Real Tsunami May Have Inspired Legend of Atlantis

LiveScience ^ | 09 Oct 2009 | Charles Q. Choi

[BGHater]

The volcanic explosion that obliterated much of the island that might have inspired the legend of Atlantis apparently triggered a tsunami that traveled hundreds of miles to reach as far as present-day Israel, scientists now suggest.

The new findings about this past tsunami could shed light on the destructive potential of future disasters, researchers added.

The islands that make up the small circular archipelago of Santorini, roughly 120 miles (200 km) southeast of Greece, are what remain of what once was a single island, before one of the largest volcanic eruptions in human antiquity shattered it in the Bronze Age some time between 1630 B.C. to 1550 B.C.

Speculation has abounded as to whether the Santorini eruption inspired the legend of Atlantis, which Plato said drowned in the ocean. Although the isle is often regarded as just an invention, the explosion might have given rise to the story of a lost empire by helping to wipe out the real-life Minoan civilization that once dominated the Mediterranean, from which the myth of the bull-headed 'minotaur' comes.

The primary means by which the eruption potentially wreaked havoc on the Minoan civilization is by the giant tsunami it would have triggered. However, the precise effects of this eruption and killer wave have been a mystery for decades.

[BGHater]

Some others:

The Atlantis between Spain and Morocco. The Expedition Revealing discoveries.
The wave that destroyed Atlantis [Destroyed by a giant tsunami?]

[BGHater]

Sunkenciv ping.

[blam]

Where Was Atlantis? Sundaland Fits The Bill, Surely!

[BGHater]

I concur, SE Asia[Indonesia] fits.

[blam]

Biblical Plagues and Parting of Red Sea caused by Volcano

[Kandy Atz]

If you ever get the chance to travel to Greece, I would highly recommend some island hopping including a stop at Santorini. It is a gorgeous island. Make sure you visit Akrotiri(?) this is the city that was buried by the volcanic eruption that is still being uncovered.

Its pretty cheap once you get there.

[hoppity]

I visited a distant cousin this past summer, and her husband told me he has figured out where Atlantis is. And that Atlantis and the Garden of Eden are one and the same.

I’ve read a couple of pages of his “knol”, but that’s about it.

http://knol.google.com/k/john-nichols/atlantis-eden-hiding-the-tree-of-life/2vfxjftuay98o/9#

[blam]

Santorini Eruption Much larger Than Originally Believed

[Beowulf9]

There are multiple areas around the world they figure could be Atlantis, if it ever really existed.

Santorini is one of the more favored spots.

[kabumpo]

The Minoan civilition was on Crete, a different island not near Santorini.
Asia wouldn’t do because of the reference to the pi;;ars of Hercules.
There’s a very detailed description in Plato’s account.

[BGHater]

The size of Atlantis described by Plato doesn’t fit with anything near Crete or the Med. at all.

[redangus]

Nor does the time frame. Both are off by a factor of 10.

[Grut]

Actually, the ruins of Atlantis are in New Jersey, a few miles northeast of Hammonton. I say this confidently because they’ve already been ‘located’ everywhere else and then not found there. ;^)

[Young Werther]

You're wrong. Abraham Lincoln used to summer in Atlantis. My family vacationed there and enjoyed the

Of course now "The Donald" owns the casinos and Atlantis is sinking into the sea once more!

[SunkenCiv]

New Ice-Core Evidence Challenges the 1620s age for the Santorini (Minoan) Eruption
Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 25, Issue 3, March 1998
Pages 279-289 | 13 July 1997 | Gregory A. Zielinski, Mark S. Germani
Posted on 07/29/2004 12:25:45 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1180724/posts

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BGHater. Seismology and Chronology.

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[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	Thanks BGHater for posting this topic. :') "Even when, during the respective Thera Conferences, individual scientists had pointed out that the magnitude and significance of the Thera eruption must be estimated as less than previously thought, the conferences acted to strengthen the original hypothesis. The individual experts believed that the arguments advanced by their colleagues were sound, and that the facts of a natural catastrophe were not in doubt... All three factors reflect a fantasy world rather than cool detachment, which is why it so difficult to refute the theory with rational arguments." -- Eberhard Zangger, "The Future of the Past: Archaeology in the 21st Century", pp 49-50. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
·Dogpile · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

[Bean Counter]

” But these things come not into the tale of the Drowning of Numenor, of which now all is told. And even the name of that land perished, and Men spoke thereafter not of Elenna, nor of Andor the Gift that was taken away, nor of Numenore on the confines of the world; but the exiles on the shores of the sea, if they turned towards the West in the desire of their hears, spoke of Mar-nu-Falmar that was whelmed in the waves, of Akallebeth the Downfallen, Atalante in the Eldarin tongue.”

