Researchers Find Possible Atlantis Location

An AC writes"It seems that Plato's Atlantis has a new spot candidate. Some archaeologist used satellite imagery to identify a structure in an once tsunami-ed Spanish plain. From the article: '"This is the power of tsunamis," head researcher Richard Freund told Reuters. "It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and that's pretty much what we're talking about," said Freund, a University of Hartford, Connecticut, professor who lead an international team searching for the true site of Atlantis.'"

Comments

Yawn

[mseeger]

Yet another repeating news story.... How many times Atlantis has been located by now? 100+ times at least. What's the next news? Transparent Aluminium again?

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst part of it is that Plato made up Atlantis just to set up a hypothetical argument. His contemporaries understood this, but eventually it got out of hand and people took it literally. Atlantis really doesn't exist. There may be a lot of "lost" cities and small civilizations, but I doubt any of them are Atlantis.

Re:Yawn

[mseeger]

If the summary makes it clear...this is a POSSIBLE location.

Exactly: Finding Atlantis would be news, a possible locations you get a dozen for a dime.

CU, Martin

Re:Yawn

[schmidt349]

This from a soon-Ph.D in Classics.

Atlantis was a story Plato made up in the course of a philosophical discussion. It goes no further back in the literary record unless you want to twist a couple mentions of "Atlas' island" in the earlier corpus like balloon animals.

Re:Yawn

[Trepidity]

Even this particular proposal isn't new. A half-dozen archaeologists have been studying this national park in southern Spain as a possible site for the past 15 years or so, and this is just the latest round of press releases.

Re:Yawn

[Dan541]

It's only a matter of time until people start searching for middle earth.

Re:Yawn

[sortius_nod]

The thing that gets me is that Atlantis is about metaphor rather than reality. I see no difference between a "researcher" and a fundamentalist religious type. Both are interpreting devices used to stir inner dialog as gospel truth.

If anything atlantis was one of the first science fiction tales. Think of how ridiculous it would be if people turned Star Wars into a cult...

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

You are completely ass-fuck wrong. He didn't make it up. He got the story from the Egyptians.

Re:Yawn

[Bender0x7D1]

It's only a matter of time until people start searching for middle earth.

Middle-earth can be found in the area we now call New Zealand.

Re:Yawn

[Gofyerself]

Think of how ridiculous it would be if people turned Star Wars into a cult

Just wait 2011 years.

Re:Yawn

[schmidt349]

Yeah, and _they_ had records going back to 8,000 BCE that the aliens gave them. Unfortunately the data was all on NASA 1" tape, so the Egyptians couldn't read it until Plato cheerfully loaned them an Ampex machine...

Re:Yawn

[Gutboy]

Did you mean wait until 2011?

Re:Yawn

[Nikkos]

So did ya find that secret out in his new tell-all book?

Plato used real people in his writings and there's no way to tell at which times is he using their own words and meanings and at which times he's inventing them. The discussion has long gone on and the simple answer is we don't and won't ever know. This is why the words of Socrates are more often credited to Plato - Socrates didn't write anything, so we're taking Plato at his word. Likewise there is no way to tell for certain if references to "lore" such as Atlantis were based on local gossip or were made out of whole cloth.

Your attempt at ethos fails too. Give back your Ph.D.

Re:Yawn

[mseeger]

They will have much better chances than fining Atlantis. Tolkien left a lot more clues behind than Platon did :-).

Funny thing is: Platon probably "invented" Atlantis to give some background to a story too...

Re:Yawn

[schmidt349]

[quote]there's no way to tell at which times[/quote]

[quote]we don't and won't ever know[/quote]

[quote]Likewise there is no way to tell[/quote]

Thanks so much for agreeing with me!

Re:Yawn

[Scrameustache]

The worst part of it is that Plato made up Atlantis just to set up a hypothetical argument.

People used to say that about Troy. Then someone dug it up.

Re:Yawn

[interkin3tic]

Yet another repeating news story.... How many times Atlantis has been located by now?

Zero, which is why we should wait until someone finds Atlantis to say "Researchers FIND atlantis."

That doesn't mean the methodology or the finding here isn't interesting.

Re:Yawn

[schmidt349]

See, a lack of evidence leads _reasonable_ people to extreme skepticism. It is not an open invitation to invent a crackpot theory and then plug your ears while shouting "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU."

Moreover, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. If you want to take Plato at his word you don't just get to point to a previously-undiscovered set of ruins somewhere in the Med and say "Atlantis!" You need to prove

a) that it was inhabited 8,000 years ago
b) that Athens was inhabited 8,000 years ago
c) That an apocalyptic war was fought between the two

because these are all parts of Plato's story.

You also don't get to say "the Egyptians told Solon/Plato/whoever" because archaeology proves that at the alleged time of this apocalyptic war the Egyptians (if you can call the Faiyum A culture "Egyptian" for any reason other than that the happened to leave near the Nile river delta) were still a Neolithic people with no system of writing.

Moreover, since all available evidence tells us that b) is not only not true but impossible, you're putting the cart before the horse trying to prove a) or c). If someone tells me, in earnest, that the CIA has been instructing him to kill the Pope by way of a radio embedded in his brain, nothing short of a CT scan showing me the radio and a bug detector showing signal origin at Langley is going to convince me that he's not insane. I don't start speculating on why the CIA would want the pope dead.

I realize that this type of reasoning from evidence rather than speculation is not the usual fare at the UFOlogy seminars and astrology club meetings you drag your knuckles to every night, but do pay attention, you might learn something.

Re:Yawn

[schmidt349]

The difference is that the Trojan War happened only a few hundred years before Homer's time -- a short enough span for some memory of the city to be preserved. According to Plato, Atlantis was destroyed by Athens some 6,500 years before his own day.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there's an interesting comparison to Europe, albeit with a rather different sea level :-)

Re:Yawn

[JWSmythe]

The worst part of it is that Plato made up Atlantis just to set up a hypothetical argument.

    The sad part is that there are so many people who take old fictional works "set up as a hypothetical argument" and treat them like some mystical work where the words are taken verbatim, even if they are contradictory even in the same work.

    I have no doubt that the Atlantis story was made up from somewhere. Circular built cities, or from Plato's own imagination, it came from somewhere. I prefer to believe the resurrected story used by the Stargate show. It's obvious, Atlantis was a starship, and Plato was an alien. :)

Re:Yawn

[MindlessAutomata]

Nikkos needs to shut up.

Re:Yawn

[blincoln]

"The worst part of it is that Plato made up Atlantis just to set up a hypothetical argument. His contemporaries understood this, but eventually it got out of hand and people took it literally."

I've seen this statement before, and I've always wondered - is there a Cliff's Notes version of the alleged supporting evidence for it? I mean, actual statements from people of Plato's era along the lines of "that Plato sure does like inventing ancient cities that never existed as back-story for his work! I bet in a few thousand years, people will think Atlantis actually existed, even though all of us here in Ancient Greece know that that is completely false!".

I ask because art critics and members of the "soft sciences" have a terrible habit of making statements like this, and then those statements become accepted as fact, when really it was just someone's opinion. One of the great things about art is that different people take away different things from each work, but the downside is that many of those people also assume that whatever *they* took away was what the creator of that work actually intended.

Re:Yawn

[tsm_sf]

Can we just add this post to the article summary and close the thread?

Re:Yawn

[Attila Dimedici]

The main difference is that there are other ancient references to Troy in addition to Homer. As far as I have been able to discover, the only ancient reference we have to Atlantis is one place in Plato's writings.

Re:Yawn

[evilviper]

Up next, using cell phones to track traffic patterns. I can't wait!

Re:Yawn

[Pyrus.mg]

News Flash! Rubies and sapphires are transparent crystals of aluminum oxide.

Re:Yawn

[JoeMerchant]

What I read in a related article is that the researchers found "echo cities" laid out according to the design of Atlantis described by Plato, this is their evidence that the people of the area were (possible) survivors of the Atlantis.

A timeline of the cities' construction and Plato's account would be interesting.

Re:Yawn

[JoeMerchant]

Plato described a form of the city, while his chronology may have been distorted, the description of the city form was clear. These people, for the first time, are finding cities of similar form.

The rest of the story may be exaggerated, distorted, inaccurate or impossible - but if there was a city which inspired Plato's story, most people would be interested to see what it looks like after it's dug up.

Re:Yawn

[ebuck]

Well, either the ancient historian Strabo is lying when he said that Aristotle said that Atlantis was just "made up" to further examine a hypothetical argument, or Aristotle was a pupil of Plato, but without some "key" knowledge of one of his most important thought experiments, or Plato was telling the truth but he couldn't get his key pupil to agree?

Aristotle's works are many things, but they don't seem to indicate that he had an axe to grind against Plato, at least not one so sharp as to make the argument that Plato was a liar. I'm inclined to believe that Aristotle was right, that his teacher made up Atlantis to flesh out an argument, much like Ann Ryan made up a series of books (and heroes) to flesh out her argument.

The weakness in the above belief is that it's more-than-second-hand information. The works of Aristotle which purport to refute the real existence of Atlantis were destroyed. We only have Strabo's account of what Aristotle said about what Plato meant to go by.

That there is some evidence that Strabo truly believed in Atlantis and that he still bothered to write Aristotle's refutation of it's existence lends me to believe in Strabo's accounting of Aristotle's refutation more.

After reading a description of Atlantis, I doubt you'll ever find it (or that it ever existed). I have a hard time believing that any civilization could be so orderly to get all citizens to build their cities in circles. And building a circular canal means a spoke and ring system of waterways, when any semi-sane engineer would just settle for a spoke and hub system, no need to lay out perfect rings. Even enormously planned communities like Washington, D. C. and Brasilia have less structural control than what's implied.

Re:Yawn

[datsa]

Who cares? They found friggin' ATLANTIS! Didn't you see the Disney movie**?

**Me neither

Re:Yawn

[Johnny Mnemonic]

When I studied Relig

Re:Yawn

[Penguinisto]

Mind you, I'm not saying Atlantis is real, but... ...Heinrich Schliemann was laughed at until he unearthed the city of Troy. They found what is believed to be the cities referred to as Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as the Philistine city of Gath (e.g. Goliath's crib). The tomb of Tutankhamen was considered to be a myth.

Not all tales have pure fabrication as their foundation. Sometimes they drag in real places into the picture.

I'm thinking that Plato caught wind of (or maybe even grew up with) the oral stories surrounding the Santorini eruption ~1,000 years before he was born. He likely took that and ran with it.

Re:Yawn

[WCguru42]

I agree on the CT scan, but it's quite a leap to suppose that the CIA only operates out of Langley, Virginia.

Re:Yawn

[camperdave]

Aluminum Oxide? You mean I could make sapphires by melting down old lawn chairs? Which way to the dump?

Re:Yawn

[Black Parrot]

The worst part of it is that Plato made up Atlantis just to set up a hypothetical argument.

People used to say that about Troy. Then someone dug it up.

I'm pretty sure no one ever said that someone made up Troy just to set up a hypothetical argument.

Re:Yawn

[Black Parrot]

The main difference is that there are other ancient references to Troy in addition to Homer. As far as I have been able to discover, the only ancient reference we have to Atlantis is one place in Plato's writings.

Actually he mentions it in two different dialogues, though that hardly dulls your point.

Re:Yawn

[Black Parrot]

I have no doubt that the Atlantis story was made up from somewhere. Circular built cities, or

There is a hypothesis that the topology was inspired by the famous circular harbor at Carthage.

Re:Yawn

[mosb1000]

I'm inclined to believe that Aristotle was right, that his teacher made up Atlantis to flesh out an argument, much like Ann Ryan made up a series of books (and heroes) to flesh out her argument.

I'm pretty sure she wrote a series of books. The distinction is the same is the difference between imagining a house and building one. And while it's true that she made up characters and stories, most of the places in her books are real. Just as in comic books most places are real (or are at least based on real places). It's hard to make something up from nothing, and it's counterproductive if you are trying to make arguments you want other people to understand.

Re:Yawn

[Ecuador]

It is not "alleged supporting evidence". Plato's dialogues are very well known works, which are available in many translations. They are very interesting works, definitely worth a read if you are the "reading" type, so you can see for yourself.
I remember once I realized that "Atlantis" was first referenced in the TImaeus dialogue, I went back to the original (I can read ancient Greek, and had read Plato before), and was surprised to see how obviously it is a fictional place.
So, if you want see for yourself, read some Plato to get the feel for his writing (I don't know how much is lost in Translation), and try out the Timaeus and Critias dialogues to see if it is obvious to you that Atlantis is made up. Or, if you don't want to read it yourself ask any Classical Philologist who has read Plato. For example if I ask my wife (ancient Greek philology) whether she things Atlantis is real, I will get some laughs.

Re:Yawn

[Ecuador]

Nope, that is misinformed, not insightful.
Troy was never a hypothetical argument. Homer gave a fictitious account of a war 300 years before his time, but no-one in antiquity at least doubted Troy or the Trojan war itself.
Atlantis, on the other hand, to anyone who reads Plato, is obviously a fictional place. There was no doubt about it in antiquity, as there is no doubt about it now for people who read Plato. It might not be that obvious if you just read the translated excerpt that mentions the story of Atlantis, but if you have read some of Plato's dialogues and go on to Timaeus, you will get it.

Re:Yawn

[Sique]

And here lies the problem. Most of the places and names in the Iliad are real, and the people at the end of the 19th century knew some them. Ithaka is real, and Mykene is real, the Hellespont is real, and so is Boeotia. One can take a map of the Mediterran and draw Ulysses' voyage. The only place one couldn't put a finger on was Troy, and that's probably because Troy was not a part of the hellenic world. Actually it was a lydian settlement, called Wilusa, which the Greek pronounced Ilyos or Ilyon and the Romans Ilium. So it always looked strange in context to the later generations. But then the archeologist at the end of the 19th century started to find one town after another mentioned in the antique texts. They discovered Ur, Ninive and Babylon. Suddenly the mood changed. One started to believe that any place ever mentioned in the antique texts would be real, even those never meant to be real to begin with.
Plato's report about Atlantis doesn't mention any wellknown places. Even the description of the location as "beyond the pillars of Hercules" just puts it outside of the contemporary ship lines, but doesn't fix any place. There is no reason why it should be real.

