A prehistoric lost world under the North Sea has been mapped by scientists from the University of Birmingham. The team used earthquake data to devise a 3D reconstruction of the 10,000-year-old plain.
The area, part of a land mass that once joined Britain to northern Europe, disappeared about 8,000 years ago.
The virtual features they have developed include a river the length of the Thames which disappeared when its valley flooded due to glaciers melting.
This is the most exciting and challenging virtual reality project since Virtual Stonehenge.
Professor Bob Stone, head of the Department of Engineering's Human Interface Technology Team, said they were working to ensure the visual accuracy of the environment.
"This is the most exciting and challenging virtual reality project since Virtual Stonehenge in 1996.
"We are basing the computer-generated flora on pollen and plant traces extracted from geological core samples retrieved from the sea bed."
Dr Vincent Gaffney, director of the University's Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity and lead investigator on the project said they still had a lot of work to do.
"We intend to extend the project to visualise the whole of the now submerged land bridge that previously joined Britain to northern Europe as one land mass, providing scientists with a new insight into the previous human occupation of the North Sea."
One thing which people lose track of too easily is that whoever wrote those biblical books down for the first time was 4000 years closer to anything which might have happened 5000 or 8000 years ago than we are, and probably had better sources for it.
Wonder if that relates to these?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1008597/posts Explorers on the trail of Lost City of Atlantis
Telegraph ^ | October 27, 2003 | Roger Highfield
Posted on 10/26/2003 4:16 PM PST by sarcasm
An expedition to the Strait of Gibraltar may solve one of the world's
greatest mysteries, reports Roger Highfield
For more than two millennia, many of the world's greatest adventurers,
explorers and thinkers have sought the fabled Lost City of Atlantis.
Next month, an expedition to hunt for its remains among submerged
Gibraltarian islands will be unveiled at the Royal Geographical Society,
London, by a renowned geologist, Prof Jacques Collina-Girard, and the
leaders of the Titanic expeditions.
First described by Plato in 360 BC, many have written off the story as a
moralistic tale, a Utopia that was located in the mind of the Greek
philosopher who used the demise of Atlantis as an allegory of how the best
laid plans of mortals can go wrong.
But many have taken the lost world seriously. It inspired Jules Verne and
Walt Disney, even Adolf Hitler. In 1882, the Prime Minister, Gladstone,
tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade the Cabinet to fund an Atlantis
exploration vessel.
Now it is to be sought by the Deep Med One expedition, planned for next
summer by Prof Collina-Girard, of the University of Provence, with Commander
Paul-Henri Nargeolet and George Tulloch.
The team will search a location about 20 miles south west of Tarifa, Spain,
and 12 miles north west of Tangier. Using a submersible capable of reaching
depths of 3,200ft, the expedition, backed by private investors and corporate
sponsors, will look for signs of temples, buildings and prehistoric
artefacts, such as tools and weapons.
"We hope to find artefacts there, but cannot predict this with total
certainty as this area is totally unknown from a diving perspective," said
Commander Nargeolet. "We will gather as much as we can in preparation for a
second excavation expedition."
Plato said the island kingdom was larger than Libya and Asia put together.
It was paradise: peaceful, cultured and unspoilt. A golden age continued for
centuries, but eventually corruption got the better of its inhabitants and
the gods punished them by submerging Atlantis.
Prof Collina-Girard believes that generations of Atlantis obsessives
overlooked the most obvious location: Plato's account suggests Atlantis lay
before the Pillars of Hercules - today's Strait of Gibraltar.
The professor came to this conclusion after studying the patterns of human
migration from Europe into North Africa at the height of the last ice age,
19,000 years ago. To see if Stone Age people could have crossed the strait,
he made a map of what the coastline looked like at that time, when the sea
level was 420ft lower than today. This revealed an ancient archipelago with
an island "in front of the Pillars of Hercules".
This island is now a shoal, called Spartel or Majuan Bank, which lies to the
west of the strait, also as Plato described.
When he first outlined his idea two years ago in Comptes Rendus de
l'Academie des Sciences, Prof Collina-Girard suggested that the archipelago
provided stepping stones for early sailors to cross between Europe and North
Africa until around 11,000 years ago. Then sea level rises accelerated to
more than 6ft per century, according to records from coral reefs, swamping
the island.
This fits the timing of the demise of the science-fiction-style superstate
in Plato's Timaeus and Critias dialogues.
The story is told by Critias who said he heard it from his grandfather, who
had heard it from Solon, his great-grandfather's contemporary, who in turn
heard it from Egyptian priests, who were describing events that had occurred
9,000 years earlier - 11,000 years before the present day.
Plato suggests Atlantis is huge, whereas Prof Collina-Girard's candidate is
nine miles by three wide. However, the professor argues that distances in
Greek geography were usually approximate. The legend - and size - of
Atlantis likely grew as storytellers embellished it as it was passed down to
Plato.
