Plato and Atlantis
I.A.Blease
It should be pointed out that much of this exegesis has been touted
about without much concern for the common sense rule of interpretation
that a man's words should be understood with reference to their context.
It seems to me that this rule has never been considered by the Atlantean
believers.
Like all the diaglogues of PLato, the Timaeus/Critias contains many
levels of interpretation, such as the well known use of irony by Plato,
all of this is lost on the wilder theorists, who perhaps are more
interested in Dollars wringed from the believe anything public than
serious study. Ironically, trash sells well, academic works do not.
G Horvat
irritates you so much. Is it because you know who named the Atlantic
Ocean or the Atlas mountains and everyone else does not? Or perhaps
it is because you know both the source and reason for all of the mass
migrations C14 dated to around 2600 BC (and scholars do not)?
If you have all of these answers, then I tip my hat to you ....but
please, do not keep all of this knowledge to yourself.
Gisele
Pat Sibbald
G Horvat wrote:
> I wonder why the belief of words written by a respected philosopher
> irritates you so much.
Up until the middle ages it was known that men had more teeth than women
because Aristotle said so.
G Horvat
wrote:
If your are suggesting that anyone who is found to be in error is an
unreliable source of information, then I'm afraid that NO ONE,
including today's top scholars, will ever be totally exempt from
errors.
I suspect that Aristotle compared the numbers of teeth of older males
and younger females and thus, the error... as his statement was based
on personal observation:
"Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats,
and swine; in the case of other animals observations have not yet been
made: ...." [Aristotle's History of Animals]
Whomever believed that men had more teeth than women until the middle
ages deserved to be misguided since they could have easily confirmed
this information themselves.
As far as submerged lands are concerned, the average person is at the
mercy of geological data gathered by others. Scholars scoff at the
concept of 'Mu' but believe in the Sunda Shelf. The only difference
between the two concerns extent.
Gisele
Aethelrede
G Horvat wrote in message <3798a1fb...@news.connect.ab.ca>...
>On Fri, 23 Jul 1999 14:07:24 +1000, Pat Sibbald <piss...@beer.com>
>wrote:
>
>>G Horvat wrote:
>>
>>> I wonder why the belief of words written by a respected philosopher
>>> irritates you so much.
>>
>>Up until the middle ages it was known that men had more teeth than women
>>because Aristotle said so.
>
>If your are suggesting that anyone who is found to be in error is an
>unreliable source of information, then I'm afraid that NO ONE,
>including today's top scholars, will ever be totally exempt from
>errors.
>
>I suspect that Aristotle compared the numbers of teeth of older males
>and younger females and thus, the error... as his statement was based
>on personal observation:
Oh yeah? Where did he ever say something like "I personally counted the
number of teeth of (some number) of 15 year old men and women of Athens, and
this observation shows that the women have fewer teeth than the men"?
>"Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats,
>and swine; in the case of other animals observations have not yet been
>made: ...." [Aristotle's History of Animals]
>
>Whomever believed that men had more teeth than women until the middle
>ages deserved to be misguided since they could have easily confirmed
>this information themselves.
So could Aristotle: he was married so all he had to do was ask his wife
to open her mouth so he could do a count. But he didn't. He just
theorised, like most of the Greeks. Theorising was philosophy: counting
was slave work, beneath the pride of free men
Pat Sibbald
G Horvat wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Jul 1999 14:07:24 +1000, Pat Sibbald <piss...@beer.com>
> wrote:
>
> >G Horvat wrote:
> >
> >> I wonder why the belief of words written by a respected philosopher
> >> irritates you so much.
> >
> >Up until the middle ages it was known that men had more teeth than women
> >because Aristotle said so.
>
> If your are suggesting that anyone who is found to be in error is an
> unreliable source of information,
Certainly not. I do argue, however that
A says B
I respect A
B must therefore be true
is not a logical progression.
> then I'm afraid that NO ONE,
> including today's top scholars, will ever be totally exempt from
> errors.
>
You have strengthened my argument. Thank you.
>
> I suspect that Aristotle compared the numbers of teeth of older males
> and younger females and thus, the error... as his statement was based
> on personal observation:
>
> "Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats,
> and swine; in the case of other animals observations have not yet been
> made: ...." [Aristotle's History of Animals]
>
Quite possibly all true, but not entirely relevant. As I say I'm not
attacking Aristotle, just the "but so-and-so said so" school of debate.
>
> Whomever believed that men had more teeth than women until the middle
> ages deserved to be misguided since they could have easily confirmed
> this information themselves.
Harsh but probably fair, and certainly no excuse for being deluded by Plato's
description of Atlantis.
>
>
> As far as submerged lands are concerned, the average person is at the
> mercy of geological data gathered by others.
As a geologist I would be interested if you could present a solid geological
argument for the presence/destruction of Atlantis. Particularly considering
that every other theory puts it in a different place - is there a continent
which has not been at some time declared as the site of Atlantis? Come to
think of it, maybe Australia.
> Scholars scoff at the
> concept of 'Mu' but believe in the Sunda Shelf. The only difference
> between the two concerns extent.
>
>
> Gisele
Pat
e...@club-internet.fr
> Much nonsense has gone forward about the reality of Atlantis.
I posted several serious messages which remained unanswered.
>
> It should be pointed out that much of this exegesis has been touted
> about without much concern for the common sense rule of interpretation
> that a man's words should be understood with reference to their context.
> It seems to me that this rule has never been considered by the Atlantean
> believers.
> Like all the diaglogues of PLato, the Timaeus/Critias contains many
> levels of interpretation, such as the well known use of irony by Plato
How can you be certain that Plato would go into great detail to describe
how he got information which he actually made up? He doesn't do this in
any other dialogue. You're making an assumption. All I can tell you is
that I wish I was as convinced of the existence of Atlantis as you are of
its non-existence, because if I was I would sell everything and spend the
rest of my life digging underwater around the Canary Islands.
>
> all of this is lost on the wilder theorists, who perhaps are more
> interested in Dollars wringed from the believe anything public than
> serious study. Ironically, trash sells well, academic works do not.
Absolutely, but you're wrong to think that arguments in favor of Atlantis
are only to be found in books by Charles Berlitz, Edgar Cayce, Erich Von
Daniken, etc. etc. etc. Try reading Proclus, Diodorus Siculus or Alejo
Carpentier, for example.
--
Erick Wolff Despujol
e...@club-internet.fr
Doug Weller
+0200, e...@club-internet.fr said...
> I posted several serious messages which remained unanswered.
>
From: dwe...@ramtops.demon.co.uk (Doug Weller)
Subject: Rodney Castleden's Atlantis Destroyed
Date: 21 Jun 1998 00:00:00 GMT
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Newsgroups: alt.mythology,sci.archaeology
Just wrote this for another purpose, and thought I'd post it to these two
newsgroups.
Of all the books I've read on Atlantis, the most impressive (and the one
with the most archaeological evidence) is Rodney Castleden's Atlantis
Destroyed, published this year by Routledge. Castleden also wrote The
Making of Stonehenge, The Knossos Labyrinth, The Stonehenge People,
Neolithic Britain, and Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete. (And Classic
Landforms of the Sussex Coast for the Geographical Association, but
that's not relevant here!).
On page 7 he discusses the Pillars of Hercules:
"Before the sixth century BC several mountains on the edges of mainland
Greece were seen as supports for the sky. Amongst others, the two
southward-pointing headlands on each side of the Gulf of Laconia were
pillars of Heracles. Then, to the Greeks, a large island with one end
just outside the pillars of Heracles could only have meant Crete. [This
isn't the sum of Castleden's thesis, wait for it]...Support for a
Peloponnesian location for the pillars comes, unexpectedly, from Egypt.
The Medinet Habu texts, dating from 1200 BC, describe the Sea Peoples
invading from islands to the north (possibly the Aegean), 'from the
pillars of heaven', by which the Egyptians probably meant that the
invaders came from the end of the world as they knew it.'
He then goes on to say "The thesis of this book is that the story is not
one piece of identifiable proto-history but several, and that Plato drew
them together because he wanted to weave them into a parable that
commented on the state of the world in his own times ... he wanted to
entertain, improve and exalt his readers. A distant memory of the Minoan
civilization was available, preserved for his use, as he said, by the
seventh century priests in the Nile delta. The wealth, orderliness and
strangeness of the Minoans are sketched in for us." Castleden then points
out that Plato does not write about Atlantis as a utopia, but about
Athens -- "It is the Athenians who are described in utopian terms. It is
they who have relinquished private property... and have prolific fields
and boundless pastures. It is Athens that is the excellent land with
well-tempered seasons."
Castleden follows this with a very detailed discussion of the archaeology
and geography of Minoan Crete and Thera and how that compares with
Plato's tale. He goes into detail about how the story might have been
transmitted to Plato and Plato's possible motives in writing the two
essays. (He also mentions that there was a century older text by
Hellanicus, of which only a small fragment survives, called 'Atlantis'!).
In the last chapter, he writes "There are several reasons why there have
been so many misunderstandings about the nature of Atlantis and its
location in time and space:
"1. Plato left the various elements in the story's visible and
undigested. Although he altered it, he did not do so thoroughly and the
result is that Atlantis as described cannot have existed at all. That
has led some commentators to claim mistakenly that the story is fiction
from start to finish, and thus to overlook the proto-historical content.
"2. The Egyptians who acquired the story in 1520 BC or shortly
afterwards had a very different geographical sense from he Greeks of
Plato's or Solon's time. To the 16th-century Egyptians, the Aegean was a
long way to the west. When the story was passed to Solon, the known
world was expanding rapidly, and either Solon or the priest may have
assumed that Atlantis was out in the newly visited Atlantic Ocean.This
mistake may actually have led to the ocean being named after the lost
land, rather than the other way around as most people have assumed.
"3. The geographical mistake was compounded by a misreading of Linear A
or B numerals, or a misreading of hieratic or demotic copies of the story
made in Sais by Egyptian scribes, in the fifteenth century or later.
This led to a tenfold exaggeration of many of the distance measurements,
and a hundredfold exaggeration of area, so that the Plain of Mesara,
instead of being small enough to fit into central Crete, was inflated to
the size of the southern Aegean. The land areas involved became too big
to fit into the Mediterranean: another reason for removing Atlantis to
the outer ocean.
"4. A similar mistranslation of numerals led to an exaggeration of the
900 years elapsing between Thera's destruction and Solon's Egyptian visit
to 9000 years. The idea of an advanced bronze age culture ...in 9600 BC
has always been unacceptable to pre-historians, and that has helped to
push Atlantis to the outer fringes of academic study.
[Here I'd like to interject that I've always been puzzled by those who
believe in a 9600 BC Atlantis and ignore the archaeological evidence that
there was no 9600 BC bronze age Athens. They seem to want to say that
half the story is true, the other half false.]
"5. The hypothesis revived repeatedly in the 20th century - that Minoan
Crete was Atlantis - has proved inadequate ... The parallel hypothesis,
based on more recent archaeological evidence, that Cycladic Thera was
Atlantis is also in itself inadequate. Because these hypotheses can be
rejected separately, many have rejected the idea that Atlantis might have
existed in the southern Aegean, understandably overlooking the
possibility that if the two hypotheses are combined they do meet the
needs of Plato's description.
6. -- omitted, about the Pillars of Heracles and dealt with above.
"7. It is possible that contemporary allegorical readings of the tale
were intended to be implicitly ironic, and that in relation to Sparta and
Syracuse Plato intended Athens to be Atlantis. From the execution of
Socrates, Plato learned the value of cricumspection and may have chosen,
for safety's sake, not to say directly what he meant."
What I find so impressive in this book, as I've said, is the wealth of
archaeological evidence.
One final point. Castleden is holding to the later date for the Thera
eruption, and includes an appendix justifying this.
Castleden goes into a lot of detail about where Plato got inspiration for
various aspects of his story.
A nuch older book, Atlantis: Fact or Fiction, ed. Edwin Ramage, is also
interesting, especially the section on the literary perspective.
Doug
--
Doug Weller Moderator, sci.archaeology.moderated
Submissions to:sci-archaeol...@medieval.org
Requests To: arch-mo...@ucl.ac.uk
Co-owner UK-Schools mailing list: email me for details
--
Doug Weller Moderator, sci.archaeology.moderated
Submissions to: sci-archaeol...@medieval.org
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.demon.co.uk
Co-owner UK-Schools mailing list: email me for details
Pat Sibbald
G Horvat wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Jul 1999 10:03:05 +1000, Pat Sibbald <piss...@beer.com>
> wrote:
>
> >G Horvat wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, 23 Jul 1999 14:07:24 +1000, Pat Sibbald <piss...@beer.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >G Horvat wrote:
> >> >
<snip>
> >> If your are suggesting that anyone who is found to be in error is an
> >> unreliable source of information,
> >
> >Certainly not. I do argue, however that
> >A says B
> >I respect A
> >B must therefore be true
> >is not a logical progression.
>
> Replace variable 'A' with the term 'scholar'. Hasn't most of the
> information that you've accumulated to date been transmitted in the
> same manner?
Sure, after all that is how one learns. It does not mean that I unquestioningly
accept everything presented to me nor does it mean that subsequent research will
not show something which has been accepted by me or others to be incorrect.
>
> Archaeologists have always paid attention to what was written by
> historians and ancient scribes but, if I have the correct impression,
> geologists feel complete with their own data and have no use for oral
> traditions and the like.
True to a certain extent, however this is not due to arrogance on the part of
geologists but to the timespans involved in the two diciplines. Archeology is
confined to human history so ancient texts and traditions are capable of providing
valuable clues. Geology on the other hand deals with earth history, a
substantially longer period of time for which there are no human witnesses.
> Since Plato was not the only one who wrote
> about a flood, is it not probable that there were eye witnesses to
> zones reclaimed by the sea at the end of the last ice age?
No! This is an unreasonable assumption! I'll approach this qustion on two levels.
1 - that there are records and traditions of devastation by flood other than
Plato's and 2 - that there were eyewitnesses to flooding at the end of the last
iceage.
1. Most, if not all, traditions refer to a flood event, it is untenable to assume
the position that these stories all refer to the same event. It would be more
resonable to conclude that at some time in a culture's history a major flooding
event took place and this found its way into mythology of the culture. When one
considers that a cultures oral history will easily reach back several centuries,
often more, and may even be partially inherited from earlier cultures it is
entirely concievable that a devastating event such as a major flood would have
occoured at least once.
If you find this a bit of a reach, consider that in just the past few years we
have seen massive flooding in central and eastern Europe, Central America, China,
Burma and Australia and a tsunami in PNG (these example are just off the top of my
head, a bit of thought could easily produce more). These were individual events
_not_ a world-wide phenomenon, yet to the people whose lives were affected it
could easily seem that the whole world was inundated, especially to people living
in a society with a view if the world far more insular than our modern
understanding.
2. The last ice age (emphasis on the _age_, as opposed to minor glaciation events
due to climatic fluctuation) was approximately 200 000 years long and ended about
11 000 years ago. At some stage during that period the human race evolved into
what it is today so the end of the ice age was witnessed by beings we would
consider human. However bear in mind that we are talking about processes which
occour over _geological_ time, not a sudden demarcation which would be noticed by
whoever was around at the time - 300 metre thick continent-wide ice sheets don't
recede overnight. The inundation due to the melting of all this ice would have
occoured over _thousands of years_ and would not have been catastrophic enough to
have entered into the folklore of whatever cultures were evolving at the time. At
best it would have been a case of something like "You know, they say that when my
great-great-grandad was a boy you could walk to that island at low tide." Hardly
the stuff of legend!
>>> then I'm afraid that NO ONE,
> >> including today's top scholars, will ever be totally exempt from
> >> errors.
> >>
> >
> >You have strengthened my argument. Thank you.
>
> I don't think so. Aristotle made the error while working in a
> scientific capacity.
>
What does that have to do with it? I still think you presented a good argument for
my point which is that not everything postulated by a
scholar/scientist/philosipher, no matter how respected, is by definition truth.
>
> If Herodotus had not written that the Phoencians circumnavigated
> Africa, how long would it have taken archaeologists to realize the
> same from archaeological record alone?
You still seem to be trying to argue that I won't accept anything written in
antiquity, this has never been the case! I simply believe that caution is required
when using ancient texts so that a greater signifigance is not ascribed to them
than what the author intended. Should archaeologists of the future search for
Airstrip One because it is described by Orwell?
btw any idea when the Suez Canal was completed? or is 'circumnavigated' your own
misinterpretation? Either way you have presented another point for my case!
>
<snipped stuff about Aristotle & teeth>
> > I'm not
> >attacking Aristotle, just the "but so-and-so said so" school of debate.
>
> No one who seriously studies this issue has 'all of their eggs in one
> basket'.
>
What?
>
> >> Whomever believed that men had more teeth than women until the middle
> >> ages deserved to be misguided since they could have easily confirmed
> >> this information themselves.
> >
> >Harsh but probably fair, and certainly no excuse for being deluded by Plato's
> >description of Atlantis.
>
> You mean 'there's no excuse for being deluded' into believing
> something which has not yet been condoned by science? This is the
> real issue, isn't it?
>
No, this is not the issue. Science is not perfect, theories and ideas change, new
discoveries are made, and this is how it should be. I am surprised however that
you could write "I wonder why the belief of words written by a respected
philosopher irritates you so much." while seeming to ignore modern science when it
doesn't jibe with your notion of the world!
>
> >> As far as submerged lands are concerned, the average person is at the
> >> mercy of geological data gathered by others.
> >
> >As a geologist
>
> (with an email address like that?) :)
>
Why not, even a geologist needs a hobby!
>
> >I would be interested if you could present a solid geological
> >argument for the presence/destruction of Atlantis.
>
> Solid geological? Not I.... To provide that I would have to know
> more than the most eminent geologists, wouldn't I?
>
Nope. Never underestimate the worth of entusiastic amatures. Your earlier post
did seem to imply that there was good geological evidence for Atlantis or
something like it. Whether generated by you personally or others, I would be
interested in seeing it, even though I make no claims to preeminence in the field.
>
> I will say this, though. Plato was definately referring to an area
> closer to New World than the Old (re: the colonies were described as
> being located in North America rather than Africa or Europe). In my
> opinion, he was referring to a pre-ice-age condition of the Caribbean
> Islands.. This explains, to me, the similarities between major
> aspects of the Egyptian culture and that of Central America.
If the peoples of Egypt and Central America _are_ somehow linked, this can not be
cited as evidence for Atlantis, more rational postulations could be put forward to
establish a link. If both were started by refugees from the destruction of
Atlantis it would be resonable to expect that evidence of their migrations could
be found elsewhere, if not other colonies.
Are thare many similarities beyond piling rocks in more or less the same shape,
and some mumified corpses.
Has anyone produced any linguistic or biological (eg DNA) evidence for such a
link?
Why are there no technological artifacts in the archeological record? Surely if a
formerly technologicaly advanced race were precipitated back into a stone age by a
cataclysmic event, some remnant of their former powers would have survived to be
handed down as revered objects. It follows that these objects would be contained
in remains such as temples or the tombs of powerful leaders, which also happen to
be prime targets for excavation. And don't use the old crystal skulls & big rocks
arguments - I can't explain them but I'm not willing to accept them as proof of an
advanced society at a time when the rest of the human race were just figuring out
what fire was good for.
I also understand that the people of Egypt are caucasoid and the natives of
Central America are mongoloid, if so this would seem to present a pretty
fundamental barrier to any theory of common origin, Atlantean or otherwise.
>
<snip>
Pat
I.A.Blease
Atlantis on what PLato wrote. I am absolutely confident that no Atalntis
will ever be found because it does not exist nor did it ever except in a
PLatonic dialogue. Plato blends in to his story elements of the Median
wars and the Persian Wars. Plato also uses his first hand knowledge of
Syracuse for his physical desription of Atlantis, the archaeology backs
this up.
G Horvat
>On Mon, 26 Jul 1999 13:12:44 +1000, Pat Sibbald <piss...@beer.com> wrote:
>G Horvat wrote:
>> On Sat, 24 Jul 1999 10:03:05 +1000, Pat Sibbald <piss...@beer.com>
>> wrote:
><snip>
>
>> >> If your are suggesting that anyone who is found to be in error is an
>
>> >> unreliable source of information,
>> >
>> >Certainly not. I do argue, however that
>> >A says B
>> >I respect A
>> >B must therefore be true
>> >is not a logical progression.
>>
>> Replace variable 'A' with the term 'scholar'. Hasn't most of the
>> information that you've accumulated to date been transmitted in the
>> same manner?
>
>Sure, after all that is how one learns. It does not mean that I unquestioningly
>accept everything presented to me nor does it mean that subsequent research will
>not show something which has been accepted by me or others to be incorrect.
You would agree that the correct answer must be known before anything
can, properly, be labelled 'incorrect'?
>> Archaeologists have always paid attention to what was written by
>> historians and ancient scribes but, if I have the correct impression,
>> geologists feel complete with their own data and have no use for oral
>> traditions and the like.
>
>True to a certain extent, however this is not due to arrogance on the part of
>geologists but to the timespans involved in the two diciplines. Archeology is
>confined to human history so ancient texts and traditions are capable of providing
>valuable clues. Geology on the other hand deals with earth history, a
>substantially longer period of time for which there are no human witnesses.
>> Since Plato was not the only one who wrote
>> about a flood, is it not probable that there were eye witnesses to
>> zones reclaimed by the sea at the end of the last ice age?
>
>No! This is an unreasonable assumption! I'll approach this qustion on two levels.
>1 - that there are records and traditions of devastation by flood other than
>Plato's and 2 - that there were eyewitnesses to flooding at the end of the last
>iceage.
>
>1. Most, if not all, traditions refer to a flood event, it is untenable to assume
>the position that these stories all refer to the same event.
It is unclear whether you consider the melting of the ice-caps which
may have affected different parts of the world at different times 'the
same event'....
>It would be more
>resonable to conclude that at some time in a culture's history a major flooding
>event took place and this found its way into mythology of the culture. When one
>considers that a cultures oral history will easily reach back several centuries,
>often more, and may even be partially inherited from earlier cultures it is
>entirely concievable that a devastating event such as a major flood would have
>occoured at least once.
>If you find this a bit of a reach, consider that in just the past few years we
>have seen massive flooding in central and eastern Europe, Central America, China,
>Burma and Australia and a tsunami in PNG (these example are just off the top of my
>head, a bit of thought could easily produce more). These were individual events
>_not_ a world-wide phenomenon, yet to the people whose lives were affected it
>could easily seem that the whole world was inundated, especially to people living
>in a society with a view if the world far more insular than our modern
>understanding.
That would be a reasonable assumption if all natural disasters
(volcanoes, forest fires, landslides, hurricanes, etc.) were
represented in myths. I have personally been unable to locate a
single comment about the volcano at Thera in the Greek texts.... yet
the flood of Deucalion was well known.
>2. The last ice age (emphasis on the _age_, as opposed to minor glaciation events
>due to climatic fluctuation) was approximately 200 000 years long and ended about
>11 000 years ago. At some stage during that period the human race evolved into
>what it is today so the end of the ice age was witnessed by beings we would
>consider human.
Let me re-phrase that: H.sapien sapiens had already existed for at
least 90,000 years and most parts of the world were occupied.
> However bear in mind that we are talking about processes which
>occour over _geological_ time, not a sudden demarcation which would be noticed by
>whoever was around at the time
This is the old school of thought, is it not? In the following
excerpts, the climate change from the Younger Dryas-Holocene is
believed to have occurred over a few decades:
[Sudden climate transitions during the Quaternary
by Jonathan Adams (1.), Mark Maslin (2.) & Ellen Thomas (3.)]
"Until a few decades ago it was generally thought that all large-scale
global and regional climate changes occurred gradually over a
timescale of many centuries or millennia, scarcely perceptible during
a human lifetime. The tendency of climate to change relatively
suddenly has been one of the most suprising outcomes of the study of
earth history, specifically the last 150,000 years (e.g., Taylor et
al., 1993). "
and
"The time span of the past few million years has been punctuated by
many rapid climate transitions, most of them on time scales of
centuries to decades or even less. The most detailed information is
available for the Younger Dryas-to-Holocene stepwise change around
11,500 years ago, which seems to have occurred over a few decades."
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html
>- 300 metre thick continent-wide ice sheets don't
>recede overnight. The inundation due to the melting of all this ice would have
>occoured over _thousands of years_ and would not have been catastrophic enough to
>have entered into the folklore of whatever cultures were evolving at the time. At
>best it would have been a case of something like "You know, they say that when my
>great-great-grandad was a boy you could walk to that island at low tide." Hardly
>the stuff of legend!
The other way of looking at is - if there were eye-witnesses, then
the ice might have melted faster than you propose or I've seen the
suggestion that the shifting of weight could have created additional
complications.
>>>> then I'm afraid that NO ONE,
>
>> >> including today's top scholars, will ever be totally exempt from
>> >> errors.
>> >>
>> >
>> >You have strengthened my argument. Thank you.
>>
>> I don't think so. Aristotle made the error while working in a
>> scientific capacity.
>>
>
>What does that have to do with it? I still think you presented a good argument for
>my point which is that not everything postulated by a
>scholar/scientist/philosipher, no matter how respected, is by definition truth.
Right, no single source can be trusted completely and for that reason
all available sources must be compared. If that was routinely done,
then no one would have to write at some future date:
"Until a few decades ago it was generally thought that ...[old
concept]"
Most people reject the concept of Atlantis on geological evidence
alone. (This is the concept of having all of one's egg's in a single
basket. If geologists are wrong, then so are they.)
>> If Herodotus had not written that the Phoencians circumnavigated
>> Africa, how long would it have taken archaeologists to realize the
>> same from archaeological record alone?
>
>You still seem to be trying to argue that I won't accept anything written in
>antiquity, this has never been the case! I simply believe that caution is required
>when using ancient texts so that a greater signifigance is not ascribed to them
>than what the author intended.
Disregarding lack of evidence for the moment, exactly what is
inconsistant about the Mayans and Egyptians being related? If the
ancestors of the Egyptians were African, then their physical features,
religion and technology should have resembled that of southern
Africans much more than that of Mayans (who you believe were part of a
completely different physical, spiritual and technological evolution).
