Re: Atlantis <very long reply, extra coffee alert>
HOLA Joe and everyone,
This will be a long reply, so I beg your indulgence.
Cactusjumper wrote:
That being said, it's all boils down to informed opinion, or in my case, uninformed. If you want to call Stonehenge a civilization,
I did not call Stonehenge a civilization, I was asking if you would class it as one. While the Stonehenge culture has some of the attributes of a civilization, they seem to lack the key marker - cities. As far as I have been able to learn, the Stonehenge culture was likely a herding society with only semi-permanent settlements. The later stages (with the intriguing "barrow" tombs) might fill this requirement though. I would tentatively call the Stonehenge culture a
proto-civilization, and just a side note but the first stages of Stonehenge site specifically appears to be around 8000 BC, structures built of pine timbers rather than stone which came much later.
Cactusjumper also wrote:
Going outside the story of Atlantis to bolster the likelyhood that it existed in that time and place, is rather circumstantial. You won't find many archaeologist's who will date anything with unequivocal statements of "fact".
I went "outside" of the story of Atlantis in response to your statements:
Let's start with Atlantis being an established, technological civilization in 9,600 B.C. There is a great deal of historical evidence against Plato's description of that civilization even being possible. Maybe we could start with hearing your evidential arguments for overcoming that early date.
and especially this one:
The things that are associated with Atlantis, and 9,600 B.C., would be my choice as a place to begin. Remember, they must also apply to the rest of the known world at that time. Was it possible? There is no archaeological evidence of any rudimentary civilization prior to around 4,000 B.C. The earliest true civilizations, Egypt and Sumer, did not emerge until 3,000 B.C. Let's talk time.......
I was merely pointing out
examples of other civilizations that existed prior to 3000 BC, and yes I classify Catal Huyuk as a civilization, as well as the walled city of Jericho. However if we are to insist on an Atlantis that has technology of Plato's time (~350 BC or over 9000 years later) then we are destined to never find it.If we can prove that there were people (cultures) existing in or near the time of legendary Atlantis that exhibited some of the traits of what we call "civilization" -
then it becomes a different question than the easy dismissal of an improbable Iron age civilization being placed in the late Paleolithic. So if we are to talk
time - then let us indeed talk time, and not try to re-imagine an advanced stone age people into an anachronistic state. Would Atlantis be less remarkable, if it were only on a par with Catal Huyuk?
For your next set of responses, I will break them down into separate answers:
Cactusjumper also wrote:
At the centre of the island...
There is nothing in this part of the description that would not serve for an Ice Age culture. (I will use the term "culture" rather than civilization, will that suffice to fit your definitions of what a civilization is better?)
<ibid>
There was a temple to Poseidon himself...
Again we know of other ancient cultures, even older than the time period proposed for Atlantis, that had temples. The Middle East has some extremely old temples in the Negev and in nearby Sinai. Covering the walls with silver, gold or orichalcum is questionable, but gold is the first metal ever worked by man, and hammering these types of metals into thin sheets (which can then be "plated" onto any hard surface, using a resin to glue it permanently) is not a great leap of technology. Even quite "barbarian" cultures have shown rather advanced metallurgy, for examples the Thracians and Scythians. So this passage is a "maybe" - though it is just as likely that this is some of Plato's embellishment. An example of a temple dating back 12,000 years was recently found in Gobekli hill in Turkey, short article online at:
http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/001723.html
Examples of metal working by "barbarian" peoples:
(Thracian silver-gilt breastplate from Hellenistic era)
(Scythian hammered gold plaque, 7th century BC)
<ibid>
Two springs, hot and cold, provided an unlimited supply of water...
Natural springs are not too extraordinary, and if the "plantations" were simply some fig trees and the buildings of wood rather than marble, nothing anachronistic.
<ibid>
Here seperate accommodation was provided for royalty and commoners, and, again, for women, for horses, and for other beasts of burden...
If this section is read with an eye thinking of Athens, one gets quite an image - however read it again with a mental image of the type of buildings found in Malta, which are far more likely for 9600 BC, and it has a different effect on your view. As for having horses, it is anachronistic according to Brittanica, however there is evidence that horses were domesticated well before 10,000 BC - cave paintings showing horses wearing bridles have been found that date to 20.000 BC. (Side note but horses are remarkably easy to "tame" among the animal kingdom, even a wild horse can be trained to ride safely in a single day. Try doing that with a wolf, that is taking a wild one from the wild and trying to tame it in a single day and you will get bitten!)
<ibid>
On each of these ring islands they had built many temples for different gods, and many gardens and areas for exercise, some for men and some for horses... Finally, there were dockyards full of triremes and their equipment, all in good shape...
This passage has a sentence which certainly could be an example of Plato "embellishing" or to be exact, attributing the Atlantians with what were the most powerful warships of his own day - triremes. Penteconters, the "fifty" oared ships of the siege of Troy, were not invented until around ~1500 BC, or over 8000 years later. We can see examples of earlier ships in the wall carvings of Queen Hatshepsut recording the then-epic voyages to Punt; the ships were even smaller than the Penteconters with perhaps a dozen rowers, open decked. The types of boats used by men of 10000 BC started out as log rafts, hollowed out versions, and it is quite possible that the "warships" of Atlantis were far more similar to the outrigger canoes of Polynesia than the swift and sleek Triremes of Plato's day.
<ibid>
Beyond the three outer harbours there was a wall, beginning at the sea and running right round in a circle, at a uniform distance of fifty stades from the largest ring and harbour and returning in on itself at the mouth of the canal to the sea. This wall was densely built up all round with houses and the canal and the large harbour were crowded with vast numbers of merchant ships from all quarters, from which rose a constant din of shouting and noise day and night.
A wall is nothing too advanced, nor would houses be so great an advancement in technology. Merchant ships could be referring to large outrigger canoes and rafts, much as the sort of trade that took place in the Caribbean prior to the arrival of Columbus. A constant din is something Plato likely imagined himself, having been in the busy cities of his own day - one need only read some of the letters from ancient Rome, Babylon, Alexandria and Athens to find many complaints about the noise of busy commerce. (They ought to hear downtown NYC on a weekday, maybe they wouldn't have complained! )
Cactusjumper also wrote:
How many years do you think it might have taken to develop and build such a magnificent and ideal place? I put triremes in bold, because it's an important clue to the age of Atlantis.
I would say not more than 300 years would be necessary, simply by referring to other ancient civilizations that arose in such a span of time or considerably less. A few generations can make significant advances and constructions, for instance the very largest Egyptian pyramid took less than 40 years to build, so how long would it take to excavate out a few canals, build temples and a city etc? I don't take the mention of triremes to be any clue of the age of Atlantis, rather an example of Plato assigning the most advanced warship of his own day to the ancients. This is not a habit we can accuse Plato of singly either, just look at some of the paintings of Medeival times that purport to depict scenes of classical antiquity, and we see knights in shining armor, Medeival castles etc set in a time period when no such thing was known - though certainly armor was known and fortresses had been around for much longer. (Here is a well known example of such an anachronism)
I don't mean to sound as if I am
belittling Atlantis, rather I am trying to put it into a perspective of realism, so that we may more readily recognize Atlantis should someone actually find it. (no disrespect intended, Don Jose..) I think we covered a bit of this before, a simile would be if we were to try to find a 20th century USA while digging in revolutionary war period sites. The culture exists but not as some are imagining it.
Good luck and good hunting Joe and everyone, I hope you have a very pleasant evening.
Oroblanco
Of course, if we are to believe that the weathering that marks the Sphinx is caused by rainfall, it gets a bit older......sometime in the era described above. That seems unlikely, as there are more logical answers. If you are going to argue that it was caused by sea water.....the ocean, and thus Atlantis enters the picture, you are going to find that as hard a sell as Atlantis itself.
