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Prehistoric Maritime Global Kingdom?

stu neville

stu neville

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I've recently become very interested in the Piri Reis map, the theory of ancient Sea-Kings some 8000 years ago, Atland and the Oera Linda manuscript, etc.

There is stuff on the net: this page, whilst slightly off-putting in it's presentation and obviously written by a Dutch chap with a good, but not brilliant, command of English, still contains some fascinating and valid points, including the geological fact that tracts of the North Sea were above sea level until comparatively recently, in exactly the place that Atland is reputed to have been: much of the chronology in the Oera Linda does tally to a remarkable degree with what we now accept as history (much of it after this was published in the 1870s). Coupled with the Piri Reis map (discussed in context here), which shows with remarkable precision the actual coastline of Antartica beneath the ice, the legends of the Sea Kings (or sea-people), Wiki entry here, there does seem to be a huge swell (pardon the pun) of evidence for a prehistoric, global maritime community.

Were they inahbitants of the later deluged Atland, which through retelling then morphed into Atlantis (conveniently Latinised name ;)) and it's associated legends?

Anyone know any more?
 
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Prehistoric Maritime Civilizations?

Enough submarine ruins indicative of a pre- or inter-Ice Ages civilization or culture have been discovered within just the past five or six years in the North Atlantic, the Caribbean, the North Pacific, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and the Indian Oceans that such speculative sources as the Oer Linda Boek and even the Piri Reis map are no longer the primary evidences they once were.

It seems clearer and clearer, on an almost monthly basis, that there was indeed a "Prehistoric Maritime Civilization." I have numerous times referred to this in the past by my term of "Hyper-Neolithic," by which I mean an age of barbarian splendour far outstripping anything that orthodox Anthropology or Archaeology has been willing to accept, or rather that which it has started to accept only very recently.

As for "Global," that may be an issue of semantic interpretation. Were there civilizations around the world in, say, 1400 A. D.? Yes, certainly, but many of those civilizations had no idea that all the others existed.
 
I think that there are certainly enough flood myths from around the world to suggest that there was some kind of deluge that was fairly disruptive for whatever civilisations were around when it happened. There's a succinct round up of them here: http://ragz-international.com/floods.htm
 
I was wondering...

The origins of the 'Merovingians' - The long-haired kings - wasn't the origin of the line (Merovech) a result of a union with a woman and some sort of mythelogical sea-creature-man thing? As wikipedia says:

Leadership among the early Merovingians was based on mythical descent and alleged divine patronage, expressed in terms of continued military success
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merovingian

I heard on R4 a few weeks ago about some underwater high detailed sonar scans being undertaken (by Portsmouth Univ?) in the North Sea. We already know the region between UK and the continent was above sealevel once (only 50-130m under now); there is a delta system conprising the Thames, Rhine and (?). Although on the radio, the guy explaining the 3d results (one of those achaeology types - pah!) was pointing out where likely places for habitation would be. If memory serves (which is generally a bad idea these days) I think he mentioned some finds in the form of charcoal that had been identified as indicating a possible settlement/camp.

This area would have been a rich environment to live - plenty of food, fish, birds etc - prior to sealevel rise

The Oera Linda Book is fascinating - but can anyone comment on the original 'rune' language - something doesn't feel right for me.
 
thanks, Ryn

I've probably read it at some stage - I'll re-read it again (failing memory is a bugger, ain't it?)

Baz
 
Hospitaller said:
"I think that there are certainly enough flood myths from around the world to suggest that there was some kind of deluge that was fairly disruptive for whatever civilisations were around when it happened."

I believe that you are most probably correct, but the problem here is that many flood legends and myths have migrated to cultures which didn't previously have them.

For example, some of the older Atlantologists put great emphasis on the fact that native Hawaiaan mythology described one fellow named "Nu" who saved the remnants of humanity in a great boat he'd built.

It was later realized that the story of "Nu" had entered native Hawaiian mythology AFTER the introduction of the Old Testament to the islands.
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I remember an article about someone arguing Atlantis had a whole empire. Which might be explaining the "stretching from Africa to Asia" comment. He was talking something about copper mining done in south america, but with the mined copper seemingly having sort of gone missing. It was the only time I've felt that perhaps Atlantis was more than a myth. Can't remember enough about the article to identify it though.
 
Not sure about S.A., but in North America, specifically the upper midwest, there are traces of copper mines, the ore apparently missing and unacounted for. The idea relates to the migration of the Aztlan Indians and why the settled here in the first place. Excellent book, "The Pyramids of Rock Lake" which covers some of the theory.
 
Graham Hancock wrote about this in his fairly recent book
"Underworld : The Mysterious Origins of Civilization"

Now that it is in paperback, I'm on the hunt for a copy.
(The hardcover was enormous!)