<snip>
>> >Harsh but probably fair, and certainly no excuse for being deluded by Plato's
>> >description of Atlantis.
>>
>> You mean 'there's no excuse for being deluded' into believing
>> something which has not yet been condoned by science? This is the
>> real issue, isn't it?
>>
>
>No, this is not the issue. Science is not perfect, theories and ideas change, new
>discoveries are made, and this is how it should be. I am surprised however that
>you could write "I wonder why the belief of words written by a respected
>philosopher irritates you so much." while seeming to ignore modern science when it
>doesn't jibe with your notion of the world!
It is much easier to prove or disprove a fact than to determine an
unknown through time-consuming scientific procedures. It may be felt
that all aspects of the ocean bottom are already known. If that is
the case, then I suppose no scientists will be required to continue to
study it in the future.
<snip>
>> >I would be interested if you could present a solid geological
>> >argument for the presence/destruction of Atlantis.
>>
>> Solid geological? Not I.... To provide that I would have to know
>> more than the most eminent geologists, wouldn't I?
>>
>
>Nope. Never underestimate the worth of entusiastic amatures. Your earlier post
>did seem to imply that there was good geological evidence for Atlantis or
>something like it.
No, I did not use the term 'geological'...
>Whether generated by you personally or others, I would be
>interested in seeing it, even though I make no claims to preeminence in the field.
I am not ready to tackle this. The issue regarding the origin of
native Americans must be settled first. Currently, 20,000 - 40,000
years of Native American history is unsupported by the archaeological
record. Linguists such as Johanna Nicols claim that the native
American languages must be 30,000 - 50,000 years old, geneticists
claim that native Americans must have been multiplying for 30,000 or
more years but other than the Monte Verde site in Chile, there is no
archaeological evidence of such early sites. Although I realize that
some archaeologists may have not looked too hard to find evidence
which predated that in Alaska (do you agree?), many must have been
interested in the earliest sites. Therefore, where were all the
people, Pat?
>> I will say this, though. Plato was definately referring to an area
>> closer to New World than the Old (re: the colonies were described as
>> being located in North America rather than Africa or Europe). In my
>> opinion, he was referring to a pre-ice-age condition of the Caribbean
>> Islands.. This explains, to me, the similarities between major
>> aspects of the Egyptian culture and that of Central America.
>
>If the peoples of Egypt and Central America _are_ somehow linked, this can not be
>cited as evidence for Atlantis, more rational postulations could be put forward to
>establish a link.
Correct. But the Egyptian civilization is deemed to have begun
relatively recently.
> If both were started by refugees from the destruction of
>Atlantis it would be resonable to expect that evidence of their migrations could
>be found elsewhere, if not other colonies.
>Are thare many similarities beyond piling rocks in more or less the >same shape,
>and some mumified corpses.
If you had no written accounts of the colonization of Australia by
Europeans (except that written by some ancient philosopher), what
criteria would you use to determine if that colonization occurred?
The same criteria could be applied to Egypt.
>Has anyone produced any linguistic or biological (eg DNA) evidence for such a
>link?
No one, to my knowledge, is attempting to make such a link. Do not
think for a second that this is irrelevant.
There are a number of posting in sci.archaeology, at the present,
concerning tobacco and cocaine found in mummies. For those who
believe that early trans-atlantic crossings occurred, this is deemed
to be supportative evidence. For those who do not believe in these
early capabilities, the evidence is considered to be inconclusive.
>Why are there no technological artifacts in the archeological record?
Like what, for instance?
>Surely if a
>formerly technologicaly advanced race were precipitated back into a stone age by a
>cataclysmic event, some remnant of their former powers would have survived to be
>handed down as revered objects. It follows that these objects would be contained
>in remains such as temples or the tombs of powerful leaders, which also happen to
>be prime targets for excavation. And don't use the old crystal skulls & big rocks
>arguments - I can't explain them but I'm not willing to accept them as proof of an
>advanced society at a time when the rest of the human race were just figuring out
>what fire was good for.
All I can say to that is that you can't convince anyone who has their
mind made up."
>I also understand that the people of Egypt are caucasoid and the natives of
>Central America are mongoloid,
Mongoloid? I don't think so.... No disrespect intended, but that
assumption is based upon your expectations with certainly no
consideration to your vision.
I'll end with a quote from the Mammoth Trumpet site:
"Both Dr. Jantz and Dr. Steele stressed that there was much diversity
in prehistoric American populations, but noted that as recently as the
1970s influential anthropologists were teaching that Native American
peoples were homogeneous."
"Much diversity" - this agrees with the proponents of the 3 wave
theory but totally disagrees with the general view among geneticists
today.
Here is something which agrees with mtDNA data but is not widely
discussed:
"Data generated by Howells and Brace tended to agree with Steele's own
multivariate analysis of North America's rare paleo-American
skeletons: early Holocene Americans did not look much like modern
Native Americans. Steele, looking specifically at fossils known to be
older than 8,500 years, found they more closely resembled some
prehistoric and modern Eurasians or Pacific islanders than they did
later American peoples." (Mammoth Trumpet, Ancient Peoples Do Not Fit
Into Today's Categories, Don Alan Hall)
http://www.peak.org/csfa/mt12-3.html#part2
The part I am referring to relates to Pacific Islanders as the mtDNA
of the Aymarans, Atacamenos, Costa Rica, Panama (gradually moving
northward but not generally past the Freemont) is more similar to that
of Polynesians than to that of other native Americans. The same
haplotype is also, coincidentally, virtually absent from Siberia.
I have not seen mtDNA data on the Egyptian mummies to make any
comparisons however, I have heard that the mummies were found to be
more genetically similar to peoples of the Near East and Europe than
to Nubians (and other southern Africans?) but don't quote me on that.
Gisele
Lenny Shirose
> Let me re-phrase that: H.sapien sapiens had already existed for at
> least 90,000 years and most parts of the world were occupied.
>
H. sapiens sapiens has only been around for some 35,000-40,000 years
G Horvat
wrote:
>G Horvat wrote:
>
>> Let me re-phrase that: H.sapiens sapiens had already existed for at
>> least 90,000 years and most parts of the world were occupied.
>>
>
>H. sapiens sapiens has only been around for some 35,000-40,000 years
I was referring to the earliest date of H.sapiens sapiens in Africa.
Although the date may not be well-supported, archaeologically, I'm not
aware of this date (100,000 ybp) being disputed.
Gisele
Lenny Shirose
> On Thu, 29 Jul 1999 17:04:04 -0700, Lenny Shirose <le...@albedo.net>
> wrote:
>
> >G Horvat wrote:
> >
> >> Let me re-phrase that: H.sapiens sapiens had already existed for at
> >> least 90,000 years and most parts of the world were occupied.
> >>
> >
> >H. sapiens sapiens has only been around for some 35,000-40,000 years
>
> I was referring to the earliest date of H.sapiens sapiens in Africa.
> Although the date may not be well-supported, archaeologically, I'm not
> aware of this date (100,000 ybp) being disputed.
>
Well, now you are aware! I know of *no* confirmed finds of Homo sapiens
sapiens before the Upper Pleistocene (about 35,000 years ago). Do you
remember where you heard the theory?
G Horvat
>>I was referring to the earliest date of H.sapiens sapiens in Africa.
>>Although the date may not be well-supported, archaeologically, I'm not
>>aware of this date (100,000 ybp) being disputed.
>Well, now you are aware!
It is disputed by whom?
>I know of *no* confirmed finds of
>Homo sapiens sapiens before the Upper Pleistocene (about
>35,000 years ago).
>Do you remember where you heard the
>theory?
Yes, I know where I obtained this date but a quick look around the
internet reveals that this date is well accepted . My date was
derived, primarily, from the following passages (although this date is
found throughout the book, apparently referring to the same proposed
migration):
Africa
"...These microliths, with their characteristic steep retouch, were
widespread in Africa by about 20,000 BP, but had first appeared in
South Africa significantly earlier, perhaps as much as 100,000 years
ago.....The African microlithic industries were the work of people who
were fully modern in the anatomical sense: Homo sapiens sapiens.
Precisely where and when such people first evolved is not yet known,
but it is significant that the oldest fossils generally accepted as
being of this type come from sites in South Africa, where they seem to
date to about 100,000 years ago. These, if correctly attributed, are
the most ancient remains of fully modern people anywhere in the
world...." (David W. Phillipson)
The time span applicable to Archaic Homo sapiens in Africa was
provided by Gunter Brauer as ca. 400,000 - 130,000 years and that
"While in Europe the evolution toward the late Neanderthals was still
under way, the process in Africa had already led to the origin of
anatomically modern humans about 130,000 years ago."
