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Critically Thinking with Atlantis

The process of applying logical, skeptical, and objective analyses and evaluations to the available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments in order to form a judgment is known as critical thinking. This is the official definition of critical thinking but the way it’s actually used is how people’s minds take the information that they learned, known or heard effects the way they think about other new or known information. The stories and myths we hear about as kids against the information we learn in school connect in a way that everyone interprets differently. When people are young and think about Atlantis, they typically go straight to the movie produced in the early two thousands. When they’re older they think about the different possibilities of what a place like that could have been. Did it sink into the ocean, was it swallowed by the Bermuda triangle, or was it just made up by Plato.  

Critical thinking doesn’t just affect how we understand different theories but how we understand the concept of theories itself. Myths and theories change the mindset of people and how they think about a lot of different things in everyday life. Myths can include simple things like you have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you go swimming, but they can also go further and deeper into things like the lost city of Atlantis. Both of these kinds of examples can affect the way people think or act. For example, believing in the theory of Atlantis being sunk to the bottom of the ocean, thinking of the ocean will be different. You will wonder what else is down there and what happens to the ocean to make an island like that sink. People critically thinking about this type of information in all different ways, without the different theories and ways of thinking, everyone's brain would be the same.  

The prefrontal cortex is where critical thinking is processed. It strategically controls our feelings, behaviors, and ideas by forming strong connections with other brain areas We wouldn't be able to carry out a lot of executive functions without it, including planning, decision-making, self-control, self-motivation, reasoning, and problem-solving. Biologically, just about everyone’s brain critically thinks the same but with different information, theories and more, all of the information is going to be understood differently. Using the information people learn and know is how our brains become metaphorically different.  

Connecting back to Atlantis, there are many different ideas. The first and most common idea is that Atlantis was a mid-Atlantic continent and abruptly sunk to the bottom of the ocean. It wasn't until the late 19th century that people began to believe that Atlantis was a real historical location rather than merely a myth created by Plato. In his 1882 book Atlantis, the Antediluvian World, author Ignatius Donnelly made the case that because the ancients lacked the ability to independently develop these innovations, they had to have received them from an earlier, more advanced civilization. These innovations included agriculture, metallurgy, and language. Back when this theory became a well know myth, people had little idea of the depth of the Atlantic Ocean. In the Atlantic Ocean, just beyond the "Pillars of Hercules," the two rocks that define the entrance to the Straits of Gibraltar, Donnelly described a continent flooded by shifting ocean waters that sank precisely where Plato claimed it did. Donnelly's shifting-waters thesis was challenged by contemporary oceanography and a deeper comprehension of plate tectonics, but some people still hold onto his theory because it maintains Plato's location of Atlantis in the mid-Atlantic. Overall, this is the top theory that most people believe or think of when they think about Atlantis.  

A man names Charles Berlitz was an American language teacher with other theories of Atlantis. He discussed the possibility of Atlantis being a nuclear disaster, natural cause or magical submerge. This all came from Berlitz’s book, The Mystery of Atlantis. This book mainly discusses the idea that Atlantis came from the Bermuda triage. Berlitz argued in the 1970s that Atlantis was a real continent off the coast of the Bahamas that had been destroyed by the infamous "Bermuda Triangle". This was an area of the Atlantic where several ships were said to have vanished for unknown reasons. Those in favor of this theory cite the finding of what appear to be man-made streets and walls off the coast of Bimini; however, upon closer inspection, scientists determined that these formations are natural beach-rock formations.  

These are only two of the very detailed and well researched myths or theories about the city of Atlantis. Hundreds of people have spent their life's work backing up this information. Critical thinking is essential for this work. In order to solve issues or reach decisions, skilled critical thinkers are able to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant details and draw logical conclusions from a set of data. This kind of critical thinking takes problem solving, creativity and more but the people learning and trying to understand the information have those skills as well. Not only do the people discover these ideas need critical thinking skills but so do the people they’re sharing their information with. The idea that there was an island in the Atlantic Ocean but is no longer there is bound to have some questions. The questions are what leads to creativity and problem solving.  

Over the years, myths and theories have grown but so has the way we think about them. Critical thinking is constantly changing with the ideas themselves. Critical thinking is not something you can learn in a classroom, much like the majority of soft skills. Instead, this skill is made up of several analytical and interpersonal skills. Learning to be open-minded and applying analytical thinking to the process of framing problems is more important than anything else in developing critical thinking skills. This is all used to discover new ideas as well as learn new ideas. Critical thinking is always changing as well as the ideas with it.