Ancient and Archaeology permalink
It's Definitely Atlantis!!
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Message 1.Â
Posted by jinks-cider-stash (U7847019) on Friday, 20th February 2009
Haven't been on here for a while so I don't know if this has cropped up.
I was sent a link today to an Independent article about some irregular-regular patterns on the seabed close to Maderia and the Canary Islands.
So my thread title might be a little tongue-in-cheek, afterall how many supposed locations for the mythical city are we up to now? -
Message 2
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Saturday, 21st February 2009
Some years back I was telling people here that the myth of Atlanis is not your everyday myth but has strange references (it mentions historic people and is found within a philosophical text - however not serving the discussion, but rather as an interesting addition). Far too far-fetched to be the product of anyone's imagination, especially when the story implicates famous and revered politians like Solon - minor details could had been altered in 120 years between Solon's visit to Sais, Egypt and that discussion in some rich man's house in Athens, but the basic story to had been all a lie, a bit difficult - why tell such a lie about Solon anyway? Especially when Kritias was the grand,grandson of Solon and even Plato (from his mother's side).
The text obviously talks about Hercules columns and about an island (bigger than Libya and Asia together). Given the fact that "Libya" and "Asia" are not necessarily the continents of Africa and Asia, the size is debatable (afterall the precise size up to satellite era was always debatable), it could be for example that this size was a reference to the Atlantic ocean rather than the island of Atlantis itself and during Solons' quick translation to Greek (after getting permission to read the archives of the priests) it was attributed to the island. Anyway the myth talks rather about a group of islands.
However, the position of Hercules columns is precise and I cannot think of anything else than the entry point of the Mediterranean. Especially when the following story talks about an invasion from that island into Europe (Iberia) and Northern Africa (Maroco). Also it makes reference to the "ocean on the west of Atlantis", then to "a large group of islands" and more west to a huge continent". However, is not able to see there Carribean islands and America must be blind or too stupid to think that this was Aegean and the huge continent Egypt or Minor Asia, places that Greeks knew by heart long before they built even their first worth-mentioning ship.
Also what is very interesting is the dating - 9000 years before Plato's time was actually around 11500 years from our times and it coincides - oh what a coincidence e? - with the cataclysmic events of that era (mentioned in all other mythologies) that are long now proved also by science, namely geology. The submergence of Atlantis was "rapid" in the sense that it took a geologically very small period, be it 50, 100 or 200 or a bit more years - the text did not ever say 1 day or 1 week or something like the uninformed like to think. What is even more interesting though is that it mentions that after the submerging of the Atlantis below the ocean level, the whole sea was full of mud and thus became not navigable - you can just imagine a huge ocean-swamp with water depths of about 2-3 meters at places 30cm or 15 meters, animals and all the rest of life that thrives in such conditions. Dutch people of the beginning of the 20th would imagine that better - anyway for them the sea access never closed as the problem of floudings was coastal centered - in Atlantis we talk about 1000s of kilometers of sea in that condition. Hence the myth goes on to explain how the Hercules columns became for several centuries unavigable to the point that those sea routes were forgotten - imagine 2000 years after with a huge part of the land missing... nobody could be even in a position to guess what lied beyond, especially when the western Mediterranean world did not give birth to any culture that kept written records from that era.
So, what is not extremely interesting is the finding some years back of a French geologist that proved that back in 8000 B.C. the mouth of Gibraltar hosted 1 island and two other just west and south of it. Bashers quickly jumped to say that "these islands are too small to had been the ancient Atlantis" without realising in their stupidity that actually this geological finding coincides 1000% with the myth that talks about an large island and its group of islands submerged in a relatively short time followed by the creation of a sea-swamp completely unavigable for the following centuries. 8,000 B.C. is around 2-3 millenia after 11,000, hence these 3 small islands are fitting as remnants of the older lands that existed there which were also in their turn continued to be submerged in the span of the other 7,500 years up to Plato's time.
Now, if Atlantis was on that island in the mouth of Gibraltar or if it was in Canaria islands, even the myth is not very clear - when it says that Atlantis was just at the mouth of Gibraltar did it mean Atlantis the city, the island, or the state of Atlantis?
