Later writers, together with Sir Francis Bacon, William Blake, and American politician Ignatius Donnelly, saved Atlantis within the public’s consciousness, however was Atlantis actually a spot? Many historians and archaeologists imagine {that a} historic catas­trophe—an earthquake, tsunami, or huge flood— could have impressed the story. Essentially the most generally invoked location is the Aegean Island of Santorini. As soon as a flourishing industrial centre often known as Thera, town and its island have been blown aside round 3,600 years in the past in an unlimited volcanic eruption, which can even have triggered a tsu­nami.

The lingering reminiscence of this cataclysm could have formed Plato’s story. Nonetheless, seekers after historic Atlantis have appeared for proof in ruins in Spain, the Bahamas, and India, amongst different locations, however to no avail. For now, explorers proceed to search for Atlantis, or its inspiration, in sunken cities world wide.

(Learn all in regards to the legend of Atlantis.)

The tip-of-the-world Thule

Greek explorer Pytheas first wrote in regards to the mysterious island of Thule in his fourth-century B.C. work, On the Ocean. An intrepid traveller from Massalia (at this time’s Marseille, France), Phytheas visited and precisely described northwestern Europe. Thule, he wrote, was six days’ sail north of the British Isles, alongside the Arctic Circle. Scholar debate if Phytheas made landfall himself however wrote that it had neither land, nor sea, nor air, however a combination of all three, with a texture of a jellyfish.

Geographers over the centuries linked Thule to a believable number of northern lands: Iceland, Inexperienced­land, Norway, or Nova Scotia (as a result of Pytheas described its dramatic tides, which can have referred to the Bay of Fundy’s large tidal vary). Right this moment, historians aren’t positive if Pytheas’s distant land was primarily based on an actual location or whether or not it’s merely a stand-in for anywhere. Regardless of the case, it reveals up within the phrase “Ultima Thule”—any extraordinarily distant place on Earth. And the title Thule lives on in Greenland with the Thule Air Pressure Base; within the Sandwich Islands, certainly one of which is South Thule; and within the title of the 69th component, thulium, found by a Swedish chemist.