The Truth about Atlantis (2019)
talesoftimesforgotten.com
talesoftimesforgotten.com
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001c6t3
The conclusion is similar to OP: Plato had way too much fun making up the story.
Originally it was meant to be a critique of democracy as practiced by the seafaring populace of Athens.
There is also nice reading list provided there.
Like are we also giving Plato's account of the afterlife the same credibility?
He's also pulling in characters from a fairly large timespan, some of which (e.g. Parmenides) are unlikely to have unlikely to have overlapped with Socrates' active years.
We currently have a very static language compared to language drift prior to the 20th, which didn't have endless TV, radio, and other sources of repeated language examples which has ossified usage and drift. The same goes for the massive amounts of written text produced in newspapers, magazines, and now the internet.
Prior to these times, most of the world was illiterate, and accent, and usage drifted significantly.
Yet even today, with all this consistency in usage, we get words shifting usage and idioms appearing.
Then we turn around and presume to understand word usage with great certainty from thousands of years ago.
Sure, OK, some things can be derived. But in my opinion, to use an example, "you know nothing John Snow" is understood now, wasn't 50 years ago, won't be 50 years from now.
I was reading some of Ovid's Metamorphosis while waiting for someone else. I turned to a random page and it was an action packed description of Achilles riding his chariot while spears deflect off him and he effortlessly impales opponents. It almost resembled an anime style power fantasy or something. I wonder if Achilles was viewed more like Wolverine or Superman and people didn't really believe that there were immortal warriors blessed by the gods mowing down enemies in battle.
Not that that can't be correct sometimes. Would be interesting to see that quantified.
I didn't enjoy much Ovid's books, but Homer was wonderful. The Illiad often surprised me. The human characters and their connections with gods are so intriguing. But it's mostly dark — a hero can seem nice then behead an unarmed prisoner. And I remember vividly when a river was so upset by all the atrocities of the furious Achilles that it flooded the battle ground to stop the massacre.
This seems like a misleading question. Based on what we know about the Maya civilization, the Inca Empire, Ancient China, or Ancient Egypt, I would probably agree that ancient, advanced civilizations roughly similar to how we imagine Atlantis once existed, even though I know that Atlantis is a metaphor and not a real city.
These examples are not exactly like the Atlantis described by Plato, but they're not that far off. They're all wealthy, advanced civilizations with powerful* militaries and advanced architecture, engineering, and agricultural practices.
* Powerful in their local and temporal context.
There is also the question of what is meant by Atlantis. While I have certainly encountered versions of the story that the author was referring to, I read too many "mysteries" books as a kid and the myth pops up in contemporary fiction, I typically hear of the more plausible versions of the story that can be backed up by archaeological evidence. Granted, it can also be a complete fiction.
With the end of the Ice Age and its consequences, plenty of civilizations may have disappeared in deep waters. The Sumerians themselves claimed they received their knowledge from a man who visited them by the sea (fish-man like creature) on the aftermath of the great flood which may have buried plenty of Atlantis-like civilizations which could be the missing links to understand how, for instance, the Egyptians built the pyramids.
三海平原
The idea that it’s a mystery how the ancients built large projects like this and Easter island is simply modern chauvinism.
Or the chamber that was “theorized” by crackpots, included into Assassins Creed based on said “crackpots”, and then revealed to actually exist by sonography?
I think it’s far more sycophantic to insist that the ancient Egyptians were “primitive” rather than “advanced” when it was built, but hey, I’m against the grain and thus a crackpot.
You’re saying there’s evidence of structures miles below which pyramids? How were these structures detected? Who discovered them, using what methods?
Many people simply don't have any grasp of how complex technology is and how quickly and easily it is lost when unneeded and possibly but rarely redeveloped when needed again.
Heck I believe it was on this very website someone posted a study by a group of students who went to the actual quarry the stone was from, and actually carved out a stone using period techniques.
As far as I am concerned, pyramid denial is dead save a few absolute moronic hold outs who seem to believe copper tools cant cut stone.
Ancient civilizations had fairly thin survive or starve margins. Civilizations that sit atop the best agricultural land and build vanity projects instead of armies and practical infrastructure don't tend to sit atop that land for long. While we don't have precise records nobody is perplexed about how they moved stones nor how they mobilized the population, we have many well understood examples of ancient civilizations doing these things. It's largely a question of what other special circumstances let them engage in these projects so prolifically when Baybylon and China built <checks notes> walls.
Plenty of people, including myself, are perplexed about how they moved stones. Specifically, how 60--80 ton stones were moved up.
That's it. That's all there is to it.
Nothing more.
It isn't complicated, it's leverage, ramps, muscles, and patience.
It is likely that the entire construction program was planned around the 10-20 years it took to move the 80-ton weight-relieving stones much like how today I plan engineering and manufacturing efforts around the components with the longest lead times.
There were very few 80t blocks and those only had to go halfway up. Most were 2.5t.
Sacsayhuamán in Peru has 100t+ stones that were quarried 35km from the fortress location and transported up a steep incline. It took 6,000 men to move the stones.
Inca (1438-1570), Wari (600-1100) or Tiwanaku (300-1100)? Or some previous civilization?
Some of the columns, obelisks and statues are very large and heavy. Moving them would be a serious challenge, but not impossible. Some weigh 100 tons, one or two are much heavier again. The unfinished obelisk in the Aswan quarry is 1,000 tons, which begins to stretch credulity.
Consider that many columns and obelisks were stolen by the Romans: most squares in Rome seem to have an Egyptian obelisk; the Pantheon has single-piece granite columns from Egypt (topped with Roman capitals). However, the Romans did have iron, capstans and pulleys.