Do not get me wrong. I never said I am 100% sure that we will find it there. However, what is certain for me is that while in other cases we have a preferred plan, called A then B then C then D, E, F and so on, for the case of Atlantis we have plan A = Atlantic ocean, plan B and C do not exist, then plan D = America and the likes of Cyprus and Thera are plan X and Y since it would be unbelievable for Greeks not to be able to understand even during translation that the myth talked about the Aegean or Eastern Mediterranean - in anyway Thera island even as a full round island was never too big to host such a population to threaten as much as 2 continets!!!
Now, having said that and going back to plan A, searching for Atlantis even if we say we will try the location of east Atlantic between the Canaria islands and the Gibralter, the area covered is huge. Even if we take the 1/5th of it we will still have an area equal to the surface of Spain... now imagine that sonar ships have logistic problems when scanning by & large, 4-5 square kilomters, let alone scan 300,000 square kilometers while satelites are good for finding signs of oil (huge quantities lying for hundreds of square kilometers) but are not good at searching the remnants of a 11,000 years old city. And what could be left protruding above the bottom of the sea after all that deposit of 11,000 years (and not a normal deposit, but the deposit of particules of a huge island!!!!!!). Even at normal deposit rates you would find nothing. On the top of that, if it is real what the myth says that Atlantians used soft metals like gold, silver and copper while for building used a short of brown stone coming at different colours (does not sound very solid to my ears!) then one can guarantee that there will be nothing left udentifiable as man-made. And even if say a stone pyramid survived it would be so heavily covered with mud and plantlife that would be passed as a seabed elevation, one of the millions that exist in the Atlantic.
Given all that, the possibilities of finding Aliens in our neighbouring solar system suddenly sound quite elevated! Good luck to those ambitious and patient enough to work on that - including the possibility of Atlantic not being the correct place...!
Also keep always in mind that this myth is not the myth of Atlantis but primarily the myth of Athens. Oh! That is another huge discussion... -
Message 3
Posted by -frederik- (U13721647) on Saturday, 21st February 2009
It is a consequence of the course of the ships scanning the ocean. It was on the news.
False alarm
(surprise surprise) -
Message 4
Posted by -frederik- (U13721647) on Saturday, 21st February 2009
<>
Why is that? I am not an expert on the subject, but I believe there are few things too far-fetched to be the product of imagination. Maybe 5000 years from now, people will be discussing the location of Thomas Mores Utopia.
I know people will probably counter this statement by pointing out various differences between the two. Please dont, the example is not as important as the idea. -
Message 5
Posted by LairigGhru (U5452625) on Saturday, 21st February 2009
I heard the news item this morning too, and it was stated that the neat grid effect came into play as scanning took place for Google Earth. No physical features on the seabed are represented.
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Message 6
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Saturday, 21st February 2009
It is really far fetched and I will explain you using the following points.
1) First and most important this is a myth of Athens and not of any Atlantis. Atlantis merely comes as a side story to it. If anyone wanted to invent a story about Atlantis he would start from there.
2) Had any Athenian (be it Plato, or Kritias or earlier Solon or whoever else) invented the story to prolong by some 7-8 millenia and glorify the history of his city he would certainly do it in a more relevant way to Athenians: put it to fight an epic battle against a real or imaginary Asian Empire... the mention about Atlantic ocean and battles in Iberia and North Africa come really out of nowhere and it is difficult to accept as a natural lie for impressions since if the liar wanted to impress he would anyway use totally imaginary landscapes (I do not know... the moon, the center of the earth etc.). Iberia did not make Greeks dream, Persia or India did.
3) Had any Athenian fabricated this myth he would not went up to the extend to ridicule Solon by putting him in the embarassing position of having narrated all the Greek mythology in front of barbarians (Egyptians maybe, barbarians at all times) and then putting barbarians to laugh at him telling him that these are child stories in front of theirs! In Greek cities they would kill for less than that (in Athens they killed Persian ambassadors for speaking Greek badly!), ok Solon was alone in the foreign land, at least people would not comment of such an embarassement let alone fabricate a myth and put him in that embarassing position!
