Location hypotheses of Atlantis

Location hypotheses of Atlantis are various proposed real-world settings for the legendary island of Atlantis, described as a lost civilization mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 B.C. In these dialogues, a character named Critias claims that an island called Atlantis was swallowed by the sea about 9,200 years previously. According to the dialogues, this story was passed down to him through his grandfather, Dropides, who in turn got it from Solon, the famous Athenian lawmaker who got the story from an Egyptian sanctuary. Plato's dialogues locate the island in the Atlantic Pelagos "Atlantic Sea", "in front of" the Pillars of Hercules (Στήλες του Ηρακλή) and facing a district called modern Gades or Gadira (Gadiron), a location that some modern Atlantis researchers associate with modern Gibraltar; however various locations have been proposed.

Most theories of the placement of Atlantis center on the Mediterranean, influenced largely by the geographical location of Egypt from which the story allegedly is derived.

Robert Graves in his The Greek Myths (1955), argues Atlantis was the Island of Pharos off the western coast of the Nile Delta, that is, before Alexander the Great connected the island to mainland Egypt by building a causeway.

The theory that Thera was the site of the capital of Atlantis was suggested by Angelos Galanopoulos in 1960.

Soon after the discovery of the Minoan civilization at Knossos on Crete by Sir Arthur Evans in 1900, theories linking the disappearance of this advanced empire with the destruction of Atlantis were proposed by K. T. Frost in 1913 and E. S. Balch in 1917. This theory was revived by Spyridon Marinatos in 1950 and P. B. S. Andrews in 1967. More recent archaeological, seismological, and vulcanological evidence has expanded the asserted connection of Crete, the island of Santorini, and the Minoan civilization with Plato's description of Atlantis. (Recent arguments for Akrotiri being Atlantis have been popularized on television in shows such as The History Channel show Lost Worlds episode "Atlantis") Evidence said to advance this idea includes:

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