On the Trail to Atlantis 570
Bifurcati writes "Scientists claim to have found the lost city of Atlantis, off the coast of Cyprus. They apparently have used sonar to detect the sunken landmass, and even identify geographical features. They seem confident, but all the same, I wouldn't go buying Atlantian artifacts on Ebay just yet."
Predicted (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Predicted (Score:4, Informative)
I don't believe it: Atlantis was predicted to be found in 2012!
And people have searched for it and failed for centuries. Maybe there's a lesson to be learned from that ;-)
"Scientists claim to have found the lost city of Atlantis, off the coast of Cyprus"
I thought that the popular theory was that Atlantis was actually in Antarctica. Antarctica once had a tropical climate, and there are remains of tropical rainforests there today.
Re:Predicted (Score:5, Funny)
Just a link to back up that comment about Antarctica here [pravda.ru].
Re:Predicted (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Predicted (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Predicted (Score:3, Interesting)
John.
Re:Predicted (Score:3, Interesting)
Near cyprus makes more sense to me. Even the theory that Cuba [cdnn.info] is the remains of Atlantis [mysterious-america.net]sounds more plausible than Antarctica.
Re:Antartica wasn't where it is now (Score:5, Insightful)
What? The standard theory of continential drift [leeds.ac.uk] has Antarctica positioned somewhere around the latitude of central Peru and Argentina [fobomade.org.bo], which is far north enough to have a tropical climate. You don't need these additional theories of shifting to explain this.
Indeed, Antarctica is believed to have had a rich and varied mammal population, and until they all became extinct, it was probably quite distinct from those on other continents because of its isolation.
Re:Predicted (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Predicted (Score:5, Funny)
Oh great - now we're going to have to deal with eight years of Y2.012K-inspired panic. You know the hype... "the Pyramid of Uxmal will stop working", "the Tzolkin calendar will start giving the wrong dates for crop planting". About the only upside is that there's going to be a massive run on glyph carvers to make the necessary updates.
Re:Predicted (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed. Having done some digging on this, the Mayans apparently had an incredibly stupid calendar system. Instead of using the concept of "zero as a placeholder" to get infinite years (which I believe they had discovered), they just kept adding more "layers" (like our days/weeks/months/years) on top. The uppermost cycle is only the uppermost because their civilization collapsed before they got to wrap the counter and add another layer on top.
Re:Predicted (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Predicted (Score:3, Informative)
Done. It seems to be bunk [skrause.org]. Hapgood suggested that Antarctica shifted through thirty degrees of latitude over a period of centuries(!) He was a historian by training who dabbled in geology, and quite frankly he got it wrong.
All the evidence we have indicates that tectonic shifts can run up to inches or feet per year--miles per year for centuries is definitely unreasonable.
Re:Predicted (Score:3, Funny)
er, hang on a minute...
Re:Predicted (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Predicted (Score:4, Funny)
> What makes this guy so sure he's found Atlantis and not Ry'leh?
He's still alive.
Re:Predicted (Score:5, Funny)
"Discoverer of Atlantis finds lost city in Pacific, loses 2D6+3 SAN"
Re:Predicted (Score:3, Funny)
You're only fourteen? LIKE, NO WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
StarGate (Score:3, Funny)
Re:StarGate (Score:4, Funny)
Nope, McGyver helped discover Atlantis in one of the movies alright. Same actor - Richard Dean Anderson.
IIRC, he then destroyed some of it in order to escape.
Bloody hooligans...
T.
Re:StarGate (Score:5, Funny)
Let me guess, he built a bomb out of a bag of crisps, added some water and made it a hydrogen bomb, right?
I miss McGyver sometimes, I still remember the episode where he started his car (dead battery) by putting two plugs in a cactus
Re:StarGate (Score:4, Informative)
Arrrrrrh!
