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Science

Atlantis Found. Again. 671

Tufriast writes "Paul McCartney and Mythic eat your heart out! BBC News has an interesting revelation regarding the lost city of Atlantis: "American researchers claim to have found convincing evidence that locates the site of the lost kingdom of Atlantis off the coast of Cyprus."" Hey, here's an idea: The idea of an almost mythical lost civilization is common thread throughout all old human societies - much like, say, really big Floods. Perhaps there could be more then one story that fits? But, no, that wouldn't be a simplistic enough answer to be sound-bitten into oblivion.
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Atlantis Found. Again.

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  • by madaxe42 ( 690151 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @10:44AM (#10819675) Homepage
    I remember reading a while back about the possibility that Atlantis had been on the Northern edge (yep, that'll be all of them) of the Antarctic continent, before we entered the current ice-age (we're in an interglacial at the moment, technically still an ice age). See levels would have been higher, but Antarctica/Atlantis would have had a climate similar to modern britain.

    Contrasting this, early greek explorers who went to 'Atlantis' noted that the natives were 'red skinned with horse-like hair', almost identical to Christopher Columbus' description of Native Americans!
  • Idea! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 15, 2004 @10:44AM (#10819683)
    Here is another idea: Maybe the story is based on something that DID happen?
    So finding the factual basis for a myth would be quite amazin, innit m8?
  • by krymsin01 ( 700838 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @10:46AM (#10819703) Homepage Journal
    It's just as likely that a few stories migrated into other cultures via cultural diffusion. Want to see this in action? Look at the Christian Bible.
  • Underworld... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 15, 2004 @10:47AM (#10819712)
    Read Graham Hancock's Underworld : http://www.grahamhancock.com/underworld/

    It has a much more generic and in my opinion much more plausible explanation for all the flood myths of this world.
  • Would be nice (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gr8Apes ( 679165 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @10:51AM (#10819753)
    if they finally did find the actual atlantis. They believe they've found the real Troy [allaboutturkey.com], finding the real Atlantis will hopefully put much speculation to rest.

    Personally, I'm just eager to see what they find, if it is found. Ancient archeological surprises are pretty cool, as it always astounds me how relatively advanced some of these civilizations were, to only fall back into ignorance before we finally moved into the modern age.

  • by Charles Dodgeson ( 248492 ) <jeffrey@goldmark.org> on Monday November 15, 2004 @10:52AM (#10819757) Homepage Journal
    In "western" civiliation there is no history of this story prior to Plato. Plato has a fictional character, Timeos (sp?), tell the story of Atlantis. The story is an obvious parable illustrating Plato's ideas about how things decline.
  • by DeafDumbBlind ( 264205 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @10:53AM (#10819771)
    The only mention of the place comes from Plato. He was telling a story about an evil, technologically superior force( The Atlantians) getting defeated by the 'just and moral' Athenians. Plato was telling a tale with similar themes to Star Wars, etc : The just and moral will overcome the wicked and powerful.

    There was nothing more to it. No other historians wrote about it, none of Plato's contemporaries made any mention of it.

    Now, were there civilizations that got zapped by a flood/volcano/earthquake, etc? Sure.

    But was there an advanced civilization on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that got its ass kicked by the Greeks sometime between 1200-10000 BC (Depending on if you take Plato's words of 10k years literarly or not)?
    Doubt it.
  • again? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by calibanDNS ( 32250 ) <brad_statonNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Monday November 15, 2004 @10:55AM (#10819786)
    The AP article can be found here, on CNN [cnn.com].

    Just how often [science-frontiers.com] do we have to "solve" [atlan.org] the mystery [abc.net.au] of Atlantis [in-sourced.com]? When will the media accept that not every sunken city Atlantis, and that it probably isn't the last time that someone will find a site sunken by volcanic activity. Most of these discoveries are occuring in an area with large amounts of Volcanic activity, so doesn't it just make sense that these cities are there?
  • by Ubergrendle ( 531719 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @10:58AM (#10819816) Journal
    Unfortunately history of civilisations is not seriously considered anywhere prior to 10,000 BC, and probably more realistically 6,000 BC. There is no significant historical evidence pre-ice age that homo sapiens were anything more than small nomadic bands. Primitive language was probably available, as well as iconogaphy and basic tools. Large groupings of people would have been nigh-impossible in the absences of farming, husbandry, and written language.

    Its an interesting hypothesis, but historical record does not support the notion. It would be an interesting theory though... HP Lovecraft and Robert E Howard certainly filled in the pre-Ice Age gap nicely in the realm of fiction. :)
  • by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:00AM (#10819833)
    Stories of fire-breathing dragons are also common among almost all of the world's cultures. That doesn't make it any less likely that they are all handed down from one great experience.

    Look at it this way -- there have been thousands of human cultures, each with thousands of items in their individual mythologies. Statistically, there's a pretty good chance that out of all those items, at least one or two will match up.

    Unfortunately, most people are too stupid to figure this out, so idiots keep wasting money investing in schemes to find the Atlantis and Noah's ark.
  • by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:03AM (#10819845) Journal
    ... so here is one from some swedish news: a bunch of urns [aftonbladet.se]

    Surprisingly that picture doesn't seem very common in related stories from a Google News search.
  • by belmolis ( 702863 ) <billposerNO@SPAMalum.mit.edu> on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:06AM (#10819872) Homepage

    Any new archaeological find is potentially interesting, but I wouldn't get all excited about this, for two reasons. First, nothing much is known. Sonar doesn't tell you very much, not even whether it is really an archaeological site. It is all too common for people to decide that something must be manmade because the edges are too straight or something like that, only for it to turn out to be a natural geological formation. Without further evidence, we won't know what this is.

    Secondly, supposing that these are the remains of a city, what makes this one more exciting than any other? I submit that what makes it exciting is the association with the Atlantis legend of a particularly advanced society. But that is precisely the part of Plato's story that is most likely false. Even if his story is based on a real city that was submerged, it was most likely an ordinary city of its time, perhaps well off by the standards of the day, but not the amazingly advanced civilization of sci-fi movies. We can't of course rule it out entirely, but we will only have reason to believe it if actual evidence is found, and at present there isn't any.

  • by theMerovingian ( 722983 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:10AM (#10819890) Journal

    including important chronicles about Moses, Solomon, and others, were actually made up for the first time by scribes hired by King Josiah

    It is important to note that the Bible does make mention of Moses recording historical and legal material in written form, as in Exodus 17:14, 24:4, and 34:27, and in Numbers 33:2. Modern scholarship would suggest that these words of Moses were passed down and later recorded in the form that we have today.

    Read the first few chapters of this book for a Christian perspective on the same topic:
    The Message, Form, and Background of the Old Testament. Ed. William LaSor, David Hubbard, and Frederic Bush. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI. 1996.

  • by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:13AM (#10819922) Homepage Journal
    Don't forget Chariots of the Gods? [alienresistance.org] Why should one invisible monster have any more prior art rights to homo sapiens than another?
  • Re:Atlantis $69.99 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by friendscallmelenny ( 746745 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:17AM (#10819973)
    Edgar Cayce was a royal nutjob that predicted Atlantis would rise up out of the ocean not be found.

    Cayce followers have been good at editing his predictions as time passes. But you can always find old books in used book stores that have very detailed predictions about things that will happen in the 80's and 90's.

  • Re:Underworld... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by empaler ( 130732 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:19AM (#10819985) Journal
    Plausible explanations are not the same as actual events. For every event there are thousands of plausible explanations.
  • by Vinnie_333 ( 575483 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:19AM (#10819988)
    "Stories of fire-breathing dragons are also common among almost all of the world's cultures. That doesn't make it any less likely that they are all handed down from one great experience."

    Hey, maybe dragon mythos does have basis in fact. If you ask this guy [apologeticspress.org]. He claims they were dinosaurs that forgot they were suppose to be extinct.

  • Cynical submitter (Score:1, Interesting)

    by mlucius ( 117576 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:23AM (#10820028)
    >>Perhaps there could be more then one story that fits? >>But, no, that wouldn't be a simplistic enough answer to >> be sound-bitten into oblivion. Tsk! Such obvious cynicism is very unattractive.
  • by ultraworld ( 822170 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:25AM (#10820039)
    I'm fascinated by the culture of the ancient Minoans, that lived in this area during the late Bronze Age. The Atlantis myth is almost certainly about them. They thrived for at least 2000 years, until a series of volcanic events around 1700 BC that appear to have destroyed their major cities (and others) and ended in the assimilation of their culture into others, most notably the Mycaenians - the ancestors of the ancient Greeks, and the beginnings of a long dark age in the Mediterranean that halved the population or more, lasted several hundred years and reduced many area cultures to pre-literacy. Our historical era begins in the dawn of literacy out of the ashes of this time.

