Story of Atlantis Part 1 - Ice Age and Deluge

[Stosh]

Ok, but they worked big stones in Greece, by conventional means. Plato would know that and it would mean that the big stonework wasn't by levitation. The Greeks knew the Egyptians ( Athens goes back 5000yr- great pyramid 4500yr)  and would have used extraordinary means too, rather than just forget something mundane.

If the great pyramid is mundane, everybody else's certainly was. Stonehenge also goes back 5000yr

No?

So what did the Atlanteans contribute? Navigation?

Is the idea that Atlanteans connected places disconnected in time by thousands of years? Gobekli goes back 12000yrs so how could their stone tech be connected to Egypt or Greece ? 

Edited March 15, 2019 by Stosh

[Stosh]

Presumably , it has to be more efficient , to cut and move big stones than small. If one has unlimited labor , then all you really need to do is have each person contribute a small stone-50lb , if a stone weighs 5 tons thats 10000 pounds- which is the work of 200 people and so thats roughly as many people you would have to presume ,are available to move any big stone. 

 However , if  one is cutting a big stone , many cuts are not made and therefore there is a big additional savings.

If my math is correct ,,  a 10000lb stone roughly 14x4x4 has appx 256 square feet of faced stone cuts
the same weight if done in individual person size 50lb granite blocks has 1344 cut faces. So the big stone requires roughly a fifth of the cutting work as the small stones. 

in 'man efforts' you have now 200 moving men per big stone over a short distance , and five times as many men cutting sufficient stone for the project, by using big rocks . 

So I think this does suggest that its at least reasonable to figure that the large stone construction could be much more efficient , and that's why you would do it. 
And you would want the efficiency because you don't have unlimited labor.  

If one was using extraordinary means to cut the stones like lasers , you might cut into smaller blocks making it easier to move.
If you were using levitation to move the rocks, you might as well cut them as huge as possible ,( fourteen feet by four by four isn't really all that big.)  And if you had both these advanced technologies you wouldn't need to build in incremental blocks anyway! Just float a hill over and blast it to shape.  

[Nungali]

18 hours ago, Stosh said:

Ok, but they worked big stones in Greece, by conventional means. Plato would know that and it would mean that the big stonework wasn't by levitation. The Greeks knew the Egyptians ( Athens goes back 5000yr- great pyramid 4500yr)  and would have used extraordinary means too, rather than just forget something mundane.

If the great pyramid is mundane, everybody else's certainly was. Stonehenge also goes back 5000yr

No?

So what did the Atlanteans contribute? Navigation?

Is the idea that Atlanteans connected places disconnected in time by thousands of years? Gobekli goes back 12000yrs so how could their stone tech be connected to Egypt or Greece ? 

 

This time lag ,  it is especially relevant to those that claim an Atlantis influence in the new World .

 

It just dont add up

 

[Nungali]

2 hours ago, Stosh said:

Presumably , it has to be more efficient , to cut and move big stones than small. If one has unlimited labor , then all you really need to do is have each person contribute a small stone-50lb , if a stone weighs 5 tons thats 10000 pounds- which is the work of 200 people and so thats roughly as many people you would have to presume ,are available to move any big stone. 

 However , if  one is cutting a big stone , many cuts are not made and therefore there is a big additional savings.

If my math is correct ,,  a 10000lb stone roughly 14x4x4 has appx 256 square feet of faced stone cuts
the same weight if done in individual person size 50lb granite blocks has 1344 cut faces. So the big stone requires roughly a fifth of the cutting work as the small stones. 

in 'man efforts' you have now 200 moving men per big stone over a short distance , and five times as many men cutting sufficient stone for the project, by using big rocks . 

So I think this does suggest that its at least reasonable to figure that the large stone construction could be much more efficient , and that's why you would do it. 
And you would want the efficiency because you don't have unlimited labor.  

If one was using extraordinary means to cut the stones like lasers , you might cut into smaller blocks making it easier to move.
If you were using levitation to move the rocks, you might as well cut them as huge as possible ,( fourteen feet by four by four isn't really all that big.)  And if you had both these advanced technologies you wouldn't need to build in incremental blocks anyway! Just float a hill over and blast it to shape.  

 

 

Yup.  Thats a main point a lot of people miss.   The bigger the block of stone the less cutting required .  Put the blocks on rails and rollers and the number of men needed to move it  is greatly reduced.

 

Also waste and 'chippings are reduced in a big block, and if it breaks, just trim it  to make two or three smaller ones.

