9 ms·

The Truth about Atlantis (2019)

87 points by gostsamo 2y ago

Beijinger 2y ago
"If you are like most Americans, chances are, you probably believe that Atlantis or another civilization like it once existed. A survey conducted by Chapman University in October 2014 found that, at that time, roughly 63% of people in the United States agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “ancient, advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, once existed.” I am pretty sure that Atlantis existed in one way or another. We found that the the Great Flood in the book of Genesis existed, we found that Troy existed, we know that The Song of the Nibelungs / Siegfried existed, why should Atlantis not have a real history in it? And sometimes oral history might be older than we think: Seven Sisters, which corresponds to the Pleiades star cluster. https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronomers-say-global-myths-about-seven-sisters-stars-may-reach-back-100-000-years-151568 https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronom...
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  > why should Atlantis not have a real history in it Plato never intended to describe a real city. Atlantis is a metaphor for hubris and the moral decay that follows, which, in my opinion, is quite apparent when you read his descriptions of the city. The details he describes don't make sense as a real city.
  - Beijinger 2y ago
    Well, does it make sense to slay a dragon and take a bath in his blood? It is a metaphor but it has a real basis.
    - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
      I'm not sure if I follow. Are you implying that dragons are real?
      - Beijinger 2y ago
        It depends. In most Nibelungen texts, he doesn’t encounter a dragon, but rather a long lindworm with shiny armor. In these accounts, someone slays the lindworm, but not through direct combat. Instead, he uses an invisibility cloak, takes the creature's treasure, and bathes in its blood. Later, he meets his end due to treachery. Clearly, this is a work of fantasy. But what about the Roman historian's lament regarding the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest? Over 150 years later, and they’re still singing his tale... the song of Hermann the German. Unfortunately, that song hasn't survived. However, the Nibelungen texts remain, where Siegfried (Hermann) defeats a long worm with shiny armor (symbolizing the Roman legions), not through open battle but by ambush (the cloak of invisibility), seizing their treasure (the dragon’s hoard), and ritually killing their leaders (bathing in blood). And, just like Siegfried, he is ultimately undone by treachery. The parallels are so striking that it seems highly unlikely to be a mere coincidence, especially since Roman writers noted that "his song" endured for an exceptionally long time. The Nibelungen texts IS THIS SONG! I say the Nibelungen Tale is based on facts. And the same may be the case with Atlantis.
        neaden 2y ago
        What is the basis for thinking that it's not just a work of fantasy and has to be a retelling of real events? We have plenty of examples of people making up fantasy stories, why add this extra step that has no evidence for it?
        Beijinger 2y ago
        How many coincidences? There are many (slightly different) versions of the text were discovered over a vast area? Germany, Norway etc. It must have been an extremely important "fairy tale". All this should raise suspicion.
        neaden 2y ago
        I mean, none of the things you've really said feel like coincidences to me since you're basically saying the dragon is a metaphor. And there are plenty of other stories that are found over a large area and have a lot of different versions since that's what happens with oral stories. On the other hand we know people today make up fantasy stories all the time, so thinking that people in the past must have been just what, encoding their history in elaborate metaphor?
    - nartho 2y ago
      Achilles was bathed by his mom in the river Styx, not in the blood of a dragon. I still don't follow your point though.
      - Beijinger 2y ago
        [flagged]
        nartho 2y ago
        This is according to the Achilleid by Publius Statius. if you have different material that you think better establish Achilles' history than the Achilleid please provide it instead of resorting to name calling.
        Beijinger 2y ago
        "Achilles was bathed by his mom in the river Styx, not in the blood of a dragon." Right. The Problem is, that I never claimed this. And based on the Thread, every half educated person would have realized that this is a quote regarding the Nibelungen tale that was mentioned before.
        nartho 2y ago
        You're right, I was ignorant about the Nibelungen and assumed it was about Achilles. If you had just provided the information to me instead of resorting to name calling (twice now) without adding anything to the conversation (comments on HN are supposed to add something to the conversation, I imagine you know that), I would have learned something new, we both would have wasted less time by arguing back and forth, and I would have thought "Hey what a nice and educated guy this Beijinger is" instead of "I guess he is one of those people who have to put other people down in order to feel better about themselves". But you do you.
        Beijinger 2y ago
        "It's useless to try to explain a thought to someone for whom a hint is not enough." — Nicolás Gómez Dávila
- nrclark 2y ago
  > We found that the the Great Flood in the book of Genesis existed Floods are certainly a thing that happens in nature - especially to the flood plains that surrounded large rivers like the Euphrates before dams were a thing. Are you referring to a specific event? Or just floods in general?
  - Beijinger 2y ago
    The Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis posits that around 7,500 years ago, the Mediterranean Sea breached the Bosporus Strait, causing a massive influx of water into the Black Sea. This event transformed the Black Sea from a freshwater lake into a saltwater sea, resulting in a dramatic rise in water levels. This rapid flooding would have submerged large areas of land, displacing human settlements along the coastline. The catastrophic nature of this event is believed to have been preserved in the oral traditions of ancient cultures, leading to the creation of flood myths, such as those in the Bible and the Mesopotamian epics like the Epic of Gilgamesh. Archaeological evidence, including submerged prehistoric settlements and shifts in the Black Sea's shoreline, supports the idea of this sudden and profound flooding event. The Black Sea Deluge is considered a key historical event that likely influenced the development of various ancient flood myths across the Near East and beyond.
    - neaden 2y ago
