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Plato`s Atlantis

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  Quote docyabut Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Plato`s Atlantis
    Posted: 11-Jan-2006 at 19:40

Hello all.  My interest is in finding Atlantis and I do believe in, after all my  studies that it  was Herodutus `s Tartesso.

Timaeus

But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arganthonios

When the capital fell the city and the empire sank into the Guadalquivir river. Mainake, the Greek colony which protected Tartessia from Carthage, also sank.

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  Quote docyabut Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 08:28

I have found such good infomation  on this site like this one, and wonder what others think of  Plato `s writings on Timaeus and Critias.

 

http://www.allempires.com/article/index.php?q=ancient_iberia

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  Quote sedamoun Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 11:09

Atlantis is a myth.

Plato used the myth of Atlantis to promote the "Superiority" of Athens (which was at the moments of his writings in full decadence). As told by Plato, Atlantis' armies conquered Libya, Egypt and regions as far as Italy, but were defeated by Athens.

In a more scientific approach, Atlantis can be the extrapolation of the Santorini Island's Volcanic eruption - the black cloud - according to the legend - be seen by all of greeces' coastal cities.

Another theory is that Atlantis is based on the Cretan Civilization - Minoan.

Cheers and don't believe the hype.

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  Quote AlbinoAlien Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 11:21
I have heard of large stones being placed all around the world so that they relate to constellational stars. all of these huge boulders are about 3 feet high and perfectly round. there are theories that these boulders were used for starnavigation.
people are the emotions of other people


(im not albino..or pale!)

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  Quote Maju Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 12:00
I believe that Atlantis was in Iberia but it wasn't Tartessos, which belongs to the period that the Greeks would have recorded more or less historically but to a more ancient period, of which not even Phoenicians had memory and only Egyptians, not a sailor nation, but a country with an old history and in contact with other Mediterranean cultures, notably Minoan Crete were able to keep a diffuse memory of it.

I have posted in some other topics about what I think but I will recapitulate. There was a notable but now mostly ignored civilization in Portuguese central-coastal region that lasted from c. 2600 BCE to c. 1300 BCE, with apogee in the 2100-1900 period, where it was central to the Bel Beaker phenomenon, which is thouht to be of mainly commercial nature.

This civilization is known as culture of Vila Nova de Sao Pedro (VNSP), for the earliest known fortified site, or, sometimes, as Zambujal, for its main city. The civilization is totally parallel to the SW civilizations of Los Millares and El Argar, but they show clear diferent substratum and evolution. While Los Millares and its successor are clearly Iberian in the ethnic sense and Mediterranean in its projection, VNSP is rather Atlantic probably belonging largely to the pre-Neolithic substratum.

VNSP has the following clear parallels with the Atlantis describe by Plato and others:
  • It is clearly beyond the columns of Herakles, wether you consider them to be the strait of Gibraltar or certain columns in Gadir or elsewhere in Andalusia. It is not far away from them either and it surely exerted control of the Atlantic trade to the precious tin mines of NW Iberia and SW Britain, apart of accessing easily many other minerals in its SW Iberian hinterland.
  • Island: actually it is a peninsula but the oldest sources describe it as a perirruthos, which is just something surrounded by flow (water). The perception for any foreign sailor that could come from the Mediterranean would be that of an island, actually two because the smaller peninsula south of Estremadura is also part of the same civilization.
  • The capital was on a mountain in the center of the island. It was: Zambujal stands on an elevation at the approximate center of the Estremadura peninsula.
  • There were 10 kings: VNSP displays exactly 10 neo-megalithic tombs of special "artificial cave" design that could well mark the pantheons of the 10 royal clans.
  • The plant of the city is complex: the plant of Zambujal fortifications are extremely complex and have been reformed once and again in diferent periods. Further approximation to the Platonian description could be subject to wider excavations but could also be partly an adition of the Eastern historians. The distance to the sea or rather the wide stuary of the Tagus is almost as Plato described it in any case.
  • They fought against the Greeks (Athenians): the Middle Bronze Age (1500-1300 BCE) shows a clear "Hellenization" of El Argar that is rather transparently rival of VNSP. I believe that El Argar was supported by Mycenean Greeks and that can explain not just the appearence of Greeks in the narration of Atlantis but also the western travels of Herakles in other legends, which are telling the same in a diferent manner.
  • The famous catastrophe: I used to think that it was a metaphore of the Celtic invasions of Urnfields that are temporarily coincident with the vanishing of both VNSP and El Argar. But recently I reas about the devastating effects of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake and I think otherwise now.
Relevant maps (from my article that so graciously Morty referred to):


