where did the "sumerians" come from?

[lightly]

Thanks Harte, Slim,Spartan, and cormac. And yes Harte, i did suspect the claim was erroneous , scuse me .. carry on. Arctic Buttercup>

[Totah Dine]

never heard about the Sumerians originating in Bahrain.

maybe you check up on the history of Bahrain.

Maybe you should do a google search before making arbitrary statements. Among LEADING Archaeologists there is general consensus that they may have originated from Bahrain. I didn't just pull this out of my butt.

[Abramelin]

Maybe you should do a google search before making arbitrary statements. Among LEADING Archaeologists there is general consensus that they may have originated from Bahrain. I didn't just pull this out of my butt.

I guess this is what you are hinting at:

Dilmun (sometimes transliterated Telmun) is a land mentioned by Mesopotamian civilizations as a trade partner, a source of copper, and an entrepôt of the Mesopotamia-to-Indus Valley Civilization trade route. Although the exact location of Dilmun is unclear, it might be associated with the islands of Bahrain, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and nearby Iranian coast in the Persian Gulf.

Dilmun, sometimes described as "the place where the sun rises" and "the Land of the Living", is the scene of some versions of the Sumerian creation myth, and the place where the deified Sumerian hero of the flood, Utnapishtim (Ziusudra), was taken by the gods to live forever.

Dilmun is also described in the epic story of Enki and Ninhursag as the site at which the Creation occurred. Ninlil, the Sumerian goddess of air and south wind had her home in Dilmun. It is also featured in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

However, in the early epic "Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta", the main events, which center on Enmerkar's construction of the ziggurats in Uruk and Eridu, are described as taking place in a world "before Dilmun had yet been settled".

--

Howard-Carter (1987) [4] realizing that these three locations possess no archaeological evidence of a settlement dating 3300-2300 B.C., has proposed that Dilmun of this era might be a still unidentified tell near the Shat al-Arab between modern-day Qurnah and Basra in modern day Iraq. In favor of Howard-Carter's proposal, she noted that this area does lie to the east of Sumer ("where the sun rises"), and the riverbank where Dilmun's maidens would have been accosted aligns with the Shat al-Arab which is in the midst of marshes. The "mouth of the rivers" where Dilmun was said to lie is for her the union of the Tigris and Euphrates at Qurnah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilmun

.

Edited August 30, 2010 by Abramelin

[SlimJim22]

This was the link I posted on Bahrain-Dilmun a few pages back. It has a nice little map of the area.

http://www.applet-magic.com/dilmun0.htm

On the burial mounds.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/03/12/bahrain.burial.mounds/index.html

An Assurbanipal clay cylinder states: Dilmun ki s'a qabal ta_mtim s'apli_t (Dilmun is in the midst of the lower sea) (D.D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria, ARAB, II 970. A Ungnad, ZA 31 (1917): 34, 1.9. That Dilmun was a continental coastland may be surmised from Sargon II's great Display inscription: bi_t-ia-kin s'a kis'a_d na_r marrati adi pa_t Dilmun (Bi_t-Iakin which (extends) from the bank of the brackish river to the border of Dilmun)(Luckenbill, ARAB, 54 = 82 =99). Sargon II's inscription states: Upe_ri s'ar Dilmun s'a ma_la_k 30 be_ru ina qabal ta_mtim s'a nipih s'ams'i ki_ma nu_ni s'itkunu narbasu (Upe_ri, king of Dilmun, whose resting place is 30 double hours away like a fish in the midst of the ocean of the rising sun)(Luckenbill, ARAB, 41,70). During the reign of Sargon of Assyria, Dilmun and Magan are stated to be "on the farther side of the lower sea" and there is also a reference to the " sea of Magan" (J.Muhly, Copper and Tin, p. 226; W.F. Leeman, Foreign Trade, p. 81, n.11; M. Weitemeyer, Acta Orientalia, 27 (1964): 207; E. Weidner, AfO, 16 (1953): 5, 1.42). The timber for the boats in Bahrain always came from India. The name of the Meluhha-boat is magilum (Enki and the World Order 128).[boats which plied on the Sindhu river are called mohanna.]

http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/sarasvati/lapis/lapis_lazuli.htm

I dunno what is the most likely possibility but the link has lots of pictures of seals found in Bahrain though it does not specify when they have been dated to.

This is the site of a UM member who identifies Dilmun with the Himalayas or maybe Pakistan as in the mountain of onions.

http://ghulamakbar.com/?p=78

[Abramelin]

They rejoiced, they uttered blessing: "Marduk is king!"

They bestowed upon him the scepter, the throne, and the battle-axe;

They gave him an unrivaled weapon, which turns back the foe,

"Go, Tiamat's Life cut off;

May the winds bear her blood to secret places!"

When the gods, his fathers had fixed Bel's fate,

The way of prosperity and success they caused him to take.

His bow he prepared, his weapon he chose,

A spear he bound on him at his waist.

He raised the heavenly weapon, with his right hand grasped it,

His bow and quiver at his side he hung,

He placed the lightning before his face,

With quivering flame his body he filled.

