Legend of the City of Atlantis

I swear that I saw an article a few years ago (but I'll be damned if I can find it now) about some archeologists who supposedly, after going by another archeologist's sonar map, had found the remains of a city they thought to be Atlantis off the shores of Greece. They had even seen a mosaic, done in some kind of tile on the wall, of what looked like a conceptual drawing of the Egyptian pyramids. But the greek government, after finding out what they found, shut the operation down.

Did anyone else see this?

All this speculation doesn't fit in with the supposed time frame of Atlantis (which varies drastically from what I've seen), but here's a couple of things that make me wonder:

The egyptians built the pyramids without a drop of mortar, yet they stand to this day. The plans have never been discovered (at least to my knowledge). I'm sure there were some great minds in Egypt back in the day, but we can't reproduce that feat of engineering in this day and age. Who designed the pyramids?

The ancient celts built their structures out of wood, because that was as far as their technology had taken them. Yet, out of stone, they built a lunar calender that is extremely accurate (stonehenge). Ruins of stone buildings still stand that were centuries ahead of the technology possessed by the celts of that day. The celts were fair skinned and fair haired for the most part, but there is a story that survived the christian's culture purge about a group of dark skinned, dark haired (i.e. greek) people who washed up on the shores one day. After learning the language, the strangers related to them that they came from a country that no longer existed. It had sank into the ocean after "a single day and night of misfortune". They supposedly predicted the tragedy, and after numerous unheeded warnings, they took to the sea to escape it. Their technology was far greater than the celts possessed (i.e. stoneworking and written language), and used this technology to better the celtic civilization. They eventually became the spiritual leaders known as the Druids. Keep in mind that this story is older than the celts' contact with the Mediterranean civilizations, and they never named themselves as "Atlantians". This was an conclusion drawn several centuries after the Druids became lost to history.

I believe they existed.

[Edited on Feb 03, 2004 by Dante0]

Yes we can. We just don't fancy building them to house our Pharaohs anymore. The names of the designers and architects of most of the major pyramids are known to us, because the majority of them have their own tombs which have been discovered.

The Celts were actually a complete mishmash of cultural diversity, some of whom were dark-haired and dark-skinned. The Picts, who co-existed with the British Celts for centuries, were extremely dark. Many Celtic structures were built from a combination of stone and wood, although nothing remains whatsoever that could be interpreted as ahead of their level of technology. Stonehenge certainly isn't. Neither is it a particularly accurate calendar - to the degree where many academics currently consider it to be not even related to the cycle of seasons. Celts possessed stoneworking for as far into the past as we can comfortably trace them, right back into the Mesolithic at least. Written language was also present centuries before any Roman invasion, and the form of it (Oggham runes) would make me doubt to the extreme any Mediterranean influence being as it is far closer to Nordic script in nature. The druids were not spiritual leaders, neither were they present in Celtic civilisation until a few years prior to the first Roman incursions. They were a group of religious iconoclasts from an island called Anglesey who incited open warfare against the Roman conquerors, for which reason they were massacred in a single campaign. All the evidence we have points to pre-Roman Celtic Britain being of many different forms of religion, from the Christian monks of Ireland to the shamanic practices of the Orkneys, to the pantheon cults that ranged all over Britain. Also, where did you get the account of these washed up travellers from?

This wasn't intended as a direct jab, I assure you.

[Edited on Feb 03, 2004 by MattOrganic]

the nail went right through my undead heart. please stick it through something other than my coffin next time.
But regardless of my necromantic status....good points there, all my evolutionary questions now go to you.

Actually it was the Legend of Thule that fueled nazi occult. Tall thin blonde nordic super human mother race.


Thank you for your insight and comments MattOrganic. I am not a hardened new ager who believes everything, however I can be way out there. I search for Atlantis because I have been fanatical about it since I was so young. I can't really put a finger on anything that influenced my interest either. I just have this gut feeling that there is more to the story.

I do have a problem with Plato's story. It many ways it has been a big help with keeping the story alive, in other ways it was harmful. I can see after reading the timaeus, and criterion why some skeptics might find it to be an analogy. I have become more interested in Mesoamerican legends of Atzlan. I think allot of debate over the Atlantis issue with mainstream archeology and alternative archeology has been because of the date of 11,000BC.
Ancient evidence barely survives 2,000 years, so any 'hard' evidence from something that long ago is going to be hard to come by. While the Cuba evidence and the youniguni (sp) might be questionable, I think the evidence off of India, and the Azores is legit. I think eventually Underwater archeology will become more popular.

I do agree with Hancock that if the sea level is lowered and that civilizations have a habit of building near said coastlines, it only makes sense that the best archeological sites are underwater. I did not agree with Hancock’s adapted theories of Charles Hapgoods Earth crust displacement and the Piri Reis map. That was dodgy. I think in time, new evidence will come out; maybe not A.R.E sponsored findings, but large university doing research. While I agree that skepticism is need, I hear there is some pretty hefty debunking going on in Universities in "America" (European universities are I believe a bit more open minded). Hopefully we can find some common ground.


[Edited on Feb 04, 2004 by Shoegazey]

The survivability of archaeology is something that has come under the hammer a lot recently. On one hand, the dates of human innovations and developments are being pushed back further and further each year as new discoveries are made, which shows us that the temporal backtracking of human civilisation still has a long way to go before we can come to any kind of solid conclusions. Hard archaeological evidence does turn up from a surprisingly long time ago however, and one could argue that the more advanced a culture is the more likely it is to leave it's remains behind and for them to be found. Finds 11,000 years old to do with human society have been discovered, and nothing yet points to an 'Atlantean' civilisation. But, survivability is a fickle thing and I for one would not be shocked if something turned up to surprise mainstream archaeology.

The evidence from India and the Azores is of course 'legit' in that it is legitimate archaeological evidence, and the Indian site is especially interesting since it may possibly represent a culture which has been considered legendary by Indian archaeological authorities. However, this is by no means definate and a full appraisal and excavation would have to be carried out before conclusions (if any) could be drawn. This really highlights Mr Hancock's main flaw in his professional work, which is finding his conclusions before he actually has any solid evidence to back it up with. This means that even should he ever be proved correct, he can say "I told you so". But it also means that he can never be taken seriously until real academics have examined his work and found it to conclusively back up his claims. Which is fairly unlikely.

Underwater archaeology is starting to become very popular, and several university courses I know of currently run courses in it worldwide. It's something a lot of time and money is being poured into, and rightfully so.

Not all civilisations build by coastlines - there is a preponderance of them, but no more so than build along rivers. The shifting of geography is not a static thing worldwide, and though the sea levels have risen significantly since 10,000 BC many coastal areas have remained 'dry'. I certainly think that coastal and underwater archaeology is important, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it is any more important than mainland sites.

The Piri Reis map has been completely debunked now, which is a bit of a shame because it was a nice idea. Earth crust displacement is still a valid theory however, and one which is worth looking into further since no one really, truly knows how tectonics function in any proven way. I don't necessarily look upon debunking as a completely bad thing, as there are some truly crazy theories out there which need to be shot before they cause more trouble. I've never been to an American university, but I can assure you that Hancock et al are thought of in very negative terms over here as well.

There is a very good reason why the field of archaeology is extremely hostile to ideas of this kind. It is because when you combine folklore with science in this fashion it has a powerful capacity for misuse. The social Darwinism put forth by Nazi 'archaeologists' during the Third Reich cast a pall over the profession. In many ways archaeology (albeit fraudulent archaeology) was the main evidence utilised by the Nazi party to convince it's countrymen that what they were doing was right - that the Aryan race was the master-race. There are many other examples of politicised archaeology being put to negative use in racist and genocidal ideas and actions, and although no one is likely to create any kind of homicidal crusade off the back of the Atlantean theories it doesn't do any good towards seperating the discipline from more politically inbued stances.

Aztlan isn't that far from here(WI), or one of the several (I think) locations named Aztlan.

Angkor Watt wasn't discoverd that long ago either.

But whoever said that is right, unless we find a big 'welcome to atlantis' sign somewhere, it's just never going to happen.

I'm willing to beleive that there were many seemingly advanced societies that existed in the world prior to the egyptians.

And I'm not at all surprised they had amazing astrological observations.

I'd like to beleive there just wasn't a lot to do besides look up.

Atlantians was the Minoans , thats the only thing that makes logical sense to me.

It fell off.