Posted on 09/19/2001 9:10:00 PM PDT by blam
Sea level study reveals Atlantis candidate
19:00 19 September 01
Jon Copley
It sounds a familiar enough yarn - a lone researcher claiming to have pinpointed the lost land of Atlantis famously described by Plato. But this time there is no mention of "supercivilisations", UFOs or magic crystals. Instead, he has turned the clock back on ancient rises in sea level to reveal an island that matches Plato's story.
Plato's works Timaeus and Critias contain the first written descriptions of Atlantis and its watery fate, drawn from stories collected in Egypt. "These texts are the origin of a lot of speculation about Atlantis," says Jacques Collina-Girard of the University of the Mediterranean in Aix-en-Provence.
"Curiously, nobody has really taken seriously the most obvious location," Collina-Girard adds. According to Plato, Atlantis lay just in front of the Pillars of Hercules - what we now call the Strait of Gibraltar - and disappeared around 9000 BC.
Collina-Girard was interested in patterns of human migration from Europe into North Africa at the height of the last ice age, 19,000 years ago. To see if Palaeolithic people could have crossed the strait, he made a map of what the western European coastline looked like at that time, when the sea level was 130 metres lower than it is now. His reconstruction of the area reveals an ancient archipelago, with an island at the spot where Plato described Atlantis.
Rising tide
"There was an island in front of the 'Pillars of Hercules'," says Collina-Girard. Named Spartel, it lay to the west of the Strait of Gibraltar just as Plato described. The Strait was longer and narrower than today, and enclosed a harbour-like inland sea that Plato mentions as the setting for Atlantis.
Just over 11,000 years ago, the slow rise of post-glacial sea levels accelerated briefly to more than two metres per century, according to records from coral reefs. This would have swamped the island, Collina-Girard suggests. "The archipelago was engulfed 9000 years before Plato," he says.
There are a few facts that don't match Plato's story, however. Plato describes Atlantis as larger than Libya and Asia put together, whereas Collina-Girard's island is 14 kilometres long by five kilometres wide. He argues that a mistake was made in converting Egyptian units of length into Greek units as the story was passed down.
Plato also reports that volcanic activity sank Atlantis, but this may have been a case of embellishment, says Collina-Girard. "The Greeks were familiar with volcanic eruptions," he notes. To them, such a fate might have been more dramatic and plausible than a change in sea level.
As for an advanced Atlantean civilisation, Collina-Girard points to Plato's own admission that he grafted these details onto the tale to present his ideas about a Utopian society.
Long yarn
The lower sea levels of 11,000 years ago would have exposed many islands, says Bill Ryan of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York.(Ryan & Pittman are the guys that discovered the Black Sea Flood, Noah's Flood?)
Ryan has examined evidence for the Noah and Gilgamesh flood stories around the Black Sea. But he cautions that the story of Atlantis would have needed to survive down the generations for 9000 years in Egypt before being recorded by the Greeks. "The difficulty here is correct translation of nouns and adjectives passed down by the oral tradition as languages change and evolve," he says.
Collina-Girard suggests that the archipelago could have provided stepping stones for primitive sailors to cross between Europe and North Africa. "The coasts of Spain and Morocco were inhabited at the time, so certainly these islands were too," he says. A prehistoric culture spread rapidly in Morocco around 20,000 years ago. "Traditionally this came from the east, but why not from the north?" he asks.
Wrong! It clearly dissapeared because of second-hand smoke. All the burning tobacco caused a fog cloud that kept the residents of Atlantis to not see the levee rising. Their exposure to second-hand smoke caused them to not have the wind to swim to safety. Many died trying to dive to save their cigarettes.
Hmmmm,is there a blues song hidden in there somewhere? "The levee broke and my baby died trying to get me a Camel..."?
When thinking of SE Asia, think Krakatau (It's been a bad boy for a long time. 74,000 years ago it really blew it's top)
Sure, 300-500 feet lower at the height of the Ice Age. Here's one for you: After each Ice Age the water levels of the oceans are 25 feet lower that they were for each previous Ice Age. Where is that 25 feet of water worldwide going?
Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia
Landsat image of Toba caldera. Image courtesy of the Landsat Pathfinder Project.
Toba caldera produced the largest eruption in the last 2 million years. The caldera is 18 x 60 miles (30 by 100 km) and has a total relief of 5,100 feet (1700 m). The caldera probably formed in stages. Large eruptions occurred 840,000, about 700,000, and 75,000 years ago. The eruption 75,000 years ago produced the Young Toba Tuff. The Young Toba Tuff was erupted from ring fractures that surround most or all of the present-day lake.
Toba Caldera
The name Krakatau does pop up a lot in catastrophism.
Good question. Could it slowly(very slowly)cooking off into the upper atmospere vacuum,and being lost? I doubt that there's such a thing as a truly closed system-everything in the world seems to have some leakage,and I wouldn't expect any kind of ecosystem to be different.
Good question. Could it slowly(very slowly)cooking off into the upper atmospere vacuum,and being lost? I doubt that there's such a thing as a truly closed system-everything in the world seems to have some leakage,and I wouldn't expect any kind of ecosystem to be different.
Note: this topic is from 9/19/2001. Thanks blam.
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Note: this topic is from 9/19/2001. Thanks blam.
And Plato got it third or fourth hand, so we’re lucky we have the story at all.
Yes, you are right. This is the first and only post, in the history of Free Republic that has ever challenged, anyone’s knowledge/belief system. Are you a free lance moderator?
We are seemingly underwater.
>>America is Alantis!
Yep.
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