Plato also reports that volcanic activity sank Atlantis, when the strait is
not in a volcanic area. Perhaps this was more plausible than a change in sea
level, said Prof Collina-Girard. As for an advanced Atlantean civilisation,
the professor points to Plato's own admission that he grafted these details
on to the tale to promote his own ideas about a Utopian society.
---
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1011563/posts The Atlantis between Spain and Morocco. The Expedition Revealing discoveries.
"Scientific society for the Origins of the Civilizations" ^ | 02-09-2003 | María Fdez-Valmayor
Posted on 10/30/2003 12:36 PM PST by Maria Fdez-Valmayor
The Atlantis between Spain and Morocco
Revealing discoveries
Expedition: "The Ibero-Marroqui Atlantis '"
By Maria Fdez-Valmayor
A Scientific Expedition has started off at the end of this summer for the area of the Straits of Gibraltar in search of possible ruins of the well-known civilization like Atlantis by Plato. According to the project? Atlantis Ibero-Moroccan, between the coasts of southwest of the Iberian Peninsula and the northwest of Africa evidences of cities or submerged coastal villages of the Age of the Bronze would have to be, that could belong to the Island or Peninsula of Atlantis. The expedition is directed by specialist the investigating outstanding and in languages and writings of the antiquity, Georgeos Diaz-Montexano, President Founded Emeritus of the rising "Society the International for the Origins of the Civilizations" (S.I.O.C.), and creator of the Proto-genesis project. Between his objectives it is the confirmation of revealers and enigmatic data found in several texts of the antiquity.
The old authors and the Atlantis
The investigator and escriptólogo Georgeos Diaz - Montexano has made very revealing discoveries that they allow to guarantee his thesis on the possible existence of an historical substrate in the story of Plato on the Island or Atlantis Peninsula or Atlantis, the one that would be according to Georgeos Diaz, in some point between the Straits of Gibraltar, the Gulf of Cádiz, the coasts of Morocco, and the Madeira Islands, like possible more remote point. In their indefatigable intellectual effort definitively to decipher the enigma of the Atlantic civilization that Plato she denominated with that same name, Diaz-Montexano has been able to find several references of other authors classic, previous to Plato, who give to faith of the existence of an island or peninsula that, like the Atlantis Island, was located just in front of the Straits of Gibraltar between
Gadira or Gades, the present Cádiz, and the coasts of Morocco.
These references contribute many revealing data that confirm the geographic data contributed by Plato when it described emporium Atlantean, its main island or the Acropolis and the location of this in front of the " Columns of Hercules " (Gibraltar) between Gadira (Cádiz) and the Atlas (Morocco). These references were made by other authors of the antiquity previous to the Athenian philosopher, and to whom a considerable reliability in its descriptions is granted to them as they are Eutímenes de Massalia (500 B.C.), Anacreonte
(570 B.C. - beginnings of the V B.C.), Hecateo de Mileto (560-480 B.C.), Ferécides (456 B.C.), Píndaro (518-438 to C.), Eurípides (485-306 to C.), Heródoto (484-430/424 to C.), Isócrates (436/5-338 B.C.), Euctemon (436/424 to C.) and Damastes de Sigeon (V to C.). These authors mention to other islands also located in the surroundings of Gibraltar
and in the borders of the Atlantic coasts of Iberia and Morocco, these islands are Aliba, Etheria, Scheria, Erythea, Gadeira, Sarpedonia, Ogigia and
Tartessós, and is very possible that many of them are different forms to denominate to the same island or peninsula that Plato it named like Atlantic island or of Atlantis.
The translations of texts of the mentioned authors are guaranteed by the solid knowledge of the prestigious philologer Elvira Gangutia Elícegui, Professor of Investigation of the Department of Greco-Latin Philology of the Institute of Philology of the CSIC and co-author of the lexical Dictionary Greek-Spanish.
Georgeos Diaz it was noticed, it does or more than seven years, that all the translations of the dialogues of Plato of the Timaios and the Kritias
were too liberal, adapted or interpretative. In most of the grammar translations of the diverse European and American classic schools of philology, than being translated more to Plato, it was interpreted to him, and this brought like consequence the edition of serious errors of interpretation that motivated, on the one hand, that the story of Plato seemed more incredible or mythical, whereas on the other hand, these same imprecision’s served as stimulus many fantasises and speculating writers, more interested in writing books of successes or basing esoteric ideologies that in looking for the truth.
If the first modern translators of Latin and Greek texts of Plato had worried to translate the texts adjusting the possible maximum to the own written words, to their true meaning etymologises and contextual, he is to say to translate metafrásticamente and not to interpret on which he assumes that he meant Plato, because probably never so many fantasies would have been written and speculations on the Atlantis neither would have been tried to look for their rest by almost all the Earth corners, until in the absurd and remote points the more of “Columns of Hercules” or Straits of Gibraltar .
