Introduction, where to start?

here to start? Is the real question! We may indeed well ask with what to start. It's for these reasons we use that what is known in project management as a method called HWWHWWWW¹ (In French: CQQCOQP), where each letter is a question for which we must find an answer. There is, however, in this series of questions one, the “How much”, that does not matter, at least not in terms of cost but rather in the quantitative sense.

Another approach could be a method similar to that the police is using and make a “missing” case, with indications of possible witnesses, checking all possible tracks, including audits of “Ouï-dire”.

The first witness, if one can speak of a “missing” case, is our dear Plato who left us with a sufficiently detailed and extensive description to start working it out. The dialogues of Timaeus and Critias contain in fact a wealth of details on the construction of, for him, most important part of the country. He had made, or rather he had done so by others, a brief description of Greece at the time with its capital Athens and a more detailed description of Atlantis with its capital Poseidon. Plato, however, limited his description of Atlantis to the part of the country controlled by the capital, which was probably the largest and most important part. We have, up to today, no description, no information on the remaining nine out of ten states that Atlantis was made of. The only detail that remains is the name of the first and oldest king, “Atlas” and his twin brother “Eumélos”, who once controlled the area ranging from the east edge of the island Atlantis to the region of Cadiz on the Andalusian coast of Spain. We know the names of eight other kings, but we ignore so far of which part of the island they were in charge. According to the dialogues of Plato, it was Atlas, the first and the oldest king, who ruled over the main city and the island as a whole. The dialogues of Plato also specify that the island and the ocean that surrounds it, bear his name.

What is interesting to note is that the ancient Greeks apparently had the habit of calling their cities, at least some of them, according to their deities. The city of Athens was named after a goddess of the same name and the main city of Atlantis after Poseidon. And it seems that the island and the ocean that surrounds it have, according to the dialogues of Plato, been named after Atlas.

But the dialogues of Plato are not the only sources of information we have. A number of informations have been provided by the famous American medium and seer Edgar Cayce, who had primarily the vocation and ability to cure sick people in some particular manner. He knew in fact, without ever having seen his “client”, what disease the person had and what treatment was needed to heal him. This man regularly went back to the past lives of his “customers” to know the origin of the evil they where suffering of. It was during these “visits” of the various past lives, that Cayce was able to get an idea of Atlantis, even then when his conclusions differ somewhat from those of Plato.

These differences are perhaps less important that one may think, especially as Plato describes only part of the island at a definite time, while Cayce might have seen another part of the island or even an other part of the world under the influence of Atlantis. Because this all lets us believe that the Atlanteans had built a veritable empire, comparable to the British empire of 18^th and 19^th century. At that time we could almost travel around the globe without ever leaving the British Empire. Evidence suggests that the Atlanteans had in that time also got their hold on much of the world. It's perhaps also for this reason that we find so many Atlantis's everywhere.

Another point of difference between Plato and Cayce is that Cayce was mainly seeing observations made by other people and flashes of their past live experiences. Most of the comments made by Cayce are therefore only observations of the immediate circle of the subjects studied by him. While the informations of Plato came visibly from other sources and is of a more global nature, ie those of Egyptian priests, who had kept them in temples and libraries. Another observation that we can do is that the informations that Plato had obtained in an indirect manner from the Egyptian priests was probably earlier in time then the ones obtained by Cayce. An interesting fact is that Cayce mentions that at the time of disappearance, the island had already suffered two other destructions. It was after the second destruction that they had only three islands left, including the main island and the main town, both of them being called Poseidia.

