Sigh. I thought I was being fun and intellectual. My little joke about skating was made because no one is addressing the fact that Atlantis supposedly existed in a time frame when most of the earth was covered in ice.
My take on it is that if Atlantis existed at all, it will follow Plato's description. If Atlantis did not exist, then all other locations are only a possible "inspiration" for Atlantis, at best.
I have always agreed with this, and never said otherwise. It just happens that I believe other locations ARE the inspiration for Atlantis as well as events he knew or heard of.
I disagree. Egypt stays dry because it receives very little rain, but receives most of its water from the Nile (not from underground).
Yes. From underground aquafiers and rivers. In other words, from water that is already on the ground, not from rains, making the point that Greece was inundated many times by rain storms and Egypt wasn't.
Plato -
Whereas in this land, neither then nor at any other time, does the water come down from above on the fields, having always a tendency to come up from below; for which reason the traditions preserved here are the most ancient.
Plato never said Atlantis was a continent. He was quite clear on this. Atlantis was a large island between two continents
I was making the point that Atlantis was a very LARGE island. The size of Libya and Asia put together. Some people say the Egyptian priest wouldn't have known how big Libya and Asia were, but by their own admission, they wrote down anything of import they heard tell of, whether in their own country or someplace else, and we know from modern research, that Egypt traded far and wide, so I think it's reasonable to assume they had a pretty good idea of the size of Libya and Asia.
This characterization of tectonic opening up and swallowing an island is not something science has ever addressed, to my knowledge. If scientists ever thought this of the Atlantis story, then their imaginations on the subject of geology must be pretty flat. Tectonic collapse, or subsidence, or crustal slumping does not involve any tectonic split and something falling into a chasm. Subsidence is a standard geological concept.
This was my own characterization that I used when asking the geologist how an island with mountains a mile high, could sink and only leave "shoals of mud".
Subsidence is a standard geological concept.
Yes, that can cause huge "sinkholes", so I was wondering how big a sinkhole would be needed to sink Atlantis.
Subsidence frequently occurs in karst terrains, where dissolution of limestone by fluid flow in the subsurface causes the creation of voids (i.e. caves). If the roof of these voids becomes too weak, it can collapse and the overlying rock and earth will fall into the space, causing subsidence at the surface. This type of subsidence can result in sinkholes which can be many hundreds of meters deep.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubsidenceA few measly, uninhabited mountain tops still sticking up could easily be overlooked or discounted.
Possibly.
I have no idea where you get this. Plato was quite clear that prehistoric Greece suffered about the same time that Atlantis did. They suffered from earthquakes and flooding.
I've not heard that theory presented before. That prehistoric Greece was suffering the same time that Atlantis was. The priest told of storms that had ruined Greece before and eroded the top soil and destroyed civilization except for those living high in the mountains, like shepherds.
Oh, but according to Plato, they were not IN Atlantis. They were in their own homeland.
Right. So going on the assumption, which a lot of people do, that Plato IS talking about the same event - Atlantis sinking and the warlike men meeting the same fate - these two events are 3000 miles apart. How would the Egyptians even know that the Athenian men had met such a fate at the same time? Supposedly Egypt herself, according to your theory, was a thousand years recovering from the same incident, and yet she had a record of these details?
I think there was something major that happened in the past and word of mouth kept the story alive, but no one that survived such a catastrophe would know that the warlike men and Atlantis met their end at the same time. There would be no one who knew there had been a war, 9000 years after the fact.
And you mention something about no other nation receiving the flooding and earthquakes? Plato doesn't mention anyone else getting them, but who else was there at that date?
Exactly. Who else was there? Who is Plato referring to here?
This vast power, gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at a blow our country and yours
and the whole of the region within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind. She was pre-eminent in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when
the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjugated, and generously liberated
all the rest of us who dwell within the pillars.There were the Egyptians, but what other nations were there on Earth? I suspect that most of the planet was still primitive hunter-gatherer.
Exactly. What other nations were there on earth, at that time? According to those who study these things, most of the planet WAS still primitive hunter-gatherer types. There were no armies, no ocean going ships that could fill the harbors of Atlantis out in the ocean.
I have always said the time lines need to be pushed back for when man developed certain technologies, and this has been happening more and more, as further finds are made, but as I've said before and no one seems inclined to address this problem, that Atlantis supposedly existed during the ice age. How does one sail through the ice? One would have to put their ships on skids and slide them. How does one explain that there were supposedly a people so advanced they already had ship building technology, statistical knowledge for the deployment of organized troops, with horse drawn chariots that weren't invented yet?
A bit about Egypt:
The Nile Civilizations
This is where the great Nile civilizations were fostered and grew: Egypt, Nubia, Meroe. From the desperate human communities forced by the growing desert to live on the banks of the Nile grew one of the first great urban cultures of human history. However, we know almost nothing of these early pre-Egyptian communities. What did they think? What gods did they worship? How did these communities evolve into the great urban centers of the Nilotic kingdoms? Like the grass and trees swallowed by the desert, we'll never know, for they left only graves, tools, knives, pots, and garbage. No words and no speech. We do know that around 5000 BC, people began to live in villages up and down the Nile Valley, and one thousand years later these people were burying their dead with great care and ornamentation (belief in an afterlife?). Around 3800 BC, Nile culture began to flourish. Egyptians discovered the world and began to interact and trade with other cultures as far away as Mesopotamia. Egyptians became master craftspeople; they buried their dead in coffins in lavishly equipped graves; they began to develop sophisticated technologies.
This was the template on which Egyptian civilization would emerge, for out of this crucible would rise The Two Lands, the first states in human history.
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/EGYPT/PREHIST.HTM