The Lost City of Atlantis

Plato was great at stirring up trouble and two of his dialogues -- Timaeus and Critias -- have served as the basis for the theory behind the Lost City of Atlantis. While many critics attribute this story to the creation of a philosopher's imagination to illustrate an argument, there are proponents who claim that it was the other way around; that his dialogues were inspired by catastrophic events, leading to the destruction of the Minoan civilization on Crete and Thera.

So, did Plato have too much wine? Is Atlantis an exaggeration based on the ancient cities of Thera in the Mediterranean? Or could it be real? Is it possible for an advanced and rich civilization to have existed in the Atlantic Ocean circa 9,000 B.C.? By most accounts, the only written records of Atlantis are found in Timaeus and Critias. Another possible location for the Lost City of Atlantis is around the Azores Islands, a group of islands belonging to Portugal that are 900 miles west of the Portuguese coast. Some actually argue that these islands are the mountaintops of the sunken continent of Atlantis. Wherever the Lost City of Atlantis is located, it remains one of man's ultimate unsolved mysteries.