William(Will) James Durant (1885-1981) was a renowned American philosopher and
historian. In 1968 Will and his wife Ariel won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. He is probably best known for his eleven volume work The Story of Civilisation published over a forty year period. There is a website devoted to his work^(a).

In the first volume of The Story of Civilisation Durant claimed that Heinrich Schliemann “believed that Atlantis had served as a mediating link between the cultures of Europe and  Yucatan, and that Egyptian civilization had been brought from Atlantis.” However, I would suggest that this statement be treated with caution as it may have stemmed from the Paul Schliemann hoax perpetrated just a couple of decades earlier.

^(a) http://www.willdurant.com/home.html