    The Minoan millennia's history is still almost completely unguessable. Archaeological sites that exist are difficult to find, sometimes obscured by this volcanic action, water (changing sea levels) or by the massive desertification that occurred in North Africa. There may be still much to learn from seawrecks on the bottom of the Mediterranean, though.

    These events probably also formed the factual basis for the Biblical plagues of Egypt. (huge volcano-caused climate changes, tsunamis, earthquakes, etc. resulting in a 'nuclear winter' lasting several years in which a significant portion of the Northern Hemisphere's population died of starvation.) The volcanic caldera of the present-day Aegean island of Santorini was probably the location of this explosion. The surviving Minoans clearly were scattered across the world...the Phoenecians, the Carthaginians, and many other ancient Semitic cultures (the Sephardic Jews and the Arabs) may all be descended from them. So were the Pelasgians. And perhaps the Philistines of the Biblical era.

    The Minoans were probably the real proto-Greeks.

    They are truly an enigma. It appears that they lived most of this time in peace, indeed, the remains of their cities that we have found never have walls. They had indoor plumbing, flush toilets, buildings up to five stories high. There are traces of their influence all the way from Spain to India. They were probably the model for Tolkien's "Numenorians", as well as many cultural myths.. Read Platos "Critas' and "Timmaeus' for his version of the story.. Its fascinating. They were Europe's first advanced civilization... Their written language (what little that we have) Linear A has still not been deciphered and it is one of the great mysteries in linguistics...and cryptology..

  • by tehanu ( 682528 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:29AM (#10820082)
    Chinese dragons control the element of water. It is believed possible for fish under certain exceptional circumstances to become dragons. There are no Chinese fire-breathing dragons. Chinese dragons are also not evil (though they aren't necessarily good - more like a force of Heaven which can be benevolent but also wreck destruction depending on whim. Who can understand Heaven really?), whilst Western dragons are usually portrayed as evil.
  • by Ubergrendle ( 531719 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:37AM (#10820150) Journal
    Stonehenge and the Spinx don't even get close to the 10,000 year mark. The nile was settled as far back as 6,000 BC, but what we're recognise as the First Dynasty of Egypt occurs as recently as 3,300 BC.

    Just because something ~looks~ complex, even in comparison to modern day technology, does not make it such. 10 years ago when I was at the University of Toronto, the Egyptology masters program sent a number of students over to Egypt to prove how easy it was to build a pyramid. A team of 10 men, using nothing more complex than wood planks (greased with animal lard), a pulley, and large sticks to act as levers, were able to move 2 ton stone blocks with ease.

    Stonehenge doesn't even approach the 10,000 year mark either. Roughly carbon dated to 3,000 BC as well. Those stones are NOT as hard to move as the conspiracy theorists would have you believe.
  • by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:40AM (#10820173) Journal
    Seeing as there is a documented sea level rise that took place at the end of the last Ice Age Glacial Period that was a couple hundred feet anyhow, it is likley that there are several sites that had some city building going on that are now below the surface of the sea [hermetics.org]. In some cases, the land extended out dozens of miles beyound the current shoreline.

    This allowed Indonesia to be connected to mainland Asia, as well as Tasmania to Australia. I am uncertain as to the extent of the European Coast line [ornl.gov], although it is likely certain that the English channel was dry land. There was much more land in the Bahamas. More and related info here [roperld.com]. It is certain that some islands would disappear [geolsoc.org.uk]

    And the Sahara was much more of a grassland with trees area, with plenty of people leaving rock drawings behind. So nomads with cities on the now submerged coastline is plausible as well.

