Recently a discussion was started about "Atlantis and the phrase "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules." This phrase most certainly relates to a geographical subject and as such is a difficult one for me to pass up.

Atlantis or Atlantica was a civilization which
according to the Egyptian Priests who told the story to the Greek Historian Solon, that was submerged in the sea. Plato who was
later facinated by this story tells it in some
detail in his dialogues of "Timaeus" and "Critias." These dialohues are today the
primary source of the story. "Atlantis" was
placed by the ancient priests in their story as just beyond the "straits of Gades" which we know as the Atlantic Ocean and just
beyond the Strait of Gibraltar or beyond the "Pillars of Hercules."

The former civilization is described as an island larger in size than Asia Minor (including Lybia) and whose kings once ruled
southwest Europe and northwest Africa. This civilization was finally defeated by the Athenians in prehistoric times. Then turning to his unfinished "Critias" Plato describes the almost perfect commonwealth of Atlantis while it was in power.

This story of a disappeared civilization was forwarded to medieval scholars by the geographers of Arabia and very likely influenced island traditions of similar Atlantic Island Chains such as the Welsh Avalon, or the Portuguese Antillia. In modern investigation, geologists have been able to discover that the Western European coastline did indeed extend farther westward that it currently does. It's submergence seems to have taken place long prior to the historic period.(2) -- (3)

To all those who think of "Atlantis" as a figment of an ancient Historian's imagination, I remind all that "Atlantis' subsided into the sea within what is described as a very probable earthquake or volcanic eruptions, certainly something which can be found in the area of the "Atlantic Ridge."

It is only within a recent span of years that any signifigant exploration of the Atlanic Ridge has been attempted for a simple lack
of technology. For the most part this exploration has been in the area of submarine routes of access at distances significantly above the ocean floor. Thousands of shipwrecks still lie on the ocean floor awaiting rediscovery for possible treasure troves or disaster in the form of the eventual release of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the surrounding sea.

It is only recently that the famous ships which were only decades ago lost to the world, "SS Titanic," "USS Monitor," "CSS Alabama," the Propellor (Submarine) Hunley, have now not only been located, but raised or investigated and phoographed thoroughly in the case of "Titanic,"

(1)"Timaeus" 24 ff;

(2) Donnelly, Inatius. "Atlantis: the
Antediluvian World," (1882, new ed. New York, 1949)

(3) The Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. II,
Americana Corporation, New York, 1962

Remaining still are literally thousands of
square miles of unexplored ocean bottom which has not been surveyed in detail. It has been found in the deep trenches of the
Pacific, that literally thousands of feet of
accumulated material covers the rocky mantle of the earth in those deep places, certainly sufficient to cover a small civilization which went before and may
have spawned something of the Etruscan Civiliaztion which arose, Even in this early civilization (Etruscan) we have evidence of beautiful metal work, slillful gold dentalwork
and the ability to operate on the human skull, obviously to relieve pressure on the brain from a blow of some kind. From what source did these amazingly beautiful and intricate skills come?

There are assurances from:

• divers of very strange elements on the sea bottom in the Caribbean Sea that
  speak to possible remains of an ancient city;
• Those who ave found the strange stone walls of the city high in the Andes in
  which the blocks of stone are so closely fitted that a knife blade cannot be inserted between the massive stones which comprize the wall;
• There are the photographs of the huge
  figures laid out in the high deserts of South America, that can only be determined from extreme hieghts above the earth;
• And there are the very recent discoveries of the city group in the Arizona desert which seems to have had no other purpose than the recognition of celestial phenomena;
• It has been proven that long voyages (continent to continent) can be made at sea on extremely primitive leather and straw boats or rafts and canoes driven by the wind.

All these things have been found in the last century with the technology now in our grasp. It is a very big question as to what
will e found in the next century with new
technologies that are created virtually every day.

It is easy enough to say that such things are merely myth, but we have found in history, more often than not, that every myth has some kernel of truth within it that has given the myth some small credit, even
though the myth may not look vaid at first
investigation or without supplementary evidence.
The biblical myth of Noah and the Ark takes on a much more realistic view when explained in the environment of the local
geography and history of the period, rather than the modern view of an overly dramatic world flood in which everything but Noah and a pair of each kind of animals in the world were preserved.

So in the matter of "Atlantis" I shall keep an open mind by reminding myself that those who refer to such, while not always accurate in the things that they wrote in light of our "wisdom" of today, were in all probability sincere in what they thought to be an explanation for the unknowns of their world of the ancents. Just as some of our present day stories of "ghosts" and hauntings" may someday seem rediculous to historians of the future in light of technologies as yet even undreamed of.