Slashdot Mirror
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."
I don't believe it: Atlantis was predicted to be found in 2012!
I thought SG-1 discovered Atlantis? BTW: I think this is my first post as a "first" post!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Just be careful with those Orichalcum beads.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
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.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
As long as they are not going to find bunch of Oricalcum beads and start converting themselves to higher beings (or making nuclear bombs), good luck for them..
But the first thing I thought when I saw the news was the good adventure game by Lucasarts game.
Doesn't Disney already have rights to the place?
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
They've found Atlantis, and Linux is set to overtake Windows within three years?
"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.
All I seem to find on this guy is links to buy his book on his "discovery". Great for him. What's his background ? What are those scientific clues he's talking about ? This all seem too vague to be taken as granted right now. Besides, there are so many theories about Atlantis that it'll take more than that to convince me...
Article from the Guardian with more details
Personally, I don't see this turning into much. Claims like this have been made before, without much coming of it. The details are short, which is generally not a good sign for something like this.
That's scary.
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.
Coca cola plant, Delta hub.. oh Atlantis, right.
MacBook Pro. Worst name since the Bicycle
So how come Atlantis is still the lost city if people keep discovering it? :\
First of all "scientists..." in the parent is not accurate. 'Cording to his website, Robert Sarmast "studied aerospace engineering, philosophy and architecture in various US universities for years". In other words, he has no academic qualifications. Also, he's only one person.
Secondly, here's the deal with Atlantis:
The whole story comes from Plato. Plato liked to make sh!t up. You can't even take Platonic narratives as accurate representations of Greek mythology, let alone reality.
The point of the Atlantis story in the Timaeus and Critias is to make a political allegory. Trying to hunt for the "real Atlantis" is like trying to hunt for the "real Oceania" after reading 1984: it's not only dumb, it also misses the point.
Also, Atlantis was 'sposed to be beyond Gibraltar, not off Cyprus - hence the name "Atlantis", 'cause that's where Atlas was supposed to have been.
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
Atlantis is nothing more then the combination of 2 events.
? 78 72
i .h tm.
1) The explosion of the volcano on the greek island Santorini, which sunk part of that island
2) The end of the Minoan civilization
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord
Quote:
" The eruption of Santorini in 1650 B.C. was one of the largest in the last 10,000 years...The eruption probably caused the end of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, and may be the source of the myth of Atlantis."
and
http://www.decadevolcano.net/santorini/santorin
-- TRUST ME! I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!
Sarmast works in architecture, and describes himself as a "mythologist". He is very interested in "ancient mysteries". He supports himself by doing "odd jobs" and as his hobby studies "Atlantology" and travels. His "research" is privately funded.
What is pretty funny, is that his biography states he cooperates with "specialists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)". They even supplied him with "a digitized file of the existing raw data ... a document that was over 2,500 pages long". I can imagine the following conversation between two of those "specialists":
S1: "That crackpot is on the phone again."
S2: "Please, not now. Besides, it's your turn to talk to him."
S1: "Come on, I'm busy."
S2: "Just blow him off."
S1: "Then he'll just phone again in a few hours."
S2: "I have an idea. Let's give him some data that will really keep him busy for the next six months."
S1: "What data?"
S2: "Just give him everything."
S1: "But he won't be able to do anything with it. It's just raw data!"
S2: "That's the point. He's a crank. He has studied Atlantology, for Christ's sake. He is used to immerse himself in meaningless stuff!"
This is old news.
;)
Atlantis is a lost colony of the Ancients. There will be series about it starting around July, 22 episodes or so.
Robert
PS
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
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.
You mean that the authentic statue i bought was a ripoff?
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
But just like Noah's Ark, Atlantis is a magnet for cranks and pseudo scientists. Forget painstaking archeological research - how many books have been and gone that supposedly pinpoint its exact location and toss in a few references to aliens and UFOs? We're in Graham Hancock territory here. I thought it was meant to be off Cuba only last year! Or perhaps not. We'll know more about this latest endeavour if / when a proper scientific paper appears to back it up. We'll know more when these supposed features are actually studied properly.
I reckon given a thousand years the kook brigade will be still looking for Atlantis, that is when they are not busy looking for Minas Tirith, Xanadu and Hogwarts.
