Is the Richat Structure, the Eye of Sahara, the remains of Atlantis

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

Also books were a lot of trouble to write back then. A life's endeavor. Not something a person would undertake for giggles.

Not quite true:

Plato wrote 21 books and many other smaller works - in particular his famous dialogues

www.biblio.com...

plato-dialogues.org...

Here is a partial list

Alcibiades, translated by D. S. Hutchinson
Alcibiades (2), translated by Anthony Kenny
Apology, translated by G. M. A. Grube
Axiochus, translated by Jackson P. Hershbell
Charmides, translated by Rosamond Kent Sprague
Clitophon, translated by Francisco J. Gonzalez
Cratylus, translated by C. D. C. Reeve
Critias, translated by Diskin Clay
Crito, translated by G. M. A. Grube
Definitions, translated by D. S. Hutchinson
Demodocus, translated by Jonathan Barnes
Epigrams, translated by J. M. Edmonds, rev. John M. Cooper
Epinomis, translated by Richard D. McKirahan, Jr.
Eryxias, translated by Mark Joyal
Euthydemus, translated by Rosamond Kent Sprague
Euthyphro, translated by G. M. A. Grube
Gorgias, translated by Donald J. Zeyl
Halcyon, translated by Brad Inwood (this spurious little work which is most likely not by Plato has found its way in modern times in the works of Lucian, where he is usually printed. Because it was once in antiquity attributed to Plato, the editor of this edition has included it in the spurious works)
Hipparchus, translated by Nicholas D. Smith
Hippias Major (or Greater Hippias), translated by Paul Woodruff
Hippias Minor (or Lesser Hippias), translated by Nicholas D. Smith
Ion, translated by Paul Woodruff
On Justice, translated by Andrew S. Becker
Laches, translated by Rosamond Kent Sprague
Laws, translated by Trevor J. Saunders
Letters, translated by Glenn R. Morrow
Lysis, translated by Stanley Lombardo
Menexenus, translated by Paul Ryan
Meno, translated by G. M. A. Grube
Minos, translated by Malcolm Schofield
Parmenides, translated by Mary Louise Gill and Paul Ryan
Phaedo, translated by G. M. A. Grube
Phaedrus, translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff
Philebus, translated by Dorothea Frede
Protagoras, translated by Stanley Lombardo and Karen Bell
Republic, translated by G. M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve
Rival Lovers, translated by Jeffrey Mitscherling
Sisyphus, translated by David Gallop
Sophist, translated by Nicholas P. White
Statesman, translated by C. J. Rowe
Symposium, translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff
Theaetetus, translated by M. J. Levett, rev. Myles F. Burnyeat
Theages, translated by Nicholas D. Smith
Timaeus, translated by Donald J. Zeyl
On Virtue, translated by Mark Reuter

I guess writing the original copy of a book is, technically, no different than writing a very long letter. The trick is getting enough copies out so the book circulates.

That means making paper and ink, in a time when those weren't being mass produced. And, of course, scribing it by hand, in a time when the ability to read and write at all in the first place was considered "skilled labor".


www.metmuseum.org...


I was discussing with a friend of mine who has his bachelor's in linguistics about the possibility that Plato's source might have been an ancient Sumerian book , and he pointed out to me that Sumerian writing wasn't very good at conveying subtle points. It was more useful for things like numbers and figures.

... which if you look at Plato's description of Atlantis, it basically is just a big listing of quantities. IE. how many stadia wide the plain is, how big the concentric circles forming the core of the city are... The kind of things you might find written down on an old cuneiform tablet.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

I was discussing with a friend of mine who has his bachelor's in linguistics about the possibility that Plato's source might have been an ancient Sumerian book , and he pointed out to me that Sumerian writing wasn't very good at conveying subtle points. It was more useful for things like numbers and figures.

...but that brings up the question - how would Plato have read the cuneiform? He spoke and wrote in Attic Greek. Now I don't recall if he could speak or read any foreign languages. Sumerian by then was a lost language which meant it would have had to been translated into Babylonian then into another language then a few others and finally in to Greek - not sure who would have been making those translations. Neither the Greeks or Romans knew of the Sumerians. In the Pinakles of the Great Library no 'Sumerian' writing is noted.

You might ask your friend if he is aware of any known Sumerian to' x' lexicons or proto-dictionaries. Babylonians had some to teach people to write in Sumerian but I'm unsure if the translation train made it up to Greek.

Plato had a lot of people working with him. Much like modern scholarship. Indeed, the way the information is presented in the dialogue itself, "Critias" is reciting his tale entirely from memory, claiming his grandfather had recited it to him from having heard it from another ancestor named Solon, with Solon being the one who had translated everything from Egyptian texts.


classics.mit.edu...