He made a net to enclose Tiamat's body,

He caused the four winds to seize so that nothing of her could escape;

The south wind, the north wind, the east wind, the west wind,

He brought to the side of the net, the gift of his father Anu,

He made the evil wind, the bad wind, the tempest and the hurricane,

The four winds, the seven winds, the whirlwind, the unhealthy wind;

He brought forth the winds which he had made, the seven of them,

To trouble the inward parts of Tiamat, they came after him.

The lord raised up the tornado, his mighty weapon,

As a chariot, a storm unrivaled for terror he mounted,

He harnessed for himself and attached to it four steeds,

"Destroyer," "Unmerciful," Overwhelmer," "Fleet-footed."

[Foam-covered] were their teeth, filled with poison,

Skilled were they [to run dow], taught to destroy.

http://www.piney.com/EnumaBar4.html

Does this describe in cloaked terms an extraplanetary body as some suggest? Or is it a history, written as myth of a matriarchal water based culture. I have said earlier how Atlantis could be read as an allegory of the demise of such a culture. Maybe there is no parallel but Tiamat sounds like one bad mutha.

Hurricanes are mentioned but as a way of fighting this dragoness. Either it was a pretty big event, perhaps including a flood or one hell of a fight with a culture that suffered in a storm. Far from clear either way but that's what I get from what I've read.

Jim, this is what you quoted earlier, and to which I responded:

The Sumerians left behind legends about the gods and their early settlement as told in the "Barton Tablets". These according to Christian O'brian "The Genius of the Few", tell of a land "of the gods" which at one time became frozen and cold, and eventually forced them south. I consider these myths about the Sumerian "gods" to be ancient recollections of very early events remembered for millenniums, that actually happened to the ancestors of the Sumerians, about their old homelands in the frozen land areas like Siberia. They called this place "Karsag". I believe that this freezing was caused by the shift in the North Pole 13,000 years ago, which plunged Central Siberia from a temperate climate to a polar climate, where the ground a few feet from the surface never thaws out. Scientists have found frozen mammoths in Siberia, whose stomachs were still filled with plants that are known to live only in temperate climates, and not in the arctic regions.

I also posted links to thos Barton Tablets.

Now, if you think you can distill what's been said in the quote from those Barton Tablets, then please show me.

It's all a bit farfetched if you ask me.

[The_Spartan]

Maybe you should do a google search before making arbitrary statements. Among LEADING Archaeologists there is general consensus that they may have originated from Bahrain. I didn't just pull this out of my butt.

Use toilet pape dude...and flush when you take a drop

and wash your hand!

Dilmun is mentioned in the records /writings/cuneiforms of the mesopotamian civilizations as a trade partner.

as for Dimum being the birth place of the sumerian culture

Dilmun, sometimes described as "the place where the sun rises" and "the Land of the Living", is the scene of some versions of the Sumerian creation myth, and the place where the deified Sumerian hero of the flood, Utnapishtim (Ziusudra), was taken by the gods to live forever.

Dilmun is also described in the epic story of Enki and Ninhursag as the site at which the Creation occurred. Ninlil, the Sumerian goddess of air and south wind had her home in Dilmun. It is also featured in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

However, in the early epic "Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta", the main events, which center on Enmerkar's construction of the ziggurats in Uruk and Eridu, are described as taking place in a world "before Dilmun had yet been settled".

To date (2008) archaeology has failed to find a site in existence from 3300 B.C.(Uruk IV) to 556 B.C.(Neo-Babylonian Era) when Dilmun (Telmun) appears in texts. Despite the scholarly consensus that Dilmun encompasses three locations: (1) the eastern littoral of Arabia from the vicinity of modern Kuwait to Bahrain; (2) the island of Bahrain; (3) the island of Failaka east of Kuwait, the earliest known site is Qal'at al-Bahrain which is dated no earlier than circa 2200 B.C. according to Flemming Hojlund. Failaka was settled after 2000 B.C. following a drop in sea level according to Daniel Potts and Harriet Crawford. No settlements exist in the Arabian littoral 3300-2000 B.C. according to Hojlund. Thus, despite Dilmun's appearance in ancient texts dating from 3300-2300 B.C. archaeologists have failed to find a site for Dilmun dating to this period. Hymns regarding the Sumerian god Enki of Eridu in Sumer speak of his assaulting and deflowering Dilmun's maidens as they stand by a river bank, he reaching out of nearby marsh to clasp them to his bosom. Of Bahrain, Failaka, and the eastern littoral of Arabia, none possess marshes and a riverbank. Dilmun, furthermore, is said to lie "in the east where the sun rises," a situation that does not apply to the eastern Arabian littoral, Failaka or Bahrain, all of which lie south of Sumer and Eridu.

Howard-Carter (1987) [4] realizing that these three locations possess no archaeological evidence of a settlement dating 3300-2300 B.C., has proposed that Dilmun of this era might be a still unidentified tell near the Shat al-Arab between modern-day Qurnah and Basra in modern day Iraq. In favor of Howard-Carter's proposal, she noted that this area does lie to the east of Sumer ("where the sun rises"), and the riverbank where Dilmun's maidens would have been accosted aligns with the Shat al-Arab which is in the midst of marshes. The "mouth of the rivers" where Dilmun was said to lie is for her the union of the Tigris and Euphrates at Qurnah.

Source

Among the LEADING Archaeologists, one of the MOST LEADING Archaeologist Howard carter has opined that Dilmun could be in Iraq. Go GOOGLE for yourself or read wikipedia for yourself and see.

