Atlantis: What is it all about?

[Birdjaguar]

The YD ended 11,700 years ago with an incredibly fast and strong warming trend, Plato's Atlantis was submerged 11,600. According to the story Atlantis was west of Gibraltar, could be NW Africa or SW Spain/Portugal. Might even be a bit further north, before the North Sea ice sheet melted and flooded the English Channel many people would have called it home. Possibly the Canary Islands, I don't think it was across the Atlantic, according to the story Atlanteans were at war with eastern Mediterranean cultures.

Atlantis has long bedeviled western folks. Plato is the only source and his story is fraught with confusing details. @Berzerker mentioned it in the conspiracy thread and I thought there is enough stuff on it to have its own thread. Opinions certainly vary.

All we know about Atlantis comes from Plato's two stories: Timeus and Critas. Timeus provides the summary of the Atlantean Saga and Critias all the details of Atlanean and Athenian society. Plato further claims that he heard the story from his ancestor Solon who heard it from Egyptian priests.

So the question at hand is: Was Plato's story of Atlantis made up or did he base his Atlantis writing on actual places and events?

Simple timeline

• Mycenaean Culture: ~1600-1100 BCE
• Greek Dark Age: ~1100-800 BCE
• Homer's Illiad: ~750 BCE
• Solon visits Egypt: ~600 BCE
• Plato's writings: ~360 BCE
• Atlantis story grows legs after 1552 when Spaniard Lopez de Gomara suggest that Native Americans are descendants of Atlanteans.
• 2021: Berzerker claims that the YD were responsible for the destruction of Atlantis about 11,600 years ago but at an unknown location.

The search for Atlantis has been ongoing for 500 years and nothing has been settled to the satisfaction of many. One camp says that the whole thing is false and can be ignored. The other camp is all over the map about what, when, where.

More to come, but you may post.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The gist of Solon's story:

• Two civilizations were at war. One was Greek and the other an island nation
• The Greeks won
• A disaster destroyed both

One has to consider the real world capabilities of naval warfare and trade. How far could Greek warships venture and wage war?

So where might Atlantis be found?
Mostly, we know where it wasn’t. Civilizations and cultures, even small ones, leave traces. Great civilizations leave lots of things behind. Since the Straits of Gibraltar was not settled upon as the recognized Pillars of Hercules until about 250 BCE and prior to that, was applied to over a dozen different places around the Mediterranean Sea, we can set aside that as important or definitive about locating Atlantis. What is more important is the actual trading area for ships of the era. Most trading by sea was limited to the eastern Mediterranean where long distances over open water could be avoided. In addition, to fight a war with an island nation, that enemy nation must be within the practicalities of Mycenaean naval capabilities.

So when might Atlantis have existed?
The actual geologic history of the area makes the 9000 BCE date quite unlikely. Ice sheets covered much of Europe and sea levels were lower such that many of the islands were part of the mainland. But if the Egyptian lunar calendar is used for counting back, rather than 9600 BCE we get a more reasonable 1350 BCE or so date.

More to come

 

[Zardnaar]

I would suspect it's a tale handed down about the lost "golden era" if Mycenae/Crete filtered through several centuries of the Greek dark ages.

So a mixture if myth, legend and events handed down verbally.

See reports on Assyria. The locals lived near the ruins but didn't know who built them in the time off Xenoohon a mere 200 years later.

So some cyclopean ruins combined with several centuries of no written record and half remembered tales handed down from the past and you have Atlantis.

More modern example Aliens and pyramids.

 

[Berzerker]

Santorini blew up around 1600 bc it was thought a possible source of the story since that was 1000 years earlier and some thought the 9000 years may have been 900. I dont think Santorini would have been home to the civilization needed to support the war machine to take on mainland powers.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It's a myth. Period, end of story, go that way to buy the t-shirt.

Who/what is "YD"?

 

[Birdjaguar]

The Younger Dryas theory of Atlantis

https://atlantis.fyi/blog/atlantis-and-the-younger-dryas-impact-hypothesis

 

[Kyriakos]

I would suspect it's a tale handed down about the lost "golden era" if Mycenae/Crete filtered through several centuries of the Greek dark ages.

So a mixture if myth, legend and events handed down verbally.

See reports on Assyria. The locals lived near the ruins but didn't know who built them in the time off Xenoohon a mere 200 years later.