*rips out hair*
best.show.ever
Cool. (Score:5, Funny)
I need more info! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is interesting... I have heard other explanations [unmuseum.org] for Atlantis... but the best one I've heard was on a Discovery channel (I think) special a few weeks ago. Apparently there is an island in the Meditterranean that was highly volcanic at one point, and kind of imploded on itself and caused massive tidal waves and such in the area... I think there's evidence in the surrounding area, but at the time of the documentary they hadn't managed to explore the crater yet. There was news of a rather advanced civilzation there for the time; running water, indoor plumbing, the kind of thing that would be rare in the ancient world -- not spaceships or anything. I tried to find an article on it online, but didn't come up with anything. I wonder if these news items are related (it seemed a very recently made documentary). The articles are rather light on info. Anyone else see this thing or know what I'm talking about? It could've been on one of the History channels too, because I watch those about 90% of the time.
Re:I need more info! (Score:5, Informative)
Oooh... it was bugging me, so I looked some more; this isn't from the documentary but I'm pretty sure they're talking about the same place:
http://www.aarp.org/destinations/Articles/a2002-05 -22-destinations_santorini.html [aarp.org]
Re:I need more info! (Score:5, Informative)
Undeniably, the Theran eruption was catastrophic (something like Krakatoa), and around about 1600BC. On Crete, the tidal surge shifted huge stone blocks on the coast. However, the decline of Minoan civilisation is difficult to date (and the source of notoriously vigorous debate amongst archaeologists). The Theran eruption is not generally considered to have marked the catastrophic end of the Minoans. Makes a good Discovery channel story though.
Atlantis was a didactic figure composed by Plato in order to contrast the civic values of Athens. It's hard to imagine that Plato didn't have his tongue in his cheek when he claimed to have the story third hand from some guy who knew some guy who had heard the story in exotic Egypt.
Hope Mr Sarmast enjoys his boat ride.
Re:I need more info! (Score:5, Informative)
So the theory goes this: When Akrotiri finally was covered by the volcanic outbreak in 1600 BC, the really big bang that destroyed the island was already history, and the people were already in progress to rebuilt it, thus all buildings are about the same age. It was not inhabited anymore. It was a ghost town, where the inhabitants went away before the next outbreak which seemed to be near, taking with them only the things they could carry: Tools, money, jewels, and the animals which could walk on their own. It seems that the last outbreak of the volcano had told them a lesson, and the people of Akrotiri were prepared.
So if Thera/Santorini was the site of the legendary Atlantis, then all the ancient wisdom the Atlanteans possessed hasn't been lost, but spread around by the people fleeing Akrotiri. So either Thera wasn't Atlantis at all, or the famous Atlantean wisdom wasn't lost by the destroying of their home, but it influenced stronger than before the surrounding settlements and ancient towns.
Re:I need more info! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes but has anyone here heard of the Piraeus map? It apparently comes from the middle ages, and is a depiction of an unknown landmass...
Its only in the last century that we can discern that the map is, in fact, very similar to Antarctica, only without the ice!
Someone was talking about it being closer to the equator about 10,000 years ago too. Not that the continent slipped or anything, but that the earth rolled a little, and dropped it south. The massive flooding and earthquakes this would cause explain many a creation myth, also, and the uncanny similarity of same between diverse cultures. The earth rolling may be a bit of a stretch, but sure the entire monstrous mass rotates completely every 24 hours... is it really that far fetched?
Sorry if I'm a bit light on details, but I haven't had my coffee yet this morning...
Re:I need more info! (Score:5, Interesting)
The Piri Reis Map was drawn in 1513 by a Turkish admiral. The interesting thing is that on the map he describes how his map was created by piecing together and copying 20 much older maps, some going back to ancient Egypt.
The US Navy map bureau's chief engineer analyzed the map, agreed it was highly accurate, and agreed that the coast line at the bottom could only be the land mass of Antarctica. That coast has been completely obscured by ice for 6000 years.
Unfortunately, the crackpots have given the word "Atlantis" and the search for very ancient advanced cultures a bad name. I want every smart scientific person on Slashdot to take a long look at the map linked below. The information on that map contradicts every mainstream history book. There's a lot more to the story of human civilization than we currently understand.
A good picture and story about the map [sacred-texts.com]
-B
Re:I need more info! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I need more info! (Score:3, Informative)
-B
Re:I need more info! (Score:3, Insightful)
One slight problem -- if the Piri Reis map does indeed show Antarctica, then it shows it as part of the South American landmass, making circumnavigation impossible. If Reis based it on this purported Chinese expedition, then where are the Straits of Magellan?
