Atlantis Found!!! (maybe)

[Tsukiyumi]

Dude, Mikey is just disagreeing with you; he's presented reasonable arguments, and made his point in a polite manner.

Deep just doesn't like you. Or anybody.

Personally, I agree with you that this is interesting, almost as much as Gobleke Tepe.

You are, however, seriously overreacting.

[Monroe]

eh maybe you're right. Past with Mikey and all.

[Deepcrush]

I've tried to be nice to folks on here as of late but...

When someone from an art school which admits to having no history program and also claims to have a history degree from said school while constantly fouling up anything that has to do with history in their posts and posts an article about something as important to history as a lost civilization while producing nothing to it and draws the amount of humor that this of course does...

Knowing me as we all do how could you expect me in good honesty to not poke at it? You're a walking target/joke and thats just more then I can pass up at times. Also as Tsu said, I just don't like people and even more so when I know them to be dishonest people like yourself.

@Mikey, glad to help!

[Monroe]

I didn't go to an arts school o.o Its leading majors are nursing, teaching, and criminal justice. I think I complained about the size of the facility of the history department but it does have a history department.

[Mikey]

What's your point? I mean you're making a huge deal out of it and for what reason? You know I know there are many older civilizations. What is your point? You're just nitpicking to be a tool. I'm not going to list every single one because you know what I am talking about. If the ruins are old enough that would mean a brand new alpha civilization that we don't know about. You're focusing on the wrong part of the topic.

My point is exactly what I said. You said that it would be neat to find out that there was a civilization - i.e., city-building, labor-diversified culture - older than Egypt. There were, in various and sundry forms. It may not respond to the Cadiz findings, but it speaks directly to a topic which you broached; and further, I think youre hope for this being Atlantis is based on a partly-incorrect assumption.

Cadiz:
Access to Atlantic and Islands beyond: check
Destroyed in a single day and night: check
Ringed city: check
Beyond the Pillars of Hercules: check
Island / Continent: mostly fail (to the Egyptians the Iberian peninsula might count)
Domination of most of Europe and Africa: unknown (But situated well to do so).
War with Athens: unknown
Land area: check

Thera:
Access to Atlantic islands and beyond: kinda
Destroyed in a single day and night: check (But not swallowed by sea)
Ringed City: unknown
Beyond Pillars of Hercules: fail
Island / Continent: check
Domination of most of Europe and Africa: unknown (But again situated well)
War with Athens: unknown but likely.
Land area: fail

Crete:
Access to Atlantic Islands and Beyond: kinda
Destroyed in a single day and night: kinda (destruction of Thera)
Ringed City: fail
Beyond Pillars of Hercules: fail
Island / Continent: check
Domination of most of Europe and Africa: unknown (But situation works as the successors dominated the trade routes of that area)
War with Athens: unknown but likely
Land area: kinda fail.



I think this new city is the best candidate so far. Just need the dating to come back. If the dating comes back and it dates back prior to 5,000 BCE or prior I would say its a match of the story and we would have the birth place of the myth.

I didn't see any evidence mentioned yet that the Cadiz city was destroyed in one day. Further, Plato wasn't a geographer, and misconception of Mediterranean geography was not only common but rife among Hellenic Greeks. Third, the criteria you mention contradict themselves: war with Athens could at the earliest mean Mycenaean Athens, which means the 5,000 BCE criterion would necessitate Atlantis missing the war-with-Athens criterion by three millenia (about.)

I don't see why you guys are all up in arms about it. Its as if you'd be mad cause I say we know were the Cyclops mythology came from.
"Hey guys I know where cyclops came from!" me
"You idiot there's no such thing as giant one eyed creatures!" Mikey
"Yeah, they were mammoth skeleto--" me
"Yeah you're an idiot! Giants aren't real!" Deep
"Mammoth skeletons found--" me
"Cyclops came from the X-gene in mutants." Deep
"You're racist against pirates and mutants!" Mikey
"Monroe has been officially warned and will be banned if he mentions pirates and mutants again." Graham


Its like no wonder this forum barely grows in members. You're all dying to flame anyone you can. I even said (maybe) in the title of the thread.

Hmmm. I'm fully willing to apologize profusely if you can point out where I engaged this alleged flaming. I commented directly on the points presented; I don't recall using any abusive language in this thread, nor even making a value judgement about you based on your belief in Atlantis' existence. I have no desire to do so. Everything I've said in this discussion has been either about a tangential point you made or about the lack of evidence or even basis for the Cadiz find itself being Atlantis. Like I said, please illustrate the post in which I "flamed" you.

eh maybe you're right. Past with Mikey and all.

I have been and am still more than willing to let bygones be bygones, and I honestly don't see where any of that came up in this discussion.

@Mikey, glad to help!

