The Lost City Of Atlantis by RoundGlass Music

Atlantis. The lost city. The forgotten empire. A place of great power, that had, according to Plato, conquered the entire world except for Athens. The island was swallowed under the waves as punishment for the Atlantean’s hubris. It is Atlantis that has resurfaced again and again across different cultures and different centuries. Sometimes as a real place, sometimes as a metaphor or parable, but never far from the imagination. What is it about this mythical place that makes it inextinguishable in the human imagination?

Even back in ancient times, scholars that came after Plato argued whether it was a real place or not. Some early Christian theologians believed in its existence but added to the legend that it was destroyed by God as punishment for its paganism. In the 6th century, Cosmas Indicopleustes, a Christian theologian, used the legend of Atlantis to prove that the world was flat and surrounded by water.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, many writers and thinkers posited that Atlantis was the New World, and the Europeans had merely lost contact with it after the ancient era, with Janus Joannes Bircherod even saying ‘the New World is not new.’

For European writers in the Renaissance, it served as inspiration for metaphorical works about perfect societies. Thomas More’s Utopia was partially inspired by Atlantis, as was Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis.

Some thought the ruins of the Maya empire must be remnants of Atlantis, ‘rediscovered.’ This took on a new level in the 1800s when Atlantis was offered as an explanation for the advanced state of the Mayan empire. The Mayans, whose culture thrived for thousands of years was incredibly advanced. The racism of 19th-century scholars led them to posit that these people were descendants of the European Atlanteans, as they could not imagine a Mesoamerican culture so advanced.

Fascinatingly, Abraham Ortelius, the first person to posit that the continents were once connected and moved apart, used Atlantis as part of his explanation. That it did not all sink below the waves, that the earthquakes and ruptures of the continents separating destroyed it.

Though he was right about continents moving, his timeline was off by a few million years. 

Needless to say, part of what is captivating about Atlantis is that it is so open to interpretation. It can be almost anything to anyone. That is probably due to the fact that there actually is very little to it. The legend was created by Plato in his works, Timaeus and Critias. He created Atlantis to stand in for a world power that had conquered all the world except for Athens. Athens, alone, is able to defend itself against Atlantis. The story was more to indicate the strength of the Athenian concept of state than it was about Atlantis itself. At the end of the story, Atlantis sinks below the waves.

With so little in the way of any primary source, Atlantis has become an open symbol for people to fill in their own meaning. It’s hard to think of anything, beyond religious texts, that have inspired such a vast cultural impact. From Medieval theological texts to Disney adaptations and everything in between, there’s no doubt that this idea of a lost civilization, a sunken empire is something that continues to move the human imagination.

While Plato’s story is inarguably fiction, that does not completely rule out the idea that Atlantis is real. Plato’s fiction was sometimes inspired by history and legends from his time. An example of this would be his use of the ‘ring of Gyges’ in his work Republic. The ring is a mythical artifact that renders the wearer invisible. Though its use in Republic is to tell a moral tale, it turns out there were earlier legends of this ring that he was drawing from. So, if you don’t want to give up on the adventure, you could say that Atlantis was real, and Plato was only repurposing the real legend to make his point about Athens.

Our mix focused on, arguably, the most fun aspect of the legend, that of imagining an adventure to find this forgotten place. The tracks, from some of the great film composers, as well as some contemporary electronic music, will put you in the viewing room of a steam-powered submarine descending below the waves to be the first to discover a once-great civilization. Put on your explorer’s cap and give yourself over to the great adventure!