Edgar Cayce: First cycle of Atlantis

Edgar Cayce described Atlantis as having experienced three main periods of destruction or major upheavals. These mark distinct cycles in its long history:

• First destruction — approximately 50,000 BC (some sources give ~50,700 BC). A large single landmass broke apart due to volcanic activity, earthquakes, and earth changes. This was the initial major division.
• Second destruction — approximately 28,000 BC. Further breakup occurred, with additional volcanic eruptions and land changes. The remaining portions became more fragmented islands.
• Third (final) destruction — approximately 10,500–10,000 BC. The last remnants (including Poseidia) sank. This period is often linked to migrations to Egypt, the Yucatan, and the Pyrenees, and in some readings associated with the biblical flood account.

Reading 364-13 belongs to the first cycle.

The Nile entered into the Atlantic Ocean. What is now the Sahara was an inhabited land and very fertile. What is now the central portion of this country, or the Mississippi basin, was then all in the ocean; only the plateau was existent, or the regions that are now portions of Nevada, Utah and Arizona formed the greater part of what we know as the United States. That land along the Atlantic seaboard formed the outer portion then, or the lowlands of Atlantis. The Andean or the Pacific coast of South America occupied then the extreme western portion of Lemuria. The Urals and the northern regions of same were turned into a tropical land. The desert in the Mongolian land was then the fertile portion. This may enable you to form some concept of the states of the earth’s representations at that time. The oceans were then turned about; they no longer bear their names, yet from whence obtained they their names? What is the legend, even, as to their names?

Edgar Cayce – Reading 364-13

It describes the Earth’s surface and human conditions at a very early stage, when the Atlantean landmass was still largely one large continent (or just entering the phase of the first eruptions and changes). The reading speaks of “the period of the appearance of the five projections” (the five races or early soul groups appearing in five places at once) and early human “indwelling.” It states that the land was whole “until the first eruptions brought those changes,” after which it broke into islands with canals, gulfs, and streams created by elemental forces.

The specific geography in the passage you quoted — the Nile flowing into the Atlantic across a fertile, inhabited Sahara; the central Mississippi basin underwater; and only the western plateau (Nevada, Utah, Arizona region) forming the main land area of what later became the United States — reflects conditions before or during the onset of the first destruction. At that remote time, river systems, sea levels, and land elevations differed significantly from today, and early populations lived in regions now desert or submerged.

Later readings in the 364 series and related material discuss the second and third destructions as subsequent stages, when the land had already fragmented further and advanced technological and spiritual developments (including the misuse of power) had progressed. Reading 364-13 focuses on the foundational, pre- or early-first-destruction phase to set the scene for how human laws and spiritual understanding began amid these ancient earth changes.

This placement aligns with the overall structure of Cayce’s Atlantis material, which covers a long span from early soul projections and land configurations (before 50,000 BC) through the three destruction cycles down to the final sinking around 10,500 BC. The vast timeline references in 364-13 (such as millions of years in some contextual statements) refer to the deep antiquity of these early events rather than the later, more technologically developed phases of Atlantis.