Atlantis

Atlantis is first mentioned by Plato, a Greek philosopher. The story is a small part of a larger dialog featuring Socrates, Plato's philosophical ideal and teacher. We have no writings from Socrates, but Plato's dialogs are thought to closely resemble the Socratic method.

Plato's story is said to have been taken from information given to Solon by Egyptian priests familiar with truly ancient history. The Atlantis legend may have been a part of Grecian folk lore.

Atlantis, according to Plato was located west of the Straights of Gibraltar. It was a circular island the size of a continent that sank beneath the sea. The Atlanteans, we are told, were set on conquering all of Europe and the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. Pre-historic Greeks stymied the Atlantis aggression, and then both were destroyed by a flood. This is almost certainly not true (the Trojan War was probably around 1280 BCE during a time, the late Bronze Age, when Mycenaean Civilization still dominated the region). The Golden Age of Greece came about 600 years later.

The legend of Atlantis has been the inspiration for many later imaginative tales and speculation. Other legendary sunken cities, like Mu, probably were inspired by Atlantis. There is no physical evidence that a place like that described in Plato ever existed, but the story remains popular. Some scholars think that the explosion of the island Santarini was the actual source of the Atlantis legend.

The way I see it, humans have been around for over a hundred thousand years physically unaltered, so it's likely there was an advanced civilization prior to recorded history.

100 000 years. That's many years. And a person who lived then had the same potential as a person living today, if there hasn't been any physical evolution happening in the meantime.

From the earliest documented time they used shovels and the wheel and controlled fire, and to modern spaceships and computers, it took about six thousand years. Considering that 94 thousand years passed before that, something similar probably happened before.

So I'd say that the theme of the myth of atlantis is true. There was a civilization. Many. Probably not called atlantis, but for all we know many of these periods of history may have had civilizations as advanced as ours and even beyond.

Pretty strange that no artifacts have been discovered anywhere. There are unexplained ruins that are older than around 6,000 years. Writing and metallurgy don't go back much beyond 5000 years, and previous to that we have a pretty much continuous record of Paleolithic and Neolithic tool stretching back to the beginnings of our species. For most of human hiistory change was s l o w. The first evidence we have for domesticating animals in the Southwest Asia was perhaps 2500 BCE, though agriculture predates that by at least a thousand years

If our technological civilization were to crumble because of climate change, or unconstrained global nuclear war, etc., the ruins would remain for perhaps one hundred thousand years. The survivors of our species wouldn't lose all of the knowledge fundamental to our world. They would know the Earth isn't flat, and other scientific knowledge would greatly shorten the recovery time. People wouldn't forget reading and writing because they are important survival skills. How long does it take for plastic to totally disintegrate?

I'm afraid that romantic tales about Atlantis, Mu, and other lost civilizations are only stories.

The Atlantians were probably destroyed by the Amazonians.

The stories may have been based on Santorini.

"Atlantis" Eruption Twice as Big as Previously Believed, Study Suggests
Richard A. Lovett
for National Geographic News
August 23, 2006
A volcanic eruption that may have inspired the myth of Atlantis was up to twice as large as previously believed, according to an international team of scientists.
The eruption occurred 3,600 years ago on the Santorini archipelago, whose largest island is Thera. Santorini is located in the Aegean Sea about 125 miles (200 kilometers) southeast of modern-day Greece

for more:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060823-thera-volcano.html

Asherman is generally right, except the time frame has been extended farther back: settled towns go back abbout nine thousand years (Jericho has been in continuous existence since then), and plant and animal domestication go back at least 12,000 years or so. There's no evidence of the technological or agricultural basis for a large-scale at-least-somewhat-urban civilization like Atlantis was supposed to be before that, and no compelling evidence of unknown advanced civilizations (which would have traded with other civilizations, one assumes) after that. So it's probably just a story.

Santorini was Minoan, or Cretan. And it may have been a greater center for that civilization than Crete. Since the volcano blew it up, we can't tell.

Hmm.. you seem to take it for granted that a civilization more advanced than ours had to have developed in the same direction as ours. The invention of the combustion engine shaped our history strongly. So did the notion of ownership.
A highly advanced civilization might have evolved beyond our point without taking the same steps we've taken.

Atlantis
There is speculation that the ancient island of Thera may have been Atlantis. It experienced the worst vocano eruption known to ever have happened on earth. The effects of the eruption can be traced as far as California. It was an island just off of Crete. Archeologists have found evidence of a highly advanced civilization over 3,000 years old (flushing toilets and all). Pieces of the ancient island still exist and it is a resort destionation. Again it is speculation. Evidence does exist that a highly advanced civilization lived on the island and was destroyed by a volcano and it's aftermath. The decision is yours.

You're projecting your personal values into this discussion, Cyracuz. You speak of the combustion engine (by which i assume you mean the internal combustion engine) and property ownership, and then say that a previous civilization might have been more "evolved." That suggests that the use of an internal combustion engine, or property ownership, are evidence of a socially or technologically "primitive" people who hadn't the sense to do any better.

You can speculate to your heart's content, and project your contempt for the world you inhabit onto such an absurd proposition as that "Atlantis" ever existed--but it does not alter that your speculations are meaningless, unless and until you can come up with some evidence.

Do you really mean to suggest that a highly, technologically developed society could have existed more than 10,000 years ago, and not have left any archaeological evidence? Rather a dodgy proposition, it seems.

set

All I said was that it is possible that an advanced civilization evolved without taking the same steps ours has. However imporbable it sounds to you, it is a possibility.

Cyracuz - I 've asked myself the same question. If, humans have been around relatively unchanged for the past 100,000 years, then why has there only been apparent progress in the last 4,000 years or so?

The best answer I've read is from L. Sprague deCamp, who explained that you need adequate food surplusses and population densities to make progress. If you're doing backbreaking work 12+ hours a day just to ward off starvation you probably won't be thinking up technical advances.

But still, I do like to wonder if we'd find any anomolies if we did a thorough search of the lunar surface.