Myths are stories that express meaning, morality or motivation. Whether they are true or not is irrelevant. But because we live in an age of science, we have a preoccupation with corroborating our myths.

Consider the so-called Lost Continent of Atlantis, a mythic place that has been "found" in so many places around the planet that one wouldn't think there was anywhere left to look. Think again. On June 6 the BBC released a story about satellite images locating Atlantis in, of all places, the south of Spain (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3766863.stm). The story quoted Rainer K¿hne of the University of Dortmund in Germany as saying, "Plato wrote of an island of five stades (925 m) diameter that was surrounded by several circular structures--concentric rings--some consisting of Earth and the others of water. We have

1 Comments

1. 1. Rod Martin, Jr. 10:57 AM 4/2/10

   Mr. Shermer uses some shaky logic in this short article. I'm surprised this prestigious magazine agreed to include it.
   
   Mr. Shermer says, "Whether they are true or not is irrelevant." This is opinion and, in my opinion, a very poor one. Why? What if a myth is based on some past, very real incident? Perhaps we could ask, are history, prehistory, anthropology, geology, archaeology, astronomy, paleontology and a host of other sciences that study the past irrelevant? I think not.
   
   Mr. Shermer goes on to ask and answer, "What if Plato made up the story for mythic purposes? He did." This is a bold, but unsupported claim. Did Mr. Shermer interview the Greek philosopher? Even if there is a scholarly consensus that this was Plato's purpose, erudition and intelligence do not confer omniscience. This is only opinion.
   
   When the author says, "...'Pillars of Hercules' (usually identified by Atlantologists as the Strait of Gibraltar)," he is betraying a prejudice that, while being subtle, is quite evident and not very conducive to a logical discussion. He commits an error of omission by not including the fact that the "Pillars of Herakles" are usually identified with the Strait of Gibraltar by scholars, as well.
   
   Albert Einstein once said that imagination is more important than knowledge. Logic can only take you from A to B, but imagination can take you everywhere. Certainly a scientist needs to come back from an excursion into the imaginary, but the inability to go there may have long prevented scientists from finding Troy, Minoan Crete, Amazons in the burial kurgans of Southern Russia, and possibly the location of the Island of Ithaca. Attitude can drive us, but it can also blind us.
   
   Yes, Atlantis may well have been only myth, but there are three items of scientific evidence, each from a different discipline which support the thesis that Atlantis may have been real. These occur right when Plato said Atlantis subsided. One of these items, if found to be a proxy for a real event, gives us a smoking gun in the death of Atlantis. A sudden, two-meter drop in sea levels worldwide is consistent with such an event. See http://www.ancientsuns.com/fwd/mia/atlantis-articles/atlantis-proof.php for more details.
   
   Perhaps the greatest "weakness" of the Atlantis story is a geological one. Yet Plato's location is right where most mountains in the world are formed -- adjacent to a tectonic boundary. And this stretch of Africa-Eurasia boundary has its share of apparent damage.
   

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