Atlantis? Real, fiction or both ....

lumphammer2

We all know the story …. lost civilisation sunk under the mid Atlantic ocean …. some say city …. some say island …. some say continent …. Most often attributed to Plato …. we are divided on its status …. a fictional morality tale based on the demise of the Minoans set elsewhere …. completely true …. completely fictional …. articles like this continue to fascinate:

Scientists discover metal from the 'lost city of Atlantis' (msn.com)

What is your take on Atlantis ?? …. for me if it is real it has to be based on the Americas ….. no other continent was found ever in the ocean …. and Plato did document continent/large landmass …. and not small island …. the Americas are the only continents across from Europe/Africa … plus they have ancient civilisations such as the Maya and Olmecs ….. if real this must have been what Atlantis was …. plus the term Atl Tlan in the Mesoamerican languages sounds like Atlantis and means water place …..

Jim_Hodge

Even Aristotle, who was a student of Plato, believed Plato had created Atlantis as a means to study and discuss philosophy around the ideal state and a republic.

crusd

Elements of the folk memory of the flooding of the Black Sea. Same folk memory that created the Noah's ark legend. Sprinkle in Elements of the folk memory of the Minoan Eruption and add in the mythology around the Atlantic ocean past the pillars of Hercules and bobs your Mythical city / island / continent.

Atlantic literally means Sea of Atlas or sea beyond the Atlas mountains, named for greek god Atlas.

Atlan in mesoamerican languages has a different origin. Being a combination of the atl (water) and tlan (in). If the origin of the word Atlantic in greek was not understood, maybe the coincidence would be worthy of consideration, but it is understood. A lot of this comes from the use of Atlantico in modern Nahuatl for the Atlantic ocean, which is known to be a loan word from Spanish.

silliussoddius

An allegory, but for some reason it had to be trotted out by fantasists and weirdly it has to be mentioned in any context of new finds as if no other civilizations existed in prehistory.

deirdremf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122559150#Comment_122559150

Other areas that flooded after the end of the ice age would be shallow seas like the Adriatic and the Persian Gulf.

The latter more specifically I expect is the source of the Bible story of the Great Flood.

Jim_Hodge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122579285#Comment_122579285

The bible story is a rehash of flood myths from Mesopotamian and Hindu traditions.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122579528#Comment_122579528

Yes. But those myths in turn may have been inspired, or partly inspired, by the inundation of the Gulf.

On edit: Having said that, the inundation of the Gulf wouldn't have been experienced as a sudden flood but as a very gradual process. It was a process that unfolded over several thousand years. It might have involved the occasional sudden local flood, but mostly it would have been a case of dry lands gradually becomin wetlands, tidal plains, estuarine lands, etc over many, many generations. There might be a collective memory that, e.g, this particular place used to be fertile but gradually became wetter and saltier and is now no longer usable, but it's unlikely that would have been perceived as a flood.

Aboriginal Australian cultures have stories that preserve knowledge of the inundation of the Australian coast plain that occurred between 13,000 and 7,000 years ago. Often these stories are quite detailed - e.g. they record and name specific landmarks that are now submerged; they describe customary routes ("songlines") that can no longer be travelled, etc. None of these stories attribute the inundation to rain, storms or sudden floods; they all describe a progressive rising of the seas which is attributed to various mythic causes ("Garnguur, the seagull woman, took her raft and dragged it back and forth across the neck of the peninsula letting the sea in and making our homes into islands").

The stories come from widely separated places and are told in different languages. They don't appear to be derived from one another. But they all describe, in various ways, the gradual loss of coastal lands to salination, marshiness and eventual submersion, and they all ascribe this to the steady ingress of the sea. It's likely that this is how the inundation of the Gulf would have been experienced by the cultures that lived there at the time.

The other point to note is that the biblical story and the antecedent mesopotamian stories describe a sudden flood which rises and then recedes. But of course the sea level rise that occurred at the end of the last ice age has never receded; once inundated, land was never recovered, and this was the feature that people struggled most to come to terms with. A myth that fails to address this issue is not likely to be derived from this experience.

RobbingBandit

I wouldn't look as far out as America or even the Atlantic Ocean I would guess if Atlantis was real it was a city state in the Mediterranean area either Greece Turkey or Northern Africa areas that crumbled into the sea as a result of a very powerful earthquake or it was just a concept created by Plato for another philosophical project.