Re:Yawn

[L4t3r4lu5]

They'd become outrageously rich puppet masters of talking heads around the world?

Oh wait, that's the science fiction writings of L. Ron Hubbard, not George Lucas.

Re:Yawn

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Yeah, yeah: "Man land on Mars" is a dupe, because we already talked about man one day going to Mars.

Re:Yawn

[tibit]

There's nothing earth-shattering about Asimo's playback-style technology. Heck, I'd consider it quite outdated by now. Ever heard of big dog, for example?

Re:Yawn

[Owy]

His GPS was briefly down when he wrote about Atlantis... of vourse he DIDN'T point the EXACT location!

Re:Yawn

[Grizzley9]

You do know that 200 years is nothing really and easily passed to the next generation. The last of the Civil War widows just passed away a few years ago. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1071061/posts

Re:Yawn

[MemoryDragon]

Actually Thera before the eruption had a circular like harbor structure, when thera was blasted off the ground by the eruption the area was unpassable by ships thanks to the volcanic output for quite some time.
Also Thera was one of the highest developed civilizations of its time (they even had a water toilet and multi floored buildings)
so at least the memory regarding Thera could be related to Plato. I also dont believe Atlantis as such ever existed, but there are several occasions in history which could ultimately have lead to such a legend in Platos time.
The probably by then in legend unforgotton explosion of Thera probably was one such event, the sea peoples invasion of the southeastern mediterrenean also was another such occasion.

Re:Yawn

[DrXym]

I've seen this statement before, and I've always wondered - is there a Cliff's Notes version of the alleged supporting evidence for it? I mean, actual statements from people of Plato's era along the lines of "that Plato sure does like inventing ancient cities that never existed as back-story for his work! I bet in a few thousand years, people will think Atlantis actually existed, even though all of us here in Ancient Greece know that that is completely false!".

I don't see the problem with starting with the default assumption that the place was hypothetical. There is no supporting evidence and Plato used the place as a springboard to go off into a philosophical discourse.

I can well believe than in a few thousand years there will be pseudo archeological cranks who will spend their lives looking for Hogwarts, and claiming they've found it every time they unearth some evidence of a railway track.

Re:Yawn

[somersault]

And what do they say about the whole angel bit? In a story with deities and invisible angels, I don't see why a donkey talking is suddenly any more unbelievable..

Re:Yawn

[Ecuador]

Wow. Just wow. Insulting people to compensate for your ignorance.
"until someone dug it up" refers to the period up to the digging, which includes the antiquity. Unless you speak a different language.
But this is just semantics, the simple fact that I stated is that scholars never doubted the existence of Troy.
This is the exact opposite to the Atlantis which scholars know is fictional.
Now, there are always people who believe in LGM, Hollow Earth etc, and there is no point convincing those...

Re:Yawn

[jfengel]

It's still pretty amazing to me that the memory of Troy was preserved with such astonishing accuracy over the space of centuries. It's chock-full of details, and while many are unverifiable, so many have been verified that it's easy to believe that there really were exactly 1186 ships, for example.

400 years ago was Shakespeare's day, and even with writing we've lost a lot of important information. They managed to preserve an astonishing amount of information in the oral history. I don't think we've managed to lose any major cities (though things were pretty damn vague in the early days of the Age of Exploration), but we've lost so much else.

Re:Yawn

[stonewallred]

And if you go to -5900 meters, you'll see the world with no oceans.

so what does your asshat comment have to do with anything, other than quietening the voices in your head?

Re:Yawn

[tehcyder]

The main difference is that there are other ancient references to Troy in addition to Homer. As far as I have been able to discover, the only ancient reference we have to Atlantis is one place in Plato's writings.

Maybe Plato was an early slashdotter, and crap at spelling, so he was really talking about Atlanta, Georgia.

Re:Yawn

[CAIMLAS]

Plato's Atlantis may be fiction, but it's possible that it's myth built on historical fact. There were numerous token records of a 'lost civilization' as well as confirmation within other tomes of antiquity. The problem is that the documents/sources referenced by these tomes are long since destroyed (eg. in Alexandria), so there's no independent corroboration.

When you combine the myth-for-teaching having been based on a similar historic record with other, surrounding historic information, the possibility starts to look a bit stronger. There is some strong contention with the "Egyptology" approach to dating things, as well as the cloistered method in which "Egyptology" is practiced. It tends to ignore other scientific disciplines and their findings (eg. such as the actual age of the pyramids or sphinx). The congruous nature in which the pyramids were made, as well as the mimicking pyramids of the Americas and elsewhere, all aligned in similiar fashions, the question of "was there a long-lost civilization that had the power to span the globe?" This posses an opening for "Atlantis".

It's kind of like if I were to go to Africa and find a mummy with a Gameboy-like device at his feet, inside the coffin. The only thing left would be the PCB and plastic casing, as the rest had completely rotted/decayed. The plastic is brittle with age and the PCB has cracked, so it's obviously of antiquity. Yet, it's out of place: I have to assume either it was placed there in contention or it's a legitimate artifact, and the current understanding of the timeline is wrong. The pyramids across the world, aligned "perfectly" in a geographically congruent fashion, suggest just such a scenario.

I'm of the opinion that if there were an Atlantis, it was at such a time period that any records of it (statues, buildings, the results of industrial processes, etc.) would have either long been utterly destroyed, or be unrecognizable to us as such due to their erosion and antiquity or to their inclusion into our own status quo existence (eg. the 'old' churches in England, built upon old burial/rite sites, which demark an even more aged site - the significance of which has long since been lost). If we find Atlantis, we're not goign to find pillars sticking from the soil or ocean floor with mosaics still intact unless by some miraculous scenario the entire island was hermetically sealed. What we may find is a pile of rubble, pebbles, and dirt with chemical traces suggesting the presence of metals. (After all, even cities destroyed by disaster in the past 2000 years have very little evidence of their existence remaining, and then only after years of excavation; what of a city 5,000 - 10,000 years old?)

Re:Yawn

[mikael]

It's well known from archived archeological papers and ancient manuscripts dating from the Roman era, that around 3 miles (5 km) of farmland around some areas has disappeared into the sea since Roman times. You only need to erode 2.5 metres/year on average to achieve this rate of loss. Even just having one bad storm that erode 10 metres in a single night, once every 10 years is enough to achieve this.

Even if Atlantis never existed, there is a good chance that any point of ocean bed is going to having artifacts from sunken ships, islands or even tsunamis.

Re:Yawn

[Dan541]

I am convinced that sometime in the future Star Wars will be mistaken for a documentary.

Re:Yawn

[CAIMLAS]

I have a hard time believing that any civilization could be so orderly to get all citizens to build their cities in circles.

