Atlantis is an underwater city filled with mermaid people. People who can breath underwater anyway. That's at least how Marvel and DC depict Atlantis. Futurama played on that myth but changed it to Atlanta, as in Georgia.
In reality, Plato probably made up Atlantis as an allegory. There's no evidence a continent ever sank, especially one larger than "Asia and Libya combined." Although to be fair, they probably weren't measuring Asia from East Turkey to Eastern Siberia as we do now.
The possibly connection with the city state of Helike adds an interesting twist. Plato knew about the sinking of Helike of course. But for years it was itself considered a myth, and it's only been found quite recently. The truth is about as wild as the story, overall.
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Allowing the story of Atlantis may be purely mythical the fact is nobody really knows, but there are interesting aspects to consider. History is full of things we once thought were myths, like Troy, until Heinrich Schliemann found the place. If you give Plato's story a hearing he does say that Atlantis was destroyed 9600 years before his lifetime in 360 BC and that it was a land beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
What I find fascinating is that few geologists or archeologists for that matter ever consider what was happening on Earth 11,000 years ago when half the planet was still underneath several miles of ice. Then something substantial happened that caused the ice to melt in a relatively short time producing catastrophic changes:
Eustasy and isostasy both affect sea level but in different ways: Eustasy refers to global sea level changes from variations in ocean water volume (ice melt, thermal expansion) or basin size, while isostasy describes local changes in land height (crustal uplift/subsidence) due to weight shifts, like glacial ice loading/unloading (isostatic rebound) or tectonic forces, causing the land to rise or fall relative to the sea. Eustasy changes the "bathtub" level, while isostasy moves the land, affecting "relative sea level"
I've been interested in this and similar subjects for a long time. Randall Carlson has been providing fascinating evidence via long podcasts but I managed to find a couple of brief excerpts about the Ice Age meltdown and another about the Azores as a possible location for Atlantis. There are already too many boring answers by mind-numbing scientists. Randall is brilliant and entertaining.
Ice age meltdown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbakPmqR7VE
Azores
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-QA2TkEP_g
That's a good point about Troy being assumed to be mythical until Schliemann and his crew found it. Schliemann apparently declared that he'd unearth Troy when he was seven. He may represent the ne plus ultra of "never give up on your dreams." The Pillars of Hercules are at the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. A number of locations could be beyond them. 9,600 years before Plato would be what we generally think of as Early Neolithic. Which is a pretty mysterious time.
I've believed for a long time now that many ancient tales of the great global flood are in essence folk memories of the ice melting. Not that families were consistently talking about it from 11,000 BC until the modern era, but if there's a story that really gets the point across, it's going to stick around for a while and perhaps keep gathering force.
Eustasy and isostasy are interesting compare/contrast terms. Two very distinct phenomena that nonetheless can exercise an effect on each other.
Randall Carlson is an interesting speaker and thinker. It's funny that he showed a map of North America with a giant ice sheet burying Canada. That's how so many people still think of it.
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