This seems like a misleading question. Based on what we know about the Maya civilization, the Inca Empire, Ancient China, or Ancient Egypt, I would probably agree that ancient, advanced civilizations roughly similar to how we imagine Atlantis once existed, even though I know that Atlantis is a metaphor and not a real city.
These examples are not exactly like the Atlantis described by Plato, but they're not that far off. They're all wealthy, advanced civilizations with powerful* militaries and advanced architecture, engineering, and agricultural practices.
* Powerful in their local and temporal context.
There is also the question of what is meant by Atlantis. While I have certainly encountered versions of the story that the author was referring to, I read too many "mysteries" books as a kid and the myth pops up in contemporary fiction, I typically hear of the more plausible versions of the story that can be backed up by archaeological evidence. Granted, it can also be a complete fiction.
The theory comes with several hypotheses which have not been validated or invalidated yet. to invalidate the theory would require significant (strategically chosen) archaeological surveys of the Sahara and the richat structure. The theory is falsifiable, and has not been falsified yet. That doesn't make the theory of Atlantis true, it just makes it undetermined.
Falsifying a vague hand-wavy theory of Atlantis, I agree with you. But the specific theory that Richat structure was the home of a large city 13,000 years ago that was destroyed in a flood? I wholeheartedly disagree. It's falsifiable and probably could be done with less than 1/100th the archeological investment that's been made into Egypt.
"Is it possible that there was an advanced civilization that somehow left virtually zero evidence? Yes, but why?"
Several cataclysmic meteorite strikes that ended the ice age, triggered younger dryas, caused biblical flooding, rapid environmental change, etc.
I don't think the geological evidence of this is being refuted, just the consequences of it on our understanding of human civilizational history.
2. Is there any evidence of either glaciation or flooding at the Richat structure?
3. If no on 2, then why should their civilization leave virtually zero evidence, even if it collapsed? Macchu Pichu is still there. Teotihuacan is still there. The Nasca Lines are still there. Chan Chan is still there. The Minoan ruins are still there. If this was just an abrupt collapse. why should it leave no trace?
2. There is evidence of tremendous flooding, yes. You can actually see it on google earth yourself if you go look...
3. The theory assumes there was massive flooding, which is why we have to look harder for evidence (careful subsurface excavation) compared to sites like Macchu Pichu. Also Macchu Pichu is 600 years old, and the theory of the Richat structure housing a city assumes it was destroyed 12,900+ years ago.
4. Keep in mind that it's widely accepted that 13k years ago the Sahara was lush grasslands and forests.
The article would be good if it asserted "we don't know".
For someone to post a comment like "I thought everyone knew" is so egregiously deceptive and misleading that the comment should be flagged. It's tantamount to posting "I thought everyone knew area 51 recovered aliens from Roswell." It's a conspiracy theory masquerading as an ordinary remark.
I think its accepted that ~13,000 years ago the Sahara was lush forests and grasslands, and around that time there was a significant meteor strike (or several) that hit North America and possibly the Atlantic Ocean.
Of course it would be fun to learn that Atlantis was real, so many people will be biased to want to believe it. It might not be true, but to argue it's conclusive either way I think is premature. The article states several times things like "all available evidence", which is both not true, (the article omits available evidence) and also doesn't acknowledge how little evidence is available.
"Other than having concentric circles, it doesn't match Plato's description of Atlantis" - in what way? Be specific.
"and there is no evidence that any large city was ever there." - lol, there has never been a thorough archeological survey, and the surveys that have been done have turned up evidence that points to noteworthy human activity. What about the tens of thousands of axe heads found all concentrated in one spot?
Assuming that the city was destroyed in a significant flood, we need to assume the evidence will be hard to find, and therefore we have to look hard for it before we can say it's not there.
I think OP mentions this due to your mention of meteor impacts
> What about the tens of thousands of axe heads found all concentrated in one spot?
According to Wikipedia, Stone Age axes. It seems reasonable to believe that the site provided easy access for material
I thought I was pretty clear about the strikes being in North America, but ill emphasize that point again. The formation is natural and the theory is that human settled in it for its logistical and defensive advantages (back when the area around it was lush), and then got wiped out by floods caused by global climate shifts caused by massive meteorite strikes in North America and possibly the Atlantic ocean.
> According to Wikipedia, Stone Age axes. It seems reasonable to believe that the site provided easy access for material
Sure, but given how little investment has been made into archeological studies of the area, isn't it interesting that we found evidence of some significant human activity?
