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Errata list for 'Atlantis from a Geographer's Perspective'
On page 22 it says "The summers were warm and hot", although it should read "The summers were warm and dry"
On three pages it says "Thuata", although it should say "Tuatha"
It is not as clear as stated in the book that the dimensions 3000x2000 stadia refer to the island. In fact, from the Greek original it is clear that it referred to the central plain, since the plain and the island have different grammatic genuses in Greek. However, in Jowett's rather literal translation it appears to refer to the island, since English does not feature grammatic genuses. However, this can not be taken as proof that the hypothesis is wrong, for the following reason: Plato said that the information came from Egypt via Solon. The Egyptian text would have been written with hieroglyphs. If Plato's text is a faithful attempt to render a hieroglyphic message in Greek, then the translator would have had to make the same guess I made from Jowett's text, as to whether the dimensions refered to the island or the plain. Since the plain is mentioned lastly before the dimensions, anybody not paying attention to the content of the text would have assigned the dimensions to the plain. However, because of the context, it is my opinion as a geomorphologist that it is much more likely that the dimensions refered to the island as a whole. The reason is that the dimensions came together with two descriptive words, which make more sense when applied to the island with its mountains, than to the plain: smooth and even. Plains are by definition smooth and even so it would have been redundant information; but if mountains are smooth and even, then it is something worth mentioning. Of course, there are very few smooth and even mountains, and all I know of are previously glaciated and located in either the British Isles or in Scandinavia. The bottom line is therefore that the probability is less than calculated, but that the hypothesis still holds up.
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