How did Plato know what Atlantis looked like?, page 3

reply to post by Hanslune

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You forgot: propaganda.

It's fun to speculate that Zeus was a mothership and Athena was some other kind of vehicle, etc., but we lend real credence to such ideas at our peril.

It's not true that myths were history to ancient people; ancient people had no concept of history. To them, all time antecedent to living memory was myth-time. That is why real and fictitious events are hopelessly conflated in prehistorical tales and documents.

I'll explain with the help of an example familiar to me. The Mahavamsa (literally 'big book') of the Sinhalese people contains an unbroken regnal chronology that extends from Vijaya (said to be the first Sinhalese settler and king of Lanka) to Moggalana I, the fifth-century monarch during whose reign it was written. Wherever it is possible to verify the dates given in this chronology, it is accurate. Using it, we can put an exact date on the arrival of the Sinhalese in Lanka: 550BCE. This date originally entered western culture in the nineteenth century with the help of Madame Blavatsky and her chum Henry Steel Olcott; the latter was a great patron and benefactor of Sri Lankan Buddhism.

The Mahavamsa also makes some other claims. It says the Buddha had a special affection for the island of Lanka; that he visited it thrice in prehistoric times, when it was inhabited only by nonhuman beings; and that he died at the exact moment Prince Vijaya set foot on the shores of Lanka for the very first time (as you will have gathered, Sinhalese are mostly Buddhists).

Now we come to the interesting part: Wilhelm Geiger, a German scholar who translated the Mahavamsa in the early 1900s, was so impressed by the accuracy of its chronology that he decided it must be right about the date of the Buddha's death as well. There was at the time much controversy about when the Buddha actually 'attained Parinibbana' (died). Influenced by the Mahavamsa, Geiger endorsed the 550BCE date. For some decades it was accepted as accurate by many Western scholars. Among Sri Lankan Buddhists, it is an article of faith to this day.

However, it is now generally agreed by historians that the Buddha actually died some 150 years later than this.

Geiger was led to his erroneous conclusion by the mixture of fact and falsehood, typical of mythohistorical accounts, in the Mahavamsa. Its chronology may have been accurate with regard to historical times -- but how could this respectable European scholar possibly have thought it could be accurate when it describes the Buddha levitating back and forth between India and Lanka (where his arrival and doings were witnessed by -- who, exactly, if the island was uninhabited?), or describes the gods surrounding the dying Teacher and solemnly swearing to carry out his last wishes?

That's what happens when you get history and myth confused.

History is a specific study, for whose invention we have two men to thank: Herodotus and Thucydides. It involves neither accepting what is told us as true nor reinterpreting it as we please, but checking its accuracy, weighing its importance in that light and deciding what role it plays in the greater narrative. Myth is simply the best humanity could do to describe the past before it invented history, just as religion is the best it could do to explain the world before it invented science. In both cases, it was a very poor best. We can do much better now.

[edit on 21-4-2008 by Astyanax]

reply to post by seagrass

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Just blame it on the Romans who burned the Library at Alexandria. It's ancient book burning. terrible, just terrible.

Can't really do that as there is no account of the story of Atlantis ever being in the Library of Alexandria.

Also interesting is that the story supposedly is passed from Solon through several lines to Plato, yet there is absolutely nothing directly from Solon himself. One would think that such an important story would be well known in his time. Also, the story is said to have originated in Sais, Egypt however there is no evidence it was ever there.

cormac

Originally posted by cormac mac airt
reply to post by seagrass

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Just blame it on the Romans who burned the Library at Alexandria. It's ancient book burning. terrible, just terrible.

Can't really do that as there is no account of the story of Atlantis ever being in the Library of Alexandria.

Also interesting is that the story supposedly is passed from Solon through several lines to Plato, yet there is absolutely nothing directly from Solon himself. One would think that such an important story would be well known in his time. Also, the story is said to have originated in Sais, Egypt however there is no evidence it was ever there.

cormac

I know, but there is no evidence it wasn't. If it existed, it was probably there. It's not like they had the Dewey Decimal system.

reply to post by seagrass

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If it existed, it was probably there.

Without there being an ancient inventory of the Library's contents or a contemporary reference to the story being at the Library, it's just a matter of opinion.

Still doesn't answer why such an allegedly important story is not mentioned by Solon or any of his comtemporaries. Nor why there is no evidence in Sais, Egypt of the stories origins.

cormac

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