I Fucking Hate Atlantis [TE]
Welcome back to the Trenchant Edges! A Newsletter soon to be leaving Substack!
This shouldn’t affect any of you in any practical way except you won’t be hassled to sign up for an account.
We’ll see!
Anyway, today’s distraction from my original plans is Atlantis.
I don’t remember why I was reading Plato’s dialogue the Critias again this week, but I noticed something that changed my opinion of Atlantis.
See, I don’t give a fuck about Atlantis. This title was a lie.
But I don’t give a fuck about it in a specific way: It keeps coming up around in my research so I’ve had to learn a lot more about it than I really care to.
The very last paragraph of the text before the end of the fragment says something that kind of blew my mind. Note: The kings of Atlantis were descendants of Poseidon and thus demigods like Hercules.
By such reflections and by the continuance in them of a divine nature, the qualities which we have described grew and increased among them; but when the divine portion began to fade away, and became diluted too often and too much with the mortal admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand, they then, being unable to bear their fortune, behaved unseemly, and to him who had an eye to see grew visibly debased, for they were losing the fairest of their precious gifts; but to those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice and unrighteous power.
Too much with the mortal admixture? Wait a sec.
Did I read that right?
Mortal Admixture?
I’ve checked a couple translations and they share that phrase. I’ve got a lot of research to do to really verify this since I can’t read any kind of Greek, but that’s enough for me to dig around.
What we have here is a mighty empire who was destroyed because they lost their virtue because of a *checks notes* higher race breeding with a lower race.
Iiiiiinteresting.
See, a not-inconsiderable number of the people I’ve researched Atlantis for are, well, Nazis. Including the literal Germany ass Nazis.
Note: I’m absolutely not saying anyone interested in Atlantis is a Nazi. But it’s interesting that there’s a clear racial subtext in Plato I haven’t heard anyone discuss.
But let’s step back a bit.
Atlantis 101
OK, let’s get on the same page with Atlantis.
Atlantis is a myth found in two Platonic Dialogues, the Timaeus and the Critias. Platonic Dialogues are not works of history or scholarship, they’re philosophical texts to elaborate different ideas and ways of thinking to help students get the basics to start making their own arguments.
There are no surviving sources about Atlantis earlier than Plato and every single source after Plato references him. A core part of his story is that the tale itself was related from a story Solon had learned from a trip to Egypt, then passed it onto his kids, who passed it onto Critias who told it to Socrates.
Plato wrote an account of it in 360BC, about 200 years after Solon’s death.
None of the archeology in Egypt has corroborated the story he told. The historian and philosopher Plutarch, writing some 400 years later, in his The Life Of Solon that Solon planned a great poem to “The Atlantic Island” after his voyage to Egypt but never finished it.
For all practical purposes: Plato’s dialogues are the only real sources we have and thus authoritative. `
The scholarly consensus, which I agree with, is that it’s not a historic account at all.
It’s a myth told for specific purposes which, shockingly, Plato is specific about. He tells us what it’s about in the Timaeus.
It’s the day after the dialogues of the Republic where he lays out the ideal civilization and calls for a story to show how his ideal civilization would deal with a real world crisis like a war.
Critias tells the story of Atlantis waging a great war of conquest with Europe and Africa, and only the virtue and prowess of the ancient Athenians was able to stop their advance and free everyone, most notably Egypt.
This is important because Atlantis is mainly built up in the story as a villain. They’re there to make the heroes look better.
The more powerful they are, the more impressive the ancient Athenians victory over them is.
There are many interesting details about Atlantis given (more in the Critias), but we’re not really interested in them.
Opinion on Atlantis was somewhat divided in history. Leaning away from a historical reading of Atlantis.
Until a Radical Republican (good) former congressman from Minnesota came into the picture.
My Beliefs: An Aside
Before going any further I want to lay out my stance on Atlantis. I think there are kind of 3 layers to it. From General to Specific.
Atlantis is a cool idea. A mysterious lost civilization that once had a continents spanning empire? It’s sexy! And that’s ignoring all the extra wonders stapled to it by posterity.
Layer 1: There absolutely, without question, are lost cities we know nothing about today who’s ruins we haven’t found.
The parallels often cited by Atlantis believers are Pompey/Herculaneum and Troy. Cities assumed to be myth only to be discovered later.
I don’t follow it closely but there’s some crazy discoveries coming out of South America in terms of previously unknown cities. It’s rad as hell.
I actually think there- Ok, so I was about to write about an alleged Atlantis near Cadiz Spain, it turns out while I was waiting for back surgery ANOTHER but DIFFERENT claim that Atlantis is underwater in Cadiz Spain popped up.
I won’t be talking about it here because all the actual information appears to be locked behind interviews or X, the everything app, comments. But I’m happy to admit the possibility I’m super wrong if the evidence is really there for it. And this appears to be a lot of underwater sonar.
The documentary they claim talks about it doesn’t appear available yet even on its own website.
We’ll probably have to go down this rabbit hole on its own.
