04-03-2001 03:43									#1
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Now that we are in the middle of a very absorbing debate about the origins of Iberia, I thought it interesting to create this spinoff-thread on another mysterious ancient civ, Atlantis. Did it exist in reality? If so, where it was located?

Some say Thera (hi, Waku ), others say Santorini (hi cpoulos , nice nude beaches btw )... A long time ago on these same forums, Allard came up with a very interesting theory based on the striking phonetical similarities between Atlantis and Aztlan... But I say: you fools! I will destroy you all! , which is to say: Canary Islands all the way!!!

Proofs? You ask me for proofs? Okay, here they are:

1) Take a look at MPS's Atlantis scenario (Fantastic Worlds). Why did they place Atlantis exactly where the Canaries are? (please keep in mind that the guys at MPS are extremely smart)

2) Last Asterix comic book (title: La galere d'Obelix). On page 35 it is clearly stated so.


Refute my proofs if you can, ha, ha. Or put up yours in favor of other posible locations!

Let us the debate begin!

	04-03-2001 03:50									#3
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You should have read my last post before starting this. Thera is the anciet name of Santorini, and I'm not going to repeat all that I just typed(Can't remember it, getting old ). But if you reread my responses, you will see why the Canary islands cannot be the Atlantis of Plato. Sorry Jay Bee, but your off the mark here.

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	04-03-2001 04:02									#4
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Here you are...

quote: Originally posted by cpoulos on 03-02-2001 09:55 PM The search for the city that Plato describes has been found. It is Thera, in the Aegean sea. Plato misinterpreted the writings of Solon. The eclipse of Atlantis had occured 900 years before Solon, not 9,000. Atlantis was not 800,000 square miles, but 80,000. There is another tranlation mistake by Plato: The greek word for "greater than" is very similar to the word for "midway". So Atlantis was midway between Libya and Asia, not greater than Libya and Asia. And were the pillars of Hercules really the strit of Gibraltar? Two promontories on the coast ot Greece, near Crete, are also called Pillars of Hercules. Thera erupted in about 1500 BC, wiping out the Minoan civilization(Who were the Atlantians), and the survivors may have been the Sea People, invaders who tried to conquor Eygpt and the Levant. Thera is the modern island of Santorini, and it's ruins are still 9/10ths covered. That was what Schulten was searching for.

	04-03-2001 04:15									#5
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Sorry for not having been more obvious here guys . I was only trying to prevent what finally happened, that people started posting on Atlantis in the Tartessos thread and thus deviate the attention to matters that are irrelevant to the Tartessos thread (or is it that I missed something and Atlantis and Tartessos are related?).

I had assumed that you guys would rapidly realize that someone who backs up his asserts by quoting Obelix and MPS, who compares Aztlan with Atlantis, could only be joking, plain and simple.

On the other hand, I would have liked to hear your ideas about the Atlantean myth... but, oh well. This is supposed to be a Spanish-related forum so a excuse had to be put up to initiate a thread on Atlantis here.

Sigh, I wasn't off the mark.... I was well beyond the mark

	04-03-2001 04:16									#6
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Oh, and why do you think I put a smiley right after hi Waku, hi cpoulos?

	04-03-2001 04:35									#7
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Thanks, Waku!

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All knowledge begins with the phrase: I don't know.

	04-03-2001 06:29									#9
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I had decided not to post to this thread after the misunderstanding mentioned above. It happened, however, that out of curiosity I went to my ol' dear Guide to the Ancient World, by Michael Grant, Professor of Humanity at Edinburgh University (1997 edition) and look what I found under Thera (second paragraph):

Thera, according to Callimachus, was originally known as Calliste, 'most beautiful'. Fanciful stories identified it with Scheria, the home of the mythical Phaecians in the Odyssey, or with lost Atlantis, described by Plato.

*These are honest questions, please do not misinterpret my intentions*: What does 'fanciful' exactly mean in this context? Is it possible that the evidence to which cpoulos referred to in that post he says I didn't read (despite I replied to it ) was provided after 1997?

The Canarian defense rests its case



[This message has been edited by Jay Bee (edited March 03, 2001).]

