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News: Plato's Atlantis: Fact, Fiction or Prophecy?
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the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

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Carolyn Silver
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« Reply #165 on: February 07, 2011, 12:49:25 am »

GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE
The Importance of Oceanography

The geological aspect of Atlantis is the most important facet of the whole issue of Atlantis. If the geological story of this planet does not support the existence of a large island in the midst of the North Atlantic, then, to make a long story short, Atlantis is down the tube. Therefore, establishing the feasibility of such a landmass geologically is of paramount importance. In the case of Atlantis, geology and oceanography are closely entwined.

SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS

Science confidently asserts that "geologists find no traces of sunken continents in either the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans" (Davies, 1979). This in spite of the glaring fact that an extremely large mid-oceanic plateau (known as the Azore Plateau) exists in the North Atlantic, which at a depth of 1600 meters (approximately one mile) is roughly 500 X 600 miles in extent—representing a total area of 300,000 square miles.


The Azore Plateau as Atlantis (Capital City: red dot near southern coast). Notice the
level plain in the south and the mountains in the north as described in Plato's Critias.


http://www.atlantisquest.com/Geology.html
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Carolyn Silver
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« Reply #166 on: February 07, 2011, 12:50:27 am »

Equally misleading statements are made, such as the following: "No scientist believes that the sea level rose by anything like five thousand feet [roughly one mile], although much smaller changes are known to have occurred during the Ice Ages." (ibid.) No Atlantologist to my knowledge has suggested a rise in sea level of this magnitude; but sea-floor upheaval and subsidence is a totally different matter, as will be seen in the data given below—all from scientific sources.

The center of the geological story of Atlantis is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Other related aspects are confined to the ocean bottom in the vicinity of the Ridge; therefore these areas, including the Azore Plateau, will be the focal points of this study. I've noticed that the Azore (also called the Dolphin) Plateau is all but invisible in most maps of the Atlantic Ocean floor. However, I did locate one beautiful color-coded bathymetric chart which conveys a reasonably clear idea of its location and extent. (Click for bathymetric chart)

Since I am not an oceanographer, I will rely on the special reports and scientific papers of oceanographers and geologists who have done work in these areas in the past. The data presented below include those of the prestigious Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory at New York's Columbia University, as well as those of other well-known marine research institutions.

Objections have been raised as to the placement of Atlantis: why is it that with sea-floor spreading constantly taking place, Atlantis could remain in mid-ocean? A good question, but not one that can't be answered. Actually Atlantis was mainly east of mid-ocean; and if one drops the idea that it was a fragment of Pangaea that broke off from the Euro-African continent, it ceases to be a problem. Plate tectonics is an exceedingly slow process. In geological terms 10,000 years is the blink of an eye. Atlantis was not just sitting there "all created" and at ease: it was periodically wreaked by seimic turmoil, appearing and disappearing more than once, caused by at least three active factors (geologically speaking) working together at the point of the triple junction of the Afro-Euro-American crustal plates.

There were also forces working against the normal spreading of the ocean floor at that point, forces involving subduction, obstruction, rotation of plates, and vulcanism, all contributing to uplift (and eventually subsidence) at that point. A good friend of mine in the Philippines, Mr. Carl Martin, has developed some excellent ideas concerning the geological processes which contributed to the existence of Atlantis. Have a look at these ideas at Ancient Earth. It should not be forgotten that in spite of "continental drift" the Azore Plateau (which contains loads of continental material) remains near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

The modern theory of Plate Tectonics (involving "continental drift") does not disprove Atlantis in any way. I've heard professionals in the field make statements like, "This doesn't leave any room for Atlantis!", or "the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is made of basaltic material, it can't be part of a continent!" We will let you decide after you have looked at the evidence presented below.


THE ATLANTIC LANDMASS
U.S. Navy hydrographic map

Professional geologists have endeavored to make Plate Tectonics—the backbone of modern geology—an enemy of Atlantis (Speicher, 1972). Nothing could be further from the truth. Plate Tectonics is what created and what destroyed Atlantis. It is also what has made it such an unreliable dwelling place for plants or animals; and the landmass Plato called Atlantis may have gone in and out of existence several times over a period of several millions of years. It was not always the same size or the same shape, and it doubtless had different categories of flora and fauna during these different periods of time. In geological terms it doesn't take long for a landmass to develop some sort of collection of flora and fauna. In a mere thousand years, all kinds of grasses, weeds, bushes and trees will cover any landmass making its appearence in a temperate or tropical zone. Such growth couldn't care less whether the land was made of continental (sial) or basaltic (sima) material. Or whether it was officially a "continent" or not. Greenland is an island. Plato called Atlantis "a large island". So if it was as large as Greenland (a pretty big place), it would still be an "island".