4) Had any Athenian fabricated a false myth (even without the above scene) based on the name of Solon, a legendary politian, viewed back then as the best ever of Athenians, well... that would not make him particularly popular to his co-citizens. It could be even a dangerous thing to do
5) Plato in his text does not even speak about ancient history and mythology. He describes a discussion led by Socrates in which he was present as well as a line of other aristocrats including his distant relative Kritias - and it is Kritias that brings in the story. The discussion was on ideal city governance. Kritias remembers the story he had heard when he was younger from his father
6) Kritias was the great-grandson of Solon and the story was passed to him by his father and grandfather whose father was Solon himself. Plato himself was also a descendant of Solon from his mother side, probably also knowing the story independently of Kritias (and thus not needing to remember details when he later wrote the text). Now why would Plato tarnish the picture of the family on a text that was meant to be read from all aristocratic families? There were people still alive that might had been present in those dinners. Any such imbedded false story would be
7) Does this imbedded story about mythological Athens and Atlantis really aid discussion on ideal city? Does it offer Plato any point? Absolutely not and this is no personal opniion, this is common sense. It was natural that 90% of Athenians would not even sit down to listen about mythologies especially when talking about hot politics... just see the reaction of Socrates when Kritias finishes his story "Well, yes Kritias, this is really an interesting story and since it comes from mythology and involves gods and such great events, what better example of a well-governed city to give. Now lets get on with the issue...". Obviously Socrates did not believe the story but also he was visibly distracted by it and thus more or less told Kritias to leave the issue aside and get on with their real discussion!!! Now why Plato would destroy his own text by adding all that? Obviously because his text was a philosophical one but written with the style of presenting the discussions they had with Socrates around dinner and really, this story came out by Kritias who just wanted to tell that story more for the shake of it rather than adding anything real to discussion, something that was not well accepted by Socrates who diplomatically passed the discussion to other things. Plato, also a Solon descendant just felt he had to add it in his text.
8) The whole case around the story looks very real: Plato writing about Kritias who told people about his great-grandfather, Solon, the famous politician that went to Egypt and brought this story from there to Athens and passed it on to his circle of family and friends. We know from other texts that Solon indeed travelled internationally. We know that he did "cultural and political tourism" in Egypt. We know that he must had met local leaders and priests. Please also note here that the meeting of Solon with the Egyptian priests looks too true to be false: a Greek guy boasting about his nations' past and about his great city when visiting a foreign land... does it remind you of something? Then the reaction of priests is equally natural and should be completely absent from any false story not because they laughed but because they went on to describe the difference of geological destructions in Greece and in Egypt to explain why their myths were closer to real history than the Greek ones, and then because they went on to give an amazingly precise definition of what is a myth and how real history is transformed to myth and how myth becomes stories for children (Greek myths style!). Sorry but I have never seen a false myth/story going to that extend to provide us with all the above explanations. Let alone mentioning how Solon asked permission to read the archives and translate the stories as well as the names in order to co-relate as much as he could with the Greek mythology (the most natural thing to do of course! That is why names sound too mythological... however most names of places mentioned are really very real and we have no reason to think they have been wrongly or falsely used even if they came out of a translation, only Atlantis being disputed).
9) The myth of Athens-Atlantis and the destructions described coincide with the cataclysm. Yes it is true that a liar would go for that date for such a story of his. The problem is that how would he know back then which millenia the cataclysm happened? E? Cos the 9000 years back (i.e. 11500 from our times) coincides with the modern geological findings that finally verified a huge cataclysmic event at that time in most parts of the world. Ha! Do not tell me know that back then there might existed historic texts measuring the time elapsed from the cataclysm because then my point would be that this myth could be as well as part of them! The text is so precise that it even makes references to many more smaller cataclysms happening on a more localised scale, again, a well known fact today by geology (but not back then by all mythologies).
10) It is the first text in later human history that informed us that there were islands in the mouth of Gibraltar some millenia ago... quite a precise since it was verified only 5-6 years back by geologists... it also talks quite directly about Carribean and America on the other side of the ocean.