Between these errors of interpretation one is - in most of the translations that Atlantis was an enormous continent located beyond the Columns of Hercules in means of the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantis was not a continent but an island, was not "beyond" of the Columns of Hercules but ahead, together or near the own Columns, and one was not in means of the Ocean but in a sea, Straits or arm of sea that own the Plato it denominates with the name of Straits
of the Columns of Hercules. The word the Ocean not even exists in the narration of the Atlantic-Gadi'rica civilization of Plato. And as far as the size of the island or peninsula Atlantis, Plato always talks about to the same one like a Nêsos that in Greek was used the same to denominate to the islands that to peninsulas, like for example the Peloponesos, that is a Greek peninsula.
Plato he does not say either that Atlantis were greater than Libya and Asia but that this was the greater island of Libya and the Asia, which is translated because the Atlantis island was the greater one, greatest, compared with the islands of Libya (the North territory and the northwest of Africa, from Morocco to Egypt) and with the islands of Asia (smaller Asia). Atlantis or Atlantis were because an island not a continent, and the dimensions that offer Plato of their plain, 3000 stages of East-West length by 2000 stages of latitude the north-south, are the same ones that offer other classic authors for the extension of the kingdom of Tartessós or the Turdetania.
These measures, according to Plato, were those of the plain where was the Acropolis; a plain that watched at the southern part (the plain of the Bética?), whereas Brown Mountain range was protected of northern winds by a mountain arc (?). Theses this of chronics real of Spain, Jose Pellicer y Osau (S. XVII) and historian Spanish Francisco Fernandez and González, (XIX-XX Centuries), who went ahead to famous German investigator Adolf Schülten in the identification of the kingdom of Tartessós with the Atlantis of Plato, although lamentably, nowadays do not recognize such merits to them. After this region or it lines up main of king Atlas extended other nine regions of diverse dimensions, being main and the greatest one, the one of the great plain where one was the sacred Acropolis and the temple dedicated to the God Poseidôn
and its Kleitos woman. This Acropolis was surrounded by five ring or concentric pits, alternated from the centre of the Acropolis in three of land and two of water of sea.
A geologic enigma: hypothesis
In the metafrásticas or literal translations of texts of Plato, who Georgeos Diaz - Montexano comes made from 1994, are clear references on the existence of one rooted tradition on an island, peninsula or extremera earth forehead to Gibraltar and the Atlantic coasts of the Iberian Peninsula and noroccidental Africa. But most surprising it is the discovery of repeated descriptions of the area of the Straits of Gibraltar or " Columns
of Hercules ", whose characteristics raise a great enigma for marine geology and the paleogeography. According to these old and controversial descriptions previous to Plato or the Straits of Gibraltar, in classic times, previous to the arrival of the Romans, was much more narrow - as soon as a pair of kilometers of distance between the coasts of both continents or these descriptions is sustained in ancient copies of traditions that would overcome before to several thousands of years.
The differences that exist between the true range that separates the Straits of Gibraltar and the measures offered by some of the mentioned authors are so great that very hardly it could explain like simple computational errors or defects of measurement, mainly when are several the authors that agree in this great narrowness or narrowness of the step that existed between the " Columns of Hercules " or " Straits of Gibraltar ", authors who when describing other geographic measures of Iberia and Libya (Morocco) do not commit errors as serious as this, which makes those measures so more likely narrows that they offer of the Straits of Gibraltar .
These authors affirm that the existing Gibraltar or separation distance in the Heracleo Straits was of as soon as about two or three kilometers, according to the source. Nevertheless, according to the more recent geologic data, it is practically impossible that at historical times - not even at prehistoric times the channel of the " Straits of Gibraltar " has had so little separation distance. >From a geomorphological and paleogeográfico point of view the human being not even would exist when the " Columns of Hercules " or " Straits of Gibraltar " presented/displayed a so single separation of a few kilometers between the coasts of Iberia and Africa. The consulted geologists affirm that this last one is impossible, unless the theories on the separation of both continents and the formation of the " Straits of Gibraltar " are mistaken.
But, really the old authors would be mistaken who affirm that the separation distance in the Straits of Gibraltar was so single of two or three kilometers. Recent paleogeographics and hydrographics studies demonstrate that the submerged deltas of the Mediterranean Sea presented/displayed a stable level to a depth of about -95 ms, whereas the deltas of the Atlantic Ocean show that the level of the sea was variable between -30 and -130 m of depth. According to Paulino Zamarro (2001)? The tow affirmations are clearly incompatible, unless the existence of a physical separation between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea is admitted. Georgeos Diaz thinks that that physical separation could be explained through the references of the old authors when they affirmed that the Straits of Gibraltar was very narrow. The more recent scientific studies could then still confirm the descriptions of the old authors on the extreme narrowness of the Heracleo Straits or Gibraltar, existing at the end of the Age of the Bronze, according to is deduced of such sources.
Everything seems to indicate that a bridge or natural isthmus existed that would unite the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco by the Straits between "Punta de Trafalgar" and "Cabo Spartel". Just in the center the Majuan Island has been being nowadays to -50 meters of depth, identified by Georgeos Díaz, for already several years, like the possible island-Acropolis of Atlantis and more recently by the French geologist Jacques Collina Girard, who has red-baptize it like Spartel Island; nevertheless, this island is small, the enough thing like not to have allowed to tend a natural bridge between both continental margins. The scientific thesis developed by a Spanish investigator, Paulino Zamarro, defends that that natural bridge or isthmus existed which would be broken for about 7,500 years. Date considered by the change of salinity of the Black Sea. With the rupture of the isthmus flooded the Mediterranean Sea later and the Black Sea that, as of that moment, stopped being a fresh water lake to become a salt water sea, it affirms Zamarro.
The problem arises when Zamarro dates its rupture in about 7,500 years before the present (A.P.) and it locates to the Atlantis in means in the Aegean Sea, which would not fit with the descriptions of Plato of a civilization with a development similar to the cities or emporiums of the Age of the Bronze, and that had its seat in the Atlantic coasts, in front of the Columns of Hercules (Gibraltar) between Gadira
and the Atlas.
In the 6,000 a. C., according to the archaeological registries, did not exist still any Earth civilization with developed writing, which would have been more than necessary so that the memory of the catastrophe of Atlantis and the events lived by its survivors could be transmitter. According to the present scientific studies, the man did not discover the principles of the writing until at least 2,500 years after the supposed collapse of the isthmus, that according to Zamarro existed in the Straits of Gibraltar 7,500 years ago. In a time interval like that, certainly the memory of the Atlantis could have disappeared completely, although not necessarily it had so that to be thus.
Paulino Zamarro create possible that by transmitter the oral route the history of the collapse of Atlantis
until the man discovered the writing and decided to conserve it in documents written. During that time, history could enough have deformed, which would be logical, and later, when going to documents written they would be added certain mythical-literary elements on a par that would eliminate other more objective data. The final result could so have been the history of Atlantis and as we know it, thanks to Plato.
The analysis of the elements and existing data in the dialogues of the Kritias and the Timaios de Plato, where the history of the Atlantic Civilization is narrated, allows to discover a culture us that begins at the end of the paleolithic or in the dawn of the Neolithic one. Same the Plato says to us that when arose the Atlantic Civilization - that its cradle in the Atlantic coasts had, in front of Gibraltar
- the men still did not know the art navigation, and the date who offers is of 9,000 years, that supposing are before the visit of Solón to Sáis in Egypt, that went around the 550 a. C., because Plato would be locating us the origins of this Atlantic Civilization or the Atlantis in about 11,500 years. The discovered oldest boat until the present, apparently has between 6,000 and 7,000 years of antiquity. Although one thinks that the man would have discovered navigation long before, do not exist scientific tests that 11,500 years ago already the art was known navigation - at least in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic - so and as affirms Plato.
The Atlantic Civilization
could have arisen does about 11,500 years, according to Plato, and to have gradually evolved until several successive seisms and a cataclysm or tsunami, as it points Plato, would be able to break the isthmus or island-peninsula where it would be the Acropolis and emporium main of the Atlántides. This fact could take place does 7,500 years as it affirms Paulino Zamarro, but also is very possible that it has happened much later, in the heat of Age of the Bronze as Georgeos thinks Diaz, according to is come off the evidences that are finding under waters of the Straits of Gibraltar the equipment of the expedition that it directs; evidences that are being documented by a producer for National Geographic.
The Atlantis Island: An isthmus in Gibraltar?
Georgeos Diaz it defends the hypothesis that the data offered by diverse authors of the classic antiquity, and the own myth on the separation of the continents and the positioning of the two Columns that separated the Straits on the part of the famous hero and Phoenician-Greek God Herakles or Hercules, they demonstrate that the human beings were witnesses of this geologic event, without a doubt, catastrophic that more likely had to happen in a date relatively next in the time that the considered one by Zamarro . And most of the geologists and oceanographers. The argumentations, hypothesis and archaeological discoveries of Georgeos Diaz and the equipment of the "Civilizations Origins Scientific Society", they could support the hypothesis of Paulino Zamarro on the existence of
an isthmus or island-bridge in the Straits of Gibraltar in protohistorics or even historical times. The rupture of the isthmus had to happen of immediate and catastrophic way, causing the disappearance of all the islands and coastal regions of both seas and both continents, from the area immediate to the " Straits of Gibraltar " to the Mediterranean Sea. Between missing earth it would be the own island-Acropolis or peninsula denominated like Atlantis or Atlantic by Plato, the one that would be, according to Zamarro
in means of the Aegean Sea and according to Diaz-Montexano in the same isthmus or closely together.
