A central question raised was whether this text could be the Egyptian source for Plato’s Atlantis story.
Orichalcum (Plato, Atlantis)
As with the biblical flood narrative, he believed there was a kernel of truth to Plato’s account.
Ancient texts and legends: Plato's accounts, Theopompus, Diodorus Siculus, flood myths in many cultures (Popul Vuh, Troano MS.), and migrations from the east (Quetzalcoatl, Zamna).
Insight: Yima’s Vara, Nu’s ark, and Berossus’s boat mitigate total loss—preserving life/knowledge for a new cycle—contrasting Plato’s finality but aligning with non-Platonic renewal (e.g., Kumari Kandam’s Madurai).
Mitigated Renewal: Vara’s survival suggests Atlantis’s legacy endures—provoked chaos within a cycle, not Plato’s finality.
Insights—defiance, unity’s loss, mitigated renewal—deepen our narrative, aligning with non-Platonic truths over Plato’s moral lens.
Unlike Plato’s Atlantis with its urban grandeur and militaristic structure, this civilization is rural and ecological, thriving through a deep connection to the land, sea, and cosmos.
Post-Ice Age sea-level rise (circa 12,000–7,000 BCE) along Chile’s coast (e.g., submerged Lautaro Bank) offers a plausible real-world echo, though not as vast as Plato’s Atlantic island.
This contrasts with Plato’s specific “beyond the Pillars of Hercules.”
Atlantis Connection: While not oceanic like Atlantis, the Huilliche flood narrative and submerged-land motif parallel Plato’s sinking island.
Variants add earthquakes or tsunamis—common in Chile’s seismic zone—portraying a natural upheaval, not moral failing as in Plato’s tale.
Atlantis Resonance: The flood motif, lost harmony, and survivor legacy align with Atlantis—Plato’s sinking island vs.
Caicai’s rage mirrors Poseidon’s wrath, yet Trentren’s salvation adds a redemptive twist absent in Plato.
Such elements parallel Plato's Atlantis but come from an indigenous Andean view, free of Western or Catholic influence.
This differs from Plato's description of a conquest-oriented Atlantis.
This symbolic nature differs from Plato's precise geography.
Sites like Tiwanaku predate Plato's timeline and were not submerged.
Several of his stories describe lost civilizations that resemble the Atlantis tale, though they differ sharply from Plato's account.
While there’s no direct evidence that Sangomas explicitly name “Atlantis” in their narratives—given that “Atlantis” is a Western construct originating with Plato—their visions of submerged lands, ancient wisdom, and cataclysmic events resonate with the broader archetype of a lost civilization.
This civilization is not a militaristic empire like Plato’s Atlantis but a communal, wisdom-centric realm where humanity lived in close communion with nature and ancestral spirits (amadlozi).
Unlike Plato’s bronze-clad Atlantis, this is subtle tech—sustainable, not industrial—reflecting Bantu reverence for nature.
This fluidity contrasts with Plato’s fixed Atlantic island.
Unlike Plato’s sudden sinking, this is a gradual or cyclical loss, tied to cosmic balance rather than divine punishment.
Atlantis Resonance: The archetype of a wise, lost land aligns with Plato’s Atlantis, but Sangoma versions lack moral judgment—collapse is a natural shift, not punishment.
Symbolism: Water (Nommo-like), stars (cosmic origins), and bones (ancestral voices) encode a lost world’s story—richer than Plato’s linear narrative, yet opaque to outsiders.
No evidence matches Plato’s advanced Atlantis, but early coastal cultures (e.g., Khoisan) could inspire such tales.
This society is depicted as spiritually enlightened, with a deep understanding of cosmic order, contrasting with Plato’s militaristic Atlantis.
This is less mechanical than Plato’s Atlantis and more akin to Taoist qi practices, rooted in cosmic harmony.
This dual earthly-celestial framing contrasts with Plato’s terrestrial island.
Cataclysmic Shift: The oral lore doesn’t detail a single catastrophic event like Plato’s sinking but implies a transition—perhaps a flood or cosmic shift—when the Nommo departed or submerged their influence.
Contrast with Western Narratives: Unlike Plato’s moral tale or Cayce’s psychic utopia, the Dogon’s vision is neither punitive nor redemptive—it’s a neutral transmission of cosmic order, free of Catholic sin or salvation.
single-sex chaos), and Sirius focus encode a cosmology where stars, water, and humanity intertwine—richer than Plato’s linear fall.
