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    The Real and Imaginary Atlantis
    The Real and Imaginary Atlantis
    The Real and Imaginary Atlantis
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    The Real and Imaginary Atlantis

    By Mel Nicholls

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    A new theory of Atlantis is developed which makes the case that Plato’s tale may have been based on historical events. It proposes that the Bell Beaker people may have had an empire in the latter half of the third millennium BC, and moreover that this empire could have had two centers of power, one in mainland Britain and one in southwest Spain. It is speculated that there was a powerful seaport in southwest Spain and that its rulers attempted to expand the empire into the western Mediterranean. At this point they clashed with the older eastern Mediterranean civilizations and a war broke out. Towards the end of the war the seaport was destroyed by a natural disaster when it was struck by one of the tsunamis that have periodically impacted southwest Spain. Plato’s account that places the seaport on the large island in front of the Straits of Gibraltar and describes its destruction and sinking into the depths of the sea could have resulted from a very muddled communication of this hypothesized scenario. Mainland Britain would have been the large island of Atlantis, which is of course still there, whereas the hypothesized seaport in southwest Spain would have been the magnificent citadel that he vividly describes, and which was destroyed. Several lines of evidence that support this theory are discussed including how it fits with the construction of Silbury Hill the largest manmade mound in Europe.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMel Nicholls
    Release dateNov 11, 2013
    ISBN9781310186356
    The Real and Imaginary Atlantis

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      Book preview

      The Real and Imaginary Atlantis - Mel Nicholls

      THE REAL AND IMAGINARY ATLANTIS

      Mel Nicholls

      Published by Beta Gyre LLC at Smashwords

      Copyright 2013 Melville Nicholls

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Preface

      This book expands on a theory introduced in a previous book by the author called ‘Children of the Sea God’. It does not include any discussion of Stonehenge, which is a more speculative part of the theory introduced in the first book, and focuses only on the Atlantis story. The author is grateful to his brother-in-law Jim Speedy for helpful comments.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Preface

      Chapter One

      Introduction

      Chapter Two

      The mysterious Bell Beaker people

      Chapter Three

      The first king of Britain

      Chapter Four

      The empire of Atlantis

      Chapter Five

      The signs of war

      Chapter Six

      The course of the war

      Chapter Seven

      Preservation and confusion

      Chapter Eight

      Fact of fiction

      References

      CHAPTER ONE

      Introduction

      I think it is quite likely that Plato made up the tale of Atlantis, or loosely based it on events close to Greece such as the Thera volcanic eruption that devastated the island of Santorini. That’s a very good theory, but it’s not a very interesting one, and there’s a chance that he actually did base it on a real story that he knew about. A story of an empire that held sway in the Atlantic Ocean and that waged war against the eastern Mediterranean civilizations, but was finally defeated by the Greeks and shortly after was destroyed by a catastrophic natural disaster. It may seem like a very small chance however. The cold hard light of science may appear to have all but swept away any hope of finding a real Atlantis and reduced it to the realm of fantasy. Most of the existing theories have been battered and broken, as we have become aware of how badly they contradict current scientific knowledge. The few that remain are incomplete, bearing only a meager resemblance to the Atlantis in Plato’s story. Furthermore, those intellectuals who are familiar with Plato’s works almost unanimously agree that the story is a myth. So is there any hope left for a real Atlantis? In this book I suggest that there still is a reasonable chance Atlantis existed. I will argue that if Atlantis did exist the reason it may have remained hidden from view for so long is because the story Plato gave us has errors in it, significant enough to have changed it into virtually an imaginary story. If this is the situation then it would mean that ever since Plato wrote it down everyone has been chasing ghosts, trying to find an Atlantis that doesn’t exist. Nevertheless, it could be that in spite of there being errors in the story big enough to be very misleading there could still be elements of it which are correct. So there could still be a real Atlantis waiting to be discovered. If the errors in the story can be identified and an era in the ancient world found that has similarities to a modified version of it with the errors removed, then perhaps an Atlantis will be revealed that is not a myth. In this book it is shown that there is indeed a mysterious corner of the ancient past, which does have similarities with many elements of Plato’s story. It is not an easy fit requiring a radical reinterpretation of the story, but nevertheless in my opinion it leads to the distinct possibility that Atlantis existed.

