The evidences of these gradual changes of level in the land and water surfaces of the earth cannot be doubted by even the most skeptical. Again and again has the dry land disappeared below the surface of the waters of the ocean. Again and again, the ocean's bed has been raised to the surface and been converted into dry land. Suppose we attempt to follow one of the latter movements.
We will imagine an extensive area to have slowly appeared above the ocean. In due process of time this land surface, which we will assume to have continental dimensions, gradually becomes covered with plant and animal life. If it remains above the water for a sufficient length of time, its simple plants and animals acquire more and more complex forms, so as to make it difficult to detect any traces of the original species from which they have descended, or, more correctly, ascended. Moreover, where favorable conditions exist, the continent becomes peopled with men, who gradually advance from barbarism to semi-barbarism and eventually become a most highly civilized nation, sending to different parts of the world colonies, who carry with them the language and religious customs of the land of their birth.
But, a sudden or paroxysmal change of level occurs. The highly developed and densely populated region is suddenly swept out of existence and completely covered by the waters of the ocean until, in a few thousand years, all traces of its existence have so completely disappeared that but few, if any, can be found willing to acknowledge it ever had an existence.
Such, it is claimed, was the fate of the fabled Continent of Atlantis. It will, therefore, be interesting to endeavor briefly to review its past history and to read some of the things that have been written about this part of the world, which appears in the opinion of some of the ancients to have actually existed.
References to Atlantis have been made by various early writers. Solon, the great Athenian lawgiver, who flourished 600 years B. C., began a description of this place in verse. This description was never completed. At a later date one of Solon's descendants, Plato, who lived about 400 B. C., prepared a description of Atlantis, giving in detail its location, the general character of its surface, a description of its principal city, and the civilization of its inhabitants, as well as a brief reference to its sudden destruction. In another place this record of Plato will be given in full. It will suffice now to quote briefly what he says concerning its location.