10 points not because I wanted to round them up in ten - anyway they are not all-inclusive, I have tons more to write but need not really. What I need you to highlight is my awareness that the above do not constitute an absolute proof by themselves - take them one by one and you can say whatever. However combined they form a series of points that is way too long for anyone that wants to dismiss the story as a lie told to innocent Solon, or a fabrication of Kritias or Plato himself. Way too long...
What most people do not understand is that it is not up to those that have a certain belief on the existence of some basis for the events described in the myth that pre-dates by several millenia Plato's time but it is more up to those that dismiss the story as false to explain why they dismiss it as false. Apparently there are not many arguments - with their most strong being "Developed societies in 10,000 B.C.? Not possible, the story is false". Nice!
Note that the majority of them are not by themselves a full proof, but if you assemble them together -
Message 7
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Saturday, 21st February 2009
As I said I would not jump into conclusions quickly. Even when I heard about the small islands in the mouth of Gibraltar I did not jump out of my chair cos 1) it did not surprise me (the Mediteranean has existedd various times even as a closed sea-lake like Kaspian Sea) 2) It did not prove anything... what interested me was the high-coincidence with the story. From there on to pinpoint locations it is a long way if talking about sonar-scanning an area equal 5 times Spain at times when even the scanning of the equivalent of the area enclosed by Madrit's peripheral road is really a pain! Satelites will not help either in that. Millions of tons of deposited material means that anything has been under good pressure for some millenia now... and yes we are talking about soft materials like soft stones and gold and silver and copper... quite not very easy to find under such conditions...
I am not telling you I am 100% convinced it really existed. However I am not a sceptic like others. I let a 5% of possibility that this story is not at all true and another 10% of the events having taken place in any other part of the world in other more recent times.
As I mentioned, the points are too many to be discarted without discussion and discussion will always discart the possibility of this story being Plato's imagination. Sorry for Atlantis bashers but it is like this. -
Message 8
Posted by MendipTim (U13707598) on Sunday, 22nd February 2009
Thank you E_Nikolaos_E for your imformative & well argued points about Atlantis & how it came to be passed down in history. I for one did not know how the story came about & I'm sure I wasn't alone.
The bit that puzzles me is Google's explanation for the shapes on the seabed. Apparently its to do with the intervals between the data recieved by the ships that are doing the measuring.
If this was so; then why aren't similar patterns found in other areas of ocean?
The gap between the ridges varies between about 5-10 miles. I've seen Oceanography ships at work; they move very, very, slowly; backwards & forwards, presumably taking readings every few meters. They do not take a reading then go 5 miles & take another, filling in the gaps with guesswork. The data for that area was supplied by the US Navy & I doubt they would want their submarines to have such inaccurate measurments to navigate by.
But the biggest puzzle is - Why ships? Surely there must be satellites that can measure the ocean floors far more accuratly than a ship. We seem able to send them to alien worlds where they can see through ice, rock, & chemical smogs: yet we can't look through water on Earth. On land you can understand why political sensitivities might limit the amount of detail shown in certain areas; but once you get into International Waters no such restrictions should apply & the seabed detail should be almost as good as the best land detail.
I doubt that this shape is anything to do with Atlantis but it does appear to be a strange "oddity" & I hope someone will go there and have a closer look. It would also be nice to find out why Google were so hasty to come up with a rebuttal that they fabricated an implausable one. -
Message 9
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Sunday, 22nd February 2009
Science is not free of societal and political complexes. Ask any decent sociologist/biologist/psychologist and he will gladly verify that to you. And if you think that us engineers are spared of "external intervention" you are mistaken - and I will not start about the 1969 "greatest human achievement" that was resumed in false moon photos, but I will only comment that our passenger airplanes have this funny shape of cylinder with 2 wings just because (but it is not the correct one) it was more convenient for Boeing to built them that way, but technologically it is quite not the optimum way,at least it works while our cars and other machines should had been electric motored, charged by multiple sources, since as early as the 1910s, but then how would the states of the world be energetically enslaved?