There have been numerous smaller/extinct civilizations which have been found which are of circular design throughout the world. I seem to recall hearing/reading about them in Europe, Asia, and South America, but there may have been more.

Of non-trivial import are Persian Sassanian urban design - Babylon as well as Baghdad were/are circular cities. Even the modern urban sprawl mimicks this design, in poor abstract: everything radiates from the center. A circular city design is the height of good engineering: it may cost more to construct, initially, and involve more headache involving the construction of buildings on a perfect square, but there are many arguments for it. (For one, transportation is more efficient due to the average of distance from point A to point B always being shorter than were it to be from point

And building a circular canal means a spoke and ring system of waterways, when any semi-sane engineer would just settle for a spoke and hub system, no need to lay out perfect rings.

Spoke and ring would allow for more consistent subdivision of land as well as enable more intensive agriculture (due to consistent delivery of water). You will also need fewer canals dug (in terms of land volume used) with spoke and ring than with spoke and hub, saving labor. (With the spoke and ring system, several large hubs could more effectively distribute heavy rain water evenly, vs. a spoke and hub, which would tend to have the water pool near the hub instead of making it to the outlying area, on account of soil permeability.)

Also consider, spoke and ring makes it easier to construct adjoining roadways and bridges from the city center to the outlying areas without causing pathway congestion towards the city center.

Re:Yawn

[CAIMLAS]

It's hard to make something up from nothing, and it's counterproductive if you are trying to make arguments you want other people to understand.

Not so. Idealized Marxism is something from nothing, and people quite understand (or at least, cling on to) the ideal. Like all radicalized systems of government, it tends to ignore the facts of human nature in its implementation and fail utterly.

I actually think that may have been the same basic vein of argument Plato was making - along the lines of political/social/cultural organizations, and possibly existentialism.

Re:Yawn

[Scrameustache]

That is when he wrote the passage you mention

You said "never", you stupid bitch: Never say never.

Re:Yawn

[jwhitener]

I was only able to find one researcher putting forth the notion that Atlantis was completely fabricated by Plato:

Quote from the google hit in 2001

"But now Alan F. Alford, one of the world's authorities on ancient mythology, claims to have uncovered the truth: the Greek philosopher invented Atlantis as a metaphor for the ancient version of our 'Big Bang' theory."

It is hard to google about Atlantis. There are a million crackpot sites you need to weed through, so if you have more sources, by all means, share them. I was under the impression that there was no real proof about Atlantis being real or merely a story.

Re:Yawn

[jwhitener]

>

After reading a description of Atlantis, I doubt you'll ever find it (or that it ever existed). I have a hard time believing that any civilization could be so orderly to get all citizens to build their cities in circles. And building a circular canal means a spoke and ring system of waterways, when any semi-sane engineer would just settle for a spoke and hub system, no need to lay out perfect rings. Even enormously planned communities like Washington, D. C. and Brasilia have less structural control than what's implied.

I think that you'll find many examples of ancient civilizations with rigid building styles if you spend some time googling. The Anasazi in the US Southwest built all their cultural centers as semi-circles. Google "chaco canyon ruins" for a list of images (and I'd highly recommend visiting if you can, the ruins are only partially excavated and you can find pottery all over the place to look at, but of course it is illegal to take any). In general, almost all of the earliest city states had centrally controlled building operations. That is one of the main ways that archaeologists have of identifying different cultures: building style and building placement.

And even in places without much central control of building, there are also sites in Turkey and other areas of the near east, where necessities of the times shaped cities and towns. For instance, many towns built their houses side by side, in a circle, so that the outer wall of the houses formed one big circular wall for defense.

There is also some evidence that even as far back as the megalithic period, that some sorts of universal measurement were being used. The 'megalithic yard', for example, is believed by some to have been derived by a simple astronomical observation combine with some strings and plumb bobs, giving ancient folks all over a standard unit of measure!. I am not sure how widely that belief is held in academia, I just read a book on it years ago.

In modern times, it is pretty hard to imagine rigid city plans, but during pre-history (and essentially pre-history in the case of the Anasazi) it was pretty common.

Horatio Caine says...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the idea of Atlantis... *sunglasses* ...isn't dead in the water after all.

YEAAAAAAAAAH!

Re:Horatio Caine says...

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

+1 CSI:Miami

Joel McHale as David Caruso

Atlantis...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like they don't know anything about Tartessos. That would be a real explanation for the ruins found.

Re:Atlantis...?

[turbidostato]

"Seems like they don't know anything about Tartessos"

Of course. How in hell would a Spanish Classics Ph.D student know the slightest bit about Tartessos.

Did you consider that what this student fellow meant might be that Atlantis is an old memory of a Tartessian debacle?

Re:Atlantis...?

[mangu]

Seems like they don't know anything about Tartessos. That would be a real explanation for the ruins found.

They certainly know about it, and that's probably the explanation for the city they found. Problem is, few people ever heard of Tartessos. It's a question of marketing, claim it's Atlantis to get press coverage, then announce it's Tartessos to get scientific recognition.

Atlantis - Plato's example of Athens in a Play

[Anonymous Coward]

Egad! The invention of "Atlantis" was part of a political satire play written by Plato to show how Athens (Represented by a mythical kingdom of Atlantis in the play) had squandered its destiny and reputation by dominating Greek shipping by warfare and demanding tithes from other Greek nations. The mythical Atlantis represented Athens in the play and was sunk to show that the result of such political arrogance resulted in destruction. There never was such a place, nor was Plato doing anything else but critiquing Athens without mentioning it by name. (He remembered the fate of Socrates.) You just as well might search for the land of the Golden Fleece. (Wait! They did just that 200 years ago. Today we laugh at the idea knowing it was just a story.)

Re:Atlantis - Plato's example of Athens in a Play

[pjt33]

Today we laugh at the idea knowing it was just a story.

So was Troy.

Re:Atlantis - Plato's example of Athens in a Play

[ebuck]

Today we laugh at the idea knowing it was just a story.

So was Troy.

You're argument has a parallel: since some of the UFOs have indeed been found to be weather balloons, it's irrefutable proof that extra terrestrials exist.

Re:Atlantis - Plato's example of Athens in a Play

[MemoryDragon]

Actually yes , it is most likely, but there might be some truth behind it nevertheless. There was a big invasion of the eastern mediterranean sea by of what the egyptians called the sea peoples. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples, it was a mass migration combined with an invasion which brought several highly developed bronze age cultures to a downfall and Egypt on the brink of collapse.
No one really knows who those people were, but they are a fact conserved in letters and writings of that period.
They are definitely not survivors of the Thera desaster that happened way earlier, but could be forced out of their native homes by other catastrophies.
No one really knows who they were, there are theories, that they came from the black sea, others that they came from greece or spain (the excavation site we are talking here)
It is definitely not 10.000 years but, given the timespan the memories of the Thera cathastrophy (which resembled Atlantis in many ways, due to being highly developed seafaring etc...) and the sea peoples invasion have been there in tales lingering around, while not being written down explicitely outside of egypt.