Re:I need more info! (Score:4, Interesting)
Piri Reis' map,
Sorry to burst bubbles here, but it ain't no antarctica without ice. Piri Reis only drew the coast of South America a bit weirdly.
Here's [bermuda-triangle.org] a good commentary on the matter, with pictures and discussion.
Here's a writeup [everything2.com] about it. There's also My writeup [everything2.com] on Buache map, which is a simiar "Antarctica without ice" story.
Re:I need more info! (Score:3, Informative)
Its only in the last century that we can discern that the map is, in fact, very similar to Antarctica, only without the ice!
The supposed Antarctica on the Piri Reis map is located around southern Brazil and conjoins South America. The more likely explanation is that either Reis ran out of room and warped the coast, or misinterpretted the maps he was using in his work.
Re:I need more info! (Score:4, Interesting)
That "some guy" was Solon the Great. He was not "some guy." Solon learned of the story from Egyptian priests, and the Egyptians claimed Atlantis fell 9,000 years before them. If you look at the speculative timeline to when Antartica wasn't completely covered in ice, the time jives. The only "Puff Daddy" remixing Plato did to the "story" was that he added the part about the Atlanteans being defeated by the ancient Athenians when Atlantis tried conquering the city and Zeus punished them for it by destroying their continent.
You ever wonder why the ancient peoples of the Middle East all share a common "flood" myth? Did you bother to check out the Mayan's own origin myths? They [the Mayans] claimed their ancestors fled in boats from a continent to their east that sunk. I'll refuse to raise the von Daniken card about how the Egyptians and Mayans both had pyramids and advanced astronomy skills, but the Atlantis "myth" ties up the loose ends rather easily.
As for Santorini and the Minoans being the Atlanteans, that theory still receives a passing reference in college courses. My ancient history professor (who is Greek) mentioned it, but he took more pride in the fact that an ancient Greek people [the Minoans] invented the flush toilet thousands of years before Mr. John Crapper.
Okay, so question... (Score:3, Insightful)
And what does being called "the great" have to do with anything? There's tons of fancy gentlemen with fancy titles who are asshats just the same. Plato may have thought Solon was all that, but simply throwing out that he was called "the great" doesn't really do anything to make him other th
Re:I need more info! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there's the fact that Plato made it up as a morality tale to scare little children into becoming good little Platonists. It stands to reality as does Geo. Washington's dad's fictitious ex-cherry tree, which there's also no point in going out to look for.
Nevermind, we can treat it as another Troy if you like, just so long as I'm not expected to invest in the company.
Everytime someone finds some lumpy sort of thing under the water they immediately start yelling "Atlantis!" whether it actually otherwise conforms to the tale or not. Well, there may well be more than one old city under the water here and there. I'll bet there's hundreds of them, and worth an archeological investigation, but if you find one off the coast of Guam, well, I'm sorry Sparky, that ain't Atlantis.
"Hey, you won't believe it. I found an unknown '62 Ferrari 250 GTO in an old barn. I'm going to be rich and famous!"
"Ummmmmmmm, to tell you the truth, dude, it looks rather like a '62 Rambler to me."
"No, no, look, see, it's got wheels, four of them, and it's front engine-RWD, and a hard top, and like everything."
"Yeah, but it says "Rambler" on it."
"Look, if all you're going to do is stand around and nitpick minor differences when I've shown that it corresponds to the image of a 250 GTO in all major details you can just STFU, 'K?"
KFG
Re:I need more info! (Score:5, Funny)
Well, of course there's no point in looking for that. George chopped it down.
Re:I need more info! (Score:5, Funny)
And then tossed it onto Atlantis, which then blew up, and sank.
KFG
Re:I need more info! (Score:5, Funny)
But the fourth one stayed up! And that's what you're going to get, son, the strongest island city-state in the Agean.
Re:I need more info! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I need more info! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I need more info! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I need more info! (Score:5, Interesting)
The ancient civilization that they were talking about was the Minoans, who lived on Crete. At least their claims of finding evidence of a civilization make sense. However, whether or not the Minoans were the inhabitants of the fabeled Atlantis is another debate entirely.
