All language subtitles for The Lost City of Atlantis Explained

Look at this map I found.

Now we've all heard of a legend of
Atlantis.

Here's a map that shows the mythical
land of Atlantis. Whether Atlantean or

giant. And it matches all the
characteristics of Atlantis. Atlantis. I

believe it. And this map asserts that
it's maybe not so mythical.

It shows exactly where it is. I mean,
everything else about this map, if you

just look at like the... lines of the
current day world is accurate it's a

-made map it was made at the end of the
1800s and yet it shows atlantis and a

bunch of other crazy stuff saying that
it existed about a million years ago i

bought the originals and if i look giddy
it's because i am i love bold original

maps and it's not just one map it's four
of them

These maps claim to explain some of the
greatest mysteries of human

civilization. How ancient civilizations,
despite not being able to communicate

with each other, invented similar
looking structures an ocean away. It's a

about the birth of civilization, the
spread of technology. I want to tell you

the story of these maps. These maps that
assert that Atlantis is real and that

we can learn something from it. I also
think we can learn something from these

maps. These are effectively treasure
maps.

purporting to show you the location of
Atlantis.

They're part of this book that argues
that Atlantis is real. A detailed

and explanation.

So let me tell you the story of these
maps, which is the story of Atlantis.

So it all starts with Plato.

Plato was one guy living in Athens 2
,400 years ago. He had some really good

ideas. ideas about justice, education,
government, science, and a bunch of

things that influenced how our Western
society developed.

Pretty influential, incredible guy.

And here he is in one of his texts
describing a land called Atlantis. He

was a utopia that was located, quote,
past the Pillars of Hercules, so

in the Atlantic Ocean. According to
Plato,

Plato says that Atlantis had an advanced
military and navy, which ruled over

this huge island civilization.

Okay, before we go on here, let me make
one thing crystal clear, which is that

most historians agree that Plato wasn't
describing a literal place.

In his mind, Atlantis was a parable. It
was a lesson that he was using to talk

about utopian societies and the hubris
of man and the downfall of humans and

of these things, and that it wasn't
actually real. But the idea of this

civilization in the middle of the
Atlantic did not go away. It stuck

centuries, especially when Europeans
started exploring the world.

It's like the 1500s, Europeans are out
discovering new lands, and a lot of

explorers were secretly hoping that they
would stumble upon some advanced lost

civilization.

like Plato's Atlantis, where maybe they
would find all these precious resources

and advanced technology. But the idea of
Atlantis didn't really take off in any

sort of serious way until a couple
centuries later with the arrival of

Science was

not invented

by Europeans in, like, the 1700s, but...

Europe was going through a scientific
revolution where more and more people

tinkering with instruments and
methodologies that were teaching them

reality. They were displacing the old
explanation that God was responsible for

all of reality, and they were gathering
empirical evidence that explained the

world in new ways.

As a part of all of this science,
European explorers were stumbling upon

cities, cities they thought were just
myths.

If these thought -to -be mythical cities
ended up being real and scientists are

finding them, what else was out there?

Maybe Plato's Atlantis?

So yeah, it's the 1800s, science is
having a big moment, and Atlantis is

trending once again.

There was no concept in the mid -1800s
that civilization had been around for...

thousands and thousands of years. You
know, most people were still kind of

the Bible as the main source of
information about the human past, so

thought that the Earth was relatively
young. People were approaching the idea

Atlantis with a much more scientific
lens.

There was a bunch of scientific theories
on offer at the time.

For example, we were learning just how
much the continents we stand on aren't

fixed. They're actually all floating
around, bumping into each other. And

helped explain why scientists were
finding fossils that matched up with

other even though they were an ocean
apart.

They were seeing this same sort of thing
with cultures as well.

The Egyptians and the Mayans both had
created pyramids, but there's no way

could talk to each other. Their arches,
their writing systems, their

agricultural practices, all very
similar.

How could you explain this?

And this is where this idea caught hold.

What if there was one civilization where
all of this knowledge had stemmed from?

One that was perhaps right in between
the new and old world.

What if it was Plato's Atlantis?

People in Europe and America really
started to think about Atlantis through

lens of science. They started producing
books and lectures and studies and

graphs and maps.

And this gets us to the maps that I've
been obsessed about. The maps that I

pulled the trigger on and just bought
the originals because I couldn't...

help myself.

Can we just get a short montage that
shows how beautiful these maps are,

Thank you. Okay, so here's where the
story gets a little bit wild. I'm going

show you finally what these maps show.

This is also where things get a little
bit dark. These maps were created by a

Scottish banker turned amateur
cartographer and anthropologist at the

of the 1800s and into the early 1900s.

You have to understand something about
that time. Yes, a scientific revolution

was taking place. Yes, science was
trending and we were revolutionizing

everything about how we saw the world.
And yet at the same time, there was

another revolution, which was a
spiritual revolution.

