Plato states his information came from notes taken by the great Greek statesman Solon when he visited Egypt and heard the story of Atlantis.  I think the key here is “notes” suggesting a few brief comments and not a historical document.  It makes perfect sense that Plato took the basic information that a mighty civilization sank overnight 10,000 years ago (I don’t recall the exact figure he gave).  That time period is right when the sea level rose 400 feet as the glaciers of the ice age melted.   There’s also a theory that there was a comet impact around then that caused the Younger Dryas.   All in all, a bad time for cities built on an island or a sea shore.  But Plato needed to tell an interesting story and give details so he took the Minoan Civilization and the eruption of Santorini that was only 1000 years before Plato’s time (approximately) so more information would be available.  So he described Atlantis using Minoan references .  I think the key is he says Atlantis sinned in planning to attack Athens!  It would make sense there had been war between the Minoans and Athens.  There are Greek myths that suggest that.   So my point is that I think there are two parts to finding the truth about Atlantis.  First dismiss all the description that fits Santorini and the Minoans.  Then focus on the basic claim about a mighty civilization that sank into the ocean (or got flooded by a rising sea0 10,000 years ago.  If we can prove it existed, that will rewrite ancient history.

That’s a fair question Sonya. Judging by all the other replies on this thread there are many theories as to what Atlantis was and where it was located. It is interesting that some people are quite adamant that their solution to the question is the correct one however it is obvious that Plato was not exactly sure himself where the legendary continent was. Nobody knows for sure where the place he was referring to is located.

The ancient continent of Mu has also been called Whaga and Pan in different historical texts. It may or may not have been called Atlantis in later myths and legends (by later I mean at the time of Plato). The entire continent of Mu, Whaga or Pan did not disappear below the ocean, parts of it are still above water. Many of the smaller Pacific islands are individual mountains (mostly volcanoes) and the larger islands are mountain ranges of the continent. It was huge and covered much of the middle and northern Pacific Ocean. The coastline at it’s western extremity included Sulawesi in Indonesia then heading north it included the Philipines, Taiwan, Japan and the Aleutians. From there the coast headed south to Rapanui or Easter Island, meaning that what is know known as Hawaii was about 1,000 miles or 1,600 km inland. From Rapanui the south coast encompassed Fiji, New Caledonia and Vanuatu and the huge island of Papua new Guinea, extending to Sulawesi in the west. The continent of Australia was separated from Pan by the Torres Strait and the Arafura sea.

Remnants of an ancient high culture have been discovered on most of the Pacific islands and Sulawesi. Indeed some very large temple structures have been discovered underwater: Nan Madol in the ocean adjacent to the island of Phonpei and Yonaguni in the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa. There are also extensive canals on the island of Papua New Guinea that have been overgrown by forest.

Being such a large continent the people who did escape the submersion would have gone to North and South America, and places that are now known as Siberia, China, Vietnam, Borneo, Java and Australia. In all of these places the indigenous people have legends of the great flood. As people migrated throughout the world the story or the cultural memory would have been carried with them.

Whether that is the continent later referred to by the Greeks as Atlantis we will never know because Plato himself did not know where it was.

“Atlantis the Andes Solution” by J. M. Allen appears to have solved it.  Atlantis is right where Plato said it was.

1. “Atlantis” refers to both the continent and the capitol city.  If we assume that it was the city which sank and not the whole continent, then South America fits the description.
2. Plato said that a mountain range crossed the continent.  The Andes fit this description.
3. Plato said that half way down the mountain range there was a large plane of a certain size.  Such a plane of that size exists on the eastern side of the Andes just south of where the west coast takes a bend to the south.  Just south of Sajama National Park.
4. Plato said that the plane was criss crossed with canals which irigated the land and storing water from the rainy season for use in the dry season.  Remains of canals can be seen in arial photos of the plane.
5. Plato said that Atlantis was located in the sea next to the plane.  Lake “Lago Poopo” is just to the south east of the plane.
6. Plato said that the sea is no longer navigatable because the earthquakes which sank Atlantis caused it to fill with silt.  Lago Poopo can not be navigated because earthquakes in its history filled it with silt.
7. The Egyption Priest said that the remains of Atlantis can be found in the many temples in the mountains which still existed.  The Andes are filled with temples whose builders are uncertain.

