Scribd
Upload
25 views2 pages

2 Atlantis

Uploaded by

Mervat Aftoh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
25 views2 pages

2 Atlantis

Uploaded by

Mervat Aftoh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Name Citing Textual Evidence

The Lost City of Atlantis


DIRECTIONS: Read the passage. Then answer the questions. Use
textual evidence to support your answers.

People have long wondered about the alleged “lost” city of


Atlantis, but in fact Atlantis has never been lost at all. Its story was first told in two
Platonic dialogues, the “Timaeus” and the “Critias” (330 B.C.). According to
professor of archeology Ken Feder’s book, Frauds, Myths and Mysteries, Science
and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, Plato’s Atlantis was "a technologically
sophisticated but morally bankrupt evil empire. . . Atlantis . . . attempts world
domination by force. The only thing standing in its way is a relatively small group
of spiritually pure, morally principled and incorruptible people — the ancient
Athenians. Overcoming overwhelming odds . . . the Athenians are able to defeat
their far more powerful adversary simply through the force of their spirit.”
Plato’s story of Atlantis is less about a “lost” civilization than it is about the
virtue of the Athenians, and scholars believe that Atlantis never in fact existed,
but was a literary creation on the part of Plato. Atlantis has never been
mentioned in any other Greek literature that has ever been found. In fact, for
most of history people have believed that Atlantis was a fictional place, until the
late 1800s when a writer named Ignatius Donnelly proposed that significant
achievements of the ancient world, like metallurgy, agriculture, religion and
language — must have originated in Atlantis. His argument was that the known
ancient civilizations weren’t sophisticated enough to have developed these things
on their own, rather they were given to them by some more intelligent
civilization. Donnelly’s ideas captured enough of the imaginations of others for
later writers to add their own speculations. Mystics and psychics well known at
the time jumped on the bandwagon, helping to popularize the idea of there
having been a real Atlantis.
Interest in Atlantis was furthered by a book published in 1969 by Charles
Berlitz called The Mystery of Atlantis because Berlitz claimed that Atlantis was
both real and the reason behind the mystery of The Bermuda Triangle. Since then,
thousands of books, magazine and websites have been devoted to the topic of
Atlantis.

CCSS RI.6.1 |© http://www.englishworksheetsland.com


Name Citing Textual Evidence

1. Why do scholars believe that Atlantis was a fictional place created by Plato?

2. If people understood that Atlantis was a fictional creation for thousands of


years, what made people start to think that it had once really existed?

3. What was the role of Ignatius Donnelly in popularizing the idea of a “lost”
Atlantis?

4. What was the role of Charles Berlitz in popularizing the idea of a “lost” Atlantis?

CCSS RI.6.1 |© http://www.englishworksheetsland.com

You might also like