It could be those Egyptian priests had translated their text from Sumerian, and the Sumerians from something even more ancient.

But it also gives the story a lot of wiggle room to be a fabrication, if Plato so desired. Seems kind of blasphemous for him to include a major god of the Greek pantheon in it, if so, however. Making up stories about traditional dieties which the author knows to be false strikes me as meddling with a cultural force the people might not forgive, especially in the days prior to the age of reason as we know it today.

originally posted by: Hanslune
You might ask your friend if he is aware of any known Sumerian to' x' lexicons or proto-dictionaries. Babylonians had some to teach people to write in Sumerian but I'm unsure if the translation train made it up to Greek.

Sumerian to Akkadian lexicons and dictionaries have survived.

Akkadian is part of the Semitic language group.
Don't know if that means much.

Harte

a reply to: glend

That's Enki's old house. Used to be a pine forest. LoL

I've never considered this theory. Seems possible.

The structure kind of resembles what a water flooded area would look like after massive amounts of flood waters receded, stripping the structures away.

The "great flood" could have been a series of planet-wide, coastal super Tsunamis triggered by deep underground earthquakes.

That's probably why places like Tibet and mountainous regions everywhere held more ancient structures and older customs.

Gods did always descend from the mountains...or in-land. Humans also did stick to the coastlines in our early development out of the stone age.

It could have been the only uncontested land left available to us since the mountains and inland were already taken by the cataclysm surviving "gods".

The "gods" were just more "buoyant" than others when the earths top blew and of an older, more advanced civilization than ours.

Possibly they were another type of intelligent native hominid. One that made contact with aliens.

originally posted by: Harte

originally posted by: Hanslune
You might ask your friend if he is aware of any known Sumerian to' x' lexicons or proto-dictionaries. Babylonians had some to teach people to write in Sumerian but I'm unsure if the translation train made it up to Greek.

Sumerian to Akkadian lexicons and dictionaries have survived.

Akkadian is part of the Semitic language group.
Don't know if that means much.

Harte

Yep those were the ones that Akkadian students learned the language so they could write it kinda like Englishmen in the 19th century learning Greek and Latin.

I don't recall any finds of cuneiform material in Egypt though.

Yeah it is but Sumerian was an language isolate and not known to be related to any other language.

A math question what was the mechanism of transmission of Sumerian & later Babylonian math discoveries to Greece?

originally posted by: Hanslune

originally posted by: Harte

originally posted by: Hanslune
You might ask your friend if he is aware of any known Sumerian to' x' lexicons or proto-dictionaries. Babylonians had some to teach people to write in Sumerian but I'm unsure if the translation train made it up to Greek.

Sumerian to Akkadian lexicons and dictionaries have survived.

Akkadian is part of the Semitic language group.
Don't know if that means much.

Harte

Yep those were the ones that Akkadian students learned the language so they could write it kinda like Englishmen in the 19th century learning Greek and Latin.

I don't recall any finds of cuneiform material in Egypt though.

Yeah it is but Sumerian was an language isolate and not known to be related to any other language.

A math question what was the mechanism of transmission of Sumerian & later Babylonian math discoveries to Greece?

Seems like there's evidence of trade/interaction between Egypt and Mesopotamia going way back. Somebody in Egypt must have known how to talk to Sumerians/Babylonians at some point, probably.
Perhaps I misremember.

That says nothing at all about any ancient legend being passed on though.

Harte

I noticed reading Critias's account that he says Poseidon himself crafted the rings.

classics.mit.edu...

"Poseidon fell in love with her and had intercourse with her, and breaking the ground, inclosed the hill in which she dwelt all round, making alternate zones of sea and land larger and smaller, encircling one another; there were two of land and three of water, which he turned as with a lathe, each having its circumference equidistant every way from the centre, so that no man could get to the island, for ships and voyages were not as yet. He himself, being a god, found no difficulty in making special arrangements for the centre island, bringing up two springs of water from beneath the earth, one of warm water and the other of cold, and making every variety of food to spring up abundantly from the soil. "

That would suggest they were a natural formation.

However, the 50 stadia (9.25 to 9.6 kilometer) long canal leading from the canal out to the sea was said to be man made:

"And beginning from the sea they bored a canal of three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and fifty stadia in length, which they carried through to the outermost zone, making a passage from the sea up to this, which became a harbour, and leaving an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find ingress. "



However, if I'm reading this right, the ring section was actually somewhat smaller than the richat structure.

"Now the largest of the zones into which a passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth, and the zone of land which came next of equal breadth; but the next two zones, the one of water, the other of land, were two stadia, and the one which surrounded the central island was a stadium only in width. The island in which the palace was situated had a diameter of five stadia."