Hydrographic map of Azore Plateau and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

http://www.atlantisquest.com/Geology.html
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Carolyn Silver
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« Reply #167 on: February 07, 2011, 12:53:29 am »



The Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) stretches down nearly the entire length of the Atlantic Ocean sea-floor like the stitched-seam on a baseball. The MAR divergent boundary forms a continuous basaltic ridge between the Eurasian and North American continental plates in the North Atlantic, and the African and South American continental plates in the South Atlantic.
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Carolyn Silver
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« Reply #168 on: February 07, 2011, 12:54:25 am »


Paleomagnetic fossil records of  Geomagnetic Reversals, (periodic magnetic-field polarity reversals due to intensity changes in the Earth�s magnetic field,) have also played an important part in the processes of plate tectonics. Magnetic variations studied from core samples taken along the Reykjanes Ridge south-west of Iceland give evidence that basaltic lavas have been intermittently laid down along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge with both Normal Polarity (exhibiting the same magnetism as the present-day magnetic field) and Reverse Polarity (exhibiting the opposite magnetism as the present-day magnetic field.)

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Carolyn Silver
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« Reply #169 on: February 07, 2011, 12:55:14 am »


The dynamic driving mechanism behind spreading centers such as MAR was first proposed by  Harry Hess of Princeton University in the early 1960�s. His hypothesis, which was later termed Sea-Floor Spreading, states that the upwelling of mantle material from interacting  Convection Currents deep within the plastecized mantle causes mantle material to penetrate the sea-floor lithosphere and create the production of new basaltic sea-floor along each side of a divergent boundary.

As new sea-floor pushes old sea-floor laterally away from the divergent boundary (spreading center) in opposite directions, old sea-floor meets deep trenches which mark convergent boundaries and push the underlying lithosphere under continental plates where it plasticizes and becomes part of the mantle again. This type of convergence is called a Subduction Zone, which keeps the amount of sea-floor nearly constant by laterally destroying the same amount which is being created.
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Carolyn Silver
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« Reply #170 on: February 07, 2011, 12:56:23 am »


Hess referred to this recycling action involving mantle convection cells, upwelling mantel material, sea-floor spreading, and convergent boundaries which replasticizes old sea-floor lithosphere, as a sea-floor �conveyor belt.� Of course, this "conveyor belt" moves quite slowly by our time standards. But on a geological time scale, new MAR sea-floor is being produced at an alarming rate--as much as 2-4cm per year along Slow-Spreading Atlantic divergent zones, and as much as 10cm along Fast-Spreading Pacific divergent zones.

Exactly how oscillating polarity reversals correlate to sea-floor spreading rates over the last 4 million years is still not entirely understood. Polarity reversals would seem to have a significant impact upon mantle convection cells, which are the power source for upwelling mantle materials. At any rate, MAR fossil magnetism core samples have allowed geologists to grasp hard geological evidence in support of the plate tectonic hypothesis by plotting their paleomagnetic time scale.

Another bit of compelling evidence that supports continental drift comes from matching mountain Structural Belts across the North Atlantic to the geological time when the Appalachian mountains of North America and the Atlas mountains of northern Africa created each other through interaction between the North American and African plates.

Likewise, the same Appalachian mountain belt runs up the North American plate to disappear off the coast of Newfoundland--only to reappear again in the inter-related mountains of Ireland and Scotland, and then again on the east coast of Greenland and the west coast of Norway, which are all part of the Eurasian continental plate. All of these mountain ranges are of aproximately the same geological age and composition.

When geologists match these structural belts by reversing the effects of continental drift, the jig-saw picture that is revealed depicts the adjoining land mass of the northern African, North American and Eurasian continental plates. The single unifying factor that links them all geologically to one another is the ever-present MAR divergent boundary line.

