Re: Atlantis (was Re: Juvenile fooleries (was: Re: Neanderthal and PIE (Long!))

And of course Atlantis gave rise to the legend of another King Arthur
- Aquaman, a.k.a. Arthur Curry.  So we come full circle. :)

Which is a sideways way of pointing out that as a comic book geek -
whose conlangs were made to flesh out the backstory of my own
superhero creation - I considered Atlantis to be somewhat old hat, and
therefore didn't incorporate it into my mythos at all, even though it
would seem a natural fit to the current Dankaran backstory. It was all
over the mainstream comics of my youth.  The "still around but adapted
to undersea life" version was of course alive and well, with Aquaman,
the Sub-Mariner, Superman's mermaid girlfriend Lori Lemaris, etc, but
there were also series dedicated to the ancient aboveground society,
which usually was depicted as mystical (c.f. Arion).
    But now that I'm more aware of the ability to spin fresh takes out
of old material, it may be time to revisit that decision and toss a
bone Plato's way... I may do this backwards and develop a juvenile
Atlantis fantasy in my 40's. :)



On 10/20/08, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...> wrote:
> Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>
>> quoting me:
>>
>>> If Plato exaggerated the size of Atlantis by a factor of 10, its
>>> dimensions would fit reasonably well with Crete, and if he
>>> exaggerated the age by the same factor, it would fit reasonably well
>>> with the time of the mentioned catastrophe, it seems. Cheap
>>> storytelling trick, I guess.
>>
>> Yes.  It is also sometimes proposed that Solon (whom Plato cites as
>> source of the myth) mistranslated from Egyptian.  Indeed, the Minoan
>> hypothesis is widely considered one of the more likely candidates,
>> but it suffers from the problem that Crete and Santorini are not, as
>> seen from either Greek or Egypt, beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
>
> Of course. But it seems to me that the real Atlantis story is the
> story of the fate of the Cretan culture, blended with the myths
> surrounding the mysterious growths in the Sargasso Sea, which seemed
> to indicate a sunken continent. And probably some other stuff as
> well. To create a good myth, you take the best parts out of what's
> already available and blend it well. It's the same thing with the
> Arthur of Britain stuff, I think, for example.
>
> LEF
>
--
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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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