60 Fun Facts About Atlantis

Which philosopher's works are the only primary sources for the story of Atlantis?

Every later mention of the island traces back to two of his dialogues.

In which two dialogues does the story of Atlantis appear?

Only Critias actually tells the tale, though Socrates and Hermocrates are also present.

The Greek name Atlantis literally means what?

Atlas, eldest son of the island's divine founder, was made its first king, and the ocean was named for him too.

Plato says the story reached Greece through which Athenian lawgiver, who heard it from priests in Egypt?

The dialogues claim he visited Egypt between 590 and 580 BC and translated the records.

According to Plato, Atlantis lay beyond what landmark?

The Pillars are usually taken as the Strait of Gibraltar, though some argue they once meant the Gulf of Laconia.

Plato dates the fall of Atlantis to roughly how long before his own time?

That would put it around 9600 BC, deep in the Stone Age.

Plato describes Atlantis as an island larger than which two lands combined?

For the Greeks, 'Libya' meant North Africa and 'Asia' meant Anatolia and beyond.

Which god was allotted the island of Atlantis when the deities divided the earth?

It was a fitting share for the god of the sea.

The island's divine founder fell in love with the mortal Cleito, who bore him how many children?

The eldest, Atlas, became king of the whole island; his twin Gadeirus got the land towards the Pillars.

The god enclosed the central mountain of Atlantis with how many circular moats?

Rings of land separated them, and the Atlanteans later cut tunnels so ships could sail right into the city.

The walls of Atlantis were covered in brass, tin and which legendary precious metal?

The stone beneath was red, white and black rock quarried from the moats.

Who led the alliance that defeated the Atlantean empire in Plato's story?

Plato modelled this ideal ancient city on the perfect state of his Republic.

How quickly did Atlantis disappear into the sea, according to Plato?

Violent earthquakes and floods took the island and Athens's warriors together.

What did Plato say made the sea impassable where Atlantis had been?

It was caused, he says, by the subsidence of the island.

Plato built Atlantis, a naval empire of the west, as a literary contrast to which real land power of the east?

The story is an allegory on the hubris of nations, with an idealised Athens as the hero.

Which of Plato's own students believed his teacher had invented the island to teach philosophy?

Crantor, by contrast, is often cited as the first to take the story as history.

Which sixth-century writer used Atlantis in his Christian Topography to argue Earth is flat?

He claimed Plato and Aristotle had simply borrowed everything from Moses.

What do scholars think Theopompus of Chios's land beyond the ocean, Meropis, was?

Its people grew to twice normal size and lived in Pious-town and Fighting-town.

Some scholars think Plato drew Atlantis's fortifications from which Sicilian city he had just left?

Rodney Castleden notes he wrote of Atlantis in 359 BC, just after returning from Sicily to Athens.

Which Bronze Age volcano's eruption is often proposed as the catastrophe behind the Atlantis story?

Its tsunami is thought by some to have devastated Minoan Crete.

Whose 1882 book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World is credited with reviving the Atlantis myth?

He argued every ancient civilisation descended from Atlantis, where he placed the Garden of Eden.

Helena Blavatsky claimed her book The Secret Doctrine had originally been dictated where?

She made the Atlanteans the fourth 'root race', peaking about a million years ago.

The clairvoyant Edgar Cayce predicted that Atlantis would rise again in which decade?

He also claimed a Hall of Records beneath the Sphinx holds the island's history.

What scientific development in the 1960s made lost-continent theories of Atlantis wane?

Plate tectonics showed a continent could not vanish in the geologically recent past.

The 16th-century cartographer Abraham Ortelius, musing on Atlantis, first imagined what?

He pointed to the matching coastlines of Europe, Africa and America.

Which submerged North Sea landmass, drowned after the Storegga Slide, has been proposed as Atlantis?

The Swedish scholar Olof Rudbeck preferred Sweden itself, in his Atland of 1672-1702.

In 2011 a National Geographic team claimed to find Atlantis in the marshes of which Spanish national park?

Spanish scientists dismissed the claim as 'fanciful' sensationalising of their work on Tartessos.

Ulf Erlingsson claimed a 99.8% probability that Plato's description matched which country?

He later said he did not believe Atlantis ever existed; Ireland's national museum saw no supporting archaeology.

Which Atlantic archipelago, often touted as Atlantis, has been an undersea plateau for millions of years?

The Canaries and Madeira have been steadily uplifted, not sunk, over four million years.

Which frozen continent did Flavio Barbiero propose as the site of Atlantis as early as 1974?

Other suggested sites range from Cuba and the Bermuda Triangle to Indonesia and India's Kumari Kandam.

Which formation in Mauritania has been put forward as Atlantis by some theorists?

Its concentric rings recall Plato's rings of land and water, though geologists call it an eroded dome.

Which writer coined the word 'utopia' in a 16th-century work partly inspired by Plato's Atlantis?

He set his imaginary land in the New World, tying the Americas to utopian dreams.

