Atlantis Myth Origin

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First, a little history:

10,900BCE - (Approximate Year) A series of strikes by an asteroid or comet causes climatic changes that kill off all the horses, all the camels, the mastodon, short-faced bear, giant beaver, dire wolf, and saber-toothed cats in Europe and in North America.

10,900BCE - (Approximate Year) Beginning of the Younger Dryas stadial - a period of cold climatic conditions and drought, brought on by a sudden event.

10,500BCE - (Approximate Year) Paleo-Indians reach the Tierra del Fuego region of the South American continent.

10,001BCE - End of the Paleolithic Period and Pliestocene Epoch; Beginning of the Holocene Era ("Year Zero H.E."). Pre-Historical period ends; Modern human history begins.

10,000BCE - (Approximate Year) Beginning of the First Agricultural Revolution. People begin to leave their nomadic lifestyles, settle down into permanent locations, and begin to rely on agriculture for sustenance in many regions. The domestication of animals begins. All continents (except Antarctica) inhabited.

9,600BCE - (Approximate Year) End of the Younger Dryas stadial.

9,560BCE - The alleged year of the destruction of mythical Atlantis, according to Plato.

So, the latest suggestion for the origin of the Atlantis Myth seems to involve the end of a mini-glacial period and the subsequent warming - and thus thawing - of glaciers and snow packs in the northern hemisphere. This would have produced flooding in low-lying areas, and likely inundate any cities in those areas. Maybe one of those cities had a name similar to "Atlantis" ... maybe not ...

That is before any cities are known to have been constructed anywhere

Possible but I remember a docudrama a few years ago about a historical island called Thera,destroyed by volcanic eruptions, many scholars believe that this is the island which inspired plato.

Speculation: If cities along the coast were destroyed in a "Great Flood", then evidence of their existence might not be available.


9,600 BCE - (Approximate Year) End of the Younger Dryas stadial. Sudden climatic warming causes melting of glaciers and snow packs, the runoff inundating low-lying coastal and litoral areas.

9,560 BCE - The alleged year of the destruction of mythical Atlantis, according to Plato.

6,100 BCE - (Approximate Year) The land area known as "Doggerland", between England and Denmark, is devastated by a sudden sea level rise due to a tsunami from the Storegga Slide. This is one of the many possible explanations for the origin of Plato's "Atlantis" myth.

5,600 BCE - (Approximate Year) Approximated date of possible Black Sea inundation; this alleged event is one of the many possible explanations for the origin of Plato’s "Atlantis" myth.

1,628 BCE - Santorini Event: The Thera Volcano explosion destroys most of the island of Santorini; one of the many possible explanations for the origin of Plato's "Atlantis" myth.

373 BCE - Destruction of Helike; one of the many possible explanations for the origin of Plato's "Atlantis" myth.

360 BCE - (Approximate Year) Plato writes "Timeus" and "Criteus", mentioning the alleged destruction of mythical Atlantis.


The date of the end of the Younger Dryas stadial corresponds closest with the date put for by Plato for the destruction of Atlantis.

Most of these coastal regions they could have existed in are still not very deep so it seems likely that by now, someone would have noticed them, especially with how extensively mapped the Mediterranean basin is. Even so melting glaciers would produce a lot of water, obviously, but it was not a tsunami. It was probably more like a high tide that just never went away and gradually went further inland. For this reason I suspect the Minoan civilization is possibly the best candidate for Atlantis, as there was a clearly catastrophic event that occurred within a reasonable amount of time for there to still be talk about it, albeit with word-of-mouth hyperbole added. I also recall reading somewhere recently there were extensive sunken ruins discovered off of Spain in the Balearic Sea that may also be a possible candidate, as well as the possibility that there was a rupture of the Bosphorus that raised the Black Sea's level dramatically

The trouble is that Plato's Atlantis was allegedly destroyed some 11,572 years ago. We have enough trouble determining the layout of the first real cities erected on the sites of modern-day Jericho, Jerusalem, and Rome. How much more trouble to determine the layout of a city - shrouded in myth - that was allegedly washed out to sea and buried under a few hundred metres of alluvial sediment?

Even finding the location of a real city under these conditions may be nearly impossible.

The gods came from the west 13,000 years ago. So the Egyptian priests told Solon, who told Herodotus, 2500 years ago.

Atlantis was outside the Pillars of Hercules, and larger than Africa and Asia.

15,500 years ago is when the second flood came. The first was a warming that melted some of the ice, but also it sublimed in the dry air, and released fine dust, which became airborn, and caused the Younger Dryas, which made it colder again.

When the air cleared, it warmed suddenly, and floods from above, lakes on top of the ice sheet, broke loose, sought the ocean, many times, a worldwide flood, and the oceans rose, 400 foot in several thousand years.

People living in the Atlantic Basin sought higher ground, and that is when the gods come.

Plato does embelish the story, does take in the volcano, which was a big one, and also, the cause, the moral failings that he saw in his time.

Humans like the coast, the low lands would have been the best, and from when the snow stopped falling, 20,000 years ago, till it started melting, left thousands of years with a new beach line.

The sea had risen before the last ice, it was 21 foot higher than now, and it is now rising a foot every hundred years. As it has risen 450 foot over 15,000 years, thirty foot per thousand years, the current rate is only a third of the historical rate. It was not even, one summer it rose sixty foot.

What starts our era, was a few survivors that were flooded from above by melting ice, and below by rising sea. I am sure they made several stands over the years, only to see them go under the waves.

We will find Atlantis, during the next ice age.

Gods? What gods? There is no more evidence for Plato's "gods" than for the Judeo-Christian God. Plato was completely ignorant of the Younger Dryas stadia, and he was also working with information that was already nearly 400 generations old (~9000 years).

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2008):

Granted, it's only a theory, but there is empirical evidence to back it up. Whether or not it's an actual fact requires more research.

As for the Platonic "gods" - let's not posit agents for which no empirical evidence exists. I'm looking for the origins of the Atlantis myth, not more religion.

www.youtube.com

brings to mind, a lovely song...

Unfortunately lots of crazy s**t surrounds Atlantis' myth and prevents actual anthropology on it from being taken seriously

True, that ... the best we can hope for is critical speculation that is based on known facts, which are sparse indeed.

The Atlantis Myth is Fiction. It is a story the Plato picked up and wrote up in his dialogues.

There is no Atlantis and there never was.

ruveyn

I'd say the majority of accounts are definitely fictional but I suspect they may have origin with a real event, probably the Minoan civilization

Certainly not an "Atlantis" as Plato described it - no gods, no flying chariots, and no magic. I'm just considering that there may be an origin for the myth in something other than Plato's own mind. The "Great Flood" itself is a monomyth, as it is presented many diverse cultures, and is often cited as a cause for lost cities and civilizations.

To reiterate one of the more recent, and seemingly more sensible speculations...


Seacoasts, alluvial plains and littoral zones are included in the term "low-lying areas". In an historical sense, it might have taken 40 or more years for the "sudden" rise in sea level after the Younger Dryas ended, but that might still mean that one or more coastal fishing villages and trading centers might have been lost to flooding, and their collective demise was rolled into the Atlantis myth.

The Minoans did not have Death Rays, flying machine and shining eyes at the top of pyramids. They were a remarkably advanced culture, but still technologically primitive by modern standards. They couldn't even predict tsunamis following earthquakes at sea, which shows how primitive their science was.

ruveyn

Obviously anybody who believes that garbage is a fool hence why I said the majority of accounts are fictional. But the destruction of their civilization fits the description. As is standard for the day hyperbole and magic play a big part. Unfortunately people thousands of years later still buy it, though the same could be said for a few other things *cough Bible cough*