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Review of "In Search Of" S01E09 and S01E10: "The Empire of Atlantis" Parts 1 and 2

9/14/2018

97 Comments

 
Picture
In my review of the pilot episode of History’s revived In Search Of with Star Trek actor Zachary Quinto as host, I noted that the show seemed to stand with one foot in Leonard Nimoy’s shadow and another in the standard History channel mold of wallpapering the screen with nutjobs pretending to be experts. Over the course of its run, In Search Of has covered many topics of no interest to me, including high-concept ideas like life after death and mundane subjects like sinkholes, the subject of an entire episode. As the season comes to a close, not much has changed since the pilot, but the audience for the series never really grew beyond the spillover from its Ancient Aliens lead-in, nor did the series build much of an independent fan base. Last week’s episode, the first to air without a new Ancient Aliens as lead-in, fell to just one million viewers and a 0.17 share of the 18-49 audience. For comparison, the show’s primetime rating is the same share and fewer viewers than the noon Inside Politics newscast on CNN.
​I don’t bring this up to laugh at In Search Of as much as to make the point that there is a ceiling on the audience for the kind of uninspired retread program that In Search Of represents, and tonight’s two-hour finale exemplifies that way cable “documentary” shows—and I use the term loosely—waste time recycling old garbage and calling it something new and exciting. In fact, the original In Search Of did the same investigation in its first season, clocking in at just a half hour, and it was wilder in its speculation and broader in its scope—covering Edgar Cayce, Charles Hapgood’s map claims, and Ignatius Donnelly’s ideas—and more definitive in its ridiculous conclusion that “the memory of Atlantis is no myth; it is history.” 
By contrast, our In Search Of is a more milquetoast affair, in the style of modern pseudo-documentaries that want to imply a lot while saying very little and taking up as much time as possible watching people walk around and look off into the distance.
 
Indeed, so similar are the segments of this episode to two recent Atlantis documentaries that it almost seems ridiculous to offer much of a review of the episode at all. I almost want to just pull paragraphs from my earlier reviews and call it a day, so little new was contained in this show. (Disclosure: I was invited to appear in this episode, but I declined because I was not able to travel to Africa on short notice for the shoot.) The first half of the episode is basically the same as James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici’s NatGeo Atlantis documentary from January 2017, right down to the appearance of amateur historian Robert Ishoy and religious historian Richard Freund in both, and the second half mirrors with uncanny precision the same information portrayed last September in the Science Channel’s Mysteries of the Missing with Terry O’Quinn. Both Mysteries and In Search Of adapt theories presented by the late Michael Hübner that were reported in Mark Adams’s 2015 book Meet Me in Atlantis, the fairly obvious inspiration for the episodes, and both use Andrew Gough, giving that Heretic magazine ignoramus best known from his appearances on Forbidden History the same platform to recycle the same unoriginal ideas. 
 
But the problem is deeper than that. The hypotheses put forward for Atlantis in this episode are old, so old that they have been discussed to death, with no new revelations, and no discovery of Atlantis. This two-hour episode covers three primary hypotheses: (a) Atlantis was a memory of Minoan civilization in the Aegean. (b) Atlantis was located in Sardinia and identified with its Bronze Age Nuragic culture. (c) Atlantis is located in Morocco, in what is now the Sahara Desert.
 
None of these hypotheses is new.

  • The identification of Atlantis with Minoan Crete occurred in 1909 when K. T. Frost made the claim in the Times of London, later developing his idea for a 1913 journal article that remains the foundational argument for Atlantis as a memory of Minoan times. This claim was made possible by the discovery of Minoan culture only a few years earlier, but it also sits atop the identification of the destruction of Atlantis with the volcanic eruption that destroyed Santorini (Thera) that goes back to 1872 when Louis Figuier made the claim in the fourth edition of his La terre et les Mers: “We believe that this event, which would have left such a deep impression, and which would have been transmitted from age to age, was a volcanic eruption that suddenly engulfed an island in the Greek archipelago beneath the waters” (my trans.). To these twin arguments, little has been added over the past century.
  • The identification of Atlantis with Santorini goes back further, and is less logical. It was proposed in 1793 by Jean-Baptiste-Claude Delisle de Sales in his Histoire Philosophique du Monde Primitif​. He based his claim on a revision of the idea of the Pillars of Hercules, assigning them to the strait separating Sicily from Africa. His Atlantis was next to Sardinia, which was part of their empire, but in time, later writers combined this claim with nineteenth-century claims that the Giants from the Bible lived on Sardinia, since medieval and modern writers alike identified Atlantis as the home of the antediluvian giants since both had been destroyed by a divine flood. (Plato modeled part of the Critias on the Near Eastern Flood myth that shares its origins with the Biblical story.)
  • The identification of Atlantis with Morocco is both more recent and much older. The modern form of the claim comes from Michael Hübner, who died in 2013, and was popularized in Mark Adams’s Meet Me in Atlantis in 2015. It has since been the subject of several cable documentaries. But it was not original to Hübner. According to occult writer Lewis Spence, the idea of Atlantis in Morocco was current in Morocco itself in 1927, the year he wrote his History of Atlantis: “I recently received a letter from a lady who knows North-West Africa well, in which she states that many traditions of Atlantis are still to be found among the native population. An Arab Emir of her acquaintance is quite an authority on the subject, and has even written a book on Atlantis in Morocco. The names of the author and of the book she does not mention.” But the claim is much older. It has a long tradition in France and Francophone countries, starting with E.-F. Berlioux in 1874 with a book-length treatment in 1883, and it is no surprise—that he placed Atlantis in French-dominated colonial West Africa. At least six more major claims for Morocco as Atlantis occurred before 1930, from Gustave Lagneau, A. L. Rutot, and others. Going back still further, Alfonso the Great in his General Estoria in the 1200s identified Atlantis with the earthly paradise, called it the land of the Giants, and placed it in what can be interpreted as south of the Atlas Mountains in western Africa.
 
Given the lack of originality in these ideas, and the fact that all have been discussed and critiqued for a century or more, there is little left to offer in this review than a brief description of what In Search Of made of the old material, and whether they had any inkling that their new ideas were not new. 
HOUR ONE
​The show opens with a summary of Plato that is just wrong, since Quinto claims that Atlantis vanished without a trace, while Plato clearly tells us that Atlantis left behind a giant pile of mud that blocked part of the ocean from being navigable. This is indicative of the quality of the episode and the depth of research that went into its production. The producers started with the assumption—never proved—that Atlantis existed, and through circular reasoning, it attempted to prove the reality of Atlantis by interpreting various data points in light of the assumed reality of the fictitious city.
 
To launch the quest, Quinto meets with Ishoy, who is described by the ludicrous title of professional “Atlantis historian.” He hands him a list of 51 traits of Atlantis derived from Plato’s writings, which are used to frame the “investigation,” just as they were in the earlier documentaries. Quinto expresses his confusion as to why Plato would tell a false story without acknowledging it as fiction. Clearly, he has not read Plato. I suppose that makes the shadows in the cave a true story, too. Quinto also meets with a “paranormal investigator” who is “based in the Bermuda Triangle” and “only available via Skype,” and that makes me wonder why the producers insisted that I had to be in Africa to be on the show while this bozo gets to Skype in to say nothing of any importance.
 
It’s probably worth disclosing that Ishoy and I have exchanged emails a few months ago when he complained that it was unfair of me to point out in a previous blog post that he holds no academic credentials in history, saying that it impugned his honor for me to describe his original credential—a college term paper he wrote decades ago—as poorly researched.
 
Much of the first half-hour is given over to exploring some Bronze Age ruins in Greece, including underwater ruins and those of the Minoans’ great palace at Knossos, under the assumption, put forward by Figuer and Frost more than a century ago, that Atlantis might have been a Bronze Age culture destroyed by the Thera volcano—whose eruption he wrongly dates to 2000 BCE instead of the more accurate 1600 BCE (+/- a few decades). Quinto and the producers seem unaware of the origins of the claims they investigate, and they simply present the idea as conventional wisdom. They decline to address the shortcomings of the idea, namely that the Bronze Age cultures of the Aegean continued on for nearly four centuries after the volcanic eruption before the Bronze Age collapse that led to the Greek Dark Ages. The volcano blew up an island and weakened the Minoans, but it did not destroy a whole civilization. The show elides the fact that Plato placed the death of Atlantis in 9600 BCE, and Minoan civilization is not that old. They ask us to take Plato literally, except for the parts that don’t fit.
 
Frankly, the show is slow, and that paragraph above represented the entire content of 20 minutes of screen time, much of which was devoted to glamour shots of Quinto looking pensive and confused, and frequent repetition of suggestive narration, largely without factual foundation.
 
As the second half-hour opens, the show claims that the Minoans worshipped Poseidon, based on the appearance of tridents, but this is not secure at all, since Poseidon was (a) a Greek god not Minoan, (b) of Indo-European origin, (c) well-attested as a god of the earth (he is the earth-shaker) as far back as Linear B, but not firmly connected to the sea until Homeric times. The evidence for Poseidon at Knossos is not Minoan; it is Mycenaean, from the time, long after the Thera volcano erupted, when the Mycenaeans had assumed control of Knossos. He was assimilated to the Minoan bull cult but there is no way to trace this back before the Mycenaean invasion, and at any rate the evidence suggests Poseidon was the Indo-European horse god before being reassigned to the sea.
 
In the second half-hour, Quinto tells a whopper of a lie, claiming that “scholars around the word” support the claim that Atlantis had colonies all over the world, and the show recycles Ignatius Donnelly’s claim that Atlantis spread advanced culture all over the world. I suppose it depends on what you mean by “scholar.” On the History Channel, the term seems to refer to people who pretend to be historians and can chant litanies from nineteenth century books with the firm conviction that they had invented them all by themselves.
 
Much of this half-hour is given over to retracing the steps of Cameron and Jacobovici’s documentary from last year, right down to having Ishoy assert, falsely, that the Nuraghe civilization of Sardinia was that of Atlantis. A supposed mystery is raised in the form of petroglyphs that two men assert are a lost alphabet that they intend to decipher. Quinto promises to check in with them later. The show declines to provide much by way of facts about prehistoric Sardinia, nor do they clearly acknowledge that Sardinian civilization does not date back to 9600 BCE, the date when Plato placed the extinction of Atlantis. For some bizarre reason, Quinto tries to gin up interest into Sardinia by likening the dangers to visiting Nuraghe sites to the fictitious “curse” of Tutankhamun, a curse invented in large measure by novelist Maria Corelli, ultimately from medieval Islamic legends about Egypt. But this is the History Channel, so why should a few facts get in the way of a sensational story?
 
As the first hour comes to a close with nothing to show for it but some pretty high-definition photography of ancient sites and the ramblings of old men who have exempted themselves from the norms of historiography and of science, not a single opinion dissenting from the reality of Atlantis has been uttered, and I can’t fathom what the producers imagined I would have contributed to this program. I am rather relieved not to have been a part of it, and I fear that they never looked beyond the aesthetics of my website and actually thought I hunted Atlantis.

Quinto ends to hour by saying that the civilization of Sardinia “might somehow relate” to Atlantis. The producers never did make that very clear, and Quinto’s unintentional acknowledgement of the producers’ incompetence is entirely apropos, particularly when Quinto admits that they are throwing spaghetti at the wall by hunting data points they can twist into evidence for Atlantis “anywhere we can find it and by any means necessary.”
HOUR TWO
​The second hour resumes the quest for Atlantis on Sardinia, but they are clearly grasping at straws. Carvings resembling bull horns are said to be evidence of Atlantis because the bull was sacred there, but the bull was one of the most common symbols in ancient religion, of no particular uniqueness. Quinto is astonished and feels that there must be a connection between Minoan and Sardinian bull cults. Presumably, he is completely ignorant of all the other faiths that involved bulls and cows, not least of which the Indo-European culture of India, where the Vedic faith was full of bulls and cows of a sacred nature. (Hinduism retains this today.) Similarly, the appearance of black, red, and white stones are taken to be evidence since Plato spoke of such colors. They also happen to be the most common colors of stone used throughout the Mediterranean.
 