      But that's not the flood in Genesis. Not even close to it, for instance in Genesis the land is flooded and then the waters recede and the land comes back, whereas the Black Sea is still a sea. You're just pointing at a flood and saying it must be the origin of a story of a flood, but there's no basis for it.
      - Beijinger 2y ago
        And where did Noah Land after the flood? Right. Mount Ararat
        neaden 2y ago
- calebio 2y ago
  > We found that the the Great Flood in the book of Genesis existed Can you elaborate what you mean by the "Great Flood"? There's certainly evidence for regional megafloods, but I'm not aware of any professional geologic body that recognizes what most people mean when they say "Great Flood", i.e. a single planet-wide flood around that time period.
  - Beijinger 2y ago
    The Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis posits that around 7,500 years ago, the Mediterranean Sea breached the Bosporus Strait, causing a massive influx of water into the Black Sea. This event transformed the Black Sea from a freshwater lake into a saltwater sea, resulting in a dramatic rise in water levels. This rapid flooding would have submerged large areas of land, displacing human settlements along the coastline. The catastrophic nature of this event is believed to have been preserved in the oral traditions of ancient cultures, leading to the creation of flood myths, such as those in the Bible and the Mesopotamian epics like the Epic of Gilgamesh. Archaeological evidence, including submerged prehistoric settlements and shifts in the Black Sea's shoreline, supports the idea of this sudden and profound flooding event. The Black Sea Deluge is considered a key historical event that likely influenced the development of various ancient flood myths across the Near East and beyond.
  - fads_go 2y ago
    "most people mean" implies most people since the King James version was published. Not at all clear that's what author meant; the concept of the world as we now know it didn't exist then. So very reasonable to conclude that the Great Flood in Genesis was meant to describe a regional megaflood, which innundated the "whole world" meaning all of Mesopotamian civilization. And there is archeological evidence of ancient cities totally buried in mud, i.e. as you say regional megafloods.
    - neaden 2y ago
      I don't think that's true at all. The narrative is very clear that all humans and land animals that are not on the ark die, and in the Talmud I'm not aware of any debate that all humans died.
- bediger4000 2y ago
  > We found that the the Great Flood in the book of Genesis existed Sure, in Babylonian cuneiform texts. Other than that, no. A worldwide flood absolutely did not happen. Why should Atlantis not have existed? The Atlantic sea floor is not crust, totally different rock chemistry.
- neaden 2y ago
  What do you mean we found out that Troy existed? We always knew it existed, it continued to exist as a city until about around 1300 AD, it's present in the Homeric stories along with Gods, but so are a bunch of other cities and like those cities we have other attestations for Troy like coins from there, inscriptions, etc. There was some debate about how old the city was and if it had moved a few miles over the centuries (it didn't), but no serious scholar ever suggested Troy was not real.
InsideOutSanta 2y ago
>If you are like most Americans, chances are, you probably believe that Atlantis or another civilization like it once existed. A survey conducted by Chapman University in October 2014 found that, at that time, roughly 63% of people in the United States agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “ancient, advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, once existed.” This seems like a misleading question. Based on what we know about the Maya civilization, the Inca Empire, Ancient China, or Ancient Egypt, I would probably agree that ancient, advanced civilizations roughly similar to how we imagine Atlantis once existed, even though I know that Atlantis is a metaphor and not a real city. These examples are not exactly like the Atlantis described by Plato, but they're not that far off. They're all wealthy, advanced civilizations with powerful* militaries and advanced architecture, engineering, and agricultural practices. * Powerful in their local and temporal context.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- kleiba 2y ago
  Agreed. The semantics of "civilization such as Atlantis once existed" are vastly different from that of "Atlantis once existed". There's definitely a way to read that sentence and think of civilizations like the Mayan, etc.
  - cvoss 2y ago
    Especially because, I suspect, in a lot of people's minds, the concept of Atlantis much more closely resembles what the author enumerates as the possible (non-fictitious) sources of inspiration for Plato. That is, I certainly don't picture Atlantis in the way that Plato describes it exactly. So in my mind, I agree with the author's assement of Plato's story and conclude that, yes, a place such as that one did exist. The author concedes as much, too, and doesn't realize it.
- dboreham 2y ago
  The question implies knowledge of an "Atlantis Marvel Universe", which I'm guessing 90% of people would have no clue about.
EncomLab 2y ago
I thought everyone knew that Atlantis is just another name for the Richat Structure.
- burnte 2y ago
  It's not just another name for that, though. That's in a very, very wrong location to be the source of Atlantis myths. If Atlantis had a real basis, which it doesn't, it would probably be the pre-glacial-retreat land off the coast of England like Doggerland or off the west coast of Ireland.
  - FloorEgg 2y ago
    The relevant (unvalidated) theory is that Atlantis was an empire that covered north western Africa (Morocco, sharah, etc) - at least, and which had a port city around where Tangier is today, and a capital city at the richat structure (pre-younger dryas). The theory comes with several hypotheses which have not been validated or invalidated yet. to invalidate the theory would require significant (strategically chosen) archaeological surveys of the Sahara and the richat structure. The theory is falsifiable, and has not been falsified yet. That doesn't make the theory of Atlantis true, it just makes it undetermined.
    - jeltz 2y ago
      I would say Atlantis is like a slightly more falsifiable and slightly more plaudible version of Russell's Teapot. We have zero reason to think Atlantis existed and zero indications of it. Is it possible that there was an advanced civilization that somehow left virtually zero evidence? Yes, but why? There are plenty of much less advanced civilizations which left plenty of trace and while we cannot know exactly how many civilizations left no trace an advanced civilization tends to leave a lot of traces. And why would Plato know of it?
      - FloorEgg 2y ago