 

Still, I do find it at the limits of my comprehension ;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note marks from cutting through the rock with stone pounders

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Stosh]

Oh certainly ! That's all incredible, but in the end I think it boils down to humans with time on their hands. While Apech seems to be interested in the culture , the engineering and various technologies are what I find interesting. 

But not to diverge too far , that all doesn't look like space alien tech, fly to earth ,only to bang rocks on other rocks. So if there isn't anything else amazing techno-wise to Atlanteans, we are just looking a people who may have gotten around ( or had been found) and fit in with Plato's critique, in the 'Athens time frame' or a few hundred years earlier. 

 

It only took Columbus two and a half months to get to the new world in the big fat sailing ships he had , but if one really knew what they were setting out to find , it appears possible that sailing people had gone way way farther even , long before that. So my alternate Atlantis is the relic story , and the significant thing is the early voyages. 

 

It reverses the paradigm of the Atlanteans being the bringers of tech , but rather stone or bronze age folk coming out of Europe by sails rather than the overland progression of walking as their progenitors had done, were the bringers of tech. like big rock buildings. 

Its the 'Out of the Mediterranean' hypothesis.  

 

Following megalithic construction There is a loose trail leading from The Caucasus through Europe and out the Mediterranean. You can bang around with the dates and types of construction but If I were speculating , I would say that the advent of civilization did not begin in the Atlantic , it spread out from the Caucasus on this western end of Eurasia.  

Gobekli 12000ya

Carnac France 6500ya

Dolmens in Caucasus 6000ya

Crete 6000ya

Athens founded 5000 ya

Stonehenge 5000ya

Palenque 2200ya

 

There were already people around , at least 60,000 ya in Australia. The out of Africa theory suggests this as the oldest expansion for modern people, and those folks went all the way from the Levant to Australia and beyond. And across that time frame were dating the local Densiovans ,Neanderthals and so forth. I think it might be ventured that the most recent significant human development would be the backcross with the Archaics. 

 

So from 60000 ya to 12000 years ago ... anything could have been going on and I dont know what that is. If were to hypothesize Ice Atlanteans , this would be their time period.  

 

 

 

Edited March 15, 2019 by Stosh

[Nungali]

... those Goddamn  Ice Atlanteans  !     

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

[Stosh]

5 minutes ago, Nungali said:

... those Goddamn  Ice Atlanteans  !     

 

 

 

  Hide contents

 

Yeah, who knows what they got up to. I figure on orgies, spreading genes all over the place!

Who the heck is the father of these bastages!

[Michael Sternbach]

On 14.3.2019 at 11:35 PM, Apech said:

Come on guys, this is turning into the Nungali vs. Micheal thread.  You come from different perspectives ... good!  As long as we share opinions openly what's the problem?

 

If I was investigating this subject I would take the minimalist approach, in other words what are the least key facts you would have to substantiate to advance the Atlantis idea.  For me these would be:

 

1.  a pre Ice Age culture/civilisation which was destroyed by advancing sea levels (cataclysmically).

 

Following Plato, we must indeed suppose a cataclysmic (i.e. catastrophic) event, such as the dramatic increase in sea levels following the impact of a comet in the Arctic ice sheet (which talked about in my February 17 post), as opposed to the relatively slow rise occuring due to the gradual melting of the glaciers during the first several thousand years of our current inter-glacial epoch.

 

Alternatively - and more in accordance with Plato's account - we might assume a sudden sinking of the Atlantic Island due to terrestrial activity as suggested by Flambas, Zhirov and others.

 

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2.  a knowledge of at least advance stone working and megalith structures

3.  some knowledge of astronomy (observations over long periods of time)

 

The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus tells us that Atlas (the first son of Poseidon and Cleito, and the first king of Atlantis) was gifted in the art of astrology and was the first to present to mankind the doctrine of the sphere, for which reason he is said to have supported the vault of heaven on his shoulders.

 

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4.  ability to plan and execute large scale architecture

 

As evidenced by the structure of Atlantis with its aqueducts, and especially of its capital Poseidonis with its big circular channels .