But there are several unexplained aspects of ancient Egyptian artifacts:
- Lower casing stones, facing on nearby 'temples' and internal chambers (often below the actual pyramid or mastaba), are built of precise megalithic granite. The granite blocks often fit together with surprising precision, and have features such as 'turning the corner' which require extra, strictly unnecessary, work (interestingly, also seen in Andean megalithic building).
- Granite boxes in lower chambers are large, heavy and precisely machined to high tolerances (flatness, parallelism).
- Vases found in lower tunnels and chambers (esp. under Djoser's step pyramid at Saqqara) are very precisely machined granite (circles, curves, symmetry, thinness) often to a few 1/1000 inch. They usually have two handles, meaning they cannot be simply lathed - and dynastic Egyptians did not even have the lathe.
- There are many single-piece statues and columns made from granite, with precisely machined curved surfaces and remarkably accurate symmetry.
- There are no known tools from dynastic Egypt which can reproduce precise curved surfaces in granite. Copper chisels and sand-lubricated copper saws or tube drills can work cylindrical holes and planar cuts in granite - but they take a very long time, and consume huge quantities of valuable copper. They cannot cut precise curved surfaces, or hollow out vases. Tube drill cores from ancient Egypt show spiral grooves, which cannot be made by copper+sand tools. The dynastic Egyptians did not have the wheel, the lathe, the potter's wheel, pulleys, capstans or any iron tools.
- No lower-level granite chambers, granite boxes or granite vases, have any decoration or writing. No bodies or mummies have been found in pristine boxes, although one or two have been found in chambers known to be opened in later periods. There are no hieroglyphics. Some perfect granite statues do have hieroglyphics carved into them, but these are clearly later and lower quality than the original work (the hieroglyphics are usually just a royal cartouche 'claiming' the artifact).
- It is strange that the most perfect granite artifacts are presumed to be the oldest artifacts. Later dynastic Egyptian periods did not reproduce that level of technique and precision. They worked in softer limestone, and their jars are all soft alabaster. However the oldest artifacts were created, the skills to make them were somehow lost.
- There is no solid dating of the oldest chambers, boxes, vases, obelisks or statues. There is no organic material for carbon dating. The lower chambers are often subterranean, and could have existed before the pyramids. Most archaeological timelines assume that a rough scratched royal cartouche means the whole artifact or building was created by that pharaoh. There is no doubt that dynastic Egyptians used, repaired and extended older structures, but there's no evidence they originated all of them.
- Finally, I tentatively mention the most famous controversy: weathering on exposed limestone surfaces, esp. Sphinx enclosure, but also pyramid temple complexes; and astronomical alignments that make most sense for prehistoric configuration of the equinoxes.
* [Here the word 'granite' means usually red granite, but also quartz, dolerite, andesite, basalt or other very hard igneous rocks.]
** [There is one caveat about their copper, sourced from Sinai and Red Sea coast, which had high impurities of arsenic and nickel that may have made it harder than pure copper, but not as hard as later copper-tin bronze.]
The final 'modern mystery' is why simple questions about known sites are not answered by non-intrusive scanning and excavation. Two of many examples:
- Chambers under the Sphinx and tunnels under the causeway from the Sphinx. There are openings of shafts clearly visible. A drill was put down in front of the Sphinx, it hit red granite, but nothing was done to investigate.
- The labyrinth at Hawara, which has several Greek/Roman eyewitness accounts, and even an old GPR survey validating the story, but it has not been excavated.
The result is that recent surveys are attempted using satellite sensing or other remote techniques that do not require sanctioned presence on the sites themselves. The results are somewhere between fanciful and ridiculous, but a simple GPR/seismic survey would be an obvious corrective to any misinformation.
It's also not a question of money. Firstly, plenty of rich donors and crowd-sourcing would sponsor such work, and secondly, any uncovered sites and artifacts would generate tourist revenue.
Yeah possibly.
But the current "fan favourite" capital of Atlantis is well above water.
IIRC there were stone age artefacts recovered from Doggerland. Which, also IIRC, was likely caused by a big ice shelf impacting the ocean at the end of the ice age. But to imply that a technological superpower with massive amounts of land disappeared without a trace is kind of bs.
Atlantis was never real and anyone who thinks it was is a moron.
If there were truly some sort of globe-spanning advanced civilization existing ~11KYA we'd have found at least one single piece of their material culture by now, but we haven't. We have however found innumerable pieces of archaeological evidence of contemporary hunter-gatherer neolithic societies in and around all of the places Atlantis was supposed to have "Conquered" and yet not once have we found a single Atlantean trade good, pot sherd, metal working, etc. Atlantis supposedly had a bronze-age or greater level of technology and a globe-spanning empire, and we literally haven't found a single shred of physical evidence to support its existence, despite having literal mountains of physical evidence for pretty much every other major empire that's existed throughout history.
Nor have we found any genetic evidence in people or crops that there was any kind of "Empire" connecting parts of Europe or Africa as we find time and time again with real empires that actually existed in prehistory. Real empires have people and crops that move around within the empire and leave genetic evidence of the mixing of populations and breeding of crops, yet we find nothing, not even the faintest echo of Atlantis. Again, we have mountains of hard physical evidence that shows how empires like the Summerians in the fertile crescent or the Norte Chico in meso-america spread through genetic evidence in current local populations and crops, yet we find absolutely no genetic evidence to support the existence of Atlantis.
