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Atlantis: Discovered at Last?
Henry G. writes "The BBC is reporting that recent satellite pictures may show the location of the fabled city of Atlantis, as described by Plato. It is in Southern Spain, though, and not on an island as is commonly believed. Here's an image of the concentric rings over the alleged area." This story has gotten a lot of submissions; it's worth noting that it's also shown up off Cyprus, or near Cuba, or is Crete, or... It is worth noting that that Ubar was found this way.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
...who can't see any rings in that photo?
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
...where's Patrick Duffy?
If I squit really hard I can see the face of Bin Laden, or Saddam or whoever it is this week!
Of course, it certainly would be cool if it was the real deal!
Hey I see it now, its a pony! No wait....its a mule....OH I see it now, it's a city. How silly of me!
Have you metaroderated recently?
I'm probably at the karma cap. Mod up a funny troll instead, it lightens the mood
the biggest secret of history will be revealed, were the old atlanteans already able to cook pancakes :-)
It's probably just pareidolia. They know what they are looking for, so they see it in highly ambiguous data. Sure it might be Atlantis, but I remain skeptical until they can produce much more unequivocal evidence.
Here's an image of the concentric rings over the alleged area.
Atlantis? Is that a new filter for the Gimp or something?Is it just me, or does the satellite photo, the last picture in the BBC article, look like Mel Gibson with his nose pirched on his fist?
...you can clearly see Noah's Ark perched about three-quarters of the way up.
And the skeleton of a dove.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
This site doesn't need "satelites" to prove atlantis exists
But these days everyone's finding Atlantis
Or is anyone else having Heraldo and the vaults of Capone flashbacks?
(we found it! we found it! Oh, crap...)
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Why could he not have just whipped out what ever passed for hand held GPS at the time and provided map co-ordinates ? He might have been a decent philosopher but he was a crap travel writer.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Patrick Duffy played in a short-lived tv series in the 70's called Man from Atlantis.
Let's go there with our metal detectors and see what we can find!
Finders keepers?
This article reminds me of the great Lucasgame Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
t s/indy4_7.jpg
:)
Screeny here: http://www.sebelinteractive.de/scummvm/images/sho
I hope there will be something interesting to find down there
This is the sig that says NI (again)
It might be important to note that the sory of Atlantis could and is most likly just that a story. Plato like Homer was a great story teller, he was also had an great impact on many Academic Disciplines.
While Homers story of The Illiad was based on the real war that happened in Troy, we have no conclusive prof that an island of Atlantis existed. This discovery may provide evidence of the fabled city, but I won't hold my breath just yet.
-Ghost
I always thought that Santorini and its adjacent islands were "Atlantis": it was one big island,but it went pompeii and thus you get a big ring of smaller islands. They have excavated and found ancient stuff, of course, etc. Same with Crete. How far do you think the story of Atlantis travelled geographically?
stuff |
how do they confirm it is atlantis?
will they find a stone fragment with the words "downtown atlantis, exit 43" in ancient greek?
no seriously: how does a mythical city of unknown location be "proven" to be this old city versus that old city?
why can't their find of this ancient city stand on its own as exciting and important? why link it to a dubious unprovable myth?
it seems to me that there is no way to say either this city or that one is atlantis itself, or am i missing something
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Thats the lost city of R'lyeh...
It strikes me that there will be many cities lost to flooding throughout history. Just because they've found one sunken city doesn't mean that it's the same city Plato was talking about, surely?
IIRC, the Greeks attributed their stories of Atlantis to a travelling Egyptian. So even the Greeks got the information second hand, and probably wouldn't have been able to uniquely identify Atlantis.
would be if we discovered a very old, very advanced civilization that threw historians a curveball. For example, what if some ancient civilization was just as advanced as us but nuked themselves out of existence? This could explain much: the gods of Greek mythology, etc. Just a thought.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
I'm not a geological historian, but it seems that (despite the annual claims of finding this place) there's a lot more evidence than usual. It's kind of interesting. Working off of the evidence Plato left us, this place seems to fit the bill a heck of a lot more than Schlieman's so called "Troy."
... the location of an allegorical tale to teach us the evils of materialism?
"This is the only place that seems to fit [Plato's] description," he told BBC News Online.
Except for its not being an island and all the other bits we ignored to make the data fit the model.
KFG
Welcome our new Atlantian overlords.
The Mediteranean Sea has been rising for as long as it's existed (it's essentially a big basin that's filling from the other water sources around it). Cities have been built on the coast of the Mediteranean for millenia.
If we call any sunken city in the Mediteranean "Atlantis", we'll never get any work done. There are just too many of them.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
I think there was a error in the headline. It should read:
Atlantis: Discovered Again?
It makes the story more consistent with facts.
--
virve
i'm skeptic. if this is atlantis, then where is the poets, the farmers, the magicians, and the other so-called gods of our legends? though, gods they were! and as the elders of our time choose to remain blind, let us ...hail atlantis! but isn't it supposed to be 'down below the ocean: where i want to be' (repeat ad nauseum)?
I wish that I was a catfish.
I can't make out rings nor rectangles in that
picture. But I clearly see a big cache of WMD in the lower left corner.
---- join dshield.org Distributed Intrusion Detec
I can see the face of Bin Laden
Let me guess: you're in the US Army and you are just trying to start this rumor in the hopes that you get relocated out of Iraq to the beautiful beaches of Spain, right?