Iberia in the Chalcolithic age: c. 3000-1800 BCE, showing the location of Atlantis (VNSP) and the parallel civilization of Los Millares


Map of VNSP and nearby areas in the late Chalcolithic period, around its apogee (c. 2000 BCE)


Iberia in the Early and Middle Bronze Age (c. 1800-1300 BCE), showing Atlantis (VNSP), the rival ("Hellenized" after 1500) civilization of El Argar, other important cultures and the location of the strategic tin mines.


Another map from the municipality of Torres Vedras site, showing the shape that the Estremaduran penisula had in the late Chacolithic, much more "insular" than nowadays.


Edited by Maju

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  Quote docyabut Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 17:10

sedamoun qoute-Plato used the myth of Atlantis to promote the "Superiority" of Athens.

I don,t think it was the city of  athens the priest was refering to but the country men  of the hellenes, a colony, because in  timaeus critias says=

The city and citizens, which you yesterday described to us in fiction, we will now transfer to the world of reality. It shall be the ancient city of Athens, and we will suppose that the citizens whom you imagined, were our veritable ancestors, of whom the priest spoke.

 

It shall be the anicent city of athens.

  It is not mention  where this war took place, I believe it to be this war http://www.mysteriousetruscans.com/history3.html

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  Quote docyabut Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 17:19

maju  I believe this was the atlantian war  ( men of the sea of atlas ) and it was recorded in egyptain history in 600 bc.

600bc

The Egyptian Pharaoh Necho commissioned Semitic-Phoenician mariners to voyage round Africa.  Three years later they returned to report that the continent is surrounded by sea except at the point in Egypt where it joins Asia.

The Egyptians in 600 B.C. recorded the existence of Atlantis.  This alleged myth was passed down through Solon to Plato who recorded it in 400 B.C.  An epochal flood is believed to have swallowed up Atlantis.

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  Quote Maju Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 18:08
Most of what we "know" on Atlantis comes through Plato's narrations. The history of the circunnavigation of Africa, while very plausible, doesn't mention Atlantis at all, instead Plato mentions that Atlantis existed 9,000 before his narration. Most people believe this to be an error (in 9400 BCE there was simply no civilization at all - anywhere) and that it should read 900, what would place the catastrophe quite precisely around 1300 BCE, when VNSP is abandoned.

Besides, there are other problems with Tharsis/Tartessos being Atlantis: it was a known place by those names, the known descriptions, which would fit with an older geography of the mouth of the Guadalquivir, are different than those that talk of Atlantis and Erithia, which I think are the same older civilization that was fought by the Mycenean Greeks.

The key for me is that while Classical Greeks had contemporaneous accounts of Tartessos (even Foceans had been once there) they had no other account of Mycenean and the Dark Ages that Homer's writtings and their own oral legends. Greeks never fought against Tartessos (apparently it was destroyed by the Phoenicians) but they may well have been involved in the geopolitical struggles in Iberia in a more glorious past. At least Mycenean influence is clear in El Argar (and more speculatively in the undefined groups of the SW), while there was no Greek influence at all in the time of the destruction of Tartessos (pressumably around 800 BCE). The Phoenicians precisely had benefitted from the Greek Dark Ages to largely replace them as masters of the Mediterranean waters and colonial outposts.

I make a key point of my argumentation on the late VNSP fitting much better with this aspect of the narration: that Athenians (Mycenean Greeks) fought against Atlanteans.