Iceland falls on the map south-east of Greenland, but north-west of Great Britain. Its geological history presently seems unique to the Atlantic Ocean compared to the rest of the land masses discussed previously. Iceland is thought to be sitting upon what is referred to as a hot spot. The Pacific archipelago of Hawaii is the classic example of a Hot Spot/Island-Seamount Chain that stretches from Hawaii north-west to the Midway Islands, and then north to the Aleutian Trench.
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Carolyn Silver
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« Reply #171 on: February 07, 2011, 12:57:37 am »


  Atlantis: New Hypothesis

I have been afraid to deal with such a dangerous pseudo-historical clich�. One could probably fill the entire Atlantic Ocean with all the garbage which has been written about Atlantis. The very name "Atlantis" tends to spell doom for any serious geological hypothesis without any substantial scientific proof. On the other hand, a hypothesis is a "best guess" until further evidence can be proven or disproven. The real question is, can the MAR provide such evidence? My hypothesis is that the MAR divergent boundary (with or without the help of lower Ice Age sea levels) may have generated several islands during the evolution of the Atlantic Ocean's plate tectonic scenario.


A closer look at Ice Age sea level

There is one final piece of evidence I want to consider before wrapping things up. What kind of climate would have prevailed over an island south of Iceland or the now inundated ancient-Eurasian-seashore? The British Isles are kept warm by the North Atlantic Current, even though the isles themselves are higher north in lattitude than Newfoundland. Satelite imagery has allowed us to peek at how ocean and atmospheric currents affect weather patterns. The following picture is a global heat satelite image.
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Carolyn Silver
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« Reply #172 on: February 07, 2011, 12:59:51 am »


This last picture shows the actual complexities of ocean currents. Note the North Atlantic Current, as well as the circular currents that make the Azores and Aleutian Islands almost tropical.


http://webspace.webring.com/people/eu/um_6643/MidAtlRid.html
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« Reply #173 on: November 17, 2011, 01:22:03 am »

  Atlantis: New Hypothesis

I have been afraid to deal with such a dangerous pseudo-historical clich�. One could probably fill the entire Atlantic Ocean with all the garbage which has been written about Atlantis. The very name "Atlantis" tends to spell doom for any serious geological hypothesis without any substantial scientific proof. On the other hand, a hypothesis is a "best guess" until further evidence can be proven or disproven. The real question is, can the MAR provide such evidence? My hypothesis is that the MAR divergent boundary (with or without the help of lower Ice Age sea levels) may have generated several islands during the evolution of the Atlantic Ocean's plate tectonic scenario.

Carolyn, some impressive input, including some nice snippets from R.C. Leonard's website. He's got some cool stuff at www.AtlantisQuest.com, all nicely grounded in science.

You bring up a good point how the "A" word spells doom, but that's ego talking, not science. This is just as bad as the "Clovis first" dogma that ruled North American anthropology for so long. Now that it's dead, scientists can get back to science rather than shuddering to dig below the Clovis horizon for fear of jeopardizing their careers. -- What? Science by intimidation!? Will Atlantis ever be able to find respect?

Now, are the above-quoted words yours, or those of someone else? That particular post was not attributed. This sounds like something Mr. Leonard would write.

Divergent boundaries are less likely to generate islands, it seems -- at least based on the current state of all Earth's divergent boundaries. The only exception seems to be Iceland, but one has to wonder about the mechanism which generated that island.

Convergent boundaries seem the best place to look, but we need to keep in mind that boundaries may change over time from one type to another.

The Africa-Eurasia boundary in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean is one such boundary. Currently it is mixed with divergent in the West (Terceira Ridge) and mixed transform and convergent. The Africa-Eurasia boundary in the Mediterranean remains heavily convergent. So, the overall pattern of the Africa-Eurasia boundary is one of rotation. In fact, the Euler pole of the Africa with respect to the Eurasia is about 1600 km south of the easternmost end of the Terceira Ridge.

The Atlantic Af-Eu boundary is heavily damaged, with one scientist describing "the eastern segment is not so well defined and deformation spreads over a much broader area."

The current rotation (Euler pole) seems to have started about 36 million years ago (Mya). That, according to Searle, et al, was when the Terceira Ridge started -- an abrupt bend in the East-West trending Af-Eu boundary toward the Northwest.

My Hypothesis

More than 200 Mya, Africa separated from South America and moved northward. During the next several million years, the Africa-Eurasia was entirely convergent resulting in subduction. For the most part, this subduction (one plate sliding underneath another) was relatively smooth and without incident.

