A discussion on Peter James theory of Atlantis

As i had promised,i am back with my discussion on the theory of tantalis and atlantis being the same.Let us take a closer look at the theory of Peter James,as it would be better for us to then discuss and put our point further on it..

The Sunken Kingdom provides a solution to a mystery which has baffled scholars for nearly 2,400 years - since Plato first wrote about Atlantis in Timaeus and Critias. Written by an outstanding historian and
archaeologist,Peter James, this book takes an entirely new approach. It reviews previous theories, some fantastic, some more rational, and shows why they will not work. Atlantis could not have been in the Atlantic, nor was it the volcanic island of Santorini near Crete, as currently held. Through a careful analysis of the sources, it becomes clear that the story of Atlantis came from western Turkey, where a major Bronze Age city was devastated by an earthquake and submerged beneath a lake.James has also hypothesized about the location of Atlantis. By first claiming that references to mythological Tartarus by Plato were infact meant to identify a Lydian king by the same name, he goes on to identify Atlantis with a hypothetical lost temple city called Tantalis, corresponding to modern-day Manisa in Turkey.He took a clue from Plato's mention of king Tantalus, and investigated the city of Tantalis (also Tantalos) in the province of Manisa, Turkey. In addition to having very similar sounding anagram names, numerous inscriptions and ancient writings from the region matched the Atlantis story. Tantalis, formerly a wealthy city state, was destroyed when a powerful earthquake,struck and caused a lake to flood the city.Atlantis could not have been in the Atlantic, nor was it the volcanic island of Santorini near Crete, as currently held.

Under close analysis,the theory of Thera being the kingdom of Atlantis broke down.Plato described a catastrophe involving earthquake and flood, yet the Thera event was a volcanic explosion. The Greeks were reasonably informed about ancient Cretan civilization - as echoed in the stories of Minos, Theseus and the Minotaur in the Labyrinth - so it seems unlikely that they would have, first, learnt about Crete from the Egyptians, and second, not recognised what their source was ostensibly describing. It also became clear by the 1980s that the explosion of Thera did not, after all, bring about the end of Minoan civilization. It was time for a new approach to the Atlantis problem.Most theories about Atlantis have been constructed by believers, who have identified its 'real' site in myriad locations from the British Isles and Greenland to Carthage and Thera. On the other side are the sceptics who have dismissed the search for Atlantis as futile. Many years ago it was decided that the only way forward was to suspend any naive hope of finding a 'real' Atlantis, and to concentrate instead on the key question: can we identify a source behind Plato's claims? It had an unexpected bonus.

The crux of the problem is the supposed Egyptian connection. The ancient Egyptians took a dim view of foreigners and the idea that they preserved a detailed tradition describing two remote civilizations - Atlantis and its rival Athens - is highly improbable. Even more far-fetched is the idea that the Egyptians, who took pride in being the 'oldest' civilization, could have recorded events which took place a thousand years before their own beginnings.Alternatively, is it possible that Plato was right that Solon gathered the story on his travels, but mistaken in assuming that this was during his famous visit to Egypt? Solon travelled elsewhere, notably to the kingdom of Lydia in western Anatolia (Turkey). There, at the court of king Croesus - proverbial for his riches, but historical nonetheless - Solon is said to have swopped stories not only with the king, but with the great fable-writer Aesop.It was to Anatolia that many other clues began to lead, beginning with Atlas, the famous Titan of Greek myth who was condemned to the edge of the world to support the skies when his race was defeated by Zeus and the Olympians. Atlas, Plato tells us, was the first king - and eponym - of Atlantis. Analysis of the myths surrounding Atlas and his family suggests that the Greeks believed that his 'home', before he was banished to the west (i.e. the 'Atlantic'), lay to the east and that the Greeks may have learnt the idea of the sky-supporting giant from that quarter. This is confirmed by a mass of pictorial and literary evidence from the Hittite civilization of Bronze Age Anatolia, which provides exact parallels to
the classical Greek concept of Atlas.