Re:I need more info! (Score:3, Interesting)
http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/images/santor ini.jpg [nasa.gov]
see that island?
more info here (Score:5, Informative)
As I was writing this I found a good general overview site for Alantis which is a lot more readable than the wikipedia link. Atlantis Info [unmuseum.org] Apparently the website was listed as one of the 50 best science sites by pop sci magazine, so despite it's conspiracy theory-esque look, it seems to be a credible source.
Re:I need more info! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have an even better explanation: it never existed. The main "source" for Atlantis is a description by Plato - a philosopher, not a historian. He was probably using it as a metaphor for his ideas on government. There might have been legends about it before, but there are plenty of legendary places that never existed - or if they did exist, bear little actual resemblance to the legend. There are enough known "lost" civilisations that could have given rise to such a myth without having to invent a large island that sank below the waves.
If I was this guy, I'd put off looking for Atlantis until they've found the Big Rock Candy Mountain. If he's looking to kill time, he can always join the search for Noah's ark...
Re:I need more info! (Score:4, Interesting)
Plato made some errors in the translation, for one example the ten-fold error, he datet antlantis 10.000 years in the past, that cannot be, this would put it rightous into the young stone-age or so.
The biggest error when translating the Egyptian legends was the error of the island, in ancient Egyptian the word for island and coast is the same. So it could and was likely to be just a coast.
And beeing a coast atlantis could have been anywhere, it's likely that the Egyptians descriped as Atlantis a place Plato was infact very familiar with, just not realizing they ment Greece after all. Dough!
Or it also very likely they ment the Persian culture, which has been cultural and technical at that times far ahead.
http://www.crystalinks.com/atlantistheories.htm
Indiana Jones (Score:4, Funny)
But the first thing I thought when I saw the news was the good adventure game [adventurecollective.com] by Lucasarts game.
Claimed? (Score:5, Funny)
let me get this straight (Score:5, Funny)
Re:let me get this straight (Score:4, Funny)
I'll believe it when I see it (Score:5, Interesting)
Greek legend holds about as much proof for me as the Bible does proof there was a Noah's Ark, btw.
Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not so fast(long, poss tedious) (Score:5, Informative)
New! Improved! actually Readable! (Score:3, Informative)
The tale of Atlantis does seem to be partly based on fact and partly allegorical, so there is some basis to the tale, as Plato got the tal
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Interesting)
People looking for Atlantis have the distressing tendency to look for it, and claim to have found it, in all the places where the Platonic tale says it isn't.
Now, maybe I'm just being an old fuddy-duddy, but it seems to me you can't land on Hispaniola and get away with calling it India for very long, no matter how exotic it looks.
KFG
Re:Call it what you want (Score:3, Insightful)
like Polish Americans, Italian Americans, Irish Americans or Israeli Americans (=Jewish Americans?)... t
Re:I'll believe it when I see it (Score:5, Insightful)
Another example of how you can creatively waste government funding for your personal projects. Atlantis is not even legend or mythology. Besides not even supposed to lie anywhere near Cyprus (rather in the Atlantic Ocean, hence the name...), Plato's Critias an Timaios are the only two dialogues that mention the island. It could very well be that the island never existed at all and was a construct of a philosopher designed for exemplification. Noah's ark however was designed to show why there is only a given number of animals surviving and perhaps it was used to explain dinosaur bones found at the time? Don't know exactly. But proof there will never be, since any old tree on ararat could be a remainder of the ark, and so could any stone that sunk when on cyprus they had a temple standing on the outmost rock over water, and that rock just broke off...
The point I want to make is that absolute proof does only exist in mathematics. Any other discipline is strongly affected by personal beliefs, as the above example shows, where the scientists not even think about Plato's location of all this. Proof stands in the way of faith, and to some people, it is just not understandable that this island with all the peaceful people on it could well be the brainchild of a brilliant mind.The problem now is that some scientists are in desperate need for money (because of their very special opinions probably). So they claim to have found something that everyone knows about, yet too little to be able do doubt the claim (Atlantis, Noah...) and therefore get today's headlines.
