Atlantis is usually filed under myth. In this clip from his 2016 London Real interview, Graham Hancock explains why he thinks that is a mistake, and why the most interesting thing about Plato’s story might be the date attached to it.
It’s a compact, five-minute version of an argument he has been making for decades, and it shows how he builds a case from ancient texts and modern geology.
▶ Watch the full episode: Graham Hancock – The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth’s Lost Civilisation
An old idea, not a new one
Hancock starts by pointing out that the idea of a lost civilisation didn’t begin with his 1995 bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods. It goes back thousands of years, and its most famous source is the Greek philosopher Plato.
Plato described Atlantis as a great, advanced civilisation with sea-faring and navigation skills, huge buildings and knowledge in every field. It was prosperous and powerful, until corruption crept in. In Hancock’s paraphrase, Atlantis “ceased to wear its prosperity with moderation,” became greedy and cruel, and was destroyed in a cataclysm of flood that sank it beneath the waves.
“Plato just made it up”
Most historians, Hancock says, treat the story as invented, a parable Plato wrote to make a political or philosophical point. He has always been suspicious of that view, for two reasons. First, Plato repeatedly insists the story is true. Second, he gives it a date.
The chain goes like this. Around 600 BC, Solon, the famous Athenian lawmaker and an ancestor of Plato, visited Egypt. Priests at the temple of Sais in the Nile Delta told him the story of Atlantis and said it was recorded on their temple walls. When Solon asked when it happened, they said 9,000 years earlier. That puts the destruction at around 9600 BC, or roughly 11,600 years ago.
What the geology says
This is the heart of Hancock’s argument. Around 11,600 years ago, he says, geologists record a truly cataclysmic episode known as Meltwater Pulse 1B: a rapid rise in sea level as the ice sheets over North America and northern Europe collapsed into the ocean. “If Plato made the whole thing up,” Hancock says, he was “astonishingly on the money” with modern geology.
A tipping point
Hancock places himself in a long line of writers who have taken the story seriously, including Ignatius Donnelly, whose 1882 book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World was a huge investigation of its own. Mainstream academia has always said a lost civilisation is impossible. But in Hancock’s view, new evidence keeps appearing that doesn’t fit the accepted model, and he predicts a radical revision of our view of the past within our lifetimes.
What to take from it
You don’t have to accept Hancock’s conclusions to find the clip useful. Most archaeologists still reject the idea of an advanced Ice Age civilisation, and the date in Plato’s account can be read in other ways. But his underlying point is a fair one: ancient stories sometimes preserve real memories, and it is worth testing them against the evidence rather than dismissing them outright.
Who is Graham Hancock?
Graham Hancock is a British writer and former journalist, born in Edinburgh in 1950. His books on ancient civilisations, including Fingerprints of the Gods (1995), Magicians of the Gods (2015) and America Before (2019), have sold millions of copies, and he later presented the Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse. He has also written widely about altered states of consciousness.
He has appeared on London Real several times. In this full episode he talks with Brian Rose about Magicians of the Gods, Göbekli Tepe and the case for a lost civilisation. You can also watch his earlier conversation: Graham Hancock – The Sacred Vine.
See everything Graham Hancock has done with London Real on his guest page: Graham Hancock on London Real.
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Transcript
Transcript: Graham Hancock – The Truth About Atlantis: Why Plato’s Date Matters
0:00 Graham Hancock: Of course, even in 1995 the notion of a lost civilisation was not a new idea. That notion has been around for a very long time. We can take it back thousands and thousands of years. The most famous example is the Greek philosopher Plato, who gave us the story of Atlantis.
0:22 Graham Hancock: From Plato comes the story of Atlantis: a great advanced civilisation which had navigating and sea-faring skills, which could explore the world, which built gigantic buildings, which had advanced knowledge in every area, which was prosperous and powerful. But then Plato says that corruption crept into this society. It became cruel and avaricious. It became greedy. It began to impose its power around the world. And he has a very ringing phrase: he said that Atlantis ceased to wear its prosperity with moderation.
1:00 Graham Hancock: And the suggestion is that it’s this hubris, this conceit of Atlantis, which had become so sure of itself, that somehow the universe struck it down, and we have the cataclysm of flood and disaster, and Atlantis is submerged beneath the waves.
1:16 Graham Hancock: Now, of course, the view of historians and academics is that Plato’s story is just made up, that he made it up to make some political or philosophical point. I was very suspicious of that view the first time I heard it from a mainstream historian. Plato repeatedly states that it is a true story.
1:39 Graham Hancock: And as we look into it further, we find something else. Plato puts a date on the destruction of Atlantis. He says Atlantis was submerged beneath the waves in a huge global cataclysm 9,000 years before the time of Solon. That gives us an absolute date, because we know who Solon was. Solon was a famous Greek lawmaker. He was an ancestor of Plato, as a matter of fact, about 200 years before Plato.
2:08 Graham Hancock: Around 600 BC, Solon, the great Greek lawmaker, made a visit to Egypt, and in Egypt the priests at the temple of Sais in the Delta told him the story of Atlantis. They said it was written on the walls of the temple. And he said, when did this happen? When was this great civilisation destroyed? And they said, 9,000 years ago. That was in 600 BC, so that’s 9600 BC in our calendar. That’s 11,600 years ago.
2:41 Graham Hancock: Plato is telling us a great civilisation was destroyed in a global cataclysm of flood 11,600 years ago. He’s laughed at by all academics and historians. But then geology comes along, and lo and behold, what do we find? 11,600 years ago is a truly cataclysmic episode in geological history. It’s called Meltwater Pulse 1B. We have a massive rise in sea level as the ice sheets on North America and northern Europe crumble and collapse into the ocean. If Plato made the whole thing up, he was just astonishingly on the money with the latest geology.
3:19 Graham Hancock: And I think we really have to reconsider our attitudes to these stories that have come down to us from the past. Academics have been too quick to dismiss them, too quick to say, “Oh, we’ve figured the whole story out, there’s no mystery there.” Maybe there’s a huge mystery there. Maybe we should listen to these clues and hints from the past that speak of a great civilisation.
3:35 Graham Hancock: So when I published Fingerprints of the Gods in 1995, it was at the end of a long lineage going back to Plato and before. And of course, famously, Ignatius Donnelly in the late 1800s wrote Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, which was a huge investigation of Atlantis. So this subject has been tackled again and again and again. Mainstream academia has said no, it’s impossible, there could be no lost civilisation, we know everything about the past, and it’s been dismissed.
4:09 Graham Hancock: But the problem is that new evidence keeps coming out which can’t be explained by the existing historical model, new evidence that just doesn’t fit the picture. My sense is that this evidence is now becoming overwhelming and that we’re reaching a tipping point. Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but within our lifetimes we are going to see a completely new understanding of the past, a radical revision of the past, and therefore of our place in the world as well.