But a highly developed civilization which spanned lots of europe reigned out of the atlantic and that about 10.000 years ago, this is highly unlikely there must be proof one way or the other plastered all over the mediterrenean, and so far there is none. There are only a handful of sites somehow resembling what plato described but they are all dated sometime 1500BC when the bronze age culture was at its height and trade all over the mediterrenean was going on.

Re:Atlantis - Plato's example of Athens in a Play

[goose-incarnated]

.[...] and Egypt on the brink of collapse.

Great. Thousands of years later and nothing has changed.

Re:Atlantis - Plato's example of Athens in a Play

[Dabido]

How the frig did this get modded 'informative' ???

• 1. Plato never wrote plays, let alone 'political satire plays'.
• 2. It was from Platos 'Timaeus and Critias' which is a 'dialogue' written by Plato. Dialogues are used to explore several opposing views in a discussion, a way for the author to show the flaws in others arguments and the virtues in their own beliefs. It is in no way a 'play' of any sort, and was far from being a 'political satire'. It was suggested the point of Atlantis was for Plato to pretend that his 'utopia' as written about in his book 'The Republic' was to invent a history for his ideas. This was because most of 'The Republic' ideas were stolen from the Egyptians and Plato wanted to make his ideas seem to be 'Athenian'.
• 3. Atlantis never represented Athens in the work, as Athens was actually in the story as fighting against Atlantis. If Atlantis was supposed to represent Athens, then what the frig was Athens doing in the story????

• My suggestion to whomever the anonymous coward was who posted this, is GO LEARN WHO PLATO WAS!!!!

Re:Atlantis - Plato's example of Athens in a Play

[gad_zuki!]

I'm afraid at a certain point we need to accept that humans in general are an extremely irrational people. Sure we understand the origin of Atlantis, but people also love to believe myth and religion. You're a member of the reality-based community and to them you're the crackpot. In a democracy truth is sometimes a consensus, so to them you're not only crazy but "obviously wrong." I've been an atheist since I've been a teenager and I see this mentality all the time. Its pathetic and there's little fighting it.

>You just as well might search for the land of the Golden Fleece.

Go for a walk in America and start talking to people about religion. Ask them what their thoughts are about finding Noah's Ark, the Ark of the Covenant, the original Cross, etc. Their attitudes will be the same as the people who were looking for the fleece in antiquity. If we took away religion they'd just start up UFO cults. If we took that away, they'd worship rocks, etc, etc.

Re:Atlantis - Plato's example of Athens in a Play

[pjt33]

That's not at all a parallel. My argument is that (exists x in S such that P(s)) => not(forall x in S : not P(s)). Your argument is that (exists x in S such that P(s)) => forall x in S: P(s).

Re:Atlantis - Plato's example of Athens in a Play

[pjt33]

(Well, actually that's a generous interpretation of your argument).

Make it stop

[Samantha Wright]

The truly boggling thing about people who believe in Atlantis is that they believe in Atlantis. Even Wikipedia doesn't. (Or, at least, whatever corrupt bureaucrat obsessively controls that article.) Seriously, Slashdot, this is the kind of crap we're told we should expect from the "History" Channel, not our favourite hyperbolic tech news site!

Re:Make it stop

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Time was, you wouldn't even expect this from the history channel. It's even weird to say that now.

Re:Make it stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Most "mythical" cities have turned out to be real. Often they are less awe inspiring that the fables but they are generally real. Odds are there was a city that corresponded to the stories of Atlantis that was less impressive but the odds of it being identified are nearly zero. In truth it may have not been called Atlantis by the residents. One of the problems is over the last 10,000 years there have been hundreds of small civilizations that have not been found or identified. In a single location there could have been dozens of different cultures or civilizations. In the British Isles there have been quite a number and it's one of the proposed locations for Atlantis, believe it or not it fits a number of the conditions for Atlantis if you go back to when sea levels were lower. It will probably never be identified but it probably existed.

Re:Make it stop

[Black Parrot]

Most "mythical" cities have turned out to be real.

Most? Can you support that claim?

It will probably never be identified but it probably existed.

If you had the most rudimentary understanding of Plato's "Dramatic Dialogues", you'd realize that there's not the slightest reason to believe it ever existed.

Plato wrote fictions, usually starring the late Socrates, to convey his philosophy. The Socrates we all know and love is probably more nearly Plato's sock puppet than the real man. And any "ancient history" worked into the stories is made up to support the philosophy.

Re:Make it stop

[Mashiki]

And the 7 Cities of Troy didn't exist either right? I thought so. There's been enough things lost through disasters that we could be searching for a very long time.

Re:Make it stop

[DiegoBravo]

Before Schliemann nobody knew for sure about the reality of Troy and the whole Homer opus with its mix of men and gods. Atlantis is a different case, where a very modern tale is fabricated from twisted interpretations of old passages, and that fabrication is very well documented as a hoax. Atlantis is in the same category as Chariots_of_gods for example.

Re:Make it stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Troy and Ur were found exactly where they were supposed to be located. Shangri la is believed to actually be a series of villages along the Silk Road high in the mountains. People commonly live past a 100 years of age there but it doesn't look that impressive. As I said many of the cities or mythical locations aren't as awe inspiring as the tales. Ur was a fairly nondescript desert town but it was along a trade route where the stories said it would be. There have been dozens found. A few obvious omissions are things like El Dorado but it was probably more a tale tale than even a myth. The city might have been found but was so unimpressive the connection was never made. Lemuria/Mu is thought to have been more a translation error than a place. Even the underwater part of Alexandria was once a myth but it has been found. There's a difference between pure fantasy as in locations talked about in myths than places that have been talked about as an actual location that was lost. Even Pompeii was a mythic site at one time. Many of the ancient cities were. Hey good ole "Vinland" was a mythic place in Norse sagas. I just happen to be living there now. I think if you did the numbers on the major mythic locations, I'm not talking the thousands of obscure ones, you'd find the majority have been found. In truth only a handful that have yet to be found come to mind. Do a little research and you might be surprised. FYI I'm not talking about things like Solomon's mines or the Lost Dutchman's mine. I'm talking cities.

Re:Make it stop

[Oligonicella]

Most "mythical" cities have turned out to be real.

A baseless assumption, but let's go with it.

Odds are there was a city ...

No. Just like with a coin, the odds on the next flip remain the same. Atlantis being an actual site is true or not. Just because other cities (I really don't recall all that many verified finds) have been found says not one thing about the odds of this one being found, or real. The fact that Plato named his work "Dramatic Dialogues", says a bit more.

Re:Make it stop

[ebuck]

And the 7 Cities of Troy didn't exist either right? I thought so. There's been enough things lost through disasters that we could be searching for a very long time.

In this case, it's more like searching for the 7 cities of Gold than the 7 cities of Troy. Just saying.

Re:Make it stop

[MightyMartian]

You've given some examples of places referenced in literature and legend that turned out to be true. For the claim "most mythical cities turned out to be real" you would have to actually do a proper survey of all the mythical cities, places, etc.

