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The Atlantis Thread

Wasn't Tenochtitlan built to resemble the Aztec's original home city in the East, with all it's concentric canals and whatnot?
 
That's very interesting. I hadn't heard that before. So, that would lend support to what Frank Joseph is saying in this interview.
 
I think Plato's Atlantis was Santorini, personally, but what if maybe stories about an earlier civilisation got mixed up with stories about the Cycladic/Minoans? Like the way King Arthur got himself transported from the Dark Ages to the Middle Ages, or King Lear, for that matter. That's just my brain rattling 'cos it's not in gear...
 
I suspect that human history is longer than currently accepted, and that relatively advanced civilizations did once exist. Many if not all of these may have been 'bombed back to the stone age' by natural catastrophes such as meteor impacts.

Science has begn to swing back towards catastrophism, after a long period when such views were deemed sensationalist. Improved knowledge of asteroids and comets has undoubtedly helped this re-evaluation, and the discovery of the world-wide iridium signature of the impact that probably destroyed the dinosaurs was one crucial factor, the other being the observation of the comet Shoemaker-Ley 9 impacting on Jupiter, less than a decade ago.

Suddenly the world seemed much less safe, and many people have been re-reading ancient histories and legends and finding possible confirmation of real and wide-spread catastrophes. One day, perhaps not too far in the future, a history that includes stories of ancient civilizations and major destructions may become the new orthodoxy.
 
I think Rynners right about Atlantis. What nobody seems willing to say is that Santorini may have been the centre of Minoan civilisation not just an outpost.

On the other hand there may well have been several drowned civilisations. The Black Sea culture (possibly the source of the Noah legend), Scillonia, possibly the Cuban site as well as Santorini.
 
I think this is the first I have seen on Atlantis in a long time that makes me wonder if it could be real. Also I had never thought of an Atlantean empire before, stretching from Africa to Asia(America). The only thing that bothers me is the timing, right when Disney releases it's Atlantis movie.
 
Well, I had a little jaunt to Crete and Santorini this summer and had a look around Knossos, Akrotiri and all the rest. I think the
idea that Santorini was the capital of Cycladic/Minoan civilisation makes perfect sense. Santorini would naturaly become a crossroads of sorts, making it a far better choice than Crete.
If you like this sort of thing read 'Atlantis: The Truth Behind the Legend' by A.G. Galanopoulos and Edward Bacon. It's got pretty pictures and everything! Brings back all kind of fond, donkey-related memories...
(What's this...? I hear you cry...he's said something sensible, possibly)
 
Brings back all kinds of fond, donkey related memories

:eek!!!!: :monster: :madeyes: :p
 
Explorers View 'Lost City' Ruins Under Caribbean

I thought this was interesting.

---------------------------------

Explorers View 'Lost City' Ruins Under Caribbean
Reuters
Dec 6 2001 11:13AM
HAVANA (Reuters) - Explorers using a miniature submarine to probe the sea floor off the coast of Cuba said on Thursday they had confirmed the discovery of stone structures deep below the ocean surface that may have been built by an unknown human civilization thousands of years ago.

Researchers with a Canadian exploration company said they filmed over the summer ruins of a possible submerged "lost city" off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula on the Caribbean island's western tip. The researchers cautioned that they did not fully understand the nature of their find and planned to return in January for further analysis, the expedition leader said on Thursday.

The explorers said they believed the mysterious structures, discovered at the astounding depth of around 2,100 feet and laid out like an urban area, could have been built at least 6,000 years ago. That would be about 1,500 years earlier than the great Giza pyramids of Egypt.

"It's a really wonderful structure which looks like it could have been a large urban center," said Soviet-born Canadian ocean engineer Paulina Zelitsky, from British Columbia-based Advanced Digital Communications (ADC).

"However, it would be totally irresponsible to say what it was before we have evidence," Zelitsky told Reuters.

Zelitsky said the structures may have been built by unknown people when the current sea-floor actually was above the surface. She said volcanic activity may explain how the site ended up at great depths below the Caribbean Sea.

In July 2000, ADC researchers using sophisticated side-scan sonar equipment identified a large underwater plateau with clear images of symmetrically organized stone structures that looked like an urban development partly covered by sand. From above, the shapes resembled pyramids, roads and buildings, they said.

"ULISES" ASSISTS UNDERWATER ODYSSEY

This past July, ADC researchers, along with the firm's Cuban partner and experts from the Cuban Academy of Sciences, returned to the site in their ship "Ulises." They said they sent a miniature, unmanned submarine called a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) down to film parts of the 7.7-square-mile area.

Those images confirmed the presence of huge, smooth, cut granite-like blocks in perpendicular and circular formations, some in pyramid shapes, the researchers said. Most of the blocks, measuring between about 6.5 and 16 feet in length, were exposed, some stacked one on another, the researchers said.

Others were covered in sediment and the fine, white sand that characterizes the area, the researchers said.

The intriguing discovery provided evidence that Cuba at one time was joined to mainland Latin America via a strip of land from the Yucatan Peninsula, the researchers said.

"There are many new hypotheses about land movement and colonialization, and what we are seeing here should provide very interesting new information," Zelitsky said.

ADC's deep-water equipment includes a satellite-integrated ocean bottom positioning system, high-precision side-scan double-frequency sonar, and the ROV. The company currently is commissioning what it calls the world's first custom-designed ocean excavator for marine archeology to begin work both at the Guanahacabibes site and at ship wrecks.

ADC is the deepest operator among four foreign firms working in joint venture with President Fidel Castro's government to explore Cuban waters containing hundreds of treasure-laden ships from the colonial era.

The Canadian company already has discovered several historic sunken Spanish ships.

In an earlier high-profile find, ADC was testing equipment in late 2000 off Havana Bay when it spotted the century-old wreck of the American battleship USS Maine. The ship had not been located since it blew up mysteriously in 1898, killing 260 American sailors and igniting the Spanish-American War.

The rush of interest in Cuba's seas in recent years is due in part to the Castro government's recognition that it does not have the money or technology to carry out systematic exploration by itself, although it does have excellent divers.

American companies are prohibited from operating in Cuba by the long-running U.S. embargo on the Communist-run island.
 
Atlantis

Did anyone see the tv prog that suggested the inspiration behind plato's description of Atlantis was a place called Heliki(sp?).
Great Earth power but was it the inspiration?
Personally thought it was fascinating but not convinced on the inspiration bit , would appreciate your views
 
When the publish pictures or sonar imaging I'll be interested
 
Didn't see the prog. but thought I would try & bring the thread back to life. read last year that a russian guy was going to search for atlantis a few hundred miles out from the scillies, and a few before him have suggested mid atlantic locations near the azores. Anyone know where the name atlantis originated? A recent nat geographic prog. suggested that an island off crete was the original atlantis, inhabited by the minoans and destroyed by a tsunami after the side of an erupting volcano fell into the sea.
Brythonic celtic countries all seem to have stories of lands sunk beneath the waves, we have lyonesse, the bretons the isle of ys and the welsh also have the same legend. In all of them one "knight" on horse back escapes the catastrophy. Is this a mythic record of the same event?
 
Some theories suggest that Lyonesse was some throwback to The area of land south of Cornwall during the last ice age when the sea level was low enough that it was land. I know there are also tree stumps visible out in Swansea Bay, where the sea level rose and took areas of land- things like this may also contribute to some legends like that of the Bottom Hundred at Aberdovey.

Atlantis has been identified all over the place, including Santorini off Crete, America, Cuba, Antarctica the turkish city of Tantalis and almost anywhere else you care to mention. Recent favourites have included an area on the Atlantic side of the Strait of Gibraltar which would have been dry land during the last ice age.
 
The problem with Atlantis is as someone else said, we only have one source to it, and anyone who claims they found Atlantis always assume Plato was wrong about everything. So you get somebody with this great discovery of it, but it was just in another place than Plato had said, at another time, it was some different people, and something else happened to it. Then it could be some ancient civilisation existed at that place, but no reason to think it was Atlantis.
 
Q:"I know there are also tree stumps visible out in Swansea Bay"

There are also tree stumps visible in Mount's bay, formerly visible on rare occ. in neap tide conditions but now after the removal of sewage outlets in the bay, the stumps I'm told are visible from the scillies helicopter on calm days. Also, legend has it that St.Michael's mount was a hill in a forest on which a monastery was built, and the tree stumps wuld support this as fact, but there is no record of a sudden inundation as far as I know. Surely the sea level increase from the end of the last ice age would be long before any monks or written records? However, Lyonnesse according to legend was definitely sunk violently beneath the waves. There are romantic stories of fishermen hearing church bells in the sunken towers ringing beneath the waves on stormy days off Land's End. Lovely but presumably Lyonnesse was sunk before christian days?
 
When the last ice age ended the seas rose and all over the world coasts were submerged and islands were drowned.
1. People were spread over the planet prior to this.
2. People always build most heavily on coastlines.
=
There must be thousands of sunken towns and cities all over the world.
Altantis is "the tip of the iceberg".
 
Edgar Cayce, the 'sleeping prophet', reckoned he was given his predictions and medical advice from souls who'd lived in Atlantis.

I used to read about Cayce all the time as my Da had books about him. He is a little out of fashion now. Some of his prophesies involved Atlantis rising again from the sea and in fact it should have happened by now! Can't wait.

See Also:

SLEEPING PROPHET

A recent poll showed that three quarters of history students at American universities believe that Atlantis will resurface in the near future. Jack Romano profiles ‘the Sleeping Prophet’, Edgar Cayce (1877–1945), the man whose pronouncements did more than any other to raise Atlantis in the New Age imagination.

FT 165 DECEMBER 2002

No longer available online at the magazine's website. The MIA article can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20051218065520/http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/165_cayce.shtml
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hancock's "Underworld" has loads of info on all of the above!

The Cayce prediction was 'fulfilled' when some Cayce supporters discovered the 'Bimini road', underwater in the Bahamas. Still much debate about what this really is, but it looks artificial to me.

The scientific evidence shows that the sea level rise after the last ice age was not steady (which would have been just centimetres per year), but happened in 3 major phases. Also, flooding was not just due to sea level rise - there were also major floods on land when ice barriers collapsed, releasing huge lakes of meltwater. And in certain areas, these floods reaching the sea could cause catastrophic sea level rises.

Other floods occured when rising sea levels breached land barriers, leading to the flooding of the Black Sea and the Persian Gulf.

I suspect that in another generation the idea of Flooded Kingdoms will be generally accepted, and a more intense phase of underwater archaeology will commence.

BTW Brian, you mean spring tides (revealing the old forest remains) not neaps.
 
Two Atlantis threads merged here.

And...

New report on 'Cuban Atlantis'.
Iturralde said volcanic rocks recovered at the site strongly suggest that the undersea plain was once above water, despite its extreme depth. He said the existence of those rocks was difficult to explain, especially because there are no volcanoes in Cuba.

He also said that if the symmetrical stones are determined to be the ruins of buildings, it could have taken 50,000 years or more for tectonic shifting to carry them so deep into the ocean. The ancient Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt is only about 5,000 years old, which means the Cuba site "wouldn't fit with what we know about human architectural evolution," he said.
 
Opinion tends to be divided between the Mycenean (sp?) theory of Atlantis (civilisation on a Greek island which may have been destroyed by the eruption of the Thera volcano) and the American/Caribbean theory - the latter of which is backed up by the various mysterious remains found in the Bahamas and Cuba for instance, but let down by the necessity of ancient Greeks having had to have travelled to (and returned from) the Caribbean.

However I have just had a thought - could the Myceneans(?) have travelled to the Caribbean, returned influenced by the culture which existed there, and been somehow confused with that culture by the Greeks?

The Aztecs believed that their ancestors had travelled to Mexico from the island of "Aztlan" - a name very similar to "Atlantis", and I believe placed in the Caribbean/Atlantic Ocean. There was also the Aztec legend of the god-king Montezuma, described as white-skinned and with a long beard, coming in a ship of a type the Aztecs were not familiar with (but described as like a sailing ship) to tell the Aztecs to travel to Mexico and saying he would return - thus Cortez was believed to be the returned Montezuma.