        "I would say Atlantis is like a slightly more falsifiable and slightly more plaudible version of Russell's Teapot." Falsifying a vague hand-wavy theory of Atlantis, I agree with you. But the specific theory that Richat structure was the home of a large city 13,000 years ago that was destroyed in a flood? I wholeheartedly disagree. It's falsifiable and probably could be done with less than 1/100th the archeological investment that's been made into Egypt. "Is it possible that there was an advanced civilization that somehow left virtually zero evidence? Yes, but why?" Several cataclysmic meteorite strikes that ended the ice age, triggered younger dryas, caused biblical flooding, rapid environmental change, etc. I don't think the geological evidence of this is being refuted, just the consequences of it on our understanding of human civilizational history.
FloorEgg 2y ago
I could take this article more seriously if it were to credibly refute the possibility that the capital of Atlantis was the richat structure, and that the empire of Atlantis covered the saharah, with a port of entry just outside the straight of Gibraltar. I think its accepted that ~13,000 years ago the Sahara was lush forests and grasslands, and around that time there was a significant meteor strike (or several) that hit North America and possibly the Atlantic Ocean. Of course it would be fun to learn that Atlantis was real, so many people will be biased to want to believe it. It might not be true, but to argue it's conclusive either way I think is premature. The article states several times things like "all available evidence", which is both not true, (the article omits available evidence) and also doesn't acknowledge how little evidence is available.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  The Richat Structure is the result of natural geological processes. Other than having concentric circles, it doesn't match Plato's description of Atlantis, and there is no evidence that any large city was ever there.
  - FloorEgg 2y ago
    "The Richat Structure is the result of natural geological processes." - this is irrelevant "Other than having concentric circles, it doesn't match Plato's description of Atlantis" - in what way? Be specific. "and there is no evidence that any large city was ever there." - lol, there has never been a thorough archeological survey, and the surveys that have been done have turned up evidence that points to noteworthy human activity. What about the tens of thousands of axe heads found all concentrated in one spot? Assuming that the city was destroyed in a significant flood, we need to assume the evidence will be hard to find, and therefore we have to look hard for it before we can say it's not there.
    - saturn_vk 2y ago
begueradj 2y ago
That does not make the existence of Atlantis a mere fiction. With the end of the Ice Age and its consequences, plenty of civilizations may have disappeared in deep waters. The Sumerians themselves claimed they received their knowledge from a man who visited them by the sea (fish-man like creature) on the aftermath of the great flood which may have buried plenty of Atlantis-like civilizations which could be the missing links to understand how, for instance, the Egyptians built the pyramids.
- ferguess_k 2y ago
  And in Asia there was the so-called "Three-sea plains". 三海平原
- seanw444 2y ago
  The ice age and its consequences have been a disaster for ancient civilizational races.
- feoren 2y ago
  What exactly is "missing" in understanding how the Egyptians built the pyramids? Why is it so hard to understand how a population of millions with a ton of unused labor during flood season built a bunch of scaffolding and moved a bunch of rocks around?
  - gigatree 2y ago
    You must not be familiar with its architecture to be so dismissive. That’s the hn equivalent of calling Amazon “just a website”
    - jeltz 2y ago
      So are you saying aliens or some unknown advanced civilization built Amazon? No, just like the Pyramids it was built by huge number of ordinary humans with ordinary technology.
    - jamiek88 2y ago
      Actually the opposite is true. YOU must be unfamiliar with the architecture and large projects in general if you Think there’s more to it than well understood ancient technology. The idea that it’s a mystery how the ancients built large projects like this and Easter island is simply modern chauvinism.
sireat 2y ago
I highly recommend BBC's In our time Podcast on Plato's Atlantis: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001c6t3 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001c6t3 The conclusion is similar to OP: Plato had way too much fun making up the story. Originally it was meant to be a critique of democracy as practiced by the seafaring populace of Athens. There is also nice reading list provided there.
- marginalia_nu 2y ago
  When I read the dialogue, I never got the feeling it was intended as a historical account, heck the same goes for the socratic dialogues in general. They're mostly a vehicle for philosophical discussion. Like are we also giving Plato's account of the afterlife the same credibility? He's also pulling in characters from a fairly large timespan, some of which (e.g. Parmenides) are unlikely to have unlikely to have overlapped with Socrates' active years.
  - b112 2y ago
    What bothers me is that we presume too much about idiomatic usage from such ancient texts. We currently have a very static language compared to language drift prior to the 20th, which didn't have endless TV, radio, and other sources of repeated language examples which has ossified usage and drift. The same goes for the massive amounts of written text produced in newspapers, magazines, and now the internet. Prior to these times, most of the world was illiterate, and accent, and usage drifted significantly. Yet even today, with all this consistency in usage, we get words shifting usage and idioms appearing. Then we turn around and presume to understand word usage with great certainty from thousands of years ago. Sure, OK, some things can be derived. But in my opinion, to use an example, "you know nothing John Snow" is understood now, wasn't 50 years ago, won't be 50 years from now.
- ericmcer 2y ago
  We do seem to imbue the greek & roman writers with a more serious tone then they might have had. I was reading some of Ovid's Metamorphosis while waiting for someone else. I turned to a random page and it was an action packed description of Achilles riding his chariot while spears deflect off him and he effortlessly impales opponents. It almost resembled an anime style power fantasy or something. I wonder if Achilles was viewed more like Wolverine or Superman and people didn't really believe that there were immortal warriors blessed by the gods mowing down enemies in battle.
KingLancelot 2y ago
[dead]
codr7 2y ago
[flagged]
cryptonector 2y ago
