“It never happened in the world,
- they say ironically to me, -
of the country that has disappeared forever
in the ocean's empty depths.
We shine a spotlight in vain
in this kingdom of underwater shadows.
But do fairy tales only need children?
Adults need fairy tales much more … "Alexander GORODNITSKY," Atlantes. In Search of Truth "," How many miles to Atlantis?"
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A LITTLE HISTORY
Hardly any other myth can compare with the legend of Atlantis - a mighty island-state that sank into the deep sea overnight - neither in universality, nor in vitality, nor in constancy of success. The fabulous country of the Atlanteans did not give rest to the contemporaries of Plato (real name - Aristocles, 427-347 BC) - the author of this legend, and has not lost its appeal to this day. It is rightly noted that if you put together everything written about Atlantis, then a new unusual monument to human gullibility and imagination will rise above the Egyptian pyramids.
Atlantis does not fit within the tight bounds of any one concept; there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of them - and each has its own logic, its own meaning and is closely intertwined with the rest. However, all hypotheses have one thing in common: they cannot be tested. Neither those who are sure that Plato was right, nor those who don’t believe him a dime and believe that he invented everything, can prove once and for all the validity of their point of view.
However, let's turn to the legend itself. It's not that long. The entire Platonic myth of Atlantis was put down by its author in paragraphs 20d – 26e of the dialogue "Timaeus, or On Nature" and in paragraphs 108d – 121c of the dialogue "Critias, or Atlantis". True, in these creations, Plato broadcasts about the event not on his own behalf, but through the lips of a certain Critius, and the narrative chain is by no means short. According to Plato, he learned about Atlantis from Socrates (his teacher), to whom Critias told about it, to whom his grandfather (who was also called Critias) told about it, who, in turn, heard this story from Solon himself (638 -559 BC, "the wisest of the seven wise men", the famous Athenian legislator), to whom, during his stay in Egypt (about 570 BC) in the city of Sapis, for some reason, the local priests told that before strait,which the Greeks called the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar), "nine thousand years ago" there was a certain island that "exceeded in size Libya and Asia combined." Moreover, this "island" was not the only one in the Atlantic Ocean, which in the west was covered by such a large land that "the entire opposite continent … really deserves such a name." The power of the Atlanteans extended not only to many islands and parts of this continent, but also to Libya, Egypt and Europe "up to Tyrrenia." Such were the sovereign Atlanteans. “But later, when the time came for unprecedented earthquakes and floods, in one terrible day … Atlantis disappeared, sinking into the abyss. After that, the sea in those places until this day became unnavigable and inaccessible due to the shallowing caused by the huge amount of silt,which left behind a settled island."
The passage on Atlantis in Timaeus ends here. Then the story continues in "Critias", where in the process of the story Critias (read - Plato) develops the idea, giving details. Once, he says, the gods divided the Earth among themselves - “… all the countries of the earth. They did it without strife …"
Atlantis went to Poseidon during the division: “… at an equal distance from the shores and in the middle of this plain,…, there was a mountain, low on all sides. On this mountain lived one of the husbands, at the very beginning brought into being by the earth, by the name of Evenor, and with him the wife of Leucippa, their only daughter was called Kleito. When the girl reached the age of marriage, and her mother and father passed away, Poseidon … united with her; he strengthens the hill on which she lived, separating it from the island in a circle and enclosing it alternately with water and earth rings … of greater or lesser size, drawn at an equal distance from the center of the island as if with a compass. This obstacle was insurmountable for people …"
While equipping, Poseidon also exuded two sources from the earth - warm and cold - and made the earth bear various and sufficient fruits for life. Kleito also did not waste time and managed to give birth to five pairs of male twins. Poseidon divided the island into ten parts and distributed them to the children. The firstborn of Poseidon, named Atlantis, became king, from which, in fact, the name of the island came - Atlantis.
The island, covered with dense abundant forests, supplied its inhabitants with everything they needed to feed domestic and wild animals. Even elephants were found on the island. People never stopped decorating Atlantis. They built the royal palace there, "where stood the abode of God and their ancestors." "From the sea, they drew a canal … so they created access from the sea …, preparing sufficient passage for even the largest ships."