It doesn't prove the theory, but its an observation that if anything lends to the theory.
The scientific method is a process of making observations, developing a theory, forming falsifiable hypotheses, testing them carefully, and then drawing conclusions, and updating the theory as appropriate.
I don't take issue with people being skeptical about all this, I just take issue with people confidently stating that it's been proven false. Their stance seems less scientific to me than the people who want to pursue experiments that validate or invalidate (or refine) the theory.
I for one just would like to know the truth, whatever it might be.
Edit: To the people who are downvoting this comment, I wish you would respond to it and explain why you think it deserves to be downvoted.
Plato pretty clearly describes the city as man-made. Perhaps Atlantis was real, but he was mistaken about how it was built, so let's give you that. However, everything else still doesn't match.
>in what way? Be specific
That's a bit bossy. It's funny that you ask me to be specific, given that you're providing no evidence for your claim other than "it's round."
Plato is pretty specific in how he describes Atlantis. He says there's a mountain 9 km away from the city. That does not match the geography of the structure. He says there are three concentric circles of land; it's unclear what would even count as a circle of land in the structure, but it doesn't look like three. Plato claims Atlantis was about 500km in diameter, but the city (i.e., the concentric rings) was only a few km, much smaller than the structure. He said there was a passage for ships into the city, half a km wide, which does not exist in the structure.
He also says Atlantis controlled Libya, Egypt, Asia, and parts of Europe. And yet there are no traces of anything? Nowhere? Nothing at all? But Plato knew about it, and nobody else?
>What about the tens of thousands of axe heads found all concentrated in one spot?
There is nothing there. There are no clay pots, no walls, and no abundance of metals or technological artefacts that should be there if this were Atlantis. There are no walls, and nothing. It's just nothing.
Keep in mind my goal here isn't to prove the theory - my stance is that the theory is falsifiable and hasn't yet been proven or disproven. My response below is based on the assumption that misalignments between the reality of the Richat structure and Plato's descriptions of the Atlantis capital aren't material enough to dismiss the theory with confidence.
I also hope that you can agree with me that if we represent the theory fairly in order to disprove it we have to acknowledge that the details will have been muddied by 9000+ years and multiple translations, etc. between the theoretical city and Plato's descriptions. That said, I have responded to each of your points below:
"He says there's a mountain 9 km away from the city. That does not match the geography of the structure." There is a 200-250 meter jump in elevation 9km north of the outermost ring of the richat structure. I agree it's not exactly a "mountain" but considering my point above, can we agree that this could be what Plato was referring to?
"He says there are three concentric circles of land; it's unclear what would even count as a circle of land in the structure, but it doesn't look like three." - Odd, it does to me... Have you tried using google earth and checking the elevation at different points in the area?
"Plato claims Atlantis was about 500km in diameter, but the city (i.e., the concentric rings) was only a few km, much smaller than the structure." - The innermost circle is about 9km in diameter. The full concentric ring structure is about 50km, and the distance between the Richat structure and the ocean is about 500km. This theory assumes that the Richat structure was connected to the ocean by a river, and the civilization would also have built up along that river (hence the 500km figure). It seems reasonable to mix up the 9km inner circle with the whole concentric ring structure.
"He said there was a passage for ships into the city, half a km wide, which does not exist in the structure." - Relative to the size of the structure, half a KM wide is only 1% of the diameter. The theory is that the city was wiped out in a biblical flood, so there would have been significant erosion and earth movement which could make evidence of specifically where this channel was located harder to determine. There may be no evidence of it, or there may be subtle evidence of it, I don't know. Of all your points, I find this one the hardest to debate, but I also think its inconclusive.
"There is nothing there. There are no clay pots, no walls, and no abundance of metals or technological artefacts that should be there if this were Atlantis. There are no walls, and nothing. It's just nothing." - As far as I know, no one in modern times has actually dug under the surface to check? I don't understand where your confidence in "there is nothing there" comes from. It's like a developer who has written a few unit tests stating "there are no bugs", just because you haven't encountered one. This confidence in "there is no evidence" I find unscientific, and its the attitude that bothers me the most in these discussions. Can't you just say "We haven't found any conclusive evidence yet, but we also haven't looked very hard"? Do you honestly disagree with this statement?
I appreciate you engaging with me, and I hope you don't interpret my labelling your one comment unscientific as a criticism of your skepticism. Its good that you are skeptical, I only take issue with the conflation between "there is no evidence" and "we haven't found any evidence".
