QuoteReplyTopic: Plato`s Atlantis Posted: 23-Jan-2006 at 09:42
The chariot doesn't seem to fit with VNSP. I don't know of any chariots
in Iberia prior to the Tartessian period. Overall it seems more
adorning of the story with many unlikely details with the
socio-political purpose of giving it a moral of virtuosity.
Poseidon was actually a major god of Athens, together with Athena. It's
not unlikely that the Atlanteans had some sort of veneration for the
sea (the only element in Basque that bears the suffix -aso, proper of
ancestors) but I have no other evidence for that.
In my opinion it would be much more likely that Atlantic peoples
venerated a heavenly god, related to Astronomy, such as Basque Urtzi,
aka Jainko (lord of the high), still used in recent times for the
Christian God. It's been speculated that the English expression "by
Jingo!" (from which "jingoism") could be an archaism derivated from
Jainko. A separate Greek myth also says that Uranos was the first king
of the Atlanteans (instead of Atlas) and that he developed astronomy.
Atlas, in his god form of sustainer of the sky (as he appears in
Herakles and the apples of the Hesperides) may be also related to an
Iberian prehistoric icon (now revitalized) of a guy holding an arch
over his head (no pics found, sorry).
Docyabut asked me to take part in this discussion. Since 3 years we met in the "Atlantis Rising" forum and both thought Atlantis or at least the central parts of Atlantis might have been in Iberia. But I do not believe like docyabut that Atlantis could have been Tartessos. It must have existed earlier, in my opinion, according to Platos texts; eventually Tartessus could have been a late successor of Atlantis.
Maju, I find your theory very interesting and hope we can discuss it more in detail. The southern part of the area west of Lisbon, which you call VSPN, I have visited 3 years ago. I agree with your opinion that Atlantis has something to do with the Megalithism, and that the tin trade was an important economic and political factor in the early Bronze Age.
But I cannot see how VSPN fits almost 100% with Platos narration about Atlantis. Where is the flat and even plain with a size of 2000 x 3000 stades? Where is the described sophisticated canal system?
VNSP stands for Vila Nova de Sao Pedro, the first discovered fortified settlement of this culture. The main city is nown as castro of Zambujal and it is near Torres Vedras.
I wouldn't say that it fits 100% with the Platonic description but it
is (of all we know) what fits better with it. It would also fit in what
I consider the parallel narrations of the labours of Herakles.
I think that I can say that the following fits very well:
A peninsula (looking an island for Mediterranean sailors)
Beyond the strait of Gibraltar but not too far away
Ten royal dynasties (ten artificial cave mausoleums)
Capital city in the central moutain
Cultural and econmic "domain" over vast stretches of land
(actually it seems more like a loose area of influence, but very vast
anyhow)
Presence of Greeks in the area (El Argar B)
Huge mineral riches (not in VNSP area but in the region of influence)
Astronomical knowldege
Complex structure of the city's fortifications (I don't have a map at hand but it would look like there are no gates or almost)
And now they have discovered that a "sea branch" reached near the city.
It might be one of the canals. I don't think the archaelogic team is
imagining Atlantis but they may well be discovering it.
I do consider that some of the details given in the Platonic narration
may have been exaggerated or distorted. After all, many centuries had
passed by and neither Egyptians nor Classical Greeks had a first hand
knowledge of the matter. I suspect that, if the narration is true, that
Egyptians knew of it mostly by Greeks themselves (maybe POWs of the Sea
Peoples' wars, maybe memories kept by the Philistines or the
Phoenicians, who are also related to Sea Peoples and therefore somehow
to Mycenean Greeks). The details may have been embelished by the vivid
imagination of sailors, the very Egyptian scribes or even Plato or his
cricle, who after all has been accused of telling this story with
political purposes.
In other words: I wasn't looking for Atlantis and found this but I was
studying the past and found that this culture resembled the narration
of Atlantis extraordinarily.
There are excavations in process and I hope that more information will
arise and that maybe some of that info will corroborate even further my
theory. We'll see.
