Other than Plato, we know of no other sources of Atlantis, and he heard about it through hand-me-down hearsay - pure rubbish, just as many stories in the bible are rubbish, like the parting of the Red Sea, Noah's arc and turning water into wine.
While "hand me down hearsay" might very well be complete fiction, the mere fact that it is "hand me down hearsay" does not make it fiction. Many of the bible stories that were once believed to be pure fiction are now thought to have originated from a grain of truth, including the Noah story. The Noah story occurs not only in the bible, but in several other ancient stories from that region. Certainly we know that the Black Sea region flooded from the Mediterranean breaking through circa 8,000 B.C.(E.), displacing tens of thousands of people by rising waters. It does not take much of a stretch of the imagination to have one family, having gone to the highest nearby ground (a hill) decide to take take to a boat with their farm animals to save themselves, and then live to tell the tale, to account for embellishment on that tale over the millenia to give rise to the various Noah stories that first appeared in print circa 4,000 to 5,000 B.C.(E.). And please, don't start a thread challenging each and every such story. I'm not a scholar in that area, and quite possibly some of the stories have no genesis (pun intended) in fact. Overall, however, most scholars believe that much of the bible was written as an embellished chronicle of actual events.
Walter, Walter, Walter. Do you believe everything you hear? You address one story that I mention from in the Bible and try to make a case out of it. Why? What's the purpose? Did you ever play the classroom game where everyone sits in a circle and whispers a sentence into the the ear of the person next to them? Then they do the same to the next person until it comes around back to the beginning. And within two or three minutes you have a sentence that has absolutely no relation to the original. Within just a few minutes! Can you not imagine how much a story would most inevidently change in a few hundred years? Walter, Walter, Walter. So the theory goes.
Sorry. I mean't to write "inevitably change." And also: "So the theory goes: down the drain." But my eyes get strained after reading journals all day.
I don't want to distract the discussion the two of you are having, but your comment caught my eye. Surely Walter has a point vallich. You said earlier that the Noah's Ark story was pure rubbish. Now this just isn't so and Walter was briefly demonstrating that. Wouldn't you agree that correcting this small error on your part is a reasonable thing to do? As I say, I don't mean to interfere, but as Walter says, aspects of the Bible are based upon actual events. There is good reason to believe that the story of the Ark is one of them. I think that is important, so I think it is equally important that the correction is made. Right. I'll let you all get back to your main discussion. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I admire the deserved dignity and respectable wording of your post, and it is excepted with respect and definitely commands a thoughtout addressed reply. Yes, I do admit that some stories in the Bible are based on factual occurrences that probably did take place in history, while as I eluded to, others are just too supernatural to believe and have been shown to be "possibly" related to drastically different probable occurrences that were then altered so much through centuries of hearsay to be then attributed to wild farfetched supernatural "miracles" of God and Jesus just to support Christianity. This is basically what I was trying to reference to in my post, and how hearsay had the affect of changing what actually did happen to change the facts into fantasizing occurrences that were then attributed to miracles. So what can you believe in the Bible as fact? I have no idea. As far as the Noah's arc theory, I believe this is still being debated, although I do remember a documentory on it some 10 years ago that they THINK they MAY have found remains of such a large boat/ship in the Alps somewhere. You may know more about this than I, so any current updates on this would be more than welcome. I asked a friend of mine about this today and he also recalls hearing something about it but that they're just not sure. I don't think that any knowledgeable person would believe the story behind it about Noah taking two of every animal species on earth to apparently save them from extinction from the flood and then repopulating the world with only the species he had on board. That's farfetched hearsay, again propogated to substantiate the beliefs surrounding the ancient Hebrews and Christian Canon. Of course, the point I was trying to make was that you just can't believe what was written down from what was heard from one person then passed to another then to another, ad infinitum, till 300 years after the fact it was finally written down. So how can you even begin to believe what Plato similarly heard from what someone passed down to someone else, ad infinitum after the fact, had any basis in reality? Seems highly improbable to me.
Wow The first words that came to my brain after reading the first page in this thread was : "Hey, are you guys really this stupid?" anyway... she was making predictions on Larry King on Sept. 3 2001 and never mentioned anything even close about Sept. 11. some of you even considering this might be real is astounding to me.
