Could the concept of an Atlantian civilization have existed?

Leaving aside the geography of a sinking island, the mythology of Atlantis was a society at least superior in technology and innovation to classical Greece that existed some 9,000 years earlier.

Could a civilization that advanced have developed that long ago in human history? Not if it actually did but if it would have been possible?
 
In the original text by Plato, the island was powerful and rich but not superior in technology and innovation. After all, Athens was able to beat them.

But could a nation have advanced more than others ? Well yes, in 9000 bc cooper working was discovered in middle east and the people of Jericho were making brick houses and wall. Classical greek were not even at that point in 9000 BC.
 
There's limit how far ahead you can be technological in the hard science without it spreading. But you could have a very complex civilisation with rather primitive tools. As example in the Ice Age the Persian Gulf was a large fertile valley. It's not impossible (through unlikely) to imagine that the people of this valley was agriculturalist or that they build grand cities, while at the same time they was using stone tools, the stone tool could be better made and more complex than their neighbours in the highland around the valley. The dry climate and different altitude could have kept these agriculturalist from spread farming from their valley.
 
I've read a theory that the mythical Atlantis could have been Santorini. That island had more advanced technology than the other Greek city states, for example analog computers like the Antikythera Mechanism and human-sized clockwork androids who waved and did other simple movements on the street.
 
I've read a theory that the mythical Atlantis could have been Santorini. That island had more advanced technology than the other Greek city states, for example analog computers like the Antikythera Mechanism and human-sized clockwork androids who waved and did other simple movements on the street.
The problem with that theory is that clockwork androids are certainly made up and the Antikythera Mechanism has been dated to around a thousand years after the Thera eruption and the collapse of Minoan civilization. Aside from the weird claims of fake technology it is a logical theory if you believe the plausible idea that Solon got the date wrong by mistranslating the Egyptian decimal point, but it still doesn't provide any particularly convincing explanation about the placement of the island in Plato's story.
 
Atlantis was a thought experiment on the nature of hubris, not a place.
If you're asking could a sufficiently advanced civilization relative to its neighbors have existed and was considered by nature to be of the Atlantaen variety (which you are, fairly obviously). The Kingdoms of Egypt actually existed and were very advanced for their day (and were even contemporary to the Greek Cities though by that time they were in decline). If you want to consider legends, the peoples of the Pacific Basin speak of a few such civilizations that were purely mythic, and India has the story of Lumeria, if I recall correctly.
 
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I always had assumed Plato was using the Minoans as a basis for a thought experiment.
Most of pre-archaic greek history was unknown for classical greek scholars, safe some names dump. At very best, it was some passing reminiscence but it was probably more of a tought experiment situated in your average "long ago, before anyone can actually remember safe the most ancient civilization, a perfect society existed before it was corrupted".

Historicity of Altantis is, IMO, as much relevant than the historicity of Genesis or Exodus. Not only it's not really fitting safe by sentationalist or twisted point, but it's not the point of the account or narrative.
 
Functionally, if you want an Atlantis, you need an isolated civilization(s) with sufficient resources and the movement to drive their technological progress. Not impossible at all.

There's no particular reason that, say, the Americas couldn't be vastly more advanced than Eurasia - after all, at least in military tech, Europe was quite a way ahead OTL. An advanced civilization could have risen up, and then collapsed, leaving the European explorers very confused archaeologically.

The issue is if you want to have a civilization which is in close contact with other less advanced nations, but somehow the tech doesn't really transfer. Possible in the short term (*lots* of exploitation likely) but rather difficult otherwise.
 
IMHO, Plato used the Santorini event as an analogy, because it was 'recent', stomped the Minoans, even registered on the introverted Egyptian priesthood.

FWIW, the description of 'Atlantis' was very specifically 'Beyond the Pillars of Heracles', hence out in the Atlantic. Okay, there's been enough moon-bat notions about Central America etc, plus everywhere from Rockall, via the Canaries to the Azores. But, Eastern Atlantic geology is unambiguous. Unlike Doggerland and the Sunda Shelf, there were no vast ice-age lands. The islands rise from deep water...

Recently, a new contender showed up in South Morocco, on the Souss-Massa plain. Yup, on the mainland. http://asalas.org/doku.php

It had 'ringy thingy' geology, was isolated by land, had a nice port, seemed amply supplied by springs, wells and melt-water. As a sea-going power, they'd have been all up and down that coast, from West Africa to the Cornish tin mines, and through into the Med. Then it was abandoned, either when changing climate dried up their mountains' snow-caps, or a quake deranged their ground-water...

( If you want an 'off the wall' what-if, they were perfectly placed to accidentally discover South America... )
 
(Prepares to get torn down and humiliated)

What about Gavin Menzies' idea of the Minoans going to North America?

There, I said it. Spare me. Even if it did not happen, if you could get a similar seafaring civilization to his Minoans, and ones who could cross vast distances of water (even the Atlantic from right places?), you would have a plausible Atlantis. Not here to say whether he is right or wrong, just pointing out that what he asserts describes a Atlantean-esque civilization.
 
The trick is coming up with a plausible reason for people to cross the Atlantic at all. Also I remember reading a bit of that book at a library and it came off as a bunch of literally insane ramblings with no rhyme or reason. He basically just describes himself looking at various places in America and saying "I could totally imagine the Minoans coming here. Therefore it must have happened."
 
What @9 Fanged Hummingbird said, with the addendum that Late Bronze Age ships were barely able to sail the Mediterranean Sea in winter (usually following precise roads as hinted by the "aegean list"), used the traditional "boweled fish" model fit for inner sea. To think such ship were able to not only cross the Atlantic (at very best, meaning top conditions, ancient ships could maybe cross the Atlantic in one month), but to do so regularily enough to set up a civilization is inane.

It would require, at the very least, a reason why super-Minoans wouldn't have traded or settled in Spain, would it be only inorder to take on tin trade,local mines and ressources, and at the very least a "jumpgate" to the west.

No, the trade in Middle and Late Bronze Age was essentially a Near-East/Eastern Mediterranean trade for what matter Minoans : I'd rather soon see a Minoan settlement in Red Sea or Persian Gulf than in western Mediterranean Sea or eastern Atlantic shores. And that would be a strech.

I'm going to ramble, but wondering if Plato was really about Minoans or Santori makes as much sense wondering if Thomas More was rather talking about Amerindians or Inuits. That's missing the point : maybe some toughts about ancient history (that, I must repeat, was barely known by classical Greeks, and mostly trough Homer, without any conception of Mycenean Greece), but these are your usual utopian dwellings.
 
The Atlantean civilization we know now is either the Minoans or the Tartessians. The Tartessians fit the bill and are an underrated alternate history subject.
 
What about Atlantis being Ugarit, or at least influenced by old myths about it? It was way older than Greek civilization, it's an island, and it fell in the past.
 
An 'Atlantis in Tartessos, Crete or Morocco are probably the best choices IMO. Sadly we don't know much about Tartessos or the hypothetical Moroccan Atlantis - although something based on Berber culture would probably be quite interesting. Berber cities are certainly interesting enough.

It'd be mostly fiction to write, but throw the hypothetical Tartessos, Moroccan Atlantis as a pair beyond would be interesting. Tie it in to the new hypotheses about Orkney and you've got a fun group of civilisations to play with.

--- Again, mostly fiction. But I'd read it.
 
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