When you have the opinion that the archaeological findings in the area of the VNSP culture resemble Platos narrations about Atlantis, but no traces of the three circular canals around the capital could be found, this must not have been due to exaggerations by Plato.
Plato wrote that second to the central kingdom ruled by Poseidons first son Atlas, there were 9 other kingdoms under the 9 brothers of Atlas. One of these brothers had the Greek name Elasippos. Elasippa was the Greek name for the city of Lisbon, in Roman times changed to Olisippo, from which we got our modern name Lisboa. Why not combining the VNSP with Elasippos kingdom?
The ten artificial cave mausoleums you have mentioned could have been tombs of local grandes, not necessarily of the ten kings of Atlantis. An Atlantis comprising only the VNSP area could not have been great enough to have an army of 1,2 millions of warriors and to rule over Europe as far as Tyrrhenia and over Libya (North Africa) up to the border of Egypt (other exaggerations of Plato?)
Are there links available about the archaeological excavations in the VNSP area?
Hi Ulf so glad you joined. As you know my I believe Tartesso to be the city that went under the waves in Plato`s story. And I do realize where Gods are injected into a story,a story can be a little over blown.
However I can relate to Maju`s theory of the ten tombs as the atlantian kings of 1300 bc, for in the story the kings and their desendants for many generations ruled over the divers islands.Tartesso and other cities in Iberia could have been these desendants the story refers to.
Also Ulf ,I invited those from the atlantis forum that believe Atlantis could have been in Iberia or close to it. Jonus and Gerogous. Jonus said he come when he has the time ,Gerogous I dont know if my email went through. I like Maju`s theory and thought others might be interested.
ROME - Archaeologists digging beneath the Roman Forum have discovered a 3,000-year-old tomb that pre-dates the birth of ancient Rome by several hundred years.
State TV Thursday night showed an excavation team removing vases from the tomb, which resembled a deep well.
Archaeologists were excavating under the level of the ancient forum, a popular tourist site, when they dug up the tomb, which they suspect is part of an entire necropolis, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
"I am convinced that the excavations will bring more tombs to light," ANSA quoted Rome's archaeology commissioner, Eugenio La Rocca, as saying.
Also found inside the tomb was a funerary urn, ANSA said.
State TV quoted experts as saying the tomb appeared to date to about 1,000 B.C., meaning the people who constructed the necropolis pre-dated the ancient Romans by hundreds of years.
Legend has it that Rome was founded in 753 B.C. by Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of the god of war, Mars.
Last year, archaeologists who have been digging for some two decades in the forum said they believed they found evidence of a royal palace roughly dating to the period of the legendary founding.
I fear you are asking a level of accordance that I can not give. Of
course, the 10 tombs could be just of "grandes", as you say but the
civilization is too long-lasting to think it didn't have some sort of
state structure, whichever it was. It is anyhow puzzling that there are
10, not 12 or 7 or any other number of them.
I hadn't thought about Elassippos - maybe because I haven't read so
throughtly the "Critias" as to keep all the small details in mind. But
it is very significative.
As far as I know, Olissipo is a later foundation (see maps in previous
pages) but the name connection is more than significative. I also can't
discard that early Iberian civilizations like VNSP and Los Millares had
an Aegean connection by birth. Most local historians tend to discard a
colonization now but it is true that there is some some sort of
connections since 3000-2800 BCE, even before the cities were founded,
as the same models of tombs (tholoi and atrificial cave) are found in
both areas. Yet the colonization model fails due to the fact that
Iberian tombs are older than their Aegean counterparts. So the
influence in this case rather seems W->E.
In any case I think that the ten kingdoms are divisions of the VNSP area, like in the following map:
I added the potential canal and the probable trade routes.
There is were I found, in the course of this debate, that they had found a "sea branch" reaching near Zambujal:
Location
Ausdehnung der kupferzeitlichen Befestigung
The
fortification complex of the 3rd and 2nd millennium B. C. is situated
in the Cencelho Torres Vedras (province of Estremadura, district of
Lisbon) some 14 km as the crow flies from the present-day Atlantic
coast on a hill projection steeply dropping away towards the west.
