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Atlantis story in “Critias,” where he describes the lost continent as the kingdom of Poseidon, the god of the sea. This Atlantis was a noble, sophisticated society that reigned in peace for centuries, until its people became complacent and greedy. Angered by their fall from grace, Zeus chose to punish them by destroying Atlantis. Although Plato was the first to use the term “Atlantis,” there are ante- cedents to the legend. In an Egyptian legend which Solon probably heard while traveling in Egypt, and which was passed down to Plato years later, the island nation of Keftiu, home of one of the four pillars that held up the sky, was said to be a glorious advanced civilization which was destroyed and sank beneath the ocean. Another Atlantis-like story is closer to Plato's world, in terms of time and geography, and it is fac- tual. The Minoan Civilization was a great and peaceful culture based on the island of Crete, which reigned as long ago as 2200 B.C. The Minoan island of Santorini, later known as Thera, was home to a huge volcano. In 1470 B.C., it erupted with a force estimated to be greater than Krakatoa, and it destroyed everything on Santorini's surface. The resulting earthquakes and tsunamis devastated the rest of the Minoan Civilization, whose remnants were easily conquered by Greek forces. Santorini may have been the “real” Atlantis. Some have argued against this idea, noting Plato specified that Atlantis sank 10,000 years ago, but the Minoan disaster had taken place only 1,000 years earlier. Still, it could be that translation errors over the centuries changed Plato's original writing. Alterna- tively, Plato may have blurred the historical facts to suit his purposes. Or, Atlantis may be purely Plato's invention. Just the same, his story of the sunken continent has caught the imagination of suc- ceeding generations. Other Greek thinkers, such as Aristotle and Pliny, disputed the existence of Atlantis, while Plutarch and Herodotus wrote of it as historical fact. Atlantis became entrenched in folklore all around the world, charted on ocean maps and sought by explorers. In 1882, Ignatius Donnelly, a U.S. congressman from Minnesota, brought the legend into the Amer- ican consciousness with his book, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. In more recent years, the psy- chic Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) became the U.S.'s most prominent advocate of a factual Atlantis. Widely known as “The Sleeping Prophet,” Cayce claimed the ability to see the future and to com- municate with long-dead spirits from the past. He identified hundreds of people—including him- self—as reincarnated Atlanteans. Cayce said that Atlantis had been situated near the Bermuda island of Bimini. He believed that Atlanteans possessed remarkable technologies, including supremely powerful “‘fire-crystals” which they harnessed for energy. A disaster in which the fire-crystals went out of control was responsible for Atlantis's sinking, he said, in what sounds like a cautionary fable on the dangers of nuclear power. Remaining active beneath the ocean waves, damaged fire-crystals emit energy fields that disrupt ships and aircraft—which is how Cayce accounted for the Bermuda Triangle. 3. 1704-1662 B.C. The Babylonian empire was based in Babylon, near the 33rd Parallel. The empire stretched from the Persian Gulf to the middle Euphrates River and upper Tigris River regions. Ham- murabi, the last great king of the first dynasty, developed his legal code and ordered it to be incised on a basalt column and placed in the temple of Shamash, the god of justice, for all to see. 4. 1500 B.C. Tel Megiddo: One of the most important archaeological mounds in Israel, Tel Megiddo has the remains of historic Megiddo, a fortified city that sat strategically on the ancient trunk road from Egypt to Syria and Mesopotamia. Near the 33rd Parallel, Tel Megiddo has served as an 274 Appendix C: Suggested Areas of Research Atlantis, Alien Visitation, and Genetic Manipulation