{"id":1039,"date":"2017-10-12T21:41:29","date_gmt":"2017-10-13T04:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/?p=1039"},"modified":"2017-10-12T21:41:29","modified_gmt":"2017-10-13T04:41:29","slug":"sinking-atlantis-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/2017\/10\/12\/sinking-atlantis-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinking Atlantis: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It is an attractive vision: a golden city of high culture that flourished long ago, but which came to a terrible end through its pride and greed, and now lies in ruins under the sea.\u00a0 All of which makes it, not only a thumping good story, but a perfect allegory for hubris, otherwise known as getting too big for your britches; or for entropy, the tendency of things to fall apart. But is it history or allegory? Folk-memory or a fiction? I\u2019ll talk about that in this series, sparked off by recent discussions on Gunung Padang<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For the Atlantis narrative, whether fact or fiction, has taken on a life of its own in\u00a0our times. Many books have been written around it; it shows up in movies, television, computer games, mystical cults, even a tragic opera<\/a> and an attempted musical<\/a>. Its magical name has been bestowed on all manner of things, from bouncy castles<\/a> to luxury hotels and even a space shuttle (though calling a space shuttle after a place that vanished catastrophically seems to me as tactful as naming it after the Titanic<\/em>.) It has spawned generations of searchers for its watery grave, or its coded residue in the remains of known ancient civilizations.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In short, Atlantis has a complex resonance in modern culture, not just for its classical connotations, but also for its strands of mysticism, ancient glamour, and lost wisdom. Over the centuries, as well, the legend has been expanded to include two other sunken continents, Mu and Lemuria, each with its own story. It is worth going back to the origins of the narrative, and then to trace it forward to see where and how all those strands joined the evolving tapestry. Here we go.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Origin<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The first mention of Atlantis is in the writings of Plato, preeminent Greek philosopher living in the 5th<\/sup> to 4th<\/sup> centuries BC: pupil of Socrates, mentor of Aristotle, author of The Republic<\/em> and many other works of philosophy and political theory. The relevant works are two that were written late in Plato\u2019s life, c.360 BC: Timaeus<\/em> and Critias<\/em>.\u00a0 They are in Plato\u2019s favoured format, dialogues on matters of mutual interest, in this case involving Plato\u2019s old mentor, Socrates, and three other aristocratic Greeks: Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates.\u00a0 Timaeus<\/em> is set on the day after the dialogue presented in Plato\u2019s Republic<\/em>, which described the ideal political state, though the latter was written about twenty years earlier and involved different speakers. With Timaeus<\/em>, Plato was evidently setting out to write a trilogy that would expand upon and illustrate some of the themes of The Republic<\/em>; alas, Critias<\/em> was left unfinished, and the third projected dialogue, Hermocrates<\/em>, was never written.<\/p>\n

Timaeus<\/em> makes only passing reference to Atlantis, as an illustration of the idealized state discussed in The Republic<\/em>, but the ideal state is not<\/em><\/strong> Atlantis\u2014it is the virtuous Athens of the distant past. Critias\u2019s illustrious collateral ancestor Solon, visiting Egypt, was told the story by a rather patronizing Egyptian priest and passed it down orally through his family. The tale goes that, 9000 years before, Athens liberated the Mediterranean world, including Egypt, from the tyranny of an evil empire situated on an island in front of the Pillars of Hercules, generally recognized as Gibraltar \u2013 an empire that was then destroyed by earthquake and flood.\u00a0 Then Timaeus takes over and spends the rest of the dialogue delivering a monologue on creation and the nature of things.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The next day, it is the turn of Critias to deliver a monologue. He first describes the noble Athens of 9000 years ago; then he moves on to describe Atlantis and its origins, founded by the god Poseidon and settled by Poseidon\u2019s children out of a mortal wife, Kleito.\u00a0 The capital is described as a city of rings of water and land around the original hill where Poseidon had first bedded Kleito, on a large, fertile plain fringed with mountains and abounding in all good things, including elephants. The continent on which it stood was ruled by descendants of the original ten kings, the sons of Poseidon out of Kleitos, who met regularly in the central temple of Poseidon to sacrifice a bull and work out their decrees.<\/p>\n

Through the generations, so the story goes, Atlantis became ever grander and more fabulous, with palaces and towers, great statues, harbours, and bridges over the broad canals that still divided the city into concentric rings. The vague nature of Plato\u2019s visual descriptions has given modern artists, writers, and alternative scholars a free hand in gorgeously envisioning it. In general, their visions of lost Atlantis break down into three broad categories:<\/p>\n