the numerous “deluges” and other “destructions of mankind” the Egyptian priests describe to Solon?

What geological events might explain the destruction of the prehistoric Athenian Acropolis?

What geological mechanism might explain the creation and destruction of the Atlantic Island?

Where could people look for physical evidence of Plato’s Atlantis story and the prehistoric Atlantean and Mediterranean worlds Plato describes?

The term “BP” (Before the Present) describes any prehistoric periods - before any known written records. Once historical records exist, “BCE” (Before the Common Era) is used for what was once called “Before Christ”; and “CE” (Common Era) for what was once called “AD” or “Anno Domini”. To describe geological events that occurred over much longer periods, the term “mya” represents “millions of years ago”, and “kya” represents “thousands of years ago”.

If you have not already done so, you are again strongly advised to read the Jowett translations of the Timaeus and Critias dialogues included in “Appendix 1”. Only when you read Plato’s entire Atlantis story, rather than merely the scattered fragments in the body of this book, will you appreciate the scope and significance of Plato writings.