 

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Problems:

 

1.  500,000 years of last ice ages had erratic climatic conditions - what kind of culture could survive this

 

 

The following article gives a good general overview of these glacial climatic oscillations, called  Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) cycles:

 

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-climate-change-during-the-last-ice-24288097

 

However, not all areas of the globe were equally subject to such climatic changes; thus, in order to determine how our supposed Atlantic Island was doing during the last ice age, we have to turn to more specialized surveys. A quick search (lasting a mere three hours or so ) brought up J. E. Hertzberg: "Decadal- to centennial-scale tropical Atlantic climate variability across a Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle", which explores to what extent the Cariaco basin, lying off the north central coast of Venezuela, was affected by such climatic fluctuations. This seems like a good approximation, since the Venezuelan basin is perhaps the most plausible location for our submerged island, as suggested by Dr. P. P. Flambas in his aforementioned book Plato's Carribean Atlantis - A Scientific Survey. Long story short, the article concludes:

 

Quote

Multidecadal variability similar to the AMO in scale was only noted during the warmest part of the interstadial, and thus may be a function of relatively warm climate states, while being absent during colder, stadial and near-stadial conditions.[/quote]

 

In plain English: That region was not affected much by climatic fluctuations at all most of the time!

 

 

 

 

 

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2.  no evidence of agriculture pre around 6000 BC (?) so what food source?

 
Agriculture may in fact have started much earlier than generally believed. Specimens of cultivated wheat (Triticum dicoccum) were retrieved at a neolithic site in Nahal Oren, Israel, from a level indicating an age of approximately 16.000 years. Grinding tools have been found in the vicinity as well. However, the authors of the respective article (being careful academics) don't consider the evidence fully conclusive.

Source: T. Noy et al.: "Recent Excavations at Nahal Oren, Israel", in: Proseedings of the Prehistoric Socienty, vol. 39, Dec 1979, pp. 75-99.
 

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3.  if Atlantis was destroyed around 10,000 BC then presumably they went to Anatolia and taught the Gobekli Tepe hunter gatherers to build ... but then what?

 
If the megalithic site of Göbekli Tepe was indeed the result of an Atlantean influence (which seems to be a reasonable assumption), it may have been built under the direction of just a small group of settlers - who eventually mingled with the natives.
 

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4.  if you back date the GP to 10,000 BC then what did they do between then and the dynastic period?  how do you explain pre-dynastic cultures (primitive)

 
Yes, that's a good question that made me rattle my gears already a number of times.

My conclusion so far: If we imagine some global cataclysm had eradicated our technological civilization with all the comforts that it provides. Those of us who had the opportunity would naturally turn to native tribes accustomed to living in nature for help to survive. Any of our more advanced technological items would soon stop functioning and be destroyed, however, the more knowledgeable among us about science and technology may pass on whatever they can to their descendants and to the natives. Isn't it conceivable that we would figure out ways to preserve as much information as possible even over many generations, with heavy losses and distortions perhaps, but recoverable when circumstances permit? And that one day, some geniuses would build a culture in some ways resembling our own on that foundation?
 

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5.  Genetic science has mapped modern human genetic ancestry without any Atlantean involvement - how is this explained?

I wonder, how would genetic science know what to look for? How would it affect the genetical record if the Atlanteans had simply been Cro-Magnon humans that settled in regions where we know the latter existed?

Also, I don't believe that human genetics are particularly well understood, overall. Quoting the 2014 National Geographic article "Oldest Burial Yields DNA Evidence of First Americans" by K. Than:
 

Quote

The scientists say they strongly suspect, but cannot yet prove, that Native Americans in the United States are also closely related to the Clovis people. Native American groups in the U.S. have been reluctant to share their DNA, or the DNA of their ancestors, with scientists. "Unfortunately, we don't have much genetic material for native people living in the United States," Waters said. "If you look at the genetic map [of humans around the world], the U.S. is a big [blank] spot.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140212-anzik-skeleton-dna-montana-clovis-culture-first-americans/

But the same seems to apply to other places as well; take a look at J.C. Chamber et al.: "The South Asian genome" (2014). This article is stating bluntly:
 

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The genetic sequence variation of people from the Indian subcontinent who comprise one-quarter of the world's population, is not well described.

 

I may have some more on genetics later, but I have to look for it first.

 

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6.  Nothing from archeology/fossil record suggest Atlantean involvement (as far as I know)

 

Well, it has been suggested for the Great Sphinx and the temples associated with it... For submerged structures off the coast of the Bahamas... For the city of Tiahuanaco in the Andes... But none of this is undisputed - and before anybody gets worked up about what I said in passing, I'd ask to keep your arguments pro and con for the specific topics to be launched soon.

 

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Possible

 

1.  the idea of Atlantis is actually a 'memory' of early neolithic (or even mesolithic) cultures which were far more sophisticated and complex than is generally understood - coastal dwelling hunter gatherer megalith builders.

 

Many cultures have preserved memory of a 'mother civilization' that existed in the Atlantic ocean, though. IMO, the evidence is for that is compelling! We will look at some of that material in topics dedicated to Egypt, the Americas etc.

 

Bear in mind that we barely see beyond the veil that the last ice age has spread. Present day understanding of our human history is woefully incomplete; at best, we have scratched the surface, IMO. I propose that Atlantis is just the tip of the iceberg - there were indeed more sophisticated cultures, knowledge of which has come down to us in mythology and esoteric lore. And I have little doubt that future excavations will bring much undreamed of archaeological evidence to the light of day. How much more do we know about ancient times than people a hundred years ago, and yet how much more will be found within a hundred years from now...

Edited March 16, 2019 by Michael Sternbach

[Michael Sternbach]

On 15.3.2019 at 12:01 AM, Stosh said:

If Plato's Atlantis was defeated by Athens , and Athens dates maybe 600BC . Then Atlantis couldn't have been destroyed by the advancing sea levels which peaked 10000 yrs ago. They would have been underwater for 9400  years.

 

Plato was describing a world in which a prehistoric Athens existed at the same time like Atlantis, i.e. until somewhen in about the tenth millenium B.C., when both civilizations were destroyed in the same cataclysmic event.

 

While any claims of humans that weren't hunter-gatherers existing so far back in time seemed ludicrous to academic scientists until recently, what we know now about places like Göbekli Tepe, Çatal Hüyük, Jericho proves that larger societies capable of advanced feats of architecture, agriculture etc. existed much earlier than hitherto accepted.

[Stosh]

2 minutes ago, Michael Sternbach said:

 

Plato was describing a world in which a prehistoric Athens existed at the same time like Atlantis, i.e. until somewhen in about the tenth millenium B.C., when both civilizations were destroyed in the same cataclysmic event.

 

While any claims of humans that weren't hunter-gatherers existing so far back in time seemed ludicrous to academic scientists until recently, what we know now about places like Göbekli Tepe, Çatal Hüyük, Jericho proves that larger societies capable of advanced feats of architecture, agriculture etc. existed much earlier than hitherto accepted.

Ok, was Athens founded 5000ya or 12000ya. And if Athens was destroyed by cataclysm how is it still here? Above water

[Michael Sternbach]

On 15.3.2019 at 2:19 AM, Stosh said:

I see, then would it not be prudent to toss out all of his account, until it can be shown that the Ice Atlanteans existed?

That would require us to circumscribe a people who may have lived anywhere ,done anything ,and existed for an indeterminate time🙂

 

That's the reason I made Plato's Atlantis the central theme of this thread, which does not mean that there can't be any detours whatsoever, as long as we get back on topic.

 

As for the war between Atlantis and prehistoric Athens, Settegast has extensively explored that topic from a historic perspective, and I hope to present some of her conclusions soon.

[Stosh]

She is going to outline the events of a war, between two destroyed civilizations that happened ,oh,10000 years before anyone mentioned it?

[Michael Sternbach]

6 minutes ago, Stosh said:

Ok, was Athens founded 5000ya or 12000ya. And if Athens was destroyed by cataclysm how is it still here? Above water

 

Plato lets the Egyptian priest tell Solon that Athena (aka the Egyptian goddess Neith) founded Athens after the Earth  goddess Gaia and the god Hephaestus provided “the seed of your race (of Athenians)”. Flambas thinks this statement might imply that Athena/ Neith arrived in the area of Athens from a distant place and united with the pre-existing native population to create the city. Interistingly, it seems like the cult of Athena originally started in Lybia.

 

Athena/ Neith then founded the Egyptian city of Sais one thousand years later or about perhaps 8.600 B.C., apparently without the help of other gods. This statement might mean that colonisers from Athens travelled to Egypt and founded Sais one thousand years after Athens was founded.

 

A five-thousand-year-old wooden label with the name of King Aha shows the symbol of Sais inside a wooden compound. This artefact indicates that Sais was already an important cult centre at the beginning of Egyptian history, around 3100 B.C. And the cult of the city’s patron goddess Neith was practised at least as early as the 1 st Dynasty, ca. 3100-3050 B.C.

 

Prehistoric Athens didn't sink into the sea but (again according to Plato) was destroyed by a massive earthquake that was part of the same cataclysmic event that led to the submergence of Atlantis.

[Michael Sternbach]

15 minutes ago, Stosh said:

She is going to outline the events of a war, between two destroyed civilizations that happened ,oh,10000 years before anyone mentioned it?

 

The war in which the prehistoric Athenians struck back an overly imperialistic Atlantis that had conquered much of the then-known world took place prior to the cataclysm that destroyed both civilizations.