One has to be very careful with such pieces of information. They are not meant to be informative in any way, they are just here to be read and nothing more.Of cause (Score:2, Funny)
Too vague (Score:5, Insightful)
Better article (Score:5, Informative)
Personally, I don't see this turning into much. Claims like this have been made before, without much coming of it. The details are short, which is generally not a good sign for something like this.
Can't believe this (Score:5, Interesting)
Sea-level rises and submerged islands (Score:5, Interesting)
Plato's work refers to the location of Atlantis as beyond the "The Pillars of Hercules" which is now known as the strait of Gibraltar. This is the gateway between the Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic ocean. This of course is quite far from Cyprus. According to measurements of the bottom of the sea, if the sea-level dropped by 100 metres, a new archipelago of islands would be exposed just beyond the straits of Gibraltar. This is a probable location for Atlantis.
As for the civilisation being more advanced, that could have been because they were on an island that was cut off from the mainland which was infested with barbarians. The islanders could then develop their technology in peace. Seeing that the story took place some 9000 years ago, even 7000 year old technology would seem advanced to outsiders. When the flood came, either everyone on the island drowned, or those that escaped did not manage to establish their advanced civilisation on the mainland (those pesky barbarians again).
Another theory about submerged civilisation being more advanced is that at the time of the end of the ice-age, the lands that are submerged now were more fertile than other lands. Climate models of India have shown that 10000 years ago, the part that is now above sea-level was a desert, and the part now below was fertile. The land could have been fertile because it had remained underwater so long before the last ice-age, and rivers could have been continuously been depositing sediments on the sea-floor. The fertile land encouraged agriculture which made the peoples more sedentary in nature, and thus more likely to become advanced. The people on the highland remained hunter/gatherers, were more nomadic, and consequently, did not develop as well.
I can't find links for everything offhand, but do have a look at Graham Hancock's web-site [grahamhancock.com].
Not another Hancock idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a small matter of things called 'boats', which have been used for tens of thousands of years. 'Barbarians' are rarely that barbaric and are usually pretty good at getting places.
It really is not worth taking Hancock seriously: He never goes for a simple explanation of th
Re:Sea-level rises and submerged islands (Score:5, Interesting)
In one of his books he 'proved' the existence of an ancient civilization c.10,000 years old by the location of 'sacred' sites which mirrored constellations. Of course, he selectively picks the sites (ignoring inconveniently located ones) to match the star patterns.
An excellent BBC documentary debunked his theories showing how you could use the same technique to plot locations of sites in Manhatten against similar 10,000 year old constellations. When questioned on screen about this he was visibly squirming in his seat. Priceless!
Re:Sea-level rises and submerged islands (Score:5, Insightful)
C'mon, it wasn't a bad attempt at spelling a foreign placename. Talk about nit-picking!
Also please link to this apocryphal BBC documentary of yours that depicts Hancock "visibly squirming in his seat."
Any good? [bbc.co.uk]. It's the science programme called Horizon and has won awards in many countries. The transcript is available here. [bbc.co.uk]
From the transcript:
Hancock put in a total of 8 complaints about this programme to the Broadcast Standard Agency. Just one was upheld. If you look on Hancocks website he holds this up as a victory for him. He doesn't mention that this complaint was dismissed:
The programme had created the impression that he was an intellectual fraudster who had put forward half baked theories and ideas in bad faith, and that he was incompetent to defend his own arguments.
Adjudication: [The Commission] finds no unfairness to Mr Hancock in these matters.
Until you do, you are no more than a common naysayer with absolutely nothing but empty accusations hiding behind the opinions of others.
Well, I've now done that and Hancock is still a charlatan, fraudster and practices bad science. Please - next time don't post anonymously. There's no need to hide!
Re:Sea-level rises and submerged islands (Score:3, Insightful)
The OP was quite correct in his assertion that, in Europe at least, a move to sedentism brought on technological innovations. It's known as the 'neolithic revolution.' Essentially we stopped being hunter-gatherers and started domesticating animals - we became farmers. Once you make the transition from moving around to settling in a permanent loc
Excellent. (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah I've seen it (Score:5, Funny)
Question (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Question (Score:3, Funny)
Atlantis is Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, here's the deal with Atlantis:
The whole story comes from Plato. Plato liked to make sh!t up. You can't even take Platonic narratives as accurate representations of Greek mythology, let alone reality.
The point of the Atlantis story in the Timaeus and Critias is to make a political allegory. Trying to hunt for the "real Atlantis" is like trying to hunt for the "real Oceania" after reading 1984: it's not only dumb, it also misses the point.
Also, Atlantis was 'sposed to be beyond Gibraltar, not off Cyprus - hence the name "Atlantis", 'cause that's where Atlas was supposed to have been.
Re:Atlantis is Stupid (Score:4, Informative)
Atlantis was mentioned by more than Plato. It was in Herodotus' writings as well, and he claimed the Egyptians recorded its existence (he studied in Egypt). Among the description given was that it was populated by pygmy elephants. Surprise, surprise, but the remains of pygmy elephants have been discovered on several Cycladean islands.
The island in the Mediterranean (and, btw, Cyprus is an island in the Mediterranean) that an earlier poster referred to is the modern island of Santorini.
Santorini/Fira was part of the Minoan civilization. The volcanoic eruption there that buried the city on the island and likely destroyed the Minoan civilization was far larger than Krakatoa, in fact one of the largest eruptions ever. The Minoans were contemporaries of the ancient Egyptians, and had a marvelous culture. They had little in the way of barriers or fortifications or, as far as we can tell today, much of a military presence. Of course it's hard to be sure, but they seemed to have focused mostly on trade, and their the remains of their language Linear B as found on tablets seems to have been used for inventory records and transactions. They had lively and beautiful arts, their women went around with bustiers showing off their uncovered breasts, and they had bull-dancers who, instead of slaughtering a bull with shaven horns by wearing him down with picodrs and men on armored horses with spears before allowing the 'brave' torero into the ring, performed gymnastics over and on top of the wild bulls. They also had indoor plumbing, including toilets.
What Atlantis is represented as today is a myth. That doesn't mean it wasn't originally routed in what most people at the time would have found to be a balmy paradise.
Re:Atlantis is Stupid (Score:5, Informative)
You also said:
Plato didn't say they were pygmy elephants, just elephants.Re:Atlantis is Stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Atlantis is Stupid (Score:3, Funny)
Are you trying to imply that there is not such thing as SG-1????? Are you implying Egypt doesn't exist either?!?!
And for the record, this years season was way too short. It had what, 6 episodes? Shesh.
Cheers!
Not stupid, just complicated (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always been fascinated by the legend, especially after reading the work trying to identify Thera (Santorini) as the origin of the legend, for a recent analysis of Thera see this transcript from the BBC [bbc.co.uk]..
Recently I studied up on Atlantis quite a bit trying to sort it out once and for all to my own satisfaction.
Just about every location on the face of the Earth has been nominated as a candidate for 'good' reasons. After wading through all of them and comparing them to Plato's accounts (Timeus and Critias) your head starts to spin a bit. Goddam confusing.
I looked at exactly what Plato said in his story to try and find if there was a possible consistent story, and any inconsistencies. I wont bore you with most of what I found but basically, Plato was very insistent that it was based on a true story, unusually so. However, even if we accept that it does not mean he didn't take extensive liberties even if there was an element of truth (e.g. legends of the destruction of Santorini).
Plato said a civilisation existed just beyond the Pillars of Heracles 9,000 years before Solon (about 11,600 years ago), which coincidently matches the end of the last ice age. But I've seen weirder coincidences. But it turns out the Pillars we know as the Pillars of Heracles (Hercules) were not the only ones, there were lots of them. So it could have been anywhere. And there are inconsistencies in the description of the island that translate into 'Plato made that bit it up' as far as I can see. But other bits seem, subjectively, to be not part of such reworking.
