Could an Atlantis have existed?

sure, Atlantis as written have never existed, but i doubt that the history was made out of air ... most, if not all myths have some meat on the bones ... Kingdom of Prester John for an example can likely be attributed to Nestorian Christians all across Asia (there were a established group in Tang China), which had next to no communications with catholics or orthodox christians
 
sure, Atlantis as written have never existed, but i doubt that the history was made out of air ... most, if not all myths have some meat on the bones ... Kingdom of Prester John for an example can likely be attributed to Nestorian Christians all across Asia (there were a established group in Tang China), which had next to no communications with catholics or orthodox christians

I conceded that Atlantis was not made out of air, in much the same way that space aliens or sherlock holmes are not made out of air.

In the case of space aliens, we have an elaborate understanding of the cosmos, including direct observation of planets which resemble our own in many particulars, and the knowledge that the universe is full of stars and potentially solar systems much like our own. With that in mind the prospect that some of these solar systems may possess life approaches a near certainty, the prospect that some of this life may have intelligence seems quite likely, and the notion that some of that intelligent life might have visited is entirely appealing.

In the case of Sherlock Holmes, we have pre-existing the notion of crime, puzzles, police, logic and detection. Poe has already written detective stories. London is a real place. Scotland Yard is also real. All the elements and preconditions appear to be in place for the inspiration of a Sherlock Holmes.

This is about the level of underlying truth behind Atlantis. Every detail about Atlantis is crap. What is not crap is the belief of the Greeks, perhaps supported by bits of evidence and distant oral lore that there were other civilizations than theirs, some of them were much older or quite remote, and some of them weren't around any more.
 
I read once that Plato had 'written himself into a corner' when it came to the Atlantis stories. On the one hand, he depicted it as an idealized society that was near perfect, in his opinion. OTOH, he had originally noted that Atlantis had offended the gods and sunk into the sea. So why/how did this near perfect society offend the gods? Which explains why he never finished the second story...
 
I read once that Plato had 'written himself into a corner' when it came to the Atlantis stories. On the one hand, he depicted it as an idealized society that was near perfect, in his opinion. OTOH, he had originally noted that Atlantis had offended the gods and sunk into the sea. So why/how did this near perfect society offend the gods? Which explains why he never finished the second story...

Would that 2nd story be about how Atlantis could rise again if everyone sent him 10 drachmae? :D

I agree with Dvaldron on this with the added note that bits of pre-Ice Age civilisation were probably being found all the time so that society was willing to accept vague theories that explained them all.
A bit like how dinosaur fossils were initially accepted as evidence of the Noachian Flood
 
Would that 2nd story be about how Atlantis could rise again if everyone sent him 10 drachmae? :D

I agree with Dvaldron on this with the added note that bits of pre-Ice Age civilisation were probably being found all the time so that society was willing to accept vague theories that explained them all.
A bit like how dinosaur fossils were initially accepted as evidence of the Noachian Flood

If you go back to the heyday of Atlantean theory with Ignatius Donnelly, I believe that this is an era before the discovery of much of the deeper history of mesopotamia - including Sumer. This was before Catal Huyuk, Gobeli Teke, it preceded the discovery of the Harappan civilization, etc. I don't think that there was even a clear idea of who and what the Minoans were.

So if the 19th century westerners were speculating that there were civilizations that preceded the known historical civilizations - Greece, Egypt, Babylon, Persia, etc., there was plenty of evidence lying around for them.
 
Ignatius Donnelly. There's a name (with Ed Cayce) I haven't seen in a while. If you want a good Atlantis myth, read Robert Doherty's Area 51 series. In it, it turns out Donnelly (and Madame Helena Blatavasky) are right ...
 
Wasn't 2nd Century Rome fairly dirty in its mining and military industrial (i.e. mass smelting for swords)? In other words, wouldn't a culture of that equivalent have left some record in the atmosphere? Of course a society that mined by hand and didn't need tens of thousands of swords might have been as dangerous to the atmosphere as Neolithic cattle drivers and leave no trace gases behind, I suppose.

I was referring to population density not population size but you make a good point about the lack of evidence for air pollution in the Atlantis timeframe.
 
I was referring to population density not population size but you make a good point about the lack of evidence for air pollution in the Atlantis timeframe.

Wasn't 2nd Century Rome fairly dirty in its mining and military industrial (i.e. mass smelting for swords)? In other words, wouldn't a culture of that equivalent have left some record in the atmosphere? Of course a society that mined by hand and didn't need tens of thousands of swords might have been as dangerous to the atmosphere as Neolithic cattle drivers and leave no trace gases behind, I suppose.


Having said that, though, no matter how individually polluting Roman protoindustries might have been there's still no comparison with the pollution produced by an industrial economy. I wouldn't be surprised if there was no real record of the Roman empire in, say, ice cores (where the pollutants and so forth given off since the 19th century do start to show up. I just doubt any preindustrial society would show up except indirectly through changes in global or regional temperature or weather (due to deforestation etc.)
 
I saw that Ancient Aliens show on the History channel; just for the lulz of course. The weird fringe stuff the had to say about everything reminded me of a huge steaming pile of elephant dung.

I think Atlantis might just be the greatest fanfic every. I mean Plato came and told a story and people loved it so much that over, not just centuries but millennia have added layers upon layers of what can only be possibly described as seemingly innocuous but incredible 'fluff' about it.

Most likely it was a just the whole Santorini story retold on steroids.

Or it was an amalgamation of sorts of various legends and myths of the time which were based on little understood facts such as the fate of the Minoans, etc.

Then again if we really really have to assume that it was a different story then the one about the city on the shores of the Black Sea abandoned due to the rising sea levels seems like a reasonable analogue for the whole Atlantis story.