Ishoy repeats his claim that the circular Nuraghe towers represent Plato’s circular city of Atlantis, even though a tower is not a city, and no tower meets Plato’s assertion that the city was more than 100 stadia across. In Search Of, unlike its predecessor series, simply omits inconvenient facts rather than try to slap together some sort of explanation. I’ll note again here that the “checklist” has yet to address Plato’s date of 9600 BCE, and that Sardinia was never destroyed and sent beneath the waves. Plato also said that Atlantis had elephants, and no elephant have been alive on Sardinia in 30,000 years. Their bones were mistaken for those of giants.
 
Freund pops up to tell us that the Atlanteans survived the disaster and moved to central Spain, which has been his bugaboo since his controversial 2013 documentary. Jessica Farrell, a self-described hematology expert, asserts that Rh-negative blood—associated in fringe literature with space aliens—is actually the royal blood of Atlantis. She runs a registry to track Rh-negative people, and she suggests that people with this blood type might be a different species of human and tend to seek truth, have a mission in life, and a bunch of other pseudoscientific traits she believes blood type impacts. This made me question Farrell’s credentials, and it turns out she is not exactly who In Search Of claims she is. Her LinkedIn page says she is a personal assistant by trade and has a business degree. She does not list any credentials in hematology.
 
What is with the History Channel and assigning its amateur talking heads dubious pseudo-scholarly titles?
 
Quinto discovers that he is Rh-negative, and Farrell tells him that this means he is “more likely” than not a descendant of Atlanteans. It’s worth noting that there is no evidence whatsoever that Rh-negative blood has anything to do with Atlantis since, as we might guess, no Atlanteans have ever been dug up to genetically test. The claim actually derives from the appearance of Rh-negative blood among the Berbers of the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. In other words, it’s circular reasoning.
 
In the final half-hour, Andrew Gough joins Quinto in Sous Massa, Morocco to hunt for Atlantis, reenacting his appearance in O’Quinn’s documentary last year. What’s interesting is that in 2017, he was there to chaperone Michael Hübner’s brother to describe Hübner’s work, but now Gough refers to him only as a “German scientist” who crunched data and otherwise he talks on his own authority, broadly asserting that Morocco exactly matches what Plato described. That must be why Morocco is currently under a giant mud pile in the middle of the ocean. Oh, right: It isn’t. Gough must enjoy these free vacations, given the number of them he takes at TV channels’ expense. Given what the producers told me in the spring, I imagine that they envisioned me slotted into the role Gough is playing here, but I don’t think they would have been happy with what I had to say.
 
Quinto asserts that the Morocco hypothesis is “a radical new theory,” even though it goes back perhaps to Alfonso X of Spain (depending on your interpretation of the text) and was widespread in the France of the Belle Époque. Even David Hatcher Childress devoted part of one his books to the idea several decades ago. Basically, the producers have no idea about the history of their own topic and are merely skimming the surface and passing off their cursory research as revelation. Online articles hyping Mark Adams’s book described the idea as “new” back in 2015, so that is as far as the show’s producers seem to have gone in examining the claim.
 
Gough asserts that Atlantis wasn’t an island because Plato’s word for island, νῆσος (nesos), really meant anything that borders water. I guess he is referring to Sophocles’ poetic use of νῆσος to refer to the Peloponnesian peninsula, which is not the same as saying all Greeks used it to describe a coastline in general. So far as I know, and so far as Classics scholar James Diggle of Queens College Cambridge knows, that is the only use of νῆσος as a peninsula; from the time of at least Herodotus, there was a separate word for peninsula. Plato would have known it and used it. Gough further asserts that Moroccans have destroyed the “central city” of Atlantis by carting it off in trucks and grinding it up for construction material. This seems rather ridiculous since the Moroccans, being cultured people, are unlikely to be part of a vast conspiracy to destroy proof of Atlantis—and for what end?  
 
In the last few minutes of the show, Gough gives a nearly verbatim recreation of his claim from O’Quinn’s Atlantis documentary that the shore of Morocco has eroded formations that create natural harbors of red, white, and black stone like those Plato described. Quinto then remembers that his other kooks had asserted that there was a lost alphabet on Sardinia that they hoped to decipher. He updates the story at the end by quietly saying that they did not decipher it, despite a promise in Hour One that they would do so in a few days. It was a plot point that went nowhere, designed as a cliffhanger that the producers knew they would not resolve. Like everything else about this show, it was a tease and a cheat, a question posing as an answer.
 
Quinto concludes that the show by saying that he believes Atlantis was likely real, and we get a montage of all the talking heads talking about the many places they believe Atlantis to be. But this actually undercuts the message since all of their many claims—from the Bermuda Triangle to Thera and beyond—cannot possibly be simultaneously true. The more people who confidently assert one location or Atlantis, the more obvious it becomes that none of them knows whereof he speaks. All of these men—and they are all men—want to believe in the unproveable. I ended up losing a lot of respect for Quinto, who accepts phony evidence and fallacious logic as though it were scholarly research. He is more gullible and credulous than I would have imagined, or at least agrees to play dumb on TV. 
97 Comments
Hal
9/14/2018 11:23:37 pm

Incredible. I almost agree with this review. However you wrote such shows have a ceiling or upper limit of possible viewers. So, what show doesn’t?

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Jeff Miller
9/15/2018 12:10:00 am

I have slogged through all the episodes. As soon as I saw the preview with Gough, I knew how this episode would go. I hope this show is cancelled. I really agree with your notion that this is very uninspired. It's so boring.

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E.P. Grondine
9/15/2018 01:02:25 am

Hi Jason -

I seem to remember that Aristotle made a pithy comment about Plato's concoction.

That said, when you start to examine the pieces that Plato used, it starts to get interesting...

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E.P. Grondine
9/15/2018 09:43:29 am

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/strabo-and-aristotle-on-atlantis-what-alternative-historians-dont-know

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P.G. Fontine
9/22/2018 03:32:49 pm

E.P. GRONDINE
3/2/2018 10:33:55 am
"Good morning, Stupid Asshole"

E.P. GRONDINE
3/1/2018 10:09:28 am
"Look, you stupid asshole"

E.P. GRONDINE
3/2/2018 11:23:39 am
"Look, you stupid asshole"

Joes Scales
9/15/2018 11:20:06 am

"I ended up losing a lot of respect for Quinto, who accepts phony evidence and fallacious logic as though it were scholarly research. "

Was there ever much reason to respect him in the first place?

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Doc Rock
9/15/2018 01:42:18 pm

I guess there is still decent money to be made by recycling much of the same fringe stuff that was on TV or in paperback 40 years ago.

Would be interesting to see how many regular viewers actually buy into this stuff as opposed to tuning in as a sort of guilty pleasure? Kind of like enjoying late nite readings of "true scary stories" on youtube even though you know the stories come from creepypasta or other such sites.

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Christie
9/15/2018 04:36:41 pm

I have ab- blood of which i saw no pile for in this episode and knowing my heritage and bloodlines, i know my blood type is very rare. I don't see many of these supposed things related to rh negative blood on myself. If you want to know about blood types all you need is a little research from well known professionals and experts in pathology. There is plenty of evidence out there, you just need to know where to go.

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Karen
9/16/2018 10:32:58 am

Please hook me up with the web site for Jessica Farrel. I have a negative O blood type and I saw her list. I have done my DNA through Ancestry website and what I found out was shocking compared to my family's verbal account. They swear I am not adopted but I am different than all of them. Go figure. Please email me her website.

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Hugh’s poo
9/16/2018 02:11:07 pm

Pfftt. Ungh sorry Karen. You can call her directly at BR549.

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Matt Agajanian
9/16/2018 09:08:07 pm

Phooey! I wholeheartedly wanted this reincarnation of the Nimoy classic to shed light on one of my favourite mysteries. Perhaps that O’Quinn option may give me a more plausible and valid collage of answers to the Atlantis mystery.

So, could you please tell me what program I should be looking for? I would appreciate it.

Thanks

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Matt Agajanian
9/16/2018 09:36:04 pm

From your vantage point, Jason, let me ask. Is finding Atlantis akin to chasing ghosts? In your research, was there an actual Atlantis or it’s a part of Plato’s library of writings?

Thanks
Matt Agajanian

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Hanslune
9/17/2018 11:12:57 am

Excellent review of what was a 'milquetoast affair' glad I missed it.

Jason the use of the term, 'nutjobs pretending to be experts'.

That seem unduly harsh may I recommend the following substitutes:

Pseudo intellectual goof balls, ninnyhammers, cretins or god awful liars

One correction: Nuraghe sights (sites?) to the fictitious “curse” of Tutankhamun,

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Machala
9/17/2018 01:12:37 pm

I have not seen all of the "new" In Search Of programs, but I have watched parts of several - including the final episode - and aside from rather trite content and commentary, my biggest criticism of the show is how it was shot and edited. From a cinematographic perspective the setups are staid and unimaginative and the lighting does nothing to enhance the viewing experience. The editing alternates from ragged jump cuts to overlong close-ups of the talking heads that look like the cameraman set up the shot, turned the cameras on, and then went for a beer, and let the cameras run, - counting on the director or editor to sort out the cuts.

The series ending ( which I hope it really is ) could have used some very heavy editing and been pared down to an hour show without losing any of the program - and perhaps gaining from a faster pace and abbreviated script.

Sadly,THC used to be visually creative and had some programs that were really enjoyable from a visual standpoint, but alas, this isn't one of them.

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AmericanCool"Disco"Dan
9/18/2018 12:25:26 am

I stand by THC. All I can say is more for me!

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Bob Jase
9/17/2018 01:48:02 pm

Every week millions of people attend worship services at some religious meeting place. I expect that its the same mind set that keeps programs like this in business. Believe in the evidenceless needs repeated reinforcement.

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AmericanCool"Disco"AndyGriffith
9/18/2018 02:02:39 am

What it was, was football.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j45JkwGfUSE

https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press

Pray for the Wildcats:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bEpYOXA12k

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Titus Pullo
9/17/2018 08:16:47 pm

I feel asleep about a 1/2 hour into it. The part where Zac went to Greece to dive in 6 ft of water reminded me of something from American Unearthed when Scott Walter spent most of an episode driving some mini sub or something. Not relevant to the story but chews scenery for minutes..

I do remember the old In Search Of...I was in Junior High when it came out and the "Money pit" episode was well done ...at least for a 12 year old.

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Phantom
9/18/2018 05:14:58 pm

The difference between the original "In Search Of" and its reboot on History Channel is that the original was concerned with information (no matter how dubious), while the reboot is primarily concerned with entertainment. In today's environment, the need to entertain trumps the need to inform. The choice of Zachary Quinto as host suggests a parody, whether intentional or not, of the original ("new" Spock replaces "old" Spock), while the idea of giving their kook commentators titles seems to be in line with the Discovery Channel's Forbidden History series. Whenever I see Andrew Gough on a program I know I'm being taken for a ride. The man is a publicity whore specializing in topics where facts are discarded in favor of wild theories that can never be proven or disproved. Did Hitler escape the bunker at the end of the war? Gough's your man. Are extraterristals living among us? Gough's your man. Are gigantic ants responsible for unsolved disappearances in New Mexico? Gough's your man. Whatever nonsense he's spouting is always covered with an academic title of sorts, as if to convince viewers that he actually knows what he's talking about. That he and his cronies are still able to mine a living from a mythical reference by Plato is proof of H.L. Mencken's observation on the American public.

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Joe Scales
9/18/2018 09:34:09 pm

"The difference between the original "In Search Of" and its reboot on History Channel is that the original was concerned with information (no matter how dubious), while the reboot is primarily concerned with entertainment."

Sure. The good old days. Informed by television...

Wrong on all counts, actually. Like then as it is now, it's ad revenue that's the chief concern.

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AmericanCool"Disco" Dan
9/19/2018 01:22:44 am

You, my friend, my brother, sound like someone who is mad as hell and isn't going to take this anymore.

Joe Scales
9/19/2018 09:38:58 am

Funny that. I was shouting the very same sentiment out my window last night.

T. Franke link
9/20/2018 05:06:50 pm

Sad, but true: Nothing new.

It is the eternal literalist and / or cherry-picking approach. Even in details, a historical-critical approach had been missed. For example, the discussion about the meaning of "nesos" / "island" concerns (or should concern) not the Greek but the Egyptian language: Egyptians used to talk of Greece and Asia minor as "islands in the Great Green", or so -- at least this is the claim, but the show even did not meet this level of understanding of this claim, whether true or not.

Jason: "... and I fear that they never looked beyond the aesthetics of my website and actually thought I hunted Atlantis."

That is very likely. It happens all the time to me, too, that visitors of my page misunderstand my approach. Can't they read? They do not want to! I admit that in my case it is a bit more complicated ....

Jason: "I suppose that makes the shadows in the cave a true story, too."

Well, the shadows in the cave are at least shadows of something true. So, are they completely wrong? Aren't the shadows in the cave traces of the truth? The truth comes to you, when you realize that the shadows are not themselves true, but nevertheless give hints and clues to the truth, or?

Here is another review of the "In Search of" which is critical, too:
(the review of the Atlantis part begins some paragraphs into the text)
https://meaww.com/in-search-of-episode-9-episode-10-the-empire-of-atlantis-review-adventurous-without-spectacular

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Frank
9/20/2018 10:53:00 pm

At last the great scholar and part time compiler of the information on Atlantis, herr Franke, chimes in. And what are you hunting in Sicily, if not some strange and partial Atlantis of your own?

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T. Franke link
9/21/2018 04:45:42 pm

@Frank:

Ooohhhh, thanks for the compliments.

Believe it or not: You cannot find Atlantis by traveling to its place. The most important part is text work. Interpretational work. Historical criticism. Understanding the ancient times and their oddities. Understanding Solon, Plato and the Egyptians. Learning ancient languages. Reading many academic papers written by Atlantis skeptics, etc.

And it is no "partial" Atlantis. It is simply the real Atlantis. In full. The same way as the ancient cities of Carthage or Alexandria are real cities, although they do not fit to the ancient texts in many ways. But I admit: Many will find it strange. You hit the point with this word. It's not what they had expected. But a fair-minded person will at least appreciate the approach and its original result, about this I am sure. The future will show it. I am still working on it.

Have you seen that after many silent changes of mind, the first scholar explicitly accepted one part of my Aristotle thesis? He suggests now Eratosthenes as the author of the invention assertion in Strabo 2.3.6. The Aristotle claim is dead, and I killed it.
https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_aristotle.htm

Hanslune
9/21/2018 05:55:14 pm

Howdy Mr. Atlantis

Oh my.....T. Franke's middle name is NASA - Never A Straight Answer - he'll never tell you were Atlantis actually is all he really wants to do is go thru a mind numbing recounting of his glorious decades finding out what the various ancient text REALLY says - in his opinion.

Consider his quote from above:

"You cannot find Atlantis by traveling to its place. The most important part is text work."

In other words finding Atlantis is unimportant - obsessing over the text is what he is really into........

Mental masturbation of the finest quality.

This message will now trigger a multi-paragraph response that will say nothing of value.

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T. Franke link
9/21/2018 06:50:51 pm

@Hanslune:

Have you never heard the story of Professor Cecil Torr who went on searching for the famous harbour of Carthage ... he really went there ... but he couldn't find it? Because he had a wrong idea about it. Although standing directly in front of it he could not see it. Never heard of this case?

A very striking example of somebody who thought he could avoid what you pleased to call "mental masturbation".

Jason Colavito does such "mental masturbation", too. Ever had a look into his books? Or his translations? Too complicated for you? You do not need this? You are a wise man without education and text work? So why are you here, then?

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Hanslune
9/21/2018 08:34:06 pm

As predicted a lot of the usual mental gymnastics, and of course evasion and NASA 'Never a straight answer'.

Come back when you finally figure out where Atlantis is.....lol

Or is the straight answer that you don't want to say is that you want people to buy your books instead of just providing the information? If so why not just say that instead of the masturbation?

NASA

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T. Franke link
9/22/2018 10:20:17 am

@Hanslune:

It is clear since 2008 that I am personally convinced -- in this wording: personally convinced -- that Sicily was Atlantis, with the central Sicels' sanctuary as the main correspondance to Plato's descriptions, around 1200 BC. Published on the Atlantis conference 2008 in Athens. Since 2008, I am on the way to transform a personal conviction into a demonstration of evidence which can be presented and potentially accepted by science.

So, what exactly is not clear?

Some steps on this way have already been published, and -- surprise -- already these steps have attracted even YOUR attention. Isn't this interesting? Even before I reach the point of presenting the whole thing, you already realized that there is something which is worth the attention. This is a good sign for me.

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Hanslune
9/22/2018 12:25:02 pm

Ah Sicily - good luck then in convincing anyone to believe you. Since 2008 huh, spreading like wild fire is it.

Thanks for the response.

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T. Franke link
9/22/2018 03:21:33 pm

@Hanslune:

I have the impression that you do not read my statements, here. How can a hypothesis "spread like wildfire" if it is still in the making to become a theory, still nothing published of its core except the research program from 2008? But thank you for the good luck wishes.

It would be interesting for me, how you interpret the behaviour of one of the leading proponents of the invention hypothesis, Christopher Gill. My review about his recent Atlantis publication says:

"For example, in 1980 Gill boldly expressed the opinion that Aristotle spoke out explicitly against the existence of Plato's Atlantis; Gill even cited Aristotle literally! Now, Gill still states that "it looks" that Aristotle was skeptic about Plato's Atlantis and allegedly put it in line with Homer's Iliad. But where does Aristotle say this? And why does "it look" so? Where and why has the bold self-confidence from 1980 gone? Gill is silent, and some lines later he says that Aristotle did not talk about Atlantis at all. So, if Aristotle does not talk about the matter, how can he express an opinion about it? Furthermore, Gill rightly says that Aristotle mentions one detail of Plato's Atlantis story, the mud in front of the Straits of Gibraltar. This is true, but Aristotle mentions this mud affirmatively: So, where is the skepticism, now? Why can't Gill simply abandon the wrong idea that Aristotle spoke out against the existence of Atlantis? Why sticking so desperately to this groundless claim? -- Why does Gill not mention the authors Harold A. Tarrant and Thorwald C. Franke about this question, neither where Gill discusses the topic nor in the bibliography? Harold A. Tarrant defends the idea that Aristotle spoke out against the existence of Plato's Atlantis, Thorwald C. Franke refutes it; see the literature below. Gill claims to have updated his booklet to the recent publications on the topic. Obviously he has not. We dare to ask the question: Why not?"
https://www.atlantis-scout.de/christopher-gill-atlantis-story-review-engl.htm

Do you have any suggestion for this strange behaviour?

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Frank
9/23/2018 01:09:38 am

Pardon me, I had not intended to start a personal feud between you, an expert proponent of Atlantis, and Hanslune, a staunch skeptic for the reality of Atlantis. I just wanted to point out your contradictory position on Atlantis, since you claimed to be a "non" hunter of our turned-evil empire of Atlantis. Clearly you are, and you even propose a location where your hunt has lead you to, Sicily.

As far as your claimed mighty feat of setting straight the historical record on Aristotle's sentiments on Plato's Atlantis, I suppose the world will forever be indebted to you. And if you ever turn your hypothesis into a theory, and then further, into reality on showing to the world the most irrefutable evidence of the existence of Atlantis, well, at that point you will become as immortal as Plato himself, in the eyes of the world's most elite academics. Germany will remain forever remembered in the great annals of history for having given us both the worst and best of its citizens, Hitler, and Franke, respectively.

I wanted you to know that I'm currently purchasing a great deal of real estate in Sicily, speculating on the expected large increase in value once you prove to the world, beyond any shadow of a doubt, of your having located Atlantis in Sicily. Sicilian tourism will go through the ceiling. Financially I'm rooting for you all the way. And if you ever set out to hunt Plato's cave next, please give me a hint as to where it could be, as I want to do the same, as far as investing in land and property.

Good luck to you, and may Zeus praise and bless you to the hilt, although you are already doing a great job at that yourself.

T. Franke link
9/23/2018 12:31:28 pm

@Frank:

It is legitimate to ask questions, when you see a contradictory position. I appreciate this. We really could clarify something, here.

Your hint to buying real estate in Sicily points to a real problem. What, if my idea really has consequences? There comes some responsibility with such ideas. In Santorini, they really make money by playing with the Atlantis idea. But they also have problems with the masses of tourists.

Finally, you put forward the eternal mistake of Atlantis skeptics: You ask for the reality of Plato's cave. Look. Plato's cave is an analogy. There is no claim at all, that it has reality. Comparing Plato's cave to Plato's Atlantis is comparing apples and oranges. And ..... both (!) stories are not presented as myths. Because the one is an analogy, and the other allegedly history.

But I can sell you a shadow of Plato's cave, fresh and dark, as it should be. It is USD 4711,00 only. Special price for you. Please put the money on my shadow bank account, then turn on the light. And you will see.

AmericanCool"Disco"dan
9/22/2018 01:29:45 pm

Sicily, Pillars of Hercules, Solon was wrong, ancient languages....Herr Obersturmgruppendummy Francke lives to promote his website. I've enjoyed watching you take him to task, chasing him around the Orion Nebula.

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Frank
9/23/2018 04:07:53 pm

Mr. Franke,

I want you to know that you have dashed all my hopes of getting rich on Atlantis. But that is not as bad as your dashing all my hopes for ever finding Plato's cave, physically. Surely there must be some truth in anything that Plato tells us, especially when it is through the mouth of Socrates. I tend to believe that such a place really exists, as the allegory was conjured forth to show the level of our enlightenment, as it relates to reality. And the fruit you selected for comparison is not quite appropriate for the material it represents. You would do better to sticking to cherries, like all you cherry-pickers, and nuts, since all you Atlantis hunters are nuts. If any of you would ever really understand Plato, than there would be hope that someday, one of you overly educated grunts would eventually start heading towards the right direction in finding Atlantis. But not until the cave is first identified. As the road to Atlantis starts in the cave. And understanding Plato is a prerequisite for taking those shackles off, so as to get out of the cave. As then, out of the cave, one can begin to see reality, and then Atlantis too, if God wills it. But I see that your journey out of the cave will be considerably greater in difficulty and time, than the other prisoners, as you are chained down with more than just the general chains of ignorance, when it comes to understanding Plato, or the cave. Because you also dawn the chains of vanity, superiority complex, hypocrisy, and delusions of grandiosity. And more, you are resisting being released, as you are addicted to those prizes and rewards given to the prisoners, for identifying and predicting the sequences of progression of those shadows on the cave's wall. People like you, who are hunting down Atlantis, give the skeptics more than ample ammunition to shoot down the reality of Atlantis, since you have no idea as to the truth of Plato's Atlantis. And therefore make a very weak argument, and open yourself to ridicule.

