Essay talk:Is there any truth in the story of Atlantis

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Interesting article, but like so many that address the 'did Atlantis really exist?' conundrum, it does not touch on the intriguing, and baffling, etymology of the word 'Atlantis' itself.

Where, in other words, does the word 'Atlantis' come from?

Plato's Timaeus dialogue refers to 'Atlas's Island', which gave rise to the English derivative, 'Atlantis'. The island was supposedly located in the 'Sea of Atlas' aka the Atlantic ('Atlantikos' in the original Greek). In Greek mythology, Atlas was a Titan condemned to hold up the celestial heavens at the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar), close to the Atlas Mountains of northwest Africa.

But here's the curious thing. 'Atlas' has no etymological precedent in Greek. It is a one-off, likewise the 'atl' prefix, which again has no etymological root in the Greek language.

In fact, to find a real commonality, you have to look elsewhere, to the other side of the Atlantic: to Mexico and Middle America. In the Aztec language and its ancient precursor Nahuatl, 'atl' is an omnipresent linguistic trope. The word 'atlan', for example, combines 'atl', meaning water, with the locative '-tlan', which can mean into, under or in between. So 'atlan' could mean 'in between the water' or 'the water in between.'

The word 'Nahuatl' itself, of course, is just another example of the ubiquity of the 'atl' component across the Nahuatl / Aztec languages. Most famously, perhaps: Quetzlcoatl, the Aztec feathered-serpent god, associated with the planet Venus and the rising sun, which emerges in the east, the location of Europe and Africa from a Mesoamerican standpoint.

As for the 'tic' in 'Atlantic', this might have derived from the Nahuatl word 'tliltic', which means, intriguingly, a black person. The first documented references to 'tliltic' are from the early colonial period. But was the word in use, with the same or similar meaning, in a pre-Colombian context? Could 'Atlantic' actually mean 'the water in between (us) and a black person (black Africa)?'

Another possibility is that 'tic' is a bastardisation of the Nahuatl 'tec' or 'ec' suffix. The Nahuatl word 'techutli', for example, means 'lord' or 'member of the high nobility.' So, if 'tic' is an evolution of 'tec', then 'atlantec' could be interpreted as 'the water between (us) and the Great Lord,' a reference, perhaps, to the 'great lord' Quezlcoatl.

The bottom line is that while in the Nahuatl / Aztec languages, 'atl' is all over the place, in Greek it is nowhere to be found, except as a component of the word Atlas. Is this a random coincidence? Or should we confront another possibility: that there is a long-forgotten connection between the ancient world of the Mediterranean and the Nahuatl-speaking civilisations of Middle America?

We know that Phoenician traders regularly sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic, reaching Britain to the north in c.450 BC, and the West Coast of Africa two decades later. According to Herodotus, a Phoenician expedition had even circumnavigated Africa two centuries earlier. The ancient historian Diodorus states that Phoenician ships travelled as far as the Canary Islands, Madeira and the Azores. In 1749, eight Carthaginian coins (Carthage was a Phoenician city state, situated near present day Tunis) were found on Corvo, an island in the Azores. How the coins got there has never been explained. On a Phoenician ship? That has to be a possibility.

Could a Phoenician expedition have been blown off course by a storm so severe it drove the ships (or ship) as far as Central America? Have accounts of this, retold perhaps as legend, been lost to us - like so much of ancient history - the only remaining evidence being the 'atl/an' in Atlantic?

Of course, there could be another explanation. The Berber word for mountain is 'adrar' or 'adras', leading some historians and etymologists to conclude that these terms 'are cognates of the toponym "atlas"' (Wikipedia). That has to remain a possibility. But is this really a more plausible theory than the idea that the 'atl' of Atlantic was derived from a language where this specific linguistic component is omnipresent, and even links through to the notion of an expanse of water?

Instances where what was originally dismissed as 'myth' or 'legend' and later turned out to be 'real' are nothing new (Troy, Knossos, Delphi, for example). But to date there is no undisputed archaeology to confirm that Phoenicians, Greeks or any other ancient Mediterranean culture ever crossed the Atlantic. That said, on a purely practical level such a journey, planned or accidental, would not have been impossible. The Phoenicians were renowned sailors and navigators. In terms of speed, stability and endurance, their ships would not be equalled until the 15th century AD. Only last year, a team of enthusiasts built a replica Phoenician ship and sailed it from Tunisia to the Dominican Republic, taking just 39 days to make the journey.

But the archaeological evidence, such as it is, remains contentious, the discovery of 'Roman amphorae' in waters off Rio de Janeiro in 1982 and of a 'Phoenician platter' by a fisherman off the northwest coast of Brazil twelve months earlier, being among best-known examples. Even the aforementioned 'Phoenician coins' discovered in the Azores are problematic, not least because they have long-since disappeared; we only have contemporary illustrations as 'proof' that they existed.

So, although there have been a number of intriguing if fiercely disputed 'discoveries', there has been nothing so far on the archaeological front to conclusively establish the reality of an ancient trans-Atlantic link. But on an etymological level the 'atl' connection is hard to dismiss. Not quite 'game, set and match', perhaps. But worthy of a far greater degree of scrutiny than this extraordinary linguistic 'coincidence' has so far warranted.