It was a short step from there to see what the classical traditions of Anatolia - and in particular Lydia - had to say about the 'original' Atlas. Classical scholars have long accepted that another mythological figure, Tantalus, is essentially a Lydian version of Atlas. Tantalus, too, crossed the Olympians, and was condemned to an eternal torment which gave us the word 'tantalise'. In the version given by Homer his punishment was everlasting hunger and thirst, but the more common tale was of a rock which perpetually swayed over his head. Other versions say he was attached to the rock, that he was condemned to support it and that the 'rock' was the sky itself. And Tantalus, like Atlas, is once thought to have ruled an earthly kingdom. When Tantalus was struck by Zeus' lightning for his sins, the city he founded was shattered by an earthquake and drowned beneath a lake. The name of his city was Tantalis. There was already enough circumstantial evidence to vindicate Plato's claim that he had not invented the Atlantis story. His putative source, Solon, could have picked up in Lydia the story of Tantalis which had all the key elements for its later exaggeration into Atlantis - from its fabulous wealth and transient empire to its catastrophic transformation into a 'sunken kingdom'. As Tantalus was identified with Atlas, the scene could have been mistakenly transferred to the far west, the location of Atlas after his downfall. Once in the Atlantic, the story of the 'sunken kingdom' could grow uncontrollably during its retelling through the generations from Solon to Plato.

The Questions which now arose was: could the site of the legendary Tantalis be located, and did such a place ever exist? Clues from classical writers such as Pausanias made it clear that Tantalus' lost city was believed to lie near Mount Sipylus, modern Manisa Dagh, twenty or so miles inland from the modern port of Izmir (Smyrna) on the Aegean coast. Classical writers describe Tantalis/Sipylus not only as the original capital of Lydia, but as the ancestral seat of the Mycenaean kings. Substance was given to this by a lengthy text from the archives of the Hittite Emperors, composed about 1400 BC, describing the troubles they had with a vassal ruler from a western vassal in league with the Mycenaeans. His seat, 'the mountain land of Zippasla', can be reasonably located in Lydia, and identified with Sipylus. Slice by slice, the ruler of Zippasla (Madduwattas by name) swallowed up all the smaller states of western and southern Anatolia and even challenged Hittite authority in Cyprus. How far the men from Zippasla got is hard to say - but Hittite authority was only properly re-established in Anatolia some fifty years later.If the kingdom of Zippasla lay at Sipylus, where was its capital? Here history, archaeology and legend seem to converge neatly. When Peter James went to Turkey in 1994 it was not too difficult to locate the site of legendary Tantalis. Until about thirty years ago there was a small lake just to the north of Mt Sipylus and a few miles away from a magnificent (and almost undatable) rock-cut tomb which Pausanias described as 'the by-no-means inglorious grave' of king Tantalus. A hundred and fifty years ago the lake was much bigger, and after doing the initial groundwork, to find that 19th-century scholars, including Sir James Frazer, had already identified it as the spot where the ancients believed the lost city lay submerged underwater. As the location for a real city, it would be hard to improve: it lies on a fertile plain between the ancient caravan route skirting the mountain and the river Gediz, main artery of Lydia. Yet we are not reliant on merely theoretical considerations. Three hundred feet up the mountain-side a thirty-foot sculpture of a Mother Goddess gazes out over the very spot where Tantalis was thought to lay. Pausanias claimed that it was carved by the son of Tantalus and that it dates to the Late Bronze Age is undeniable - from its style and from the Hittite hieroglyphics which were incised into the carving about the 13th century BC.It would be strange to imagine that this unique sculpture was not prepared for the worship of a highly organised community, settled in the plain below. For this, and a host of other reasons, it is not difficult to believe that here there was once an important Late Bronze Age centre. Most likely it was the Zippasla of the Hittite documents and almost certainly it was the Sipylus or Tantalis of classical texts. For its fate we only have the traditions to go on, but the belief that it was totally devastated by an earthquake is not outlandish. The Izmir region, as travellers to Turkey will know, lies in one of the worst earthquake zones of the world,while the appalling damage suffered by the cities of Lydia during the great earthquake of AD 17 is well documented. Hopefully excavation will one day determine whether a Bronze Age city at Mt Sipylus - like the Atlantis of legend - was really destroyed by an earthquake and consigned to a watery grave.

