Blog Tour: Guest Post by Carol Oates author of Shades of Atlantis

Welcome to the second stop of Carol Oates book blog tour for her book Shades of Atlantis. The tour will run from April 1st through April 19th. You will have a great chance at winning some great prizes if you follow the rules provided. Today Carol wrote a wonderful guest post for all the readers. So enjoy.

Atlantis.


The most famous reference to the legendary place we know as Atlantis was inPlato’sdialoguesofTimaeus and Critiasand refers back to the society discussed in the Republic. Atlantis was said to be a great city surrounded by three huge circular mounds and water. The location has been a subject of hot debate for many generations.


Plato’s idea was that every person had a role to play in creating in a perfect three tired society and to function, that society required laws. Without structure any man, even a good man may be persuaded to do wrong if there were no repercussions for his actions, if he truly believed he would never be found out. All it would take for perfection to slip away was the inhabitants not playing their designated role.


In Plato’s story, the people of Atlantis extended their reach beyond their own land, overthrowing countries and turning their inhabitants into slaves. Eventually those inhabitantsled by Athenian warriors revolted against them and Atlantis lost power. Atlantis was then swallowed up by the sea in a single night of floods and earthquakes, fitting since, according to Plato, it wascreated by Poseidon, god of the sea.


So was Atlantis a real place or a metaphor for human nature?It is debatable. While some have put forward the idea of Tsunamis, others have said it may have been a tale Plato borrowed from pervious histories. No one has found definitive proof of Atlantis’s existence as yet. Everywhere from Ireland to America, to most recently Spain has laid claim to Atlantis.In 1927 Lewis Spence wrote, “Kircher, Ginguene, Mentelle and others believed that the Atlantic Islands were the remains of the sunken continent and Buffon argued that Ireland, the Azores and America had once been portions of the great isle of Plato.” 


As recently as this year a documentary "Finding Atlantis," a National Geographic Channel special claimed an international team searching for the true site of Atlantis had found evidence of the lost city near Cadiz, Spain. They certainly found something, if it really is Atlantis remains to be seen.


The connection between Ireland and Atlantis goes back hundreds of years in literature. In Ireland the ancient seat of power religiously and politically was at Tara in county Meath, a place made up of circular mounds surounded by trenches. To futher support this theory Ireland was said to have been invaded by a race people from greece. The inhabitans were conqured but much later, around 1,000 BC the conqurers were driven underground by invaders from a settlement in the Iberian peninsula.

Another link between Ireland and Atlantis was through the mysterious sunken island of Hy-Brasil, located off the west coast of Ireland in the Atlantic. This island is visible once every seven years in local folklore. Some believe this could be Atlantisand in1684, an Irish historian spoke about the enchanted island of Hy-Brasil:

"From the Isles of Arran and the west continent often appears visible that enchanted island called O'Brasail and, in Irish, Beg Ara.

Interestingly another tale in folklore mentions this same place as a possible location for the enchanted Isle of Avalon, where King Arthur was taken after being mortally wounded in battle. Is it possible Atlantis and Avalon were the same place? A place that still exists in the rough waters of the Atlantic Ocean after all this time.Was it destroyed?Or did Atlantis ever really exist at all?

Now how did you like that post? I truly love anything about Atlantis. Thank you Carol for taking the time to write it for us. Now for more fun stuff. Carol and Omnific Publishing will be picking some winners at the end of the tour. Here is a list of the items up for grabs.

Prizes:

1. Signed copy of Shades of Atlantis, a lined spiral notebook with SoA cover, bookmark, keyring, SoA 2011 calendar, and SoA mug.
2. Signed copy of Shades of Atlantis, a lined spiral notebook with SoA cover, bookmark, keyring, SoA 2011 calendar
3. eBook copy of SoA
4. eBook copy of SoA

To Enter:

In order to be chosen as a winner, all participants will need to leave a comment on each blog stop. Then the names will be chosen by random.org and the name chosen will be checked on comments. All giveaways are open internationally. Participants do not need to be followers to be entered.