The book goes on with many references and details.

The Lord of the Rings ring was like a plain gold wedding band. Just sayin..

It is now very well known that the Atlantis island/continent existed and it was situated in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.Its final destruction took place around 13,500 years ago.Those who are lucky enough to have access to the Akashic Records could tell a lot about this subject.

If you want to understand anything like Atlantis, your search must be both BROAD and deep.  But you all keep digging deeper into dry wells.  Stop it.  None of that stuff leads anywhere at all.  You won’t find anything there.  Most of the stuff you parrot is just literally fiction pulled straight out of someone’s imagination anyway.  Mu indeed.  You’ll NEVER get anywhere that way.

So, for example, look up the Voynich manuscript.  See that fold-out with the nine circles?  Recognize it?  Those are the nine worlds of Yggdrasil, the nine heads of the 9-headed Naga, the 9 lights of the Hanukiah menorah, the nine figures of the Mount Nimrud ‘chess set’.  They are, in fact, the nine worlds of the post-diluvian solar system.

Now, how does that apply?  Because there were actually ten, and everybody knew it.  It was just rarely mentioned.  Enoch, for example explains the ten HEAVENS, as planets and their orbits, from the innermost (in his time) to the outermost.  Of the outermost, though, he says ‘we don’t discuss that because that is the face of God’.  And, no, it’s not a tenth planet.  What he means by the tenth sphere is the rest of the stars in the universe.  And this is entirely appropriate and correct because, to the ancients, the universe WAS God, and God was the universe.  It’s the age-old dichotomy in perspectives: Pantheism vs. Panentheism.  And it’s the answer to the ten kingdoms of Atlantis.

Y’all are making the same mistake our nuclear physicists AND our astro physicists keep making in that you keep looking down instead of up.  The source of the atom is not in the atom.  The power of the sun is not in the sun.  And Atlantis is no mere island, mountain, or obscure and remote formation on the earth.  But it’s not gone either.  You just don’t recognize it anymore.  The Atlantis you all are looking for *IS* the earth.  (Although the full truth is that the earth is just the reflection of the real, origital Atlantis, just as Egypt was, according to Herodotus, the reflection of heaven.)

You all look silly chasing your tails, only ever adding further confusion to the matter.

And you can stow that ‘thinks they know more than everyone else’ stuff.  Y’all are taking charlatans and fiction writers as gospel.  UFOs, aliens, magic, … what’s next?  Black holes?  The fifth dimension?

YES!  I DO know more than those who spread manure like that.

1. 1. The Richat structure. It has the correct colours concentric bands of rock. I think it could have been filled with water. Its longitude is literally beyond Gibraltar. Being beyond the Pillars of Hercules may refer to the route of access. North Western Africa may have been separated from the rest of Africa by the Trans-Saharan Seaway, and would have been a huge island about the size of Australia, though this may have been too long. ago.
2. 2. Tenochtitlan, Mexico CIty. The pattern of artificial canals may have been redesigned by the time of the conquistadors. 
3. 3. Some islands in the Atlantic ocean have mountains that could have been said to be amongst the tallest in the known classical world. These include: Pico, Azores and Teide, Tenerife. We would be looking for mountains about as tall as Mount Olympos. Other islands with tall mountains include La Palma, Gran Canaria, and Madeira. There are several submerged seamounts in the Atlantic Ocean, some of which appear as islands on old maps. Off the coast of Portugal in particular.
4. 4. Erlingsson proposed Ireland as Atlantis. Notably, the island has a central plain and perimeter mountains. It is possible that the island could have been inundated, perhaps by glacial melt water.
5. 5. Rockall Plateau. Perhaps depression and rebound of the crust from glacial ice sheet weight could have had an influence. It seems to have an elevated perimeter.
6. 6. Porcupine Bank, possible location of Hy Brasil.
7. 7. The Dogger Bank could have been submerged by a tsunami after the Storegga Slides off the coast of Norway.
8. 8. The bursting of Lake Agassiz is also worth mentioning as a possibly catastrophic flood event.
9. 9. Parts of the Caribbean, Antilles, or Bahamas, now under the sea.

