The Lost City of Atlantis Explained

I Found Atlantis on a Map?

Atlantis was always fictional. Yet it somehow became the center of a religion. The heart of conspiracy theories today. And even the motivation behind an occult Nazi hunt, right before the onset of WWII.

Special thanks to:
- Kenneth Feder, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at Central Connecticut State University
- Andrew White, Ph.D. in Anthropology; University of Michigan @AndrewWhite33

You can now BUY THE MAPS from this video!

-- VIDEO CHAPTERS --
00:00 Intro
01:34 What is Atlantis?
03:23 The Science of Everything
04:04 Atlantis is Back
09:00 Atlantis Mapped
14:40 Why???
17:05 Atlantis Today

AI Disclosure: We used AI to create some of the imagery of Atlantis which our (very talented) animator then took and spent weeks developing into what you see in the video. When AI is used to generate any imagery that may appear onscreen, we'll add this to the video description. We're learning as we go how to implement, and appreciate your thoughts.

About:
Johnny Harris is an Emmy-winning independent journalist and contributor to the New York Times. Based in Washington, DC, Harris reports on interesting trends and stories domestically and around the globe, publishing to his audience of over 5 million on Youtube. Harris produced and hosted the twice Emmy-nominated series Borders for Vox Media. His visual style blends motion graphics with cinematic videography to create content that explains complex issues in relatable ways.

- press -

- where to find me -

- how i make my videos -

- my courses -

[Honeybee]

Johnny Harris: Countries are fake
Johnny Harris: Atlantis is real

[mr.divine]

Lets be honest this is lowkey an excuse for Johnny to gosh over map

[kaylor]

Johnny -- I appreciate creators like you that put a progress bar on the ads. It's the little things, thank you for that 🙏

[Chris-]

"I love old original maps."

We know you do Johnny.

[NoPodcastsHere]

The more I watch this guy, the more I realize how easily I will trust people who sound authoritative and have decent production value...

[riantaylor]

Plato attributes his knowledge of Atlantis to Solon, a renowned Athenian statesman and lawgiver who visited Egypt around 600 BCE. During his visit, Solon reportedly engaged with Egyptian priests in the city of Sais in the Nile Delta. The priests shared with him ancient records about a powerful island civilisation, Atlantis, that existed thousands of years earlier. These records were said to be preserved on temple walls and in written accounts, documenting a catastrophic event that led to Atlantis’s destruction.

[shawnadryen]

The concept of Atlantis originates from the Greek philosopher Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, which were written around 360 BC.

Plato described Atlantis as a powerful and advanced civilization that existed in the distant past but was lost in a catastrophic event.

Nowhere in Plato's writings is it explicitly stated that Atlantis is an allegory. In fact, Plato presented Atlantis as a historical account, claiming that the story was passed down through his ancestor, the Athenian statesman Solon.

The interpretation of Atlantis as an allegory is a perspective developed by later scholars and philosophers, who analyzed Plato's works and considered the symbolic and philosophical themes present in the story.

So, to answer your question, the idea that Atlantis is an allegory is an assumption made by scholars and readers after Plato's time, rather than an explicit statement by Plato himself.

[presidentzeus]

I'm never getting over the fact that Americans pronounce Plato as playdough

[kevlav]

"Take a look at this map" now makes me laugh everytime 😂

[dannydelaluz]

You know it’s going to be good when he starts with a map

[BetImRight]

I got my Print map today. It looks great Buddy, thanks so much for allowing us access to them the way you did.

[fernandorawicz]

Pyramids are a very usefull way to pile up things

[Elfishery]

Plato did not pull the idea of Atlantis out of thin air. The story came down to him from his ancestor Solon, who heard the story of Atlantis from priests in Egypt. The story was said to be so old that the papyrus scrolls it was written on were disintegrating, and were being transcribed onto the temple walls to preserve it. And the date given for the destruction of Atlantis was very specific, not random. And it turns out that the date given was the exact time of catastrophic flooding and sea level rise at the end of the ice age.

[crazycjk]

1:36 I was extremely confused momentarily when I heard "so it all starts with playdough", what has a kids toy got to do with it? 😂

[saaaaauce]

Didn't mention the eye of the Sahara?

[davidmersiovsky]

That's a fine direction to go in for the video, but it would have been cool to discuss the fact that there was a period during the ice age when sea levels were hundreds of feet lower, meaning untold numbers of coastal towns and villages (perhaps cities too) legitimately are underwater now. Missed opportunity for a map lover and geography guy.

[tyquansmith]

Johnny I usually like your videos but, this wasn’t researched well, In Plato's dialogues, it is mentioned that his ancestor, Solon, traveled to Egypt and learned about Atlantis, he reportedly encountered priests who informed him of the story of Atlantis, describing it as a powerful and advanced civilization that existed thousands of years before his time. This account is presented in Plato's dialogues "Timaeus" and "Critias, " where the story of Atlantis is elaborated upon. Both Egypt and Greece describe Atlantis and the Egyptians trace their royal lineage to the rulers of Atlantis

[Djieff]

Shoutout to Jimmy Corsetti from Bright Insight, Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson!

[SamtheIrishexan]

They are back guys, in the skies above NJ

[acro]

It may be worth noting that historians didn't think Plato's Atlantis was real, but it's equally noteworthy that Plato NEVER said that it was just allegorical pontification. Just go read what he said yourselves, and you will see that he talks about it as a real part of human history. Historians just ASSUME that he made it up, similar to how they assumed the city of Troy wasn't real until it was found. It's actually pretty annoying, on par with anthropology dismissing thousands of native histories as myths because they don't fit into the one "true" narrative that they have curated. The same narrative that rejected history being longer than 6, 000 years old until Gobekli Tepe was found and dated to 12, 000 years old.
Anatomicslly modern humans have been around for over 300, 000 years, so to say that there definitely weren't any civilizations until the last 4 or 5 percent of history is not science, it's dogma.