Slashdot Mirror
Atlantis Found. Again.
Tufriast writes "Paul McCartney and Mythic eat your heart out! BBC News has an interesting revelation regarding the lost city of Atlantis: "American researchers claim to have found convincing evidence that locates the site of the lost kingdom of Atlantis off the coast of Cyprus."" Hey, here's an idea: The idea of an almost mythical lost civilization is common thread throughout all old human societies - much like, say, really big Floods. Perhaps there could be more then one story that fits? But, no, that wouldn't be a simplistic enough answer to be sound-bitten into oblivion.
OR perhaps all the stories originated from one actual occurance, but have become distorted through years of relay from one generation to the next.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
Sounds like the White House to me.
My other processor is big-endian.
Hey, here's an idea. The primary job of an editor is to edit not editorialize.
Sheesh.Perhaps there could be more then one story that fits? But, no, that wouldn't be a simplistic enough answer to be sound-bitten into oblivion.
If you're an archaeologist, it's alot easier to get funding for your excavation if you make it sound like your project has major ramifications to the history of humanity.
It's just good business to call it Atlantis.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
It's spelled "than"...
Atlantis NEVER existed!
l antis is a legendary island in the Atlantic, west of Gibraltar, that sunk beneath the sea during a violent eruption of earthquakes and floods some 9,000 years before Plato wrote about it in his Timaeus and Critias. In a discussion of utopian societies, Plato claims that Egyptian priests told Solon about Atlantis. Plato was not describing a real place any more than his allegory of the cave describes a real cave. The purpose of Atlantis is to express a moral message in a discussion of ideal societies, a favorite theme of his. The fact that nobody in Greece for 9,000 years had mentioned a battle between Athens and Atlantis should serve as a clue that Plato was not talking about a real place or battle. Nevertheless, Plato is often cited as the primary source for the reality of a place on earth called Atlantis. Here is what the Egyptian priest allegedly told Solon:
....
From
http://skepdic.com/atlantis.html
>>>>>>>>>>>
At
Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valour. For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent.
Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind. She was pre-eminent in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjugated, and generously liberated all the rest of us who dwell within the pillars. (Timaeus)
The story is reminiscent of what Athens did against the Persians in the early 5th century BCE, but the battle with Atlantis allegedly took place in the 8th or 9th millennium BCE. It would not take much of an historical scholar to know that Athens in 9,000 BCE was either uninhabited or was occupied by very primitive people. This fact would not have concerned Plato's readers because they would have understood that he was not giving them an historical account of a real city. To assume, as many believers in Atlantis do, that there is a parallel between Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Plato's Critias and Timaeus is simply absurd. And those who think that just as Schliemann found Troy so too will we someday crack Plato's code and find Atlantis are drawing an analogy where they should be drawing the curtains. Plato's purpose was not to pass on stories, but to create stories to teach moral lessons. What can we expect next from these lost scholars? A search for the grave of Cecrops, the serpent-tailed first king of Athens? The discovery of the true trident of Poseidon?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I'm not trying to be a pessimist, but making claims about finding Atlantis based on preliminary sonar imagery might be jumping the gun a little bit. In a sea that's been heavily travelled since human kind first built boats, it could be a lot of different things. Even if it's a civilization, it could be one of many Mediterrannean settlements that nobody knew was missing.
My point is that until they come up with some underwater photos, artifacts, or both, it's a bit early to claim that they found something that might not have even existed in the first place.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
What on earth? Yes, I read the linked article, but sheesh that is so random and off topic. Eat his heart out? Because he may have sung back up on a song called atlantis that he is so proud of he's not even credited with it? WTF?
Really big floods aren't an outrageous mythical proposition. Neither is an anti-religion bias.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Plato goes out of his way to say that the story NOT a parable and that Atlantis really existed.
The information he's relaying is third or fourth hand and has been translated at least once (possibly multiplying all the numbers by 10).
I keep an open mind about Atlantis because Troy was ficticious right up until someone found it.
-B
Oh, it's in the Bible. It must be true.
They were looking around Cypress... what you expected them to get a donation from the Argentinian Tourism board for their research in the waters off Cypress? It's not like the Donation from the Cypress Tourism Board made them pick the location, they'd already picked the location, and got a donation from the locals.
It has become painful to read slash-dot lately with so many people posting replys when they don't know the subject.
It was not just Plato who talked about Atlantis (like we talk about, say, Chicago), but also the Eygyptians and the Hindus in Vedic manuscripts that still exist!
Yes, there is a lot of BS when we discuss antideluvian civiliazations. And, yes, there are lies and mis-truths from modern entrenched elites such as the mafias that run the archiology and anthropology departments world wide who seem to be in-bed with world freemasonr. (please no flame, I admit that the previous statement is a little paranoid).
There is a lot of evidence that contridicts what is taught in schools and displayed in the vanity mueseums created by the entrenche elites (such as the Simthsonian and various schools of archiology).
