Talk:Atlantis

Pillars of Hercules

I am a firm believer that Platos story about Atlantis was indeed a fictional political allegory but in the interests of providing the widest possible background would add one more snippet.

Many years ago there was an article in the international press where a Greek professor suggested that the original Pillars of Hercules were natural feature on the Greek coast. Which may suggest that Plato had the Santorini devastion of Crete partly in mind when composing his books.

Only many generations later was the name then applied to the present Straits of Gibraltar.

Possible connection to Younger Dryas event

Scientists have hypothesized that a comet or a swarm of cometary fragments impacted North America circa 10900 BC, in what is called the Clovis comet hypothesis. This hypothesis is a proposed explanation for the Younger Dryas event.

The energy released by an event of such magnitude would have melted or vaporized a significant volume of the Laurentide ice sheet. The superheated atmosphere is believed to have ignited forest fires over a vast swath of North America. Because the vapor pressure of water in a gas increases as the temperature of the gas increases, the superheated atmosphere could have held an enormous amount of water vapor (from the Laurentide ice sheet) in such conditions. When the fires stopped burning, the water vapor would have condensed and fell as torrential rains, flooding low-lying areas much like a catastrophic flash flood on a continental scale.

If Plato’s date for the destruction of Atlantis, 9600 BC, is taken to be chronologically accurate, then it seems to be within the margin of error of the 10900 BC date of the Younger Dryas event. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.179.22.90 (talk) 23:51, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

If you have any RS promoting this idea feel free to add it.Slatersteven (talk) 12:32, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Houot and Archimede

No reliable source that I have been able to find supports the notion that the "giant stone stairway" supposedly observed by Georges Houot (note the spelling) was anything other than a natural formation, nor that it was claimed by him to be anything else, nor that it had anything to do with Atlantis. The Popular Science article cited by the IP who wants to add this material makes no mention at all of a "stairway" or of Atlantis; and the Jochmans website cited is clearly not a reliable source itself, nor does it cite any source for its implication that the formation has anything to do with Atlantis. In the absence of any reliable sources claiming a connection between this observation and the Atlantis myth, I'm once again deleting the material. Deor (talk) 04:15, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree, I checked the article before reading this. It doesn't belong here. Dougweller (talk) 04:52, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I forgot to mention that, despite the IP's "not a copyvio" in the edit summary, the first and last of the three sentences added were direct copies of sentences on Jochmans's site, which bears an explicit copyright notice. Deor (talk) 13:46, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked! And getting tired of copyvio in so many articles. Dougweller (talk) 14:05, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Atlantis place Hypothesis

While browsing Google Earth, aeronautical engineer Bernie Bamford, found what he believed to be a huge man-made underwater site south-west from the Madeira Island. Archeologist of New York State University Dr. Charles Orser said: "The site is one of the most prominent places for the proposed location of Atlantis, as described by Plato. Even if it turns out to be geographical, this definitely deserves a closer look."

The source can be found here: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2255989.ece#ixzz0w4hVsYNd

But the coordinates in Google Maps are here: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=31.770208,-23.988647&spn=3.376099,4.938354&t=h&z=8

Leandro Dias

user:leandrodias —Preceding undated comment added 03:18, 9 August 2010 (UTC).

This has been discussed here before (as at Talk:Atlantis/Archive 5#Google Earth) and the idea that it has anything to do with Atlantis has been pretty thoroughly debunked. The 'man-made underwater site" is just an artifact of the ocean-sounding process. Deor (talk) 03:40, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Hellanicus et al. revisited

The anonymous user who recently edited the article to insert references to Hellanicus and Heraclitus is an acquaintance of mine, and contacted me on Facebook to vent his frustrations. I don't know anything about the classical sources on Atlantis, and all of my classical reference works are in storage, so I can't contribute anything about the scholarship here, but I did review the talk archives, and saw that the discussion here apparently ended with a suggestion that Hellanicus be mentioned in the article, with appropriate caution about whether the "Atlantis" about which he wrote has any connection with Plato's island. I'm not sure why this wasn't done, or if it was done, why it was removed.

Would it be appropriate to have a short note about other ancient uses of the word Ἀτλαντὶς, explaining that it means "of Atlas" and may or may not refer to the Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος (island of Atlas)? Similarly, should there be a note about the connection (whether derivation or merely common etymological ancestry) between the Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος and the Ἀτλαντὶς θάλασσα (ocean of Atlas or Atlantic Ocean)?