Karma: NaN
Then Geraldo excavates the lost city of Atlantis on live television and finds ...
... Al Capone's vault.
oh no, what does this do to Sci Fi channels Stargate: Atlantis.
Evolution or ID?
If you're looking for something spesific, it's easy to find it.. our mind is good at recognisong patterns, even when they arn't there. Off course, this is what leads people to see cities om Mars, Lenin in their shower curtain and, in this cause, traces of Atlantis. It's called pareidolia, and it's more common than you might think.
PS: I urge everyone to visit the link and explore the site - it's a good read and quite interesting as well as funny.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Incontrovertible proof of the weapons of mass destruction.
Their they're doing there hair.
No. This is not Atlansis at all. That's a simple targeting area for ancient spacemen to practice. To drop SPace Marines, or may be some bombs. Be a sceptic. There was not Atlantis at all.
... this is just a PR stunt by the Sci Fi Channel to hype their new series, Stargate: Atlantis.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
The original Antiquity article is here.
Aside from a great deal of speculation about correlations between Egyptian records, tales of the Peoples of the Sea, and a selective reading of the Dialogues, the only "data" the author points to are the satellite images which may be the remains of rectangular structures. Nothing in situ to indicate dating.
As there is almost certainly evidence of Bronze Age settlements practically anywhere one cares to dig along the Mediterranean coast of Spain, this article is roughly the equivalent of speculating that an unattributed burial in a 6th century Wessex tomb must necessarily be the remains of Arthur.
Trusted by cats.
Other similar headlines include:
/. stories starting to have tabloid feel?
Proof of Dark matter?
Cold Fusion Finally?
SCO's last gasp?
Is it just me, or are some
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
And now, bring on the South Park jokes regarding Skuzzle-Butt...
Karma: NaN
here
So, in near future we will have dozen places that claim to be Atlantis. Is this going to be as with Santa Claus. There are atleast ten different countries claiming to be Santa's home countries.
How do you define which is the real Atlantis? I bet there are many forgotten cities that distantly match description written almost 3000 years ago.
Can Atlantis be identified without a doubt? If so, then how?
It was believed to be a mythical place, thanks in great part to the Illiad, but it was eventually found.
The same could be said of some of the biblic places.
And who knows? We may find one day a place that inequivoably is identified as Atlantis.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours.
There's a chain of islands called the Mid Atlantic ridge, which, if the water level were lowered 300-500 feet (as it was before the end of the ice age) would be a very large island. You could even call it an island continent.
Plato said atlantis was 9000 years before him, or about 11,500 years ago. We've only learned in the past couple of decades that almost exactly at that time, the mean temperature of the earth raised a significant amount in a short amount of time. If a bunch of ice (North America had a mile-thick layer of ice) melted all at once, and you lived on an island continent, it would seem that your island sank into the ocean.
Someday I'll be proven correct. I just know it.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
The RE/MAX rep assured them that eveything was fine, and they had to move fast to close the deal.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
It is in the East Indies Though I like the South America ideas better. The East Indies have ALL the right stuff.
Did you turn yourself around? It doesn't work if you leave out part of the ritual.
KFG
Why can't these people get it through their heads thaty Atlantis, as recounted by Plato in Timaeas and Critias, is allegorical.
It has as much objective reality as More's Utopia and Butler's Erehwon. It even had the same purpose, to illustrate a philosophical point and "demonstrate" Plato's idea of an ideal society.
It just happened that Atlantis was a handy cultural peg to hang it off, somewhat like Avalon and Lyonesse is today for some people.
There have been numerous candidates for Atlantis, but the outstanding one, IMO, is Santorini.
That island, part of the of the Minoan civilisation, blew its top somewhat spectacularly, and was probably a contributory factor to the collapse of the Minoan, Mycenaean and Hittite empires, who just happened to be trading partners with the Egyptians at the time.
The Egyptians, being anal-retentive record keepers kept some records of this, and these, in garbled form, are probably what inspired Plato to use the island as the home for his ideal civilisation.
Given the effects of this massive explosion on the weather (shitty crops practically guaranteed throughout the region), which would have negatively effected the economies of the Mycenaeans and Hitties.
The loss of contact with the Minoans (who were in a decline at the time anyway, so this probably played a large part in finishing them off) would likely have pushed them over the edge as well. Both of those regions (the Anatolian Plateau and southern Greece) being somewhat marginal environments to start with, having low annual rainfall, poor and shallow soil, and high summer temperatures).
This probably would have made it into the Egyptian annals as something along the lines of "those Greek and Turkish bastards haven't turned up so far this year to hawk their tat, no great loss, but a bit of a pain in the arse. Also we have been having some really shitty weather this last year, on the plus side, the surf was wicked last summer. Wonder if they are related? - Amememhat"
This also would quite likely have been mythologised to a certain extent from the tales of survivors.
No need for the tortured logic and papering over the cracks here, it all depends on fairly well understood factors, a big fuck off explosion, the fragility of civilisations based on gift-giving economies and ties of obligation, especially in somewhat marginal environments, and a bit of garbling and mythologisation over the years.
Mix an ambitious philosopher looking for a name to hang an idea off, and Viola! a ready made myth for people to chase incessantly, and for con-men in the mould of Von Daniken and Hancock to make a good living off.
