How do we know that Atlantis existed

If Plato was Greek then I put somewhere in the Mediteranian. As for technilogical superiority you can't always guage it by todays weapons, computers and airplanes. Consider the civilizations with advanced engineering, sea vessels and societies. Some of these societies were just as comfortable in their homes as the average person is today. True pressurized water, AC and electricity give us some more options. But they did ok without them with a cooler climate. Candles/OilLamps and a fireplace turned a home into a warm and confortable place. They also had a community to help rebuild if their house was destroyed, we fight with insurance companies and rip off contractors. There was plenty of alcohol and entertainment during times of peace. Who needed nukes when a few trebuchets could level the primary structures within a few days. As for medicine, with the exception of asprin and antibiotics, most of todays medicine is to make up for our bad habbits. A number of the diseases around then are still killers today.

I think that Antartica is Atlantis, the myth says that it was at the centre of the world and its land masses. If you look at globe of the Earth looking down on Antatica it puts it in the middle of the Earths land masses. We know that the current position of North/South poles have not always been so and there is evidence of other polar locations which would have put the Antartic nearer to the Equator.

As for evidence of such a civilisation it could be burried under miles of ice so how could we find it. Look at Monserrat, the volcano there is completly covering the island and once it has done so, to future peeps there would be no proof that it was ever inhabited.

We live on a terra forming planet that despite mans activities dose and has changed many times over so there is every chance that such a civilisation did exist.

Originally posted by magicmushroom
I think that Antartica is Atlantis

And inhabited by penquins?

We know that the current position of North/South poles have not always been so and there is evidence of other polar locations which would have put the Antartic nearer to the Equator.

Continental positions have changed slowly due to plate tectonics. But Antarctica hasn't moved much in the past 100 million years. Although the main ice sheet is probably only around 35 million years old.

Originally posted by speight89
Looking at the posts above me, it says that Plato was the only person to document Atlantis, could this mean that Atlantis could be only part of a novel like Narnia? CS Lewis wrotenovels about Narnia, and Plato wrote novels about Atlantis

This explination makes the most sense to me.

I saw a show on an american prophet. I don't remember his name but this guy was astounding. He could find cures for himself and others by going into a trance. He was right 100% of the time to. He said before Atlantis was destroyed the Atlateans hid a record of their history in the left paw of the sphinx. They used ground penetrating radar on the sphinx and they concluded there is a room in there but the have yet to investigate.

I think the guys name was Edgar Cayce. Not 100% sure though.

Essan what proofs have you got that Antartica could not be Atlantis, we know the Earth has capsized in the past so anything is possible and plate tectonics do not explain polar shifts or capsizing.

Not too long ago, they did find Atlantis. Just watch Ancient Mysteries Monday on Discovery Channel!

Atlantis is supposed to be 100,00 years old. Antartica couldn't have moved 5,000 miles. Maybe 5,000cm

No Antartica did not move but the earth did, how can you have mamoths in siberia superfrozen in seconds with plant life in their stomachs that only grew in temperate climates, one explanation could be the capsizing of the earth. Has anyone read the HAB theory.

Originally posted by magicmushroom
No Antartica did not move but the earth did, how can you have mamoths in siberia superfrozen in seconds with plant life in their stomachs that only grew in temperate climates, one explanation could be the capsizing of the earth. Has anyone read the HAB theory.

Well, you see the thing is, we don't have any mammoths in Siberia superfrozen in seconds with plant life in their stomachs that only grew in temperate climates...

We do have mammoths that froze in days (being scavanged by predators in the meantime) with remains of undigested food in their stomach (which, incidently, elephants use for storage, not for digesting) and which was typical of the cold, dry, steppe conditions that existed when the mammoth died. Most date to interstadial periods when the Siberian climate was not dissimilar to today, albeit somewhat drier.

Instead of reading a science fiction novel, like the HAB Theory, try Dale Guthrie's The Story of Blue Babe: Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe

Alternatively, this needs updating as it's a bit rough and ready, and there's loads more stuff I need to add in, but it acts as a starting point: Mammoth Myths

Todays science fiction is tomorrow's science fact, you cannot denounce one book over another just because it dose not fit in with your beliefs. Erkhart wrote the HAB theory as fiction because he was concerned that if he wrote it as a serious theory he would be ridiculed by the scientific community. That has happened to may people has it not, you know the burn, discredit them attitued by those with mainstream views. I will read up on your suggestions though.

Originally posted by magicmushroom
I will read up on your suggestions though.

Please do

You might want to brush up geophysics too.

There's usually a good reason why scientists reject 50 year old theories with don't match with more recent discoveries and evidence

Time will prove me right about the Antartic just wait and see.

Originally posted by magicmushroom
Time will prove me right about the Antartic just wait and see.

If you bothered to do any research you'll know that you've already been proved wrong

Why, just because you say so, you believe every thing you hear and read do you, so if an expert opinion poses a theory your ready to believe that at the expense of all others. Theres' plenty that we the public arent told so how do you know your right, you dont do you your just projecting one side of the argument and saying anybody else with an alternative view is wrong , just because something is accepted as the mainstream view dose not make it right dose it, all theories but no facts.

Originally posted by magicmushroom
Why, just because you say so, you believe every thing you hear and read do you, so if an expert opinion poses a theory your ready to believe that at the expense of all others.

Given an expert opinion, supported by evidence, and an non-expert opinion unsupported by evidence, then yes.

Theres' plenty that we the public arent told

Do you read Science and Nature? What about the Journal of Quaternary Science? All scientists publish their research in peer reveiwed Journals as as these. All are avaliable to the public.

There are no secrets in the Earth Sciences

Unless you have some evidence to the contary?

just because something is accepted as the mainstream view dose not make it right dose it, all theories but no facts.

We should always be wary of accepting something simply because it is the mainstream view. However, in this case there are facts. Many, many facts. All of which support the contention that Antarctica has been buried in ice for a very long time, and, indeed, was colder and had a more extensive ice covering 15,000 years ago than it does today. This alone invalidates any crustal displacement theory under which Antarctica was temperate until recent times.

There is, admittedly, still some debate over the temperature and extent of ice cover in the Pliocene - and whether pollen and wood samples dating to that period were native to Antarctica or blew/washed there. But this is several million years ago and irrelevant to our current discussion.

As well as not automatically accepting the mainstream view without question, one must also be wary of assuming the mainstream view is wrong simply because someone has proposed an alternative. When that someone has no experience in the relevant field of science, one should be extra wary and demand extraordinary evidence.

Remember - even extraordinary cliams require some evidence

What do you think of this then, in 2000 I was at stonehenge and I walked passed an archi telling a group of American tourist that they new who built the henge becuse of the tools found at the site, antler bone tools etc. but I said to him does that prove they built it and his reply was that yes it was becasue those were the people around at the time and those were the only tools available. So I said by that analogy if I leave a coin dated 2000AD in thousands of years future archis will say that was when it was built because they have definite proof is that real proof? he did not like that and said it was ridiculous, I said no more so than your theory.

Also on the same topic and Im sure you saw this program on how the henge was constructed. 2 20ton concrete blocks were placed in a field and 250 persons plus experts carried out a demonstration as to how the stones were moved and erected.
Well the exercise went to plan and the very proud experts announced this was indeed how the henge was built. Well sorry that proved nothing to me, it proved that 250 persons using brute force could move and erect a 20 ton block of concrete on level ground. It did not explain how primitive people could shape and move 50ton blocks of stone over hills, rivers etc. The day they do that experiment is the day I will believe them. It did not explain how or why these people entered into such a task and for what reason.

Originally posted by magicmushroom
What do you think of this then, in 2000 I was at stonehenge and I walked passed an archi telling a group of American tourist that they new who built the henge becuse of the tools found at the site, antler bone tools etc. but I said to him does that prove they built it and his reply was that yes it was becasue those were the people around at the time and those were the only tools available. So I said by that analogy if I leave a coin dated 2000AD in thousands of years future archis will say that was when it was built because they have definite proof is that real proof? he did not like that and said it was ridiculous, I said no more so than your theory.

If you did say that, then you were wrong.

Obviously, with the amount of traffic at the Stonehenge site, there will be found there thousands of years in the future both the remains of modern (to us) tourism (candy wrappers, ciggy packs, diapers) as well as the earlier, and easily distinguishable, remains of the cultures that constructed the henge (stone tools, antler tools, gnawed on bones or whatnot) at a much lower level (deeper in the ground) than our garbage. Also all the passers by in the looong years between, if they dropped a trinket or two every now and then, that is.

So, yes, it is ridiculous.