The philological studies and the literal or metafrásticas translations (beyond the phrase or prose) that has made Georgeos Diaz - when working with the texts written in Greek and Latin that speak on the Atlantic island or Atlantis - have thrown revealing and quite precise data that, for the first time, they could find support in the geologic and bathymetrics studies of Zamarro and other investigators, and vice versa. Georgeos Diaz has verified - through the Latin translation commented of the Timaios de Plato
made by the neoplatonic Chalcidio (S. IV) - that Plato or spoke of the existence of that bridge or isthmus. According to the metafrástica or literal translation that makes Georgeos Diaz of the edition of PLATONIS TIMAEUS of Chalcidio interpreter, the Atlantis island was the same isthmus that according to Zamarro existed in the Straits of Gibraltar in the Neolithic one. Chalcidio translates the Greek text of Plato (Timaios 2ê) where is located the position of the Atlantis island of the following way:
"... TUNC ENIM FRETUM ILLUD, OPINOR, ERAT COMMEABILE HABENS IN PRAYS AC VESTIBULO SINUS ( ATLANTIS ) INSULAM, QUOD OS To VOBIS HERCULIS CENSETUR COLUMNAE ..."
"... Then that one Close era, I think, stepable when having in the mouth or lobby of the gulf an island ( Atlantis ), that is the mouth of the Column that you adjudges to Hercules " (metaphrastical
Translation: Georgeos Diaz , 1994)
What interpreted or adapted, according to the general context of the dialogues of the Timaios and the Kritias, it would be:
"... Then that Straits , I think, they were possible to be happened because it had an Island ( Atlantis ) in the Mouth or Lobby of the Gulf , that is the Mouth of the Columns that you adjudge to Hercules ..." (phrasticalTranslation:
Georgeos Diaz, 1994 )
In the Greek text of the Timaios , Chalcidio had to read the following thing:
"... TOTE GAR POREUSIMON HN TO EKEI PELAGOS: NHSON GAR PRO TOU STOMATOS EICHEN HO KALEITE, HÔS PHATE, HUMEIS HRAKLEOUS STHLAS ..."
"... Then yes that sea could be crossed
: an island, in effect, in front of the mouth to which you call, and you present, the Wakes of Heracles. ... " (metaphrastical Translation: Georgeos Diaz )
In both texts it is clear perfectly that, at the time of the Atlantic kingdom , before his collapse, it was possible "to journey" or "to cross. the Straits , since as much the Latin COMMEABILE, “stepable” , “can be happened” , “that is easily stepable” , like the Greek POREUSIMON, they were used in the same sense what he is “stepable” or “passable”, fundamentally on foot ; of a way that is “possible to happen” . The translation made by Chalcidio was a correct translation, almost exact and faithful to the true sense of the Greek words, it could say that she was almost metafrástica ; nevertheless, this clear mention to an island that was in the same mouth or entrance of the Straits like an isthmus that would allow to pass or to journey the Straits had to be strange to him to the own Marsilio Ficino, the first Latin translator of Complete Works of Plato already , because in his PLATONIS IT OPERATES OMMIA (century XV) decided to change word COMMEABILE, “stepable”
, used correctly by Chalcidio , NAVIGABILES that is, "navigable" . Ficino had to think that it was an error of Plato , and Chalcidio , reason why it dared to make this amendment. The inheritance of Ficino has noticed in many of the grammar or adapted translations to modern languages, where has been decided on "navigable" instead of “possible to happen”, although it is well certain that the best European translations have respected, in this case, the original sense of voices POREUSIMON and COMMEABILE, that is to say, "passable" or “possible to happen”.
In the Greek text one affirms that what was “stepable” it was the PELAGOS, that is to say “pelagous”, that all the modern translators translate like “Sea” or “Ocean”, whereas Chalcidio and Ficino translate voice PELAGOS by the Latin FRETUM, that was used to denominate to “Close s” or "Arm of Sea" that they communicate to other two greater seas, as were the case of the Straits of Hercules ( Gibraltar
) who communicated the Atlantic with the Mediterranean . If Chalcidio translated PELAGOS by FRETUM it is because it must have information of first hand that the PELAGOS of Plato was the own FRETUM, arm of sea or Straits of Hercules . As he exposes Georgeos well Diaz ": We must consider that Chalcidio translated to
Plato in the century IV and that must have access to original texts of the Greek teacher, since it was neon Plato ICO and it studied in the Academy founded by own the Plato . Therefore, Chalcidio is a good source in which to sustain to a philological and interpretative study of the Timaios de Plato and in this case of the island Atlantis . Also it is very probable that in the times of Chalcidio the Greek concept of PELAGOS shared meaning with the one of the Latin FRETUM, in the sense of "arm of sea" or "narrow Sea", but rather like "divided Sea or started off"(by the Phoenician root PLG "divided") or like "difficult Sea or dangerous", like that Close s ran between
them and in front of the same one by the Atlantic part , according to proposes Georgeos Diaz.