I for one am a believer that Atlantis was really South America. There was a massive thriving culture in South America 3000 years ago and plenty of evidence to suggest that trade was occuring between South America and Egypt around that time. Google has several sites which endorse this theory.
bance.net
History Of Atlantis Atlan is a pretty good summary,
Searching for Atlantis
Interesting account of the hunt throughout history, Lbr> possibly the most important info:
Atlantis was said to be a land of fruitful plains, extensive timber, rich flora and fauna, and great herds of elephants. According to the story, the ground was seamed with gold, silver and other metals including a mysterious one called orichalcum. This was a copper that sparkled like fire, according to Plato
Sounds like Orichalcum would make a cool pc case :)
Do you need a website upgrade?
I thought the land mass under the South pole was Atlantis, the piece fits into the Pangea puzzle , and it is said to have landed up there when the poles revesed there polarity around the same time the great lakes , and the scotish lochs where formed since those two places used to be the poles, I saw it on National Geographic or Discovery a while back
oops, that second link should be Searching for Atlantis, it contains the quote in italics above.
Do you need a website upgrade?
Was Plato there? How does he know about Atlantis? If there was an Atlantean civilization during his era, why is his writings the first? You would think some king would have had a writing about it. And the final question: Do we really want to attempt to resurrect a civilization that Posiden (sp?) decided to sink? I mean come on - the dudes a God for crying out loud. We've seen the previews for "the day after tomorrow" now I know most of us don't want to see the movie - do we really want to see it enacted LIVE? Anyone? Anyone? (ok that was a few more questions) :)
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
It's /. so I'm too lazy to look at the article, but from the story I should point one thing:
As little as we know about alleged Atlantis, one thing is sure from Plato's tales -- Atlantis was beyond the Pilars of Hercules (Gibraltar Strait). So anything on the Atlantic, Pacific or Indian Ocean is a good candidate, whether it is in Amercia, Asia or Antarctic.
Anything on Mediterranean Sea, or Black Sea is NOT beyond the Pilars of Hercules.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Coming soon to a Slashdot near you: "Batboy confirms he created Linux"
---
"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
so if i scan these new "Atlantis" photos in photoshop, will it show up as forged(Blacked out) money??
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
Santa Claus cannot have a home country, though it could be argued that his home town is the global HQ of Coca Cola.
It constantly amazes me how few people are aware of the FACT that Santa Claus (just look at the dude's colour scheme) is invented by and copyright the Coca Cola company and is no more than a marketing tool, just like the Michelin Man.
Don't believe me? do a google.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Plato's references to Atlantis, specifically, are basically a sequel to his Republic, which is in turn an idealized version of the Spartan state. The Republic is mostly about an anti-democratic reaction to the direction Athens chose to go. The Atlantis myth is essentially a way of describing early Athens as virtuously fighting against an outside invader. Plato was using his created myth, to quote a skeptic's article on this, as a "noble lie."
The specific physical characteristics being cited in this article are so ludicrously overgeneral that I'm amazed they don't have more than one match to go on. All you have to know is what the article says: "The features were originally spotted by Werner Wickboldt, a lecturer and Atlantis enthusiast who studied photographs from across the Mediterranean for signs of the city described by Plato." This is another Heinrich Schliemann. They'll be planting golden masks next.
(Hey, I've found another ancient city of Troy! It's an Anasazi settlement. Go ahead... prove it ain't. Or maybe Atlantis was on Santorini. Or was that Troy? Or Tyre. Yeah... Tyre.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Umm...the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is kinda deep for this sort of thing. I mean, sure, the Bering Strait/Land Bridge was exposed at that time, but the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a bit deeper. Plus, don't forget the reason the Ridge exists: It's the fault line between two major techtonic plates, and new crust is constantly erupting in the middle. Not exactly the most hospitible place for a civilization, I would think.
If anyone gets to the site, can you pick me up some orichalcum beads ... I'm running low. Thanks.
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
Michael Shermer's book "Why People Believe Weird Things" does a decent job of summing up the problem and how it works with ideas like this: People's minds are wired to look for patterns. They look for patterns that relate to other patterns they're familiar with, mostly, or those are the ones they think they see anyway. Show me a Rorschach blob, or a random scattering of data, and I'm going to try to figure out what it means. Faces on Mars! My fate, written in the tea leaves! Your character, in the lines on your palm! And so on.
In the case of Atlantis, though, it takes a special kind of thinking to ignore all the obvious political context for Plato -- his and his family's opposition to the way Athens had gone, the whole Republic-as-an-ideal-Sparta thing -- but to seize on the few physical details he describes for Atlantis. They're not missing the forest for the trees: they're imagining the forest where they imagine there's a tree. Based on two rectangles near some concentric circles, no less. Yow.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
It was originally thought that the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere was constant over time. It's been later found out that this is incorrect. In addition there is the 'hard water error' which affects results quite badly. However by correlating dendrochronology dates (very, very precise and accurate) with C-14 dates we have quite a refined system. C-14 dates are represented as a date with an error margin and percentage probability eg 10,000BP +/- 200years at 2 standard deviations.
C-14 isn't a fundemental principle of Archaeology. It's one of many tools that are used.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
If it's actually Atlantis, then my faith in Stargate will be shaken.
:)
nope... can't happen.
First of all, that's a terrible analogy. Our understanding of ancient history is far better than that.
