Atlantis

[Qoais]

Here's Jim Allen's response to all those questions Swede!!

(1) Quote Qoais “Finally, some of the Sea Peoples who invaded Egypt were in fact settled by the Egyptians in a part of the land under their control

Could you clarify this sentence please?”

Answer, the people known as the “Sea Peoples” comprised a large federation made up of many different nations. You may remember that Plato said “Atlantis” was a confederation that controlled Libya up to the borders of Egypt and also tried to “enslave” the eastern Mediterranean. . Well the “Sea Peoples” carried out naval assaults on Egypt in the Nile Delta and also along with their allies tried to invade Egypt both from Libya and also from Palestine. The invading armies brought whole families with them so theirs was no simple act of aggression but an attempt at conquest and settlement.

They were all defeated by the Egyptians and some of the invaders, for example the Philistines were settled by the pharaoh in what is now Palestine which takes its name from the Philistines who were settled there.

(2) Quote Qoais “Mr. Allen is basing his hypothesis on a lot of assumptions and a similar geographical description of a particular area. “

Answer, yes that is the whole idea, we are looking for a similar geographic area which corresponds to the description Plato gave, so far the Altiplano in Bolivia is the only area that matches his description and has the greatest correspondence, other sites which have been put forward have very few points which correspond to what Plato said and none of them have a rectangular level plain which is one of the key points of his description.

(3) Quote Qoais: “He has stated himself that the Atlantis Conference was not prepared to indulge this theory and I suspect it's because Mr. Allen has given no solid basis for it being feasible.”

Answer: I did not say they were not prepared to indulge my theory, what I said was

“at the Atlantis Conference various other locations were put forward including upper Sudan and Sardinia – the result of this is that all the time was spent presenting regions which clearly do not remotely fit Plato’s description and no time was available to discuss the region which actually fitted the description and the outcome is that with so many alternative sites on offer - it puts people off the subject altogether and no progress can be made like that.”

Since each participant was only allowed 20 minutes of speaking time and since there was so much material available for the Atlantis in Bolivia site, obviously there was not time available to present it all.

In fact I was later asked by the organiser of the conference prof Stavros Papamarinopolous to provide him not with one paper for his forthcoming conference book, but with three papers.

I have posted them online here

www.atlantisbolivia.org/athensfullpaper.pdf

www.atlantisbolivia.org./athensfullpaper2.pdf

www.atlantisbolivia.org./athensfullpaper3.pdf

(4) Quote Qoais “Let's take the word Atl for instance. Atl - Native American - Actually Nahuatl (Aztec), a subset of the Uto-Aztecan language group. This language group reaches into the western North American continent. One must question this association, especially in regards to the apparent lack of any other linguistic transfer.”

Answer, Ok, so what does that mean in real terms. Atl is a native america word from the Aztec/Mexica language meaning water. We are looking for Atl Antis and have identified South America. Large parts of the Altiplano are often flooeded under water. Part of the name of one half of the Aymara kingdoms were called water kingdoms. Large parts of Amazonia are under water in the wet season with only the tops of the trees sticking above the water. The mountains are the copper (Antis) mountains. The Uru peoples who live on the Altiplano live amongst the water and construct floating islands. So surely Atl Antis is a perfectly descriptive name for “South America” and has more correspondence linguistically than say, Crete, Sardinia, Ierland, Malta, Antarctica, Azores etc.

And don’t say there is no connection between Mexico and Bolivia because they both have similar statuary and the Aztecs claimed to have come from “Atzlan” thought to be a “place of whiteness” which is also a description of parts of the Altiplano due to salt deposits

(4) Quote Qoais “Does the Bolivian region have parallel oral histories that indicate they had knowledge of the world on the eastern side of the ocean?”

Answer: We should remember that many of the oral traditions of the region were lost when the Spanish Conquistadores deliberately murdered the native inhabitants who were specially trained to maintain the oral traditions. So a lot of the history of the country was lost. Yet we still find on the island of Marajo at the entrance to the Amazon River, pottery and artefacts from Tiwanaku in Bolivia which had a large trading empire. So obviously they had knowledge of the eastern side of their empire.

(5) Quote Qoais: Is there any archaeological evidence from the region in question?

Answer: Of course there is archaeological evidence, but what sort of evidence would you like. There are amphoras and vases similar to Egyptian and eastern Mediterranean amphora. Also the Fuente Magna with proto Sumerian writing. People seems obsessed with finding pottery, but as in the case of Caral in Peru, that city from 2627BC was a pre-ceramic civilisation and hence not easily detected. Akakor have found remains of a civilisation dating to 4,000BC beneath Lake Titicaca. In Bolivia there are plates and dishes made out of STONE.

(6) Quote Qoais: “Do you or Mr. Allen have a specific topographical map from the region you're referring to?”

Answes, yes, you can find one online at www.atlantisbolivia.org/atlantisboliviapart2.htm

Where you can see theeh rectangular shape of the plain, also some general and early maps on

www.atlantisbolivia.org/atlantisboliviapart3.htm

and a comparison of measurements for various sites put forward on

www.atlantisbolivia.org/plaincomparison.htm

(7) Quote Qoais: ”Is it possible to lay out the transfer route of goods or armies from Bolivia to the eastern shores of S. America for transfer to the Mediterranean regions? Is there any archaeological proof for this route of transfer of goods or armies?

Answer: The routes via the Amazon and via the river Paraguay have already been followed in reed boats by Col John Blashford-Snell.

It is unlikely that large armies would be transferred in this way. Since Atlantis commanded an empire, it could dispatch forces from other parts of the empire. Sir Francis Bacon in “the New Atlantis” tells us that invading forces were dispatched from Mexico and Peru respectively and separated by a space of 10 years, which sounds also about the intervals between the main attacks of “The Sea Peoples”.

Opinions are changing all the time about the “pristine” state of the Amazon forest at the time of the Spanish arrival. They now find that what they previously thought uninhabitable was in fact highly populated and there existed a form of “black earth” which regenerated itself.

http://www.sopitas.com/site/?p=36805

( Quote Qoais: Even IF there are Red Skinned people in Palestine in ancient times, one must be able to prove they came from S. America.

Answer: You see, there you go again, once you have certain pieces of evidence you continually keep adding to the requirements. The fundamental point is that within Pato’s description of Atlanits there is a description of South America.

What kinds of boats they used or proving that people in Palestine came from there goes beyond the information that is currently publically available.

( Quote Qoais: The Red Sea got its name from a phenomenon caused by a type of algae called Trichodesmium Erythraeum, which is found in the sea. When these algae blooms die off the blue-green color of sea appears to change to reddish-brown color.

Answer, The Red Sea in antiquity was not the Red Sea you presently find marked on your world Atlas. It was the sea which is presently called “The Persian Gulf” also known sometimes as the

Erythaean Sea, but Cedric Leonard and others are of the opinion that the Atlantic may formerly have been called the Erythaean Sea, or Red Sea.

http://www.atlantisquest.com/Writings.html

(9) Quote Qoais: “I know Jim Allen is trying to sell his book”

Answer: I am sure the publishers would be pleased if anyone bought one of the new books as it is only a small publisher and the principal reason for publishing it is to document the work that has been done and to make the information available to anyone interested in the subject of Atlantis, which is also why there is a large quantity of information and essays freely available on my website www.atlantisbolivia.org including the first book which can be download free of charge.

