Ancient and ArchaeologyΒ permalink
Troy was Atlantis
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Message 1.Β
Posted by TonyG (U1830405) on Thursday, 14th April 2011
This is another old chestnut that has been argued over before but seeing as the Nennius List has generated some lively discussion, I thought I'd resurrect it.
Some years ago, Eberhard Zannger wrote a book suggesting that the legend of Atlantis was based on the actual city of Troy. There are a lot of arguments he made (read "The Flood from Heaven"if you want the full story), the most interesting of which as I recall (not having read the book for some years) was that there are only two places in classical writings which are described as having two springs, one of hot water, the other of cold. One was Troy, as described by Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔr in the Iliad, the other was Atlantis, as described by Plato.
Another important description of the Atlanteans was that they fought against the Greeks in a great war that had been fought in the distant past. Given the Greek propensity for fighting anyone they came across, this is hardly conclusive, but it is pointer.
However, at the time Zannger's book was written, very little archaeological work had been done at Troy beyond the mound of Hissarlik. Zannger invited the archaeological world to prove him wrong by excavating the plain around Hissarlik. He argued that they would find traces of a much larger city surrounding the "acropolis" of HIssarlik, along with evidence of water management and canals.
I confess I am not fully up to date with what has been going on there, but I do recall seeng some documentaries a while ago which showed that more extensive digging has revealed pretty much what Zannger said would be there.
Of course, it may not be surprising to find extensive building beyond the walls of a small hilltop complex, and Zannger may have merely been playing the odds, but the remains do seem to be very extensive indeed, much more in keeping with a major city than the tiny hill of Hissarlik. I may be wrong but I believe they have also found the remains of an ancient canal that would have led to the sea, as described in Plato's description of Atlantis.
I must say I found Zannger's arguments very persuasive and certainly far less fanciful than some Atlantis theories. As far as know, nobody has been able to prove any of his many supporting theories on the evidence to be wrong. There is a challenge for you.
I have lit the blue touch paper and will now retire to a safe distance to watch the fireworks.
Tony -
Message 2
Posted by ArweRheged (U14720560) on Thursday, 14th April 2011
I shall now set off my airbomb repeater...
I suspect Atlantis is primarily a creature of myth, rather than history. Many cultures share the notion of a drowned world. Our own Atlantis is Lyonesse, which supposedly lies between Laaaands End and the Scillies.
It appears to be fairly commonly accepted that flood myths pervade many cultures and it's tempting to see drowned lands as being part of that. If there is a grain of truth in it all, I suppose one might even be able to argue that they are a faint hint of rising sea levels after the last Ice Age, but it woud be a bold personage who postulated that.
The idea of drowned human settlement has more modern echoes in the various sunken church myths. One is supposed to be able to hear church bells from under the water at numerous locations, including Rostherne and Ladybower (I think).
Any finding of a settled site which is now under the waves inevitably prompts the "is this the real Atlantis?" question, but perhaps a better question might be "is this just AN Atlantis?"
Just off outside to check it hasn't been raining......
Regards,
A R -
Message 3
Posted by TonyG (U1830405) on Friday, 15th April 2011
Well, I expecte dmore fireworks than that. No tmuch to argue with in what you say. Flood myths go all the way back to Gilgamesh, although Plato's description of Atlantis is very detailed, if annoyingly vague on precise location. Perhaps that is not surprising since it came from a translation handed down to Solon by some Egyptian prests who probably had only the vaguest idea of the world beyond their borders.
One other thing I have remembered from Zangger's book is that most seekers after Atlantis have, as they say in Raiders of the Lost Ark, "been looking in the wrong place". He claims that, given the alleged antiquity of the story, back to the Bronze Age, the description "beyond the Pillars of Hercules"did not refer to the Straits of Gibraltar because that passage was unknown to Greeks and Egyptians in the Bronze Age. He claims it probably meant the narrow point at the eastern end of the Mediterrainean - the Dardanelles.
This is the sort of claim that is hard to prove or disprove as we cannot really know how much or how little the Egyptians knew of geography c. 2000 BC. Some people may find it difficult to accept as there is, as far as I know, no other refereence to the Dardanelles being referred to as the Pillars of Hercules. Having said that, I think it is easier to believe this theory of misidentification than that some enormous land mass once existed in the Atlantic and has managed to disappear sothat geologists have beenunable to find any trace of it. -
Message 4
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Monday, 18th April 2011
Tony
Years ago, after extensive reading and evaluation of the clues left us in ancient writings, I came to the conclusion that 'Atlantis' was a real place located somewhere close to the shores of the Eastern Med. Like you, I also wondered at the time if 'The pillars of Hercules' were not the Straits of Gibraltar as suggested in numerous theories, but were in fact exactly as you suggest - the Dardanelles.
As for the writings of Plato and his like, is it not now widely accepted that there is some truth in their accounts? Sleiman thought so, and he was richly rewarded for his faith.
Although modern day scholars poo-poo them, I certainly believe that there is an element of fact in most ancient writings. -
Message 5
Posted by TonyG (U1830405) on Wednesday, 20th April 2011
Hi Sleeyrooster,
I would recommend Zannger's book to you. There is far more in it than the few bald facts I have managed to recall and he does build a very convincing case. His premise is, much like yours, that there is an element of truth behind the story but that it has been garbled by misunderstandings and mis-translations.
One other thing I have remembered is that Plato's story breaks off, unfinished, yet it is apparently known that this was not his last piece of writing as he allegedly wrote other things after it. Zangger claims that this could be because Plato thought he was writing an account of a genuinely "lost" history of Greece, as handed down to him from Egyptian priests via his own ancestor, Solon, but suddenly realised that what he was writing was actually a garbled description of Troy, so he stopped writing. I must say that I am not entirely convinced by this as someone of Plato's intellect could easily have been working on two books at the same time but it is another little piece of cunulative theory-building.
Tony -
Message 6
Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Wednesday, 20th April 2011
Hi Tony
Yes, I will try to obtain a copy of Zannger's book. Is it still in print?
And yes, I most strongly believe that not all ancient writing was bunkum. Of course, writing an account of an important happening long after the event, is open to 'stretching' of the truth as it is passed down from generation to generation. But as I stated in my previous post, there must be an element of truth somewhere in these writings, and as I said, Harold Sleiman must have thought so too.
Kind regards, Rooster -
Message 7
Posted by TonyG (U1830405) on Wednesday, 11th May 2011
I felt I had to reactivate this thread after watching the Timewatch Special - Atlantis: The Evidence. I always thought that Bettany Hughes was one of the better historians on TV but this programme wa yet another example of TV history being super-selective with "the evidence".
While there was some very interesting aspects of the programme, the entire thing was devoted to demonstrating why the Atlantis myth was probably spawned from the the destruction of There (modern Santorini). Now I don't have a problem with people supporting this theory and Ms Hughes certainly produced some examples from the Plato account which matched the physical descirpiotn of Thera. However, she completely ignored any of the details in Plato's account which inconveniently could not match the theory.
Small details such as the huge, rectangular plain of Atlantis, the fact that some of the circular waterways she was so keen to point out Santorin has, had a roof over them according to Plato, the hot and cold springs that Atlantis was said to have and the hugely inconvenient detail that the Atlanteans were said to have fought against the Greeks in a great war, the result of which was to end the threat of Atlantis taking over the then known world. None of these match anything that is known about Thera so were conveniently ignored.
No-one can deny that there are some things in the Plato account which are clearly inaccurate and this makes it difficult to know which statements can be believed and which cannot, but to present a documentary allegedly examining "the evidence", and then settling on one theory which matches a few descriptions but does not match several others and not to even mention the ones that are not matched is just bad historcal analysis.
The main "fact" that the Thera hypothesis hangs on is that Atlnatis was an island. The story says, however, that it was a huge island, larger than Africa and Asia combined. That is one of the more patently inaccurate statements in the story but it shows that Atlantis was thought to cover a large area. This makes a bit more sense when one ocnsiders that the story, according to Plato, came from Egypt. To the Egyptians, anyone who lived across the sea (just about everyone from their point of view) lived "in their islands". Concentrating on this one statement while ignoring other, more telling, statements is bound to lead to mis-identification.