[Abramelin]

Great, you posted exactly the same as I did.

Well, I think Totah Dine will get the message now, LOL !!

[fish13]

Very silly ans , from africa all Homo sapiens sapiens orignated from there

[SlimJim22]

Jim, this is what you quoted earlier, and to which I responded:

I also posted links to thos Barton Tablets.

Now, if you think you can distill what's been said in the quote from those Barton Tablets, then please show me.

It's all a bit farfetched if you ask me.

I thought I was quite clear to tell the truth. I disagree with Karsag refering to a Siberian homeland. Sure it is possible that an element of Sumer was made up of people from the north, be them caucasians or finno-ugrics or Sammi but as far as deducing that from the Barton tablets translations is a load of rubbish.

I still have a couple left to read of them but from what I got so far I reckon extraplanetary activity or a war between two cultures. One matriarchal and shamanic and the other patriarchal and more based on war and agriculture. Hope that helps you get my position but I often quote stuff I do not agree with. To compelment this I try and get my point across aswell. Obviously this time I failed.

[Abramelin]

I thought I was quite clear to tell the truth. I disagree with Karsag refering to a Siberian homeland. Sure it is possible that an element of Sumer was made up of people from the north, be them caucasians or finno-ugrics or Sammi but as far as deducing that from the Barton tablets translations is a load of rubbish.

I still have a couple left to read of them but from what I got so far I reckon extraplanetary activity or a war between two cultures. One matriarchal and shamanic and the other patriarchal and more based on war and agriculture. Hope that helps you get my position but I often quote stuff I do not agree with. To compelment this I try and get my point across aswell. Obviously this time I failed.

You said you posted that speculative theory for the sake of the argument.

But what was your argument then? That is could be true? Or part of it?

I got interested in those Barton Tablets you posted about, because all I knew is that I once read somewhere that the Sumerians claimed to have come from the north, from a land that got frozen over. So I was glad to see the source of those claims, just to discover it's not in those texts at all.

That will give you an idea how crazy ideas and wrong and/or farfatched ideas spread around the internet like wildfire.

[SlimJim22]

You said you posted that speculative theory for the sake of the argument.

But what was your argument then? That is could be true? Or part of it?

I got interested in those Barton Tablets you posted about, because all I knew is that I once read somewhere that the Sumerians claimed to have come from the north, from a land that got frozen over. So I was glad to see the source of those claims, just to discover it's not in those texts at all.

That will give you an idea how crazy ideas and wrong and/or farfatched ideas spread around the internet like wildfire.

Logically there could be some truth in it but the way it is portrayed I doubt it. Maybe they came from Russia/China, unlikely. Perhaps a little more possible is from Armenia but originally were Kurgans from the Pontic steppes. If there is truth to this it sortafits my suggestion of an incoming patriarchal culture that began to dominate the preceeding culture represented by Tiamat the dragoness.

If this is the case then it sounds like propaganda taking credit for the achievements of the culture, most notably the irrigation systems. The ceramics do seem to be quite east european from what I've seen. I just cannot imagine siberian nomads as settling down in the near east. What's your take?

[Abramelin]

Logically there could be some truth in it but the way it is portrayed I doubt it. Maybe they came from Russia/China, unlikely. Perhaps a little more possible is from Armenia but originally were Kurgans from the Pontic steppes. If there is truth to this it sortafits my suggestion of an incoming patriarchal culture that began to dominate the preceeding culture represented by Tiamat the dragoness.

If this is the case then it sounds like propaganda taking credit for the achievements of the culture, most notably the irrigation systems. The ceramics do seem to be quite east european from what I've seen. I just cannot imagine siberian nomads as settling down in the near east. What's your take?

If they came from Armenia, then my next question is: did Armenia get frozen over?

I don't think so.

You will remember I posted a map of that giant Siberian lake formed by melting ice (after the ice age /and that I posted about it catastrophically emptying itself after some ice dam breached.

I would like to believe these Sumerians came from the north, and spoke a agglutinive language, much like Uralics and Finno-Ugrians do/did. That they fled their submerged land, a land that first got frozen all over, and then was flushed down the drain.

But is there proof of any genetic link between the Sumerians and these Uralic and/or Finno-Ugric people from the north?

EDIT:

My posts about that Siberian lake:

HERE and HERE

.

Edited August 30, 2010 by Abramelin

[Harte]

Likely they ultimately came from the Caucasus range, like a lot of other folks.

When is anyone's guess.

Damn cold up in those hills as well. Not to mention things like the Altai flood.

Harte

[Abramelin]

Likely they ultimately came from the Caucasus range, like a lot of other folks.

When is anyone's guess.

Damn cold up in those hills as well. Not to mention things like the Altai flood.

Harte

Well, it should be easy then: the people from the Caucasus are genetically linked to the Sumerians.

Is there any proof of that being true?

And 'damn cold' is not the same as frozen up.

We Dutch don't flee our country as soon as the snow falls, lol.

Well, some pussies do, but most just stay at home.

[Pezmo]

Well, it should be easy then: the people from the Caucasus are genetically linked to the Sumerians.

Is there any proof of that being true?

And 'damn cold' is not the same as frozen up.

We Dutch don't flee our country as soon as the snow falls, lol.

Well, some pussies do, but most just stay at home.

And drink Amstel

[SlimJim22]

Was this the sort of thing Abe?

“14000 BP. Deep in the Altai Mountains of Southern Siberia, about this date, a wall of water 1,500 feet high surged down the ChujaRiverValley at 90 miles per hour. How does one deduce such a hydrological cataclysm? A. Rudoy, a Geologist at Tomsky State Pedagogical Institute, points to giant gravel bars along the ChujaRiverValley. These are not the inch-sized ripples we see on the floors of today’s rivers; these are giants measuring tens of yards from crest to crest. Only a catastrophic flood could have piled up these ridges of debris. Rudoy postulates that, during the Ice Ages, a huge Ice Dam upstream held back a lake 3,000 feet deep, containing 200 cubic metres of water. When the Ice Dam suddenly ruptured, all life and land downstream was devastated. (folger, tim, “The Biggest Flood”, Discover, 15:36, January 1994.) But other thoughts intrude: were the heaps of Mammoth Carcasses, the Siberian “IvoryIslands;” and those anomalous Stone tools mentioned earlier under Archaeology the consequences of similar Siberian Floods?” (Science Frontiers #92, March-April 1994. William R Corliss.)

So there I am trying to hunt down the Sumerian homeland of which I think there is more tan one but anyway, I come across this quite bozarre site where I found the excerpt. The first claim they make is that the welsh came from Siberia 30,000BP. Are the kidding or what? Wales only has a population of 3 mil so how they can deduce such a genetic relationship I do not know. I understand they can but I see it of no real relevance.

http://www.goetia-girls.com/occultarticles_f.html

On agglutinative languages.

It can be shown that the distribution of many typological features of languages is not random but geographically (relatively) restricted. E.g., ergative-absolutive languages show up basically in the Caucasus, in North America, Mesoamerica, Australia: Basque, Berber, Dyirbal, Eskimo-Aleut, Kurdish, Mayan, Mixe-Zoque, Samoan, Tagalog and many other Austronesian languages, Sumerian, Tibetan, Caucasian without Kartvelian. Since agglutination is inheritable, we may thus ask if the agglutinative languages are also concentrated in certain regions of the world. Unfortunately, since there is no complete list of agglutinative languages (but cf. Shibatani/Bynon 1999), the following overview may be

incomplete:

Uralic (Collinder 1957)

Altaic (Turkic, Mongolian, Manchu, Korean, Japanese) (Ramstedt 1966; Poppe 1960; Sohn 2001; Miller 1971 [with review Menges 1974])

Eskimo-Aleut (Mithun 1999)

Paleo-Siberian (Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Yukaghir, Yeniseian, Gilyak) (Comrie 1981)

Ainu (Tamura 2000)

Tibeto-Burman (van Driem 2001; also some Chinese languages like Wu; Old Chinese?Clauson?)

Basque (Hualde/Ortiz de Urbino 2003)

Caucasian Languages (Klimov 1980)

Punjabi (Bhatia 1993)

Ossetic (Thordarson 1989)

Kurdish (Wurzel 1997)

Cushitic Languages (Saeed 1993)

Bantu Languages (Guthrie 1971)

Dravidian (Kirshnamurti 2003)

North American Indian Languages (von Sadovszky 1996; Kroeber 1999)

Mesoamerican Indian Languages (Campbell 1997)

South American Indian Languages (Derbyshire/Pullum 1986)

Malaysian (Lynch/Ross/Crowley 2002)

The following ancient languages were also agglutinative:

Pre-Indo-European (Lehmann 2002; Greenberg 2000)

Proto-Indo-European (Brunner 1969)

Etruscan (Pfiffig 1969)

Tocharian (Krause/Thomas 1960)

Sumerian (Thomsen 1984; Edzard 2003)

Elamite (Khacikjan 1998)

Hurrian (Wegner 2000)

Urartian (Diakonoff 1971)

Hattic (Girbal 1986)

Kassite (Balkan 1954)

Gutian (Hallo 1957)

Lullubi (Speiser 1931)

From this brief list, we can conclude:

All known Mesopotamian languages (excluded the later Semitic languages like Akkadian, Rhaetic, Amoritic, Ugaritic, etc.) were agglutinative.

The geographical distribution of the agglutinative languages is more or less identical with the languages that have been suspected in the past to be related to Hungarian and thus have been researched in my “Etymological Dictionary of Hungarian” (Tóth 2007b): Roughly speaking, they extend from the Ice Sea to the Southern Seas leaving huge “gaps” only in certain parts of India (e.g., no member of the Mon-Khmer family is according to my knowledge agglutinative).

Therefore, agglutination is not only inheritable, but agglutinative languages seem to cover a more or less coherent territory with a huge extension both in space and in time. Although not all languages are sufficiently documented, it is possible to show the genetic relationship of typologically related languages with Bouda’s concept of “Brückensprachen” (“bridging languages”) (cf. Bouda 1963). These are languages that connect both genetically and typologically related languages that are geographically (nowadays) distant. The concept of bridging languages is the more useful because, as already stated, languages can change their typological structure during their evolution. E.g., Old Chinese was agglutinative (as, e.g., Wu Chinese still is), while it is now isolating. The same may be true for the Mon-Khmer languages (cf. Shorto/Sidwell/ Bauer 2006, p. 590ss.). The special problem with India is that many of the hundreds of languages are not even researched yet.

http://www.szabir.com/blog/are-all-agglutinative-languages-related-to-one-another/

The notable language that is not agglutinative is the Mon Khmer family. I don't really know what this could support other than how I have little chance of understanding all this.

