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The Lost City of Atlantis - Fact or Fiction?

Claudia Miclaus
As Plato considers, the lost city of Atlantis is the very cradle of civilization. Was it real? We might know some day, if science proves it.
There have been many stories over the years that have captured the imaginations of men, but none so much as the Plato's story about the lost city of Atlantis. So, is it a fact or fiction?
Apparently nobody really knows, but there have been a lot of guesses and theories over the years; some with evidence and some without. It was Plato, who first gave us this story around 355 B.C.

The Story of Plato

In Plato's books, he uses a type of writing, wherein he employs conversations between different people to express his ideas. In the story of Atlantis, there is a man named Kritias telling the story of Atlantis, that has apparently been in his family for several generations.
It was Poseidon, that established the city of Atlantis and it was a wonder to all who could see it. It had walls and canals, hot and cold water fountains, and irrigation systems for the farms that were outside the city. It was a marvel before its time!
The most wonderful object in the city was the temple that was on a hill in the very center of the city. You could find a huge statue of Poseidon, riding in a chariot, being carried along by winged horses. The whole city revolved around worshiping Poseidon ― the god of the sea.

Who believed it first?

The first person to believe that it was more than just a myth, was a man who lived during the 1800's, named Ignatius Donnelly. He believed that the city really did exist, but it was destroyed by a natural disaster.
In 1882, Donnelly published a book named Atlantis - the Antediluvian World, in which he states that the city was somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. He also states that the Atlantian was the place where that civilization started and through colonizing places like Egypt, this civilization spread to the rest of the world.
The only problem with all of this is the fact that, it has been proved scientifically impossible for the lost city of Altanis, to have been located in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, because there is too much sediment covering everything down there and not enough time since the fall of Atlantis to fully cover it all up.
Since that book came out, there have been many theories as to where the city was located; some have said Switzerland, others thought of Borneo, Bolivia, and even New Zealand.

Did it exist on Crete island?

There was a man with a very convincing and logical argument about its location. A history professor K. T. Frost said it was not far from Plato as many people thought. He stated that the city was none other than the Minoan civilization located on the island of Crete.
The island of Crete was the center of the Minoan Empire, with a huge navy and one of the most sophisticated civilizations of the time. However, a massive volcano, just ten miles off the island of Crete, exploded and what was then known as the greatest empire of the world, fell into ruins and disappeared.
There are people who believe that the Minoan empire was the lost city of Atlantis but there are many who contradict it. Maybe it was, maybe it really existed, maybe it didn't, or maybe in the future, science will be able to discover its secret.