Jim_Hodge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122580283#Comment_122580283

And I wouldn't look anywhere. It was a fabrication. A teaching aid. It just is not, and never was, real.

lumphammer2

I tend to believe Plato made up the story and name Atlantis …. it was inspired by what he knew what he heard ….. a lot of Greek myth is put into it like Atlas and Poseidon …. which did not exist in the culture of anywhere else ….

I liken the story to Star Wars ….. the stories in it are based on earthly power struggles re-located to fictional alien planets …. the writers did not know of any …. if we later discovered similar would we point to George Lucas as being somehow in the know ?? !! …..

Floods admittedly have been in the myths of various cultures ….. Middle Eastern like the Noah one and similar in Iran …. West African ones ….. Mesoamerican ones ….. the Australian ones described here by another person ….. all must point to something real but noted separately ….. the end of the ice age …..

The earthquake on Santorini/Thera prob inspired Plato ….. he set it elsewhere and embellished it …. Atlas and Poseidon were not in any way related to the Mesoamerican cultures …. but Plato may have surmised that there must be more across the great ocean …..

He guessed right that there was a whole continent …. 2 in fact ….. across the way from Europe and Africa ….. with advanced civilisations ….. but it is almost certain he knew nothing of the Maya or Olmec ….. one could say the Maya and Olmec are 'real Atlantis' but they did not call their kingdoms that and they most certainly were not Greek-centric with knowledge of Atlas or Poseidon as said …..

Atlantis was a part of a long tradition of being interested in other lands out there ….. surmising what might be there …. it is easy then to combine a surmised might be place with aa morality tale …. and that is exactly what Plato did …. it was less controversial than saying what he really was on about in those stories …. critiquing complacency among Greek elites in Athens and the like !!

Donald Trump

Doggerland.

And no. Not people meeting up in cars in the woods.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122582139#Comment_122582139

Wasn't Doggerland attached to mainland Europe?

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122582323#Comment_122582323

It still is. It's just underwater now

Shoog

One of the best expositions of lost civilization I ever read was a book called "Eden in the East". It basically made the point that the story of the Garden of Eden was current even in the time of Mesopotamia and still referred to an Eden in the East. This places it somewhere far distant to the Middle East.

Basically the story of a mythical Eden radiates out from south east Asia or Sundaland. This would have been one of the most temperate and fertile areas throughout the whole of the last ice age and there would have been plenty of time for an advanced civilization to develop and prosper over thousands of years. However at the end of the ice age most of this area would have been flooded by rising sea levels scattering it's inhabitant to every corner of the globe and totally obliterating their towns and cities - carrying their legends of high culture and a flooding of the world to every part of the globe.

The research was very detailed and quite compelling.

silliussoddius

Stephen Oppenheimer also had a book on genetics called Origins of the British, it was based on the same research that the show Blood of the Irish was based in. So obviously his central point of that book is erroneous. I wouldn’t hold that against him as that’s what a lot of mainstream scientists were saying for a while, but he clung to the idea for a long time in the face of evidence to the contrary.

I did hear about Eden in the East after reading Origins of the British, but never got around to reading it.

BalcombeSt4

Fiction. He might have based it on some Mediterranean culture that's been forgotten about, sort of like how George RR Martin based the Ice Wall on Hadrian's wall.

This story seems to have gotten big again in the 19th century, people started making up their own Atlantis's like the Kingdom of Mu (or Hiva) which was said to be this great continent in the south Pacific between of the coast of Chile & stretched close south east Asia. There was another one made up close to the US in the north west Atlantic which was said to be about a third of the size of the continental US which stretches close to Iceland.

crusd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122580267#Comment_122580267

What was a gradual event on a macro scale could on a local level have catastrophic results as a specific valley or low lying area gets flooded. When your world view is informed by how far you can walk a local catastrophe seems global.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122584777#Comment_122584777

Oh, sure. My point is that, (A) even when viewed at the local level, what happened wouldn't have looked like a sudden flood, but a gradual (as in, over generations) loss of land to the sea/to marshes or wetlands. And (B), the loss was irreversible. Which means that the biblical flood story, as a myth to try to come to terms with the consequences of rising sea levels, doesn't make a lot of sense. It wouldn't do what such a myth would need to do to be of any use. And, if a myth isn't useful, it doesn't survive — certainly not for millenia.

I can certainly buy the idea that the biblical flood myth has its origins in an attempt to come to terms with an actual flood. it seems much less likely that it was an attempt to come to terms with rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age.

deirdremf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122584813#Comment_122584813

Not disagreeing about the story not being true to life, but in the Noah story, I don't think it says anywhere that they ended up anywhere that Noah recognised; so if you take it as the story of a man who put all his belongings in a boat and set sail from some piece of land that first turned into an island and then gradually became submerged, well when he reached dry land this could be understood as "the waters receded" when they did no such thing.

And as is well known - stories grow in the telling; so it could be that the waters receding was added in to a later telling of the story, while poetic licence took "he put his pig and his hens and his family into his boat and sailed off in search of a new home" and turned it into "he built an ark and gathered together a pair of every animal in the whole wide world, and then set sail along with his family and their spouses and children" etc

lumphammer2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122582391#Comment_122582391

Many put the garden of Eden as between what is now Basra Iraq and Ahvaz Iran …. it equates to the fertile crescent civilisation in what is now Iraq and the very southwestern tip of Iran …. this was the precursor to the Babylonian and Persian civilisations of later ….

I see the bible as a series of half remembered hand me downs and moral allegory tales …. not that different to Plato and Atlantis really! ….

I don't believe Adam and Eve, Noah, etc. to be real …. more like named fictional characters that represented the typical person of the time in order to tell a story …. Noah being the typical refugee of the flood gathering what animals and supplies he had to relocate elsewhere …. of course as would be typical then he felt god chose him to live!

Jim_Hodge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122587472#Comment_122587472

The ark hardly covered any distance in the bible story. Noah was from Mesopotamia and the Ark settled on nearby Mount Ararat.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122584813#Comment_122584813

The end of the last ice age had a number of actual catastrophic flood events as ice dams collapsed and released cubic miles of meltwater. One was so signficant that it raised sea levels by over a meter and caused a temporary collapse of the north Atlantic circulation and a return to frigid conditions.

Such events would have had a profound impact on low lying communities and would have been preserved in legend. The Biblical flood and the original Genesis creation stories are both candidates for such an event.

deirdremf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122587642#Comment_122587642

Just under 400 km according to Google maps.

Of course, Ararat was chosen as it is the highest mountain in the region and way above all the surrounding land, to demonstrate just how high the flood reached. Hyperbole in other words!

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122587661#Comment_122587661

They're candidates, but it's speculative. The flood events associated with the end of the last ice age occurred 7,000 years ago or more; the Mesepotamian flood narratives are dated to between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago. That would suggest that the stories were handed down in an unbroken oral tradition for 4,000 years or more before being written down, and if so those oral tradition must have survived considerable cultural transitons that we know occurred during this time — the kind of transitions that normally interrup oral traditions. While this is possible, we have no evidence that it happened. It's equally possible, and perhaps more likely, that the flood narrative represents a memory of a different flood event — there were many — that occurered early in the Mespototamian period.

The only place were we have evidence of purely oral traditions surviving for millenia is in Australia, where violent cultural transitions did not occur. We've already mentioned Aboriginal flood narratives which are plausible candidates for representing memories of the end of the last ice age; there are also narratives to explain the origins of meteor craters that do look be narratives of a meteor strike, and we can date the formation of the craters.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122592026#Comment_122592026

Almost all of the Bible legends from the first two books came from Mesopotamia and were likely transmitted in the Lavant orally until they were written down much later.

Oral traditions can be extremely durable, even more so than written traditions - mainly because it was the life's work of a revered bardic caste to preserve them.

As I pointed out the ancient Mesopotamians trace their origins to an eden in the east not to the Iran/Iraq region. Similarly the very earliest Egyptian writings claim they came from the East originally.

There is also evidence for large areas of sunken cities from the Indian ocean, an area which would have been dry in the last ice age and would likely have seen migration to both the Indus Valley civilization and Mesopotamia at the end of the last ice age.

There is abundant clues that there were cultures of settled populations in the ice age period, building sophisticated towns and cities. The end of the age was relatively sudden and catastrophic to any settlements in low lying areas.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122592052#Comment_122592052

Everything you say is correct, but this is the point:

• Oral traditions can be extremely durable, even more so than written traditions - mainly because it was the life's work of a revered bardic caste to preserve them.

Precisely because of this, oral traditions are lost at times of cultural dislocation/transition when the bardic caste is suppressed or replaced. And we know this happened more than once over the period for which the tradition would have had to survive for the mesopotamian flood narratives to represent memories of the last ice age.

It's possible that such an oral tradtion survives several such transitions. But, if we're honest, the greater possiblity is that it did not survive, and that the stories that come to us are of more more recent origin.

silliussoddius

Getting closer.

lumphammer2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122592052#Comment_122592052

Oral traditions travel and this is clear with the bible …. a lot comes from what is now Iraq, Iran, Türkiye and Armenia ….. amalgamated in with stories of King David and King Solomon etc in the Levant area …. perhaps it is true the ancient Egyptians came from the East …. most say they were more or less the same skin colour as today's Egyptians which means they were prob Berber or Arabs ….. possibly originating from what is now Saudi Arabia ….

It seems the ice age end created all these legends …. and found their way to other lands …. the similarities in myths in cultures seem to prove links …. for instance there is a Cu Chulainn type in Persian mythology …. Celts and Milesians who came to Ireland have roots in what is now Iran …. some also liken Cu Chulainn to a Mayan myth ….

Perhaps before the ice age ended …. it was easier to travel longer distances on land …. it may also have been necessary to avoid harsher places at certain times of year …. maybe the end of the ice age then made former dry land areas into sea …. e.g. Caspian sea, Black sea, Persian gulf …. resulting in the migration of people …. and their stories ….

Plato's Atlantis may be based on a the link between Europe/Africa and a real place/civilisation across the sea handed down via folk tales for years ….. the Mayans or Olmecs for instance …. but diluted by things he was more knowledgeable about like Greek gods, Minoans and Egypt ….. maybe there were shallow waters and lots of islands thus making it easy to get from place to place ….. what is also clear is same in the Indian and Pacific oceans ….. people in Indonesia and Malaysia are closely related to those in Madagascar and same goes for all those Pacific Polynesian cultures …. there must have been more land around back then …..

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122598049#Comment_122598049

Similarities in Legends radiate out from South East Asia all the way down the Polynesian islands and all the way west to Mesopotamia and even as far as Middle America and the Tibetan plateau. Sundaland is the prime target for locating an Atlantis type civilization.

Many of the Root Biblical stories are common across this whole region.

Skeletal remain of a type typical of south east Asians have been located in sunken caves on the East coast of America - predating the Clovis culture by millennia. Clovis seem to be relatively late arrivals to America.

lumphammer2

Another interesting article

The five ancient cities that once ruled North America (msn.com)

If Atlantis has any basis in reality at all …. it def refers to things like that ….

lumphammer2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122598132#Comment_122598132

It is clear there is a huge link between East Asia and North America …..

The conection between Asian and Amerindian languages – Visión lingüística (wordpress.com)

and even parts of Asia that are not near America …..

US and Turkish Governments See Kinship Between American Indians and Turkic Peoples (indigenousnetwork.org)

Turkic peoples are most associated with Türkiye/Turkey and Central Asia for fairly obvious reasons …. they also spread right across far Eastern Russia …. and prob got to the Americas too …. certain NA languages resemble Turkish languages as does Japanese …..

One also notes that medieval North America ….. as discovered around the time of Columbus …. was far less advanced than South and Central America …. was it that a great cataclysm had occurred there ??? …. was North America in a dark ages similar to the period after the fall of the Roman Empire ??? …. was North America the real 'Atlantis' ??? …. it would be interesting to know for sure why N. America did not have something like the Aztecs, Mayans or Incas back in the middle ages ….

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122607580#Comment_122607580

There is strong evidence for a very long drought across North America which led to the collapse and abandonment of settled cultures. The Navaho rock communities are the best know examples, but the Mississippi river basin is littered with mound settlement from around that period.

America has very long climate cycles measured in centuries, plenty of time for agricultural communities to thrive before been wiped out by drought.

However I don't think there is any strong evidence for a lost high culture in North America and if there were it would have been found by now.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122607580#Comment_122607580

Ok, so are we officially in Hancock mode?

The language thing shouldn’t be a shock as the Turkic family (previously known as Altaic) covers a massive region from Turkey through Siberia and almost as far as the Korean Peninsula. This sounds cool as Turkey is far away from the US and the name gives the suggestions of the language family be named after the country. When things like this are brought up people try to create a direct link between both regions instead of looking for common ancestry, which in this case ties with what is known about the land bridge migration.