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.
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.
Among ancient Greek authors, I've read a far better example of mockery mixed with seriousness. Towards the end of the Illiad, the Greek leaders organize a feast where many oxen are roasted. It's followed by sport games. At the foot race, the powerful Ajax is ahead. But Odysseus pleads Athena for help. The goddess makes Ajax slip on bull dung and crash headfirst. In the general hilarity the cunning Odysseus wins the race!
I didn't enjoy much Ovid's books, but Homer was wonderful. The Illiad often surprised me. The human characters and their connections with gods are so intriguing. But it's mostly dark — a hero can seem nice then behead an unarmed prisoner. And I remember vividly when a river was so upset by all the atrocities of the furious Achilles that it flooded the battle ground to stop the massacre.
It isn't just greek/roman writers. We seem to desperately want to think any writer in the past was more serious than I think we can really justify. It gets downright silly when we find artifacts and assume they must have been holy priceless things.
Not that that can't be correct sometimes. Would be interesting to see that quantified.
Historians don't do that much tho. That was one thing I realized when I started to read more serious historians. It is mostly popular "bro that was cool" history that does that ... and history written for concrete political purpose of inspiring the public to something.
Idk, neither ovid nor catullus struck me as particularly "serious". Hell, Pygmalion is one of the funniest stories I've ever read in my life. You have to veer into people who are both proud and ideological (eg Cato the Elder) to really get a sense of roman arrogance, IMO. I suppose Seneca might also be a very "serious" roman writer without veering into arrogance.
I highly recommend Stargate. They actually go to Atlantis. I know most media outlets have to say Atlantis is "just a story", but if you want the real truth. Go to the Canadians.
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).
>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.
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.
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.
> 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,
There is also the question of what is meant by Atlantis. While I have certainly encountered versions of the story that the author was referring to, I read too many "mysteries" books as a kid and the myth pops up in contemporary fiction, I typically hear of the more plausible versions of the story that can be backed up by archaeological evidence. Granted, it can also be a complete fiction.
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.
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?
My daughter is an archeologist and this is one of her bugbears, the idea that the Egyptians couldn't possibly have built something so huge on their own. Even though we're pretty clear on it, the originally racist idea that they were too primitive has survived long enough to just become "common knowledge" with the explicit racism receding.
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.
I am quite familiar because I keep reading about it everytime someone insists its too hard, falling all over references demonstrating just how easy it was.
Heck I believe it was on this very website someone posted a study by a group of students who went to the actual quarry the stone was from, and actually carved out a stone using period techniques.
As far as I am concerned, pyramid denial is dead save a few absolute moronic hold outs who seem to believe copper tools cant cut stone.
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.
Even in the face of the new evidence of structures miles below the pyramids, we have to have this debate?
Or the chamber that was “theorized” by crackpots, included into Assassins Creed based on said “crackpots”, and then revealed to actually exist by sonography?
I think it’s far more sycophantic to insist that the ancient Egyptians were “primitive” rather than “advanced” when it was built, but hey, I’m against the grain and thus a crackpot.
>With the end of the Ice Age and its consequences, plenty of civilizations may have disappeared in deep waters.
Yeah possibly.
But the current "fan favourite" capital of Atlantis is well above water.
IIRC there were stone age artefacts recovered from Doggerland. Which, also IIRC, was likely caused by a big ice shelf impacting the ocean at the end of the ice age. But to imply that a technological superpower with massive amounts of land disappeared without a trace is kind of bs.
Except an exact location is given in the original text and there's definitely nothing there. Also the text says they ruled over lands that were known to the Greeks and they have no corroboration of an earlier dominant force or advanced society. Any civilization that failed to graduate past wood and earth construction could easily be washed away. Anyone that was capable of monumental construction or even pottery should leave a trace.
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.
>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.
"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."
What about Gobekli Tepe?
"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."
Wouldn't Europe have been mostly tundra/ice that long ago?
Also, what about this article (not Europe, but other global implications), do you dispute it specifically?
You seem to be really upset (and frankly insulting) at the prospect of people being curious about the idea that we don't know everything about our history yet. There is a very wide gap between believing a theory is true or being certain its not true, and that gap is the humility to accept we aren't sure yet and there is room to be surprised.
Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence? What exactly is the risk? Isn't it more risky to stop developing the science and pursuing the truth? Is this really about scientific rigor, or do you have some reason to want there not to have been more developed civilizations pre-younger dryas than we previously thought existed? What's the harm to you in other people asking these questions and going out and trying to answer them?
>You seem to be really upset (and frankly insulting) at the prospect of people being curious about the idea that we don't know everything about our history yet.
Scientific Curiosity should never involve insisting something exists without evidence or any intention of looking for it.
This is where hancocks people always fall back to. Science just isnt "Imaginitive" enough to give enough time to their theories. Whereas you meet any scientist in the field and they will tell you how 3 broken pots and a pile of bones translates into an amazing civilisation. I dont think archeologists could survive being even 1 iota more imaginative.
>Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence?
They should search for that evidence instead of writing 20 books, some of them DEEEPLY racist, demanding other people search for that evidence on their behalf.
>Isn't it more risky to stop developing the science and pursuing the truth?
There are tons of people in the field right now developing the science and pursuing the truth.
>do you have some reason to want there not to have been more developed civilizations pre-younger dryas than we previously thought existed? What's the harm to you in other people asking these questions and going out and trying to answer them?
The person trying to force a narrative on history is Hancock. The danger is that he doesn't hypothesize, he instructs his legion of morons that his word is the truth and they need to buy more of his books to discover said truth.
Okay, I get it. You really don't like Hancock and you think he's racist.
I was trying to have a dialog about the actual evidence of the theory that the Richat structure could have been home to an advanced civilization that was wiped out in a flood ~12-13,000 years ago.
Here is what interests me:
- What evidence supports the theory, what evidence falsifies the theory
- If it's inconclusive, what kind of evidence would we need to find to either prove of falsify, and where would we look for it.
Because you have dragged in Hancock and his "people" (whatever that means) into this, I find it really hard to have a constructive dialog with you about the actual evidence and theory. Do you have any interest in setting aside the big fat red herring?
Here goes my best effort:
"There are tons of people in the field right now developing the science and pursuing the truth."
There are tons of people pursuing archeological excavations of the Richat structure? If not, then what novel theories are the archeology community pursuing?
"Scientific Curiosity should never involve insisting something exists without evidence or any intention of looking for it."
I am not doing that, and you are responding to me. I am asking about a theory and what evidence proves or disproves it. All science starts with observations and theories. My intention was to have a respectful dialog about the topic of the article, hoping I might learn something.
"In science, a theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment"
Your idea, your concept, is that there's some huge missing gap in history. You haven't met the standard to expect other people to go and investigate things for you. You are free to take your idea, and go and seek approval to dig up the richat structure.
>what evidence falsifies the theory
No evidence falsifies the theory. First there isn't a theory, but second, the capital of atlantis will simply move somewhere else when evidence fails to be located.
>I find it really hard to have a constructive dialog with you about the actual evidence and theory
The chief proponents of the idea, are kind of relevant. They have 20 years or so of history, moving the goal posts all over the planet. Realistically, you should be looking at it like this:
1. Is there evidence to support your claims, if not, why not.
2. Is there evidence to support your intended course of action, if not, why not.
3. Go and find 2, and then seek 1.
I mean we have seen 1 and 2 unravel before you in this comment section. Theres no geologically sound "mud flood" or impact event that would explain why theres no evidence in the richat structure. Theres no visible evidence of atlantean civilisation in the Richat structure. Why do you expect some other person to go do labor when they have no reasonable expectation of results? Its hard enough for archeologists to get permits to dig where they have a reasonable expectation of findings. Putting down digs in the middle of the desert without a single reason to do so seems mad right? Its like asking a physicist to test gravity in the richat structure just in case it works differently there. Or a chemist to double check the atomic weight of helium on alternate tuesdays. If you are burdened with the glorious imagination that will free us from the shackles of incorrect history, why wouldnt you put that amazing talent to work yourself?
What about it? It's one of the oldest Neolithic settlements we've identified, but otherwise, it's not particularly unusual within our understanding of Neolithic Mesopotamia.
When GP is talking about "material culture", they're (probably) referring to the archaeological definition of culture, which means you need to give an explanation as to what makes an artifact indicative of belonging to a culture. The shape of an arrowhead perhaps, or maybe the kind of style used in painting pottery. Something that lets an archaeologist dig something up and go "aha, this is culture X!" Age isn't one of those characteristics.
But of course the province of pseudoarchaeology is to come up with a theory and work everything into evidence for that theory. Atlantis is old, Göbleki Tepe is old, therefore Göbleki Tepe is Atlantean!
> Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence? What exactly is the risk?
Most of the people that tend to propose these theories aren't interested in searching for evidence. See for example, Graham Hancock, who has been peddling the same theory for 30 years and has done nothing to actually produce better evidence for it except to whine that mainstream archaeologists don't want to listen to him because they're stuck in their own stupid ways. (Of course, in that same time, mainstream archaeology has thoroughly demolished the Clovis-First hypothesis which was previously disfavored, precisely because the pre-Clovis adherents actually did the legwork to produce better evidence to make it more accepted!) You can also see this with archaeoastronomy, which is borderline fringe--its better practitioners have made some success by listening to the criticisms and persevering in efforts to get better, stronger evidence to buttress their claims. As a basic rule of thumb, if someone's response to criticism is to chide scientists for being rigid in their thinking rather than going out to try to get better evidence, then that's a strong sign they're engaged in pseudoscience and not science.
As for the risk, a lot of these theories bear a deep legacy of overt racism just begin their skin; they've historically been used to devalue the abilities of the people who've made them (e.g., Great Zimbabwe). Nowadays, they've been modified to edit out the basic message of "white people taught everybody how to civilization," so it's no longer quite as overt as their late 19th century ancestors... but you can still see the lingering traces of it in "an ancient civilization taught everybody how to civilization."
There is so much about your comment here that I appreciate (similar to your other reply to me). Thank you.
I wish I had time right now to thoughtfully ask a couple questions I have, but it will have to wait.
I am compelled to squeeze this in:
"As for the risk, a lot of these theories bear a deep legacy of overt racism just begin their skin; they've historically been used to devalue the abilities of the people who've made them (e.g., Great Zimbabwe). Nowadays, they've been modified to edit out the basic message of "white people taught everybody how to civilization," so it's no longer quite as overt as their late 19th century ancestors... but you can still see the lingering traces of it in "an ancient civilization taught everybody how to civilization.""
- Wow! Holy cow, I had no idea, and this hadn't remotely crossed my mind. If anything, I would have thought the opposite. (that evidence of incredible achievements by ancient civilizations would diminish [relatively] the achievements of modern ones).
So I read up on what you are saying and some of Hancock's past work, and I see how the theory could be seen as diminishing the accomplishments of indigenous cultures or denying their own capacity for innovation.
Prior to today, I hadn't read any of Graham Hancock's work and have no attachment to him or his theory.
I was under the impression that the younger dryas impact hypothesis was accepted by Geology (I actually learned from this thread that it's not). If one is to assume that the younger dryas was caused by cataclysmic meteorite impacts, then the idea that an ancient civilization was wiped out in said cataclysm seems plausible and triggered my curiosity.
Given that the impact hypothesis hasn't reached the burden of proof, then I am not sure what to make of it.
That said, I don't appreciate any implication that just because someone is interested in evidence of undiscovered pre younger dryas civilizations they are racist. Not speaking of Hancock specifically, but I would appreciate being able to have a conversation about the evidence without feeling like someone is implying I am racist because I am interested in it. (Keep in mind I wasn't the one who brought up Hancock)
What gets my goat, quite substantially, is that I love bad history/archeology in terms of fiction.
Like Howard and Lovecraft among others, loved this sort of stuff. "What if theres an entire missing age where heroes roamed around doing cool shit" yeah bro what if that shit rules.
They formed a lot of their worldview based on books that were already being discredited in their time. But its still amazing fiction.
The problem largely seems that people cant let it live in fiction.
>then the idea that an ancient civilization was wiped out in said cataclysm seems plausible and triggered my curiosity.
Yeah thats how they get you. It activates the neurons. That said, it would have had to atomise a lot of their society to prevent detection.
>That said, I don't appreciate any implication that just because someone is interested in evidence of undiscovered pre younger dryas civilizations they are racist.
The problem is that, since around the 1950s we have had pretty much perfect knowledge of the planet. Small notes of our understanding can change but we have been almost everywhere and done almost everything. Its really sad but its a fact.
There are really 2 strands of archaeology denial.
1. "I really wish there was more to explore, so I am going to make it up\become heavily invested in a made up history"
2. "I dont think those people could have discovered stacking rocks without help"
1. Can be fine in fiction, but 2. is just gross tbh. And terribly, the people in group 1, are largely basing their understanding on work done by group 2. Its hard to overstate how frequently racist nonsense is bubbling just underneath this.
So while yeah, you might resent the implication by some commenters that you are in some way racist, the fault lies largely with the fact that you are standing, possibly blindfolded, in a big crowd thats like 99% racist by volume. It might be rude to assume, but its also generally a fairly accurate assumption that tends to work without issue.
Something to keep in mind. A lot of YDIH people end up as "Mud Flooders" people whose ur-conspiracy involves the entire planet being covered in 20 meters of mud during the YD. These people then spin off everything in that manner. Flat earth, tartaria, etc etc. Its quite a slippery brain slope.
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.
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.
"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.
Plato pretty clearly describes the city as man-made. Perhaps Atlantis was real, but he was mistaken about how it was built, so let's give you that. However, everything else still doesn't match.
>in what way? Be specific
That's a bit bossy. It's funny that you ask me to be specific, given that you're providing no evidence for your claim other than "it's round."
Plato is pretty specific in how he describes Atlantis. He says there's a mountain 9 km away from the city. That does not match the geography of the structure. He says there are three concentric circles of land; it's unclear what would even count as a circle of land in the structure, but it doesn't look like three. Plato claims Atlantis was about 500km in diameter, but the city (i.e., the concentric rings) was only a few km, much smaller than the structure. He said there was a passage for ships into the city, half a km wide, which does not exist in the structure.
He also says Atlantis controlled Libya, Egypt, Asia, and parts of Europe. And yet there are no traces of anything? Nowhere? Nothing at all? But Plato knew about it, and nobody else?
>What about the tens of thousands of axe heads found all concentrated in one spot?
There is nothing there. There are no clay pots, no walls, and no abundance of metals or technological artefacts that should be there if this were Atlantis. There are no walls, and nothing. It's just nothing.
Apologies for coming off as bossy! Thank you for the respectful response.
Keep in mind my goal here isn't to prove the theory - my stance is that the theory is falsifiable and hasn't yet been proven or disproven. My response below is based on the assumption that misalignments between the reality of the Richat structure and Plato's descriptions of the Atlantis capital aren't material enough to dismiss the theory with confidence.
I also hope that you can agree with me that if we represent the theory fairly in order to disprove it we have to acknowledge that the details will have been muddied by 9000+ years and multiple translations, etc. between the theoretical city and Plato's descriptions. That said, I have responded to each of your points below:
"He says there's a mountain 9 km away from the city. That does not match the geography of the structure." There is a 200-250 meter jump in elevation 9km north of the outermost ring of the richat structure. I agree it's not exactly a "mountain" but considering my point above, can we agree that this could be what Plato was referring to?
"He says there are three concentric circles of land; it's unclear what would even count as a circle of land in the structure, but it doesn't look like three." - Odd, it does to me... Have you tried using google earth and checking the elevation at different points in the area?
"Plato claims Atlantis was about 500km in diameter, but the city (i.e., the concentric rings) was only a few km, much smaller than the structure." - The innermost circle is about 9km in diameter. The full concentric ring structure is about 50km, and the distance between the Richat structure and the ocean is about 500km. This theory assumes that the Richat structure was connected to the ocean by a river, and the civilization would also have built up along that river (hence the 500km figure). It seems reasonable to mix up the 9km inner circle with the whole concentric ring structure.
"He said there was a passage for ships into the city, half a km wide, which does not exist in the structure." - Relative to the size of the structure, half a KM wide is only 1% of the diameter. The theory is that the city was wiped out in a biblical flood, so there would have been significant erosion and earth movement which could make evidence of specifically where this channel was located harder to determine. There may be no evidence of it, or there may be subtle evidence of it, I don't know. Of all your points, I find this one the hardest to debate, but I also think its inconclusive.
"There is nothing there. There are no clay pots, no walls, and no abundance of metals or technological artefacts that should be there if this were Atlantis. There are no walls, and nothing. It's just nothing." - As far as I know, no one in modern times has actually dug under the surface to check? I don't understand where your confidence in "there is nothing there" comes from. It's like a developer who has written a few unit tests stating "there are no bugs", just because you haven't encountered one. This confidence in "there is no evidence" I find unscientific, and its the attitude that bothers me the most in these discussions. Can't you just say "We haven't found any conclusive evidence yet, but we also haven't looked very hard"? Do you honestly disagree with this statement?
I appreciate you engaging with me, and I hope you don't interpret my labelling your one comment unscientific as a criticism of your skepticism. Its good that you are skeptical, I only take issue with the conflation between "there is no evidence" and "we haven't found any evidence".
I honestly don't know if the Richat structure was Atlantis, and my overall stance on it is neutral. If there was significant research done into it that turned up no evidence of a significant human population I would accept it. My desire isn't to prove the theory, its to be supportive of people being able to do more work to more conclusively prove or disprove the theory.
BTW, there's still the problem of claiming that (a) Plato's account is a true and faithful transcript of an actual conversation, and that (b) all the various accounts reproduced in this rather complex game of telephone are faithful, as well. If, on the other hand, we conceded that neither the conversation nor the various narrator(s) were real, but rather a figure of speech and and a rhetorical vehicle, it's kind of difficult to claim at the same time unconditional veracity for the narrative conveyed by this. Maybe, the mode of introduction and framing already gives it away?
(Moreover, there was no broader tradition before this, it just popped up with the dialogs. So it should be difficult to claim that Plato just stated the obvious in another context. How comes that this knowledge should have come down to Plato exclusively, by this complex line of famous men, via a complex chain of witnesses, without any of them having been attributed for anything alike before or after this?)
Hey there are lots of reasons to be skeptical of the theory, but I haven't yet seen a reason to claim the theory is false (or the specific theory of Atlantis relating to a civilization occupying the Richat structure as unfalsifiable).
If we set aside "Atlantis" and Plato for a moment, and consider that 13,000 years ago the area around the Richat structure was lush with fauna and flora, and that there's geological evidence that around that time there were multiple cataclysmic meteorite strikes in North America (and maybe the Atlantic ocean), rapid global temperature changes, and flooding, then maybe:
- Given the very unique geography of the area it would have been a likely place for people to settle and flourish. There would have been both defensive and logistical advantages to the structure.
- They could have developed further there than anywhere else in the continent at the time
- They might have been wiped out by cataclysmic flooding that makes evidence of their presence significantly harder to detect than the civilizations we do have strong evidence for.
While I do not doubt that Northern Africa has cradled human civilization for a long time, to me, connecting the Richat structure and Plato is stretching it quite a bit, though. Why not say Plato's Atlantis is actually Göbekli Tepe – it's in the wrong direction and also not an island, but there are concentric structures and is actual man made?
If we are to neglect that Plato clearly states that his rhetorical vehicle is situated outside of Africa, but the Richat structure is in the then known parts of Africa, why should direction matter? While we may discuss the Richat structure, we should do so separately. There's no need to connect these things and no indication of why we should do so.
Regarding features, given the total population of that time (at least, as far as our estimates go), controlling a circular structure of 25km diameter may have been a bit ambitious. (It may have been pretty disadvantageous in actuality, as you would have to control and defend rather extensive perimeters with what would only account to thousands (in the low single digits). And, if you failed to do so, the very same features would have hosted your enemies. — Compare this to what Plato thought to be a more realistic size for what must have been then a remarkably extensive population.)
> I think OP mentions this due to your mention of meteor impacts
I thought I was pretty clear about the strikes being in North America, but ill emphasize that point again. The formation is natural and the theory is that human settled in it for its logistical and defensive advantages (back when the area around it was lush), and then got wiped out by floods caused by global climate shifts caused by massive meteorite strikes in North America and possibly the Atlantic ocean.
> According to Wikipedia, Stone Age axes. It seems reasonable to believe that the site provided easy access for material
Sure, but given how little investment has been made into archeological studies of the area, isn't it interesting that we found evidence of some significant human activity?
It doesn't prove the theory, but its an observation that if anything lends to the theory.
The scientific method is a process of making observations, developing a theory, forming falsifiable hypotheses, testing them carefully, and then drawing conclusions, and updating the theory as appropriate.
I don't take issue with people being skeptical about all this, I just take issue with people confidently stating that it's been proven false. Their stance seems less scientific to me than the people who want to pursue experiments that validate or invalidate (or refine) the theory.
I for one just would like to know the truth, whatever it might be.
Edit: To the people who are downvoting this comment, I wish you would respond to it and explain why you think it deserves to be downvoted.
>and then drawing conclusions, and updating the theory as appropriate.
This bit never happens.
What does occur is that the hypothesis just twists to ignore new data. Hancock has claimed that as he isn't a scientist he doesn't need to include the facts that disagree with his ideas. He sees himself as a champion of an idea, and cherry picks facts to craft the best possible case for that idea. IE: Hes a massive fraud and waste of time.
> I just take issue with people confidently stating that it's been proven false.
I take issue with the idea that this entire argument has to happen again, politely and fresh, for anyone who pops up on the internet having read some cherry picked nonsense about atlantis. Why is it our collective responsibility to educate you. Its not even the responsibility of scientists to prove or disprove your claims, if you are making positive claims you should be either presenting or locating evidence for those claims. Also to note, evidence doesnt mean "Hey this sounds a bit like some old folklore".
>I for one just would like to know the truth, whatever it might be.
All offense intended, but the people who go on about this stuff have already arrived at their desired truth, and they are simply defending their truth from the slings and arrows of reality. Get on a boat, go investigate the Richat structure, come back with evidence, otherwise the current evidence stands.
Plus all the details that conveniently line up. The mountains with rivers to the north. Being south of the Atlas mountains – Atlas being the first king of Atlantis. "Atlantis" meaning "island of Atlantis" is interesting because it's likely that if water were present in the rings, it would have the appearance of an island, and there are two forms of evidence that there was: zoom out on Maps/Earth and see the obvious water blast the sand experienced coming from the Atlantic; there is also salt present in the rings.
Is it Atlantis? Maybe not, but there a number of stiking coincidences.
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.
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.
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?
"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.
1. Cataclysmic meteor strikes ending the ice age? Aren't they more likely to prolong it?
2. Is there any evidence of either glaciation or flooding at the Richat structure?
3. If no on 2, then why should their civilization leave virtually zero evidence, even if it collapsed? Macchu Pichu is still there. Teotihuacan is still there. The Nasca Lines are still there. Chan Chan is still there. The Minoan ruins are still there. If this was just an abrupt collapse. why should it leave no trace?
1. Yes. I don't know, but there is lots of geological evidence that 12-13,000 years ago there were several cataclysmic meteor strikes, and the earths temperature swung up and down wildly, eventually settling at a much higher temperature (ending the ice age). I am pretty sure this is accepted by the geological community.
2. There is evidence of tremendous flooding, yes. You can actually see it on google earth yourself if you go look...
3. The theory assumes there was massive flooding, which is why we have to look harder for evidence (careful subsurface excavation) compared to sites like Macchu Pichu. Also Macchu Pichu is 600 years old, and the theory of the Richat structure housing a city assumes it was destroyed 12,900+ years ago.
4. Keep in mind that it's widely accepted that 13k years ago the Sahara was lush grasslands and forests.
> I don't know, but there is lots of geological evidence that 12-13,000 years ago there were several cataclysmic meteor strikes, and the earths temperature swung up and down wildly, eventually settling at a much higher temperature (ending the ice age). I am pretty sure this is accepted by the geological community.
You're wrong about this. There's not a lot of evidence for the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. In particular, the best evidence--an actual meteoric impact crater--is completely missing. This is why proponents have instead suggested either that it was a series of large airbursts or an impact in the Laurentide ice sheet itself, to be able to keep a large crater from forming.
The current consensus hypothesis is that it's a reconfiguration of the glacial lake outflows on the margin of the Laurentide ice sheet that induced a breakdown of the thermohaline circulation system, which also explains some peculiarities of the Younger Dryas (like its effects were a lot worse in North America than the rest of the world).
Thank you for taking the time to point this out respectfully. Looks like you're absolutely right about the current consensus, and my summary didn't fairly reflect all the evidence.
Times like this I wish I could edit older comments. I would update it to incorporate what you are saying and diminish the confidence in the impact hypothesis.
Dude. Somebody told you you're wrong, and you listened? Refreshing to see.
And I'll try to return the favor. If they were airbursts, and so were providing heat but not stuff thrown up into the atmosphere, then I could maybe see meteors ending an ice age.
I think there is consensus that Doggerland was wiped out by a massive tidal wave generated by the Storegga event. This feels like it deserves mention in any arrogant certaintist article like the one above.
The article would be good if it asserted "we don't know".
I had never even heard of this before this comment. I have now learned it's a very unique geological formation in the Sahara consisting of concentric rings of raised stone. It appears to be entirely natural and the scientific consensus is that no city has ever existed on the site nor did human artifice have anything to do with its creation.
For someone to post a comment like "I thought everyone knew" is so egregiously deceptive and misleading that the comment should be flagged. It's tantamount to posting "I thought everyone knew area 51 recovered aliens from Roswell." It's a conspiracy theory masquerading as an ordinary remark.
Worse, it's one that uses a psychological trick to dodge the burden of proof, because "everybody knows", so if you ask for evidence, you're admitting you're not among the "knowing ones". "Everyone knows" is not evidence.
> 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.
"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.
People used to think Troy was fictional. People (myself included) think Atlantis is fictional. The difference is: Troy was much closer to us in time, and it was found.
People didn't use to think Troy was fictional, where did you get that idea?
Edit: to be clear there is no evidence that the Trojan war happened as described, but that doesn't mean Troy is a fiction anymore then Sparta or Ithaca are.
I had to look it up. My memory of this is from my childhood, and I doubt I ever had sources. But yes, it seems that there were scholars who thought Troy to be fictional:
| In the early modern era, attitudes towards the legends grew more skeptical. Blaise Pascal characterized the story as merely a "romance", commenting that "nobody supposes that Troy and Agamemnon existed any more than the apples of the Hesperides. [Homer] had no intention to write history, but only to amuse us."[6] During the 19th century the stories of Troy were devalued as fables by George Grote.[7]
| In his books on Troy, Bryant endeavoured to show that the existence of Troy and the Greek expedition were purely mythological, with no basis in real history. In 1791, Andrew Dalzel translated a work of Jean Baptiste LeChevalier as Description of the Plain of Troy.[8] It provoked Bryant's Observations upon a Treatise ... (on) the Plain of Troy (1795) and A Dissertation concerning the War of Troy (1796?). A fierce controversy resulted, with Bryant attacked by Thomas Falconer, John Morritt, William Vincent, and Gilbert Wakefield.[5]
I think you are conflating people calling the Trojan war fiction with thinking the city was. While there were a few people like Bryant who thought Troy was totally fictional it was always a very fringe position.
What are you talking about? Here is the Blaise Pascal quote in the first link:
> "nobody supposes that Troy and Agamemnon existed any more than the apples of the Hesperides. [Homer] had no intention to write history, but only to amuse us."
Many European scholars did consider Troy fictional. For example, Jacob Bryant's "A Dissertation concerning the War of Troy" (1796) explicitly argued that Troy never existed as a real city and that the Trojan War was purely mythological. He thought Homer's place names derived from Egyptian and Phoenician religious vocabulary, so the entire Trojan War narrative should be interpreted as imported solar allegory without any historical basis.
Bryant was a pseudo historian who came up with an elaborate alternate history. He doesn't represent the mainstream view anymore then flat earthera do today.
Edit: as I said, Troy was inhabited until around 1300 and left behind many artifacts like coins. While conspiracy theorists might doubt it occasionally, it was never a mainstream view that the person I was responding to presented it as. Saying that we used to doubt Troy so therefore maybe Atlantis is real is basically saying that if we reject one conspiracy theory we should accept a separate one.
"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?
> 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?
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.
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.
Are you saying that the ark left the flooded Black Sea basin, flew through the air, and landed on a mountain many kilometers from the sea? That seems like a stretch to fit a hypothesis.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
I'm even more confused now. You're saying that dragons are not real, because they're a metaphor for the Roman legions? That supports the idea that Atlantis isn't real, because it's similarly a metaphor for something else, right?
There was a time ancient people broke their own legs, believing it would bring good luck.
It is true and written all across ancient records of that time.
Scholars don't fully understand why they would do such a thing. Many theories have been presented over the years. A ritual of passage, a demonstration of loyalty as bargain in exchange for a favor from a divinity, or simply a group ritual believed to reinforce the will of those within a social group.
Truth is, we will never know. Despite our best efforts, several parts of the original text describing the ritual were lost, only copies of copies remain.
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.
I highly recommend BBC's In our time Podcast on Plato's Atlantis:
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.
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.
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.
Among ancient Greek authors, I've read a far better example of mockery mixed with seriousness. Towards the end of the Illiad, the Greek leaders organize a feast where many oxen are roasted. It's followed by sport games. At the foot race, the powerful Ajax is ahead. But Odysseus pleads Athena for help. The goddess makes Ajax slip on bull dung and crash headfirst. In the general hilarity the cunning Odysseus wins the race!
I didn't enjoy much Ovid's books, but Homer was wonderful. The Illiad often surprised me. The human characters and their connections with gods are so intriguing. But it's mostly dark — a hero can seem nice then behead an unarmed prisoner. And I remember vividly when a river was so upset by all the atrocities of the furious Achilles that it flooded the battle ground to stop the massacre.
It isn't just greek/roman writers. We seem to desperately want to think any writer in the past was more serious than I think we can really justify. It gets downright silly when we find artifacts and assume they must have been holy priceless things.
Not that that can't be correct sometimes. Would be interesting to see that quantified.
Historians don't do that much tho. That was one thing I realized when I started to read more serious historians. It is mostly popular "bro that was cool" history that does that ... and history written for concrete political purpose of inspiring the public to something.
Idk, neither ovid nor catullus struck me as particularly "serious". Hell, Pygmalion is one of the funniest stories I've ever read in my life. You have to veer into people who are both proud and ideological (eg Cato the Elder) to really get a sense of roman arrogance, IMO. I suppose Seneca might also be a very "serious" roman writer without veering into arrogance.
I think it started when Schleimann discovered Troy based on Homer.
I highly recommend Stargate. They actually go to Atlantis. I know most media outlets have to say Atlantis is "just a story", but if you want the real truth. Go to the Canadians.
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).
Perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis:_The_Antediluvian_Wor... (1882) by Ignatius Donnelly.
>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.
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.
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.
> 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,
There is also the question of what is meant by Atlantis. While I have certainly encountered versions of the story that the author was referring to, I read too many "mysteries" books as a kid and the myth pops up in contemporary fiction, I typically hear of the more plausible versions of the story that can be backed up by archaeological evidence. Granted, it can also be a complete fiction.
Most Americans have Edgar Cayce to thank for keeping the myth of Atlantis alive.
The question implies knowledge of an "Atlantis Marvel Universe", which I'm guessing 90% of people would have no clue about.
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.
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?
My daughter is an archeologist and this is one of her bugbears, the idea that the Egyptians couldn't possibly have built something so huge on their own. Even though we're pretty clear on it, the originally racist idea that they were too primitive has survived long enough to just become "common knowledge" with the explicit racism receding.
You must not be familiar with its architecture to be so dismissive. That’s the hn equivalent of calling Amazon “just a website”
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.
I am quite familiar because I keep reading about it everytime someone insists its too hard, falling all over references demonstrating just how easy it was.
Heck I believe it was on this very website someone posted a study by a group of students who went to the actual quarry the stone was from, and actually carved out a stone using period techniques.
As far as I am concerned, pyramid denial is dead save a few absolute moronic hold outs who seem to believe copper tools cant cut stone.
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.
Even in the face of the new evidence of structures miles below the pyramids, we have to have this debate?
Or the chamber that was “theorized” by crackpots, included into Assassins Creed based on said “crackpots”, and then revealed to actually exist by sonography?
I think it’s far more sycophantic to insist that the ancient Egyptians were “primitive” rather than “advanced” when it was built, but hey, I’m against the grain and thus a crackpot.
The ice age and its consequences have been a disaster for ancient civilizational races.
>With the end of the Ice Age and its consequences, plenty of civilizations may have disappeared in deep waters.
Yeah possibly.
But the current "fan favourite" capital of Atlantis is well above water.
IIRC there were stone age artefacts recovered from Doggerland. Which, also IIRC, was likely caused by a big ice shelf impacting the ocean at the end of the ice age. But to imply that a technological superpower with massive amounts of land disappeared without a trace is kind of bs.
And in Asia there was the so-called "Three-sea plains".
三海平原
Except an exact location is given in the original text and there's definitely nothing there. Also the text says they ruled over lands that were known to the Greeks and they have no corroboration of an earlier dominant force or advanced society. Any civilization that failed to graduate past wood and earth construction could easily be washed away. Anyone that was capable of monumental construction or even pottery should leave a trace.
As an example, Sundaland was a huge area of Asia that is now underwater.
Whats even more surprising to me is that people still believe the great flood was nothing but a myth.
(wow, is this the MOST clickbait title I've seen?)
The big thing with Plato is his dates of a great flood match with the end of the younger dryas. The dates check out.
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.
>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.
Knowledge, I keep insisting, comes in silos.
"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."
What about Gobekli Tepe?
"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."
Wouldn't Europe have been mostly tundra/ice that long ago?
Also, what about this article (not Europe, but other global implications), do you dispute it specifically?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9629774/
You seem to be really upset (and frankly insulting) at the prospect of people being curious about the idea that we don't know everything about our history yet. There is a very wide gap between believing a theory is true or being certain its not true, and that gap is the humility to accept we aren't sure yet and there is room to be surprised.
Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence? What exactly is the risk? Isn't it more risky to stop developing the science and pursuing the truth? Is this really about scientific rigor, or do you have some reason to want there not to have been more developed civilizations pre-younger dryas than we previously thought existed? What's the harm to you in other people asking these questions and going out and trying to answer them?
>You seem to be really upset (and frankly insulting) at the prospect of people being curious about the idea that we don't know everything about our history yet.
Scientific Curiosity should never involve insisting something exists without evidence or any intention of looking for it.
This is where hancocks people always fall back to. Science just isnt "Imaginitive" enough to give enough time to their theories. Whereas you meet any scientist in the field and they will tell you how 3 broken pots and a pile of bones translates into an amazing civilisation. I dont think archeologists could survive being even 1 iota more imaginative.
>Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence?
They should search for that evidence instead of writing 20 books, some of them DEEEPLY racist, demanding other people search for that evidence on their behalf.
>Isn't it more risky to stop developing the science and pursuing the truth?
There are tons of people in the field right now developing the science and pursuing the truth.
>do you have some reason to want there not to have been more developed civilizations pre-younger dryas than we previously thought existed? What's the harm to you in other people asking these questions and going out and trying to answer them?
The person trying to force a narrative on history is Hancock. The danger is that he doesn't hypothesize, he instructs his legion of morons that his word is the truth and they need to buy more of his books to discover said truth.
Okay, I get it. You really don't like Hancock and you think he's racist.
I was trying to have a dialog about the actual evidence of the theory that the Richat structure could have been home to an advanced civilization that was wiped out in a flood ~12-13,000 years ago.
Here is what interests me:
- What evidence supports the theory, what evidence falsifies the theory
- If it's inconclusive, what kind of evidence would we need to find to either prove of falsify, and where would we look for it.
Because you have dragged in Hancock and his "people" (whatever that means) into this, I find it really hard to have a constructive dialog with you about the actual evidence and theory. Do you have any interest in setting aside the big fat red herring?
Here goes my best effort:
"There are tons of people in the field right now developing the science and pursuing the truth."
There are tons of people pursuing archeological excavations of the Richat structure? If not, then what novel theories are the archeology community pursuing?
"Scientific Curiosity should never involve insisting something exists without evidence or any intention of looking for it."
I am not doing that, and you are responding to me. I am asking about a theory and what evidence proves or disproves it. All science starts with observations and theories. My intention was to have a respectful dialog about the topic of the article, hoping I might learn something.
You cant form a theory without evidence.
"In science, a theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment"
Your idea, your concept, is that there's some huge missing gap in history. You haven't met the standard to expect other people to go and investigate things for you. You are free to take your idea, and go and seek approval to dig up the richat structure.
>what evidence falsifies the theory
No evidence falsifies the theory. First there isn't a theory, but second, the capital of atlantis will simply move somewhere else when evidence fails to be located.
>I find it really hard to have a constructive dialog with you about the actual evidence and theory
The chief proponents of the idea, are kind of relevant. They have 20 years or so of history, moving the goal posts all over the planet. Realistically, you should be looking at it like this:
1. Is there evidence to support your claims, if not, why not.
2. Is there evidence to support your intended course of action, if not, why not.
3. Go and find 2, and then seek 1.
I mean we have seen 1 and 2 unravel before you in this comment section. Theres no geologically sound "mud flood" or impact event that would explain why theres no evidence in the richat structure. Theres no visible evidence of atlantean civilisation in the Richat structure. Why do you expect some other person to go do labor when they have no reasonable expectation of results? Its hard enough for archeologists to get permits to dig where they have a reasonable expectation of findings. Putting down digs in the middle of the desert without a single reason to do so seems mad right? Its like asking a physicist to test gravity in the richat structure just in case it works differently there. Or a chemist to double check the atomic weight of helium on alternate tuesdays. If you are burdened with the glorious imagination that will free us from the shackles of incorrect history, why wouldnt you put that amazing talent to work yourself?
> What about Gobekli Tepe?
What about it? It's one of the oldest Neolithic settlements we've identified, but otherwise, it's not particularly unusual within our understanding of Neolithic Mesopotamia.
When GP is talking about "material culture", they're (probably) referring to the archaeological definition of culture, which means you need to give an explanation as to what makes an artifact indicative of belonging to a culture. The shape of an arrowhead perhaps, or maybe the kind of style used in painting pottery. Something that lets an archaeologist dig something up and go "aha, this is culture X!" Age isn't one of those characteristics.
But of course the province of pseudoarchaeology is to come up with a theory and work everything into evidence for that theory. Atlantis is old, Göbleki Tepe is old, therefore Göbleki Tepe is Atlantean!
> Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence? What exactly is the risk?
Most of the people that tend to propose these theories aren't interested in searching for evidence. See for example, Graham Hancock, who has been peddling the same theory for 30 years and has done nothing to actually produce better evidence for it except to whine that mainstream archaeologists don't want to listen to him because they're stuck in their own stupid ways. (Of course, in that same time, mainstream archaeology has thoroughly demolished the Clovis-First hypothesis which was previously disfavored, precisely because the pre-Clovis adherents actually did the legwork to produce better evidence to make it more accepted!) You can also see this with archaeoastronomy, which is borderline fringe--its better practitioners have made some success by listening to the criticisms and persevering in efforts to get better, stronger evidence to buttress their claims. As a basic rule of thumb, if someone's response to criticism is to chide scientists for being rigid in their thinking rather than going out to try to get better evidence, then that's a strong sign they're engaged in pseudoscience and not science.
As for the risk, a lot of these theories bear a deep legacy of overt racism just begin their skin; they've historically been used to devalue the abilities of the people who've made them (e.g., Great Zimbabwe). Nowadays, they've been modified to edit out the basic message of "white people taught everybody how to civilization," so it's no longer quite as overt as their late 19th century ancestors... but you can still see the lingering traces of it in "an ancient civilization taught everybody how to civilization."
There is so much about your comment here that I appreciate (similar to your other reply to me). Thank you.
I wish I had time right now to thoughtfully ask a couple questions I have, but it will have to wait.
I am compelled to squeeze this in:
"As for the risk, a lot of these theories bear a deep legacy of overt racism just begin their skin; they've historically been used to devalue the abilities of the people who've made them (e.g., Great Zimbabwe). Nowadays, they've been modified to edit out the basic message of "white people taught everybody how to civilization," so it's no longer quite as overt as their late 19th century ancestors... but you can still see the lingering traces of it in "an ancient civilization taught everybody how to civilization.""
- Wow! Holy cow, I had no idea, and this hadn't remotely crossed my mind. If anything, I would have thought the opposite. (that evidence of incredible achievements by ancient civilizations would diminish [relatively] the achievements of modern ones).
One of hancocks claims is that his urcivilisation that seeded technology all over the planet were white.
He has dropped the claim from more recent works but never recanted it.
So I read up on what you are saying and some of Hancock's past work, and I see how the theory could be seen as diminishing the accomplishments of indigenous cultures or denying their own capacity for innovation.
Prior to today, I hadn't read any of Graham Hancock's work and have no attachment to him or his theory.
I was under the impression that the younger dryas impact hypothesis was accepted by Geology (I actually learned from this thread that it's not). If one is to assume that the younger dryas was caused by cataclysmic meteorite impacts, then the idea that an ancient civilization was wiped out in said cataclysm seems plausible and triggered my curiosity.
Given that the impact hypothesis hasn't reached the burden of proof, then I am not sure what to make of it.
That said, I don't appreciate any implication that just because someone is interested in evidence of undiscovered pre younger dryas civilizations they are racist. Not speaking of Hancock specifically, but I would appreciate being able to have a conversation about the evidence without feeling like someone is implying I am racist because I am interested in it. (Keep in mind I wasn't the one who brought up Hancock)
What gets my goat, quite substantially, is that I love bad history/archeology in terms of fiction.
Like Howard and Lovecraft among others, loved this sort of stuff. "What if theres an entire missing age where heroes roamed around doing cool shit" yeah bro what if that shit rules.
They formed a lot of their worldview based on books that were already being discredited in their time. But its still amazing fiction.
The problem largely seems that people cant let it live in fiction.
>then the idea that an ancient civilization was wiped out in said cataclysm seems plausible and triggered my curiosity.
Yeah thats how they get you. It activates the neurons. That said, it would have had to atomise a lot of their society to prevent detection.
>That said, I don't appreciate any implication that just because someone is interested in evidence of undiscovered pre younger dryas civilizations they are racist.
The problem is that, since around the 1950s we have had pretty much perfect knowledge of the planet. Small notes of our understanding can change but we have been almost everywhere and done almost everything. Its really sad but its a fact.
There are really 2 strands of archaeology denial.
1. "I really wish there was more to explore, so I am going to make it up\become heavily invested in a made up history"
2. "I dont think those people could have discovered stacking rocks without help"
1. Can be fine in fiction, but 2. is just gross tbh. And terribly, the people in group 1, are largely basing their understanding on work done by group 2. Its hard to overstate how frequently racist nonsense is bubbling just underneath this.
So while yeah, you might resent the implication by some commenters that you are in some way racist, the fault lies largely with the fact that you are standing, possibly blindfolded, in a big crowd thats like 99% racist by volume. It might be rude to assume, but its also generally a fairly accurate assumption that tends to work without issue.
Something to keep in mind. A lot of YDIH people end up as "Mud Flooders" people whose ur-conspiracy involves the entire planet being covered in 20 meters of mud during the YD. These people then spin off everything in that manner. Flat earth, tartaria, etc etc. Its quite a slippery brain slope.
>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.
waahhh no more critical thought on hacker news!!!!
then: "Atlantis was never real and anyone who thinks it was is a moron."
"f*ck"
go back to reddit
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.
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.
"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.
> this is irrelevant
Plato pretty clearly describes the city as man-made. Perhaps Atlantis was real, but he was mistaken about how it was built, so let's give you that. However, everything else still doesn't match.
>in what way? Be specific
That's a bit bossy. It's funny that you ask me to be specific, given that you're providing no evidence for your claim other than "it's round."
Plato is pretty specific in how he describes Atlantis. He says there's a mountain 9 km away from the city. That does not match the geography of the structure. He says there are three concentric circles of land; it's unclear what would even count as a circle of land in the structure, but it doesn't look like three. Plato claims Atlantis was about 500km in diameter, but the city (i.e., the concentric rings) was only a few km, much smaller than the structure. He said there was a passage for ships into the city, half a km wide, which does not exist in the structure.
He also says Atlantis controlled Libya, Egypt, Asia, and parts of Europe. And yet there are no traces of anything? Nowhere? Nothing at all? But Plato knew about it, and nobody else?
>What about the tens of thousands of axe heads found all concentrated in one spot?
There is nothing there. There are no clay pots, no walls, and no abundance of metals or technological artefacts that should be there if this were Atlantis. There are no walls, and nothing. It's just nothing.
Apologies for coming off as bossy! Thank you for the respectful response.
Keep in mind my goal here isn't to prove the theory - my stance is that the theory is falsifiable and hasn't yet been proven or disproven. My response below is based on the assumption that misalignments between the reality of the Richat structure and Plato's descriptions of the Atlantis capital aren't material enough to dismiss the theory with confidence.
I also hope that you can agree with me that if we represent the theory fairly in order to disprove it we have to acknowledge that the details will have been muddied by 9000+ years and multiple translations, etc. between the theoretical city and Plato's descriptions. That said, I have responded to each of your points below:
"He says there's a mountain 9 km away from the city. That does not match the geography of the structure." There is a 200-250 meter jump in elevation 9km north of the outermost ring of the richat structure. I agree it's not exactly a "mountain" but considering my point above, can we agree that this could be what Plato was referring to?
"He says there are three concentric circles of land; it's unclear what would even count as a circle of land in the structure, but it doesn't look like three." - Odd, it does to me... Have you tried using google earth and checking the elevation at different points in the area?
"Plato claims Atlantis was about 500km in diameter, but the city (i.e., the concentric rings) was only a few km, much smaller than the structure." - The innermost circle is about 9km in diameter. The full concentric ring structure is about 50km, and the distance between the Richat structure and the ocean is about 500km. This theory assumes that the Richat structure was connected to the ocean by a river, and the civilization would also have built up along that river (hence the 500km figure). It seems reasonable to mix up the 9km inner circle with the whole concentric ring structure.
"He said there was a passage for ships into the city, half a km wide, which does not exist in the structure." - Relative to the size of the structure, half a KM wide is only 1% of the diameter. The theory is that the city was wiped out in a biblical flood, so there would have been significant erosion and earth movement which could make evidence of specifically where this channel was located harder to determine. There may be no evidence of it, or there may be subtle evidence of it, I don't know. Of all your points, I find this one the hardest to debate, but I also think its inconclusive.
"There is nothing there. There are no clay pots, no walls, and no abundance of metals or technological artefacts that should be there if this were Atlantis. There are no walls, and nothing. It's just nothing." - As far as I know, no one in modern times has actually dug under the surface to check? I don't understand where your confidence in "there is nothing there" comes from. It's like a developer who has written a few unit tests stating "there are no bugs", just because you haven't encountered one. This confidence in "there is no evidence" I find unscientific, and its the attitude that bothers me the most in these discussions. Can't you just say "We haven't found any conclusive evidence yet, but we also haven't looked very hard"? Do you honestly disagree with this statement?
I appreciate you engaging with me, and I hope you don't interpret my labelling your one comment unscientific as a criticism of your skepticism. Its good that you are skeptical, I only take issue with the conflation between "there is no evidence" and "we haven't found any evidence".
I honestly don't know if the Richat structure was Atlantis, and my overall stance on it is neutral. If there was significant research done into it that turned up no evidence of a significant human population I would accept it. My desire isn't to prove the theory, its to be supportive of people being able to do more work to more conclusively prove or disprove the theory.
Please, see "No – Atlantis Has Not Been Discovered in North Africa" by Steven Novella (2018):
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/no-atlantis-has-not-been...
BTW, there's still the problem of claiming that (a) Plato's account is a true and faithful transcript of an actual conversation, and that (b) all the various accounts reproduced in this rather complex game of telephone are faithful, as well. If, on the other hand, we conceded that neither the conversation nor the various narrator(s) were real, but rather a figure of speech and and a rhetorical vehicle, it's kind of difficult to claim at the same time unconditional veracity for the narrative conveyed by this. Maybe, the mode of introduction and framing already gives it away?
(Moreover, there was no broader tradition before this, it just popped up with the dialogs. So it should be difficult to claim that Plato just stated the obvious in another context. How comes that this knowledge should have come down to Plato exclusively, by this complex line of famous men, via a complex chain of witnesses, without any of them having been attributed for anything alike before or after this?)
Hey there are lots of reasons to be skeptical of the theory, but I haven't yet seen a reason to claim the theory is false (or the specific theory of Atlantis relating to a civilization occupying the Richat structure as unfalsifiable).
If we set aside "Atlantis" and Plato for a moment, and consider that 13,000 years ago the area around the Richat structure was lush with fauna and flora, and that there's geological evidence that around that time there were multiple cataclysmic meteorite strikes in North America (and maybe the Atlantic ocean), rapid global temperature changes, and flooding, then maybe:
- Given the very unique geography of the area it would have been a likely place for people to settle and flourish. There would have been both defensive and logistical advantages to the structure.
- They could have developed further there than anywhere else in the continent at the time
- They might have been wiped out by cataclysmic flooding that makes evidence of their presence significantly harder to detect than the civilizations we do have strong evidence for.
While I do not doubt that Northern Africa has cradled human civilization for a long time, to me, connecting the Richat structure and Plato is stretching it quite a bit, though. Why not say Plato's Atlantis is actually Göbekli Tepe – it's in the wrong direction and also not an island, but there are concentric structures and is actual man made?
If we are to neglect that Plato clearly states that his rhetorical vehicle is situated outside of Africa, but the Richat structure is in the then known parts of Africa, why should direction matter? While we may discuss the Richat structure, we should do so separately. There's no need to connect these things and no indication of why we should do so.
Regarding features, given the total population of that time (at least, as far as our estimates go), controlling a circular structure of 25km diameter may have been a bit ambitious. (It may have been pretty disadvantageous in actuality, as you would have to control and defend rather extensive perimeters with what would only account to thousands (in the low single digits). And, if you failed to do so, the very same features would have hosted your enemies. — Compare this to what Plato thought to be a more realistic size for what must have been then a remarkably extensive population.)
> this is irrelevant
I think OP mentions this due to your mention of meteor impacts
> What about the tens of thousands of axe heads found all concentrated in one spot?
According to Wikipedia, Stone Age axes. It seems reasonable to believe that the site provided easy access for material
> I think OP mentions this due to your mention of meteor impacts
I thought I was pretty clear about the strikes being in North America, but ill emphasize that point again. The formation is natural and the theory is that human settled in it for its logistical and defensive advantages (back when the area around it was lush), and then got wiped out by floods caused by global climate shifts caused by massive meteorite strikes in North America and possibly the Atlantic ocean.
> According to Wikipedia, Stone Age axes. It seems reasonable to believe that the site provided easy access for material
Sure, but given how little investment has been made into archeological studies of the area, isn't it interesting that we found evidence of some significant human activity?
It doesn't prove the theory, but its an observation that if anything lends to the theory.
The scientific method is a process of making observations, developing a theory, forming falsifiable hypotheses, testing them carefully, and then drawing conclusions, and updating the theory as appropriate.
I don't take issue with people being skeptical about all this, I just take issue with people confidently stating that it's been proven false. Their stance seems less scientific to me than the people who want to pursue experiments that validate or invalidate (or refine) the theory.
I for one just would like to know the truth, whatever it might be.
Edit: To the people who are downvoting this comment, I wish you would respond to it and explain why you think it deserves to be downvoted.
>and then drawing conclusions, and updating the theory as appropriate.
This bit never happens.
What does occur is that the hypothesis just twists to ignore new data. Hancock has claimed that as he isn't a scientist he doesn't need to include the facts that disagree with his ideas. He sees himself as a champion of an idea, and cherry picks facts to craft the best possible case for that idea. IE: Hes a massive fraud and waste of time.
> I just take issue with people confidently stating that it's been proven false.
I take issue with the idea that this entire argument has to happen again, politely and fresh, for anyone who pops up on the internet having read some cherry picked nonsense about atlantis. Why is it our collective responsibility to educate you. Its not even the responsibility of scientists to prove or disprove your claims, if you are making positive claims you should be either presenting or locating evidence for those claims. Also to note, evidence doesnt mean "Hey this sounds a bit like some old folklore".
>I for one just would like to know the truth, whatever it might be.
All offense intended, but the people who go on about this stuff have already arrived at their desired truth, and they are simply defending their truth from the slings and arrows of reality. Get on a boat, go investigate the Richat structure, come back with evidence, otherwise the current evidence stands.
> if it were to credibly refute the possibility that the capital of Atlantis was the richat structure
It has never been positively established why would it need refutation.
