9 ms·

Atlantis-style myths that turned out to be true

114 points by Perados 11y ago

rwmj 11y ago
They don't mention Doggerland, a huge piece of land between the UK and Europe that sank into the sea some 8000 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
- arethuza 11y ago
  Are there myths of a land where the North Sea is now?
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    I think that is considered fact.
    - arethuza 11y ago
      What I meant is that are there any records of any myths in the countries round the North Sea of lost lands that might actually turn out to have some basis in geological fact. NB I'm in Scotland and fascinated by ancient history and geology (which are almost the same thing....).
desireco42 11y ago
I guess they arenot myths then ?! :)
- mordocai 11y ago
  Per definition of myth, something doesn't have to be false to be a myth. Since there are multiple definitions, depends on which you use: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/myth http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/myth
  - dalke 11y ago
    Further, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth distinguishes between: > Use of [myth] by scholars implies neither the truth nor the falseness of the narrative. and > In popular use, a myth can also be a collectively held belief that has no basis in fact according to the speaker. This usage, which is often pejorative,[5] arose from labeling the religious myths and beliefs of other cultures as being incorrect, but it has spread to cover non-religious beliefs as well.
    - desireco42 11y ago
      Thank you for explaining. I was going for popular use, but you pointed out correctly that it might not be always so. Both of you.
pgtruesdell 11y ago
Randall Carlson and Graham Hancock have been on the Joe Rogan Experience a few times over the years, together and separately, and have explained their well documented theory about Atlantis. The short of it would be, before the Younger Dryas period when the massive ice sheets over North America melted, the ocean levels were approximately 300 ft lower than they are today. When you look at the mid-atlantic ridge, the lower sea levels would expose an area now called the Azores Plateau. This would be a large habitable island off the coast of Europe. This becomes especially interesting when you take into account the timeline of Plato's account which exactly lines up with the beginning of the Younger Dryas meltdown. I apologize if my interpretation of their discussions is inaccurate in any way, I am now just digging into this theory and it's truly fascinating. The most recent episode with both Randall and Graham was especially intriguing, since they both brought their unique studies together into a more unified theory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDejwCGdUV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDejwCGdUV8
- cnp 11y ago
  I've been following Hancock for quite a while and every year the push is a little stronger in support for his arguments. Göbekli Tepe, in Turkey, is now forcing it forward. Its fantastic.
  - api 11y ago
    Years ago there was a thread on the old less-moderated /r/science about "Are there any of today's 'kooks' that you think might eventually be vindicated?" Hancock was one of the most popular answers, along with the two 'water weathering on the Sphinx' folks (forget their names). Some of Hancock's ideas are a little wacky, but the core idea that civilization is older than we think probably has legs. Unfortunately the modern scientific establishment with its roots in the monastic system (academia as we know it is a direct evolution of the monastery and medieval guild systems) still persecutees heretics and tends to dismiss all works from those who espouse heresy. Having even a few "out there" ideas trashes a person's entire corpus and leads to a kind of excommunication. The general trend I've noticed has been this: the more we learn about our history, the further back the dates go. I've seen this for both hominid evolution and civilization. That and the standard narrative is just weird. We know from the fossil record that humans have had large craniums and by extension complex modern brains for at least hundreds of thousands of years. What the heck were we doing for all that time? Saying civilization is only ~10k years old is like saying "birds have had wings for millions of years but they only recently started flying." Huh? Really? This to me strains credulity more than the idea of lost civilizations and forgotten epochs. The latter seems like a straightforward possibility, especially if the end of the ice age involved catastrophic climate shifts that would have ruined agriculture, drowned coastal cities (we like to build on coasts), and dispersed people everywhere. Even among recent ancient civilizations, only those that built massive stone megaliths are really remembered. We know little about native Americans that lived here only a few hundred years ago. There could have been massive and complex antediluvian civilizations and if they didn't happen to be in the habit of stacking up a lot of big rocks they'd have left almost nothing of themselves. It's funny to me how much resistance this idea gets. I don't find it that hard to believe at all. I wonder if it conflicts with some residual "young-Earth creationism," even among some nominally secular folks. Even though most scientists no longer believe the Earth to be young, there still might be a kind of implicit bias against the idea that history might go back astronomically far into the past and that there might be forgotten epochs of history. None of that stuff is even hinted at in the Bible. I mean it talks about a big flood -- which if the ice age ended catastrophically would be somewhat accurate -- but has little if any detail about what came before.
ajarmst 11y ago
For some values of "true".
legulere 11y ago
Kind of reminds me of Pytheas that was not believed what he told about lands where the sea freezes and other stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pytheas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pytheas