People were throwing off the old ways of
thinking about God, but were still in

this kind of awkward middle ground where
they wanted to embrace science, but

they also had some leftover thinking
from the religious days.

making claims about reality, but using
kind of superficial empirical evidence,

and then filling in the blanks,
connecting the dots with more evidence

had gathered by being in touch with
spirits or psychic powers. These

powers boosted their ability to do
science, which, you know.

It wasn't really science.

We're talking about the late 19th
century, and so we don't know that much.

don't have some of the same skills and
the same tool set that we have today in

archaeology. And this makes Atlantis the
perfect target for this sort of

thinking. And it's that kind of thinking
that produced these masks.

So let me decode them for you. Okay,
real quick, I'm going to pause the story

because I need to thank today's sponsor.
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today's video, longtime sponsor of our
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let's keep talking about atlantis
because there's so much more to cover

okay this first one atlantis at its
prime so you

can see that you have a map of the
modern day world that's all this black

here okay that's like the map today but
then the red shading over it is what the

author william scott elliott says the
world looked like all these years ago so

it looked kind of like this

The bluish green is another set of land
that the author said existed a long time

ago. But I'm going to focus on the red
here because that's where we get

Atlantis. The reason it's four maps is
because this author wanted to represent

what the world looked like over time as
the ocean rose and fell.

Which, remember, that's a real thing
that happens in real life.

Tectonic plates move around and the
ocean rises and falls. Like the entire

coast of the United States used to be
underwater.

That's like an undisputed fact.

William Scott Eliot is pulling from that
real scientific theory to create his

own theory of Atlantis.

So if you look right here, this is what
William Scott Eliot says is the

continent of Atlantis. It's labeled
right there, Atlantis.

The main population center is right
here, the city of the Golden Gate.

Oh, but it's not just math.

There's a whole book.

Boy, this book. This book is wild. In
this book, William Scott Eliot describes

in detail the city of Atlantis. It
follows a lot of what Plato described in

terms of a circular city that was full
of sophisticated canals and palaces and

stuff. But boy, William Scott Eliot
takes it to an entirely new level. I

let me show you.

Welcome to William Scott Eliot's
Atlantis.

an ancient civilization that reached its
prime a million years ago.

Most of the details of this version of
Atlantis were revealed not through real

scientific inquiry, but through William
Scott Eliot's brain, through spiritual

clairvoyance, which he blended with a
few scientific factoids at the time to

build out this story.

Atlantis is a circular city with this
massive palace at the center. The

engineering is highly sophisticated,
with a complicated canal system that

manages the city water.

And look, there's an underwater
reservoir in the shape of a heart from

city gets its drinking water. At its
height, he says, two million people

here, and they were of a unique
Atlantean race with unique powers and

characteristics. They wielded advanced
tech, like these flying battleships.

that used a type of energy from a
different plane, not measurable by our

understanding of physics, an etheric
plane, whatever that means.

This understanding of different energy
planes allowed the Atlantean race to

wield nature in powerful ways, creating
a kind of powerful sorcery that could be

used for both good and evil. They wrote
on sheets of metal, they drank blood hot

from the animal, they had explosives
that released poisonous gas, and the

were treated equally.

Wow. Okay, before we get too drunk on
all these juicy tantalizing sci -fi

details, let's just check in on like
what's going on here. Is this guy

piece of fiction or is he trying to do
science?

Yes, he produced a set of painstakingly
detailed maps that look like real maps.

Like there is the world. I see the world
in the shape of the world. And yet he's

describing a civilization with
supernatural powers.

All of this happening a million years
ago, which is about...

990 ,000 years before scientists say
that humans started farming,

animals, and developing what would
become civilization.

Okay, but don't worry. William Scott
Elliott has an explanation for this.

Catastrophes. He says that there was a
global catastrophe 800 ,000 years ago.

was an ice age that ripped through the
Earth and reshaped the entire planet,

which is how you get from this to map
number two.

So here's the world starting 800 ,000
years ago after the Big Ice Age.

Atlantis is still here, but it's
starting to kind of sink into the sea.

Fast forward, that gets us to map number
three and map number four. According to

William Scott Eliot, it's these
catastrophes that sunk Atlantis into the

until it became this smaller island,
which is what he says Plato was

to when he was talking about this
utopian society.

And then, finally, the ocean rose.

And Atlantis sunk completely in the year
9564 BC.

Pretty specific there, William. Which is
the time that he says there was a

massive flood that covered the whole
planet. He says it's the same flood that

happened in the Bible. Noah's Ark,
remember?

And that the flood sunk Atlantis once
and for all into the ocean.

Goodbye, Atlantis. Great civilization is
now gone. But before it sunk, people

from Atlantis had fled east and west.

across the world, bringing with them
their knowledge about advanced

engineering, architecture.

And this is his explanation for why the
Egyptians and the Mayans had pyramids.

Oh, and he also says that the
descendants of these Atlanteans would go

the Aryan race, which would be the most
advanced civilization. Yeah, we'll get

back to that in just a sec, because it
gets pretty messed up.