Finally, if Plato’s Atlantis is not based upon a description of South America which came via Egypt, then perhaps Qoais can explain how he was able to describe so precisely a continent opposite the Pillars of Hercules larger that Asia and Libya combined, a level rectangular plain in its centre midway along its longest side, the plain being enclosed by mountains, the plain being high above the level of the sea, the mountains rising sheer out of the sea to a great height, the first inhabitants being born in pairs, an existing legend in that location of a city sunk punished by the gods and sunk beneath the sea, the presence in the location he gave of the metals gold, silver, tin and orichalcum, the custom of plating temple walls in sheets of gold, the amount of wealth existing in that country being the same as Plato described as “a wealth so great the like will never be easily seen again”, the custom of carrying around or having golden statues of their ancestors, the presence of elephants i.e mastodons which are a type of elephant, the presence of hot and cold springs, the stones being the same colours of black, red and white, the custom of using them being intermixed to form a pattern as found in the local church, the correspondence between the local name for the place and the name Plato gave, the mountains being celebrated for their height and beauty, every type of food existing on the “continent”, the presence of irrigation canals in parallel formations, the fact that when canals/plots were restored two harvests a year were possible, the fact that an island surrounded by concentric rings exists in the location Plato gave, the fact that there are two rings of land and three sunken channels as Plato counted them, the fact that this island was also home to the god of the sea in the local legends, again in local legend the god of the sea married a personage who lived on a hill, and again in local legend the god of the sea carved the ringed formation out of the island, and the fact that this island has been destroyed by earthquakes and floods, equally possible in a single day and night as Plato described? Oh yes, and not forgetting that remains of a sunken civilisation has already been found in the lake further north by the Akakor expeditions.

And please don’t say it is just a co-incidence or nonsense about a psychic vision!

[Alien Being]

I no that this theory is not new but remember when the Nazi's where trying to find evidence of a master race or at least Atlanteans? Well their idea of Aryans are blond hair and blue eyes. Well one of the theory's out their is that Atlantis is located around the Black Sea Region. Well new genetic samples argue that Blue Eyes is a relativity new trait only about 10,00 years old and was a mutation in a single man and then spread rapidly throughout Europe. And everyone who has Blue Eyes is related through a single common ancestor. Well Atlantis was a world wide Empire could it be possible that Atlantis genetically altered man to have Blue Eyes, and since it was a world wide Empire the gene for Blue Eyes spread throughout Europe?

Atlantis was located in the British Isles.

Plato indicates that it sank below the waves 9700 B.C. Geologists say that a massive landslide occured off the west coast of Norway sometime around 9800 B.C which resulted in a Mega Tsunami wave.

Evidence for this wave can be found as far south as Doggerbank off the coast of Kent. As most of the North Sea area was dry land at this time the wave must have swept inland several hundred miles destroying any civilization in its path and forming the coast of Britain, Belgium, Holland, Germany and Denmark as we know them today.

[jaylemurph]

Actually, 'atl' is a whole word in Nahuatl. Just sayin'

Happy New Yars all!

I encourage you to prove it. I went back and checked half a dozen or so (reasonably respectable) online Nahuatl dictionaries just to make sure, and none of them listed "atl" as its own word. As I pointed out, it IS a morpheme and show up compounded in many, many other words, but I have never once seen it used alone.

I'm by no means an expert on Uto-Aztecan langauges, however and I live to be proven wrong.

(I believe what you mean to say is that -atl- is one of several combinative form for "water", however when just the word for (fresh) water was used, the term was "quiyahuatl". Which admittedly does have the -atl- morpheme in it. But as I said, it's no more a full word than "cess" or "cide" or "doc" are in English.")

--Jaylemurph

[cormac mac airt]

Greece has no real main Gods.

Zeus, poetically referred to by the vocative Zeu pater ("O, father Zeus"), is a continuation of *Di̯ēus, the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called *Dyeus ph2tēr ("Sky Father").[4] The god is known under this name in Sanskrit (cf. Dyaus/Dyaus Pita), Latin (cf. Jupiter, from Iuppiter, deriving from the PIE vocative *dyeu-ph2tēr[5]), deriving from the basic form *dyeu- ("to shine", and in its many derivatives, "sky, heaven, god").

Yet, interestingly enough, shows no connection with any Mesopotamian name/usage which would be much older (by millenia) than either Greek or Vedic Sanskrit name/usage. How is that possible? It skipped the entire Fertile Crescent? This doesnt significantly put the origins outside of the Greek world, IMO.

Etymologies/earliest attestations: (btw Mycenaean Greek IS STILL GREEK)

Poseidon - Mycenaean Greek

Hera - Mycenaean Greek at the earliest.

Demeter - Mycenaean Greek at the earliest.

Ares - Dorian Greek

Hermes - Mycenaean Greek

Hephaestus - Dorian or Mycenaean Greek

Aphrodite - Greek

Athena - Mycenaean Greek/Cretan at the earliest

Apollo - Anatolian

Artemis - Anatolian

Hestia - Greek

So yes, for the most part, Greece DOES have main gods.

You think Poseidon is a Greek God?

As his earliest attestation from Linear B appears to be Mycenaean Greek, PO-SE-DA-WO-NE and E-NE-SI-DA-O-NE then yes, hes a Greek God.

…but his attributes in a Godlike form existed prior to any invention of the Greeks in their Pantheon.

His attributes werent Egyptian either, nor a non-existant Atlantian. Similar attributes between deities of two disparate pantheons do not make them one and the same.

You again have misconstued what I said…

I misconstrued nothing. You specifically said:

El (Yahweh) is not actually the creator God or God Most High, he is a grandson of God.

So now youre claiming that El (Yahweh) is now his own grand-pa, El Elyon, since according to you they morphed into one being?

But it has long been suspected that this is a late development…

But no evidence has been presented to confirm this suspicion. This is, at best, someone elses speculation.

According to the pantheon, known in Ugarit as 'ilhm (=Elohim) or the children of El (cf. the Biblical "sons of God"), supposedly obtained by Philo of Byblos from Sanchuniathon of Berythus (Beirut)…

This is a supposition, not a fact.

I am not changing any Greek mythology or turning it around to suit me...

Actually you are if you are aligning or equating or supposing or placing non-Greek deities into a Greek story, using Greek names, to somehow figure out what Plato was actually trying to say. Again, assuming that there was anything more to the story than what Plato himself said.

cormac

Edited January 1, 2010 by cormac mac airt

[Ikki]

I encourage you to prove it. I went back and checked half a dozen or so (reasonably respectable) online Nahuatl dictionaries just to make sure, and none of them listed "atl" as its own word. As I pointed out, it IS a morpheme and show up compounded in many, many other words, but I have never once seen it used alone.

I'm by no means an expert on Uto-Aztecan langauges, however and I live to be proven wrong.

