Atlantean "elephants" were perhaps mammoths?

I think a lot of people miss the point that Atlantis was an Ice Age island, coincidentally (?) destroyed at approximately the same time of the last rapid glacial retreat in the Northern Hemisphere. Some people would like to search for it in some far-away corners of the globe, but if you're going to pay any attention to Plato's description, Atlantis pretty much had to have been where the Azores are now. Recent bathymetric scans of the Azorean plateau have come up with so many correspondences to Plato's description that it barely warrants further debate.

Anyway, one of the more interesting details Plato offers in his description of Atlantis is that "elephants" inhabited the island. Indian and Asian elephants were and are too far away from the mid-Atlantic island, and while elephants are good swimmers, it's doubtful that they could have made it all the way from Africa to the Azores.

But during the final years of the last Ice Age and Atlantis, there were plenty of wooly mammoths to be found in North America. Mammoths were plentiful in North America until around 11,000 years ago, in fact.

So one needn't stretch one's imagination very far to envision a small population of wooly mammoths crossing a seasonal ice bridge that could could easily have extended from the northeast coast of North America to the uppermost islands of Atlantis. Remember, too, that coastlines were also extended because of the decrease in sea levels, making the distance between North America and Atlantis even shorter.

A breeding population of mammoths stranded on some of the northernmost islands in the chain along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge would be much more likely to either swim or use seasonal ice packs to make the rest of the journey to Atlantis. Well-trained mammoths might come in quite handy for building large-scale public works (such as the capitol city and the Temple of Poseidon) without there being a tremendously large indigenous human population available for labor.

Of course, the catastrophic destruction of Atlantis didn't leave any solid evidence behind. The Azores are what used to be the mountain tops, and no sensible person would expect to find Atlanean artifacts or mammoth remains there, even if the destruction wasn't so very long ago.

Curious, though, that considering the shoreline and ice pack conditions during the end of the last Ice Age, Plato's strange mention of "elephants" is not so ridiculous after all.

[edit on 10-2-2007 by SuicideVirus]

I think a lot of people miss the point that Atlantis was an Ice Age island

Including Plato who is the only source on the myth of Atlantis

destroyed at approximately the same time of the last rapid glacial retreat in the Northern Hemisphere

the Ice age ended around that time but the ice took up to 4000 years to retreat

Atlantis pretty much had to have been where the Azores are now. Recent bathymetric scans of the Azorean plateau have come up with so many correspondences to Plato's description that it barely warrants further debate.

oh really
in that case perhaps you would like to point them out
heres a bathymetric map of the azores to get you started

Anyway, one of the more interesting details Plato offers in his description of Atlantis is that "elephants" inhabited the island

thats right he does
he clearly states Elephants
critias "Moreover, there were a great number of elephants in the island"

So one needn't stretch one's imagination very far to envision a small population of wooly mammoths crossing a seasonal ice bridge that could could easily have extended from the northeast coast of North America to the uppermost islands of Atlantis

I would think you would need to stretch your imagination until it snapped actually
you are proposing a 3000 mile ice bridge along which an animal which preferred forest and plains vegetation is supposed to have trotted so that it could get itself trapped in a small area

Remember, too, that coastlines were also extended because of the decrease in sea levels, making the distance between North America and Atlantis even shorter.

actually yes I'll have to give you that one. the sea level during the ice age was an average of 30 metres higher which represents about 5 miles on both coastlines which is now submerged
let me just do the math
3000 - 5 - 5 = 2990
so the mamoths would only have to travel 2990 miles with nothing to eat or drink to reach the site you have proposed as atlantis

A breeding population of mammoths stranded on some of the northernmost islands in the chain along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

the mid atlantic ridge runs north south
your claimed path of migration is south east
ok i get it
you are proposing that these mammoths had springs fitted to the bottom of their feet so they could hop from island to island

Of course, the catastrophic destruction of Atlantis didn't leave any solid evidence behind

that was convenient

The Azores are what used to be the mountain tops, and no sensible person would expect to find Atlanean artifacts or mammoth remains there,

actually imo no sesnible person who know anything about geology would expect to find anything there than has already been found
there is no evidence of a catastrophic sinking around the Azores dating to the claimed time for atlantis
if there had been there would be tons of evidence

Curious, though, that considering the shoreline and ice pack conditions during the end of the last Ice Age, Plato's strange mention of "elephants" is not so ridiculous after all.

Bet ?

The Azores would be the last place you'd expect to find woolly mammoths during the ice age, - climate and vegetation would have been entirely wrong for an animal specifically adapted to cold, arid, steppe conditions (think Gobi desert for nearest modern equivalent)

Plato probably mentioned elephants in order to make the place sound more exotic to his audience...

I completely fail to see how one can extrapolate mammoths from Platos description of elephants. Elephants wherent that uncommon around the med and was used in war.

Why could they not be just African Elephants? It's not that far from Africa for an advanced "civilization" to travel. Also, if Atlantis was around in the ice age, then how would Plato suddenly come out with this story at least seven and a half thousand years later, seemingly by word of mouth, without archaeology or any science like we have today?

