Strangely enough, the father of modern logic, Plato, is responsible for one of the greatest folk-tales of all time. He was the first one to tell the story of the lost city of Atlantis. He placed it beyond the Pillars of Heracles, which today we know as the Strait of Gibraltar. According to the Egyptians who told Plato's ancestor Solon the story, the tragedy occurred 9,000 years before Solon's birth. Geological evidence shows that the Atlantic Ocean has not changed for millions of years, so if there was an Atlantis, it would have to be elsewhere. The civilization that Plato describes could have been the Minoan culture, which was in Crete. It was a civilization that had iron smelting, engineering and written laws, but disappeared somewhere in the 15th century B.C. The disappearance of the Minoans has long been a mystery, although current speculations credit the volcano on Thera - which erupted around 1470 BC - for the disappearance. If the volcano didn't kill them, it would certainly have made them vulnerable to invasions. Another problem ties in the translation of Plato's story - The Greek word for "greater than" is very similar to the word "midway." Plato said that Atlantis was "greater than" Libya and Asia ... or did he say it was midway between Libya and Asia? Also, there are three land masses that are known as "The Pillars of Heracles," thus leaving the location of Atlantis vague at best. Back to Shadis #23 Table of Contents Back to Shadis List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master List of Magazines © Copyright 1996 by Alderac Entertainment Group This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com