Second, I can't even imagine that you are an archaeologist, but if by hook or by crook you got a degree from somewhere, I assure you, most archaeologists are not like you.
how on Earth can we be so sure that we've interpreted a few clay tablets here and there correctly?
snip
leads me to a very nasty suscpicion that we've completely misunderstood the Ancients, too many times to be sure
Have you ever read Homer's The Illiad? Or Plato's The Republic? Those texts sure make a lot of sense if your hypothesis is true.
I mean if he can pick out Atlantis from that one picture.. he should be able to find every hiding spot in Iraq..
The signs of it are EVERYWHERE, if you know what to look for!
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Now the little guys can spend endless amounts of money on a meaningless race much as the U.S. and Russia did for space. "Who is the first to discover Atlantis in their country" is the 21st century way of drawing attention away from more important current events and to secure a re-election!
Slartibartfast:"Is that your robot?"
Marvin:"No, I'm mine."
Maybe we can get that Noah's Ark guy to look into this one, too.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
There are "a lot of supposed sites for Atlantis. I would have to say this is one of the least faith inspiring "finding" I've seen.
Mythology being quite entertaining to me, I've read of most of the supposed sites. There is an island called Thera, located off the coast of Crete. It seems to me that if anything found so far is the fabled Atlantis, this is it. Archological digs show that they had both hot and cold running water, as well as a very advanced trade. Prior to the erruption, there was a circular cove around the island. There are significant enough similarities between Plato's Atlantis and Thera for there to be a very convincing arguement for this site. The disaster of the volcanic erruption would fit the timeframe of the other legends surrounding the survivors of Atlantis - for instance, the Spanish conquistadors that slayed the white-skinned men on the northwestern coast of Africa that claimed to be from such a society (I think? my memory is sketchy.)
I suspect people aren't making conclusive claims about Thera being Atlantis yet because there simply aren't enough interesting historical mysteries to get funding for. Atlantis is a pearl in almost everyone's eyes, thus people keep searching - finding various other interesting things - in the name of searching for Atlantis.
After all, once you've found all the easter eggs that they said there were, you're not going to want to keep looking, as it's not likely you'll find anything - or so you think.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I for one welcome our new Atlantean overlords!
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
.. it is not in the Atlantic, it is not under water, but other than that it is Atlantis just like Plato described it?
* Waldo
* The wizard
* A scroll
* Two mermaids pleasuring each other
* Poseidon's driving license
* Plato's lost map
* Sebastian the crab
* Cowboy Neal's bathing suit
Well, you can cross one off that list.
-Waldo Jaquith
(I'm not criticizing you here...)
So how long would you last in your field if you made a huge claim with only the weakest, unsubstantiated data? This Atlantis claim is based solely on one poorly defined image and absolutely NO physical evidence from the ground. The whole story of Atlantis is based on the assumed infallibility of Plato, as if Plato were incapable of being mistaken or believing a bogus folktale.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Everyone knows you have to go through a StarGate to get to Atlantis.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I'd say that the use of concentric rings would be relatively common in very early settlements as a basic form of self defense. Hill forts with circular earthen walls are found in England and Ireland. It is simply the shortest and simplest wall you can make around a site. I wouldn't be surprised if prehistoric settlers in Spain and England were in contact and used similar construction styles. To say that this is an automatic sign that it is Atlantis is like saying everyone who wears a baseball cap must be on a major league baseball team.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Let me guess: you're in the US Army and you are just trying to start this rumor in the hopes that you get relocated out of Iraq to the beautiful beaches of Spain, right?
Those would be the beautiful beaches of Andalusia, infidel swine!
Atlantis is probably no more beyond the Pillars of Hercules than the ancient shoggoth infested city of the Great Race is at the south pole.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Archaeology is not a science, certainly not an 'arcane science'. It's a discipline which employs (amongst other things) scientific techniques, such as C-14 dating.
I almost belived you were an Archeolog up until you wrote that..
For something to be a science, you have to be able to do studies, using methods based on theories, and to get results that can be independently verified by repeating the study by peer scientists.
Archeology is exactly that ..
If you want an example of something that is not science, take psychoanalysis as an example. It's not even a theory, and as such, can't be disproofed. Everything is based on two subjects of Freud that he found interesting, and used to get him out of his financial troubles.
I'm sure he is laughing hysterically in his grave.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Are these photos with black outlines really any different than the evidence Colin Powell presented to the U.N.?
Plato's work describes a rather agressive and widespread empire. Hindu legends of the Deva Nahusha also tell of a similar, widespread empire around the same time. Atlantis is not mentioned by that name anywhere outside of Plato's work, but strikingly similar entities are told of in other place under different names.
There's lots of other myths and legends in other cultures around the world that seem to point to some sort of largish civilization at the time Atlantis was supposed to have peaks. No UFOs, no advanced technology, no silliness... just *something* that is, for the most part, still undiscovered. It's not a big deal, really. So the dawn of civilization gets pushed back a bit. So what? It'd be interesting. Look at Caral in Peru. That discovery pushed back the birth of city life and organized farming in the "New World" a full 1000 years in one shot.
As for the features being spotted by an Atlantis enthusiast, well, use scientific method here: who else is looking for it? ;-)
--- Ban humanity.
*puts on a baseball cap* Ok, where's my cheque for $2 million?