> The line of transmission is so long and convoluted that there are literally more than a half dozen different people who could have plausibly made the story up. Ditto for The Iliad and The Odysee, yet Troy existed. That's the thing about oral traditions. They are like a telephone game where the story changes a bit with each retelling, so they are not trustworthy, but societies that engaged in epic storytelling did try to keep true to them word-for-word, and that's why some of them are epic poems: to help memorize them. So it's entirely possible that one of the people involved in this story just made it up, but it's also as likely that it was a story they passed down as well as they could, and possibly actually true. This is not strong evidence for Atlantis being made up. Neither is the fact that Plato made up things like the allegory of the cave: we generally know when he's doing that. The fact is that we can't find any actual evidence of Atlantis anywhere other than in tenuous ancient writings. A lot like it was for Troy. But since Atlantis supposedly goes back much longer, we might never find any of it, and so it might as well be made up, and that is a safe conclusion. Those who say it existed nowadays tend to believe that it was in the "eye of the Sahara", in present day Mauritius, and was destroyed in a flood related to an impact event on the North American ice sheet around 11,900 years ago that caused the Younger-Dryas. That idea has the unfortunate / convenient feature that there is literally nothing there and nothing will ever be found there given the scale of the supposed cataclysm. There are huge debris fields off the coast of Western Africa where one could -presumably- find bits of Atlantis, though good luck finding anything obviously man-made in those debris fields, let alone anything that would be highly suggestive of Atlantis. If that theory is true then we'll never prove that Atlantis existed by finding it.
- neaden 2y ago
  "Ditto for The Iliad and The Odysee, yet Troy existed." - As I said in a different comment this comparison makes no sense. Troy was continuously inhabited up until around 1300, we have artifacts like coins from there and multiple attestations from contemporary sources. The only thing that was debated was if the ancient city was underneath the more contemporary one or a few miles away. That is nothing like Atlantis.
  - cryptonector 2y ago
mcswell 2y ago
Decades ago, I read a book (written, I think, around 1890) about Atlantis. 99% of the evidence it gave was, of course, bogus. But the one piece that seemed reasonable was an account of depth soundings by the SS Great Eastern when it laid the second cable across the Atlantic in 1866. I haven't seen a recent account of those soundings, but the chart in the book did show the Atlantic to be shallower in the middle--which the author took to be the sunken continent of Atlantis. Of course, now we know that the shallower depths there are the Mid-Atlantic ridge, which was never above water (except up at Iceland).
- richardfontana 2y ago
  Perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis:_The_Antediluvian_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis:_The_Antediluvian_Wor... (1882) by Ignatius Donnelly.
  - mcswell 2y ago
    I think so.
rfwhyte 2y ago
Damn some of the comments here are really depressing. I'd formerly thought HN was one of the last bastions of critical thought on internet, but I guess I was wrong judging by some of these comments. Way too much regurgitation of long-since debunked pseudo-scientific nonsense. Atlantis was never real and anyone who thinks it was is a moron. If there were truly some sort of globe-spanning advanced civilization existing ~11KYA we'd have found at least one single piece of their material culture by now, but we haven't. We have however found innumerable pieces of archaeological evidence of contemporary hunter-gatherer neolithic societies in and around all of the places Atlantis was supposed to have "Conquered" and yet not once have we found a single Atlantean trade good, pot sherd, metal working, etc. Atlantis supposedly had a bronze-age or greater level of technology and a globe-spanning empire, and we literally haven't found a single shred of physical evidence to support its existence, despite having literal mountains of physical evidence for pretty much every other major empire that's existed throughout history. Nor have we found any genetic evidence in people or crops that there was any kind of "Empire" connecting parts of Europe or Africa as we find time and time again with real empires that actually existed in prehistory. Real empires have people and crops that move around within the empire and leave genetic evidence of the mixing of populations and breeding of crops, yet we find nothing, not even the faintest echo of Atlantis. Again, we have mountains of hard physical evidence that shows how empires like the Summerians in the fertile crescent or the Norte Chico in meso-america spread through genetic evidence in current local populations and crops, yet we find absolutely no genetic evidence to support the existence of Atlantis. Let alone the fact the bloody story of Atlantis references how the Atlanteans went to war with Athens some 9000 years before the Athenian city-state was even founded. Just utter, complete brain-dead nonsense. Honestly, belief in Atlantis has become something a litmus-test for critical thinking and research ability these days, as anyone that believes in Atlantis despite the overwhelming volume of evidence that firmly proves it never existed is basically saying "I'm too lazy to do my own research (Based on peer-reviewed primary sources) and / or too stupid to understand actual science." Also f*ck Graham Hancock (And Joe Rogan via extension). MFer is the worst kind of charlatan and is broadly responsible for how many Americans believe in Atlantis.
- krapp 2y ago
  >I'd formerly thought HN was one of the last bastions of critical thought on internet, but I guess I was wrong judging by some of these comments. Stay away from any thread about physics, astronomy or anywhere vaccines are mentioned if you value your mental health.
nautikos1 2y ago
[flagged]
ldjkfkdsjnv 2y ago
The big thing with Plato is his dates of a great flood match with the end of the younger dryas. The dates check out.
m463 2y ago
(wow, is this the MOST clickbait title I've seen?)
rigi_jazaru 2y ago
[dead]
- morbicer 1y ago
  Beware, the linked Creative Society is a front for AllatRa sect, very dangerous Russian backed disinformation group that's infiltrating Central Europe. It goes so far that district attorney from Slovakia, who is a member of the sect is going after Czech journalists who uncover them. They have tool to generate videos on any esoteric/conspiracy topic with AI assistance. Sadly I can't link much English sources. - https://vsquare.org/disinformation-whitewashing-russia-allatra-creative-society https://vsquare.org/disinformation-whitewashing-russia-allat... - https://allatra.tv/en https://allatra.tv/en - https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-61166339 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-61166339 - https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllatRa https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllatRa

87 points by gostsamo 2y ago

"If you are like most Americans, chances are, you probably believe that Atlantis or another civilization like it once existed. A survey conducted by Chapman University in October 2014 found that, at that time, roughly 63% of people in the United States agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “ancient, advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, once existed.” I am pretty sure that Atlantis existed in one way or another. We found that the the Great Flood in the book of Genesis existed, we found that Troy existed, we know that The Song of the Nibelungs / Siegfried existed, why should Atlantis not have a real history in it? And sometimes oral history might be older than we think: Seven Sisters, which corresponds to the Pleiades star cluster. https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronomers-say-global-myths-about-seven-sisters-stars-may-reach-back-100-000-years-151568 https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronom...

InsideOutSanta 2y ago
> why should Atlantis not have a real history in it Plato never intended to describe a real city. Atlantis is a metaphor for hubris and the moral decay that follows, which, in my opinion, is quite apparent when you read his descriptions of the city. The details he describes don't make sense as a real city.
- Beijinger 2y ago
  Well, does it make sense to slay a dragon and take a bath in his blood? It is a metaphor but it has a real basis.
  - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    I'm not sure if I follow. Are you implying that dragons are real?
    - Beijinger 2y ago
      It depends. In most Nibelungen texts, he doesn’t encounter a dragon, but rather a long lindworm with shiny armor. In these accounts, someone slays the lindworm, but not through direct combat. Instead, he uses an invisibility cloak, takes the creature's treasure, and bathes in its blood. Later, he meets his end due to treachery. Clearly, this is a work of fantasy. But what about the Roman historian's lament regarding the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest? Over 150 years later, and they’re still singing his tale... the song of Hermann the German. Unfortunately, that song hasn't survived. However, the Nibelungen texts remain, where Siegfried (Hermann) defeats a long worm with shiny armor (symbolizing the Roman legions), not through open battle but by ambush (the cloak of invisibility), seizing their treasure (the dragon’s hoard), and ritually killing their leaders (bathing in blood). And, just like Siegfried, he is ultimately undone by treachery. The parallels are so striking that it seems highly unlikely to be a mere coincidence, especially since Roman writers noted that "his song" endured for an exceptionally long time. The Nibelungen texts IS THIS SONG! I say the Nibelungen Tale is based on facts. And the same may be the case with Atlantis.
      - neaden 2y ago
        What is the basis for thinking that it's not just a work of fantasy and has to be a retelling of real events? We have plenty of examples of people making up fantasy stories, why add this extra step that has no evidence for it?
        Beijinger 2y ago
        How many coincidences? There are many (slightly different) versions of the text were discovered over a vast area? Germany, Norway etc. It must have been an extremely important "fairy tale". All this should raise suspicion.
        neaden 2y ago
        I mean, none of the things you've really said feel like coincidences to me since you're basically saying the dragon is a metaphor. And there are plenty of other stories that are found over a large area and have a lot of different versions since that's what happens with oral stories. On the other hand we know people today make up fantasy stories all the time, so thinking that people in the past must have been just what, encoding their history in elaborate metaphor?
  - nartho 2y ago
    Achilles was bathed by his mom in the river Styx, not in the blood of a dragon. I still don't follow your point though.
    - Beijinger 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - nartho 2y ago
        This is according to the Achilleid by Publius Statius. if you have different material that you think better establish Achilles' history than the Achilleid please provide it instead of resorting to name calling.
        Beijinger 2y ago
        "Achilles was bathed by his mom in the river Styx, not in the blood of a dragon." Right. The Problem is, that I never claimed this. And based on the Thread, every half educated person would have realized that this is a quote regarding the Nibelungen tale that was mentioned before.
        nartho 2y ago
        You're right, I was ignorant about the Nibelungen and assumed it was about Achilles. If you had just provided the information to me instead of resorting to name calling (twice now) without adding anything to the conversation (comments on HN are supposed to add something to the conversation, I imagine you know that), I would have learned something new, we both would have wasted less time by arguing back and forth, and I would have thought "Hey what a nice and educated guy this Beijinger is" instead of "I guess he is one of those people who have to put other people down in order to feel better about themselves". But you do you.
        Beijinger 2y ago
        "It's useless to try to explain a thought to someone for whom a hint is not enough." — Nicolás Gómez Dávila
nrclark 2y ago
> We found that the the Great Flood in the book of Genesis existed Floods are certainly a thing that happens in nature - especially to the flood plains that surrounded large rivers like the Euphrates before dams were a thing. Are you referring to a specific event? Or just floods in general?
- Beijinger 2y ago
  The Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis posits that around 7,500 years ago, the Mediterranean Sea breached the Bosporus Strait, causing a massive influx of water into the Black Sea. This event transformed the Black Sea from a freshwater lake into a saltwater sea, resulting in a dramatic rise in water levels. This rapid flooding would have submerged large areas of land, displacing human settlements along the coastline. The catastrophic nature of this event is believed to have been preserved in the oral traditions of ancient cultures, leading to the creation of flood myths, such as those in the Bible and the Mesopotamian epics like the Epic of Gilgamesh. Archaeological evidence, including submerged prehistoric settlements and shifts in the Black Sea's shoreline, supports the idea of this sudden and profound flooding event. The Black Sea Deluge is considered a key historical event that likely influenced the development of various ancient flood myths across the Near East and beyond.
  - neaden 2y ago
    But that's not the flood in Genesis. Not even close to it, for instance in Genesis the land is flooded and then the waters recede and the land comes back, whereas the Black Sea is still a sea. You're just pointing at a flood and saying it must be the origin of a story of a flood, but there's no basis for it.
    - Beijinger 2y ago
      And where did Noah Land after the flood? Right. Mount Ararat
      - neaden 2y ago
calebio 2y ago
> We found that the the Great Flood in the book of Genesis existed Can you elaborate what you mean by the "Great Flood"? There's certainly evidence for regional megafloods, but I'm not aware of any professional geologic body that recognizes what most people mean when they say "Great Flood", i.e. a single planet-wide flood around that time period.
- Beijinger 2y ago
  The Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis posits that around 7,500 years ago, the Mediterranean Sea breached the Bosporus Strait, causing a massive influx of water into the Black Sea. This event transformed the Black Sea from a freshwater lake into a saltwater sea, resulting in a dramatic rise in water levels. This rapid flooding would have submerged large areas of land, displacing human settlements along the coastline. The catastrophic nature of this event is believed to have been preserved in the oral traditions of ancient cultures, leading to the creation of flood myths, such as those in the Bible and the Mesopotamian epics like the Epic of Gilgamesh. Archaeological evidence, including submerged prehistoric settlements and shifts in the Black Sea's shoreline, supports the idea of this sudden and profound flooding event. The Black Sea Deluge is considered a key historical event that likely influenced the development of various ancient flood myths across the Near East and beyond.
- fads_go 2y ago
  "most people mean" implies most people since the King James version was published. Not at all clear that's what author meant; the concept of the world as we now know it didn't exist then. So very reasonable to conclude that the Great Flood in Genesis was meant to describe a regional megaflood, which innundated the "whole world" meaning all of Mesopotamian civilization. And there is archeological evidence of ancient cities totally buried in mud, i.e. as you say regional megafloods.
  - neaden 2y ago
    I don't think that's true at all. The narrative is very clear that all humans and land animals that are not on the ark die, and in the Talmud I'm not aware of any debate that all humans died.
bediger4000 2y ago
> We found that the the Great Flood in the book of Genesis existed Sure, in Babylonian cuneiform texts. Other than that, no. A worldwide flood absolutely did not happen. Why should Atlantis not have existed? The Atlantic sea floor is not crust, totally different rock chemistry.
neaden 2y ago
What do you mean we found out that Troy existed? We always knew it existed, it continued to exist as a city until about around 1300 AD, it's present in the Homeric stories along with Gods, but so are a bunch of other cities and like those cities we have other attestations for Troy like coins from there, inscriptions, etc. There was some debate about how old the city was and if it had moved a few miles over the centuries (it didn't), but no serious scholar ever suggested Troy was not real.

InsideOutSanta 2y ago

>If you are like most Americans, chances are, you probably believe that Atlantis or another civilization like it once existed. A survey conducted by Chapman University in October 2014 found that, at that time, roughly 63% of people in the United States agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “ancient, advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, once existed.” This seems like a misleading question. Based on what we know about the Maya civilization, the Inca Empire, Ancient China, or Ancient Egypt, I would probably agree that ancient, advanced civilizations roughly similar to how we imagine Atlantis once existed, even though I know that Atlantis is a metaphor and not a real city. These examples are not exactly like the Atlantis described by Plato, but they're not that far off. They're all wealthy, advanced civilizations with powerful* militaries and advanced architecture, engineering, and agricultural practices. * Powerful in their local and temporal context.

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kleiba 2y ago
Agreed. The semantics of "civilization such as Atlantis once existed" are vastly different from that of "Atlantis once existed". There's definitely a way to read that sentence and think of civilizations like the Mayan, etc.
- cvoss 2y ago
  Especially because, I suspect, in a lot of people's minds, the concept of Atlantis much more closely resembles what the author enumerates as the possible (non-fictitious) sources of inspiration for Plato. That is, I certainly don't picture Atlantis in the way that Plato describes it exactly. So in my mind, I agree with the author's assement of Plato's story and conclude that, yes, a place such as that one did exist. The author concedes as much, too, and doesn't realize it.
dboreham 2y ago
The question implies knowledge of an "Atlantis Marvel Universe", which I'm guessing 90% of people would have no clue about.

EncomLab 2y ago

I thought everyone knew that Atlantis is just another name for the Richat Structure.

burnte 2y ago
It's not just another name for that, though. That's in a very, very wrong location to be the source of Atlantis myths. If Atlantis had a real basis, which it doesn't, it would probably be the pre-glacial-retreat land off the coast of England like Doggerland or off the west coast of Ireland.
- FloorEgg 2y ago
  The relevant (unvalidated) theory is that Atlantis was an empire that covered north western Africa (Morocco, sharah, etc) - at least, and which had a port city around where Tangier is today, and a capital city at the richat structure (pre-younger dryas). The theory comes with several hypotheses which have not been validated or invalidated yet. to invalidate the theory would require significant (strategically chosen) archaeological surveys of the Sahara and the richat structure. The theory is falsifiable, and has not been falsified yet. That doesn't make the theory of Atlantis true, it just makes it undetermined.
  - jeltz 2y ago
    I would say Atlantis is like a slightly more falsifiable and slightly more plaudible version of Russell's Teapot. We have zero reason to think Atlantis existed and zero indications of it. Is it possible that there was an advanced civilization that somehow left virtually zero evidence? Yes, but why? There are plenty of much less advanced civilizations which left plenty of trace and while we cannot know exactly how many civilizations left no trace an advanced civilization tends to leave a lot of traces. And why would Plato know of it?
    - FloorEgg 2y ago
      "I would say Atlantis is like a slightly more falsifiable and slightly more plaudible version of Russell's Teapot." Falsifying a vague hand-wavy theory of Atlantis, I agree with you. But the specific theory that Richat structure was the home of a large city 13,000 years ago that was destroyed in a flood? I wholeheartedly disagree. It's falsifiable and probably could be done with less than 1/100th the archeological investment that's been made into Egypt. "Is it possible that there was an advanced civilization that somehow left virtually zero evidence? Yes, but why?" Several cataclysmic meteorite strikes that ended the ice age, triggered younger dryas, caused biblical flooding, rapid environmental change, etc. I don't think the geological evidence of this is being refuted, just the consequences of it on our understanding of human civilizational history.

