How did Plato know what Atlantis looked like?

Originally posted by lostinspace
Maybe we need to search for the lost portion of the Critias to solve this mystery.

Here are the last words of Plato in the Critias.

"Zeus, the god of gods, who rules according to law, and is able to see into such things, perceiving that an honorable race was in a woeful plight, and wanting to inflict punishment on them, that they might be chastened and improve, collected all the gods into their most holy habitation, which, being placed in the center of the world, beholds all created things. And when he had called them together, he spake as follows..."

If I remember right the gods resided on Mt. Olympus per Greek mythology. Where is the center of the world to the author of the Critias? Is it somewhere in the middle of a great ocean or is it in the center of the planet?

Maybe the ancestors of the Carthaginians were from the center of the Atlantic ocean.

Probably just a long speech, however it (the missing portion) may show up in one of the carbonized scrolls of the Herculaneum Library.

Many scholars today theorized that Plato simply stopped there, realizing he was headed toward what would be basically a tale already told - that of the Trojan War.

Harte

Perhaps so - or perhaps the first use of cliff hanger serial type ending!

reply to post by Hanslune


Maybe his secretary got tired. Plato thought it was all being written down but he didn't notice the scribe had fallen asleep. The only one who knows the rest of the story is Plato.

He's dead from what I hear

Originally posted by Essan

Basically - even if we assume for the sake of argument that Plato described what he genuinely thought Atlantis looked like based on ancient accounts, can we consider it in any way reliable?

No, not reliable after being handed down for so many generations. A distorted copy of a faint memory of a copy of a copy of a faint memory.

maybe egypt was sending spies to atlantis.

as to why the location is not described better, i dont know.

So basically we're agreed - we cannot accept Plato's account as being a first hand description of the city. Which in turn raises questions about other things he described?

Originally posted by Essan
So basically we're agreed - we cannot accept Plato's account as being a first hand description of the city. Which in turn raises questions about other things he described?

We can't accept as truth anything that Plato said about Atlantis without good, positive corroborative proof. Unfortunately, if it really was as long ago as he said, and the place really did sink, that proof might be pretty hard to find or recognize.

Still, as a hobby, it doesn't hurt to look.

reply to post by mythatsabigprobe

Actually, that's the real solution of the Mystery of the Great Pyramid.

The Pharoahs were so impressed by the samples their intrepid reed-raft explorers brought back from America they just went wild for the stuff. Created these giant sculptural homages to the Ultimate Stash and had themselves buried inside them. Talk about dying and going to heaven.

And after they got the supply lines sorted and could import as much of the stuff as they liked, the Pyramids got bigger. Cocaine-induced megalomania. Never fails.

Also explains why so many Egyptian mummies have holes in their septums...

I like anything that involves the words "Ultimate" and "Stash".

As anything Plato heard is a X to the power of N'th hand-me-down story, it isn't "technically" reliable.

However, I'm sure that some of the major points (things like, massive walls coated in orchalcum, elephant inhabitants, trade fleets etc) may have had a base in history, if ever such a place existed. These strike me as quite important and memorable points that would be difficult to really corrupt from telling to telling. Like the fisherman's story (it was THIS big!), the magnitude of the object in question might be suspect, but the object in question is always the same.

I think an important thing to remember is how seriously these people took mythology. These people were the serious historians of their day, and I think we do them an injustice if we imply they did not record what they were told accurately.

Originally posted by C.C.Benjamin
I think an important thing to remember is how seriously these people took mythology. These people were the serious historians of their day, and I think we do them an injustice if we imply they did not record what they were told accurately.

Another important thing to remember is how unrealistically imaginative these people told said mythology
"Mythology" is just another word for "ancient fiction". That's what made it so interesting.

Originally posted by merka

Originally posted by C.C.Benjamin
I think an important thing to remember is how seriously these people took mythology. These people were the serious historians of their day, and I think we do them an injustice if we imply they did not record what they were told accurately.

Another important thing to remember is how unrealistically imaginative these people told said mythology

"Mythology" is just another word for "ancient fiction". That's what made it so interesting.

Mythology may mean that now, but back then it was history, not mythology. As far as they were concerned, things happened exactly as said, so keeping it correct would have been important.

I recall reading some wiki article that said that the Israelites would destroy an entire manuscript if they made a mistake on a single page - that is dedication to accuracy, if ever I heard it.

I like how you used "unrealistically imaginative". Thats the point, isn't it? If there wasn't a base for it, you couldn't tell it, right?

As in, yes, Athena was born fully-formed from Zeus' head, and killed a titan. Thats a stretch, isn't it?

Well, maybe. However, if it is a Vedic-style vimana-flying god then it's entirely possible that "Zeus" was a battleship, or the captain of (he was god of storms, so flight is probably something associated with him), and Athena was a fighter ship (or Athena was the captain of it).

Imagine, if you will, if a cataclysm occured tomorrow, and by the end of the week we were all living in caves, with not a single remnant of technology. Your wife gives birth, your child grows up.

Imagine how hard it is going to be to explain to that child how life was like - what a car, plane was. How they operated. Electricity. Telephones, wireless internet. Any of it.

It would all be so completely beyond this poor stone-age child's sphere of experience that he is going to first anthropomorphise everything (and the Great God Boeing 747 looked down upon the land he flew over and was displeased), and then assume it was all done by mystical "god-powers", magic, whatever, because he doesn't have the slightest clue about something as essential as an atom, let alone how an electron gets knocked off it to produce a current.