(I believe what you mean to say is that -atl- is one of several combinative form for "water", however when just the word for (fresh) water was used, the term was "quiyahuatl". Which admittedly does have the -atl- morpheme in it. But as I said, it's no more a full word than "cess" or "cide" or "doc" are in English.")

--Jaylemurph

Well, the Daysign Atl seems to use it as a whole word... but I may have spoken too confidently. I can't at the moment find anything else that uses it as a word unto itself, and this dictionary would appear to support what you said. I'll look into it further tomorrow, when I'm less hungover.

As a closing bone to the discussion, 'atlan' apparently means 'in the water', 'the other world', or 'city of islands', referring to Mexico...!

Edited January 1, 2010 by Ikki

[jaylemurph]

As a closing bone to the discussion, 'atlan' apparently means 'in the water', 'the other world', or 'city of islands', referring to Mexico...!

Which isn't quite as mysterious when you consider that Mexico City is, in fact, a city of islands in a lake. I take it we might have a "Venice is really Atlantis" thread soon, too?

--Jaylemurph

[Qoais]

Does anyone have any idea how many thousands of years ago the Genesis of the Greek Gods took place? I mean, Mr. Allen is saying that

Bury states that both Atlantis and Atlas were named from the same source word.

and that the source word was Atl of the Bolivian (Nahuatl) language. If that were so, then the Bolivians would have had to be influencing the Greek language as far back as when the Genesis of the Gods was, or at least as far back as when they were naming their children, and Iapetus named his son Atlas. So I am trying (without being negative) to point out that A}if the words Atlantis and Atlas were WERE derived from the same source word, it was not from the Nahuatl language. B} That IF he thinks this is so, then he has to also think that there was continuous trans-Atlantic sailing back in the days of the Genesis of the Gods of Greece. So - when was that - anyone know?

[cormac mac airt]

Qoais,

(2) Answer, yes that is the whole idea, we are looking for a similar geographic area which corresponds to the description Plato gave, so far the Altiplano in Bolivia is the only area that matches his description and has the greatest correspondence, other sites which have been put forward have very few points which correspond to what Plato said and none of them have a rectangular level plain which is one of the key points of his description.

So Mr. Allen is looking for a similar geographic area, regardless of what Plato says about its alleged location, for a place he (Plato) never saw, himself. And all based on multiple handed information. That’s much like proving the accuracy of Nostradamus’ prophecies. Look hard enough, and one can make anything fit.

(3) Answer: I did not say they were not prepared to indulge my theory, what I said was “at the Atlantis Conference various other locations were put forward including upper Sudan and Sardinia – the result of this is that all the time was spent presenting regions which clearly do not remotely fit Plato’s description and no time was available to discuss the region which actually fitted the description and the outcome is that with so many alternative sites on offer - it puts people off the subject altogether and no progress can be made like that.” Since each participant was only allowed 20 minutes of speaking time and since there was so much material available for the Atlantis in Bolivia site, obviously there was not time available to present it all.

So there were so many trying to show that they had evidence for Atlantis that Mr. Allen didn’t get a chance to show his own. Imagine that.

4) The usage of “atl” aside whether as a word, prefix, suffix or whatever, the Aztlan the Aztecs talk about was believed to have been to the North of Mexico. Bolivia is in the wrong direction.

4?) Answer: We should remember that many of the oral traditions of the region were lost when the Spanish Conquistadores deliberately murdered the native inhabitants who were specially trained to maintain the oral traditions. So a lot of the history of the country was lost. Yet we still find on the island of Marajo at the entrance to the Amazon River, pottery and artefacts from Tiwanaku in Bolivia which had a large trading empire. So obviously they had knowledge of the eastern side of their empire.

So Mr. Allen skirted around your question. The obvious answer being NO.

5) There are amphoras and vases similar to Egyptian and eastern Mediterranean amphora. Also the Fuente Magna with proto Sumerian writing.

Similarities are not evidence of a relationship, in and of themselves.

In 1992 an expedition in Chua discovered a bowl, which was unearthed by a local man some 30 years before, all covered with glyphs. The stunning discovery was that the interior of the bowl was covered with what at first sight seemed cuneiform signs. Photos of the interior panel were sent to linguistics around the world, who declared with no doubt that the writing system was Sumerian cuneiform.

So an archaeologically non-provenanced bowl from Bolivia, allegedly discovered in the 1950’s is found by an expedition in 1992 and translated as being proto-Sumerian. Interesting how Mercer’s 1966 book on Assyrian Grammar is used to translate the cuneiform, yet John L. Hayes‘ (2000) book, A Manual of Sumerian: Grammar and text is used to read the Sumerian Text. These are peoples from two different time periods.

(Quote Qoais: Even IF there are Red Skinned people in Palestine in ancient times, one must be able to prove they came from S. America.

Answer: You see, there you go again, once you have certain pieces of evidence you continually keep adding to the requirements. The fundamental point is that within Pato’s description of Atlanits there is a description of South America.

READ: "You’ve thrown another wrench into the cogs and it p***es me off that I don’t have a valid answer".

Answer, The Red Sea in antiquity was not the Red Sea you presently find marked on your world Atlas. It was the sea which is presently called “The Persian Gulf” also known sometimes as the Erythaean Sea, but Cedric Leonard and others are of the opinion that the Atlantic may formerly have been called the Erythaean Sea, or Red Sea.

One must assume by this then that when the Egyptians sailed down the “Red Sea” to the land of Punt, that they actually had to travel all the way to lower Mesopotamia to travel down the Persian Gulf. Yet the trade goods they mention are African in nature. That's a hell of a long way to go to get to your own back yard, IMO.

cormac

[The Puzzler]

So now you’re claiming that El (Yahweh) is now his own grand-pa, El Elyon, since according to you they “morphed” into one being?

Actually you are if you are “aligning” or “equating” or “supposing” or “placing” non-Greek deities into a Greek story, using Greek names, to somehow figure out what Plato was actually trying to say. Again, assuming that there was anything more to the story than what Plato himself said.

cormac

No, not NOW I'm claiming.....I said it clearly before:

"So God or the LORD is actually God Most High or El Elyon and in his form as LORD he is El, not quite so high as his previous incarnation God Most High El Elyon."

You obviously don't understand a word I'm saying, I'm over your attitude, I have clearly stated something and you are not understanding it at all.

Archaeology and mythography, on the other hand, have revealed that the Greeks were inspired by some of the civilizations of Asia Minor and the Near East. Adonis seems to be the Greek counterpart — more clearly in cult than in myth — of a Near Eastern "dying god". Cybele is rooted in Anatolian culture while much of Aphrodite's iconography springs from Semitic goddesses. There are also possible parallels between the earliest divine generations (Chaos and its children) and Tiamat in the Enuma Elish.[99] According to Meyer Reinhold, "near Eastern theogonic concepts, involving divine succession through violence and generational conflicts for power, found their way ... into Greek mythology". In addition to Indo-European and Near Eastern origins, some scholars have speculated on the debts of Greek mythology to the pre-Hellenic societies: Crete, Mycenae, Pylos, Thebes and Orchomenus.

