Lost city of Atlantis believed found off Spain

WilliamBoyd8

WilliamBoyd8

Active member
A U.S.-led research team may have finally located the lost city of Atlantis,
the legendary metropolis believed swamped by a tsunami thousands of years ago,
in mud flats in southern Spain.

"This is the power of tsunamis," head researcher Richard Freund told Reuters.

"It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and
that's pretty much what we're talking about," said Freund, a professor at the
University of Hartford who led an international team searching for the
true site of Atlantis.

Atlantean residents who did not die in the tsunami fled inland and
built new cities there, he added.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42072469/ns/technology_and_science-science

post_atlantistlostcontinent.jpg


:)
 
M

Montana Smith

Active member
A strange tale.

Is this a grim topical hoax, or a real report?

If it was a tsunami the rubble would be washed inland and reused later in other construction, and the remainder would be swept back out to sea, where the evidence should still lie.
 
InexorableTash

InexorableTash

Active member
I watched the NatGeo documentary (in my defense, I was pinned under a sleeping baby.) Given that promotion of the show predated the recent quake/tsunami, it appears to be just grim coincidence, not poor taste.

The theory is based on a few key facts:

  • In southern Spain - just past "the Pillars of Hercules" from the perspective of Greece, there is a plain with some geological anomalies that could suggest it was coastal in the ancient past and has since become quite far inland.
  • Satellite photos show surface anomalies that could be interpreted as concentric rings.
  • Anomalies also suggest there could have been manmade structures present.
  • Gold, silver, and red copper were mined nearby.
  • This area may correspond to an area referenced in biblical text that was mentioned in earlier sources but not in later sources.
  • Ruins further inland may correspond to later construction.
  • At least one ruin contains a carving with concentric circles.

So... it's not a totally crazy theory (like, say, ancient astronauts...) but it's incredibly fragmentary and the falsifiable claims weren't tested.
 
Attila the Professor

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
kongisking said:
I'm sorry to be troll-ish here, but look up "continental drift" and you'll see why Atlantis is bunk.
Click to expand...

That's just assuming that it's actually an entire continent. (You've got to figure that wherever the notion of the "lost <I>continent</I>" has to be a later translation of something that's closer to city, polis, island, or kingdom.)
 
WillKill4Food

WillKill4Food

New member
Atlantis found on Pi Day?

Even thought these archaeologists have clearly found something, and perhaps even something extraordinary, they seem too quick to label it "Atlantis," in hopes of making a name for themselves.

Attila the Professor said:
That's just assuming that it's actually an entire continent. (You've got to figure that wherever the notion of the "lost <I>continent</I>" has to be a later translation of something that's closer to city, polis, island, or kingdom.)
Click to expand...
Why do you think that? Given that Atlantis is described as "larger than Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined," I doubt their archaeological finds fit Plato's description.

When I first heard this today, I immediately thought of Columbia University Professor Alan Cameron's claim that "t is only in modern times that people have taken the Atlantis story seriously; no one did so in antiquity."

Also applicable:
Julia Annas of University of Arizona said:
The continuing industry of discovering Atlantis illustrates the dangers of reading Plato. For he is clearly using what has become a standard device of fiction—stressing the historicity of an event (and the discovery of hitherto unknown authorities) as an indication that what follows is fiction. The idea is that we should use the story to examine our ideas of government and power. We have missed the point if instead of thinking about these issues we go off exploring the sea bed. The continuing misunderstanding of Plato as historian here enables us to see why his distrust of imaginative writing is sometimes justified.
Click to expand...
I suppose next archaeologists will go off in pursuit of More's Utopia and Plato's allegorical cave. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's lost world, and Michael Crichtons dinosaur-plagued Isla Nublar should be targeted as well.

In a couple thousand years, if travel at the speed of light ever becomes possible, future archaeologists will scour the galaxy looking for Klingons and Tattooine. ("I'm telling you, we found documentary footage of this stuff, man. Better quality than those ancient bigfoot video-scrolls.")

At any rate, I did enjoy this eye candy of what the fictional Atlantis could look like:
110314-science-atlantis-1031a.grid-8x2.jpg



And the alleged site of Atlantis, before the alleged tsunami:
110314-science-rings-1031p.grid-5x2.jpg
 
M

Montana Smith

Active member
WillKill4Food said:
Even thought these archaeologists have clearly found something, and perhaps even something extraordinary, they seem too quick to label it "Atlantis," in hopes of making a name for themselves.
Click to expand...

And that's a surefire method of getting attention.

WillKill4Food said:
At any rate, I did enjoy this eye candy of what the fictional Atlantis could look like:
Click to expand...

I have a book based on Plato's theories, which is full of black and white diagrams of how Atlantis might have appeared, and how the city was constructed. Nothing nearly as pretty as that artist's impression.

WillKill4Food said:
And the alleged site of Atlantis, before the alleged tsunami:
Click to expand...

To misquote 1957 Indy, "I thought it was further away."

I always imagined it to be out in the Atlantic, well beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
 
C

Captain Craig

New member
I believe there was a civilization known as Atlantis but not that it was a continent. Atlantis has a lore to it cause it was known by other civilizations/kingdoms back in antiquity. Other cultures have been found but because they were so isolated they had no notierity to them.

Atlantis captures us because they were seemingly advanced, if not just for the time, but still what did they know.

These discoverers may indeed be too quick to call it Atlantis but you got to admit if you found ruins under the sea what would your first thought be?

Curious to hear more of this. Afterall a news article on Yahoo! News front page indicates that the island of Japan moved 13' to the right, closer to the US and was shifted 2' down. Lost coastline, not hard to imagine a lost island then if an quake/tsunami was bad enough.
 
C

Captain Craig

New member
I believe there was a civilization known as Atlantis but not that it was a continent. Atlantis has a lore to it cause it was known by other civilizations/kingdoms back in antiquity. Other cultures have been found but because they were so isolated they had no notierity to them.

Atlantis captures us because they were seemingly advanced, if not just for the time, but still what did they know.

These discoverers may indeed be too quick to call it Atlantis but you got to admit if you found ruins under the sea what would your first thought be?

Curious to hear more of this. Afterall a news article on Yahoo! News front page indicates that the island of Japan moved 13' to the right, closer to the US and was shifted 2' down. Lost coastline, not hard to imagine a lost island then if an quake/tsunami was bad enough.
 
The Drifter

The Drifter

New member
I've read quite a few theories on the whereabouts of the lost city of Atlantis. To me, while very interesting - this just seems to be another false hope in the never-ending search for the fabled city.

I'm no expert in this subject, but wasn't Atlantis first described by Plato? In what works of his did he write about it, and for what purpose? Where there any other people who wrote of it during that era?

It just seems that over the centuries, someone would have found something to undeniably prove the existence of such a sought after and popular legend (or) myth if it did indeed exist.
 
WillKill4Food

WillKill4Food

New member
Montana Smith said:
I have a book based on Plato's theories, which is full of black and white diagrams of how Atlantis might have appeared, and how the city was constructed. Nothing nearly as pretty as that artist's impression.
Click to expand...
Artistic license, eh?

The Drifter said:
I'm no expert in this subject, but wasn't Atlantis first described by Plato? In what works of his did he write about it, and for what purpose? Where there any other people who wrote of it during that era?
Click to expand...
This right here should be able to explain it all to you...
Not to repeat myself, but:
WillKill4Food said:
...Columbia University Professor Alan Cameron: "It is only in modern times that people have taken the Atlantis story seriously; no one did so in antiquity."

Also applicable:
Julia Annas of University of Arizona said:
The continuing industry of discovering Atlantis illustrates the dangers of reading Plato. For he is clearly using what has become a standard device of fiction?stressing the historicity of an event (and the discovery of hitherto unknown authorities) as an indication that what follows is fiction. The idea is that we should use the story to examine our ideas of government and power. We have missed the point if instead of thinking about these issues we go off exploring the sea bed. The continuing misunderstanding of Plato as historian here enables us to see why his distrust of imaginative writing is sometimes justified.
Click to expand...
I suppose next archaeologists will go off in pursuit of More's Utopia and Plato's allegorical cave.
Click to expand...
 
M

Montana Smith

Active member
WillKill4Food said:
How can pirates on 18th-century ships find a sunken city?
Click to expand...

Well, pirates do sometimes have that sinking feeling.

2najqcw.jpg


And more so the further we go bck in history!

piratecs.png


vigie-pirate-asterix.jpg


This Spanish 'Atlantis' doesn't see to be very deep down - just under marshland? Those pirates will be wrecking their ships on it. And that's not really very satisfiying for the fantastical image of the deeply submerged city in popular culture.
 
Indy Scout 117

Indy Scout 117

New member
hahahahaha man. when i was a kid i always wanted to find the lost city of Atlantis. but i always thought it would be like the movie Atlantis where we get submarines and find people in an underwater utopia. ah yes, the dreams of childhood :p
 
RedeemedChild

RedeemedChild

New member
For some reason or another, I actually do believe that Atlantis existed. However, I don't actually think it was a sunken city. I'd like to believe that it existed before the Biblical flood and was destroyed during the 'Great Deluge'. I also don't mind buying into the idea proposed by National Geographic that Atlantis was destroyed by a Tsunami as the events in Japan sure make this idea plausible.
 
WillKill4Food

WillKill4Food

New member
RedeemedChild said:
For some reason or another, I actually do believe that Atlantis existed. However, I don't actually think it was a sunken city. I'd like to believe that it existed before the Biblical flood and was destroyed during the 'Great Deluge'. I also don't mind buying into the idea proposed by National Geographic that Atlantis was destroyed by a Tsunami as the events in Japan sure make this idea plausible.
Click to expand...
A.) You "believe" that Atlantis existed. You do not think that it did. You believe.
B.) You'd "like to believe" that it existed, but only because you want it to confirm your [presumably fundamentalist] interpretation of the Bible. There's a reason that Ignatius Donnelly never became a respected historian/scientist, you know.
C.) I'm lost. Japan's a lost continent now?

Which is more likely: that Atlantis was a rhetorical device that captured the imaginations of escapist authors of pulp or that some island was inexplicably pulled under the sea by an irate god without leaving behind any archaological evidence?
 
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