Atlantis

Myth to some, mystery-waiting-to-be-solved to others. It's easy to pass Plato's tale of the lost island of #Atlantis as #parable, considering how tough it is to find anything at the bottom of the ocean.

Plato didn't invent the story as part of a #Socratic dialogue but, supposedly, borrowed it from the #Egyptians. While he claimed that the story of the city had been passed down by survivors to his grandfather, his two books are the only record we seem to have of it.

It made for a great festival speech, with its societal comparisons and philosophical theories, and so people generally disregarded it as having been too convenient to be true. There was no way to very his story if the entire island had sank, of course.

But islands do sink, so to speak. We know this now. Over geological time, islands have been known to have subsided below the surface of the ocean, and subsequent tectonic forces along with changing sea levels have even made islands reappear later. The scenario is in many respects plausible. One would think a sunken island wouldn't be too difficult to locate in this day and age, but are we looking in the right places? If Atlantis is based on an Egyptian story, then its location could be much different than #Plato had speculated.

Interested parties are constantly searching for clues and connections, and I like to believe we're getting closer by the centennial. In January 2015, a metal called orichalcum that Plato said was found in the city of Atlantis, was recovered from a ship that sunk off the coast of Sicily about 2,600 years ago.