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The Atlantis Thread

I'm off to Madeira in 4 weeks.
At around 1,000 km West of the "Pillars of Hercules" and being a massif on a huge plain, which was still volcanically active up to around 7,000 years ago, Madeira is one of the top candidates for the historical Atlantis.
The accepted history is that Madeira has only been occupied since the first Portuguese colonists landed there around 1420.

A few YouTube videos (yeah I know!) claim there are far older structures on the island though. Indeed a quick scan of the largely unoccupied interior on Google maps reveals traces of circular or rectilinear shapes, which do look extremely old and which reminded me of round shapes on Salisbury Plain only visible from the air.

I will hire a car for a couple of days and will do my best to explore the interior. Watch out for my holiday pics!
 

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Field trip to Madeira now sadly over.
A stunningly beautiful island and one of the nicest holidays I can recall.
We covered most of the island in our trusty little hired Fiat Punto*. Some very evocative pyramidal hills near Faial to the North East:

PSX_20191029_100106.jpg

One highlight of the trip for me was exploring the labyrinth of caves and lava tubes, known as Grutas de São Vicente. They were apparently formed during a huge volcanic eruption some 850,000 years ago. No sign of any prehistoric human occupation though:

PSX_20191029_100405.jpg

In fact, the only hard evidence of Atlantis I discovered, was this excellent (and quite pricey) local rosé wine:

PSX_20191029_095914.jpg

* Despite clocking up 200 or so km, much of it along narrow, rough and zig-zagging mountain roads, strewn with fallen rubble, the only puncture I got was in downtown Funchal. At home I drive a Jeep and tend to park in tight spaces by putting one huge wheel up on the kerb and then dropping down into place. Try that in a small-wheeled hatchback and wait for the hiss of a burst tyre!
 
More dubious Atlantis stuff.

Ashley Cowie published yet another crappy article this week trying to spin mystery out of discovery in the belief that ancient history needs to be sexed up with fakery and myths to attract the attention of the public. Today’s subject is Atlantis, which Cowie understands at about the Wikipedia level of research, citing as sources Atlantipedia and an article in National Geographic. It makes me wonder why I bother researching primary sources when, apparently, one can get paid to surf the web and summarize the results like a high school book report.

The long and short of it is that some Minoan artifacts were recently discovered on the islet of Chryssi, off Crete, and Cowie decided to label them “Atlantean treasure” to make them seem sexier.
By now many of you will be tapping your fingers briskly, thinking to yourselves “so where are the artifacts from the lost continent of Atlantis?” […] [A]ccording to Atlantipedia, many archaeologists support The Minoan Hypothesis, including K.T. Frost, a professor of history at Queen's University in Belfast; archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos, and seismologist A.G. Galanopoulos. Essentially, this theory points towards the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea as the inspiration for Atlantis…
At the end of the article he states that Minoan treasures are “maybe” Atlantean, though he makes no effort to support the claim beyond recycling the Minoan hypothesis, which is the actual subject of his article. As with so many of his pieces, there is a brief news peg followed by a lengthy rewrite of information easily obtained from a Google search, and then a mealy-mouthed conclusion that uses weasel words to avoid actually saying anything of substance, letting rhetorical questions and “maybe” stand in place of argument and analysis.

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/ashley-cowie-appropriates-minoan-archaeology-for-atlantis
 
More dubious Atlantis stuff.

Ashley Cowie published yet another crappy article this week trying to spin mystery out of discovery in the belief that ancient history needs to be sexed up with fakery and myths to attract the attention of the public. Today’s subject is Atlantis, which Cowie understands at about the Wikipedia level of research, citing as sources Atlantipedia and an article in National Geographic. It makes me wonder why I bother researching primary sources when, apparently, one can get paid to surf the web and summarize the results like a high school book report.