Atlantis, however, is such a pervasive story that is found in a lot of differnt sources from antiquity that it is most likely a real place.
Here is a small list of other cities or civilizations that were considered to be made up:
Troy
Ninevah
Minoan civilizations
the Miceneans
Throughout history there are those who make up stories. And they do this because it gives them a certain power. But you must be able to sort through the cruft.
When you reduce human tradegdy such as the distruction of a civilization to an 'obvious parable' then you do the rest of us a disservice.
It amazes me that in the United States there are 7,000 year old archiological sites that are left ignored. Why? Because the harvard and etc mafias have their world view and don't want to rock it. There is a site in Amesbury MA that is reported to be 7000 years old. There is no marker, no books, no mueseum and no way to get at the artifacts that were found there.
Whenever anyone finds anything precolumbian in the US the Smithsonian burries it.
For years Mystery Hill in New Hampshire was stated as being a fraud. And then after it came out that a lot of metholithic ruins were astronomical observatories, Mystery Hill was examined and it was also found to be one!
There are spirals that are found on rocks in Celtic ruins, in Spain, in North Africa and also on ruins in the American Southwest! The Hopi say these are 18 year moon-cycle calanders for observing the cycles of the moon. And yet pick up a book on the Celts and the authors don't know what these are.
The Zuni's of the American Southwest have recently been shown to most likely have been decendant from Buddist pilgrims from Japan who arrived in New Mexico region about 1000 years ago! Do your children get taught this in school? No. And why not? Because the establishment hasn't gotten around to learning these things yet.
Open your mind and please do not reduce the tradegies of human history into 'obvious parable'.
If you don't know, don't say.
Maybe there are myths about really big floods, because there have been really big floods.
No, I'm not talking about the earth being 6000 years old and Mosasaurs being proof of evolution.
For example, the Great Flood myth that pop up around the Persian Gulf all stem from the fact that the Persian Gulf filled up only about 9000 years ago. Well it may have gone from marsh to it's current form sometimes in there. Likewise it's a stretch, but not too much of one to have some of those myths derive from the end of the most recent Ice Age and the rising of the water levels from that.
Erg,... this has happened in other religions, at least. In Shintoism, Nihonki (IIRC) was seen as revisionism to make Amaterasu Oomikami the superior god above the various local gods. I still think Moses actually existed -- I can't imagine people buying into a story that there was a great leader called Moses, but absolutely nobody heard of him until the King made announcements about him to his people.
They're just ornaments, there is no way any of those big solid metal things are going to fly anywhere.
When I read things like this on that site
"There seems to be no doubt that Vimanas were powered by some sort of "anti-gravity." Vimanas took off vertically, and were capable of hovering in the sky, like a modern helicopter or dirigible. Bharadvajy the Wise refers to no less than 70 authorities and 10 experts of air travel in antiquity. These sources are now lost."
It's easy to dismiss the whole lot as gibberish and gobbledegook. If you are making theories based purely on a series of suppositions then I am disappointed the conclusion isn't even more fantastic !
That's easy, there's revision history on each page. In particular, this excerpt was added to that page on 12:40, 6 Sep 2004, and nobody has had a legitimate (non-vandalizing) criticism of it in the two months that it's been up there, and has stuck around through 31 revisions and countless other readers. If you have any additional constructive information to post on the topic, please go ahead and add that.
It is possible that there was an Atlantis that inspired Plato.
What other things are possible?
What I don't get is why the headline for this article is half content, half editorializing. They've been doing this a lot more recently. When did this site become "Slashdot: Editorials for Nerds. Opinions of strangers that don't matter."?
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
A Christian perspective? Just out of curiosity: how does whether or not you believe Christ was the fulfilment of the messianic prophecies affect the historical accuracy of early Israelite writings? (Other than the doctrinal belief in such accuracy, which is presumably shared by Judaism, hence suggesting more of a Judeo-Christian perspective rather than a Christian perspective)
Pardon my asking, but aren't these sources (Exodus, Numbers) the very sources which the grandparent posting calls into doubt as original works of Moses (transmitted to later scribes or otherwise)?
I love Exodus 17:14:
Seems like in order for the remembrance of Amalek to really be blotted out from under heaven, we'd have to destroy a bunch of Bibles!
Here's Exodus 24:4.
Exodus 34:27 is one of the "Giving of the Ten Commandments" narratives.
Numbers 33:2 purports to describe the Exodus from Egypt itself, and, intra, gives details about the route taken from Egypt by Israel.
Fine, if you can accept a source as justification for its own validity. But I would think that modern scholarship would look for some external validation for these claims. For instance, can any record be found among contemporary Egyptian chronicles giving just these vectors for the departing Israelites, a record that preferably wasn't available in the time of King Josiah?
I treasure the Bible, personally (I also treasure other, much older stories such as Gilgamesh.) But my appreciation of the Bible isn't constrained by having to believe that everything in it is true in the style of modern history (lots of untruth there, too.)
History is written by winners.
