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So what are folks thoughts on it?

A number of years ago I stumbled across a website of a professor who claimed that he had pinpointed its location. On the submerged portion of Indonesia. He listed evidence for it, and the forum on his website was a place of active discussion over the matter. Now I felt he was dead wrong, and the local residents thought of me as a troll, since I certainly spared no effort in pointing out holes in the theory.

Here's the website if folks wanted to look at it. The forums no longer exist.

http://www.atlan.org/

That being said, I feel there maybe some grains of truth to the tale of Atlantis, and while I doubt it was even close to what Plato described it as, there was probably something that inspired the story.

Well people did find a sunken city off of Crete IIRC. A portion of the island had sunk into the ocean.

I don't doubt there is a grain of truth to Atlantis itself. I very much doubt its in Asia.

The Minoans did have some pretty advanced stuff for their time period. Running water being an example if I remember my History correctly. So a Minoan city sinking into the sea would certainly line up with Atlantis(advanced culture sinking into the ocean)

Even if the Disaster took several days it could still easily be embellished to have happened in a single night. After all, they didn't have real time communication, so by the time everybody heard about it it would have already been over with. And if a city was built right next to the sea it could still have happened in a few hours. Maybe there was a giant sink hole involved. We know how fast those things can happen. And if it was next to water it would have been like the city fell into the sea.

I just hope all the ley lines don't flare up at once and raise Atlantis from the seabed. IDK if we could handle all those True Atlanteans and their magic tattoos.

It's one of those things - I don't people could honestly claim that at no point in history did some or all of a city fall in to the sea -we do like to live on the coast, and sometimes the land mass changes very quickly. There's certainly a few human ruins found under the water here and there.

On the other hand, we also have a basic, primal urge to tell stories about sudden, dramatic apocalypse, and we've never shown any hesitation of making stuff up if it produces an entertaining yarn. King Kong anyone?

So yeah, maybe part or all of a city did fall in to the sea, and that led to a story that changed and evolved over time to become the Atlantis myth. Or maybe one day someone just thought it'd be awesome to tell the story of a city thrown in to the sea...

Isn't Atlantis supposed to a utopia? An imaginary/idyllic setting crafted by Plato for his writings?

I agree with Sebster. How would Plato have known about the place in Indonesia? Unless merchants carried the tale to Athens, it's unlikely that he would of known about the archipelago.

As long as the new and improved (badass) Aquaman is ruling it, and not a complete d-bag like Namor, I'm cool with it.

With stuff like the Antikythera mechanism turning up in the Med, and stories of similar exploits (Archimedes and the burning mirrors), there is likely to be some truth to the myth. The Library of Alexandria would probably have mentioned it a fair bit, but....

But, did no-one else mention it at the time?
We have Plato mentioning the place, but surely there are other writers we have works from.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Isn't Atlantis supposed to a utopia? An imaginary/idyllic setting crafted by Plato for his writings?

Yes, that's it.

The search for Atlantis doesn't really suggest that we've gotten smarter since the days of ancient Greece, does it? Perhaps in some distant future, posthumans will be hard at work looking for alternate universes names Oz, Wonderland and Narnia.

I don't recall Atlantis being a Utopia. I always remember it being described as a powerful advanced society that dominated its neighboring cultures, before its destruction at the hands of the gods. Hardly a Utopia.

Arguably Atlantis was something completely made up by Plato as his writing style basically hinged on telling stories to get his points across and Atlantian society has some parallels with his Republic.

That said, there are lots of sunken cities along the Greek coast and the Aegean Sea. One, Helike, actually did reportedly sink overnight and wasn't discovered until 2001 even though the ruins were somewhat visible in shallow water on a sunny day. This could have inspired Plato's analogy of Atlantis as Helike sank in 373 in the middle of Plato's life (Plato first recounted his story of Atlantis reportedly in 360).

I can believe in an Atlantis being an ancient city sunk in antiquity becoming folklore in the middle east.

This could cover a number of places wasted by the eruption of Thera in approx 1610BC. Knossos being one of the best candidates.

However an Indonesian sunken city cant be Atlantis however big it is or how much remains as I very much doubt irt would influence the cultures of the med.