Edited August 30, 2010 by SlimJim22

[Harte]

Well, it should be easy then: the people from the Caucasus are genetically linked to the Sumerians.

Is there any proof of that being true?

And 'damn cold' is not the same as frozen up.

We Dutch don't flee our country as soon as the snow falls, lol.

Well, some pussies do, but most just stay at home.

Not at all sure we got any Sumerian DNA.

I mean, they were absorbed by Akkadians that spoke a language from a different family (semitic) so I doubt we can backtrack from present DNA. But maybe.

Harte

[MissionAtlantis]

I have to wonder. Where is the evidence for "a single culture behind all these that was predisposed toward civilization because their ancestors had already been there" as you put it? Also to add, why even bring Atlantis into the discussion as the Black Sea Theory has nothing to do with what Plato said, either in time or location. Seems everyone wants to equate EVERY flood story with Atlantis, IMO.

Was the Black Sea catastrophically flooded in the early Holocene?

cormac

Single Culture

First of all, I don't "believe" in Atlantis. I think it is a possibility, but I have no direct proof of its existence. I do have three pieces of scientific evidence, each from a different discipline, which indicate an Atlantis-like event occurred 9620 BCE -- a veritable bulls-eye for Plato's date. If Atlantis existed and it was technologically advanced, then it remains a strong possibility that such a culture, as it migrated across Eurasia over the next 6000-9000 years carried with it stories of the past which remained inspiration for future creativity. The fact that some of the cultures that I hypothesize may have been children of Atlantis were also sources of civilization's advancement locally may indicate the possibility of a single original source. The Etruscans were constructing roads and stone buildings when the Romans were still simple dirt farmers. The Sumerians gave us writing. The Mon-Khmer built an amazing city and empire in the middle of the Cambodian jungle. And the people of Colchis (Georgians?) had two artifacts which may have been items of Atlantean technology, if there is any truth to the myth (personally, I think dragons were technological not biological, if they existed at all).

Why Bring Up Atlantis?

First of all, the thread is about the source of the Sumerians. The Black Sea Theory was brought up in that context. The subject of the Children of Atlantis was also brought up in the context of Sumer, not the Black Sea flooding.

You say, "Seems everyone wants to equate EVERY flood story with Atlantis, IMO." Now, that's a lot of jumping to conclusions in one sentence. First of all, I'm not "everyone." I don't remember reading of anyone equating "every" flood story with Atlantis. Even in the Atlantis dialog, Timaeus, the Egyptian priest mentioned several floods after the Atlantis one. None of them were equated to Atlantis. In my own research, it seems Noah's Flood (if it really happened) likely occurred about 18,000 years earlier (27,970 BCE) than the Atlantis subsidence (9620 BCE). The Noah date is based on years of exegetical research and a code I found in Genesis which reveals not only a biblical timeline compatible with those of science, but also the Kabbalah's "Tree of Life" embedded in Genesis 4 and 5.

Even with the Black Sea flooding occurring 7400 BCE as opposed to 5500 BCE, that's still thousands of years after the putative subsidence of Atlantis. If Atlantis existed, then it likely had some refugees and separated colonists. Discussing these children of Atlantis thousands of years after the subsidence of Atlantis is not the same thing as equating "Atlantis" (the subsidence event itself?) with the Black Sea flooding. Like any other culture with a history, it does not exist in one static moment in time, but across many hundreds or thousands of years.

[MissionAtlantis]

As for Atlantis - in myth it was a bronze age society identical in term of technology with Greece at the time of Plato. And was subsequently destroyed. Greece then spent the next 6,000 odd years making no cultural or technological advancements whatsoever. I'm inclined to think Plato made Atlantis up. There is no evidence to the contrary.

Plato's Atlantis

In myth, Atlantis was not "bronze age," but thousands of years before the Bronze Age -- ending roughly 9000 years before Solon's visit to Egypt (600 BCE => 9600 BCE).

Have you ever seen science fiction movies from the '30's and '40's? Rocket ships with vacuum tubes and similar technology from that era. Highly anachronistic. The vibrations from a rocket launch could easily break every vacuum tube, rendering them useless. Plato mentions Atlantis possessing chariots and triremes. That's part of the story teller's art, using what you know to talk about something unknown. To use the highest technology of your own era to discussing something about which you can only guess or may not entirely understand. You see this kind of modification in many of the early myths (Egyptian, Greek, etc). When Isis survives having her head cut off and later returned to her, isn't the myth really talking about the Isis (Asett) group losing its kidnapped leader? When Zeus swallows Metis whole and Athena is born full grown from her father's head, are these merely things impossible for a primitive to understand because they've never experienced "island empire," "technology," "mature refugee civilization," and the like?

Greece

You say, "Greece then spent the next 6,000 odd years,..." but how is it Greece we're suddenly talking about? The homeland of Greece was wiped out by earthquakes and floods. All of the rich topsoil was washed away from Attica.

