[HN Gopher] Lost islands cited in Welsh folklore and poetry are ...
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Lost islands cited in Welsh folklore and poetry are plausible
Author : docmechanic
Score : 111 points
Date : 2022-09-03 16:16 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedaily.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedaily.com)
| galgot wrote:
| Could it be that the Ys city legend in Brittany was this Welsh
| legend transposed in Brittany, when the Bretons (originally Welsh
| peoples) migrated there... very interesting.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ys
| gus_massa wrote:
| I hate when the articles have no images, so here are a few:
|
| Wikipedia page about the legend
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantre%27r_Gwaelod
|
| The PDF of the research article is in
| https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/ag/article/view/32596/...
| (https://doi.org/10.4138/atlgeo.2022.005)
|
| The old map with the islands is in page 5 and a new map with the
| sea depth is in page 7.
| lumost wrote:
| It does make you wonder if the legend of atlantis is simply due
| to a myriad of ancient civilizations that vanished under rising
| oceans. Given human population centers cluster around ocean
| ports/rivers with easy access to fresh drinking water. It seems
| entirely plausible that estimates of human population size at
| the end of the last ice age may be substantially off.
| swayvil wrote:
| Through the grinder of mythology black can become white and
| up can become down. You can't trust it except in the
| blurriest sense.
|
| This is what makes science so special and revolutionary. The
| alternative being normal horrible epistemology like everybody
| does it all the time since forever.
|
| And yes, even science can be mythologized.
| didericis wrote:
| Not all of that older epistemology is horrible. Mathematics
| and logic and proof are ancient.
| bertil wrote:
| There's a fairly credible theory that Atlantis was a port
| city in the Richat Structure.
| 01acheru wrote:
| The whole circularity of this structure actually bring
| Atlantis and it's rings to mind, and also we must remember
| that the Sahara had a much different climate not that long
| ago.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period
| simonh wrote:
| That's true, but it beggars belief that the civilisation
| Atlantis conjures to mind would leave zero physical
| evidence of significant structures behind.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| It would also have significant trade and its artifacts
| would show up along the traderoutes.
| rustymonday wrote:
| We don't know that it hasn't left any physical evidence
| behind. The origin of many archaeological artifacts are
| not known for certain. It's possible that there is
| pottery and other artifacts from Atlantis that we've
| already unearthed.
| simonh wrote:
| I was commenting in the context of the Eye of Africa,
| it's a fascinating structure that happens to have some
| dimensional characteristics that vaguely resemble Plato's
| description. There's just no physical evidence of any
| significant architecture there of any kind.
| svrtknst wrote:
| Not just zero physical evidence - zero evidence _at all_.
| Afaik it doesn't appear until Plato uses it, and he
| claims that its thousands of years old or something like
| that. That should reasonably have traces in other
| accounts through the years.
|
| I did hear a fairly credible theory that it is just an
| allegory invented by Plato, but influenced by various
| other myths and political centers (such as king Minos
| rule on Crete).
| tremon wrote:
| The island Thera was destroyed by a volcanic eruption
| some 1200 years before Plato:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorini_caldera. The
| collapse of the island would have triggered tsunamis all
| across the Aegean Sea, so it's very likely many coastal
| towns had their own stories of being "swallowed by the
| sea".
| twic wrote:
| Exactly, Atlantis is in Tunisia:
| https://medcraveonline.com/IJH/is-atlantis-related-to-
| the-gr...
| layer8 wrote:
| It's not credible at all:
| https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/no-atlantis-
| ha...
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Aka the "Eye of Africa" (wikipedia seems to have scrubbed
| almost all trace of this commonly used name.)
|
| I don't buy it it all. The lowest point of this structure
| is presently several hundred meters above sea level. There
| is almost no archeological trace of human habitation, save
| for some ancient stone tools (no trace of structures, no
| middens indicating dense population.) These tools date to
| the Late Pleistocene to early Holocene, when sea levels
| were _even lower_ than they are today (in other words, this
| formation was even further from the sea then.)
| UberFly wrote:
| Richat Structure
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richat_Structure
| sampo wrote:
| Then there is a fringe theory, that a somewhat advanced
| ancient civilization and a city is sunken off the West
| Coast of India. And that later travelers from India brought
| the myth of a Western sunken city into Europe. Then
| Atlantis would be in the Arabian Sea, East of Europe. But
| West of India.
| rustymonday wrote:
| Here's the thing about Atlantis: even if you know exactly
| where it is, and even if you can prove it, you'll find it's
| nearly impossible to sell.
|
| The best way to be compensated for its discovery is probably
| to make a documentary, but this has been done dozens of times
| already by people who claimed to know where it is. Networks
| only have so much appetite for it. And even without that
| hurdle, it's extremely difficult to get a hold of anyone who
| might be able to help.