From the bits I've seen he concentrates on cities found
off the coast of India and in the Bay of Bengal --
but I'm sure he includes all of the world's seas at some point.

FWIW
TVgeek
 
Xanatico said:
"I remember an article about someone arguing Atlantis had a whole empire."

I suspect that Atlantis was a "empire" in pretty much a metaphorical sense - in much the same way that Western Europe, the British Isles, North America, Australia, New Zealand and so on might be called a "democratic empire."

As I've said before (probably ad nauseum) we are likely dealing with an "Atlantean age" rather than a single "lost continent" out in the middle of the sea.
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Well, they were meant to have been warring with Athens. Possibly when trying to expand their territories. I was thinking an empire along the lines of the Roman one with Atlantis being the Rome of the empire.
 
Xanatico said:
"Well, they were meant to have been warring with Athens."

But this presupposes that there was a "First Athens" towards the close of the most recent Ice Age. But there is no archaeological evidence (not even aparently among "weird" and "variant" archaeological relics) for the existence of that proto-Athens. And why in the world did it take EIGHT THOUSAND YEARS to re-build the Second Athens on the site of the First? I'm surprised anybody remembered where that putative First one stood.

And:

"I was thinking an empire along the lines of the Roman one with Atlantis being the Rome of the empire."

Yes, that's been the traditionalist view for centuries. But today I think it also helps to explore the other options that modern marine archaeology keeps giving us.
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In addition, the Mediterranean Basin is believed to have been dry land for at least part of this period - possibly containing a series of smallish, linked lakes in its deepest depressions, fed by the yearly flooding of the Nile.

If this was truly the case, "Proto-Athens" (assuming that it existed) was most likely NOT a seaport at all but an INLAND town, and thus of very limited interest to the sea-fighting Atlanteans.
 
I originally posted this on the Ice Age thread on August 2, but I think it really belongs here.
Obviously, I do not have the search skills of an EnolaGaia, or I would have found this thread to post in.
I am lazy too, so I have just copied and pasted my original post, which is in regards to not just a lost city, but a lost whole entire civilization (possibly—a possibility heavy on conjecture) plus a lost whole entire ancient library:

I found this intriguing ice age related possibility in a foot note from the book The Alchemy of Color by Spike Bucklow (pp 179-180—it's a long foot note):

The Portuguese used ancient sea routes to trade with various tribes in Africa. The sea routes were rediscovered routes that had been used by the Carthaginians two thousand years before. "The Carthaginians' knowledge of ocean currents and winds may represent some of the last traces of a long-lost civilization" which existed before the last ice age. The conjecture of ancient knowledge from before the ice age rests on a Turkish map from 1513 AD, which shows the coast of Antarctica, buried under ice and "inaccessible for the whole of recorded history" until the 20th century. It is impossible to prove what knowledge the Carthaginians had access to since the Romans destroyed the library and "around half a million scrolls" when they conquered Carthage. Tantalizing.
 
IbisNibs said:
I originally posted this on the Ice Age thread on August 2, but I think it really belongs here.
Obviously, I do not have the search skills of an EnolaGaia, or I would have found this thread to post in.
I am lazy too, so I have just copied and pasted my original post, which is in regards to not just a lost city, but a lost whole entire civilization (possibly—a possibility heavy on conjecture) plus a lost whole entire ancient library:

I found this intriguing ice age related possibility in a foot note from the book The Alchemy of Color by Spike Bucklow (pp 179-180—it's a long foot note):

The Portuguese used ancient sea routes to trade with various tribes in Africa. The sea routes were rediscovered routes that had been used by the Carthaginians two thousand years before. "The Carthaginians' knowledge of ocean currents and winds may represent some of the last traces of a long-lost civilization" which existed before the last ice age. The conjecture of ancient knowledge from before the ice age rests on a Turkish map from 1513 AD, which shows the coast of Antarctica, buried under ice and "inaccessible for the whole of recorded history" until the 20th century. It is impossible to prove what knowledge the Carthaginians had access to since the Romans destroyed the library and "around half a million scrolls" when they conquered Carthage. Tantalizing.
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This brings to mind a group called the Sea Peoples, about which almost nothing is known.

Also, the Phoenicians were fantastic sailors, as well as traders. The city of Carthage was founded by them about 1000 BCE, and was a very major power in the Mediterranean until Rome finally destroyed them in the Third Punic War.
 
Xanatico said:
I remember an article about someone arguing Atlantis had a whole empire. Which might be explaining the "stretching from Africa to Asia" comment. He was talking something about copper mining done in south america, but with the mined copper seemingly having sort of gone missing. It was the only time I've felt that perhaps Atlantis was more than a myth. Can't remember enough about the article to identify it though.
Click to expand...
If memory serves, David Hatcher Childress goes into this in one of his Lost Cities books.
 
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