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Overview
Ever since Plato created the legend of the lost island of Atlantis, it has maintained a uniquely strong grip on the human imagination. For two and a half millennia, the story of the city and its catastrophic downfall has inspired people--from Francis Bacon to Jules Verne to Jacques Cousteau--to speculate on the island's origins, nature, and location, and sometimes even to search for its physical remains. It has endured as a part of the mythology of many different cultures, yet there is no indisputable evidence, let alone proof, that Atlantis ever existed. What, then, accounts for its seemingly inexhaustible appeal?Richard Ellis plunges into this rich topic, investigating the roots of the legend and following its various manifestations into the present. He begins with the story's origins. Did it arise from a common prehistorical myth? Was it a historical remnant of a lost city of pre-Columbians or ancient Egyptians? Was Atlantis an extraterrestrial colony? Ellis sifts through the "scientific" evidence marshaled to "prove" these theories, and describes the mystical and spiritual significance that has accrued to them over the centuries. He goes on to explore the possibility that the fable of Atlantis was inspired by a conflation of the high culture of Minoan Crete with the destruction wrought on the Aegean world by the cataclysmic eruption, around 1500 b.c., of the volcanic island of Thera (or Santorini).
A fascinating historical and archaeological detective story, Imagining Atlantis is a valuable addition to the literature on this essential aspect of our mythohistory.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
"In Imagining Atlantis, Richard Ellis has written an entertaining, thorough, yet readable account of the geological and archeological evidence that may have contributed to this peculiar myth, and of the lunatic fringe that has made so much moonshine out of it."
--The New York Times Book Review
Throughout history, Atlantis has seduced many great minds. In works written by authors ranging from Plato to Arthur Conan Doyle, this island -- which, according to legend, was swallowed up by the sea and vanished underwater -- has produced a powerful and enduring legacy. In his new book, Imagining Atlantis, Richard Ellis immerses himself in Atlantology and reports that he has found not one bit of geographical or historical evidence that the Lost Continent ever existed. Though he concludes that Atlantis must therefore be seen as only a myth, Ellis points out the importance that Atlantis still retains as a fascinating saga and an enduring metaphor.
Los Angeles Times - Brian Fagan
Quite simply the best book on Atlantis ever written. . .Anyone interested in lost civilizations should look no further.
Editorials
Brian Fagan
Quite simply the best book on Atlantis ever written. . .Anyone interested in lost civilizations should look no further.—Los Angeles Times
Daniel McMahon
Ellis takes us on a magnificent journey that leads us to a better understanding of earthquakes, tsunamis, flood myths, volcanology, architecture, archaeology, the works of Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle. . .A real treat.—Washington Post
Katharine Whittemore
This is a skeet shoot of a book. For if you target the subject of Atlantis -- there are some 2,000 to 10,000 Atlantean works out there -- you must explode endless philosophical clay pigeons. There are an infinite number of crackpot explanations regarding the lost city's location and demise, as marine expert Richard Ellis admits. God love him, he's game to compass all he can. But the task is just too Sisyphean; Imagining Atlantis reads like a long, heavy sigh. Then again, if you're a buff, it's downright handy. Ellis begins by walking us through Plato, who first mentioned "an island opposite ... the Pillars of Hercules, an island larger than Libya and Asia combined." Plato's Atlantis supposedly existed 9,000 years before he wrote that (though many "scholars" think he meant 900 years, which places Atlantis in the biblical era). It boasted great soil, fine crops and the wisest of citizens, who had covered its brilliant walls "with a veneer of bronze [and] fused tin."Then an earthquake/flood, apparently, sunk it all into the sea. Was Plato talking about a real place or was he spinning a "noble lie" parable? Ellis himself believes Plato made the whole thing up, using Atlantis (whose aggression would bring a comeuppance) as an example of what could happen to his own hubristic Athens. The bulk of Imagining Atlantis, however, chronicles the theories of literalists. Most take the "Pillars of Hercules" to mean Gibraltar. Some believe Atlantis was the Garden of Eden and that the few who escaped its ruination lived to create the Deluge and Flood legends; the most famous proponent of this hypothesis was Ignatius Donnelly, an eccentric Minnesota congressman whose 1882 tome, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, is still in print.
After Donnelly, Ellis tosses in everyone from Madame Blavatsky, the famous psychic -- she thought Atlantis was populated by a hermaphroditic race whose downfall came from the discovery of sex -- to archeologist Angelos Galanopolous, whose 1969 book posits, among other things, that eels offer a clue to Atlantis. Eels? The Sargasso Sea, where they are genetically programmed to breed, merely covers the freshwater rivers of Atlantis, where they originally spawned.
It gets weirder than eels, believe me. There's a hypothesis that pivots on bananas, another on Mayan deities, another on Antarctica. Einstein gets in on the act, plus Rachel Carson, Jacques Cousteau, Arthur C. Clarke, even Cokie Roberts (she and husband Steven V. Roberts wrote a 1976 New York Times piece about Atlantean research on the island of Thera, near Crete). Many Atlanticists now believe Plato meant the Aegean, not the Atlantic, and that the fabled lost civilization is on or near Crete; it was destroyed by a volcanic eruption on Santorini.
