Morocco and Eastern Atlantis

[Bianca]

atalante
Member
Posts: 1301
From: Tucson AZ USA
Registered: Apr 2003
  posted 03-01-2004 13:04             
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Ulf,
re: coastland vs island
My impression is that some Greek writers ca 750-550 BC were aware that the Phoenicians had established an actual colony at Cadiz. Hesiod and Stesichorus probably called that region Erythia (although in later centuries, the name Gadira replaced the name Erythia).

At that time, the Greek model for the world was a flat circular disc. However, MOST of the outer edge of the world-disc was still unexplored (ca 750-550 BC).

A minimum size of the outer shoreline was revealed when Necco II circumnavigated Africa (ca 600 BC). This was shortly before Solon visited Egypt.

So it seems that the priests of Sais could have been talking about the voyage of Necco II when they told Solon that the coastline of one "continental" portion of Atlantis was bigger than Libya and Asia combined.

The names Asia and Libya were merely "shorelines" to sailors among the Greeks and Egyptians of Solon's era. But Necco II had proven that the outer shoreline of the world-disc was MUCH "longer" than the combined lengths of Asia Minor plus Libya.

Perhaps it was either Dropides or Critias who confused coastland vs island when they relayed the story to Plato.

[Bianca]

Ulf Richter
Member
Posts: 475
From: Schwabenheim, Germany
Registered: Sep 2002
  posted 03-03-2004 06:14             
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Jonas,
Your quotes about orichalcum are very interesting; I did not know them before. When Theopomp states that Oreichalkos is a mixture of copper and zinc, it is the same as the Romans called it. They had "Aurichalcum" coins which were made from brass. But I always thought that brass was a relatively late invention. According to Pseudo-Aristoteles brass was first made from an Anatolian people called Mossynoikoi. Brass with 20% zinc looks like gold. Darius the Great (521-486 BC) had a bowl of brass. in his treasure. This may be the material which Theopomp describes. But not necessarily must the greaves of Heracles also have been from brass, perhaps in earlier time another material was called "oreichalcoi". Brass cannot be mined directly from the earth, as Plato describes it for orichalcum. And brass was known in the times of Plato, and was not "only a name". And when the walls of the inner circle of Atlantis was covered with brass, it was necessary to polish it frequently, to make it "flash with the red light of orichalcum".

[Bianca]

atalante
Member
Posts: 1301
From: Tucson AZ USA
Registered: Apr 2003
  posted 03-03-2004 09:59             
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Maria,
You mentioned that Pliny used the name Aetheria for Atlantis. Perhaps this comes from Greek Mythology (rather than from a translation of the Egyptian god Shu).
http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/HYADES1.html
Aethra was a wife of Atlas who is said to have borne him one son and 15 daughters. The son, named Hyas went to Libya and was killed by a lion.

Many of those 15 daughters left their father's homeland, Asia Minor, and moved to the Peloponese peninsula ca 6500 BC, but they were eventually translated into the sky as the Pleiades.

Some of the daughters (Hyades) died of grief after Hyas died, and so they were translated into the sky in the constellation of Taurus.

Due to the celestial nature of these myths (and their mother's name Aethra), I am not surprized to hear that Pliny used the word "aetheria" (=airy) in connection with a group of daughters of Atlas (atlantes). And since Hyas went to Libya, it does not seem extreme for Pliny to associate these people with the Atlantes tribes which Herodotus described in that same geographical region.

If the "traditional Greek" Atlas myths were trying to describe a very early, non-Indo-European, spread of neolithic agriculture around the Mediterranean, then several myths about other "daughters" of Atlas (by other mothers) begin to make sense. The Hesperides could have gone to Italy (=Hesperia, the land of sunset) around 6000 BC, when neolithic agriculture first arrived in Italy at Tavoliere.

The Olympian Goddess Demeter could have carried agriculture (barley and bread-wheat)from Asia Minor to Sicily (as her Greek myth claims) around 5500 BC, when obsidian was discovered in the small islands of Lipari and Pantelleria, near Sicily.

And Calypso (daughter of Atlas) could have carried agriculture from Asia Minor to her island (Sardinia or Majorca) shortly after 5500 BC.

[Bianca]

Jonas Bergman
Member
Posts: 180
From: Uppsala, Sweden
Registered: Jul 2003
  posted 03-03-2004 10:03             
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Quote Ulf: Your quotes about orichalcum are very interesting; I did not know them before.
---
Brass cannot be mined directly from the earth, as Plato describes it for orichalcum.

