Have you heard of this legendary continent-slash-nation-slash-island called Atlantis? I’m fairly certain you have, and today we’re gonna dive deep into some of its secrets, and try to figure out if it was even real or not, where it was located, and a few other burning questions the explorers and historians have been asking for well over 2000 years.
Here are 5 fantastic facts about the Lost City of Atlantis!
Do we actually know the location of Atlantis?
Multiple media, such as books, movies, and TV shows, have pointed at some possible location of Atlantis. Sure, the directors may have done some research, placing their movies on Santorini or Bimini, however, if we follow Plato’s texts, we’ll find the legendary Atlantis. I won’t bore you with the quotes, but I gotta add just a few: “Atlantis came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean”; “there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you [ancient Greeks], called the Pillars of Heracles.” (also known as Straits of Gibraltar, where Spain and Africa are separated by a narrow strip of sea). After taking into account other local legends, tales and architecture, this pretty much narrows down our search to Cadiz, Spain, which, incidentally, is also one of the most ancient cities in Western Europe. Apparently, thousands of years ago, the city’s name was Gades, which sounds a lot like the name of an Atlantean prince Gadeirus aka Gades. What more evidence do you need?
Atlantis was named after the demigod Atlas
You probably think that Atlantis got its name from being in the Atlantic Ocean, but the legend says that Poseidon had five pairs of male twins with a mortal Atlantean cutie named Cleito. He then divided the island between 10 sons. As previously mentioned, Gadeirus got the north part, and had a city in Spain named after him, but Atlas, his older twin was the one who made the island legendary.
Atlantis is 11,500 years old, at least
Long story short, there was this Greek sage named Solon, who was visiting Egypt and talked to the priests, wanting to hear the oldest of their tales. He started first and told the priests about the oldest Greek stories like the great flood and the creation of the first man. To which the priest responded with a tale about how Athens was founded 1,000 years before Sais (the city they were in) and that the Athenians of this time fought off Atlantis. Using some basic math, assuming the stories were true, the fall of Atlantis occurred around 9500 BC. If this was actually true, it would mean that Atlantis is about as old as Gobekli Tepe, the world’s first temple discovered by archaeologists. But for now it’s only a really old tale.
Women were allowed in the military in ancient Athens
Unlike pretty much every other ancient kingdom, the Athens did not care if you were a boy or a girl, all they cared about were sick sword-slash-spear skills. Even today a lot of countries and some cultures treat women as decorative, food making, baby factories. In fact, it was Plato’s student, Aristotle, who used to say: “Silence is a woman’s glory.” But the Athenians ca. 9500 BC didn’t give a hoot about the gender of their fierce warriors. As I’ve mentioned above, Plato wrote about the great war between the Athenians and the Atlanteans, with the text going something like this: “Military pursuits were then common to men and women, the men of those days in accordance with the custom of the time set up a figure and image of the goddess [Athena] in full armor, to be a testimony that all animals which associate together, male as well as female, may, if they please, practice in common the virtue which belongs to them without distinction of sex.” Basically, thanks to these ancient tales about Atlantis we now know that the Amazons were real. At least that’s how my mind interprets that!
Mankind had been destroyed before!?
And finally, let’s go back to the Egyptian priest and the Solon dude. The priest told Solon that none of his stories were “truly ancient” compared to his own. It’s like a measuring contest for them, to see whose tales are the oldest. And the reason for that argument was that, according to the priest, mankind has been wiped off the Earth multiple times. Here’s the posh quote: “There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. […] When, on the other hand, the gods purge the Earth with a deluge of water, the survivors in your country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwell on the mountains.” The priest is pretty much saying that if the only people who survived these cataclysms were highlanders, with little to no knowledge of the rest of the world, then you can see how a lot of an entire civilization’s history could be lost in time. And, naturally one of those lost civilizations is believed to be Atlantis. What I wouldn’t give to spend some time with those 2 dorks, I tell you.
