Thursday 4 February 2010

ATLANTIS: THE LOST CONTINENT

This is a guest post by Sulav. Website: Medchrome.com

This is a history documentary about the lost continent that has been talked and written about a lot. But still it remains a great mystery because what we’ve heard and read are merely hypotheses.
Atlantis is believed to be the source of all religion, science, races and civilization. Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written in 360 BC, contain the earliest references to Atlantis...

According to Plato:
“At the center of the island, near the sea, was a plain, said to be the most beautiful and fertile of all plains, and near the middle of the plain about fifty stades inland a hill of no great size... There were two rings of land and three of sea, like cartwheels, with the island at their center and equidistant from each other... In the center was a shrine sacred to Poseidon and Cleito, surrounded by a golden wall through which entry was forbidden... There was a temple to Poseidon himself, a stade in length, three hundred feet wide and proportionate in height, though somewhat outlandish in appearance. The outside of it was covered all over with silver, except for the figures on the pediment which were covered in gold... Round the temple were statues of the original ten kings and their wives, and many others dedicated by kings and private persons belonging to the city and its dominions... The two springs, cold and hot, provided an unlimited supply of water for appropriate purposes, remarkable for its agreeable quality and excellence; and this they made available by surrounding it with suitable buildings and plantations, leading some of it into basins in the open air and some of it into covered hot baths for winter use. Here separate accommodation was provided for royalty and commoners, and again, for women, for horses and for other beasts of burden... The outflow they led into the grove of Poseidon, which (because of the goodness of the soil) was full of trees of marvelous beauty and height, and also channeled it to the outer ring-islands by aqueducts at the bridges. On each of these ring-islands they had built many temples for different gods, and many gardens and areas for exercise, some for men and some for horses... Finally, there were dockyards full of triremes and their equipment all in good shape... Beyond the three outer harbors there was a wall, beginning at the sea and running right round in a circle, at a uniform distance of 50 stades from the largest ring and harbor and returning in on itself at the mouth of the canal to the sea. The wall was densely built up all round with houses and the canal and the large harbor were crowded with vast numbers of merchant ships from all quarters, from which rose a constant din of shouting and noise day and night.”

According to Plato, Atlantis was located "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules", which means beyond the Straits of Gibraltar and out into the Atlantic Ocean.
Proposed Sites:
A. In/Near Mediterranean Sea: islands such as Sardinia, Crete and Santorini, Sicily, Cyprus, and Malta; Troy, Tartessos, and Tantalus, Turkey; Israel-Sinai or Canaan; Bosporus and Ancomah, Sea of Azov
B. In Atlantic Ocean: northern Europe, in the North Sea , Celtic Shelf and Andalusia, Ireland, the Azores, strait of Gibraltar
C. Other locations: Caribbean locations such as Cuba, the Bahamas, and the Bermuda Triangle, areas in the Pacific and Indian Ocean

What caused the destruction of Atlantis?
There are various hypotheses involving natural disasters like earthquake, tsunami, flood, volcano, etc. Some associate its destruction with the existence of a lots of supernatural forces in it.

The events associated with Atlantis are presented well in a game called “Age of Mythology”.










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