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

From:Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
Date:Friday, October 17, 2008, 21:17
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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Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...>