  • by tehanu ( 682528 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:41AM (#10820182)
    In Chinese mythology, there is a story of a great flood. The tale is very different from the Noah story though. Also given the nature of the story I suspect that this is due to a great flooding of the Yellow River rather related to the tales of a great flood in Asia Minor and Europe. But I can't remember any tales of a lost civilisation that disappeared beneath the waves. There are the mythological 5 emperors who were advanced in wisdom, technology, helped the Chinese people, etc. but they were very firmly based in China. I guess this means that Atlantis if it exists can't be around the Asian region then?
  • by Gadzinka ( 256729 ) <rrw@hell.pl> on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:49AM (#10820259) Journal
    Every time someone finds submerged (or even simply abandoned) ruins, he claims that he has found Atlantis. Completely disregarding the only sure thing from Homer's tales, that if it even existed, Atlantis was beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

    You can argue all you want, that "beyond the Pillars of Hercules" means "far, far away", but that still doesn't change the fact, that Cyprus, Crete, Santorini are right in the middle of Hellenistic domain!!! Hence neither "beyond the Pillars of Hercules" nor "far, far away".

    Abandoned or submerged ruins of ancient civilization? Sure. Atlantis? No fucking way!

    Move along, nothing to see here.

    Robert
  • by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:53AM (#10820321) Homepage
    I keep an open mind about Atlantis because Troy was ficticious right up until someone found it.

    That's an interesting comparison, but at least there are indications that the Illiad, along with being a good story, may have been intended to be a sort-of "historical account". Certainly, as with many oral traditions, historical accounts become mythologised, re-interpreted with each generation, and generally skewed. However, since we don't anything like written documentation of the creation of "The Illiad", and it was supposed to be the story of how the Greek peoples united into being, together, "Greek", I find the idea that there was some historical intention hard to argue with.

    We are much more certain, however, about Plato. Plato was essentially a writer of fiction, and it's commonly agreed that he had little intention of being historically accurate. That being said, it's hard to know for sure if the Atlantis myth from the dialog was even a common Greek myth at the time, or if Plato invented it out of thin air.

    Additionally, with the discovery of Troy, an ancient city which archeological evidence seems to indicate was distroyed by Greeks at about the right time frame was discovered in about the right area, and many people agree that it is likely to be the city being referenced in the stories of Troy. However, this evidence verifies very little of the Greek's historical accounts of the war with Troy.

  • Re:Idea! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Monday November 15, 2004 @12:23PM (#10820701) Homepage Journal
    They're just ornaments

    Indeed. Solid metal ornaments that depict something fairly air-worthy. The Egyptian "bird" also appears to be something of an advanced glider design.

    "There seems to be no doubt that Vimanas were powered by some sort of "anti-gravity."
    [...]
    It's easy to dismiss the whole lot as gibberish and gobbledegook.


    It is something of a conundrum, as UFOologists (ahem) have latched onto these things and added their own screwy ideas about them. A more thoughtful look at the craft reveals a few more plausible explanations:

    1. The texts describe nuclear weapons. i.e. "An incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as the thousand suns rose in all its splendour... An iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death, which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas.... the corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. The hair and nails fell out; pottery broke without apparent cause, and the birds turned white.... after a few hours all foodstuffs were infected.... to escape from this fire, the soldiers threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and their equipment..."

    2. The Vinamas were "powered" by "careful heating of a yellowish mercury substance." If we believe that they had nuclear power, then nuclear rockets (similar to NERVA) seem likely. Especially if they were unconcerned about the fallout their engines produced.

    3. "Vimanas took off vertically", as do rocket ships and Harrier jump jets.

    4. "[A]nd were capable of hovering in the sky" It's difficult for me to tell if the author is talking about the same craft here. Supposedly the Hindu texts refer to quite a few different types of craft. Hovering ability could be achieved with a variety of methods: Ducted exhaust (like the Harrier), vertical flight profiles (like the DC-Y, "Delta-Clipper"), or lighter than air travel (hot air balloons, blimps, dirigibles, etc.)

    If you are making theories based purely on a series of suppositions then I am disappointed the conclusion isn't even more fantastic !

    Don't get me wrong. I don't suddenly believe in "anti-gravity" simply because of a few images that look like airplanes. However, I do think this is something worth investigating. There obviously existed a certain amount of knowledge of powered flight in the ancient world. Did they actually manage to construct these machines, or were they working on different theories based on birds as the Wright Brothers did?