Francis Bacon's posthumously published 1626 utopia, set on the island of Bensalem, is titled what?

Its ideal college, Salomon's House, prefigured the modern research university.

Which composer wrote the 1943 opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis while an inmate of the Theresienstadt camp?

The Nazis banned it as a satire on Hitler; Ullmann and librettist Petr Kien were murdered at Auschwitz, and it premiered in Amsterdam in 1975.

Manuel de Falla's late cantata was based on L'Atlantida, an 1877 epic in which language?

Jacint Verdaguer's poem has Hercules found Barcelona after the continent sinks.

In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, Nemo shows Aronnax the ruins of which legendary sunken realm?

The Nautilus also visits sunken ships from Vigo Bay and the transatlantic telegraph cable.

Donovan's 1968 single Atlantis peaked at what position on the US Billboard Hot 100?

It began life as a B-side, topped the charts in the Netherlands and Switzerland, and later featured in Goodfellas.

Who voiced linguist Milo Thatch in Disney's 2001 film Atlantis: The Lost Empire?

The film flopped against Shrek and Tomb Raider, and Disney scrapped a planned TV spin-off and theme-park rides.

Which linguist, also creator of Klingon, constructed the Atlantean language for the Disney film?

The film used more CGI than any earlier hand-drawn Disney feature.

Which DC superhero, alias Arthur Curry, is the son of a lighthouse keeper and the queen of Atlantis?

He debuted in More Fun Comics #73 in November 1941; Jason Momoa played him on film.

In the TV series Stargate Atlantis, the city of the Ancients is found in which galaxy?

The show ran five seasons from 2004 to 2009 as a spin-off of Stargate SG-1.

The Atlantis Paradise Island resort, opened in 1998 with its Royal Towers, is in which country?

South African hotelier Sol Kerzner bought the old Paradise Island Hotel in 1994 and rebranded it.

The Space Shuttle Atlantis was named after what?

RV Atlantis was Woods Hole's primary research vessel from 1930 to 1966.

Space Shuttle Atlantis flew the final mission of the entire Shuttle programme in which year?

STS-135 launched on 8 July and landed on 21 July, the orbiter's 33rd flight.

Léon Bakst's 1908 painting Ancient Terror, a scene of Atlantis, shows a goddess holding what?

Lightning streaks above a city being swallowed by the sea below her.

Einar Jónsson's sculpture The King of Atlantis sits in his museum garden in which capital?

The king wears a big triangular helmet and sits on a throne borne by two young bulls.

Of the four speakers in Plato's two Atlantis dialogues, which one actually tells the story?

He claims the tale came down through his family from Solon, who heard it from Egyptian priests.

Plato wrote of Atlantis in 359 BC after returning to Athens from which island?

Rodney Castleden sees parallels between Atlantis's fortifications and those of Syracuse, where Plato had just been.

Where did Francis Bacon locate the ideal society of his 1627 New Atlantis?

Thomas Heyrick and later Delarivier Manley, whose New Atalantis was dystopian, followed in the genre.

Which two ancient geographer-philosophers are named as believers in a real Atlantis?

Aristotle, by contrast, thought his teacher Plato had simply invented the island.

Diodorus Siculus placed the Atlanteans in North Africa and had them go to war with whom?

Ammianus Marcellinus separately reported Gaulish Druids claiming descent from distant islands.

The Nordic-supermen version of Atlantis popular in German ariosophy lent its name to which group?

Guido von List and others spread the idea around 1900, drawing on Bailly's 'Hyperborea'.

What does the four-metre figure in Luk van Soom's Brussels fountain The Man of Atlantis wear?

The 2003 sculpture steps from its plinth into the spray, looking playful despite a serious message.

Which first commentator on Plato is said to have taken the Atlantis account as 'unadorned history'?

He was a student of Plato's student Xenocrates; scholars still argue over what Proclus meant when quoting him.

In his multi-volume Atland (1672–1702), Olof Rudbeck placed Atlantis in which country?

Doggerland in the North Sea is another northern European candidate, drowned by a megatsunami.

Which Hartford professor led the 2011 National Geographic team that claimed Atlantis lay in Andalusia?

Spanish scientists on the project accused him of sensationalising their work.

Historian Adolf Schulten identified Atlantis with which lost Iberian city?

Later theorists such as Rainer Kühne used satellite images to place it in the marshes north of Cádiz.

Which 16th-century chronicler was among the first to identify Atlantis with the newly encountered Americas?

Such speculation grew into Mayanism, later linking Atlantis to Mesoamerican civilisations.

Who wrote The New Atalantis (1709), a dystopia set on a fictional Mediterranean island?

Distinguished from Bacon's work by a single letter, it uses sexual violence as a political metaphor.

In Plato's tale, who were the parents of Cleito, the mortal woman Poseidon loved on Atlantis?

Their eldest grandson Atlas was made king of the whole island and of the ocean named after him.