Some more on Atlantis

[Cormac Mac Airt]

Easy.
They hired David Copperfield.

Harte

And even that was an illusion! 

cormac

[IdeomotorPrisoner]

It's not an account, strictly speaking, it's a story meant to teach a lesson about hubris. While Thera may have been an inspiration for the story (possibly one of several) it is not Plato's Atlantis as it is not where Plato puts it, it's not the size Plato makes it, nor is it the same timeframe Plato places it. It's so far over-detailed as to be ridiculous. Add to all that that the Greeks, who wouldn't even exist then, would know absolutely nothing about a timeframe 9000 years before Solon. It's akin to "a long, long time ago in a land far, far away"!

cormac

Yeah, I know he heard from "Egyptian Priests", who say it happened 9000 years prior.. E.g. around the Gobekli Tepe era.. right....

Egypt started at the end of The Green Sahara. Their Egyptian priest knowledge didnt exist yet. So its weird for them to hear a different story of different unrelated destroyed concentric city of a seafaring power. 

They were trade partners with the Minoans .  They probably lost a few cargo shipments in the catastrophe if anything.

All together, I think its all based on the Minoans and Thera, a known oral myth just like Gilgamesh in Mesopotamia until written 2150, but gave it to "lost knowledge" to become the hubris Allegory of Today. 

The Micean oral account of Thera, which loosely fit the desciption + "An ancient Egyptian secret" = an  "original" Hubris allegory...

In my mind, you're looking for an allegory loosely based on a singular event that happened and fits, everything else is a fools quest for a phantom society made up later.

[Cormac Mac Airt]

Yeah, I know he heard from "Egyptian Priests", who say it happened 9000 years prior.. E.g. around the Gobekli Tepe era.. right....

Egypt started at the end of The Green Sahara. Their Egyptian priest knowledge didnt exist yet. So its weird for them to hear a different story of different unrelated destroyed concentric city of a seafaring power. 

They were trade partners with the Minoans .  They probably lost a few cargo shipments in the catastrophe if anything.

All together, I think its all based on the Minoans and Thera, a known oral myth just like Gilgamesh in Mesopotamia until 2150, but gave it to "lost knowledge" to become the hubris Allegory. 

The Micean oral account of Thera, which loosely fit the desciption + "Ancient Egyptian secret" =  "original" Hubris allegory...

In my mind, you're looking for an allegory loosely based on a singular event, everything else is a fools quest for a phantom society.

I don't see it as based on anything much really. When other cultures ripped off story elements from their neighbors those elements were still rather near in location. There was never a necessity to take a story from, say, Thera and transplant it 1500 MILES from where Thera was located, hype its size up by some 30+ times, place it so many millenia in the past and then claim they defeated ALL the countries in the Mediterranean with Bronze Age technology. It's just asinine to take a story that ridiculously far IMO and just to teach a lesson in hubris. Such could be done with far less exaggeration!

In the meantime cultures in the western African/Southern Spain region are being overshadowed by those who wish to pigeon-hole them under the "Atlantis" umbrella!

cormac

[Randyvine]

Technically, we are still smack in the middle of an ice age aka the Quaternary Glaciation.

I've read that somewhere. I believe the Pleistocene (had to spell check) was the period?
I guess I just don't picture Atlantis as being anywhere near a period of global winter.

Okay so I just had a look and read that the melting process started in the pleistocene
at circa 18,ooo BCE. Plato puts the destruction of Atlantis at around 11,600 years ago.
Right at the same time of the Younger Dryas event. I don't recall Plato describing the
time of Atlantis as being frozen over for such an enormous period. A detail that I doubt
would escape being part of any narrative Plato would write. So that seems to work
against the existence of this great sea faring and technologically advanced culture. But
oh look again and the destruction of Atlantis comes at a time that coincides almost perfectly
with a known cosmic event that supports Platos account the YD. 

I guess by this alone I can see every reason for keeping to the narrative of hard science.
What I can't understand is how keeping to the scientific catagorized dictation. Is in
any way a reason for the search to be deemed as for that of a myth. Wasn't Plato more
of historian or scholar than a novelist? I don't see that an Athenian of well known
stature would even consider recording an allegory regarding the consequences of
immorality in a society that was likely no less immoral in it's own rtight. Why does
science see a reason to stop searching for "a myth" when it's own record should be
lessons well learned siting the likes of Troy and Ur as the two greater knowns.

Seems odd to me how science over and over scoffs at plausible alternatives
when it should be the most excited and open minded at any possibility.
Could just call it laziness but I know damn well that isn't the case. Science
needs stop being such a pisser! :)

[Cormac Mac Airt]

I don't recall Plato describing the time of Atlantis as being frozen over for such an enormous period. 

Wasn't Plato more of historian or scholar than a novelist?

Plato had no need to describe Atlantis as frozen over since glaciers below circa 2000 meters didn't exist as far south as the southern Iberian Peninsula during the last glacial period and he would know nothing about them in any case.