Or if we really wanna go ASB, there could be like a story where the Greys (part of a larger collective of several species of aliens) needed a primitive neolithic species that was smart, had a fast population growth rate and good at fighting to fight of other aliens (giant space bugs ala Swarm on the Somme anyone). They gave us tech and helped form a civilization based in the Bahamas with small not so self-sufficient colonies for resources all over the planet. How about they even genetically modify us into something like the Nordic aliens? And when the alien threat was gone, we started spreading out and started getting into conflicts with them. We knew we were doomed so we left little trinkets like the stash under the Sphinx etc for the neolithic peoples still there to use.
The aliens wiped out mars and turned it into the desert wasteland it is, and a caused the sea level rise which submerged Atlantis by firing at the poles. Some of the Atlanteans survived and spread out among the people giving rise to the common cultural traits in the ancient civilizations like bull worship and stuff. Some escaped to distant star system like somewhere int the Sagittarius constellation (i.e., the WOW! Signal) while the Greys sorta imposed a quarantine on our system.
Sound like a half-decent ASB thread? :p :D
 
Yes but not in the form of continents sinking with death rays and all kinds of hich tech gadetry. We are probably talking of the Minoans and Thera and the sea people who attacked Egypt. Gavin Meznies recently wrote a book on Atlantis proposing this suggestion rather more plausible than his theories about Zheng Ho

the-lost-empire-of-atlantis-historys-greatest-mystery-revealed.jpg
 
Every detail about Atlantis is crap. What is not crap is the belief of the Greeks, perhaps supported by bits of evidence and distant oral lore that there were other civilizations than theirs, some of them were much older or quite remote, and some of them weren't around any more.
The way the story of the Flood in the Bible, with its accumulation of details, echoes the flood of Mesopotamia mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Thus the basic premise can be based on slightly more precise memories than a 'generic belief'; not that it changes much in the end.
 
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The way the story of the Flood in the Bible, with its accumulation of details, echoes the flood of Mesopotamia mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Thus the basic premise can be based on slightly more precise memories than a 'generic belief'; not that it changes much in the end.

I'd be skeptical. Can we really find any detailed 'Atlantis type myth or folklore' that preceded Plato but which is reflected in Plato's story with a high degree of fidelity?

The Biblical flood is stolen pretty nakedly from the Epic of Gilgamesh, mimicing details in several particulars. Indeed, Gilgamesh's tale makes more sense, since the destruction/salvation of the world is the handiwork and subject to debate among different gods. In the Biblical version of the tale, the acts and dialogue of different gods is all wrapped into the Hebrew god, making him quite schizophrenic to the point where he has conversations with himself. It's pretty much such a naked steal that you can see the stitches and sutures.

There's no clear 'prior story' for Atlantis, just a handful of perhaps vague and indirect pieces of data, and a lot of millenia later post facto theorizing which works really hard to fit the Atlantis story into one event or another. But there's no evidence that any of these events themselves gave rise to a clear myth-track, or folklore, or written or oral history or legend that Plato could then cannibalize.

The truth is that with his elaborate efforts to attribute the story to the Egyptians, its pretty clear he was pulling it all out of his ass. If there'd been a locally current story, he wouldn't have needed the Egyptians.

And the Egyptians, so far as we can tell, didn't have any prior version of the Atlantis story so they are a dead end.
 
I'm skeptical to the point of total poppycock. Any ancient/iceage civilization with modern technology (which presumably would include things such as aircraft, efficient transport, advanced metals, power generation, etc.) would leave abundant evidence of itself throughout the world, even if its home area of development was completely destroyed in some geologic cataclysm. Consider the modern world. "Modern" technological civilization arose in a small area of Europe and almost immediately (in broad historical terms), European influence spread throughout the globe, via trade and conquest. I find it impossible to imagine that artifacts from such a hypothetical vanished civilization would not have been traded far and wide. We would see them in Paleolithic campsites, neolithic villages, or in all sorts of archaeological sites not directly associated with the civilization. I think the same would hold even if the "advanced civilzation" was more along the lines of Rome or Ancient China. Just as in OTL, we'd see tools and other artifacts from that civilization showing up in surrounding areas.
 
Atlantis is probably an aggregate myth. There are lost cities the world over so it's not that uncommon. So take the eruption of Thera, maybe throw in a little bit of Tartessos, some Egyptian details, the Antikythera device, medieval traveler's tales, and a bit of utopian moralizing and poof: Atlantis.

Add in the things like Schliemann's discovery of Troy from old myths ("if he discovered this is real than...") and you give it just enough possibility to keep the legend alive.
 
Having said that, though, no matter how individually polluting Roman protoindustries might have been there's still no comparison with the pollution produced by an industrial economy. I wouldn't be surprised if there was no real record of the Roman empire in, say, ice cores (where the pollutants and so forth given off since the 19th century do start to show up. I just doubt any preindustrial society would show up except indirectly through changes in global or regional temperature or weather (due to deforestation etc.)

Not to drag on with my point, but the only reason I knew about Roman era pollution was because they found it in ice samples.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/265/5180/1841
 
The problem is that I cant see any scientist of any standing attributing ice samples that contain suggestions of industry to an advanced civilization if they are pre Ice age. Just look at the Clovis First theory.
 
I read once that Plato had 'written himself into a corner' when it came to the Atlantis stories. On the one hand, he depicted it as an idealized society that was near perfect, in his opinion. OTOH, he had originally noted that Atlantis had offended the gods and sunk into the sea. So why/how did this near perfect society offend the gods? Which explains why he never finished the second story...

Thus Atlantis version of "The Matrix" and, unlike Matrix :rolleyes:, the sequel was abandoned because it was just too bad
 
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