That "Atlantis" referred to most of Indonesia, under the South China Sea, since it was a full continent rather than a bunch of islands during the last ice age. It's pretty novel, and I can't recall any other work putting forth this theory (ie, anything on TLC - heh).
A Brazillian Professor has a pretty informative site about this where he talks about his research. Since they added a forum, it seems that more other people than I realized have been following this as well.
How does this work, you say? Well, if you consider the mediterranian philosophy of flat earths and rings going out, they considered the "Atlantic Ocean" to be a sort of "world ocean", not the specific ocean we call it today. Plus, there are a whole other number of Atlantis "checklist items" that the area has in its favor that really don't exist in the Mediterranian or South America (ie, lots of elephants, dual rice harvests, etc...)
Anyway, now that it's posted... I'd be interesting in seeing some other Slashdotters' opinions about it.
=)
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Are we supposed to believe that the some great ancient civilization that possessed mythological technologies and a naval fleet some sort lived in a city with just 2 buildings? The map says there is a temple and a castle. That doesn't sound like a city let alone a civilization to me. Please, someone tell me what I'm missing.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
No it isn't. Many aspects of archaeology are non-repeatable. Excavation is the obvious example. If you cannot have a control and it is non-repeatable then I'd argue that it is not a science.
Secondly, although archaeology uses many scientific techniques, it is fundamentally subjective. Once you've excavated a site, got dates from objects and contexts one is still left with the subjective opinions of the primary excavator. What was Stonehenge for? Different archaeologists have different views, though they all may agree on the layout, size and age of the site. And don't even get started on Biblical archaeology!
Even before that though subjectivity comes into play - where do we dig? where are the bounds of the excavation? what methods of excavation are we going to use?
Check out some of the writings of Ian Hodder or Phil Barker to explore some of these ideas further.
BTW, IAAA.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
The more I think about it, the more I think Plato based his story of Atlantis on the destruction of Thera (neé Santorini).
Let's consider the following:
1. Thera in its heyday had a very advanced civilization by ancient standards with things like surprisingly modern plumbing systems!
2. The island of Crete--90 miles south of Thera--had more or less the same type of civilization on Thera.
3. When Thera's volcano did that catastrophic eruption, not only did most of the island sink into the sea from the eruption but it also created a massive tsunami wave that wiped out most of the smaller and larger human settlements on the north coast of Crete 90 miles south. That explains why there was considerable water and mud damage to Knossos.
4. If Solon had properly translated what he heard from the Egyptians in the 7th Century BC, he would have placed the destruction of Atlantis at 900 years, not 9,000 years before his time. 900 years would almost match perfectly the time Thera did its final eruption from Solon's contemporary perspective.
Ah, Historic Cartagena, staging area for Hannibals invasion of Rome. Haven't been there, but it sounds lovely. The rise in waters is slow, and the city was built up a little bit (unlike less well planned ones like Venice), so there's at least a thousand years before the water level will really hit the city, possibly more like two or three thousand. The people there who are worrying most appear to be the ones maintaining the beaches.
Water doesn't have to be over your head to get a submerged city. If the streets are flooded with a few centimeters of sea water on a regular basis, it gets pretty uncomfortable to live. People move, buildings get abandoned, and fall down. Erosion takes care of as much as the rising water.
PS: If you are Spanish, why are you talking in feet? I thought Spain went Metric way back in 1849.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
For I think they found Cthulhu's vacation cottage!
Waking up the old rugsucker himself MIGHT win a few folks the Darwin awards... or worse!
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Atlantis is located on Antartica.
Atlantis is reputed (in ancient writings) to have a view of all three oceans and to be an island.
The Earth was not always at it's present axial tilt. Tilt the planet and Antartica will be located at the equator and have a view of all oceans. Look at a tilted globe sometime.
This has been the input of your local Free-Energy-Conspiracy nut.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
My theory is someone accidentally sailed to South America way back when, and the Atlantis myth arose from that.
Secondly, the ancient unit of measurement used by Plato - the stade - may have been 20% larger than traditionally assumed.
If the latter is true, one of the rectangular features on the "island" matches almost exactly the dimensions given by Plato for the temple of Poseidon.
I would love to know, if they have any particular reason for deciding that they need to redefine the size of a stade. Or if they just decided they needed to change the facts, to match the current situation.
Sure seems like one of those cases, where you could choose to make almost anything fit the description that Plato gave, with the proper adjustment to the measure of a stade.
Isn't Washington DC built in concentric circles too? Perhaps the Lincoln monument, or some such, can be said to match the temple, with teh proper adjustment to stade size, and we've actually recreated Atlantis w/o even trying.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
ne ne ne first to discover atlantis! first to discover atlantis! someone mod this fp whore down.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
My $0.02 US is that the ancient city they just found is a colony of Atlantis. Atlantis was supposedly a powerhouse of a civilization. All great imperial powers set up colonies. The Greeks, the Romans, and the British. Just because this place has the rings and the temple does not mean its the *Real Slim Shady*. Think about how many places in the US are named after older cities and counties of Ireland and England (or for that matter, other cities in Europe). This could be a colony of Atlantis and the colonists chose to set up their colony just like from their homeland.