I honestly don't know if the Richat structure was Atlantis, and my overall stance on it is neutral. If there was significant research done into it that turned up no evidence of a significant human population I would accept it. My desire isn't to prove the theory, its to be supportive of people being able to do more work to more conclusively prove or disprove the theory.
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/no-atlantis-has-not-been...
BTW, there's still the problem of claiming that (a) Plato's account is a true and faithful transcript of an actual conversation, and that (b) all the various accounts reproduced in this rather complex game of telephone are faithful, as well. If, on the other hand, we conceded that neither the conversation nor the various narrator(s) were real, but rather a figure of speech and and a rhetorical vehicle, it's kind of difficult to claim at the same time unconditional veracity for the narrative conveyed by this. Maybe, the mode of introduction and framing already gives it away?
(Moreover, there was no broader tradition before this, it just popped up with the dialogs. So it should be difficult to claim that Plato just stated the obvious in another context. How comes that this knowledge should have come down to Plato exclusively, by this complex line of famous men, via a complex chain of witnesses, without any of them having been attributed for anything alike before or after this?)
If we set aside "Atlantis" and Plato for a moment, and consider that 13,000 years ago the area around the Richat structure was lush with fauna and flora, and that there's geological evidence that around that time there were multiple cataclysmic meteorite strikes in North America (and maybe the Atlantic ocean), rapid global temperature changes, and flooding, then maybe:
- Given the very unique geography of the area it would have been a likely place for people to settle and flourish. There would have been both defensive and logistical advantages to the structure.
- They could have developed further there than anywhere else in the continent at the time
- They might have been wiped out by cataclysmic flooding that makes evidence of their presence significantly harder to detect than the civilizations we do have strong evidence for.
Is it Atlantis? Maybe not, but there a number of stiking coincidences.
With the end of the Ice Age and its consequences, plenty of civilizations may have disappeared in deep waters. The Sumerians themselves claimed they received their knowledge from a man who visited them by the sea (fish-man like creature) on the aftermath of the great flood which may have buried plenty of Atlantis-like civilizations which could be the missing links to understand how, for instance, the Egyptians built the pyramids.
三海平原
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001c6t3
The conclusion is similar to OP: Plato had way too much fun making up the story.
Originally it was meant to be a critique of democracy as practiced by the seafaring populace of Athens.
There is also nice reading list provided there.
Like are we also giving Plato's account of the afterlife the same credibility?
He's also pulling in characters from a fairly large timespan, some of which (e.g. Parmenides) are unlikely to have unlikely to have overlapped with Socrates' active years.
I was reading some of Ovid's Metamorphosis while waiting for someone else. I turned to a random page and it was an action packed description of Achilles riding his chariot while spears deflect off him and he effortlessly impales opponents. It almost resembled an anime style power fantasy or something. I wonder if Achilles was viewed more like Wolverine or Superman and people didn't really believe that there were immortal warriors blessed by the gods mowing down enemies in battle.
Ditto for The Iliad and The Odysee, yet Troy existed. That's the thing about oral traditions. They are like a telephone game where the story changes a bit with each retelling, so they are not trustworthy, but societies that engaged in epic storytelling did try to keep true to them word-for-word, and that's why some of them are epic poems: to help memorize them. So it's entirely possible that one of the people involved in this story just made it up, but it's also as likely that it was a story they passed down as well as they could, and possibly actually true.
This is not strong evidence for Atlantis being made up. Neither is the fact that Plato made up things like the allegory of the cave: we generally know when he's doing that.
The fact is that we can't find any actual evidence of Atlantis anywhere other than in tenuous ancient writings. A lot like it was for Troy. But since Atlantis supposedly goes back much longer, we might never find any of it, and so it might as well be made up, and that is a safe conclusion.
Those who say it existed nowadays tend to believe that it was in the "eye of the Sahara", in present day Mauritius, and was destroyed in a flood related to an impact event on the North American ice sheet around 11,900 years ago that caused the Younger-Dryas. That idea has the unfortunate / convenient feature that there is literally nothing there and nothing will ever be found there given the scale of the supposed cataclysm. There are huge debris fields off the coast of Western Africa where one could -presumably- find bits of Atlantis, though good luck finding anything obviously man-made in those debris fields, let alone anything that would be highly suggestive of Atlantis. If that theory is true then we'll never prove that Atlantis existed by finding it.
Edit: to be clear there is no evidence that the Trojan war happened as described, but that doesn't mean Troy is a fiction anymore then Sparta or Ithaca are.
