THERE IS something marvelously organic—and unexpected—about the way one book grows out of another. In 1980, when I had submitted the manuscript and illustrations for a comprehensive book on the cetaceans of the world, Ash Green, my wise editor (then as now), recommended that I break it up into two parts. The first became The Book of Whales, and two years later, after a lot of revisions, Dolphins and Porpoises appeared. Monsters of the Sea grew out of my inability to incorporate the entire Atlantic Ocean into a single book; when I tried to add sea monsters to this unmanageable hodgepodge, I ended up quitting the Atlantic and detouring into a study of giant cephalopods, sea serpents, mermaids, man-eating sharks, and ship-sinking whales. But then, having found a way to return to the back-burner “Atlantic” project, I (figuratively) descended into the depths, brought up Deep Atlantic, and wrote about sea-floor spreading, submersible exploration, hydrothermal vents, and the weird and wonderful creatures of the abyss. I was once again trying to encompass everything that had to do with my putative subject, and for no better reason than to be able to answer the common question “Are you going to include Atlantis?” I began a search for information on the Lost Continent. There was more about Atlantis than I had imagined possible, but it had no legitimate place in a book about the geology, exploration, and natural history of the depths. So I turned in the manuscript and the drawings for Deep Atlantic, and encouraged by the steadfast support of the people at Knopf, I sallied forth in search of Atlantis.
In one way, the search for the Lost City was easy; it seems that almost everybody, from Plato to Francis Bacon, from Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle to Edgar Cayce and Charles Berlitz, had something to say on the subject. Even Indiana Jones had an opinion. But it was not so easy to ascertain exactly what “the subject” actually was. Was it a prehistorical myth whose origins are lost? Was it somehow related to the 1500 B.C. eruption of an Aegean volcanic island whose repercussions might have destroyed an entire civilization? Did it have to do with pre-Columbians? Ancient Egyptians? Extraterrestrials? Where was I to look for the information? Archaeological journals? The Bulletin of Volcanology? Bulfinch’s Mythology?
Atlantis has been the subject of so many stories, fables, novels, and movies that it was obvious there was not going to be a single answer. Was there ever a real Atlantis, or has it been a metaphor or symbol for so many things that its reality is forever buried, like Herculaneum, under the accumulated debris of centuries of speculation?
Another, even more important question is “Why bother?” Thousands of books have already been written about Atlantis. In his less than laudatory review of Peter James’s 1995 The Sunken Kingdom: The Atlantis Mystery Solved, Nigel Spivey wrote, “To witness a soul sucked into the maw of Atlantis would be horrible, if it were not a volunteered folly. There is no universal edict requiring such martyrs. Still they come forward, brimming with the usual hubris of solution and resolution.” Unlike James (who thought he had solved the mystery by placing Atlantis in Anatolia), I offer no new or revolutionary explanation. Rather, I believe that Plato wrote the story for his own reasons—which reasons we might be able to guess at—and that those who followed him either embellished an already rich and complex tale with enough complications to make their interpretations crumble like the fabled city itself or approached it from such peculiar vantage points that their creativeness, contumaciousness, or gullibility requires some sort of acknowledgment. Atlantis is such an abundant field for study, that even if we never find a single Atlantean artifact, a long-lost hieroglyphic inscription, or any geological evidence of a sunken landmass, the legend of the Lost Continent will perdure in the human consciousness.
Many may think that this book contains too many quotes and excerpts from other books. I plead guilty to overciting, but with extenuating circumstances. I believe that most later versions of the Atlantis story are misguided, exaggerated, or just plain incorrect, and that it would be insufficient to say that “Ignatius Donnelly is an old humbug” or “Charles Berlitz is irresponsible” without offering evidence to support such assertions. To get a sense of the nature of Atlantean research, I think it is necessary to read what Charles Pellegrino actually wrote, or what Robert Ferro and Michael Grumley thought they were doing when they sailed to Bimini.