Now, if you were to drop this coin at some other, currently unknown, archaeological site, and it was found thousands of years from now and erroneously associated with the archaeological site, then at first archaeologists might consider the site to date from our era. Then they would compare what they found there to other sites they had dated to our era. Depending on what the actual age of the real archaeological artifactual evidence was (I mean, if it dated from 1940 or so, it wouldn't be far off, would it?), the scientists may or may not eventually discern that the original dating was wrong.

We do, after all, follow the timelines today of several archaeological sites that cover a timespan of thousands of years of archaeological evidence (one such site is, in fact, Stonehenge), all in the same area. Why would scientists thousands of years from now be incapable of the same?

Originally posted by magicmushroomAlso on the same topic and Im sure you saw this program on how the henge was constructed. 2 20ton concrete blocks were placed in a field and 250 persons plus experts carried out a demonstration as to how the stones were moved and erected.
Well the exercise went to plan and the very proud experts announced this was indeed how the henge was built. Well sorry that proved nothing to me, it proved that 250 persons using brute force could move and erect a 20 ton block of concrete on level ground. It did not explain how primitive people could shape and move 50ton blocks of stone over hills, rivers etc. The day they do that experiment is the day I will believe them. It did not explain how or why these people entered into such a task and for what reason.

No archaeologist has ever claimed to have "proven" anything about how a certain thing actually happened. What the program you are remembering actually did "prove" was the feasibility of a small group of people setting stones in a "Stonehenge-like" manner. Nothing more.

By the way, why do you require proof of "why" Stonehenge was built? You start out claiming you want to know how it was built and when you are shown one of several possibilities suddenly you are outraged that no one has satisfied you regarding the "why" of the matter, a question you had not asked.

Harte

[edit on 9/23/2006 by Harte]

Harte Im not ridiculous or outraged if someone wants to show how something was constructed then use like for like, the experiment was not so, so it did not prove anything other than what I said. And the program did not do this, they did not carve a 50 ton block and drag it tens of miles then erect it. If our ancestors did this then I want to know how they did it, what engineering techniques did they employ and how they moved the stones, were did they get the idea from to build the henge, how did they develop the technology for such an undertaking and who was their insperation for it, how were they organised into working groups.
We are told that the people of the time were very primative and lived in small social groups so who was it that brought these groups together. I want to know the whole the story not some academics personal theory on it. And do you think in thousands of years time the henge will be as it is today. No it could well be burried as it was before so the litter as you call it would be burried as well so future archis would not neccesarily know when it was constructed would they.

Originally posted by magicmushroom
Harte Im not ridiculous or outraged if someone wants to show how something was constructed then use like for like, the experiment was not so, so it did not prove anything other than what I said. And the program did not do this, they did not carve a 50 ton block and drag it tens of miles then erect it.

I agree that nothing was proven, beyond what the program showed. On the other hand, can you agree that a television program has a limited budget as well as time constraints and hence cannot possibly be expected to carve out a megalith from Welsh bluestone and take months to drag it (or float it, which is the current theory for most of the stones) to the site and erect it?

What I'm saying is that, given the time and financial restraints, a program like the one you're talking about has no choice but to "model" the current theory. Please remember that as far as we can tell, Stonehenge was "built" over several centuries and by at least two different cultures.

Originally posted by magicmushroomIf our ancestors did this then I want to know how they did it, what engineering techniques did they employ and how they moved the stones, were did they get the idea from to build the henge, how did they develop the technology for such an undertaking and who was their insperation for it, how were they organised into working groups.
We are told that the people of the time were very primative and lived in small social groups so who was it that brought these groups together. I want to know the whole the story not some academics personal theory on it.

You want to know this? So do I! And so do all the anthropologists that are studying the site and the artifacts left by the cultures that eventually made Stonehenge into it's final version.

But wanting ain't getting. Without a time machine, we will have to be satisfied with "theories," be they scientifically valid or pure flapdoodle.

Originally posted by magicmushroomAnd do you think in thousands of years time the henge will be as it is today. No it could well be burried as it was before so the litter as you call it would be burried as well so future archis would not neccesarily know when it was constructed would they.

I believe I said as much in my previous post, that our artifacts we left would eventually be buried, but not as deep as the earlier ones.

You may not be aware of it, but the fact is that even today, geologists, paleontologists, and archaeologists are able to discern in their dig sites which areas had been previously dug and refilled. Even if they were refilled thousands (even millions) of years ago. Why would scientists 2,000 years from now inexplicably be unable to do the same?

Harte