10 Reasons You Might not Sail off the Edge of the World Looking for Atlantis. Pt. 1
Admit it. Atlantis is the jam. Come on…. Remember how much you loved it as a kid? Remember how badly you wanted to build that submarine for the lake behind your house?
I know, I know, it’s hard… especially now with the world being round and all. But never the less, you deserve Atlantis!
And over the next couple weeks, I’m gonna share a bunch of reasons why. Let’s start off with two.
1.) Don’t dismiss the hype.
History is chock full of awesome and hilarious stories: of cyclops and Pegasus, children raised by wolves, big wooden horses, and more. I’ll admit, a few of these stories are a bit suspect… while others, like the once fabled city of Troy, just needed a little time to themselves before rejoining the party. But there are a few stories out there that like to get around. The most notable is the Flood Myth. A lot of religious and mythological texts recount a story about a great cataclysm of water. If you’re wondering what I mean by “a lot”, check out THIS CRAZY SITE. And many of these cultures describe a peaceful time before their great deluge. Why would that be? It’s like some traumatic memory has been living in our collective conscious for longer than we can remember. Perhaps it’s more comfortable to revisit as fable; as a story that didn’t actually happen, but if we don’t watch out… could.
2.) Primative is relative.
If we’re to believe the possibility of an Atlantis, we first have to buy into the notion that human history is MUCH older than we think. Plato puts the “sinking” at about 10,000-11,000 BC, which incidentally lines up with the end of the last Ice Age; a period typically associated with Neanderthals and Woolly Mammoths. But, if we were to travel back even further than that (say 25,000 years ago) we’d actually find some pretty creative humans roaming the earth. When we hear the term cave men, we usually think of cave paintings; privative pictures of furry dudes throwing spears at woolly mammoths… which is pretty cool no doubt… but you might be interested to know that 25,000 years ago in Europe we had cave men making things like THIS. Around 12,000 years ago we had some folks in Japan making THESE. Around 1500 BCE at the height of the Egyptian civilization we had people making THESE THINGS. And still today the people of Papua New Guinea are making stuff like this CUTE LITTLE GUY. My point is, humans haven’t really changed much in 25,000 years… at least their human spirit hasn’t… certainly not compared to how much the world has changed around them; the agricultural sweet spots, the hospitable terrains. We still have people on earth today living the hunter gatherer lifestyle… while others hang out at the mall. We have folks who can make really interesting pieces of pottery and sculpture… and others who can’t even draw a good stick figure.
In Pt. 2 I’ll be talking about civilizations and more about the Great Deluge.
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Manos Torgo on 17 Mar 2009 at 4:33 pm #
In regards to #2, it certainly is true that primative is a relative term. Though history records Heron, a Greek as experimenting with steam power, its been unsubstantiated that even prior to his experiments, the ancient Greeks harnessed steam at Oracles & Temples as part of an ancient fog machine to show off the power of the gods. Sorta like an early KISS concert.
I remember reading last summer about this device: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
When we consider all of the works at the library of Alexandria that were lost one can imagine many more ancient concepts that we claim to have “discovered” yet are merely recovered ideas.
*One caveat with Plato is that time and other numbers were often exaggerated like numbers of troops in armies or were commonly used figures of speech, like “40 days and 40 nights” is used often in the Bible, yet imagine someone reading an account of January rain in So Cal….”it rained cats and dogs”…they’d wonder what happened when these animals landed on the ground.
So its possible Plato added some time for dramatic effect.
John Cabrera on 17 Mar 2009 at 7:43 pm #
I actually plan to talk about the antikythera mechanism (and some other stuff like it) deeper in this series of posts… when I get to the part about “atlantean tech”.
Is it crazy that I totally associate this thing with an iPhone app?
Manos Torgo on 18 Mar 2009 at 9:08 am #
Crazy? No, as you said humans really haven’t changed much in all this time. We are curious little monkeys and love to create tools. That’s why as much as I love technology I am careful to avoid worship of it as it is a means and not the end. A sundial or an atomic clock…separated by thousands of years but serving the same purpose and need.
Atlan.org some an interesting and very elaborate theory about Atlantis. But its clear from the FAQ that like so many other sites, they are married to their theory and lack true scientific honesty.
Did I ever mention the Pendragon triology by Stephen R. Lawhead? I read those in high school (before he made more sequels) and it basically mixes Atlantean myth with Arthurian legend in a believable way. Good read too.
John Cabrera on 23 Mar 2009 at 12:01 am #
Actually Atlan.org and I share several similar beliefs. My gut tells me the Lost writers are very aware of the South Pacific Atlantis theories. I’m not sure if I believe them, but I do think many of the reasons for a person to believe them are totally valid.
But so are a lot of others. The point is we know so little…. and so much of our history and prehistory is lost.
who’s john cabrera? » 10 Reasons You Might not Sail off the Edge of the World Looking for Atlantis. Pt. 2 on 29 Mar 2009 at 7:32 am #
[...] you need to catch up, here’s Part 1. Otherwise, let’s just dive [...]
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