They also said that about Shlieman until he found Troy and Mycenae, and Arthur Evans until he excavated Knossos and rubbed it under the archeological establishments noses. The latest example is Frank Goddio who's discoveries in Egypt of the sunken city of Herakleion seem set to make some archeologists and historians eat crow. The point of this little lecture is that sometimes these guys actually get it right and anybody who ridiculed them ends usp looking very, very, dumb. In light of what happened to Herakleion and other sunkens cities found in the around the world it must be considered quite possible that (once you strip away all the modern new age crap about Aliens) the 'Atlantis' legend is based on a real event just like the events of the Illiad and the most convincing location for 'Atlantis' that has been suggested so far is the Mediterranean.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Did they find Patrick Duffy's career whilst they were there?
As I was writing this I found a good general overview site for Alantis which is a lot more readable than the wikipedia link. Atlantis Info Apparently the website was listed as one of the 50 best science sites by pop sci magazine, so despite it's conspiracy theory-esque look, it seems to be a credible source.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
A self-styled "scientist" (not scientists) claims to think he might know where Atlantis is, and is about to start looking. That's not the same thing as having found it. The English gramtical construct "believes Atlantis found off Cyprus" means that he thinks it will be found there - ie, he thinks it's there - not that he has already found it.
The article is a whole 5 sentences, and is very clear.
Apache guy, Open Source enthusiast, runner
Atlantis is for sissys.
The Big question is where is R'lyeh?
And don't give me: 47 degrees 9 minutes south, 126 degrees 43 minutes west,
they have already looked there...:P
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.
Yeah, an awful lot of people back then were made to look very silly when Schliemann found the Tell that is reckoned to have been Troy (it might not have been though, there is no way to know for sure until we find the fuck off great big "Welcome to Troy" sign in the outskirts, which is unlikely to happen, given the techniques of Schliemann and those that followed him[1]). The tale of Atlantis does seem to be partly based on fact and partly allegorical, so there is some basis to the tale, as Plato got the tale from Aristotle, IIRC, who got the story from the Egyptian records. However Plato's Atlantis probably bears as much similarity to the "real" Atlantis as More's Utopia or Butler's Erewhon have to any real world location. The Santorini Hypothesis seems, to me, to be the most likely hypothesis, being the straw that broke the camels back and finally destabilised the trading circle of Mycenae, Minos, the Egytians and the Hittites. Given that the Minoans had been in decline for a long time before hand the eruption probably managed to finish off what remnants were left, and the loss of this trading partner dealt a fatal blow to the Myceneans(thus starting the Greek Dark Ages) and the Hittites. The Egyptians, being the only one of these civilisations to avoid a decline and survive until classical times, and also being anal retentive records keepers, would have recorded these events. Given that the Santorini event would have sent waves all the way to the Egyptian Mediterranean coast, it is not inconceivable that they would have conflated the freak waves with the sudden breakdown of their trading network, thus a civilisation sinking beneath the waves. Plato's Atlantis was pretty much made up, and the reason that he located it in the Atlantic rather than the Med is because, to the Greeks and even the Romans, the Atlantic was the edge of the world, so halfway between this world and the next, a suitable setting for the unlikeliest things to occur (see many Roman quotes about their then new colony of Britannia), so any "evidence" contained in Platos account of Atlantis is tenuous at best, as he was not telling a story to entertain and tell of the great deed of the Heroes of Old, as Homer was (oral traditions and epics such as that often have some basis in fact, such as the Irish epics and the Epic of Gilgamesh), he was telling the story to make a philosophical point, just like the rest of his dialogues. Oh, and to the spods who ask why it is called Atlantis if it was not in the Atlantic, its simple, the ocean was named for the place in the story rather than the other way round. I, personally, suspect that Sarmast is either another Von Daniken (a scummy chancer fleecing the fuckwits) or Berlitz(who is so full of shit that its surprising he hasn't had a rectal prolapse), but, without reading his Book(why no peer reviewed scientific paper I wonder, Schliemann submitted his shit for review, even though most people thought he was nuts), I couldn't conclusively try to blow him out of the water.
The only existing written records which specifically refer to Atlantis where written by Plato
... how much do we KNOW about anything that happened 9000 years ago.. and we have a lot of technology to aid us now that did not exists during those times...
The story is about the conflict between the ancient Athenians and the Atlantians 9000 years before Plato's time. How likely is it that this actually exists?