Geo-archaeological investigations (in 1986) established that, until the
2nd half of the 2nd millennium B. C., Zambujal was at most 1 km away
from a former marine branch.
(...)
Results
Mauerlinie 4
In
the interior of the fortification complex, copper manufacture was
carried out during all periods of its existence. Alterations of the
complex indicate that the concept of the defensive strategy was altered
several times. From this, certain structures of command within Copper
Age society were inferred. Hints as to residential zones outside the
fortification, e. g. on the slope {Zambujal-4.gif: Zambujal, trial
trench C} below the steep escarpment of the hill projection on which
the fortification is situated, explain, where the settlement of the
population required for the construction and defence of the complex
must be searched for. The fortification itself seems to have been many
times the size that was assumed until now {Zambujal-9.gif: extension of
the Copper Age fortification of Zambujal; Zambujal-8.gif: Zambujal,
wall line 4}. Probably, the bay mentioned above was of fundamental
importance for the existence of the settlement, because on the one hand
different materials used in Zambujal had to be brought in from distant
sites (e. g. amphibolite, ivory, exotic items such as a cowrie snail,
but probably also copper) and on the other hand, the produced copper
articles had to be bartered. Additionally, the end of the occupation
around the transition from Bronze Age to Iron Age seems to have been
connected to the disappearance of the bay.
And here it comes my idea of the earthquake+tsunami, erasing the
canal/bay and, of course, breaking havoc among the inhabitants.
I don't know if the circular canals were true or an invention but I
suspect that, as excavations continue, we will find a lot more
surprising coicidences. I don't discard that the final shape of the
"growing" settlement will eventually happen to fit too much the
Platonic description of Atlantis. But I must be honest to myself and
accept the possibility that some discrepances may exist too.
I didn't expect a marine branch (possible canal) at all and it gladly surprised me when I read about it.
I'm pretty confident that I'm on the right track, though I can't say how close reality will fit the narration.
...
Regarding the miltary ammount, historians always tend to disregard
ancient figures as exaggerated, even when they come from relatively
good sources.
As you say VNSP area itself is small but we can't know for sure how
powerful was their influence in the other Megalithic regions, from
Britain to North Africa around 1500. I suspect that the Megalithic
phenomenon represents a somehow organized religion and that VNSP
Atlanteans may well have controlled that (proto-druidic?) faith. If the
Platonian account is reasonably accurate, we may infer that the Great
King of the line of Atlas could be also some sort of high priest (Pope
or Caliph) for Megalithic nations, exerting a considerable influence
over them. The war against the Greeks and El Argar could well have been
a religious war, sort fo crusade or jihad, gathering much more than
just that forces of VNSP itself. This is very speculative in any case,
as we can hardly find hardcore proof of that. Yet the context might
well be as I described it, at least I wouldn't think that any evidence
steps on my line of thought so far.
For your better ubication, I repost here a map that I created and
posted two pages back (I sugest that you read all the topic, anyhow),
pondering the possible cultural areas of the Atlantean-Megalithic
civilization and the rest of the Mediterranean region as for 1500 BCE:
Lighter colors represent (more or less realistic) influence areas (blue
for Atlantis-VNSP, red-orange for Mycenean Greece, green for Hittite
Empire). I am a little uncertain about Italy and North Africa.
I think that the findings you mention of 1000 BCE in Rome would fit
better with early Etruscans or maybe even the Roman legend of Eneas.
But I think it is unrelated (excep in a very wide sense) to what we are
discussing here.
Hi docyabut, I am also glad to meet you here. I saw your posts about Tartessos and Argantonius in Saltzmans thread and that he was not glad about your mentionig Tartessos because it was too late for his theory, but I had no time to write something in this discussion.
In the museums in Cadiz and Sevilla I saw many items from the time of Argantonius, and I bought a thick catalogue of an exhibition taking place in Sevilla, Madrid and Alicante in the year 2000 : "Argantonio, Rey de Tartessos. La Tarteside en Epoca de Argantonio." The enclosed map shows the kingdom of Argantonius greater than marked in Majus maps. It comprised the whole land south of the "Sierra Morena" mountains from the border of today Portugal up to the sources of the Guadalquivier river, that is an elongation of 300 km (190 miles). In the south it included Gibraltar, but not the high mountains of the "Sierra Nevada" .