|
| And if you went the academic route, you'd essentially be
| publishing the information for free, running the risk of
| someone else taking all the credit.
|
| How would you even go about selling Atlantis? I'm seriously
| asking.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Plenty of wealthy people sail all over the world, looking
| for interesting things to see and treasure to loot.
|
| And yes, there's a finite appetite for documentaries about
| _" I found a few rocks that kind of look rectangular if you
| squint real hard, I think it's Atlantis"_. But if you find
| something more substantial than that, people will perk up
| real quick.
| zem wrote:
| you don't sell discoveries like that. historically
| speaking, the reward was either some explicit prize, or
| simply the fame of being the discoverer, and the cost of
| the exploration, as well as the prize if any, was borne by
| some deep pocketed entity who wanted the discovery made
| (the crown, the government or some academic body).
| tpmx wrote:
| Wikipedia:
|
| > Legends of the land suggest that it may have extended 20
| miles west of the present coast.
|
| Any idea of how large these lands were, area-wise?
| gus_massa wrote:
| From the research article:
|
| > _The dimensions of the offshore islands may be estimated in
| proportion to these respective two sets of measurements, so
| that the southern island measures approximately 6.6 x 3.8 km
| (ca. 19.7 km^2) and the northern island 10.7 x 5.8 km (ca.
| 48.7 km^2), and that the islands lie ca. 3.5-4.0 km from the
| mainland shore. However, these measurements must be viewed
| with extreme caution given the poor areal accuracy of the
| Gough Map._
|
| Later in the article they estimate that the sea erosion was
| 5-10m/y and the alleged islands disappeared in 5
| approximately centuries, so a width of 5km is consistent.
| docmechanic wrote:
| Thank you! Surely there is a Welsh writer of science fiction or
| fantasy that can make good use of this knowledge ...
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Is this a reference to Susan Cooper?
| galangalalgol wrote:
| That was my first thought on seeing the headline as well.
| docmechanic wrote:
| No, but she's exactly the sort of writer that I was
| thinking of.
| tombh wrote:
| I grew up in this part of the world! Quite a strange
| juxtaposition seeing my home on the front page of this site.
|
| So maybe I can offer some lesser known interesting context:
|
| Wales is only some 300km west of London, yet I have childhood
| memories (some 35 years ago) of needing to try to speak Welsh to
| my elderly (in his 80s) neighbour who struggled with English.
|
| There is a theory that English's use of "do" (so-called "Do-
| support") comes from the Welsh language.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-support#Origins
|
| The stones for Stonehenge come from the Preseli mountains, a
| small range of blue-ish hills exactly on the coast where these
| lost islands are proposed.
|
| There is a Welsh settlement in Argentina:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Wladfa
|
| Not strictly Welsh, but the Severn Estuary, which is the calm,
| funnel of sea between Wales and England, that invites ships into
| the harbour of Bristol, points exactly towards Newfoundland in
| North America. This Welsh-English estuary is where John Cabot
| made the second recorded voyage of a modern European to the New
| World[1]. Nowadays, we think of Airports as being the doorways to
| whole new worlds, but there was a time when it was the coastline
| and harbours of the South West British Isles that rang and echoed
| with the adventures, legends, captains, pirates, spices, gems and
| foreigners of unimaginable far away lands.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cabot#Second_voyage
| docmechanic wrote:
| New study of coastal geography and a medieval map.
| paganel wrote:
| > Evidence from the Roman cartographer Ptolemy suggests the
| coastline 2000 years ago may have been some 13 km further out to
| sea than it is today.
|
| This sort of stuff doesn't get repeated often enough in this day
| and age, we live with the illusion that the sea levels as we now
| have them should remain the same over the next centuries no
| matter what.
| 988747 wrote:
| It does not get repeated because it would suggest that sea
| level changes are natural, as opposed to being caused by
| industrial CO2 emissions, and limiting CO2 emissions is a huge
| business right now.
| potsandpans wrote:
| wow! more braindead takes on hn?!
| simonh wrote:
| Firstly sea levels have nothing to do with this at all, these
| coastal changes were caused by erosion.
|
| Anyway some sea level changes are natural, some look to be
| man made. Just because natural changes can happen, it doesn't
| follow that man made one's don't happen, or if they do that
| it's ok.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _Firstly sea levels have nothing to do with this at all,
| these coastal changes were caused by erosion._
|
| The paper seems to say these islands were likely formed
| from unconsolidated glacial till, and subsequently eroded
| by some combination of melting glaciers and the Holocene
| sea-level rise.
|
| Islands formed when the sea level was low, and eroded when
| the sea level was high. When you say sea level rise had
| 'nothing to do with it', you're contradicting the paper.
