[pmayrgundter]

Agreed.

It's turned into a very fun and interesting side project for me.

In particular, the Atlantis story in Plato's Timaeus is historically written off as intentional myth, despite the literal claims to the opposite in the text. If taken as a historical account, it tells of an unprecedented impact, conflagration and deluge within a millennium of the YDIE.

"Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth, which recurs after long intervals... For there was a time, Solon, before the great deluge of all, when the city which now is Athens was [preeminent]."

The following story tells of a large land in the middle of the Atlantic that sank after the conflagration and deluge. The invasion of the Sea Peoples from the direction of the Atlantic, and the establishment of cities by the remnants of these times. These would used to seem preposterous, before the discovery of the by-far oldest megalithic site at Göbekli Tepe 9500-8000BCE, the same dates given for the founding of Athens and Sais in Timaeus.

There's a great literature review channel on YT:

[Prehistory Decoded](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx11KXwumf5w8J-GdBGKNVA)

And here's some resources I've developed:

[The Story of Atlantis](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dQbm3QNHnYD5xDwDjZXm1M8i...)

[Comparative Energies of Catastrophic Events](https://docs.google.com/document/d/14EslUTRCwOgc_EobxH6X5e01...)

[jcranmer]

> The invasion of the Sea Peoples from the direction of the Atlantic, and the establishment of cities by the remnants of these times.

The Sea Peoples (at least, those involved in the ravaging of the Hittites and the Egyptians) appear to have come from the vicinity of the Aegean Sea, although the Mycenaean collapse would suggest that they do not originate there. (At the same time, there's no actual written documentary evidence of Mycenaean collapse; that it was caused by the invasion of the Sea Peoples is informed by archaeological evidence of a discontinuity in material culture that happens at about the same time the Egyptians and Hittites are reeling from the Sea Peoples. It's actually consistent with the evidence that displaced Mycenaean peoples are the Sea Peoples as recorded in Egyptian stelae. There is 0 evidence that the Sea Peoples came from the Atlantic or anywhere other than the Eastern Mediterranean.

It's also worth remembering that the Younger Dryas occurred c. 10,000 BC, while the invasion of the Sea Peoples happens c. 1,200 BC. That is, the Sea Peoples happened closer in time to the present than it did to the Younger Dryas.

[Maursault]

> If taken as a historical account, it tells of an unprecedented impact, conflagration and deluge within a millennium of the YDIE.

More likely, Timeaus describes the destruction of Santorini, c.1600BC (we can't trust Plato's dating, just that it occurred in the distant past). Plato's "Pillars of Heracles" would have been describing a place other than Gibraltar, (the earliest reference of which is 600BC in Peisander's Heracleia (fixing the number of Hercules labors at twelve), yet the Greeks were unaware of the Atlantic Ocean until the voyages of Pytheas ~330BC, during Plato's lifetime, suggesting another location for the Pillars). The destruction of Santorini also neatly explains the Ten Plagues of Egypt described in Exodus.

[1] https://greekreporter.com/2022/05/10/new-findings-on-santori...

[pmayrgundter]

Yeah, but if you discard the time and the place from stories you can make them fit anywhere.

I doubt the Greeks were so ignorant of history that they'd mistake the meaning of 9000 years for 1000 years (Solon was ~5-600BC). We had no trouble maintaining their histories using similar practices since, over 2500 years, and we would hardly mistake that for say 250 years.

But the Greeks were surely aware of the Atlantic Ocean and meant the same Straight as we mean by Gibraltar[1]. The Timaeus calls it "Ἀτλαντικοῦ πελάγους"[2] or Atlantic Sea, and the Phoenicians[1.1] were well settled West of the Straight much earlier than your literary reference:

"The new [Phoenician] chronology suggests an Atlantic exploration period, during the tenth century B.C., followed by later ninth century colonization. Gades (Cadiz) was founded west of the Strait."[3][4]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Hercules [1.1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Hercules#Phoenician... [2]http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... [3]https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol78/iss78/4/ [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicia#Genetic%20studies

[osiris-with-ED]

How would you explain the presence of landmasses corresponding to the Atlantis myth that can be found in the Azores plateau? Additionally, the legend itself was recovered from Egypt, so whether or not the Greeks had knowledge of the Atlantic would have no bearing on if the Egyptians (or, more importantly, the people who were their progenitors) had this knowledge.

