Atlantis

Well, there issues with this - not aimed at you btw, I'm just broadly addressing the thread.

1. Solon died 100 years before Plato, so even if Plato was presenting this as a genuine statement of fact, he'd be doing little more than Chinese whispers - unless Solon wrote this down in detail.

2. However, Plato's timing of Solon visiting Egypt is in conflict with Herodotus and later, Aristotle.

3. His use of Solon is quite complicated to break down without assuming knowledge of Plato, Solon and the political context. However, he is probably using Solon (and by extension Egypt) authoritatively to reinforce his own ideas in the Republic - which I have studied academically, but not so much the Timaeus and Critias.

4. Plato's description of Atlantis matches no civilisation that ever existed, as far as anybody else bar Plato is aware of - which is absolutely bizzare. Nobody else anywhere, mentioned Atlantis prior to Plato, and every person since, relies entirely on him as the source. This is absurd, if we assume Atlantis was real.

5. The source that Solon is alleged to have seen, is also impossibly unreliable. Neither Egypt nor Athens existed 11,500 years ago. In addition, there was no mathematics, no way of measuring 'years', and nobody could write any of this down until several thousand years later - which means that attempts to post hoc map this onto geological events from similar periods, doesn't grant any knowledge by Plato - as he would have no reasonable way of knowing that, or anything else that happened such a vast period of time pre-history.

In the late Archaic/Classical periods in Greece, anything written which discusses events from more than about 100-120 years, is hugely unreliable anyway. We can study Thucydides and Herodotus and see this in action, but it is fascinating.

There is a lot more I could say, but I don't want to bore everybody :)

But I heard a quote from a particular Classics scholar (whose name escapes me) that I liked: 'People looking for Plato's Atlantis essentially set out looking for their lost pet dog in Dundee, and then don't find it, so instead they point to a recovered parakeet found in Bolivia, and claim to found the dog'.

There are some good, accessible academic books on Plato that I could recommend if anybody was interested.
As I said in my original post... imo, myths are just stories used to pass down ideas. Atlantis, imo, is just a cautionary tale of what happens to societies that fail to protect themselves from [insert villain of choice here].

I am interested in where you got this information though. You sound like you've either done your research or have stumbled onto a website worth knowing about. I like to learn.
 


As I said in my original post... imo, myths are just stories used to pass down ideas. Atlantis, imo, is just a cautionary tale of what happens to societies that fail to protect themselves from [insert villain of choice here].

I am interested in where you got this information though. You sound like you've either done your research or have stumbled onto a website worth knowing about. I like to learn.
My undergraduate degree was in Classics and Philosophy, and I have an MA in Roman Archaeology & Historiography.

I could recommend loads of books (although I'm not at home to access my laptop), and it depends what you want to read about. But there is a book by Kathryn Morgan, a Classics professor from (I think) UCLA called, 'Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato'. But there are loads of other books on Plato.
 
My undergraduate degree was in Classics and Philosophy, and I have an MA in Roman Archaeology & Historiography.

I could recommend loads of books (although I'm not at home to access my laptop), and it depends what you want to read about. But there is a book by Kathryn Morgan, a Classics professor from (I think) UCLA called, 'Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato'. But there are loads of other books on Plato.
A list of philosophy books would be nice. :p

Not now though, finish work first. I've just started reading Jung, Nietzsche and Piaget but fear I may have dove in at the deep end. I'm more of a Physics bloke myself.
 
A list of philosophy books would be nice. :p

Not now though, finish work first. I've just started reading Jung, Nietzsche and Piaget but fear I may have dove in at the deep end. I'm more of a Physics bloke myself.
It depends what you want to get out of it really. Philosophy is a massively broad subject - I tended to be interested in ethics, philosophy of religion, ontology and especially the most important thing that underpins all of it, and everything we ever think, is epistemology - I think everybody in the world should be educated in epistemology - because it changes the way you think, it makes you think like a philosopher. So I'd start with an intrduction to philosophy/epistemology, and I could point you in that direction. You may well be very familiar already, so don't take offence if I'm stating the obvious!

As an aside, you might appreciate this as somebody who likes physics/maths - a book called 'innumeracy', by mathematician John Allen Paulos. It is a short, fun book that I really enjoyed, which takes a look at how misunderstandings of maths leads to errors in logical reasoning, statistics, fraud, conspiracy thinking etc. Good fun.
 
