Atlantis Seekers Given Thrill by Google Ocean 321
RcK writes "Numerous articles are springing up regarding a feature found using the new Google Ocean, which some claim could be the location of Atlantis. While this is obviously early, and probably has the same credibility levels as previous claims of finding the mythical city, the detected anomaly is quite convincingly linear, is apparently the size of Wales and sits near where Plato hypothesized the city to be located." Google has stated that this is an issue with the way their ocean mapping software is working, but clearly that is a cover up while Google execs try to buy the real estate. I just hope they bring back Elvis next.
Re:The article explains it (Score:3, Insightful)
On a related note:
But the internet giant said âoeblank spotsâ within the lines could not be explained.
Unless of course after a few criss-crosses whoever was piloting the boat said, "yeah, maybe we shouldn't waste our time mapping out what appears to be a really big flat part of the ocean floor"
People, seriously. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why, for the love of God, do you people think that there was a civilization called Atlantis just because it's in one of Plato's dialogues? Plato isn't even the one who says it; it's a character in one of his dialogues, who claims to have got the information from the Egyptians. He also says that there was an apocalyptic war six thousand years before his own time between Atlantis and Athens, a city we know on the basis of archaeology hasn't been inhabited for much more than 3,500 years.
Ask yourselves three questions:
1. How can the Athenians have fought a war against another civilization at a time when all good archaeology and paleontology tells us humans didn't yet live in developed cities or fight wars?
2. How can Plato's source have known about Atlantis? It's not mentioned in any of the preserved archives of the ancient Egyptians.
3. How can knowledge of this so-called war and apocalypse have survived until ca. 350 BCE when the Greeks didn't have reliable information about their own history going back before 1000 BCE? Hint: if you say "but the Iliad..." I am going to beat you repeatedly with a copy of the collected works of Milman Parry.
Plato created the fiction of Atlantis to make a point in one of his dialogues. Give it up already. If you believe in Atlantis you may as well believe it was destroyed by Captain Nemo with the help of a plucky fifteen year-old French engineer and a lion cub.
Re:Missing geek details (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, maybe back in 1999...but this is now. You'd get more points handing out the Google Maps link instead.
Re:The Sun? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Minoan Hypothesis (Score:1, Insightful)
Minoan culture was NOT destroyed by the eruption of Santorini. The Minoan-like Cycladic civilization (which was also influenced by Mycenaean culture) which lives on the islands between mainland Greece and Crete almost completely disappeared, but Minoan "Palace" culture continued to thrive for hundreds of years afterwards.The Minoans of 2000 BC were at the beginning of a very lengthy gradual process of centralization and growth that would eventually result in the massive palace structures.
This is another perfect example of how a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Re:The Sun? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I was just going to say. That "anomaly" is around 126 miles, corner-to-corner, and the "streets" are something like 1.5 miles wide.
I'm not sure what to call it, and suspect that it is actually just a processing glitch, but in any case, it's not exactly "city" material.
Re:The real 'atlantis' (Score:3, Insightful)
But, it is common in ancient (especially greek for some reason) to run in to a lot of "10s". Everything in ancient greek stories takes "10 years" and "100 years" and it is easy to imagine, based on this pattern, that 900 could easily be embellished to 9000.
I'm not sure where you get this generalisation from. I just can't think of anything to back it up. Though if you can cite three to five examples from pre-Hellenistic sources, I'd be happy to change my mind.
Much more common are groups of 20 years (periods of a single person's life) or 30 years (common estimate of the years between two generations), or sometimes another number within a specific text (e.g. periods of 6 or 9 days in the Homeric Odyssey, or groups of 50 sons or daughters in a few myths).
But I know of no instances whatsoever of a situation where it can be shown that a historically accurate number has been multiplied by a particular factor, whether 10 or 100 or anything else.
In other words, unless you can actually demonstrate otherwise, I suspect you're just generalising from your own familiarity with Arabic numerals. I should be interested to be corrected.