Near East
"If the Out-of-Africa Hypothesis is correct, then Homo sapiens sapiens
spread from the African tropics across the Sahara Desert into the
Mediterranean region before the last glaciation caused the Sahara to
dry up....The earliest occurrence of modern humans in the Near East
dates to about 100,000 years ago at Qafzeh Cave in Israel..." (Brian
M. Fagan).
These quotes are all from Brian Fagan's 'Companion to Archaeology'
1996).
When do those who dispute this 100,000 ybp date place man in Australia
and in the Americas?
Gisele
Lenny Shirose
> >>I was referring to the earliest date of H.sapiens sapiens in Africa.
> >>Although the date may not be well-supported, archaeologically, I'm not
> >>aware of this date (100,000 ybp) being disputed.
>
> >Well, now you are aware!
>
> It is disputed by whom?
Well, the book I have in front of me is *General Zoology* by Storer,
Usinger, Stebbins and Nybakken (University Zoology textbook), but I checked
a number of sources and they generally set the upper Pleistocene as the
boundary. There are finds like Omo that appear more or less anatomically
modern--then again there are eastern finds of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
that look pretty modern too. If you add material culture (types of
artefacts associated with the find) into the equation then you generally get
a figure of about 50,000 years in Africa and about 40,000 years in Europe.
> >I know of *no* confirmed finds of
> >Homo sapiens sapiens before the Upper Pleistocene (about
> >35,000 years ago).
This was obviously too strong a statement on my part--there are finds that
look anatomically modern from before 35000 years ago, but there is still
controversy about what that means.
> >Do you remember where you heard the
> >theory?
>
> Yes, I know where I obtained this date but a quick look around the
> internet reveals that this date is well accepted . My date was
> derived, primarily, from the following passages (although this date is
> found throughout the book, apparently referring to the same proposed
> migration):
>
> Africa
>
> "...These microliths, with their characteristic steep retouch, were
> widespread in Africa by about 20,000 BP, but had first appeared in
> South Africa significantly earlier, perhaps as much as 100,000 years
> ago.....The African microlithic industries were the work of people who
> were fully modern in the anatomical sense: Homo sapiens sapiens.
Which means that they had characteristics like cranial capacity that were
similar to ours and not so similar to H. erectus or to Homo sapiens
neanderthalensis of the extreme type found in western Europe. In fact you
very frequently find a distinction in the literature between 'anatomically
modern' Homo sapiens sapiens and fully modern--Homo sapiens sapiens using
Upper Paleolithic technology (Cro Magnon culture). Where you draw the line
depends on whether you think human means looking like a modern human or
thinking and acting like a modern human. Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo
sapiens neanderthalensis are similar enough to be commonly considered
subspecies and the exact relationship between them is unclear. Some Homo
sapiens neanderthalensis finds from the less harsh (in terms of climate)
regions are much more 'human' looking than those from western Europe (taller
and less robust with less extreme cranial features), so physical features
alone may not be enough to draw a line between them and us.
> Precisely where and when such people first evolved is not yet known,
> but it is significant that the oldest fossils generally accepted as
> being of this type come from sites in South Africa, where they seem to
> date to about 100,000 years ago. These, if correctly attributed, are
> the most ancient remains of fully modern people anywhere in the
> world...." (David W. Phillipson)
>
> The time span applicable to Archaic Homo sapiens in Africa was
> provided by Gunter Brauer as ca. 400,000 - 130,000 years and that
> "While in Europe the evolution toward the late Neanderthals was still
> under way, the process in Africa had already led to the origin of
> anatomically modern humans about 130,000 years ago."
> Near East
>
> "If the Out-of-Africa Hypothesis is correct, then Homo sapiens sapiens
> spread from the African tropics across the Sahara Desert into the
> Mediterranean region before the last glaciation caused the Sahara to
> dry up....The earliest occurrence of modern humans in the Near East
> dates to about 100,000 years ago at Qafzeh Cave in Israel..." (Brian
> M. Fagan).
>
> These quotes are all from Brian Fagan's 'Companion to Archaeology'
> 1996)
> When do those who dispute this 100,000 ybp date place man in Australia
> and in the Americas?
I don't know about Australia, but there have been no finds in the Americas
older than around 10,000 years old. The land bridge seems to have started
disintegrating about 13,000 years ago though--I think most people put the
colonization somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago.
Pat Sibbald
G Horvat wrote:
>
<snip>
> You would agree that the correct answer must be known before anything
> can, properly, be labelled 'incorrect'?
No I wouldn't! I don't know (nor I think does anyone else) the correct answer to the
question 'What is the largest possible prime number?' but I know that 10 is incorrect.
>
<snipped a base slur on geologists everywhere>
>
> >> Since Plato was not the only one who wrote
> >> about a flood, is it not probable that there were eye witnesses to
> >> zones reclaimed by the sea at the end of the last ice age?
> >
> >No! This is an unreasonable assumption! I'll approach this qustion on two levels.
> >1 - that there are records and traditions of devastation by flood other than
> >Plato's and 2 - that there were eyewitnesses to flooding at the end of the last
> >iceage.
> >
> >1. Most, if not all, traditions refer to a flood event, it is untenable to assume
> >the position that these stories all refer to the same event.
>
> It is unclear whether you consider the melting of the ice-caps which
> may have affected different parts of the world at different times 'the
> same event'....
>
Ice caps at various locations may well have retreated at different rates but marked
changes in sea level would have been effectively global.
>
> >It would be more
> >resonable to conclude that at some time in a culture's history a major flooding
> >event took place and this found its way into mythology of the culture. When one
> >considers that a cultures oral history will easily reach back several centuries,
> >often more, and may even be partially inherited from earlier cultures it is
> >entirely concievable that a devastating event such as a major flood would have
> >occoured at least once.
> >If you find this a bit of a reach, consider that in just the past few years we
> >have seen massive flooding in central and eastern Europe, Central America, China,
> >Burma and Australia and a tsunami in PNG (these example are just off the top of my
> >head, a bit of thought could easily produce more). These were individual events
> >_not_ a world-wide phenomenon, yet to the people whose lives were affected it
> >could easily seem that the whole world was inundated, especially to people living
> >in a society with a view if the world far more insular than our modern
> >understanding.
>
> That would be a reasonable assumption if all natural disasters
> (volcanoes, forest fires, landslides, hurricanes, etc.) were
> represented in myths. I have personally been unable to locate a
> single comment about the volcano at Thera in the Greek texts.... yet
> the flood of Deucalion was well known.
>
Some suggest that stories of the Flood of Deucalion relate to flooding caused by the
eruption of Thera, and even go so far as to postulate that the eruption may also have
been behind the myth of Atlantis if it was not an outright invention of Plato.
I don't know of any comparative studies which have been undertaken to determine the
relative frequencies of natural disasters in various mythologies (interesting idea
though) but natural disasters crop up all the time in stories and place names.
Let's take volcanoes as an example. These are myths or place names with which I am
familiar or dug up quickly on the net - by no means an exhaustive compilation:
Places: Rangitoto - island near Aukland NZ, name means 'blood sky' in Maori dialect.
Mt Fuji - Japan, name probably means everlasting life & deity of fire in the language
of the Ainu.
Myths: Sth America - indians tell how the creator caused a volcanic eruption to to
remind the indians who he was.
Nth America - indians tell stories about eruptions of various mountains as punishments
or lessons for the people, or as the result of battles between supernatural beings.
Philippines - a myth tells how a man stole his lover away from her uncle who chased
them and was buried by a land slide. The eruptions of lava are due to his anger.
Kamchatka - eruptions are due to the mountain goblins discarding the excess embers from
their stoves
There are also myths from PNG, NZ, Hawaii, Indonesia, Japan & Canada dealing with
eruptions, both specifically and generally. That pretty well covers the Pacific Rim,
I'm sure that a similar list could be drawn up for other tectonically active regions.
As I'm sure lists could be drawn up for other natural disasters.
In any case when we are discussing floods in myth we have two options: 1 - there was a
sudden massive global inundation which affected all or almost all cultures at
effectively the same time or 2 - there have been a number of major floods and all or
most cultures have experienced a major inundation at some time in their cultural memory
which has entered their folklore. Which postulation seems the most reasonable?
These are brief climatic fluctuations and are recognisable in written history as
periods of reduced crops, increased disease etc. These relatively short-term climate
changes are not enough to cause the formation of landlocked ice caps nor substantially
affect their extent. While their effects on the populations which lived through them
would have been undeniably devastating, they are in effect short lived aberations in a
longer cycle of cooling/warming. So that still leaves us with...
> >- 300 metre thick continent-wide ice sheets don't
> >recede overnight. The inundation due to the melting of all this ice would have
> >occoured over _thousands of years_ and would not have been catastrophic enough to
> >have entered into the folklore of whatever cultures were evolving at the time. At
> >best it would have been a case of something like "You know, they say that when my
> >great-great-grandad was a boy you could walk to that island at low tide." Hardly
> >the stuff of legend!