Though this theory does seem much more plausible and probable than the others i have elucidated before,but maybe in the next few years we will start to challenge this as well..With the dearth of real data to provide us with further clues and concrete documents it is very difficult to really tell whether Atlantis is Tantalis or whether it really did exist or not...

Introducing Troy

Beauty of Helen, her daunting affair with Trojan prince Paris, heroics of Achilles and Odysseus (thanks to Bradd Pitt !!!), a decade of bloody war, a great impenetrable wall encircling a rich city, and finally, the ingenious huge wooden horse pregnant with armed soldiers, all these and more has earned immortality of the ancient city of Troy (thanks to hollywood also). Troy, however was a real city and not merely a myth. Homer's Iliad describes Troy as a impenetrably fortified city that rested upon a hilltop overlooking the plains of Scamander, where the fierce Trojan war had taken place. According to myth, the Trojan royal family owes its origin from Pleiad Electra and Zeus, the parents of Dardanus. It was the fourth generation of Dardanus, a person named Ilus, who found the city of Troy and named it after his father Tros. According to myth, the Trojan defensive wall that kept the Greek at bay for a decade, was designed by Poseidon and Apollo.

Troy or rather the Trojan war and events related to it had a great impact on the ancient greek literature, scholarly research and popular ast and architecture as well. Not only Homer, but many scholars that followed him considered Trojan war with due importance. Herodotus, in his Histories mentioned about that Homer's description of Trojan war was not accurate as herodotus claimed that Helen was not present in Troy during the decade long war as she was rescued from Paris by an Egyptian king while Paris was fleeing from Greece with Helen. To quote Herodotus: "It seems to me that Homer was acquainted with this story, and discarded it, because he thought it less adapted for epic poetry"

Later, scholars like Strabo, Eratosthenes etc also mentioned about Trojan war in their writings. Trojan war and events related to it formed an integral part of popular art and architecture in ancient Greece. Often, the archaeologists unearthed vases and articles of domestic use with depicitionof those events. Thus these suggests that the story of Troy and the heroes like Achilles and Odysseus etc were a household name even at that period. This also highlights the immense importance that the victory over Troy was to the Mycanean Greeks as, when everything of Mycanean age was destroyed by intervening dark age, the story of Troy survived evn during the dorian periodand well into the classical Greece and throughout the Roman era and to the modern day.

Representation of the fight between Hector and Achilles from a 7th c. BC vase

In my next article, I would discuss the historiography of the quest for Troy and several claims of its true locations. This will be followed by an article on the important place of Troy in the eyes of the people in ancient mediterranean.

Locations...a discussion

Many ancient philosophers viewed Atlantis as fiction, including (according to Strabo), Aristotle. However, in antiquity, there were also philosophers, geographers, and historians who believed that Atlantis was real.Other ancient historians and philosophers believing in the existence of Atlantis were Strabo and Posidonius.

Sometime back,i watched a documentary on the "History Channel",which dealt with the question as to whether it would be proper to say atlantis existed or not.Here they discussed the various locations that over the years have been speculated as Atlantis of Plato or not..based on this,and some surfing of the net done on my own,i have compiled the following speculative list of sites...while checking out the sites we will keep four elements as elucidated by Plato, in mind..they would be:

1.A vast state existing around 9000 BC
2.The city layered out in concentric circles,with waterways.
3.The buildings made of white,red or black bricks.
4.The presence of a strong bull sacrifice cult.
5.Elephants roaming the land.
6.Destruction of the city on a single night by a natural calamity,with the city sinking beneath the ocean.

Our first location would be "Malta".this came into prominence during the scond world war,when malta held out bravely againt a nazi offensive.Around this time the intriguing ruins of megalithic temples,dating back to 5000BC,1000 years before Egypt rose to prominence were discovered.These incredible feat of engineering left people flabbergasted,and the speculations of it being the lost atlantis started..so let us review the place with our 6 point checklist-
1.Does not qualify:as this was dated back to 5000 BC and not Plato's 9000 BC.
2.Partly qualifies:there are remains of some mysterious tracts but not any concrete proofs.
3.Does not qualify:buildings of white,black n red have not been identified.
4.Qualifies:there are evidences of bull worship.
5.Partly qualifies:elephants might have existed.
6.Partly qualifies:there are evidences of flooding,and some of the sites maybe present under the water as well.But nothing can be said for certain.

the second location would take us to the Bahamas.Famed psychic Edgar Cayce first mentioned Atlantis in a life reading given in 1923, and later gave its geographical location as the Caribbean, and proposed that Atlantis was an ancient, now-submerged, highly-evolved civilization which had ships and aircraft powered by a mysterious form of energy crystal. He also predicted that parts of Atlantis would rise in 1968 or 1969. The Bimini Road, found by Dr.J Manson Valentine, was a submarine geological formation just off North Bimini Island, discovered in 1968, has been claimed by some to be evidence of the lost civilization (among many other things) and is still being explored today.Other names that should also be mentioned here are those of divers Greg and Lora Little,who have devoted a lot of their time on the exploration of this Bimini Road.
now for our checklist:
1.cannot say:the structures found cannot be identified as belonging to a certain era as yet.
2.does not qualify:no evidence of waterways.
3.does not qualify:no evidence found.
4.does not qualify:no evidence found.
5.does not qualify:no evidence found.
6.cannot say:though the structures found are under water,but whether they came to being there because of some natural calamity or not cannot be determinded.

the third location would be more southern,in Cuba.In december 2001,a marine engineer named,Pauline Zelintsky,found huge structures under the sea,which she found had stricking similarities to the mayan structures.These structures appeared manmade,but their immense depth,around 2000 feet made the geologists skeptical,as they opined that it should be found in the depth of around 100feet only.Another intersting angle here was in the oral parodies of Mexico,a tale akin to atlantis also existed.so let us inspect it on our cheklist:
1.cannot say:as no evidence of its timeline has been discovered.
2.does not quaify:no evidence found.
3.does not quaify:no evidence found.
4.does not quaify:no evidence found.
5.does not quaify:no evidence found.
6.partly qualifies:As these structures are obviously manmade,so there are chances of it being drowned due to some catastrophe.

Now again,we go across the Mediterranean,to come to our fourth location,to an island which is close to ancient greece,which was blown to slytherins by a natural disaster.In 1960's archeologists discovered a well preserved Minoan city,around Crete region,the advanced island culture of Santorini.This location comes closest to being the lost Atlantis,but let us review in our checklist:
1.does not qualify:this civilization isnt that old.
2.qualifies:evidences of circular layering and waterways.
3.qualifies:the are buildings of red,black and white found.
4.qualifies:there is a strong cult of bull worship.
5.does not qualify:there are no evidences of elephants.
6.partly qualifies:there are evidences of a natural disaster,a volcanic eruption,which might have led to a tsunami.but the site found is not under water,but buried beneath the earth,and ashes.

Peter James is a British author and historian who has advanced several controversial theories about the chronology of Mediterranean civilizations, the Middle East, and Egypt. His theories are not generally accepted by mainstream historians or Egyptologists.
James has also hypothesized about the location of Atlantis. By first claiming that references to mythological Tartarus by Plato were in fact meant to identify a Lydian king by the same name, he goes on to identify Atlantis with a hypothetical lost temple city called Tantalis, corresponding to modern-day Manisa in Turkey. This is the most recent attempt at defining the location of atlantis.

In my next article i will briefly talk about what Peter James claims to be the real atlantis..so long friends..:)

Atlantis : A brief Sketch..

A map showing a supposed location of Atlantis.
From Ignatius L. Donnelly's Atlantis: the Antediluvian World, 1882

Atlantis is a mythical island state,first described by the classical greek philosopher Plato in his dialogues "Timaes" and "Critias".It is supposed to be a naval force which had conquered several regions in the western parts of Europe and Africa.Plato placed its existence 9000 years before his time,so approximately around 9400 BC.Plato wrote about 40,000 words describing this state as a vast city around 9400 BC,layered out in concentric circles with waterways,built with red,black and white bricks,it had elephants roaming the place and a strong cult of bull sacrifice.It supposed to have been completely destroyed in a single night by some kind of natural catastrophe,and sank beneath the ocean.

The possible existence of a genuine Atlantis was actively discussed throughout the classical antiquity, but it was usually rejected and occasionally parodied. While basically unknown during the Middle Ages, the story of Atlantis was rediscovered by Humanists at the very beginning ofmodern times.Plato's description inspired the utopian works of several Renaissance writers, like Francis Bacon's "New Atlantis". To this day, Atlantis inspires today's literature, from science fiction to comic books and movies, its name having become a byword for any and all supposed prehistoric but advanced (and lost) civilisations.

To Quote, Plato himself from "Timaes" :

"Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valour. For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire..."

The 1882 publication of "Atlantis: the Antediluvian World" by Ignatius L. Donnelly stimulated much popular interest in Atlantis. Donnelly took Plato's account of Atlantis seriously and attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from its high Neolithic culture,as if Atlantis was the mother culture of cultures like the egyptian or the mayas.According to Ignatius L. Donnelly in his book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, there is a connection between Atlantis and Aztlan (the ancestral home of the Aztecs).He claims that the Aztecs pointed east to the Caribbean as the former location of Aztlan

Since Donnelly's day, there have been dozens – perhaps hundreds – of locations proposed for Atlantis, to the point where the name has become a generic term rather than referring to one specific (possibly even genuine) location. This is reflected in the fact that many proposed sites are not within the Atlantic at all. Some are scholarly or archaeological hypotheses, while others have been made by psychic or other pseudoscientific means.

IN my next article i will briefly talk about the various locations as proposed by the searchers of atlantic..i prefer to call them searchers because all are not historians or geologists..they are people from diverse feilds having diverse views..but with a single aim in their mind..to "search" for Atlantis..like we are searching wisdom...

Ispirare..

Quaero Sophisma - An Introduction

As we..the group of searchers,start off this blog,let us make our
intentions clear...

For sometime now,we have been facing certain blooming queries deep
down somewhere in ourselves..we are searching for answers which we
are not sure where to look for..queries that are blossoming every
second whithin us..pulling us closer and closer to its
dazzling,mythical,swirling,indeterminant depths..

Let me first explain what the title of our blog represents.."Quaero
Sophisma"..to put it literally,it simply is the latin for "searching
for wisdom":Wisdom which is lost,which is ancient,which is
hidden,which is lurking somewhere, peeping once or twice to
tantalise us,to provoke us,to make us wonder,to bedazzle us,to make
us probe further..which is also complex till it is hidden,to some
extent unattainable yet attainable,mindboggling yet entralling...

These Queries are in a way titillating,giving us the will to look
for the answers,which try as we might,havent been easy to get..it
has given us clues,and a very foggy misty path:which ultimately
leads to the truth,the answer..which to us will be the "Holy
Grail"..the Wisdom,the Truth...

So after a lot of laidbackness,dilly-dallying,daydreaming..we have
finally decided to really make an honest effort to search those lost
treasures..or put it on a lighter frame...to make others aware of
our thoughts and our Questions..so that it might lead us to the
answer that we were looking for,or maybe just bring us closer to
it,or again,give us another window of knowledge to open..

Queries which have made us to think more,ask more,yearn to learn
more,share more..

And that is exactly what we want to do here..We will first post an article on a certain topic(based on recent
facts),then we will each individually post our own point of views on
it..and after that the topic will be open to all..to freely read
it,review it and give us their comments on it..We will be highly indebted to each one coming to our blog site,if
they make the effort to read our thoughts and views and review it
and comment on it..

So keep coming back to the site because we promise there will be no
dearth of excitement here..:)