The first mumblings about a place called "Atlantis" that sank beneath the waves way back came from no less a person than Plato. Now, where he got his information, nobody seems to know. Whether he had actual historical data, had been listening to legends and giving them credence, or sniffing glue, is unclear. He believed that it was "beyond the Gates of Hercules" (the Straits of Gibraltar), which, one presumes, puts it somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. It sank, says Plato, during a massive earthquake. He did not, however, say that it was a marvelously spiritual and technologically advanced civilization; he believed that, at one time, it had been a military threat to Athens.

All the stuff about some marvelously advance, utopian civilization living on a place specifically called "Atlantis," complete with paranormal mental powers, possessing magnificent ships and flying machines powered by some mysterious kind of crystals (dilithium, no doubt), came from folks like occultist Helena Blavatsky and her cadre of woo-woos. This was accelerated by the writings of Richard S. Shaver. Shaver wrote for Amazing Stories, one of the more popular science-fiction pulp magazines (lots of the biggies—e.g., Azimov, Heinlein—got started there), and he wrote a lot about such things as the lost continents of Atlantis, Lemura, Mu, and maybe even others. He also came up with that "hollow earth" business (any planetologist, or scientist in general, or anyone who understands planet-sized bodies and gravitational forces, knows that this is physically impossible). Shaver, with the collusion of the, then, editor of Amazing Stories, Ray Palmer, claimed that, although he was putting this stuff forward as fiction, it was all true. A young Harlan Ellison, never known to be particularly shy, recognized it for exactly what it was, and gave Shaver and Palmer a heavy ration of grief about the so-called "Shaver Mystery" they were trying to peddle. Thanks partially to Ellison's gadflying, and, of course, the amused and amazed snorts of the scientific community, it became known as "The Shaver Hoax." Nevertheless, it developed a substantial cult following. Self-styled psychic Edgar Cayce predicted that Atlantis would rise out of the Atlantic Ocean near the Caribbean in 1968 and usher in a New Age. (Damn! Missed it by that much!).

Genuine historians and archeologists believe that if something like Atlantis every did exist, it was probably the island of Thera, or possibly Crete, both of which were inhabited by relatively advanced societies (advanced in terms of social structure, economy, and standard of living—but no flying machines or telepathy—sorry!). Unfortunately, Thera was a volcanic island, and sometime around the 15th century BCE, it perished in a massive volcanic explosion that hurled gigatons of matter into the upper atmosphere and caused a massive tsunami that devastated much of the eastern Mediterranean, particularly the Minoan civilization on Crete. Thera, or Crete, or both, may be the factual basis for the belief in the legendary Atlantis, and where Plato got the idea. Currently, the island of Santorini is shaped like a partial ring. It, and some nearby islands form what is left of the rim of the caldera of a huge volcano and all that remains of Thera. People live there. The island has no fresh water, so they have to collect rainwater in cisterns. They have a small wine industry (volanic soil usually produces good grapes), but the main industry is tourism.

Don Firth