There was nothing more to it. No other historians wrote about it, none of Plato's contemporaries made any mention of it.
You mean those of his comtemporaries whom we currently have knowledge of did not write about Atlantis?
You can find dozens of examples of names and places written about in the bible that many claimed were fairy tales since there were no other records of them. Pontius Pilate, Belshazzar, etc...
In this case the believer of the historical document takes the same stance as the evolutionist waiting for the right fossil to be found... perhaps additional evidence is actually buried out there somewhere, often it is found. To say simply "There is only one document claiming this, it must be false!" is simply unrealistic.
-Don.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Go get an education buddy. This thought about the original Biblical accounts being invented by later scholars is hogwash made up by those that can't accept the responsibility of realizing that the Bible accounts accurately document the history of the world.
Just look at for instance the flood accounts that are consistent throughout all parts of the globe. What does it prove--that there really was a global flood. Just as the Bible says. Time and time again, archeologists are realizing that the Bible proves itself true again. Any archeologist digging in the middle east can easily (and actually does) use the Bible to get a clear idea of the areas they are investigating.
Truth is that Yahweh (i.e. Jehovah) is the true God, almighty, Creator of the universe, the earth, and all life. He has given us a book that we can rely on, that explains his purpose for the earth, his requirements for man, and his purposes for the future.
BTW, Josiah ripped his garments apart when scribes of his day found the original documents of Moses' day in the temple.
Pardon my asking, but aren't these sources (Exodus, Numbers) the very sources which the grandparent posting calls into doubt as original works of Moses (transmitted to later scribes or otherwise)?
No, my point was that the Pentateuch as it currently exists does not consist of the exact words Moses recorded.
The likelihood of Moses' original writings surviving to modern times are very small. In all probability, the original writings were copied, distributed, and even repeated orally to maintain the history of the people. I'm at work now and don't have access to my library, but a study of the language style does in fact suggest that the books were written much later than 1200 BC (quite possibly during the reign of King Josiah).
2 Chronicles 34 contains the biblical account of his life. Specifically, it details how he was renovating the Temple and discovered a Book of the Law tucked away. It is clear from the text that the Law was not known among the people, was rediscovered, and then copied and distributed.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with 16th and 17th century english, but it's significantly different from our modern english. It would be understandable that spelling, grammar, sentence structure, etc, were rewritten and modernized for distribution to the general populace. As an example, compare the language of the original King James bible to that of the modern "New Living" translation.
In short, I'm not disputing the assertion that the texts are more modern than Moses. I simply disagree that the texts were significantly modified or wholly fabricated to prop up the reign of Josiah.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
You know, my longstanding position on religion is that its a great idea so long as humans stay the hell away.
What do I mean by that? Probably not what you think.
I simply do not trust the validity of a book that has been handled, mishandled, and passed through so many corrupt hands. We KNOW things have been added, removed, and generally manipulated.
That being said I do believe in God, but rather than read a book that may or may not be intact, I preffer to just goto the source. If I do the best I can in life and try my best that is about all I can do, if its not good enough, oh well....religion doesnt seem like a better alternative at the moment.
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
In grography, a point is a point and a line is the shortest path between them. Those are essential truths. We have many truths that make up one reality, and the great irony is that those who consider themselves great thinkers and raise themselves above the great mass of unwashed dullards are the ones most likely to fall for mystic unrealities and relativistic concepts. Meanwhile, the simple farmer knows that he has to work the field or crops won't grow, the Wal-Mart cashier knows she has to go to work or her kids won't eat, and Slashdot elitists tell them they're stupid because they believe in God or voted for Bush.
Now, for the truth. Is the point of this weak-kneed troll within the article to deride the Biblical flood story? Then consider this:
The Bible alleges that a flood covered the entire earth.
The majority of cultures with extant written records (and many with verbal records) recall a great flood.
Does that make the "flood myth" a myth - or perhaps a fact?
To once again turn this back on topic somehow - yes, there is one answer to the legend of Atlantis out there. The key is somehow to separate the fact from the myth.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Ebla was for decades only a 'mythic' civilisation to archaeologists until they unearthed it in Syria starting with the sign at the city's entrance. Perhaps the Atlantis legend is not credible but that doesn't mean it didn't exist.
The thing is, everyone knows the Bible was written by men. A Christian believes that the writers were inspired by God, that the message is life to those who hear it, and that it is the key to knowing and having a relationship with God.
I encourage you to ignore all of the social issues, controversies, and right-wing chatter about the bible, and just read it with an open mind. Start with the book of 1st John, and if you like that then read the Gospel of John.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
The Religious Right doesn't care how Jesus lived, or what he taught. They only start paying attention to the Bible at all at the start of Revelation.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
dont be dumb, yes thats the way the Republican party is, but the people who support them really DO hold most of bible important, the problem is the hold the WRONG things important. its sad but its true.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Oh please. The average evangelical Christian in the US would be more than happy to join a mob to stone prostitutes.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
While the average Libertarian would GET stoned WITH the prostitutes!