Anyway, so you get the story. There's so
much more to this that, like, I'm just

going to leave all my reading in the
source document so you can see it

it gets nuts and there's so much more
kind of racializing of this story. But

what this is is a pseudoscientific
attempt to tell a story that was based

spiritual revelations, meaning not
science, but it is clothed in science -y

looking things. That's what this is.

Let's just be very clear. I'm not saying
it's anything other than that. At the

time, that was kind of accepted by some
circles.

My big question here is why?

Why would this guy do this? Did he make
a bunch of money off of duping people

into the legend of Atlantis?

I don't think so.

Why would he make all of this up? We'll
never know exactly why, but my theory is

that he really believed this stuff.

I think, like a lot of us, William Scott
Elliot had constructed a worldview that

helped explain the mysteries he didn't
understand.

And he used a variety of rational and
spiritual means to construct a story

helped him make sense of the world. We
all kind of do this. This guy just

happened to do it in a map that 120
years later we can all look at and like

at, even though it's a really beautiful
map. And I'm totally going to hang this

on my wall.

This was his explanation. Someone trying
to explain how the native people in a

new world who Europeans saw as primitive
and inferior had somehow built such

sophisticated structures.

This story helped explain that. So the
world those guys are talking about is a

world in which mainly dark -skinned
people are kind of backward and kind of

primitive and a cadre of white folks who
are...

Members of this advanced civilization
travel around the world and give them

culture. And yes, it resulted in this
implication that there was one superior

Aryan race, an idea that unfortunately
endured into the 1930s when one man

became obsessed with trying to use
scientific sounding methods to prove the

thing. This is Heinrich Himmler. He's
the architect of the Holocaust.

And before World War II, he funded
archaeological expeditions in search of

evidence that would prove the existence
of a superior ancient civilization in an

attempt to validate his horrible motives
for trying to wipe out entire races.

It's an effort that was loosely depicted
in this Indiana Jones movie.

One of the leaders of this Nazi
archaeological effort speculated that

ancestors of the German people were
actually from Atlantis, and that they

escaped when the continent sunk and came
to Germany. It was the same thing that

William Scott Eliot was doing, building
a bogus story using an old parable, but

in this case to justify some of the most
heinous acts of violence in our

history.

So, the big question that I should just
answer very clearly, is there any

evidence? that Atlantis existed?

Well, it depends what you mean by
evidence.

If you're someone who looks at the many
mysteries in our world and is

comfortable filling in the blanks with
your own guesses, especially the ones

that feel good, then yes, there's a
million different things that you could

at, connect the dots on, that would make
you believe that Atlantis is real. But

if you're somebody who believes in the
long, slow process of scientific

knowledge, where many different
scientists gather, analyze, and debate

over decades until they establish a
consensus of what is true. If that's

definition of compelling evidence, then
no.

Atlantis, which was constructed by Plato
as a parable to teach people, has no

basis in empirical fact. It simply does
not.

And yet my big lesson out of all of this
is that even after centuries of, like,

good science and archaeological
methodologies that tell us what's real

are still trying to discover the other
mysteries, we still are so intoxicated

this story for the same reason these
guys were. It's a really tempting idea,

kind of a comforting idea.

I think a lot of people want there to be
something wonderful and fascinating and

lost out there that they don't know
about. As an archaeologist, I often try

communicate to them that the human past
is interesting enough without making a

bunch of stuff up.

But to me, this is just a good story
closed in scientific language and

which is perhaps the most dangerous of
them all because it looks real. It co

-ops the language of science to tell
lies.

And it continues to live on in the form
of History Channel documentaries, a

recent Netflix documentary that indulge
these same ideas because people like

to believe.

So to me, not only is this map
beautiful, but it also serves as a

tale. I want to hang this on my wall to
remind me that even if it looks science

-y and has a lot of big scientific
words, that doesn't make it proof.

That doesn't make it true.

We've been scanning these maps, and
we've created a poster that you can buy.

We will create 500 of them. There are
four original maps I bought for this

story. I'm keeping one of them. But
three of them are up for grabs. The

map that was printed at the time. Nick,
who has been doing all of this scanning,

has some thoughts on why one would want
to purchase a map like this for their

home. Nick? Own a piece of Western
esoteric history. An original 1900

Scott Elliot Atlantis map.

It really represents the, like, Late
1800s and early 1900s fascination and

obsession with mysticism and like the
esoteric in general. So people became

totally obsessed with things like
Atlantis and seances and stuff. So it's

thing to be able to own.

a piece of like mystical history and
like where science and mysticism really,

really intersected. Maps are for sale.
Go get them now in the description.

you all for being here, for being on
this journey as we continue to learn

the history of evidence and science and
how we know what we know.

It's an ongoing discussion and debate
and boy, it's an important one to have

these days. So thanks for being here and
I'll see you in the next one.

i love just holding these maps and the
old paper you can like see the fiber in

the old paper the original printing
artifacts that are just like you can't

recreate this stuff with digital i've
tried we've gotten pretty close but like

there's just nothing like it also some
bold font choices here