3+3+2+2+1 radius from the center island. That times two gives us 22. Then add 5 for the center island, and we have a total diameter of 27 stadia (between 5 and 5.18 kilometers.)

The Richat structure is 50 kilometers wide.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

between 5 and 5.18 kilometers

Hmm,
Roughly three miles, hmmmm,

Just about the right size






Ring canal harbor and wharehouses on Thera.

bringing up two springs of water from beneath the earth, one of warm water and the other of cold,

Theran house had hot and cold water supplied by springs

originally posted by: Harte

originally posted by: Hanslune

originally posted by: Harte

originally posted by: Hanslune
You might ask your friend if he is aware of any known Sumerian to' x' lexicons or proto-dictionaries. Babylonians had some to teach people to write in Sumerian but I'm unsure if the translation train made it up to Greek.

Sumerian to Akkadian lexicons and dictionaries have survived.

Akkadian is part of the Semitic language group.
Don't know if that means much.

Harte

Yep those were the ones that Akkadian students learned the language so they could write it kinda like Englishmen in the 19th century learning Greek and Latin.

I don't recall any finds of cuneiform material in Egypt though.

Yeah it is but Sumerian was an language isolate and not known to be related to any other language.

A math question what was the mechanism of transmission of Sumerian & later Babylonian math discoveries to Greece?

Seems like there's evidence of trade/interaction between Egypt and Mesopotamia going way back. Somebody in Egypt must have known how to talk to Sumerians/Babylonians at some point, probably.
Perhaps I misremember.

That says nothing at all about any ancient legend being passed on though.

Harte

Unless they were using intermediaries (the Hurrians and Amorites come to mind) to do the trade. I remember the AE doing diplomatic actions with the Hittites but not with Sumerians (That I can recall). They definitely started snarling at one another in the late bronze age (16th century BC). Later Akkadian became the trade language of choice.

....been a long time since I looked at that particular question.

originally posted by: punkinworks10
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

between 5 and 5.18 kilometers

Hmm,
Roughly three miles, hmmmm,

Just about the right size

Ring canal harbor and wharehouses on Thera.

bringing up two springs of water from beneath the earth, one of warm water and the other of cold,

Theran house had hot and cold water supplied by springs

That may be true, but it doesn't match any of the other details. No 500 kilo by 300 kilo rectangular plane. The Island could never have hosted the population that is described.

And although there are structures relating to a number of other Greek Gods, Poseidon isn't one of them.

en.wikipedia.org...


Of course, Atlantis could be kind of like Tom Sawyer. A collection of true (or mostly true) legends about different cities that somehow got cobbled together into one. With Santorini/Thera being one of the contributing parts.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

It is definitely not alone as you say, Hi Brasil is another and of course there are a great many other's, at least some of these legend's of a lost land must have a very strong element of truth to them.





Now it is far from the only such mysterious island and there are perhaps many other lost island's which may or may not have existed within prehistory during the existence of man, of course that there ARE indeed many real lost land's in the Atlantic is a provable scientific fact but those believed to have existed within the period that modern human's definitely existed are the one's which archaeology and historian's have the problem with.


But what if the ocean was shallower AND the ocean crust was higher in altitude - even just a little, now how many sea mount's and even very large island's would emerge from the water if that were the case?.

Another such island is Frisland which was supposedly further north and some believe is actually greenland or even iceland.

This guy video also suggests the rockall bank may have been atlantis or at least one version of it.


But as for real lost world's that can be proven and which do not upset the archaeological community - too much, were they are real as well.
www.huliq.com...
news.nationalgeographic.com...
groundviews.org...

Land does sink.

People might remember such an event in various tales.

For the islands mentioned above, it might be possible that some tales of Doggerland were passed down.

Again, land falls as well as rises. Port Royal, etc.

Harte

a reply to: Harte

Yes at the moment the south of England is very slowly sinking and has been due to glacial rebound and other tectonic forces.
And of course since you left it out the Mediterranean basin is slowly getting deeper with the result that sometime's cataclysmic episodes have sunk entire coastal city's, over in Jamaica Port Royal.

On the island of Pohnpei in the pacific there are ruin's deep under the water adjacent to the mysterious city that the island Nan Madol is mostly known for this would likely indicate that the island once had a far larger land mass capable of feeding the city's population and when the first Nan Madol was drowned possibly slowly the city's population then rebuilt it higher up but the island was then unable to sustain the population.

There are many claim's of sunken city's but as you know Heart marine archaeology is far more difficult than land archaeology.

