Archaeology: Economy-Size Atlantis

For 20 centuries and more, the legend of the lost Atlantis has had a powerful hold on the human imagination. In his dialogues, Plato described Atlantis as an island "confederation of marvelous power" located near the Straits of Gibraltar, somewhere in the Atlantic. In Timaeus, he declared that one day the whole population "sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea." Plato dated the disaster as 9,000 years before the time of Solon, the Athenian statesman who lived in the 7th...