Pre-deluvian civilisations

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Thank you Fnord, yes this is more accurate than Plato having an amphora of beer with Solon in a greek tavern. I still think Plato is a credible source but we are back to occam's razor again.

^
you're slightly off. (Fnord's chronology)

Plato didnt say that Atlantis sank 9000 years ago (ie before his own time), but said that Solon said that it sank that many years before Solon's own time. Making the date of the event about 9600 BC. Not 9300.

Ninety six centuries before Christ puts it slightly but enough farther back that it would more coincide with ten thousaand BC, and the end of the last Ice Age, the melting of the glaciers, and the gradual end of the Upper Paleolithic, and the inundations of dry lands worldwide that are now undersea.

But I think that its just coincidence anyway. More likely Plato just added a zero to it, and was talking about a real thing preserved in distorted legend that happened 900 years prior to 600 BC, but not nine thousand. The explosion of the Volcanic island of Thera that sent the tidal wave that destroyed the Minoan civilizaton in Crete really happened around 1500 BC (nine hundred years before Solon).

^Yep. You are correct.  Must have been a typo.  Here is a much earlier post from another website:

According to Plato, Atlantis was a naval power lying "in front of the Pillars of Hercules" that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune". If we allow for a slow thaw (after all, the current Ice Age began about 2,580,000 years ago) of 100 to 1000 years, this puts the inundation of Plato's Atlantis right in the middle of a major rise in sea level at the beginning of the Holocene Interglacial Period.

Of course, we have only Plato's accounts as "evidence" for the alleged existence of Atlantis, and many scholars believe that Plato created the myth himself merely to teach a lesson about hubris, and cited Solon as his source to lend the story an air of credibility.

There exists no valid empirical evidence to indicate that any one location is THE location of mythical Atlantis -- no stellae, no cartouch, no papyrus scrolls, and no signpost saying "This Way to Atlantis"; not even on Thera/Santorini, although many people believe this one, nondescript Greek island is all that's left of the mythical Atlantean Empire.

There was no "university of Alexandria" in Solon's time. In fact there was no city of Alexandria.

Alexandria Egypt was named after Alexander the Great who did his thing in 330 BC.: uniting Greece, and leading Greek and Macedonian armies eastward to beat the crap out of the Persian Empire and replace the Persians with the Greeks as the rulers of the whole known world...and as icing on the cake...to build a new city in newly seized Egypt named after himself. Long after 600 BC. .

As I understand it Plato said that Solon traveled to Egypt and visited temples and conferred with Egyptian priests, and that these priests had preserved memories of this far back Atlantis thing.

Plato's account is unambiguous: it clearly places the existence of Atlantis at circa 9600 BC.  It also clearly accounts for the alleged provenance of the Atlantis story up to Plato: priests at the Egyptian city of Saïs kept the historical written records ("gegrammena") of Atlantis lore for 8,000 years before Solon hears the tale.

HOWEVER . . .

. . . there simply were no Egyptian writing, no Egyptian priests, nor any Egyptian civilization 11,600 years ago. However, assuming for the sake of argument that Plato's claim is possible, it is then a matter of a tenuous thread of hearsay:

1. The priests tell Solon about the legend.
2. Solon tells Dropides.
3. Dropides tells his son, the elder Critias.
4. Critia the Elder tells his ten-year-old grandson, Critias the Younger.
5. Critias the Younger, now a grown man, recounts the tale for Socrates and his guests in a semi-fictional dialogue recorded by Plato.

The Atlantis legend -- if you believe Plato's provenance -- seems quite a stretch to lend credibility to a story about the distant past.

All valid points, but to get the date so close to a huge historical geological event... against all doubt I can't help but think there is something to the story.

Strictly speaking, there is no - mainstream accepted - evidence of those things. However, no Atlantis thread is complete without Sphinx water erosion theories, so hopefully someone will take up that battleaxe today. I do so enjoy it.

Sure, the Santorini Event (c.960 BC) and the melting of the Great Northern Ice Sheet (C.10,000 BC) are my two favorite explanations for the origin of Plato's Atlantis myth.  One is a global event that accounts for equally global myths of the Great Flood, while the other accounts for the sudden destruction of an entire civilization (Thera).

Alexandria was known as Rhakotis, or Râ-Kedet, was a settlement established before the fourth century B.C around the time Solon was supposed to have visited. in the area subsequently developed as Alexandria.

Prior to Alexander's invasion the city had a temple and priests and was a place of learning which is why Solon was supposed to have visited this place.

And we have not yet even touched upon Erich von Däniken's claim that the destruction of Atlantis was so complete that it tore a hole in the fabric of time and space -- a hole that is now called "The Devil's Triangle".

It gets back to what i said. Plato's date of 11,500 years > coincidence
All I am saying is that more should be done to investigate this

Why bring Von Daniken into this?

The alleged destruction of mythical Atlantis in 9600 BC coincides with no other known event of that time.  The year 960 BC is closer to the Santorini Event, so Plato may have written the wrong date.  We may never know for certain, because there is too little valid evidence from which to draw a definite conclusion.

As for investigations, it has been done and redone numerous times, and by numerous people ranging from professional archeologists to crackpot writers like Erich von Däniken -- do you remember "Chariots of The Gods"?

So, as things stand right now, Plato's Atlantis is a myth, nothing more.

Ok then we are left to ponder whether Plato's listening skills are in order then?
Plato's Critias says he heard the story of Atlantis from his grandfather, who had heard it from the Athenian statesman Solon (300 years before Plato's time), who had learned it from an Egyptian priest, who said it had happened 9,000 years before that.

I guess that's a lot of Chinese whispers. But if it happened in Santorini why claim 9000 years ago?? why not just state the location as surely the event must have also been in Greek records as well?

What?!  And have someone back-check the facts and ruin Plato's reputation?  Or worse, have Plato put on trial for asebeia against the pantheon of Athens, and corruption of the youth of the city-state for spreading unsubstantiated rumors?  At least he had the chutzpah to cite Solon in his chain of 'evidence', thus lending credence to his story.

Of course, all we have is Plato's word that everything he said was true.  Too bad we have no opportunity to cross-examine him or his sources.  So sad there is no material evidence beyond a coincidence or two to support his claims.

Dude...its not "960 BC". It's 900 rather than 9000 years prior to 600 BC (the time of Solon) which would be 1500 BC..which IS about the time of the explosion of Thera.

That extra zero in the digit could be just one of those misunderstandings...like how in the UK a "billion" is a "million times a million", but in the US a "billion" is just "a thousand times a million".