	04-03-2001 07:50									#10
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It is said that Plato got his information about 'Antlantis' when he was a boy, and he overheard a private conversation between his Tutor and guests.
Yet all of Platos works hinge on ethics and his description of the ancient Athenians acting as a last bastion of independence against the 'Atlantian' Empire seems by some scholars to signify his disgust with the ethics of the Athenians during his day such as the corruption that occured in the supposedly Democratic state.

For more information about Plato

" I am Arthur, King of the Briton, Defeater of the Saxons!" King Arthur to Gaurd-Monty Python and the Holy Grail
"Pull the Other one" Gaurd to King Arthur-Monty Python and the Holy Grail

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	04-03-2001 08:28									#11
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For Waku: The Minoans are indeed the civilization of Crete. Their capitol was believed to be Thera, but the largest city found is on Crete, at Knossos, which is near modern day Iraklion. The pillars are said to be on a prometory near here (but it is disputed).

For Jay Bee: I meant the last post, not the one Waku put in for me. I had just finished wirting it when I saw this new thread. The history might have changed since I was in college (back when dinosaurs walked the Earth! ), and as any good historian will tell you, there are no absolutes in history! I believe the Phonecians settled the Canaries, but who knows? Sorry if I sounded insulting, Jay Bee. I would never want to hurt any of my friend's feelings. Sometimes when you write, people see things in it that was not intended.

	05-03-2001 06:47									#15
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Allow me to join this nice discussion. I'm so glad to finally see a thread which is not about Spain, and about which I can talk a bit, without being laughed at.
This is gonna be a long post, but please do read at least some parts of it. Jesús wants us to have a serious conversation about this, and nothing seems more appropriate.

There are no first hand sources available on this, I guess, so the best you can do is read Plato's Kritias yourself, if you wish to know things yourself instead of reading third hand sources. Go here: http://classics.mit.edu

quote: Allard came up with a very interesting theory based on the striking phonetical similarities between Atlantis and Aztlan.

Damn, you must have liked this little phonetic joke, that you have remembered it.

No, I would like to think that Plato used the whole idea as a metaphore. Perhaps he heard of the Minoan civilization once, and got inspired by it. After all, Solon seems to have heard of the legend in Egypt, who always were very close to Crete in politics and culture, until the Mycaenic influences of the Linear B period.

Plato regularly makes up stories, placing it in somebody else's mouth, pretending it to be true, but eventually his only aim is to teach the reader something.

Then why is this too not made up then?

"nine thousand was the sum of years"... Who can count such years? Why 9000? Why not 900? Because he shows us that it is purely meant as an example.

"Of the combatants on the one side, the city of Athens..." Very nice, very nice. The city of Athens, right? Athens only started to become of any important status in Homer's time. How much then can be true of the rest of the story?
Athens is probably used here indeed more to criticize than for the sake of history.

"[Atlantis] was an island greater in extent than Libya and Asia, and when afterwards sunk by an earthquake, became an impassable barrier of mud to voyagers sailing from hence to any part of the ocean"

A continent destroyed by an earthquake? An impassable barrier the size of a continent? And lots of voyagers sailing there, yet further than the Pillars of Herakles, where nobody sailed at that time? Yeah right.

And it goes on and on like that, describing Plato's perfect society. Compare it to his Republic, and you'll see; it's all metaphores, metaphores, and more metaphores.

Oh, come on, if you're still not convinced about Atlantis not existing, you can as well believe that Atlantis was founded by aliens.


What is much more interesting though, is Thira itself. As señor Waku and kyrios Poulos explained, the explosion of this island must have been enormous and awful and was almost certainly the main reason for the fall of the Minoan civilization.
Oh yes, Poseidon was really mad that day...

I could post some information of Thera, but that's gonna be rather long. I made a short little essay for in the readme of my next scenario Homer v4, which will be completely centered around this event.

quote: (La galere d'Obelix). On page 35 it is clearly stated so.

It says nothing more than "Pour certains, ces îles seraient aujourd'hui les îles canaries". (is french allowed in this forum?)
But I'm very happy that more people seem to enjoy Asterix and read it in French, as it's much nicer to read in French than in translated versions.

I think that this album however is quite bad. Asterix never reached the same level as it used to have, never anymore since Goscinny died. Especially La rose et le glaive was quite awful (though there were nice women in it).

Oh, one final little quote:

quote: And this is the reason why the names of the ancients have been preserved to us and not their actions. This I infer because Solon said that the priests in their narrative of that war mentioned most of the names which are recorded prior to the time of Theseus, such as Cecrops, and Erechtheus, and Erichthonius, and Erysichthon, and the names of the women in like manner.

Funny that he mentiones all kind of people living in exactly the same time of the fall of Knossos and just before.

There are some more nice quotes, such as the boundaries lying at the Isthmos, etc., but I won't make this too long a post, and I'll save you some time to read the entire real story yourself.

	05-03-2001 07:38									#16
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Nice post, Allard.

I haven't posted my opinion about Atlantis yet, but I think that Allard has already made it for me. Jay Bee will probably be very surprised, as I am defending the existence of Tartessos, but I don't want to believe that Atlantis was more than a metaphor.

Why, you ask. Patriotism? No, I swear. It's just for the fact that Plato wasn't writing History. He wasn't a historian, he was a philosopher, and he worked with metaphors, examples, myths (like the famous Myth of the Cavern) and the like, not with historical facts. Herodotus and Polibius were writing, or at least trying to write, History.

Again, not concludent proofs, Jay Bee. Just a simple and logic, IMO, argumentation.

	05-03-2001 10:10									#17
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Hi Allard! Perhaps I was a little unclear in my post. I don't believe the Atlantis Myth(I agree with Fiera), but i do believe that Plato was describing a real place, despite the fact that you are right that Plato often spoke in metaphor. I havn't read the Critias in years! Plato certainly was a long winded fellow, wasn't he? On to Thera: In his book 'Return to sodom and gomorrah' noted scientist Dr Charles Pellegrino postulates that Thera erupted in 1650 BC, wiping out the Minoan capital and sending a tidal wave toward Crete, which killed many, and the ash from this volcano can be found(and authenticated through carbon dating) throughout Eygpt and the middle east, but not in Greece proper, for the winds blew towards the South east. He speculates that the effects of this eruption caused the Biblical plagues on Eygpt that are described in Exodus. This is not to doubt the power of God, for he could have certainly caused such an eruption. For those non-believers, they can account for it by random chance. It is known that a disaster struck the world at this time, so it fits these parameters. As Plato described it, Atlantis was not possible from an scientific point of view. A place as large as Austrailia sinking into the Atlantic would have left physical evidence, as well as a wave that would have covered almost all of Europe, and there is no evidence of that. Also, there are no written records from 11,000 years ago(9,000 for Plato), but if the translation errors I mentioned in a previous post are taken into account, they do fit the parameters of Thera and Minoan culture. Of course, I could be completly wrong in this, but that is my belief. One last thing, your new scenario sounds quite interesting, but will I, who only have MGE, be able to play it? I was sorely disapointed by River war not being MGE compatible (that is untill Kull sent me a fix for it, thanks again Kull!). I don't know what it entails to make it compatible, but if it is possible, would you consider it? Myself and other gold players would be most happy about that, if it were possible.

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All knowledge begins with the phrase: I don't know.

	12-03-2001 01:43									#18
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Interesting that nobody wrote anything about the most recent theory...

Some say that Plato or perhaps Solon or whoever got the dates mixed up, and that "Atlantis" as the Egyptian name is supposed to be was actually... Troy! The story of the end of Atlantis could be a dragged memory or report, maybe Egyptian-based/biased about the Trojan War. I have a looong (German) article about that. Very interesting indeed, some new excavations at Illium started in May '99.
As for me personally, I doubt that. It's an interesting theory, but IMHO not more trusthworthy than all the others.

	12-03-2001 19:48									#23
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Just two words, cause I'm very busy in the middle of exams.

quote: When is the next album supposed to come out? I have already asked in several bookstores and no one can give an exact date.

Actually, when i saw your question, I got curious too, so I visited the "official" Astérix website ( http://www.asterix.tm.fr ), and to my astonishment, the next album will be released.... the day after tomorrow! March 14th!!

quote: Where did you get from that I read Asterix in French? I do not understand a single word in French

What a shame! I assumed cause you quoted the french title for "la galère d'obélix". And I thought that all Spanish could speak French, being "one single nation"..