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In two of his dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, Plato described both the geography and the people of Atíantis.

"Atlantis stretched beyond the Pillars of Hercules and was larger than Libya and Africa together. The peoples who inhabited it came from the union between Poseidon and the mortal Cuto" (Poseidon being the God of the Seas)

According to Plato, Atlantis was finally destroyed 12,000 years ago, as a punishment for man's wickedness. The inhabitants of Atlantis had 'fallen prey to the worst vices". Once an immensely prosperous people, they had lost divine inspiration through "practising the grossest indecencies" and had become "utterly vile, filled with boundless greed and drunk with power." Zeus, said Plato, would teach them a lesson.

In Critias Plato gives a fuller narrative:

"The only survivors were those who dwelt on the mountains who did not know how to write. They, and their descendants for many generations lacked ah the usual comforts and had to devote ah their energies and intelligence to satisfying their physical needs. Thus, it is not surprising that they forgot what had happened in ancient times. This, moreover, explains why only the names of our distant ancestors have reached us, while their deeds have been forgotten."

In the latter half of the 19th century the American writer, Ignatius Donnelly believed the ancient cultures of Egypt and Mexico were colonies established by the earlier peoples of Atlantis, basing his assertion on the similarity between the cultures. Donnelly believed Atlantis had been the point of departure of known civilisation; the people of the lost continent, the fathers of the modern world.

Following the terrible catastrophe of the "sinking" of Atlantis, a few men managed to survive, saving thernselves in boats or rafts. They carried news of the disaster to people settled along both eastern and western shores of the ocean, where the catastrophe has been passed down through the millenia as "The Flood".