    It's certainly conceivable. Nuclear power was very easy to discover once the proper materials were found in sufficient quantities. (i.e. Pile up enough uranium of sufficient purity, and you've got a nuclear pile.) And flight was but a stone's throw away once the Holy Roman Empire stopped marking everyone as heretics. A great many lighter-than-air flights were performed in the 18th century, long before the Wright Bros. cracked powered flight.

  • by Thomas Miconi ( 85282 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @12:29PM (#10820757)
    It is very easy to see how real history can be distorted to add magic and mythological things where none existed before.

    And to be honest the Chinese were rather conservative in their historic transmissions. You want to know what Europeans (folk and scholars alike) are capable of ?

    Fact: There once was a germanic tribe called the Burgunds (after which Burgundy is named). Also there was a guy called Attila who kicked some serious ass more or less at the same time.

    Add Germanic poets, Norse scholars (the Icelandic scribes who wrote the sagas were the intellectual elite of medieval Europe) and let it simmer for about six-seven centuries.

    Result: The Nibelungenlied ! [wikipedia.org]

    And don't even get me started about how Richard Wagner single-handedly rewrote the whole damn thing into the version that most people know today.

    Thomas-
  • by bleaked ( 609151 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @12:31PM (#10820785)
    The Nature of the Universe (a gooey mass of old theories and new ideas)
    Pondering the subjective experience of time flowing way to fucking fast, i've come to yet another latest view on what i think the universe is and how it behaves.

    I recently checked out a lecture on cosmology at the University given by a leading cosmologist in his field who informed me that omega is not equal to 1.

    Quick background: Once upon a time scientists discovered the red shift, which is essentially the Doppler effect applied to light and shows that every galaxy in the universe is moving away from us. From this they decided that the universe must be expanding, and of course, an expanding universe leads to the question of whether or not this universe will continue expanding forever or eventually shrink back to a "big crunch". I was currently under the impression that they'd figured out that the universe would eventually shrink down and that it had simply existed forever and would exist forever going through cycles of blowing up, forming stars and planets etc etc etc and then shrinking down again only to blow up again.

    But now i've got some guy with a Ph.D. telling me that the latest theory is that the universe will actually continue expanding forever, and even crazier than that, it appears to be expanding at an ever increasing rate.

    OK, that trips me the fuck out. If there is any gravity at all, how could it possibly continue expanding faster and faster without any external energy being added to the system??? And they explain this away by not only creating "cold dark matter" but also creating "dark energy" which apparently makes up 75% of the universe's mass and has a repulsive quality stronger than gravity's attractive property. Or something. Idk, i need to read more about this. One day. When i have more time (in the past).

    But i want to take this experimental evidence that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate and play around with it.

    Because there are other theories out there.

    First of all there is the theory that maybe this whole time speeding up thing isn't a subjective effect but rather that time really is speeding up. And since i can't think of anyone with a Ph.D. from whom i've ripped this theory off and i came to it by my own thinking, i'm calling it my theory, until someone proves me wrong.

    So like i can't even remember why i started thinking that time was speeding up, but look at the implications. If time is speeding up, that means it was once going a lot slower. Let's say that around 5,000 revolutions around the sun ago time was going really really slow. In fact, let's say the graph forms an asymptote and that at a certain point in time it was approaching infinity and essentially not moving at all. Now, let's assume that in the first "day" after this asymptote time was going so slow that it what we consider a second actually took a million of our years, or even....4.6 million if you want to entertain science and religion...

    If this were true, "God" could have easily created the heavens and the earth in one day. Hell the guy had millions or billions of years to do it. We could even stretch this so far as to perfectly match it up with how long science thinks it took from the big bang until we had a solar system and a relatively cooled earth. And the next day would be going a little faster, not quite as much could have been done in that second "day", and so on and so forth throughout the creation story, eventually by the 6th day there were human beings already and eventually that exponential curve hit that special point where the timelessness felt in Eden started moving fast enough to record and these primeval beings felt the effects of aging and pain. I think this can explain quite nicely why life expectancy was so much higher back then too: Methuselah didn't live any longer than any of us, but it sure as hell felt like 900 some odd years to him!