In my website I have earlier stated that orichalcum probably is the yellow copper ore you can make brass out of. In other words: It is both the alloy(brass) and the natural copper ore which can be mined directly from the earth. Both was called Orichalcum(Oreichalkos). Plato could also have meant copper. If they covered one wall with tin, they could have covered another with red shining copper, or as you ( Ulf ) prefer: copper with arsenic.

---------------------------------------------
DICTIONARY
orei-chalkos , ho, Lat.
orichalcum (which by a false
etym. was freq. written
aurichalcum), mountain-copper,
i.e. yellow copper ore, copper
or brass made from it
---------------------------------------------

Quote Ulf: And brass was known in the times of Plato, and was not "only a name".

This is one of the reasons why "is now only a name" can be interpreted in many ways.

Translation: and also that kind which is now known only by name but was more than a name then

kai = also, even / and / and yet / likewise

to = the, that / namely that / those who / there, on that spot / in this way, thus / thus, in this wise, then, if this be so, on this condition

nun = now at this very time / of the present / as it is, as the case now stands / then, thereupon, thereafter

onomazomenon = to name or speak of by name, call or address by name / of things: to name, specify / names they say are
saying has arisen / to use names or words

monon =

tote = at that time, then / one time or other / of that time / in those times

de = but, while, whereas, on the other hand

pleon = more, larger / further / of Time: longer / the greater number / the many, the people / a higher degree /

onomatos = name / by name / a name / a mere name / a false name, pretence, pretext / a phrase, expression /

I would interpret this as if Orichalcum was considered very precious in the time of Atlantis.
It was a great name back then. ( not forgotten )

One good translation may be:
and also that kind which is now a mere
name but a whole expression back then,
there being mines of it in many places of the island, I mean "orichalcum," which was
the most precious of the metals then known, except gold.

more than a name = a whole expression / phrase / greater name

I way for Plato to express himself.
Express that this was something highly
appreciated back then, but in his days only a
name in comparison. A name like everything else, nothing special.
( copper/brass wasn´t special in the time of Plato )

pleon = more, larger / further / higher degree
onomatos = a phrase, expression / name

also - that kind(of metal) - now at this very time - a name/specify
- while - at that time - a higher degree( greater)- name/expression/phrase

Just some thoughts.

Regards, Jonas Bergman

[Bianca]

atalante
Member
Posts: 1301
From: Tucson AZ USA
Registered: Apr 2003
  posted 03-04-2004 09:30             
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There are two regions in Siberia where brass can be dug out of the earth. http://mineral.galleries.com/minerals/elements/brass/brass.htm
But it seems like a fairy-tale, to suppose that the Atlanteans found a rare deposit of mineral brass in their home city.

[Bianca]

atalante
Member
Posts: 1301
From: Tucson AZ USA
Registered: Apr 2003
  posted 03-04-2004 12:36             
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Perhaps the Atlantean metalurgy benefitted from using Cadmium as a trace alloy. Cadmium was not isolated by modern science until 1817, but it was first derived from calamine soils.
quote from: http://www.lenntech.com/Periodic-chart-elements/Cd-en.htm
"Cadmium can mainly be found in the earth's crust. It always occurs in combination with zinc. Cadmium also consists in the industries as an inevitable by-product of zinc, lead and copper extraction."
endquote

Modern science did not isolate Cadmium until 1817, when cadmium was produced from calamine soils. If this technique had been known in the chalcolithic era, cadmium could have been an extremely valuable trade secret.

Adding roughly 1% cadmium to copper, lead, tin, zinc, or most combinations of those metals will improve the characteristics of such metals and/or alloys. The modern name for a cadmium/copper alloy is "cadmium bronze".

quote from: http://www.cadmium.org/app_allo.html
"Copper-cadmium alloys which have almost double the mechanical strength and wear resistance of pure copper, yet still retain 90 per cent of its conductivity, contain between 0.8 to 1.2 per cent cadmium. In addition, copper-cadmium alloys can be severely cold rolled without making them susceptible to softening during soldering. Major uses for such alloys include telephone drop wires, contact wire and catenary strand for railway overhead electrification, tinsel conductor for flexible telephone cords, special cables for military and aerospace uses and electrical components such as contact strips. Copper-cadmium alloys can withstand service temperatures as high as 150'C; as a result they are used in both domestic and automotive radiators and fittings. "
endquote

Although most of the world's current supply of Cadmium is created as a byproduct of processing other metals, there is a true ore for Cadmium, which is called Greenockite (=Cadmium Sulfide).

quote from: http://mineral.galleries.com/minerals/sulfides/greenock/greenock.htm
"PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS:
Color is honey yellow, orange, red or light to dark brown.
Luster is adamantine to resinous.
Transparency crystals are transparent to translucent.
Crystal System is hexagonal; 6 m m
Crystal Habits include small tapering hemimorphic six sided pyramids and platy hexagonal crystals. Also seen as crusts or dustings over crystals of calcite, smithsonite and sphalerite."
endquote

So perhaps the Atlanteans were harvesting these honey-yellow-orange-red crystals of Cadmium Sulfide, which appear as crusts over the common mineral, calcite, and then using the crystals to create a 1% cadmium alloy with copper.