Edited March 16, 2019 by Michael Sternbach

[Stosh]

Ok, a pervasive European culture, gets in a war, with proto Athenians, both groups get destroyed. New Athenians come over from Libya. Plato recounts the events preserved in oral tradition,? Is that the format? 

Then the Atlanteans could be the Celts that prehistorically dominated Europe ,had big rock tech, and was supplanted by cultures expanding from the Mediterranean with grain based agriculture.

[Apech]

4 hours ago, Michael Sternbach said:

 

Following Plato, we must indeed suppose a cataclysmic (i.e. catastrophic) event, such as the dramatic increase in sea levels following the impact of a comet in the Arctic ice sheet (which talked about in my February 17 post), as opposed to the relatively slow rise occuring due to the gradual melting of the glaciers during the first several thousand years of our current inter-glacial epoch.

 

Alternatively - and more in accordance with Plato's account - we might assume a sudden sinking of the Atlantic Island due to terrestrial activity as suggested by Flambas, Zhirov and others.

 

I know the comet impact has some evidence for it, not least the recent crater found under the Greenland ice.

 

4 hours ago, Michael Sternbach said:

 

The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus tells us that Atlas (the first son of Poseidon and Cleito, and the first king of Atlantis) was gifted in the art of astrology and was the first to present to mankind the doctrine of the sphere, for which reason he is said to have supported the vault of heaven on his shoulders.

 

If we accept for a moment that these stories are grounded in some actual history we still need evidence.

 

4 hours ago, Michael Sternbach said:

 

As evidenced by the structure of Atlantis with its aqueducts, and especially of its capital Poseidonis with its big circular channels .

 

That is not evidence.

 

4 hours ago, Michael Sternbach said:

 

The following article gives a good general overview of these glacial climatic oscillations, called  Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) cycles:

 

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-climate-change-during-the-last-ice-24288097

 

However, not all areas of the globe were equally subject to such climatic changes; thus, in order to determine how our supposed Atlantic Island was doing during the last ice age, we have to turn to more specialized surveys. A quick search (lasting a mere three hours or so ) brought up J. E. Hertzberg: "Decadal- to centennial-scale tropical Atlantic climate variability across a Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle", which explores to what extent the Cariaco basin, lying off the north central coast of Venezuela, was affected by such climatic fluctuations. This seems like a good approximation, since the Venezuelan basin is perhaps the most plausible location for our submerged island, as suggested by Dr. P. P. Flambas in his aforementioned book Plato's Carribean Atlantis - A Scientific Survey. Long story short, the article concludes:

 

[ quote]Multidecadal variability similar to the AMO in scale was only noted during the warmest part of the interstadial, and thus may be a function of relatively warm climate states, while being absent during colder, stadial and near-stadial conditions.[ /quote]

 

In plain English: That region was not affected much by climatic fluctuations at all most of the time!

 

Good, thanks.  So some parts of earths surface were relatively unaffected by the climatic variations.  Which should narrow down the search somewhat.

 

4 hours ago, Michael Sternbach said:

 

Agriculture may in fact have started much earlier than generally believed. Specimens of cultivated wheat (Triticum dicoccum) were retrieved at a neolithic site in Nahal Oren, Israel, from a level indicating an age of approximately 16.000 years. Grinding tools have been found in the vicinity as well. However, the authors of the respective article (being careful academics) don't consider the evidence fully conclusive.

 

Source: T. Noy et al.: "Recent Excavations at Nahal Oren, Israel", in: Proseedings of the Prehistoric Socienty, vol. 39, Dec 1979, pp. 75-99.

 

yes it might.  but they might have been grinding wild grass seeds - which we know that hunter gatherers did harvest - but this indicates a nomadic lifestyle since they would move from place to place depending on which natural vegetation and game was abundant seasonally.

 

4 hours ago, Michael Sternbach said:

 

If the megalithic site of Göbekli Tepe was indeed the result of an Atlantean influence (which seems to be a reasonable assumption), it may have been built under the direction of just a small group of settlers - who eventually mingled with the natives.

 

 

Yes, that's a good question that made me rattle my gears already a number of times.

 

My conclusion so far: If we imagine some global cataclysm had eradicated our technological civilization with all the comforts that it provides. Those of us who had the opportunity would naturally turn to native tribes accustomed to living in nature for help to survive. Any of our more advanced technological items would soon stop functioning and be destroyed, however, the more knowledgeable among us about science and technology may pass on whatever they can to their descendants and to the natives. Isn't it conceivable that we would figure out ways to preserve as much information as possible even over many generations, with heavy losses and distortions perhaps, but recoverable when circumstances permit? And that one day, some geniuses would build a culture in some ways resembling our own on that foundation?