By Greek I meant Hellenic Greek not Cretan or Mycenaean or any other pre Hellenic origin. I am not going to argue here whether or not Mycenaeans are Greek, I would be pretty stupid if I stated that and meant otherwise (than Hellenic Greek).

It is not a Greek story, Plato says it is a story about the ancient Greeks and Atlanteans but told by an Egyptian, so it is an Egyptian story if anything with a later translation into Greek using names of Gods known by Egyptians of 650BC.

What name do you think an Egyptian priest (before you jump on this again, yes, IF it happened at all) would have said when it translated to Poseidon in Greece? Did he say Poseidon in the original story? NO. It must have been another name for a God that could be interpreted into Greek as Poseidon.

[Qoais]

It is not a Greek story, Plato says it is a story about the ancient Greeks and Atlanteans but told by an Egyptian, so it is an Egyptian story if anything with a later translation into Greek using names of Gods known by Egyptians of 650BC.

So the priest could have said that "when the gods divided up the land amongst themselves, the god of the water, took for himself the island of Atlantis.......substitute whatever the name of your water god is.

[The Puzzler]

Puzzler? Can I ask a little question? (I'm trying not to ruffle any feathers so am speaking quietly!!) Don't mean to be rude or anything, but all that is really complicated and I'm wondering if Plato even knew most of what you've said. I mean he wasn't even born yet when Jesus walked the earth. I don't think that even if he had heard of some of this stuff, he would know it by rote and be able to make up a completely knew story on the fly for the goddess's birthday. I think when going impromptu like he did for the celebration, he would stick to things he knew close to hand. Other than like I've said before, he could have started his story with once upon a time, in a land far, far away.

No worries Q, but I hardly think it was an impromptu story, on the fly - even though he conveys that in the story just like he conveys Socrates is there, Socrates is long dead, that is all just a setting...I reckon this work took him ages to write, even years of thought on the Universe, it's structure and our own selves incorporating his Theory of Forms.

I think Plato certainly knew of other religions including ancient Canaanite or early Phoenician and there is no need for him to know of Jesus, it doesn't include Jesus.

That was a reference to a group that see El Elyon (El Shaddai used in the OT) and Yahweh as 2 separate beings where I understand it as being originally 2 as in Yahweh is not God Most High in other religions but placed into the OT as Yahweh evolving out of El Shaddai (God Most High) so coming across as being 1 by the time of the OT writing. These things are anything but clear cut. I've always maintained 2 things - that the Atlanteans are somehow connected to Phoenicians and that this story is relative to the Greeks of Plato's day in the context of the Persians. Those 2 points might be right or wrong but they are my own guideposts. The Persians count the Phoenicians as being part of the Persian Empire and it is also relative that the ancient Canaanite religion is also part of the ancient Phoenician religion.

Plato imo would have known about ancient Canaanite and Phoenician religions. If the everyday Greek didn't, it doesn't mean Plato didn't, he could have learnt about it easy on any of his travels, especially in Egypt. If Sanchuniathon's writings were known Plato would have known them. If Plato didn't know ancient Levantine religion THAT would surprise me.

[The Puzzler]

So the priest could have said that "when the gods divided up the land amongst themselves, the god of the water, took for himself the island of Atlantis.......substitute whatever the name of your water god is.

Yep, pretty much like that... He apparently used non Greek names.

[Swede]

Here's Jim Allen's response to all those questions Swede!!

(1) Quote Qoais “Finally, some of the Sea Peoples who invaded Egypt were in fact settled by the Egyptians in a part of the land under their control

Could you clarify this sentence please?”

Answer, the people known as the “Sea Peoples” comprised a large federation made up of many different nations. You may remember that Plato said “Atlantis” was a confederation that controlled Libya up to the borders of Egypt and also tried to “enslave” the eastern Mediterranean. . Well the “Sea Peoples” carried out naval assaults on Egypt in the Nile Delta and also along with their allies tried to invade Egypt both from Libya and also from Palestine. The invading armies brought whole families with them so theirs was no simple act of aggression but an attempt at conquest and settlement.

They were all defeated by the Egyptians and some of the invaders, for example the Philistines were settled by the pharaoh in what is now Palestine which takes its name from the Philistines who were settled there.

(2) Quote Qoais “Mr. Allen is basing his hypothesis on a lot of assumptions and a similar geographical description of a particular area. “

Answer, yes that is the whole idea, we are looking for a similar geographic area which corresponds to the description Plato gave, so far the Altiplano in Bolivia is the only area that matches his description and has the greatest correspondence, other sites which have been put forward have very few points which correspond to what Plato said and none of them have a rectangular level plain which is one of the key points of his description.

(3) Quote Qoais: “He has stated himself that the Atlantis Conference was not prepared to indulge this theory and I suspect it's because Mr. Allen has given no solid basis for it being feasible.”

Answer: I did not say they were not prepared to indulge my theory, what I said was

“at the Atlantis Conference various other locations were put forward including upper Sudan and Sardinia – the result of this is that all the time was spent presenting regions which clearly do not remotely fit Plato’s description and no time was available to discuss the region which actually fitted the description and the outcome is that with so many alternative sites on offer - it puts people off the subject altogether and no progress can be made like that.”

Since each participant was only allowed 20 minutes of speaking time and since there was so much material available for the Atlantis in Bolivia site, obviously there was not time available to present it all.

In fact I was later asked by the organiser of the conference prof Stavros Papamarinopolous to provide him not with one paper for his forthcoming conference book, but with three papers.

I have posted them online here

www.atlantisbolivia.org/athensfullpaper.pdf

www.atlantisbolivia.org./athensfullpaper2.pdf

www.atlantisbolivia.org./athensfullpaper3.pdf

(4) Quote Qoais “Let's take the word Atl for instance. Atl - Native American - Actually Nahuatl (Aztec), a subset of the Uto-Aztecan language group. This language group reaches into the western North American continent. One must question this association, especially in regards to the apparent lack of any other linguistic transfer.”

Answer, Ok, so what does that mean in real terms. Atl is a native america word from the Aztec/Mexica language meaning water. We are looking for Atl Antis and have identified South America. Large parts of the Altiplano are often flooeded under water. Part of the name of one half of the Aymara kingdoms were called water kingdoms. Large parts of Amazonia are under water in the wet season with only the tops of the trees sticking above the water. The mountains are the copper (Antis) mountains. The Uru peoples who live on the Altiplano live amongst the water and construct floating islands. So surely Atl Antis is a perfectly descriptive name for “South America” and has more correspondence linguistically than say, Crete, Sardinia, Ierland, Malta, Antarctica, Azores etc.

And don’t say there is no connection between Mexico and Bolivia because they both have similar statuary and the Aztecs claimed to have come from “Atzlan” thought to be a “place of whiteness” which is also a description of parts of the Altiplano due to salt deposits

(4) Quote Qoais “Does the Bolivian region have parallel oral histories that indicate they had knowledge of the world on the eastern side of the ocean?”