Be that as it may, if PELAGOS had only meant "high Sea" or to "open Sea" , then how we could explain that as much Chalcidio as Ficino could commit the "error" so serious to translate a word that meant "Sea high" by other than she was used to denominate to “Closes”
or "Arm of sea" . The answer, according to Diaz-Montexano , we could find it in other two meanings of word PELAGOS accepted by the expert lexicographers: "channel" and “land level flooded” ; from PELAGOS it also derives PELAGOÔ, "Flood"(George Liddell, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones, and Roderick McKenzie). More likely this era the original sense of Greek voice PELAGOS, since she appears associate almost always to seas of low bottoms with islands ,
stumbling blocks and archipelagos. In the ladino, dialect Jew-Spanish who was spoken in the Iberian Peninsula in the Average Age, sea meant "Dam", and still nowadays the fishermen of Chipiona , Cadiz , call seas to the small islands that form in the low bottoms of the fishing corrals. Therefore, when Chalcidio and Ficino translated PELAGOS by FRETUM would have in mind, more likely, the idea that Plato
was talking about "Arm of sea" or " Straits " of the Columns of Hercules or Gibraltar , who is like one "channel" or great "channel of sea", although same the Plato - in the Greek text it affirms that the PELAGOS was the own NÊSOS when it says: ... Then yes that sea could
be crossed : an island, in effect, ...
Therefore, if PELAGOS or FRETUM, "arm or sewer of sea" of the Straits of Gibraltar "it could go" , it is because then there was an isthmus that allowed it, and that isthmus is same that Plato calls NÊSOS, and the Latin INSULA, “island”, what it is ratified in another meaning of the voice NÊSOS, “land flooded”. A NÊSOS could be because one "island", one “peninsula” , one “land flooded” or “land alluvial" , whereas a PELAGOS we have seen that also one could be "land level flooded", which also confirms when specifying Plato who, it was "en effect" a NÊSOS. With all these meanings, closely related between if, semantically, the Latin translations of Chalcidio and Ficino are explained . On the matter, it summarizes Diaz-Montexano
: "la Atlantis Island that Plato locates before the mouth of the Straits of Gibraltar would be really an average isthmus with flooded zones of salt marshes or earth, but that would still allow - in the previous times to its collapse the one that could be passed or be crossed the Straits . Subsequent to the collapse of the island or isthmus of Atlantis - in the Age of the Bronze a Narrow channel of only two or three kilometers in width would exist like redoubt of the catastrophe that could be observed by the first Phoenician navigators, who would know the facts relative to the Atlantic Island by own mouth tartésicos or turdetanos.
The data collected by Georgeos are many the last Diaz in these fifteen years dedicated to the investigation of texts of Plato and the ibero-African authors of the antiquity who wrote on the ibero-líbicas Atlantic Civilizations or that Plato groups under the Atlantic name of Atlántides or . Data that have forced to defend the hypothesis to him of the existence of real an historical substrate in the story of Plato on the island or Atlantic peninsula or of the Atlantis .
The scientific expedition
At the end of the last month of August, Georgeos Diaz-Montexano began the direction of a scientific expedition whose objective is the exploration of the area of the Straits of Gibraltar , Moroccan Cadiz and coasts with the intention to detect possible architectonic rest or submerged artificial structures and to be able to document them and to film them. These possible ruins under the sea could scientifically demonstrate the veracity of the descriptions made by the authors of the antiquity and if there is luck, maybe the same existence of the island-Acropolis of Atlantis or also very looked for city of Tartessós . For it is counted on a team of scientists, Spanish specialists and divers that are submerging until a depth of-30 meters, with the only objective to obtain images and shootings to later put them to disposition of the national commission of historical-archaeological patrimony and UNESCO. The filmic support is being guaranteed by a prestigious North American producer that is accompanying to the expedition due to the interest of the prestigious world-wide institution, "National Geographic" , to document the project of "
Atlantis between Iberia and Africa" or Proto-genesis that Diaz-Montexano directs to Georgeos .
Between the members of the expedition are specialists and scientists like Juan Naval Luis (historian and official cronist), Gem Tirado and Maria Fdez-Valmayor (Investigation and documentation), Antonio Font (engineering and architecture), Raul Menasalvas (subaqueous archaeology), Antonio Daza and Esteban Wheat Márquez (geology and geominería); as well as the following explorers and subaqueous investigators: Beatriz Lumbreras , Marsal Grifa , Manuel Santana, Miguel Aragón ,
Naval Filomeno , and Antonio Lucas Of the Moral .
