Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 08:45:47 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Ancient Crash, Epic Wave
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/14/healthscience/web.1114meteor.php?page=1

 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (Original)

Pages: 1 ... 3 4 5 6 7 8 [9] 10   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (Original)  (Read 15892 times)
0 Members and 77 Guests are viewing this topic.
Carolyn Silver
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4611



« Reply #120 on: August 11, 2008, 02:13:55 am »

TRAVELLING TO THE OPPOSITE CONTINENT

For finding the answer to the question of where Atlantis was situated, the passage describing its whereabouts in relation to landmarks other than the Pillars of Hercules is of particular interest:

"...from it [Atlantis] travellers could in those days reach the other islands, and from them the whole opposite continent which surrounds what can truly be called the ocean." (Tim. 24e-25a)

In Thomas Taylor's translation it reads as follows:

"...and afforded an easy passage to other neighbouring islands; as it was likewise easy to pass from those islands to all the continent which borders on this Atlantic sea. For the waters which are beheld within the mouth which we just now mentioned, have the form of a bay with a narrow entrance; but the mouth itself is a true sea. And lastly, the earth which surrounds it is in every respect truly denominated the continent."

The argument about whether America is implied in this passage or not, can be veritably endless. But such a vision of the ocean surrounded by land, is strange, to say the least, for Plato of Greece or even for his imagination. Indeed, Greeks themselves did not know of America. So, this is a serious argument in support of the idea that Plato really possessed some information which had been lost long before his time, and that thanks to him, we have received uniquely ancient recorded information.

The phased character of sailing to the "opposite continent" in itself suggests the idea of the not-too-high level of navigation skills. The manner of action described would be appropriate for the Vikings' voyage to the island of Newfoundland, rather than for Columbus's search of a westward route to India. It is well known that both ancient Egyptians and the ancient Greeks we know of, sailed the seas on their ships, keeping to the coast and never losing sight of it. The very look of ancient maps testifies to this. So does the fact that no evidence has been found, that either Greeks or even Egyptians were familiar with the principles of navigation used in sailing the open seas. There are no grounds to believe that matters were different as regards Plato's Atlanteans and ancient Athenians.

Taking into account these considerations, we can see that in Timaeus a very accurate description is given of the route from the west of Europe to the above-mentioned island of Newfoundland via Iceland, Greenland and smaller islands, which, given a lower level of the ocean, must have been more numerous on the way.

CATASTROPHE

Attempts to link the vanishing of Atlantis to the rise of the world ocean level following the end of the last Ice Age have always met with serious objections. It is believed that the ocean level had been rising with different speed for over two thousand years, and critics asserted that the process did not correspond to the catastrophic character of what Plato described - the vanishing of Atlantis "in a single dreadful day and night". There may be two possible explanations of this discrepancy:

1.The first explanation is rather traditional: a tidal wave (tsunami) following some natural calamity destroyed the city and killed the armies, and then all the artifacts had been slowly (over thousands of years) swallowed by the ocean.

2.The second explanation is a little more complex. It is possible that the rising of the sea level may have been much faster than is commonly believed. Let us try to clarify where the idea of the long duration of the process originated from in the first place. Conclusions about it are arrived at on the basis of

• paleoclimatic data on the rise in temperatures. But we must be aware of the extent to which these data are circumstantial for assessing the speed of the given process, and of the fact that the correlation between the mean temperature and the ocean level must be non-linear. (Let us recall an experiment from the school course of physics, when a vessel with ice is being heated, but the temperature of the water only starts rising after all the ice has melted.)

• data on the glacio-eustatic fluctuations of the ocean level, the shortcomings of which we have already discussed in section "WHERE?"

Meanwhile, up to now, very little is known about the reasons for the beginning and the end of the Ice Ages. The only thing that is evident is that for the mean temperature on the planet to rise, a vast amount of energy is required. In considering the temperature charts for various regions, we can observe that the warming that marked the end of the last Ice Age was more pronounced, dramatic and durable than all the previous ones (See graphs of climate change).

In view of this, it cannot be ruled out that the warming had been caused by some event (or events) of seismic, volcanic or atmospheric nature:

"At a later time [after beginning of war between Atlanteans and Athenians] there were earthquakes and floods of extraordinary violence, and in a single dreadful day and night all your fighting men were swallowed up by the earth, and the island of Atlantis was similarly swallowed up by the sea and vanished..." (Tim. 25c-d)

This cataclysm could have been connected with the release of a vast amount of energy. In that case, the speed of the glacier melting and the rise of the ocean level could have been considerably higher than is widely believed now.

Another argument to back the thesis that none other than the rising of the ocean level was the catastrophe that Plato described, is that the relief of the plain in point in the west of Europe was of such character, that the rising of the ocean level by one metre could often have meant the retreat of the coastline by kilometres. I am sure that even if the submerging lasted several years, the eye-witnesses (and victims), who were on a flat plain, must have perceived it as a very fast sinking of all the land they could see, from horizon to horizon (See again map of the Celtic Shelf).

Report Spam   Logged
Pages: 1 ... 3 4 5 6 7 8 [9] 10   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy