Atlantis

[Oroblanco]

Roy,

I wonder why the historians of Athens did not record their epic battle with the people of Atlantis?

Happy New Year to all,

Joe

Didn't they? Is not Plato our primary source, and did not Plato found the Academy in Athens? His main source was Solon, whom was an Athenian statesman and at least started to write the history of Atlantis which would entail the war as well correct? If you mean why they did not write it circa 9,500 BC, as far as we know, they had no writing system to record it. As has been pointed out earlier, it is quite possible that very war is at the root of the myth of the war between the Olympians and the Titans. Most of the myths turn out to be originally oral histories that got written down, and are in most cases (every one I have looked into anyway) are mythologized versions of real events. Virtually every "god" or "goddess" was a living human being that was accorded the honors of being a god after their death. Were we to take only the written record of events, then nothing happened at all in Greece much before the great war with Troy, for nothing was written down; yet we know that there were a number of prosperous cities in Greece at the time of the Trojan war and they had not sprung up the night before.

Do you get the impression that Plato describes the Athenians as being on the same level with the Atlantians, technologically? Thank you in advance, and wishing everyone a very Happy New Year!
Roy

PS while I was typing, Crow raised an interesting possibility - that we may have more source material available in the future, if any of the Oxyrhychus collection turns up something. There is also the burned library of Herculaneum, the sister city of Pompeii, these scrolls are basically carbonized but new methods and technology are starting to unravel the hidden texts in that ash. Just recently a long lost text of Archimedes was deciphered from that collection. Who knows what tomorrow's spade or magnifying glass will uncover?

 

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[Old Dog]

My opinion deals with my own poor opinions on archies.
but the way it works...
it will not happen in our lifetimes.

 

[cactusjumper]

Roy,

I agree.....No method of writing around 9,500 B.C. On the other hand, the Egyptians were writing their history long before Plato came along. Why no record of their own epic battle with the armada from Atlantis?

Solon was not really Plato's source for the story.......directly.

Take care,

Joe

 

[Oroblanco]

Roy,

I agree.....No method of writing around 9,500 B.C. On the other hand, the Egyptians were writing their history long before Plato came along. Why no record of their own epic battle with the armada from Atlantis?

Solon was not really Plato's source for the story.......directly.

Take care,

Joe

Just to be specific here, no writing in Athens; there is evidence that some kind of written records may run back 30,000 years. Who said that Egypt fought a battle with the armada from Atlantis?

If Solon is not Plato's source as he claimed, then where do you propose he got the story? Or do you hold that it is Plato's own invention, pure and simple? Thank you in advance,

Roy

 

[cactusjumper]

Hi Roy,

"Who said that Egypt fought a battle with the armada from Atlantis?"

I am no expert on this subject, but I believe it is written in "Timaeus".

If Plato did not make up the entire story, his source was Critias, likely the third. (III) I don't believe that Plato
made the story up, but was given someone else's confused history of the island of Crete, substituting Atlantis as
the fictional double of Minoan Crete. Just too many parallelos.

I believe you can discard the 9,000 year figure as erroneous.

Take care,

Joe

 

[Oroblanco]

Hi Roy,

"Who said that Egypt fought a battle with the armada from Atlantis?"

I am no expert on this subject, but I believe it is written in "Timaeus".

If Plato did not make up the entire story, his source was Critias, likely the third. (III) I don't believe that Plato
made the story up, but was given someone else's confused history of the island of Crete, substituting Atlantis as
the fictional double of Minoan Crete. Just too many parallelos.

I believe you can discard the 9,000 year figure as erroneous.

Take care,

Joe

Greetings Joe,

I can't find the passage that refers to a naval battle between the Egyptians and Atlantian armada; in Timaeus the only mention that Egypt is involved is this:

This vast power, gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind.

In fact I can't find any mention of any naval battle, just that there was war. The source is not specific about whether the warfare was on land or on sea, but it is notable that in the description of Athens circa 9500 BC there is no mention of any kind of warships, or ships of any kind. It is very easy to read things into Plato that are not there, by assuming a statement about Atlantis must likewise apply to Athens or Egypt. Based on what is in Plato's dialogues, Atlantis may have had the only naval power in its time, and the war he alluded to was in the nature of amphibious invasions and land battles only.