Other points are the concept of island, the 10 "royal tombs", the clear study of astronomy (mentioned in some Greek legends), the wide cultural connections with both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, the trading nature of the Bell Beaker phenomenon, the geographical coincidences...

I think that Tartessos replaced partly Atlantis-VNSP not long after the catastrophe. Yet the known Tartessian culture, while rich, is not the proud long-lived authoctonous civilization of VNSP, with wide connections along all the Atlantic coasts, but a semi-colonial country under clear Phoenician influence, with only a limited regional influx.

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  Quote docyabut Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 18:34

Maju, your theroy  is good, what were the names of these kings?  Plato  writes, all these kings and their descendants for many generations were the inhabitants and rulers of divers islands in the open sea. which make me think that the last of  the generations were in this war before  the final sinking.

 

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  Quote docyabut Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 18:53
I agree that the meaning was a error , that Atlantis`s  end was of 9,000 bc .  however  that it was the sum total of its excistence.
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  Quote docyabut Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 19:15

Pharaoh Necho was of Sais , where Solon got the story from the priest of Sais. Seems to me if the egyptains were such great records keepers and could record a war before their own excistence they would have recorded this war. a event of such international importance.

 

 Alalia was a tremendous victory and it made a world-wide impression. The ancients understood very well the great significance of this naval battle to the Etruscans and Carthaginians, and rightly considered it an event of international importance. Apart from the victory of Pharaoh Rameses Ill in about 1200 B.C. over the Sea Peoples in a battle off the mouth of the Nile, it was the first great naval battle in history.

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  Quote docyabut Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 19:54

I guess we have to go by what was the meaning of the  word atlantis   means .Plato states the names  given were not the real names. So in describing this war gives the names of all of the men of the sea of atlas that rule the seas .

 Now in this island of Atlantis ( iberia) there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis ( the sea of atlas) had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one.

 

Arganthonios empire rule  over half  of Spain,  thats a pretty big empire!

 

 

 

 

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  Quote docyabut Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2006 at 22:05

maju the story of atlantis all fits in like when the priest said -

Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves.

 

The dark ages  -  the Aegean prehistorians have no choice but to adapt themselves to the Egyptologists.

 

http://www.varchive.org/nldag/colon.htm

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  Quote docyabut Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 10:36

Timaeus

But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arganthonios

When the capital fell the city and the empire sank into the Guadalquivir river. Mainake, the Greek colony which protected Tartessia from Carthage, also sank.

 

They must have been real close for both to sink , which makes me think it was the greek colony Mainke. Both  Tartessos and Mainake are consider lost civilizations and have not been found.

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  Quote Maju Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 15:04
Originally posted by docyabut

Maju, your theroy  is good, what were the names of these kings?  Plato  writes, all these kings and their descendants for many generations were the inhabitants and rulers of divers islands in the open sea. which make me think that the last of  the generations were in this war before  the final sinking.



My theory is indeed pretty good: it has withstood my self-criticism for almost a decade now.

We don't have any written or even mythic refrences to those civilizations. We have no idea of which could be the names of those kings or even if they were kings as I speculate based on Plato's narration. The only thing rather sure is that the civilization (counting in the classical way: since walls were erected around towns and cities) lasted around 1300 years and the "royal dynasties" could be even older (I don't have such accurate dates for the tombs but they could be as old as 3000 BCE, 1700 years before the culture vanished).

Many-many generations in any case (more than 50, depending on when you start counting). I don't think that the "island" ever sunk and Plato isn't so precise. But if there was an earthquake as that of 1755 the effect would have been about the same and the stuary of the Tagus could have become impassable for some time due to mud, as Plato says.

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  Quote Maju Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 15:15
Originally posted by docyabut

 Now in this island of Atlantis ( iberia) there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis ( the sea of atlas) had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one.


This is not clear. It is clear that Megalitism reached North Africa (Lybia) and that African imports reached Iberia, as well as amber from Scandinavia and probably other products from the Atlantic rim and parts of the Western Mediterranean.

The extent of VNSP civilization properly speaking is very small as you can see in the maps but their influx, specially in the Bell Beaker period, was much larger.

