The Atlantis Syndrome

Paul Jordan traces the Atlantis story from Plato’s dialogues around 360 BC through classical antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when the idea gained new force during the age of exploration. He considers how a moral tale about Athens became attached to claims about a lost civilisation scattered across the ancient world.

The book examines modern alternative-archaeology theories involving vanished languages, underwater structures, Antarctica, pyramid landscapes, ancient maps and supposed worldwide traces of Atlantean influence. Jordan assesses these arguments against archaeological and geological evidence, questioning the belief in a superior civilisation destroyed by catastrophe. He also considers how the Atlantis myth may have developed and what conventional archaeology reveals about human evolution, prehistory and early societies.