Let alone the fact the bloody story of Atlantis references how the Atlanteans went to war with Athens some 9000 years before the Athenian city-state was even founded. Just utter, complete brain-dead nonsense.
Honestly, belief in Atlantis has become something a litmus-test for critical thinking and research ability these days, as anyone that believes in Atlantis despite the overwhelming volume of evidence that firmly proves it never existed is basically saying "I'm too lazy to do my own research (Based on peer-reviewed primary sources) and / or too stupid to understand actual science."
Also f*ck Graham Hancock (And Joe Rogan via extension). MFer is the worst kind of charlatan and is broadly responsible for how many Americans believe in Atlantis.
Stay away from any thread about physics, astronomy or anywhere vaccines are mentioned if you value your mental health.
What about Gobekli Tepe?
"Nor have we found any genetic evidence in people or crops that there was any kind of "Empire" connecting parts of Europe or Africa as we find time and time again with real empires that actually existed in prehistory."
Wouldn't Europe have been mostly tundra/ice that long ago?
Also, what about this article (not Europe, but other global implications), do you dispute it specifically?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9629774/
You seem to be really upset (and frankly insulting) at the prospect of people being curious about the idea that we don't know everything about our history yet. There is a very wide gap between believing a theory is true or being certain its not true, and that gap is the humility to accept we aren't sure yet and there is room to be surprised.
Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence? What exactly is the risk? Isn't it more risky to stop developing the science and pursuing the truth? Is this really about scientific rigor, or do you have some reason to want there not to have been more developed civilizations pre-younger dryas than we previously thought existed? What's the harm to you in other people asking these questions and going out and trying to answer them?
What about it? It's one of the oldest Neolithic settlements we've identified, but otherwise, it's not particularly unusual within our understanding of Neolithic Mesopotamia.
When GP is talking about "material culture", they're (probably) referring to the archaeological definition of culture, which means you need to give an explanation as to what makes an artifact indicative of belonging to a culture. The shape of an arrowhead perhaps, or maybe the kind of style used in painting pottery. Something that lets an archaeologist dig something up and go "aha, this is culture X!" Age isn't one of those characteristics.
But of course the province of pseudoarchaeology is to come up with a theory and work everything into evidence for that theory. Atlantis is old, Göbleki Tepe is old, therefore Göbleki Tepe is Atlantean!
> Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence? What exactly is the risk?
Most of the people that tend to propose these theories aren't interested in searching for evidence. See for example, Graham Hancock, who has been peddling the same theory for 30 years and has done nothing to actually produce better evidence for it except to whine that mainstream archaeologists don't want to listen to him because they're stuck in their own stupid ways. (Of course, in that same time, mainstream archaeology has thoroughly demolished the Clovis-First hypothesis which was previously disfavored, precisely because the pre-Clovis adherents actually did the legwork to produce better evidence to make it more accepted!) You can also see this with archaeoastronomy, which is borderline fringe--its better practitioners have made some success by listening to the criticisms and persevering in efforts to get better, stronger evidence to buttress their claims. As a basic rule of thumb, if someone's response to criticism is to chide scientists for being rigid in their thinking rather than going out to try to get better evidence, then that's a strong sign they're engaged in pseudoscience and not science.
As for the risk, a lot of these theories bear a deep legacy of overt racism just begin their skin; they've historically been used to devalue the abilities of the people who've made them (e.g., Great Zimbabwe). Nowadays, they've been modified to edit out the basic message of "white people taught everybody how to civilization," so it's no longer quite as overt as their late 19th century ancestors... but you can still see the lingering traces of it in "an ancient civilization taught everybody how to civilization."
I wish I had time right now to thoughtfully ask a couple questions I have, but it will have to wait.
I am compelled to squeeze this in:
"As for the risk, a lot of these theories bear a deep legacy of overt racism just begin their skin; they've historically been used to devalue the abilities of the people who've made them (e.g., Great Zimbabwe). Nowadays, they've been modified to edit out the basic message of "white people taught everybody how to civilization," so it's no longer quite as overt as their late 19th century ancestors... but you can still see the lingering traces of it in "an ancient civilization taught everybody how to civilization.""
- Wow! Holy cow, I had no idea, and this hadn't remotely crossed my mind. If anything, I would have thought the opposite. (that evidence of incredible achievements by ancient civilizations would diminish [relatively] the achievements of modern ones).
He has dropped the claim from more recent works but never recanted it.
Prior to today, I hadn't read any of Graham Hancock's work and have no attachment to him or his theory.
I was under the impression that the younger dryas impact hypothesis was accepted by Geology (I actually learned from this thread that it's not). If one is to assume that the younger dryas was caused by cataclysmic meteorite impacts, then the idea that an ancient civilization was wiped out in said cataclysm seems plausible and triggered my curiosity.
Given that the impact hypothesis hasn't reached the burden of proof, then I am not sure what to make of it.
That said, I don't appreciate any implication that just because someone is interested in evidence of undiscovered pre younger dryas civilizations they are racist. Not speaking of Hancock specifically, but I would appreciate being able to have a conversation about the evidence without feeling like someone is implying I am racist because I am interested in it. (Keep in mind I wasn't the one who brought up Hancock)
Like Howard and Lovecraft among others, loved this sort of stuff. "What if theres an entire missing age where heroes roamed around doing cool shit" yeah bro what if that shit rules.
They formed a lot of their worldview based on books that were already being discredited in their time. But its still amazing fiction.
The problem largely seems that people cant let it live in fiction.
>then the idea that an ancient civilization was wiped out in said cataclysm seems plausible and triggered my curiosity.