Originally posted by Essan

Plato probably mentioned elephants in order to make the place sound more exotic to his audience...

that's the most likely scenario...


after all, Plato's 'Atlantis' knowledge came from a long dead Atheanian
named Solon (630-558 BCE) a respected Sage, Lawmaker, Poet....

who himself (some ~150 years before Plato wrote about Atlantis)
had heard the tale of Atlantis from Egyptian Priests on one of his, Solons' never authenticated, junkets to Egypt.


\____________/





how is it that the date of 10,000 years before the Egyptian Priests, or Solon, or Plato (427-347 BCE) is accepted as the date of Atlantis' destruction???

perhaps Atlantis was before the last Ice Age even started,
and the place of Atlantis was the land we know today as Greenland?
after all, there are still going on volcanos, & back then the 'breaking-up' of the island continent could of been more noticeable...in line with a lot of the descriptions of how Atlantis met its demise, but not up to the maxium hyperbole & sensationalism that the Plato account told.

elephants, or cousins, seem spread in many environments....adaptable & able to find a niche in the animal kingdom...why not pre-ice age greenland or antarctica for that matter!

Atlantis was a literary conceit by a writer and philosopher who was famous for them...the Socratic dialogues being his most famous. So get over it already. No one ever looks for his original humans... you know the ones who were the size of a couple in an embrace.... everyone knows that was a metaphor so was atlantis.

how is it that the date of 10,000 years before the Egyptian Priests, or Solon, or Plato (427-347 BCE) is accepted as the date of Atlantis' destruction???

basically it isn't
its 9000 years before Solon

from Timaeus by Plato
Solon marvelled at his words, and earnestly requested the priests to inform him exactly and in order about these former citizens. You are welcome to hear about them, Solon, said the priest, both for your own sake and for that of your city, and above all, for the sake of the goddess who is the common patron and parent and educator of both our cities. She founded your city a thousand years before ours, receiving from the Earth and Hephaestus the seed of your race, and afterwards she founded ours, of which the constitution is recorded in our sacred registers to be eight thousand years old. As touching your citizens of nine thousand years ago

Solon lived 638 BC–558 BCE
so the destruction of Atlantis is approximately 9600BCE according to Timaeus

from Critias by Plato
Let me begin by observing first of all, that nine thousand was the sum of years which had elapsed since the war which was said to have taken place between those who dwelt outside the Pillars of Heracles and all who dwelt within them

so Critias states 9000 years before this discussion which is between Critias and Socrates
Socrates lived between 470–399 BCE
so this date is approx 9400BCE according to Critias

most Atlantis officianados therefore accept the average date of 9500bce for the destruction itself

now heres the thing
Plato was taking this story of a catastrophic flood and fictionalising it for a modern audience (i.e. his)
so the details really aren't important
this happens with all stories which are told and retold over the years
in the story of cinderella for instance the slipper turned from a fur one when it was told by peasants in Russia to a glass one when it was told by the aristocracy in france
in the biblical flood which in earlier versions has an ark made of reeds over time becomes a plank built ship
the flood hero turns from a Sumerian into a hebrew

about the only detail that could be considered solid in the tale of Atlantis is that a civilisation was destroyed by a flood around 9500bce
any other details were just added to make it more interesting


[edit on 10-2-2007 by Marduk]

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[edit on 10/2/07 by masqua]

Originally posted by Marduk
about the only detail that could be considered solid in the tale of Atlantis is that a civilisation was destroyed by a flood around 9500bce

I dont get it. Why?

because if you take the Atlantis as based on an event like a catastrophic flood it has a precedent
if you take it as everything is true it isnt possible and has already been disproven

Marduk gave the original poster a tremendous ripping of his/her facts. While it was with a sarcastic tone IMO it did deny ignorance. Well done Marduk, I have voted you way above.

Cheers,

-ADHD

Nothing has ever been proven because it only existed in the imagination of Plato.

How would an ancient Greek philosopher know of a civilization that your supposing existed in the ice age?

Unless it was passed down and hes the only one who wrote about it, but ancient greek civilization is no where near that old as far as I know. Atlantis had to have existed around Plato's time.

Literalists I swear...because he made it up. It never existed he made it up as part of a parable.... Plato did that kind of thing a lot. Ever read him? He is kinda famous, you might have heard of him.

Yep, I agree. I always wondered why it seemed so hard for people to believe that people in ancient times could have written stories. Everything thats written in ancient times doesn't equal fact, I'm sure they had creative minds too.

Sure, I'd love there to have been an Atlantis, but more and more the evidence points towards it just being a story...

we have always had dreams of a utopia... it gives us something to aspire to... and maybe some day we will achieve it but not in my life time.

Ya know Kacen I misread your previous post and thought you were advocating the whole Atlantis thing and I was quite sarcastic, I apologize but I read so many things on here that make me wonder about the functional intelligence of some.

If there was a historical precedence for Atlantis if was most likely Minoian Crete and its collapse after the Thera eruption.

We humans have such a rich past as it is there really is no need to look for something outside the factual.

[edit on 10-2-2007 by grover]

[edit on 10-2-2007 by grover]

Well, to me, the canary islands would be a more likely place for anything connected to atlantis. There are step pyramids there similar to ones found in egypt and in the yukatan and it was the site of the mysterious guanches.

But out of all the places that would PROBABLY be atlantis, Id have to say plato was describing the minoans. the minoans fit VERY closely to the description that plato gave. Not only that, but if you consider the pillars of hercules being a metaphor for something in the aegean, then crete and thera would lie beyond it.

Also, if you accept that the translation of egyptian dates to greek produced an extra zero in the calculations, then its 900 years before solon which would place it at the time of a massive eruption on Thera in about 1500 bc. Now this eruption was supposed to be far more massive than anything in modern times and burried the cities on Thera and concealed them up to modern times. Also, the ocean in that area would have been impassable as plato states after the "sinking" of atlantis. So, Anyone familiar with Thera and the people there would have seen it practically vanish from existance. As for the stories of people finding there way from Atlantis to other areas, there is evidance that the minoans on Thera knew the eruption was going to happen and left. For me, until someone else can actually find a sunken island, this is atlantis.

And for the record, Plato is not the first nore the only Greek writer to mention Atlantis. Nygdan pointed this out to me so I give him the credit of finding this. There was an author by the name of Hellanicus of Lesbos who wrote about atlantis a century before Plato. So it was not something plato plucked out of the air, this story is based on something.

Originally posted by XphilesPhan
And for the record, Plato is not the first nore the only Greek writer to mention Atlantis. Nygdan pointed this out to me so I give him the credit of finding this. There was an author by the name of Hellanicus of Lesbos who wrote about atlantis a century before Plato. So it was not something plato plucked out of the air, this story is based on something.

I went looking around for info on Hellanicus of Lesbos. I found some stuff on him but no mention of any writings regarding Atlantis. Can you tell me which of his works contains these writings?

Herodotus History book1 440 B.C.E
"But one of the mouths of the Araxes flows with clarity into the Caspian Sea; but the Caspian Sea is by itself, not connected to the other sea. For the sea navigated by the Greeks, also that outside of the Pillars called the Atlantis Sea and the Erythraean, are one and the same."

this was written 10 years before Plato was born
where it mentions Atlantis is this text though it is equally fair to translate that word as "the sea belonging to Atlas"
but then the noun "Atlantis" actually means "belonging to Atlas"
so looking for the name Atlantis at any time before the greek period is doomed to failure
but Plato covers this well by explaining that all the names in the story are not original because as it had come down to Solon via the egyptians and had been recorded in hieroglyphs the meaning of the names was the same
so Atlas is derived from the ancient greek word "tlao" which means "to endure". Tis is greek for "him" so the story of Atlantis really when translated into English means "the story of him who endures"

the only egyptians god who could be said to endure is the Sun God
here is the hieroglyph which is most often used to depict the Sun God
its called the Akhet and directly translates as "the horizon"

as you can see either side of it there are two pillars
this symbol further breaks down when you take the sun disc away from it


this is the symbol for mountains "djew"
www.touregypt.net...
anyone who has read the eleventh taks of hercules should be going "ahhh" right about now
because it tells how Heracles attempting to find the garden of the Hesperides needs to enlist the help of Atlas who stands nearby on two pillars.(the pillars of heaven) Heracles looks everywhere for Atlas but finally gets a clue to his location in Egypt
he finds him standing atop two mountains (pillars) holding up the heavens and asking Atlas to help gets the titans agreement only by shouldering his burden for a while.
this is the only time in any greek text that heracles is associated with any pillars at all
so to say that there is no mention of Platos story Atlantis before the greek period is quite correct
but to say that there is no mention of the meaning and tale of the "him who endures" is quite wrong

still
I reckon Plato made it up
otherwise
there would be another account somewhere of a civilisation wiped put because they were sinful by an enraged god with a flood


and of course
no ones ever heard of that before have they

Originally posted by Marduk
...here is the hieroglyph which is most often used to depict the Sun God
its called the Akhet and directly translates as "the horizon"

as you can see either side of it there are two pillars
this symbol further breaks down when you take the sun disc away from it


this is the symbol for mountains "djew"
www.touregypt.net...
anyone who has read the eleventh taks of hercules should be going "ahhh" right about now
because it tells how Heracles attempting to find the garden of the Hesperides needs to enlist the help of Atlas who stands nearby on two pillars.(the pillars of heaven) Heracles looks everywhere for Atlas but finally gets a clue to his location in Egypt
he finds him standing atop two mountains (pillars) holding up the heavens and asking Atlas to help gets the titans agreement only by shouldering his burden for a while.
...

This reminds me Marduk,

Have you ever reconciled your theory about Atlas, Heracles and the Hesperides with Herodotus' account of Atlas being on a mountain in Libya and not in the Caucasus, which is where Prometius was supposed chained up? That's a pretty ugly fly in your Altai ointment, ain't it?

Harte