[HN Gopher] The Truth about Atlantis (2019)
___________________________________________________________________
The Truth about Atlantis (2019)
Author : gostsamo
Score : 57 points
Date : 2025-04-22 18:08 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (talesoftimesforgotten.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (talesoftimesforgotten.com)
| Beijinger wrote:
| "If you are like most Americans, chances are, you probably
| believe that Atlantis or another civilization like it once
| existed. A survey conducted by Chapman University in October 2014
| found that, at that time, roughly 63% of people in the United
| States agreed or strongly agreed with the statement "ancient,
| advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, once existed."
|
| 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...
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| _> why should Atlantis not have a real history in it_
|
| 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.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Well, does it make sense to slay a dragon and take a bath in
| his blood? It is a metaphor but it has a real basis.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| I'm not sure if I follow. Are you implying that dragons are
| real?
| Beijinger wrote:
| It depends. In most Nibelungen texts, he doesn't
| encounter a dragon, but rather a long lindworm with shiny
| armor.
|
| 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.
| neaden wrote:
| What is the basis for thinking that it's not just a work
| of fantasy and has to be a retelling of real events? We
| have plenty of examples of people making up fantasy
| stories, why add this extra step that has no evidence for
| it?
| Beijinger wrote:
| How many coincidences? There are many (slightly
| different) versions of the text were discovered over a
| vast area? Germany, Norway etc. It must have been an
| extremely important "fairy tale". All this should raise
| suspicion.
| neaden wrote:
| I mean, none of the things you've really said feel like
| coincidences to me since you're basically saying the
| dragon is a metaphor. And there are plenty of other
| stories that are found over a large area and have a lot
| of different versions since that's what happens with oral
| stories.
|
| 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?
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| I'm even more confused now. You're saying that dragons
| are not real, because they're a metaphor for the Roman
| legions? That supports the idea that Atlantis isn't real,
| because it's similarly a metaphor for something else,
| right?
| alganet wrote:
| There was a time ancient people broke their own legs,
| believing it would bring good luck.
|
| 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.
| nartho wrote:
| Achilles was bathed by his mom in the river Styx, not in
| the blood of a dragon.
|
| I still don't follow your point though.
| nrclark wrote:
| > We found that the the Great Flood in the book of Genesis
| existed
|
| 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?
| Beijinger wrote:
| The Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis posits that around 7,500
| years ago, the Mediterranean Sea breached the Bosporus
| Strait, causing a massive influx of water into the Black Sea.
| This event transformed the Black Sea from a freshwater lake
| into a saltwater sea, resulting in a dramatic rise in water
| levels. This rapid flooding would have submerged large areas
| of land, displacing human settlements along the coastline.
| The catastrophic nature of this event is believed to have
| been preserved in the oral traditions of ancient cultures,
| leading to the creation of flood myths, such as those in the
| Bible and the Mesopotamian epics like the Epic of Gilgamesh.
| Archaeological evidence, including submerged prehistoric
| settlements and shifts in the Black Sea's shoreline, supports
| the idea of this sudden and profound flooding event. The
| Black Sea Deluge is considered a key historical event that
| likely influenced the development of various ancient flood
| myths across the Near East and beyond.
| neaden wrote:
| But that's not the flood in Genesis. Not even close to it,
| for instance in Genesis the land is flooded and then the
| waters recede and the land comes back, whereas the Black
| Sea is still a sea.
|
| 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.
| Beijinger wrote:
| And where did Noah Land after the flood?
|
| Right. Mount Ararat
| neaden wrote:
| What is the significance of that to you? Mount Ararat
| doesn't stick out of the sea.
| calebio wrote:
| > We found that the the Great Flood in the book of Genesis
| existed
|
| 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.
| Beijinger wrote:
| The Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis posits that around 7,500
| years ago, the Mediterranean Sea breached the Bosporus
| Strait, causing a massive influx of water into the Black Sea.
| This event transformed the Black Sea from a freshwater lake
| into a saltwater sea, resulting in a dramatic rise in water
| levels. This rapid flooding would have submerged large areas
| of land, displacing human settlements along the coastline.
| The catastrophic nature of this event is believed to have
| been preserved in the oral traditions of ancient cultures,
| leading to the creation of flood myths, such as those in the
| Bible and the Mesopotamian epics like the Epic of Gilgamesh.
| Archaeological evidence, including submerged prehistoric
| settlements and shifts in the Black Sea's shoreline, supports
| the idea of this sudden and profound flooding event. The
| Black Sea Deluge is considered a key historical event that
| likely influenced the development of various ancient flood
| myths across the Near East and beyond.
| fads_go wrote:
| "most people mean"
|
| 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.
| neaden wrote:
| I don't think that's true at all. The narrative is very
| clear that all humans and land animals that are not on the
| ark die, and in the Talmud I'm not aware of any debate that
| all humans died.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| > We found that the the Great Flood in the book of Genesis
| existed
|
| 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.
