There have been many tv shows on lately about Atlantis. I myself have written a few articles on the subject and one of them has become very popular on the internet. The subject of Atlantis never seems to get boring and as new discoveries are made, they seem to affect our ideas of this supposed ancient country. Many different people have thought that they have either discovered the ruins of Atlantis or that they know where it was located. Here is the rub, no one can be sure that Atlantis even existed, let alone where it was located. Some people think that it was in the Mediterranean, some think it was located in the new world and still others think that it might have been near the North Pole when it was warmer. Could any of these people be right? Sure, it is like asking will anyone win the lottery. We all know that sooner or later someone will win, but the lottery is a for certain thing, Atlantis is not. Sure someone might locate it if it really existed, or it may never be located because it may have never existed at all. It is really amazing how there is always someone who states that Atlantis existed in a different place. Some say that present day China was Atlantis.

Here is a question that I would like to know the answer to, did Plato have a sense of humor? Plato, you see, was the first one to mention the existence of Atlantis in some of his works. Well Plato did believe in humor we know that, he suggested that there were two kinds of humor, the first kind inflated our ego and the second kind deflated someone else's. He also said that life was a play. Knowing this, may give us a clue to the location of Atlantis. How can this be, you might ask? If we know that Plato had a sense of humor, we can assume that it is a possibility that he was playing a joke on us. I am not saying that this is what happened, only that there is a possibility that this is true.

When we talk of Atlantis, what kind of place are we talking about? I think that we will all agree that Atlantis was supposed to be a technologically superior country. The legend goes on to state that they sank or were flooded. One thing is for sure, we are finding out the the ancient Greeks were so far superior technologically that their accomplishments weren't equaled until about the 18 century or later. How can I make such a bold statement? Let us look at the evidence we are beginning to find and the other evidence that has been out there for years.

Archimedes, an ancient Greek mathematician and inventor, was a genius beyond comprehension. How smart was this man? He built an odometer for the Romans so that they could put mile markers on their roads. The plans for the machine were in the Library at Alexandra and they were burned. Leonardo Da Vinci tried to duplicate the machine from ancient drawings but gave up in failure. I would say this makes him very smart. What made this machine so advanced? It turns out that the ancient Greeks had something that we never suspected, they had metal gears. This may not seem that important to you, but believe me it put them over two thousand years ahead of everyone else. It is beginning to look like they used this knowledge of gears in some very advanced ways. An example of this is a water clock run on gears in the town squares of the big cities so all the citizens could tell what time it was.

There were many other famous ancient Greek mathematicians and philosophers along with many inventors. Look at Hero, for example. He invented the first steam engine. If only the Greeks would have followed through on this invention they could have invented a train or steam powered engines for their ships and machines before 200 A.D. It is believed that Hero created his steam engine around 62 A.D. It is also believed by some that he continued his work and before he died, he was using steam in many different ways such as opening temple doors and heating rooms.

So why do I bring all this up when I am talking about Atlantis? My theory is that Atlantis may have been ancient Greece or Alexandra or even Sardinia. Greeks lived in all of these places and Alexandra was considered to be the most advanced and sophisticated city of the ancient world. Could Plato have really been talking about the Greeks themselves but masking it with a fictional name? Why not, it looks like the Greeks were far ahead of what we thought of them. If only they could have kept their society going, who knows how advanced we would have been today. It seems like we wasted at least 1700 years of advancement when the Greeks were conquered. It is turning out that they even had mechanical computers as witnessed by the discovery of a two thousand year old mechanical computer laying at the bottom of the sea. It is known as the Antikythera Mechanism and is so advanced in calculating the movements of the heavens that a complicated computer program is needed to duplicate it. It ran on gears and disks and the parts were in a wooden box. At the beginning it was thought to be a fluke, one of a kind, but other devices were found that were from ancient Greece that also used gears and disks. It is definite that the ancient Greeks were much further advanced than we thought they were.

So was old Plato playing a trick on us, was he really referring to his own society, that of the Greeks, when he talked about the advanced Atlantians? Why not, is this so far fetched. Haven't many writers used this country as a basis of fiction when they wrote their stories? It may turn out that all the people that have searched for Atlantis have wasted their time. It reminds me of an astronomer who lived before the computer age and spent his life plotting the positions of the sun and moon, then computers were invented and it was possible for them to calculate these positions in an instant, thirty years went down the drain. There is one thing I can say about searching for Atlantis, it may lead to discoveries of other great and unknown civilizations.