The trouble is if you start cutting out parts of the story you end with such a vague story it could refer to almost anywhere ... funnily enough one of the better suggested places for Atlantis is Indonesia .. heh heh. But I still think the story was influenced by real past events then dramatised for current political and social comment. The real influences could have been Thera and a more recent city, whose name I forget, that was destroyed by tidal wave and claimed ground liquefaction. I was starting to view the whole thing as just an invention of Plato using bits of stuff known from other cultures (try reading Herodotus sometime with an eye to look for bits you could use , there is a lot of source material for such a story) but then I saw that documentary on the BBC. Unfortunately, the website doesn't have one image I saw in the doco ... they showed a mural found at Akrotiri showing the form of the island before the eruption and it was in the form of a broken ring with a central island , and the main city was on the central island. Which would mean that if that is Atlantis then it has been vapourised , its gone, kaput. Interestingly this idea of access from the sea through rings of water to the central city is the way Plato describes the layout of Atlantis and the reference to hot springs etc means he thought it was volcanic. So maybe some legend did survive to Plato's time and made it into the story. As for whether such a large, relatively advanced civilisation existed as in the story, well just re-read your copy of "Guns, Germs and Steel" and tell me where the crops are ... zip. Only in the Middle East, no such continent as Atlantis would be big enough for the genetic diversity for major crops to arise. And the grains haven't shown up all over the place ... therefore no Atlantean culture.
Well I've ranted longer than I expected. Must say investigating this stuff was just sooo interesting and I came across some of the most amazing things. I guess I was most impressed by reading Herodotus, when I read it at school I skipped most of the leadup to the war, but the leadup describes just how incredible the ancient world was, amazing.
As for Cyprus. Gees gimme a break. Well I must admit that one thing that is mentioned in the legend is a metal called Orichalcum that in the s
Scientists? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure atlantis may have been a real place, but you have to do more than just *say* you found it.
As almost every Greek knows (Score:5, Informative)
1) The explosion of the volcano on the greek island Santorini, which sunk part of that island
2) The end of the Minoan civilization
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord
Quote:
" The eruption of Santorini in 1650 B.C. was one of the largest in the last 10,000 years...The eruption probably caused the end of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, and may be the source of the myth of Atlantis."
and
http://www.decadevolcano.net/santorini/santorin
Re:As almost every Greek knows (Score:3, Insightful)
It's this last claim that is questionable. Plato can't even keep key geographic details about Atlantis consistent. The "myth of Atlantis" was born in the 19th century. Before that time, people who read Plato agreed that Atlantis was a fictional utopia for talking about politics.
Atlantis is "a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away." When Plato talks about Atlantis, he puts it both in an inconcievably distant past and in a location that was inconciev
Robert Sarmast (Score:5, Funny)
Sarmast works in architecture, and describes himself as a "mythologist". He is very interested in "ancient mysteries". He supports himself by doing "odd jobs" and as his hobby studies "Atlantology" and travels. His "research" is privately funded.
What is pretty funny, is that his biography states he cooperates with "specialists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)". They even supplied him with "a digitized file of the existing raw data ... a document that was over 2,500 pages long". I can imagine the following conversation between two of those "specialists":
S1: "That crackpot is on the phone again."
S2: "Please, not now. Besides, it's your turn to talk to him."
S1: "Come on, I'm busy."
S2: "Just blow him off."
S1: "Then he'll just phone again in a few hours."
S2: "I have an idea. Let's give him some data that will really keep him busy for the next six months."
S1: "What data?"
S2: "Just give him everything."
S1: "But he won't be able to do anything with it. It's just raw data!"
S2: "That's the point. He's a crank. He has studied Atlantology, for Christ's sake. He is used to immerse himself in meaningless stuff!"
Old news (Score:4, Funny)
Atlantis is a lost colony of the Ancients. There will be series about it [scifi.com] starting around July, 22 episodes or so.
Robert
PS
Scientist? (Score:3, Interesting)
A google search [google.com] for Robert Sarmast doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
I wouldn't go buying Atlantian artifacts on Ebay (Score:4, Funny)
Don't tell the kooks but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
But just like Noah's Ark, Atlantis is a magnet for cranks and pseudo scientists. Forget painstaking archeological research - how many books have been and gone that supposedly pinpoint its exact location and toss in a few references to aliens and UFOs? We're in Graham Hancock territory here. I thought it was meant to be off Cuba only last year! Or perhaps not. We'll know more about this latest endeavour if / when a proper scientific paper appears to back it up. We'll know more when these supposed features are actually studied properly.
