This article was originally published on July 21, 2020.
Atlantis: the legendary island that sank beneath the waves in the distant past, taking down with it an advanced civilization. Is it possible that we will ever find it? Or, more importantly: Did it even exist?
The short answer to both: No. All available evidence indicates that the philosopher Plato, sometime around 360 B.C., invented the island nation in order to illustrate a point about the dangers of aggressive imperialism. In Plato’s telling, Atlantis was no utopia. Rather, it was a foil for an idealized version of Athens from long before Plato’s time. This ancient Athens “was very similar to Plato’s notion of the ideal state,” says Jyl Gentzler, a professor of philosophy at Amherst College. Plato laid out the details for what such a state would look like in his famous work, The Republic.
