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Researchers Find Possible Atlantis Location

Posted by samzenpus on from the does-aquaman-know? dept.

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.'"

44 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Yawn by mseeger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Yawn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Yawn by mseeger · · Score: 2

      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

    3. Re:Yawn by schmidt349 · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Yawn by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    5. Re:Yawn by Dan541 · · Score: 3, Funny

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

      --
      An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
    6. Re:Yawn by sortius_nod · · Score: 2

      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...

    7. Re:Yawn by Bender0x7D1 · · Score: 3, Funny

      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.

      --
      Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
    8. Re:Yawn by schmidt349 · · Score: 3, Funny

      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...

    9. Re:Yawn by Gutboy · · Score: 2

      Did you mean wait until 2011?

    10. Re:Yawn by Scrameustache · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --

      You can't take the sky from me...

    11. Re:Yawn by schmidt349 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    12. Re:Yawn by schmidt349 · · Score: 2

      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.

    13. Re:Yawn by blincoln · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "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.

      --
      "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
    14. Re:Yawn by JoeMerchant · · Score: 2

      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.

    15. Re:Yawn by ebuck · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    16. Re:Yawn by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    17. Re:Yawn by Sique · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
  2. Horatio Caine says... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    YEAAAAAAAAAH!

  3. Atlantis...? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

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

  4. Atlantis - Plato's example of Athens in a Play by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.)

    1. Re:Atlantis - Plato's example of Athens in a Play by pjt33 · · Score: 2

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

      So was Troy.

    2. Re:Atlantis - Plato's example of Athens in a Play by MemoryDragon · · Score: 2

      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.

    3. Re:Atlantis - Plato's example of Athens in a Play by Dabido · · Score: 2
      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!!!!

      --
      Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
  5. Make it stop by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!

    --
    Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
    1. Re:Make it stop by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 2

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

      --
      May the Maths Be with you!
    2. Re:Make it stop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Make it stop by Black+Parrot · · Score: 2

      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.)

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  6. Thera/Santorini? by JonBuck · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Thera/Santorini? by rhathar · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      http://www.chaotickingdoms.com
    2. Re:Thera/Santorini? by Evil+Pete · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      Bitter and proud of it.
  7. Plato has a lot to answer for ... by Kittenman · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

    --
    "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
  8. Was it not in Plato’s head? by Flavianoep · · Score: 2

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

    --
    Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
  9. Atlantis real location by lordshipmayhem · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:Atlantis real location by Zumbs · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
    2. Re:Atlantis real location by Keramos · · Score: 2

      Or the Pegasus Galaxy, perhaps?

  10. they found Tartarus by www.sorehands.com · · Score: 2

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

    --
    Fight Spammers!
  11. Billy Batts by Ol+Biscuitbarrel · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Billy Batts by coredog64 · · Score: 3, Funny

      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.

  12. I'm appalled by zill · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

  13. Atlantis vs. Athens by Troll-Under-D'Bridge · · Score: 2

    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.

  14. I know where it is by dlgeek · · Score: 2

    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?)

  15. Typical! by savi · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

  16. Re:Just a fluff piece for National Geographic. Sha by Curmudgeonlyoldbloke · · Score: 2

    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?