Or is it?  If interested in Atlantis, then go to the recommended books section and get the book I recommended on Atlantis by Ignatius Donnelly, it's very good, and it is the origional, not a retelling based on someone elses book. There you can learn the context of Plato's story, who he told it too, why he told it and where he heard it....

"Way down, below the ocean, where I want to be, she made me"....Donavan

I think fact as well. Though some may go with the universal consciousness theory, I think there are too many ancient civilizations that are too far apart with too many similar traits for there not to have been a common source. The old India(n) documents which describe ancient flying machines also point to advanced civilizations hidden in the mists of time. My only nagging doubt is the lack of man made evidence. Tomorrows people will find much evidence that we were here, things that simply do not break down without traces, plastics, certain metals, etc. It is curious to me that ancient civilizations, could develop without the same trace evidence. Even if they blew, or were blown apart. All natural building materials would seem to indicate more primative societies. But, besides that, I'd like to believe in Atlantis as a real place, or remembered history....

I wonder if, in the worlds early formation, there may have been less dimensional barriers, which lead to stories like Atlantis. Another possible explanation, is, like the Superman comicbook stories, Atlantis was another planet, which when it discovered it's impending doom, sent out it's people to new colonies, planets, and the legend of Atlantis is but a trace of our long past history....

Imo the the Atlantis story relates to the civilizations in the pre-Columbian Americas. There is significant evidence to suggest that Europeans, Middle Easterners, and North Africans were making regular voyages to these areas and were trading with the local peoples and may well have been creating colonies in the 'New World' as well. Some of the evidence includes tobacco and coca traces found in Egyptian mummies. There are also Egyptian, Libyan, Punic, and Celtic petro-glyphs and linguistic evidences that are coming to light.....

                                                                           -BB, Badger