The island on which the royal palace stood was five stades in diameter1. "The kings surrounded this island on all sides, as well as the earthen rings and the bridge with circular stone walls, and on the bridges near the passages to the sea they erected towers and gates everywhere." “If some of their buildings they made simple, in others they skillfully combined stones of different colors for fun, giving them a natural charm; as well as the walls around the outer earthen ring, they molded copper along the entire circumference, applying the metal in molten form; the wall of the inner rampart was covered with tin casting, and the wall of the acropolis itself was covered with orichalcum, emitting a fiery glow."
As long as the Atlanteans lived virtuously, in accordance with the laws and "in friendship with a kindred and divine principle," they were happy, and Atlantis flourished. But when the divine principle inherited from Poseidon weakened and the human character prevailed, the Atlanteans were unable to endure their wealth, lost decency, exchanged moderation for stinginess, beauty for ugliness, good for evil.
The retribution, of course, was not long in coming: “And Zeus, the god of the gods, who observes the laws …, thought of a glorious family that fell into such pitiful depravity, and decided to impose punishment on it, so that he, having sobered from misfortune, learned goodness. Therefore, he summoned all the gods to the most glorious of his abodes, established in the center of the world, from which one can contemplate everything involved in birth, and addressed those gathered with these words …"
At this point, the manuscript of Plato's "Critias" breaks off, and with what words the Thunderbolt addressed the gods on the occasion of the fallen Atlanteans, for us, alas, remained unknown. But nevertheless, we know from the beginning of the story of Cretius and from the Timaeus what the punishment of Zeus was: firstly, the Atlantean troops were crushed to smithereens by the Athenians, and secondly, Atlantis was completely swallowed up by the ocean abyss …, the Lightning Rebel did not skimp on punishment when he wanted to make people "more moderate and wiser."
In Plato, the legend of Atlantis takes up very little space: only two or three paragraphs in the Timaeus, plus a few pages in the Critias. True, he did not finish his "Cretius". Didn't Plato write? Or is the topic tired? Or is the plot run out?
ATLANTIS: VERSIONS, VERSIONS, VERSIONS …
Without going into the reasons why Plato did not finish the story of Atlantis and its sudden death, it should be noted that if we proceed only from Platonic stories (in which there is not even an insignificant amount of accuracy, which readers generally have the right to expect from a mathematician), then the real the existence of Atlantis seems more than doubtful. The Platonic myth has no material basis either in oral or in written legends of ancient Greece, such as the Trojan War or the journey of the Argonauts. If the events retold by Plato from the words of Cretius (and those from the words of a number of other people) did take place, then they took place in times so distant that memories of them were simply not preserved in the historical memory of the people. In addition, there are so many interpretations and interpretations of Plato's texts, from antiquity to the present day,that this inevitably misleads any researcher who is ready for any unbiased judgment. And since the unfortunate Atlantis was placed everywhere - from America to Sri Lanka (and even to Mongolia) and from Iceland to Central Africa - an endless sea of information about it was poured out, no less deep than the one in which Atlantis itself drowned., and it became almost impossible to separate truth from fiction.and it became almost impossible to separate truth from fiction.and it became almost impossible to separate truth from fiction.
There are four main approaches to Platonic texts.
The first approach: to take Plato's words on faith literally - they say, the abyss of Atlantis, which has been swallowed up, is resting on the Atlantic bottom somewhere “on the other side of the Pillars of Hercules”.
The second approach: to admit in principle the existence of Atlantis, but not in the Atlantic Ocean, but in another place; the number of hypotheses of this kind and their versions is incalculable.
The third approach is to consider Plato's narrative as nothing more than a colorful salad from Egyptian legends and actual historical events closely intertwined with them that took place at different times and in different places. This point of view does not at all allow formulating a holistic working hypothesis.
And, finally, the fourth approach, which coincides with the opinion of the famous Aristotle - a student of Plato: Aristotle was convinced that his teacher simply invented the myth of Atlantis in order to more clearly state his philosophical, political and ethical views and still reach out to the minds and hearts of his fellows. Hellenes. In his doubts, Aristotle was not alone, and the skepticism of himself and his supporters was based on rather serious arguments. And many researchers both then and now shared and share the point of view of Aristotle.
Why, pray tell me, Plato was the only ancient author who told about an island (mainland?) On the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar, which disappeared into the depths of the Atlantic in the 10th millennium BC, i.e. about 12,000 years ago? Why is there no mention of this event in any text preceding the appearance of his dialogues "Timaeus" and "Critias"?
Why, if Plato learned about the existence and death of Atlantis during his stay in Egypt (although he refers to Solon, who at one time also visited this country, and not even directly to him), he gives such meager descriptions of - and being Atlanteans, and cataclysm? Plato lived in Egypt for (presumably) thirteen years; really during all this time he did not ask the priests for details, if he (or even not himself, but Solon) learned about everything from them? Was it really not interesting? Or did the priests not want to speak? Why then did they even talk about Atlantis?
Plato says practically nothing about the sources of his knowledge of Atlantis. Everything that we know apart from what is told in the "Critias" comes from one of Plato's disciples, a certain Posidonius. Posidonius reports that Plato himself once rather mysteriously said about Atlantis: "Perhaps this story was not invented." Everyone is free to think about this phrase …
And yet Aristotle and his supporters constituted a rare exception: from ancient times to the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, no one doubted that Atlantis lay at the bottom of the sea where Plato "drowned" it, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. … The ancient author Markel, although he lived after Plato, wrote in his Ethiopic: “… the inhabitants of the islands have preserved the memories of their ancestors about the Atlantic island, which existed there and was really unusually large; for a long time he ruled over all the islands of the Atlantic and was himself equally dedicated to Poseidon. " The great geographer of antiquity Strabo (1st century AD) also did not exclude that the land of the Atlanteans actually existed: "The story of the island of Atlantis may not be a fiction."
The systematic exploration of the oceans, which began during the Great Geographical Discoveries, naturally forced the inquisitive to return to the topic of Atlantis. It is no less natural that in the initial period of the American conquest, Atlantis was identified with the newly discovered continent. Someone Francesco Lopez da Gomara raised his voice in defense of this postulate back in 1533. The Spaniard Oviedo believed that the island of King Atlanta was in the possession of the Amazons - in Brazil, i.e. In South America. However, objections were already heard then: Plato, as you know, placed Atlantis not somewhere, but in the ocean, and described it as an island lying in front of a huge continent, which, in principle, could be America. This did not add clarity in any way.
The mystery of Atlantis has always worried the inquisitive, and they, by virtue of their mind and soul, tried to find its rational solution, or, at least, to offer a consistent solution. In the 16th century, the Frenchman Pitton de Tourainefort, based on the texts of Diodorus of Siculus, suggested that once the Black Sea (Euxine Pontus) had no communication with the Mediterranean. Feeding on the waters of the great rivers flowing into it, the sea "overflowed", flooded part of the adjacent land, broke through natural barriers and formed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits. Further, the waters of the Black Sea rushed into the Mediterranean Sea, raising a gigantic wave that swept to Gibraltar, released into the Atlantic Ocean and covered Atlantis, which was supposedly exactly opposite the Strait … The hypothesis is no better and worse than any other. However, studies of the second half of the twentieth century indicate thatthat after the formation of the straits, not the waters of the Black Sea rushed into the Mediterranean, but quite the opposite, and it was the Black Sea coastline that significantly changed its shape.
In the eighteenth century, new opinions were born - Atlantis began to be pushed to the north. The French writer Fabre d'Olivier assumed that the Atlanteans were northerners, or Boreans, and fought the southerners, or Pelasgians. When, a little later, traces of an ancient settlement were discovered on the island of Helgoland, some scholars, primarily Jurgen Spanut, began to prove that traces of the Atlantean civilization should be looked for in the Baltic and nowhere else. In his opinion, the cause of the death of Atlantis was the fall of the comet Phaethon at the mouth of the Oder with all the ensuing consequences.