FloorEgg 2y ago

I could take this article more seriously if it were to credibly refute the possibility that the capital of Atlantis was the richat structure, and that the empire of Atlantis covered the saharah, with a port of entry just outside the straight of Gibraltar. I think its accepted that ~13,000 years ago the Sahara was lush forests and grasslands, and around that time there was a significant meteor strike (or several) that hit North America and possibly the Atlantic Ocean. Of course it would be fun to learn that Atlantis was real, so many people will be biased to want to believe it. It might not be true, but to argue it's conclusive either way I think is premature. The article states several times things like "all available evidence", which is both not true, (the article omits available evidence) and also doesn't acknowledge how little evidence is available.

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InsideOutSanta 2y ago
The Richat Structure is the result of natural geological processes. Other than having concentric circles, it doesn't match Plato's description of Atlantis, and there is no evidence that any large city was ever there.
- FloorEgg 2y ago
  "The Richat Structure is the result of natural geological processes." - this is irrelevant "Other than having concentric circles, it doesn't match Plato's description of Atlantis" - in what way? Be specific. "and there is no evidence that any large city was ever there." - lol, there has never been a thorough archeological survey, and the surveys that have been done have turned up evidence that points to noteworthy human activity. What about the tens of thousands of axe heads found all concentrated in one spot? Assuming that the city was destroyed in a significant flood, we need to assume the evidence will be hard to find, and therefore we have to look hard for it before we can say it's not there.
  - saturn_vk 2y ago

begueradj 2y ago

That does not make the existence of Atlantis a mere fiction. With the end of the Ice Age and its consequences, plenty of civilizations may have disappeared in deep waters. The Sumerians themselves claimed they received their knowledge from a man who visited them by the sea (fish-man like creature) on the aftermath of the great flood which may have buried plenty of Atlantis-like civilizations which could be the missing links to understand how, for instance, the Egyptians built the pyramids.

ferguess_k 2y ago
And in Asia there was the so-called "Three-sea plains". 三海平原
seanw444 2y ago
The ice age and its consequences have been a disaster for ancient civilizational races.
feoren 2y ago
What exactly is "missing" in understanding how the Egyptians built the pyramids? Why is it so hard to understand how a population of millions with a ton of unused labor during flood season built a bunch of scaffolding and moved a bunch of rocks around?
- gigatree 2y ago
  You must not be familiar with its architecture to be so dismissive. That’s the hn equivalent of calling Amazon “just a website”
  - jeltz 2y ago
    So are you saying aliens or some unknown advanced civilization built Amazon? No, just like the Pyramids it was built by huge number of ordinary humans with ordinary technology.
  - jamiek88 2y ago
    Actually the opposite is true. YOU must be unfamiliar with the architecture and large projects in general if you Think there’s more to it than well understood ancient technology. The idea that it’s a mystery how the ancients built large projects like this and Easter island is simply modern chauvinism.

sireat 2y ago

I highly recommend BBC's In our time Podcast on Plato's Atlantis: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001c6t3 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001c6t3 The conclusion is similar to OP: Plato had way too much fun making up the story. Originally it was meant to be a critique of democracy as practiced by the seafaring populace of Athens. There is also nice reading list provided there.

marginalia_nu 2y ago
When I read the dialogue, I never got the feeling it was intended as a historical account, heck the same goes for the socratic dialogues in general. They're mostly a vehicle for philosophical discussion. Like are we also giving Plato's account of the afterlife the same credibility? He's also pulling in characters from a fairly large timespan, some of which (e.g. Parmenides) are unlikely to have unlikely to have overlapped with Socrates' active years.
- b112 2y ago
  What bothers me is that we presume too much about idiomatic usage from such ancient texts. We currently have a very static language compared to language drift prior to the 20th, which didn't have endless TV, radio, and other sources of repeated language examples which has ossified usage and drift. The same goes for the massive amounts of written text produced in newspapers, magazines, and now the internet. Prior to these times, most of the world was illiterate, and accent, and usage drifted significantly. Yet even today, with all this consistency in usage, we get words shifting usage and idioms appearing. Then we turn around and presume to understand word usage with great certainty from thousands of years ago. Sure, OK, some things can be derived. But in my opinion, to use an example, "you know nothing John Snow" is understood now, wasn't 50 years ago, won't be 50 years from now.
ericmcer 2y ago
We do seem to imbue the greek & roman writers with a more serious tone then they might have had. I was reading some of Ovid's Metamorphosis while waiting for someone else. I turned to a random page and it was an action packed description of Achilles riding his chariot while spears deflect off him and he effortlessly impales opponents. It almost resembled an anime style power fantasy or something. I wonder if Achilles was viewed more like Wolverine or Superman and people didn't really believe that there were immortal warriors blessed by the gods mowing down enemies in battle.