In regard to the ancient civilization of Mu; A while ago, I was talking to Jason Phillips a Taumoko artist of Whakarewarewa and he was telling me how a friend had been to Tibet and found a real connection with the people. What caught his attention was being greeted with the Pukana - a Maori (and Tibetan) tradition of sticking out ones tongue to show off ones virility. He also noticed how similar the priest’s garb was to Hawaiian chiefs. The orange crescent crest hats and red robes were uncannily similar. He thought there had to be some sort of priestly connection - but how could there be a commonality to two cultures 10,000 kilometres apart - how could a mountain dwelling culture and a seafaring nation be related? I was perplexed, then one day I saw this paper by; Katsushi Tokunaga etal. ’A Genetic link between Asians and Native Americans; ‘HLA’s A24-Cw8-B48, A24-Cw10-B60 and A24-Cw9-B61 were all commonly observed in Taiwan indigenous populations (pre Chinese), Tibetans, Thais, Tlingit, Maori, Pima, Maya, Japanese, Orochon, Buryat, Man, Yakut and Inuit.’ These findings indicated that East Asia was the dispersal point for both the Tibetans and the Polynesians, not to mention certain Native American groups. Studies by Mark Stoneking indicate this dispersal occurred approximately 6,000 years ago, before the Chinese expanded down onto the East Coast from the interior.
A little research revealed that the Tibetans believe they are descended from Avalokitesvara and ancestress GuanYin, who were from an island off the coast of China - Putuo Shan - The Sanscrit equivelant of Putuo is Potalaka. The palace of Dalai Lama in Lhasa is called `Potala Palace' - also the residence of Avalokitesvara. Although Buddha only goes back to 600AD, earlier forms of the Buddhist religion go back much further than that. When one sees the megalithic entrance rocks on Putuo Shan, one can imagine this island has a very deep history of great importance to the origins of the East Asian people.
Looking on a map, one finds Putuo Shan is on the south side of the Yellow Sea - the home sea of Hawai’i Loa - the discoverer of Hawai’i and not far from the centre of the Hemudu culture - a culture that some believe was the birth place of the Austronesian culture. Further into the Yellow Sea, one finds the Hongshan culture which produced Jade carvings not unlike the Jade carving of the Maori. On the North side of the Yellow sea can be found petroglyphs not unlike the ones in the Bella Coola Valley - also attributed to a proto Polynesian culture.
When I first heard the names Potala and Putuo, I immediately thought of Pulotu - the Samoan ancestral homeland.
In Tongan mythology, Pulotu is presided over by ancestral figure Havea Hikuleʻo. In Tongan cosmology the sky, the sea, and Pulotu existed from the beginning, and the gods lived there. There are suggestions that for Tonga and Samoa, Pulotu refers to a real country that went underwater - a place where there was a civilization for which they held great reverence.
It is not hard to imagine that Putuo Shan may hold the key to the origins of the Polynesian nation. A remnant of a lost civilization that once inhabited the flooded continental shelf off East Asia. One can imagine this great civilization being ruled by kings and Queens in red robes and orange crescent crests with processions adorned with rows of Kahili.
Hawai’i is most definitely a nation connected to the North Pacific - the Hawai'ian language uses L instead of R as in East Asian languages, they use the Glottal Stop the same as the Tlingit and Haida and they make stone tools similar to Both East Asia and the Canadian NW - This is the area people need to be looking to find the origins of the Polynesian culture - not New Guinea or Indonesia. It has the right mix of DNA, the right stone technologies, culture and oral histories that all agree with the science. Why are there no scientific studies being done regarding these obvious connections?
 

We have as much chance of evolving into marine creatures as there is of us seeing anthropogenic climate change a la the BBC's perpetual position.The medieval Maxwells both faced and delivered real threats. They didn't need to make them up.

However, if one wishes to further one's career an appearance on the BBC is a step forward and there is nought the Beeb love better than adding an anthropogenic climate change angle to just about any story involving actual science. It's almost as if they understand that imposters need to mingle with the real thing to really be accepted.

In that sense, today's no different to medieval times.