Perhaps about 50-60 Mya, when Africa continent collided with Eurasia, the triple junction of Af-Eu-NAm became "pinched" resulting in new crust from the MAR becoming folded before entering the subduction region of Af-Eu boundary. This folded crust became a "bone" which the Af-Eu subduction zone could not "swallow." This was the start of Atlantis.

As the Africa continued to move northward against this blockage, the boundary continued massive crustal folding resulting after several million years in islands appearing. After several more million years of island building, perhaps one large island and several others decorated the Atlantic Ocean. At this point, about 36 Mya, the Africa could no longer move straight northward at this area of blockage. The island had become too big and no more folding could be added to it.

Because most of the Af-Eu plate boundary continued subduction farther East, the plate changed its Euler pole, initiating its current pattern of rotation. This also initiated the formation of the Terceira Ridge (divergent boundary or spreading center). And this may have been the main impetus for the formation of what is now the Azores plateau.

In my article and PDF on the Geology of Atlantis, I describe in greater detail how this led to the increased size of Atlantis, how Atlantis may have become a peninsula of Eurasia (allowing elephants and other creatures to invade the former island), and how Atlantis once again became an island about 5 Mya, ultimately suffering massive tectonic collapse 9620 BC as much from geological factors as from those of climate. My video on "Why the Philippines Will Not be the Next Atlantis" gives a layperson's perspective on this.

As always, I would love to get everyone's feedback on this. Of course, logic and politeness are appreciated.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2011, 01:29:11 am by LoneStar77 » Report Spam   Logged

LoneStar77
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« Reply #174 on: November 18, 2011, 12:17:01 am »

Hello Carl,

I am curious, we tend to get a lot of skeptics here.  What would you say is the strongest evidence that Atlantis existed and that it was in the Atlantic?  Where exactly in the Atlantic do you set it by the way?
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« Reply #175 on: November 18, 2011, 03:26:54 am »

I am curious, we tend to get a lot of skeptics here.  What would you say is the strongest evidence that Atlantis existed and that it was in the Atlantic?  Where exactly in the Atlantic do you set it by the way?

Hi Daedalus!

Skepticism is okay, but personally I think it's overrated. Restraint and humility make a better paradigm for any search for knowledge -- less ego and less subjectivity (bias).

While I believe Atlantis was a possibility, I don't "believe" in it. It's still quite possible Plato made the thing up.

If it was real, then it would likely follow Plato's description, minus the latitude inherent in the "storyteller's art." All other possibilities are only an "inspiration for Atlantis," at best. So, if you look up Plato's work and look at the geological maps of the region, you'll see a tectonic boundary from Gibraltar to the Azores -- the entire length of Old Atlantis.

Here is an illustration I created for the Ancient Earth section of my Ancient Suns website.


(Map copyright © Carl Martin)

You can find more information on my Mission: Atlantis website.

As for the strongest piece of evidence, I'd have to say the "triple whammy" mentioned in my "Atlantis Proof" article.

For more on my arguments for the location, see my article on location of Atlantis.
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LoneStar77
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"Now we have proof that something BIG happened right when Plato's Atlantis subdided. We have the 'smoking gun.'"
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« Reply #176 on: November 18, 2011, 10:10:10 pm »

Hi Carl, and welcome to the forum.  I've been browsing your website and it has some very interesting research on it.  It seems you also set Atlantis in 9620 bc.  How do you account for the story being passed on for all those years between the disaster and Solon when it occurred in an age where there was no Egypt, was no Greece, not to mention there was't even a common language  and before the creation of writing?  Think of it, out culture, with all these things can only account for the last 5000 years.  How could the ancient have accounted for the prior 9000 years when they had no writing or common language?
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« Reply #177 on: November 20, 2011, 09:55:30 am »

Hi Carl, and welcome to the forum.  I've been browsing your website and it has some very interesting research on it.  It seems you also set Atlantis in 9620 bc.  How do you account for the story being passed on for all those years between the disaster and Solon when it occurred in an age where there was no Egypt, was no Greece, not to mention there was't even a common language  and before the creation of writing?  Think of it, out culture, with all these things can only account for the last 5000 years.  How could the ancient have accounted for the prior 9000 years when they had no writing or common language?

Thanks, Skinwalker. Glad to be here. And yes, I set the demise of Atlantis at 9620 BC +/- a few decades.

Good questions. Let me see if I can answer them adequately.

Social Memory

In Timaeus and Critias, Plato relates that the Egyptian civilization extended back thousands of years earlier than our current social "memory."

Just look at how much we've lost over the ages. Manetho, the Egyptian historian had to piece together his "history" of Egypt from various sources and scraps. It seems he didn't have an easy time of it, because so much was missing.

Many of the ancient Greek writings have disappeared. We only know of them from brief quotes by other ancient Greek or Roman authors. In fact, Western civilization lost its "Western heritage" for a few hundred years until it was re-discovered from the Moslems in their Golden Age.

Knowledge is a fragile thing. Just think of how much data has been lost on 8" floppy disks because they don't make the drives anymore. Until recently, I had a few 5-1/4"  floppies, but had no way of reading them. And my 3-1/2" floppy external drive is gathering dust.

Just because we "don't know" something doesn't mean it didn't exist. To assume that a lack of something proves the non-existence of something is a logical fallacy (argument to ignorance).

There are so many possibilities for what is "true," but we have to admit that we simply do not know.

Egypt, Greece and Language

According to Plato, the then current civilization of Egypt started 8000 years earlier. If that's true, then there was a 1000 year gap when Egyptian civilization (which had been going off and on for about 30,000 years) collapsed, right after the demise of Atlantis.

The lack of a common language has never been a lasting barrier. People learn. Some people, at least. Immerse yourself in another culture for several weeks or months, and you will likely pick up a usable vocabulary.

No Egypt and no Greece according to whom? Plato explains what happened to the proto-Greece of Atlantean times. It suffered massive flooding and earthquakes. Nothing is said about what happened to Egypt to give it a thousand-year Dark Age. Could it have suffered the same flooding -- a mega-tsunami from the tectonic collapse of Atlantis (mile-high waves traversing the Med, perhaps only a thousand feet high when they reached the Eastern Med)?

One article I read years ago said that there was some evidence of agriculture in the Nile Delta from about 9500 BC, but that the culture disappeared. I seem to have lost the reference and looking for a replacement. I'd like to corroborate that data. There was also signs of domestication of goats on Sardinia about the same time, but then this society disappeared from the records, too.

And who's to say that writing didn't exist far earlier than the Egyptians or Sumerians? All it takes is one tablet or artifact to prove that writing is far older. And we haven't dug up the entire planet, yet.

I hope that explains my current viewpoint adequately. Of course, I'm always learning new things. With that learning, my worldview changes.
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LoneStar77
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« Reply #178 on: November 20, 2011, 01:32:03 pm »

Those are some good points, Carl, the main one being, I suppose, that absence of evidence doesn't mean that something didn't exist. Agreed. However, if we are going to take Plato literally, then also says that Neith, where Solon got the story from the Egyptian priests, was founded a thousand years after Athens. Well, archaeology tells us that the area where Athens was founded wasn't even inhabited until 3000 bc. And Neith, though one of Egypt's oldest cites, wasn't founded until something like 3500 bc at the earliest. That still leaves a gap of about 6000 years to fill, which is longer than the gap we know of the rise or our own civilization. Provided that the story was passed on by oral tradition, how can one possibly keep the details of when Atlantis existed  straight with all the various languages and peoples involved?

There are some old writing systems that were around at that time - Linear A and some mysterious symbols on rocks in the Canaries, but they have yet to be deciphered. In the case of the Canaries, we don't even know if they are a language at all.
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« Reply #179 on: December 23, 2013, 08:59:16 am »

Dear ALL,

HAPPY X-MAS everyone !

My name BlueHue was chosen because most Atlantologists
couldn't see the Forest from the trees or better
fail to see the(invisible ELEPHANT in the Room !

ALAS people talking about Atlantis keep barking-up a wrong Tree

I have narrowed Down my Point: to two instances,
 PLATO wrote ATHE not Atlantis
Euhemerus wrote Atlantis is opposite the NileSorches at Mons Lunae(= bu Sinia=Ethiopia)
I rest my case
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Atlantis in,"historical-Perspective"
=Known-World,Oikumene=Now,Yemen>Surat-89

This Egyptian,INDIAN-Ocean trade-Empire was
ruled by-CEO-Queen Tiy

PLATO wrote (GREEK!)" ATHE " Now,Aden= Solomon's/OFIR, in Herodotus-Araby-Map

ATLANTIS-Dialogue=Satire,on Athens-Trade boycott(of Darius2,413bc)
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