KingLancelot 2y ago

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codr7 2y ago

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cryptonector 2y ago

> The line of transmission is so long and convoluted that there are literally more than a half dozen different people who could have plausibly made the story up. Ditto for The Iliad and The Odysee, yet Troy existed. That's the thing about oral traditions. They are like a telephone game where the story changes a bit with each retelling, so they are not trustworthy, but societies that engaged in epic storytelling did try to keep true to them word-for-word, and that's why some of them are epic poems: to help memorize them. So it's entirely possible that one of the people involved in this story just made it up, but it's also as likely that it was a story they passed down as well as they could, and possibly actually true. This is not strong evidence for Atlantis being made up. Neither is the fact that Plato made up things like the allegory of the cave: we generally know when he's doing that. The fact is that we can't find any actual evidence of Atlantis anywhere other than in tenuous ancient writings. A lot like it was for Troy. But since Atlantis supposedly goes back much longer, we might never find any of it, and so it might as well be made up, and that is a safe conclusion. Those who say it existed nowadays tend to believe that it was in the "eye of the Sahara", in present day Mauritius, and was destroyed in a flood related to an impact event on the North American ice sheet around 11,900 years ago that caused the Younger-Dryas. That idea has the unfortunate / convenient feature that there is literally nothing there and nothing will ever be found there given the scale of the supposed cataclysm. There are huge debris fields off the coast of Western Africa where one could -presumably- find bits of Atlantis, though good luck finding anything obviously man-made in those debris fields, let alone anything that would be highly suggestive of Atlantis. If that theory is true then we'll never prove that Atlantis existed by finding it.

neaden 2y ago
"Ditto for The Iliad and The Odysee, yet Troy existed." - As I said in a different comment this comparison makes no sense. Troy was continuously inhabited up until around 1300, we have artifacts like coins from there and multiple attestations from contemporary sources. The only thing that was debated was if the ancient city was underneath the more contemporary one or a few miles away. That is nothing like Atlantis.
- cryptonector 2y ago

mcswell 2y ago

Decades ago, I read a book (written, I think, around 1890) about Atlantis. 99% of the evidence it gave was, of course, bogus. But the one piece that seemed reasonable was an account of depth soundings by the SS Great Eastern when it laid the second cable across the Atlantic in 1866. I haven't seen a recent account of those soundings, but the chart in the book did show the Atlantic to be shallower in the middle--which the author took to be the sunken continent of Atlantis. Of course, now we know that the shallower depths there are the Mid-Atlantic ridge, which was never above water (except up at Iceland).

richardfontana 2y ago
Perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis:_The_Antediluvian_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis:_The_Antediluvian_Wor... (1882) by Ignatius Donnelly.
- mcswell 2y ago
  I think so.

rfwhyte 2y ago

Damn some of the comments here are really depressing. I'd formerly thought HN was one of the last bastions of critical thought on internet, but I guess I was wrong judging by some of these comments. Way too much regurgitation of long-since debunked pseudo-scientific nonsense. Atlantis was never real and anyone who thinks it was is a moron. If there were truly some sort of globe-spanning advanced civilization existing ~11KYA we'd have found at least one single piece of their material culture by now, but we haven't. We have however found innumerable pieces of archaeological evidence of contemporary hunter-gatherer neolithic societies in and around all of the places Atlantis was supposed to have "Conquered" and yet not once have we found a single Atlantean trade good, pot sherd, metal working, etc. Atlantis supposedly had a bronze-age or greater level of technology and a globe-spanning empire, and we literally haven't found a single shred of physical evidence to support its existence, despite having literal mountains of physical evidence for pretty much every other major empire that's existed throughout history. Nor have we found any genetic evidence in people or crops that there was any kind of "Empire" connecting parts of Europe or Africa as we find time and time again with real empires that actually existed in prehistory. Real empires have people and crops that move around within the empire and leave genetic evidence of the mixing of populations and breeding of crops, yet we find nothing, not even the faintest echo of Atlantis. Again, we have mountains of hard physical evidence that shows how empires like the Summerians in the fertile crescent or the Norte Chico in meso-america spread through genetic evidence in current local populations and crops, yet we find absolutely no genetic evidence to support the existence of Atlantis. Let alone the fact the bloody story of Atlantis references how the Atlanteans went to war with Athens some 9000 years before the Athenian city-state was even founded. Just utter, complete brain-dead nonsense. Honestly, belief in Atlantis has become something a litmus-test for critical thinking and research ability these days, as anyone that believes in Atlantis despite the overwhelming volume of evidence that firmly proves it never existed is basically saying "I'm too lazy to do my own research (Based on peer-reviewed primary sources) and / or too stupid to understand actual science." Also f*ck Graham Hancock (And Joe Rogan via extension). MFer is the worst kind of charlatan and is broadly responsible for how many Americans believe in Atlantis.

krapp 2y ago
>I'd formerly thought HN was one of the last bastions of critical thought on internet, but I guess I was wrong judging by some of these comments. Stay away from any thread about physics, astronomy or anywhere vaccines are mentioned if you value your mental health.

nautikos1 2y ago

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ldjkfkdsjnv 2y ago

The big thing with Plato is his dates of a great flood match with the end of the younger dryas. The dates check out.

m463 2y ago

(wow, is this the MOST clickbait title I've seen?)

rigi_jazaru 2y ago

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morbicer 1y ago
Beware, the linked Creative Society is a front for AllatRa sect, very dangerous Russian backed disinformation group that's infiltrating Central Europe. It goes so far that district attorney from Slovakia, who is a member of the sect is going after Czech journalists who uncover them. They have tool to generate videos on any esoteric/conspiracy topic with AI assistance. Sadly I can't link much English sources. - https://vsquare.org/disinformation-whitewashing-russia-allatra-creative-society https://vsquare.org/disinformation-whitewashing-russia-allat... - https://allatra.tv/en https://allatra.tv/en - https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-61166339 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-61166339 - https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllatRa https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllatRa