And on that humorous note I revert to my original idea expressed in the words of classical scholar Daniel Dombrowski:
"Atlantis was only a powerful literary device invented by Plato, which was to act as a means of highlighting the fate of the ideal state created in Plato's mind's eye. The only place in which Atlantis can be found, in addition to the writings of Plato, is in the minds of those with an imagination as vivid as that of Plato."
That’s a possibility, and I don’t doubt that the rinky-dink details such as the semi-divine origin of the rulers, how they took turns sharing power and so forth were all typical of Plato’s thought exercises on politics. The fact remains that the continental shelf was dry land 10s of 1000s of years ago, and repeatedly submerged and exposed a number of times over the past two million years, the period when humans were coming around. IOW, Plato’s literary device was based on very old oral traditions which were, like the secret word in the game of telephone, altered in transmission over hundreds of generations, or perhaps many more generations than that.
"Atlantis was only a powerful literary device invented by Plato, which was to act as a means of highlighting the fate of the ideal state created in Plato's mind's eye. The only place in which Atlantis can be found, in addition to the writings of Plato, is in the minds of those with an imagination as vivid as that of Plato."I've not heard that one before, thank you! Dąmbrowski, a very Polish name :)