Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Archeology Begins on Atlantis Site




Read my post regarding Rainer Kuhne (2 June 2008) on this site and you will quickly concur that this site and its time and circumstance is exactly mirrored by Plato.

I am pleased to see that the article has inspired an on the ground investigation and that Atlantis is at least been mentioned in passing.  Since my interpretations of the Atlantic Bronze Age are way ahead of the curve, it is enough to see that boots are finally on the ground.  I know it will be too much to discover the Atlantean treasury of bronze ingots.  A tsunami would have destroyed the town and its peoples and obviously its imperium, but left the metal available for quick looting.

The local society continued on but no longer as the center of a commercial empire.  The Sea Peoples lost their access to copper ingots from the Americas and with it the currency underpinning their civilization.  Their tributary palace-centered colonies or trade factories then fell.  This included the Mycenaeans and the Philistines to put a face on the collapse.

The Trojans and others were at the periphery of this mercantile empire in the Baltic lands as clearly explained by da Vinci last year.  Their war occurred in the generation before the collapse which was triggered by Hekla in 1159 BCE.  That event forced the northern folk to head south and it is plausible that these remnants resettled in Italy to found Rome if we want to believe clearly self serving legend.

We are able to paint a creditable picture of the decades around 1159 BCE and the various peoples we presently know about.  The metal culture was controlled by an aristocracy who built centers to act as their trading posts.  Their surrounding cultures could have been anything and has left scant evidence behind.

Recall the Hudson Bay factories and their relationship to indigenous natives.  The Archeological record would show only traces of their forts and nothing else.   The linkage to London if discerned would have been an enigma.




Lost city of Atlantis 'could be buried in southern Spain'

Archaeologists have begun the search for an ancient civilization in southern Spain that some believe could help pinpoint the legendary lost city of Atlantis.

By Fiona Govan in Madrid 

Published: 6:00AM GMT 19 Jan 2010


A team of researchers from Spain's Higher Council for Scientific Study (CSIC) are examining a marshy area of Andalusian parkland to find evidence of a 3,000-year-old settlement.

They believe that Tartessos, a wealthy civilization in southern Iberia that predates the Phoenicians, may have had its capital in the heart of what is now the Donana national park.

Until now historians had dismissed the region as a possible site believing that it had been submerged since the ice age. But it is claimed new evidence suggests the waters may have receded in time for the Tartessians to build an urban centre, which was later destroyed in a tsunami.

The Hinojos marshes, an area close to the mouth of the Guadalquiver river where it meets the Atlantic, have now been pinpointed as the site most likely to provide evidence of a lost city.

Archaeological findings have already proved the existence of Tartessian culture at sites on the opposite bank of the river.

"If they existed on the other side, they must also have been here (in Donana)," Sebastian Celestino, the archaeologist leading the project told the newspaper El Pais.

"There were earthquakes and one of them caused a tsunami that razed everything and which coincided with the era in which Tartessian power was at its height."

Aerial photos show the existence of large circular and rectangular forms that could not have been produced by nature.

The images, together with literary accounts by ancient Greek geographers have given weight to the theory that a great Tartessian city once existed within the park.

The Tartessian civilization, which developed in southern Spain between the 11th and 7th centuries BC and became rich trading gold and silver from local mines, has long been linked by mythologists to the Atlantis legend.

While the Spanish researchers refuse to speculate on whether they are on the brink of discovering Atlantis others believe their research could be a breakthrough in a centuries old quest.

"Evidence is mounting that suggests the story of Atlantis was not mere fiction, fable or myth, but a true story as Plato always maintained," said Georgeos Diaz-Montexano, a Cuban archeologist who has spent the last 15 years searching for the submerged city.

"Atlantis is not exactly where the CSIC is looking, but it is close," he claimed.

The theory is just the latest in a long list of suggested locations for Atlantis, including various Mediterranean islands, the Azores, the Sahara desert, Central America and Antarctica.

2 comments:

sharonsj said...

The time line is wrong. I thought Atlantis existed more than 30,000 years ago, not 3,000. This is the same as claiming the Santorini explosion was Atlantis.

You can't read the description of Atlantis and just keep the parts you like while deciding the rest (the age) is a typo.

arclein said...

I have no idea where you got 30,000 years from, so i will assume you meant 3000 years.

The time of Atlantis has jumped all over the place for lack of any information beyond Plato. Yet Plato spells out a very powerful city state at Gibraltar and dominating the Mediterranean with sea power about five hundred years earlier. (this is very reasonable in terms of documents he would have had access to)

For the past century we lacked the site itself and this allowed every possible interpretation to be thrown out into the literature.

The site has been found and now needs to be confirmed. this item already confirms the existence of contemporaneous sites with the correct culture on the adjacent shores.

The time for the collapse of 1159 BCE may be the only exactly known date from the Bronze age we actually have and it allows us to range a couple of centuries in either direction with confidence.

That date was a major blast at Hekla in Iceland that sent a huge tsunami out that wreaked the atlantic seaboard of Europe and inundated a low lying Atlantis.

The site here was built up on delta lands at the mouth of the river and was at extreme risk. Present site evidence shows a large urban center for the times sufficient to support our expectations.