What I do find interesting that nobody has brought up here on Slashdot that's read the article is how this explains the Basques. The "homeland" of the Basques is in portions of Spain and France. Their language is not related to any other language in Europe. They claim they are the descendents of the Atlanteans. So finding this city, whether it be Atlantis or a colony thereof, easily now explains where the Basques came from.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
No it isn't. Many aspects of archaeology are non-repeatable. Excavation is the obvious example.
Excavation is not about digging dirt, the main part, and the one that matters is to not destroy anything that matters and rigorusly documenting every aspect of it.
That way you can "repeat the study" later by other archeologs, and based on new theories and/or information, possibly reach a totally different conclusion.
Secondly, although archaeology uses many scientific techniques, it is fundamentally subjective. Once you've excavated a site, got dates from objects and contexts one is still left with the subjective opinions of the primary excavator.
Exacty, and archeology is *exactly* like other sciences in that matter. Physics, for example is not *truth*, but merely a collection of our best efforts to describe the universe we live in.
A new *truth* can be found tomorrow and change the way we think about reality. Take the size and shape of the universe as an example, there are more than one theory about that one.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
I don't very many people besides Kuehne see these rings either. But to be fair, to non-experts most satellite photos that have yielded actual results look like ordinary terrain to most people. To the untrained eye, ancient human bone fragments are just bits of rock.
Notice that, like all other Atlantis claims, this one satisfies some parts of Plato's information and not others. My favorite tantalizing Atlantis clues are the specific alloy of gold and copper called "orichalcum" mentioned by Plato, found only in the Andes mountains, and that the words "atl" and "antis" mean "water" and "copper" in one of the ancient languages of South America.
You geeks need a dictionary:
archaeology
\Ar`ch[ae]*ol"o*gy\, n. [Gr. ?; 'archai^os ancient (fr. 'archh` beginning) + ? discourse, ? to speak.] The science or study of antiquities, esp. prehistoric antiquities, such as the remains of buildings or monuments of an early epoch, inscriptions, implements, and other relics, written manuscripts, etc.
science
\Sci"ence\, n. [F., fr. L. scientia, fr. sciens, -entis, p. pr. of scire to know. Cf. Conscience, Conscious, Nice.] 1. Knowledge; knowledge of principles and causes; ascertained truth of facts.
Perhaps the invisibility of these concentric circles have something to do with the new anti-piracy/counterfeiting measures? (Mod funny please)
I discovered Atlantis with my family while on a recent vacation on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
Atlantis didn't match Plato's description. Come to think of it, it didn't match the travel agent's description either. Indifferent service. Very expensive.
I'm headed for Shangri La next year. I'm sure my travel agent will provide the necessary arrangements.
Life will be changed forever.
For the SciFi channel will likely cancel Stargate Atlantis for reshooting in Mexico.
Damnit.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Your point about not destroying anything that matters is interesting. How do we know what matters to future generations of archaeologists? I'm sure those who 'excavated' the archaic/classical greek sites were doing their best, but they did destroy stuff that mattered to us now. It's naive to think that we're not doing the same today.
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Someone MOD PARENT UP please!!!
/. post.
Evolution is Not a strategy aimed at achieving any goal. It's a process of change whereby forms of life adapt to changing environment via selection and a bunch of other biological mechanisms too interesting and complicated to fit in a
-DVK
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
Geeze, that sounds like a really cheezy fantasy story...
Oh, wait...
(BTW it's Geraldo...)
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Is astronomy a science? Especially in its cosmological aspects? Astronomers have no "control universe" and I'd rather they not repeat the big bang any time soon.
In archeology, you have hypotheses (like various answers to "What was Stonehenge for?") and you have data against which to test the hypotheses. Hypothesis and data are the only two necessary pillars of science.
(As an arch-reductionist, I might argue that data alone is necessary for science, as data will give rise to hypotheses thus bootstrapping the entire endeavor, but I'm suffering a caffeine shortage at the moment and don't feel I can do justice to this view.)
Repeatability, controls, falsifiability and so on are good guidelines and good practice. But for some fields of knowledge, they are impractical. In some fields of knowledge, they must be interpreted expansively to have any usefulness.
By an expansive interpretation, "repeatability" in archeology could be as simple as digging another hole a meter away and seeing if you get the same pottery shards. For a control, dig a hole several kilometers away.
I am not suggesting expanding the concepts past the point of usefulness -- repeatability w.r.t. archeology should not include the repetition of irrelevant actions like cleaning your navel (I hope). I am suggesting that in many fields of knowledge, an expansive interpretation of the scientific method is applicable and therefore those fields can indeed be called "science."
A few decades ago, few thought of history as a science. Those proposing such view were shouted down with jeers of "Hari Seldon!" But today, people like Jared Diamond (trained as a biologist) and Luca Cavalli-Sforza are building on the work of historians and archeologists and forging a truly scientific method for history.
Hari Seldon Hari Seldon Hari Hari Seldon Seldon...
IAACP2, and have worked with ancient (in industry time) codebases, so I have usefully applied archeological insights to the computer science. Layers of kludges and counter-kludges provide the stratigraphy, and the changing idioms are like pottery styles. Since the code was criminally awful, I thought of it as "forensic CS." But since it was also phenomenally crappy code, I ended up regarding it as pure scatology.
Yet more proof that the Bible is WRONG.
Well, with the moats around the city/site/whatever, it technically is an island. Just not surrounded by as much water as we might have guessed.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
If you cannot have a control and it is non-repeatable then I'd argue that it is not a science.