If we toss that 9000 year figure, then how do we explain the presence of elephants in Atlantis? No trace of any elephants ever living on the island have ever been found, as far as I know.
Roy

 

[Crow]

Hello All

Of course no one is saying the Minoan culture was destroyed 9000 years ago?

In regards to the date 9000 BC? As far as I know there was no unifed measurement of time between ancient early cultures which varied so the date given could be an error in our modern day interpretation of the date? Say for example the date was passed from say Hittite sources who had contact with Egypt. There is very little knowledge of Hittite calender and perhaps a corrupted version of that was mistranslated to Plato?

I still think there was many untrustworthy details attributed to Plato which we take alleged details too literally. And of course we assume too much that Plato did not exaggerate?

Ancient Greek was never as descriptive as our much vaunted academics make out.

Our modern perception of what ancient cultures distinction between fact and fiction is very different.

Perhaps Plato would laugh his ass off on our speculations of his work if he was here today?

Crow

 

[cactusjumper]

Roy,

While sails on small vessels have been around for about 10,000 years, the ships needed for Plato's Atlantis were not developed until around 3,000 BC. It was the Egyptians that first developed that technology, as far as I have read. That puts the legend down another notch for me, at least era-wise.

I will need to reread Timaeus to find the conversation about Atlantis attacking Egypt. Considering the fact that Atlantis was an island naval power, it's difficult to imagine that an armada was not in the forefront of such a battle.

This is part of the story told to Plato by Critias. It is the dialog of what was told to Solon by the priest's of Sais, Egypt:

"Now, in the island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire, which had rule over the whole island and several others, as well as over parts of the continent; and, besides these, they subjected the parts of Libya within the Columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. The vast power thus gathered into one, endeavored to subdue at one blow our country and yours, and the whole of the land which was within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind; for she was the first in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjected, and freely liberated all the others who dwelt within the limits of Heracles. But afterward there occurred violent earthquakes and floods, and in a single day and night of rain all your warlike men in a body sunk into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared, and was sunk beneath the sea. And that is the reason why the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is such a quantity of shallow mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.' ("Plato's Dialogues," ii., 617, Timæus.) . . ."
http://stevequayle.com/Giants/Ancient.Civ_Technol/ataw102.html

That tells us that Atlantis did attack Egypt and Hellenes, assuming the story is more than a poem of fiction. Best I could do without cracking my books.

Take care,

Joe

 

[Oroblanco]

Roy,

While sails on small vessels have been around for about 10,000 years, the ships needed for Plato's Atlantis were not developed until around 3,000 BC. It was the Egyptians that first developed that technology, as far as I have read. That puts the legend down another notch for me, at least era-wise.

I will need to reread Timaeus to find the conversation about Atlantis attacking Egypt. Considering the fact that Atlantis was an island naval power, it's difficult to imagine that an armada was not in the forefront of such a battle.

This is part of the story told to Plato by Critias. It is the dialog of what was told to Solon by the priest's of Sais, Egypt:

"Now, in the island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire, which had rule over the whole island and several others, as well as over parts of the continent; and, besides these, they subjected the parts of Libya within the Columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. The vast power thus gathered into one, endeavored to subdue at one blow our country and yours, and the whole of the land which was within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind; for she was the first in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjected, and freely liberated all the others who dwelt within the limits of Heracles. But afterward there occurred violent earthquakes and floods, and in a single day and night of rain all your warlike men in a body sunk into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared, and was sunk beneath the sea. And that is the reason why the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is such a quantity of shallow mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.' ("Plato's Dialogues," ii., 617, Timæus.) . . ."
http://stevequayle.com/Giants/Ancient.Civ_Technol/ataw102.html

That tells us that Atlantis did attack Egypt and Hellenes, assuming the story is more than a poem of fiction. Best I could do without cracking my books.

Take care,

Joe

I did not state that Atlantis had no navy, only that there is no indication that Egypt, or Athens for that matter, had a corresponding war fleet. Obviously an island nation would have to have some kind of sea transport to attack anyone, unless they could fly before they could swim which is a bit far-fetched. The war could have been, and based ONLY on what is in Plato, would have been a case of a naval (amphibious) power attacking land powers with NO naval capabilities.

According to Egypt, of course Egypt invented sailing vessels; according to Sanchoniathon, the Phoenicians invented them before 3500 BC. Mankind managed to reach Australia by sea some 40,000 years ago, so it is not safe to assign dates for when sailing was really "invented". For that matter, it is equally possible that Atlantian "ships" were oar-powered, with no sails of any kind. Plato assigns triremes to the Atlantians which were not invented until after the Trojan war, unless they (like some other things) were a case of an invention that got re-invented.

Not to trash Egypt, and working from memory as I do not have the relevant source handy, but the very first ships built by Egypt, were built of lumber purchased and shipped to Egypt by the Phoenicians. That rather casts doubt on the Egyptians as the original innovators.

The Hittite calender I cannot address, but the Assyrian, Chaldaean, and Sumerian calenders are fairly well understood; the passage of a year is not far different among different cultures so any calculations required by differences in the way calenders are kept would not greatly alter the 9000 year figure IMHO. Also there is no reference to the Hittites as an original source to the story, so I think we can safely ignore that possibility.

The Minoan theory is a tempting one, and I believe that Plato did borrow some of his details from that civilization but it has many problems, not the least of which is the presence of elephants, which the Minoan theorists prefer to ignore. The Minoans seem to have been destroyed by a massive volcanic eruption and resulting tidal waves, and there is no volcanic eruption in the story of Atlantis. Plus the Minoans survived the disaster for at least one generation - the Atlantians homeland did not.

Good luck and good hunting to you all, I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
Oroblanco

 

[cactusjumper]

Roy,

You are correct that the word "armada" is not used in "Timaeus". I doubt the term existed in that era. It was John V. Luce who characterized the Atlantis fleet as an armada in the storied attack on Greece and Egypt.

Despite the terminology, it would have been a naval armada that was used to undertake that invasion and Atlantis was said to have a fleet of "some 1,200 warships". For the era, that is quite stretch.

Take care,

Joe

 

[Oroblanco]

Postscript, (found my copy of 'Cory's Ancient Fragments') here is what Sanchoniathon said;

And Usous having taken a tree, and broken off its boughs, was the first who dared to venture on the sea. And he consecrated two pillars to Fire and Wind, and worshipped them, and poured out upon them the blood of the wild beasts he took in hunting: and when these men were dead, those that remained consecrated to them rods, and worshipped the pillars, and held anniversary feasts in honour of them.

While not providing any exact date, he does place the invention of going to sea in a wooden boat (a log) directly after the invention of Fire, or extremely early in the history of mankind.

Why does that number of ships mean a "stretch"? If the population was as great as Plato describes, and the warships were not really so large as triremes (as is hinted at by the numbers of men listed per allotment of territory for a 'draft') I fail to see any problems. The great fleet of the Hellenes in the Trojan war, (a thousand ships) had none larger than a penteconter, some were only thirty oarsmen, to transport an army that would not amount to more than 50,000 in total. Considering that primitive oared ships, perhaps fitted with a sail are more believable than huge warships, this would mean an Atlantian invasion army of probably less than 60,000. The only population estimate I can find for pre-dynastic Egypt gives a figure of up to 200,000 (7.5 million by the time of the Ptolemies) and a guess at the warriors available among such a population would include everyone able to carry a weapon, perhaps 30% of the total or close to the same amount (60,000). Just reasoning it out, and while such a figure of warships - 1200 - does sound like an exaggeration, it may well be a truthful figure based on a lot of guesswork and speculation. Of course if it was 1200 triremes, with over 200 men on each one making a total amphibious force of over 240,000 men, I have trouble in accepting it as factual. For one thing it would mean a population of the homeland numbering in several millions, which while possible seems unlikely.

Oroblanco



PS - here is Sanchoniathon on whom invented sailing:

Of these were begotten two brothers who discovered iron, and the forging thereof. One of these called Chrysor, who is the same with Hephæstus, exercised himself in words, and charms and divinations; and he invented the hook, and the bait, and the fishing-line, and boats of a light construction; he was the first of all men that sailed. Wherefore he was worshipped after his death as a God, under the name of Diamichius. And it is said that his brothers invented the art of building walls with bricks.

Afterwards, of this race were born two youths, one of whom was called Technites, and the other was called Geïnus Autochthôn. These discovered the method of mingling stubble with the loam of bricks, and of baking them in the sun; they were also the inventors of tiling.

By these were begotten others, of whom one was named Agrus, the other Agrouerus or Agrotes, of whom in Phœnicia there was a statue held in the highest veneration, and a temple drawn by yokes of oxen: and at Byblus he is called, by way of eminence, the greatest of the Gods. These added to the houses, courts and porticos and crypts: husbandmen, and such as hunt with dogs, derive their origin from these: they are called also Aletæ, and Titans.

Chrysor is credited by him as inventing sailing, and places him as living before the generation of the Titans. (Atlas was a Titan) Sorry I forgot to add this in the first place. Side note here too but Sanchoniathon mentions one of the main methods of building in the age before the Titans, which would logically have still been the methods used - sun dried mud bricks, with straw stubble added. When you imagine Atlantis, do you picture a city of mud bricks? Most don't - and that is what my bet is on for a real Atlantis, an Ice Age civilization built of mud brick cities, probably with very primitive agriculture or herding of animals, not the beautiful classic Greek model so often associated with it.

 

[cactusjumper]

Roy,

It is not unusual for people who believe in the legend of Atlantis to change Plato's story in an effort to
match the era it describes. In this case, I would say that mud huts and simple log boats falls way short of approaching the story.

It's hard to imagine the reality of the times spawning Plato's story. It really speaks to conditions of a much later date. I have been down most of the day, but would like to continue this conversation in the next few days.

Take care,

Joe

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

Lisunun Cactus

Don Jose de La Mancha

 

[cactusjumper]

Roy,

[And Usous having taken a tree, and broken off its boughs, was the first who dared to venture on the sea. And he consecrated two pillars to Fire and Wind, and worshipped them, and poured out upon them the blood of the wild beasts he took in hunting: and when these men were dead, those that remained consecrated to them rods, and worshipped the pillars, and held anniversary feasts in honour of them.

While not providing any exact date, he does place the invention of going to sea in a wooden boat (a log) directly after the invention of Fire, or extremely early in the history of mankind.]

That would be what I would expect the Atlantians to have for ships. Considering the area they were said to have waged wars in, that seems to be a problem for logistics. All battles took place on land, in that era.

Take care,

Joe

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

Morning Cactus: You posted --> All battles took place on land, in that era.
************************
Did they ??

Don Jose de La Mancha

 

[cactusjumper]

Don Jose,

Yes! The preferred weapons were sticks, stones, teeth and fingernails, along with the occasional loud grunt thrown in for emphasis. Straddling a log with the limbs cut off makes for a very ineffective fighting platform. That assumes the battle progressed beyond the grunting phase.

The sea-battle would end when one side, or both, drowned.

Take care,

Joe

 

[Oroblanco]

Greetings,
This reply got very long as I could not sum it up in a few words as others are able to do so well. I must ask your indulgence, and to anyone whom does not wish to wade through such a long winded post just skip ahead and I will not be offended. Thank you in advance.
Cactusjumper wrote

Don Jose,

Yes! The preferred weapons were sticks, stones, teeth and fingernails, along with the occasional loud grunt thrown in for emphasis. Straddling a log with the limbs cut off makes for a very ineffective fighting platform. That assumes the battle progressed beyond the grunting phase.

The sea-battle would end when one side, or both, drowned.

Hmm while I realize that post was addressed to our mutual amigo Don Jose, apparently I have not phrased things in a way that makes sense. Let me try to put it in a straightforward, line by line approach.

The weapons of the day we get from what the Egyptian told Solon, namely spears and shields. However a wooden club or cudgel is not out of the question, as we can see on ancient coins honoring Herakles, he is depicted as a man of a Stone Age, wearing a lion skin and carrying a wooden club over his shoulder. Shields and spears however were mentioned by Plato and are extremely ancient weapons systems, they need not be of metal to be effective. For that matter, Amerindians were still using stone headed clubs as late as 1890 with good effect, and we do not view them as cave men for they are not.

Herakles with club

Herakles with his child, wearing the Nemean lion skin and carrying his signature club

The ships were not logs, or perhaps you missed the part about Chrysor quote

"One of these called Chrysor, who is the same with Hephæstus, exercised himself in words, and charms and divinations; and he invented the hook, and the bait, and the fishing-line, and boats of a light construction; he was the first of all men that sailed. "

Chrysor lived before the Titans, and supposedly one of his brothers invented building walls of brick (mud brick strengthened with straw) So your characterization of the Atlantians as a bunch of cave men with sticks floating on logs is just ignoring what the texts say in a facetious attempt to ridicule a late Paleolithic Atlantis.

This Atlantis would probably be built of mud-brick, yet could have had courts and porticos and crypts, as these are supposed to be invented before the time of the Titans. The ancient cities and ziggurats of Mesopotamia (including Babylon) were of mud brick, no one describes them as cave men floating on logs with sticks. They could have boats of light construction fitted with sails, which would serve to transport a land army. Even rafts can be quite effective as transportation just as Columbus encountered in the Caribbean. As Joe has pointed out, the turn of a shovel can overturn the entire structure of written history - for example in 1997 the discovery of an ancient ship off the coast of England;

<extract>
"World's Oldest Ship??
Divers have found timbers they believe to be remains of the world's oldest known ship off Hayling Island near Portsmouth, England. Radiocarbon dated to 6,431 years ago, the timbers were discovered in 30 feet of water by a team led by British sport diver Don Boullivant. "We have been searching the area for quite some time, looking for Roman wrecks," says Boullivant. "When we came across the worked oak timbers, we were certain that we had finally found one. To our great surprise the wood is older by 4,000 years."

If the find is confirmed, the ship will predate the earliest known depictions of boats from predynastic Egypt, which date to the mid-fourth millennium B.C., by more than 1,000 years, and the earliest known Northern European ship by 3,000 years. Until now the oldest vessel from Northern Europe has been a 3,300-year-old, 50-foot-long boat discovered at Dover, England, in 1992." <emphasis in bold by me, from

http://www.archaeology.org/9707/newsbriefs/hayling.html >

The first known vessels date back to the Neolithic Period, about 10,000 years ago, but could not be described as ships. The first navigators began to use animal skins or woven fabrics as sails. Affixed to the top of a pole set upright in a boat, these sails gave early ships range.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship>
The earliest seaworthy boats may have been developed as early as 45,000 years ago, according to one hypothesis explaining the habitation of Australia. In the history of whaling, humans began whaling in pre-historic times.
<emphasis mine>
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_maritime_history#Prehistory >

So let us discard the image of a fleet of floating logs with men straddling them, paddling across the Mediterranean. That sort of closed minded approach only guarantees one cannot see a clear picture.

For that matter, even our historians allow that many innovations appeared in this period, quote


During the Upper Paleolithic, further inventions were made, such as the net (c. 22,000 or 29,000 BP)[25] bolas,[35] the spear thrower (c.30,000 BP), the bow and arrow (c. 25,000 or 30,000 BP)[2][36] and the oldest example of ceramic art, the Venus of Dolní Věstonice (c. 29,000–25,000 BP).[2] Early dogs were domesticated, sometime between 30,000 BP and 14,000 BP, presumably to aid in hunting.[37] <snip> Archeological evidence from the Dordogne region of France demonstrates that members of the European early Upper Paleolithic culture known as the Aurignacian used calendars (c. 30,000 BP).

By the end of the Paleolithic era, about 10,000 BP people began to settle down into permanent locations, and began to rely on agriculture for sustenance in many locations. Much evidence exists that humans took part in long-distance trade between bands for rare commodities (such as ochre, which was often used for religious purposes such as ritual[44][45]) and raw materials, as early as 120,000 years ago
Some sources claim that most Middle and Upper Paleolithic societies were possibly fundamentally egalitarian[2][30][17][42][42] and may have rarely or never engaged in organized violence between groups (i.e. war).