Re:Make it stop

[Black Parrot]

Troy

I'm not sure Troy counts as mythical. As recently as the early Byzantine era a traveller from western Europe visited the site and reported with astonishment that he found the eternal flame at Achilles' tomb was burning. Turned out that the local Christian Bishop was keeping it up.

Western Europe went through a Dark Age, and later it became stylish for Western scholars to dismiss everything as myth, but the information has been around continuously since the Hellenic Dark Ages.

and Ur

Not sure why you call this one mythical either.

Shangri la is believed to actually be a series of villages along the Silk Road

IOW, somebody thinks it was a myth derived from a series of villages? Hardly fits the definition of a mythical city that turned out to be real.

Even the underwater part of Alexandria was once a myth but it has been found.

Part of Alexandria sank in an earthquake. There was no mythical city.

Even Pompeii was a mythic site at one time.

Don't know why you would say that. No lesser a person than Pliny the Younger watched it from across the bay and left us an eyewitness report.

IIRC, Pliny the Elder died in the event.

Do a little research and you might be surprised.

The only thing research has taught me is how ignorant the masses are. (And how ignorant I certainly am as well, on topics that I haven't researched.)

Re:Make it stop

[gtall]

It is easy to support. In general, most myths have a basis in fact....take for instance, the Easter Bunny.

Let's thank T'ealc from Stargate for that one, absolutely priceless.

Thera/Santorini?

[JonBuck]

I know this is armchair archeology, but I thought that the evidence pointed at that island and the Minoan civilization in general to be the source of the Atlantis legend. The tsunami from that caldera eruption did wipe out Minoan coastal towns and opened the way for the Mycenaeans to expand.

Re:Thera/Santorini?

[rhathar]

There is no "general source" for the Atlantis "legend". There's a very specific one. It's Plato. He made it up for a story.

Re:Thera/Santorini?

[Mr_Huber]

And then some people, unwilling to give Plato credit for an imagination, insist he must be retelling some local legend or relating some half remembered folk history.

Re:Thera/Santorini?

[Evil Pete]

You haven't read The Critias or The Timaeus have you?

Plato goes to great lengths to try to persuade the reader that this is in fact a true story based on the what was told to a relative of his which Plato committed to memory when he was a boy.

Quite some time back I grew curious about the legend and invested some time in trying to find out if it is just an invention or whatever. And if there is any truth then where is the "real" Atlantis. My conclusion was that Plato probably heard some stories about past disasters (it is a tectonically active area), and maybe even got the gist of the destruction of Minoa from the Egyptians (via his relative Solon). Then he just wove a story to suit his own ends. The proof of the invention part is in the design of the city and the statistics on the army and navy. Wont go into details but it reveals when the story is written. It is a product of its time. But looking for where the story might have come from reveals something surprising: the world is filled with lost civilisations and cities. They are not unusual. We know very little about the past.

Re:Thera/Santorini?

[schmidt349]

Plato goes to great lengths to try to persuade the reader that this is in fact a true story based on the what was told to a relative of his which Plato committed to memory when he was a boy.

See, if you read the _rest_ of Plato, you find that this is a very common trope for him. He distances himself from the truth of a statement by putting it at multiple layers of indirect speech. Also, the character doing the talking is quasi-fictional to begin with (Plato's Socrates is _not_ the historical Socrates).

Re:Thera/Santorini?

[Attila Dimedici]

Although it is certainly possible he used the general vague recollection (various minor references in legend and story) of the Minoan civilization as a template to provide slightly more credibility to his story.

Re:Thera/Santorini?

[Black Parrot]

Plato goes to great lengths to try to persuade the reader that this is in fact a true story based on the what was told to a relative of his which Plato committed to memory when he was a boy.

See, if you read the _rest_ of Plato, you find that this is a very common trope for him. He distances himself from the truth of a statement by putting it at multiple layers of indirect speech.

And in this case it was "a heard it from b, who heard it from c, who heard it from..." Up to about g or so.

And this in a dramatic dialogue, which was a fictional vehicle for Plato's views. In this case, a report on the after-dinner conversation at a party Plato didn't attend (if it happened at all).

Re:Thera/Santorini?

[MemoryDragon]

There is no general source, and in fact various places are identified of the origin of the atlantis myth. The highest possibility is Thera/Santorini which comes closest, the site the article talks about is also a bronze age civilisation in spain which also fell around the mid bronze age.
Also there is a handful of other mediterenneaen civilisations which would be candidates.
What I would exclude is the flooding of the mediterranean basin and the black sea, that had been too long before Platos time to give anything meaningful anymore.
But given the lack of resources on the Egyptian side and they have documented a lot of their works in stone, it is very likely that Plato made everything up and no Atlantis legend was existent anymore in his time, but some other legends around Thera and the sea people might have been still floating around in Egyptian records.

Re:Thera/Santorini?

[siriuskase]

A city gets wiped out by water. A city big enough for people to care about. It happens in fiction and it happens in real life. Was the real Port Royal anywhere nears as sinful or as much fun as the legendary Port Royal? That city hasn't had anywhere near as much time as Atlantis.

Plato has a lot to answer for ...

[Kittenman]

I guess these things get funded by crackpots with more money than sense; the same breed who want to track down Noah's ark, Moses's sandal and the gourd left behind by Brian.

Re:Plato has a lot to answer for ...

[C0R1D4N]

People tend to make great discoveries when looking for something else. The Americas are a good example. Viagra as well.

Atlantis

[Anonymous Coward]

Which Atlantis is this?

The one from Stargate Atlantis, or the one from Interpose with the overlynxes?

Re:Atlantis

[hedwards]

I think they're looking for a copy of the Atari game. I've got a cart right here, no need to start looking on Google Earth.

Re:On the planet "Lantea"?

[bertoelcon]

Everybody knows that Atlantis is on the planet "Lantea" built millions of years ago by the Ancients.

That's not true, it's on earth now. Probably just sitting cloaked in an ocean.

Was it not in Plato’s head?

[Flavianoep]

I’ve read thoroughly Plato‘s Republic and although I couldn’t spot where Atlantis ended, it’s clear where it began: a dialogue.

Atlantis real location

[lordshipmayhem]

I have it on very good authority that Atlantis is not in Spain. It's in Florida, assigned to Launch on Need Mission STS-335. Hopefully it never is needed, but instead goes directly to the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

Re:Atlantis real location

[Zumbs]

I thought it was already settled that the Atlantis of Plato was on the Moon. I mean, we have been searching everywhere on Earth, so the next logical step is the Moon ... or Mars, maybe.

Re:Atlantis real location

[Keramos]

Or the Pegasus Galaxy, perhaps?

have they found Tartarus yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the deepest pit in the underground where dead sinners were sent for punishment, according to Plato and many other ancient Greek writers.

That should be worth another research grant.

they found Tartarus

[www.sorehands.com]

It is discovered that Tartarus is ancient name for Washington DC.

Billy Batts

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

The continent of Atlantis was an island
Which lay before the great flood
In the area we now call the Atlantic Ocean.
So great an area of land,
That from her western shores
Those beautiful sailors journeyed
To the South and the North Americas with ease,
In their ships with painted sails.
To the East Africa was a neighbour,
Across a short strait of sea miles.

