Interesting link about Helike. Whether or not that was "Atlantis" is still up in the air. The approximately 400 feet (125 meters) rise in sea level with the melting of the ice-age glaciers, some 18,000 to 14,000 years ago, appeared to pause for a few thousand years, with a final rise of about 50 feet some 10,000 to 8,000 years ago. It was that final rise that apparently flooded the Black Sea basin, which by then had been settled agriculturally, with lots of farm animals. Its flooding, with residents initially taking their livestock and themselves to the hills, only to have the hills flooded, could easily have given rise to a Noah story. There are likely many thousands of archaeological sites awaiting exploration beneath the sea, along the shores of the oceans as they were 10,000 years ago, as well as along the shores of the oceans as they were during the height of the ice-ages. People were fully modern, with full intelligence, but apparently not with all the advantages of the copper/bronze/iron ages. Whether or not cities emerged, only to be drowned when the ice ages ended, is a good question. On the American continents, many Amerindian tribes likely settled on those ancient shores, and there could well be a wealth of archaeological knowledge for the intrepid future archaeologist to explore. Good luck with the treasure hunt! We see from marine terraces, with numerous ancient beach terraces going upslope some additional 400 feet (125 meters) along the current coastlines, that in ancient times, when all of the glaciers were melted, that there were even more ancient shorelines that are now currently exposed, though it is believed that those date back millions of years, and are mostly pre-human experience. It remains to be seen if over the next several millenia, additional melt will end the glaciers that remain, returning us to the ocean levels of millions of years ago.
No, you've oversimplified. We didn't go directly from cave dwellings to the Bronze Age. First came the Neolithic Era (the Late Stone Age), or the Agricultural Revolution. Farming both permitted and required humans to build permanent settlements, and therefore marked the end of the hunter-gatherer era. Permitted because domesticated plants and animals did not need to be sought out for hunting and gathering and because the resulting surplus tided us over the winter, and required because we had to stay with our crops and livestock. Before the Neolithic Era there were no villages because people could not stay in one place long enough to build them. The only archeological sites of the Mesolithic Era (the Middle Stone Age) are camps. Sometimes large, sophisticated camps, but temporary lodgings with none of the cultural and technological artifacts that accrete to a settlement. We know that the Neolithic Era began no earlier than 10,000BCE in round numbers because that is when the earliest evidence of agriculture is dated: remains of plants that were clearly hybridized and otherwise cultivated, rather than simply picked in the wild. If you're wondering, the date of the earliest cultivated crop was just this year pushed back 500 years and it was figs. If I'm not mistaken I think we've got the Dawn of Agriculture at just about 9,000BCE. Villages were populated by large tribal groups, people who were all acquainted with each other personally and most of whom were related by blood. So they operated like families, with no formal, conscious government or accounting. They were self-sufficient but traded with other villages because they had a surplus due to the efficiency of the technology of agriculture and also due to the efficiency of not having to move around. Permanent buildings, ability to store large quantities of stuff, etc. Less labor in hunting, gathering, and migrating, more labor available for other productive work like making pottery and furniture--and a way to keep it since it didn't all have to be carried around without draft animals or wheels. The next step was to build larger settlements as people from different villages moved in together to exploit division of labor and economy of scale. The farmers outside the settlement specialized in producing food, using the labor of other settlers during the times of peak workload. This left lots of labor for other activities such as songwriting, teaching, and the making of more sophisticated tools, as well as nicer clothes, houses, furniture, baskets, and pottery. The down side of this was that people were no longer all personal acquaintances and blood relatives so more formal ways of keeping society running smoothly without unfair treatment and fights were needed. Also as goods and services became more complicated and specialized, a barter economy was not adequate so someone had to invent accounting to keep track of who owed what to whom. This was still the Stone Age. Technically the Neolithic because the strongest material available was still stone, but it's usually just called the beginning of the Era of Civilization. (Literally, "the building of cities.") This began about 8,000BCE in Mesopotamia, but it also arose independently in at least five other places at slightly later dates: (not in chronological order) Egypt, India, China, Inca, Olmec. The only archeological artifacts from this era are, therefore, made of natural materials like stone, wood, shells, animal and plant fibers, etc. The invention of metallurgy ushered in the Bronze Age several thousand years later. Civilization got along just fine without metal tools for a long, long time. So when people hypothesize "ancient civilizations" going back tens of thousands of years, you can see why they are greeted with such skepticism, especially when they are so romantically endowed with metal artifacts. First we'd expect evidence of people inventing agriculture and building permanent settlements. Then we'd expect evidence of cities made of stone. All of this before the bronze tools and artwork. Lots and lots and lots of all of this!