Plato wrote about a conversation between Socrates, Hermocrates, Timeaus, and Critias.
How likely is it that any of those four people knew about a civilisation 9000 years before them
I don't believe that there is anything worth looking for.. but then again, just my opinion.. I accept the fact that I could be wrong, although I find this highly unlikely.
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.
Uh... a pyramid is the simplest way to build a tall structure that won't easily fall down. So their appearance all over the world doesn't really mean anything.
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"
Yeah, an awful lot of people back then were made to look very silly when Schliemann found the Tell that is reckoned to have been Troy (it might not have been though, there is no way to know for sure until we find the fuck off great big "Welcome to Troy" sign in the outskirts, which is unlikely to happen, given the techniques of Schliemann and those that followed him[1]).
The tale of Atlantis does seem to be partly based on fact and partly allegorical, so there is some basis to the tale, as Plato got the tale from Socrates[1], IIRC, who got the story from the Egyptian records. However Plato's Atlantis probably bears as much similarity to the "real" Atlantis as More's Utopia or Butler's Erewhon have to any real world location.
The Santorini Hypothesis seems, to me, to be the most likely hypothesis, being the straw that broke the camels back and finally destabilised the trading circle of Mycenae, Minos, the Egytians and the Hittites. Given that the Minoans had been in decline for a long time before hand the eruption probably managed to finish off what remnants were left, and the loss of this trading partner dealt a fatal blow to the Myceneans(thus starting the Greek Dark Ages) and the Hittites.
The Egyptians, being the only one of these civilisations to avoid a decline and survive until classical times, and also being anal retentive records keepers, would have recorded these events. Given that the Santorini event would have sent waves all the way to the Egyptian Mediterranean coast, it is not inconceivable that they would have conflated the freak waves with the sudden breakdown of their trading network, thus a civilisation sinking beneath the waves.
Plato's Atlantis was pretty much made up, and the reason that he located it in the Atlantic rather than the Med is because, to the Greeks and even the Romans, the Atlantic was the edge of the world, so halfway between this world and the next, a suitable setting for the unlikeliest things to occur (see many Roman quotes about their then new colony of Britannia).
So any "evidence" contained in Plato's account of Atlantis is tenuous at best, as he was not telling a story to entertain and tell of the great deed of the Heroes of Old, as Homer was (oral traditions and epics such as that often have some basis in fact, such as the Irish epics and the Epic of Gilgamesh), he was telling the story to make a philosophical point, just like the rest of his dialogues.
Oh, and to the spods who ask why it is called Atlantis if it was not in the Atlantic, its simple, the ocean was named for the place in the story rather than the other way round.
I, personally, suspect that Sarmast is either another Von Daniken (a scummy chancer fleecing the fuckwits) or Berlitz(who is so full of shit that its surprising he hasn't had a rectal prolapse), but, without reading his Book(why no peer reviewed scientific paper I wonder, Schliemann submitted his shit for review, even though most people thought he was nuts), I couldn't conclusively try to blow him out of the water.
[1] Not, as I said before Aristotle, I always get those two mixed up for some reason
The two dialogs of Plato's which describe Atlantis are the Timeaeus and Critias. It is on-line at: Atlantis
The Timeaeus only refers to Atlantis in two paragraphs. The Critias has a longer description, but it ends in the middle of the dialogue.
You can draw your own conclusions.
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.
Here it is: http://www.discoveryatlantis.com/. The story submitter's links sucked. The first was only one paragraph and misspelled Sarmast's last name, the second was hardly better. The wiki reference was ok for background info. Anyway, here's the press release that started it all, http://www.discoveryofatlantis.com/800/press.htm, and from there are links to some actual bathymetric maps, etc., of the region: sea level lower 1.6 km, 3D seafloor, and others.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
I mean shifted as a unit, not like in the movement of the plates, but shifted all together like if the peel of an orange moved around the inside. This means that at some point antartica (part of it anyway) was in a more tropical like climate.
What? The standard theory of continential drift has Antarctica positioned somewhere around the latitude of central Peru and Argentina, which is far north enough to have a tropical climate. You don't need these additional theories of shifting to explain this.
Indeed, Antarctica is believed to have had a rich and varied mammal population, and until they all became extinct, it was probably quite distinct from those on other continents because of its isolation.