    From this I also thought about extrapolating the graph to try to predict the future. One extra
  • by pizzaman100 ( 588500 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @12:41PM (#10820894) Journal
    Someone better tell the Egyptions. Apparently there is a movement in Egypt [nrk-online.com] to sue Israel for reparations because Moses took their gold during the "Exodus".
  • by debrain ( 29228 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @12:48PM (#10820959) Journal
    Curious: How do you carbon-date stone?

    The stone has been around for millenia, presumably. How would dating the stones tell when the stones were placed into their current location. As well, carbon dating [wikipedia.org] applies only to organic materials. What organic material would have been tested?

    In other words, how could carbon dating reveal the time at which Stonehenge was placed? Just curious; I'm sure there's some ingenious way of doing it.

    Cheers
  • by redcaboodle ( 622288 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @12:54PM (#10821033)
    The dragon myth has a factual base. Men has found dinosaur skeletons and made up the dragon myth from there.
    This even explains why the Asian and European Dragons look different, because there were different kinds of dinosaur predominant in the area and more likely to leave remains.
    Don't know where the fire-breathing stuff comes from, but that was probably made up to make the dragons more powerful. Fire is har to control and very destructive.
  • by tompaulco ( 629533 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @01:18PM (#10821295) Homepage Journal
    How does this jibe with the fact that the gospels were estimated to have been written (even by Bible detractors) to have occurred prior to the the 3rd century?
  • by nofx_3 ( 40519 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @01:55PM (#10821670)
    I think you understanding of cosomology may be slightly flawed. If you agree that time is a dimension, then you are incorrect that as object move further apart time does as well. You see, as any bodies in the universe excelerate further away from eachother they would tend to move more through space dimensions and therefore less through the time dimension, in which case time would actually be slowing down at any point relative to the rest of the universe that is accelerating away from that point

    Another huge problem is trying to combine cosmology and the bible. When a scientific theory is formed, it is tested with the best possible method, and if the theory sufficiently agrees with expirimentation we accept that theory until a better theory comes along. If a theory fails any major part of testing, the theory is considered to be an incorrect theory either indefinately or until a new test is developed with results that do agree with the theory. With respect to cosmology the bible makes claims that the earth is the center of the universe and the church agree for most of biblical history. We know have testable theories that show that earth is but a tiny planet in a large solar system in a larger galaxy, in a larger universe. This I believe is sufficient proof that the bible, at least as far as cosmology is concerned, can be written off as accuracte with respect to any claims made that relate to cosmology. Therefore any time the bible discusses creation of heavenly bodies, times of existance of heavenly bodies, and explanations for the why of existance of earth and other heavenly bodies, it can be ignored as completely non factual, and insignificant as it is fasle in a sceintific sense and does not effect the moral value of the biblical stories.

    -kaplanfx
  • projection (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @02:17PM (#10821880)
    Of course any relic found off the coast of the mediterranean will be picked up by the press and others as "Atlantis." The new agers (and sometimes some smart person you know) will rant and rave about time machines, solar lasers, etc. Its really sad to see so-called educated people buy into any conspiracy theory. The same was (and still is) true with the mythological Noah's ark. In the 70s there was no shortage of articles on how some relic found somewhere was the "true ark" and no shortage of clergy men to claim it is real. Now the "ark" supposedly is on top of some mountain somewhere.

    These are the fruits of an anti-intellectual culture. Of a culture with a weak media. Of a culture that is religious and anti-skeptic.

    This all reminds me of the intro to Sagan's 'Demon Haunted World' where he tells a cabbie he's a scientist and the cabbie's questions are all related to press-driven pseudoscience like Uri Geller, UFOs, time machines, etc. IIRC, Sagan had nothing to say as he didn't know where to start with someone so full of disinformation. This is a pretty good parable for a good part of the the world. Where to even begin when Nostradamus is ranked up there with Einstein and people think Archaeologists are after Atlantian magic machines while the press feeds them the same credulous crap everyday?
  • by Pfhorrest ( 545131 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @03:28PM (#10822639) Homepage Journal
    China has the myth of Peng-lai, a sinking island supposed to be the home of the immortals, and home of the Xian-gu (mushrooms of immortality, cf. soma, ambrosia, tree of life).

    http://www.pantheon.org/articles/p/peng-lai.html

    This, not so coincidentally, out across the South (or East, according to this article) China Sea, in Oceania, where a lot of the seafloor is continental shelf, which was dry land and/or very shallow sea before the end of the Pleistocene. This is where many people place "Mu", "Lemuria", and other mythical sunken lands where ancient and/or powerful people lived. Not to mention Hawaiiki and it's variants, common to most Pacific Island cultures, and core of the Maori geneological story. So yeah, the Asian waters have their share of sunken homeland stories.