 

That's a whole string of maybes.

 

4 hours ago, Michael Sternbach said:

 

I wonder, how would genetic science know what to look for? How would it affect the genetical record if the Atlanteans had simply been Cro-Magnon humans that settled in regions where we know the latter existed?

 

Also, I don't believe that human genetics are particularly well understood, overall. Quoting the 2014 National Geographic article "Oldest Burial Yields DNA Evidence of First Americans" by K. Than:

 

 

 

Genetics has moved on even since 2014, in the last few years they have mapped the genomes for many ancient humans and mapped out the relations between groups.  There is actually a finding about a non-Clovis related group of unknown origin dating to, from memory about 9000 BC - which might be your guys.

[Apech]

On the genetics of the Americas, particularly South America watch from 56 mins.

 

At about 1.02 hr he mentions a population change at about 9000 years ago (unexplained).

 

 

Edited March 16, 2019 by Apech

[Nungali]

2 hours ago, Apech said:

On the genetics of the Americas, particularly South America watch from 56 mins.

 

At about 1.02 hr he mentions a population change at about 9000 years ago (unexplained).

 

 

 

Interesting !  here is a summary of his book ;

 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/padr.12196

 

Population replacements sometimes happen  at various times and places   ;

 

Spanish Men Were Completely Wiped Out By The Arrival Of A New Tribe 4,000 Years Ago

 

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/spanish-men-were-completely-wiped-out-by-the-arrival-of-a-new-tribe-4000-years-ago/

Edited March 16, 2019 by Nungali

[Nungali]

Here is another dynamic that might suggest that some  people living  in the past  AFTER THE EVENT  might have memories /  developed stories about a better, more advanced time before them .

 

" Down into chaos went the Egyptians and the Babylonians. The Aegean civilizations of the Minoans and the Mycenians descended into a Dark Age. Peoples who had an advanced writing system, seemed to have forgotten it. In fact some scholars suggest that the events described in the Iliad, such as the destruction of Troy and the Odyssey pertain to this period.

Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age (found south of the Black Sea, in modern Turkey) and its surrounding towns were burned to the ground and abandoned. Gone were monumental architecture, writing systems, pottery types and familiar settlement patterns."

 

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium-1177-bce-the-year-civilization-was-destroyed-1.5350507

 

 

- I have had some VERY interesting on line conversations with Dr  Cline .

 

/

Edited March 16, 2019 by Nungali

[Apech]

1 minute ago, Nungali said:

Here is another dynamic that might suggest that some  people living  in the past  AFTER THE EVENT  might have memories /  developed stories about a better, more advanced time before them .

 

 

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium-1177-bce-the-year-civilization-was-destroyed-1.5350507

 

 

- I have had some VERY interesting on line conversations with Dr  Cline .

 

That's the Sea People - who were stopped in the delta by Ram III presumably.  The link only opens a short intro for me.

[Nungali]

33 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

That's the Sea People - who were stopped in the delta by Ram III presumably.  The link only opens a short intro for me.

 

Not sure what you mean .     " Thats the Sea people' .... the   'that' that I am talking about is the Late Bronze Age collapse.  The Sea People where the displaced "'Med Migrants  /   refugees'  .

 

Dr Cline  points out a variety of things happening at the time  ....   'perfect storm' . 

 

And now, when I go to that link it only opens an intro for me too  ...   ?  Strange .

 

I will have a fiddle .

 

 

 

 

 

... I just, re entered that  site via google search again  and  only got the intro this time ?  

 

But then I  clicked around a bit and now the whole article is there ...  curious !  Anyway, I will see if I can lift it

 

Here ya go  -

Sometime after 1200 BCE, civilization collapsed, and a dark age prevailed.

 

The Late Bronze Age collapse of societies throughout the Levant, the Near East and the Mediterranean some 3,200 years ago has been a mystery. Powerful, advanced civilizations disappeared, seemingly overnight. Now an archaeologist believes he has figured out what lay behind the cataclysm.

 

The trigger seems to have been the invasion of ancient Egypt in 1177 BCE by marauding peoples known simply as the “Sea Peoples,” as recorded in the Medinet Habu wall relief at Ramses III' tomb. The relief depicts a sea battle (and also carts full of supplies, women and children, something that always puzzled researchers. Why would the women and children have been at a sea battle, and why were there chariots? Did they bring them on ships as well?) The foreigners were depicted wearing distinct head gear.