So some cyclopean ruins combined with several centuries of no written record and half remembered tales handed down from the past and you have Atlantis.

More modern example Aliens and pyramids.

It's not like Crete was alien to Plato, though. He even supports its style of civics iirc (in his Laws book). Crete had been a backwater for literally aeons by then.

Some elements of the story can be tied to the Minoans, such as hot running water pools. The Minoan civ collapsed, likely as a result of tidal waves from the eruption of the volcano at Thera (now known mostly as Santorini).

 

[Zardnaar]

It's not like Crete was alien to Plato, though. He even supports its style of civics iirc (in his Laws book). Crete had been a backwater for literally aeons by then.

Some elements of the story can be tied to the Minoans, such as hot running water pools. The Minoan civ collapsed, likely as a result of tidal waves from the eruption of the volcano at Thera (now known mostly as Santorini).

Plato wrote centuries later though.

Amount the common people I suspect Thera was part of the origin myth of Atlantis.

Add several centuries of illiteracy plus embellishments etc you get Atlantis.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

The Med was once dry was it not? Perhaps ancient cultures lived on the land before it flooded.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Atlantis is in the Pegasus galaxy.

 

[GenMarshall]

As a whole, it's a mythical story.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

It's a myth. Period, end of story, go that way to buy the t-shirt.

More like the endpoint of the story. As several people have pointed out here, Atlantis-the-Superrace is a Platonic fiction, but the archaeological evidence suggests the myth ties back to the Minoan collapse. Mythology is, among other things, a quite ingenious way for preliterate societies to transmit information across generations. Much of eastern Mediterranean myth is, at its literal essence, allegorical accounts not just of natural disasters generally, but of specific events: the Theran eruption is a possible source for the Hittite legend of Ullikummi, while the ensuing tsunami would plausibly inspire Poseidon's temper tantrum over losing the nomination of Athens' patron god. Cyclopes are personified volcanoes and Medusa and her sisters imply a volcanic chain (although the precise range remains disputed), while cross-cultural parallels suggest Prometheus can actually be visited today: Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus, which remained an active volcano as late as 50 AD.

In short: just because it's a myth doesn't mean it's untrue. If you're into cognitive science, geology, cultural history, or just want to know where these stories come from, the book is well worth the read. Once you know how to read through the obviously fantastic, myths are actually treasure maps to real hidden worlds.

 

[Birdjaguar]

More added in post 2

Erroneous posts removed.

 

[Berzerker]

I need to read up more on that theory, the impact is what they're blaming for the onset of the YD when we were warming up coming out of the last peak glaciation. That sent us back into ice age conditions for 1300 years and Plato's timing places Atlantis shortly after the YD ended, not when it began. It is estimated Greenland warmed ~20f in a few decades.

The leading theory is vast fresh water lakes in N America trapped by geography and 1-2 mile high ice sheets drained away from the Atlantic but as the ice sheets receded reservoirs could drain eastward and eventually the north. These new drains were opened violently as large glacial lakes broke thru ice dams causing an 'immediate' reduction in heat reaching the N Atlantic.

During the YD it was the N Atlantic and neighboring regions that cooled the most and also warmed the most when ocean currents returned to typical interglacial conditions. And past advances and retreats of the ice sheets show these quick wild swings are common.

The impact theory says the YD resulted from impact(s) from comet debris, apparently there is a crater in Greenland they think might be the right age. Off the coast of N Australia are 2 craters and there is evidence of biomass being torched along with spikes in cosmic dust. The timing doesn't match Plato's story but could fit with another Greek myth.

https://atlantis.fyi/blog/atlantis-and-the-younger-dryas-impact-hypothesis

Good link, but while they're right about the timing an impact could have destroyed Atlantis with earthquakes and tsunamis. Doesn't sound like rapid sea rise did in Atlantis. I didn't realize this but Plato doesn't say Atlantis was destroyed 9000 years ago, he said the war between Atlantis and Athens was 9000 years ago.

It's a myth. Period, end of story, go that way to buy the t-shirt.