Arganthonios empire rule  over half  of Spain,  thats a pretty big empire!


I don't know where you got that from: he's a semi-mythical character and it's doubtful that he and the other Tartessian kings ruled beyond some parts of Southern Iberia but I don't think he held control of half of the peninsula ever. Still Tartessos was probably the most powerful native state of Western Europe in its time. Yet the Phoenicians were able to destroy it and absorb the country into their colonial influence area.

 

 

 

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  Quote Maju Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 15:23
Originally posted by docyabut

maju the story of atlantis all fits in like when the priest said -

Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves.

 

The dark ages  -  the Aegean prehistorians have no choice but to adapt themselves to the Egyptologists.

 

http://www.varchive.org/nldag/colon.htm



Your link actually seems to say that the Egyptian chronology was wrong. Not sure.

I don't trust any source more than any other but unlike the peoples of the Atlantic, Egyptians knew the art of writting and kept record that we can luckily read now and that Ancient Greeks could also refer to when exploring their own past. Yet it's just a reference: archaeology is what seems to give a mute but defined response with some clear data that is not just words.

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  Quote docyabut Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 17:14

 maju qoute-

I don't know where you got that from: he's a semi-mythical character and it's doubtful that he and the other Tartessian kings ruled beyond some parts of Southern Iberia but I don't think he held control of half of the peninsula ever. Still Tartessos was probably the most powerful native state of Western Europe in its time. Yet the Phoenicians were able to destroy it and absorb the country into their colonial influence area.

 

According to Herodotus, Arganthonios ruled Tartessia as king for 80 years, from 630 BC to 550 BC. Much of this Tartessian dynasty is told in legends, so no one knows what part is actually historical. He is said by the Greeks to have lived for 120 years while others state that he lived a longer 150 years. His empire consisted all of Andaluca and extended to the Cabo de la Nao (a cape east the Costa Blanca, south of the Gulf of Valencia). His empire was what possibly attracted Greek colonists to the Spanish coast. One of those colonies was Mainake, present day Mlaga. Though the capital of Tartessia sank in the mouth of the swampy Guadalquivir River (and now is famously thought of to have been Atlantis), its ruins show great fortifications and columns though hard to see as it is under water. Herodotus records his death after a naval battle between the Greeks and a united fleet of Carthaginians and Etruscans. The battle was a Greek victory. But loosing over half of its fleet, the Greeks stopped challenging military dominance in the area and Tartessia, without an ally, became exposed to Carthaginian expansion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arganthonios

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  Quote docyabut Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jan-2006 at 17:21

Solon returned to Athens in the 550s BC

Maju, I`m just  saying this was the war and the story of atlantis the egyptain priest told Solon.

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  Quote Maju Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Jan-2006 at 05:56
The Wikipedia article on Tartessos is awfully wrong in its last part: nobody knows for sure where the city of Tartessos lies, though recently some satellite images seemed to show some buildings in the swamps of the mouth of the Guadalquivir (now a National Park, the largest one of Spain) and someone was "selling" it as Atlantis.

Mainake wasn't founded by Greeks but by Phoenicians. While there's a semilegendary account that the King of Tartessos recieved some Greek sailors and even gave them enough silver as to build the walls of certain city, so to resist the attacks of the Perisans, Greeks disn't settle in the Far West (the Hesperides, from where Hispania-Spain comes from) before c.600 BCE, when Marseilles was founded. The only colonial settlement that Greeks ever had in all Spain was Emporion, a Marsellian outpost.

It's the first time I read that Arganthonios played any role in any battle of antiquity. The recognized account of the end of Tartessos is that it was destroyed by the Phoenicians, at least that was what these claimed.

Phoenician colonization in Southern Spain is much older than any Greek presence west of Sicily (apart of whatever happened in the Bronce Age). Phoenicians claimed to have founded Gadir (Cdiz) in the 11th cenctury BCE, being the first colony ever founded by Phoenicians at all (funny that they crossed all the Mediterranean to do that) though archaeological research has only found data since the 8th century.

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