Good old Atlantis pops up again.

Let's wait to see what the outcome of this is. Seems like a lot of people have thought they found it, but later not have.
 
The researcher sounds just a little (OK, a lot) too sure of himself. I guess he's trying to reassure his financial backers. Personally, I don't think Atlantis will ever be found. How would they identify it, anyway? Not withstanding the researcher's references to Plato, I don't think Plato's description of Atlantis was so detailed as to help much with the identification of a city that's spent the last few thousand years under water.
 
gajinoz said:
Believe as much, or as little, of THIS as you like.
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Zero!

"...histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together..."

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html

Atlantis never existed. Plato wrote two books, the Timaeus and the Critias. In those books - talking about a time 9,000 years in his past - he invented the island of Atlantis to use as a moral example of what happens to a country when its people go bad.

Atlantis is as real as Barsoom or Bizarro world. It has been found in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, in Cuba, off the coast of Devon...

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
Atlantis is as real as Barsoom or Bizarro world. It has been found in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, in Cuba, off the coast of Devon...

maximus otter
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Barsoom is not real ???

Damn, there goes another of my boyhood dreams of nights with the princess ..... :(

Edgar Rice B., you have a lot to answer for!
 
It's real, all right. Why do you think there have been so many Mars spaceship glitches? Even now, the rovers are being fed photoshopped images by the Oldest Highest Martians.
 
Esav Benyamin said:
It's real, all right. Why do you think there have been so many Mars spaceship glitches? Even now, the rovers are being fed photoshopped images by the Oldest Highest Martians.
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Shh! The Illuminati and the Bilderberg Group are using Carnivore to monitor our transmissions. I'd use radio, but they've got Echelon. Knackers! Black helicopters!

White noise.............................

maximus otter
 
homers illiad was often put to fiction even though he documented it years after Troys fall (well the one he mentioned) and Heinrich Schliemann successfully used those texts to discover Troy...

...I dont believe for a second that Atlantis was a fiction made up by Plato to get a moral across. And I hope archaeologists searching dont listen to people who are so quick to discount the texts of Plato, fact is theres more proof of the existence of Atlantis then there is proof of "God". I'll keep it at that, everyone can make there own mind up but like the example I gave of Heinrich Schliemann, he was heavily criticised by others in the field that discounted Troy as a myth, he is now remember as the man who found Troy (even though his impetuous nature did alot of damage to the site)...
 
There is some speculation among anthropologist types that Plato might have used the actual destruction of Minoan Crete as a basis for his story.

The volcanic Island blew up rather spectacularly prior to the rise of the Greek culture, mostly destroying the Minoan culture that resided there at the time. (Similar to Krakoata in scope). Survivors scattered around the Mediteranian area.
 
Robert.B said:
homers illiad was often put to fiction even though he documented it years after Troys fall (well the one he mentioned) and Heinrich Schliemann successfully used those texts to discover Troy...

...I dont believe for a second that Atlantis was a fiction made up by Plato to get a moral across. And I hope archaeologists searching dont listen to people who are so quick to discount the texts of Plato, fact is theres more proof of the existence of Atlantis then there is proof of "God". I'll keep it at that, everyone can make there own mind up but like the example I gave of Heinrich Schliemann, he was heavily criticised by others in the field that discounted Troy as a myth, he is now remember as the man who found Troy (even though his impetuous nature did alot of damage to the site)...
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I read a book on Schliemann once, he was a totally fascinating character who started out with nothing and ended up a millionaire. He also wasn't much of an archaelogist in that he made his finds fit his preconceived notions of what they were or should be rather then allowing them to speak for themselves. I think that the best that can be said was that he found A city rather then that he definitively found the Troy of the Iliad. However the name has stuck so he is credited with finding Troy.

I couldn't say that there is NO Atlantis however a few texts by Plato uncorroborated by anything or anyone else don't make much of a proof either. It's a neat story but so is Camelot and the Fountain of Youth. I'm not sure how you can categorically say that there WAS an Atlantis. As was mentioned earlier Plato was supposedly writing about a civilization that existed 9000 years before his time. That's more then 4 times as long as it has been since the time of Christ and how much do we know about that time period a mere 2000 years ago?
 
