The story of Atlantis in the Ancient World

Abstract

This article offers a journey through the different positions and developments arising in the Ancient World, and also in the Middle Ages, from Plato’s story about Atlantis as it was formulated in the dialogues Timaeus and Critias. It can, thus, be seen that, almost from the very beginning, writers on the subject were split into two groups which, up to this day, have remained almost intact in relation to the way how they view the text written by the Athenian thinker must be interpreted, namely, those who considered it a mere fable forged with ideological intentions, and those who believed in the existence of a real referent which was the basis for the Platonic text, which, undoubtedly, constituted at that time a benchmark for the geographical and geological thinking.