Re:Billy Batts

[Black Parrot]

I heard Donovan's old song on the radio recently. To my surprise, it has aged quite well - especially the spoken part.

Re:Billy Batts

[coredog64]

The gods of our legends were there:

Ted Turner, Hank Aaron, Jeff Foxworthy, the magician, the guy who invented Coca Cola. Also, Jane Fonda was there.

Oops -- I thought we were talking about the lost city of Atlanta.

Re:On the planet "Lantea"?

[peragrin]

what do you think that caused the tsunami that hit the Pacific. It was Atlantis landing. They just came down near japan instead of Frisco.

I'm appalled

[zill]

Is anyone else sickened by these people that capitalize on natural disasters?

Re:I'm appalled

[zill]

Their research claims that a tsunami destroyed a city that was 60 miles inland, while the recent tsunami only reached as far as 6 miles inland. It's obvious that their archaeological site didn't have anything to do with tsunamis.

I don't doubt the validity of their research. I just question whether it has anything to do with tsunamis at all.

These are some cynical 'researchers'

[fredmosby]

They are trying to capitalize on a disaster that probably killed tens of thousands of people in order to get media attention for their questionable theories.

Re:These are some cynical 'researchers'

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, if Atlantis even existed, then it sank thousands of years ago. There's such a thing as taking "too soon" too far.

Re:These are some cynical 'researchers'

[fredmosby]

No, but when they saw that tsunamis were in the news they decided to piggyback on that publicity and make a press release. Also, a troll is someone who says something that they know is wrong in order to make people upset, not someone you disagree with.

Total bullshit

[joeszilagyi]

Everyone knows Atlantis is in the Pegasus galaxy.

Oh sure

[DrXym]

Anyone claiming anything a site is Atlantis is either a crank or a sell out. Serious archaeologists do not make such bold proclamations unless they want to be skinned alive by their peers. And throwing in a hook about a tsunami seems like ghoulish self promotion in the current circumstances

Re:Oh sure

[DrXym]

Anyone claiming anything a site is Atlantis is either a crank or a sell out. Serious archaeologists do not make such bold proclamations unless they want to be skinned alive by their peers. And throwing in a hook about a tsunami seems like ghoulish self promotion in the current circumstances

They used to say the exact same thing about Troy, and then someone dug it up. Same with King Tut's tomb.

Serious archaeologists do not claim that a site doesn't exist just because it hasn't been found. Those are the crackpots who have an agenda to push; real scientists are Skeptics, not Disbelievers.

Rubbish. Proper archeology is driven by laboriously mapping & excavating sites, recovering fragments of pottery, writing, jewelry, carvings, writing, analysing firepit, bone & plant remains, taking soil samples, dendrochronological dating and everything else. It's tedious, backbreaking, uncomfortable and methodical work as likely to end in failure as success. And when all that is done, the conclusions made must be supported by the evidence you have gathered and published in a peer reviewed journal. If you're lucky you might find something spectacular and compelling, a lost city maybe or a dead king, but you had damned better have the evidence to support it. Which you will find in your cited examples they did.

In the absence of such evidence you cannot just proclaim Atlantis. That is the hallmark of pseudo archeology, of cranks and attention whores. People with a TV show or book to plug. The Erich von Danikens and Graham Hancocks of this world who engage in the worst kind of making shit up to sell books. And yes Atlantis is a staple of these cranks because it's a magnet to the New Age kooks who like these books.

It appears that TV shows do it too, shamefully even National Geographic. There's nothing like a bit of bait and switch to drum up ratings. Toss in the word Atlantis and tsunami to promote the show, front load with hyperbolic reimaginings of Atlantis with phony CGI and then string the viewer out for an hour before concluding it's just a sunken boat loaded with rocks, or a dumping ground for stone anchors, or some natural feature or some other mundane structure and there is zero evidence to support any other conclusion.

Re:Oh sure

[Monchanger]

Well put. TFA has all the hallmarks of made-for-television "science."

Doing just a tiny bit of digging I wonder if Prof. Freund is actually a crackpot, or if he just looks like it by his association with mass-media.

There's a little more information about this show to be found in a Harvard article advertising the screening they had last week. Probably not enough to convince any skeptics, but it is more substantial than just saying he's got an intriguing satellite photo the way TFA does. I don't think those two stone figurines in the photo of him are very impressive, and certainly not indicative of the advanced civilization Atlantis was supposed to be.

He has also been featured on NOVA several years ago in another very unlikely and controversial finding. That one was actually in his field of expertise, Judaic history, but the transcript suggests that very little humility is observed in reaching his conclusions. Now this could all just be due to editing, an unfortunate choices of words captured on film, and the need for ratings. And perhaps he's put himself in a position where he can't say something like "no, that's misleading- don't use that title for the show." At the moment I doubt that all of these are the case.

Until I can watch the show to see more information, I find it concerning how he keeps running into these very improbable "finds" and how this new one isn't even in his primary field. I'll be counting the number of weasel words appearing in the show. How many per minute constitutes pseudoscience? My second question is this- obviously a NatGeo show does nothing to improve the credibility of one's work in professional circles, but is cooperating with mass-media to secure funding (esp. in a day where it's hard to come) for actual archaeology work wrong, and should it hinder one's credibility to use such funding?

The article casts doubt on itself!

[nuckfuts]

While it is hard to know with certainty that the site in Spain in Atlantis...

Yep, that's what the world has been waiting for. More unproven speculation about Atlantis.

Just discover it already.

[tregeagle]

Yup it's true, King Arthur is waiting in Atlantis.
  He's pretty bored, the last bit of excitement was when Elvis arrived and gave Captain Nemo a wedgie.

I was starting to worry!

[Black Parrot]

Usually Atlantis gets discovered every six months, but I haven't heard anything for nearly two years!

(Insert usual diatribe about the purpose of Plato's fiction, and the idiocy of anyone who believes it. Sorry, but I'm tired of typing it up everytime a new discovery is announced on Slashdot.)

Re:I was starting to worry!

[Konsalik]

The recession caused budget cuts and layoffs in the "does-aquaman-know?" dept.

Re:I was starting to worry!

[ebuck]

Usually Atlantis gets discovered every six months, but I haven't heard anything for nearly two years!

(Insert usual diatribe about the purpose of Plato's fiction, and the idiocy of anyone who believes it. Sorry, but I'm tired of typing it up everytime a new discovery is announced on Slashdot.)

So I was telling this really bad joke on the Internet, and I heard a lan tis!

It's not fucking Atlantis!

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Atlantis never existed. It is a fictional place. Plato made the whole thing up! He admitted that!

Atlantis vs. Athens

[Troll-Under-D'Bridge]

The mythical Atlantis represented Athens in the play and was sunk to show that the result of such political arrogance resulted in destruction.

That's not exactly correct. Atlantis is set up as the anti-thesis, or opposite, of Athens, an anti-Athens, if you will. The second paragraph of the Wikipedia article[*] on Atlantis states:

In Plato's account, Atlantis was a naval power lying "in front of the Pillars of Hercules" that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune".