Unlike Plato’s militaristic Atlantis, it’s a realm of wisdom and abundance, where rulers wield knowledge as power, not weapons.
This contrasts with Western hierarchies (e.g., Plato’s kings), emphasizing collective attunement over rigid castes.
Contrast with Tradition: Unlike Plato’s Atlantic island or Cayce’s Caribbean, Liu’s location is fluid—more a state of being than a spot on Earth.
Unlike Plato’s divine punishment, this is a natural consequence, echoing Taoist impermanence.
This contrasts with Western hubris tales (e.g., Plato’s greed), offering a Taoist lesson: align with nature or perish.
It suggests a prehistoric wisdom lost to chaos, a Chinese Atlantis sans Plato’s flair.
These are not urban empires like Plato’s Atlantis but decentralized communities of enlightened individuals—perhaps proto-Taoist immortals (xian)—marked by simplicity, wisdom, and attunement to nature.
Oral traditions expand this into a golden age of “hidden kingdoms,” where leaders were alchemists or seers attuned to cosmic cycles, contrasting with Plato’s stratified kings and warriors.
Oral traditions speak of “jade instruments” or “sounding stones,” possibly symbolic of harmonic tools (e.g., musical resonance for balance), contrasting with Atlantis’s militaristic tech (e.g., Plato’s triremes).
Oral tales describe “floating realms” or “hidden valleys,” suggesting a lost terrestrial paradise, not a single island like Plato’s Atlantis.
Contrast with Tradition: Unlike Plato’s precise “beyond the Pillars of Hercules” or Cayce’s Bimini, this is a fluid, archetypal space—less a place on Earth than a phase of existence submerged by time and water.
Unlike Plato’s divine wrath or Golokhvastoff’s occult failure, this is a return to equilibrium—the Dao reasserting itself.
Contrast with Western Narratives: Unlike Plato’s moral tale or Steiner’s spiritual evolution, the Huainanzi offers no redemption arc—just a natural dissolution.
Nature of Society: Khlebnikov’s Atlantis is a stark departure from the opulent, militaristic utopia of Plato or the spiritually enlightened realms of esoteric traditions.
Unlike Plato’s bronze and orichalcum, Khlebnikov’s Atlantis is sleek and abstract, reflecting early 20th-century fascination with science as art.
Contrast with Tradition: Unlike Plato’s “beyond the Pillars of Hercules” or esotericists’ Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Khlebnikov’s Atlantis feels timeless and placeless, a futurist reimagining unbound by historical coordinates.
It’s not divine punishment (as in Plato or Blavatsky) but an internal flaw—hubris manifesting as paradox.
Cultural Specificity: Rooted in Russian futurism and pre-revolutionary angst, it lacks the universal appeal of Plato or Theosophy, limiting its export.
This same narrative aligns with the accounts given by Plato in his works Timaeus and Critias, which also reference Egypt as a custodian of Atlantean history.
Atlantis (Plato's account): a great civilization that fell due to arrogance.
For Atlantis, Plato describes the moment the decline began.
Plato says the Atlanteans lost their divine nature and became full of greed for power.
Plato's Critias is quoted in Benjamin Jowett's translation.
Plato tells of an older race of Athenians, a memory of an even older civilization.
Plato treats the idea in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias.
Plato describes an advanced civilization that existed long before his time.
In Plato, Atlantis was a powerful island empire beyond the Pillars of Heracles and a rival of these early Athenians, and it was later destroyed.
The Phaeacians are an ideal, isolated people with great sea skills and divine ancestry, and in this site's reading Plato's Atlantis is described the same way.
Phaeacian myth gives them divine ancestry, and Plato gives his ancient civilizations superior abilities.
Plato describes an organized society in Atlantis too.
The older Athenians of Plato could represent a myth built on a real civilization such as the Minoans or the Phoenicians, an ideal of a time when people were closer to the gods, as with Homer's Phaeacians, or a mix of memory and myth.
Plato, the Phaeacians and the Phoenicians point to how ancient cultures saw the peoples before them.
They fit well in the discussion of Plato's older Athenians, and they also connect to the Phaeacians and Phoenicians.
Plato's ancient, advanced civilization matches many parts of Minoan culture.
Plato places his early Athenians about 9,000 years before Solon.
The Minoans still thrived more than a thousand years before Plato, who lived from 428/427 to 348/347 BCE according to Britannica.
The dates differ: Plato puts the war about 9,000 years before Solon, while the Minoan civilization flourished from about 3000 BCE to about 1100 BCE, with the palace culture in decline by the middle of the 15th century BCE.