The long and short of it is that some Minoan artifacts were recently discovered on the islet of Chryssi, off Crete, and Cowie decided to label them “Atlantean treasure” to make them seem sexier.
By now many of you will be tapping your fingers briskly, thinking to yourselves “so where are the artifacts from the lost continent of Atlantis?” […] [A]ccording to Atlantipedia, many archaeologists support The Minoan Hypothesis, including K.T. Frost, a professor of history at Queen's University in Belfast; archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos, and seismologist A.G. Galanopoulos. Essentially, this theory points towards the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea as the inspiration for Atlantis…
At the end of the article he states that Minoan treasures are “maybe” Atlantean, though he makes no effort to support the claim beyond recycling the Minoan hypothesis, which is the actual subject of his article. As with so many of his pieces, there is a brief news peg followed by a lengthy rewrite of information easily obtained from a Google search, and then a mealy-mouthed conclusion that uses weasel words to avoid actually saying anything of substance, letting rhetorical questions and “maybe” stand in place of argument and analysis.

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/ashley-cowie-appropriates-minoan-archaeology-for-atlantis

Not very convincing was it?

It's hard to avoid the fact that Plato unambiguously described the location of Atlantis as "in the great ocean to the west of the pillars of Hercules". This, coupled with the fact that the Azores plateau, possibly extending as far as Madeira and the Canary Isles, was far larger some 10,000 years ago, surely rules out The Mediterranean hypothesis.
 
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Ireland as Atlantis!

We’ve covered Keystone University (a non-accredited, for-profit adult education facility) and its zany ideas about Ireland as Atlantis before.

Now, Anthony Woods of Keystone University has released the argument in book form, called Atlantis Ireland, with a rather ominous nationalist tagline about how the history of Ireland “has been written by her enemies.” That’s always a promising start for a supposedly sober evaluation of evidence for Atlantis.

To promote the book, Woods published a two-part discussion of its central claims on Ancient Origins. The evidence is the same as it was the last time we discussed Keystone University’s claims, but I was struck by Woods’s blatant illogic in his article and inability to see it. Consider these sequential paragraphs:
The most telling characteristic of Atlantis is that it was an island located in the Atlantic Ocean. Obviously, Ireland is an island in the Atlantic with an ancient people, language, and culture. There are an estimated 100,000 Stone Age constructions remaining in Ireland - including the most spectacular megaliths on Earth - as you would expect if they really were an advanced early civilization. Similar constructions (mounds, cairns, stone circles, dolmens, passage tombs, etc.) are found all over the world, proving that the entire world, not just Ireland, has a stunning and forgotten ancient history. ...

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/t...w-are-back-now-with-alleged-egyptian-evidence
 
The beautiful lagoon of Sete Cidades on São Miguel Island in The Azores archipelago:

azores.JPG


It is the caldera of a volcano, the earliest recorded eruption of which was some time between 1439 and 1444. That is only a decade or so after the Portuguese first reached The Azores. The accounts state that "the topography of the eastern part of the island had changed radically".

A quick scan down the Wiki page shows how common volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and landslides are on The Azores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_disasters_in_the_Azores

Perhaps that 15th century eruption, itself dramatic enough to change the shape of the island, was only a faint echo of vastly more destructive eruption(s) during the Neolithic that turned what was a contiguous plateau of land in the mid-Atlantic into the scattered archipelago we now know as The Azores?

The discovery of pre-European structures and artefacts on these islands is incredibly interesting and I hope the archaeologists will keep on digging until the enduring mystery of Atlantis is resolved.
 
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Atlantis disappears again.

"Hunting Atlantis" disappeared from Discovery's schedule, vanishing without a trace, just like its namesake continent. Meanwhile, Lue Elizondo has a lucrative new gig.​


Today was to have been the premiere date for Hunting Atlantis, a new series from Morgan Freeman’s Revelations Entertainment in which volcanologist Jess Phoenix and genre novelist Stel Pavlou were to have explored various hypotheses for the location of Atlantis before deciding that Pavlou was right to tie Plato’s allegory to the alleged flooding of the Black Sea around 5000 BCE, despite matching none of the details of Plato’s fictitious story. The Discovery channel, fresh off purchasing Warner Media, pulled the show without explanation and replaced it with an extended episode of Expedition Unknown.