For many years, archaeologists thumbed their noses at the Atlantis story saying that there is no evidence of a civilization existing that far back. Well, duh! Most of it sank into the Atlantic, if it existed at all. Try "digging" two miles under the sea. And the recent find at Gobekli Tepe, dated at 9500 BCE, proves two things: (1) There are plenty of places yet to dig that may reveal the needed evidence; and (2) the lack of evidence does not disprove a thesis (to think it does is a logical fallacy -- argument to ignorance).

Made Up?

You say, "I'm inclined to think Plato made Atlantis up." And that's great. That's definitely one possibility.

No Evidence to the Contrary?

You also say, "There is no evidence to the contrary."

On the contrary, there is a great deal of evidence in support for the past possible existence of Atlantis. That's what makes the subject so intriguing.

• Proof of an Atlantis-like event 9620 BCE.
  
• Proof of a separated family (genetic) about 12,000 years ago (subsidence of Atlantis). MtDNA haplogroup X in North America and Western Europe.
  
• The geological nature of the region given by Plato for Atlantis.
  
• And a great deal more circumstantial evidence...
  

If Atlantis existed, then there remains a possibility that their ancestors ("children of Atlantis") influenced or were the Sumerians.

[Essan]

Plato's Atlantis

In myth, Atlantis was not "bronze age," but thousands of years before the Bronze Age -- ending roughly 9000 years before Solon's visit to Egypt (600 BCE => 9600 BCE).

The only description we have of Atlantis comes from Plato. There is no other evidence for its existance whatseover - only conjection, supposition and wild imagination.

Without Plato we would not be having this discussion.

Plato described a bronze age society identical in technology to that of his own. The only reason to suppose the events he described occurred more than 10 years before we wrote them down is because of his 8,000 years comment. Artistic licence?

The Atlantean army was defeated by Athens. There is no reason to suppose Athens then vanished. Indeed, it seems quite clear that Plato meant the ancestors of the Athenians of his own time, implying the same city on the same place inhabited by the same people.

Back to other comments above ...

... there is a danger in trying to trace ancestory through language. In 100 years time all Japanese might speak English. Does that mean their ancestors came from America? Were Philippinos all of Spanish ancestry, only to be wiped out and replaced by English settlers? Languages change. The British spoke Gaelic, then Anglo Saxon, then French, then English - yet genetically the peoples speaking these languages were virtually unchanged. It may only take a change in trading patterns or the ruling class to lead to a complete change in written language and, in time, spoken language.

[MissionAtlantis]

The notable language that is not agglutinative is the Mon Khmer family. I don't really know what this could support other than how I have little chance of understanding all this.

Thanks, SlimJim22. When I did my original research on agglutinative languages, my sources said otherwise, but hey, I'm no linguistics expert.

Just a couple that currently say Mon-Khmer languages are agglutinative:

http://www.answers.com/topic/mon-khmer

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0861217.html

Yet, I see that Wikipedia excludes Mon-Khmer languages from its list of agglutinative languages. Curious. I suppose the only way to know for certain if Mon-Khmer languages are related (or not) to Sumerian is to invent time travel and investigate the pathways of each language. Short of that, we may never know for certain, one way or the other. But now, I need an authoritative source on agglutinative languages and on Mon-Khmer.

I suppose, if we want to discuss this idea further, though, we might start a new thread, so we don't get too far from Sumer on this one.

[The Puzzler]

Plato's Atlantis

In myth, Atlantis was not "bronze age," but thousands of years before the Bronze Age -- ending roughly 9000 years before Solon's visit to Egypt (600 BCE => 9600 BCE).

Have you ever seen science fiction movies from the '30's and '40's? Rocket ships with vacuum tubes and similar technology from that era. Highly anachronistic. The vibrations from a rocket launch could easily break every vacuum tube, rendering them useless. Plato mentions Atlantis possessing chariots and triremes. That's part of the story teller's art, using what you know to talk about something unknown. To use the highest technology of your own era to discussing something about which you can only guess or may not entirely understand. You see this kind of modification in many of the early myths (Egyptian, Greek, etc). When Isis survives having her head cut off and later returned to her, isn't the myth really talking about the Isis (Asett) group losing its kidnapped leader? When Zeus swallows Metis whole and Athena is born full grown from her father's head, are these merely things impossible for a primitive to understand because they've never experienced "island empire," "technology," "mature refugee civilization," and the like?

Greece

You say, "Greece then spent the next 6,000 odd years,..." but how is it Greece we're suddenly talking about? The homeland of Greece was wiped out by earthquakes and floods. All of the rich topsoil was washed away from Attica.

For many years, archaeologists thumbed their noses at the Atlantis story saying that there is no evidence of a civilization existing that far back. Well, duh! Most of it sank into the Atlantic, if it existed at all. Try "digging" two miles under the sea. And the recent find at Gobekli Tepe, dated at 9500 BCE, proves two things: (1) There are plenty of places yet to dig that may reveal the needed evidence; and (2) the lack of evidence does not disprove a thesis (to think it does is a logical fallacy -- argument to ignorance).

Made Up?

You say, "I'm inclined to think Plato made Atlantis up." And that's great. That's definitely one possibility.

No Evidence to the Contrary?

You also say, "There is no evidence to the contrary."

On the contrary, there is a great deal of evidence in support for the past possible existence of Atlantis. That's what makes the subject so intriguing.

