Destruction of Atlantis at the end of the Upper Paleolithic age?

Question

I want to hear what people have to say about the island of atlantis, to gauge the average person's knowledge of it's history.
Please dont bother responding if you dont know anyhting about it, or are going to say something like "It's just a myth, blah blah blah"
Serious answers only

Actually the proposed date of Atlantis' destruction was 9600 bc and Plato lived 350 BC. He got the information scondhand from his gradfather Solon, who heard it from the Egyptian priests (Who have it chronicles)

Most of my research points to the atlantic. In fact just today an article was released discussing two giant holes in the earth's crust right around the spot in the atlantic that popular theory places the island.

Kermit- you crack me up! LOL *Shudders* why do people SAY that??!!

Good answers all! If you're really interested in some hard fact, which leads to some pretty good theories, check out this website- www.atlantisquest.com
I'm not affiliated with the website or anything, it's just some darned compelling evidence

Answer 1

The idea of Atlantis comes to us through the Greek philosopher Plato in his two stories Timaeus and Critias. Those stories came separately to the orators Timaeus and Critias from their ancestor Solon who got it through the priests of Sais in Egypt. Solon lived well before Plato’s time, around 600 BC. http://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/critias.txt

There are lots of references in these two stories that can never be reconciled with any place that is real, and the reason for that is because some of the references are junk if taken literally. People who read the references too literally tend to believe that Atlantis was an island outside of the Mediterranean Sea in the ocean.

I believe that Plato's stories are an amalgam of at least three quite different stories: A) A travelogue of a powerful confederation of islands lead by a King. B) A travelogue about city of commerce near a strait that leads out of the Aegean sea to the Black Sea. C) A catastrophe that destroyed those people and, also the Athenian warriors, and which filled the strait out of the Aegean sea with mud and prevented ships from sailing through there.

I also believe that you have to interpret the information brought out in his stories with an understanding of the context of the times in which they were written. So here are some of my points of interpretation.

1) The Greek name 'Atlantis nesos' is translated into English as Island of Atlantis. While the word 'nesos' in Greek usually means island, it is used more broadly than the English word and sometimes just means an peninsula. For example Peloponnesus is the Peninsula of Pelopes - it is not an island. So it really could refer to any country near Greece that has a beach.

2) The reference to the ‘Pillars of Heracles’ are used by people today to force the conclusion that Atlantis must have existed outside the Mediterranean Sea. But in Solon's time those were most likely the Strait of Dardanelles, or the Strait of Bosporus, or the Kesik Canal (in the myth of his Twelve Labors, Heracles cleans the stables of Augeas by diverting the river Alpheus with a canal), but not the Strait of Gibraltar as people assume today. The Strait of Dardanelles is the gateway between the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea and that puts Atlantis well within the sphere of countries neighboring Greece. http://www.black-sea-atlantis.com/black-sea-atlantis

3) The date of the destruction of Atlantis given in the story is 9000 years before Solon's time. That figure is impossible because the story could not have been transmitted through that much time without writing and the earliest form of writing (with continuity) is cuneiform in Mesopotamia around 4th millennium BC. That figure of 9000 was probably a misreading from Solon's notes of the number 900. The Greeks did not have distinct symbols for numbers, instead they used alphabetic letters to represent numbers. Large numbers would have an apostrophe in front or behind or a bar over them, but scribal errors would have been common in that system because there was no standard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals.

4) Those people who believe that Atlantis must be in the Atlantic ocean because of the similarity of the names fail to realize that the Atlantic ocean was simply called Okeanos 'Ocean' and it received its present name much later in history due to fascination with the legend in Plato's stories. Also if you ever have a chance to examine a modern bathyspheric map of the Atlantic ocean, you will see that the mid-Atlantic ridge is impressive but you will also realize that it is not a sunken island.

5) Most of the translations of the story say “the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together”, but Taylor’s translation of 1793 has it correct when he translated it as “the island was **greater** than both Libya and all Asia together”. In this case **greater** is a reference to political power, not geographic size. http://www.greekatlantis.com/timaeus6.html

6) Oddly, but significantly, Plato's stories mention elephants and ivory. Most people who research Atlantis ignore this completely. Yet there were dwarf elephants living on the islands Crete and Cyprus and other islands of the Mediterranean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_elephant

(It is interesting to note that although the Aztecs have many statues of elephants, there were no living elephants in the Americas 900 years before Solon's time or even 9000 years before his time.)