So could Montezuma have been a Mycenean? Presumably an island nation which were more advanced than the rest of Greece at the time would have been good seafarers. Could they have crossed the Atlantic and come into contact with a similarly (though perhaps in different aspects) advanced culture in Cuba (thus fitting the description of the size and location of Atlantis), and then, having brought its influence back, through the passage of time and the combining together of various misunderstood histories, the Myceneans themselves conflated with those they "discovered", so that the fall of their culture was turned into a story of the fall of Atlantis?

Thus the contact between the Myceneans and the pre-Aztecs of Aztlan/Atlantis/Cuba or other Caribbean islands would have left legends, though distorted, in the later cultures of both regions.

I could be entirely mixed up on the time scales here, as I have no idea when the ancestors of the Aztecs were supposed to have left Aztlan, or how old the remains found in the sea around Cuba and the Bahamas were, and how this compares to the Mycenean civilisation. But please say if you have any comments on my speculation/theory...
 
You're forgetting the theory subscribed to by most historians: that Atlantis was a myth cobbled together by Plato to illustrate the inherent superiority of the Athenian city state.
 
Troy was also believed to be a make believe city, only existing in The Iliad and The Odyssey.


Then in 1870 Heinrich Schliemann had the gall to begin ecavations at Troy.
( granted there is debate as to weither he was actually the first, )


Atlantis may or may not have existed, however
historians, like members of all branches of learning, have been wrong before.
:)
 
I believe that Atlantis is the "Chinese Whisper" of one of the many geological and climatological disturbances of the past.
 
I thought they recently found an island near Greece that sunk around the right time to have inspired the stories. Worse still, it was exactly where Plato said it was all along.

Of course, I much prefferred the theory that Atlantis was actually in the British Isles, where Lyonesse is supposed to have been. Of course, we then have to figure out where Lyonesse was. My theory is that it was in the vicinity of the possible location of Mu. Mu, is therefore around about where Lemuria was, which leaves Lemuria where Atlantis is supposed to have been.

All quite simple, really.
 
anome said:
Worse still, it was exactly where Plato said it was all along.
Depends where you reckon the Pillars of Hercules to be.

Or rather...it depends on where Plato reckoned the Pillars of Hercules to be.

The flooding of the low countries and the removal of the land bridge that connected us to the larger continent was fairly sudden. Britain would have been seen to recede over the years. If you were on the european side of the flood, you would see the land bridge become so submerged that the other side was no longer visible. Britain would appear to sink. It did'nt of course but it would have looked like it had.

Just one possible chinese whisper.
 
Goldstein said:
The Aztecs believed that their ancestors had travelled to Mexico from the island of "Aztlan" - a name very similar to "Atlantis", and I believe placed in the Caribbean/Atlantic Ocean. There was also the Aztec legend of the god-king Montezuma, described as white-skinned and with a long beard, coming in a ship of a type the Aztecs were not familiar with (but described as like a sailing ship) to tell the Aztecs to travel to Mexico and saying he would return - thus Cortez was believed to be the returned Montezuma.

So could Montezuma have been a Mycenean?

Montezuma (Mochetazuma) was the aztec emporer at the time of the Conquest. properly known as Mchetazuma Xocoyotzin, (Mochetazuma the Younger) he ruled from 1502 - 1520. there was a previous emporer also called Mochetazuma illicimana who ruled from 1410-1469 (His grandfather) . neither have a legend of being 'White skinned' attached to them. the Mochtezuma the younger is known to have sported a beard (Contrary to popular beleif, not uncommon in mesoamerica). ;)

Perhaps you are thinking of the Quetzalcoatl myth? see my post here for my thoughts on this.
'
The Aztecs actually reffered to themselves as the 'Mexica'. Aztec is the name given to them by other peoples in the valley of mexico meaning 'From Aztlan'. which is the legendary homeland of the Mexica People. From here they bagan thier nomadic wanderings at the behest of their tribal god Huitzilopochtli (Hummingbird on the left), to finally settle on a marshy island in Lake Tezcoco, where they founded their capital, Tenochtitlan (Now Mexico city)
Aztlan in Nahuatl means 'Place Of Herons' The Mexica always climed a 'chichimec' ancestry, the chichimecs being the semi nomadic hunter-gatherers from the north, and as such were always painfully aware that they were 'Squatters' in the valley of Mexico. this goes a long way to explaining Mochtezuma's initial capitulation to cortes, beleiving him to be the returning Quetzalcoatl, one time king of Tula, capital of the Toltec, a people to whom all nations in the valley of Mexico looked to as the font of civilisation.