• Proof of an Atlantis-like event 9620 BCE.
  
• Proof of a separated family (genetic) about 12,000 years ago (subsidence of Atlantis). MtDNA haplogroup X in North America and Western Europe.
  
• The geological nature of the region given by Plato for Atlantis.
  
• And a great deal more circumstantial evidence...
  

If Atlantis existed, then there remains a possibility that their ancestors ("children of Atlantis") influenced or were the Sumerians.

Hello and welcome to UM, I think I'm on your ship, my destination is definitely Atlantis. I'm intrigued, it's what I do, be intrigued by Atlantis.

Why don't you start a thread on your ideas, everyone here is sick of my Atlantis threads and I promised no more, but YOU, well....you sound like you have something to listen to.

[MissionAtlantis]

The only description we have of Atlantis comes from Plato. There is no other evidence for its existance whatseover - only conjection, supposition and wild imagination.

I agree. Plato is our source for the subject of "Atlantis." He defines what "Atlantis" means.

Now, I guess you mean "conjecture" when you say "conjection." And I disagree. Certainly we have lots of each of these (conjecture, supposition and wild imagination), but we also have evidence strongly suggestive of the possible past reality of Atlantis. Did you read the material in my last post, or did you merely discount it without investigating?

On the genetic evidence, we have a number of possibilities. For one, the progenitor group could have spread across Eurasia and into North America, but subsequently lost all Eurasian traces except those in Western Europe. We could also have had something like the Solutreans migrating by boat across the Atlantic. Or we could have Atlantean refugees. I hold each of these to have been possible. The last two of these seem the most likely, given the current evidence.

On the three items of scientific evidence of an Atlantis-like event, one of those pieces of evidence, if proven to be a proxy for a real event, would prove that a large, Atlantis-sized landmass (island or part of a continent) subsided right when Plato said Atlantis subsided. Even if this was proven to have happened (that a 2-meter drop in worldwide sea levels actually occurred at the end of the Younger Dryas), we still wouldn't have direct evidence of Atlantis. We would have no way of knowing where on Earth such a subsidence occurred. But such an event would be far more than mere conjecture. The fact that the date "coincides" with that given to us by Plato, makes Atlantis the likeliest suspect.

The other two pieces of evidence, though they could have been caused by something other than a major tectonic slump, could also have been caused by such a subsidence. A major, abrupt change in climate worldwide (end of the Younger Dryas, circa 9620 BCE), and a moderately large volcanic event (GISP2 survey, dated at 9620.77 BCE).

Wild imagination? Hardly. Scientific evidence published in respected, peer-reviewed journals. Unconventional interpretations? You betcha. But do you think scientists would stick their neck out if anything even remotely smelled like the "A" word? Don't hold your breath. Let me give you an example. There are a number of potential archaeological sites just off the coast of Bimini Island which are going ignored by professional archaeologists because they're afraid of losing funding and their reputations. Why? Because "Bimini" is associated with the "A" word.

Not too many years ago, North American anthropologists were ridiculed if they said anything to rock the "Clovis first dogma" boat. Many anthropologists were afraid to dig below the Clovis horizon for fear that anything they might find there could jeopardize their careers. If no one digs below the Clovis horizon, then no evidence would ever be found to conflict with Clovis. How conveniently unscientific. This kind of gray area misconduct tends to make the search for fact (relative truth) more difficult than it should.

In the 1948-49 Woods Hole expedition to the Mid Atlantic Ridge, Dr. Ewing reported evidence of subaerial phenomena and beach-like terraces. These support the idea that some parts of the MAR were above sea level as recently as 12,000 years ago (end of Atlantis). A review of the expedition literature published ten years later omitted all of the controversial material. Conspiracy? Hardly. But unconscious bias? Perhaps. The "A" word is perhaps one of the favorite "blasphemies" in modern science. So, if evidence was ever found, would it be re-buried to protect someone's career? That possibility has occurred to me more than once.

Without Plato we would not be having this discussion.

Absolutely! It makes me wonder how many other mysteries of prehistory have been completely lost because the trail of documentation withered and died. Many of the ancient writings we only get second or third hand from later writers who read from those earlier authors. If Plato had not written his dialogs, then the trail of Atlantis (if it was a real place) would have been lost, likely forever.

Plato described a bronze age society identical in technology to that of his own. The only reason to suppose the events he described occurred more than 10 years before we wrote them down is because of his 8,000 years comment. Artistic licence?

Artistic license? Perhaps. That's certainly a possibility, but you have not proven this. No one has. And I've read some pretty fancy arguments in support of the "Atlantis was made up" hypothesis. None of them have been proven.

And no, the "8000 years" that you mention is NOT the "only reason" to suppose the events happened a long time ago. There are a number of clues in Timaeus and Critias that point to a very remote event. The priest of Sais said his civilization (the then current Egyptian) was born 8000 years earlier, but he also said that the battle between Athenians and Atlanteans occurred 9000 years earlier. The Egyptian priest said that there had been many floods between the demise of Atlantis and his "modern" times, all of them lost in the dim myth of Grecian prehistory. Plato also mentions more than once that the story of Atlantis is a true one (non-fiction). Is it possible Plato was telling the truth about telling the truth? Perhaps.