>
> The other way of looking at is - if there were eye-witnesses, then
> the ice might have melted faster than you propose
We are talking about a _massive_ volume of ice here. I doesn't just go away because
the global or regional climate improves for a few decades. It is the warming/cooling
cycles with periodocities of centuries to millennia that control ice caps.
> or I've seen the
> suggestion that the shifting of weight could have created additional
> complications.
The mass of ice overlying the continents did have the effect of 'tilting' them, leading
to inundation of their southern regions and uplift of their northern regions once the
ice was removed (in the northern hemisphere that is). This process (isostacy) is
_extremely_ slow and is continuing today (10 000 years or so later). Any inundation
caused by this method is far less significant than that directly caused by the melting
of the ice caps.
>
> >>>> then I'm afraid that NO ONE,
> >
> >> >> including today's top scholars, will ever be totally exempt from
> >> >> errors.
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> >You have strengthened my argument. Thank you.
> >>
> >> I don't think so. Aristotle made the error while working in a
> >> scientific capacity.
> >>
> >
> >What does that have to do with it? I still think you presented a good argument for
> >my point which is that not everything postulated by a
> >scholar/scientist/philosipher, no matter how respected, is by definition truth.
>
> Right, no single source can be trusted completely and for that reason
> all available sources must be compared. If that was routinely done,
> then no one would have to write at some future date:
>
> "Until a few decades ago it was generally thought that ...[old
> concept]"
This is a partial quote from the paper above and is used in respect to scientific
investigations of climate change prior to any written records, before humans even
evolved in most cases. If you have any contemporary 'sources' which can shed light on
this period you should tell someone - they'd be worth a small fortune!
While we're on the subject of sources - how many sources refer to Atlantis other than
Plato and those who have derived their works from his? Are there any contemporary
records of trade, tribute or travel (excellent alliteration) between Atlantis and other
parts of the world?
>
> Most people reject the concept of Atlantis on geological evidence
> alone. (This is the concept of having all of one's egg's in a single
> basket. If geologists are wrong, then so are they.)
Like who? I _am_ a geologist and the nearest I've come to a geological argument is the
one above on climatology and glaciation. If you have been presented with arguments
based on geology which you find unacceptable, refute them if you can.
>
> >> If Herodotus had not written that the Phoencians circumnavigated
> >> Africa, how long would it have taken archaeologists to realize the
> >> same from archaeological record alone?
> >
> >You still seem to be trying to argue that I won't accept anything written in
> >antiquity, this has never been the case! I simply believe that caution is required
> >when using ancient texts so that a greater signifigance is not ascribed to them
> >than what the author intended.
You didn't address my previous point regarding the Suez Canal! Did Herotodus actually
use the word circumnavigated or is it a mistranslation?
>
> Disregarding lack of evidence for the moment,
That's a large part of the problem!
> exactly what is
> inconsistant about the Mayans and Egyptians being related? If the
> ancestors of the Egyptians were African, then their physical features,
> religion and technology should have resembled that of southern
> Africans much more than that of Mayans (who you believe were part of a
> completely different physical, spiritual and technological evolution).
I never said the Egyptians were African (by this I take it you mean negroid), I said
they were caucasian which lumps them in to the same gross grouping as the peoples of
Europe, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. Religion and technology don't
even enter into it.
The inconsistency is that the American indians belong to the mongoloid group which
covers the peoples of most of Asia, the Pacific islands (including NZ) and the Americas
- as you say a completely different physical ... evolution.
>
> <snip>
>
> >> >Harsh but probably fair, and certainly no excuse for being deluded by Plato's
> >> >description of Atlantis.
> >>
> >> You mean 'there's no excuse for being deluded' into believing
> >> something which has not yet been condoned by science? This is the
> >> real issue, isn't it?
> >>
> >
> >No, this is not the issue. Science is not perfect, theories and ideas change, new
> >discoveries are made, and this is how it should be. I am surprised however that
> >you could write "I wonder why the belief of words written by a respected
> >philosopher irritates you so much." while seeming to ignore modern science when it
> >doesn't jibe with your notion of the world!
>
> It is much easier to prove or disprove a fact than to determine an
> unknown through time-consuming scientific procedures. It may be felt
> that all aspects of the ocean bottom are already known. If that is
> the case, then I suppose no scientists will be required to continue to
> study it in the future.
>
Surely if proof is required we are talking about a proposition, not a fact and the best
method of testing a proposition is through 'time-consuming scientific procedures',
shortcuts only lead to misinformation being dressed up as respectable theory.
> <snip>
<more snips>
>
> No, I did not use the term 'geological'...
No, but you did write 'As far as submerged lands are concerned, the average person is
at the mercy of geological data gathered by others.' I took this as an indication that
there was some information of which most people were unaware.
>
> >Whether generated by you personally or others, I would be
> >interested in seeing it, even though I make no claims to preeminence in the field.
>
> I am not ready to tackle this. The issue regarding the origin of
> native Americans must be settled first. Currently, 20,000 - 40,000
> years of Native American history is unsupported by the archaeological
> record. Linguists such as Johanna Nicols claim that the native
> American languages must be 30,000 - 50,000 years old, geneticists
> claim that native Americans must have been multiplying for 30,000 or
> more years but other than the Monte Verde site in Chile, there is no
> archaeological evidence of such early sites. Although I realize that
> some archaeologists may have not looked too hard to find evidence
> which predated that in Alaska (do you agree?), many must have been
> interested in the earliest sites. Therefore, where were all the
> people, Pat?
If there are gaps in the archaeological record it is obviously due to the fact that
people arrived suddenly from a mysterious place which blew sky high soon after they
left it. BOLLOCKS!!
More likely lack of funds and more obvious places to use the funds they have - why
scratch around in the dirt on the off chance that there will be a significant find when
there are buildings sticking out of the jungle saying 'Come and investigate me'? It
will probably take an amateur to dig up something interesting on a field trip to show
the professionals where to look.
> >> I will say this, though. Plato was definately referring to an area
> >> closer to New World than the Old (re: the colonies were described as
> >> being located in North America rather than Africa or Europe). In my
> >> opinion, he was referring to a pre-ice-age condition of the Caribbean
> >> Islands.. This explains, to me, the similarities between major
> >> aspects of the Egyptian culture and that of Central America.
> >
> >If the peoples of Egypt and Central America _are_ somehow linked, this can not be
> >cited as evidence for Atlantis, more rational postulations could be put forward to
> >establish a link.
>
> Correct. But the Egyptian civilization is deemed to have begun
> relatively recently.
All civilizations are recent in terms of human existence. How 'recent' is the Egyptian
civilization compared to other early civilisations.
If as you say the Atlantean colonies were in the pre-ice-age Caribbean Islands this
would mean that the Atlanteans were colonizing about 100 000 years before the rest of
the human race even evolved. Why are there no pyramids in the Caribbean?
>
> > If both were started by refugees from the destruction of
> >Atlantis it would be resonable to expect that evidence of their migrations could
> >be found elsewhere, if not other colonies.
> >Are thare many similarities beyond piling rocks in more or less the >same shape,
> >and some mumified corpses.
>
> If you had no written accounts of the colonization of Australia by
> Europeans (except that written by some ancient philosopher), what
> criteria would you use to determine if that colonization occurred?
> The same criteria could be applied to Egypt.
>
I doubt that I would draw the conclusion that the colonists originated from a now
vanished island for a start.
>
> >Has anyone produced any linguistic or biological (eg DNA) evidence for such a
> >link?
>
> No one, to my knowledge, is attempting to make such a link. Do not
> think for a second that this is irrelevant.
>
Are you implying a conspiracy?
>
> There are a number of posting in sci.archaeology, at the present,
> concerning tobacco and cocaine found in mummies. For those who
> believe that early trans-atlantic crossings occurred, this is deemed
> to be supportative evidence. For those who do not believe in these
> early capabilities, the evidence is considered to be inconclusive.
Trans-Atlantic crossings may or may not have occoured, either way they do not provide
any evidence for Atlantis.
>
> >Why are there no technological artifacts in the archeological record?
>
> Like what, for instance?
>
I don't know - how advanced do you believe the putative inhabitants of Atlantis were
compared to their contemporaries? There is evidence that in Japan about 1700 years ago
items (particularly weapons) made from more advanced metals than were locally available
were brought to Japan with immigrants arriving through Korea. These items are believed
by some to have become revered objects until they became more common. Surely a similar
scenario is conceivable for any remnants of Atlantis, if anything I would imagine it
would have been more likely, as the people involved were direct descendants of the
fallen culture.
>
> >Surely if a
> >formerly technologicaly advanced race were precipitated back into a stone age by a
> >cataclysmic event, some remnant of their former powers would have survived to be
> >handed down as revered objects. It follows that these objects would be contained
> >in remains such as temples or the tombs of powerful leaders, which also happen to
> >be prime targets for excavation. And don't use the old crystal skulls & big rocks
> >arguments - I can't explain them but I'm not willing to accept them as proof of an
> >advanced society at a time when the rest of the human race were just figuring out
> >what fire was good for.