I am skeptical of the idea that the first wave of city building had to be just a few thousand years ago. Ice age, glaciers scouring everything down to bedrock, remember? The evidence has been erased. Metals rust and get scavenged.
Lest we should not forget those pesky hurricanes did back in those 'good ole days' that have a tendency to wipe out entire coastal cities and most of the inhabitants like what Katrina did to New Orleans. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Compared to what natural disasters can be, the one that hit New Orleans was a baby. It only had the negative effects that it did have because of the flooding, which was preventable. How in Hell do we wind up with people leading us who think that what happened before is impossible now?
So, still we have absolutely no evidence for the existence of Atlantis except from the hearsay passed down to Plato, probably from some wandering transient. No such civilization could have ever existed near ancient Greece and then be gone without a trace, and there's no way, tectonically, that Atlantis could now be in such a remote location halfway around the world in the Caribbean. Do we have any new reports on what that underwater western Carribean location is all about?
It's interesting that the evidence of city-building and the end of the neolithic coincided with the last 50-foot rise of the sea circa 8,000 B.C. (B.C.E.), or 10,000 years ago. While I agree that we have good evidence for civilizations separately arising in numerous locations around the globe shortly thereafter, I do not find it impossible that there might have been another civilzation(s) that had arisen only a few thousand years earlier, only to be drowned when the last ice-age ended in bulk circa 14,000 years ago, with the oceans rising some 350 feet in only a few millenia. The people would have been driven from their homes, etc., causing great social disruption and probable reversion to hunter/gatherer traditions. That's about an inch a year of sea rise, and it flooded vast tracts of excellent farmland on all continents. Most ancient cities for which we nowadays have evidence are of course at or above the current sea-level, and most ancient civilizations formed in regions that were just slightly above sea-level (10-100 feet above). It's good to be close to the sea to form a civilzation, as it enhances the ability to obtain food while waiting for the crop to come in, etc. If that is one of the prerequisites for our ancestors to have formed cities and civilizations (being close to the sea), then I don't find it too difficult to imagine that it might have happened earlier too, only to be wiped-out/flooded by the melting of the glaciers beginning about 18,000 years ago. Genetic evidence suggests that mankind began its spread across the globe (out of Africa) in its modern form (ignoring Neandertal and other races with which we might have interbred somewhat) circa 70,000 years ago, at the height of the ice age when land-bridges existed everywhere. This was likely one or more small tribes looking for greener pastures. These, and the ones who stayed behind in Africa, were fully modern people, from which we are all separately descended, with full language ability and cognition. They certainly had the mental capability to form civilizations if their numbers were large enough in any one area. Perhaps a good place to look for an "Atlantis" would be at the bottom of the Mediterranean, or at least about 400 feet down, where it used to be dry land just before the end of the last ice-age. Of course, this is currently all speculation, and it is true that all we have are old stories passed down to the Greeks. As I said, good luck with the treasure hunt!
Tell that to a ridiculous so-called celebrity psyhic called Silvia Browne who thinks otherwise and who hasn't even got a clue on how to even spell 'Atlantis', let alone on how to find her own apt. in downdown Manhattan. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Walter is absolutely correct. The last glacial period was only 15,000 years ago. Hominids have been on earth as hominids for over 5 million years, of which we know very little if any history of. "Toumaï" (Sahelanthropus tchadensis) is classified as a hominid and dated at 6-7 million years old: "Lucy" 4-5 mya. But if you account for the much greater eras involved in plate tectonics, it would seem more reasonable to me that Atlantis would be near Greece. What the heck is that Western Caribbean location? Anybody have any new info on it?
