If Atlantis was real...

please excuse my relatively short posts so far, I am still very new to this fascinating subject of alternate history.

Imagine if Atlantis was real, and if would still excist today, and if it wasn´t drowned. How would the world be like today?

Merowinger
 
If Atlantis had advanced technology, Man would have gone industrial and technical 3000 years before OTL.

If not, it would be an easy stepping-stone between Europe and America.
 
Yeah. It all depends on what Atlantis is. Furthermore, it requires a rather large change in our geography. Are we talking huge sub-continent? Sicily sized island? If we have a huge Atlantis, then we are probably not going to have a Mediterranean, as the continental plate that forms Atlantis is going to throw up a mountain range running from Spain all the way down along the coast of Africa. That would even preclude extensive contact between the rest of civilization and the Atlanteans.......

Too bad Hapsburg isn't still around. Merowinger would probably just be attacked for not believing Atlantis was real.
 

MrP

Banned
Mm, continental drift, deep ocean currents. Where are we placing Atlantis, by the way? Since Plato puts it "beyond the Pillars of Herakles" we can either pop it stereotypically in the Atlantic, or stick a big island in the middle of the Black Sea. Apologies if I've misquoted, I don't have a copy of said text to hand!
 
Too bad Hapsburg isn't still around. Merowinger would probably just be attacked for not believing Atlantis was real.[/QUOTE]

I didn´t say I would not believe in Atlantis ;)
 

MrP

Banned
Mm, I like the idea of a Black Sea Atlantis more now I return to it. A Black Sea British isles, perhaps. It'd be very strategically significant later on if Russia and Turkey come into existence. A nation with a strong reason to develop a large fleet - to protect its borders and control trade in the surrounding area. Atlantean Empire occupying the shores of the Black Sea, and controlling the Dardanelles. This is really quite intriguing.
 

Raymann

Banned
Unless it stays out of the way of the rest of the world, the butterflies would make an alternate TL hard to figure out.

Personally thats why I tend to stay away from POS's more then a few centuries back, anything more is too hard to predict.
 
Depends on what kind of Atlantis. If is was a large atlantic island with a super advanced technology in Plato's time, then who knows.

If it was just a large, inhabited landmass in the eastern Atlantic with a typical bronze-age, but maritime, civilization, then it would have had many effects on the rise of European and Mediterranean civilization, and quite possibly helped create contact between old and new worlds at least 2000 years before Columbus. THis would have had an interesting effect on the rise of early Mesoamerican civliization, which was significantly less advanced than the mediterranean area, but not disastrously so. Probably a merged civilization would develop in the Americas, combining long term Mexican cultural elements (corn, beans, squash agriculture, blood religions, kingdoms) with old world technological and cultural influences (bronze metalwork, maritime technology, draft animals, more sophisticated scripts)
 
MrP said:
Mm, I like the idea of a Black Sea Atlantis more now I return to it. .
one of the newer theories of Atlantis is that it was indeed by the Black Sea, and was the city ruled by Tantalus....
 

Straha

Banned
The most likely site for any "atlantis"/colony by the romans in the new world could be Brazil. It would probably last as long as vinland did: a few centuries. The butterflies would hit post 1492.
 
MrP said:
Mm, continental drift, deep ocean currents. Where are we placing Atlantis, by the way? Since Plato puts it "beyond the Pillars of Herakles" we can either pop it stereotypically in the Atlantic, or stick a big island in the middle of the Black Sea. Apologies if I've misquoted, I don't have a copy of said text to hand!
the pillars of Heracles is a discription for the bosperos. thus it depends from which side plato was looking. then either in the med. or black sea. other accounts would rather go pro med.
there are even some people who think it was a greek island which sunk just like venice today is sinking. other think it was a greek island which got flooded. either way most accounts i've read say med.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
I hadn't realized that there were more than two pillars. I had always assumed that the only Pillars of Herakles were the ones flanking the entrance to the Mediterranean - one being at Gibraltar and the other on the African side.

It would be nice if someone were to dig up all of those old books by Ignatius Donnelly, throw in some Frazier, and add a touch of Hapgood, and cobble together an instant Atlantean civilization. With all of the ink that has been spilled over Atlantis during the past century or so, one of the great minds here could come up with a fairly detailed conculture.
 
I've usually heard the Pillars of Herakles explained as the Straits of Gibraltar, not the Bosporus. That's why everyone puts Atlantis out in the Atlantic (hence the name).
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
Forum Lurker said:
I've usually heard the Pillars of Herakles explained as the Straits of Gibraltar, not the Bosporus. That's why everyone puts Atlantis out in the Atlantic (hence the name).
It makes more sense. Herakles was associated with the Tyrian Melqart, whose temples were characterized by two pillars (Herodotus describes the pillars in the Temple of Melqart at Tyre; they were made of green glass and glowed from within; he claims that they were hollow and that the Tyrians inserted lamps within them, which must have made for a very eerie effect). The pillars were allegedly created at the outer limits of the Western world by Herakles himself, who split a mountain asunder to create the channel. Given the fact that this region was first settled by the Phoenicians (whose cities Cadiz and Lixus predate even Carthage), it is possible that the legends of Herakles' wanderings in North Africa may be thinly-veiled references to the Tyrian Melqart, who was the chief god of the city of Carthage.
 
I think that people suggesting there are pillars at the Bosphorus might be getting them confused with the crashing rocks that slammed together and wrecked ships trying to pass through........

Jason was told to send a dove through, the result the bird met would be the result the Argo would meet, and it almost made it, except it lost its tail feathers, thus the Argo lost its stern and rudder IIRC.
 
I can remember from latin class that the pillars are the bosporus at least according to the intrepretation of a few roman philosophers. and it would make sense than gibraltar since the bosporus is like 2 very big pillars while gibraltar just looks like thousands of miles of other coastline.

to the atlantic. some people in my latin class asked that too and the teacher made some research and got to the result that the name comes probably from atlantis in a way that the atlantic is the so much water on one place and the myth says that atlantis was sunk by more water than ever imaginable. thus the romans saw the atlantic and had to think about it as the place where atlantis must have been. but that doesn't change the fact that most greek accounts point on the med. and maybe the black sea.
 
Lauranthalas said:
I can remember from latin class that the pillars are the bosporus at least according to the intrepretation of a few roman philosophers. and it would make sense than gibraltar since the bosporus is like 2 very big pillars while gibraltar just looks like thousands of miles of other coastline.

to the atlantic. some people in my latin class asked that too and the teacher made some research and got to the result that the name comes probably from atlantis in a way that the atlantic is the so much water on one place and the myth says that atlantis was sunk by more water than ever imaginable. thus the romans saw the atlantic and had to think about it as the place where atlantis must have been. but that doesn't change the fact that most greek accounts point on the med. and maybe the black sea.

There aren't any pillars at the Bosphorus. At Gibraltar there is at least one HUGE rock guarding the Straits. It is a veritable fortress that people have thought about taking from the Brits, but realize it would cost an arm and a leg.
 
Forum Lurker said:
I've usually heard the Pillars of Herakles explained as the Straits of Gibraltar, not the Bosporus. That's why everyone puts Atlantis out in the Atlantic (hence the name).
Just to clarify something, the Atlantic was so named because everyone assumed thats where Atlantis was.

Oh, and who else thinks this (and so many other recent threads) really belongs in the ASB forum?
 
i didnt want to say there are any pillars at the bosporus. i meant the bosporus itself is like a building of 2 very huge (short in hight) pillars
 
Top