Of course, one could still mean that Atlantis, by being the opposite of Athens, actually represents Athens! But that's a semantic subtlety best reserved for a philosophical forum, not a social tech news site.

[*]I know. Not the most trustworthy resource. But the basic details appear to be borne out by a simple GSearch (keywords: "Atlantis" "Athens") showing the clear distinction being made between two advanced ancient states.

A possible Location for Atlantis

[rossdee]

Great, will Joe Flanaghan and David Hewlett be back as Col Sheppard and Dr Mckay ? I could care less about Ronin and Teyla

I know where it is

[dlgeek]

I know exactly where Atlantis is! It's at 28 degrees, 35 minutes, 8.89 seconds north by 80 degrees, 39 minutes, 17.97 seconds west.

(When will slashcode ever support non-ascii symbols?)

Re:I know where it is

[bloodhawk]

really you make the effort to work out the location and you still don't get it?

Re:I know where it is

[rossdee]

Whooooshhh

(thats either the sound of that joke flying over your head , or STS 135 going up to rescue Congreswoman Giffords husband and the rest of the Endeavour crew.( if some chunk of ice fell of it on takeoff and damaged it so it may not be safe for reentry.

Just a fluff piece for National Geographic. Shame.

[__aavqan3009]

Reuters should be ashamed.

Typical!

[savi]

In any historical discussion on slashdot, it's only a matter of time until the gourd-deniers show up. Bunch of crazies. They're the only group more persistent than creationists and more dense than global warming deniers.

Just wait...

[Penguinisto]

I figure that by the year 4011, Slashdot (or its analogue) will be posting stories about some dude claiming to have found the remains of the 3-kilometer-long "RMS Gigantic", as described in the popular tale by the ancient author called Spielberg.

(...and there will *still* be jokes about hot grits, jokes about Soviets, and the occasional goatse link. And people will still bitch about the new layout).

Where next?

[kooky45]

In 2,000 years time will researchers claim to have found the locations of Lilliput and Blefuscu?!

Spoiler on SGA finale.

[Barryke]

Atlantis was parked on Earth years ago.

Re:Just a fluff piece for National Geographic. Sha

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

Damn right - and in exceptionally poor taste as well.

How can someone who's first thought on hearing of the disaster in Japan is to release a tsunami-related press release for a TV show live with themselves?

again?

[hesaigo999ca]

I thought we already covered this one,..... they left a while back to fight the wraith, and wont be back till the finale....in that ship of theirs,
then we will all see what atlantis looks like....sheesh!

doesn't really look all that anciet-y

[foxpaws]

says Col. Sheppard of this newly found so-called "Atlantis"

Really, though, we could use a few ZPM's (pronounced in that cute Canadian way, of course) and a shield or two. A stargate would be nice, but I like the Pegusus ones. Better lights, more disco-y.

Oh, and a puddle jumper.

Earliest sci-fi

[Slur]

It's arguable that the earliest sci-fi exists in Hindu literature dating to ~2500 years ago. Flying machines, missiles, energy beams, and space ships are all featured in the Ramayana. Sure, the main characters are godlike beings, but they definitely haz the high tex!

Re:Earliest sci-fi

[YodasEvilTwin]

Pretty sure the Bible (OT) has stuff about flying saucers and lasers that are even older. But, of course, people say it's about "angels" ...

Re:Earliest sci-fi

[mikael]

I read about that - there was a book about Vimanas which claimed to be translated from ancient Sanskrit documents.
It was fascinating read at a sci-fi/steampunk level as the technology described was more basic physics than anything way out there:

o Tinted windows to screen against infra-red / UV light to avoid annoying glare - at the time I read this book, the windows on our office block were actually laminated with blue/purple plastic to do this exact task.

o A pair of parabolic dishes to amplify sound to detect other systems.
o Colored oils and a light projector to project images of lions, tigers, skulls on surfaces to scare the natives.
o Shaped pipes (wider at the bottom than the top) and hot wires to create a propulsion system (like those hot wire standing wave pipe experiments)
o Recessed cylinders along the side of the craft with propellers to create a stabilisation system
o Releasabe fireworks/dyes to create camouflage smoke trails
o Phosphorus screens, lenses and crystals to detect buried explosives (rays would be emitted, then reflected back to illuminate the phosphorus screen). I wondered if that would be some kind of X-ray emission/UV absorption system

Really wonder how many of these actually would work...

Stories about totally fake archaeology?

[GregLaden]

This should be filed in the Slashdot-Cares-Not-About-Credibility department.

All right you Atlantis-sceptics

[tehcyder]

How come it's still called the fucking Alantic ocean, huh?

Then you've never done grant writing

[bussdriver]

I won't go into how real scientists are not necessarily "Skeptics" which is a over simplified characterization of the philosophy of science. Disbelief as well as belief run counter to good science- ideally that is the case; however, intellectually honest believers/disbelievers can accomplish a lot of good science - the science ideals themselves are not the greatest motivators of humans... Irrational behavior is the NORM for humans not the other way around and this goes for practitioners of science as well.

The masses and their mass media warp things extremely and the influence of scientists and the mass media is bidirectional. Time travel and parallel universes for example are really taken way off to the point where scientists are playing with the tripe - its a far bigger leap but more acceptable to people right now.

1) writing grants involves targeting people on the outside; motivation/inspiration and marketing while trying not to discredit oneself too much with the potential rewards claimed. I think of it as being similar to media whoring.

2) Describing to the public in a similar but more sensationalized entertainment form is bound to have a "Hollywood" warp but it can motivate people to get started on something that they wouldn't have otherwise. I find this is usually quite harmless and far far cheaper than a stupid manned mission to mars to "inspire the next generation of scientists."

Some believer who's gone a bit too far may practice bad science but still could be an extremely valuable contributor - He may find signs of primitive cultures and lose interest in ape-men while looking for his mass-media inspired utopia - but others can build upon it; at least by disproving his theories.

Global Dimming scientists were not treated well - and they were not being sensationalists; however, if they had been bashed down long enough with tattered reputations I'd not be surprised if some didn't start getting grants from the coal/oil industries - what more would they have to lose? Anyhow, in the end they came out fine as continual work on their side as well as the majority opposition (disbelievers and skeptics) eventually found out Global Dimming fits and actually strengthens Global warming science. The process wasn't the Utopian view of science purported by pop culture.

I like to ponder what we'd think of Egypt if they weren't into making stone records... How did humans get on Hawaii? The 'technology' to do that had to be extremely advanced for the time period; it could have become legendary - but did not... or well, if it was we've not found records - they weren't into stone monuments. Atlantis may or may not have a kernel of truth behind it won't likely ever know without a time machine... ;-p (I wouldn't be surprised if the name turned out to be a variation for other reasons...like the story sounded better if it was a distant island instead of beneath the local volcano.)

C'mon guys!

[GCPSoft]

Everybody knows Atlantis is floating near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, after being moved from the Pegasus galaxy...