Who/what is "YD"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Mazama

a 7,700 year old myth

 

[Valka D'Ur]

More like the endpoint of the story. As several people have pointed out here, Atlantis-the-Superrace is a Platonic fiction, but the archaeological evidence suggests the myth ties back to the Minoan collapse. Mythology is, among other things, a quite ingenious way for preliterate societies to transmit information across generations. Much of eastern Mediterranean myth is, at its literal essence, allegorical accounts not just of natural disasters generally, but of specific events: the Theran eruption is a possible source for the Hittite legend of Ullikummi, while the ensuing tsunami would plausibly inspire Poseidon's temper tantrum over losing the nomination of Athens' patron god. Cyclopes are personified volcanoes and Medusa and her sisters imply a volcanic chain (although the precise range remains disputed), while cross-cultural parallels suggest Prometheus can actually be visited today: Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus, which remained an active volcano as late as 50 AD.

In short: just because it's a myth doesn't mean it's untrue. If you're into cognitive science, geology, cultural history, or just want to know where these stories come from, the book is well worth the read. Once you know how to read through the obviously fantastic, myths are actually treasure maps to real hidden worlds.

Yes, I know that myths are often based on fact, but it's one thing to find a fact or two to plausibly go on, and it's another to ignore the possibility that the facts are actually "facts" that were embellished by later peoples and good luck finding the original facts.

Obviously Troy is one thing that turned out to be true - there was a city there. Actually, there were a lot of cities, and according to the documentary series In Search of the Trojan War, Schliemann accidentally blasted through much of the ruins he was actually looking for, since he misread his maps and findings. But he did find cities, and he did find some nice stuff that he looted, rather than properly documenting it as a modern archaeologist would.

As for Atlantis... There's a series of biblical/historical novels by Peter Danielson (house name; the books were actually written by four different authors, though the one who wrote most of them includes the part of the series dealing with the Trojan War, Moses, and the eruption of Thera).

Waitaminute. Those three events are a lot to cram into the same novel (or two; it's been awhile since I read them). Danielson, in addition to cutting down the 40 years of wandering to 10 years, decided to explain the plagues inflicted on Egypt as resulting from Thera's eruption causing all sorts of abnormal things to happen, as some of the animals' normal habits were greatly disturbed, the "water turning to blood" was actually red sediment, and the parting of the Red Sea... well, massive volcanic explosions and earthquakes aren't an uncommon combination.

As I was reading this, I started musing about Atlantis. What we know as Thera was the home island of the main branch of the Children of the Lion - wealthy metalworkers, artisans, and merchants. They had a far-reaching influence all along the Mediterranean and inland. The head of the family and some of his scholarly friends had advance warning that Thera was showing signs of erupting, so they took steps to pack up their people and important belongings and business records and relocate elsewhere that would be safe. They got out in time, but most of the common people didn't.

So is this Danielson's retelling of Atlantis? Maybe. But until archaeologists and other -ologists can say for sure that they've found it, I'm not jumping on the "Atlantis was real" bandwagon. To me, it's a fun story that's fodder for novels and umpteen different Doctor Who stories, none of which are in agreement.

 

[Ajidica]

All I know is that Atlantis was one of the formative movies of my childhood.

 

[Berzerker]

The version of the plagues I heard was a red tide drove frogs ashore, they died and flies proliferated. Hail or dust storms, the first born dying from a fungal contamination of food stores, parting of the Red Sea by a rare but actual northeastern wind resulting in exposed ridges. Or was that the Sea of Reeds.

 

[Ajidica]

The version of the plagues I heard was a red tide drove frogs ashore, they died and flies proliferated. Hail or dust storms, the first born dying from a fungal contamination of food stores, parting of the Red Sea by a rare but actual northeastern wind resulting in exposed ridges. Or was that the Sea of Reeds.

I dunno, the only account of the Plagues of Egypt make it pretty clear what was responsible.

This is what the great LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs. The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. The frogs will go up on you and your people and all your officials.

— Exodus 8:1–4

 

[Robert Can't]

More added in post 2

Erroneous posts removed.

Not sure what was "erroneous" about my post so I will further elaborate. John Anthony West and Robert Schoch showed the age of the Sphinx to be much older than previously though. If you want the sources the basics are covered in West's 1979 book Serpent in the Sky or you could read Robert Schoch on the topic here.

Please do not simply delete evidence you find inconvenient to your own narratives

 

[NinjaCow64]

I concur. John Anthony West is one of the greatest Egyptologists (he won an Emmy) and his theories on the Sphinx and its connections (and importance!) to Atlantis is truly exquisite.