And by the way, your "comical" skills are much better than your skills at understanding Plato. If you practice more, who knows, as perhaps you can gain your release from the cave by making the guards laugh. But let warn you, the guards have a very poor sense of humor, therefore you really have to be funny. Maybe they will laugh if can tell them, convincingly, that you have to be released because you are the only one that can find Atlantis.

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T. Franke link
9/24/2018 01:28:09 pm

@Frank:

Hanslune expected "the usual mental gymnastics", now you delivered it. Atlantis skeptics are very capable of this art, too.

Again, all Atlantis searchers are put together in one big pot and no difference of the approach is made. Again, you say that I would do cherry-picking. I do not. But less eduacted persons will never realize the difference between historical-critical analysis and cherry-picking. I have to live with this. You think you do not have to argue. You think, the "wise" readers just "see" it. But you never explain how. And you explicitly end up with ridiculing Atlantis searchers. All of them. And you pretend some wisdom about Plato which you do not have.

With your mysticism, which is the opposite of science, you could join Edgar Cayce on Atlantis, do you know this?

Concerning the cave, I point you to my words several postings above, directed to Jason Colavito:

"Well, the shadows in the cave are at least shadows of something true. So, are they completely wrong? Aren't the shadows in the cave traces of the truth? The truth comes to you, when you realize that the shadows are not themselves true, but nevertheless give hints and clues to the truth, or?"

I talked about the cave in rational words, before you came, and before you came with your pseudoscientific mysticism of the "wise" men who left the cave and "see" the truth of Atlantis, instead of being able to give a rational explanation. Go home to your armchair and read some fairy tales! There you can apply your "wisdom" which just "sees" the morality of the tale.

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Hanslune
9/24/2018 02:00:43 pm

Oh, my by Jesus' sweaty feet and just take me out and slap me dead with frozen hominy.

I'll watch this top flight intellectual slug fest from the peanut gallery.



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Frank
9/24/2018 09:11:40 pm

I must assume that you are referring to Mr. Franke, as I'm not anything remotely resembling an intellectual, I think. Although I'm not certain if the intellectual class includes Atlantis hunters, does it? Mr. Franke claims to be a special hunter, and not the run of the mill idiot hunter, when it comes to Atlantis hunters, as he segregates himself from them, because he has a very special academic rifle which he uses to shoot down all the clues of his prey, Atlantis.

Anyway, I'm no match for Mr. Franke, and you will have to leave the spectators' gallery and come back onstage to remain his opponent. He claims to be a special heavyweight Atlantis proponent, and you are a heavyweight Atlantis skeptic. Therefore it will be a more evenhanded match. I'm only a featherweight mystic. I really feel that I have been more like a boxing referee when I intruded in your bout with Franke. And in the process of trying to enforce the rule of correctness, in pointing out Franke's lie about him stating that he does not hunt Atlantis, I got hit in the face. Now he is all yours again to try to take away his Linus' blanket, since you mentioned the peanuts gallery. And his blanket is of a special weave; a blanket that has the symbol of the one and only correct location of Plato's Atlantis embroider on it.
https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3162/2770550968_3dbc9dc7d7.jpg

Franke does not believe he cherry-picks from Plato, but did he not just throw one of those unpicked cherries at me, when he mentions my "mysticism" in expressing my humble opinion as to the intended meaning of the allegory of the Cave? He does not realize that he is cherry-picking from Plato when he takes one likely story, Atlantis, and disregards the rest of the tales in Plato. The next thing he will throw at my face is the Myth of Er, as he does not like that cherry either, and has left it on Plato's tree. Apparently Franke does not believe in the thousand years journey that we go on after we leave the cave. Mr. Franke must have been one of those that came down from heaven, and without thinking or using true philosophy, rushed to pick one of those lives of a tyrant. Albeit, an "academic" tyrant, and a very special Atlantis hunter, a smart one.

And according to the report of the messenger from the other world this was what the prophet said at the time: ‘Even for the last comer, if he chooses wisely and will live diligently, there is appointed a happy and not undesirable existence. Let not him who chooses first be careless, and let not the last despair.’ And when he had spoken, he who had the first choice came forward and in a moment chose the greatest tyranny; his mind having been darkened by folly and sensuality, he had not thought out the whole matter before he chose, and did not at first sight perceive that he was fated, among other evils, to devour his own children. But when he had time to reflect, and saw what was in the lot, he began to beat his breast and lament over his choice, forgetting the proclamation of the prophet; for, instead of throwing the blame of his misfortune on himself, he accused chance and the gods, and everything rather than himself. Now he was one of those who came from heaven, and in a former life had dwelt in a well-ordered State, but his virtue was a matter of habit only, and he had no philosophy. And it was true of others who were similarly overtaken, that the greater number of them came from heaven and therefore they had never been schooled by trial, whereas the pilgrims who came from earth, having themselves suffered and seen others suffer, were not in a hurry to choose. And owing to this inexperience of theirs, and also because the lot was a chance, many of the souls exchanged a good destiny for an evil or an evil for a good.

Reply
T. Franke link
9/25/2018 09:55:55 am

@Frank:

Cite " I'm not certain if the intellectual class includes Atlantis hunters"

If you count Goethe or Humboldt .... or Strabo and Posidonius ... Newton and Schopenhauer would do, too, or the bearer of this year's peace prize of the German book industry, Jan Assmann, may well serve as an intellectual.

Cite "Mr. Franke claims to be a special hunter, ........because he has a very special academic rifle "

Yes, exactly. But I am not completely alone. See my Web site for academics open for Atlantis as a real place.

Cite "Apparently Franke does not believe in the thousand years journey that we go on after we leave the cave."

I just realize that you are not a Platonic philosopher, but a kind of Platonic believer .......

The triskelion symbol for Sicily of your picture came into being only long after Plato.

Hanslune
9/25/2018 10:42:00 am

""I must assume that you are referring to Mr. Franke, as I'm not anything remotely resembling an intellectual, I think.""

But of course, oh no I don't want to talk to him either. I've been to Sicily and unless he's speaking of some coastal portion perhaps towards Pantelleria? It has not sunk beneath the waves.

Odd

Adieu

T. Franke link
9/25/2018 12:02:11 pm

@Hanslune:

It is not about some sunken land, but about the island of Sicily itself.

Which is odd, when it comes to the allegedly sunken Atlantis.

Yes.
I agree.

Odd.

But I am glad to hear that you have been in Sicily. Really a very nice place, be it Atlantis or not.

Frank
9/25/2018 02:26:21 pm

Mr. Intellectual Atlantis hunter, that's you, Mr. Franke. Thank you for the short list of noteworthy intellectuals who believe in Plato's Atlantis, but I already had a good idea that some of those named by you had interest in Atlantis. But I doubt that any of them were as accurate as you are about its location. You are assuming that I know little about this business of Plato's Atlantis, and that is why you are giving me the basics about it. And you must assume that I know even less about Plato's philosophy. You must have forgotten that this is not the first time that we exchange compliments on this forum of comments. Although you are not a mystic like me, I do see that
we have a thing or two in common. One is the opinion on Sicily as being a nice place. I'm very familiar with the island, especially the ground on which Plato must have walked on. And in respect to your hypothesis of Sicily being Plato's Atlantis, I don't see how it could possibly resemble Plato's descriptions. Why, if Plato wanted to tell us that Atlantis was Sicily, he would have done so, plainly. For crying out loud, Plato did not even mention, nor describe the one thing that would have made Sicily Plato's Atlantis for certain. The largest active volcano in Europe, Mt. Etna.

Now, you say you do not cherry-pick to arrive at your Atlantis, but that is what you are doing. I don't particularly want to engage you to refute your silly hypothesis on Atlantis, as you refute yourself on your own, easy enough, with all the cherry-picking. Anyone that cannot provide an Atlantis conforming to all the descriptions given by Plato has not found Atlantis. What you have found in Sicily is your dream of Atlantis, and not reality. In other words, you don't even understand the allegory of the cave, and yet you set out to understand Plato's Atlantis.

And I dare say that I underestimated your level of delusion of grandiosity, now that I see the company you are placing yourself with. But are you also in Newton's company when it comes to the "Good" Book? Being such a scholar you must know that Atlantis was not the only eccentric material that Sir Newton delved in, as he was a firm believer in the end-times, as given in the book of Revelation. Newton was very religious Christian, and also believed the Bible contained codes. And he locked himself in his house for the last 20 years, as the story goes, trying to crack the Bible code. Are you religious? But he gain much if you also locked yourself in your house, sitting in a an armchair, like I do, and read Plato's fairy tales until you are blue in the face, or to the point of having fully understood Plato. Plato is really telling you that what you see, hear, touch, taste, and smell is not reality, but only shadows. Reality is found outside the cave. You are an intellectual dunce, if you cannot even understand the allegory of the cave. And you have no business hunting for Atlantis, as you keep shooting yourself in the foot with your academic rifle. Have you ever seen absolute justice? You soul will, one day, if my mystic notions are correct.

Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner?
Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner.
Imagine once more, I said, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness?
To be sure, he said.
And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
No question, he said.
This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in publ

Reply
Joe Scales
9/25/2018 03:47:24 pm

Again, half as long...

Reply
T. Franke link
9/25/2018 05:03:39 pm

@Frank:

Cite: "Anyone that cannot provide an Atlantis conforming to all the descriptions given by Plato has not found Atlantis."

Just a small question: Herodotus wrote about Egypt, that it is 11000 years old and older. Now, let us search for Egypt with your method:

"Anyone that cannot provide an Egypt conforming to all the descriptions given by Herodotus has not found Egypt."

I fear we will never find Egypt, if we follow your advice! Because this strange land at the river Nile does not fit. It is not 11000 years old. So we have to strike it off the list of possible candiates for Egypt.

Or? Do we? And if not, why not?

Reply
AmericanCool"Disco"Dan
9/25/2018 06:14:04 pm

You've trotted out the "Herodotus was wrong" argument before and turned it around to mean "Plato was right because Herodotus was wrong." Look, something shiny!

Herodotus was wrong (misinformed) about the AGE of Egypt, not its LOCATION.

Plato made up a story. Atlantis is a suburb of Narnia.

Frank
9/25/2018 08:15:55 pm

Not just Herodotus, as Plato also said that Egypt was at least 10,000 years old. Not to speak of what Plato said about the existence of civilizations many ages before the great and terrible deluge (Flood). Why don't you go hunting Plato's Egypt of 10,000 BC instead of Atlantis? At least hunting an Egypt that old has its advantage over a questionable location for Atlantis, as we already know the place where to look. And in the Atlantis story that old Egypt was never destroyed. Or better still, how about the Athens that fought against Atlantis, why don't you hunt that? It should be easy, as that Athens of 9,600 BC was said to be in the same place as our modern Athens is, and was also very well described in the Critias too.

And as far as searching for Herodotus' Egypt, or Plato's Atlantis with my method, you would have found them long ago. But you first must become a mystic. Herodotus' Egypt is full of nonsense, besides some facts and near-facts, and Plato's Atlantis is full of facts, besides some nonsense. Plato's Atlantis is full of those facts that are all facts dreamed up by Plato. Herodotus, as wild as he was with stories on and from Egypt, at least he was not wild enough to mention anything on Atlantis that even remotely resembled the story that Plato put in the mouth of the character, Critias. As I have stated, If you really were a genuine academic, instead of just a shadow of one, you would have understood Plato long ago, and would not have wasted your time hunting Atlantis. Not to mention all the money you have wasted in purchasing all those books on "Atlantis found" paraphernalia. But listen, it's not a bad hobby, this hunting of yours, as long as you at least get the benefit of reading and understanding Plato. You haven't reaped those benefits, I'm afraid. Read Plato between the lines, and you will find Atlantis!

ATHENIAN: Enough of this. And what, then, is to be regarded as the origin of government? Will not a man be able to judge of it best from a point of view in which he may behold the progress of states and their transitions to good or evil?
CLEINIAS: What do you mean?
ATHENIAN: I mean that he might watch them from the point of view of time, and observe the changes which take place in them during infinite ages.
CLEINIAS: How so?
ATHENIAN: Why, do you think that you can reckon the time which has elapsed since cities first existed and men were citizens of them?
CLEINIAS: Hardly.
ATHENIAN: But are sure that it must be vast and incalculable?
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: And have not thousands and thousands of cities come into being during this period and as many perished? And has not each of them had every form of government many times over, now growing larger, now smaller, and again improving or declining?
CLEINIAS: To be sure.
ATHENIAN: Let us endeavour to ascertain the cause of these changes; for that will probably explain the first origin and development of forms of government.
CLEINIAS: Very good. You shall endeavour to impart your thoughts to us, and we will make an effort to understand you.
ATHENIAN: Do you believe that there is any truth in ancient traditions?
CLEINIAS: What traditions?
ATHENIAN: The traditions about the many destructions of mankind which have been occasioned by deluges and pestilences, and in many other ways, and of the survival of a remnant?
CLEINIAS: Everyone is disposed to believe them.
ATHENIAN: Let us consider one of them, that which was caused by the famous deluge.
CLEINIAS: What are we to observe about it?
ATHENIAN: I mean to say that those who then escaped would only be hill shepherds,–small sparks of the human race preserved on the tops of mountains.
CLEINIAS: Clearly.
ATHENIAN: Such survivors would necessarily be unacquainted with the arts and the various devices which are suggested to the dwellers in cities by interest or ambition, and with all the wrongs which they contrive against one another.
CLEINIAS: Very true.
ATHENIAN: Let us suppose, then, that the cities in the plain and on the sea-coast were utterly destroyed at that time.
CLEINIAS: Very good.
ATHENIAN: Would not all implements have then perished and every other excellent invention of political or any other sort of wisdom have utterly disappeared?
CLEINIAS: Why, yes, my friend; and if things had always continued as they are at present ordered, how could any discovery have ever been made even in the least particular? For it is evident that the arts were unknown during ten thousand times ten thousand years. And no more than a thousand or two thousand years have elapsed since the discoveries of Daedalus, Orpheus and Palamedes,–since Marsyas and Olympus invented music, and Amphion the lyre–not to speak of numberless other inventions which are but of yesterday.

T. Franke link
9/26/2018 06:05:27 am

@AmericanCool"Disco"Dan:

Your words speak loudly a big ACCEPTANCE for my argument concerning the time. Thank you, AmericanCool"Disco"Dan.

Concerning the location, and many other aspects, it is just the same game. Herodotus was not wrong about the location of Egypt, since he personally was there, and Egypt existed in his times. Yet Herodotus talks a lot about other places, where he was not, and where he makes mistakes concerning the location.

And not only concerning the location, but other aspects, too. Such as distances, size of buildings, etc. etc.

And not only Herodotus, but other authors, too.

The question is, whether we can see any system behind these mistakes, allowing us to un-distort the distortions. Whether we can explain such mistakes on the background of the transmitters of information, demonstrating that they only could make certain mistakes, considering their view of the world.

But you already ACCEPTED the basic principle, above. Thank you, AmericanCool"Disco"Dan.

T. Franke link
9/26/2018 06:10:33 am

@Frank:

Cite: "Why don't you go hunting Plato's Egypt of 10,000 BC instead of Atlantis?"

I explained this now at length. These numbers were common mistakes common to all Greeks in Plato's time. The real numbers are given by modern science. Egypt was founded around 3000 BC, not 10000 BC.

You still have to answer me, how YOU want to find Egypt when applying your strange rule from above:

"Anyone that cannot provide an Egypt conforming to all the descriptions given by Herodotus has not found Egypt."

I fear we will never find Egypt, if we follow your advice! Because this strange land at the river Nile does not fit. It is not 11000 years old. So we have to strike it off the list of possible candiates for Egypt.

Or? Do we? And if not, why not?

(AmericanCool"Disco"Dan already ACCEPTED my argument, but I am still waiting for YOUR acceptance.)

Frank
9/26/2018 10:27:41 am

Franke,
I have accepted you argument. I accept your argument on Atlantis as being; ridiculous, unfounded, distorted, illogical, and cherry-picked to fit your wishes and dream of becoming something that you will never be, a real intellectual.

No one accepts your idiotic hypothesis on Atlantis, only you, who cooked it up from a "Swedish thought." How do you ever expect any skeptic on Atlantis to accept your fairy tale on a Sicilian Atlantis, which you have constructed out of straw, when not even your nutty comrades and fellow Atlantis hunters accept a word of it? You need to go back to the drawing board and try other combinations of cherries you have not picked, so far. Then, perhaps you may get an inch or two closer to the truth, because as you stand, you are miles and miles away from Plato's Atlantis. And this is as plain as that most fertile plain surrounded by that great long, deep, and wide ditch of 10,000 stades.

You have out-foxed yourself by trying to make Sicily something that it is not. Sicily is not Atlantis, O Mighty Hunter. Sicily is way too minute. But it's not just the size, it's all the rest that does not fit Plato's Atlantis. Therefore it does not even match as a miniature. Just as the other island of Sardinia does not match either. Those that propose them, or other Mediterranean islands are dunces.

As I said, get out of the cave first and then you might catch a glimpse of reality. I did, as far as understanding Plato. And what I see, especially as his Atlantis goes, you, Franke, are a real dunce, one with especially long ears. With this long tale of a Sicilian Atlantis, the Sicilian themselves would tell you, si nu Sciccareddu Sicilianu. Sicilian donkeys, also known as Miniature Mediterranean Donkeys, Sardinian donkeys, or miniature donkeys, are from the islands of Sicily and Sardinia in Italy. They are nearly extinct in their land of origin, but are now prevalent in the United States.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CycdXpV2mo
Here is the whole song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUIQ2I2QWMQ

To an ignorant crowd full of blockheads you may perhaps convince a few that you have found Atlantis. Otherwise, with those that know better. What are you doing here, Herr Franke? This is the land of the skeptics and debunkers of myths, and you sit here, at the feet of the great one, Jason Colavito, waiting on him to throw you a bone or two of his approval on this BS hypothesis of yours being plausible. While all along you, full of hypocrisy, criticize your fellow Atlantis seekers. You feel you are some special hunter, gifted with special intellectual prowess, and are wanting to not only convince the skeptics of your find, but also the other believers and faithful hunters of Atlantis. You are no friend to your fellow hunters, nor an enemy to the skeptics. You are in no man's land. You want to become a legend of your own. Unfortunately for you, Franke, as the wise say, you are just a legend in your own mind.

SOCRATES: The words of the wise are not to be set aside; for there is probably something in them; and therefore the meaning of this saying is not hastily to be dismissed.
PHAEDRUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: Let us put the matter thus:–Suppose that I persuaded you to buy a horse and go to the wars. Neither of us knew what a horse was like, but I knew that you believed a horse to be of tame animals the one which has the longest ears.
PHAEDRUS: That would be ridiculous.
SOCRATES: There is something more ridiculous coming:– Suppose, further, that in sober earnest I, having persuaded you of this, went and composed a song in honor of an ass, whom I entitled a horse beginning: ’A noble animal and a most useful possession, especially in war, and you may get on his back
and fight, and he will carry baggage or anything.’
PHAEDRUS: How ridiculous!
SOCRATES: Ridiculous! Yes; but is not even a ridiculous friend better than a cunning enemy?
PHAEDRUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And when the orator instead of putting an ass in the place of a horse, puts good for evil, being himself as ignorant of their true nature as the city on which he imposes is ignorant; and having studied the notions of the multitude, falsely persuades them not about ’the shadow of an ass,’ which he
confounds with a horse, but about good which he confounds with evil,–what will be the harvest which rhetoric will be likely to gather after the sowing of that seed?


Reply
T. Franke link
9/26/2018 01:06:53 pm

@Frank:

You really screwed this up. You repeatedly avoided to answer my question how to find Egypt on the basis of Herodotus' descriptions when applying your method .... the reason for your avoidance is simple. You are a LITERALIST. As most of Atlantis skeptics are! They are literalists, as well as most of the Atlantis searchers. You, and most who deal with the topic of Atlantis, be they skeptics or searchers, are intellecutally unable to grasp the idea of historical criticism.

Cite: "You are no friend to your fellow hunters, nor an enemy to the skeptics. You are in no man's land."

Thank you for this sentence. You are right. My ideas are odd, as Hanslune said, and I am in no man's land. I am not affiliated to any tribal behaviour. I am on a way no one ever tried. Well, not fully true. Few others tried, too, as you can see on my Web page. My hope is to be able to go the way to its end.

I want to urge you:

You really should think about your answer on my Finding-Egypt question. You still have given no answer.

And you really should think about why academics (implicitly or explicitly or not at all referring to me) abandon or at least heavily modify their Aristotle-said-so claim. Why do they do it? Why do they do it now? What happened? Why do some say that Franke did it?

And you should think about your idea how science works. Do you really think that such an idea as the invention of Atlantis can be turned around in a minute? By jumping at some ruins in the field and saying: This was it?! This is a journey with many steps. And it is text work. But YOU want to see only the one big thing, or nothing at all. This is really a problem. Your understanding of science is a problem.

Cite: "This is the land of the skeptics and debunkers of myths, and you sit here, at the feet of the great one, Jason Colavito, waiting on him to throw you a bone or two of his approval on this BS hypothesis of yours being plausible."

Since YOU, Frank, are a LITERALIST and a Plato BELIEVER, it is YOU who is the pseudo-scientist. What are YOU doing here? You want to receive some acceptance from ME for your weird Cave ideas? No, you will not get a single "bone" from me for your BS hypotheses of Plato's cave.

CAUTION! Frank is a LITERALIST, a Plato BELIEVER, an ANTI-PHILOSOPHER.
CAUTION! Frank is a pseudoscientist.

Reply
Frank
9/26/2018 07:31:24 pm

Let us make one thing clear, my dear Franke. From you I want nothing but truth, the whole truth. I want you to admit to yourself that you are a real dunce. What you call my BS about Plato's cave are precisely the same sentiments that Socrates gives. I had only cited Plato's English translation. Albeit, one that you do not approve, Jowett's. You are like some of the other dunces seeking Atlantis, as they too use translations as a way of getting around the truth of the essence of Plato's thoughts. The essence of the allegory of the cave is the same with all the translators and translations. Since you claim great language skills and, apparently, also grand philosophical understanding, you happen to differ with all the real genuine scholars. They all give us a flat earth while you give us a round one. Is this what you are claiming?

And get this into that thick and hard head of yours, I'm not a LITERALIST, as I'm a REALIST. B ut you are correct on the second accusation, I'm definitely a Plato BELIEVER. And I believe that you do not understand Plato at all. Now let me make a charge about you. You are a "PARTIALIST" CHERRY-PICKER, and a FULL FOOL who has fully self-deceived himself.

SOCRATES: Excellent Franke, I have long been wondering at my own wisdom; I cannot trust myself. And I think that I ought to stop and ask myself What am I saying? for there is nothing worse than self-deception–when the deceiver is always at home and always with you–it is quite terrible, and therefore I ought often to retrace my steps and endeavour to ’look fore and aft,’
in the words of the aforesaid Homer. And now let me see; where are we? Have we not been saying that the correct name indicates the nature of the thing:–has this proposition been sufficiently proven? Why yes!

