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The reason for the lack of Greek history on the topic is because it was a closely guarded Egyptian piece of knowledge, apparently. The story of 'Atlantis' as P

The reason for the lack of Greek history on the topic is because it was a closely guarded Egyptian piece of knowledge, apparently. The story of 'Atlantis' as Plato knew it, came to him from Critias (the younger) through his father, Critias (the elder, also Plato's great grandfather), who got it from his father Dropides who received it directly from Solon, who learned of the story from his time in Egypt, specifically via priests in Sais who supposedly maintained an artifact from this lost civilization. It's clear that Plato's recanting of the story is embellished, he probably made up a great number or all of details to support his ideas and what he was trying to get across, but it's also possible that there are germs of truth in the story, such an ancient civilization being destroyed that Egyptians were aware of. It's not a stretch to imagine that Egyptians had knowledge of ancient civilizations, or that secret knowledge was revealed to Greeks, and it's not stretch that civilizations rose and fell all over the Earth. There isn't much to hang your hat on but I think we can charitably assume there was some real basis to the story that Plato based his writing on. Did ancient Egyptians poses knowledge of the Americas and encounter its population? Or was it a story about a local group of people? Or perhaps it was a general story of a pre-historic civilization and the associated cataclysms that ended it? Who knows, but I don't think you can say with certainty that it existed, or it didn't exist at all.

Sprocklem 3y ago
We also have no surviving Egyptian accounts of Atlantis. It was not uncommon, however, for Greeks to attribute fictional and fabricated information to the Egyptians due to how relatively ancient – and therefore, wise – they were believed to be.
- TheCleric 3y ago
  To be fair, if there were any Egyptian accounts, they could very well have disappeared with the Library of Alexandria. Not that it means that Atlantis WAS historic, just we can't use absence of evidence to infer evidence of absence.
  - ffgjgf1 3y ago
    > Library of Alexandria. Was greek, staffed by Greek speaking scholars and stored works written in Greek. I’m not aware that they had many Ancient Egyptian texts there > just we can't use absence of evidence to infer evidence of absence. Can we apply this to pretty much anything we can’t disprove beyond a shadow of doubt? So pretty much everything including loads of conspiracy theories..
    - TheCleric 3y ago
      > Can we apply this to pretty much anything we can’t disprove beyond a shadow of doubt? So pretty much everything including loads of conspiracy theories.. Honestly, I don't have a good answer for you. I just simply don't know. It's a problem that much smarter people than me have likely already wrestled with. I'm with you in that a blanket application of this can lead us to accepting all kinds of crackpot theories. However there are things where it's literally true that just because we didn't have evidence of something doesn't mean it didn't exist, such as the coelocanth.
technothrasher 3y ago
> I don't think you can say with certainty that it existed, or it didn't exist at all. Certainty is a red hearing. You cannot say anything with absolute certainty. The question is whether there is evidence to support the conjecture. For Atlantis, there isn't much and so there really isn't any rational reason to believe it existed. If more compelling evidence arises, that is the time to believe, but not before.
empath-nirvana 3y ago
The ancient greeks (and romans) often claimed that some piece of writing was sourced from ancient knowledge -- the egyptians and the chaldeans (babylonians) being frequent purported sources -- sometimes they even sourced things to particular people/gods (Hermes, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Zarathustra). Many (probably most) of those attributions were probably false.
- astrange 3y ago
  India and Tibet also do this; if you come up with a new work of philosophy, you have to say it's a newly found ancient work from Buddha you found under a rock or was dictated to you in your dreams from your past life. If you wrote it yourself, nobody would respect it.
  - verelo 3y ago
    > India and Tibet also do this Do as in, even in present day?
    - empath-nirvana 3y ago
      I wouldn't generalize to like, the entire nations of India and Tibet, but it's an _extremely_ common phenomenon even in the US, even today. Just look at how many spurious quotes are ascribed to "great thinkers" (abe lincoln, gandhi, albert einstein). It happens even with relatively contemporary figures when we have voluminous historical evidence available to disprove it -- imagine how often it happened before the internet and printing press. I have this pet theory that the origin of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source was just someone trying to write down all the stuff that anybody anywhere said that Jesus said in one place, so that people would stop making up shit.
    - astrange 3y ago
      Buddhists still do it (called "terma"), but I don't think it's necessary to call your secular philosophy works Buddhism anymore. And of course people in the US often make things up and call it ancient Asian wisdom too, but usually aphorisms rather than whole books.
bazoom42 3y ago
> it was a closely guarded Egyptian piece of knowledge, apparently. Apparently no more closely guarded than they told it to some Greek guy who told it to a famous author who put it a book. Apparently the Egyptians hadn’t learned the secret about secrets: If you want to keep something a secret, you shouldnt tell people about it.
- empath-nirvana 3y ago
  Interestingly, Plato himself was famously guarded about what he told people and he likely had esoteric teachings that he never wrote down or talked about in public (although they can be sort of derived through what aristotle and other contemporaries said about them) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_unwritten_doctrines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_unwritten_doctrines
ffgjgf1 3y ago
> Did ancient Egyptians poses knowledge of the Americas and encounter its population? Why would you ask this question? I we might as well say “Did the aliens build the pyramids? Who knows” if we assume that nobody “knows” anything.. > Who knows, but I don't think you can say with certainty that it existed, or it didn't exist at all. For instance we know that Troy existed
st4lz 3y ago
There is a myth of an ancient city Atlantis that was flooded, we also name the Bronze Age collapse as caused by the invasion of Sea Peoples. I drove this strange parallel lately, maybe the story is not exactly about the water?

