Hypothetical locations of Atlantis

Common card · No. 265474

There exist a variety of speculative proposals that real-world events could have inspired Plato's fictional story of Atlantis, told in the Timaeus and Critias. While Plato's story was not part of the Greek mythic tradition and his dialogues use it solely as an allegory about hubris, speculation about real natural disasters that could have served as inspiration have been published in popular accounts and in a few academic contexts. Additionally, many works of pseudohistory and pseudoarchaeology treat the story as fact, offering reinterpretations that tie to national mysticism or legends of ancient aliens. While Plato's story explicitly locates Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules, other proposed locations for Atlantis include Helike, Thera, Troy, and the North Pole.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Ignatius Donnelly; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:14, 28 September 2010 (UTC), Public domain