Looking fore, and aft I see what others have been saying here, about you, my dear Franke, and they all agree that you are, in essence, a real DUNCE. Jason will not go that far, as he has to be politically correct whenever he throws you a bone or two. But you should be reading the warning label on the box from which Jason takes the bones he throws your way. Read the fine print between the lines.

Bioarchaeologist Steph Halmhofer posted to Twitter an excerpt from National Geographic’s recent “special issue” on “Mysteries of History,” and the cover is a depressing look into what journalists think qualifies as “history,” and basically it’s mythology. The three stories teased on the cover are Atlantis, King Arthur, and the Curse of the Hope Diamond. Of the three, Atlantis is fictitious, King Arthur is a myth (or at best a composite legend), and the Hope Diamond curse is fictional. It’s good, I guess, that the magazine asks “What’s real, what’s fantasy, and what’s still a mystery,” but it’s sad that the only “history” on the cover is the picture of Stonehenge.

Hanslune
9/26/2018 01:02:11 pm

Disastrous.

T. Franke is still posting - make it stop......pls



Reply
T. Franke link
9/26/2018 01:15:38 pm

@Hanslune:

Cite: "T. Franke is still posting - make it stop......pls"

Since you complain only about my (!) posting and not about Frank's posting, am I allowed to conclude that you agree with Frank's literalist kind-of-religious reading of Plato's cave? And that you agree that historical criticism is just BS? And that "inspired" persons like him just are allowed to avoid an answer to my Finding-Egypt question on the basis of Herodotus? Because you just "see" that Atlantis is an invention, while you "see" that Herodotus ... etc. .... without giving any reasons for it? You agree with Frank's understanding of science?

Reply
Joe Scales
9/26/2018 09:15:48 pm

"T. Franke is still posting - make it stop......pls"

Okay, here we go with my Glinda the Good Witch moment...

Dude, just click your heels three freakin' times and go back to Kansas. T. Franke ain't gonna follow. And should someone else (cough... Frank) wish to waste bandwidth on him... then let them. Though shooting fish in a barrel comes to mind, the better parable would be that the longer you argue with idiots, the harder it is to tell the difference.

Embrace your power to ignore. It can speak volumes.

Reply
Frank
9/27/2018 10:10:37 am

Sorry Joe, I just read this post of yours directed at Hanslune, as I spotted my name in parentheses. I like the "parables" you cite. I clicked something thrice, as Mr. Mighty Hunter has stopped, so far. Should Franke return, I will take your advice and try to go back to Kansas. But is Kansas a real historical place? Will not Mr. Franke still follow anyone there, if he thinks there is something of an historical-critical value to be garnered there?

And thanks for the advice Joe, but it may be already too late for me, as far as idiots go. But is it not also the case with most skeptics that argue against Atlantis and other such material? What I mean is that, are not the skeptics always arguing with the believers and hunters of myths and legends they are skeptical about? Surely a skeptic will not ARGUE with another skeptic about the same things they agree on and are skeptical about? The skeptics will only enjoy themselves and laugh whenever they discuss the skeptical material among themselves, or watch from the sidelines. And you, appearing to be a skeptic, how long have you been arguing with those idiots who hunt down myth and legends, believing them to be true? What I mean is this, Joe. Is there a scale that indicates the length at which point one risks becoming an idiot, or seeming to be an idiot, for arguing with idiots? Provided you already have another scale for predetermining what is an idiot, before one begins to argue. What I'm driving at is that the ones arguing may already be idiots prior to the arguing phase, if you have a scale.

The Italians have similar parables, or even better ones. For instance, in reference to the one you gave us on idiots, the say something like this. Chi va con lo zoppo impara a zoppicare. And after all what are these old saying, or parables, but popular philosophy? And let us recall another proverb, "Hope is last to die," when we are over critical of the believers of Atlantis. For who knows if myth is truth and truth myth? Kansas may turn out to be myth and Oz truth. Only God knows, as man have only opinions.

SOCRATES: There is a noble freedom, Callicles, in your way of approaching the argument; for what you say is what the rest of the world think, but do not like to say. And I must beg of you to persevere, that the true rule of human life may become manifest. Tell me, then:–you say, do you not, that in the rightly developed man the passions ought not to be controlled, but that we should let them grow to the utmost and somehow or other satisfy them, and that this is virtue?
CALLICLES: Yes; I do.
SOCRATES: Then those who want nothing are not truly said to be happy?
CALLICLES: No indeed, for then stones and dead men would be the happiest of all.
SOCRATES: But surely life according to your view is an awful thing; and indeed I think that Euripides may have been right in saying, ’Who knows if life be not death and death life;’ and that we are very likely dead; I have heard a philosopher say that at this moment we are actually dead, and that the body is our tomb and that the part of the soul which is the seat of the desires is liable to be tossed about by words and blown up and down; and some ingenious person, probably a Sicilian or an Italian, playing with the word, invented a tale in which he called the soul–because of its believing and make-believe nature–a vessel, and the ignorant he called the uninitiated or leaky, and the place in the souls of the uninitiated in which the desires are seated, being the intemperate and incontinent part, he compared to a vessel full of holes, because it can never be satisfied.



Joes Scales
9/27/2018 01:40:08 pm

Again. Half as long.

Hanslune
9/26/2018 01:25:14 pm

Aquila non capiat muscas

(for non Latin speakers)

'An eagle does not feed on flies.'

Reply
Joe Scales
9/26/2018 01:49:01 pm

What's the Latin expression for saying you're done with a pointless internet argument when that's clearly not the case?

Reply
Hanslune
9/26/2018 01:56:04 pm

Hey Joe

It IS pretty pointless isn't it?

Damn it's right up there with looking for Lemuria or Mu.

I continue to be amused from the sidelines. Have a good day.

T. Franke link
9/26/2018 03:58:42 pm

@Joe Scales:

I suggest:

Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Catoni.

"The victorious cause pleased the gods, but the vanquished (pleased) Cato."

T. Franke link
9/26/2018 03:51:39 pm

@Hanslune:

I would prefer to translate this with:

"An eagle shall not catch flies".

Look, it is not important how exactly we translate this. But when it comes to Atlantis, a correct translation is crucial. And when I look into Benjamin Jowett's translation, which is the most common, then I see a lot of mistakes which create moments of irony which are not there in the original. I think Benjamin Jowett's translation is a major source of the erroneous claim that you just could "see" that it is an invention. It's just an illusion. I am tempted to call persons who claim that you just can "see" it: seers.

Reply
AmericanCool"Disco"Dan
9/26/2018 04:09:28 pm

You've added "moving the goal posts" to cherryy-picking. Your argument now, in addition to "How would you find Egypt based on Herodotus's incorrect statement about its age? Therefore Plato [and Franke] are right about Atlantis" you further argue "Herodotus was wrong about the location of places he had not been to therefore Plato [and Franke] are right about Atantis."

Repeating your argument back to you is NOT accepting it.

Reply
Frank
9/26/2018 06:40:30 pm

But that's the point that Franke's wants to make, because Plato had been in Sicily, thrice, we are told. Therefore Plato could describe what he saw. I'm assuming that Franke has been there too, unless his comment on Sicily being a nice place was gotten by him through second and third sources, or through pictures and videos. The only problem is that Franke must be a poor listener, or a blind one, because what Plato describes is not what Sicily is, and neither what Franke sees, or hears. But Franke has taken care of that very nicely, he believes. Franke claims that Plato used Sicily and the Greek colony city of Siracusa's politics as a model for the story of Atlantis. Franke wants his cake and eat it too. Franke, whenever he will complete his great hypothesis, will give the world an Atlantis that existed only in Plato's mind, but also a real physical place, a real role model Atlantis on which Plato based it. As I told the great hunter, he plagiarized an idea and concept from Rudberg, and is developing it into what is his childhood dream of his. He wants to unify the skeptics, and the hunters of Atlantis, giving each what they want. In other words, as in the world of physics, Franke wants to find the theory of everything (his Atlantis) to unify the macro universe physics of Einstein, and the micro physics of Quantum Mechanics.

Franke's aspirations are indeed grandiose, as he wants to be able to be a real Caesar, and claim a "swift" and conclusive victory about Plato's Atlantis, veni, vidi, vici.

Reply
T. Franke link
9/27/2018 01:22:45 pm

@Frank:

Let me remind all followers of this discussion that all these arrogant and ignorant words about an alleged idea of my "grandiosity" are put forward by my opponents. The old rhethorcial tricks still work.

No, I did not plagiarize Rudberg's idea. Rudberg is another major step in the right direction, but not correct in his final conclusions.

My idea is that Plato took the Atlantis description from the ancient historical tradition without realizing that it is Sicily. He wanted to make a point for the Sicilian ruler, but did not realize the coincidence. The coincidence becomes evident only when applying the historical-critical method on the basis of modern knowledge. Plato did not have this, neither the method nor the knowledge.

But even if you are convinced that Plato made up a 100% invention with Sicily as the model, you would have made a major step towards the truth. Rudberg is so-to-say the gold standard among the Atlantis skeptics.

His book is presented here, and it is in English:
https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_syracuse.htm

I really appreciate that Frank showed so much interest in my work. Again, I want to say, that my work cannot be so bad, if this forum of skeptics gathers several of my readers.

Americancool"Disco"Dan
9/27/2018 03:27:05 pm

Again, moving the goalposts. To be clear, even though I am going to repeat it back to you, I do not accept your argument "that Plato made up a 100% invention with Sicily as the model".

Now you are saying "The Atlantis story is fictional (you have accepted MY argument in this) BUT Sicily is the real location of Atlantis."

The more that you (T. Franke) say something, the less believable and more wrong it seems. Less is more.

AmericanCool"Disco"Dan
9/27/2018 03:36:14 pm

"Again, I want to say, that my work cannot be so bad, if this forum of skeptics gathers several of my readers."

We are telling you that "[your] work is so bad".

People telling you at every turn that you are wrong and your arguments are those of an idiot does NOT make them "[your] readers".

T. Franke link
9/27/2018 04:02:44 pm

@AmericanCool"Disco"Dan:

Cite: "People telling you at every turn that you are wrong and your arguments are those of an idiot does NOT make them "[your] readers"."

True, but the knowledge about my works which they show makes them my readers. You are not in this number. You are talking about my hypotheses on a very superficial level.

You still think that you could deal with every Atlantis searcher in a quick-and-easy way. You cannot.

T. Franke link
9/27/2018 04:05:25 pm

@Americancool"Disco"Dan:

Cite: >>Now you are saying "The Atlantis story is fictional..."<<

Errr, no. Not at all. I said: "My idea is that Plato took the Atlantis description from the ancient historical tradition without realizing that it is Sicily."

There is nothing fictional in it. Only distortions by the way of historical tradition.

AmericanCool"disco"Dan
9/27/2018 04:10:18 pm

"True, but the knowledge about my works which they show makes them my readers."

You've told us what seems like a metric asston about your work here.

Name some of the people you think are your readers. Let's prove you right on something,

T. Franke link
9/27/2018 04:36:23 pm

@AmericanCool"disco"Dan:

Fair request, here is the answer:

Frank obviously has some deeper knowledge of my ideas. Isn't this obvious? He talked at least some deeper thoughts about my Gunnar Rudberg book.

Hanslune will reject to have read anything from me, but somehow he realized something of my steps on the way. And he talks of my books where no one had talked about them before. He is clearly an attentive observer, if not a reader.

You are neither nor. You talk always superficially about me and my hypotheses. And thus you regularly miss the point.

By the way:

- Hanslune carefully avoided to comment on my questions about Cecil Torr and Christopher Gill.
- Frank carefully avoided to comment on the Finding-Egypt question.
- Will you carefully avoid to comment on Alfred E. Taylor?

