[Phil V.]

Atlantis?

No.

Flash Gordon's secret base.

[rwfromkansas]

I doubt Atlantis is as large as initially thought, but at the same time, the literary record speaks of such a place. Contrary to most people who just brush off something they think is too far-fetched, I at least have an open mind on this. This may not be it, but it is one of the areas that is looked at geographically.

[Anotherpundit]

"Atlantis" was a myth totally invented by Plato. Whatever this is, it's not Atlantis -- if nothing else, there wasn't any contact between the west and east hemispheres!

[hinckley buzzard]

Flash Gordon's secret base has a higher probability.

Plato definitively located Atlantis as outside the pillars of Hercules. And he ought to know, since he made it up.

As in other of his writings, Plato made overt and exlicit use of myths and stories as instructional aids, especially for communicating moral lessons to children, which is the context in which the Atlantis story is put in the mouth of Timaeus.

It's a lot of fun to imagine a great ancient city lost beneath the waves, but that's all it is. The fact remains, there was no record of the Atlantis myth anywhere, ever, in any language, before Plato's stories.

It is a better thing to cultivate wonder at the mysteries of the real world, rather than to besot the imagination with idle fantasies...