This would happen in one single generation. No matter how well you told it, the kid is going to come away thinking "magic and all-powerful gods who can heal the sick and perform other assorted miracles".

Now, this kid is going to relate the story to others the best he can, in ways he can personally relate too. It's not surprising that so many things in mythology (Ymir's feet copulating, giants being born from armpits etc) come across as blatantly wierd, because they have been taken out of the context they occured in and place in a way the listener can at least accept, if not understand.

That is why archaeological evidence is so important - the evidence is in the ground, in the sediment, in ice cores. Hard to destroy. If you build a building the foundation leaves a permanent mark on the soil.

I agree, but that doesn't mean that mythology is a bunch of made-up stories.

And we haven't exactly excavated a large percentage of the earth, have we? And I'm sure that thousands of generations of humans have been busy building on top of what came before, or generally damaging what was already there.

I appreciate that without evidence, nothing can be set in stone, but I don't think the possibility should be entirely discounted either, just on the basis that we've not found it yet. If our search had been so thorough as to have gone over ever part of the earth and found what there is to find, we could make such assertions, but until then...

Mythology comes in many different types

Story telling - trying to explain the world around us, the basis of religion

Legends or folklore- factual based stories of things that happened but sometimes with other elements, oftenwith imagery or story telling combined into it.

Imagery - nightmares, dreams with no apparent meaning

What we call myths are made up of those types of things, the problem is telling which is which.

Originally posted by Hanslune
Mythology comes in many different types

Story telling - trying to explain the world around us, the basis of religion

Legends or folklore- factual based stories of things that happened but sometimes with other elements, oftenwith imagery or story telling combined into it.

Imagery - nightmares, dreams with no apparent meaning

What we call myths are made up of those types of things, the problem is telling which is which.

And this counters my argument because...?

I pointed out that mythology in it's entirety was their history. To them, it was the truth.

Why aren't there Sumerian murder mysteries? Why don't I read a hieroglyphic short story about a man who is betrayed by a cheating wife? Why don't I read something that is fiction and accepted as such, rather than administrative documents, historical records and creation myths?

Because literacy was not an easy thing to invent and maintain, and so what got written down, literally etched in stone, were the most important things. Ergo, what they wrote down was, to them, the truth.

But the point is, you can't claim the universe is born from a giant egg if you don't have any reason to say so. Who would believe you?

There must have been a catalyst for the stories - there must have been god-like beings or something of that nature to influence people EVERYWHERE to say "hey, gods, right?"

If something catastrophic (like our imaginary modern-day civilization collapse) were to happen, would you or would you not relate the story as accurately as possible to your son? Wouldn't he do the same with his? Sure, his understanding is far more limited than yours and so the story might be described in a different way, but the nature of the story would remain the same.

And since the nature of the stories implies beings of advanced technology and, frankly, few morals, why assume they are just bull?

If you are standing in a field with a group of hunters and a storm cloud comes over.

It starts to rain and suddenly a thunder bolt comes out of the sky and fries the guy to your right.

How do you explain that?

How do you explain that your son is healthy while a neighbors is deformed?

That your mother lived until old but your father dropped dead one day?

That you see colors in the sky (rainbow)?

Spirits/gods/demons whatever

People are imaginative and they come up with ideas, even today we see that, this board has lots of imaginative people and some are probably superstitious.

There doesn't have to be a factual basis for a myth. We see that into days world.

Ancient literature has more than historical record, there is legend, myth and religious comment.

Originally posted by Hanslune
If you are standing in a field with a group of hunters and a storm cloud comes over.

It starts to rain and suddenly a thunder bolt comes out of the sky and fries the guy to your right.

How do you explain that?

How do you explain that your son is healthy while a neighbors is deformed?

That your mother lived until old but your father dropped dead one day?

That you see colors in the sky (rainbow)?

Spirits/gods/demons whatever

People are imaginative and they come up with ideas, even today we see that, this board has lots of imaginative people and some are probably superstitious.

There doesn't have to be a factual basis for a myth. We see that into days world.

Ancient literature has more than historical record, there is legend, myth and religious comment.

Yeah? That's interesting, because I imagine the very earliest religions were something like that.

Well, maybe anyway. Who knows. I'm not saying their has to be a factual basis for myths (the book of job, for instance, is obviously complete fiction. Who would have been doing the reporting?) but that is a fable to explain why god does bad things. Because it had to be justified.

But don't you think there are a few quite specific things that wouldn't be randomly generated by an imagination after your friend got struck by lightning? Like Dian Chect crafting a working mechanical arm for the High King of Ireland? Like vimanas? Like sound-seeking missiles? Like the ark of the covenant?

Come on! Are you really telling me that from trying to explain the weather men got to imaging genetic engineering, space travel and omnipotent gods? That they basically invented high technology in their heads?

How could you envisage something with which you had no comparison, however vague? And then go on to explain the ins and outs of it?

Howdy CCB

Haven't heard of the arm, got any more info on that?

You are interpreting "magic" with a modern technological eye. If you are referring to Sitchin stuff, no that is made up translations. "magic" can be made to sound very technical if you are so directed.

The problem is - where is this technology?

As the police have long known, human testimony is not reliable that is why they go with technological evidence when the can.