Sprocklem 3y ago

We also have no surviving Egyptian accounts of Atlantis. It was not uncommon, however, for Greeks to attribute fictional and fabricated information to the Egyptians due to how relatively ancient – and therefore, wise – they were believed to be.

TheCleric 3y ago
To be fair, if there were any Egyptian accounts, they could very well have disappeared with the Library of Alexandria. Not that it means that Atlantis WAS historic, just we can't use absence of evidence to infer evidence of absence.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  > Library of Alexandria. Was greek, staffed by Greek speaking scholars and stored works written in Greek. I’m not aware that they had many Ancient Egyptian texts there > just we can't use absence of evidence to infer evidence of absence. Can we apply this to pretty much anything we can’t disprove beyond a shadow of doubt? So pretty much everything including loads of conspiracy theories..
  - TheCleric 3y ago
    > Can we apply this to pretty much anything we can’t disprove beyond a shadow of doubt? So pretty much everything including loads of conspiracy theories.. Honestly, I don't have a good answer for you. I just simply don't know. It's a problem that much smarter people than me have likely already wrestled with. I'm with you in that a blanket application of this can lead us to accepting all kinds of crackpot theories. However there are things where it's literally true that just because we didn't have evidence of something doesn't mean it didn't exist, such as the coelocanth.

technothrasher 3y ago

> I don't think you can say with certainty that it existed, or it didn't exist at all. Certainty is a red hearing. You cannot say anything with absolute certainty. The question is whether there is evidence to support the conjecture. For Atlantis, there isn't much and so there really isn't any rational reason to believe it existed. If more compelling evidence arises, that is the time to believe, but not before.

empath-nirvana 3y ago

The ancient greeks (and romans) often claimed that some piece of writing was sourced from ancient knowledge -- the egyptians and the chaldeans (babylonians) being frequent purported sources -- sometimes they even sourced things to particular people/gods (Hermes, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Zarathustra). Many (probably most) of those attributions were probably false.

astrange 3y ago
India and Tibet also do this; if you come up with a new work of philosophy, you have to say it's a newly found ancient work from Buddha you found under a rock or was dictated to you in your dreams from your past life. If you wrote it yourself, nobody would respect it.
- verelo 3y ago
  > India and Tibet also do this Do as in, even in present day?
  - empath-nirvana 3y ago
    I wouldn't generalize to like, the entire nations of India and Tibet, but it's an _extremely_ common phenomenon even in the US, even today. Just look at how many spurious quotes are ascribed to "great thinkers" (abe lincoln, gandhi, albert einstein). It happens even with relatively contemporary figures when we have voluminous historical evidence available to disprove it -- imagine how often it happened before the internet and printing press. I have this pet theory that the origin of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source was just someone trying to write down all the stuff that anybody anywhere said that Jesus said in one place, so that people would stop making up shit.
  - astrange 3y ago
    Buddhists still do it (called "terma"), but I don't think it's necessary to call your secular philosophy works Buddhism anymore. And of course people in the US often make things up and call it ancient Asian wisdom too, but usually aphorisms rather than whole books.

bazoom42 3y ago

> it was a closely guarded Egyptian piece of knowledge, apparently. Apparently no more closely guarded than they told it to some Greek guy who told it to a famous author who put it a book. Apparently the Egyptians hadn’t learned the secret about secrets: If you want to keep something a secret, you shouldnt tell people about it.

empath-nirvana 3y ago
Interestingly, Plato himself was famously guarded about what he told people and he likely had esoteric teachings that he never wrote down or talked about in public (although they can be sort of derived through what aristotle and other contemporaries said about them) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_unwritten_doctrines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_unwritten_doctrines

ffgjgf1 3y ago

> Did ancient Egyptians poses knowledge of the Americas and encounter its population? Why would you ask this question? I we might as well say “Did the aliens build the pyramids? Who knows” if we assume that nobody “knows” anything.. > Who knows, but I don't think you can say with certainty that it existed, or it didn't exist at all. For instance we know that Troy existed

st4lz 3y ago

There is a myth of an ancient city Atlantis that was flooded, we also name the Bronze Age collapse as caused by the invasion of Sea Peoples. I drove this strange parallel lately, maybe the story is not exactly about the water?