Discovery pulled all references to the program from its website, and Freeman’s Revelations Entertainment does not list the show among its projects. Phoenix scrubbed the series from her social media feed. Discovery was still promoting the show just a couple of weeks ago. The change came swiftly enough that many major publications still listed the premiere episode in tonight’s TV listings. ...

https://jasoncolavito.substack.com/...eries-sinks?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cta
 
Atlantis disappears again.

"Hunting Atlantis" disappeared from Discovery's schedule, vanishing without a trace, just like its namesake continent. Meanwhile, Lue Elizondo has a lucrative new gig.​


Today was to have been the premiere date for Hunting Atlantis, a new series from Morgan Freeman’s Revelations Entertainment in which volcanologist Jess Phoenix and genre novelist Stel Pavlou were to have explored various hypotheses for the location of Atlantis before deciding that Pavlou was right to tie Plato’s allegory to the alleged flooding of the Black Sea around 5000 BCE, despite matching none of the details of Plato’s fictitious story. The Discovery channel, fresh off purchasing Warner Media, pulled the show without explanation and replaced it with an extended episode of Expedition Unknown.

Discovery pulled all references to the program from its website, and Freeman’s Revelations Entertainment does not list the show among its projects. Phoenix scrubbed the series from her social media feed. Discovery was still promoting the show just a couple of weeks ago. The change came swiftly enough that many major publications still listed the premiere episode in tonight’s TV listings. ...

https://jasoncolavito.substack.com/...eries-sinks?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cta
Not at all unhappy about that. More crap shows should be scrubbed. But I do wonder about the backstory.
 
I'm off to Madeira in 4 weeks.
At around 1,000 km West of the "Pillars of Hercules" and being a massif on a huge plain, which was still volcanically active up to around 7,000 years ago, Madeira is one of the top candidates for the historical Atlantis.
The accepted history is that Madeira has only been occupied since the first Portuguese colonists landed there around 1420.

A few YouTube videos (yeah I know!) claim there are far older structures on the island though. Indeed a quick scan of the largely unoccupied interior on Google maps reveals traces of circular or rectilinear shapes, which do look extremely old and which reminded me of round shapes on Salisbury Plain only visible from the air.

I will hire a car for a couple of days and will do my best to explore the interior. Watch out for my holiday pics!
'Madeira2' Pic looks like a wall - going by the shadow. Also notice that it seems as if there are many traces of either streets/walkways or foundations?
 
'Madeira2' Pic looks like a wall - going by the shadow. Also notice that it seems as if there are many traces of either streets/walkways or foundations?

I agree.
If I recall, the official explanation was that it was part of a cattle enclosure from the late Middle Ages i.e. a construction dating from a short while after the Portuguese "discovered" Madeira.
A lot of comments though argued that it looked far older - possibly Neolithic.
 
I'm off to Madeira in 4 weeks.
At around 1,000 km West of the "Pillars of Hercules" and being a massif on a huge plain, which was still volcanically active up to around 7,000 years ago, Madeira is one of the top candidates for the historical Atlantis.
The accepted history is that Madeira has only been occupied since the first Portuguese colonists landed there around 1420.

A few YouTube videos (yeah I know!) claim there are far older structures on the island though. Indeed a quick scan of the largely unoccupied interior on Google maps reveals traces of circular or rectilinear shapes, which do look extremely old and which reminded me of round shapes on Salisbury Plain only visible from the air.

I will hire a car for a couple of days and will do my best to explore the interior. Watch out for my holiday pics!
Seems like another wall here too...

Wall.jpg
 
There was a recent Discovery documentary pointing to Santorini as the site of Atlantis. Seemed reasonable. But then again, they all do.
 