Right... Like Open Heart Surgery. You can only remove the clot once, then it's gone.
My point being, that your arguing two different issues. The methods of working vs the object you work on.
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
And then we end up in the situation where almost everything is a science, and the word becomes meaningless!
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= 9J =
Anthropology tends to be tied to Sociology over here, whilst Archaeology tends to be associated with History or even Classics, hence the disparaging 'Archaeology is the handmaiden of History' quote often trotted out.
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Correction: my Hari Seldon chant should not have been in italics, the local convention for quoting. It is not a quote (that I know of). I should have chosen some other way to denote the chant. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.
From http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/Appendi xE/AppendixE.html the definition of the Scientific Method is:
Archaeology can do #1, and #2. Arguably it can do #3. However, #4 is right out as you don't have the ability to create alternate realities.
Plato's Critias can be read free at: http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/1571
Part of the problem is that the BBC article seems to be missing some history behind the story that makes a non-island city a possibility. Plato pretty much lifted the Atlantis (city) story from the Egyptian tale of Keftiu (as well as embellished on it), a city that supposedly existed past the Pillars of Hercules (Straight of Gibraltar today, which separates Spain and Morocco). Keftiu is rooted in the Egyptian word for Pillar and was believed to be the end of the earth where the sky was held up. Atlantis means isle of Atlas - recognize the similarity? Atlas held up the world in Greek mythology. Keftiu also wasn't necessarily an island - it can either mean the Isle of Keft or the People of Keft. So, possibly due to a simple translation error, an island was born.
This could very easily be Atlantis. Minoan Crete never made sense (it never sunk) - Santorini island made more sense as most of it blew up (flooding Minoan Crete). It seems to me, though, that it was described as "west of Egypt" and that island's really NW.
Also the resevoir effect can throw dates off. Of course, many of the error situations are obvious, and thus won't throw you off. For example, you simply don't carbon date deep sea creatures (recycled carbon from oceanic conveyors), or plants that lived on the rim of an active volcano (carbon from deep in the earth), without expecting your results to be way off. There are lots of ways you can "catch" unexpected causes of carbon being off when they were expected to be correct, but in general, the results of carbon are dating quite accurate because the cases that can really throw carbon dating off are clearly exceptions, not the rule.
Calibration amounts are generally relatively small, so it's not a big deal. Creationists like to pretend that they're huge (they're not), or that all dating mechanisms are calibrated (most aren't; carbon dating is unusual). The most reliable dating methods, BTW, are methods like isochron and concordia/discordia methods, which have built-in error checking.
Probably the best indicator of the reliability of carbon dating in the general case is its correspondance to other dating methods, particularly (as was mentioned) dendrochronology. Different fossilized tree records, while showing somewhat varying levels of the different carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, show, to a good degree of accuracy, the *same* varying levels.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
The rings aren't very visible in the first image, and I wondered at its validity. But the second image, taken at a later time of day so that the rings show up better, I assume, really clears everything up. All doubt is gone from my mind.
Your brain is not a computer.
Dude, don't talk about Tyr Anasazi, I haven't seen all of S4 of Andromeda yet ;)
Ah - found some more specific info:
(From http://members.lycos.co.uk/brisray/th/thist1.htm)
~ Leilah
Europe too.
Anthropology tends to be tied to Sociology over here...
As Archaeology is a discipline within Anthropology, Sociology is a specialization of Anthropology. Anthropology is incomplete without the study of cultural context. An accurate simplification would be that as siblings, Archaeology and Sociology study the same things, but at different times. One in the present, the other in the past. One relies on remnants of civilization to learn about its subject via recontruction, the other studies it live. Of course, this is a simplification, and in actuality most of the disciplines within the larger science of Anthropology (the study of man) borrow from one another or overlap.
You may be confusing various subsets of Archaeology, with the discipline itself. Sub-fields of Archaeology include Classical and Historical Archeaology. The science remains the same, despite the specialization.
= 9J =
First off, I don't see any concentric rings. Are they being obscured by the figure of Jesus or the praying virgin Mary?
Second, Atlantis was only 925m in diameter? It was always made out to be a whole continent in all the crackpot stories. It sounds like it was only ever just a city with 5 defensible moats. If that is what Plato wrote then how did it get blown so far out of proportion?
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
The story is that one of my ancestors was a minor English noble that got in trouble with one of the serving girls. He paid off one of his men to take her to America and we've been bastards ever since.
True or not, I just don't know. We have been screwed out of our inheritance for so long that I don't think the House of **cough** Lords or whoever is in charge of these things would listen.
Anyway, History, as we teach it, is a relatively new way of discovering and presenting truth. Many ancient greekish peoples would say we are being vulgar and trivial about the whole thing, ignoring the more important and eternal truths. They also would have been shocked at how crappy our memories are.
Memories can be trained. Druids (real, not the freaks that like to get stoned at Stonehenge) had to spend 20+ years memorizing their material. They could recite for days. Every year some guy had to recite all the laws from memory in Iceland. I think he was called the Law giver, and if he left something out, it was out for that year. I'm a bit fuzzy on that one though.
If memorization was as important now as it was then, I'd know exactly who my "noble" ancestor was, who his lackey was, and everything since then. At least we would have a juicy story, whether it would be true or not is a different thing.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
hey there,
I've noticed that you offered to revamp the FFII site. Does that offer still counts? Is there a way in which to contact you? (Is the email on www.nuatech.ciom yours, or do you prefer we use another emailaddy?)