Now in such a "controlled" environment - and please do not mix all this with conspiracies, that is just the way things work, it was always like this" - don't you think that the discovery of Atlantis would not be an event that not everybody would like to see, quite like aliens or something (and I am not saying here that both exist necessarily!!!)? Especially if we find out that this was a pro-cataclysmic and relatively highly evolved civilisation. Wanna talk about religions for example? If saying that the found city was Noes' city it will be hard for muslims, christians, jewish to explain how the Middle Eastern stories co-relate with the Atlantic ocean!!! Then even Hindus that claim the most ancient religion, culture will have to accept that there was something long long before our earliest stories!!!
Not to mention that the founding of something that verifies the Atlantis story will eventually have to lead us to search for the pre-cataclysmic Athens too, since this city had to be even more amazing to be able to beat that amazing Atlantis without the aid of anybody else, nor the cataclysm (which started later during Athenian conquest of Atlantis)!!! Now that we built the metro in Athens this will be quite difficult, haha!! Ok kidding but then it should not suprise you that for many people, the finding of Atlantis will not be so welcomed.
Archaiologists and historians also, even if they have some idea about they will not come out and talk before they 1) are certain of what they have found
2) be told what to do
3) be told to come out and talk about that
Do not forget that for archaiologists the first frustration is not where to find what, but how to find money to fund their quite expensive projects. Now if funding falls on Egypt or Greece or Mesopotamia or India (and rightfully it does) and if funding falls not on the hunt of an imaginary as perceived by most city then they will have to work accordingly.
What I do not understand is why Google had to come out and comment themselves. They had not to do so all they had to do is transfer the comments of the specialists that worked for these images. Google is a software company not geologists and not archaiologists. They have nothing to explain on that..; -
Message 10
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Monday, 23rd February 2009
... especially when they are not able to give us convincing explanation:
The guys that first saw this "not so normal" appearence of the east Atlantic sea bottom had noted that nowhere else in the Atlantic was there any such similar morphology. Hence you have two cases:
1) The explanation of the process of sonar-scanning being a lie, just to end up stories about Atlantis and save up Google time answering people etc.
2) The explanation of the process of sonar-scanning being correct, thus in fact this part of the Atlantic being the only really highly scanned...
... so in the second case one may wonder what is so interesting there and the scanning projects concentrated only there and not in other parts of the Atlantic (that are equally if not more interesting in terms of geology/morphology).
See, if you analyse things you may discover many more traps on the sayings of people and organisations!!!
Please note again that I am not using this to support any finding of Atlantis there on the exact location - these shapes could be indeed anything. In fact I do not believe that sonar scanning will easily give any answer as the answer (in case Atlantis existed indeed) will be more deeply buried. Satelites also will not be able to detect even an ancient city of the size of Rome or Konstantinople (1 million people) if that was built with soft stone and with soft metals like tin, copper and gold and destroyed 11,000 years back, thus buried under tons of material. Satelites and scanners are already have a difficulty pointing much more recent sites dating a mere 2,000 years. -
Message 11
Posted by MendipTim (U13707598) on Monday, 23rd February 2009
It's not often that Google's business acumen get questioned. They don't often miss a trick to get their sneeky little adverts all over our screens. They do it in such clever little ways that if we are not looking for them we hardly see them; yet they produce very good results to the advertisers.
So this is a very strange case. Google just release Google Ocean & then this strange shape appears on it. Its a publicity coup; or it should be. Unless they put the shape there, its not their problem: so why not let the story run for awhile. Another million or so downloads of their software & another billion little adverts with it. They could have played the story for months with half the world following the progress of the Google Research Ship.
Instead they kill the story almost before it has come out; but not with solid reasoned arguments. They choose to do it with hogwash.
You don't have to be a businessman to make the choice: make a million or eat a porky pie? -
Message 12
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Monday, 23rd February 2009
Very good remark. The only thing I can think of is the will of Google to present a "serious" face towards such issues and not play the "loopey-UFOlogists, Atlantologists" game in fear of losing "seriousness". However, again I underline a really serious as well as totally frank position from Google should be not to answer directly themselves but to address all questions to the companies that provided with the imaging and let the companies directly (or via google, but then again directly) give the answers. As I simply analysed above, their answer is insufficient hurting their credibility.
Again I will not jump onto this as I am not Atlantologist. I am merely I guy that loves history and in generally the past that sometimes has some some doubts on "established world viewing" but nothing extraordinary beyond that. We have to sometimes feel the need to use our own logic than accept what we are being told (like I tried to do above with the analysis of the myth - I have not read any other text on Atlantis other than the myth itslef - some years ago). -
Message 13
Posted by Iapetus (U551167) on Sunday, 8th March 2009
The gap between the ridges varies between about 5-10 miles. I've seen Oceanography ships at work; they move very, very, slowly; backwards & forwards, presumably taking readings every few meters. They do not take a reading then go 5 miles & take another, filling in the gaps with guesswork. The data for that area was supplied by the US Navy & I doubt they would want their submarines to have such inaccurate measurments to navigate by.
But the biggest puzzle is - Why ships? Surely there must be satellites that can measure the ocean floors far more accuratly than a ship. We seem able to send them to alien worlds where they can see through ice, rock, & chemical smogs: yet we can't look through water on Earth. On land you can understand why political sensitivities might limit the amount of detail shown in certain areas; but once you get into International Waters no such restrictions should apply & the seabed detail should be almost as good as the best land detail.
I doubt that this shape is anything to do with Atlantis but it does appear to be a strange "oddity" & I hope someone will go there and have a closer look. It would also be nice to find out why Google were so hasty to come up with a rebuttal that they fabricated an implausable one.Â
I work hydrographic surveying, so can answer this.
Modern surveying is done using "multibeam echosounders" (MBES), which send out a fan of sonar beams (called a swath") either side of the survey ship. They typically send out 200 or more beams in a line perpendicular to the direction the ship is travelling. The length of this line (known as the "swath width" is usually about 4 times the depth of the water. The sonar "pings" several times a second (up to 10 to 20 times in shallow water, less frequently in deeper water).
The survey ships sail up and down along pre-defined tracks, usually at a separation equal to the swath width (so all the seabed is covered) or half the swath width (so all the seabed is covered twice, which makes it easier to spot errors).
There are various potential problems that can introduce systematic errors (known as "artefacts") in the data. (It's my job to check these surveys and make sure any errors are within acceptible limits). For example, if the tide hasn't been measured correctly, then all the depths measured on one passage will be slightly less/more than those on adjacent passages, giving the seabed a sort of "mown lawn" appearence.
Another fairly common error is to get slightly incorrect depths directly below the ship. This is what has appears to have happened in this case (I've seen a diagram showing the route of the ship that did this survey, and it exactly duplicates the pattern and spacing of the grid on the google images.
As to "why ships, not satellites", the answer is simply a matter of resolution. The sonar beams from an MBES typically have a beam width of 0.5 degrees or less, which corresponds to a "footprint" on the seabed of about 40m in a depth of 5km. Satellites can be and are used to map the seabed, but their resolution is much, much worse (from memory, I think about 1km, maybe even more). -
Message 14
Posted by MendipTim (U13707598) on Sunday, 8th March 2009
Thank you Lapetus for your concise information.
As a keen sailor I found it very interesting as well as seeming to solve this mystery. If any of your work appears on Navigation charts I would like to also thank you for that; without you & your colleagues work life at sea would be more dangerous. -
Message 15
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Sunday, 8th March 2009
Yes, but then why this phenomenon did not provoke a similar image to other parts of the Atlantic? I did not see it myself to be honest (did not install google earth, just saw the ready pictures on the web), but people that first mentioned it, said that nowhere else in the Atlantic was there any such similar image of the sea bed.
And of course, as I said above, I am not suggesting any "eureka" here! I am convinced that if Atlantis was really there we will not be able to find anything visible to us even several 10s of meters under the seabed.
Perhaps the local geomorphology of the seabed in combination with the sonar process? I still believe that the explanation is not complete and still leaves space for passionate people to hope to find something.
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