There was a recent Discovery documentary pointing to Santorini as the site of Atlantis. Seemed reasonable. But then again, they all do.
There certainly seems to be a lot of evidence for remains of building's, walls, avenues (pathways) and terraces in the Madeira shots from 'Blessmycottonsocks.'
 
There was a recent Discovery documentary pointing to Santorini as the site of Atlantis. Seemed reasonable. But then again, they all do.
Actually, none do. Atlantis was portrayed as mythical and allegorical in its original context. So anything that suggests it was a real place as described is nonsensical.
 
Actually, none do. Atlantis was portrayed as mythical and allegorical in its original context. So anything that suggests it was a real place as described is nonsensical.

But Sharon. Whilst I always enjoy reading your posts and thoroughly respect your scientific analysis, that cuts through any farcical pseudoscience, I am also fascinated by the growing evidence that a pre-Portuguese civilisation existed on the Azores and that the islands were once part of a far larger, contiguous, mid-Atlantic land mass.
Are you open to at least the possibility that the Atlantis legend could be a genuine folk-memory of a Neolithic or possibly Mesolithic Azores culture?
 
While it may be fictional - like Utopia - people are still spending money looking for a location. They may be getting money back from TV show rights but their efforts do at least show the evidence of cross pollination of various cultures although, it has to be said, not always accurately. We’re in a time where ‘What If’ is taking precedence over actual fact. Whatever that is. It’s time to give up. People are really only briefly entertained - and will flimsily hold in their brains the last thing they saw with their eyes. For a while.

On the plus side, all history is there to be rewritten. (No emoji for this).
 
I think Plato's allegorical account has long been erroneously construed as a retelling of a specific historical event.

There's no doubt that cities / or settled regions have been lost to the sea - either gradually (via historically rising sea levels) or catastrophically (via earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.). For a sample set illustrating both categories see this recent Live Science article:

Sunken cities: Discover real-life 'Atlantis' settlements hidden beneath the waves
https://www.livescience.com/real-life-atlantis-settlements.html

The title of this article illustrates the real issue - the presumed connection between drowned cities / settlements / civilizations and Plato's Atlantis. "Atlantis" has become a catch-all label for alluding to a sunken city or civilization, and its popularity dupes some people into believing there must have been a specific historical precedent that Plato was describing in fictionalized form.
 
I have no doubt that when Plato wrote about Atlantis, it was something he made up to fulfil the needs of his argument. I'm not shooting in the dark here: I've read a lot of Plato and think I have a good understanding of the general thrust of his thinking and his technique.

Ancient Greece was made up of city states and islands, the common factor being that they are discrete centres of human activity. Where you have a culture distributed over several islands, there is always room for one more distant island to be imagined, just over the horizon.

I would draw an analogy with planets. Once we understood that Earth was only one of several planets orbiting the sun, we began to imaginatively populate the others with strange civilisations. The next step was to imagine things like counter-Earth, and then planets orbiting other stars, populating each one with races and civilisations that each serve to illustrate how we see ourselves.

We now know that there are planets orbiting other stars; that does not mean that one of them must be Tatooine or Gallifrey. Similarly, we know that there are islands out beyond the Pillars of Hercules but that does not mean that one must have been Atlantis.

Looking for the "real Atlantis" is no more sensible than searching for fossils of cyclopes or the hydra, or sending a mission to find the tripod factories on mars.

However, it is a demonstrable fact that inhabited land areas have been submerged by the sea, either gradually or catastrophically, at various times in history and prehistory. For example, I have kayaked over the visible remains of Simena off south west Turkey. It was hit by an earthquake in the second century CE.

Skara Brae, a neolithic village on Orkney was unexpectedly exposed by a storm in 1850. The Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were both destroyed and concealed by volcanic eruptions and only rediscovered centuries later.

We know that there were ancient cultures that we know little or nothing about. We know that large areas of previously occupied land are now under the sea. Put these two ideas together and it is inevitable that there are massive discoveries to be made, and that our understanding of history and prehistory will be reshaped as we learn more. However, actively searching for Plato's lost city as if it were a real place is a distraction.
 
