探索频道英语听力 遗失的大陆-02

In the holy shrine of the ancient Egyptian capital, Solon was shown records of unsurpassed antiquity, the secrets of a long lost age when a civilization of incomparable power and prestige had dominated the world 9, 000 years before— the Empire of Atlantis. The description the Egyptian priest gave to Solon of this mighty vanished civilization is the starting point for every search, ever undertaken to find Atlantis. A description which Plato says, has the great advantage of being a fact and not a fiction . Atlantis was said to lie beyond the pillars of Hercules, outside the Mediterranean sea in an ocean we now call the Atlantic.

Plato was very very specific about where Atlantis was and what size it was, and he described it as being larger than the continents of Africa and Asia put together and he located it very carefully outside the pillars of Hercules. The pillars of Hercules are what we know now as the straits of Gibraltar and when you locate something outside the pillars of Hercules, you are locating it in the Atlantic Ocean just to the west of Spain and North Africa.

Atlantis was dominated by vast, almost perfectly rectangular plain, surrounded on three sides by high very beautiful mountains, possessed of abundant natural resources, rare plants and precious flowers of every description, even elephants and other exotic animals. Atlantis was a land like no other where the people wanted for nothing. That sacred island which then beheld the light of the sun brought forth infinite abundance and blessings of the earth.

unsurpassed: a. 卓越的
exotic: a 异国情调的， 奇异的