We should not forget to ask, if the question “Did Atlantis ever exist?” could be justified in despite the fact that Plato was quite demonstrative with his assertion of being it a true story. Because it was quite possible that Plato used the dialogues to describe an, in his eyes, ideal state. We also have an example of the story of Troy with his horse and the Trojan War, which took probably place between 1190 and 1180 BC, but whose exact date is uncertain at this time. It's known only by the epic poems from a poet named Homer, who did certainly not write them at the same time as the war, but much later, to praise the exploits of the heroes of the past. Again, there also, archaeologists have searched about everywhere, until a German industrialist named Heinrich Schliemann, who was amateur archaeologist, began searching in 1870, using his own fortune, there where the legend of the city of Troy said it was. Then he had actually indeed found this city there, and not just a city, but several towns piled on top of each other. It's my ultimate belief, as the author of this book, that the dialogues of Plato on Atlantis are no exception and it's probable that Plato had used a true story to demonstrate contemporary political problems of his time. It's highly probable that Plato had identified a threat to the Athenians and that they should be ready to defend their interests, while they might have preferred to ignore this danger. Taking into account these criteria, we should not lose sight that certain aspects of the dialogues of Plato were probably carried into a context that he was contemporary to. An example is the description of the army of Atlantis, especially when we consider the so-called readings² of Cayce. Plato could hardly have spoken of tanks, planes, laser guns, submarines and other. Even then if the translations would be received intact, he could, in this case, have been forced to translate the description of the armaments and armed forces into the contemporary context of his time.

Another question we should ask is whether Atlantis existed; where was it and, if so, are there any leftovers? In any case, according to Plato there should not be much left of it when he said that there remain of Atlantis only small islands, as the bones of a wasted body, washed by the rain and licked by the wind, where all parties, the richest and most soft, of the soil have been carried away. In other words, where there was once Atlantis, we should still find a few small islands and bare rock. Plato made another very important point, by saying that we should always have sacred memorials or the remnants thereof, where the fountains had existed in the past. Then he added, “this proves the truth of what I say”. An example of these monuments is the famous Bimini Wall, discovered in 1968 by an airplane pilot when he flew over the region. In addition, Plato has insisted that this story was true and wrote about an Egyptian priest: “As regarding the country, the Egyptian priests said that it's not only probable but manifestly true.” Plato was convinced that the story was true, although he has never been able to verify anything about this.

If we look good, we can certainly find other traces. These, all steeped in legends and myths, will certainly be much less obvious than the writings that Plato has left us. There is, for example, the famous story of feathered serpent of the Indians of Mexico. They had a god named “Quetzacòatl”, an old bearded Quetzacòatl, represented by a feathered serpent, which had a garden of abundance. The legend said that one day Quetzacòatl, wishing regain his youth, had tasted a drink that made him lose his head. He destroyed everything, embarked on a raft and disappeared, promising to return in the year, under the sign of the reed, with lots of wealth. It was in 1519, the year of the reed thus, that the Aztec king Moctezuma was awaiting the appearance of Quetzacòatl. He saw coming from the sea an old bearded man, wearing a plumed helmet. That what he thought being Quetzacoatl was actually... Hernán Cortés. Who had been treated as a god and had the opportunity to taste a delicacy which was reserved for them... the quachahualt, cocoa in the ancient Mexican language, which was also used as currency.

The strange coincidence between the Quetzacòatl legend and the Cayce readings is, that he told us that the Atlanteans had saved some of their holy rollers in the Yucatan. Would the legend of Quetzacòatl have something to do with the Atlanteans, who were obviously in contact with the pre-Mayan people and who lived at the time there? Has it been them who embody the god by the name of Quetzacòatl? They may be in this case well be the ones who would have left the region up on a time and never returned since. It's certain that the Atlanteans were gone one day with the promise to return and that they, due to circumstances beyond the common, never came back, creating thereby a legend.

Let's start, to stay in the subject HWWHWWWW and use “Who” and “What”, with the presentation of Plato and Cayce. We will continue afterwards with a chapter on “Where” and “How much”, to see the possible size and location. Thereafter another chapter on “How”, “When” and “Why” to make an overall estimate of the disappearance of Atlantis and the possible cause of this disappearance. These chapters are then followed by a treatment of clues and questions, in the style of a “missing” case.