AmericanCool"Disco"Dan
9/27/2018 05:44:09 pm

"- Hanslune carefully avoided to comment on my questions about Cecil Torr and Christopher Gill.
- Frank carefully avoided to comment on the Finding-Egypt question.
- Will you carefully avoid to comment on Alfred E. Taylor?"

So the fact that they DON'T cite material from your website is proof that they ARE your readers???

And then you say: "Hanslune will reject to have read anything from me".

So his DENIAL is more PROOF? You have an interesting reasoning process.

Rather than more idiocy from you let's wait to hear from them.

T. Franke link
9/27/2018 01:10:41 pm

@AmericanCool"Disco"Dan:

You are now one of the few constructive particitpants in this discussion, congratulations. Thank you for making an argument.

You are right. It is not possible to conclude the existence of Atlantis from the problems I raised. But what we can conclude is that many arguments against the existence of Atlantis do not work, and that a possibility of existence is opened where it had been excluded, before.

And an ACCEPTANCE of this idea is included in your words above.

This is, of course, only a partial step towards the great goal. As I pointed out, partial steps on the long road to proving the existence of Atlantis should be of interest to everybody interested in a scientific approach to the question.

Reply
Americancool"discodan
9/27/2018 03:17:06 pm

AGAIN, repeating your argument back to you is NOT acceptance.

T. Franke link
9/27/2018 03:56:34 pm

@Americancool"discodan:

Your words were:

>>You've trotted out the "Herodotus was wrong" argument before and turned it around to mean "Plato was right because Herodotus was wrong." Look, something shiny!
Herodotus was wrong (misinformed) about the AGE of Egypt, not its LOCATION.
Plato made up a story. Atlantis is a suburb of Narnia. <<

(x) You clearly agree that Herodotus was simply misinformed or whatever, but did not make it up. Fine. With this agreement, you cannot escape any more.

(x) You omit, that simply all ancient Greeks were misinformed in this way, and that no one until certain Christians and their Biblical chronology bothered about the 11000 years of Herodotus or the 9000 years of Plato's Atlantis.

(x) I did NOT turn the argument around. You say this only in order to avoid the open ACCEPTANCE. Because this is, what follows: If Herodotus was wrong, why then in all the world should we believe that Plato made it up? It still could be made up (even in Herodotus' case), but how likely is this?

(x) I admit, that your ACCEPTANCE was given only implicitly.

Let me cite you a real scholar, a scientist, the great Alfred E. Taylor:

"Plato was, of course, right in his belief in the antiquity and continuity of Egyptian culture, but he seems to have overestimated the age of the existing monuments." And: "Hence the assumption that the Egyptians might possess contemporary records of events nine thousand years before the time of Solon is in full accord with Plato's own beliefs about the age of the earliest monuments."
(Alfred E. Taylor, A commentary on Plato's Timaeus, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1928; pp. 52 f.)

Now tell me: Where is the "making up" of Plato? Was Alfred E. Taylor nuts?

The making-up of Atlantis exists only in the head of Atlantis skeptics, who do not want to see the obvious: The ancient Greeks were victims of a collective error (and not only one such error), and this opens the possibility for Atlantis to be real in the sense of a distorted historical tradition. Not more. Nor less.

Calm down, Atlantis still could be an invention. But you cannot claim this with easy words. Not any more. Not in the presence of reason and good conscience.

T. Franke link
9/27/2018 04:56:35 pm

@all:

Well, somebody has to stop this. And it is me, who does it. I will not answer any more in this thread.

I am somewhat disappointed how reluctant many where to provide real arguments, and to show interest in my arguments. Just avoiding my arguments is an intellectual declaration of bankruptcy.

And my argument was not that Atlantis is real, but only that certain very popular arguments do not exclude the reality of Atlantis in the sense of a distorted historical tradition.

I am thankful for certain true words: My idea is "odd", by Hanslune, and "You are no friend to your fellow hunters, nor an enemy to the skeptics. You are in no man's land." by Frank.

Yes!

Reply
AmericanCool"Disco"Dan
9/27/2018 06:18:30 pm

"Well, somebody has to stop this. And it is me, who does it. I will not answer any more in this thread."

Anyone who's been on the internet for more than a day has seen this before.

Roll up! Roll up! Place your bets!

My prediction is "within the next 14 hours."

Reply
Hanslune
9/27/2018 06:02:08 pm

The point of all this was to see if you would clearly state your position without trying to drag people through the same boring sludge of your tedious arguments.

You won't.

You finally did when you found no one was willing to listen to it all again.

Here is a suggestion: State clearly and precisely what your position is then SHUT UP if anyone is interested in finding out WHY you came up with that conclusion let them ask don't try to trick them into listening to you.

Reply
Frank
9/28/2018 02:27:50 am

Franke said: "Plato was, of course, right in his belief in the antiquity and continuity of Egyptian culture, but he seems to have overestimated the age of the existing monuments." And: "Hence the assumption that the Egyptians might possess contemporary records of events nine thousand years before the time of Solon is in full accord with Plato's own beliefs about the age of the earliest monuments."
(Alfred E. Taylor, A commentary on Plato's Timaeus, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1928; pp. 52 f.)

Now tell me: Where is the "making up" of Plato? Was Alfred E. Taylor nuts?

The answer is NO my dear Franke. It's no because AE Taylor, or the other Taylor, Thomas, a Platonist at heart, never went out to hunt down Atlantis. These real scholars understood the story for what it was worth, a myth. And an unfinished myth at that.

We should ask, Are all the "scholarly" commentators and translators of Plato nuts? The answer is also no. They all understood that it was a made-up story.

Franke, you cannot comprehend, nor able to see clearly what writers write because you are partial to your dream and your ambition of finding Atlantis. AE Taylor was merely offering his readers his opinion on his trying to rationalize a possibility as to Plato's understanding of the age of Egypt, as the basis as to why Plato, in making up the story, was confident in placing Atlantis in the distant past, one of prior to 9,600 BC. Taylor, being a translator and student of Plato, was using Plato's Laws dialogue to argue for the age of Egypt believed by Plato. The age of Egypt believed by Plato to be at least 10,000 years old is extracted from the contents of his Laws. But one cannot always take as reality the lines written for the characters. One has to understand the overall essence of the dialogue to differentiate.

CLEINIAS: And what are the laws about music and dancing in Egypt?
ATHENIAN: You will wonder when I tell you: Long ago they appear to have recognized the very principle of which we are now speaking–that their young citizens must be habituated to forms and strains of virtue. These they fixed, and exhibited the patterns of them in their temples; and no painter or artist is allowed to innovate upon them, or to leave the traditional forms and invent new ones. To this day, no alteration is allowed either in these arts, or in music at all. And you will find that their works of art are painted or moulded in the same forms which they had TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO;–this is literally true and no exaggeration,– their ancient paintings and sculptures are not a whit better or worse than the work of to-day, but are made with just the same skill.
CLEINIAS: How extraordinary!

How extraordinary that you, Franke, believe that Alfred E Taylor believes the tale of Atlantis to have some reality. Since you say you are a student of history and classical material, does Alfred Taylor provide specific words that clearly shows that he believed the story of Atlantis to be true, as you are implying? Have you actually read Alfred Taylor and what he says about the story of Atlantis?

My dear Franke, I hate to wake you up from your dream, as I'm going to cite Alfred Taylor from his, Plato The Man And His Work. Specifically from Chapter XVII, Timaeus and Critias

From page 439.
(b) The Story of Atlantis (20c-25d). The story told by Critias
is to the effect that nine thousand years before the time of Solon Athens had enjoyed just such institutions as those described in Republic i.-v. Her soil was then wonderfully rich and fertile, as it had not suffered from the denudation which has since reduced the district of Attica to a rocky skeleton. The prehistoric Athenians, strong only in public spirit and sound moral, encountered and defeated the federated kings of Atlantis, an island lying in the Atlantic outside the Straits of Gibraltar, who had already successfully overrun all Europe as far as Italy, and all Africa as far as the Egyptian border. Afterwards both the prehistoric Athenian victors and the island Atlantis were overwhelmed in a single day and night of earthquake and inundation. The story only survived in the records of Egypt, where Solon heard it when on his travels.
IT SHOULD BE CLEAR THAT THIS WHOLE TALE IS PLATO'S OWN INVENTION. He could not tell us so much more plainly than he does in the Critias (113b), when he makes Critias appeal to the testimony of "family papers" as his sole evidence for the narrative. Not only the existence of the island-kingdom, but the statement that Solon had ever contemplated a poem on the subject is represented as a "family tradition"; in other words, nothing was ever really known of any such intention. It is not hard to see what the materials for the tale are.

Thorwald, It would take a very voluminous book to point out why you and all those other hunters of Atlantis can never find Atlantis. And understanding the cave allegory from a mystic's point of view is the key to getting at the truth.




Reply
T. Franke link
9/28/2018 01:44:13 pm

NO FAKE NEWS.

Just for the scientific record in order to avoid bold misunderstandings resulting in FAKE NEWS shared time and again among credulous Atlantis skeptics:

Thomas Taylor's claim about Plato was explicitly that Plato did NOT make up the story but believed it himself, so just the opposite of what Frank said above.

Thorwald C. Franke's claim about Alfred E. Taylor was NOT that AE Taylor "believes the tale of Atlantis to have some reality", as Frank said above. Franke's claim was that the 9000 years cannot be used as a simple argument against the reality of Atlantis, and AE Taylor does not do this in accordance with Franke.

As Frank himself cited, the core argument of AE Taylor against the reality of Atlantis is not the 9000-years-argument, but it is the family-papers argument. How AE Taylor concludes from this weak argument, that "it should be clear that this whole tale is Plato's own invention" is one of the great riddles of science. E.g. Desmond Lee expressed the weakness of this argument: "Nor does it seem to me in the least surprising that the story should occur only in Plato. By his own account it had survived as, so to speak, a bit of family gossip in Critias' family."

Thank you for your understanding, but FAKE NEWS cannot be tolerated. There are no limits for the credulity of most Atlantis skeptics, as well as of most Atlantis searchers.

We have to keep the record straight here. Especially in this forum.

Reply
Americancool"Disco"Dan
9/28/2018 04:13:48 pm

"T. FRANKE
9/27/2018 04:56:35 pm
@all:

Well, somebody has to stop this. And it is me, who does it. I will not answer any more in this thread."

Frank
9/28/2018 05:12:05 pm

Franke, you are dork. Come on, you were caught with your hand stuck in the cookie jar. Now you want to worm your way out of the rotten apple, or rather the rotten cherry you picked from Alfred, and not Thomas, Taylor. You praise Alfred Taylor as being "great" and now you are wanting to demean him because I cited the obvious thought he had on the reality of Atlantis. Again, read the entire commentary Alfred Taylor gave on Atlantis, before you put your foot in your mouth again. I stopped short of all A Taylor's arguments on what he thought Plato based the story he made up on Atlantis, and also his prehistoric Athens. Also, if we read Alfred's translation of the Timaeus and Critias, he has a whole appendix dedicated to the story of Atlantis. See Appendix II

Your own words convict you of the truth, my dear Franke, as you said this: "Let me cite you a real scholar, a scientist, the great Alfred E. Taylor:

"Plato was, of course, right in his belief in the antiquity and continuity of Egyptian culture, but he seems to have overestimated the age of the existing monuments." And: "Hence the assumption that the Egyptians might possess contemporary records of events nine thousand years before the time of Solon is in full accord with Plato's own beliefs about the age of the earliest monuments."
(Alfred E. Taylor, A commentary on Plato's Timaeus, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1928; pp. 52 f.)

Now tell me: Where is the "making up" of Plato? Was Alfred E. Taylor nuts?

The making-up of Atlantis exists only in the head of Atlantis skeptics, who do not want to see the obvious: The ancient Greeks were victims of a collective error (and not only one such error), and this opens the possibility for Atlantis to be real in the sense of a distorted historical tradition. Not more. Nor less."

So now you, Franke, want to retract your untruthful claim about the GREAT Alfred E. Taylor, and tell us that you meant Thomas Taylor? Is this what you are proclaiming? As I asked of Alfred Taylor, I will ask, have you read Thomas Taylor? And do you consider Thomas Taylor a scientific minded mant, with a scientific view on Plato's Atlantis? Really?

T. Franke link
9/28/2018 06:37:11 pm

@Frank:

You are speaking to somebody who organized, financed and edited a translation of Gunnar Rudberg, a great scholar and Atlantis skeptic at the same time. But such combinations are beyond your imagination, I see.

AmericanCool"Disco"Dan
9/28/2018 07:58:49 pm

Yeah! Show some respect!

"T. FRANKE
9/27/2018 04:56:35 pm
@all:

Well, somebody has to stop this. And it is me, who does it. I will not answer any more in this thread."

AmericanCool"Disco"Dan
9/28/2018 08:02:00 pm

Forgot to add: Well-executed change of subject! Keep moving those goalposts and picking those cherries.

"T. FRANKE
9/27/2018 04:56:35 pm
@all:

Well, somebody has to stop this. And it is me, who does it. I will not answer any more in this thread."

Frank
9/28/2018 11:59:43 pm

My dear Franke, as far as financing the translation of Rudberg, you wasted your money, just as you are wasting your words here to defend your hopeless position of a haphazard "researcher" of an historical-critical Atlantis, and all your nonsense and idiotic positions on Plato's Atlantis. Neither you nor Rudberg show any understanding of Plato's Atlantis.

And as far as knowing who I'm "talking" to, I have already made it clear. But let me repeat some of my sentiments. I'm talking with Thorwald Franke, the epitome of an hypocrite, who criticizes other hunters of Atlantis, whom he considers not his equal, but inferiors and "stupid". You are the cherry-picker extraordinaire. You are blind, deaf, and dumb when it comes to understanding Plato. You suffer from delusional thoughts of believing yourself as someone special. And you have self-deceived yourself into believing to have found Plato's Atlantis. The rest of what I think of you I cannot say here.

If you would go and get yourself some modesty, it would be a good start for you to redeem yourself. It is OK to hunt down Atlantis, if you believe that there is some truth in. But it's not OK to criticize the other hunters, referring to them as idiots and inferiors, just because they see and interpret things differently than you do. Perhaps it is impossible for you to ever become a mystic, but at least pay some respect to what Plato was trying to convey to mankind, and not just to his Atlantis. Virtue is at the top of what Plato wanted to convey, and the benefits that come from being virtuous, both in this life and the one after this one. Instead of wasting your time and money seeking out Atlantis, go and seek out virtue. We already have too many hunters of Atlantis.

Go and understand from Plato what a true philosopher is. Because unless you do, you will remain a chained prisoner of the cave.

The philosopher desires death–which the wicked world will insinuate that he also deserves: and perhaps he does, but not in any sense which they are capable of understanding. Enough of them: the real question is, What is the nature of that death which he desires? Death is the separation of soul and body–and
the philosopher desires such a separation. He would like to be freed from the dominion of bodily pleasures and of the senses, which are always perturbing his mental vision. He wants to get rid of eyes and ears, and with the light of the mind only to behold the light of truth. All the evils and impurities and
necessities of men come from the body. And death separates him from these corruptions, which in life he cannot wholly lay aside. Why then should he repine when the hour of separation arrives? Why, if he is dead while he lives, should he fear that other death, through which alone he can behold wisdom in her purity?
Besides, the philosopher has notions of good and evil unlike those of other men. For they are courageous because they are afraid of greater dangers, and temperate because they desire greater pleasures. But he disdains this balancing of pleasures and pains, which is the exchange of commerce and not of virtue. All the virtues, including wisdom, are regarded by him only as purifications of the soul. And this was the meaning of the founders of the mysteries when they said, ’Many are the wand-bearers but few are the mystics.’ Or put another way, ’Many are called but few are chosen.’

Still, Franke, wishing you no harm, I wish you lots of luck, and may Zeus grant that you reach the summit of your dream.

Reply
Matt Agajanian
10/1/2018 07:13:13 pm

Hello all.

I’m looking for an excellent version of Plato’s Timaeus and Critias. So, for both Kindle and iBooks, which author/translator should I look for? If even a one-volume book of Plato’s works, better.

Thanks.

Reply
Frank
10/2/2018 01:25:52 am

Matt,
The only excellent versions of the Timaeus and the Critias are those written by the very hand of Plato. However those versions are not available in either kindle or ibooks formats. But for this shortfall of unavailability in these formats, we are rewarded by having a completed Critias, rather than one stopped in the middle of a sentence. But I should also inform you that Plato's original versions, the ones in his own handwriting, were lost long ago, and everything we have today are not faithful to the originals, as a copy is never quite as good as the original on which it was based. It's like a painting masterpiece, there is only one Mona Lisa, and any attempt to copy it will have been distorted by the hand of the copyist.

But all kidding aside, it is best to have various translations of them, if one is not a proficient scholar of Plato's Attican ancient Greek, and therefore able to read the dialogues in the original. The reason I say that you should have various translations, and the more the better here, is because translators also tend to flavor their translations to their individual taste, and are also limited to their ability in understanding Plato's philosophy, besides understanding the basic Greek language. By having recourse to multiple translations, you will be able to get a better picture of the original by using them all, and then drawing your own picture.

If you search online there are free copies available of all of Plato's work, and by various translators, and in various languages. And as you want, also in various formats. A good source is Archive.org.

Reply
Matt Agajanian
10/2/2018 02:53:11 pm

Frank, yes, I see your point. Like Sade’s song ‘Never As Good As The First Time,” the original edition is always the most satisfying.

With that said, thank you for directing my attention and assurance that there are manuscripts which are as close to suitable as possible (and better yet, free). Now I can feel comfortable in knowing that as I search for a volume of Plato’s works or just the Timaeus or Critias separately, I can find one that suits me well.

Thanks

Matt Agajanian
10/2/2018 04:28:18 pm

Frank, thanks again! I found a trio of books common to both Kindle and iBook. And all were translated by Benjamin Jowett. I picked up all three—the separate books and the paired-up volume. They were real bargains, too—either a buck or free.

Your help is much appreciated!

Reply
Matt Agajanian
10/4/2018 08:04:22 pm

Hi all.

Some questions.

Given Plato’s Critias is an unfinished manuscript, is the writing on Atlantis a finished piece?

I found something called Póise by Solon (although a French translation. Is there an English translation of Solon’s writings about Atlantis?

Has anyone seen NatGeo’s Atlantis episode of Is It Real (available on Netflix)? If so, any thoughts?

Thanks

Reply
Frank
10/5/2018 10:10:00 pm

Matt,

As far as Plato is concerned it is still an open "story". As far as the "hunters" of Atlantis goes it is never finished, nor will it be. There is a new Atlantis found on a monthly basis, so go the claims of these mighty hunters. If you want to indulge further on Atlantis, you should first become acquainted with the facts and the nonsense that has evolved over the centuries. And you should be told that Solon's writings that are extant are mere fragments, and some parts of his work is known to us only through comments by other classical men of the past, whose work is extant. Jason and all the experts here will tell you that there is no such thing as Solon directly telling the world the story of Atlantis through his writings. Plato is the sole source on Atlantis, and has used Solon's name in his dialogues to make the made-up story more believable, much like science-fiction writers use and stretch actual known experimental future technology to make their fiction seem more real. There are websites and forums that deal with Atlantis. You should visit those if Atlantis tickles your fancy.

Reply
Matt Agajanian
10/5/2018 11:23:30 pm

Frank (and all other comment authors).

Thank for clarifying how (and why) Solon fits into the Atlantis topic (or not). Steering me in the right direction of Plato’s Critias & Timeaus and in what context to read those works also has helped.

Over the past weeks since this ISO episode, I have dealt with objectivity and critical thinking muscles to see Atlantis for what it is

**SPOILER ALERT**

a work of philosophy and a morality tale.

Besides, as rationalities dictate, Atlantis cannot possibly reside in Morroco and Crete and Santorini, etc. at the same time. And also, given the meteorological realities, Atlantis could not have disappeared in a single night. So, what’s left? Logic leaves the conclusion that Atlantis is a production of fiction.

I am glad this group has indulged my questions and recommended the works which are suited to the Atlantis topic. Now I can put my Atlantis presuppositions to rest and thoroughly enjoy the writings of Plato (and Socrates and Aristotle, to name a few) and harness the wisdom and pleasure for what they have to teach and say for themselves.

Matt Agajanian
10/4/2018 10:44:41 pm

**CORRECTION**

The correct title of Solon’s book (in French) I located is Poésie. Sorry for the mixup.

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Matt Agajanian
10/15/2018 06:20:03 pm

Hi all.

As I was browsing some books, I came across The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest Mystery Revealed by Gavin Menzies. Although it seems he’s recycling the Minoan angle, I would like to know your opinions of his theories and this boiok.

Thank you

Reply
Deborah Krueger link
1/2/2019 12:07:15 pm

I am o negative rh I would like to find out more can you help me I do have my dna I would love to be in a study. all my life I felt like I was different from every one. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for your time

Reply
Cea
1/9/2019 02:20:06 am

Hey Jason, you prosaic sycophant:

"This seems rather ridiculous since the Moroccans, being cultured people, are unlikely to be part of a vast conspiracy to destroy proof of Atlantis—and for what end? "

Did not the iconoclast (muslims) neighboring the Giza complex DEFACE and strip the useable building stones to construct the ghetto that is modern cairo? Ummm... yes. Did the iconoclastic mo-heds deface and destroy every antiquity they come across to foist their "second hand" copycat ideology (onto the local polytheistic idol worshipers they recruited or slaughtered as infedels)? DUH.

So the ridiculous idea that the, "Moroccans, being cultured people" insinuates that they behaved differently than the 1 BILLION of them that STILL want EVERYONE to live in the ninth century. PISHA. I reject your PC BS sycophantic reality, and inform you that "islam" does NOT mean "peace," but rather, "obedience." Uggh. My arms are tired from throwing ice cold reality water onto the heads of those that make excuses for the desecration of antiquities WORLDWIDE these A_S monkey bullies are still posing as having invented a "new" monotheistic religion. Dumb dumb dumb (South Park quote (FU)).

If nothing else besides the manufactured drama the ZQ brings to, "In Search Of," is a chance to pique the curiosity of younger open minded people, just like Leonard Nimoy did for me in his original series... And who better to inherit then mantel than the new Spock? Ooof. I will refer to your pontification rather than as, "Jason" more aptly as, "Mr. Dumass?" Despite your voluminous vomitous blogging, I will.
Mic drop, you prosaic dullard.
Cea Lager

Reply
Cea Lager
1/9/2019 02:42:07 am

Umm? Maybe that was unfair. Show me an example of where the iconoclastic (A philosophy that tears down idols and defaces history) mo-heds left the local historical artifacts unadulterated... OHHH SNAP, you can't, because they DON'T. They chisel off facial features, shoot mortars at giant buddha sculptures, and deface everything they stumble across while LOOTING. These POS iconoclasts would still be riding camels back and forth trading salt and spices if "we" hadn't told them that we were drilling for icky black stuff they have been traversing over for MILLENNIA. Oops. Lawrence of arabia should have been drawn and quartered for dragging these tribes into the 20th century. Now they have gold plated supercars, and we are busy shooting ourselves in the foot over what to do with our GIGANTIC oil reserves. Let them DRINK their oil and pound sand.
Oh, and "peace be upon them."

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