The Atlantean army was defeated by Athens. There is no reason to suppose Athens then vanished. Indeed, it seems quite clear that Plato meant the ancestors of the Athenians of his own time, implying the same city on the same place inhabited by the same people.

Now, you're jumping to some wild conclusions. Your conclusions are one possibility, but not the only one.

"No reason to suppose Athens then vanished?" I don't know where you get this? Plato makes it very clear in his dialogs that the "Athens" of that time was destroyed by floods and earthquakes. He said that the rich topsoil the Athenians once enjoyed was washed away by the flooding. That would have to have been some pretty massive flooding. Plato said that the army that had defended Athens was destroyed by that flood.

When someone says that something was "quite clear," I become immediately suspicious. I can think of other possibilities that diminish your "quite clear" to merely "one possibility." For example, Americans used to find food with spear and bow and arrow. They used to eat mastodon. But we're not talking about modern "Americans," are we? By the same token, Plato could merely have been talking about the people who happened to inhabit the location known to him as Athens. Genetically, the people may not have been at all related to the Athenians of his day. And according to Plato there was massive flooding and earthquakes. Could anything of the earlier "Athens" have survived? And Plato (and the Egyptian priest) likely called it "Athens" because the location was the same. Who knows what prehistoric Americans called their home back then. It is quite likely the Athenians who fought Atlantis did not call their city "Athens." In fact, it was likely that Cecrops (who helped establish the name, "Athens") came long after Atlantis, and yet long before Solon.

... there is a danger in trying to trace ancestory through language. In 100 years time all Japanese might speak English. Does that mean their ancestors came from America? Were Philippinos all of Spanish ancestry, only to be wiped out and replaced by English settlers? Languages change. The British spoke Gaelic, then Anglo Saxon, then French, then English - yet genetically the peoples speaking these languages were virtually unchanged. It may only take a change in trading patterns or the ruling class to lead to a complete change in written language and, in time, spoken language.

You make some very good points here. Tracing by linguistics alone is highly problematic. In less than 2000 years the name of one city went from Roman, Caesar Augusta, to Spanish Zaragossa. Notice the similarities?

But using linguistics as one clue along with cultural and genetic clues provides us with an interesting pattern. The matriarchal clue and the study of mtDNA that is related to that of the Basques shows a pattern that stretches across Eurasia. Is the pattern valuable? I really don't know. All I know is that the pattern is interesting. And the possibility that an ancient, technological society migrated across Eurasia thousands of years before our own history began is a very interesting possibility indeed.

Conjecture

Could some of the myths of old be about the children of Atlantis possessing technology that they might not have even understood? I doubt if they could duplicate their technological artifacts. Once they stopped working, they would remain merely interesting trinkets with a long history. The Helvetians (elves) of Central Europe may have had devices which only seemed magical to the neighboring primitives. The old hag of Slavic myth, Baba Yaga, supposedly flew around in a mortar and pestle. In some interpretations, the pestle was a rudder, but could it have been the pilot's joystick?

The myths of dragons, especially those of the Egyptian merchant prince, of Cadmus and of Medea, talk of flying, golden dragons. And even Cecrops, who was said to be half man and half snake (dragon) could have been merely the pilot of a dragon ship popping the hatch so that the primitives of the area could see only the top half of a man and the body of the serpent ship giving rise to the legend as we receive it.

Colchis was a real place (just a hop, skip and a jump north of Sumer) in modern Georgia. Was Medea a real person? We now know that the Amazons were real (women warriors buried with their weapons and armor, while the men were buried separately with the children). Will someone someday find Medea's dragon (the one she put to sleep for her Greek lover, Jason, and the one on which she flew away from Athens, years later)?

And could Medea's frustration with the men in her life have led her to found a group of women warriors? In several of these agglutinative languages, "ama" is the word for mother. And if Medea's people were children of Atlantis, then what more appropriate name to give her new band of women warriors, than "Ama-Atlan" (mother Atlantis, or "Amazon" to the Greek ear)?

Edited August 31, 2010 by MissionAtlantis

[Harte]

Problems,

If Solon actually did hear the tale of Atlantis from the Egyptians, why does there exist no record whatsoever of this story in the Egyptian mythos?

Solon lived in the 500's BC. That's not long enough ago for this tale to have been erased, given that we are aware of Egyptian tales that predate Solon by two thousand years or more.

Egypt holds no such story. Nor is there any comparable myth in Egypt nor, indeed, in any other culture.

A civilization as described by Plato could not have possibly existed without leaving traces. The Atlanteans conquered the virtually every country along the shores of the Med. Why not a single trace of them? Did they do all this with no trade activities at all?

Unlikely, to say the least.

Where then did Plato get his tale? There exists no myth, as I said, in any culture on Earth that is comparable.

Harte

[MissionAtlantis]

Hello and welcome to UM, I think I'm on your ship, my destination is definitely Atlantis. I'm intrigued, it's what I do, be intrigued by Atlantis.

Why don't you start a thread on your ideas, everyone here is sick of my Atlantis threads and I promised no more, but YOU, well....you sound like you have something to listen to.

Thanks, Puzzler. Glad to be here.

Clearly my "innocent" comment relating Sumerians to Atlantis has hijacked this thread. Any future reply on this subject and on this thread I will forward to another thread.