    Tie that in with the genetic and cultural connections between the Polynesians and South Americans, and some suggestion of precolumbian trade between South American and Africa, maybe Plato's Egyptians' 'great seafaring people with cities of gold' were none other than our old Incan friends (whose creation story involves the survivors of a great flooded land in the west), and their 'sunken homeland to the west' was in fact west of South America, in Oceania... Plato's Atlantis may just be a very distorted and editorialized version of a much older story, perhaps crossed at some point with one of the many sunken Mediterranean civilizations.
  • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @03:29PM (#10822649)
    What you say is only true about the New Testament books. And it's only partially true.

    The Old Testament is pretty much just the Torah, the Hebrew holy book. So you claims on the "Bible" are patently false in the regard to them fudging the Old Testament.

    The New Testament is a compilation of multiple books that were written by the Apostles and various other people that were close to Jesus. Not all of them were included - books such as The Book of Mary and The Book of Steven were excluded. These excluded books are called the aprocraphal books of the Bible. The books they included were the ones they were the most legit - that is, the ones that could be verified to be the most original, written by people that could be traced by association to Christ, and in posession of reputable Church leaders. The earliest manuscripts of various books of the NT have been found, and it's been shown that what was put into the canonized Bible indeed meshes with the original manuscripts.

    Now, the legitimacy of the books they did pick is likely suspect, in my opinion. It is claimed by the modern Church that the Bible was dictated by God, to man, and that the selection of books was also dictated by God.

    I don't personally buy this, due to the various political motivations, as well as the unlikelyhood. I think it far more likely that the choice of books was strongly influenced by the aspiring political motivations and religious beliefs of those picked to select the included books. I don't recall whether the people selected were Jewish rabis, priests of the old order of religions, or even the leaders of the Christian church of the day. I don't doubt that depending on which group, or combination of group members, selected the Bible, it had an outcome on the final books chosen. For instance, there are books that talk about Christ potentially being married, and kissing Mary Magdeline "passionately" on the lips, and him saying that man should treat his fellow man in such a fashion. I don't recall if this was a legit book (chronologically), but it obviously wasn't included.

    I'd say that there's certainly a lot of truth in the Bible, and that it presents a good moral guideline, or handbook, if you will, for living. I don't think that serious alteration attempts were made, in the least. I do think that it was made from a composition of stories, written by mortals, and that, when taken in it's componet parts, it is imperfect. As a whole, it provides a template to live by, which if taken as the whole that it is, will provide someone with the knowledge and wisdom to live a spiritually fruitful life.

    That said, I am a Christian, believing Jesus was the Son of God, and that he died for my sins. I don't know whether the definition of 'sin' is definate, or if it's an abstract principle. I do know that my observations of the world lead me to believe that Christianity, in it's purest form (Love God with your whole being; love man as yourself) is the best thing out there and that it is Truth. You can have truth without being completely factual - look at any ficticious story with a moral.
  • by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) * on Monday November 15, 2004 @03:46PM (#10822815)
    Oh, it's in Wikipedia. It must be true.

    Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you...

    I thought I was the only one sitting here scratching my head and murmuring "WTF?!?" every time wikipedia was cited as if it was some kind of legit reference on par with Britannica. I'm guessing that on that parallel Bizarro world where blogs are regarded as journalism, the wikipedia can be viewed as a reference, but, man, I'm sure glad I don't live there...