| neaden wrote:
| What do you mean we found out that Troy existed? We always knew
| it existed, it continued to exist as a city until about around
| 1300 AD, it's present in the Homeric stories along with Gods,
| but so are a bunch of other cities and like those cities we
| have other attestations for Troy like coins from there,
| inscriptions, etc. There was some debate about how old the city
| was and if it had moved a few miles over the centuries (it
| didn't), but no serious scholar ever suggested Troy was not
| real.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| _> If you are like most Americans, chances are, you probably
| believe that Atlantis or another civilization like it once
| existed. A survey conducted by Chapman University in October 2014
| found that, at that time, roughly 63% of people in the United
| States agreed or strongly agreed with the statement "ancient,
| advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, once existed."_
|
| 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.
| kleiba wrote:
| Agreed. The semantics of "civilization _such as_ Atlantis once
| existed " are vastly different from that of "Atlantis once
| existed". There's definitely a way to read that sentence and
| think of civilizations like the Mayan, etc.
| cvoss wrote:
| Especially because, I suspect, in a lot of people's minds,
| the concept of Atlantis much more closely resembles what the
| author enumerates as the possible (non-fictitious) sources of
| inspiration for Plato. That is, I certainly don't picture
| Atlantis in the way that Plato describes it exactly. So in my
| mind, I agree with the author's assement of Plato's story and
| conclude that, yes, a place _such as_ that one did exist. The
| author concedes as much, too, and doesn 't realize it.
| dboreham wrote:
| The question implies knowledge of an "Atlantis Marvel
| Universe", which I'm guessing 90% of people would have no clue
| about.
| II2II wrote:
| > 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,
|
| 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.
| EncomLab wrote:
| I thought everyone knew that Atlantis is just another name for
| the Richat Structure.
| burnte wrote:
| It's not just another name for that, though. That's in a very,
| very wrong location to be the source of Atlantis myths. If
| Atlantis had a real basis, which it doesn't, it would probably
| be the pre-glacial-retreat land off the coast of England like
| Doggerland or off the west coast of Ireland.
| FloorEgg wrote:
| The relevant (unvalidated) theory is that Atlantis was an
| empire that covered north western Africa (Morocco, sharah,
| etc) - at least, and which had a port city around where
| Tangier is today, and a capital city at the richat structure
| (pre-younger dryas).
|
| 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.
| jeltz wrote:
| I would say Atlantis is like a slightly more falsifiable
| and slightly more plaudible version of Russell's Teapot. We
| have zero reason to think Atlantis existed and zero
| indications of it. Is it possible that there was an
| advanced civilization that somehow left virtually zero
| evidence? Yes, but why? There are plenty of much less
| advanced civilizations which left plenty of trace and while
| we cannot know exactly how many civilizations left no trace
| an advanced civilization tends to leave a lot of traces.
| And why would Plato know of it?
| FloorEgg wrote:
| "I would say Atlantis is like a slightly more falsifiable
| and slightly more plaudible version of Russell's Teapot."
|
| 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.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| 1. Cataclysmic meteor strikes _ending_ the ice age? Aren
| 't they more likely to _prolong_ it?
|
| 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?
| FloorEgg wrote:
| 1. Yes. I don't know, but there is lots of geological
| evidence that 12-13,000 years ago there were several
| cataclysmic meteor strikes, and the earths temperature
| swung up and down wildly, eventually settling at a much
| higher temperature (ending the ice age). I am pretty sure
| this is accepted by the geological community.
|
| 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.
| nobodywillobsrv wrote:
| I think there is consensus that Doggerland was wiped out by a
| massive tidal wave generated by the Storegga event. This
| feels like it deserves mention in any arrogant certaintist
| article like the one above.
|
| The article would be good if it asserted "we don't know".
| windowshopping wrote:
| I had never even heard of this before this comment. I have now
| learned it's a very unique geological formation in the Sahara
| consisting of concentric rings of raised stone. It appears to
| be entirely natural and the scientific consensus is that no
| city has ever existed on the site nor did human artifice have
| anything to do with its creation.
|
| 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.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Worse, it's one that uses a psychological trick to dodge the
| burden of proof, because "everybody knows", so if you ask for
| evidence, you're admitting you're not among the "knowing
| ones". "Everyone knows" is _not_ evidence.
| FloorEgg wrote:
| I could take this article more seriously if it were to credibly
| refute the possibility that the capital of Atlantis was the
| richat structure, and that the empire of Atlantis covered the
| saharah, with a port of entry just outside the straight of
| Gibraltar.
|
| 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.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| The Richat Structure is the result of natural geological
| processes. Other than having concentric circles, it doesn't
| match Plato's description of Atlantis, and there is no evidence
| that any large city was ever there.
| FloorEgg wrote:
| "The Richat Structure is the result of natural geological
| processes." - this is irrelevant
|
| "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.
| saturn_vk wrote:
| > this is irrelevant
|
| 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
| FloorEgg wrote:
| > I think OP mentions this due to your mention of meteor
| impacts
|
| 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.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| _> this is irrelevant_
|
| 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.
| FloorEgg wrote:
| Apologies for coming off as bossy! Thank you for the
| respectful response.
|
| 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.
| masswerk wrote:
| Please, see "No - Atlantis Has Not Been Discovered in North
| Africa" by Steven Novella (2018):
|
| 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?)
