The island of Thera (also known as Santorini) is part of a group of islands known as the Cyclades in the Mediterranean (see map page for its location in the Mediterranean). Thera remains today an active volcano, though how it appears to us now is much different than it would have looked before the massive eruption about 1628 BC. When Thera erupted it utterly destroyed the island including the city of Akrotiri, burying it under tons of ash and debris. The entire center of the island was blown away and where there was once a mountain peak it was now flat ocean. Geologists consider the eruption of Thera to be the most massive and singularly destructive event in recorded history.
Almost 1700 years before the birth of Christ there was a town known as Akrotiri on Thera. It was a valuable port city and part of the Minoan civilization. We know this because the art and pottery found on Thera match that found on Crete. Akrotiri thrived as a port city and the money that the sea trade brought them allowed them to afford to build beautiful buildings. Scientists have rediscovered Akrotiri and archaeologists are working to fully excavate it. It is this very town that is believed to be the source of the Atlantis legend.
Why do we place the origin of the legend of Atlantis on Thera? Most importantly it was the eruption of the island itself that is the biggest clue. No other event could have been massive enough to destroy an entire island. Plato talks of the destruction of Atlantis happening 9000 years before his day. One theory suggests that the original legend that the Egyptians read may have been written in a language that the Minoans used called Linear A. In Linear A, the symbol used for 100 and the one used for 1000 differ only slightly (see diagram). A simple mistake would have introduced an error factor of 10, putting the destruction of Atlantis not 9000 years before Plato, but 900 years before, which coincides with the eruption of Thera.
