Scientist Fail To Discover Atlantis, Despite Reports To the Contrary!

[Haunted hearse]

Did it ever occur to you that maybe Zackuth is larger than the continent of Asia, but didn't mention it because he's embarrassed by his size? Have some sensitivity...jerk.

He wouldn't be the first guy to be embarrased by his size.

[Zackuth]

Did it ever occur to you that maybe Zackuth is larger than the continent of Asia, but didn't mention it because he's embarrassed by his size? Have some sensitivity...jerk.

Hey hey hey--I'm down to 20 tons!!  I left Asia's weight class years ago!!!   

[Scatter]

I'm carrying your excess landslide Zack!!

[Zackuth]

I don't know if Atlantis ever existed, but I do believe it did.  There have been many things, both man made and natural, that have been considered a myth and later discovered to be real.  Ancient sailors reported sighting the kraken on their voyages and the karken was a myth for the longest time.  Now science has proven that giant squids do exist.  The coelacanth was supposed to have been extinct and everyone believed that except the south Africans who were catching the fish in their nets.  For years there were some who didn't believe that Pontus Pilate even existed until eveidence was found he did. 
http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2013/02/10-lost-cities-and-mythical-civilisations-of-the-ancient-world/

I'm one of those who will believe until proven it didn't exist.

[Dr. Madd]

What we know.

1. Cocaine, Nicotine and other new world drugs have been found in Egyptian Mummies 3000 years old.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2375/whats-up-with-the-cocaine-mummies

http://www.phoenicia.org/carthanewworld.html

http://www.viewzone.com/atlantis.html

Of course we haven't "Found" atlantis. We're standing on it. The Phoenicians, and later the Carthaginians hid their trade routes well, up to including sinking ships trying to follow them.  With the rise of Rome, they didn't want Rome getting that trade route, either, and they told the lie about the continent sinking, and with no Phoenicians to follow the Romans accepted it as truth.

[Haunted hearse]

So Plato was talking about Phonecia, but called it Atlantis?  Why would he do that?  The Roman empire didn't come into existence until long after Plato died.

[Dr. Madd]

The Phoenicians were the first people to mention Atlantis. Plato was reporting what he had heard from Phoenician mariners.  Everyone knew where Phoenicia was, but the Phoenicians were the best navigators on earth at the time.  I believe they reached the new world, sailing down the African Coast- And Thor Heyerdahl proved it was possible- And traded with the natives, bringing back the Cocaine, Nicotine, etc.- as well as reports of Atlantis. But when Rome rose, LONG after the Phoenicians of Mainland Asia Minor were overrun by Babylon, Carthage, a Phoenician Colony was Rome's arch-rival in the Punic Wars- Hannibal, War Elephants over the Alps and all that- The Carthaginians knew that they were losing and concocted the story to keep Rome from Reaching the new world.
Its not unheard of- The Arabs kept Europe from trying to sail around Africa for years by claiming all sorts of silly stuff.

[Haunted hearse]

So the Phonecians felt the need to keep a long destroyed empire a secret?  Good thing he did, or some evil ancient scientists might have searched the destroyed empire which vanished without a trace, and used the technology to create Robby the Robot and an ID monster that would have destroyed life as it was then known.

[Dr. Madd]

No, I am saying that the Phoenicians were trading here, and the tales of Atlantis were embellished Sailor's tales told about the ancestors of the Maya and the Toltecs and Olmecs and when they couldn't come back without being followed by Rome, they made up the story.

Atlantis is North America.

[Monster Kid]

Dr. Madd, you may have something there!!

[Haunted hearse]

Atlantis (in Greek, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, "island of Atlas") is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC. According to Plato, Atlantis was a naval power lying "in front of the Pillars of Hercules" that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune".

So what I'm now understanding is that the Phoneicans came up with the idea of a mighty nation that fell in 9,000 B.C. while attacking Athens as a way of keeping the Americas hidden.  Not sure how that works, but I'll take your word for it.

[Hepcat]

But when Rome rose, LONG after the Phoenicians of Mainland Asia Minor were overrun by Babylon....

Actually Phoenicia was where present day Lebanon is. Asia Minor is present day Turkey.

However North and South America combined do indeed fit the description of a continent in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean about as large as Asia and Africa combined. While the Americas aren't quite big enough, neither the Carthagines nor Plato knew precisely how big either Asia or Africa were. Moreover, they didn't know how large the great ocean, i.e. the Pacific, was either. All they knew was that the Americas were very far away by their own standards. And melting of polar ice caps between Ice Ages could put much low lying land along the Eastern seaboard and on the Arctic coast underwater. So, yes, perhaps the Carthagines and Plato were indeed describing the Americas.

Very interesting indeed. Besides, they did name Atlantic City after Atlantis, did they not?

[Hepcat]

Until the discovery of the New World scholars believed that Atlantis was either a metaphor for teaching philosophy, or just attributed the story to Plato without connecting the island with a real location. When Columbus returned from his voyage to the west historians began identifying the Americas with Atlantis. The first was Francisco López de Gómara, who in 1552 thought that what Columbus had discovered was the Atlantic Island of Plato.

In 1556 Agustín de Zárate stated that the Americas was Atlantis which at one time began from the straits of Gibraltar and extended westwards to include North and South America[verification needed] and that it was as a result of Plato that the new continent was discovered. He also said it had all the attributes of the continent described by Plato yet at the same time mentioned that the ancient peoples crossed over by a route from the island of Atlantis. Zarate also mentions that the 9,000 "years" of Plato were 9,000 "months" (750 years).

This was also repeated and clarified by historian Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa in 1572 in his "History of the Incas", who by calculation of longitude stated that Atlantis must have stretched from within two leagues of the strait of Gibraltar westwards to include "all the rest of the land from the mouth of the Marañon (Amazon River) and Brazil to the South Sea, which is what they now call America." He thought the sunken part to be now in the Atlantic Ocean but that it was from this sunken part that the original Indians had come to populate Peru via one continuous land mass. He says that South America was also known by the name of the Isla Atlanticus.

It first appeared as the Atlantic Island (Insula Atlantica) on a map of the New World by cartographer Sebastian Münster in 1540 and again on the map titled Atlantis Insula by Nicolas Sanson and son (1669) which identified both North and South America as "Atlantis Insula", the eastern part of the Atlantic Ocean as "Oceanus Atlanticus" and the western part of the Atlantic Ocean plus the Pacific Ocean as "Atlanticum Pelagus". This edition was further embellished with features from the Atlantis legend by his son Guillaume Sanson including the names of the ten kings of Atlantis with Atlas' portion being in Mexico. Sanson's map supposedly showed what the earth looked like 200,000 years before there were any humans on it.

Francis Bacon and Alexander von Humboldt also identified America with Atlantis; Janus Joannes Bircherod said in 1663 orbe novo non novo ("the New World is not new").

Here's another good article:

Atlantis as the Americas

[Hepcat]

Until the discovery of the New World scholars believed that Atlantis was either a metaphor for teaching philosophy, or just attributed the story to Plato without connecting the island with a real location.

Nonetheless, Plato was a great geologist as well as everything else since he was the first to expound upon the theory of continental drift.

[YoungestMonsterKid]

I had a college class on debunking this kind of nonsense.
It's worth noting that the actual anecdote of Plato's clearly makes Atlantis out to be a made up city and the purpose of the story was just to say how great the Athenians were.