I'm watching a fascinating program on the History Channel about ancient Crete and the Minoan society that flourished there some 3,500 years ago. They believe the city on the central island of Santorini fits Plato's description of Atlantis. Seems reasonable to me bassed upon the evidence they have excavated.
Those people were thousands of years ahead of their time. Three and four story buildings, every house having hot and cold running water as well as a highly technically advanced sewage system that included bathrooms and toilets inside the houses, and some engineering that is advanced even by today's standards.
Knowing how people in this country lived just a hundred years or so ago it's incredible how advanced these ancient people really were. They didn't have electricity or fuel powered machines and yet they had some amazingly advanced technical knowledge.
It's a real shame that all of that knowledge was lost for so many centuries and Man had to reinvent a lot of those concepts and technologies all over again from scratch over the course of a few thousand years. One has to wonder not only what ideas have never been rediscovered, but just how advanced we might be today had those civilizations and their knowledge not been lost to a massive volcanic eruption that literally buried it under several feet of lava and ash and a massive tsunami.