That is the closing sentence of “Alkallabeth, The Downfall of Numenor” in ‘The Silmarillion’ by JRR Tolkien. Tolkien’s mythology was all in support of his alternate story of the drowning of Atlantis, and was partially in response to the writing of C.S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia” which Tolkien did not approve of.

The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Silmarillion are all fascinating to read and understand as a whole once you realize what JRRT was really talking about in all of those tales. There is an entire set of books that have been written by Tolkien’s son Christoper, who edited and published his father’s extensive notebooks and assorted tales. I retreat to Tolkien often because it such beautiful writing in some of the longest sentences I know of.

[Little Bill]

If the eruption was so catastrophic why did the Minoan culture survive for an other couple of centuries? Why did the Minoans have an artistic and cultural revolution, aside from eating kids, see the Minotaur Myth?

Why did the Critas break off when Plato started to repeat the ILIAD.

[KamperKen]

I read Graham Hancock’s book “Underworld” a couple of years ago and found one thing more striking than anything else.

At the end of the last ice age as the glaciers melted, the glaciers themselves acted as giant ice dams holding back the melt water. There were several occasions, the most recent one occurring around 11,000 years ago, where the ice dam super structure failed catastrophically and unleashed an enormous volume of water in a very short period of time. It was estimated that the Canadian glacier at this time released over one million cubic kilometers of water in the space of a few hours.

Sea level would have risen quickly and permanently world-wide, which would explain the source of all of the world’s great flood legends, from both the old world and the Americas.

I mention all of this because of the timing of the last great global inundation. As was supposedly related to Plato’s uncle, Solon, by an Egyptian priest around 500 BC, Atlantis was inundated and destroyed 9,000 years previous to their time. The estimated dates of the worldwide inundation and dates for Atlantis as passed on to Solon are a very close match.

I first read about Spyridon Marinatos’ Santorini theory in the 1960’s and have followed the various vying theories on Atlantis as they’ve come and gone. I agree with Hancock’s conclusion that the Atlantis legend is probably referring to an event of immense antiquity that was triggered by this world-wide inundation. We should take Plato literally.

[SunkenCiv]

Heh... those who have a big woody about pushing back the date of the supposed super-eruption have made the problem even worse; used to be the conventional date for the sudden fall of the palatial civ on Crete was 70 years or so after the supposed eruption — now as you said it’s nearly 200. That chunk of pumice found in Egypt that had been used as a serving tray or something had been saddled on as evidence of the super-eruption of Thera — until it was actually studied and found to have come from an eruption of Kos 100s of 1000s of years ago. At that point it was cast aside, and just as Zangger pointed out, the delusional system was further strengthened by abandonment of yet another key piece of evidence. :’D

[Little Bill]

As I mentioned years ago I used to correspond with Zangger but I also do due diligence, Ebbi may be a semi-loon at this point in time but he raises some questions.

[SunkenCiv]

The World Question Center 2004

Zangger's First Law

Most scientific breakthroughs are nothing else than the discovery of the obvious.

Zangger's Second Law

Truly great science is always ahead of its time.

Although there seems to be a slight contradiction in my laws, historical evidence proves them right:

• The Hungarian surgeon Ignaz Semmelweiss in 1847 reduced the death rate in his hospital from twelve to two percent, simply by washing hands between operations -- a concept that today would be advocated by a four year old child. When Semmelweiss urged his colleagues to introduce hygiene to the operating rooms, they had him committed to a mental hospital where he eventually died.
• The German meteorologist Alfred Wegener discovered in 1913 what every ten year old looking at a globe will notice immediately: That the Atlantic coasts of the African and South American continents have matching contours and thus may have been locked together some time ago. The experts needed sixty more years to comprehend the concept.
• When Louis Pasteur stated that bacteria could cause disease, colleagues treated the idea as "an absurd fantasy'!
• The theories of the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud were called "a case for the police" during a neurologists' congress in Hamburg in 1910.
• Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, only eight years before Orville and Wilbur Wright left the ground in an aeroplane, remarked: "Machines that are heavier than air will never be able to fly!"
• German physicists Erwin Schrödinger's PhD thesis, in which he first introduced his famous equation, was initially rejected.
• When the Spanish nobleman de Satuola discovered the Late Ice Age painted cave at Altamira, established scholars described him as a forger and a cheat.
• The decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean Francois Champollion in 1822 was still rejected by scholar twenty years after his death.
• And when Johann Karl Fuhlrott discovered the bones of a Neanderthal in a cave near Duesseldorf in 1856, the president of the German Society of Anthropology considered it a bow-legged, Mongolian Cossack with rickets, who had been lucky enough to survive multiple head injuries, but who, during a campaign by Russian forces against France in 1814, had been wounded, and (stark naked) had crawled into a cave, where he died.
• Heinrich Schliemann's excavation of Bronze Age Mycenae and Tiryns in Greece was considered by English archaeologists in The Times' as the remains of some obscure barbarian tribe' from the Byzantine period. In particular, the so-called prehistoric palace in Tiryns was labelled "the most remarkable hallucination of an unscientific enthusiast that has ever appeared in literature."

Scientific breakthroughs will always be held hostage to the lag needed to overcome existing beliefs. Lucius Annaeus Seneca realized this already two thousand years ago, when he said: "The time will come, when our successors will be surprised that we did not know such obvious things."

[Nikas777]

Why did the Critas break off when Plato started to repeat the ILIAD.

Yes, it was if Plato realized he was repeated the Iliad as the story of Troy.

[Nikas777]

I read Graham Hancock’s book “Underworld” a couple of years ago...

I just posted a review of Hancock's "UNderworld" last week or so: UNDERWORLD - Graham Hancock The thesis of Hancock's is that during near the end of the Ice Age there arose an advanced stone age coastal civilization - not advanced like they had cars or lasers but advanced like the Egyptians and when the great melt happened this far flung coastal civilization/empire was drowned giving rise to the Atlantis myth and other flood myths with the survivors of the coastal flood moving inland to be among the less advanced humans of the inner continents who viewed the more advances coastal dwellers as gods or near gods. What survived are racial memories and some passed down knowledge turned to myth and legends and for the most part real evidence for this civilization is buried under the seas.

[colorado tanker]

I read the Structure of Scientific Breakthroughs quite some time ago, but recall it making the same point. Seems to me a fair number of present day scientists may look silly in the future, especially those on the global warming bandwagon.

[Little Bill]

Looking at the premise of recognizing the obvious is an interesting observation.

A few years ago I was doing some in depth reading on Byzantium. One of the authors mentioned that one of the reasons that the loss of Crete impeded Byzantine naval power projection was because of the currents in Aegean Sea made it easier to sail from Cyprus to Crete to the home ports in Greece, Anatola and Byzantium. I filed that away Awhile later I was rereading Jason and the Argonauts I plotted the place names mentioned in the story to a current chart, and I was rather surprised that the Author was pretty much on target.

[Grimmy]

Im an ingoranty type of way below layman on sciency stuffs...

But, it’s always seemed to me that science is as much about cult of personality dominance in the academic/social relevant circles, as it is about actually proving or disproving things.

Seems to me that some of that is actually a good thing. Gotta have solid baselines and heavy scrutiny going on, or everything would always be in uber flux on the science front.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks LB.

[SunkenCiv]

There aren’t any. :’)

[SunkenCiv]

That's Zangger's take on the Atlantis legend. His book about it is way out of print, but he revisits it in The Future of the Past: Archaeology in the 21st Century. Here's a review of the German edition of the earlier book:

Ein neuer Kampf um Troia: Archäologie in der Krise
reviewed by Edmund F. Bloedow
Bryn Mawr Classical Review 95.02.18
Ein neuer Kampf um Troia: Archäologie in der Krise by Eberhard Zangger

In such a wide-ranging study, however, one can scarcely expect one individual to be able to assess all the primary evidence. Indeed, it soon becomes evident that Z.'s conclusions are based almost exclusively on secondary, and at times even tertiary, sources. And by casting his net very wide, he hauls in a multifarious medley, whose quality varies enormously. For instance, he brings to the debate for the first time, in particular, Plato's Timaeus and Critias, as well as Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius, and other Mediaeval Homeric 'romances' (68-74). For Z., the accounts of the Sea Peoples, contemporary documents, the Homeric epics, ancient authors, legends, extra-Homeric literature, all compete essentially on a level playing field: broadly speaking, they can all be approached as "half true and half untrue" (74-75).

[SunkenCiv]

:’) Definitely.

[numberonepal]

If you ever get the chance to travel to Greece, I would highly recommend some island hopping including a stop at Santorini.

And don't forget to eat at Señor Zorba's.

[Ramius]

Atlantis is one of the more intriguing myths/legends. I actually have no problem believing that there was some such civilization at some far point in history, wiped out by some eruption or other cataclysm.

Where Plato is short on description that really helps nail down the location, the thing I find most interesting is how his narrative is somewhat cavalier about the basic fact of the existence and history of such a place. As if it was common enough knowledge at the time that it didn’t really need much in the way of explanation.

I have little doubt that there have been obscure city-states in the various parts of the world that rose and fell over hundreds or even thousands of years that we still have no idea were ever there.

If only the library at Alexandria had survived intact. How much more history would we have some idea about? There’s just no knowing.