Platos myth:
Plato Once told a story about an ancient civilization called Atlantis. In his story a country with an advanced civilization disappeared shortly after a defeat at the hands of the greeks. This supposedly took place 9000 years before Platos time on earth (427-347 BC). In his story Timaus and Critias reflected on the events that led up to the distruction of Atlantis, but this was false, but at the time the reach of some civilizations were out of reach of others and in a sence they were right.
Atlantis was a country in the Atlantic of great power and quickly conquered vast territorys, and what the didn't conquer they influenced heavily. Egypt and Africa quickly picked up Atlantis's style of government and technology. The boundry's under the Atlantians control covered much of northern africa and the mediteranian, as far north as sardinia and as far west as western Egypt. Atlantis traded heavily with some of the civilizations on some of the islands to the south of greece.
One such island was the Island of Thetis, a civilization almost as advanced as Atlantis existed there but rather than conquering Thetis Atlantis was able to establish good relations with thetis and quickly began to trade with the thetians. The Island of Thetis itself was formed from an ancient asteroid impact and as a result had a large ring shaped island surrounding it. Later a volcano created by the shock of the impact began to form creating another island within the ring and gradually protions of it filled in parts of the waterways inbetween.
Eventually through trade both Atlantis and Thetis grew stronger and more advanced but durring this time the greek civilization was forming. Eventually Greece too would become an advanced civilization and began to expand her borders. This eventually brought them into conflict with the Thetians who were expanding north.
At first it was a minor conflict but several encounters between the two began to instill distrust in their cultures and before long they began to battle heavily.
The Thetians being more advanced and trading heavily with the Atlantians had the upper hand early on and conquered many greek islands and were even attacking the mainland in sporatic raids, but over time the greeks became battle hardened and pushed back the Thetians who were also getting involved in other conflicts. Eventually a stalemate occured, niether side could gain the advantage untill after a few stinging defeats at the hands of the Thetians the Greeks once again lost some ground. Just as it seemed like the Thetians would again conquer many Greek territory's an event that drastically changed the region occuered. A great volcanic erruption took place on the Island of Thetis, so large that much of the island was destroyed. The effects of the erruption could be felt in Europe and Greece, great earthquakes followed the erruption and plunged greece into a darkage, but the island of Thetis had it much worse. The island nation was vertually distroyed and many of its people were killed, without the heart of its empire the Thetian empire colapsed very quickly.
This is were Plato got the story of Atlantis from, for to the known world Thetis was actually Atlantis because its civilization vertually mimicked that of the Atlantians. Through time the territory once controled by the thetians would fall into the hands of the Greeks and the Persians, and even the devastated island of Thetis would become part of the Greek civilization. Egypt at this time was also emerging as a civilization and eventually the Atlantians left the western borders of Egypt to be conquered by the Egyptians.