But it is true we don't really know for sure how much contact there was between the Mediterranean and Asia in ancient times.

The longer the distance traveled the greater the chance for embellishment too. A story making its way from Indonesia to Greece could pick up a lot of extra details, more than a tale from Crete could anyway. It could also explain why Plato was the only person who wrote about it. He's the only one who bothered to write that story down.

The Indonesia theory is complete balderdash. Surely Plato knew where the Pillars of Hercules were (rather he at least knew what direction they were in), and for all the theorizing some people make, the Pillars are a geographical features that has historically never referred to anything east of Greece.

Plato hardly needed a story from the East to inspire Atlantis. Most coastlines around the world have some sunken cities on them. There were plenty of local examples.

Its possible that there isn't any single city that can be pointed to as the Atlantis Plato describes.

It could be an amalgamation of sunken city stories that all came together.

Location came from one city, time of disaster from another, details of the civilization from a third, and so on. I seriously doubt the Indonesian angle, but its not impossible. I'd buy Atlantis being in South America or the Caribbean before it being in Asia.

Like I said earlier. Atlantis is most likely a made up story, probably inspired by the sinking of Helike which would have been a big deal in Plato's lifetime. Plato's description of Atlantian society so closely mirror's his Republic that it becomes very quickly obvious that he was trying to relate in story how a Republic would work. It was his style to tell stories. His own contemporaries ridiculed the idea of Atlantis in the same way they attacked his Republic, suggesting they were very well aware of this.

EDIT: Further, Plato originates the tale to the Greek poet Solon (who also happened to be Plato's ancestor) a major advocate centuries earlier in Athens for political reforms somewhat in line with Plato's own ideals in Republic. In the Ancient World crediting your work to another famous person from the past was often used to gain legitimacy. By crediting the story of Atlantis to Solon, Plato not only got to enforce the credibility of his story and thus his ideals but he also emphasized his own lineage.

It's most likely a combination of historical events mixed with embellishments to make a story of it.

From the description of the events that led to the destruction of Atlantis it bares a similarity to the destruction of the Minoan colony Akrotiri (now Santorini) by the volcano that it sits on, in the bronze age, also ending the Minoan civilization as a power in the med.
Events like that tend to hang around in stories or folk memories, even for the thousand years prior to being written (or even re-written) into the legend of Atlantis.

Helike happened in Plato's lifetime and it is possible was the primary cause for the writing of the the story as it is known to day by adapting a previous story of the fate of Akrotiri with the familiar "this is what happens to those who disobey the gods".

Unfortunately Atlantis is label assigned to all sorts of things basically for attention or as a generic label. "The" Atlantis (as opposed to an Atlantis like city) outside of the Mediterranean is at closest proximity unlikely and at distance (Americas/Indonesia) Ancient aliens territory.

Edit: this is mostly opinion on my part, I would also like to point out that stories tend to be written as happening "just over the horizon" as it were, as a plot device to allow the writer freedom without being too alien to the readers.

 LordofHats wrote:
Like I said earlier. Atlantis is most likely a made up story, probably inspired by the sinking of Helike which would have been a big deal in Plato's lifetime. Plato's description of Atlantian society so closely mirror's his Republic that it becomes very quickly obvious that he was trying to relate in story how a Republic would work. It was his style to tell stories. His own contemporaries ridiculed the idea of Atlantis in the same way they attacked his Republic, suggesting they were very well aware of this.

EDIT: Further, Plato originates the tale to the Greek poet Solon (who also happened to be Plato's ancestor) a major advocate centuries earlier in Athens for political reforms somewhat in line with Plato's own ideals in Republic. In the Ancient World crediting your work to another famous person from the past was often used to gain legitimacy. By crediting the story of Atlantis to Solon, Plato not only got to enforce the credibility of his story and thus his ideals but he also emphasized his own lineage.

This is pretty much the case, right here.

 Orlanth wrote:
This could cover a number of places wasted by the eruption of Thera in approx 1610BC. Knossos being one of the best candidates.

