"Orichalcum? Damn. Here there be Atlanteans."

wfgodot

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Does metal found in a 2,600-year-old shipwreck prove that Atlantis DID exist?
Mythical red alloy said to be from the lost island is discovered off coast of Sicily


⁍ Marine archaeologists found 39 ingots of 'orichalcum' off the town of Gela
⁍ They were discovered on the sandy sea floor in a wreck under 10ft of water
⁍ Experts say they are the mythical metal Plato claimed was from Atlantis
⁍ Analysis has shown they are an alloy of copper, zinc, lead, iron and nickel
⁍ Shipwreck is a 2,600 year old cargo vessel thought to be from Greece
⁍ Researchers believe it was sunk in a storm just 1,000 feet from shore
the story at DM link above
 
Will there ever be any definitive way to prove this is the same metal that Plato wrote about? Or maybe one of those long-running scientific debates where you lean to one side or the other? I cannot wait to see what else they may find in and around the wreck. Almost seems like a hoax it is so unbelievable, but I know it isn't. Thanks! Keep us posted!
 
Coolness!!

Radiocarbon dating.
the only dating I see in the future
 
Will there ever be any definitive way to prove this is the same metal that Plato wrote about? Or maybe one of those long-running scientific debates where you lean to one side or the other? I cannot wait to see what else they may find in and around the wreck. Almost seems like a hoax it is so unbelievable, but I know it isn't. Thanks! Keep us posted!

I'm continually surprised how both sides in the "Atlantis debate" use Plato as if he were an eyewitness to Atlantis' destruction, when, in fact, he was writing centuries after the civilization was supposedly destroyed. At best, we can say Plato was documenting the legend of Atlantis as it was understood in the 4th century BCE. (I'm using legend in the literary sense of a tale passed down via oral tradition, with no judgment on whether the legend is historically true or not.)
 
When was Atlantis supposedly an active civilization? I really know very little about it. Why has this legend been passed down through today when so many others did not make it?
 
When was Atlantis supposedly an active civilization? I really know very little about it. Why has this legend been passed down through today when so many others did not make it?

It was said to thrive roughly 12,000 years ago. Plato's is not the earliest account, just the most complete we have from antiquity. (But as I pointed out above, he was writing nearly 10,000 years after the supposed destruction of Atlantis, so his is hardly an "eye-witness" account.)

As almost every Platonic scholar points out, Plato's account comes from allegories he wrote in which Atlantis was contrasted with Plato's view of a "perfect" Athens that fought the Atlanteans in the ancient past.

In other accounts, Atlantis was a utopia that became corrupted because of its inhabitants' love of technology. The account of Atlantis is attractive because human beings like to believe in a "perfect past" that can be reclaimed, if only we do enough research. Sort of the way we treat the 1950s or the Reagan years today. LOL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis
 
Sometimes I read a new thread title and I just know. You elevate the place with your mere presence, Woofy. So happy to have you with us. :)
 
Sometimes I read a new thread title and I just know. You elevate the place with your mere presence, Woofy. So happy to have you with us. :)

Ain't that the truth? Bears repeating...
 
For the record, I don't mean to ridicule the idea that Atlantis may have existed. We know there were advanced civilizations in Egypt at the time and for millennia before the high points of Athens and then Rome. The Mycenae on Crete had astonishing art and architecture, running water and indoor toilets. (No offense to art, but I think an indoor loo is a better indicia of civilization than a painting of a bull.) Most of their cities were destroyed by tsunamis and are just now being restored.

And we should remember that during the Ice Age of 10-12,000 years ago, sea water levels were hundreds of feet lower, so any civilizations from the times would be buried fairly deeply under the sea right now.

Who knows what anthropologists will discover in the years to come? It's pretty clear that the old history we learned where Mesopotamia gave way to Egypt and then to Greece and Rome in a lockstep, linear fashion was simplistic if not just flat out wrong. (The Celts of Northern Europe also left behind artifacts that we still can't completely explain.)

My point was merely the misreading of Plato because pseudo-scientists use him for their own purposes instead of reading him in his own context. Plato's "dialogues" are one-acts plays (meant to be read silently or aloud, not acted out) that use allegory and myth to teach moral and intellectual lessons. He may have been writing what he believed to be the truth about Atlantis, or he may have merely been using the myth to make a point.
 

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