{"id":2667,"date":"2010-06-03T09:08:51","date_gmt":"2010-06-03T09:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/atlantology\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T08:09:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T08:09:13","slug":"atlantology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/atlantology\/","title":{"rendered":"Atlantology"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/strong>tlantology<\/strong> as a distinct field of study is accepted by most to have begun with the works of Ignatius Donnelly<\/a>, however flawed many of his ideas may have been. Since Donnelly, it has developed into a very complex multidisciplinary subject. Students of the topic are known today as Atlantologists, <\/em>although an earlier designation was Atlantists<\/em>, a term now used to describe supporters of political and economic co-operation between the USA and Western Europe. The inventive Zia Abbas <\/a>prefers to use the term \u2018Atlantisology\u2019!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

N. Zhirov<\/a>, <\/strong>the leading Russian Atlantologist, has offered the following formal definition of the subject: \u201cIt may be regarded as a department of the biogeography of the modern, Quaternary period (Anthropogen) of the Earth\u2019s geological history, a department chronologically relating to the period of the emergence of intelligent man, a period directly preceding our historical epoch beginning with the last glaciation.\u201d He believed that Atlantis was primarily a geological problem that could only be resolved through a study of the geological history of the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A less cumbersome definition might be \u201cthe study of all aspects of Plato\u2019s references to Atlantis\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A forum dealing with Atlantology(a)<\/sup> and suggested parameters for its study may be found interesting by readers. I personally disagree with a number of the headings proposed for inclusion, such as \u2018Rudolf Steiner\u2019<\/a>, \u2018Ireland & Tara\u2019 and \u2018Shangri-la\u2019, as I consider them unrelated to Plato\u2019s Atlantis.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Seachild<\/a>, ]the official seller of copies of Egerton Sykes<\/a> Atlantis journals, has also produced a number of papers(c)(d)<\/sup> relating to scientific Atlantology and fields of study under which it should be investigated. These documents are now twenty or more years old and badly in need of revision.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Over the years that I have spent compiling Atlantipedia <\/em>it became clear that different theories became ‘fashionable’ from time to time, because of new discoveries, the opinions of prominent individuals or as a consequence of heavily publicised books. The 15th<\/sup> century saw Gutenberg develop the printing press in 1436 and the first complete works of Plato, translated by Marsilio Ficino <\/a>were published in 1484, so when Columbus discovered the New World in 1492, there were many who speculatively identified the Americas as Plato’s Atlantis. This idea persisted until the end of the 19th<\/sup> century and even today, some think it a possibility.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

More specifically, when the monumental structures of the Maya<\/a> and Incas<\/a> were gradually revealed to Europeans, once again a link with Atlantis was proposed for South America and still, has some support today.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

However, the most popular and enduring theory is that Atlantis had been situated in the Atlantic Ocean, with the Azores<\/a> as the prime candidate. It received a boost in support with the discovery of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge<\/a> in the 19th<\/sup> century and was used by Ignatius Donnelly in the formulation of his Atlantis theory.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In 1872, the elements of the Minoan Hypothesis<\/a> began to appear when Louis Figuier<\/a> was the first to link Atlantis with the 2nd-millennium\u00a0eruption of Thera<\/a>. Today, this idea is probably the most accepted, apart from the Atlantic location.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There are many other theories regarding Atlantis, some more exotic than others, but, in my opinion, none match all<\/em><\/strong> the criteria that can be gleaned from Plato’s account, although their authors would disagree.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In 1971, John S. Bowman <\/a>[193<\/a>] <\/sup> apparently coined the term ‘atlantist’ as an improvement on ‘atlantologist’ to describe those who have a keen interest in the study of Atlantis, but it got little support.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A potted history of Atlantology from Donnelly until Sykes is available at the Atlantis Online<\/em> <\/a>website(b)<\/sup>.
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(a)<\/sup> Introduction to Atlantology, page 1 (archive.org)<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

(b)<\/sup> Print Page – HIGHLIGHTS IN EARLY ATLANTOLOGY (archive.org)<\/a><\/p>\n

(c)<\/sup> What is Atlantology? (archive.org)<\/a><\/p>\n

(d)<\/sup> Atlantology Fields of Study (archive.org)<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Atlantology as a distinct field of study is accepted by most to have begun with the works of Ignatius Donnelly, however flawed many of his ideas may have been. Since Donnelly, it has developed into a very complex multidisciplinary subject. Students of the topic are known today as Atlantologists, although an earlier designation was Atlantists, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[43,3751,6072,186,29,265,108,179,2889,1781,975,34,18,157,1397,1125,31,548],"class_list":["post-2667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-america","tag-atlantic-ocean","tag-atlantist","tag-atlantology","tag-azores","tag-egerton-sykes","tag-ignatius-donnelly","tag-incas","tag-john-s-bowman","tag-louis-figuier","tag-marsilio-ficino","tag-maya","tag-mid-atlantic-ridge","tag-minoan-hypothesis","tag-n-zhirov","tag-rudolf-steiner","tag-thera","tag-zia-abbas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2667"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66671,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions\/66671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}