To date three key deposits for these investigations since clear artificial structures or architectonic elements, semicircular walls, paving stones or blocks , constructions , wheels of mill , pillars , slabs or sillares are , channels
and pools or chimneys have been located at least . All these evidences are being discovered between-10 and-30 meters of depth and to several distances of the coasts from the area of the Straits of Gibraltar to Huelva, just in the same area where Georgeos Diaz came foretelling, for years, that would be rest of the Atlantic civilization that Plato it denominated like Atlantis .
According to more recent the oceanographic and paleogeográficos studies scientific, these evidences would have to date themselves in several thousands from years before the arrival from the Romans to the Iberian Peninsula. Nevertheless, conventional archaeology does not admit the possibility of the existence of a proto-civilization so developed and organized as the one that is appearing with an antiquity that, according to the paleogeográficos and bathymetrics data, could go back to more than 3,000 or 4,000 years before the arrival of the Greek Phoenicians and to the Atlantic coasts . Or the data of the oceanographers and palaeographers are incorrect or archaeology will be forced to rectify the established conventional chronology for the origins of the civilizations. Georgeos Diaz , thinks that the solution could be in a midpoint. The found evidences would be, certainly, older than the considered thing by archaeology, but more recent than what it is inferred of the paleogeográficos data. Therefore, it is very probable that both branches of science must rectify and fit to their chronologies and datings.
Everything interested in participating in the expedition, as much physically as in quality of partner or patron must be put in contact with Maria Fdez-Valmayor (
amira@archaeotour.com ), Coordinator of
http://www.Atlatologia.com In order to know +
1. The details of the theory and the expedition:
http://www.Atlantologia.com/ 2. The most famous theories and their comparison with texts of Plato. Click here
3. Video-Web: Presentation in video of the theories on the Atlantis of Plato. Click here
4. Hypothesis: * Atlas = * Antalas = * Andalas = Andalus: The origin of the name of Andalusia. Revealing hypothesis on the origin of the name of Andalusia. Click here
5. The Atlantis, Tartessós and t the Sea Peoples. Clica here
Map of the Straits of Gibraltar for 7,500 years according to Paulino Zamarro. In yellow part of the emerged continental platform (at the moment submerged). The area of brown colour is the isthmus that according to Zamarro existed at this time. This isthmus allowed the pass by the Straits as it affirms Plato well. According to Georgeos Diaz it could be the same island-Acropolis of Atlantis mentioned by Plato, just in front of the Atlantic mouth of the Straits; although unlike Zamarro, Diaz thinks that this isthmus would be broken or would sink several thousands of years later, in the heat of Age of the Bronze, due to the action of great seismic movements and several tsunamis. Drawing: Paulino Zamarro, 2002.
Actually, when you read and study the Hebrew version of Genesis, you find so many aspects of the Bible that you could fit evolution, preexistent earth and this find in without a major problem.
Genesis is lean as a text and what it DOESN'T say is larger than what is written. As Luther says, don't try to figure out what the Bible does not tell us - that is for God to answer.
However, so much of the Bible has been proven true, that I have no problem with finds such as this - we just don't have all the answers yet. Yeah, yeah some may flame away - but they do so only in their ignorance :)
Didn't Plato learn at the knee of Socrates? Maybe they got it wrong in the translation and it was originally meant to be Suckherti....s?
Your rule of thumb makes sense to me. My own general perspective on it is that since Plato is the only source of our information (or at least the only detailed one--Richard Ellis' book mentions a few other possibly-related passing references by other Greek writers), any investigation has to take him as the starting point for interpreting archaeological data, and he as you know says Atlantis lay in the Atlantic just off the Pillars of Hercules 9,000 years before his time. That fits the locale and time frame we're discussing fairly well. One other thought I have on it is that Plato says his source of information was the Egyptians, and as far as we know the Egyptians' written historical records stretch back to about 3,000 BC, so the Egyptians seem to have thought Atlantis was considerably older than their own culture=older than 3,000 BC.
BTW, here's an article about a local find in my area which I think fits your comments on Lake Agassiz. If you click on the link there's some maps with more info.
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http://www.jsonline.com/alive/news/sep03/167945.asp To find earliest North Americans, scientist follows ice
By SUSANNE QUICK
squick@journalsentinel.com Last Updated: Sept. 6, 2003
Sometimes the answers to the most nagging questions are right beneath our noses.
And according to David Overstreet, director of the Center for Archaeology Research at Marquette University, that's the case when it comes to questions about the first people in North America.
Evidence scattered around Wisconsin shows that people could have lived in the state as far back as 14,000 years ago. And now, two new sites in Door County may add further support to this early occupation - confounding some long-held views of New World archaeology.
Not far from downtown Sturgeon Bay, these two sites are contributing proof that people were living at the margins of the retreating ice sheets anywhere between 11,500 to 14,000 years ago - hunting woolly mammoths and bison as they followed the advancing and retreating glaciers across the state, Overstreet said.