  • by Jack9 ( 11421 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @04:58PM (#10823499)
    I guess you did not know that Christians were persecuted since the days of Nero because Nero blamed them for burning down part of Rome.
    You can assume everyone knows this, as it's college level history. Some learned this in AP history in High School.
    On October 28, 312 AD, Constantine, emperor of Rome, was encamped a few miles north of Rome, about to meet his enemy--Maxentius. Suddenly, writes ancient historian Eusebius, a Christ-inspired vision of a "cross of light" bearing an inscription "conquer by this" appeared to Constantine and his army. Later that evening, Constantine received a second vision of a Christ-inspired symbol with which he adorned his battle standards. The ensuing battle resulted in a tremendous route of Maxentius and within a few months (313 AD) Constantine announced the end of Christian persecution.
    This "overly dramatic revelation" hints that this was a way to accept a persecuted sub-culture which did nothing but flourish using what might be considered "grassroots" tactics and funded completely by charity. He was simply politically savvy to the situation.

    Try http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:M1ivimDBoY4J: www.evidenceofgod.com/addendums/Chapter%252038%252 0Addendum.pdf+origin+of+the+bible+nero&hl=en [216.239.57.104]
  • Re:Idea! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Monday November 15, 2004 @05:02PM (#10823561) Homepage Journal
    I seem to recall fairly well supported claims that a) the nuclear weapons program took a large fraction of the industrial base of the US to realize, and b) the Nazis didn't succeed in producing nuclear weapons largely because they didn't have a large enough industrual base.

    I know what you're referring to. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

    The industrial problem was centered around the production of sufficient fissile material, of sufficient purity. This effort was two-fold, and is represented in the single test and two bombs that were dropped.


    As I said, the mining and purification are the biggest difficulties with nuclear technology. A massive industrial base was required because of the time crunch imposed by the war. If we're talking smaller quantities and research performed over a few decades, then it is perfectly feasible for fissable materials to be produced in a smaller industrial base. There's actually an article somewhere on the Internet that explains how to separate small quantities of U235 and U238 with a metal bucket and some muscle power. Just don't expect to live to a ripe old age. :-)

    Either way, if you're proposing NERVA-style engines for aircraft, as you'd mentioned in your previous post, and a space program, you're going to need a _large_ industrial base to support it.

    Why? How many traces currently exist of the V2 program? We certainly have the cultural aspect of the 50's sci-fi rockets resembling the V2. But could you produce a trace of a single V2 today? How about traces of a Saturn V? Lunar landers? Mercury Rockets?

    The only traces of these things are in museums and in their cultural impact. If you keep in mind that the museums are a reflection of modern culture, what traces would remain? They certainly wouldn't be as far reaching as a launch pad that someone just "forgot" about. Such a pad would either have been destroyed in an attack, or torn down to make space for something else. Which, of course, assumes that someone bothered to build a launch pad in the first place. Retrofitting nuclear engines into a plane would mean that only a runway would be necessary. Runways erode, and may be mistaken for roads.

    I'd actually have to say that super-structures (greek temples, pyramids, modern skyscrapers, etc.) are about the extent of what you could expect to survive a thriving civilization. Beyond that, you're looking for scraps of info. Abandoned airfields (which may or may not be airfields), cultural records, any sort of buried junkyard wreckage, etc.
  • by Anonym1ty ( 534715 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @06:57PM (#10824764) Homepage Journal
    I don't believe the bible says the earth is at the center of the universe. Would you like to cite an actual passage that says it does, or instead to stop spewing misinformation?

    I believe that what you are looking for is in the book of Joshua: 10:1-15.

    Josh 10:12 Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.

    Josh 10:13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.

    Josh 10:14 And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel

    This is one of the priciple arguments against Galileo. No episode in the history of the Catholic Church is so misunderstood as the condemnation of Galileo. One of the main things it boils down to is that the Bible says that the Sun stood still, not the Earth. The Earth to them could not have stood still since it was un-moving.

    Before Galileo had forced this argument into theology, the Church was for the new astronomy. It had encouraged the work of Copernicus and sheltered Kepler against the persecutions of Calvinists. Problems only arose when the debate went beyond the mere question of celestial mechanics. Galileo's friend Archbishop Piero Dini warned him that he could write freely so long as he "kept out of the sacristy." But Galileo threw caution to the winds, and it was on this point -- his apparent trespassing on the theologians' turf -- that his enemies were finally able to nail him. see this link for more [catholiceducation.org]

    If all this doesn't make you wondeer, there are Myths of "The Long Night" There are stories of a long day in Africa and Europe and Asia, there are sories of a long night in the Americas and Oceana. Though I believe in the heliocentric solar system, I do wonder what just may have happened on that day.

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