Plus all the details that conveniently line up. The mountains with rivers to the north. Being south of the Atlas mountains – Atlas being the first king of Atlantis. "Atlantis" meaning "island of Atlantis" is interesting because it's likely that if water were present in the rings, it would have the appearance of an island, and there are two forms of evidence that there was: zoom out on Maps/Earth and see the obvious water blast the sand experienced coming from the Atlantic; there is also salt present in the rings.
Is it Atlantis? Maybe not, but there a number of stiking coincidences.
Correction: Island of Atlas
I thought everyone knew that Atlantis is just another name for the Richat Structure.
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.
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.
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?
"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.
1. Cataclysmic meteor strikes ending the ice age? Aren't they more likely to prolong it?
2. Is there any evidence of either glaciation or flooding at the Richat structure?
3. If no on 2, then why should their civilization leave virtually zero evidence, even if it collapsed? Macchu Pichu is still there. Teotihuacan is still there. The Nasca Lines are still there. Chan Chan is still there. The Minoan ruins are still there. If this was just an abrupt collapse. why should it leave no trace?
1. Yes. I don't know, but there is lots of geological evidence that 12-13,000 years ago there were several cataclysmic meteor strikes, and the earths temperature swung up and down wildly, eventually settling at a much higher temperature (ending the ice age). I am pretty sure this is accepted by the geological community.
2. There is evidence of tremendous flooding, yes. You can actually see it on google earth yourself if you go look...
3. The theory assumes there was massive flooding, which is why we have to look harder for evidence (careful subsurface excavation) compared to sites like Macchu Pichu. Also Macchu Pichu is 600 years old, and the theory of the Richat structure housing a city assumes it was destroyed 12,900+ years ago.
4. Keep in mind that it's widely accepted that 13k years ago the Sahara was lush grasslands and forests.
> I don't know, but there is lots of geological evidence that 12-13,000 years ago there were several cataclysmic meteor strikes, and the earths temperature swung up and down wildly, eventually settling at a much higher temperature (ending the ice age). I am pretty sure this is accepted by the geological community.
You're wrong about this. There's not a lot of evidence for the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. In particular, the best evidence--an actual meteoric impact crater--is completely missing. This is why proponents have instead suggested either that it was a series of large airbursts or an impact in the Laurentide ice sheet itself, to be able to keep a large crater from forming.
The current consensus hypothesis is that it's a reconfiguration of the glacial lake outflows on the margin of the Laurentide ice sheet that induced a breakdown of the thermohaline circulation system, which also explains some peculiarities of the Younger Dryas (like its effects were a lot worse in North America than the rest of the world).
Thank you for taking the time to point this out respectfully. Looks like you're absolutely right about the current consensus, and my summary didn't fairly reflect all the evidence.
Times like this I wish I could edit older comments. I would update it to incorporate what you are saying and diminish the confidence in the impact hypothesis.
Dude. Somebody told you you're wrong, and you listened? Refreshing to see.
And I'll try to return the favor. If they were airbursts, and so were providing heat but not stuff thrown up into the atmosphere, then I could maybe see meteors ending an ice age.
I think there is consensus that Doggerland was wiped out by a massive tidal wave generated by the Storegga event. This feels like it deserves mention in any arrogant certaintist article like the one above.
The article would be good if it asserted "we don't know".
> The article would be good if it asserted "we don't know".
But we do, Plato made them up.
I had never even heard of this before this comment. I have now learned it's a very unique geological formation in the Sahara consisting of concentric rings of raised stone. It appears to be entirely natural and the scientific consensus is that no city has ever existed on the site nor did human artifice have anything to do with its creation.
For someone to post a comment like "I thought everyone knew" is so egregiously deceptive and misleading that the comment should be flagged. It's tantamount to posting "I thought everyone knew area 51 recovered aliens from Roswell." It's a conspiracy theory masquerading as an ordinary remark.
Worse, it's one that uses a psychological trick to dodge the burden of proof, because "everybody knows", so if you ask for evidence, you're admitting you're not among the "knowing ones". "Everyone knows" is not evidence.
> 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.
"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.
People used to think Troy was fictional. People (myself included) think Atlantis is fictional. The difference is: Troy was much closer to us in time, and it was found.
People didn't use to think Troy was fictional, where did you get that idea?
Edit: to be clear there is no evidence that the Trojan war happened as described, but that doesn't mean Troy is a fiction anymore then Sparta or Ithaca are.
I had to look it up. My memory of this is from my childhood, and I doubt I ever had sources. But yes, it seems that there were scholars who thought Troy to be fictional:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Iliad?utm_s...
| In the early modern era, attitudes towards the legends grew more skeptical. Blaise Pascal characterized the story as merely a "romance", commenting that "nobody supposes that Troy and Agamemnon existed any more than the apples of the Hesperides. [Homer] had no intention to write history, but only to amuse us."[6] During the 19th century the stories of Troy were devalued as fables by George Grote.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Bryant?utm_source=chatgp...
| In his books on Troy, Bryant endeavoured to show that the existence of Troy and the Greek expedition were purely mythological, with no basis in real history. In 1791, Andrew Dalzel translated a work of Jean Baptiste LeChevalier as Description of the Plain of Troy.[8] It provoked Bryant's Observations upon a Treatise ... (on) the Plain of Troy (1795) and A Dissertation concerning the War of Troy (1796?). A fierce controversy resulted, with Bryant attacked by Thomas Falconer, John Morritt, William Vincent, and Gilbert Wakefield.[5]
I think you are conflating people calling the Trojan war fiction with thinking the city was. While there were a few people like Bryant who thought Troy was totally fictional it was always a very fringe position.
What are you talking about? Here is the Blaise Pascal quote in the first link:
> "nobody supposes that Troy and Agamemnon existed any more than the apples of the Hesperides. [Homer] had no intention to write history, but only to amuse us."
Many European scholars did consider Troy fictional. For example, Jacob Bryant's "A Dissertation concerning the War of Troy" (1796) explicitly argued that Troy never existed as a real city and that the Trojan War was purely mythological. He thought Homer's place names derived from Egyptian and Phoenician religious vocabulary, so the entire Trojan War narrative should be interpreted as imported solar allegory without any historical basis.
That’s like quoting harry turtledove on ww2. Bryant was writing fictional pseudo history.
Bryant was a pseudo historian who came up with an elaborate alternate history. He doesn't represent the mainstream view anymore then flat earthera do today.
Edit: as I said, Troy was inhabited until around 1300 and left behind many artifacts like coins. While conspiracy theorists might doubt it occasionally, it was never a mainstream view that the person I was responding to presented it as. Saying that we used to doubt Troy so therefore maybe Atlantis is real is basically saying that if we reject one conspiracy theory we should accept a separate one.
"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-astronom...
> 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?
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.
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.
And where did Noah Land after the flood?
Right. Mount Ararat
Are you saying that the ark left the flooded Black Sea basin, flew through the air, and landed on a mountain many kilometers from the sea? That seems like a stretch to fit a hypothesis.
What is the significance of that to you? Mount Ararat doesn't stick out of the sea.
What
> 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.
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.
"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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
I'm not sure if I follow. Are you implying that dragons are real?
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.
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?
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.
Are you kidding? Folklore survives really well. Next you will tell us Giants are real because of Gilgamesh.
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?
I'm even more confused now. You're saying that dragons are not real, because they're a metaphor for the Roman legions? That supports the idea that Atlantis isn't real, because it's similarly a metaphor for something else, right?
There was a time ancient people broke their own legs, believing it would bring good luck.
It is true and written all across ancient records of that time.
Scholars don't fully understand why they would do such a thing. Many theories have been presented over the years. A ritual of passage, a demonstration of loyalty as bargain in exchange for a favor from a divinity, or simply a group ritual believed to reinforce the will of those within a social group.
Truth is, we will never know. Despite our best efforts, several parts of the original text describing the ritual were lost, only copies of copies remain.
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.
> 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.