Morrison
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Member # 2156
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posted 02-18-2006 12:06 AM
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I'm posting this about Morocco here because I intend to post similar descriptions of South America and see how they stack up towards one another:
Morocco:
-There is no capital city like Plato descibes (unless underwater near the coast).
-You complain about the length of the passage I described that leads from Boliva to the Atlantic, however, it is worth noting that there isn't even any such passage like Plato describes in Morocco.
-Morocco may well indeed be more balmy than we give it credit for, yet hardly enough of it to form the country that Plato describes.
-Strabo refers to a more abundant Morocco in the past. That may be true, but ancient historians have been prone to exaggeration, and I doubt he had ever been there. He also mentions five sunken cities near the coast, are we also to take his word that each of them once existed, too?
Then, there are these statistics about Morocco that don't lie:
A description of Morocco:
The Atlas Mountains run down the backbone of the country, from the south west to the north east. Most of the south east portion of the country is in the Sahara Desert and as such is generally sparsely populated and unproductive economically. Most of the population lives to the north of these mountains, while to the south is the desert.
Land use:
arable land: 21%
permanent crops: 1%
permanent pastures: 47%
forests and woodland: 20%
other: 11% (1993 est.)
Irrigated land: 12,580 kmē (1993 est.)
Natural hazards: northern mountains geologically unstable and subject to earthquakes; periodic droughts
Environment - current issues: land degradation/desertification (soil erosion resulting from farming of marginal areas, overgrazing, destruction of vegetation); water supplies contaminated by raw sewage; siltation of reservoirs; oil pollution of coastal waters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Morocco Compare this with Plato's descriptions of Atlantis:
There was an abundance of wood for carpenter's work, and sufficient maintenance for tame and wild animals. Moreover, there were a great number of elephants in the island; for as there was provision for all other sorts of animals, both for those which live in lakes and marshes and rivers, and also for those which live in mountains and on plains, so there was for the animal which is the largest and most voracious of all. Also whatever fragrant things there now are in the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or essences which distil from fruit and flower, grew and thrived in that land; also the fruit which admits of cultivation, both the dry sort, which is given us for nourishment and any other which we use for food-we call them all by the common name pulse, and the fruits having a hard rind, affording drinks and meats and ointments, and good store of chestnuts and the like, which furnish pleasure and amusement, and are fruits which spoil with keeping, and the pleasant kinds of dessert, with which we console ourselves after dinner, when we are tired of eating-all these that sacred island which then beheld the light of the sun, brought forth fair and wondrous and in infinite abundance.
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/critias.html Plato speaks of an abundant land (which I believe to be South America) while we have only the word of the ancients that Morocco was much more abundant in the past.
There are many other points I could bring up, I imagine you're most likely tired of repeating the whole peninsula vs. island business, the fact that Atlantis was submerged and Morocco clearly is not, the solid evidence lacking for any kind of empire existing there the like that Plato describes, so I will save them for another day.
I think we'd agree that for the Morocco theory to become more plausible, more archaeological evidence is needed, not just words from ancient texts. I'm not saying that evidence does not exist, merely that it has yet to be found. I'll admit that very little archaeological work that I have seen has been done there, and it's a pity that ruins like Lixus have been left to languish, while others are covered by the sands.
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