Yeah thats how they get you. It activates the neurons. That said, it would have had to atomise a lot of their society to prevent detection.
>That said, I don't appreciate any implication that just because someone is interested in evidence of undiscovered pre younger dryas civilizations they are racist.
The problem is that, since around the 1950s we have had pretty much perfect knowledge of the planet. Small notes of our understanding can change but we have been almost everywhere and done almost everything. Its really sad but its a fact.
There are really 2 strands of archaeology denial.
1. "I really wish there was more to explore, so I am going to make it up\become heavily invested in a made up history"
2. "I dont think those people could have discovered stacking rocks without help"
1. Can be fine in fiction, but 2. is just gross tbh. And terribly, the people in group 1, are largely basing their understanding on work done by group 2. Its hard to overstate how frequently racist nonsense is bubbling just underneath this.
So while yeah, you might resent the implication by some commenters that you are in some way racist, the fault lies largely with the fact that you are standing, possibly blindfolded, in a big crowd thats like 99% racist by volume. It might be rude to assume, but its also generally a fairly accurate assumption that tends to work without issue.
Something to keep in mind. A lot of YDIH people end up as "Mud Flooders" people whose ur-conspiracy involves the entire planet being covered in 20 meters of mud during the YD. These people then spin off everything in that manner. Flat earth, tartaria, etc etc. Its quite a slippery brain slope.
Scientific Curiosity should never involve insisting something exists without evidence or any intention of looking for it.
This is where hancocks people always fall back to. Science just isnt "Imaginitive" enough to give enough time to their theories. Whereas you meet any scientist in the field and they will tell you how 3 broken pots and a pile of bones translates into an amazing civilisation. I dont think archeologists could survive being even 1 iota more imaginative.
>Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence?
They should search for that evidence instead of writing 20 books, some of them DEEEPLY racist, demanding other people search for that evidence on their behalf.
>Isn't it more risky to stop developing the science and pursuing the truth?
There are tons of people in the field right now developing the science and pursuing the truth.
>do you have some reason to want there not to have been more developed civilizations pre-younger dryas than we previously thought existed? What's the harm to you in other people asking these questions and going out and trying to answer them?
The person trying to force a narrative on history is Hancock. The danger is that he doesn't hypothesize, he instructs his legion of morons that his word is the truth and they need to buy more of his books to discover said truth.
I was trying to have a dialog about the actual evidence of the theory that the Richat structure could have been home to an advanced civilization that was wiped out in a flood ~12-13,000 years ago.
Here is what interests me:
- What evidence supports the theory, what evidence falsifies the theory
- If it's inconclusive, what kind of evidence would we need to find to either prove of falsify, and where would we look for it.
Because you have dragged in Hancock and his "people" (whatever that means) into this, I find it really hard to have a constructive dialog with you about the actual evidence and theory. Do you have any interest in setting aside the big fat red herring?
Here goes my best effort:
"There are tons of people in the field right now developing the science and pursuing the truth."
There are tons of people pursuing archeological excavations of the Richat structure? If not, then what novel theories are the archeology community pursuing?
"Scientific Curiosity should never involve insisting something exists without evidence or any intention of looking for it."
I am not doing that, and you are responding to me. I am asking about a theory and what evidence proves or disproves it. All science starts with observations and theories. My intention was to have a respectful dialog about the topic of the article, hoping I might learn something.
"In science, a theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment"
Your idea, your concept, is that there's some huge missing gap in history. You haven't met the standard to expect other people to go and investigate things for you. You are free to take your idea, and go and seek approval to dig up the richat structure.
>what evidence falsifies the theory
No evidence falsifies the theory. First there isn't a theory, but second, the capital of atlantis will simply move somewhere else when evidence fails to be located.
>I find it really hard to have a constructive dialog with you about the actual evidence and theory
The chief proponents of the idea, are kind of relevant. They have 20 years or so of history, moving the goal posts all over the planet. Realistically, you should be looking at it like this:
1. Is there evidence to support your claims, if not, why not.
2. Is there evidence to support your intended course of action, if not, why not.
3. Go and find 2, and then seek 1.
I mean we have seen 1 and 2 unravel before you in this comment section. Theres no geologically sound "mud flood" or impact event that would explain why theres no evidence in the richat structure. Theres no visible evidence of atlantean civilisation in the Richat structure. Why do you expect some other person to go do labor when they have no reasonable expectation of results? Its hard enough for archeologists to get permits to dig where they have a reasonable expectation of findings. Putting down digs in the middle of the desert without a single reason to do so seems mad right? Its like asking a physicist to test gravity in the richat structure just in case it works differently there. Or a chemist to double check the atomic weight of helium on alternate tuesdays. If you are burdened with the glorious imagination that will free us from the shackles of incorrect history, why wouldnt you put that amazing talent to work yourself?
then: "Atlantis was never real and anyone who thinks it was is a moron."
"f*ck"
go back to reddit
Knowledge, I keep insisting, comes in silos.
It is much harder to prove something is not real, when there is no evidence to support it in the first place. It is effectively proving a negative which requires an onerus amount of proof. The absence of evidence doesn't support a null hypothesis in stochastic environments. This is a classic cognitive bias.
Those that do so without proper basis, are most likely deluding themselves than actually participating in critical thought and rational measure based in external reality.
There are a number of anomalies in the historic record, Graham Hancock has pointed out a number of them, and to date there is no explanation for much of the evidence he has pointed out. In fact some of it points to fantastical levels of tools that in some cases exceed current day processes. The Oseiron for example which can't be pumped out with modern equipment.