Yeah, I've always been happy with the idea that the Minoan civilization with its capital at Knossos was the kernal of truth to Plato's story. However, I tend to believe it was just a story to illustrate his point, and not actual truth that Plato was spouting.

However, I'm also fond of the idea that it is off the coast of South America, because sometimes it is jjust more fun to "believe" in crap like this!

http://www.atlantisrevealed.com/pages/section1/page1.asp?pageid=2

Of course, if you are a researcher in this kind of stuff you must have a degree in hyperbole and misrepresentation of fact.

Though to be honest, it's a bit unlikely that he would have known about Knossos as well. A lot of Greeks regarded the Trojan War as fact, and considering that the Minoan collapse would have happened 1000 years before that . . .

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
Though to be honest, it's a bit unlikely that he would have known about Knossos as well. A lot of Greeks regarded the Trojan War as fact, and considering that the Minoan collapse would have happened 1000 years before that . . .

Not really, the height of Minoan Civilisation was ~1400bc making them a contemporary of another advanced society of the time, Egypt, to them the Island of Crete and it's nation was known as Kaftor. It also helped that Minoans were skilled seafarers and traders as well as literate to some degree. An influx of 'sea-people' immigrants during the Greek age of Palaces (Myceanean iirc), just Prior to the Greek Dark Age also roughly correlates. This would explain a strong oral tradition of a great nation in the sea that disappeared in Fire. Then of course there is the obvious, Knossos was already a part of Greek Oral tradition, even before it's fall.

That's true, but Plato was a Greek. The fall of the Minoan civilization isn't really that well documented. After all, history in the modern sense wasn't really around until Herodotus' "Inquiries" (and even so, that's not really in the modern sense either . . .). The Sea Peoples came around a bit later, more during the end of the Mycenaean period instead of the Minoans. I did get my dates a bit off though (damn, I do classics, I should know this crap!).

 Easy E wrote:

However, I'm also fond of the idea that it is off the coast of South America, because sometimes it is jjust more fun to "believe" in crap like this!

http://www.atlantisrevealed.com/pages/section1/page1.asp?pageid=2

Of course, if you are a researcher in this kind of stuff you must have a degree in hyperbole and misrepresentation of fact.

Thats also part of the history of the story. Greeks and Romans for the most part never took the story seriously. It's not until the discovery of America (beyond the pillars of hercules) and the finding of advanced civilizations there that resparked interest in Plato's tale, except the Europeans of the time suddenly started taking an analogy as a serious historical inquiry.

Atlantis was destroyed by the combined might of the various different Pantheons of Gods because the Atlanteans became corrupted by and started worshiping the Titans, which threatened to send the World into madness and death. Then they moved it to the south pole and buried it under a shield of ice so it would be forgotten and no one would find it's relics and whatnot.

Duh.

 Bromsy wrote:
Atlantis was destroyed by the combined might of the various different Pantheons of Gods because the Atlanteans became corrupted by and started worshiping the Titans, which threatened to send the World into madness and death. Then they moved it to the south pole and buried it under a shield of ice so it would be forgotten and no one would find it's relics and whatnot.

Duh.

Hmm...not sure if trolling.

The "duh" should have tipped you off.

djones520 wrote:So what are folks thoughts on it?

A number of years ago I stumbled across a website of a professor who claimed that he had pinpointed its location. On the submerged portion of Indonesia. He listed evidence for it, and the forum on his website was a place of active discussion over the matter. Now I felt he was dead wrong, and the local residents thought of me as a troll, since I certainly spared no effort in pointing out holes in the theory.

Here's the website if folks wanted to look at it. The forums no longer exist.

http://www.atlan.org/

That being said, I feel there maybe some grains of truth to the tale of Atlantis, and while I doubt it was even close to what Plato described it as, there was probably something that inspired the story.

I think that if you did anything less than throw tomatoes and openly ridicule that professor, then you did not go far enough.

It is written quite plainly that Plato's use of Socratic dialogue references Atlantis as a fiction in the Timaeus (sp?); on par with Christopher Walken telling the tale of the watch in Pulp Fiction: only an idiot would ever think that it was a historical account, as opposed to a work of fiction.

I guess he found mu instead of atlantis or maybe the restplace of Cthulu?