Sarah Parcak: belief

Transcript context

…What is the least crazy version of the Atlantis myth I might plausibly believe in? [laughs] Isn’t there an Atlantis in the Bahamas? That’s about the least crazy one. Atlantis was a myth. It was invented by Plato. It was meant to serve as a lesson. If you read the text in that way, he’s trying to pass on a lesson to his students. Look at this immoral society. Look at what could have happened now. It was probably loosely based on Santorini. Plato certainly would have been aware of Santorini and what happened with the eruption, so I think you could loosely say, yes, it’s Santorini-ish. The site of Akrotiri, this great volcanic explosion that impacted the archaeology of not just that island and Thera, but the whole region. Yes, people are looking for it, but I keep telling people, “You need to stop. It doesn’t really exist. It’s just a figment of someone’s imagination.” It seems we now know that the Polynesians in South America had contact, at least in one direction, possibly about a thousand years ago. Given that fact, how far do you think the Phoenicians were able to go?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.