There is, or was, a bit of fire beneath all of the smoke about Atlantis. That bit of fire was the eruption of the volcano that is the island of Santorini, known in classical Greek times as Thera. This is an island somewhat North and East of Crete that held a very active and prosperous fishing and trading community. Circa 1630 BCE, the volcano exploded in a manner similar to Krakatoa and Mount St. Helen, destroying the community that lived on the island and causing a monster tsunami that swept outward, swamping everything for hundreds of miles around. One of those unfortunate victims was the island of Crete, the home of the thriving Minoan civilization, of which the Thera settlement was a colony. The tsunami and related earthquakes shattered much of the infrastructure on Crete as well as wiping out many of the Minoan colonies and much of their merchant fleet. These blows so weakened the Minoan culture that it fell prey to its less civilized but more violent and predatory neighbors to the Nothwest, the Bronze Age Greeks. We call them "Mycenaeans" after the most powerful city state on mainland Greece, Mycenae, which appears in Homer's Illiad and in other Greek mythos as the kingdom of Agamemnon.

Below are two sites that you may find interesting. The first one shows maps of the Aegean Sea and of Santorini. What you seer as the protected harbor of Santorini is the collapsed caldera of the volcano and all of the various smaller islands around that caldera, as well as the island of Santorini itself were originally the island of Thera. This, people, was a monster explosion and eruption, at least on the scale of Krakatoa.

The second is a site discussing speculation about the connection between the Thera eruption and the Biblical Exodus. I have been reading of this connection for some time, but my biggest problem with it is that the dates are wrong. Thera blew in the 17th Century BCE while the Exodus is, more or less, identified with the reign of the Pharoah Ramesses II ("the Great") in the 12th Century BCE. I note that the author of the article, Andrew Collins, dates the Exodus to the so-called "Amarna Period", the reign of the heretical, monotheist Pharoah Akhenaten and his primary wife, Nefertiti, in the 13th Century BCE, so the eruption is either 400 or 500 years too early to be a causative factor in the Exodus story.

The third site is an announcement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that says that their scientists have used various means to date the Thera eruption to the late 17th Century BCE and to quantify its power as equal to 2,000,000 Hiroshima size atomic bombs!

1) http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/santorini.html
2) http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/news/santorini.htm
3) http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/80s/release_1989_1281.html
 
Barsoom indeed! Didn't realize anyone here had read the Princess of Mars series - when I was a kid I wanted to be John Carter for halloween one year but no one knew who that was... :cool:
 
FullerH said:
There is, or was, a bit of fire beneath all of the smoke about Atlantis. That bit of fire was the eruption of the volcano that is the island of Santorini, known in classical Greek times as Thera. This is an island somewhat North and East of Crete that held a very active and prosperous fishing and trading community. Circa 1630 BCE, the volcano exploded in a manner similar to Krakatoa and Mount St. Helen, destroying the community that lived on the island and causing a monster tsunami that swept outward, swamping everything for hundreds of miles around. One of those unfortunate victims was the island of Crete, the home of the thriving Minoan civilization, of which the Thera settlement was a colony. The tsunami and related earthquakes shattered much of the infrastructure on Crete as well as wiping out many of the Minoan colonies and much of their merchant fleet. These blows so weakened the Minoan culture that it fell prey to its less civilized but more violent and predatory neighbors to the Nothwest, the Bronze Age Greeks. We call them "Mycenaeans" after the most powerful city state on mainland Greece, Mycenae, which appears in Homer's Illiad and in other Greek mythos as the kingdom of Agamemnon.

Below are two sites that you may find interesting. The first one shows maps of the Aegean Sea and of Santorini. What you seer as the protected harbor of Santorini is the collapsed caldera of the volcano and all of the various smaller islands around that caldera, as well as the island of Santorini itself were originally the island of Thera. This, people, was a monster explosion and eruption, at least on the scale of Krakatoa.

The second is a site discussing speculation about the connection between the Thera eruption and the Biblical Exodus. I have been reading of this connection for some time, but my biggest problem with it is that the dates are wrong. Thera blew in the 17th Century BCE while the Exodus is, more or less, identified with the reign of the Pharoah Ramesses II ("the Great") in the 12th Century BCE. I note that the author of the article, Andrew Collins, dates the Exodus to the so-called "Amarna Period", the reign of the heretical, monotheist Pharoah Akhenaten and his primary wife, Nefertiti, in the 13th Century BCE, so the eruption is either 400 or 500 years too early to be a causative factor in the Exodus story.

The third site is an announcement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that says that their scientists have used various means to date the Thera eruption to the late 17th Century BCE and to quantify its power as equal to 2,000,000 Hiroshima size atomic bombs!

1) http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/santorini.html
2) http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/news/santorini.htm
3) http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/80s/release_1989_1281.html
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Fascinating Hugh, I find that sort of thing to be more reasonable. More prosaic but FAR more believable.
 
Triton said:
I think that the best that can be said was that he found A city rather then that he definitively found the Troy of the Iliad.
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modern archaeologists have long since concluded that he DID find the Homeric Troy, although there were over 10 different cities all built on top of each other. so in other words the treasure he found may not have been affiliated with Helen of Troy, since he found it and smuggled it out without really documenting the depth it was found or the strata evidence around it so archaeologists couldnt compare it with today's knowledge.

I did alot on this after high school, my ancient history teacher was a retired archaeologist who spent most of his career in Greece and the border areas...he got me interested in the whole Troy and Atlantis thing.

FullerH has gone into Thera, and I read that it could have been possible that it shifted the earths gravitational allignment...now this wasnt substantiated and they were studying it (in a journal i subscribe to) but in theory if the earths allignment were to shift it COULD put a whole continent under water with no one being the wiser. I dunno about all that as I'm into solid facts, but atlantis' saga wont be over for some time...I just hope in my life time something is found.
 
Triton said:
It's a neat story but so is Camelot and the Fountain of Youth.
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I believe the name Camelot ultimately derives from Khan-baligh, Kublai Khan's capital, known to Marco Polo as Cambaluc.

As was mentioned earlier Plato was supposedly writing about a civilization that existed 9000 years before his time.
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Plato claimed to have gotten the story through his ancestor Solon, the renowned legislator, who got it from the Egyptians on a visit there. But Solon may have misread the Egyptian numbers by a factor of ten. The destruction of Atlantis would then have occured nine hundred years before their time.

That's more then 4 times as long as it has been since the time of Christ and how much do we know about that time period a mere 2000 years ago?
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We know a lot. Even eleven thousand years ago, western and southern Asia was beginning to coalesce around nascent centers of civilization. Harappa/Mohenjo Daro and Sumer diodn't spring up in all their complexity from villages of reeds and clay.
 
Robert.B said:
FullerH has gone into Thera, and I read that it could have been possible that it shifted the earths gravitational allignment...now this wasnt substantiated and they were studying it (in a journal i subscribe to) but in theory if the earths allignment were to shift it COULD put a whole continent under water with no one being the wiser. I dunno about all that as I'm into solid facts, but atlantis' saga wont be over for some time...I just hope in my life time something is found.
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Why would a volcanic explosion have shifted the Earth's gravitational alignment? Do you mean magnetic alignment? Or the orientation of the crust/

Even had a continent -- or other large land mass -- slipped under water, it would be obvious now from satellite imagery of he ocean's floor. Nothing there.
 
Esav Benyamin said:
I believe the name Camelot ultimately derives from Khan-baligh, Kublai Khan's capital, known to Marco Polo as Cambaluc.


Plato claimed to have gotten the story through his ancestor Solon, the renowned legislator, who got it from the Egyptians on a visit there. But Solon may have misread the Egyptian numbers by a factor of ten. The destruction of Atlantis would then have occured nine hundred years before their time.


We know a lot. Even eleven thousand years ago, western and southern Asia was beginning to coalesce around nascent centers of civilization. Harappa/Mohenjo Daro and Sumer diodn't spring up in all their complexity from villages of reeds and clay.
Click to expand...

Yes we know a lot, we also don't know a lot and we are actually trying to find out unlike the people of Plato's time who didn't go in big for archaeology.
 
modern archaeologists have long since concluded that he DID find the Homeric Troy, although there were over 10 different cities all built on top of each other. so in other words the treasure he found may not have been affiliated with Helen of Troy, since he found it and smuggled it out without really documenting the depth it was found or the strata evidence around it so archaeologists couldnt compare it with today's knowledge.


I'm not sure how they could definitively make that conclusion... unless they found a large wooden horse... or badger...
 
Some good info here so far. The "scientist" sounds too definitive for his own good, which bodes ill, and his lack of formal UW archaeology training comes out. Here we're taught to use multiple working hypotheses and not to have an overriding ruling theory, which it sounds like he definately has. Further, side scans produce excellent data, but there are a lot of variables, depending on the type of system, wavelength, height off the bottom etc. I'm not very skilled with one, and I can tell you that if you don't have a lot of experience they can be very hard to interpret. We have one fellow in our program who can tell you what everything is down to the smallest dot, fish, or fish shadow, but he's been using our system for probably 5 to 10 years and does most of the sonar work for our Maritime Studies Department. Given the similarities or potential similarities between an acropolis and a large rocky plateau I'd want to know who this guy had doing his sonar work or see some images before I began to take him seriously.

Lagarto
 
lagarto said:
The "scientist" sounds too definitive for his own good, which bodes ill, and his lack of formal UW archaeology training comes out. Here we're taught to use multiple working hypotheses and not to have an overriding ruling theory, which it sounds like he definately has.
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Exactly. He "knows" what he's found, and now he's going to develop evidence to prove it. :D
 
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