The fictional lost city of Atlantis has fascinated treasure hunters and explorers for over 2,000 years. But despite many theories and decades of searching, the lost city has remained elusive.
Atlantis was first mentioned in the writings of the great Greek philosopher Plato around 360 B.C. He claimed that there was once an advanced civilization that sunk into the oceans after being struck by violent earthquakes and floods. Some say Plato invented the tragic fate of the lost city to be a cautionary tale of the gods punishing human hubris.
No written records of Atlantis exist outside of Plato's dialogues, including in the numerous other texts that survive from ancient Greece. It was only in the 19th century that some people started to imagine that there could be some truth behind these stories.
In 1882, Ignatius Donnelly, an American writer and politician, published "Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World." In his book, Donnelly said Atlantis was a lost continent destroyed by a biblical flood. Since then, many theories have claimed that Atlantis is everywhere from Antarctica to the Bermuda Triangle. (Related: Scientists discover an enormous underwater mountain off the coast of Guatemala.)
While Atlantis is most likely a fictional city, archaeologists have uncovered real underwater cities across the globe. MailOnline has created an interactive map to let people explore these lost worlds.
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