Word: atlantises
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A number of people were outraged last week by a man named L. Sprague de Camp. Mr. de Camp announced in Natural History that Atlantis and other "lost continents" had never existed.
Plato started it all, according to De Camp, by describing in his Dialogues a marvelous country beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar and Ceuta). Life was beautiful in Atlantis, said Plato, but an earthquake had foundered the continent, leaving only shoals to mark its site.
Runaway Allegory. Wherever he got his idea, Plato did not expect Atlantis to be taken literally. He meant it as an imaginary site for an ideal city, as described in his Republic. Men who came after began to accept Atlantis as fact. For 2,000 years the legend grew. Cultists...
Plato Was a Piker. Modern Atlanteans go far beyond Plato, peopling their imaginary lands with super-cultured inhabitants. Greatest extender of the Atlantis myth: Author James Churchward, who invented the "lost continent of Mu" in the Pacific. Its inhabitants, the originators of civilization, colonized Atlantis 20,000 years ago. Their...
Patiently and learnedly De Camp disproves the Atlantis theories, except for the possible grain of truth behind Plato's original allegory. But the Atlanteans go marching on. Last week a comic-strip character, Alley Oop, who was born in Moo (Mu with dinosaurs), was exploring Atlantis by time machine...