The myth is so alluring that one of the largest hotel in the Bahamas is the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort, a lost city themed resort.
Plato's account of Atlantis, believed to be the first, is found in the dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written in the year 360 B.C.E.
Donnelly took Plato's account of Atlantis seriously and attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from its high Neolithic culture.
One such was the philosopher Crantor, a student of Plato's student Xenocrates, who tried to find proof of the existence of Atlantis.
One of these, Spartel, could have been Atlantis, though there are a number of inconsistencies with Plato's account.
Poseidon was appropriately, and to his liking, bequeathed the island of Atlantis.
There have been dozens—perhaps hundreds—of locations proposed for Atlantis, to the point where the name has become a generic term rather than referring to one specific (possibly even genuine) location.
Another hypothesis is based on a re-creation of the geography of the Mediterranean Sea at the time of Atlantis' supposed existence.
The volcanic eruptions on the Mediterranean island of Santorini during Minoan times were likely powerful enough to cause the cataclysm that befell Atlantis.
Numerous expeditions have set out for the Bimini Islands to attempt to prove or disprove that the formation is man-made and somehow connected to Atlantis.
Still, the romance of Antartica's relatively unexplored regions continues to lead many to superimpose ideas, such as Atlantis, onto it.
Atlantis appears in all types of literature, from Renaissance works to modern day science fiction/fantasy, archaeological and scientific works, to New Age books.
Plato states that Atlantis was located beyond the "Pillars of Hercules," the name given to the Strait of Gibraltar linking the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean.
According to his thesis, the Atlantis described by Plato could be identified with Sardinia.
Many of the proposed sites share some of the characteristics of the Atlantis story (water, catastrophic end, relevant time period), but none has been proven conclusively to be a true historical Atlantis.
Atlantis (Greek: ???????? ?????, "Island of Atlas") is a mythical island nation first mentioned and described by the classical Greek philosopher Plato in the dialogues Timaeus and Critias.
The scholar Ignatius Donnelly published Atlantis: the Antediluvian World in 1882, helping to stimulate popular interest in Atlantis.
Critias claims that his accounts of ancient Athens and Atlantis stem from a visit to Egypt by the Athenian lawgiver Solon in the sixth century B.C.E.
The debate over Atlantis remained relatively quiet until the late nineteenth century.
Atlantis may not be a physical place, but it certainly has been established as a location in humanity's shared imagination.
Atlantis has become the ultimate mythical city, its name becoming iconic for all other lost cities.
Alleged to be an imperial power in the ancient world, the existence of Atlantis has been debated since Plato first spoke of it.