Atlantis, Atlantis, August

So yesterday the 31 for 31 challenge ended, and while I enjoyed the challenge, I also felt rather free that I no longer had to post every single day. But now, for the life of me I can’t help but feel that I need to update. Post something… anything. So I figured, why not just update on a few things. Earlier in July, I blogged about a book I brought. The Atlantis Code,  The estimated number of books written on Atlantis run into the hundreds and thousands, Atlantis is just one of the dozens of lost lands and mythical places thrown up by cultures through out history and around the world, and as Most of my blog readers will know anything Atlantis gets my interest in 0.03 seconds flat! Hence the $200+ SG: Atlantis jacket I got from the USA and owning all the Stargate seasons + waiting for one to arrive in the mail!

Well my obsession kinda possibly got worse with the end of the book, as I logged onto http://fishpond.com.au and ordered myself two more books, One book, The Atlas of Atlantis and other Lost civilizations and The Chaos Code

The Chaos Code

Matt’s dad has disappeared. An eminent archaeologist, he’s left Matt only a coded message with a bizarre set of instructions. Clues that lead Matt to the enigmatic Julius Venture and on to a world-wide treasure hunt. The race is on to find a lost treasure so powerful that it could change the world. Desperate to rescue his father, Matt knows he must get to the treasure first. With the help of Venture’s daughter Robin, and the sponsorship of an enthusiastic billionaire, Matt is soon crossing continents, deciphering codes and exploring ancient ruins in an exhausting bid to stay one step ahead of his enemies. But ancient powers are stirring, and all paths seem to lead to the same place – a magnificent pyramid hidden in the Peruvian jungle. The world isn’t ready for what Matt’s about to discover. An ancient secret that could rewrite history books. A secret that could blow open the greatest mystery of all: Atlantis.

The Atlas of Atlantis and other Lost Civilizations

Was there once a civilization more advanced than ours? One that was technologically sophisticated and more spiritually aware than we can imagine? “The Atlas of Atlantis and Other Lost Civilizations” is an exhaustivereference guide to this intriguing question. Through extensive research and beautiful illustrations, Joel Levy reconstructs these civilizations and reveals the theories about their inhabitants, culture and their fate. Including detailed maps of possible locations and an overview of the archaeological evidence, this book could change the way you see our world forever.

Table of Contents

Introduction: An overview of the theories of lost civilizations. The Mediterranean World The Atlantis Story Begins. The Americas Atlantis and the New World. The Atlantic Ocean The Site of the True Antediluvian World. The Pacific Atlantis, Mu and Lemuria. The Bahamas The Atlantean Readings. Antarctica The Piri Reis Map. The Indian Ocean The Eden of the East. Legendary Lands of the Celts. Other Lost Worlds. Atlantis and the New Age. Index.

About the Author

Joel Levy is a writer and researcher with a special interest in ancient civilizations and mysteries. He is the author of Secret History: Hidden Forces that Shaped the Past and Fabulous Creatures. Location: UK.

Prizes

The first definitive, illustrated guide to the theories about the nature and location of lost civilizations including Atlantis, Lemuria and Mu. Subject currently very popular as shown by the success of Diana Cooper’s Discover Atlantis. Features illustrated reconstructions of ancient Atlantis, detailed maps of possible locations and an overview of the archaeological evidence.

I haven’t really gotten far into the Atlas of Atlantis and the Chaos Code hasn’t arrived yet, but the Atlas of Atlantis is already interesting me with information that I really didn’t know. Just so you know if this doesn’t interest you the blog will be getting even more boring from here on in with a few pages of facts I noted from the book.

The first mention of Atlantis comes from the writings of Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher and statesman who lived in the 5^th and 4^th centuries BCE.      In two of his works, known as the Dialogue of Timaeus and the Dialogue of Critias he describes an island continent where a prosperous kingdom flourished and became the centre of a powerful empire before being destroyed in a massive natural disaster caused by the gods as punishment for its hubris.

Atlantologists, is the name given to people who study Atlantis, and they generally have a very different picture of Atlantis from the general public, of which plato painted in prose nearly two and a half thousand years ago. The Atlantis myth has been seen in many different ways. From a place with pyramids, crystals, telepathy and flying vehicles, to sci-fi wonder lands, none of which feature in Plato’s  version. He describes Atlantis as a tropical country, surrounded by mountains in a fertile plain, criss-crossed with irrigation works and in the centre of it all, a glorious capital city of concentric canals, centred on a fortified hill (or Acropolis) of palaces and temples.

Plato’s Atlantis was more of an exaggerated version of cities and states which he would have been familiar with at the time of his writing, although using bronze instead of iron as the main metal, making Atlantis a highly advanced Bronze Age civilization he even states a specific date for its peak, 9500 BCE.

The problem for Atlantologists, is that no where in conventional history is there and recognized evidence for a Bronze Age civilization of any kind from that period, let alone one as Advanced to the scale of the mythical Atlantis. Conventionally, 9500 BCE is deep with in the Stone Age period, a period of prehistory when humankind, was at best. Taking its first steps into agriculture and hadn’t mastered metallurgy, writing and monumental construction to the stage of living in towns or cities, which puts a serious disjunction between Plato’s claims and archaeology.

Over the thousands of years, millions of people have remained convinced that Plato didn’t just make up the Lost Land, and this is partly due to his description being in the form of a matter-of-fact tone and the detail and description he gives of Atlantis.

In Platos dialogue Timaeus, he describes in detail how he came into possession of the knowledge of Atlantis, and makes it clear that he acquired the story from his great-grandfather Critias, who had heard if from his grandfather who was also called Critias who learned of it from his father Dropides, who heard it from his cousin Solon.

Solon himself had learned the story during his travels to Egypt in about 590BCE, when he visited the Nile delta city of Sais, capital of the 26^th Pharaonic dynasty and major centre of religion and learning.

Solon was a figure of major importance in the early history of Athens, a warrior, poet, statesmen and lawmaker, he was known as one fo the Seven Wise Men of Athens. Upon his return from Eqypt where he had seen scribes carved into a pillar of an Egyptian temple which Psonchis translated for him, Solon begun to work on an epic verse called Atlantikos, although the poem was never completed and it is often assumed that the unfinished manuscript, or a copy of it must have come into Plato’s possession which would explain how Plato knew such detail about Atlantis.

As the myth of Atlantis has developed in more recent times, authors such as Ignatius Donnell begun to look for archaeological, linguistic and scientific evidence of the prior existence of Atlantis, Egypt begun to assume a different role in the tale, in Timaeus, Psonchis makes it clear that Egypt was not yet a nation when Atlantis ruled the known world and the kingdom of pharaos only began 500-1000 years after the fall of Atlantis, placing it at around 8500BCE, which conventional historical evidence suggest is widely improbable and that unified nations first arose in Egypt around 2500BCE.

I know that the facts kind of randomly end there, but that’s all I’ve gotten up to so far in the book, P.S. It’s not taken word from word. But I feel that when I re-write something it helps it stick in my brain just a little bit more J

But now that I’ve bored you all enough with this 4 Page long Blog. I say, see ya next time!