It was also believed that the mysteriously disappeared land was somewhere in the region of Iceland, or even in the region of Greenland. Some have tried to draw parallels between Atlantis and Denmark …
But not only European or northern options were born into the light of God. For example, in the eighteenth century, the French geographer F. Buachu expressed himself in the sense that Atlantis rests on the seabed somewhere between the Cape of Good Hope and Brazil. And Jean-Sylvain Bailly in his "Letters about Atlantis" (1799) even assured that the island-mainland sunk into the abyss of waters must be looked for already … in Mongolia (!). This, perhaps, will be worse than the "submarine in the steppes of Ukraine"! True, for some reason, this venerable man did not explain where among the endless Mongolian steppes there should be a sunken land. The nineteenth century endowed the Atlantists with the ideas of Pierre-Andre Letrea, who had no hesitation in sending the ill-fated Atlantis straight to Persia. At the end of the 19th century, the Frenchman Etienne Berlu placed the Platonians on the mainland in the Atlas Mountains region of Morocco: the sunken island in the mountains is the place …
In 1922, the German H. Schulten suggested that Atlantis was the legendary city of Tartess at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River, north of the Spanish city of Cadiz. Opponents objected: Tartess was destroyed by the Carthaginians, not the sea. They took it by storm. However, in 1973, in the Atlantic, 270 miles west of Tartess, from the Soviet research vessel "Akademik Petrovsky" at a depth of about thirty meters at the top of the Ampere seamount under a layer of sand, they actually discovered some strange vertical formations that, with the known imagination could be mistaken for the remains of the walls of a sunken ancient city! In 1982, research was continued. A whole system (!) Of "walls" was photographed from the board of the new Soviet research vessel "Vityaz" with the help of towed equipment, and a diving bell was lowered onto one of them,whose crew even managed to get a sample from this "wall". Studies have shown that this is a basalt rock and it was formed not under water, but on the surface. Atlantis?! Alas: the geologists of the expedition came to the conclusion that this rock is of natural origin …
The German explorer L. Frobenius advised looking for Atlantis in Africa, somewhere within the ancient kingdom of Benin. At the height of their power, the Atlanteans allegedly extended their power from Mauritania to Angola. The works of researchers who called for the search for Atlantis in the Maghreb and the Sahara have become classics.
The fact that in the Bronze Age the Sahara was not a desert at all prompted some authors to put forward a hypothesis that once there was a certain inland sea in the Sahara, suddenly devastated by an earthquake, and the death of the civilization that existed on its shores gave rise to the myth of Atlantis. Only if the sea was "devastated", then how did Atlantis manage to sink?
In the 30s - 40s of the twentieth century "an outstanding seeker of antiquities" of the Third Reich and the creator of "Annenerbe" Heinrich Himmler was ready to die to the death that Antarctica was the sought after "land of the Atlanteans", the ancestral home of the "Aryan race".
Etc. Perhaps, to this day, only Australia and New Zealand have, by some miracle, managed to avoid identification with Atlantis, but let's not forget that human thought is inquisitive, and the 21st century has just begun …
Of all these hypotheses and assumptions, the most logical are those according to which Atlantis was located somewhere in the center of the Atlantic Ocean. Most pundits believed that Atlantis was located in the triangle formed by the Canary and Azores and Madeira. It was these pieces of land that remained on the surface of the ocean after its flooding. And history seemed to confirm their correctness.
When the Spaniards discovered the Canary Islands in 1402, they found Guanches, tall, white-skinned people (who were soon exterminated). The Guanches seem to have been the descendants of some unknown civilization; in their language and social organization, the Guanches closely resembled the ancient Egyptians. But where did they come from in the Canaries? Opinions were expressed that either the Guanches sailed from Egypt on ships, or the Egyptians were heirs, and the Guanches were almost descendants of the legendary Atlanteans. This assumption looked quite plausible, since the Guanches, according to the surviving information, owned the technique of building ships. And everything would be fine, but the hypothesis of the death of Atlantis in the 10th millennium BC is refuted by geological data: the Canary Islands in their present form were formed about 15 million years ago.
Generally speaking, many of the coastal peoples of the North Atlantic have strange cults and traditions that favor an "Atlantic" version of Atlantis. For example, one of the legends of the North American Indian Sioux tribe says that their ancestors, like the ancestors of all other Indians, came to America from some island "lying in the direction of the rising sun", that is, to the east of the American continent. But to the east - the entire Atlantic to Europe itself, and the Sioux ancestors could well have come to America, for example, from "foggy Albion", as the British did later. In Uxmal (Yucatan Peninsula), the temple of the Maya Indians has survived to this day, the inscriptions in which glorify "the eastern lands where we came from." The Aztecs also kept memories of the "sacred island in the east", of the "land of the sun",which was called Aztlan and where the great bearded and white-skinned god Quetzalcoatl ruled (for whose messengers the conquistadors of Cortes were accepted and successfully passed themselves off). The Nahua Indians call their ancestral home a certain country Nooatlan - "land among the waters" - and claim that the vast land to the east of America was allegedly destroyed at one time by "the fury of fire and sea".