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| Conspiracy theory hogwash. Doggerland is well-discussed.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I imagine that most people haven't thrown gasoline on a fire.
| Surely they can't understand making something bad way more
| worse than it was.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| General knowledge and popular culture acknowledge natural
| climate changes. However I think people often overestimate
| the length of time involved in those changes, *overestimating
| the amount of time that has passed since dramatic climate
| changes in the past. E.g. knowing of "the ice age" but
| estimating that it happened millions of years ago and took
| millions of years for these climate changes to naturally
| occur.
|
| It's certainly not a _secret_ that Manhattan Island was
| covered by nearly half a mile of ice less than 20,000 years
| ago, nobody is suppressing this knowledge, but nevertheless I
| think there 's a wide gap between public knowledge and common
| knowledge.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >It does not get repeated because it would suggest that sea
| level changes are natural
|
| Sea level changes are absolutely natural and have fluctuated
| wildly over the history of the planet. The sea level was 360
| feet lower 13,000 years ago. Certainly human activity has a
| measurable effect on the environment but it is simply absurd
| to pretend that our environment (including sea levels) isn't
| in a constant state of flux.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| The problem now is that the change is some orders of
| magnitude faster than they used to be.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| That isn't true at all. The history of the planet is
| marked by rapid, repeated changes in the climate. The
| climate is going to change - drastically - just like it
| has for the entire history of the earth. We should
| understand that our activity has an influence but it is
| not the only factor or the dominant one.
|
| https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ContentFeature/GlobalWa
| rmi...
| [deleted]
| gus_massa wrote:
| Note that the change of this part of the coastline was caused
| by sea erosion of the cliff, not a raise of the sea level.
| fritztastic wrote:
| It's always interesting (for me) to learn of lost lands- from
| before humans were around, too, but especially those mentioned in
| human stories. There are many of these [1]- some of which are the
| subject of fascinating and informative documentaries, such as
| this one about Doggerland [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost_lands?wprov=sfla1
|
| [2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DECwfQQqRzo
| UberFly wrote:
| The article says the research was based on the Gough Map. Just
| look at this thing. Quite impressive.
|
| http://www.geog.port.ac.uk/webmap/thelakes/large/ggh1.jpg
| sveme wrote:
| Pretty similar to the story of Rungholt[1], which is clearly no
| longer myth, but fact, with lots of remnants being found.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rungholt
| balentio wrote:
| Wasn't this posted to Hacker News before?
| gus_massa wrote:
| I only could find this from another URL:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32542953 (2 points | 12
| days ago | 0 comments)
|
| Note that from the FAQ:
|
| > _Are reposts ok? If a story has not had significant attention
| in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok.
| Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates._
|
| I sometimes link old post with low points or few comments when
| one of the comments is very interesting and explain or debunk
| the post. But in this case there is nothing interesting in the
| old discussion. (Is the other URL better? Both look similar to
| me.)
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Why do people always think that things from the past are simply
| not real.
|
| "They"(us in the future) could say the exact same thing about all
| the things that are real in our current lives.
|
| All these mythical creatures (soon to be extinct)
|
| Having such a surplus of fresh water.
|
| At a certain point they will just deny Dubai was created
| nelblu wrote:
| It is human nature to glorify the past and romanticize the
| greatness of "those days". There is nothing wrong in
| maintaining a healthy skeptical mind towards outrageous claims.
| Further the onus of proof lies on the person making the claim.
| simonh wrote:
| There are plenty of things from the past that are absolutely
| real. We have tons of physical evidence for settlements all
| over the world throughout history. I'm sure there's more yet to
| be discovered. But until we discover it, it's just hearsay.
|
| There may well have been a real place that inspired Plato's
| mention if Atlantis, but only one. Not the many hundreds of
| possible locations suggested over the centuries. They can't all
| be Atlantis, if any of them are.
| ecolonsmak wrote:
| 200yrs from now well meaning discussion will consider if the
| long extinct elephant was in fact mythical
| fritztastic wrote:
| > At a certain point they will just deny Dubai was created
|
| That reminds me of a (reportedly fake) quote attributed to
| Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum:
|
| "My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I ride a
| Mercedes, my son rides a Land Rover, and my grandson is going
| to ride a Land Rover, but my great-grandson is going to have to
| ride a camel again."
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The way of vulgar skepticism is to assume something doesn't
| exist until it has been proven to exist.
|
| In cases like the Lock Ness monster or invisible pink dragons
| in my garage, that approach happens to yield good results (and
| so would blanket generic cynicism.) But it falls apart quick
| when you stray very far from the fantastical, e.g. _" masks
| have not yet been proven to work, therefore masks don't work."_
|
| A bayesian approach to skepticism is much better than vulgar
| skepticism. Bayes asks the skeptic to consider the general
| outlandishness of a possibility P(A), the basic likelihood of
| apparent evidence occurring regardless of the hypothesis P(B),
| and the likelihood of there being evidence at all even if the
| hypothesis were correct P(B|A).
| theknocker wrote:
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