Plato said Atlantis was a continient or an island? In the middle of the true ocean, being plato in the old world the true ocean would be the atlantic and pacific oceans, in the middle is north and south america, in the middle of north and south america there was huge amounts of land lost between 40,000 and 13,000 years ago, and the bahamma plateau was above water. Ice sheets extended as far as (southern) washington i think untill 13,500 or so. ocean levels were much lower. Plato also said that the mountains were rich in gold, copper and tin, the andes has been mined for gold, copper and tin for ages. I think atlantis was between central U.S. and southern south america with the ringed city in the gulf of mexico under water now. Jim allen makes a good case on Atlantis in the Andes, but Atlantis would have to be much bigger than just the andes!
many of these old stories are based on real events and then spruced up a bit to make a good story so chances are some like this did happen and there have been lots of natural disasters which may have been linked to some thing like atlantis
Kendall is correct that the Bahama Plateau was several hundred feet above water during the last ice-age. Likewise, much of the Gulf of Mexico was dry land during the ice ages. It is quite probable that the 21st century will see archaelogy take to scuba gear, etc. to investigate sites at the former ocean edges that are now some 300-400 feet below sea level. Whether any of those areas are "Atlantis", or whether there ever was an "Atlantis", is still anyone's guess.
The city of Ur has sophisticated artifacts that are 9,000 years old. We have documentation of islands in the Mediterranean that actually sink. Believing in the possibility of a sophisticated culture from 9,000 years ago that was on a sinking island is not stupid, it's believing in things that are known to exist. The only difference is in the name, and that name could have been their own name or the name that someone gave it. It's a generic story. We already know that a lot of stuff can happen in a thousand years, and that various levels of sophistication have existed before, that have been publicized. From the electrical battery to a global electronic network in American history was less than 200 years. Could there not be a population of just a few million people somewhere in history that went that way? Of course they could. With those broad plateaus we could have had some very sophisticated cultures that completely vanished and even cultures that moved entirely off planet when the chaos occurred, quite possibly more for their own convenience than any other reason. They might even have left their undesirable element behind who never understood much of anything anyway.
There is also huge 6 foot perfect spheres that are in costa rica, almost 500 of them documented that contempory archology has no explanation for, funny that Atlas had a sphere on his back. The giant carved stone heads of Costa rica that are unmistakenly shaped like African Men that are thousands of years old, Atl and antis are both words in the Inca's language one meaning copper and the other meaning water. Look at the topography of the land under the gulf of mexico, there looks like there could be remains of the huge canal that Plato talked about being so big it was hard to believe it was man made.
Kendall: These are excellent observations. Do you have any references or knowledge of what these spheres in Costa Rica are? Could they possibly be natural geological formations or are they definitely manmade? If so, why would they be manmade? We have no evidence that there was any contact or communication between the old and new world at 13,000 years ago or earlier. No evidence of any voyages.
Why 13,000 or earlier? Why not later? And it is not correct that there is no evidence of communications between the old and the new world prior to Vikings. It is quite probable that there have been several distinct immigrations from China, Japan and Indonesia. And the antique world (Greece, Macedonia, Egypt, Cyprus) had two way communications with India and China. I'm currently at work, so I don't have access to the book I have in mind, but you might want to check out "The mythic image" by Joseph Campbell. No 100% proof, but it's worth considering.
The spheres are definitly manmade, you can tell by seeing them, perfectly round almost all the same size, some are small though 2-3 feet in diam, there hasen't been much research done in the area that I know of, I seen it on discovery I think. one idea is they were used for navigating the oceans sort of a map. there is evidence of cocain in 6,000 year old mummies in Egypt, which had to come from south america. Acient Greeks and Egyptions used similar sphere's for astronomical reasons. I think it might have been to control water flow for irrigation, roll them to stop or release water. hard to think of a good reason for 500 6 foot round spheres really, must have taken some work to make them.
I also read that there are markings in Brazil/South America that appear to have possibly been made by the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians are known to have sailed throughout the Mediterranean, and were the sea-farers who did not fear sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic. I doubt that they had 'trade' with South America, but it's possible that a ship might have been blown off course, landed in Brazil, then sailed back. That was only about 4,000 years ago, however. Sailing ships had been around for thousands of years, by that time. I also read that ancient rectangular man-dug ports in India were discovered (silted in) from circa 6,000 years ago, large enough for ships the size of modern ocean liners. The history of sailing, rowing of large boats likely goes back to the Ice Ages, if not before. Sorry I don't have immediate references of these recollections. Perhaps others have more recent readings about those.
Maybe the ancients thought that they (the spheres) were probably easier to make than squares. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I dont know if it would be easier to make a sphere than a square, but it would be easier to move a sphere. I dont know of anyone who really understands the full effect of an ice age, the volume of water taken up by the ice gathering on the poles is not half of it, the weight of the ice is the key. When all this ice piles on the pole(s) the weight or pressure causes the pole(s) to sink, in return the equator expands, creating alot of land around the equator region, which happened during the last ice age, when the ice melts the oppisite happens, the poles rise, the equator shrinks, and ocean levels rise, submerging land around the equator region, this is whats happening now. This is also my theory for the oval shape of the earth, ice which was on the poles would make earth more round, now gone the earth is quickly out of balance untill the poles rise, and the equator shrinks. If my theory is correct the great lakes will run into the gulf of mexico through the Chicago river instead of the St. Laurence in less than 50 years.