7) Significantly, Plato's story mentions the love of horse racing by the Atlanteans. Similarly, in Troy we know they revered horses - after all the Greeks tricked them with a wooden horse as a gift.

9) Plato's story mentions capturing bulls with a lasso. This practice is known to have been performed on the island of Crete which is in the Aegean Sea. http://www.pantheon.org/articles/c/cretan_bull.html

10) Most important to understanding where Atlantis was located, is the part of the story of Timaeus in which he says that Athens lead the Greeks and defeated the Atlanteans in war. You must believe that Greeks would only travel within the Aegean to make war, and not outside of that sea, because any further would be pointless. (Alexander was an exception, he was building an empire modeled after Persian kings).

11) We know that Greeks warred against the Trojans; Homer’s poem the Odyssey which describes the war in some detail is now excepted as a true, even though Homer could not have been an eyewitness. So if you identify Troy with Atlantis, then this corroborates the point about a heroic war in Plato’s stories.

12) Troy could have been called Atlantis by the priests at Sais in Egypt. The reason that the name 'Atlantis' can be interpreted this way is that Atlantis could be a corruption of Atlantides which means in Greek 'decedents of Atlas'. The people of Troy would have rightly been known as Atlantides because their ancestor named Tros, the King of Troy, was a descendent of Atlas through Dardanos and then Electra. See the family tree at this site http://www.timelessmyths.com/classical/family7.html

13) The stories describe three circular ditches or harbors – these have been recently discovered around Troy (modern Hissarlik) by examining the ancient coast line. http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2003/map.jpg

I’ve already address the points of the travelogues in Plato’s story. My main point about the catastrophe that destroyed Atlantis along with the warriors of Athens is this; the island of Santorini (also known as Thera) is a volcano and it exploded with enough force to destroy Crete, Troy, and Athens all at once by tsunami and falling ash. That happened between about 1650 and 1450 BCE, http://www.decadevolcano.net/santorini/atlantis.htm

My conclusion is that the word ‘Atlantis’ refers to all of the Minoan empire (Minoan is a modern term, the Greeks used Minoites), but that Plato’s story refers in different sections to different geographic places that were part of the Minoan empire. A) The description of the size of the island and the horticulture and the elephants and the Kings is a reference to the island of Crete. B) The description of the circular canals and the commercial city at the Pillars of Heracles refers to Troy. C) The description of the destruction of the island of Atlantis and that it was lost under the sea refers to the eruption of the volcanic island of Thera.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization


“But Menoitios was outrageous, and far-seeing Zeus struck him with a lurid thunderbolt and sent him down to Erebos because of his mad presumption and exceeding pride." - Hesiod, Theogony

Answer 2

My understanding of Atlantis is that it existed on an island in the Mediterranean or Atlantic Ocean midway between Africa and South America and was destroyed by a cataclysmic volcano eruption. It is described in the writings of Plato, but some 300 years after the presumed date of destruction. Modern popular archeology theorists place "Atlantis" on the islands of Santorini near Greece. I've read several articles and seen Discovery Channel documentaries about the Santorini Theory, and it sounds most logical to me.

Answer 3

I think it could have existed...just cuz how often do you see an island dissapear. People would've have reported it....it would've probably gone a little out of proportion though. Of all that happened

I dont' think it would've taken place that far back though.....although if you believe in the noah's arc thing......various different civilizations have that story to some extent, so i guess a story like that could stick around.

I like the report that placed it close to costa rica. Some evidence that had like navigation stones pointing straight to egypt. Other people said though that it was just plain luck and people were looking too deep into it.

I think, although people are opening up a little more....the idea that somene besides a white christian(columbus) was the first person to make it to america isn't too popular today still.

Answer 4

Atlantis:

I am a Creationist, so my account of Atlantis goes along with the Bible it is not politically correct, so I would get a lot of thumbs down here: My theory makes all the sense and is quite believable, if you wish to here it then email me at

Answer 5

point it was yes it was a continent not an island all the advanced race theory is how myths got started to much exchange for non seafaring peoplesome belive a vast extension of S.America most likley almost to the med.sea

Answer 6

It's 6am in the morning.