Atlantis: What is it all about?

[Birdjaguar]

Doesn't this seem incredibly suspect? Yeah, a lot of time has passed, but you'd think we'd be able to link the existence of an advanced civilization to more than just one person.

Sounds like it's far more likely the case of one guy making something up or exaggerating an existing story or both. I bet this is simply the case of Plato going on vacation to some island, taking psychedelics and having an amazing time, then returning and trying to explaining how amazing it was. Of course he's going to embellish everything.

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a relatively advanced civilization based on an island we don't know about, but I don't think they had flying cars or sexbots.

Some scholars think that Plato's plan was to write an epic poem (popular in his day) and Critias and Timeus were background for that effort. The epic was never written. All of the fanciful "facts" about Atlantis were made up for his treatise on how intelligent governance was able to defeat wealth and power. He rooted his idea in the family story Solon brought back from Egypt 250 years earlier. So all of the various physical markers Atlantis hunters look for are just fantasy. Certainly naval warfare in the Atlantic was out of the question. What remains is the question about whether or not Solon's story about two waring nations has any validity. If it does then the likelihood is that Mycenean Greece and Theran/Minoan people went to war and the Greeks won. The eruption destroyed Thera and wrecked Crete and then the Greeks fell into their Dark Age.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Not necessarily - it could be a war with a Greek colony somewhere, that would only require Atlantis to be in "range" of that colony,

or was it war with the actual Greek city states ?

I'm not sure that Greek "colonies" existed prior to 1100 BCE. City states might have, but what we know is all about a naval war with a powerful advanced nation.

 

[Joij21]

Is it logical to assume they didn't record recipes? I would be amazed if they didn't.

Most Egyptians we're illiterate so unless they're rich and powerful most people's favorite recipes would not be recorded.

The Egyptians documented much more than most people think they did. Priests were not the only literate segment of their society. Yes, I think we can reasonably believe that they wrote down recipes, if only for the benefit of the cooks employed to prepare the dishes for the Pharaoh's banquets, and any banquets given by other high-ranking members of the nobility.

Yeah but it was only the rich who could afford an education. Most of the population was poor and thus illiterate.

And how can it take such a short time to go from Canaan to Egypt, but decades to go in the other direction? Moses was supposedly educated as a prince, which means literacy and military training; didn't his tutors ever teach him about maps and the geography of the world that the Egyptians knew about at the time?

It's heavily implied that God told Moses to keep the Jews in the desert for forty years in order to "purify" them.

There is a lot of killing that happens during their time in Exodus in order to eliminate the weak willed or those unwilling to believe in Yahweh so only those Hebrews who are absolutely fanatical are allowed to enter the promised land.

 

[E.man]

Doesn't this seem incredibly suspect? Yeah, a lot of time has passed, but you'd think we'd be able to link the existence of an advanced civilization to more than just one person.

Sounds like it's far more likely the case of one guy making something up or exaggerating an existing story or both. I bet this is simply the case of Plato going on vacation to some island, taking psychedelics and having an amazing time, then returning and trying to explaining how amazing it was. Of course he's going to embellish everything.

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a relatively advanced civilization based on an island we don't know about, but I don't think they had flying cars or sexbots.

Something like the accuracy of Herodotus?

 

[Birdjaguar]

The only device yet found in the Mediterranean area that is unexplained and which is beyond the known/accepted tech of the ancient era is the Anitkythera Mechanism. Not only is its functionality breathtaking, the manufacture of its parts appear to be beyond the craftmanship of that era's capability. What this device has done is push back the advent of skilled clock-making from the Middle Ages to Ancient Greece. But so far, this single item is the only example of such skills yet found.

https://greekreporter.com/2021/03/1...first-computer-continues-to-amaze-scientists/
https://arstechnica.com/science/202...-piece-of-the-puzzling-antikythera-mechanism/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

 

[Kyriakos]

The only device yet found in the Mediterranean area that is unexplained and which is beyond the known/accepted tech of the ancient era is the Anitkythera Mechanism. Not only is its functionality breathtaking, the manufacture of its parts appear to be beyond the craftmanship of that era's capability. What this device has done is push back the advent of skilled clock-making from the Middle Ages to Ancient Greece. But so far, this single item is the only example of such skills yet found.

https://greekreporter.com/2021/03/1...first-computer-continues-to-amaze-scientists/
https://arstechnica.com/science/202...-piece-of-the-puzzling-antikythera-mechanism/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

Afaik it has been explained, and is an intricate analog computer which calculates (primarily iirc) lunar circles

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Kyriakos Yes they do know much of what it did. They don't know who made it or how they made the very intricate clockworks-like parts. They don't know if it was a one off. It shows lunar cycles, planetary positions, Olympic games and probably more. It used a hand crank to move things around and set up the results. The text material they have found written on it are mostly new discoveries. It is an "out of place" artifact of significance. Somebody was ahead of their time.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Most Egyptians we're illiterate so unless they're rich and powerful most people's favorite recipes would not be recorded.

I did mention Pharaoh's banquets, and I'm assuming Pharaoh (whichever it was; specifics aren't important for this point) was wealthy enough to hire literate people to serve him. Obviously I'm not referring to the average housewife sharing recipes with friends and neighbors, at least not in any form that was written down.

Yeah but it was only the rich who could afford an education. Most of the population was poor and thus illiterate.

Yes, I'm aware of that. One of the things scribes did was reading and writing for people who needed it done for them - not just those too lazy to do it for themselves when they could have, but people who needed to pass on information for some reason and had to hire a scribe to do it for them.

Kinda like me and my typing business 30-35 years ago, before most people had computers and printers. There actually were a couple of papers I did where I had to physically write stuff on them. They were chemistry and pharmacy papers, and all I had to work on at that time was an electric typewriter. But I had black pens, neat handwriting, and a familiarity with chemistry, geometry, and the Greek alphabet. I was rather proud of the results, which didn't look too different from the typing around it, and the clients were satisfied.

It's heavily implied that God told Moses to keep the Jews in the desert for forty years in order to "purify" them.

There is a lot of killing that happens during their time in Exodus in order to eliminate the weak willed or those unwilling to believe in Yahweh so only those Hebrews who are absolutely fanatical are allowed to enter the promised land.

I've read Exodus, and it's enough to put me completely off following any sort of faith or philosophy that basically boils down to "love and worship me or I'll kill you in hideous ways."

I was just making the point that there's a suspicious amount of "40 days/40 nights/40 years" to make it historically accurate. Real history doesn't work in round numbers like that.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Ancient Egyptian recipes and using tomb art to parse them out.

https://www.ancientrecipes.org/tiger-nut-cone-cake-wah-shat/

 

[Berzerker]

Doesn't this seem incredibly suspect? Yeah, a lot of time has passed, but you'd think we'd be able to link the existence of an advanced civilization to more than just one person.

Sounds like it's far more likely the case of one guy making something up or exaggerating an existing story or both. I bet this is simply the case of Plato going on vacation to some island, taking psychedelics and having an amazing time, then returning and trying to explaining how amazing it was. Of course he's going to embellish everything.

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a relatively advanced civilization based on an island we don't know about, but I don't think they had flying cars or sexbots.

many cultures believe in a golden age

 

[Birdjaguar]

many cultures believe in a golden age

So what? Many cultures believe in tree spirits; women are inferior, autocratic rulers, magic, love potions, an afterlife, etc. You are just cherry picking stuff to fit your conclusions.

Your guys had gene editing and space ships and couldn't find gold except on earth and then needed salves to mine it. I kind wonder about their energy source when their planet was way the hell away from the sun and they didn't freeze to death. How would humans on an earth-like planet survive on an orbit that that took them 1800 years away from the sun? How long has Voyager been going? 44 years and it is now 14 billion miles away. Hmmm... 1800 years would put your space aliens quite a distance for most of their orbit. And in the last 400,000 years the only gold they could find was on earth? Do we know how gold dust saves their atmosphere? Any chemistry involved?

 

[Kyriakos]

Since Solon was mentioned, it's perhaps worth pointing out that his reforms cancelled the debt of ordinary athenians. It's what lead to the explosive rise to power of Athens, in the next century.
Maybe he should have argued for less drastic measures, and now Europe would have been conquered by Persia ^_^

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Maybe he should have argued for less drastic measures, and now Europe would have been conquered by Persia ^_^

You say this like it would be a bad thing.

 

[Kyriakos]

You say this like it would be a bad thing.

Bar bar bar bar ^_^

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Bar bar bar bar ^_^

Now, now, I'm sure plenty of Greek thought would still be compatible with civilized society.

 

[Kyriakos]

Come on, that wasn't a good comeback

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Here is an entirely snarky, cynical thought in support of Greek culture:

Thank goodness for the Greek alphabet. Otherwise who knows what we'd be calling the covid variants? But they'd better hurry up with finding a cure or at least whittling it down to a manageable state (like people getting one annual shot as we do for the flu). I wouldn't want the situation to get so bad that they'd run out of letters...

 

[Berzerker]

So what? Many cultures believe in tree spirits; women are inferior, autocratic rulers, magic, love potions, an afterlife, etc. You are just cherry picking stuff to fit your conclusions.

warpus said it was suspicious we have only 1 person for the story, so it matters if the rest of the world believed in a golden age of gods, demigods and heroes. Advanced civilizations meeting their demise in a natural disaster is not unique to Atlantis.

Your guys had gene editing and space ships and couldn't find gold except on earth and then needed salves to mine it. I kind wonder about their energy source when their planet was way the hell away from the sun and they didn't freeze to death. How would humans on an earth-like planet survive on an orbit that that took them 1800 years away from the sun? How long has Voyager been going? 44 years and it is now 14 billion miles away. Hmmm... 1800 years would put your space aliens quite a distance for most of their orbit. And in the last 400,000 years the only gold they could find was on earth? Do we know how gold dust saves their atmosphere? Any chemistry involved?

I dont know how life would/could evolve on a planet with such a highly elliptical orbit, but according to Sitchin Nibiru is a larger planet, internal heat could drive life - life it may have already had, life it brought to Earth. Life could predate our solar system, it could have survived the death of another and arrived here 4 bya. I consider the description of Nibiru and its need for gold the weakest part of his theory, I cant imagine humanoid life on such a planet even if life on Earth has a shared origin. But he's getting that from their writings.

According to the Mesopotamian texts these people from the sky were mining the gold themselves but grew weary and sought another way after 40 Sars/144,000 years (1 Sar/divine year is 3600 Earth years) - Enki found a creature roaming his southern domain and they modified it to take over some of the labor. The Zulu believe their ancient ancestors - 'the artificial ones' according to the myth - waged war on the apemen when a special celestial object rose in the sky.

Sitchin solved the biblical mystery of God's assertion in Genesis 6 man's days were numbered 120 years, although I cant imagine he was the first:

Now when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took as wives whomever they chose. So the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days shall be 120 years.”The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and afterward as well—when the sons of God had relations with the daughters of men. And they bore them children who became the mighty men of old, men of renown.

According to Berossus 10 preflood kings ruled 120 Sars - 432,000 years. These reigns were in multiples of 3600 years, changes in kingship were accompanied by the arrival of Nibiru in the vicinity. Sitchin said mans days were numbered 120 years because that was the time between the arrival of the gods and the flood.

So it was 40 Sars (40 x 3600 = 144,000 Earth years) after they arrived Enki started playing god with our hominid ancestors to produce slave labor - the Adam was taken by God eastward to his Garden to work. Westward of the Garden is Africa. The process of expediting our evolution began 144,000 years after they came to Earth or ~300,000 years ago, but its less clear when our common ancestors lived, Sitchin said the myths describe the first peoples as sterile or unable to procreate.

That ability was eventually given by Enki, the serpent deity, and appears in the biblical Garden of Eden as the 'curse' on Eve - for listening to the Serpent you shall suffer increased pain in child birth. Increased pain in child birth is indeed a curse on anatomically modern women, but by telling Eve her future reality the Bible is relating an evolutionary leap from over 200 kya. Actually, evolution permeates the Garden story, Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed, innocent, not knowing of good and evil.

As for why mine the Earth, why not? Even if there was no gold theres plenty of resources, including food and a potential slave labor force. If we trekked to another solar system looking for resources wouldn't we set up shop on the planet harboring life?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

warpus said it was suspicious we have only 1 person for the story, so it matters if the rest of the world believed in a golden age of gods, demigods and heroes. Advanced civilizations meeting their demise in a natural disaster is not unique to Atlantis.

Everyone has their idea of a "golden age" - but they don't usually mean that it involves literal gold.

I dont know how life would/could evolve on a planet with such a highly elliptical orbit, but according to Sitchin Nibiru is a larger planet, internal heat could drive life - life it may have already had, life it brought to Earth. Life could predate our solar system, it could have survived the death of another and arrived here 4 bya. I consider the description of Nibiru and its need for gold the weakest part of his theory, I cant imagine humanoid life on such a planet even if life on Earth has a shared origin. But he's getting that from their writings.

It couldn't. Maybe extremophiles might, since there are some that can exist in extreme heat and others that can exist in extreme cold. But advanced life like you're describing is not going to evolve on a planet with such an elliptical orbit.

It's funny how you believe so earnestly in this, yet you think I'm just making things up when I mention the Oort Cloud, where the extreme long-range comets come from.

According to the Mesopotamian texts these people from the sky were mining the gold themselves but grew weary and sought another way after 40 Sars/144,000 years (1 Sar/divine year is 3600 Earth years) - Enki found a creature roaming his southern domain and they modified it to take over some of the labor. The Zulu believe their ancient ancestors - 'the artificial ones' according to the myth - waged war on the apemen when a special celestial object rose in the sky.

What a shame it never occurred to them that they could build robots and get their gold from the asteroids. After all, if humans could do it in Ben Bova's novels, superduperadvanced aliens should have been able to figure it out.

Oh, well. More for us, I guess, when we start mining out there.

Sitchin solved the biblical mystery of God's assertion in Genesis 6 man's days were numbered 120 years, although I cant imagine he was the first:

Link to your source, please.

According to Berossus 10 preflood kings ruled 120 Sars - 432,000 years. These reigns were in multiples of 3600 years, changes in kingship were accompanied by the arrival of Nibiru in the vicinity. Sitchin said mans days were numbered 120 years because that was the time between the arrival of the gods and the flood.

So it was 40 Sars (40 x 3600 = 144,000 Earth years) after they arrived Enki started playing god with our hominid ancestors to produce slave labor - the Adam was taken by God eastward to his Garden to work. Westward of the Garden is Africa. The process of expediting our evolution began 144,000 years after they came to Earth or ~300,000 years ago, but its less clear when our common ancestors lived, Sitchin said the myths describe the first peoples as sterile or unable to procreate.

That ability was eventually given by Enki, the serpent deity, and appears in the biblical Garden of Eden as the 'curse' on Eve - for listening to the Serpent you shall suffer increased pain in child birth. Increased pain in child birth is indeed a curse on anatomically modern women, but by telling Eve her future reality the Bible is relating an evolutionary leap from over 200 kya. Actually, evolution permeates the Garden story, Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed, innocent, not knowing of good and evil.

Uh-huh. Convenient how everything works out in round numbers... very neat. As I said, real history isn't that neat.

As for why mine the Earth, why not? Even if there was no gold theres plenty of resources, including food and a potential slave labor force. If we trekked to another solar system looking for resources wouldn't we set up shop on the planet harboring life?

Of course - if there was one. You're assuming these hypothetical aliens came from a world exactly like Earth (except one that presumably has a gold shortage).

Had a recent look at the list of exoplanets that have been discovered? Not one has been shown to be Earthlike in ways that mean we could go there (given enough time or a sufficiently advanced/fast spaceship) and live out in the open, with the gravity suited to our needs, radiation levels such that we wouldn't be fried, a suitable atmosphere, nothing too extreme so it would be compatible with current conditions on Earth.

Whatever else we find in our own solar system, it's not going to be a planet where humans can live in the open, and it's certainly not anything where intelligent, technology-using, human-similar lifeforms would have evolved.

 

[Berzerker]

Everyone has their idea of a "golden age" - but they don't usually mean that it involves literal gold.

Golden ages refer to periods of relative advancement followed by decline, Atlantis is the archetype

It couldn't. Maybe extremophiles might, since there are some that can exist in extreme heat and others that can exist in extreme cold. But advanced life like you're describing is not going to evolve on a planet with such an elliptical orbit.

That would depend on the planet unless solar radiation is required. But a large planet with internal heat, maybe some large moons creating tidal friction etc with water/tides and a thick atmosphere and magnetic field might evolve humanoid life with only brief intervals of sun.

It's funny how you believe so earnestly in this, yet you think I'm just making things up when I mention the Oort Cloud, where the extreme long-range comets come from.

I dont know the nature of Nibiru, what I do believe is Genesis and the Enuma Elish likely describe events long ago in our solar system. Both the Oort Cloud and Nibiru are explanations for visible phenomenon, I dont believe the Oort Cloud exists and even the man who came up with the idea thought comets originated closer to Jupiter and were flung outward. That calls into question how 'trillions' of comets formed that cloud.

Perhaps you can clear that up, did the Oort Cloud form out there or did comets form with the planets and get ejected out there? How does that work? I thought the Oort Cloud was a 360 degree shell of trillions of comets surrounding the solar system. I dont see how thats possible, a collapsing nebula spins material into discs and I cant see how Jupiter would fling trillions of comets away from that region in such a uniform manner to form a 360 degree shell.

What a shame it never occurred to them that they could build robots and get their gold from the asteroids. After all, if humans could do it in Ben Bova's novels, superduperadvanced aliens should have been able to figure it out.

Oh, well. More for us, I guess, when we start mining out there.

How do you know they didn't build robots? What were these Cherubim with flaming swords guarding Eden? Asteroids dont grow food, this world does. I dont understand your logic, why wouldn't Earth be colonized if people wanted to mine asteroids?

Link to your source, please.

http://cura.free.fr/11kings.html

Berossus said 10 kings reigned before the flood for 432,000 years or 120 Sars, thats why Genesis says mans days were numbered 120 years.

Uh-huh. Convenient how everything works out in round numbers... very neat. As I said, real history isn't that neat.

Yes, imagine people conveniently rounding off numbers... How many years ago was Stonehenge built? No rounding off now...

Of course - if there was one. You're assuming these hypothetical aliens came from a world exactly like Earth (except one that presumably has a gold shortage).

Had a recent look at the list of exoplanets that have been discovered? Not one has been shown to be Earthlike in ways that mean we could go there (given enough time or a sufficiently advanced/fast spaceship) and live out in the open, with the gravity suited to our needs, radiation levels such that we wouldn't be fried, a suitable atmosphere, nothing too extreme so it would be compatible with current conditions on Earth.

Whatever else we find in our own solar system, it's not going to be a planet where humans can live in the open, and it's certainly not anything where intelligent, technology-using, human-similar lifeforms would have evolved.

Where did I say they came from an identical world?