That echoes Plato's point that human greatness does not last.
Plato highlights theoi as stemming from the term thein which meant to throw oneself upwards and was used to describe stars or individuals possessing the ability to ascend towards the heavens.
Plato: Timaeus(Spoken by a priest of Egypt)
This predates the Greek understanding of history and aligns with Plato’s emphasis on the antiquity of Egyptian records.
Though not as precise as Plato, this framework reflects a structured approach to prehistory.
The works of Plato, specifically Timaeus and Critias, are cited as key historical sources about Atlantis.
Plato describes two distinct phases of the Atlantean civilization:
Keppe explains that Atlantis was destroyed by wars between the Atlanteans and the proto-Greeks, as described by Plato.
According to Plato’s account of Atlantis, a catastrophic flood wiped out a highly advanced civilization, leaving scattered survivors.
He compares this with Plato’s gods in Critias, who rule their people like shepherds.
A link between Aea and Plato's Atlantis has been suggested, but it is speculation.
When Aea is mentioned together with the Atlantic, it suggests a speculative link to Plato's Atlantis.
Alexander was a student of the Greek philosopher Aristode, who had been taught by Plato, who had learned from Socrates.
Many centuries after Hesiod, Plato wrote in the Statesman that Earth’s poles shifted after the gods left the Earth.
The two men most connected to the legend of Atlantis are theGreek philosopher Plato, a student of Socrates who lived four hundred years before Christ, and IgnatiusDonnelly, a populist congressman and a student of catastrophism in general and Atlantis in particular.
In recent years, theorists havedevised all sorts of hypotheses as to how Atlantis came to be and where it ended up, but the famousphilosopher Plato was the first to introduce the concept of the lost city.
In the dialogue Timaeus in 360 BC, Plato wrote of a great war between ancient Greeksand Atlantis, “a mighty power” spanning the globe “which was aggressing wantonly against the whole ofEurope and Asia.
Notice that Plato referred to a continent opposite Africa and Europe.
This is clear evidence that the American continents were known as far back as Plato’s time, four centuries before the birth of Jesus and way before conventional history has stated that they were discovered by Leif Eriksson and Christopher Columbus.
Plato, writing through the words of Critias, offered this explanation, “I have before remarked in speaking of the allotments of the gods, that they distributed the whole earth into portions differing in extent, and made for themselves temples and instituted sacrifices.
While most people today still consider Atlantis a myth, others, including nineteenth-century American congressman Ignatius Donnelly, took Plato’s words as “veritable history,” claiming Atlantis was the place where humankind first rose from barbarism to civilization.
But many even today dismiss Atlantis as mere myth and legend sparked by Plato’s writings.
Based on Plato’s description, and assuming the “Pillars of Heracles” refers to the Strait of Gibraltar, most researchers believe Atlantis was located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Americas.
Much like the myth of Atlantis’s destruction taken from Plato, the resulting tidal waves, deadly gaseous clouds, famine due to destroyed crops, and opportunistic pirate clans finished off the great Minoan Empire, leaving remarkably little behind.
Cedric Leonard said that Menzies andothers who believe Minoan Empire and Atlantis were one and the same have mistakenly traced Atlantisback to the Bronze Age instead of the Ice Age as described by Plato, who placed the time of Atlantis atabout 9600 BC.
“Plato describes Atlantis as having‘subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far asTyrrhenia.’ The Minoan kings never conquered neither Europe nor North Africa.
But archeologicalevidence is abundant indicating that a cohesive ‘megalithic culture’ occupied those very same areas ofEurope and North Africa in Mesolithic times (5,000-6,000 years before the Minoan empire began).”Moreover, the area of Atlantis as described by Plato was far larger than that ascribed to the Minoanculture.
… Basically,the mantle, the layer beneath the Earth’s crust, shifted by about 40 degrees.” He claimed that Plato’sreference to a “real sea” was to the Ocean of the Atlanteans, or the Atlantic Ocean, which, inprecataclysmic times, stretched unimpeded by northern ice from the South China Sea eastward across thePacific to the present Atlantic.
Maurice Chatelain, who made a detailed mathematical study of ancient sites and legends, wrote, “Personally I am convinced that the story of Atlantis, as Solon heard it from Sonchis and as Plato has given it to us, is true from beginning to end and that someday the ruins of Atlantis will be found, just as one after another we found the once legendary Troy, Mycenae, Tiryns, and Knossos.”