I reckon given a thousand years the kook brigade will be still looking for Atlantis, that is when they are not busy looking for Minas Tirith, Xanadu and Hogwarts.
Hidden depths (Score:5, Funny)
NOT what the article says (Score:4, Informative)
The article is a whole 5 sentences, and is very clear.
Good Week for Slashdot (Score:3, Funny)
If I don't see one about Sasquatch being located coming up (and that he uses Linux) before the end of the week, I'm going to be terribly disappointed.
Atlantis? Bah! (Score:3, Funny)
The Big question is where is R'lyeh?
And don't give me: 47 degrees 9 minutes south, 126 degrees 43 minutes west,
they have already looked there...:P
Re:Atlantis? Bah! (Score:3, Funny)
You can't find something that never existed... (Score:4, Insightful)
The story is about the conflict between the ancient Athenians and the Atlantians 9000 years before Plato's time. How likely is it that this actually exists?
Plato wrote about a conversation between Socrates, Hermocrates, Timeaus, and Critias.
How likely is it that any of those four people knew about a civilisation 9000 years before them
I don't believe that there is anything worth looking for.. but then again, just my opinion.. I accept the fact that I could be wrong, although I find this highly unlikely.
Fortean Times Article (Score:5, Interesting)
Heck, there is even an entire magazine Atlantis Rising [atlantisrising.com] which discusses the all so many possible places for Atlantis to be.
Fundamentally, though, to claim Atlantis is inside the boundary of the Mediterranian Sea seems slightly faulty, but then again ancient civilizations were sketchy on detail regarding the regions that seemed lifetimes away. It would be like asking an American which side of Africa Zimbabwe is on.
Plato's Atlantis (Score:4, Informative)
The two dialogs of Plato's which describe Atlantis are the Timeaeus and Critias. It is on-line at: Atlantis [activemind.com]
The Timeaeus only refers to Atlantis in two paragraphs. The Critias has a longer description, but it ends in the middle of the dialogue.
You can draw your own conclusions.
Atlantis (Score:3, Interesting)
"Greeted with barely concealed mirth" (Score:3, Funny)
"The alleged discovery has been greeted with barely concealed mirth by the Mediterranean island's tourism office."
Editorializing a bit, are we?
Sarmast's website! Not posted 'til now? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If Atlantis DID exist, how advanced WERE they? (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the things I've always been fascinated by was how close civilizations have come to producing an Industrial Revolution. What would the world be like today if that had happened two thousand years ago when the first steam engine [wikipedia.org] had been invented? Or 5000 years ago when the Bronze age started in parts of Asia [wikipedia.org]? What would the world be like today with 2-5 thousand years of industrial progress behind us? Imagine where we will be in the year 4000... probably beyond anything we can possibly dream of considering the pace of technology in the last 200 years. And all that could be here today if it hadn't been for the relative cheapness of slave labor and all the other factors that held us back.
Re:If Atlantis DID exist, how advanced WERE they? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think you can look at it that way. Though many have (like Carl Sagan - he had a similar view IIRC). It takes a strange confluence of countless events to produce significant technical advances.
It could also be said that given our innate capability for self-destruction, it's a miracle that we are where we are at today. For an instance, it's a miracle that Kruschev's ego didn't get the better of him. Because if it had, we would have had a nuclear war in the sixties, and we would not be using computers in our comfy homes on the internet reading slashdot right now.
The Soviets were not dumb. They would have nuked fairchild semiconductor, and there would be no group of scientists to later start a bunch of high tech companies that would make up silicon valley. One of which is intel that was started in 1968.
We would be very lucky if we were hacking COBOL. RMS would have not have invented the GNU project that many here are fond of. Because there would be no Hawvad or MIT or PDP for him to hack on. He would not have needed that printer driver, _because there would have been no printer_
Likewise, some of the things that have held us back have been natural in nature, and beyond our control, like the black plague [byu.edu] that killed off a third of Europe. I bet a lot of smart people died then. Who knows where we would have been if it had not been for the black plague.
So, as you can see, the game "woulda coulda shoulda" is a pretty frivolous game to play.
One last thing. In modern times, Soviet Russia plagues slashdot. I said it so you don't have to.
Re:In my honest opinion... (Score:4, Insightful)