You conveniently forget the bronze-age collapse which is attributed to a seafaring people alongside chaos, and the burning of the library of Alexandria destroyed some of the most dated records.
You rely on a number of cognitive biases, your suppositions are not supported, and anyone that has to resort to invective and name calling isn't someone who is operating from a rational perspective that is capable of critical thought.
The latter most entirely undermines any argument you might make.
I think its accepted that ~13,000 years ago the Sahara was lush forests and grasslands, and around that time there was a significant meteor strike (or several) that hit North America and possibly the Atlantic Ocean.
Of course it would be fun to learn that Atlantis was real, so many people will be biased to want to believe it. It might not be true, but to argue it's conclusive either way I think is premature. The article states several times things like "all available evidence", which is both not true, (the article omits available evidence) and also doesn't acknowledge how little evidence is available.
"Other than having concentric circles, it doesn't match Plato's description of Atlantis" - in what way? Be specific.
"and there is no evidence that any large city was ever there." - lol, there has never been a thorough archeological survey, and the surveys that have been done have turned up evidence that points to noteworthy human activity. What about the tens of thousands of axe heads found all concentrated in one spot?
Assuming that the city was destroyed in a significant flood, we need to assume the evidence will be hard to find, and therefore we have to look hard for it before we can say it's not there.
I think OP mentions this due to your mention of meteor impacts
> What about the tens of thousands of axe heads found all concentrated in one spot?
According to Wikipedia, Stone Age axes. It seems reasonable to believe that the site provided easy access for material
I thought I was pretty clear about the strikes being in North America, but ill emphasize that point again. The formation is natural and the theory is that human settled in it for its logistical and defensive advantages (back when the area around it was lush), and then got wiped out by floods caused by global climate shifts caused by massive meteorite strikes in North America and possibly the Atlantic ocean.
> According to Wikipedia, Stone Age axes. It seems reasonable to believe that the site provided easy access for material
Sure, but given how little investment has been made into archeological studies of the area, isn't it interesting that we found evidence of some significant human activity?
It doesn't prove the theory, but its an observation that if anything lends to the theory.
The scientific method is a process of making observations, developing a theory, forming falsifiable hypotheses, testing them carefully, and then drawing conclusions, and updating the theory as appropriate.
I don't take issue with people being skeptical about all this, I just take issue with people confidently stating that it's been proven false. Their stance seems less scientific to me than the people who want to pursue experiments that validate or invalidate (or refine) the theory.
I for one just would like to know the truth, whatever it might be.
Edit: To the people who are downvoting this comment, I wish you would respond to it and explain why you think it deserves to be downvoted.
This bit never happens.
What does occur is that the hypothesis just twists to ignore new data. Hancock has claimed that as he isn't a scientist he doesn't need to include the facts that disagree with his ideas. He sees himself as a champion of an idea, and cherry picks facts to craft the best possible case for that idea. IE: Hes a massive fraud and waste of time.
> I just take issue with people confidently stating that it's been proven false.
I take issue with the idea that this entire argument has to happen again, politely and fresh, for anyone who pops up on the internet having read some cherry picked nonsense about atlantis. Why is it our collective responsibility to educate you. Its not even the responsibility of scientists to prove or disprove your claims, if you are making positive claims you should be either presenting or locating evidence for those claims. Also to note, evidence doesnt mean "Hey this sounds a bit like some old folklore".
>I for one just would like to know the truth, whatever it might be.
All offense intended, but the people who go on about this stuff have already arrived at their desired truth, and they are simply defending their truth from the slings and arrows of reality. Get on a boat, go investigate the Richat structure, come back with evidence, otherwise the current evidence stands.
There is no need to "prove Atlantis false" since there is no evidence for its existence. The only "evidence" is Plato, but if you read Plato, it's pretty clear that he is not talking about a real place, but making up Atlantis to make a point. So the onus is on the people who believe in Atlantis to provide compelling evidence that they are right, not on everybody else to disprove it.
Imagine you live 3000 years in the future, and you read Harry Potter. You assume that it describes real events and that Hogwarts is real. Most people look at the book and conclude it is fiction, but you disagree. Is it a compelling argument for you to say, "Well, unless they prove that there is no structure like Hogwarts anywhere on earth, I take issue with people confidently stating that Harry Potter is fiction"?
I don't think it is. I think the reasonable position is to state that Harry Potter is fictional confidently, and only reconsider that opinion when people provide compelling evidence that it is not.
Plato pretty clearly describes the city as man-made. Perhaps Atlantis was real, but he was mistaken about how it was built, so let's give you that. However, everything else still doesn't match.
>in what way? Be specific
That's a bit bossy. It's funny that you ask me to be specific, given that you're providing no evidence for your claim other than "it's round."
Plato is pretty specific in how he describes Atlantis. He says there's a mountain 9 km away from the city. That does not match the geography of the structure. He says there are three concentric circles of land; it's unclear what would even count as a circle of land in the structure, but it doesn't look like three. Plato claims Atlantis was about 500km in diameter, but the city (i.e., the concentric rings) was only a few km, much smaller than the structure. He said there was a passage for ships into the city, half a km wide, which does not exist in the structure.
He also says Atlantis controlled Libya, Egypt, Asia, and parts of Europe. And yet there are no traces of anything? Nowhere? Nothing at all? But Plato knew about it, and nobody else?
>What about the tens of thousands of axe heads found all concentrated in one spot?
There is nothing there. There are no clay pots, no walls, and no abundance of metals or technological artefacts that should be there if this were Atlantis. There are no walls, and nothing. It's just nothing.