It is a fact that the mineral "calamine" (from which modern science first isolated cadmium) was originally named after the soil of a region in Greece. So perhaps a few metallurgists/alchemists in Plato's era had been experimenting with cadmium, and gave it "what was only a (laboratory) name" -- orichalc.

[Bianca]

Jonas Bergman
Member
Posts: 180
From: Uppsala, Sweden
Registered: Jul 2003
  posted 03-04-2004 15:27             
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Trip to Morocco part2 - The delta of Bou Regreg
Warm Regards, Jonas Bergman

[Bianca]

Ulf Richter
Member
Posts: 475
From: Schwabenheim, Germany
Registered: Sep 2002
  posted 03-04-2004 17:03             
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Jonas,
I could agree to the opinion, that orichalcum was brass, when it is possible to prove, that it could be produced from one natural ore in very early times, say in the Copper Age. May be the researchers did not become aware of those remnants yet. Many bronze or copper tools in the museums were not yet examined in respect to their content of different alloying metals, so maybe a "copper dagger" is actually made from arsenic bronze, or a "bronze greave" is actually a brass greave. The green colour of the stained surface layer may look similar.
But anyway: to make walls from brass "flash with red light" or "sparkle like fire", they had to be polished nearly once a week! And the sparkling of brass in the light of the sun is more yellow golden than red.
What do you know about the composition of copper ores which can be found in Morocco?

atalante,

Cadmium is mostly contained in traces in all zinc ores, so why shouldn´t it be also part of a brass made of a natural ore containig copper and zinc in the right amounts. Cadmium would make the brass a little harder as if it would only contain copper and zinc.

Greetings from Ulf





OBTAINED FROM 'GOOGLE' - ORIGINALLY:

http://forums.atlantisrising.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000813.html

[Desiree]

Hi Bianca!

Jonas Bergman was the one at AR who was most interested in the theory that Atlantis was in Morocco.  His idea was that parts of Morocco were submerged, then the waters receded again.  That doesn't quite cut it for me. Morocco is also a lot dryer and more arid than I would expect Atlantis to be. No question Atlantis probably had some settlements there, but I am not convinced that anything on land there (with the exception of Lixus) had anything to do with it.  All the lands they inhabited there (like Spain) are probably submerged, since ancient people tended to build closer to the coasts and those shorelines are now submerged.

Have you found any pics of the city off the coast mentioned by Charles Berlitz?

Desiree

[Bianca]

MdSungate scanned this picture for us from Charles Bertlitz's "Atlantis, the Eighth Continent"

A bit hard to see, Desi. 

There is another picture somewhere by the Italian underwater journalist Pippo Cappellano.

I'll leave a space for it for when I find it, Desi.  So do check back right here.



As for the current postings, I thought the back and forth by these educated people was very
interesting, regardless of whether I agreed with the "Atlantis in Morocco Theory" or not.....

There is a lot of good information here.  (I omitted Maria 'what's her name's postings, though.)

b

[Bianca]

HERE IT IS,

From another source, Desi.  The same expedition as in Berlitz's book (Above).



By 1981 an expedition lead by Pippo Cappellano found some mysterious basaltic ruins on the ocean
floor near the coast of Lanzarote.

At a depth of about 50 feet and over an area of 900 square feet, they found large flat stones that
look like they were carefully put into place.
These blocks were followed by wide stone steps. But that’s not all: an undersea wall also was disco-
vered which was formed by regular triangular blocks.
 
 

 

Mr. Cappellano and the structures found
undersea; as all good places where hypo-
thetic Atlantean buildings made of basalt
(...) have been found, also Tenerife has
its own misterious "constructions".





INFO: The basaltic rocks can form geometric structures when suffer high temperatures and pressures, as per example the formations of North Ireland.


http://atlantis.religionstatistics.net/

[Bianca]

Well, it seems so far that Pippo Cappellano is an author of some renown over in Italy, but I don't
know yet if I could buy any books online from the US.  Most of what I found is underwater 'stuff'
for him.  Like a book called the "Underwater Photographer".

