IIRC that eruption did sink a major minoan city that was near the volcano. The minoan civilization was already mythical to the classical Greeks, and neither them nor modern scientists know/knew how to read the minoan script.
The problem with Thera being Atlantis is that both Herodotus (who lived and wrote some decades before Plato was born) and other ancient writers mentions the island, but they don’t mention anything about it being connected to the myth of Atlantis. Which is something you would have expected especially Herodotus to have mentioned if that was the general belief at the time.
Maybe Plato’s ideas were just different from the mainstream. Atlantis in Plato’s writing was part of an allegorical narrative, anyway, and it’s not like it’s unheard of for port cities to sink or otherwise be destroyed by water.
IIRC that eruption did sink a major minoan city that was near the volcano. The minoan civilization was already mythical to the classical Greeks, and neither them nor modern scientists know/knew how to read the minoan script.
The problem with Thera being Atlantis is that both Herodotus (who lived and wrote some decades before Plato was born) and other ancient writers mentions the island, but they don’t mention anything about it being connected to the myth of Atlantis. Which is something you would have expected especially Herodotus to have mentioned if that was the general belief at the time.
Maybe Plato’s ideas were just different from the mainstream. Atlantis in Plato’s writing was part of an allegorical narrative, anyway, and it’s not like it’s unheard of for port cities to sink or otherwise be destroyed by water.