Answer: We should remember that many of the oral traditions of the region were lost when the Spanish Conquistadores deliberately murdered the native inhabitants who were specially trained to maintain the oral traditions. So a lot of the history of the country was lost. Yet we still find on the island of Marajo at the entrance to the Amazon River, pottery and artefacts from Tiwanaku in Bolivia which had a large trading empire. So obviously they had knowledge of the eastern side of their empire.

(5) Quote Qoais: Is there any archaeological evidence from the region in question?

Answer: Of course there is archaeological evidence, but what sort of evidence would you like. There are amphoras and vases similar to Egyptian and eastern Mediterranean amphora. Also the Fuente Magna with proto Sumerian writing. People seems obsessed with finding pottery, but as in the case of Caral in Peru, that city from 2627BC was a pre-ceramic civilisation and hence not easily detected. Akakor have found remains of a civilisation dating to 4,000BC beneath Lake Titicaca. In Bolivia there are plates and dishes made out of STONE.

(6) Quote Qoais: “Do you or Mr. Allen have a specific topographical map from the region you're referring to?”

Answes, yes, you can find one online at www.atlantisbolivia.org/atlantisboliviapart2.htm

Where you can see theeh rectangular shape of the plain, also some general and early maps on

www.atlantisbolivia.org/atlantisboliviapart3.htm

and a comparison of measurements for various sites put forward on

www.atlantisbolivia.org/plaincomparison.htm

(7) Quote Qoais: ”Is it possible to lay out the transfer route of goods or armies from Bolivia to the eastern shores of S. America for transfer to the Mediterranean regions? Is there any archaeological proof for this route of transfer of goods or armies?

Answer: The routes via the Amazon and via the river Paraguay have already been followed in reed boats by Col John Blashford-Snell.

It is unlikely that large armies would be transferred in this way. Since Atlantis commanded an empire, it could dispatch forces from other parts of the empire. Sir Francis Bacon in “the New Atlantis” tells us that invading forces were dispatched from Mexico and Peru respectively and separated by a space of 10 years, which sounds also about the intervals between the main attacks of “The Sea Peoples”.

Opinions are changing all the time about the “pristine” state of the Amazon forest at the time of the Spanish arrival. They now find that what they previously thought uninhabitable was in fact highly populated and there existed a form of “black earth” which regenerated itself.

http://www.sopitas.com/site/?p=36805

( Quote Qoais: Even IF there are Red Skinned people in Palestine in ancient times, one must be able to prove they came from S. America.

Answer: You see, there you go again, once you have certain pieces of evidence you continually keep adding to the requirements. The fundamental point is that within Pato’s description of Atlanits there is a description of South America.

What kinds of boats they used or proving that people in Palestine came from there goes beyond the information that is currently publically available.

( Quote Qoais: The Red Sea got its name from a phenomenon caused by a type of algae called Trichodesmium Erythraeum, which is found in the sea. When these algae blooms die off the blue-green color of sea appears to change to reddish-brown color.

Answer, The Red Sea in antiquity was not the Red Sea you presently find marked on your world Atlas. It was the sea which is presently called “The Persian Gulf” also known sometimes as the

Erythaean Sea, but Cedric Leonard and others are of the opinion that the Atlantic may formerly have been called the Erythaean Sea, or Red Sea.

http://www.atlantisquest.com/Writings.html

(9) Quote Qoais: “I know Jim Allen is trying to sell his book”

Answer: I am sure the publishers would be pleased if anyone bought one of the new books as it is only a small publisher and the principal reason for publishing it is to document the work that has been done and to make the information available to anyone interested in the subject of Atlantis, which is also why there is a large quantity of information and essays freely available on my website www.atlantisbolivia.org including the first book which can be download free of charge.

Finally, if Plato’s Atlantis is not based upon a description of South America which came via Egypt, then perhaps Qoais can explain how he was able to describe so precisely a continent opposite the Pillars of Hercules larger that Asia and Libya combined, a level rectangular plain in its centre midway along its longest side, the plain being enclosed by mountains, the plain being high above the level of the sea, the mountains rising sheer out of the sea to a great height, the first inhabitants being born in pairs, an existing legend in that location of a city sunk punished by the gods and sunk beneath the sea, the presence in the location he gave of the metals gold, silver, tin and orichalcum, the custom of plating temple walls in sheets of gold, the amount of wealth existing in that country being the same as Plato described as “a wealth so great the like will never be easily seen again”, the custom of carrying around or having golden statues of their ancestors, the presence of elephants i.e mastodons which are a type of elephant, the presence of hot and cold springs, the stones being the same colours of black, red and white, the custom of using them being intermixed to form a pattern as found in the local church, the correspondence between the local name for the place and the name Plato gave, the mountains being celebrated for their height and beauty, every type of food existing on the “continent”, the presence of irrigation canals in parallel formations, the fact that when canals/plots were restored two harvests a year were possible, the fact that an island surrounded by concentric rings exists in the location Plato gave, the fact that there are two rings of land and three sunken channels as Plato counted them, the fact that this island was also home to the god of the sea in the local legends, again in local legend the god of the sea married a personage who lived on a hill, and again in local legend the god of the sea carved the ringed formation out of the island, and the fact that this island has been destroyed by earthquakes and floods, equally possible in a single day and night as Plato described? Oh yes, and not forgetting that remains of a sunken civilisation has already been found in the lake further north by the Akakor expeditions.

And please don’t say it is just a co-incidence or nonsense about a psychic vision!

Qoais - I haven't had the time to research all of Allen's claims, but here are a few notes. These will coincide with the numbers above. As a preface (and as usual for me!), note the various time related factors.

1) The primary military engagements between the "Sea Peoples" and Egypt would appear to date to circa 3300-3100 +/- BP. kmt-sesh could likely refine this more accurately. While there is debate over the origins of the "Sea Peoples", none of the current research presents anything other than Eurasian sources.

2) Well, basing a land search on a fictional account...

3) Nothing to add here, other than that the "conference" does not sound well organized.

4) This one gets rather confusing. First we have atl. As previously noted, Nahuatl.

Def: 1)water, urine, any liquid. 2)Day sign. 3) Crown of the head.

Antis - I could find no Nahuatl reference to this word. In researching the etymology of the name of the Andes mountains, "andi" was given as a likely source. Def: High crest. Seems logical. Problem - "andi" is from the Quechua language group. This group is quite distinct from the Uto-Aztecan. Two questions - 1)What is the etymology of "antis" ? Source? 2) If it is Quechua, what is Allen implying? (O.K. that was actually three!) Note: Spanish is currently the most common language in Bolivia, with Quechua the most common indigenous language.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Classical_Nahuatl_nouns

4b) The prime period of the Tiwanaku "empire" was circa 1700-1000 BP. Has he provided documentation of ceramic sequence dates? "Obviously" may be quite presumptive.

5) The amphorae - See below. Another example of presenting dubious information as certified fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact. Not my favorite source, but... scroll down.

http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassicism/2004/02/08.html

The Fuente Magna Bowl - This one is also suspect. It was supposedly discovered at a hacienda in the late 1950's. Apparently it has been unavailable for study since at least 2000. Given the lack of sound provenience and research availability, one must be more than a bit skeptical. The importation of antiquities into this region post WWII could be a factor.