114 points by Perados 11y ago

rwmj 11y ago

They don't mention Doggerland, a huge piece of land between the UK and Europe that sank into the sea some 8000 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

arethuza 11y ago
Are there myths of a land where the North Sea is now?
- reitanqild 11y ago
  I think that is considered fact.
  - arethuza 11y ago
    What I meant is that are there any records of any myths in the countries round the North Sea of lost lands that might actually turn out to have some basis in geological fact. NB I'm in Scotland and fascinated by ancient history and geology (which are almost the same thing....).

desireco42 11y ago

I guess they arenot myths then ?! :)

mordocai 11y ago
Per definition of myth, something doesn't have to be false to be a myth. Since there are multiple definitions, depends on which you use: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/myth http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/myth
- dalke 11y ago
  Further, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth distinguishes between: > Use of [myth] by scholars implies neither the truth nor the falseness of the narrative. and > In popular use, a myth can also be a collectively held belief that has no basis in fact according to the speaker. This usage, which is often pejorative,[5] arose from labeling the religious myths and beliefs of other cultures as being incorrect, but it has spread to cover non-religious beliefs as well.
  - desireco42 11y ago
    Thank you for explaining. I was going for popular use, but you pointed out correctly that it might not be always so. Both of you.

pgtruesdell 11y ago

Randall Carlson and Graham Hancock have been on the Joe Rogan Experience a few times over the years, together and separately, and have explained their well documented theory about Atlantis. The short of it would be, before the Younger Dryas period when the massive ice sheets over North America melted, the ocean levels were approximately 300 ft lower than they are today. When you look at the mid-atlantic ridge, the lower sea levels would expose an area now called the Azores Plateau. This would be a large habitable island off the coast of Europe. This becomes especially interesting when you take into account the timeline of Plato's account which exactly lines up with the beginning of the Younger Dryas meltdown. I apologize if my interpretation of their discussions is inaccurate in any way, I am now just digging into this theory and it's truly fascinating. The most recent episode with both Randall and Graham was especially intriguing, since they both brought their unique studies together into a more unified theory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDejwCGdUV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDejwCGdUV8

cnp 11y ago
I've been following Hancock for quite a while and every year the push is a little stronger in support for his arguments. Göbekli Tepe, in Turkey, is now forcing it forward. Its fantastic.
- api 11y ago
  Years ago there was a thread on the old less-moderated /r/science about "Are there any of today's 'kooks' that you think might eventually be vindicated?" Hancock was one of the most popular answers, along with the two 'water weathering on the Sphinx' folks (forget their names). Some of Hancock's ideas are a little wacky, but the core idea that civilization is older than we think probably has legs. Unfortunately the modern scientific establishment with its roots in the monastic system (academia as we know it is a direct evolution of the monastery and medieval guild systems) still persecutees heretics and tends to dismiss all works from those who espouse heresy. Having even a few "out there" ideas trashes a person's entire corpus and leads to a kind of excommunication. The general trend I've noticed has been this: the more we learn about our history, the further back the dates go. I've seen this for both hominid evolution and civilization. That and the standard narrative is just weird. We know from the fossil record that humans have had large craniums and by extension complex modern brains for at least hundreds of thousands of years. What the heck were we doing for all that time? Saying civilization is only ~10k years old is like saying "birds have had wings for millions of years but they only recently started flying." Huh? Really? This to me strains credulity more than the idea of lost civilizations and forgotten epochs. The latter seems like a straightforward possibility, especially if the end of the ice age involved catastrophic climate shifts that would have ruined agriculture, drowned coastal cities (we like to build on coasts), and dispersed people everywhere. Even among recent ancient civilizations, only those that built massive stone megaliths are really remembered. We know little about native Americans that lived here only a few hundred years ago. There could have been massive and complex antediluvian civilizations and if they didn't happen to be in the habit of stacking up a lot of big rocks they'd have left almost nothing of themselves. It's funny to me how much resistance this idea gets. I don't find it that hard to believe at all. I wonder if it conflicts with some residual "young-Earth creationism," even among some nominally secular folks. Even though most scientists no longer believe the Earth to be young, there still might be a kind of implicit bias against the idea that history might go back astronomically far into the past and that there might be forgotten epochs of history. None of that stuff is even hinted at in the Bible. I mean it talks about a big flood -- which if the ice age ended catastrophically would be somewhat accurate -- but has little if any detail about what came before.

ajarmst 11y ago

For some values of "true".

legulere 11y ago

Kind of reminds me of Pytheas that was not believed what he told about lands where the sea freezes and other stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pytheas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pytheas