Sorry folks, yet another rant about TV history but it does make my blood boil. As for Atlantis theories, Zangger's is still the only one I have come across which addresses all the descriptiopns in Plato. Of course, his problemis that he is not an archaelogist, so he has been rather ignored by academia and the media.
Tony -
Message 8
Posted by ArweRheged (U14720560) on Thursday, 12th May 2011
Hi Tony,
I tend to agree with you about the historical accuracy of these programmes. In all fairness, they are not aimed at serious history buffs and can only give a relatively broad brush picture, but the exaggeration of evidence (a fact that also rather needles me in the context of Arthur hunting) almost always leads to the construction of a fine hypothesis with no foundations.
I was about to start a thread on the evidential problems of the oral tradition, but perhaps that is precisely where this thread is now heading.
The problem is that very few historians appear to question the quality of written eveidence which was written down many years after the events they purport to describe. We see the distance of the writing from us as evidence of veracity. Taken Nennius. His battle list is taken as a fact, but everyone forgets that although he wrote 1200 odd years ago, he was as far from the putative date of the battles as we are from the 1715 Jacobite uprising. And he had far fewer resources available to him to ensure that what he was writing was true - which is arguably why he didn't even try to argue that it was!
Gildas was writing within 150 years of the end of Rome (the distance between us and the Crimean War), but look how massively he misconceives Roman history. And yet when writers like Gildas or Nennius say something which folk wish to believe, their accounts are taken as utterly reliable.
Same goes for Atlantis, Troy and all the rest of it. What we have is legends and stories - not history. There is an overlap, of course, and there may often be a grain of sand in the oyster, but the ancient writings have really done no more than snare a little of the oral tradition.
Just as joketellers and raconteurs today embellish and tailor stories for their audience, we should not be too surpised that our ancestors may have done the same thing. The writing down of one part of one version of a tale might crystallize it at a moment in time, but it says little about the historical accuracy of what is recorded. Who knows what the battle list might have looked like had it been written down in 700 or 900 instead? Who knows what the Trojan War legend might have sounded like had it not been recorded for another 200 years?
None of this means that the oral tradition has no value or that anything written down as a result of it is necessarily wrong. But it does mean that we have to be cautious about staring into the flames and hoping that recognisable shapes emerge.
Regards,
A R -
Message 9
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Thursday, 12th May 2011
The problem is that very few historians appear to question the quality of written eveidence which was written down many years after the events they purport to describeΒ
This may have been true once but surely any historian today will subject any text to critical and contextual analysis if they expect to be taken seriously? To read any document without taking account of the social and political circumstances under which it was written would be naive and unhelpful. You don't need to be a fully paid up post modern deconstructionist to realise that all documents are written with intention, a purpose in the mind of the writer, and it's only by trying to discern that purpose that you can begin to assess the reliability and real meanings of the text.
So why did Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔr, Gildas and Nennius write what they did? Who was their audience, who were they trying to please and why? Perhaps you folk who are better informed about all this might suggest some answers. -
Message 10
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Thursday, 12th May 2011
You don't need to be a fully paid up post modern deconstructionist to realise that all documents are written with intention, a purpose in the mind of the writer, and it's only by trying to assess that purpose that you can begin to assess the reliability and real meanings of the text. Β
Reliability and real meanings of the text? If only! Can reliability and real meaning ever exist in any document?
But that way madness lies. The nearest I came to suicide was when I had to write an essay entitled: "What Derrida Really Meant". I was overcome with a Rita-like urge to write "***k knows" and leave it at that.
I wish someone could explain it all properly - especially its implications for the study of history.
But the *reader* is important too, ferval. Not just what we get from the text, but what the text gets from us. I read somewhere that in this baffling but exhilarating post-modern world (are we still post-modern, or have we now moved on - like Mr Woodhouse, I live out of the world, post-modern or otherwise, and I am often amazed at what I hear) the historian has to be constantly on his or her guard, for even "Sir Geoffrey Elton's 'search for *the* truth' is relativised and re-read as a 'search for *his* truth' under post-modern conditions."
No one is posting - it's so depressing. You start to get paranoid in the end. Is it me, you start thinking - have I bored the whole world to death?