[Maursault]

> How would you explain the presence of landmasses corresponding to the Atlantis myth that can be found in the Azores plateau?

Simply, they do not correspond. The Azores were discovered in the 14th Century, and there is no archeological evidence of any settlement or even an ancient advanced civilization prior to the Portuguese settlers. Also, there is no evidence in the Azores of any ancient catastrophe.

The mistake is in assuming that in 300BC, Gibraltar was known as the Pillars of Heracles. Except that it wasn't. Another place, very close to Greece, was known as the Pillars of Heracles. Stop looking in the Atlantic.

And please look at a satellite image of Thera/Santorini and compare to Plato's description (ignoring his obviously ridiculous continent-sized scales). After the catastrophe, Santorini looks like the description of Atlantis before the catastrophe.

Following the broad strokes, a catastrophe destroyed a civilization, which could and most likely describes the Minoan civilization that was destroyed in a catastrophe, namely, the destruction of Santorini.

[simonh]

There are many dozens of theorised locations for Atlantis, tye Azores is only one and not a particularly compelling one over any of the others IMHO.

The Egyptians at that period and before were far, far worse sailors and navigators than the Greeks, or pretty much anyone else. I really wouldn’t trust anything they would say about distant geography or navigation.

[ncmncm]

An Egyptian expedition sailed all the way around Africa, starting at the Red Sea and returning via the South Atlantic, taking three years. They reported the sun on their right as they rounded the Cape, which was taken as proof of fabrication, to the ancients.

Egyptians achieved a great many impressive things, over millennia, the overwhelming majority of which we have little or no record of.

[simonh]

That was a Phoenician expedition recorded by the Egyptians.

[ncmncm]

I am corrected. ISTR the expedition was funded or instigated by a pharaoh, but could be hallucinating.

A whole mess of authentic Egyptian hieroglyphs were found carved in rock faces in Australia, a few decades back. They were recently examined and translated by an expert in ancient Egyptian language. They turn out to describe the disastrous end of a big expedition a bit over 2000 years ago. Some of the symbols used entered dictionaries only a few years ago, so they are unquestionably authentic.

[tastyfreeze]

A follow-on hypothesis to the YD impact hypothesis is Atlantis existing exactly where Plato's Timaeus describes. West of the Pillars of Heracles in the middle of the Atlantic. That describes the Azores. If the YDB hypothesis is correct and immense amounts of ice were removed quickly the spheroid of Earth would change shape dramatically. The previously ice covered areas rebound up and areas that were squeezed out subside. Couple isostatic rebound with immense amounts of meltwater and it is possible that the Azores plateau was above sea level despite now being under 2000 meters of water.

Of course there isnt much evidence to support this hypothesis and it is dependent on the YDB impact hypothesis being correct. But, I found the possibility to be intriguing.

I demonstrated the idea of isostatic rebound to my kids by squeezing a balloon describing my hands as the ice pressing on the land. The bulges between my hands are areas not covered by ice. When my hands are removed the bulges disappear as previously covered areas bounce back up and squeezed out areas drop down.

[Maursault]

> West of the Pillars of Heracles in the middle of the Atlantic.

The fatal mistake here is that in ancient Greece, the Pillars of Heracles was definitely not Gibraltar, and Egyptians would not have employed Greek myths. The Greeks had no knowledge of Gibraltar nor the Atlantic Ocean until decades after Plato wrote Timaeus. It was only centuries later that Gibraltar became known by that moniker. Plato was talking about another location in the Aegean, close to Greece, that his readers would have been familiar with, unlike Gibraltar.

[osiris-with-ED]

Excellent point. Please note that the Egyptians referred to the objects in the solar system as egg shaped. This sybolism survives in the memphis-misraim masonic rites, but they are considered clandestine and independent from mainstream masonry, reader beware.

[bitcurious]

The invasions of the Sea People was closer to us in time than the Younger Dryas was to them. The timeline just doesn’t work.

[pmayrgundter]

Sorry, yes, I don't mean the invasions during the Bronze Age[1].

I have wondered though if the generic name for them suggests a general origin of the remnants of the Atlantic civilizations that were perhaps destroyed from the YDIE

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples

EDIT: yeah fair, I hadn't read thoroughly on them. They're too far away in time to be reasonably related.

[jcranmer]

The generic name for them comes from... the fact that they are identified (in contemporary written sources) as coming in boats.

Trying to hypothesize instead that the name comes from their link to Atlantis fails Occam's Razor hard.