Supporters of "Atlantic" Atlantis make other arguments, usually in the form of questions. Why does the word "god" in the Basque language sound like "Inca", and in the mythology of the Quechua Indians this is the name of the son of the sun and his representative on earth? Why did the inhabitants of the mighty empire of Tihuatinsuyu (pre-Columbian Peru) call themselves Incas, and their ruler the Great Inca? Why does the sun god of the ancient Egyptians, Peruvians and the inhabitants of Easter Island bear the same name - Ra? Why are vertically placed stones, megaliths and pyramids so characteristic of all Atlantic civilizations? Why are there many place names on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean with the same root, for example: Mount Atlas in Morocco, Atlas on the American coast, Aztlan in Central America? And the ancient people of the Atlanteans (!) in North Africa? And why, finally, it is the titan Atlas who holds the firmament on him, and not just anywhere, but just near the Pillars of Hercules?
Are there too many coincidences? Not at all.
For a person impartially trying to understand all this, a simple listing of the similarities of different peoples and cultures in itself cannot serve as a proof of their common origin from a single root. The number of types of human behavior and human inventions is quite limited. Linguistic forms are also not endless, moreover, the word "Inca" among the Incas did not mean "God", but "man", and the Incas did not associate themselves with any overseas ancestral home. All the myths that make it possible to give an answer to incomprehensible natural phenomena have similar features. The pyramid has the geometrically most advantageous shape and volume, and therefore it is it that builders choose for the construction of a structure of maximum height without the use of binding solutions (cement, lime, etc.). All people belong to the same biological species,and the brain of all representatives of the species Homo sapiens functions according to the same fundamental laws. All people inherited from their ancestors a certain number of social patterns of behavior, which is why there is such an abundance of similar customs among different peoples (compare at least the feudal hierarchical ladders of England and France with the Japanese: this is what is called a "Japanese phenomenon", because the similarity is practically the same to one).
However, supporters of the "Atlantic" Atlantis were not going to give up and brought more and more new arguments. According to some, the "huge amount of silt" left by the sunken continent, which Plato wrote about, allegedly points to the Sargasso Sea, covered with floating algae - Sargasso, as the location and death of Atlantis. However, the depths in this place are about 5,000 meters, no silt, "left by the mainland", at such depths, is not able to interfere with navigation, so if Atlantis sank, it is clearly not here.
Others loved the Ice Age. According to their version, during the last glaciation, when the level of the World Ocean was almost a hundred meters lower than the modern one, Atlantis was on the surface. During the melting of the polar ice, the ocean level rose and swallowed Atlantis, and this happened just over nine thousand years BC, which supposedly confirms the date of the catastrophe indicated by Plato. No doubt, the argument is weighty. Only the melting of glaciers and the rise in the level of the World Ocean took place for a long time, and not during "one terrible day", as written by Plato. In addition, this hypothesis does not indicate at all where Atlantis was, and the rise in sea level during the melting of glaciers during periods of warming is a global process.
The hypothesis based on the migrations of eels looks somewhat more convincing. These snake-like fish swim into the Sargasso Sea from virtually all water bodies in Europe and North America to complete their reproduction cycle. Their offspring are born precisely in the depths of Sargasso. Then the fry again go to the continental rivers, find them (how - it is still not clear), there they turn into adult fish, and when the time for the next reproduction cycle comes, they return to the Sargasso Sea. The question is: why? Some people in this regard believe that Atlantis was once on the site of the present Sargasso Sea, and eels bred offspring in its huge swamp. After the flooding of the island, many generations of eels changed, but the instinct, as you know, is a stable thing, has survived to this day.
However, studies of the ocean floor in the region of the Azores, carried out since the second half of the twentieth century, have shown that there is a zone of magma squeezing out in this region; the substance squeezed out from under the earth's crust accumulates and pushes the European and African continental plates to the east, and the American ones to the west. At the same time, the subsidence of the earth's surface does not occur, since completely different tectonic processes affect the zone of the supposed location of Atlantis.
COULD PLATO DO ANYTHING?
So to the question whether Atlantis existed, there were no answers, and there are still no answers. To the question of whether it could exist, the number of presumptive positive and negative answers is divided approximately equally, therefore this question remains open. But to the question of whether Plato could have invented his Atlantis, one has to answer in the affirmative: yes, he could, and most likely did so.
This point of view is not new. As noted above, the first to question the sincerity of Plato was his student Aristotle (384-322 BC), who believed that Plato invented Atlantis to illustrate his philosophical views, primarily on the state. Many ancient scholars agreed with Aristotle: the structure of the Atlantean state was painfully similar to the ideal state models proposed by Plato in his dialogues "State" and "Laws". Nothing is impossible in this. In the 16th century, the Englishman Thomas More did the same and invented a certain island of Utopia (Mora's "Utopia" was published in 1516), whose inhabitants had a state structure and a way of life that seemed to him the most correct. Why, then, for the six hundred years now, the inquisitive ones, with perseverance worthy of better use, have been trying to find Atlantis,but no one is eager to look for Utopia? Why is Thomas More worse in this respect than Plato, and Utopia worse than Atlantis?
Further. Plato in his "Critias" assures that the Egyptian priests allegedly told the story of Atlantis to Solon, and from him, two generations later, it reached Plato himself. But why then did Solon not mention anything about the sunken island? And one more thing: why did the Egyptian priests even need to tell something to a foreigner, and even about the events of 9000 years ago? Especially when you consider that the Egyptian priestly castes were very closed organizations. Besides, how could the Egyptians themselves know about the events that took place 9,000 years before Solon? After all, the first state formations on the territory of Egypt emerged only at the beginning of the 4th millennium BC, i.e. more than 5,000 years later!
In addition, Plato in his narrative operates with the names of purely Greek gods - Poseidon (the founder of Atlantis) and Zeus (her destroyer). However, the Egyptian divine pantheon was significantly different from the Greek, both in the functions of this or that god, and in its position in the hierarchy, and not a single Egyptian deity had a direct analogy to the Greek Zeus and Poseidon. Plato directly names the Greek gods by their names. What, the Egyptians told Solon the story of Atlantis already transformed into the Greek religious system (which in itself was not so simple a matter)? It is highly doubtful. Most likely, Plato simply did not take these differences into account when he wrote his legend about Atlantis, hence the inconsistency.
And what about Zeus' punishment? Plato's first point is the defeat of the Atlanteans in the battle with the Athenians. However, in the 10th millennium BC (that is, approximately 11,000 - 12,000 years ago), no Athens did not exist yet: Greece at that time was still in the Neolithic. In any case, historical science knows nothing about such an early Athenian state. The history of Ancient Greece (i.e., Greece of the Argonauts, Mycenaean and Trojan War epochs) is generally conducted only from the end of the III millennium BC. So, talking about the war between the Atlanteans and the Athenians, which allegedly happened 9,000 years (!) Before Solon, who lived in the 6th-5th centuries BC, immediately followed by the catastrophe, Plato was clearly over the edge! And it seems absolutely improbable that the memories of such events were preserved for so long in a non-literate era:here it is appropriate to remember that the first hieroglyphs also appeared only after almost five thousand years …
By the way, Diogenes Laertius wrote about how Plato's dialogues should be interpreted (late 2nd - early 3rd century AD). In his opinion, one should approach Platonic dialogues in three stages: first, find out what the meaning of each of his statements is; secondly, for what it was expressed: for the development of thought or to enhance its imagery (to reinforce the thought or to challenge the interlocutor); thirdly, whether the statement is true.
So Plato could easily come up with a legend about Atlantis and its terrible death. This is also indicated by his enigmatic phrase that this story, "possibly" (!), Is true. Perhaps not. All this looks great like a saying to Russian folk tales: “I don’t know, people are telling the truth, or they’re lying, but it was just like this …” Or - the style “a la Pushkin”:
“Behind the forests, beyond the fields, beyond the high mountains
an island on the sea lay. There was a hail on the island …"
Further - according to the text of "Timaeus" and "Kritias".
COULD ATLANTIS HAVE A PROTOTYPE?
It is not excluded, however, that Plato nevertheless copied his Atlantis from a real historical event, however, seriously changing the plot, time and place of action.
We are talking about the monstrous explosion of a volcano on the island of Santorini (Thira, Fera), lying in the Mediterranean Sea about 120 kilometers north of the island of Crete, which happened in the 15th century BC - perhaps the most powerful volcanic explosion in human history. An explosion that gave rise to a tsunami about a hundred meters high and caused the death of the mighty state and the magnificent Minoan civilization of the island of Crete, which flourished just at the time of the cataclysm.
For almost five hundred years, from the twentieth to fifteenth centuries BC, the Minoan state of Crete was the ruler of the entire Eastern Mediterranean. The relative island isolation of Crete protected it from invasions, which was so rich in the Bronze Age, and a strong fleet defended the island better than any fortress. In Crete, magnificent palaces were built: in the north of the island - Knossos and Mallia, in the south - Festus, in the central part - Monasteraki. The capital of the Minoan state was Knossos, the city-palace of the legendary king Minos, from whose name the name of the civilization of Crete - Minoan was derived. It seemed that this state, born and nourished by the sea, was indestructible.
Athens was the first to give the signal for an uprising: the Athenians refused to pay tribute to Crete. The Minoans probably began to prepare a punitive expedition against the obstinate Hellenes and pulled their entire fleet into the metropolis to load troops. And here…
So it was or not, now, of course, it is impossible to say, but the fact remains: about 1450 BC (according to other sources, ~ 1628 BC), the explosion of a volcano on Santorini Island put an end not only to dominion, but also the very existence of the Minoan state.
Thus, the power of the volcanic explosion on the island of Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait in 1883 was estimated by experts from 20,000 to 200,000 Hiroshima bombs (i.e., from 250 to 2,500 Mt of TNT equivalent), and the explosion of the Santorini volcano in the middle of the II millennium BC just 120 kilometers from Crete, it is believed to have been twice as powerful! The roar of a monstrous explosion was heard in Egypt, i.e. a thousand kilometers from Santorini, as if it had exploded somewhere nearby2. Gases, vapors, ash and rock debris were thrown out to a height of tens of kilometers; a cloud of volcanic ash reached Egypt, causing the famous "Egyptian darkness" described in the Bible (and this is a thousand kilometers, and to Crete - only one hundred and twenty). The explosion generated an unprecedented monstrous tidal wave-tsunami with a height of over one hundred meters (and some computer models of the cataclysm give a wave height of almost two hundred meters!), At a speed of over 600 km / h swept almost the entire Mediterranean and completely destroyed all coastal villages and ports the dying island, as well as, of course, his entire fleet. It is pertinent to recall the destruction and casualties caused by the tsunami on December 26, 2004 in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India and Somalia. But the 2004 tsunami was no more than ten meters high on the crest, and here it was over a hundred! The ensuing earthquake destroyed the cities of Crete, and a thick layer of volcanic ash (in the northern and eastern parts of the island its thickness reached several meters) destroyed crops and the entire agricultural soil layer. Yes, and from the shock wave, Crete also probably got it: with such an explosion power, 120 kilometers is not a distance. The landscape of the island has changed beyond recognition. The rich vegetation has disappeared; mud and eruption products, trees uprooted, debris of buildings, corpses of people and animals littered the ground. Masses of pumice floated to the sea surface. Then (as it happens after any eruption) torrential rain poured down (it is possible that acid), and the picture of the catastrophe was aggravated by numerous mudflows and landslides, following the outgoing killer wave that carried the remains of life into the sea … If you put it all together - a tidal wave - tsunami, earthquake, mudflows, ecological disaster - then you can get a distant and rather pale idea ofwhat Crete looked like the day after the explosion of a volcano on the island of Santorini … The Minoan civilization was over.
An impressive event. Did Plato know about him? It is not excluded and even probable. Perhaps it was this story that the Egyptian priests told Solon at one time (the famous J.-I. Cousteau, who identified Atlantis with Minoan Crete, adhered to a similar point of view). When Plato became aware of it, the latter did not limit himself to simply retelling it, but on its basis created a completely new legend, creatively reworking the plot.
In this case, Crete was undoubtedly taken as the basis for Atlantis. However, there are the following differences between the prototype and the legend.
Crete is much smaller in size than the mainland island described by Plato in Timaeus and Kritia: Crete is only 250 kilometers long, 50 kilometers in its widest part, and the length of its valley is only 180 kilometers. Atlantis was ten times larger: its valley, according to Plato, was 10,000 stades long, or 1,800 kilometers.
Then, the date of the catastrophe is 9,000 years before Solon, i.e. in the X millennium BC. Well, and the size of the Atlantis fleet is 1,200 warships alone.
And finally: the location of Atlantis in the open ocean behind the Pillars of Hercules and its plunge into the abyss.
However, many researchers have questioned the size and date. Even Diodorus of Siculus believed that Plato's 9,000 years are a mistake and that in reality 9,000 months should be read, or about 900 years. That is, Plato was mistaken almost exactly ten times. The same - with the size of Atlantis and with the size of its fleet. If the Platonic values are reduced ten times, then it just turns out that the size of Atlantis was almost equal to Crete, the catastrophe occurred somewhere in 1500 BC or so (900 years [before Solon] + about another 600 years [from the time when the legend was told to Solon, BC] ~ 1,500 BC [approximate date of the disaster]), and the size of the Atlantean navy in this case was equal to 120 ships. Well, and with the location of Atlantis (Crete) Plato, to put it mildly,confused - Crete was not in any Atlantic and did not submerge anywhere.
And what if we assume that Plato did not confuse anything and was not mistaken in anything, but simply in his dialogues "Timaeus" and "Critias" deliberately increased ten times in comparison with the real prototype (Crete) all the numerical values - and the age of the event, and the size of the island, and the number of ships, etc. - and also changed the geographical location of his Atlantis and its subsequent fate? Then everything falls into place, and Aristotle's assumptions that Plato invented Atlantis for the greater clarity of his views and ideals are fully confirmed.
Moreover, Plato used in this case an almost win-win trick.
First, he, albeit indirectly, hid behind the authority of Solon - one of the greatest Athenians, from whom this legend allegedly originates.
Secondly, he chronologically pushed events so far (by 9,000 years) that the consciousness of his listeners and readers simply did not cover such a temporary distance. In our opinion, it sounds like "God knows when." Anyone can try to imagine when it was - even if not all 12,000 - 11,000 years (from 2010 AD), but only those 9,000 years that preceded the years of Solon's life.
Third, Plato placed Atlantis behind the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar), i.e. to the Atlantic. At the time of Plato, the Greeks had a rather vague idea of what lay beyond Gibraltar and what the Atlantic Ocean was. Therefore, for the ancient Greeks, the expression "on the other side of the Pillars of Hercules" meant approximately the same as for us - "the devil on the horns." A very accurate description of the location of Atlantis, isn't it?
Fourth, Plato flooded his Atlantis, i.e. originally made any real travel to it impossible.
Not bad, right? And Atlantis existed, God knows when, and the devil knows where, and besides, it also drowned! And such an "island" can be given any size, populate it with anyone - even giants, even dwarfs, even fools, even geniuses, even with hound heads, even without heads at all - establish any social order there - and talk about everything this ad infinitum. And even more so, you can build on such an "island" everything that your soul asks for - even water and earth rings with walls and a palace inside, even a tower to heaven. And go ahead and check if this is so - the island has sunk … And then why not say so meaningfully and mysteriously: “Who knows? Maybe not bullshit …"
As for exaggeration tenfold, tenfold exaggeration is a favorite technique of almost all summer and fabulists when there is a need to somehow highlight a particular event or pay attention to certain circumstances. And Plato in their ranks is no exception. In order to captivate listeners with his theories about the state structure, he turns a relatively small island in the Eastern Mediterranean into a huge land in the Atlantic, inhabits it with a powerful people who endows with a rational social structure that seems to him and to whom he attributes colossal achievements (in fact, the same technique applied two thousand years after Plato and Thomas More in his "Utopia"), and then ruins it all in a terrible cataclysm. The tragic end of Atlantis, like any dramatic end in general,primarily intended to enhance the impression of listeners or readers from what they have heard or read. Any accomplished writer knows this. True, for the sake of order, Plato should have provided his "Timaeus" and "Critias" with some kind of note like: "based on the catastrophe of Santorini and the death of the Minoan kingdom of Crete" or something like that. But then, of course, all the charm would have disappeared …
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Of course, everything stated above is nothing more than another hypothesis added to the great pyramid of "Atlantis" hypotheses, and in no way is it worse or better than the rest. But maybe the mysterious lovers are better off doing something more productive than chasing a ghost named Atlantis? And if not, why not start looking for Utopia at the same time?..
PS
Here it is necessary to give a certain explanation. In everything that is written, it is only about that Atlantis, which and how Plato described. No Lemuria, Mu Continents, etc. the author did not mean it. For there is nothing worse when some - about Thomas, others - about Erema, and in the end it turns out that they were talking about Prokop …
Author: I. S. DYBOV