Keep in mind my goal here isn't to prove the theory - my stance is that the theory is falsifiable and hasn't yet been proven or disproven. My response below is based on the assumption that misalignments between the reality of the Richat structure and Plato's descriptions of the Atlantis capital aren't material enough to dismiss the theory with confidence.
I also hope that you can agree with me that if we represent the theory fairly in order to disprove it we have to acknowledge that the details will have been muddied by 9000+ years and multiple translations, etc. between the theoretical city and Plato's descriptions. That said, I have responded to each of your points below:
"He says there's a mountain 9 km away from the city. That does not match the geography of the structure." There is a 200-250 meter jump in elevation 9km north of the outermost ring of the richat structure. I agree it's not exactly a "mountain" but considering my point above, can we agree that this could be what Plato was referring to?
"He says there are three concentric circles of land; it's unclear what would even count as a circle of land in the structure, but it doesn't look like three." - Odd, it does to me... Have you tried using google earth and checking the elevation at different points in the area?
"Plato claims Atlantis was about 500km in diameter, but the city (i.e., the concentric rings) was only a few km, much smaller than the structure." - The innermost circle is about 9km in diameter. The full concentric ring structure is about 50km, and the distance between the Richat structure and the ocean is about 500km. This theory assumes that the Richat structure was connected to the ocean by a river, and the civilization would also have built up along that river (hence the 500km figure). It seems reasonable to mix up the 9km inner circle with the whole concentric ring structure.
"He said there was a passage for ships into the city, half a km wide, which does not exist in the structure." - Relative to the size of the structure, half a KM wide is only 1% of the diameter. The theory is that the city was wiped out in a biblical flood, so there would have been significant erosion and earth movement which could make evidence of specifically where this channel was located harder to determine. There may be no evidence of it, or there may be subtle evidence of it, I don't know. Of all your points, I find this one the hardest to debate, but I also think its inconclusive.
"There is nothing there. There are no clay pots, no walls, and no abundance of metals or technological artefacts that should be there if this were Atlantis. There are no walls, and nothing. It's just nothing." - As far as I know, no one in modern times has actually dug under the surface to check? I don't understand where your confidence in "there is nothing there" comes from. It's like a developer who has written a few unit tests stating "there are no bugs", just because you haven't encountered one. This confidence in "there is no evidence" I find unscientific, and its the attitude that bothers me the most in these discussions. Can't you just say "We haven't found any conclusive evidence yet, but we also haven't looked very hard"? Do you honestly disagree with this statement?
I appreciate you engaging with me, and I hope you don't interpret my labelling your one comment unscientific as a criticism of your skepticism. Its good that you are skeptical, I only take issue with the conflation between "there is no evidence" and "we haven't found any evidence".
I honestly don't know if the Richat structure was Atlantis, and my overall stance on it is neutral. If there was significant research done into it that turned up no evidence of a significant human population I would accept it. My desire isn't to prove the theory, its to be supportive of people being able to do more work to more conclusively prove or disprove the theory.
According to Plato, there should be an inner island about 1km in diameter, a ring of water about 200m wide, a ring of land about 400m wide, another ring of water about 400m wide, an outer ring of land about 600m wide, and then water.
I don't see that in the structure. I don't see the center island; the structure seems flat in the middle. And if we assume that there was an island there once, and I engage my Pareidolia engine, there's now one ring too many.
Not to mention that this is way bigger than what Plato describes.
>The innermost circle is about 9km in diameter
Plato describes the innermost circle of Atlantis as 900 meters in diameter ("The island in which the palace was situated had a diameter of five stadia").
>The full concentric ring structure is about 50km
Plato describes the size of the whole city as 5km in diameter. He also claims there were walls around all the rings and bridges connecting the rings. This is somewhat plausible based on his measurements, but not the structure's size.
>I don't understand where your confidence in "there is nothing there" comes from.
People find pottery and other artefacts everywhere humans used to live, even if they don't run archeological digs. Plato describes Atlantis as incredibly rich and powerful—there would be stuff there. People would be looting that place like crazy, and we'd see evidence.
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/no-atlantis-has-not-been...
BTW, there's still the problem of claiming that (a) Plato's account is a true and faithful transcript of an actual conversation, and that (b) all the various accounts reproduced in this rather complex game of telephone are faithful, as well. If, on the other hand, we conceded that neither the conversation nor the various narrator(s) were real, but rather a figure of speech and and a rhetorical vehicle, it's kind of difficult to claim at the same time unconditional veracity for the narrative conveyed by this. Maybe, the mode of introduction and framing already gives it away?
(Moreover, there was no broader tradition before this, it just popped up with the dialogs. So it should be difficult to claim that Plato just stated the obvious in another context. How comes that this knowledge should have come down to Plato exclusively, by this complex line of famous men, via a complex chain of witnesses, without any of them having been attributed for anything alike before or after this?)
If we set aside "Atlantis" and Plato for a moment, and consider that 13,000 years ago the area around the Richat structure was lush with fauna and flora, and that there's geological evidence that around that time there were multiple cataclysmic meteorite strikes in North America (and maybe the Atlantic ocean), rapid global temperature changes, and flooding, then maybe:
- Given the very unique geography of the area it would have been a likely place for people to settle and flourish. There would have been both defensive and logistical advantages to the structure.
- They could have developed further there than anywhere else in the continent at the time
- They might have been wiped out by cataclysmic flooding that makes evidence of their presence significantly harder to detect than the civilizations we do have strong evidence for.
