Jules Verne practically milked this idea to death in his many fictional works. So much so that even today, many of his followers, calling themselves Vernean, believe it to be a true place on Earth. This myth has existed for thousands of years, and that too quite strangely across the globe, albeit in different variations.
European explorers have been fascinated about El Dorado- the city of Gold. An immeasurable treasure accumulated over thousands of years by the conquerors and shipped secretly to the new world (modern North American continent). Later it was thought to be hidden inside the remains of legendary Inca and Mayan civilizations in Southern American continent, somewhere deep inside Amazon forests. Then, during 19th century, the Europeans turned their eyes toward Egypt in Africa, and dug up the preserved sarcophagi after 3-5 thousand years of uninterrupted sleep.
After failed attempts in searching it for centuries, Atlantis was assumed to be buried under oceans, somewhere around the old civilizations like Greece or Rome in Europe itself. That became an inspiration to the prevalent myth around the city of Atlantis, as the sea-god Poseidon's home and a technologically advanced island city, which met its doom millennia ago. Supposedly, a volcanic eruption, a tsunami or an earthquake submerged it under the water level. And the city was wiped forever from human consciousness.
Atlantis, in my belief, is not just one city. It's the embodiment of our characteristic trait- curiosity, which has turned us a global explorer and the currently ruling species. Across the continents, throughout the history, how else do you justify the references of so many similarly lost cities? Oh, you're still not convinced? How about our own India?
Indians have our own Atlantis of the East, a city named Mokshapuri, more popularly known as Dwarka. One of the four supreme pilgrimage sites, situated near the port of Gujarat. This apparently five thousand old city submerged in the water has been largely unexplored yet and often coughs up puzzling relics of an old civilization. Hindu scriptures such as Mahabharata mention this city to have been built by the architects of the gods themselves, after Lord Krishna migrated his entire kingdom from Mathura in Uttar Pradesh to the cost near Arabian sea, in order to save it from frequent attacks from Magadh (modern day Bihar). Oh, and the cover image below is an actual underwater finding in the region believed to be the ancient Dwarka.
How connected we humans are in our thoughts, desires, beliefs and fundamental nature, myth of Atlantis is just one proof of it.
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