Edit: as I said, Troy was inhabited until around 1300 and left behind many artifacts like coins. While conspiracy theorists might doubt it occasionally, it was never a mainstream view that the person I was responding to presented it as. Saying that we used to doubt Troy so therefore maybe Atlantis is real is basically saying that if we reject one conspiracy theory we should accept a separate one.
Atlantis was never real and anyone who thinks it was is a moron.
If there were truly some sort of globe-spanning advanced civilization existing ~11KYA we'd have found at least one single piece of their material culture by now, but we haven't. We have however found innumerable pieces of archaeological evidence of contemporary hunter-gatherer neolithic societies in and around all of the places Atlantis was supposed to have "Conquered" and yet not once have we found a single Atlantean trade good, pot sherd, metal working, etc. Atlantis supposedly had a bronze-age or greater level of technology and a globe-spanning empire, and we literally haven't found a single shred of physical evidence to support its existence, despite having literal mountains of physical evidence for pretty much every other major empire that's existed throughout history.
Nor have we found any genetic evidence in people or crops that there was any kind of "Empire" connecting parts of Europe or Africa as we find time and time again with real empires that actually existed in prehistory. Real empires have people and crops that move around within the empire and leave genetic evidence of the mixing of populations and breeding of crops, yet we find nothing, not even the faintest echo of Atlantis. Again, we have mountains of hard physical evidence that shows how empires like the Summerians in the fertile crescent or the Norte Chico in meso-america spread through genetic evidence in current local populations and crops, yet we find absolutely no genetic evidence to support the existence of Atlantis.
Let alone the fact the bloody story of Atlantis references how the Atlanteans went to war with Athens some 9000 years before the Athenian city-state was even founded. Just utter, complete brain-dead nonsense.
Honestly, belief in Atlantis has become something a litmus-test for critical thinking and research ability these days, as anyone that believes in Atlantis despite the overwhelming volume of evidence that firmly proves it never existed is basically saying "I'm too lazy to do my own research (Based on peer-reviewed primary sources) and / or too stupid to understand actual science."
Also f*ck Graham Hancock (And Joe Rogan via extension). MFer is the worst kind of charlatan and is broadly responsible for how many Americans believe in Atlantis.
Stay away from any thread about physics, astronomy or anywhere vaccines are mentioned if you value your mental health.
What about Gobekli Tepe?
"Nor have we found any genetic evidence in people or crops that there was any kind of "Empire" connecting parts of Europe or Africa as we find time and time again with real empires that actually existed in prehistory."
Wouldn't Europe have been mostly tundra/ice that long ago?
Also, what about this article (not Europe, but other global implications), do you dispute it specifically?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9629774/
You seem to be really upset (and frankly insulting) at the prospect of people being curious about the idea that we don't know everything about our history yet. There is a very wide gap between believing a theory is true or being certain its not true, and that gap is the humility to accept we aren't sure yet and there is room to be surprised.
Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence? What exactly is the risk? Isn't it more risky to stop developing the science and pursuing the truth? Is this really about scientific rigor, or do you have some reason to want there not to have been more developed civilizations pre-younger dryas than we previously thought existed? What's the harm to you in other people asking these questions and going out and trying to answer them?
What about it? It's one of the oldest Neolithic settlements we've identified, but otherwise, it's not particularly unusual within our understanding of Neolithic Mesopotamia.
When GP is talking about "material culture", they're (probably) referring to the archaeological definition of culture, which means you need to give an explanation as to what makes an artifact indicative of belonging to a culture. The shape of an arrowhead perhaps, or maybe the kind of style used in painting pottery. Something that lets an archaeologist dig something up and go "aha, this is culture X!" Age isn't one of those characteristics.
But of course the province of pseudoarchaeology is to come up with a theory and work everything into evidence for that theory. Atlantis is old, Göbleki Tepe is old, therefore Göbleki Tepe is Atlantean!
> Skepticism is healthy, but why be dismissive of peoples' interest to consider or search for new evidence? What exactly is the risk?
Most of the people that tend to propose these theories aren't interested in searching for evidence. See for example, Graham Hancock, who has been peddling the same theory for 30 years and has done nothing to actually produce better evidence for it except to whine that mainstream archaeologists don't want to listen to him because they're stuck in their own stupid ways. (Of course, in that same time, mainstream archaeology has thoroughly demolished the Clovis-First hypothesis which was previously disfavored, precisely because the pre-Clovis adherents actually did the legwork to produce better evidence to make it more accepted!) You can also see this with archaeoastronomy, which is borderline fringe--its better practitioners have made some success by listening to the criticisms and persevering in efforts to get better, stronger evidence to buttress their claims. As a basic rule of thumb, if someone's response to criticism is to chide scientists for being rigid in their thinking rather than going out to try to get better evidence, then that's a strong sign they're engaged in pseudoscience and not science.