6) Couldn't pull up the maps, but will try again later.

7) This is all speculation. 1) Sir Francis Bacon was a brilliant man. He also lived between 1561-1626. I'm sure you understand. 2) He is the mis-characterizing the Amazon Basin factor. Do a search at archaeology.org. I can provide the direct source if needed. Note dates.

8) Boats - Tries to duck that one. The little "goes beyond the information that is publicly available" tease is just too cute by half. And who is Cedric Leonard? I'd check that one. And the reed boat exercise? I will let you draw your own conclusions;

http://www.archaeology.org/0207/newsbriefs/bolivia.html

9) Claiming mastodons? Given that the only mastodon finds recovered in Bolivia were fossilized, and that the mega-fauna extinction was essentially complete by 10,000 BP (with the exception of such isolates as Wrangel Island and Santa Rosa), this one is most curious.

I would encourage you to do your own follow-up utilizing some of the above leads. I would rather guess that between less-than-genuine presentation and what would appear to me to be hopelessly confused time-lines, your case is well founded.

[cormac mac airt]

No, not NOW I'm claiming.....I said it clearly before

It’s clear as MUD. You went from:

El Shaddai is equal to God Most High or El Elyon... the creator of the Universe before his name changed to Yahweh..

So, the same being, just with different names, to:

El (Yahweh) is not actually the creator God or God Most High, he is a grandson of God..

Two beings, grandfather and grandson, whom you claim were morphed together. It doesn’t work that way, it’s one or the other. Not that it has anything to do with Plato’s story, which mentions none of these beings.

You obviously don't understand a word I'm saying, I'm over your attitude, I have clearly stated something and you are not understanding it at all.

I understand you want Plato’s story to be more convoluted than it is.

By Greek I meant Hellenic Greek not Cretan or Mycenaean or any other pre Hellenic origin. I am not going to argue here whether or not Mycenaeans are Greek, I would be pretty stupid if I stated that and meant otherwise (than Hellenic Greek).

I can’t help what you meant. That’s not what you said, claiming the Greeks had no gods of their own. I showed they did. Sorry.

It is not a Greek story, Plato says it is a story about the ancient Greeks and Atlanteans but told by an Egyptian, so it is an Egyptian story if anything with a later translation into Greek using names of Gods known by Egyptians of 650BC.

It’s a Greek story, in as much as Plato claims it’s about a period of Greek History. And again, there is not a shred of evidence that the Egyptians ever had such a story, in any case.

What name do you think an Egyptian priest (before you jump on this again, yes, IF it happened at all) would have said when it translated to Poseidon in Greece? Did he say Poseidon in the original story? NO. It must have been another name for a God that could be interpreted into Greek as Poseidon.

Why MUST it have been true at all? A better question, considering the time in question (650 BC), would be why there is no evidence during the reigns of Necho I, Psamtik I or Necho II of anything that could even remotely be misconstrued as a story of Atlantis, by any name.

cormac

[The Puzzler]

It’s clear as MUD. You went from:

So, the same being, just with different names, to:

Two beings, grandfather and grandson, whom you claim were morphed together. It doesn’t work that way, it’s one or the other. Not that it has anything to do with Plato’s story, which mentions none of these beings.

I understand you want Plato’s story to be more convoluted than it is.

I can’t help what you meant. That’s not what you said, claiming the Greeks had no gods of their own. I showed they did. Sorry.

It’s a Greek story, in as much as Plato claims it’s about a period of Greek History. And again, there is not a shred of evidence that the Egyptians ever had such a story, in any case.

Why MUST it have been true at all? A better question, considering the time in question (650 BC), would be why there is no evidence during the reigns of Necho I, Psamtik I or Necho II of anything that could even remotely be misconstrued as a story of Atlantis, by any name.

cormac

The word Greek is used after the times of the Hellenes otherwise Homer would have called them Greeks but he does not. My terms are more defined. When I say Greeks I mean Greeks after the term Hellenes not Pelasgians, Argives, Danaans, Dorians, Cretans, Mycenaeans or any other of the multitude of pre-Greek (Hellenic) people. Your attempts to try and catch me out are not working.

It's one or the other? That just shows me how unflexible you are, it is anything but one or the other...The OT gives Yahweh's name as having been El Shaddai and then Yahweh, YHWH even says it himself....he showed himself to Abraham as El Shaddai and not his name Yahweh...even God tells us he has 2 names. An old name of El Shaddai, God Almighty, 1st God, creator and then Yahweh...the Hebrews have made him one God but if you check it out OUT of Hebrew religion you can see them clearly defined as 2, just as Sanchuniathon said it was. El - Yahweh was not the original Creator God El Elyon - El Shaddai but the Hebrews made him one and the same hence your Tanakh reference.

Anyway I am sick of repeating myself to you.

[cormac mac airt]

The word Greek is used after the times of the Hellenes otherwise Homer would have called them Greeks but he does not. My terms are more defined. When I say Greeks I mean Greeks after the term Hellenes not Pelasgians, Argives, Danaans, Dorians, Cretans, Mycenaeans or any other of the multitude of pre-Greek (Hellenic) people. Your attempts to try and catch me out are not working.

It's one or the other? That just shows me how unflexible you are, it is anything but one or the other...The OT gives Yahweh's name as having been El Shaddai and then Yahweh, YHWH even says it himself....he showed himself to Abraham as El Shaddai and not his name Yahweh...even God tells us he has 2 names. An old name of El Shaddai, God Almighty, 1st God, creator and then Yahweh...the Hebrews have made him one God but if you check it out OUT of Hebrew religion you can see them clearly defined as 2, just as Sanchuniathon said it was. El - Yahweh was not the original Creator God El Elyon - El Shaddai but the Hebrews made him one and the same hence your Tanakh reference.

Anyway I am sick of repeating myself to you.

Considering that in both the Iliad as well as the Odyssey, both about a time before Hellenic Greece, Greeks are mentioned in relation to Troy, your limited definition is irrelevant to the discussion.

This is not about how many names the Hebrew god had by however many groups of people, there were many. This is about your claim that (first) Yahweh was one of many names for the Creator and somehow (second) that Yahweh wasn't even the name for the Creator, that was his grand-dad. A bit duplicitous, IMO.

cormac

Edited January 2, 2010 by cormac mac airt

[Qoais]

Jim Allen

Answer, the people known as the “Sea Peoples” comprised a large federation made up of many different nations. You may remember that Plato said “Atlantis” was a confederation that controlled Libya up to the borders of Egypt and also tried to “enslave” the eastern Mediterranean. . Well the “Sea Peoples” carried out naval assaults on Egypt in the Nile Delta and also along with their allies tried to invade Egypt both from Libya and also from Palestine. The invading armies brought whole families with them so theirs was no simple act of aggression but an attempt at conquest and settlement.

Swede, I need to go slowly so I can understand what's important.