 

The narrative states that Ramses III’s army and navy managed to defeat them, but Egypt was never the same. It slid into a decline – and so did its neighbors.

 

This collapse was apparently very sudden: a line of advanced and powerful cultures collapsed like a row of dominoes, says Eric Cline, professor of classics and anthropology and Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at George Washington University.

 

Down into chaos went the Egyptians and the Babylonians. The Aegean civilizations of the Minoans and the Mycenians descended into a Dark Age. Peoples who had an advanced writing system, seemed to have forgotten it. In fact some scholars suggest that the events described in the Iliad, such as the destruction of Troy and the Odyssey pertain to this period.

 

Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age (found south of the Black Sea, in modern Turkey) and its surrounding towns were burned to the ground and abandoned. Gone were monumental architecture, writing systems, pottery types and familiar settlement patterns.

 

A desperate letter: The enemy is here

Archaeologists find all sorts of destruction events attributed to this time. Almost every Anatolian site from that era shows signs of violence and abandonment.

 

Ugarit, a port city in ancient Syria that traded with the Hittites and with Egypt, was famously destroyed. In a letter, Hammurabi, the last king of Ugarit, beseeching the king of Alashia (in Cyprus) for help, writes: “My father, behold, the enemy's ships came (here); my cities(?) were burned, and they did evil things in my country. Does not my father know that all my troops and chariots(?) are in the Land of Hatti, and all my ships are in the Land of Lukka?...Thus, the country is abandoned to itself. May my father know it: the seven ships of the enemy that came here inflicted much damage upon us.”

 

Almost all the main coastal sites of Canaan, including Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashdod, Akko and Jaffa, were leveled. Inland sites such as the palace at Megiddo were burnt to the ground. The impressive ancient cities of Hazor and Lachish were completely destroyed and left abandoned.

 

“The thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium BCE, which had stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, long-used trade routes were abandoned, along with writing systems, advanced technology, and monumental architecture,” writes Cline in his best-selling book, "1177 B.C., The Year Civilization Collapsed."

 

The 'storm' hits: Climate change

A common element of the imploding civilizations in the second millennium BCE is that they were all interconnected.

 

"They interacted with each other, had trade and diplomatic contacts, arranged royal marriages, international embassies, economic embargoes, and so on," Cline says. "One of the ties between them was the need for both copper and tin, in order to make bronze, which was the primary metal of the era. Most of the copper came from Cyprus; most of the tin came from Afghanistan, as did lapis lazuli. Gold came from Egypt. Both raw materials and finished goods were sold, as well as exchanged at the royal level.”

 

No question, the raids of the “Sea Peoples” were a menace. But a collapse of such magnitude could not have come about due to them alone, or to any single development, Cline argues: it could only have been due to a “perfect storm” of events.

 

Recent high-resolution pollen analysis of a core taken from the Sea of Galilee, by Dafna Langgut and Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University and Thomas Litt of the University of Bonn, has irrefutably shown that the years between 1250 BCE- 1100 BCE were the driest seen throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. This corroborates with the information from clay tablets found in Afek in Israel, Hattusa in Turkey, Emar in Mesopotamia, and Ugarit in Syria, that record a terrible drought, and the resulting difficulties attributed to it.

 

“There is evidence in the archaeological record of climatic changes such as climate change, drought (resulting in famine), earthquakes, invasions and internal rebellions at this time. Normally if a culture is faced with just one of these tragedies, it can survive it, but what if they all happened at once, or in quick succession?” asks Cline. “It seems that this is what happened between about 1225 BCE and 1175 BCE, and I think that the Late Bronze Age civilizations were simply unable to weather the 'perfect storm' and came crashing down.”

 

If it happened once

The world of the Mediterranean and the ancient Near East during the Late Bronze Age was obviously not nearly the size of our interconnected world today. "However, they were as interconnected in their own way as we are today, and they were as dependent upon copper and tin to make bronze as we are dependent upon oil for our automobiles,” Cline says.

 

He for one sees a clear warning in these events that happened thousands of years ago. Now as then, the world seems to be standing on a precipice.

 

“I would argue that the civilizations of the Mediterranean and the ancient Near East were so interconnected ... that when one collapsed, it affected the others, so that one by one they fell, like a chain of dominoes," he says. "The fact that similarly-intertwined civilizations collapsed just after 1200 BCE should be a warning to us; if it happened once, it can happen again. Even with all of our technological advancements, we are not immune," Cline says.

 

In any case, don't blame the “Sea People”. They were also victims, obviously fleeing something; looking for a better home where they could survive. They are more of a symptom than the cause of the collapse, says Cline.