I did not read all, because my Spanish is not good, but I think I can take some informations for further discussions from this book, which is more serious and authentical than many internet sites.
Maju, thanks for the link which showed me that the excavations in Zambujal were made by a German archaeological team. So it will be easier for me to get further informations from German websites.
In the above mentioned Spanish book "Argontonio, Rey de Tartessos" is written, that the kingdom of Tartessos was situated in the southwestern part of Iberia between 1400 and 550 BC. So, when you mentioned in your map the area of Egypt during the 18th dynasty (1539 - 1292 BC), you should also introduce Tartessos between Gibraltar and the River Guadiana and along the whole Guadalquivier River, because Tartessos was a very important trading place in this time due to its rich silver and copper mines in the Sierra Morena mountains.
I will copy here what I wrote yesterday in the Atlantis Rising forum in Smileys thread, as a very short (and not final) statement about my opinion about location of Atlantis and the time of its destruction:
Where was Atlantis?
When you recall Platons texts: he wrote that "inside the pillars" the kings of Atlantis ruled over Europe up to Tyrrhenia (Italy), and over Libya (North Africa) up to the Egyptian border. This is half the size of the Roman empire, or about the size of the West Roman Empire after the division in 395 after Christ. It is very probable that also the area of Atlantis outside the Pillars had a comparable size. So it is not difficult to imagine that the political and/or commercial influence zone of Atlantis included great parts of western and northern Europe along the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, including the British Isles, Morocco and Mauretania, the Canaries, Azores etc., but also the West Indian Islands and parts of the coast of America. Boats which are able to sail from the Pillars to the border of Egypt are as well capable to sail from the Pillars to America with the help of the sea currents south of the Canaries, and back with the Gulf Stream. As Thor Heyerdahl showed with his reed boat Ra, or the adventurer Ruediger Nehberg who in the year 2000 crossed the Atlantic on a 17 m long tree within 43 days, it is very easy to come to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean by ship, and why shouldnt the Atlanteans have done it with theirs?
The center of such a big trading empire must naturally have been on a place with the best accessibility from all the different parts belonging to it: this is from the geographical point of view the region where also Jonas is seeking the Royal city of Atlantis: Iberia or Morocco.
Only an empire of a very great size could have the idea to conquer also the rest of the Mediterranean countries. Plato described, that the army of the kingdom of Atlas comprised 1,2 millions of warriors (As many as the great Persian empire under Dareius could mobilize), but there were still other 9 kingdoms with their armies. It is not imaginable that a united army of about 10 millions of warriors, comparable with the army of the Soviet Union in World War II, could have been recruited from one of the proposed sites for Atlantis alone, be it Tunesia, Morocco, Spain, Ireland, Sicily, the Azores, the Canaries and so on.
Time of the war Atlantis - Old Athens:
As I have previously posted in this thread: 9000 years before Solon is absolutely illogical, when you compare the three citations of the "9000 years" in Platos texts. Old Athens, founded 9000 years before Solon, could not have defeated at the same time a host as mighty as Atlantis.
The time of the Sea Peoples invasions to Egypt, about 1200 BC, is only 600 years before Solon; he must have had knowledge of this period, when he remembered the flood of Deucalion and Phoroneus.
The Atlanteans were skilled in metal working, so they must have lived in the time when men knew how to mine and work metals: after about 4500 BC, preferably after 3000 BC. The time of the war was at the end of their existence, probably between 2300 and 1600 BC.
Tartessos city haven't been found yet (there's a possible location but
has not been excavated so far) but the associated culture called
Tartessian-Orientalizing is a later one, whatever your book says. It
belongs to the Late Bronze and Iron Age.