I do NOT remember Plato saying Atlantis was a confederation. I remember Plato saying

For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean,

and I remember his saying

Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one

I take these two sentences to mean that the rulers of Atlantis whoever they were by this time, gathered their forces together for the purpose of making war and taking over all the lands inside the Straits from the lands they already ruled. I do NOT take this as an indication that Atlanteans made an alliance with some other peoples called the Sea Peoples although Plato could have known of the Sea Peoples who attacked the Egyptians and used this as inspiration as well and since no one knew who the Sea Peoples were, or where they came from, who better to use for inspiration since they'd already attacked Egypt and this was a known fact.

Maybe I'm being too picky. Empire - confederation - but those two words always meant different things to me.

[The Puzzler]

Considering that in both the Iliad as well as the Odyssey, both about a time before Hellenic Greece, Greeks are mentioned in relation to Troy, your limited definition is irrelevant to the discussion.

This is not about how many names the Hebrew god had by however many groups of people, there were many. This is about your claim that (first) Yahweh was one of many names for the Creator and somehow (second) that Yahweh wasn't even the name for the Creator, that was his grand-dad. A bit duplicitous, IMO.

cormac

Well, just so you know for next time, when I speak of Greeks I relate it to when they became a nation of Greeks..

"The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is marked, according to some scholars, by the first Olympic Games in 776 BC,"

"Ancient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth."

Prior to that (around 800BC when the end of the Greek Dark Ages was) I will use designated names of the different tribes and areas. ie: The so called Dorian invasion was not the Greek invasion. It was a Dorian invasion. When I say Mycenaeans I mean Mycenaeans not Greeks.

I am actually talking about El and El Elyon but transferred over to Hebrew you get the same meaning, it's just that the Hebrews do not accept it. Again it boils down to the translation of El as Yahweh. And El is not the Creator God just like his Greek equal, usually Cronus, is not the Creator God.

But I think we are on too much of a different wavelength to really get anywhere.

[The Puzzler]

Swede, I need to go slowly so I can understand what's important.

I do NOT remember Plato saying Atlantis was a confederation. I remember Plato saying

and I remember his saying

I take these two sentences to mean that the rulers of Atlantis whoever they were by this time, gathered their forces together for the purpose of making war and taking over all the lands inside the Straits from the lands they already ruled. I do NOT take this as an indication that Atlanteans made an alliance with some other peoples called the Sea Peoples although Plato could have known of the Sea Peoples who attacked the Egyptians and used this as inspiration as well and since no one knew who the Sea Peoples were, or where they came from, who better to use for inspiration since they'd already attacked Egypt and this was a known fact.

Maybe I'm being too picky. Empire - confederation - but those two words always meant different things to me.

I agree Q, there is an Empire but no mention of a confederation. They subjugated lands but don't recall any of the lands joining forces with them.

[The Puzzler]

Does anyone have any idea how many thousands of years ago the Genesis of the Greek Gods took place? I mean, Mr. Allen is saying that and that the source word was Atl of the Bolivian (Nahuatl) language. If that were so, then the Bolivians would have had to be influencing the Greek language as far back as when the Genesis of the Gods was, or at least as far back as when they were naming their children, and Iapetus named his son Atlas. So I am trying (without being negative) to point out that A}if the words Atlantis and Atlas were WERE derived from the same source word, it was not from the Nahuatl language. B} That IF he thinks this is so, then he has to also think that there was continuous trans-Atlantic sailing back in the days of the Genesis of the Gods of Greece. So - when was that - anyone know?

I'm not much into this atl thing but Ill point out that 'atl' is not actually part of the word, the word Nahuatl is broken down into Nahua and then tl...

The Classical Nahuatl word nāhuatl (noun stem nāhua, + absolutive[2] -tl )

It is an Aztec language so that the Greek Gods are named after a word denoting people of the Aztec valleys seems very unlikely.

Nahuatl has been spoken in Central Mexico since at least the 7th century AD

[jaylemurph]

Does anyone have any idea how many thousands of years ago the Genesis of the Greek Gods took place? I mean, Mr. Allen is saying that and that the source word was Atl of the Bolivian (Nahuatl) language. If that were so, then the Bolivians would have had to be influencing the Greek language as far back as when the Genesis of the Gods was, or at least as far back as when they were naming their children, and Iapetus named his son Atlas. So I am trying (without being negative) to point out that A}if the words Atlantis and Atlas were WERE derived from the same source word, it was not from the Nahuatl language. B} That IF he thinks this is so, then he has to also think that there was continuous trans-Atlantic sailing back in the days of the Genesis of the Gods of Greece. So - when was that - anyone know?

First of all, I know /you/ aren't making these claims, Q, but if Mr Allen is telling you Nahautl is a Bolivian langauge, descended from or cognate from a language spoken in Bolivia, you be 100% certain he is deliberately lying or has no clue concerning what he's talking about.* You should immediately ignore everything that charlatan says about language since he has no actual knowledge on the subject. (It's tantamount to saying Georgian is a Western Germanic language! If he can't get the most basic facts of where, when and what Ancient people spoke, it seems hugely unlikely his extrapolations from those facts will ever be correct.)

Nor is there any evidence AT ALL EXTANT that any such mythical Bolivian-Nahuatl language has any effect on any Greek word. Nor, as I said above, is there any evidence of any lexical item of such basic importance (water) ever, ever, to have been a loan word from another language.

--Jaylemurph

*What they speak (historically, anyway) in Bolivia is Quechua and Aymara. There are about two dozen other languages spoken there, mostly which only have 15-50 or so speakers. I'm not aware any of them have been linked (at all) with (Proto-)Uto-Aztecan, which was spoken at least 1,000 miles away.

[kmt_sesh]

I've been asked by a couple of people to weigh in here but, in all honesty, I don't know how useful I can be. Pretty much everything being discussed has been discussed ad nauseam in the past at UM, and I've commented many times on some of this material. I think everyone who is familiar with me at UM knows the conservative line I prefer, but I suppose some basic observations on my part might be acceptable.

First off, I honestly don't understand the motivation of folks who are so damn desperate to find Atlantis that they look clear across the ocean, to the Western Hemisphere. Nothing in Plato's writing would suggest such a thing. We are bound by the material found within the pages of Timaeus and Critias, so when someone departs from the information provided in those works, that person has abandoned fact and has embraced complete fiction.

It never ceases to amaze me the lengths to which people will go. Cormac in Post 708, for example, was wise to caution us about "atl." Simply because an Aztec place name in their mythology contains something similar to this word fragment is no cause to try to associate it with the word "Atlantis." The human voice apparatus can produce only so many sounds, so of course different languages from different corners of the world will end up occasionally containing similar-sounding words. That's all it is. Beyond that, it's a simplistic mutilation of linguistics.

And as cormac also pointed out, the mythic Aztec homeland of Aztlan was somewhere to the north, so there is no logical tie-in with Bolivia. There is no proof whatsoever that Aztlan was even an actual place.

Also significant to bear in mind is pottery. We cannot logically assume a connection between ancient Egyptian pots and a pre-columbian, Mesoamerian pots simply because they might resemble one another in some way. There were only so many ways to produce pottery in the ancient world, so naturally the physical forms and shapes of pots are going to look similar from one culture to another.