| FloorEgg wrote:
| Hey there are lots of reasons to be skeptical of the
| theory, but I haven't yet seen a reason to claim the
| theory is false (or the specific theory of Atlantis
| relating to a civilization occupying the Richat structure
| as unfalsifiable).
|
| 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.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Plus all the details that conveniently line up. The mountains
| with rivers to the north. Being south of the Atlas mountains -
| Atlas being the first king of Atlantis. "Atlantis" meaning
| "island of Atlantis" is interesting because it's likely that if
| water were present in the rings, it would have the appearance
| of an island, and there are two forms of evidence that there
| was: zoom out on Maps/Earth and see the obvious water blast the
| sand experienced coming from the Atlantic; there is also salt
| present in the rings.
|
| Is it Atlantis? Maybe not, but there a number of stiking
| coincidences.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Correction: Island of Atlas
| begueradj wrote:
| That does not make the existence of Atlantis a mere 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.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| And in Asia there was the so-called "Three-sea plains".
|
| San Hai Ping Yuan
| seanw444 wrote:
| The ice age and its consequences have been a disaster for
| ancient civilizational races.
| feoren wrote:
| What exactly is "missing" in understanding how the Egyptians
| built the pyramids? Why is it so hard to understand how a
| population of millions with a ton of unused labor during flood
| season built a bunch of scaffolding and moved a bunch of rocks
| around?
| gigatree wrote:
| You must not be familiar with its architecture to be so
| dismissive. That's the hn equivalent of calling Amazon "just
| a website"
| jeltz wrote:
| So are you saying aliens or some unknown advanced
| civilization built Amazon? No, just like the Pyramids it
| was built by huge number of ordinary humans with ordinary
| technology.
| MattGrommes wrote:
| My daughter is an archeologist and this is one of her
| bugbears, the idea that the Egyptians couldn't possibly have
| built something so huge on their own. Even though we're
| pretty clear on it, the originally racist idea that they were
| too primitive has survived long enough to just become "common
| knowledge" with the explicit racism receding.
| triyambakam wrote:
| As an example, Sundaland was a huge area of Asia that is now
| underwater.
| sibeliuss wrote:
| Whats even more surprising to me is that people still believe
| the great flood was nothing but a myth.
| sireat wrote:
| I highly recommend BBC's In our time Podcast on Plato's Atlantis:
|
| 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.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| When I read the dialogue, I never got the feeling it was
| intended as a historical account, heck the same goes for the
| socratic dialogues in general. They're mostly a vehicle for
| philosophical discussion.
|
| 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.
| ericmcer wrote:
| We do seem to imbue the greek & roman writers with a more
| serious tone then they might have had.
|
| 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.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > The line of transmission is so long and convoluted that there
| are literally more than a half dozen different people who could
| have plausibly made the story up.
|
| 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.
| neaden wrote:
| "Ditto for The Iliad and The Odysee, yet Troy existed." - As I
| said in a different comment this comparison makes no sense.
| Troy was continuously inhabited up until around 1300, we have
| artifacts like coins from there and multiple attestations from
| contemporary sources. The only thing that was debated was if
| the ancient city was underneath the more contemporary one or a
| few miles away. That is nothing like Atlantis.
| cryptonector wrote:
| People used to think Troy was fictional. People (myself
| included) think Atlantis is fictional. The difference is:
| Troy was much closer to us in time, and it was found.
| neaden wrote:
| People didn't use to think Troy was fictional, where did
| you get that idea?
|
| 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.
| virissimo wrote:
| Many European scholars did consider Troy fictional. For
| example, Jacob Bryant's "A Dissertation concerning the
| War of Troy" (1796) explicitly argued that Troy never
| existed as a real city and that the Trojan War was purely
| mythological. He thought Homer's place names derived from
| Egyptian and Phoenician religious vocabulary, so the
| entire Trojan War narrative should be interpreted as
| imported solar allegory without any historical basis.
| mcswell wrote:
| Decades ago, I read a book (written, I think, around 1890) about
| Atlantis. 99% of the evidence it gave was, of course, bogus. But
| the one piece that seemed reasonable was an account of depth
| soundings by the SS Great Eastern when it laid the second cable
| across the Atlantic in 1866. I haven't seen a recent account of
| those soundings, but the chart in the book did show the Atlantic
| to be shallower in the middle--which the author took to be the
| sunken continent of Atlantis. Of course, now we know that the
| shallower depths there are the Mid-Atlantic ridge, which was
| never above water (except up at Iceland).
| rfwhyte wrote:
| Damn some of the comments here are really depressing. I'd
| formerly thought HN was one of the last bastions of critical
| thought on internet, but I guess I was wrong judging by some of
| these comments. Way too much regurgitation of long-since debunked
| pseudo-scientific nonsense.
|
| 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.
| krapp wrote:
| >I'd formerly thought HN was one of the last bastions of
| critical thought on internet, but I guess I was wrong judging
| by some of these comments.
|
| Stay away from any thread about physics, astronomy or anywhere
| vaccines are mentioned if you value your mental health.
| FloorEgg wrote:
| "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."
|
| 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?
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