If we are to neglect that Plato clearly states that his rhetorical vehicle is situated outside of Africa, but the Richat structure is in the then known parts of Africa, why should direction matter? While we may discuss the Richat structure, we should do so separately. There's no need to connect these things and no indication of why we should do so.
Regarding features, given the total population of that time (at least, as far as our estimates go), controlling a circular structure of 25km diameter may have been a bit ambitious. (It may have been pretty disadvantageous in actuality, as you would have to control and defend rather extensive perimeters with what would only account to thousands (in the low single digits). And, if you failed to do so, the very same features would have hosted your enemies. — Compare this to what Plato thought to be a more realistic size for what must have been then a remarkably extensive population.)
Is it Atlantis? Maybe not, but there a number of stiking coincidences.
It has never been positively established why would it need refutation.
The theory comes with several hypotheses which have not been validated or invalidated yet. to invalidate the theory would require significant (strategically chosen) archaeological surveys of the Sahara and the richat structure. The theory is falsifiable, and has not been falsified yet. That doesn't make the theory of Atlantis true, it just makes it undetermined.
Falsifying a vague hand-wavy theory of Atlantis, I agree with you. But the specific theory that Richat structure was the home of a large city 13,000 years ago that was destroyed in a flood? I wholeheartedly disagree. It's falsifiable and probably could be done with less than 1/100th the archeological investment that's been made into Egypt.
"Is it possible that there was an advanced civilization that somehow left virtually zero evidence? Yes, but why?"
Several cataclysmic meteorite strikes that ended the ice age, triggered younger dryas, caused biblical flooding, rapid environmental change, etc.
I don't think the geological evidence of this is being refuted, just the consequences of it on our understanding of human civilizational history.
2. Is there any evidence of either glaciation or flooding at the Richat structure?
3. If no on 2, then why should their civilization leave virtually zero evidence, even if it collapsed? Macchu Pichu is still there. Teotihuacan is still there. The Nasca Lines are still there. Chan Chan is still there. The Minoan ruins are still there. If this was just an abrupt collapse. why should it leave no trace?
2. There is evidence of tremendous flooding, yes. You can actually see it on google earth yourself if you go look...
3. The theory assumes there was massive flooding, which is why we have to look harder for evidence (careful subsurface excavation) compared to sites like Macchu Pichu. Also Macchu Pichu is 600 years old, and the theory of the Richat structure housing a city assumes it was destroyed 12,900+ years ago.
4. Keep in mind that it's widely accepted that 13k years ago the Sahara was lush grasslands and forests.
You're wrong about this. There's not a lot of evidence for the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. In particular, the best evidence--an actual meteoric impact crater--is completely missing. This is why proponents have instead suggested either that it was a series of large airbursts or an impact in the Laurentide ice sheet itself, to be able to keep a large crater from forming.
The current consensus hypothesis is that it's a reconfiguration of the glacial lake outflows on the margin of the Laurentide ice sheet that induced a breakdown of the thermohaline circulation system, which also explains some peculiarities of the Younger Dryas (like its effects were a lot worse in North America than the rest of the world).
Times like this I wish I could edit older comments. I would update it to incorporate what you are saying and diminish the confidence in the impact hypothesis.
And I'll try to return the favor. If they were airbursts, and so were providing heat but not stuff thrown up into the atmosphere, then I could maybe see meteors ending an ice age.
The article would be good if it asserted "we don't know".
But we do, Plato made them up.
For someone to post a comment like "I thought everyone knew" is so egregiously deceptive and misleading that the comment should be flagged. It's tantamount to posting "I thought everyone knew area 51 recovered aliens from Roswell." It's a conspiracy theory masquerading as an ordinary remark.
Ditto for The Iliad and The Odysee, yet Troy existed. That's the thing about oral traditions. They are like a telephone game where the story changes a bit with each retelling, so they are not trustworthy, but societies that engaged in epic storytelling did try to keep true to them word-for-word, and that's why some of them are epic poems: to help memorize them. So it's entirely possible that one of the people involved in this story just made it up, but it's also as likely that it was a story they passed down as well as they could, and possibly actually true.
This is not strong evidence for Atlantis being made up. Neither is the fact that Plato made up things like the allegory of the cave: we generally know when he's doing that.
The fact is that we can't find any actual evidence of Atlantis anywhere other than in tenuous ancient writings. A lot like it was for Troy. But since Atlantis supposedly goes back much longer, we might never find any of it, and so it might as well be made up, and that is a safe conclusion.
Those who say it existed nowadays tend to believe that it was in the "eye of the Sahara", in present day Mauritius, and was destroyed in a flood related to an impact event on the North American ice sheet around 11,900 years ago that caused the Younger-Dryas. That idea has the unfortunate / convenient feature that there is literally nothing there and nothing will ever be found there given the scale of the supposed cataclysm. There are huge debris fields off the coast of Western Africa where one could -presumably- find bits of Atlantis, though good luck finding anything obviously man-made in those debris fields, let alone anything that would be highly suggestive of Atlantis. If that theory is true then we'll never prove that Atlantis existed by finding it.
Edit: to be clear there is no evidence that the Trojan war happened as described, but that doesn't mean Troy is a fiction anymore then Sparta or Ithaca are.
