Industrial AgeIdeas & Belief
Donnelly revives Atlantis
1882NotableContested
Ignatius Donnelly's bestseller recasts Plato's Atlantis as a real lost continent behind all ancient civilizations, launching the modern Atlantis industry.
Contested history
Consensus: Atlantis comes from Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written around 360 BCE, and no archaeological evidence for it has been found.
A moral allegory invented by PlatoEstablished
Most classicists read Atlantis as a story Plato built to illustrate his ideas about the ideal state, and no earlier source mentions it.
Inspired by real events such as the Thera eruptionMinority view
Some scholars see echoes of the Bronze Age eruption that devastated Minoan settlements, but Plato's dates and geography do not fit.
A real Atlantic continent that seeded world civilizationsDebunked
Seafloor mapping and plate tectonics show no sunken continent in the Atlantic, and Donnelly's links between cultures do not hold up.
Community notes
Loading notes…
Learn more ranked by votes
Documentgutenberg.org
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly (Project Gutenberg) ↗Editor's pick
BookStephen Williams
Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory ↗Editor's pick