"Does it matter?" our dog-tired writer asks at the end. God knows, Atlantis is a hoary topic, yet as Ellis says, "It means so much to so many." Whence this noble effort. -- Salon
New York Times Book Review
Entertaining, thorough account . . .New Yorker
Engaging, lucid, and full of lore.Phyllis Young Forsyth
Imagining Atlantis offers nothing new. Indeed, its heavy reliance on lengthy quotations from other Atlantologists would merit the subtitle 'A Compendium of What Others Think.' It is also so full of historical errors and internal inconsistencies that one must question the author's grasp of the basic data....In sum, despite the author's refreshingly skeptical approach, his inept handling of basic data relegates this book to the fringes of Atlantology. -- Globe and MailPublishers Weekly
Marine painter and explorer Ellis (Deep Atlantic) has produced a gracefully written, authoritative debunking of the myth of a "lost continent" of Atlantis. He regards Plato's tale of the flood-related destruction of a wondrous city as a parable on the demise of Periclean Athens, perhaps also as Plato's commentary on the plague that killed one of every four Athenians between 430 and 425 B.C. Tracing the snowballing of this legend in the writings of Sir Francis Bacon, Edward Cayce, Charles Berlitz and others, Ellis dismantles the Atlantean scenarios of occultists and New Agers, as well as the dubious claims of oceanographers, geologists, archeologists and historians who, on the slenderest evidence, have attempted to link Plato's fabled Atlantis with the destruction of Minoan Crete, the volcanic explosion of the island of Thera around 1450 B.C. or other putative sites of lost civilizations. He also examines Atlantis lore in movies, television, science fiction and tourism.Ellis' plausible interpretation of Atlantis as a myth of greed and retribution, a utopian fable adapted by successive cultures to suit their needs, makes his odyssey through the muddy shoals of Atlantean scholarship worthwhile.
Library Journal
Castleden, who has written ten other books on historical topics (Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete), examines various events in ancient history and then attempts to prove that Plato used them to form the Atlantis tale for the purpose of creating a model world that Athenians could contemplate and learn from. He argues persuasively, offering much evidence, for instance, of similarities between Minoan civilization and the Atlantis legend. Ellis (Deep Atlantic) also reviews sources from Plato to the present that have contributed to the story of Atlantis, revealing what mystics, scientists, film writers, and others have added to the legend. His most interesting revelation is that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a novel featuring an underwater Atlantis. Ellis also discusses archaeological evidence that some have used to "prove" that Atlantis existed. -- Norman Malwitz, Queens Borough Public Library, Jamaica, NYLibrary Journal
Castleden, who has written ten other books on historical topics (Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete), examines various events in ancient history and then attempts to prove that Plato used them to form the Atlantis tale for the purpose of creating a model world that Athenians could contemplate and learn from. He argues persuasively, offering much evidence, for instance, of similarities between Minoan civilization and the Atlantis legend. Ellis (Deep Atlantic) also reviews sources from Plato to the present that have contributed to the story of Atlantis, revealing what mystics, scientists, film writers, and others have added to the legend. His most interesting revelation is that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a novel featuring an underwater Atlantis. Ellis also discusses archaeological evidence that some have used to "prove" that Atlantis existed. -- Norman Malwitz, Queens Borough Public Library, Jamaica, NYBrian Fagan
Quite simply the best book on Atlantis ever written. . .Anyone interested in lost civilizations should look no further. -- Los Angeles TimesDaniel McMahon
Ellis takes us on a magnificent journey that leads us to a better understanding of earthquakes, tsunamis, flood myths, volcanology, architecture, archaeology, the works of Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle. . .A real treat! -- The Washington PostThe New Yorker
Engaging, lucid, and full of lore.Kirkus Reviews
In this survey of Atlantis theories, Ellis (Monsters of the Sea) explains and then pokes holes in previous conjectures, from the scientifically grounded to the plain crazy. before tendering a few of his own. It is all Plato's fault, suggests Ellis, the nest of literature, philosophy, geology, archaeology, oceanography, ancient history, mythology, art history, mysticism, cryptology, and fantasy that can be summed up in the word "Atlantology." A few mentions of that fabulous island in his Critias and Timaeus, and 2,500 years later we still haven't heard the end of it. Ellis covers here the whole gamut of Atlantis explanations, compares them to a strict reading of Plato's story, and proceeds to dismember them all. The more outlandish, like paranormal Edgar Cayce and occultist Madame Blavatsky, are easy to dismiss as they have no truck with Plato (not to mention their general lunacy); same goes for notions locating Atlantis in the Crimea, the Sahara, and central France. Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle were in it for the entertainment value; even reputable (or not so reputable) investigators and cognoscenti like Francis Bacon, Ignatius Donnelly, Charles Pellegrino, Spyridon Marinatos, and Angelos Galanopoulos display instances of "rash assumption, hasty conclusions, circular reasoning, and argument based purely on rhetoric." And his points are all well taken: Hold true to Plato's tale, no fiddling around with the numbers, no monkeying with the geography and all their speculations smell like three-day-old fish. As for Ellis's thoughts on Atlantis: "I think it was entirely Plato's creation," that the story is likely a parable for the demise of Periclean Athens, itsmagical detailing plucked from contemporaneous regional sources: the architecture perhaps from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the geologic catastrophe from the Helice earthquake of 373 B.C. Just so: another corrupt civilization flooded into oblivion, a story as old as time.Of course, Atlantis is still lost, Ellis wags his head, perhaps a tad smugly. And it always will be. So stop looking, except in your imagination.