lost city of atlantis

The origins of Atlantis

Unlike many legends whose origins have been lost in the mists of time, we know exactly when and where the story of Atlantis first appeared. The story was first told in two of Plato's dialogues, the "Timaeus" and the "Critias," written about 360 B.C. 

Though today Atlantis is often conceived of as a peaceful utopia, the Atlantis that Plato described in his fable was very different. In his book "Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology," professor of archaeology Ken Feder notes that in Plato's story, "Atlantis is not a place to be honored or emulated at all. Atlantis is not the perfect society ... Quite the contrary, Atlantis is the embodiment of a materially wealthy, technologically advanced, and militarily powerful nation that has become corrupted by its wealth, sophistication, and might." As propaganda in Plato's morality tale, the Atlantis legend is more about the city's heroic rival Athens than a sunken civilization; if Atlantis really existed today and was found intact and inhabited, its residents would probably try to kill and enslave us all. 
It's clear that Plato made up Atlantis as a plot device for his stories, because there no other records of it anywhere else in the world. There are many extant Greek texts; surely someone else would have also mentioned, at least in passing, such a remarkable place. There is simply no evidence from any source that the legends about Atlantis existed before Plato wrote about it. 
In his book "Meet Me In Atlantis: Across Three Continents in Search of the Legendary Lost City" Mark Adams explains how an otherwise unremarkable Greek legend became so widely known. It was due to a Minnesota man named Ignatius Donnelly (1831-1901). Donnelly was a Congressmen and amateur historian who claimed, in his 1882 book "The Antediluevian World," that all great advances in civilization and technology could be traced back to the long-lost island mentioned by Plato. But Donnelly went beyond merely popularizing Plato's story; he added some of his own "facts" and ideas that have become part of the Atlantis myth. Donnelly promoted what is now called "diffusionism," the idea that all great cultures can be traced back to a single source. 
Adams describes Donnelly "as the first great Atlantis fundamentalist, in that he believed that Plato's story was factually accurate outside of the supernatural elements like Poseidon." Donnelly sent a copy of his book to Charles Darwin, who found it interesting but unpersuasive — reading it, he said, "in a very skeptical spirit." Adams, after poring over much of Donnelly's materials, comes to a similar conclusion: "Donnelly was ... a bag of winds. He knew the results he wanted and rummaged through his sources searching for only those facts that fit his needs, without pausing to note any reasonable doubts." 
Later, less skeptical writers elaborated on Donnelly's theories, adding their own opinions and speculations. These included mystic Madame Blavatsky (in her 1888 book, "The Secret Doctrine") and famous psychic Edgar Cayce in the 1920s. Cayce, who put a fundamentalist Christian spin on the Atlantis story, gave psychic readings for thousands of people — many of whom, he claimed, had past lives in Atlantis. Unfortunately, none of the information was verifiable, and Cayce wrongly predicted that the continent would be discovered in 1969.