formed by sunken cement barrels have fooled previous Atlantis-seekers.
 

         Atlantis Subplots:

         A Brief History of the Lost Continent

         A continent the size of Europe, boasting beautiful cities, advanced
         technology and utopian government... subjected to a great cataclysm
         and reduced to rubble that sank beneath the sea, lost forever. The
         legend of Atlantis has been around for thousands of years, and
         whatever its factual validity may be, it can truthfully claim a noble
         heritage: its earliest proponent was Plato.

         The Greek philosopher wrote of Atlantis in two of his dialogues,
         "Timaeus" and "Critias," around 370 B.C. Plato explained that this
         story, which he claimed to be true, came from then-200-year-old
         records of the Greek ruler Solon, who heard of Atlantis from an
         Egyptian priest. Plato said that the continent lay in the Atlantic Ocean
         near the Straits of Gibraltar until its destruction 10,000 years
         previous.

         In "Timaeus," Plato described Atlantis as a prosperous nation out to
         expand its domain: "Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great
         and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and
         several others, and over parts of the continent," he wrote, "and,
         furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya
         within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far
         as Tyrrhenia."

         Plato goes on to tell how the Atlanteans made a grave mistake by
         seeking to conquer Greece. They could not withstand the Greeks'
         military might, and following their defeat, a natural disaster sealed their
         fate. "Timaeus" continues: "But afterwards there occurred violent
         earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all
         your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of
         Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea."

         Interestingly, Plato tells a more metaphysical version of the Atlantis
         story in "Critias." There he describes the lost continent as the kingdom
         of Poseidon, the god of the sea. This Atlantis was a noble,
         sophisticated society that reigned in peace for centuries, until its
         people became complacent and greedy. Angered by their fall from
         grace, Zeus chose to punish them by destroying Atlantis.

         Although Plato was the first to use the term "Atlantis," there are
         antecedents to the legend. There is an Egyptian legend which Solon
         probably heard while traveling in Egypt, and was passed down to
         Plato years later. The island nation of Keftiu, home of one of the four
         pillars that held up the sky, was said to be a glorious advanced
         civilization which was destroyed and sank beneath the ocean.

         More significantly, there is another Atlantis-like story that was closer
         to Plato's world, in terms of time and geography... and it is based in
         fact. The Minoan Civilization was a great and peaceful culture based
         on the island of Crete, which reigned as long ago as 2200 B.C. The
         Minoan island of Santorini, later known as Thera, was home to a huge
         volcano. In 1470 B.C., it erupted with a force estimated to be greater
         than Krakatoa, obliterating everything on Santorini's surface. The
         resulting earthquakes and tsunamis devastated the rest of the Minoan
         Civilization, whose remnants were easily conquered by Greek forces.

         Perhaps Santorini was the "real" Atlantis. Some have argued against
         this idea, noting Plato specified that Atlantis sank 10,000 years ago,
         but the Minoan disaster had taken place only 1,000 years earlier. Still,
         it could be that translation errors over the centuries altered what Plato
         really wrote, or maybe he was intentionally blurring the historical facts
         to suit his purposes. And there exists yet another strong possibility:
         that Plato entirely made Atlantis up himself.

         Regardless, his story of the sunken continent went on to captivate the
         generations that followed. Other Greek thinkers, such as Aristotle and
         Pliny, disputed the existence of Atlantis, while Plutarch and Herodotus
         wrote of it as historical fact. Atlantis became entrenched in folklore all
         around the world, charted on ocean maps and sought by explorers.

         In 1882, Ignatius Donnelly, a U.S. congressman from Minnesota,
         brought the legend into the American consciousness with his book,
         Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. In more recent years, the psychic
         Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) became the U.S.'s most prominent
         advocate of a factual Atlantis. Widely known as "The Sleeping
         Prophet," Cayce claimed the ability to see the future and to
         communicate with long-dead spirits from the past. He identified
         hundreds of people -- including himself -- as reincarnated Atlanteans.

         Cayce said that Atlantis had been situated near the Bermuda island of
         Bimini. He believed that Atlanteans possessed remarkable
         technologies, including supremely powerful "fire-crystals" which they
         harnessed for energy. A disaster in which the fire-crystals went out of
         control was responsible for Atlantis's sinking, he said, in what sounds
         very much like a cautionary fable on the dangers of nuclear power.
         Remaining active beneath the ocean waves, damaged fire-crystals
         send out energy fields that interfere with passing ships and aircraft --
         which is how Cayce accounted for the Bermuda Triangle.

         Cayce prophesied that part of Atlantis would rise again to the surface
         in "1968 or 1969." It didn't, and no one has yet found hard evidence
         that it was ever there. With sonar tracing and modern knowledge of
         plate tectonics, it appears impossible that a mid-Atlantic continent
         could have once existed. Still, many argue that there must have been
         an Atlantis, because of the many cultural similarities on either side of
         the ocean which could not have developed independently, making
         Atlantis quite literally a "missing link" -- the topographical equivalent
         of Bigfoot.

         In more ways than one.