Indeed, this ocean took this name
because it was deemed the "Ocean of the Atlanteans". Hence, Mediterranean
locations such as Troy, Crete (Thera), Carthage, the Bosphorus, etc., automatically
disqualify as the site of Atlantis.
However, one should carefully recall that
what the ancients called by the name of Atlantic Ocean, or others such
as Outer Ocean, Kronius Oceanus, Mare Magnum, Mare Oceanum, etc., was
not the same one we now address by that name. As we discuss in detail
elsewhere [LINK], the Atlantic Ocean (or simply "Ocean") of the ancients of the
times of Plato, Herodotus, Aristotle and others was the whole of the earth
encircling ocean. This difference in nomenclature is essential, for it ties with the root of the problem of Atlantis, and explains why all researchers so far have failed to find the true site of Atlantis.
The ancients figured the world that is,
the lands they knew of (Eurasia and Africa), the so-called Ancient World
as a roughly circular plate surrounded all around by the Ocean ("Atlantic").
Outside this Circular Ocean, "containing" it, so to speak, was the true
"Continent", the Americas, which encircled it all around.
It was in this Outer Continent that the ancients
placed Eden and other such legendary Paradises which they remotely connected
with Atlantis. As a matter of fact, the very word "Ocean" derives from
the Sanskrit
acayana meaning "encircling all around". Hence,
in the same way that the Mediterranean regions are automatically discredited
as possible sites for Atlantis for they neither lie in the Atlantic Ocean
nor outside the Pillars of Hercules regions located in the Indian Ocean
and the Pacific Ocean must be included, for they indeed satisfy these two
prerequisites.
Avienus basing himself on very ancient
Phoenician sources placed the Hesperides and the island of Geryon, Erytheia,
"in the Ocean of the Atlanteans". Now, from Avienus' and other detailed descriptions, Erytheia lay in the Orient, in the Erythraean
(or Indian Ocean), to which it gave its name. So, we see that the name of
"Atlantic Ocean" or "Ocean of the Atlanteans" originally applied to the
Indian Ocean. This name was later transferred, first to both oceans and then to
the present Atlantic Ocean. We conclude, hence, that Atlantis must be sought first of all in the Indian Ocean, and only secondarily in what we presently call "Atlantic Ocean".