      Assuming that Plato didn’t invent the story of Atlantis, and it has a factual basis then it surely has to be acknowledged that it contains serious flaws. This may not have been so evident in the past, but now our knowledge has increased it has become very obvious. In this book it is conjectured that the story was based on a real one brought to Greece from Egypt, but that it became badly muddled up as it was passed by word of mouth from one person to another. The theory proposed here developed to a large extent from an attempt to guess the original story behind the one that we are told. Although, extremely speculative this is in some respects a very down to earth theory, which does not consider Atlantis as the earliest civilization on the planet, or anything exotic like that. In fact the case will be made that the Atlanteans were the megalithic people of Western Europe and that they probably borrowed much of their technology from the more advanced civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean. Nevertheless, if this theory is correct the Atlanteans were still a fascinating people, and Plato’s account might be telling us important information about the megalithic culture. Although not as glamorous as some theories of Atlantis, and the idea that the megalithic people of Western Europe were the Atlanteans is not new, I think most will still find its contentions quite extraordinary and difficult to believe. It is very specific, saying where the large island is, where the fabulous city is most likely located, and when the war occurred.

      The problem for any theory of a real Atlantis is that Plato’s story has obvious flaws in it. That is why it is so easy for sensible people to dismiss it as clearly a fiction. He stated that Atlantis was a very large island situated in front of the Pillars of Hercules, or the Straits of Gibraltar as they are known today, and that it was decimated by a cataclysmic event and became submerged beneath the sea. However, there is no evidence for the existence of a large sunken island in this area. The very idea that a huge island could suddenly be destroyed, and sink beneath the sea, seems fantastical with no scientific basis for how this could have occurred. Furthermore, the events were said to have taken place approximately nine thousand years before Plato’s time. Yet there is no evidence that any civilizations existed in the Mediterranean or anywhere else that long ago. Given these three serious difficulties the best that can be done is to say that if the story originally had some basis in fact that it somehow got completely mangled. So any credible theory of a real Atlantis has to be very convoluted from Plato’s Story and this one I present here is no exception. The difference of the approach I take is to assume that there are additional errors in the story that Plato told us that do not stand out as being obvious. These additional errors can only be guessed at, but this perspective does lead to the consideration of new possibilities that I don’t believe have been thought of before and perhaps point to a real story Plato’s may have been based on. One of the strengths of this particular theory is if it is correct you can see why the people who passed on the story may have changed it. Although, it is quite hard to understand how such huge errors could have crept into it, like getting the location of the large island completely wrong, you can at least see that it’s a possibility.

      In approximately 360 BC Plato wrote two dialogues called Timaeus and Critias, within which are relatively short descriptions of the empire of Atlantis and of a war that it fought with the ancient civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean. In the Timaeus dialogue we are informed that the Greek politician Solon was told the tale when he visited the Egyptian city of Sais. Supposedly while he was there he had discussions with the priests of the city and that a very elderly priest related it to him. Then we are informed that when Solon returned to Greece that the story continued to get passed on by word of mouth until Plato wrote it down. Many who have studied Plato’s writings dismiss this account and conclude that he made up the story of Atlantis in order to convey some of his philosophical ideas about an ideal state, and as a cautionary moral message to the Athenians of his day. The elaborate explanation he gave for how the story came to Greece from Egypt they believe was purely a fabrication, just a literary device that he used (Annas 2003). Moreover, they think that this is obvious to anyone who has seriously read his works. This is the safe academic position. It is unlikely to be wrong either, it would seem, because after

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