"Once we understood that Earth was only one of several planets orbiting the sun, we began to imaginatively populate the others with strange civilisations."

Absolutely. But the planets themselves were no invention, just as a volcanic land mass in the mid-Atlantic is no invention. Archaeological evidence exists to support Pre-Portuguese occupation of the Azores. My point is that it is possible that Plato had heard tales of ancient explorers discovering a land in the great ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules and he embellished this into the Atlantis myth.
And as Fortean devotees, we should know that many myths come with a grain of truth!
 
I am also fascinated by the growing evidence that a pre-Portuguese civilisation existed on the Azores and that the islands were once part of a far larger, contiguous, mid-Atlantic land mass.
Are you open to at least the possibility that the Atlantis legend could be a genuine folk-memory of a Neolithic or possibly Mesolithic Azores culture?
I can't say I know of any growing evidence; it seems to be all tabloid-type stuff. It's an old idea but it hasn't accrued serious interest for the century or more since it's been proposed. We can see the ocean floor pretty well now. The Azores are volcanic islands. There is no evidence of a missing landmass nearby (the mass of land must go somewhere) or of any areal island continent anywhere that disappeared during human history. [1] This also ignores the fact that it does not match at all with the "legend" of Atlantis. So, that seems to be just another one of the parade of fantastical ideas that really makes no sense except as a legend people believe in.

People who still cling to Atlantis as a literal thing really don't understand how the world works, as in - you can't just have a huge land mass disappear like that. It has to go somewhere and leave something behind. One of the deals with Atlantis (as described) is that the geological, historical, archaeological, and biological evidence have to line up and point to the same conclusion. Since that hasn't happened, it's a good bet that it never will because we would have found something more to lead us that way by now. All we have, still, is speculation. A grain of truth as the impetus for a legendary story is a lot different than the story being true as told. Whatever Plato intended, I don't know. But we can be pretty sure it wasn't a literal lost continent that mysteriously disappeared.

1. Yes, areas of land erode or get blown up by volcanoes, etc. And, yes, in earth history, continental plates disappeared, but those examples are not the same. To use those to explain Atlantis would be misleading.
 
Hi Sharon and many thanks for your reply.

I would argue that the report I posted about the Azorean cart-ruts, which closely resemble Neolithic or Bronze Age features on Malta, is far from "tabloid-style stuff".

https://www.researchgate.net/public..._Cart-Ruts_of_Terceira_Island_Azores_Portugal

Other archaeological similarities with Malta, include Azorean hypogea, although these have yet to be fully explored and analysed and I look forward to further news on them.

Of course "a grain of truth is very different from the story being true as told", but that obvious truism should not close people's minds to the exciting possibilities behind that grain of truth.

The Trojan wars were long thought to have been myths - until the burnt, shattered remains of Troy (aka Hisarlik or Wilusa) were found and the embellishments and anachronisms in Homer's account, don't invalidate the hard historical evidence. As a schoolboy, I enjoyed reading the wartime exploits of Sven Hassell. Full of dramatic exaggerations and heroic hyperbole - but based on real events and locations.

According to Wikipedia, Plato gave the dimensions of Atlantis as "three thousand stadia [about 555 km; 345 mi] by two thousand stadia [about 370 km; 230 mi]." This infers an oblong shape, which is not vastly different to the extent of the main Azores islands today, which stretch for around 370 miles.
If Plato made up the whole shebang, then at least some of his inventions about the geographical location, approximate size and shape, mountainous features and catastrophic (volcanic) destruction, seem to be uncannily accurate.

The Portuguese have documented a great many historical volcanic and seismic events, which have changed the islands' topography. What occurred during Neolithic and the Bronze Age is obviously only speculation, unless solid archaeological and geological evidence is discovered. Some evidence for pre-Portuguese occupation does exist and I would not dismiss the idea that, despite the fictional embellishments, something resembling Plato's Atlantis just might have been exactly where he said it was.
 
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