Edit: as I said, Troy was inhabited until around 1300 and left behind many artifacts like coins. While conspiracy theorists might doubt it occasionally, it was never a mainstream view that the person I was responding to presented it as. Saying that we used to doubt Troy so therefore maybe Atlantis is real is basically saying that if we reject one conspiracy theory we should accept a separate one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Iliad?utm_s...
| In the early modern era, attitudes towards the legends grew more skeptical. Blaise Pascal characterized the story as merely a "romance", commenting that "nobody supposes that Troy and Agamemnon existed any more than the apples of the Hesperides. [Homer] had no intention to write history, but only to amuse us."[6] During the 19th century the stories of Troy were devalued as fables by George Grote.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Bryant?utm_source=chatgp...
| In his books on Troy, Bryant endeavoured to show that the existence of Troy and the Greek expedition were purely mythological, with no basis in real history. In 1791, Andrew Dalzel translated a work of Jean Baptiste LeChevalier as Description of the Plain of Troy.[8] It provoked Bryant's Observations upon a Treatise ... (on) the Plain of Troy (1795) and A Dissertation concerning the War of Troy (1796?). A fierce controversy resulted, with Bryant attacked by Thomas Falconer, John Morritt, William Vincent, and Gilbert Wakefield.[5]
> "nobody supposes that Troy and Agamemnon existed any more than the apples of the Hesperides. [Homer] had no intention to write history, but only to amuse us."
I think you are confusing people debating the historicity of the Trojan war and the debate on the exact location of the ancient city with people thinking Troy was thought to be fictional and rediscovered. The latter never happened and people using it to imply Atlantis might exist are using the debunking of one conspiracy theory to prove another one. This is like using the Moon Landing being real to prove Roswell.
Edit: Troy, generally being referred to as Ilium (where we get the Iliad), or Troas is in the Acts of the Apostles as a place Paul went, it had a bishop who attended Church councils, it was part of the Roman empire, you can buy coins from there today https://www.coinarchives.com/a/results.php?search=ilium this is not at all comparable to Atlantis.
I believe you that many others did think Troy had existed, and that there were many good reasons to think as much.
The comparison of Atlantis to Troy is somewhat apt in my opinion, and completely inapt in yours.
I did not say that Atlantis must exist, or that the experience with Troy implies as much. On the contrary, I said Atlantis can't ever be found, either because it never existed or because if it did the cataclysm supposed by some to have destroyed it must have left no evidence of it behind. (Unless of course Atlantis was the Americas, in which case it was found in some sense, but not another, and again, if destroyed fully then it never will be found, and since it hasn't been found on the Americas yet it's safe to say it never will be.)
I am pretty sure that Atlantis existed in one way or another. We found that the the Great Flood in the book of Genesis existed, we found that Troy existed, we know that The Song of the Nibelungs / Siegfried existed, why should Atlantis not have a real history in it?
And sometimes oral history might be older than we think: Seven Sisters, which corresponds to the Pleiades star cluster. https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronom...
Plato never intended to describe a real city. Atlantis is a metaphor for hubris and the moral decay that follows, which, in my opinion, is quite apparent when you read his descriptions of the city. The details he describes don't make sense as a real city.
In these accounts, someone slays the lindworm, but not through direct combat. Instead, he uses an invisibility cloak, takes the creature's treasure, and bathes in its blood. Later, he meets his end due to treachery. Clearly, this is a work of fantasy.
But what about the Roman historian's lament regarding the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest? Over 150 years later, and they’re still singing his tale... the song of Hermann the German. Unfortunately, that song hasn't survived. However, the Nibelungen texts remain, where Siegfried (Hermann) defeats a long worm with shiny armor (symbolizing the Roman legions), not through open battle but by ambush (the cloak of invisibility), seizing their treasure (the dragon’s hoard), and ritually killing their leaders (bathing in blood). And, just like Siegfried, he is ultimately undone by treachery.
The parallels are so striking that it seems highly unlikely to be a mere coincidence, especially since Roman writers noted that "his song" endured for an exceptionally long time. The Nibelungen texts IS THIS SONG!
I say the Nibelungen Tale is based on facts. And the same may be the case with Atlantis.
On the other hand we know people today make up fantasy stories all the time, so thinking that people in the past must have been just what, encoding their history in elaborate metaphor?
"It's useless to try to explain a thought to someone for whom a hint is not enough." — Nicolás Gómez Dávila
It is true and written all across ancient records of that time.
Scholars don't fully understand why they would do such a thing. Many theories have been presented over the years. A ritual of passage, a demonstration of loyalty as bargain in exchange for a favor from a divinity, or simply a group ritual believed to reinforce the will of those within a social group.
Truth is, we will never know. Despite our best efforts, several parts of the original text describing the ritual were lost, only copies of copies remain.
I still don't follow your point though.
Floods are certainly a thing that happens in nature - especially to the flood plains that surrounded large rivers like the Euphrates before dams were a thing.
Are you referring to a specific event? Or just floods in general?
You're just pointing at a flood and saying it must be the origin of a story of a flood, but there's no basis for it.
Right. Mount Ararat
"It's useless to try to explain a thought to someone for whom a hint is not enough." — Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Can you elaborate what you mean by the "Great Flood"? There's certainly evidence for regional megafloods, but I'm not aware of any professional geologic body that recognizes what most people mean when they say "Great Flood", i.e. a single planet-wide flood around that time period.
implies most people since the King James version was published. Not at all clear that's what author meant; the concept of the world as we now know it didn't exist then.
So very reasonable to conclude that the Great Flood in Genesis was meant to describe a regional megaflood, which innundated the "whole world" meaning all of Mesopotamian civilization.
And there is archeological evidence of ancient cities totally buried in mud, i.e. as you say regional megafloods.
Sure, in Babylonian cuneiform texts. Other than that, no. A worldwide flood absolutely did not happen.
Why should Atlantis not have existed? The Atlantic sea floor is not crust, totally different rock chemistry.