The puzzle of a forgotten island has mystified devotees of esoterica and bewildered researchers for a score of centuries. With our own rapid "magical" advances in communication, modern browsers are able to choose from a wide variety of literature regarding the riddle of Atlantis, both academically oriented and the best recent science fiction & fantasy novels.

There are more theories about what the nature of this ancient civilization engendered and beneath which sea the remains might be encountered than nearly any other tale of primordial people. Indeed, the topic of an advanced culture which was destroyed in a cataclysm has persisted exactly for the reason that it holds so much meaning to the modern mind. Plato first began to write of a mythical continent, called Atlantis, about twenty-four hundred years ago. His version suggests the undersea continent had been in the Atlantic Ocean and thrived until about ten millennia earlier.

New Age icon Edgar Cayce wrote of Atlantis as a vast continent, approximately equal in size to Europe. According to the prophet’s amazing vision, the inhabitants of the Island were gifted with many advanced telepathic abilities and technologies, and gave rise to the strangely reminiscent solar-worshiping cultures of the early Mesopotamians and the Empires of native America. The topic is in many cases grouped with the paranormal, mediums, and auras, and is frequently alluded to in writings about 2012 mayan calendar prophesies.

Speculations about the true whereabouts of the "Lost Continent" stretch from the Far East to the New World, although, as might be expected the most popular possibilities which are islands in the vicinity, most notably the Azores and Malta.

It might never be certain the real history, but the evidence appears overwhelming: cultural innovation has attained great levels of sophistication rising and falling in a cycle of growth and fall, perhaps in a recurring pattern, in the forgotten recesses of that which we generally regard as the first gasp of modern man.

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