They may also have been the earliest occupants of the upper Great Lakes region, he said, although solid dates for the new sites are still pending.
And if that's the case, this new research could further erode a pillar of New World archaeology called Clovis-First, said Mike Waters, professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.
This theory, etched into archaeology textbooks printed since the 1960s, hypothesizes that North America was populated by one group of hunters who crossed a land bridge connecting Siberia to Alaska 11,500 years ago. The principal site backing this theory was discovered in Clovis, N.M., in the 1930s.
But according to Waters, Overstreet's work in southeastern Wisconsin, where butchered woolly mammoth bones have been found with tools, has provided some of the most conclusive evidence that people were living here before 11,500 years ago.
And although Waters has not seen the Sturgeon Bay sites, he's confident in Overstreet's research and interpretations.
Overstreet, for his part, isn't much interested in debates over Clovis. "These are not important scientific questions," he said.
Instead, it's the artifacts and stories buried below the familiar soils of Wisconsin that strike this archaeologist's fancy.
Since his 1987 discovery of a paleo-Indian site near Pleasant Prairie in Kenosha County, Overstreet has been piecing together the early human history of the upper Great Lakes.
With the help of students from Marquette and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he is painting a picture of a people who clung to the outskirts of glaciers, adapting to radical swings in their environment as the ice sheets moved back and forth.
Within 200 years, the glaciers advanced southwest across the state only to abruptly recede back beyond Michigan's Mackinaw Island, Overstreet said. This created a highly unstable environment of flooding, drought and ice.
And while scenes like this have been documented in the ancient tundras of Europe and Asia, hunting woolly mammoths at the interface of ice and grass has not been documented anywhere else in North America, he said.
What was it about the glacial margins that these people found so pleasing?
According to Overstreet, it was the vegetation on the tundra that called to these migrants. Populated by lichens, mosses and sedges, this ecosystem was the buffet of choice for woolly mammoths and extinct bison species - the bread and butter for these early hunters.
"These people developed sophisticated scavenging, hunting, boat-building strategies," to deal with their fluctuating environments, Overstreet said.
And with a tool that looks like an adz - a kind of woodworking instrument - found at the Fabry Creek site off of Highway 57 in Door County, Overstreet feels pretty confident about his boat-building speculations.
But if he wants more evidence to substantiate this hypothesis, he will have to work fast; the site will be paved over in a few years. The Department of Transportation is paying for Overstreet's research before it widens Door County's central highway.
At the Cardy site, on a farm near downtown Sturgeon Bay, the discovery of a tool made from a rock material called Moline chert - found only in outcrops from Illinois - further demonstrates this in-step movement of people and glaciers.
Tools from mammoth sites dated between 13,000 and 14,000 years ago in southeastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois are made from this same material. This may mean that the Cardy site is as old as the Kenosha County sites.
Indeed, it suggests these early people were moving large distances - with their tools - following the fast-moving glaciers and their big game.
"I think the most important thing about the Cardy site is that it's a dead ringer for Aebischer," an early site near Lake Winnebago, Overstreet said.
If the dates of the two sites match, it would indicate that Overstreet's model is correct: people were moving in tandem with the ice sheets.
They were taking advantage of the landscape and hightailing it across the countryside, he said. "Their movements mimic the movement of their prey animal."
He remains resolute, however, in not speculating too much on its meaning for "first-people" theories, though he admits the dates throw doubt on Clovis-First.
If other people want to speculate about it, he said, that's fine with him.
They do.
Vance Holliday, professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, thinks Overstreet's Wisconsin sites are exciting.
But he said the southern Wisconsin sites need national exposure to spur additional scientific investigation.
"These sites aren't that well-known," he said. "And they deserve a lot more scrutiny."
But Overstreet's new sites near Green Bay look promising, he said, and he's looking forward to what comes from them.
Overstreet has paved the way for a thorough reconsideration of Clovis-First, said Waters, the Texas archaeologist. "It's now up to us to figure out what really happened."
From the Sept. 8, 2003 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/sep03/167955.asp Last Updated: Sept. 7, 2003
> This "Lost World" coincides with Bush's unexplained absence from the Alabama ANG.
>
> Coincidence? You decide.
It's not a coincidence. The sinking of Atlantis was all Bush's fault. Global warming is causing a wormhole in the ozone layer that is retroactively affecting the Ice Age. Wesley Clark could've prevented it with his time machine, if only Mary had done her job and got him elected. So come to think of it, it's actually all Mary's fault; but Bush probably put her up to it. BTW, Al Gore actually already has a time machine--that's how he invented Atlantis and the Internet and all that other stuff that other people already invented, he just went back before it was invented.
> Algore invented global warming.
Yes--see Post #39.