No, Plato was not an historian, he was a philosopher. There's a huge difference. 

cormac

[Randyvine]

No, Plato was not an historian, he was a philosopher. There's a huge difference. 

cormac

That makes more sense now thank you I'm a truck driver! lol

Just doing my best to learn with a true interest and wouldn't dare match wits
with any of you. Unless it's HARTE! I'll take him on anyday. lmao

[guyfriday]

I made a post on ATS about this, but I'll repost part of that thread here to make a point about how a lot of people don't understand what the world looked like during the story that is being discussed. 

9000 years before the time of Plato would make it around 9300 BC. This would be only a few generations out from the Würm glaciation WIKI.

The Würm glaciation (German: Würm-Kaltzeit or Würm-Glazial or Würm stage, colloquially often also Würmeiszeit or Würmzeit; c.f. ice age), in the literature usually just referred to as the Würm,[sup] [/sup] often spelt "Wurm", was the last glacial period in the Alpine region. It is the youngest of the major glaciations of the region that extended beyond the Alps themselves. It is, like most of the other ice ages of the Pleistocene epoch, named after a river, the Würm in Bavaria, a tributary of the Amper. The Würm ice age can be dated to the time about 115,000 to 11,700 years ago, the sources differing depending on whether the long transition phases between the glacials and interglacials (warmer periods) are allocated to one or other of these periods. The average annual temperatures during the Würm ice age in the Alpine Foreland were below −3 °C (today +7 °C). This has been determined from changes in the vegetation (pollen analysis) as well as differences in the facies.

In that thread I postulated that Atlantis is located in the area of Lombardy and Veneto of Italy. With the island of Atlantis being lost due to a glacial collapse and dumping of a glacial lake located in the Alps. There are land scaring and geological evidence of this collapse that occurred during the 9300BC era. 

But hey, never mind that an advance society of the time might mean anything from using iron works to just providing a better political system. Let's just keep pretending that its highly advanced technology that we don't have today like hovercrafts and time travel. Let's also place the whole place so high on a pedestal that no matter what is found, nobody will ever accept the truth of it. 

Go and reread the Critias and see for yourselves that the island of Atlantis is nothing more than a place where the northern armies grouped up and were being led by Atlas's offspring to fight the Athenians.

[Trelane]

What if, and please hear me out, it was just as intended a morality story? Nothing more , nothing less.

[andy06shake]

I've read that somewhere. I believe the Pleistocene (had to spell check) was the period?
I guess I just don't picture Atlantis as being anywhere near a period of global winter.

Okay so I just had a look and read that the melting process started in the pleistocene
at circa 18,ooo BCE. Plato puts the destruction of Atlantis at around 11,600 years ago.
Right at the same time of the Younger Dryas event. I don't recall Plato describing the
time of Atlantis as being frozen over for such an enormous period. A detail that I doubt
would escape being part of any narrative Plato would write. So that seems to work
against the existence of this great sea faring and technologically advanced culture. But
oh look again and the destruction of Atlantis comes at a time that coincides almost perfectly
with a known cosmic event that supports Platos account the YD. 

I guess by this alone I can see every reason for keeping to the narrative of hard science.
What I can't understand is how keeping to the scientific catagorized dictation. Is in
any way a reason for the search to be deemed as for that of a myth. Wasn't Plato more
of historian or scholar than a novelist? I don't see that an Athenian of well known
stature would even consider recording an allegory regarding the consequences of
immorality in a society that was likely no less immoral in it's own rtight. Why does
science see a reason to stop searching for "a myth" when it's own record should be
lessons well learned siting the likes of Troy and Ur as the two greater knowns.

Seems odd to me how science over and over scoffs at plausible alternatives
when it should be the most excited and open minded at any possibility.
Could just call it laziness but I know damn well that isn't the case. Science
needs stop being such a pisser! :)

Sorry for the late response, Randyvine.

I've always been interested in the topic of Atlantis since I was a boy.

I recall watching the likes of "Warlords of Atlantis" or "Flash Gordon" on BB2 in black and white early Sunday/Saturday mornings. 

The thing about Science is that it doesn't stop searching for myths, it just requires evidence that can be tested.

Plato likely used a mix of history and allegory.

Which quite possibly means Atlantis is symbolic.

Or based on real events like Santorini or Younger Dryas memories. 

Who knows what's down there, all the same.

Im mean, did they not allegedly find the fabled "Dwarka" not that long ago? 

If that place can exist...many have existed...

[Trelane]

The main problem is outside of Plato's tale , there is nothing from ancient times (any civilization) documenting this cataclysmic event (as described). Additionally, there is simply nothing in the geologic record to point to as an "Aha!" moment. This all stems from people reading all the latter works (that huckster Donnelly and fraud Cayce) and then not truly understanding what Plato was truly driving at with his story.