Atlantis Seekers Given Thrill by Google Ocean

RcK writes "Numerous articles are springing up regarding a feature found using the new Google Ocean, which some claim could be the location of Atlantis. While this is obviously early, and probably has the same credibility levels as previous claims of finding the mythical city, the detected anomaly is quite convincingly linear, is apparently the size of Wales and sits near where Plato hypothesized the city to be located." Google has stated that this is an issue with the way their ocean mapping software is working, but clearly that is a cover up while Google execs try to buy the real estate. I just hope they bring back Elvis next.

Comments

The Sun?

[Anonymous Coward]

Numerous articles and you pick the sun?

Anyway here it is on google map

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=31.480209,-24.120483&spn=2.988616,5.026245&t=h&z=8

Re:The Sun?

[peacefinder]

Most amusing how the Sun declined to show the scale of the map. For comparison, here's another city at the same scale.

The similarity is not uncanny. :-)

The article explains it

[phantomfive]

Basically, they found some lines on the ocean floor, and the lines are kind of square and straight. What happened was the lines are where boats made measurements using sonar, and the blank spots between the lines are areas the boat didn't go. So what we are seeing is manmade indeed, but not as some had hoped.....

Re:The article explains it

[MozeeToby]

Especially the fact that some of the lines are up to 20 miles apart from one another and the whole formation is almost 100 miles long and 50 tall. We're supposed to believe that 12000 years ago there was a city on a lone island that covered an area of 500 square miles? It's easy to lose your sense of scale looking at satellite imagery, people who think this is Atlantis would do well to zoom out a bit and scroll to the East and Look at the cities in Africa and Europe for comparison.

Analysuis done about 10 years

[geekoid]

ago showed a more reasonable interpetation of where Plato clains Atlantis is.

If the person(s) copying Plato's work missed one little mark, the location would not be the Atlantic, but rather in the Aegean sea.
The Greek authorities refuse to grant anyone permission to go looking becasue they area is littered with antiquities they wish to preserve.
I'm NOT saying ti is there, or that there is a cover up. It's an interesting thing to think about.

Re:Analysuis done about 10 years

[FailedTheTuringTest]

In the ancient world, travel by water was easier and faster than travel by land. That's why most cities are located on the shores of lakes, seas, or rivers. It wasn't until the Roman Empire built long-distance roads that land travel was even close to competitive with sea travel.

So the argument given is incorrect. If the Mediterranean had been dry, travel would have been hard and we would expect the cities of the region to have had limited contact with each other. If the Mediterranean was a water body, we would expect the cities around it to have had quite a lot of contact and to have exchanged technology to a significant degree. The latter is indeed what we see in real life.

Missing geek details

[bokmann]

The article was missing perhaps the only thing this crowd would care about:

  31Â24'16.68"N

  24Â22'40.83"W

More of these lines

[Drakin020]

Seriously if you look at it.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=31+15'15.53N+24+15'30.53W&sll=39.679105,-105.128672&sspn=0.011015,0.019312&ie=UTF8&ll=31.25977,-24.257812&spn=3.131698,4.943848&t=h&z=8

Scroll just a tad to the right. You will see more of those lines in the water. /Sorry no HTML skills

experimental arifacts

[fermion]

While this is funny, it is another example of how artifacts of an experiment can lead to misinterpretation of otherwise valid results. The last big example of this was the man from mars. The most recent is clear and indisputable picture of this humanoid walking across mars. Then of course there is carving of the face on mars. All this comes from the mistaken assumption that somehow a photograph captures the complete reality of a situation. Even without the processing of such photographs, there is always a chance of injecting an artifact.

Re:The Minoan Hypothesis

[gnick]

The description fits, except for the location (Crete is in the Mediterranean, while Plato thought Atlantis was in the Atlantic.)

According to TFA he said that it was in the "Real Sea". Apparently that's typically interpreted as being the Atlantic, but sometimes is assumed to be the Mediterranean.

Of course, since I'm collecting this knowledge from a first-hand account from Plato reacting to a finding on Google Maps - My information may be a little faulty, but the almighty wikipedia seems to back it up.

Theseus and the Minotaur

[spun]

Some memories were preserved in the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. To the primitive Greeks of the time, the palace of Knossos must have seemed like a maze. The Minoans also demanded tariffs on all shipping in the Mediterranean, and as we know, the ancient Greeks loved to dramatize trade disputes, thus the legend of having to send virgins to slake the hunger of the Minotaur.

Re:The real 'atlantis'

[tzot]

Just FYI: fire up a python interpreter (slashdot is unicode-challenged) in a unicode environment with a nice Unicode font like DejaVu Sans.

>>> print u'\u0375\u0398'
This is what 9000 looks like in Ancient Greek: GREEK LOWER NUMERAL SIGN, GREEK CAPITAL LETTER THETA

>>> print u'\u03e1\u0374'
And this is what 900 looks like in Ancient Greek: GREEK SMALL LETTER SAMPI, GREEK NUMERAL SIGN

Quite different. So, obviously, you mean that quite recently, somebody with knowledge of arabic digits did a faulty transcription and nobody bothered to spot the error?

Re:Where else is this glitch?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

'Just wondering if anyone has seen links to other examples of this glitch? I mean, I imagine if it's a flaw in their sonar system that it would've shown up somewhere else, right?

Here's some more - just to the east of the "original site."

Google Ocean topo data is awful.

[goodmanj]

I spent a lot of time in grad school looking at seafloor topography maps, and let me tell you, the Google Ocean stuff is just *TERRIBLE*.

Much of the data comes from the GEBCO maps -- General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans. These were hand-drawn topo maps from the early- and mid-20th century. Beginning in the '90s, these were scanned in and digitized, but whoever did it did a lousy job.

The topo contours on the drawings weren't smoothed out on the digital map, so in many places the sea floor has a "terraced" or "layered" look which is not at all accurate. The original map data was supplemented with modern digital hydrographic data taken by shipboard sonars, but this data is only available along the path of the ship. No real effort was made to sensibly combine the old data with the new, so the new data forms straight lines cutting across the older data.

Which is what this "Atlantis" is. Some ship did a detailed survey of that area, following a grid search pattern. The data in between is older, less accurate, and mismatched.

If our land surface data was this bad, Google Earth would be mocked constantly. But since it's the ocean, nobody cares or notices.

The real story

[bl968]

The geology of the Madeira Aplain further studies relevant to its suitability for radioactive waste disposal

Re:The Minoan Hypothesis

[Petrushka]

According to TFA he said that it was in the "Real Sea". Apparently that's typically interpreted as being the Atlantic, but sometimes is assumed to be the Mediterranean.

Plato Timaios 24e:

hê polis hymôn epausen pote dynamin hybrei poreuomenên hama epi pasan Eurôpên kai Asian, exôthen hormêtheisan ek tou Atlantikou pelagous.

I hope that's clear enough even if you don't know Greek! The phrase "Atlantic sea" refers specifically to the body of water beyond Gibraltar (see e.g. Herodotos 1.202-203).

The GPP's post is a little exaggerated. The Thera eruption may have been anywhere from simultaneous with, up to a century before, the end of the Minoan palatial period; while a causal connection has been hypothesised, there is no evidence to support the hypothesis (as yet, at least). Minoan culture continued to exist under Mycenaean control or hegemony up to the end of the Bronze Age (the "sub-Minoan period"), so saying it was "destroyed" is simply untrue.

(Disclaimer: in my view Atlantis-hunting is silly and has no historical foundation whatsoever. I find the "humor" and "idle" tags on this story entirely appropriate.)