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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."
I don't believe it: Atlantis was predicted to be found in 2012!
Just be careful with those Orichalcum beads.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
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.
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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!
Undeniably, the Theran eruption was catastrophic (something like Krakatoa), and around about 1600BC. On Crete, the tidal surge shifted huge stone blocks on the coast. However, the decline of Minoan civilisation is difficult to date (and the source of notoriously vigorous debate amongst archaeologists). The Theran eruption is not generally considered to have marked the catastrophic end of the Minoans. Makes a good Discovery channel story though.
Atlantis was a didactic figure composed by Plato in order to contrast the civic values of Athens. It's hard to imagine that Plato didn't have his tongue in his cheek when he claimed to have the story third hand from some guy who knew some guy who had heard the story in exotic Egypt.
Hope Mr Sarmast enjoys his boat ride.
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?
Yeah, the old Santorini hypothesis, which still suffers from the same problems, the most glaring of which is that it's called "Atlantis" because its suppose to have been located in. . . wait for it. . .The Atlantic ocean. If it were to be found in the Med it would have been called Mediteris or something.
Then there's the fact that Plato made it up as a morality tale to scare little children into becoming good little Platonists. It stands to reality as does Geo. Washington's dad's fictitious ex-cherry tree, which there's also no point in going out to look for.
Nevermind, we can treat it as another Troy if you like, just so long as I'm not expected to invest in the company.
Everytime someone finds some lumpy sort of thing under the water they immediately start yelling "Atlantis!" whether it actually otherwise conforms to the tale or not. Well, there may well be more than one old city under the water here and there. I'll bet there's hundreds of them, and worth an archeological investigation, but if you find one off the coast of Guam, well, I'm sorry Sparky, that ain't Atlantis.
"Hey, you won't believe it. I found an unknown '62 Ferrari 250 GTO in an old barn. I'm going to be rich and famous!"
"Ummmmmmmm, to tell you the truth, dude, it looks rather like a '62 Rambler to me."
"No, no, look, see, it's got wheels, four of them, and it's front engine-RWD, and a hard top, and like everything."
"Yeah, but it says "Rambler" on it."
"Look, if all you're going to do is stand around and nitpick minor differences when I've shown that it corresponds to the image of a 250 GTO in all major details you can just STFU, 'K?"
KFG
Well, of course there's no point in looking for that. George chopped it down. ;-)
And then tossed it onto Atlantis, which then blew up, and sank.
KFG
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.
After being to the site of Akrotiri, I have to say: The town of Akrotiri has been destroyed by the volcano several times and rebuilt again and again. Curiously the last findings show wellpreserved walls with beautiful paintings, large storage areas with amphores filled with crops, but no money, no jewels, no dead men and only a small amount of tools. All the buildings are about the same age and have been buried only a few years after they were built. All this is nice for the tourists, but rather disappointing for the archaeologists, because money is a quite good base to set up a timeline and find out about trading routes, and tools are some of the most important things to tell about the niveau of knowledge in a society and to determine cultural roots and relations to other cultures.
So the theory goes this: When Akrotiri finally was covered by the volcanic outbreak in 1600 BC, the really big bang that destroyed the island was already history, and the people were already in progress to rebuilt it, thus all buildings are about the same age. It was not inhabited anymore. It was a ghost town, where the inhabitants went away before the next outbreak which seemed to be near, taking with them only the things they could carry: Tools, money, jewels, and the animals which could walk on their own. It seems that the last outbreak of the volcano had told them a lesson, and the people of Akrotiri were prepared.
So if Thera/Santorini was the site of the legendary Atlantis, then all the ancient wisdom the Atlanteans possessed hasn't been lost, but spread around by the people fleeing Akrotiri. So either Thera wasn't Atlantis at all, or the famous Atlantean wisdom wasn't lost by the destroying of their home, but it influenced stronger than before the surrounding settlements and ancient towns.
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 Piri Reis Map was drawn in 1513 by a Turkish admiral. The interesting thing is that on the map he describes how his map was created by piecing together and copying 20 much older maps, some going back to ancient Egypt.
The US Navy map bureau's chief engineer analyzed the map, agreed it was highly accurate, and agreed that the coast line at the bottom could only be the land mass of Antarctica. That coast has been completely obscured by ice for 6000 years.
Unfortunately, the crackpots have given the word "Atlantis" and the search for very ancient advanced cultures a bad name. I want every smart scientific person on Slashdot to take a long look at the map linked below. The information on that map contradicts every mainstream history book. There's a lot more to the story of human civilization than we currently understand.
A good picture and story about the map
-B