Atlantis, an alluring fantasy

Atlantis was the domain of Poseidon, he fell in love with a mortal woman who inhabited the island. He and Cleito had five sets of twins who became the ten kings of Atlantis. Poseidon decided to manipulate the landscape and make the central hill where his wife lived, impregnable. The great god of the sea carved concentric rings, three of sea and two of land to surround the inner hill. He coaxed springs of warm and and cold water to bubble up from the depths and blessed the land with fertility.

The inhabitants of Atlantis were immensely wealthy, the land provided an abundance of metal, timber, fruit and veg and animals both tame and wild. They created harbours and channels through the rings so goods could be transported to the central isle. The entire kingdom was walled with stone coated in brass, tin and orichalcum (a red metal which is supposed to be a mixture of copper and gold).
On the central isle they built a huge temple dedicated to Poseidon, inside a huge gold statue protrayed him driving six singed horses.

"All the outside of the temple, with the exception of the pinnacles, they covered with silver, and the pinnacles with gold. In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, adorned everywhere with gold and silver and orichalcum; all the other parts of the walls and pillars and floor they lined with orichalcum. In the temple they placed statues of gold: there was the god himself standing in a chariot--the charioteer of six winged horses--and of such a size that he touched the roof of the building with his head; around him there were a hundred Nereids riding on dolphins, for such was thought to be the number of them in that day. "

The people of Atlantis harnessed the abundant hot and cold springs for their own needs, using them to feed irrigation systems and cisterns, some were 'open to the heaven,' others were roofed over to be used as warm baths for kings, men and women and also horses and cattle. They built aquaducts to transport the water to wherever it was needed.

"and there were many temples built and dedicated to many gods; also gardens and places of exercise, some for men, and some set apart for horses, in both of the two islands formed by the zones; and in the centre of the larger of the two there was a race-course of a stadium in width, and in length allowed to extend all round the island, for horses to race in."

Plato's description portrays a bountiful landscape rising from the ocean with plains and mountains, fields and forests. Temples gilded in gold and a variety of recourses.

One of the possible theories for Atlantis' sudden destruction comes from a German Rocket Scientist called Otto Muck. In 1978 he published his book 'The secret of Atlantis' which I have found to be one of the most informative and factual books written about Atlantis. Somehow Muck manages to explain everything logically. He theorised that an asteroid crashed into the middle of the Atlantic ocean, destroying the vast continent and leaving only the isolated islands we know today. The impact caused volcanic eruptions and huge tidal waves and was given a date that supports the Atlantis legend.

"This fatal date coincides with the opposition of the sun, Venus, the moon, and Earth, which prepared the way, through a series of interlocking poles, for 'Asteroid A' to crash into one of the thinnest and most sensitive regions of the Earth's crust."(p.87)--the Mid-Atlantic Ridge; a fracture zone dotted with vocanoes.