41–50 of 149 posts
>If you are like most Americans, chances are, you probably believe that Atlantis or another civilization like it once existed. A survey conducted by Chapman University in October 2014 found that, at that time, roughly 63% of people in the United States agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “ancient, advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, once existed.” This seems like a misleading question. Based on what we…
I thought everyone knew that Atlantis is just another name for the Richat Structure.
I had never even heard of this before this comment. I have now learned it's a very unique geological formation in the Sahara consisting of concentric rings of raised stone. It appears to be entirely natural and the scientific consensus is that no city has ever existed on the site nor did human artifice have anything to do with its creation. For someone to post a comment like "I thought everyone knew" is so egregiousl…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say Atlantis is like a slightly more falsifiable and slightly more plaudible version of Russell's Teapot. We have zero reason to think Atlantis existed and zero indications of it. Is it possible that there was an advanced civilization that somehow left virtually zero evidence? Yes, but why? There are plenty of much less advanced civilizations which left plenty of trace and while we cannot know exactly how man…
"I would say Atlantis is like a slightly more falsifiable and slightly more plaudible version of Russell's Teapot." Falsifying a vague hand-wavy theory of Atlantis, I agree with you. But the specific theory that Richat structure was the home of a large city 13,000 years ago that was destroyed in a flood? I wholeheartedly disagree. It's falsifiable and probably could be done with less than 1/100th the archeological in…
2. Is there any evidence of either glaciation or flooding at the Richat structure?
3. If no on 2, then why should their civilization leave virtually zero evidence, even if it collapsed? Macchu Pichu is still there. Teotihuacan is still there. The Nasca Lines are still there. Chan Chan is still there. The Minoan ruins are still there. If this was just an abrupt collapse. why should it leave no trace?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The Richat Structure is the result of natural geological processes." - this is irrelevant "Other than having concentric circles, it doesn't match Plato's description of Atlantis" - in what way? Be specific. "and there is no evidence that any large city was ever there." - lol, there has never been a thorough archeological survey, and the surveys that have been done have turned up evidence that points to noteworthy hu…
> this is irrelevant Plato pretty clearly describes the city as man-made. Perhaps Atlantis was real, but he was mistaken about how it was built, so let's give you that. However, everything else still doesn't match. >in what way? Be specific That's a bit bossy. It's funny that you ask me to be specific, given that you're providing no evidence for your claim other than "it's round." Plato is pretty specific in how he d…
Keep in mind my goal here isn't to prove the theory - my stance is that the theory is falsifiable and hasn't yet been proven or disproven. My response below is based on the assumption that misalignments between the reality of the Richat structure and Plato's descriptions of the Atlantis capital aren't material enough to dismiss the theory with confidence.
I also hope that you can agree with me that if we represent the theory fairly in order to disprove it we have to acknowledge that the details will have been muddied by 9000+ years and multiple translations, etc. between the theoretical city and Plato's descriptions. That said, I have responded to each of your points below:
"He says there's a mountain 9 km away from the city. That does not match the geography of the structure." There is a 200-250 meter jump in elevation 9km north of the outermost ring of the richat structure. I agree it's not exactly a "mountain" but considering my point above, can we agree that this could be what Plato was referring to?
"He says there are three concentric circles of land; it's unclear what would even count as a circle of land in the structure, but it doesn't look like three." - Odd, it does to me... Have you tried using google earth and checking the elevation at different points in the area?
"Plato claims Atlantis was about 500km in diameter, but the city (i.e., the concentric rings) was only a few km, much smaller than the structure." - The innermost circle is about 9km in diameter. The full concentric ring structure is about 50km, and the distance between the Richat structure and the ocean is about 500km. This theory assumes that the Richat structure was connected to the ocean by a river, and the civilization would also have built up along that river (hence the 500km figure). It seems reasonable to mix up the 9km inner circle with the whole concentric ring structure.
"He said there was a passage for ships into the city, half a km wide, which does not exist in the structure." - Relative to the size of the structure, half a KM wide is only 1% of the diameter. The theory is that the city was wiped out in a biblical flood, so there would have been significant erosion and earth movement which could make evidence of specifically where this channel was located harder to determine. There may be no evidence of it, or there may be subtle evidence of it, I don't know. Of all your points, I find this one the hardest to debate, but I also think its inconclusive.
"There is nothing there. There are no clay pots, no walls, and no abundance of metals or technological artefacts that should be there if this were Atlantis. There are no walls, and nothing. It's just nothing." - As far as I know, no one in modern times has actually dug under the surface to check? I don't understand where your confidence in "there is nothing there" comes from. It's like a developer who has written a few unit tests stating "there are no bugs", just because you haven't encountered one. This confidence in "there is no evidence" I find unscientific, and its the attitude that bothers me the most in these discussions. Can't you just say "We haven't found any conclusive evidence yet, but we also haven't looked very hard"? Do you honestly disagree with this statement?
I appreciate you engaging with me, and I hope you don't interpret my labelling your one comment unscientific as a criticism of your skepticism. Its good that you are skeptical, I only take issue with the conflation between "there is no evidence" and "we haven't found any evidence".
I honestly don't know if the Richat structure was Atlantis, and my overall stance on it is neutral. If there was significant research done into it that turned up no evidence of a significant human population I would accept it. My desire isn't to prove the theory, its to be supportive of people being able to do more work to more conclusively prove or disprove the theory.
I thought everyone knew that Atlantis is just another name for the Richat Structure.
It's not just another name for that, though. That's in a very, very wrong location to be the source of Atlantis myths. If Atlantis had a real basis, which it doesn't, it would probably be the pre-glacial-retreat land off the coast of England like Doggerland or off the west coast of Ireland.
The article would be good if it asserted "we don't know".
That does not make the existence of Atlantis a mere fiction. With the end of the Ice Age and its consequences, plenty of civilizations may have disappeared in deep waters. The Sumerians themselves claimed they received their knowledge from a man who visited them by the sea (fish-man like creature) on the aftermath of the great flood which may have buried plenty of Atlantis-like civilizations which could be the missin…
Ditto for The Iliad and The Odysee, yet Troy existed. That's the thing about oral traditions. They are like a telephone game where the story changes a bit with each retelling, so they are not trustworthy, but societies that engaged in epic storytelling did try to keep true to them word-for-word, and that's why some of them are epic poems: to help memorize them. So it's entirely possible that one of the people involved in this story just made it up, but it's also as likely that it was a story they passed down as well as they could, and possibly actually true.
This is not strong evidence for Atlantis being made up. Neither is the fact that Plato made up things like the allegory of the cave: we generally know when he's doing that.
The fact is that we can't find any actual evidence of Atlantis anywhere other than in tenuous ancient writings. A lot like it was for Troy. But since Atlantis supposedly goes back much longer, we might never find any of it, and so it might as well be made up, and that is a safe conclusion.
Those who say it existed nowadays tend to believe that it was in the "eye of the Sahara", in present day Mauritius, and was destroyed in a flood related to an impact event on the North American ice sheet around 11,900 years ago that caused the Younger-Dryas. That idea has the unfortunate / convenient feature that there is literally nothing there and nothing will ever be found there given the scale of the supposed cataclysm. There are huge debris fields off the coast of Western Africa where one could -presumably- find bits of Atlantis, though good luck finding anything obviously man-made in those debris fields, let alone anything that would be highly suggestive of Atlantis. If that theory is true then we'll never prove that Atlantis existed by finding it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Richat Structure is the result of natural geological processes. Other than having concentric circles, it doesn't match Plato's description of Atlantis, and there is no evidence that any large city was ever there.
"The Richat Structure is the result of natural geological processes." - this is irrelevant "Other than having concentric circles, it doesn't match Plato's description of Atlantis" - in what way? Be specific. "and there is no evidence that any large city was ever there." - lol, there has never been a thorough archeological survey, and the surveys that have been done have turned up evidence that points to noteworthy hu…
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/no-atlantis-has-not-been...
BTW, there's still the problem of claiming that (a) Plato's account is a true and faithful transcript of an actual conversation, and that (b) all the various accounts reproduced in this rather complex game of telephone are faithful, as well. If, on the other hand, we conceded that neither the conversation nor the various narrator(s) were real, but rather a figure of speech and and a rhetorical vehicle, it's kind of difficult to claim at the same time unconditional veracity for the narrative conveyed by this. Maybe, the mode of introduction and framing already gives it away?
(Moreover, there was no broader tradition before this, it just popped up with the dialogs. So it should be difficult to claim that Plato just stated the obvious in another context. How comes that this knowledge should have come down to Plato exclusively, by this complex line of famous men, via a complex chain of witnesses, without any of them having been attributed for anything alike before or after this?)
"If you are like most Americans, chances are, you probably believe that Atlantis or another civilization like it once existed. A survey conducted by Chapman University in October 2014 found that, at that time, roughly 63% of people in the United States agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “ancient, advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, once existed.” I am pretty sure that Atlantis existed in one way or an…
Sure, in Babylonian cuneiform texts. Other than that, no. A worldwide flood absolutely did not happen.
Why should Atlantis not have existed? The Atlantic sea floor is not crust, totally different rock chemistry.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I would say Atlantis is like a slightly more falsifiable and slightly more plaudible version of Russell's Teapot." Falsifying a vague hand-wavy theory of Atlantis, I agree with you. But the specific theory that Richat structure was the home of a large city 13,000 years ago that was destroyed in a flood? I wholeheartedly disagree. It's falsifiable and probably could be done with less than 1/100th the archeological in…
1. Cataclysmic meteor strikes ending the ice age? Aren't they more likely to prolong it? 2. Is there any evidence of either glaciation or flooding at the Richat structure? 3. If no on 2, then why should their civilization leave virtually zero evidence, even if it collapsed? Macchu Pichu is still there. Teotihuacan is still there. The Nasca Lines are still there. Chan Chan is still there. The Minoan ruins are still th…
2. There is evidence of tremendous flooding, yes. You can actually see it on google earth yourself if you go look...
3. The theory assumes there was massive flooding, which is why we have to look harder for evidence (careful subsurface excavation) compared to sites like Macchu Pichu. Also Macchu Pichu is 600 years old, and the theory of the Richat structure housing a city assumes it was destroyed 12,900+ years ago.
4. Keep in mind that it's widely accepted that 13k years ago the Sahara was lush grasslands and forests.