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Sorry, the point about being repeatable is nonsense. First, excavations are repeatable. Yes, another team of archeologists can visit the same site and do their own excavations. They might reconfirm what the first team found. Second, it is not necessary to repeat "exactly" the same thing again to make it scientific. If this were true any experiment concerning partical physics has to be voodoo :-)
by your parameters Art History can be defined as a science, something which I'm uncomfortable with.
Absolutely.. And so can chockolate-chips-cookie making and quality-control. What matters is the methods used, not that it has some fanzy name or comes from some big scientific institude. "Scientific thinking" is the key element, unfortunately to few people are applying it in their lives.
How do we know what matters to future generations of archaeologists? I'm sure those who 'excavated' the archaic/classical greek sites were doing their best, but they did destroy stuff that mattered to us now. It's naive to think that we're not doing the same today.
There seems to be a fundamental difference on how we think about "science". Science is a way of thinking, and you can teach someone this way of thinking. However, that does not mean that person will always be right about everything. Scientists make wrong assumptions based on best information available at the time.
And that does not mean, as you seem to think, that they are any less scientists than the next generation that will have more information and better tools.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
They most certainly can do number 4. Archaeologists don't just throw a dart at a map when they choose where to dig. They examine the existing evidence, form a hypothesis, and test that hypothesis by doing an excavation. The dig is the experiment. They will either find evidence to support their hypothesis, or they won't. And some things are repeatable. For example, several archaeologist have tried to determine the extent of some of the shafts in the pyramids. In the past they have used metal rods as probes. In current times they use a robot to explore the shaft.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Picture looks like a cell biopsy to me.
What is being argued about are semantics. What is or is not science? If you're quite happy with the notion that all you need for science is data and a hypothesis then archaeology is a science - but so is everything else, and the use of the word 'science' becomes meaningless.
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chockolate-chips-cookie making and quality-control.
Interesting that you picked an example of something which is both repeatable and can use a control. This cookie not choclatey enough? Repeat the experiment with more chocolate chips.
Art history on the other hand? Well I could say that Edward Hoppers' paintings inspire feelings of lonliness because the artist worked alone and felt distanced from those around him, and that if he was a more gregarious character he would have painted happier pictures. That's got data and a hypothesis. You may think that's science - I don't.
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So it's more of an "exploration", well documenting the "landscape" (i.e. findings.).
:) But further than collecting a couple of splitters of ancient pottery, lying in the dust everywhere at Acropolis, Troja, Olympia and Delphi I never came.
When I was twelve I wanted to become an archaeologist
Sometimes I believe, these pottery artifacts are being thrown into the dust by the tourist-department. It's too obvious, these being there at such public places for more than x-thousand years.
Hello?? Fred?! Is this you?
(Identifying code by its programming practices)
A: Look at this ! This must be code from 2004 !
B: But what is this ? Isn't this a string buffer overflow ?
A: Duh. I guess it must be new code after all.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Anonymous wrote: :_(
/. don't (tired of reading posts with mph here and feet and inches there and so on), so - if you go to Rome, do like the Romans :) ;-) I highly recommend using Metric here, even if others aren't. Americans won't be helped by coddling them. :-)
AFAIK, Venice (Italia) is suffering from that kind of floods, but not because of Mediterranean rising but the city itself sinking
To my knowledge Venice has both problems, and the sinking ground problem is slower than the rising water problem. Here is an article about Venice's issues, including their solution to beef up their existing lagoon to give protection from sea level.
About the Metric thing... yeah, we do use Metric System, but many people here in
But the Romans use metric now
In the US, we do use some metric: many bottled beverages are sold using metric units, so are most illegal drugs. I expect, any day now, gas stations to realise that selling gasoline by the liter will mean customers will have less sticker shock about the rising gas prices.
You're not from USA, are you?
Nope, from New York City.
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Open mind, insert foot.
10 Print" But as an Anonymous Coward, (your name says it, so I'll believe it), I'm surprise you posted so unprepared. I never said nor implied that the stories would better be placed in a tabloid. Just that the headlines seem to be hyped beyond the weight of the contents and therefore sound tabloid-ish. "
20 If understood = False then Goto 10
30 Print "I'm glad you're clear on this issue."
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
Archaeology can do #1, and #2. Arguably it can do #3. However, #4 is right out as you don't have the ability to create alternate realities.
4 only claims that you have to be able to make a theory, and then test it independently, by describing a theorem (I.e. "In this study we will try to show that current methods in carbon dating involve errors up to 30% larger than previously known") and then performing a study with results that can be confirmed and/or disproofed by a second study.
And, yes. Archeology can do that.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Well I could say that Edward Hoppers' paintings inspire feelings of lonliness because the artist worked alone and felt distanced from those around him, and that if he was a more gregarious character he would have painted happier pictures. That's got data and a hypothesis. You may think that's science - I don't.
You are using the straw man argument here ...
You can make all the personal remarks as you want, but they won't become a part of any history.
Claiming that someone painted such and such because of this and that without a inch of research, is a personal opinion.
Think of mathematics... When you have established a mathematical proof, you can't disproof it.
Does that mean mathematics is not science ? No because even if you do have *truths* you are still free to make therories and do studies.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc