Lecture topic: Sherlock Holmes Investigates Atlantis: Did Plato base his story on real events?
My summary of the two hour talk:
Greek history time line:
Cycladic culture: 3200-1900 BCE
Minoan Culture: 1800-14000
Mycenaean Culture; 1600-1100
Dark Age: 1100-800
Archaic Greece: 800-500: Homer's Iliad about 750 and Solon visited Egypt about 600
Classical Greece: 500-338: Plato wrote in 360
Dark Age of Greek history: With the collapse of Mycenaean culture around 1100 BCE Greece entered a period of time in which its past was lost. This “dark” period created a barrier for information passing between what happened prior 1100 and what happened after 800 BCE. Most of the knowledge strands (like use of writing in Linear A) were lost. The strong oral tradition of the Trojan War endured across this barrier and allowed Homer to base his epic poem on actual facts when he wrote the Iliad about 750 BCE even if he didn’t know that the fundamentals of the story were tied to actual events. He made up a grand story rooted in a kernel of truth. Egypt did not endure a dark age period at this time. Its records of the past were intact.
Plato's Story: He wrote about Atlantis in two dialogues: Critias and Timeus. Critias detailed lots and lots of data about Atlantis such as population, army, society, kings, agriculture etc. Timeus talks about the story and what happened. The Critias data is internally consistent and self referential. It does not match any known external data. A single source for such a mountain of data is unlikely and it is similar to the kind made up information that Frank Baum compiled for OZ, GRRM for Westros, JRRT for Middle Earth etc. Cherry picking specific data from it only leads people astray, because when you find a place that matches some data points, it will fail in others. (Eye of Africa?). So all of that data was set aside.
Timeus tells a story about two civilizations at war. One was Greek and the other was an island civ (Atlantis). The Greeks won the war and then both civs were destroyed. A cataclysm destroyed Atlantis in a day. Both disappeared forever.
Where did Plato get his story? He got it from Solon. Solon was a distant relative who lived around 600 BCE but whose descendants trace a direct line to Plato. The story came from Solon, not the data. Where did Solon get the story? Solon lived in Egypt for ten years. While in Egypt, Solon learned what the Egyptians had recorded about “ancient” Greek history. Solon’s story came from the priests of Sais and was passed down through his family to Plato. This personal connection from Plato back to Solon and back to Egypt lends credence to the story part not being made up by Plato.
When was Atlantis? Solon translated the Egyptian dates and placed Atlantis around 9600 BCE. 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 and not the Greek solar calendar, rather than 9600 BCE we get a more reasonable 1350 BCE or so date.
Where was Atlantis? Near the Pillars of Heracles? Gibraltar has been called the Pillars of Heracles (PoH) since about 250 BCE. Plato wrote in 360 about events that took place much earlier. In classical Greece the PoH was attached to a dozen different narrows from one end of the Med to the other. Too iffy to be used reliably. 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 the naval capabilities of the time. That limits Atlantis to the Easter Med.
If the Egyptian stories are true then Atlantis must be an island-based, seafaring nation in the Eastern Mediterranean that was in competition with Greece around 1350 BCE.
For the Greeks, the Mycenaeans fit. For Atlantis, the Therans. The Therans were not the Minoans, but more Cycladic in culture and what they have found on Santorini does not tie them to the Minoans, but rather sets them up as connected, but independent.
So in conclusion: Mycenae fought a naval war with Thera that ended in a cataclysm that destroyed Thera in a day and devastated the Mycenae too and in the end both disappeared. Mycenae did when the Dark age arrived in 1100.
The purpose of Plato's dialogue was to talk philosophy about the perfect city state and corruption. He used a family story passed on from Solon that was rooted in actual events from before the Dark Age and recorded in Egypt to be the narrative theme and then embellished it with his philosophical message. A hint at the very end of the dialogue led the speaker to speculate that all of the mass of information about Atlantis (that was ignored) was the world building Plato did for an epic poem he was going to write but never did.
Whew! I know more, and am quite happy to try and clarify or expand upon this overly brief summation of the talk.