Hope this isn't too off-topic.
SST. -
Message 11
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Thursday, 12th May 2011
Good point Temperance, I should of course have said something like 'approach some possible understanding of'
You are of course spot on regarding the subjectivity and situatedness of the reader but then, when interpreting the past, we create our narrative in the present and for the present. The past did exist but not any more, all we can do try to come up with a story that fits as closely as possible the data we have in the knowledge that we can never really know. Heaven knows. it's hard enough to try to understand the present or people we know really well.
I've only had to deal with that stuff second hand as were, I haven't dared tackle Derrida and his pals head on but I have had to try to fight my way to a truce with Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty etc. What goes on in their heads, are they of this planet and race? I just can't imagine them eating chips or going to the loo. -
Message 12
Posted by ArweRheged (U14720560) on Thursday, 12th May 2011
"What goes on in their heads, are they of this planet and race?"
I am always reminded of the Laputan thinkers in Gulliver who required flappers to bring them back to the here and now.
My apologies for my earlier post - when being apparently rude about historians, I should have made it clear that what I meant was Historians-Lite.
As for what Gildas etc were on about - your guess is as good as mine. I don't want to derail the thread (it's about Atlantis, after all), but I do have a few ideas on this topic in the context of the 6th and 7th C - if you're interested, I'd be happy to whack something up for general dissection, discussion and mockery...
Regards,
A R -
Message 13
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Thursday, 12th May 2011
Please do start another thread, I look forward to reading it. I'm always happy to waffle on about generalities and nit pick those who actually know what they're talking about. I'm hoping to conceal my ignorance, the depths of which it's impossible to plumb!
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Message 14
This posting has been hidden during moderation because it broke the in some way.
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Message 15
Posted by arty macclench (U14332487) on Saturday, 14th May 2011
I have just watched the Atlantis film. Great visuals!- and...... lots of pyroclastic flow.
I always wonder who they are aiming at when they dig up a theory that's been around for years and start talking about "But now, new evidence reveals ...."
The commentaries of these programmes are so predictable one can recite them along with the narrator. "This is the story...." And why do they bloody well have to tell us a story is "Amazing! "Incredible!" Are we not capable of making our own minds up?
There may be new archaeological data to hand but as has been pointed when this is set against a selective reading of an ancient, ambiguous text it proves nothing.
However,t he reason I clicked on here having watched the programme was one of the wrapping up factoids. They said that the destruction of the Minoan culture made it possible for the rise of a warlike tribe of Greeks called the Myceneans.
There weren't any Myceneans till Schliemann excavated the citadel at Mycenae, were there- Any more than the dinosaurs went around saying they lived on Gondwana (that really irritates me) or Julius Caesar wrote 54 BC in his diary, or have I got that wrong- about Mycenae, I mean? -
Message 16
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Sunday, 15th May 2011
Temperance, was that your post that's been modded? If it was, for heaven's sake why? I read it quickly before but I didn't have time to read the paper you linked or reply at the time and now it's gone and I've forgotten most of it. I it doesn't reappear, could you quickly reprise it and put the link back up?
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Message 17
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Monday, 16th May 2011
Hi ferval,
My post was off-topic - as I myself pointed out.
Here is the link to the G.W. Bernard article," Postmodernism and History Revisited". It's an interesting piece, but one which leaves me feeling rather uneasy. I'd love to discuss it, but, fair do's, this is not the place:
PS Fair do's can't be right. That apostrophe looks horribly subversive and its use here is possibly defiantly postmodern. But fair dos also looks silly. Should it be fair *dues*, I wonder? -
Message 18
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Monday, 16th May 2011
Thanks for that Temperance, as you say interesting but I feel with internal contradictions and in places espousing some of the post modernist methods he is simultaneously criticising. On the whole I must disagree with him, all writing about the past cannot avoid being selective, subjective and narrative but it still has to be tested against the available information, the resistance of the data. That is what stops it descending into relativist ramblings. How can he commend about the employment of the 'historical imagination' but then make claims about the possibility of one objective meta narrative?
I must agree with his opinion of jargon though, my current bete noir is 'problematize'.
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