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60 free Atlantis trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Atlantis appears in exactly two ancient texts, Plato's Timaeus and Critias, and everything else, from lost-continent bestsellers to Disney cartoons, grew out of a few pages of philosophy. This quiz starts with what Plato actually wrote: which god got the island, how many kings ruled it, what its walls were coated with, who beat its armies and how quickly it vanished. Then it asks what the ancients themselves made of it, from the pupil who called it a fable to the churchman who used it to prove the earth was flat. From there it follows the modern legend: the Minnesota congressman whose 1882 book turned Atlantis into a real place, Madame Blavatsky's root races, Edgar Cayce's prophecy for the 1960s, and the long parade of candidate sites in Santorini, Doggerland, Andalusia, Ireland, the Azores and Antarctica. It finishes in popular culture with Francis Bacon and Thomas More, Jules Verne, Donovan's spoken-word hit, Disney's box-office flop, Aquaman, Stargate, a Bahamas resort and a Space Shuttle. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Atlantis and the works that borrowed its name, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Greek mythology, ancient Greece and Plato quizzes next.
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Q 01Which philosopher's works are the only primary sources for the story of Atlantis?
Plato
Every later mention of the island traces back to two of his dialogues.
Q 02In which two dialogues does the story of Atlantis appear?
Timaeus and Critias
Only Critias actually tells the tale, though Socrates and Hermocrates are also present.
Q 03The Greek name Atlantis literally means what?
Island of Atlas
Atlas, eldest son of the island's divine founder, was made its first king, and the ocean was named for him too.
Q 04Plato says the story reached Greece through which Athenian lawgiver, who heard it from priests in Egypt?
Solon
The dialogues claim he visited Egypt between 590 and 580 BC and translated the records.
Q 05According to Plato, Atlantis lay beyond what landmark?
The Pillars of Hercules
The Pillars are usually taken as the Strait of Gibraltar, though some argue they once meant the Gulf of Laconia.
Q 06Plato dates the fall of Atlantis to roughly how long before his own time?
9,000 years
That would put it around 9600 BC, deep in the Stone Age.
Q 07Plato describes Atlantis as an island larger than which two lands combined?
Libya and Asia
For the Greeks, 'Libya' meant North Africa and 'Asia' meant Anatolia and beyond.
Q 08Which god was allotted the island of Atlantis when the deities divided the earth?
Poseidon
It was a fitting share for the god of the sea.
Q 09The island's divine founder fell in love with the mortal Cleito, who bore him how many children?
Five pairs of male twins
The eldest, Atlas, became king of the whole island; his twin Gadeirus got the land towards the Pillars.
Q 10The god enclosed the central mountain of Atlantis with how many circular moats?
Three
Rings of land separated them, and the Atlanteans later cut tunnels so ships could sail right into the city.
Q 11The walls of Atlantis were covered in brass, tin and which legendary precious metal?
Orichalcum
The stone beneath was red, white and black rock quarried from the moats.
Q 12Who led the alliance that defeated the Atlantean empire in Plato's story?
The Athenians
Plato modelled this ideal ancient city on the perfect state of his Republic.
Q 13How quickly did Atlantis disappear into the sea, according to Plato?
In a single day and night
Violent earthquakes and floods took the island and Athens's warriors together.
Q 21Whose 1882 book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World is credited with reviving the Atlantis myth?
Ignatius Donnelly
He argued every ancient civilisation descended from Atlantis, where he placed the Garden of Eden.
Q 22Helena Blavatsky claimed her book The Secret Doctrine had originally been dictated where?
In Atlantis
She made the Atlanteans the fourth 'root race', peaking about a million years ago.
Q 23The clairvoyant Edgar Cayce predicted that Atlantis would rise again in which decade?
The 1960s
He also claimed a Hall of Records beneath the Sphinx holds the island's history.
Q 14What did Plato say made the sea impassable where Atlantis had been?
A shoal of mud
It was caused, he says, by the subsidence of the island.
Q 15Plato built Atlantis, a naval empire of the west, as a literary contrast to which real land power of the east?
The Achaemenid Persians
The story is an allegory on the hubris of nations, with an idealised Athens as the hero.
Q 16Which of Plato's own students believed his teacher had invented the island to teach philosophy?
Aristotle
Crantor, by contrast, is often cited as the first to take the story as history.
Q 17Which sixth-century writer used Atlantis in his Christian Topography to argue Earth is flat?
Cosmas Indicopleustes
He claimed Plato and Aristotle had simply borrowed everything from Moses.
Q 18What do scholars think Theopompus of Chios's land beyond the ocean, Meropis, was?
A parody of Atlantis
Its people grew to twice normal size and lived in Pious-town and Fighting-town.
Q 19Some scholars think Plato drew Atlantis's fortifications from which Sicilian city he had just left?
Syracuse
Rodney Castleden notes he wrote of Atlantis in 359 BC, just after returning from Sicily to Athens.
Q 20Which Bronze Age volcano's eruption is often proposed as the catastrophe behind the Atlantis story?
Thera (Santorini)
Its tsunami is thought by some to have devastated Minoan Crete.
Q 24What scientific development in the 1960s made lost-continent theories of Atlantis wane?
Acceptance of continental drift
Plate tectonics showed a continent could not vanish in the geologically recent past.
Q 25The 16th-century cartographer Abraham Ortelius, musing on Atlantis, first imagined what?
That the continents had drifted apart
He pointed to the matching coastlines of Europe, Africa and America.
Q 26Which submerged North Sea landmass, drowned after the Storegga Slide, has been proposed as Atlantis?
Doggerland
The Swedish scholar Olof Rudbeck preferred Sweden itself, in his Atland of 1672-1702.
Q 27In 2011 a National Geographic team claimed to find Atlantis in the marshes of which Spanish national park?
Doñana
Spanish scientists dismissed the claim as 'fanciful' sensationalising of their work on Tartessos.
Q 28Ulf Erlingsson claimed a 99.8% probability that Plato's description matched which country?
Ireland
He later said he did not believe Atlantis ever existed; Ireland's national museum saw no supporting archaeology.
Q 29Which Atlantic archipelago, often touted as Atlantis, has been an undersea plateau for millions of years?
The Azores
The Canaries and Madeira have been steadily uplifted, not sunk, over four million years.
Q 30Which frozen continent did Flavio Barbiero propose as the site of Atlantis as early as 1974?
Antarctica
Other suggested sites range from Cuba and the Bermuda Triangle to Indonesia and India's Kumari Kandam.