Surely you aren't suggesting that australopithicines could have had technology that enabled them to create a civilization? You might want to look over the morphology of these hominids if so. The word "hominid" in no way implies "human," but rather "human-like" in certain morphological aspects, such as bipedalism.
I'm more in favor of the MInoans on Crete being the model for Atlantis than Thera. I've seen a few documentaries on this, and there have been many History Channel and Discovery Channel specials about it too. Thera is good... of course, they could have both been the same people. I haven't looked that much into the subject, of course.
I would love to have seen these documentaries as they seem very credible. Skinwalker: I don't know what you are trying to say? That human history is only limited to what has been written down and recorded?
No. I'm saying that the archaeological evidence for the evolution and development of the human species and hominids is clear enough that there isn't a reason to suggest or even speculate that the australipithicines were capable of technology beyond sticks and unmodified stones.
Well I can say the Ruined palace of Knossos is worth a visit if you get the chance be it of "Atlantis" origin or just for site seeing. Just remember to not delve too far into it's depths for the myth of Labyrinth and Minator still haunts the surroundings. As for it being the actual "Atlantis" well it's known when the volcano "Santorini" exploded it didn't just create a massive tidal wave which obviously would have tsunami'd the Cretian shoreline of those minioans that would of made their fishing livelihoods there, but there was also the suggestion for a giant cloud of Hydrochloric-Sulphide being jetted into the air and potential came down over the island too. As to whether the concentration was strong enough to eat into flesh or just cause damage to the lungs, it can only be speculated. Still that point in history, you wouldn't want to have been a minioan.
Gosh, I'm not trying to be picky Stryder, but I don't think there is anything called hydrochloric sulfide. I think you must mean hydrochloric acid, or perhaps sulfuric acid. Either way I had never heard of this before and wondered if you had any references. I guess it would be most likely to be sulfuric acid, since sulfur is a common constituent of volcanic eruptions - a lot more so than chlorine, I think.
Not to change the topic too much, but in Hawaii our current long-lived (20+ years of continuous eruption) volcanic eruptions result in Vog, which is highly acidic smog, quite nasty to breathe. It consists of both sulfuric acid/water vapor and hydrochloric acid/water vapor. The sulfur is from the eruption event itself, the chlorine is from the lava when it hits the ocean and reacts with the NaCl. Where I live (Hamakua coast) we are generally Vog-free, except for 2-3 days a year when the wind blows the wrong way. It sometimes makes its way to Honolulu, and they can get nasty Vog days too. Usually, it only impacts the immediate vicinity of the eruption due to favorable winds.
Ah, ha. I didn't think of an external source for the chlorine. Thank you for that Walter. A quick read in a text book and I learned that spillites, oceanic pillow lavas, have a high chlorine content that is thought to be derived from sea water.
Hippa, My bad although both acids were present, I compressed them for memories sake. Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S) would also be present. In high concentrations it's completely lethal, okay no burning carcasses, thats where other forms of Acid fallout would be possible (Acid rain for instance). Still not a pretty sight. As for the mergence of Acids, that would have still occured considering that the Volcanoes explosion was caused by a collapse in its central reservoir, which just happened to cause the collapse of an ocean ontop of the lava below. As you can guess water on lava is going to create more than just steam.
It takes a good deal of time to clear out trees to move a city. It is WAY difficult. I wonder if trees growing in the areas that weren't citified contributed to the demise of cultures. Maybe we should be thinking of those continental shelves as having soil and deciduous forest at the time the cities were flooded. The loss of just a few of the elders would change a culture from a city culture to a tribal culture in no time. A lot of people don't even comprehend simple tool-making even in 21st century America. Skills are painfully easy to lose. People don't understand the value of someone who can even do so much as carve out a limestone block and transport it.
Even worse would be if the glaciers were right there, kept at bay by the ocean, and at the same time the ocean flooded cultivated and usable land, the glaciers retreated leaving barren rock with little to no soil on it and that's all that people had.