Accoding to a University textbook I have here right now,
proto-Tartessian culture only starts c. 1200, under the influences of
Cogotas and the Late Atlantic Bronze. This phase gives way to the
Tartessian proto-Orientalizing culture (speculatively full Tartessian)
c. 900 BCE, still in the Bronze phase. Since c. 750 BCE it is detected
Phoenician influx.
The Tartessian proto-Orientalizing cultural phase (900-700) is as I say
maybe the one that fits better with the overal description of sovereign
Tartessos. It is also coincident with the archaeologically datable
foundation of Gadir as a major settlement, c. 800 BCE (Phoenicians
claimed it to be 300 years earlier but archaeology only finds that, the
same happens with Carthage). Anyhow, the Tartessian proto-Orientalizing
culture is culturally somewhat expansive: the Huelva style potteries
that belong to it expand to all the southern half of Iberia. Not only
Western Andalucia but also Spanish Extremadura is also part of this
cultural area.
Since c. 700 BCE the region of Western Andalucia enters in the Iron age
under the name of Tartessian-Orientalizing culture, expanding also to
the SW (Southern Portugal) as well as to the SE. Since c. 550 BCE Greek
influx is detected too, what is more or less coincident with the start
of the Late Tartessian phase.
Since c. 500 BCE, the culture is called Ibero-Turdetanian and it's
precursor of what we find in the earlier Roman period
(Romano-Turdetanian).
...
In brief: I have no archaeological reasons to believe that Tartessos
existed before 1200 and probably it wasn't very strong before 900 BCE.
In fact in the 1800-1300 period, the area of Western Andalucia seems
quite scarce in findings, being most of them border and associated with
either of the neighbour areas: El Argar (SE) or the diffuse Bronze
horizons of the SW.
...
Maju, thanks for the link which showed me that the excavations in
Zambujal were made by a German archaeological team. So it will be
easier for me to get further informations from German websites.
That's great for you
I must ask you anyhow to keep us informed of whatever you find in
German. I definitively can't read your language and I'm afraid that
much of what this team publishes is in German, despite of the fact that
they work for Portugal and the division has its hedquarters at Madrid.
So any info that you can bring to us will be most welcomed. I am as
intrigued as you are, believe me.
I will copy here what I wrote
yesterday in the Atlantis Rising forum in Smileys thread, as a very
short (and not final) statement about my opinion about location of
Atlantis and the time of its destruction:
Where was Atlantis?
When you recall Platons
texts: he wrote that "inside the pillars" the kings of Atlantis ruled
over Europe up to Tyrrhenia (Italy), and over Libya (North Africa) up
to the Egyptian border. This is half the size of the Roman empire, or
about the size of the West Roman Empire after the division in 395 after
Christ. It is very probable that also the area of Atlantis outside the
Pillars had a comparable size. So it is not difficult to imagine that
the political and/or commercial influence zone of Atlantis included
great parts of western and northern Europe along the coasts of the
Atlantic Ocean, including the British Isles, Morocco and Mauretania,
the Canaries, Azores etc., but also the West Indian Islands and parts
of the coast of America. Boats which are able to sail from the
Pillars to the border of Egypt are as well capable to sail from the
Pillars to America with the help of the sea currents south of the
Canaries, and back with the Gulf Stream. As Thor Heyerdahl showed with
his reed boat Ra, or the adventurer Ruediger Nehberg who in the year
2000 crossed the Atlantic on a 17 m long tree within 43 days, it is
very easy to come to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean by ship, and
why shouldnt the Atlanteans have done it with theirs?
The
center of such a big trading empire must naturally have been on a place
with the best accessibility from all the different parts belonging to
it: this is from the geographical point of view the region where also
Jonas is seeking the Royal city of Atlantis: Iberia or Morocco.
Only
an empire of a very great size could have the idea to conquer also the
rest of the Mediterranean countries. Plato described, that the army of
the kingdom of Atlas comprised 1,2 millions of warriors (As many as the
great Persian empire under Dareius could mobilize), but there were
still other 9 kingdoms with their armies. It is not imaginable that a
united army of about 10 millions of warriors, comparable with the army
of the Soviet Union in World War II, could have been recruited from one
of the proposed sites for Atlantis alone, be it Tunesia, Morocco,
Spain, Ireland, Sicily, the Azores, the Canaries and so on.
