The Lost City of Atlantis.

[kimmerspixelated]

If one wanted to research it historically , which book would one begin with? Which book is the definitive leading authority? Thanks, my friends.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Plato's dialogues.

There's a brief description in there, and the rest is fiction based on that myth. It ain't history.

[pkdu]

2. They say the first is usually the best...

:O)



Joking apart ,several good looking accounts on wikipedia ( but I haven't read them)


Cheers
P

[Speck Tater]

3. The "conventional" theories of Atlantis are all nonsense. However...

A number of authors have made a pretty good case for the legend having originated from stories passed down from the end of the last ice age when melting glaciers pushed sea level higher, flooding the vast fertile plain that is now the shallow ocean around Indonesia. Thousands of square miles of what was once rich farmland all went under the ocean as the great ice sheets melted.

As for Atlantis being in the Atlantic, the ocean we call the Atlantic really only got its name a few hundred years ago. In ancient times the Greeks used the word "Atlantic" for all the seas and oceans of the world.

The conventional story of a continent sinking int he middle of the Atlantic is geological nonsense. The mid-Atlantic ridge is a center of uplift and spreading, not subduction. If the legends had any basis in reality it makes sense that the stories might have come from the post-glacial period when global warming raised sea levels and flooded a LOT of coastal territories.

[texastoast]

5. What about that wall in the Caribbean?

I forget exactly where it is, but it was found and I heard about it several years ago. Lots of old mountaintops in the Caribbean. Seems like it was around Cuba maybe but out in the ocean a good ways.

[NYC_SKP]

10. The Bimini Road?

That might be it...

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. This is the theory I'd like to persue

That many of the legends, such as Atlantis and Noah's flood, are based on events caused by the melting of the glaciers during the last ice age. What authors would you recommend as good reading on this subject?

[Mist]

4. Go to Amazon-quite a few books on Atlantis there. See what you feel comfortable

with. Some alternative historians think Atlantis was a continent, not a city, that disappeared during a pole shift.

[kimmerspixelated]

7. Interesting, thanks.

[FarrenH]

8. After reading a Graham Hancock book

in which he railed a little too much against the scientific community, I went looking for more sober, qualified opinions online and found this site set up by actual archeologists:

http://www.hallofmaat.com/

I posted a query on their discussion forums about the apparently ubiquitous nature of the flood myth, which can be found in African, South East Asian and Middle-Eastern/European mythology (the pan-African Nguni myth narrated by Credo Mutwa in "Indaba My Children", for instance, describes an original "golden people", a fall from grace, a punishment flood and two survivors escaping on the back of a giant fish).

The answer provided was extremely sensible . Flooding is among the most universal of natural disasters in human experience. Humans generally settle or try to live near large bodies of water. And one would expect legends to develop all over the world about particularly traumatic floods, but it doesn't necessarily imply a global flood or a common root to all the myths - that an original people carried a story about one flood all over the world.

What may have come from a common root is a proto-religion that saw natural disasters as a form of divine punishment, leading to the interpretation of many different floods in a similar manner, including, IIRC, the Atlantis myth. And given the massive disruption a major flood can cause, its also likely that talk of a better time before the flood and displacement would, in many pre-literate cultures, evolve into claims of wondrous technology and high culture, as is the case with the African and Atlantean myths.

[NV Whino]

9. Ignatius Donnelly is an interesting read on the subject

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_L._Donnelly

Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882),<3> in which he attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from its high-Neolithic culture.

The book is out of print, but with a little diligence, you might find it somewhere. Here's a link I just found. You might check it out.
http://books.google.com/books?id=r9Tbuy7TxN4C&dq=Ignatius+Donelly+Atlantis&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=LWHYLtsGd_&sig=7F2dp_EmdLlk-rTtbF6PvdME5Os&hl=en&ei=KAAnSoOZA6CCtgOqhqTgDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPR5,M1