Atlantis Wasn't the Size of a Continent

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When Plato describes Atlantis as larger than Libya and Asia combined, he's not referring to the continents we know today. In ancient Greek geography, Libya meant the known coast of North Africa, and Asia referred to Asia Minor, essentially modern-day Turkey and the Levant. The scale suddenly becomes far more reasonable. He's describing an island complex situated beyond the Pillars of Heracles, what we call the Strait of Gibraltar, in an Atlantic that was described as navigable in those days. The phrasing matters: Plato is careful to establish geographical context, and when you adjust for what those place names actually meant to a Greek audience in the 4th century BC, you're looking at something substantial but not continental. It's an island complex, possibly extending across a significant portion of the Atlantic shelf, in a time when sea levels and ocean conditions were dramatically different than they are now.