Time of the war Atlantis - Old Athens:
As
I have previously posted in this thread: 9000 years before Solon is
absolutely illogical, when you compare the three citations of the "9000
years" in Platos texts. Old Athens, founded 9000 years before Solon,
could not have defeated at the same time a host as mighty as Atlantis.
The
time of the Sea Peoples invasions to Egypt, about 1200 BC, is only 600
years before Solon; he must have had knowledge of this period, when he
remembered the flood of Deucalion and Phoroneus.
The Atlanteans
were skilled in metal working, so they must have lived in the time when
men knew how to mine and work metals: after about 4500 BC, preferably
after 3000 BC. The time of the war was at the end of their existence,
probably between 2300 and 1600 BC.
What you say is very reasonable as far as I know. In fact, our knowldge
determines that the Copper Age (Chalcolithic) didn't start in Iberia
until almost 3000 BCE (and, in other parts of Europe, c. 3500 BCE),
what should restrict your chronology much more.
Also we have in Iberia two relatively well known civilizations that
last from c. 2600 to c.1300 BCE. These are Vila Nova de Sao Pedro
(Zambujal) in West-Central Portugal and Los Millares and its successor
El Argar in SW Spain.
I have several reasons to discard Los Millares and El Argar as possible
Atlantis, one of them being that the geographical description is not
coincident and the other that their influence and connections seem more
limited: VNSP is strongly related to Megalithism, while Los Millares is
only weakly and El Argar is even less related, as they started to bury
their dead in pithoi (large jars) in the most pure Aegean style c. 1500.
Also, while Los Millares and early VNSP seem to have a rather symbiotic
relation, with the advenement of El Argar things seem to change and,
specially, after 1500 BCE, they seem to be looking for independent
inland routes into Iberia to skip the waters directly under VNSP
control in search of the desired tin (and possibly other resources as
well).
On the other hand, you seem to ignore that Athens wasn't powerful
before the Mycenean age. While the Akropolis seem to have been
inhabited since much earlier the date I have gather for it to be a
powerful city is 1400 BCE.
This again makes my chronology of 1500-1300 (1600-1200 if you wish) as the most adequate for the conflict described in Critias, Herakles agaisnt Geriones and Herakles and the Apples of the Hesperides
(all parallel narrations of the same or simmilar Greek colonial
campaigns). 1500-1300 is also adquate because it is after the conquest
of Minoan Crete (c. 1600 BCE) and before the Sea Peoples' epysode (c.
1200 BCE). It would give continuity to the expansionist Viking-like
style of Greeks in all their existence before the Dark Ages and fill a
blank on what were they doing between the invasion of Crete and that of
Troy: looking for gold, silver and tin in the Far West. When that
source of adventures for the warlike Myceneans was over due to the
cataclism or whatever reason, they eventually exploded and attacked
everyone around: Troy, Egypt, Hittites, Canaanites, etc.
Unlike Plato, I tend to sympathize with the Atlanteans... and I doubt
they actually would be able of attacking Egypt nor much less Greece
(but who knows?). I will check the history of the XVIII dynasty of
Egypt to see if we can find any epysode of western troubles (apart of
the usual riff-raff with Lybians).
Maju, certainly you have better information about the archaeology in Iberia than I have. Is Portugal your home country? I cannot show you pre-Tartessian findings from between 1400 and 1200 BC. But it seems to me, that archaeology in Spain was mainly interested in the Roman, Tartessian/Phoenician and Iberian past. What was before this time, is mostly not yet excavated, with the known exceptions of Los Millares and El Argar. The Dolmens from the Megalithic time in Antequera were not to be excavated in this sense, they were not hidden underground.
I didnt find websites in the Internat about Zambujal other than you have shown already. only mentioning of articles in books. Most is published in the "Madrider Mitteilungen" of the German Archaeological institute in Madrid. These are thick books, by chance I have the number of 2002 with 385 pages and 53 tables. It contains two articles about Portugal: D.Brandherm: "Culture of the older Bronze Age in north west Portugal" Vilaca, Beck and Stout: "Prehistoric Amber Artifacts in Portugal"
I think it will be possible to have a look into the other numbers of this Journal in the nearby university library in Mainz .
