Atlantis was Antarctica.Īnother theory-that Atlantis was actually a much more temperate version of what is now Antarctica-is based on the work of Charles Hapgood, whose 1958 book Earth’s Shifting Crust featured a foreword by Albert Einstein.

READ MORE: What Is the Bermuda Triangle? 3. Supporters of this theory point to the discovery of what look like man-made walls and streets found off the coast of Bimini, although scientists have evaluated these structures and found them to be natural beach-rock formations. In the 1970s, Berlitz claimed Atlantis was a real continent located off the Bahamas that had fallen victim to the notorious “Bermuda Triangle,” a region of the Atlantic where a number of ships had supposedly disappeared under mysterious circumstances. One of these writers was Charles Berlitz, grandson of the founder of the well-known language schools, and author of many books on paranormal phenomena. Inspired by Donnelly, many later writers expanded on his theories and added their own speculations as to where Atlantis may have been. Atlantis was swallowed up by the Bermuda Triangle. Long after modern oceanography and a greater understanding of plate tectonics poked holes in his shifting-waters thesis, some continue to cling to Donnelly’s theory, mostly due to its adherence to Plato’s placement of Atlantis in the mid-Atlantic. In his 1882 book, Atlantis, the Antediluvian World, the writer Ignatius Donnelly argued the accomplishments of the ancient world (such as metallurgy, language and agriculture) must have been handed down by an earlier advanced civilization, as the ancients weren’t sophisticated enough to develop these advances on their own.Īssuming the Atlantic Ocean was only a few hundred feet deep, Donnelly described a continent flooded by shifting ocean waters that sank in the exact location Plato said it did: in the Atlantic Ocean just outside the “Pillars of Hercules,” the two rocks that mark the entrance to the Straits of Gibraltar.

The idea that Atlantis was an actual historical place, and not just a legend invented by Plato, didn’t surface until the late 19th century. Engraving of Atlantis, as first described by Plato, just beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar and Mount Hacho).

Atlantis by Ignatius L. Donnelly