With friends like you, who needs enemas?

[Mikey]

OK, I've been re-reading more carefully the criteria that Monroe posted, and Crete falls more and more firmly into the "probably" category. Minoan Crete predated, but was contemporary with, Mycenaean Athens (and Tiryns, and Mycenae...) While the Minoans didn't seem to be particularly warlike, they definitely dominated Greece (and probably Mycenaean-age Asia Minor) culturally - later Mycenaean burial customs were filtered through Crete from Egypt; Mycenaean writing was directly adopted from Minoan Crete in the form of Linear B; Mycenaean funeral games and other rituals were adopted from Minoan religio-athletic customs; and Minoan artifacts indicate a wide trade range. In fact, the widespread reverence for the bull in Europe as an animistic representation of male virility, strength, and courage could be said to have stemmed from Minoan Crete, with the Minoans possibly even being the source of the Iberian tradition of bullfighting.

Crete was the doorstep to Sicily and the Mediterrannean beyond the Aegean for Mycenaean Greece, and thus could easily have been said to provide access to the Strait of Gibraltar. Also, Minoan culture was advanced enough beyond that of mainland Greece or Asia Minor to satisfy such tales about Atlantis; the Minoans adopted and refined Egyptian chemistry, advanced artistic techniques such as painting and metalwork, and even had such magical (in comparison to their neighbors) technology as indoor plumbing. Cnossos also could be readily described as a "ringed city."

Finally, a series of natural disasters befell Crete which could have engendered the legends of the Atlantean decline - Plato was a poet and philosopher, after all, and not an historian. The culmination of those, however, is the sudden (in archaeological terms) disappearance of Minoan civilization, which hasn't been definitively explained by Santorini, Thera, or anything else.

[Sonic Glitch]

Finally, a series of natural disasters befell Crete which could have engendered the legends of the Atlantean decline - Plato was a poet and philosopher, after all, and not an historian. The culmination of those, however, is the sudden (in archaeological terms) disappearance of Minoan civilization, which hasn't been definitively explained by Santorini, Thera, or anything else.

"I figured the Ancients packed up their entire city and left sometime between five and ten million years ago"
"In their ... flying city"
"Yes"
{Smirk}
"What?"
"Flying city."
"... They did everything big."
-- there's people here who oughta get this...

[Tsukiyumi]

[Monroe]

Yeah I'd say Crete, Thera, and Cadiz are the three best possible locations. One articles says that the cadiz site was destroyed in a tsunami. We know thera was destroyed in a volcano, and we know Crete would have been hit hard by the Tsunami from the Thera explosion. Location wise I think Cadiz fits best out of the three though but that's a personal opinion. The problem with finding the birth place behind the myth is that the requirements, as I posted, are pretty vague. Everything else from megolithic architecture to aliens have all been added post-Homer. So to find the truth behind the legend you'd have to cut the story back to the oldest known version- Homer's. There's verbal stories that are similar as far away as Norway but we don't know if that Atl-sounding name is Atlantis. And then there's the idea that its all fiction.

[Mikey]

Crete would have also been hit pretty hard by the Santorini eruption, both from volcanic fallout and tsunami(s.) Nitpick: Homer never mentioned anything like Atlantis (though there is the fact that he conflated Thera with Ithaka in the Odyssey.) The idea of Atlantis was first mentioned by Plato.

[Monroe]

Oh sorry, slip of the finger. For some reason I keep thinking Homer but aye you're right.

[Mikey]

Hmm. We've left Helike off the list of candidates too. While it may have been too recent or local to Plato to immediately be thought of as Atlantis, it was an entire city that sank into the sea.

Upon refreshing my Plato, however, I'm struck by a rather ludicrous component of the story. Plato says that Atlantis was a power about 9,000 years before the time of Solon - approximately 9600 BCE. Before the 5th millenium BCE, however, the location that would be Athens - which Plato says Atlantis attempted to invade - wasn't even permanently populated, if populated at all. Any peoples in the area would have been paleolithic, and would probably be still working on things like semi-permanent housing and domesticating crops and livestock. In other words, there was no Athens when Plato claims Atlantis existed. Athens only entered the Bronze Age within the 2nd millenium BCE as a Mycenaean polis.

[Mikey]

The conclusion: I don't have to make my car payment this month, as the Cadiz finding is obviously the dead city of R'lyeh and great Cthulhu will destroy humanity before my payment is due.

[Tsukiyumi]

The conclusion: I don't have to make my car payment this month, as the Cadiz finding is obviously the dead city of R'lyeh and great Cthulhu will destroy humanity before my payment is due.

[colmquinn]

The conclusion... the dead city of R'lyeh and great Cthulhu will destroy humanity before my payment is due.

I thought I'd left it parked in the pacific!