Plato`s Atlantis

Hello,

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 Plato�s 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 Plato�s 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?

Edited by Ulf Richter

Maju,

Thank you for your reply.

When you have the opinion that the archaeological findings in the area of the VNSP culture resemble Plato�s 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 Poseidon�s 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?

Edited by Ulf Richter

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.

 

Ulf:

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.

I posted the link to the excavations two pages back. Anyhow it is this one: http://www.dainst.org/index.php?id=595

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.

Hi docyabut,   I am also glad to meet you here. I saw your posts about Tartessos and Argantonius in Saltzman�s 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 Maju�s 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.

Edited by Ulf Richter

I will copy here what I wrote yesterday in the Atlantis Rising forum in Smiley�s 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 Platon�s 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 shouldn�t the Atlanteans have done it with their�s?

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 Plato�s 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.

Originally posted by Ulf Richter I will copy here what I wrote yesterday in the Atlantis Rising forum in Smiley�s 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 Platon�s 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 shouldn�t the Atlanteans have done it with their�s? 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 Plato�s 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).

I'm Basque, not Portuguese.

...

You are right probably that there is much work to do achaeologically in Spain but it's also true that there is much already done.

Have you read my article in this site on Ancient Iberia? It's not an archaeological nor an scholarly work but just a synthesis: from Neolithic to Historical times.

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: Do�ana, 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 Do�ana) 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.

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.


Edited by Maju

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.