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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

That’s true, but it beggars belief that the civilisation Atlantis conjures to mind would leave zero physical evidence of significant structures behind.

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Not just zero physical evidence - zero evidence _at all_. Afaik it doesn't appear until Plato uses it, and he claims that its thousands of years old or something like that. That should reasonably have traces in other accounts through the years.

I did hear a fairly credible theory that it is just an allegory invented by Plato, but influenced by various other myths and political centers (such as king Minos rule on Crete).

The island Thera was destroyed by a volcanic eruption some 1200 years before Plato: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorini_caldera. The collapse of the island would have triggered tsunamis all across the Aegean Sea, so it's very likely many coastal towns had their own stories of being "swallowed by the sea".

Though Plato said 10,000 years before, this is the most likely source of the Atlantis story, as the eruption destroyed the Minoan settlement at Akrotiri as well as those on the coast of Crete. It's possible the eruption led to the collapse of the Minoan civilization.

Another quite compelling theory posits the destruction of Thera also caused the Biblical ten plagues of Egypt.

We don't know that it hasn't left any physical evidence behind. The origin of many archaeological artifacts are not known for certain. It's possible that there is pottery and other artifacts from Atlantis that we've already unearthed.

I was commenting in the context of the Eye of Africa, it’s a fascinating structure that happens to have some dimensional characteristics that vaguely resemble Plato’s description. There’s just no physical evidence of any significant architecture there of any kind.

It would also have significant trade and its artifacts would show up along the traderoutes.

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