Over here in the UK and around the world another form of land land lost to the sea which is coastal erosion since the time of the Roman's (And of course since long before there period) has erased entire town's, farmland's and villages, the town of Dunwich once a major trading and very important town/city of the medieval period was so lost to the sea and the people just moved further away from the cliff, with the loss of it's port though it lost it's pre-eminence.
en.wikipedia.org...

It is a fascinating subject even for those like yourself whom do not buy into the Atlantis legend and of course despite our pollution of the ocean's the sea is one of the few places were if something has sunk and despite it's likely poor preservation in most cases at least human's will have had a lesser impact than if the remain's had been on land.

Third video in this series ties the legendary King of Mauritania who's name was Atlas to that of Atlas, king of Atlantis. A 2,500 year old map that ties Richat Structure to Atlantis. etc.

a reply to: glend

Thank you for keeping the thread updated I am enjoying these video's.

a reply to: andre18

I have a lot of ponderings that I would like to lay out and mental discoveries that make me really feel that this place was indeed Atlantis. I'm able to lay out interesting ideas that could be truth - yet I'm still forming some of the loose ends in my head. I'll get to those in the near future, once I have my compelling argument together (and I have more time).


For now... Something has been bugging me that maybe you guys might be able to shed some light on, or at least share in the confusion.

Atlantis, according to Plato, existed some 10,000 years before his time. That was some 12000 years ago. Yet, he said that Atlantis warred with the Athenians.

Did this mean that they warred against people who believed in Athena or the people of Athens?

If it were Athens, those Athenians, this city did not form until 3000BC some 5000 years ago. The city was supposedly formed by Theseus (the mythological hero/god). It was also said that Theseus was the son of Poseidon but fathered by the first king of Athens, Aegeus (odd since Theseus supposedly formed the city himself by combining a few subcities). Theseus only popped up a little before Plato's time, around 500BC (or less). Though, it's possible he could have been a legend still prior to this but he hadn't shown up on pottery until then.

Then again... These gods were pretty much mortal since Aegeus drowned himself in the sea (Aegean Sea) when he heard that Theseus had died (which he didn't). Either way, there is no known timeline for when either of these two existed had they not really been mythological in origin. I wonder when the people of Athens imagined that they existed? Did they believe their city, did Plato believe Athens was 10 thousand and more years old?

This makes me wonder if Atlantis was far more recent than 12000 years ago and more less 5000 years old, sometime around the biblical flood.


I do feel that Atlantis was a real place, give or take the location and the technology they had. I also believe in the biblical type flood. These two scenarios can go hand and hand for me but could also very well be just as separate and I'd still give them some credit.


Did I mention how much I LOVE this subject?!

originally posted by: Stari
a reply to: glend

I just watched a documentary about this same feature in Africa. I felt that maybe this could be the location of Atlantis but then I started going through my head about the description of Atlantis from Plato. Plato said there was a rectangular plain. I do not see that on the Richat Structure. I still have not been able to find another place that accounts for all of the hints that Plato gave us, that is except for the Caribbean Sea. I still believe the Caribbean Sea is where Atlantis was at. I am including some images showing what I mean about the rectangular area.

This image shows the rectangular area.

This next photo shows that using a straight line, the Caribbean Sea is across from the Strait of Gibraltar.

Any idea how deep that 'plane' is?

originally posted by: Hanslune

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

I was discussing with a friend of mine who has his bachelor's in linguistics about the possibility that Plato's source might have been an ancient Sumerian book , and he pointed out to me that Sumerian writing wasn't very good at conveying subtle points. It was more useful for things like numbers and figures.

...but that brings up the question - how would Plato have read the cuneiform? He spoke and wrote in Attic Greek. Now I don't recall if he could speak or read any foreign languages. Sumerian by then was a lost language which meant it would have had to been translated into Babylonian then into another language then a few others and finally in to Greek - not sure who would have been making those translations. Neither the Greeks or Romans knew of the Sumerians. In the Pinakles of the Great Library no 'Sumerian' writing is noted.

You might ask your friend if he is aware of any known Sumerian to' x' lexicons or proto-dictionaries. Babylonians had some to teach people to write in Sumerian but I'm unsure if the translation train made it up to Greek.

by way of egyptian. Remember, Plato said that Saron got his information centuries earlier from the Egyptians. They existed at the same time (maybe a couple hundred years apart when Egypt was finally established. There were a few similarities such as architecture and hieroglyphics. I would think it would be pretty easy for Sumaria to influence Egypt in their stories as well.

Sumerian is a long dead language to us, but even today we have some pronunciations to words and even the rosetta stone that allowed us to understand and compare the language. Plato was around 3-400 BC, hearing from Socrate before him and further still who heard it from the priests of Egypt.