As for the risk, a lot of these theories bear a deep legacy of overt racism just begin their skin; they've historically been used to devalue the abilities of the people who've made them (e.g., Great Zimbabwe). Nowadays, they've been modified to edit out the basic message of "white people taught everybody how to civilization," so it's no longer quite as overt as their late 19th century ancestors... but you can still see the lingering traces of it in "an ancient civilization taught everybody how to civilization."
Beijinger•4h ago
I am pretty sure that Atlantis existed in one way or another. We found that the the Great Flood in the book of Genesis existed, we found that Troy existed, we know that The Song of the Nibelungs / Siegfried existed, why should Atlantis not have a real history in it?
And sometimes oral history might be older than we think: Seven Sisters, which corresponds to the Pleiades star cluster. https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronom...
InsideOutSanta•4h ago
Plato never intended to describe a real city. Atlantis is a metaphor for hubris and the moral decay that follows, which, in my opinion, is quite apparent when you read his descriptions of the city. The details he describes don't make sense as a real city.
Beijinger•4h ago
InsideOutSanta•4h ago
Beijinger•4h ago
In these accounts, someone slays the lindworm, but not through direct combat. Instead, he uses an invisibility cloak, takes the creature's treasure, and bathes in its blood. Later, he meets his end due to treachery. Clearly, this is a work of fantasy.
But what about the Roman historian's lament regarding the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest? Over 150 years later, and they’re still singing his tale... the song of Hermann the German. Unfortunately, that song hasn't survived. However, the Nibelungen texts remain, where Siegfried (Hermann) defeats a long worm with shiny armor (symbolizing the Roman legions), not through open battle but by ambush (the cloak of invisibility), seizing their treasure (the dragon’s hoard), and ritually killing their leaders (bathing in blood). And, just like Siegfried, he is ultimately undone by treachery.
The parallels are so striking that it seems highly unlikely to be a mere coincidence, especially since Roman writers noted that "his song" endured for an exceptionally long time. The Nibelungen texts IS THIS SONG!
I say the Nibelungen Tale is based on facts. And the same may be the case with Atlantis.
neaden•3h ago
Beijinger•2h ago
neaden•1h ago
On the other hand we know people today make up fantasy stories all the time, so thinking that people in the past must have been just what, encoding their history in elaborate metaphor?
InsideOutSanta•3h ago
alganet•4h ago
It is true and written all across ancient records of that time.
Scholars don't fully understand why they would do such a thing. Many theories have been presented over the years. A ritual of passage, a demonstration of loyalty as bargain in exchange for a favor from a divinity, or simply a group ritual believed to reinforce the will of those within a social group.
Truth is, we will never know. Despite our best efforts, several parts of the original text describing the ritual were lost, only copies of copies remain.
nartho•4h ago
I still don't follow your point though.
nrclark•4h ago
Floods are certainly a thing that happens in nature - especially to the flood plains that surrounded large rivers like the Euphrates before dams were a thing.
Are you referring to a specific event? Or just floods in general?
Beijinger•4h ago
neaden•3h ago
You're just pointing at a flood and saying it must be the origin of a story of a flood, but there's no basis for it.
Beijinger•2h ago
Right. Mount Ararat
neaden•2h ago
Tagbert•16m ago
calebio•4h ago
Can you elaborate what you mean by the "Great Flood"? There's certainly evidence for regional megafloods, but I'm not aware of any professional geologic body that recognizes what most people mean when they say "Great Flood", i.e. a single planet-wide flood around that time period.
Beijinger•2h ago
fads_go•1h ago
implies most people since the King James version was published. Not at all clear that's what author meant; the concept of the world as we now know it didn't exist then.
So very reasonable to conclude that the Great Flood in Genesis was meant to describe a regional megaflood, which innundated the "whole world" meaning all of Mesopotamian civilization.
And there is archeological evidence of ancient cities totally buried in mud, i.e. as you say regional megafloods.
neaden•1h ago
bediger4000•2h ago
Sure, in Babylonian cuneiform texts. Other than that, no. A worldwide flood absolutely did not happen.
Why should Atlantis not have existed? The Atlantic sea floor is not crust, totally different rock chemistry.
neaden•2h ago