But some months ago I bought an archaeological book from 1993 about Portugal which I did not read up to now, due to lack of time. One chapter is written from Michael Kunst, the author of the website of your link. I must first read it and can afterwards contribute more to our discussion.
That there is a relative gap in West Andalucia between Neolithic (which
is the oldest of Western Europe) and the Tartessian period would seem
more a question of lack of material than lack of work. It's not that
there is nothing: there are a few megaliths, some towns (mostly near
the other main areas) and some isolated findings. But just nothing to
support an archaeological culture or even clearly defined groups.
In the case of Tartessos, it's probable site is somewhere in the largest National Park of Spain: Doana,
or maybe in a nearby unprotected area. If it would be inside the park,
it's likely that no major excavations would be allowed as the area is
very strategic biologically.
Not long ago a satellite picture showing two apparent buidilngs in the
Marsh of Hinojos (near Doana) was presented as being Atlantis (see this article).
Yet while the Atlantis propaganda seems a little too far fetched,
somewhere on that area there must be (probably) the ruins of Tartessos.
...
I was lucky enough to found a good book (probably a translation of one
of those you mention) in the local library about VNSP and the
Chalcolithic of southern Portugal. I find it fascinating and yet it's
even more shocking that there's almost no info on it on the net and
that the Portuguese people, even those interested in History and
simmilar matters are apparently totally uninterested in this most
important element of their past.
The only material I know of that is circulating on the Net, at least in
English, is something I wrote for Wikipedia (search for "Vila Nova de
Sao Pedro"). I haven't found anything in Portuguese or Spanish either.
Ulf qoute-When you recall Platons texts: he wrote that "inside the pillars" the kings of Atlantis ruled over Europe up to Tyrrhenia (Italy), and over Libya (North Africa) up to the Egyptian border-
I`m not a expert in the texts, however in Jowett`s translation it says parts.
Now in this island of Atlantis 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 had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia.
Could it mean the seas, as the story mentions only the Tyrrhenia sea as far as Italy.?
There was a lot of piracy after the Troy war and of the sea peoples.
Ulf and if it was 12,000 ships that attacked Athens, would`nt there be a few of these ships found in their harbors, if Athens won this battle?
The problem is there is no mention of where this war between Athens and Atlantis took place.
As far as I recall, the war between "Athens" and Atlantis is placed in
Atlantis, not in the Med. The "Athenians" had won already when the
catastrophe happened.
I'm more inclined to consider this a colonial intervention of Greece
rather than a real menace from Atlantis, though we can't know if, in
the course of events, the Atlanteans may have launched some sort of
naval expedition.
I was wildly speculating with the misterious Hycksos (17th century BCE)
but the lack of chariots in Iberia at that time is a clear indication
that there is no connection.
Regarding Italy, I'm uncertain on how to judge the Italian cultures.
They were megalithic but their megalithism seems of diferent type.
Maybe it was the cultural expansion eastward of Megalithism what caused
the Egyptians to see them as a threat.
Maju, maybe you can see why I place this story in 600 bc when the Egyptains recorded it . There was no war the greeks were invloved in the Mediterranean during the dark ages as we know it before the battle of Alalia. It was the first great naval battle in history.
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.
The story says the atlantians were peaceful people. before they lost their good nature.Tartesso was a peaceful nation before this war happen over their trade of metals.
The Etruscans were described as ceaselessly threatening, if not actually controlling the Western Mediterranean, especially the Tyrrhenian sea. According to various sources, the Etruscans colonised Corsica, the Balearic islands and the coasts of Spain (Stephanus of Byzantium), and there are records (Diodorus Siculus) of the struggle with the Phoenicians for an island in the Atlantic .
I do believe your ten kingdoms were the original kings of Atlantis that was recorded before the Athens kings, only Solon gave them Greek names in his translation.
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