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On the Trail to Atlantis
Bifurcati writes "Scientists claim to have found the lost city of Atlantis, off the coast of Cyprus. They apparently have used sonar to detect the sunken landmass, and even identify geographical features. They seem confident, but all the same, I wouldn't go buying Atlantian artifacts on Ebay just yet."
This is interesting... I have heard other explanations for Atlantis... but the best one I've heard was on a Discovery channel (I think) special a few weeks ago. Apparently there is an island in the Meditterranean that was highly volcanic at one point, and kind of imploded on itself and caused massive tidal waves and such in the area... I think there's evidence in the surrounding area, but at the time of the documentary they hadn't managed to explore the crater yet. There was news of a rather advanced civilzation there for the time; running water, indoor plumbing, the kind of thing that would be rare in the ancient world -- not spaceships or anything. I tried to find an article on it online, but didn't come up with anything. I wonder if these news items are related (it seemed a very recently made documentary). The articles are rather light on info. Anyone else see this thing or know what I'm talking about? It could've been on one of the History channels too, because I watch those about 90% of the time.
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"Scientists" are also planning a trip up Mount Ararat to take photos of "Noah's Ark." I'd like a little verification that there ever WAS an Atlantis first.
Greek legend holds about as much proof for me as the Bible does proof there was a Noah's Ark, btw.
According to Plato, Atlantis can be found westward of the "Heracles columns", Gibraltar. Atlantis location should be somewhere in the atlantic ocean, probably near Cuba.
I'm not convinced that "scientist" is an accurate description of the "US researcher" involved.
A google search for Robert Sarmast doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
But Schliemann at least had this going for him, he was looking for Troy right around where Homer suggested it was.
People looking for Atlantis have the distressing tendency to look for it, and claim to have found it, in all the places where the Platonic tale says it isn't.
Now, maybe I'm just being an old fuddy-duddy, but it seems to me you can't land on Hispaniola and get away with calling it India for very long, no matter how exotic it looks.
KFG
One of the things I've always been fascinated by was how close civilizations have come to producing an Industrial Revolution. What would the world be like today if that had happened two thousand years ago when the first steam engine had been invented? Or 5000 years ago when the Bronze age started in parts of Asia? What would the world be like today with 2-5 thousand years of industrial progress behind us? Imagine where we will be in the year 4000... probably beyond anything we can possibly dream of considering the pace of technology in the last 200 years. And all that could be here today if it hadn't been for the relative cheapness of slave labor and all the other factors that held us back.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Plato's work refers to the location of Atlantis as beyond the "The Pillars of Hercules" which is now known as the strait of Gibraltar. This is the gateway between the Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic ocean. This of course is quite far from Cyprus. According to measurements of the bottom of the sea, if the sea-level dropped by 100 metres, a new archipelago of islands would be exposed just beyond the straits of Gibraltar. This is a probable location for Atlantis.
As for the civilisation being more advanced, that could have been because they were on an island that was cut off from the mainland which was infested with barbarians. The islanders could then develop their technology in peace. Seeing that the story took place some 9000 years ago, even 7000 year old technology would seem advanced to outsiders. When the flood came, either everyone on the island drowned, or those that escaped did not manage to establish their advanced civilisation on the mainland (those pesky barbarians again).
Another theory about submerged civilisation being more advanced is that at the time of the end of the ice-age, the lands that are submerged now were more fertile than other lands. Climate models of India have shown that 10000 years ago, the part that is now above sea-level was a desert, and the part now below was fertile. The land could have been fertile because it had remained underwater so long before the last ice-age, and rivers could have been continuously been depositing sediments on the sea-floor. The fertile land encouraged agriculture which made the peoples more sedentary in nature, and thus more likely to become advanced. The people on the highland remained hunter/gatherers, were more nomadic, and consequently, did not develop as well.
I can't find links for everything offhand, but do have a look at Graham Hancock's web-site.
But don't forget, not so long ago Troy was also believed to be non-existant.
Real life is overrated.
Actually, 2012 is the year the Mayan calendar's cycle ended, which has been picked up as the date for the end of the world by some. (Personally my money's on Atlantis being located beneath the antarctic - google for 'charles hapgood crustal displacement' sometime)
There was a small article in Fortean Times, two months ago I believe, that was essentially a 'build your own Atlantis' where all you had to do was find some submarine structures that vaguely fit Plato's description and call it Atlantis.
Heck, there is even an entire magazine Atlantis Rising which discusses the all so many possible places for Atlantis to be.
Fundamentally, though, to claim Atlantis is inside the boundary of the Mediterranian Sea seems slightly faulty, but then again ancient civilizations were sketchy on detail regarding the regions that seemed lifetimes away. It would be like asking an American which side of Africa Zimbabwe is on.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
I don't think you can look at it that way. Though many have (like Carl Sagan - he had a similar view IIRC). It takes a strange confluence of countless events to produce significant technical advances.
It could also be said that given our innate capability for self-destruction, it's a miracle that we are where we are at today. For an instance, it's a miracle that Kruschev's ego didn't get the better of him. Because if it had, we would have had a nuclear war in the sixties, and we would not be using computers in our comfy homes on the internet reading slashdot right now.
The Soviets were not dumb. They would have nuked fairchild semiconductor, and there would be no group of scientists to later start a bunch of high tech companies that would make up silicon valley. One of which is intel that was started in 1968.
We would be very lucky if we were hacking COBOL. RMS would have not have invented the GNU project that many here are fond of. Because there would be no Hawvad or MIT or PDP for him to hack on. He would not have needed that printer driver, _because there would have been no printer_
Likewise, some of the things that have held us back have been natural in nature, and beyond our control, like the black plague that killed off a third of Europe. I bet a lot of smart people died then. Who knows where we would have been if it had not been for the black plague.
So, as you can see, the game "woulda coulda shoulda" is a pretty frivolous game to play.
One last thing. In modern times, Soviet Russia plagues slashdot. I said it so you don't have to.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
No different then the "Ice Man", from the northern Italian Alps, proving that historians and archeologists had it wrong about tattoos, acupuncture, herbalism and most importantly the use of copper as an axe.
:)
I realize that archeologists are only basing their theories on what they know but if they all were to get along a little better... They might come up with better theories. I have been to several arguements (usually when they come to my college or local museum). It is more EGO driven dabate then anything else. Just one step above name calling the last time I went.
Anyways, It was only about 18 years ago that a majority of the the dinosaur archeologists agreed that they (dinos) did not infact drag their tails but rather used them as counter balance...
Again same thing with the "Ice Man" and if this turns out to be true, the same thing with Atlantis.
Though I too love the joke (above) about Disney owning rights to it... They own so many other things.
I've always been fascinated by the legend, especially after reading the work trying to identify Thera (Santorini) as the origin of the legend, for a recent analysis of Thera see this transcript from the BBC..
Recently I studied up on Atlantis quite a bit trying to sort it out once and for all to my own satisfaction.
Just about every location on the face of the Earth has been nominated as a candidate for 'good' reasons. After wading through all of them and comparing them to Plato's accounts (Timeus and Critias) your head starts to spin a bit. Goddam confusing.
I looked at exactly what Plato said in his story to try and find if there was a possible consistent story, and any inconsistencies. I wont bore you with most of what I found but basically, Plato was very insistent that it was based on a true story, unusually so. However, even if we accept that it does not mean he didn't take extensive liberties even if there was an element of truth (e.g. legends of the destruction of Santorini).
Plato said a civilisation existed just beyond the Pillars of Heracles 9,000 years before Solon (about 11,600 years ago), which coincidently matches the end of the last ice age. But I've seen weirder coincidences. But it turns out the Pillars we know as the Pillars of Heracles (Hercules) were not the only ones, there were lots of them. So it could have been anywhere. And there are inconsistencies in the description of the island that translate into 'Plato made that bit it up' as far as I can see. But other bits seem, subjectively, to be not part of such reworking.
The trouble is if you start cutting out parts of the story you end with such a vague story it could refer to almost anywhere ... funnily enough one of the better suggested places for Atlantis is Indonesia .. heh heh. But I still think the story was influenced by real past events then dramatised for current political and social comment. The real influences could have been Thera and a more recent city, whose name I forget, that was destroyed by tidal wave and claimed ground liquefaction. I was starting to view the whole thing as just an invention of Plato using bits of stuff known from other cultures (try reading Herodotus sometime with an eye to look for bits you could use , there is a lot of source material for such a story) but then I saw that documentary on the BBC. Unfortunately, the website doesn't have one image I saw in the doco ... they showed a mural found at Akrotiri showing the form of the island before the eruption and it was in the form of a broken ring with a central island , and the main city was on the central island. Which would mean that if that is Atlantis then it has been vapourised , its gone, kaput. Interestingly this idea of access from the sea through rings of water to the central city is the way Plato describes the layout of Atlantis and the reference to hot springs etc means he thought it was volcanic. So maybe some legend did survive to Plato's time and made it into the story. As for whether such a large, relatively advanced civilisation existed as in the story, well just re-read your copy of "Guns, Germs and Steel" and tell me where the crops are ... zip. Only in the Middle East, no such continent as Atlantis would be big enough for the genetic diversity for major crops to arise. And the grains haven't shown up all over the place ... therefore no Atlantean culture.
Well I've ranted longer than I expected. Must say investigating this stuff was just sooo interesting and I came across some of the most amazing things. I guess I was most impressed by reading Herodotus, when I read it at school I skipped most of the leadup to the war, but the leadup describes just how incredible the ancient world was, amazing.
As for Cyprus. Gees gimme a break. Well I must admit that one thing that is mentioned in the legend is a metal called Orichalcum that in the s
Bitter and proud of it.
I was under the impression that Atlantis was only used as a fictitious example, a parable, from the early Greek philosophers, to teach the destruction of a socity to those who might not otherwise understand it.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Nor was the Trojan war itself as ancient as some people seem to think. The only reason it appears that way was because of the fall of the Mycenaen culture, the Dorian invasion and the subsequent "Dark Age" of Greece, but the events were well within historical times.
The timespan from the war itself to the Iliad reaching its final version (through whatever method that happened) was no greater a span than from the founding of the Plymouth Colony to now.
A timespan long enough to create a legendary version through the oral tradition, but not so great a span that people wouldn't recognize a historical event from pure myth.
KFG
Near cyprus makes more sense to me. Even the theory that Cuba is the remains of Atlantis sounds more plausible than Antarctica.
Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth.
On board were the Twelve:
The poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist,
The magician and the other so-called Gods of our legends.
Though Gods they were....
Actually, the best theory I've read is by a German geoarchaeologist called Eberhard Zanegger in his book "The Future of the Past", where he identified Atlantis as really being Troy, distorted through the myths of time. When you read both Aristotle and Homer side-by-side, the parallels are striking.
John.