Exercise 1: Extracting main ideas

Atlantis: Lost and Found?

(1) Deriving its name from Atlas,[1] the Titan, Atlantis is believed to be a civilization far more advanced than our own. Its image is that of a peaceful island-city with superior knowledge, thriving commerce, and advanced technology. Its whereabouts are still unknown. Many theories have placed Atlantis in the Indian Ocean, Antarctica, south of Japan, and the small island of Santorini. In any study of Atlantis, the primary source of analysis should begin with the only ancient record available on the subject, the texts written by Plato, Timaeus and Critias. In these texts Plato gives a detailed description of the island of Atlantis including its geography and the social life of the people populating it. If Atlantis did exist, then the details provided by Plato should be taken as the benchmark[2] for comparison. One must keep in mind, however, that Plato himself wrote about Atlantis at least a thousand years after the Atlantis civilization. This could mean then that even Plato misunderstood the accounts of Atlantis.

(2) Plato tells his readers that Atlantis was an island located in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the Greek name for the Straits of Gibraltar). He also tells us that there was a chain of islands leading from Atlantis to the continent and surrounding Atlantis in all directions. The main problem in accurately placing Atlantis according to Plato's description is that one must realize the difference between Plato's Classical Greece of 450 BC and that of the earlier Mycenean[3] Greece of 1500 BC. By classical Greek times most of the Mediterranean world was known to the Greeks, and the Atlantic Ocean was considered to be outside the Strait of Gibraltar. This view of the world is our own today. But even in classical Greece, the perception of the known world varied greatly from that of the modern age.

(3) Among the numerous researchers challenged by the enigma of Atlantis is Jacques Collina- Girard of the University of the Mediterranean in Aix-en-Provence, France. He was interested in patterns of human migration from Europe to North Africa at the height of the last Ice Age, 19,000 years ago. To see if paleolithic people could have crossed the strait, he made a map of what the western European coastline looked like at that time, when the sea level was 130 meters lower than it is now. His reconstruction of the area reveals an ancient archipelago, with an island at the spot where Plato described Atlantis.

(4) Collina-Girard says that there was an island in front of the Strait of Gibraltar. Named Spartel, it lay to the west of the strait, just as Plato described. The Strait was longer and narrower than today, andenclosed a harbor-like inland sea that Plato mentions as the setting for Atlantis. Just over 11,000 years ago, the generally slow rise of post-glacial sea levels accelerated briefly to more than two meters per century, according to records from coral reefs. This would have swamped the island, Collina-Girard suggests. He believes the archipelago was engulfed 9,000 years before Plato.

(5) There are a few facts in Collina-Girard's hypothesis that don't match Plato's story, however. Plato describes Atlantis as larger than Libya and Asia put together, whereas Collina-Girard's island is 14 kilometers long by 5 kilometers wide. He argues that a mistake was made in converting Egyptian units of length into Greek units as the story was passed down. Plato also reports that volcanic activity sank Atlantis, but this may have been a case of embellishment. The Greeks were familiar with volcanic eruptions. To them such a fate might have been more dramatic and plausible than a change in the sea level. As for an advanced Atlantis civilization, Collina-Girard points to Plato's own admission that he grafted these details onto the tale in order to present his ideas about a utopian society.

(6) Bill Rayan of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York agrees that the lower sea levels of 11,000 years ago would have exposed many islands. But he cautions his French colleague that the story of Atlantis would have needed to survive down the generations for 9,000 years in Egypt before being recorded by the Greeks. The difficulty that emerges is correct translation of nouns and adjectives passed down by the oral tradition as languages change and evolve.

(7) Collina-Girard suggests that the archipelago could have provided stepping stones for primitive sailors to cross between Europe and North Africa. "The coasts of Spain and Morocco were inhabited at the time; so certainly were these islands too," he says. A prehistoric culture spread rapidly in Morocco around 20,000 years ago. Traditionally, this came from the east, but why not from the north too?

Before you start reading

1. What have you read or heard about Atlantis?

2. Where was it situated?

3. Why do people continue to speculate about the fate of Atlantis?

4. If researchers found proof that Atlantis existed, what discipline would benefit from this

discovery?

Making a list of 5-8 words that you need to discuss hypotheses about the lost civilization.

After reading:

Exercise 1: Extracting main ideas

Read the passage and decide which of the following could be used as titles for each of the seven e paragraphs of the text.

________ A French scientist offers an explanation for mistakes in Plato's texts

________ A rise of the sea level and the death of Atlantis

________ Reconsidering ideas about the spread of prehistoric cultures

________ How accurate was the story transmitted orally for thousands of years?

________ The reconstruction of an ancient map gives birth to a new hypothesis

________ Perception of geography in ancient Greece

________ The roots of knowledge about Atlantis

Exercise 2: Vocabulary

A. Study the chart below and use the dictionary to check the meanings of unfamiliar words.

VERB	NOUN	ADJECTIVE	ADVERB
advance	advance advancement	advanced
record	record recorder recording	recorded
VERB	NOUN	ADJECTIVE	ADVERB
account	account accountability	accountable	accountably
challenge	challenge challenger	challenging
convert	conversion converter (or) convertibility convertible convert	converted   convertible
admit	admission admittance	admissible	admittedly
caution	Caution	cautious	cautiously
emerge	emergence emergency	emergent
evolve	evolution evolvement	evolutionary evolving

B.Complete the sentences below using the correct forms of the words from the chart.

1. A nuclear reactor __________________ fertile material into fissile fuel.

2. Because of the rain, the visibility was poor; so he drove slowly and more __________________

than usual.

3. The flight attendant asked the passengers sitting next to the __________________ exits to put their hand luggage into the luggage compartment.

4. Several theories explaining water reservoirs on Mercury __________________ in the last decade, but none of them has been unanimously accepted by the scientific community.

5. Only 15 out of 60 candidates __________________ as Master's students to our department last fall.

6. The first computer program that __________________ Gary Kasparov, the then world chess champion, marked a new era in the history of the ancient game. Today, several programs have risen to the __________________ of competing with the world's best chess players. (one word, two different forms)

7. Since the foundation of the company, we have kept a __________________of its profits. They were at __________________ levels in 1999 before the recession started. (one word, two different forms)

8. In the course of two centuries, a simple mechanical calculator __________________ into a programmable computer capable of performing a variety of operations. The __________________ has been made possible by the development of microelectronics. (one word, two different forms)

9. You have to take into __________________ that his __________________ of events are always colorful but seldom precise. (one word, two different forms)

C. Words in Context

What do the following words mean in the context of the passage?

PATTERNS, line 23

a. examples

b. decorative designs

c. designs repeated indefinitely

GRAFTED, line 41

a. inserted

b. transplanted

c. joined together

Exercise 3: Referents

What do the following words refer to?

1. that (line 2) _________________________________________________________________

2. this (line 10) ________________________________________________________________

3. that (line 20) ________________________________________________________________

4. it (line 29) __________________________________________________________________

5. this (line 37) ________________________________________________________________