As in the past, I could not conduct this search on my own, so like Mr. Jorrocks, I went off in all directions, aided and abetted by people who did not always realize they were being helpful. When I learned that there was an organization called the Thera Institute in London, I wrote to it, and Deborah Stratford gave me a wealth of information on the excavations and history of the volcano on Santorini. She also provided me with the necessary contacts on Crete and Santorini. I journeyed to Crete to inspect the archaeologized remains of the Minoan civilization at Knossos, Hagia Triada, and Phaistos, and then I went across the Aegean to see what was left of Thera and to visit Akrotiri, the site of Professor Christos Doumas’s ongoing (and fascinating) dig. At Akrotiri, Doumas was kind enough to spare time from his busy schedule to take us behind (and around and under) the scenes and explain what he was doing and why. Lena Levidis showed us around the Conference Center in Thera and dispensed valuable information on the symposia that have produced so much information on the history of Thera and the Aegean world. It is instructive to visit archaeological sites, but you cannot read the rocks and shards without a guidebook, and for guidebooks to almost everything, I returned to the library at the American Museum of Natural History. I found more than I could use on volcanoes, archaeology, deep-sea exploration, and oceanography, and again, my arcane investigations were inspired and supported by Nina Root, the AMNH librarian. When I needed materials on mythology, ancient history, and traditional and nontraditional literature, I went to the New York Society Library, a great and largely unheralded resource. Appropriately, some of my research was conducted across the Atlantic, by the indefatigable Erica Wagner Gilbert, who dug out some of the more obscure biographical information on the classical scholars listed in the Appendix. For the information on Harold Edgerton’s investigations of the sunken Greek city of Helice, I want to thank Liz Andrews and Jeffrey Mifflin of the MIT Archives in Cambridge. Clark Lee Merriam of the Cousteau Society made the text of A la recherche de L’Atlantide available, and my brother David helped me with the translation.
In the past, I researched my books in the traditional fashion: I frequented libraries and bookstores, read magazines and journals, wrote letters, and, whenever appropriate or possible, visited locations where I might find material, people, or experiences related to the subject at hand. But now, at least for some of us, the world of research has changed dramatically. Without leaving my desk, I can access scientific or historical journals, call up pictures of volcanoes, chat with mystics, contact archaeologists in the field and see what they are doing. The new research tool, of course, is the Internet, and while I make no claims to have mastered its intricacies (indeed, I can barely claim to know how to find anything), I am constantly astonished by the passageways that can be opened with a keystroke.
One story must suffice, since this is a book about Atlantis, not about technology. I read in Science (June 14, 1996) that some doctors had equated the Plague of Athens (430–425 B.C.) with the Ebola virus. The Science article referred to a medical journal called Emerging Infectious Diseases, so I typed that into my Web browser, and there was the journal, on my screen. I printed out the article, and when the list of references appeared, I looked for those, too. One of them was Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, so I accessed that and found his description of the symptoms. (See this page–this page for the results of this Web surfing.) I think this resource will change the way research is done, and will certainly change the way sources are acknowledged.
I know how to cite a book or a journal, or even an unpublished personal communication (“pers. comm.”), but I don’t know how to cite a Web site or identify the anonymous author of an opinion that came over the Net. In those cases where I have received useful information through a Web site or from E-mail, I have tried to acknowledge the author in a traditional fashion. But if one of the purposes of a bibliography is to permit another person to check your data or consult a particular work for himself, how can anyone else find messages that were sent to me two years ago from Crete or Cambridge? I have attempted to incorporate such information as efficaciously and honestly as possible, but some stray, undocumentable factoids may have crept into the manuscript. I accept full responsibility for any errors, cyber- and otherwise, that appear in this book.
Library research is not a team effort; even though librarians can help you to find things, you have to interpret them on your own. But traveling abroad to ancient volcanic and archaeological sites is better done with someone else, and although one does the actual research and writing alone, it helps to have a friend upon whom you can try some of your more ridiculous ideas, and whose tolerance for such foolishness is almost infinite. Stephanie Guest again came along for the ride, and except for the spider bite in Santorini, she braved the dangers of traveling with (and living with) an obsessive-compulsive—at least on the subjects of these books.