<Note this agrees with Plato about the Atlantians being at first a viruous society that became warlike and aggressive>


The existence of anthropomorphic images and half-human, half-animal images in the Upper Paleolithic period may further indicate that Upper Paleolithic humans were the first people to believe in a pantheon of gods or supernatural beings,[82] <perhaps a shamanistic system?>

This period that Plato places Atlantis in, is coincidentally when mankind is producing works of art (paintings, carved sculptings) and even music. The population of man underwent an 'explosion' possibly due to the invention of agriculture. A culture of cattle herding people were living on the grassy plains dotted with lakes we now know as the Sahara desert; men in the harsh northern islands of Scotland were making a living by fishing and hunting sea mammals, living in homes build of stone about 480 square feet. Far up in the arctic, on the Seward peninsula the people of the city of Ipiutak were living in a city with broad streets, hunting migratory herds of caribou and storing meat for the lean times. Hunters were stalking wooly mammoths on a grassy plain where Dogger Bank is in the North Sea today.

Clearly not all men were living in caves and clubbing their mates, or paddling out in the sea on logs. Neither were all men living in cities, supported by herds of semi-wild cattle and pigs, or even rudimentary farming of primitive grains and fruits like figs. To the more primitive people, those living in cities would seem far advanced, and yet were there some natural calamity, the primitive hunter gatherers would be much more likely to survive - just as we find described in Plato.

The population of humans underwent an explosion of numbers in the late Paleolithic, the very time of Plato's Atlantis

<one example in support, http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mstiner/pdf/Stiner_etal1999.pdf,

another very complex http://www.anthro.utah.edu/~rogers/pubs/Rogers-E-49-608.pdf>

- One study points out that the human population increased over 100 fold in a relatively short time! An interesting article on the possibility that Atlantis practiced agriculture, here

http://www.atlantisquest.com/Agriculture.html

Perhaps it might be beneficial for us both to re-read Plato on Atlantis? The account is not so far-fetched if you examine it. One point in that post at the top however is not far from the truth about sea battles in ancient times, or right up to modern era for that matter; the heaviest casualties came from drowning when ships sank. The casualties inflicted by the missile weapons as well as ship-to-ship boarding even as late as the Byzantine era, were a minority compared with loss from sinkings and drownings.

This topic has always interested me as it does so many others, but I don't see any route to changing opinions by argument since the evidence is lacking. Until someone finds the ruins of an Atlantis that fits the embellished one of Plato, the case can never be proven, and since Plato did embellish and we do not know to what degree, it is not possible to identify any ruins of Atlantis were we to be standing on them. I believe that the traces of Atlantis are right there before us, in the mysterious "wheel ruts" seen on Malta and elsewhere, the equally enigmatic megalithic structures of the British Isles, France and the Iberian peninsula, the ruins of Catal Huyuk and Jericho, and the aetherial herding culture of the Sahara; not that these ARE Atlantis but they were co-eval with it.

Good luck and good hunting to you all, I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
Oroblanco

 

[cactusjumper]

Hi Roy,

That is a lot to digest.

Your "oldest ship" was found in 1997......15-years ago. Here's what one of the finders had to say:
Note! I believe the wood was found in or around 1992, and only announced in 1997.

"The mind-boggling thing is it is not 2,000 years old as we were hoping, it turns out to be 6,431 years old," said a member of the team, Don Bullivant, 64, yesterday.

"We don't really know what we have got. It could be a clump of trees, which we think is unlikely, or it could be a building or it could be a ship. We are hoping very much for it to be a ship."

I should imagine they know what they have by now. Are there any recent confirmations?

I am in this conversation to learn more about, what I consider to be, the legend of Atlantis. It's true I'm a doubter, but I have no axe to grind. Just waiting to be convinced.

The Ice Age was just coming to an end, and people (for the most part) were just coming out of caves.
To be sure, things were developing at a relatively fast pace beyond 9,000 BC. Digging canals to divert water from rivers for irrigation did not take place until around 5,000 BC.

Sailing ships were invented around 3,100 BC., the wheel around 3,400 BC. Horses were not domesticated until around 2,000 BC.

How do those things fit into Plato's Atlantis?

Take care,

Joe

 

[cactusjumper]

Uncle Roy,

Here is a more recent claim for the world's oldest ship:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/fsu-wos030606.php

That ties into the claims that the Egyptians invented the sailing ship.

Take care,

Joe

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

HIO Joe: Ever read the vedics?

Don Jose de La Mancha