 

If anything perhaps we should identify with them. “We are currently facing the very same type of situation that they faced back in 1177 BCE -- climate change, famines, droughts, rebellions, earthquakes. The only thing missing from today's scenario are the Sea People -- the mysterious invaders from overseas," he says.

 

Not convinced? Look at the region. The Greek economy is in shambles and has been for a while now, Cline points out. Internal rebellions have shaken Libya, Syria, and Egypt, with outsiders and foreign warriors

fanning the flames, and Turkey and Israel are terrified of becoming involved. "Jordan is overcrowded with refugees. Iran is bellicose and threatening, while Iraq is in turmoil The same descriptions fit the situation in 1177 BC,” Cline points out. And next door is the failed state of Somalia, some of whose sons took to the seas themselves, as pirates.

 

Maybe, Cline suggests, ISIS are a sort of latter-day Sea People, bursting into the void created as the world collapses around them, causing mass migrations of large groups that destabilize the lands to which they flee.

In short, modern man, be not proud. "Every society in the history of the world has ultimately collapsed," Cline points out. "We should be thankful that we are advanced enough to understand what is happening and to take steps to fix things, rather than simply passively accepting things as they occur.”

 

 

(my emphasis)

Edited March 16, 2019 by Nungali
bad pasting format

[Apech]

Sure its more nuanced than a simple invasion - but the Sea People were part of the collapse of the Hittites etc.  Although Egypt did decline after this (actually it was already declining slowly anyway) - the victory by Ram III did at least ensure that the culture of Egypt remained intact.  It is one of the reasons Egypt is so significant as it is the only (?) example of a Bronze Age culture persisting through to the Roman period - only finally destroyed eventually by the Christianification under the Roman Empire.

 

I have read that after Ram III's victory the Sea People dispersed and one tribe returned to the Levant and were the Phillistines of the Bible.  I'm not sure if this is in line with current theories but it was certainly at one time thought to be the case.

 

Quote

In any case, don't blame the “Sea People”. They were also victims, obviously fleeing something; looking for a better home where they could survive. They are more of a symptom than the cause of the collapse, says Cline.

 

I stand with the Sea Peoples - je suis un personne de mar.

Edited March 16, 2019 by Apech

[Nungali]

Down here we call them   'boat people' .

 

 

 

2 years ago I could tell you what is happening to them. Not now. The Government has made any boat illegally approaching, how it was intercepted, what happened to it and the people on it   a  ' national security '  secret .

 

I shouldn't even be posting  that statement .     telling people that is a  ' national security  secret ' as well .

 

... so, if you don't hear from me any more  .....

 

 

....

 

 

 

[Apech]

22 minutes ago, Nungali said:

Down here we call them   'boat people' .

 

 

 

 

2 years ago I could tell you what is happening to them. Not now. The Government has made any boat illegally approaching, how it was intercepted, what happened to it and the people on it   a  ' national security '  secret .

 

I shouldn't even be posting  that statement .     telling people that is a  ' national security  secret ' as well .

 

... so, if you don't hear from me any more  .....

 

 

....

 

 

 

 

 

They've been shipped to Atlantis.

[Michael Sternbach]

3 hours ago, Stosh said:

Ok, a pervasive European culture, gets in a war, with proto Athenians, both groups get destroyed.

 

Atlanteans, not Europeans though... And yes, proto-Athenians. Both civilizations getting destroyed in the course of the same cataclysm.

 

3 hours ago, Stosh said:

New Athenians come over from Libya.

 

Nope. But Athena may have been a Libyan goddess originally. And  one way to read Plato implies that Athena, coming from a foreign land,  founded prehistoric Athens with an indigenous people. That must have happened some time before Athen's war against the Atlanteans, of course.

 

But there is no archaeological evidence for that, at least until now.

 

3 hours ago, Stosh said:

Plato recounts the events preserved in oral tradition,? Is that the format?

 

The events were inscribed on pillars in the Neith temple at Sais, where the Greek states-man Solon learned them from Egyptian priests. According to Diogenes Laërtius, Solon had a brother named Dropides who was an ancestor (six generations removed) of Plato. Solon's information about Atlantis was supposedly passed on to Plato in the way of a family tradition.

 

3 hours ago, Stosh said:

Then the Atlanteans could be the Celts that prehistorically dominated Europe ,had big rock tech, and was supplanted by cultures expanding from the Mediterranean with grain based agriculture.

 

Celtic culture as we know it came much later in history. But despite the time gap, there certainly seems to be some connection. I intend to come back to this topic later.