The Modern Era Quacks Who Popularized the Notion that Atlantis Was Real
Ignatius Donnelly’s claims were dismissed by serious scholars. However, some writers took his version of Atlantis, and ran with it. Most prominent among them were a mystic named Madame Blavatsky, and a famous psychic named Edgar Cayce. Cayce imparted a Christian spin to the story, and gave psychic readings in which he claimed that many of his clients had led past lives in Atlantis. He also predicted that Atlantis would be discovered in 1969. It was not, despite Plato’s specificity about its location. The philosopher wrote of an island bigger than Asia (what Greeks called Asia Minor back then) and Libya put together, situated in the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea, just past the Straits of Gibraltar.
Those who advocated that Atlantis was real and not a fake fictional account, argued that he was mistaken, or that for his own reasons, he sought to mislead. Over the years, there have been great advances in submarine, deep sea probe, oceanography, and ocean floor mapping technologies. Despite such progress, no evidence has emerged that Plato’s fable described a real place. Although the ocean deep is still full of mysteries, it is difficult to miss a submerged landmass bigger than Asia Minor and Libya. Nonetheless, the notion of a lost advanced civilization titillates people’s imaginations, so it is unlikely that the legend of Atlantis will die off anytime soon.