That brings me to the infamous Fuente Magna vessel. I don't know much about this bowl and it would not be in any of the books in my own library, so I had to surrender to the internet. It gave me quite a chuckle. Evidently the "script" on the bowl was translated by a Dr. Alberto Marini. I am not familiar with this person so I don't know what sort of training he's had in ancient Near Eastern scripts. The South American anthropologists and archaeologists who've studied the bowl most likely have no training in Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, or any other Near Eastern script that employed cuneiform. Why on earth would they, unless they were working in the Near East?

I cannot translate cuneiform scripts but am somewhat familiar with their morphology and contextual arrangements. Here's a closeup of the "script" on the bowl. Evidently, according to what I could find on the internet, it's been regarded as proto-Sumerian. I think not. This is an actual example of very early Sumerian cuneiform. The bowl does not match it. This is an example of Assyrian cuneiform, and here is an example of Old Persian cuneiform. The bowl matches neither. If this bowl is even an actual artifact and not someone's attempt at fraud, all I see are collections of lines and triangles--not cuneiform.

If linguists from around the world "declared with no doubt that the writing system was Sumerian cuneiform," who exactly are these linguists and where exactly are their reports? Odd that I heard of no such thing around the halls of the Oriental Institute here in Chicago, considering the O.I. employs some of the world's leading scholars in ancient Near Eastern languages. Obviously I consider that claim to be quite dubious. Were such a discovery real, it would be appearing on the front covers of all journals and periodicals devoted to the archaeology of the ancient Near East. I've seen no such coverage. Odd, that.

These are my judgements on placing Atlantis in the Western Hemisphere and in trying to find associations therein. Falderal.

I must also respectfully admit to some confusion about recent efforts to dissect some of the names for the Hebraic god. Yahweh, El Elyon (Most High God), El Shaddai (God Almighty), Elohim, and other permutations ultimately refer to one and the same deity: the Judeo-Christian God. El was simply the highest god of Canaanite peoples, and given that the Hebrews most likely originated from a branch of Canaanites, the name El ended up figuring into their own Judaic traditions. If I remember correctly, El translates simple as "lord" or "god."

Lastly, I must disagree with The Puzzler when she wrote that Atlantis was "an Egyptian story." That is not the case. The earliest existence for the story of Atlantis is Plato's Timaeus and Critias. In attributing it to an Egyptian priest, Plato was using a literary device common among Greek orators. Drawing on Egypt as the origin to something was, in the Greek mind, a means to lend weight and credibility to that origin. The Greeks had a tangible respect for Egypt because of its great antiquity, so Egypt was a handy literary tool for them. The bottom line is, in no extant text from any point in Egyptian history is there any mention of Atlantis or anything similar to it. Atlantis simply was not part of the Egyptian historical, oral, or literary tradition.

[kmt_sesh]

Maybe I'm being too picky. Empire - confederation - but those two words always meant different things to me.

I think you're wise in drawing that distinction because you're absolutely correct. There was never a "nation" of Greeks or Hellenes in ancient times, but there were confederations and even an empire. In all honesty the many different Greek polities or city-states would never have worked together well enough to form a nation, but there were many times when various city-states formed confederations (alliances) to fight other city-states. These confederations were almost always temporary. Often extremely temporary.

Athens did indeed form a small empire. Following the expulsion of Xerxes in 480 BCE, Athens was the key to the formation of the Delian League in an effort to prepare for possible future invasions from Persia. The Persians never returned but the Delian League remained in place for a long time, to the point that Athens eventually assumed full control and ruled most of the North Aegean. And Athens could be pretty brutal about maintaining its hegemony. When islands in the Aegean tried to break away from the Delian League, the Athenian navy pounced without mercy.

The Spartans and Thebans and others were never part of the Delian League, and in fact grew quite annoyed with how full of itself Athens became. This would ultimately result in the Peloponnesian War (431 to 404 BCE), at the end of which Athens was cut down to size and its empire dissolved.

It can be very difficult to form a precise definition of "empire," however. What exactly does "empire" mean? The Akkadians were arguably the first empire, ruling not only present-day Iraq but also large swaths of Syria and parts of Palestine. The Egyptians in the New Kingdom controlled everything from close to Khartoum in Sudan to past the Euphrates in Syria, although its hold on all of this territory was often tenuous and rapidly started to fall apart in the time of Ramesses II. The Assyrians ruled a huge territory, and the Persians an even larger territory. All of these empires ruled over different ethnic groups and peoples speaking a variety of languages. And yet ancient Judah could also be called an empire, although a small one ruling over fellow speakers of Western Semitic. We have Athens with its Delian League, ruling over its own people, too.

Sorry about droning on. I was just in the mood to pontificate over the meaning of "empire."

[Qoais]

Personally, I have no problem with you droning on!! One of the items Mr. Allen is trying to imply is that the red skinned people from S. America made it to Palestine. He also says that the pharaoh of Egypt after capturing some of the Sea People, settled them in certain areas such as Palestine. Do you know of this? I have noticed myself that some of the pictures on the walls in Egypt show different colored people. Some black, some bronze (red) some almost white. Can you explain?

I'll re-post some of Mr. Allen's statement:

Re: Atlantis in South America (the Evidence)

« Reply #173 on: Yesterday at 05:02:42 am »

Quote

Greetings all on this First Day of the New Year and here are a few answers to save Morrison the bother of having to look up all the information most of which is available on the Interent.

(1) Quote Qoais “Finally, some of the Sea Peoples who invaded Egypt were in fact settled by the Egyptians in a part of the land under their control

Could you clarify this sentence please?”

Answer, the people known as the “Sea Peoples” comprised a large federation made up of many different nations. You may remember that Plato said “Atlantis” was a confederation that controlled Libya up to the borders of Egypt and also tried to “enslave” the eastern Mediterranean. . Well the “Sea Peoples” carried out naval assaults on Egypt in the Nile Delta and also along with their allies tried to invade Egypt both from Libya and also from Palestine. The invading armies brought whole families with them so theirs was no simple act of aggression but an attempt at conquest and settlement.

They were all defeated by the Egyptians and some of the invaders, for example the Philistines were settled by the pharaoh in what is now Palestine which takes its name from the Philistines who were settled there.

Edited January 2, 2010 by Qoais

[Ikki]

Personally, I have no problem with you droning on!! One of the items Mr. Wells is trying to imply is that the red skinned people from S. America made it to Palestine. He also says that the pharaoh of Egypt after capturing some of the Sea People, settled them in certain areas. Do you know of this? I have noticed myself that some of the pictures on the walls in Egypt show different colored people. Some black, some bronze (red) some almost white. Can you explain?

Qoais, these paintings are obviously instructions for how to cook the delicacy that is Homo sapiens by pyramid power. Pre-preparation, the meat will usually be rather palish white; after just the right amount of time inside a pyramidical stone structure, the dish will be a fine bronze red and very tasteful. Should one forget one's dish inside the pyramid (as became the fate of many a pharaoh, some still in their Wrap-o-Mummic packaging), the meal will turn black and inedible.

See? History is interesting!