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You're spot on.The information was said to have been given to Solon during a visit to Egypt around 590 BC.

The thing I find interesting is that the priest is supposed to have said this had happened 9000 years before in around 11,600 BC. This coincides exactly with the end of the Younger Dryas period where global temperatures went up massively. This would have caused a huge sea level rise.

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Climate change IIRC. Should have put their stuff in different coloured bins to prevent it.
 
It depends what you want to get out of it really. Philosophy is a massively broad subject - I tended to be interested in ethics, philosophy of religion, ontology and especially the most important thing that underpins all of it, and everything we ever think, is epistemology - I think everybody in the world should be educated in epistemology - because it changes the way you think, it makes you think like a philosopher. So I'd start with an intrduction to philosophy/epistemology, and I could point you in that direction. You may well be very familiar already, so don't take offence if I'm stating the obvious!

As an aside, you might appreciate this as somebody who likes physics/maths - a book called 'innumeracy', by mathematician John Allen Paulos. It is a short, fun book that I really enjoyed, which takes a look at how misunderstandings of maths leads to errors in logical reasoning, statistics, fraud, conspiracy thinking etc. Good fun.
Cheers mate, will do.
 
It depends what you want to get out of it really. Philosophy is a massively broad subject - I tended to be interested in ethics, philosophy of religion, ontology and especially the most important thing that underpins all of it, and everything we ever think, is epistemology - I think everybody in the world should be educated in epistemology - because it changes the way you think, it makes you think like a philosopher. So I'd start with an intrduction to philosophy/epistemology, and I could point you in that direction. You may well be very familiar already, so don't take offence if I'm stating the obvious!

As an aside, you might appreciate this as somebody who likes physics/maths - a book called 'innumeracy', by mathematician John Allen Paulos. It is a short, fun book that I really enjoyed, which takes a look at how misunderstandings of maths leads to errors in logical reasoning, statistics, fraud, conspiracy thinking etc. Good fun.
I've did a lot of research into Atlantis and own books written by Herodotus, Plato and Aristotle. I must admit though I had to Google some of those words :lol:. Never too old to be educated :D.
 
I find it hard to believe that there isn't a link between Ancient Egypt and South America when you look at the striking similarities between the cultures. From having almost identical gods and burial rituals to building pyramids, there's so much evidence that points towards a link.

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I find it hard to believe that there isn't a link between Ancient Egypt and South America when you look at the striking similarities between the cultures. From having almost identical gods and burial rituals to building pyramids, there's so much evidence that points towards a link.

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I cant believe that a ship sailing off southern Spain wouldn't have been blown off course and taken to the Americas by the prevailing wind and currents. Many times for that matter. An emply rowing boat off the Canary islands would probably end up in the Caribbean, so a fully manned ship would have no problem.
 
I cant believe that a ship sailing off southern Spain wouldn't have been blown off course and taken to the Americas by the prevailing wind and currents. Many times for that matter. An emply rowing boat off the Canary islands would probably end up in the Caribbean, so a fully manned ship would have no problem.
And yet we're told it never happened. Evidence points to the contrary imo.
 
I cant believe that a ship sailing off southern Spain wouldn't have been blown off course and taken to the Americas by the prevailing wind and currents. Many times for that matter. An emply rowing boat off the Canary islands would probably end up in the Caribbean, so a fully manned ship would have no problem.
How big were the ships then though and could they carry the provisions needed to survive it? There's certainly some sort of link mind, interesting stuff like love owt like this me!
 
How big were the ships then though and could they carry the provisions needed to survive it? There's certainly some sort of link mind, interesting stuff like love owt like this me!
The Phoenicians had cargo ships that could hold up to 450 tonnes and they travelled as far as Britain and the west coast of Africa. It takes an average of 20 days to sail from the Canaries to the West Indies on a moderately sized sailing yacht so I cant see why a fully provisioned ship couldnt get there easily if blown off coarse.
 
The Phoenicians had cargo ships that could hold up to 450 tonnes and they travelled as far as Britain and the west coast of Africa. It takes an average of 20 days to sail from the Canaries to the West Indies on a moderately sized sailing yacht so I cant see why a fully provisioned ship couldnt get there easily if blown off coarse.
Fair enough, always thought they were small
 

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