Recently, there has been an intersting theory proposed that Aztlan was in located in Utah. can't find the link right now buit i'll dig it out.

Its worth bearing in mind, that the Aztecs were a new people on the Mesoamerican scene, well into the late postclassic, and the toltec themselves, were a postclassic people. (the 'Classic' period of mesoamerican civilisation ended, in the mexican highlands, with the collapse of Teotihuacan around 600AD. The Mayan classic continued for another 300years or so. Tula fell around 1100AD)

Theories of atlantis connected with the aztecs and the Maya should really take into account the actual timelines for these civilisations.

*edit*

Aztlan located in Utah
http://www.100megsfree4.com/farshores/am02atl.htm
 
Hancock, Your half hours well up, mate ;)

Heres a nice little piccy of some Ancient America/Atlantis nonsense ;)

quetzalcoatl-pic.jpg
 
a possible origin for the story of Atlantis

To all:
In discussing the story of Atlantis, a critical aspect is the locating of the position of the continent, or what supposedly inspired the story of the continent. In many cases, the position of Atlantis, in space, is used as a starting point. Using the description of Atlantis being "beyond the Pillars of Hercules", everything from a land in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, to the Americas, themselves, have been offered as sites for Atlantis. Usually unaddressed, though, is the information offered by the placing of Atlantis in time. Plato's writings, from which Atlantis was derived, is described as having sunk around 15,000 years ago.
That period, it turns out, was almost exactly the end of the most recent Ice Age. At that time, huge sheets of ice locked up large amounts of sea water, uncovering large areas of continental shelves. The "land bridge" between Siberia and Alaska, for example, was above water, at that time. Among these regions above water, too, was an area called Dogger Bank, a region of continental shelf, between the British Isles and Scandinavia, only about 150 feet below sea level, at the present time. Sites such as http://www.fortunecity.com/bally/sligo/93/past/pre_norman_history/iceage.html, describe the region of Dogger Bank as covered with coniferous forests, and inhabited by game animals and, possibly, even humans, at that time. The melting of the ice caps, though, caused those areas to become submerged. This process, though, may have taken a relatively short period of time. The site on http://www.fortunecity.com, for example, described the flooding of Dogger Bank as having "lasted only a few decades".
It is possible for a tribe, which had lived in the area for generations, to have been pushed out, possibly by another tribe. Forced to flee to mainland Europe, they could have maintained an oral history of the land they knew, eventually having it enter almost a kind of racial memory. If they tried to return, only a couple of generations later, possibly, hoping, perhaps, to reconquer it for themselves, they could have found the land completely covered by water. To have so drastic and dramatic a fate befall a place they may have held closely could be a genuinely traumatic experience, and that could have entered their consciousness as a story of immense cataclysm and disaster. Through circulation and contact with other cultures, which may even have similar tales in their background, from the days when the ice caps melted, the story of a sunken land could have taken hold as a powerful and common element. It may be argued that there could have been any of a number of other places where continental shelves flooded, 15,000 years ago, and those may have given rise to the story of Atlantis. Dogger Bank is only one possibility, but, it should be mentioned, it, too, lies "beyond the Pillars of Hercules".
If nothing else, this can, at least, inspire the idea of wholesale archeological exploration of areas lost to the waters, after the end of the last Ice Age. That would, of course, require underwater exploration of those sites, but there is a likelihood of significant finds. Indeed, much of standard archeology can be rewritten, or, at least, numerous questions answered, by this exploration.



Julian Penrod
 
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