Re: Atlantis - The Lost Continent (long)
George T. Young (gyoung1@ix.netcom.com)
Sat, 13 Jul 1996 02:55:51 GMT
"Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <th81@umail.umd.edu> wrote:
>cyberguy <cyberguy@IntNet.Net> wrote:
>> Ha Ha - I can't believe the off hand dismissal without inspection. How
>> unscientific. Have you ever been cave diving off Yucatan? An Olmec type
>> head in a cave under almost 400 feet of water is pretty hard to confuse
>> with a natural limestone erosive product - so is a cave painting and
>> other artifacts, including stalactites showing the cave was open to the
>> air at some time. The existence of such things has nothing to do with
>> 'Atlantis' but I personally SUSPECT that the 'great flood' was from
>> melting ice!!!! (unless some tipped the planet on its axis and the oceans
>> sloshed about a lot) Have you ever seen the sunken city out on one of
>> the Pacific islands - stone buildings and carvings etc. underwater. Fact
>> is theres all kinds of stuff that can be covered under 400 feet of post
>> glacial melt.
>Have you?
>> And which would have to be added into the equation of
>> history. Just as things like green glass under layers of mud hut
>> civilizations in the mid east. All is NOT as it appears on this planet.
>Here's a personal take on the general subject of paranormality: people
>lie. No, really, they do. For money (how much did you pay for books
>on the subject? As a kid, I must have spent over $100 in paperbacks
>(back when they were ~$2 or so) on them myself. I bought into it all.
>Then I saw an excellent series of specials on NOVA back in the 1970s.
>They covered UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, Ancient Astronauts, etc.
>Guess what: they showed that the authors I had read and enjoyed were
>wrong. More than that, disingenuous. Liars.
>I checked out the sources that NOVA cited, and found:
>You CAN erect Easter Island heads with just manpower, ropes, and a few
>logs. There ARE ancient Egyptian paintings showing how pyramids and
>megasculptures were put into place (as Lister said, "Whips. Massive whips.")
>Most of the Nazca "runways" are 5' or less across. Almost every ship
>which disappeard in the Triangle "on a clear day" did so during major
>storms. There is no record of Atlantis prior to Plato, who sets up the
>whole situation by explaining that Solon's story was told on a day
>traditionally associated with the telling of tall tales. Etc., etc., etc.
>I may not scuba dive, but I have snorkled in the Keys during a Carbonate
>Sedimentology class, where we saw (among other things) the erosive
>features which Atlantologists call "walls". Sorry, but it isn't so, any
>more than doublely plunging anticlines are Noah's Ark.
>Yep, there is more to Nature then I know, but there is a helluva lot more
>to Nature than is dreamt of in any of the paranormalists philosophies.
>Just because there are not scientific explanations yet for a given find
>does not mean that someone else's idea is automatically right.
Just a few notes here re Atlantis: First, most of what has been
written about this subject over the last 100+ years is fantasy, at
best. This has been the "problem" of Atlantis; why "serious"
investigators have avoided it & thus all the ignorance... The terms
"Atlantis," "Atlantes," etc., of Classical records mean "People of the
Atlantic" and/or "People of the Atlas;" the names comming from the god
Atlas, who according to their traditions was the first king of a
prehistoric civilization located in what is now Morocco & Spain.
"Atlantic" is also from the same source... Plato never said Atlantis
was a continent (nor did any other Classical scholors' in their
Atlantic references); always it is described as land and/or island/s
near or west of Gibraltar. Curiously, Plato (quoting his alleged
Egyptian sources) did say there was a "true" continent on the western
side of the Atlantic, which could be sailed to via the Atlantic
islands... It seems there was a Megalithic/Aeneolithic culture in the
greater Gibralter area in prehistoric or legendary times. It is
possible they may have had a seafaring connection with ancient Crete
(in which case the Thera explosion may have been the basis for Plato's
fabulous description of the "Atlantians" destruction; retold in his
moral terms). It also seems probable that, at least in part, the last
of this Atlantic civilization my have been involved in the "Sea
Peoples" wars with the Egyptians (becoming the basis for Plato's
"Atlantian" attack on Egypt & the Eastern Med.)... Were these peoples
with magical technology, etc.? Hardly. Did they exist (as a
civilization) 12,000 years ago? Unlikely...
[FYI: the best translations of Plato (and all Classical works) are the
Loeb Library editions.]
G.T.Young
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