>
> All I can say to that is that you can't convince anyone who has their
> mind made up."
>
Oh, I know, I know! (bangs head repeatedly)
>
> >I also understand that the people of Egypt are caucasoid and the natives of
> >Central America are mongoloid,
>
> Mongoloid? I don't think so.... No disrespect intended, but that
> assumption is based upon your expectations with certainly no
> consideration to your vision.
My expectations of what exactly?
>
> I'll end with a quote from the Mammoth Trumpet site:
>
> "Both Dr. Jantz and Dr. Steele stressed that there was much diversity
> in prehistoric American populations, but noted that as recently as the
> 1970s influential anthropologists were teaching that Native American
> peoples were homogeneous."
>
> "Much diversity" - this agrees with the proponents of the 3 wave
> theory but totally disagrees with the general view among geneticists
> today.
>
I have never said, or believed, that the people of the Americas were homogeneous, just
that they belonged to the same gross group. These groups are based on superficial
criteria and are pretty approximate, they can be resolved into far more specific
categories with very little effort by introducing other factors including DNA.
>
> Here is something which agrees with mtDNA data but is not widely
> discussed:
>
> "Data generated by Howells and Brace tended to agree with Steele's own
> multivariate analysis of North America's rare paleo-American
> skeletons: early Holocene Americans did not look much like modern
> Native Americans. Steele, looking specifically at fossils known to be
> older than 8,500 years, found they more closely resembled some
> prehistoric and modern Eurasians or Pacific islanders than they did
> later American peoples." (Mammoth Trumpet, Ancient Peoples Do Not Fit
> Into Today's Categories, Don Alan Hall)
>
> http://www.peak.org/csfa/mt12-3.html#part2
>
> The part I am referring to relates to Pacific Islanders as the mtDNA
> of the Aymarans, Atacamenos, Costa Rica, Panama (gradually moving
> northward but not generally past the Freemont) is more similar to that
> of Polynesians than to that of other native Americans. The same
> haplotype is also, coincidentally, virtually absent from Siberia.
>
This is not unreasonable, Polynesians fall into the mongoloid group as do the people of
America. If the peoples of South or Central America are more closely related to the
Polynesians then they could have island hopped across the Pacific to arrive in the
Americas, after all that's how the Maoris arrived in NZ. If this scenario took place
then Siberia is immaterial.
If the Polynesians are related to the Americans who you claim to be descendants of
Atlantis then would that make the Polynesians descendants of Atlantis? Where are the
Polynesian Pyramids?
>
> I have not seen mtDNA data on the Egyptian mummies to make any
> comparisons however, I have heard that the mummies were found to be
> more genetically similar to peoples of the Near East and Europe than
> to Nubians (and other southern Africans?) but don't quote me on that.
Caucasian peoples - that's what I said!
>
> Gisele
How about a bit of a summary on what you consider the facts of Atlantis, Gisele - then
we can argue specifics rather than generalities.
Hopefully not as loopy as this guys ideas
http://www.ee.fit.edu/users/lpinto/Sections/AncientVisitors/Archive/Indian_Tech.shtml
It's guys like this that give nutbags a bad name.
Pat
G Horvat
wrote:
>G Horvat wrote:
><snip>
>
>> You would agree that the correct answer must be known before anything
>> can, properly, be labelled 'incorrect'?
>
>No I wouldn't! I don't know (nor I think does anyone else) the correct answer to the
>question 'What is the largest possible prime number?' but I know that 10 is incorrect.
You're right in this instance, however, nothing that we are currently
discussing is any where near as definate as mathematics. If it were
not so, we would have to say that "by the preponderance of the
evidence, today, 10 is unlikely to be the highest prime number."
Let's revise your example a bit to one that is, at least, answerable.
7 + 2 = Not 10
If you have the proper means to determine the correct response, then
the answer 'Not 10' is hardly sufficient. Knowledge that the correct
answer is '9' lays to rest the answer 'Not 10'. Relating this to our
current discussion:
Meso- Americans = Not Atlanteans
Well, then, to sink the concept of Atlantis once and for all, prove,
in a matter acceptable to any *objective* person that an alternate
answer is true.
Certainly, this has been attempted many times by different scholars
(archaeologists, anthropologists, geneticists, linguists, etc.) but
after 100 years of research, the amount of controversy appears to be
increasing rather than decreasing although *no one* seriously doubts
that all Native Americans came from Asia. That answer was known
before the evidence was even gathered.
A gneral overview:
Geologists - contrary to claims made by Native American that they have
"always been here" geologists claim that this cannot be true due to
current theories about Pangea and Plate Tectonics.
Archaeologists - agree with Geologists because most of their findings
do not appreciably precede the Clovis time frame and therefore, most
can only confirm that man has been in America for 12,000 years. For
many years they have believed that the oldest artifacts should have
been found in the north, but older sites continue to be found in the
south instead. Clovis points or at least pre-Clovis points were
expected to be found in the north, but these are now believed to have
originated in the South (around Texas).
Linguists - claim that Native Americans have been separated too long
from their Asiatic relatives to find the language associations but
that the evidence suggests that the Native American languages are
30,000 - 50,000 years old.
Anthropologists - who studied teeth, skull shapes, etc. noticed that
everything in ancient America came in three's, therefore, surmised
that there must have been three waves.
Geneticists - did not find evidence in Siberia or Mongololia
suggestive of three waves and therefore, concluded that there was only
one significant wave. Genetic estimates suggest that man has been in
America for 20,000 - 40,000 years. Although this may not be related,
it also should be mentioned that Siberia has been claimed contain the
most diverse peoples in the world due to convicts being sent there in
historic times.
It is true that archaeologists have noted similarities between Alaskan
artifacts and those of Mongolia or Siberia but these similarities are
only significant if they predate all other artifacts. If linguistic
and genetic estimates are more correct (and the dating of the Monte
Verde, etc.), then these similarities are irrelevant to the origin of
Native Americans.
What are we to make of the contradicting information gathered by
anthropologists and geneticists? Let me make this clear: As it
stands, if anthropologists are correct about the '3 waves', then the
mtDNA similarities which have been noticed are UNLIKELY to be directly
related to the first Americans. This mtDNA data is only 'good' for a
single wave. See the following description by Kolman (1996):
"Utilizing restriction/deletion polymorphisms, Mongolian populations
were found to carry all four New World founding haplogroups as defined
by WALLACE and coworkers. The ubiquitous presence of the four New
World haplogroups in the Americas but narrow distribution across Asia
weakens support for GREENBERG and coworkers' theory of New World
colonization via three independent migrations. The statistical and
geographic scarcity of New World haplogroups in Asia makes it
improbable that the same four haplotypes would be drawn from one
geographic region three independent times."
If geneticists are correct, then the area where the proposed migration
began (just north of Mongolia) had to have been composed of peoples
having different ethnic backgrounds at that time AND upon entrance to
America, that group would have had to have separated themselves along
ethnic grounds (All the haplotype A's remained in North America. Upon
reaching South America, the B's went west and and C's & D's went east
or south). This is what is suggested due to both the extremely high
frequencies of haplotypes in certain geographical areas and the
distribution/gradients of the mtDNA haplotypes in general.
There are problems, are there not?
Linguists can not demonstrate that all Native Americans came from
Asia.
Archaeologists can not demonstrate that all Native Americans came from
Asia.
Geneticsts claim they can. Although more haplotypes have been found
in Native American mtDNA's than the 4 "founding" (A, B, C & D), it is
these 4 which have been usually connected with Asia. 'A' and 'B' are
the rarest ones in NE Asia yet 3/4 of Native Americans, tested, have
been classified as A or B. I have, therefore, paid more attention to
these two.
Haplotype B - virtually absent in Siberia except for the extreme
southern portions (Tuva, for instance) along with the other 3. It is
also found in very high frequencies in Polynesians and is believed to
have originated in Indonesia. It's highest frequencies in the
Americas suggest that the point of entrance was the western coast of
South America (N. Chile, Peru). I suggest that this haplotype relates
to people who were displaced in the south, at the end of the last ice
age. The lineages of this haplotype which have been found in Mongolia
are consistant with southern origins (Island SE Asia).
Haplotype A - the quoted frequencies in Siberia/Mongolia are usually 4
- 6 % except for the high frequency found in the Chukchi (68%). From
3 points of view (two genetical, and one anthropological), I can
demonstrate that 2/3 of the Siberian Chukchi probably received this
mtDNA from America.
