by Bill Lauritzen

Imagine if the fabled Atlantis never lay in the Atlantic at all but beneath today’s Java Sea. In Plato’s Atlantis Allegory and the Sundaland Hypothesis, I examine Plato’s Timaeus and Critias through the lens of Egyptian temple lore, volcanology and ocean-wide seafaring. I stitch together twin-peaked “Atlas” volcanoes, coconut-laden plains, copper-gold “orichalcum,” and the cataclysmic blasts of Krakatoa and Merapi to argue that the drowned sub-continent of Sundaland—now Indonesia’s shallow seas—match Plato’s vanished island better than any site yet proposed. By correctly reframing the “Atlantic” as the ancient Greeks’ single world-encircling Oceanus, I relocate Atlantis from mythic West to dynamic East, weaving in Austronesian voyagers, Egyptian SeaPeople records, and modern DNA studies. Overall, Plato’s Atlantis Allegory and the Sundaland Hypothesis offers a richly interdisciplinary tour—from classics and cartography to volcanology—that aims less to “prove” Atlantis and more to illuminate how real geographies and disasters can crystallize into enduring myth.

Download unpublished draft PDF