Anybody else forget about Atlantis being in Northern Europe?
May 27, 2001 4:51 PM   Subscribe

Anybody else forget about Atlantis being in Northern Europe? What with the Mike Mignola-designed Disney Atlantis movie coming out this summer, seems like a good time to examine one of the more elusive crackpot theories...and since this fellow beat me to it, why not just point him out? He's also got a good page on Colin Wilson, who has plenty of fascinating stuff to say on that island that suffered a day and a night of misfortune.
posted by Ezrael (11 comments total)
 
cripes, I guess my geek-cred must have disappeared to have totally to have not noticed that Mike Mignola had anything to do with this. Not like I'd expect it to be something like a Hellboy movie, but a boy can dream, can't he? Tell me that wouldn't be the best comic-book dealey yet made?
posted by foist at 7:28 PM on May 27, 2001


At least he may have gotten the part about western Cuba right.
posted by ebarker at 8:52 PM on May 27, 2001


Seriously think about the Possibilities of an older civilization for a few minutes, and about how it seems that almost all cultures in their legends lend hint to an older group of ancestors who ventured from an older land of greater power.
I feel it is Possible that there was once, in an era of lower oceans , a post ice age world where bodies of land ranging from south america to cuba to the north atlantic may have been inhabited by any number of older civilizations.
Who can say that as oceans continue to rise, our civilization will not fall prey to a great disaster and become almost extinct, only to be resurected by our surviving decendants and turned into legends of their own. Thousands of years from now, those people would too doubt our very existance.
And now as we discover that our continents basically float on the magma skin of our planet, it seems likely that land that may have existed before could have been pulled appart and sunk. As europe moves east and america/japan moves west, with the hymilayas sprouting up form said collisions, the resulting gaps in the atlantic ocean have given way to old mantle made fresh with new planetblood magama cooling in the fresh trenches. It is possible that where now exists deep sea there could have once been small strips of fertile land.

Im not saying any of this seriously happened or will happen conclusively, but that its fully possible. After all, science is full of hypothisis and conjecture. Also, if you ignore a peoples ancient story/verbal legend/lost manuscript simply because you can find one thing wrong with it does not mean that it may not hold some kernel of truth.
posted by Azaroth at 10:31 PM on May 27, 2001


sounds the way of a defence for a just cause, but with over zealous efforts, which ironically works against the cause.
consider the line in the first paragraph: 'a 13th century ancient Finnish text'.
13th century is hardly ancient, also a long way off from c.2500B.C.

um, and the disney production's promos feature a very anime style shot in which the princess mononoke looking heroine is back lit by a bright light while a sudden breeze explodes her hair and her boobs. i guess i just want to say how much disney productions suck.
posted by elle at 10:43 PM on May 27, 2001


I don't remember the details, but I think the theory that has Altantis in the Greek Island of Santorini makes the most sense to me: Santorini used to be a fairly large island by Greek standard that at some point around 1500 BC had ~50% of its surface submerged (big volcano can do that). In the last coupla decades, a huge submerged city and several villages were discovered on the island.

Hey, go judge for yourselves: Santorini is a huge tourist destination (because of its beauty, not the Atlantis connection).
posted by costas at 11:13 PM on May 27, 2001


Let me just say that pretty much all I ever seem to do is think about the possibilities of ancient civilizations...or alternate universes...or physics and magic...but I think we need a lot more evidence before I'll buy the Oera Linda book, or for that matter the Flem-Ath's theory about Atlantis being Antarctica.

But they're fun, and I like fun.
posted by Ezrael at 12:29 AM on May 28, 2001


But they're fun, and I like fun.

And it's good to have the MeFi kabbalist back in town.
posted by holgate at 10:01 AM on May 28, 2001


Costas, another page of the linked site is devoted to (feebly) debunking the Santorini theory. That theory, by the way, is not that Thera *was* Atlantis, but that the explosion of Thera destroyed or at least crippled Minoan civilization, and that Crete was the place that, a few centuries later after a Greek dark ages, was reborn in myth as Plato's Atlantis.

skallas, I agree that skepticism is a pretty blunt instrument. But there are more arguments here than just "I'm skeptical." Like, any advanced civilization tends to leave evidence of material culture behind, so where are all the Atlantean artifacts? Are they *all* submerged under the rising oceans? That would mean that all the artifacts of a culture were confined to a narrow coastal strip and never got traded outside that area?

On the other hand, we've recently been discivering previously unknown civilizations in Central Asia, so it's possible. But there too there are special circumstances that have kept thise civilizations from being discovered (desertification). We might find similar things in the Sahara too. But that's not Atlantis.

For my money the two most likely answers are:
a. Atlantis never existed in any form; it was just a fairy tale
b. The Thera/Knossos story
posted by rodii at 10:17 AM on May 28, 2001


I think that the ancient idea of Atlantis was probably based on something. My vote would be America.
posted by davidgentle at 1:35 PM on May 28, 2001


Atlantis: Don't let Disney teach you history!

Oh... wait....

:)
posted by owillis at 2:24 PM on May 28, 2001


The article mentions the Institute of Metahistory in Moscow. What the hell is metahistory? And why do the Russians have an institute for it?
posted by ktheory at 6:53 AM on May 29, 2001


« Older Its existence has been debated   |   Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments