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

Hallo!

On Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:00:45 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> I actually believed in the possibility of a Saharan
> Atlantis for the longest time, including the trans-
> Saharan Nile bit.  Then I began to believe in the
> Black Sea Flood theory and connecting Atlantis
> with that, before I finally realized that all the
> ancient Greeks and Romans understood perfectly
> well that Plato made up the whole thing!
After I dumped the high-tech Atlantis of my juvenile
conworlding folly, I pretty much lost interest in the
matter and more and more tended to assume that Plato
just laid a big egg for later generations to speculate
about and that no Atlantis ever existed.

Then came the Elves - I eventually realized that the
lost civilization in the British Isles which I fancied
to underly the Germanic and Celtic traditions of elves
could have something to do with the Atlantis myth:
Plato's description of the island of Atlantis actually
fits Britain quite well (sure, there are no elephants
there, but another source of ivory, namely walrusses);
and identifying the "Atlantic Sea" with the North Sea
seems to make sense, too (Atlas must have stood at the
pivot of the sky, which is of course in the north).

Yet, I am not sure about that, as there are things that
do not fit nicely.  The dates given in Plato's tale are
of course complete hogwash, and Britain evidently did not
sink beneath the waves (this part of the tale may indeed
be based on a distorted tale about the Santorini disaster).
There probably also never was a war between the Elves on
one side and Egypt & Greece on the other (at least, in
my conhistory, such a war does not occur).  So I would say
that, rather than being Atlantis proper, the British Elves
may have contributed a *part* of the tale Plato made up.

To conclude: I think Atlantis is just a tall tale Plato
invented to make a philosophical point, but he may have
drawn on stories that were in circulation in his time,
including tales about the Santorini catastrophe and
stories about the British Elves, if the latter actually
existed.

... brought to you by the Weeping Elf

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