With regards to the second location where mtDNA has been noted as
being similar to that of Amerinds, I have just found an
anthropological abstract which claims that the only craniums which are
similar to Amerinds are those which date to the Bronze Age in southern
Siberia. (in addition to the Chukchi and a few other groups being
"intermediate" between other Siberians and Amerinds.) If this is the
case, then at approximately the same time that the Inuit were
spreading across northern Canada, Amerinds (or their relatives) may
have migrated into southern Siberia and if so, that would account for
the low frequency of haplotype A there. (I have recently posted the
abstracts for both the "back-migration" and the "Collateral relatives
of American Indians among the Bronze Age populations of Siberia?" in
the sci.archaeology newsgroup).
If there have been one or two migrations of Amerinds or their
relatives into Siberia as is suggested by the data, this may be the
source of the finding of Haplotype A, in low frequencies, there. If
that was the case, it would also clear up a number of other "puzzling"
findings in Native North American mtDNA:
1) Haplotype A was found all over North and Central America but is
completely absent (along with B) from ancient samples of many South
America populations. Together with the complete absence of the other
two haplotypes (C & D) in Panama, one could easily conclude that these
haplotypes were not a part of a single migration.
2) Extraordinarily high proportions (like 96%) of haplotype A found
in the NW Coast of Canada are not consistant with arrival from a
multi-ethnic group.
Finally, if all Native Americans came from Asia, how can all
scientists easily pinpoint specific locations in Asia where they are
said to have originated? The fact that they can and do should
emphasize the fact that Native Americans were distinct from the
peoples who have been referred to as their ancestors. This should
have been known since 1992 (at least).
Z Morphol Anthropol 1992 Jun;79(1):53-67
Flatness of facial skeletons in Siberian and other
circum-Pacific populations.
Ishida H
Department of Anatomy, Sapporo Medical College.
Thirty-four populations from Siberian and other circum-Pacific regions
were compared in terms of facial flatness measurements of the cranium.
While fundamentally having an extremely flat face, Siberian
populations tend to be differentiated into two or three subgroups. On
the other hand, other Mongoloid populations show greater variation in
facial flatness. The less flat faces of the American Indians are
almost equal to those of the Europeans. In Japan, the existence of two
contrasting groups in terms of facial flatness have been found.
PMID: 1441724, UI: 93070539
If I am correct about Haplotype A not originating in Asia (and you can
be certain that I will look into this further), it lends credence to
the belief that native Americans have "always been here". Now, Pat,
I'm quite sure that you can easily point out how this claim is
inconsistant with current geological thought but might I remind you
that some mental readjustments have recently been required due to
discoveries in the Indian Ocean? In any case, I apologize for
rambling.....but if I don't send this now, I probably never will.
Gisele
Lenny Shirose
> If geneticists are correct, then the area where the proposed migration
> began (just north of Mongolia) had to have been composed of peoples
> having different ethnic backgrounds at that time AND upon entrance to
> America, that group would have had to have separated themselves along
> ethnic grounds (All the haplotype A's remained in North America. Upon
> reaching South America, the B's went west and and C's & D's went east
> or south). This is what is suggested due to both the extremely high
> frequencies of haplotypes in certain geographical areas and the
> distribution/gradients of the mtDNA haplotypes in general.
>
> There are problems, are there not?
Problems with the interpretation, certainly. If the migration was one of relatively small
units, which seems likely because of the difficulty of sustaining a large population on the
march by hunting and gathering, then you have sampling error at the part of departure
because you are drawing a small sample from a much larger population--this is the founder
effect. This would be exacerbated if the small groups were largely composed of related
people--family groups--since all decendents of a common female ancestor will carry her
mitochondria (until a mutation occurs)--a small population that is relatively diverse in
terms of nuclear DNA can be very homogeneous in terms of mitochondrial DNA. With small
groups, the chance of genetic drift 'fixing' a genotype is also radically enhanced because
of inbreeding (in the initial stages of the migration) and the ease with which a single
accident can remove an entire haplotype from a small population.
> 1) Haplotype A was found all over North and Central America but is
> completely absent (along with B) from ancient samples of many South
> America populations. Together with the complete absence of the other
> two haplotypes (C & D) in Panama, one could easily conclude that these
> haplotypes were not a part of a single migration.
Or one could conclude that there was a genetic bottleneck or that entire tribes or clans of
related people were moving in small units in loose contact with each other and tending to
settle in clusters.
> 2) Extraordinarily high proportions (like 96%) of haplotype A found
> in the NW Coast of Canada are not consistant with arrival from a
> multi-ethnic group.
It's not inconsistent at all if you take into account the founder effect and the increased
liklihood of genetic drift in relatively small populations.
> If I am correct about Haplotype A not originating in Asia (and you can
> be certain that I will look into this further), it lends credence to
> the belief that native Americans have "always been here".
What *exactly* does that mean? Are you saying that they evolved in the americas? If so
then you can add the evolutionary biologists to the list of scientific diciplines who have
trouble with your hypothesis. The groups of extant animals to which we are most closely
related (the Pongidae) are not found in the americas and there is no fossil evidence that
they ever were, nor (more importantly) is there any evidence that our common ancestor was
ever distributed in the americas. Nor is there any evidence of any of the pre-Homo sapiens
sapiens members of the Hominidae ever being distributed in the americas. If they didn't
evolve in the americas then they migrated here--that means that they couldn't have "always
been here".
G Horvat
I did not receive your posting through my newsreader and therefore, am
just replying in general terms from having read it in Deja News.
I would summarize your reply as the following:
1) There is no evidence of man's early evolution in the Americas.
2) There are many reasons why DNA evidence can appear to be
unsupportive of current theories regarding the settlement of the
Americas.
If this is an adequate summary, then with regards to claim #1, you
believe that a hypothesis should be based entirely upon findings (or
more accurately "lack of findings" in this instance) but, in claim 2),
you present many reasons why the evidence cannot speak for itself
(founder effect, bottleneck, genetic drift, etc). Do you see the
inconsistancy?
If we must form hypotheses from the evidence alone, then, our starting
point is a sudden appearance of man in all parts of the New World at
the end of the last ice age. If we stray from that position and
consider the possibility of any colonization in the Americas beginning
with a small group, then, upon the evidence, we must select the site
of Monte Verde in Chile (33,000 BP) as the best candidate for that
first site.
If the "red man" did not evolve in the Americas, then, by now, it
certainly should be possible to adequately demonstrate where they came
from and when they arrived. If no scientist, today, can put together
a satisfactory theory (a theory without major contradictions), then
how certain can you be about events which preceded this theoretical
entrance by many thousands of years?
Gisele
Lenny Shirose
> Lenny,
>
> I did not receive your posting through my newsreader and therefore, am
> just replying in general terms from having read it in Deja News.
>
> I would summarize your reply as the following:
>
> 1) There is no evidence of man's early evolution in the Americas.
It isn't just the evidence for early man that is missing in the americas,
it is evidence for any of the related primates as well--no Hominidae, no
Pongidae, not even any Cercopithecidae. According to Dollo's Law if
anything along the line to Homo sapiens had made the migration before Homo
sapiens evolved then it would *not* have evolved into Homo sapiens in the
americas. Even if--against all odds-- it's descendants were similar to
us, we would be separate species unable to successfully interbreed. It
isn't just that there is a complete lack of evidence to support the claim
(although that's fairly damning), it's also that, in theory, the odds of
it being possible are vanishingly small.
> 2) There are many reasons why DNA evidence can appear to be
> unsupportive of current theories regarding the settlement of the
> Americas.
>
> If this is an adequate summary, then with regards to claim #1, you
> believe that a hypothesis should be based entirely upon findings (or
> more accurately "lack of findings" in this instance) but, in claim 2),
> you present many reasons why the evidence cannot speak for itself
> (founder effect, bottleneck, genetic drift, etc). Do you see the
> inconsistancy?
No there is no inconsistency. I don't think you can make anything like a
reasonable case for the evolution of humans in the americas no matter how
you interpret the fossil record or the principles of evolutionary
biology--the evidence is incomplete but is in no way equivocal. There are
very good reasons why your interpretation of the mitochondrial DNA
evidence could easily be dead wrong, so the evidence is equivocal and the
case you make based on the mitochondrial DNA is logically weak.
> If we must form hypotheses from the evidence alone, then, our starting
> point is a sudden appearance of man in all parts of the New World at
> the end of the last ice age. If we stray from that position and
> consider the possibility of any colonization in the Americas beginning
> with a small group, then, upon the evidence, we must select the site
> of Monte Verde in Chile (33,000 BP) as the best candidate for that
> first site.
What evidence?
> If the "red man" did not evolve in the Americas, then, by now, it
> certainly should be possible to adequately demonstrate where they came
> from and when they arrived. If no scientist, today, can put together
> a satisfactory theory (a theory without major contradictions),
What major contradictions? You perceive major contradictions where there
is little but minor debate over details--and I'm pretty sure that every
scientist involved in those relatively minor debates would find common
agreement that the Homo sapiens in the americas migrated here rather than
evolving here.
> then
> how certain can you be about events which preceded this theoretical
> entrance by many thousands of years?
That depends on the events.
>
>
> Gisele