I've tried to encourage my acquaintance to raise his concerns here, but he's been reluctant to do so. So, reluctantly, I'm raising them for him. I'm not convinced that his perspective on Atlantis is necessarily correct, but if it is addressed in reliable sources perhaps it should be addressed here as well. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 18:47, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

He also tried to add something about Herodotus writing about Atlanteans from Atlantis, which is not only not correct, he'd need a reliable source to add something like that and I doubt he could find one. But I thought that the suggestion you mentioned above had been carried out, and I've left a note on the talk page of the editor who reverted your friend. Let's wait to see why he reverted it, but at the moment I think some mention should be in the article. Whatever we add, it would need reliable sources, eg for your suggestions, can you find some sources making the connection? Dougweller (talk) 19:55, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the Herodotus connection seems inaccurate (the Herodotus passage my acquaintance pointed me to is clearly talking about a mountain in Libya, not an island). But I thought that the Hellanicus connection seemed plausible, and the sources mentioned in the previous discussion (Castleden and Luce) could be used to support a mention here. (As I said, I don't currently have access to good sources myself.) The wording could be something like this:

The mythographer Hellanicus of Lesbos wrote an earlier work titled Atlantis, of which only a few fragments survive. Hellanicus' work appears to have been a genealogical one, concerning the daughters of Atlas (Ἀτλαντὶς in Greek means "of Atlas"), but some authors have suggested a possible connection with Plato's island.(insert refs to Luce and Castleden)

I don't know enough about the Atlantic/Atlantis connection to suggest wording or sources for that, though. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:53, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

@Dougweller: The reason I reverted the edit was that it changed the article's first sentence from "Atlantis ... is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias" to "Atlantis ... is a legendary island first mentioned by Hellanicus of Lesbos in his work entitled Atlantis", when there is no evidence whatever that Hellanicus mentioned this "legendary island" or that the title or content of his work had any relation to the topic of this article. If someone wants to write a section titled "Etymology" vel sim. in which Hellanicus and Herodotus can be mentioned, making it clear that they (among others) used Ἀτλαντίς and similar words to refer to something other than Plato's island, I guess that I would have no objection. The article has, at times, contained such information, most recently removed here by Akhilleus, I suppose because it was worded confusingly, verging on misleadingly. I basically agree with Akhilleus's comment here that any mention of Hellanicus or Herodotus in this article needs to avoid any suggestion that they "mentioned Atlantis (the island) before Plato". You yourself, Dougweller, seemed to recognize the danger when you wrote here, "The first mention of Atlantis is in Plato. The term was used in other ways by Herodotus and Hellanicus." Deor (talk) 12:51, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the material doesn't belong in the lead, but I'm not sure why Akhilleus removed the material when he did. Based on the sources discussed in the archive, I think it's fair to say that although the Hellanicus "Atlantis" is probably unrelated to Plato's island, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that there is some connection. Careful wording could allow for this possibility without endorsing it. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 08:28, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I see the problem. The first known use of the word is, I'm pretty sure, in Hellanicus. We should include that without implying that it's the first known use of the word to mean a country/island, etc, but we should also include what people like Castleden and Luce have to say about Hellanicus. Dougweller (talk) 10:03, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Since I don't have access to Castleden and Luce, I can't make the change with proper citations myself. Hope you can do so, Doug. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:38, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Homer, Hellanicus, and Herodotus all mention Atlantis and my citation is none other than Sir Isaac Newton himself.

"896 B.C. Ulysses found Calypso on the island of Ogygia .... She was the daughter of Atlas, according to Homer. The ancients at length imagined that this island (which they called Atlantis after the name of Atlas) had been as large as all Europe, Africa and Asia, and sank into the sea." -- Isaac Newton, mathematician, 1727 69.114.48.4 (talk) 05:26, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Newton doesn't mention 'Homer, Hellanicus, and Herodotus' there. He says 'the ancients'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller (talk • contribs) 16:20, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Furthermore, this article is so biased against the reality of Atlantis that it blatantly contradicts itself.

As Alan Cameron states the blatantly false opinion: "It is only in modern times that people have taken the Atlantis story seriously; no one did so in antiquity" and this is stated as though it's fact. Hmmm...I guess Mr. Cameron has never heard of Plato, Crantor, Proclus, and Strabo. Because this same article later states, "Some ancient writers viewed Atlantis as fiction while others believed it was real.[11] The philosopher Crantor, a student of Plato's student Xenocrates, is often cited as an example of a writer who thought the story to be historical fact."69.114.48.4 (talk) 05:32, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Is anyone knowledgeable on the subject going to respond to this, or add the aforementioned Castleden and Luce material? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 14:15, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Oops, forgot about this, sorry. Will do. Dougweller (talk) 16:13, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Doug. That looks good to me. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:02, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Plutarch

According to Plutarch, On Isis And Osiris, it was Pythagoras who met Psenophis of Heliopolis, not Solon as the article states . --Odysses (₪) 23:23, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

orichalcum

In his excellent essay "The View over Atlantis", the late Prof. Willy Ley thought that the whole story of Atlantis was probably based on the invasion of the Middle East by the Sea People. He also thought that Orichalcum was probably fossilised Amber.

It's the circular harbour that intrigues me though. At the time that Plato was writing, well before the rise of Rome, Carthage was a sea going trading nation. The central cothon in Carthage was circular and as a well educated Greek Plato must have known about Carthage. Could this have been what he really had in mind when he wrote the originally fictional story of Atlantis? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.93.199.154 (talk) 15:10, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Santorini and Vesuvius

The History Channel (October 2010) suggested that Vesuvius erupted around 1700BCE and that previous eruptions had blanketed southern Europe in ash

1700BCE is close to some estimates of the eruption of Santorini. If both these volcanoes lie on the same tectonic plate and erupted almost simultaneously due to a major plate movement, could this also be part of the origins of the legend of the fiery and watery end of Atlantis?