Then I found this (in English) and it turns out to be from Andrew Collins:


                                               PHOENICIANS IN THE ATLANTIC


                                           More Discoveries from the Canary Isles




If Professor Collina-Girard wanted to find new evidence for the existence of Atlantis he would have been better citing the archaeological features discovered recently off the island of Lanzarote in the Canaries by underwater explorer Pippo Cappellano. He has detected and filmed rectilinear stone foundations of unquestionable man-made manufacture in around 20-22 metres of water. Pictures of his discovery appear in a recent issue of HERA magazine.

Although the Canaries have been proposed occasionally as the site of lost Atlantis, there is no reason to assume that these structures do belong to Plato's lost island empire. Since they lie only at a depth of 20 or so metres, they would have been above sea-level as recently as the time of Christ, like the lost city of Heraklion found recently off the coast of Alexandria in Egypt.

This is thought to have submerged as a result of a natural cataclysm as recently as AD 600. More likely is that the underwater features off Lanzarote represent evidence for the presence in the archipelago of a proto-Phoenician, Iberic Phoenician or Carthaginian sea-port during the first or second millennium BC.

Only recently, Canaries archaeologist and historian Pablo Atoche Peña has released new evidence of a Phoenician and Carthaginian presence in the Canary isles as early as 500 BC. This lends weight to the idea that these maritime peoples regularly made journeys to the archipelago, and perhaps used them as a staging post into the outer ocean. From here the Canary Current takes a vessel towards the islands of Cape Verde, before sweeping it westwards upon the North Equatorial Current towards the Caribbean.

In 100 BC the Roman geographer Statius Sebosus recorded that it was 40 days' sail between the Gorgades, unquestionably the Cape Verde Isles off the West African coast, and the Hesperides, the 'islands in the west' said in classical tradition to have lay beyond the ocean river.

Surely this is a reference to transatlantic journeys made either during or before his age, most probably by Carthaginian and Phoenician voyagers. Thus a line of transmission for information between the Caribbean and the Mediterranean world during the first-century BC supports the view that Atlantis laid in the outer ocean, conceivably in the Caribbean.


http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/conference/

[Bianca]

For discoveries in that region we had to wait until 1981, when an expedition lead by Pippo Cappellano found some mysterious ruins with strange carved symbols on the ocean floor near the coast of Lanzarote.

At a depth of about 50 feet and over an area of 900 square feet, they found large flat stones that look like they were carefully put into place.

These blocks were followed by wide stone steps. But that’s not all. On the other side, near the Moroccan coast, a several miles long undersea wall has been discovered and photographed. What is hidden on the bottom of the Atlantic? Are these the remains of the sunken civilization Atlantis? Like
with the Yonaguni structures, many orthodox scientists claim they are natural forms, without adequate research, seemingly to avoid having to admit any mistakes in our history books.

The underwater structures in the Canary region were found at a depth of only 50 feet. That means they were probably still above water some 2000 years ago. Therefore researchers concluded that Romans, Greeks or Phoenicians must have built them.

But none of them ever colonized the Canaries, so what would drive them to build these structures?

There is indeed evidence, like some Roman amphoras, that indicates Europeans stopped by in the region, but their presence was probably of no substantial importance. It seems more logical to follow another path. Not everything of Atlantis sank, so these structures could still be the last remains of
the empire, swallowed by the sea around the time of Christ.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/VandecruysG1.php?p=1

[Desiree]

MdSungate scanned this picture for us from Charles Bertlitz's "Atlantis, the Eighth Continent"

A bit hard to see, Desi. 

There is another picture somewhere by the Italian underwater journalist Pippo Cappellano.

I'll leave a space for it for when I find it, Desi.  So do check back right here.



As for the current postings, I thought the back and forth by these educated people was very
interesting, regardless of whether I agreed with the "Atlantis in Morocco Theory" or not.....

There is a lot of good information here.  (I omitted Maria 'what's her name's postings, though.)

b

Isn't that cool?  The blocks look simililar to Bimni, don't they?  What if the Atlantic culture that built them really didn't have a homeland as big as Liby and Asia combined, but simply had an empire that big?  Plato could have simply been talking about the city when he gave the description, which could have been anywhere.

I have heard lots of bad things about Maria, who was apparently another troll!

[Bianca]

resuming the conversation from post #322:




Daffy Duck
Member
Posts: 1215
From: Michigan
Registered: Jan 2001
  posted 03-04-2004 17:34             
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Wow, great thread guys. Can't believe I've missed it for so long...
Brig:


quote:
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Seriously, it appears to me that if you could obtain orbital pictures of the Moroccan target area, you might actually be able to see whether or not ancient earthworks are in evidence. Does anyone have any idea where such pictures could be obtained. I know such pictures exist. The whole earth has been so photographed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yup, you're talking about ground-penetrating radar satellite imagery (LandSat, etc.). There's tons of it.

Start here:


Satellite Images North Africa

About 80% the way down the page.