Very cool actually.
Layer 2: Did Plato’s Atlantis as described actually exist?
No. I realize that sounds like horseshit after my last paragraph. But as I can’t access their evidence without futzing around with hours of interviews, I can’t really evaluate it. So with the caveat that I might have to eat my shirt here, I’m just going to state my prior conclusion.
Plato was not doing history, he was not transcribing a real conversation, and he wasn’t portraying a real thing. He was doing philosophy.
Atlantis wasn’t the point, the strength of an antediluvian Athens was.
Layer 3: Hyperdiffusion is fake as hell
No ancient advanced civilization handed prehistoric humans advanced knowledge.
Those people worked advanced knowledge out for themselves using whatever resources they had on hand.
The timeline of evidence just doesn’t make any sense if you’re not adding in anything supernatural.
Atlantis sunk 9000 years before Solon (11,500 years ago). Our earliest evidence of cities is from places like Çatalhöyük, Turkey which started being settled and built up around 6500 years before Solon.
That’s pretty fucking old but it still leaves the knowledge of advanced building technology up in the air for 2500 years (9000 years ago).
Where the fuck were the buildings then?
You have Gobekli Tepe much closer to the right time but they literally stopped using the site in 7500 years before Solon (10,000 years ago).
So that’s still 40 generations of human lives between construction projects at best.
Where were the builds then?
It doesn’t make sense. And most of the places cited as being influenced by Atlantis are VASTLY more recent. The Mayan civilization started around 1500 years before Solon (4000 years ago).
Those aren’t little gaps.
We could go on like this for hours, but you get the point. We certainly don’t have all possible surviving evidence, but we have a hell of a lot of it. And what we have is fundamentally incompatible with hyperdiffusion.
The Antediluvian World
Ignatius Donnelly published Atlantis: The Antediluvian World in 1882 and he’s made it everybody’s problem since.
See, it was kind of a hit.
We’re not going to delve deep into this— for one thing I’ve not finished rereading it. For another, I’m not sure it’s worth the time unless people are super into finding out more about it. The audiobook is on youtube. It’s public domain!
Before we do an overview, let’s take a look at Antediluvian. This $10 word just means before Noah’s Great Flood. The Deluge.
And there’s the great secret of this book and of much of Atlantis’ popular success. Both as a concept and as a book: Atlantis being real is taken as proof that the Biblical Deluge was real.
It’s most convincing if you don’t look too much at it or think too hard.
Like, Greek mythology has a few flood myths. Most famous being Deucalion’s Flood where Zeus killed almost all of humanity. The Egyptian Priest Solon spoke to in the Timaeus specified there have been many floods and many lost eras of history.
Thereupon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you. Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you why. There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is a story, which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt.
Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth, which recurs after long intervals; at such times those who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore. And from this calamity the Nile, who is our never-failing saviour, delivers and preserves us. When, on the other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, the survivors in your country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwell on the mountains, but those who, like you, live in cities are carried by the rivers into the sea. Whereas in this land, neither then nor at any other time, does the water come down from above on the fields, having always a tendency to come up from below; for which reason the traditions preserved here are the most ancient.
If you reduce that to “There was a big flood, therefore the bible is true” that’s all well and good. But by doing that you have to pretend most of the thing you’re looking at doesn’t exist.
Humans are happy to do this, of course.
Like, Noah’s Flood and Atlantis doesn’t really share any elements at all besides water, interbreeding if you take the Nephelium literally, and divine punishment.
But basically everything else isn’t just different but opposing.
Atlantis was destroyed by earthquakes and floods and thus perhaps a typhoon that lasted a day and a night. Noah’s Flood was caused by rain happening for 40 days and 40 nights and they spent over a year on the boat.
Where the ancient Athenians didn’t even get inconvenienced by Atlantis sinking.
Even the divine miscegenation goes in different directions: In the bible (or maybe book of Enoch, my memory is hazy and I don’t care to look it up), G_d is punishing the world because his divine angels had kids with humans. Demigods/Giants are the cause of the punishment.
In Atlantis, Poseidon’s demigod kids having kids with mortals is the cause of the hubris and greed that usually provokes divine wrath.
This only gets worse the more myths you add to compare.
If you loosen your focus it can seem plausible but it means comparing fragments of myths and not the actual myths.
So the question comes down to, “Well, how much do you care about evidence?”
And most of us come away poorer on that question.
I’ve found a few places where Donnelly clearly is cherrypicking details to make his argument stronger.
For example, he leaves out the introduction of the Timaeus where they specify that the story is about Plato’s Republic. He also selectively decides if anything supernatural happened in either dialogue based on his current argument.
Now, the real question here is: Does Donnelly talk about the “mortal admixture”?
You might think I’m exaggerating but in Part 2 Chapter 2: The Deluge of the Bible, Donnelly says this:
In both the Bible history and Plato's story the destruction of the people was largely caused by the intermarriage of the superior or divine race, "the sons of G_d," with an inferior stock, "the children of men," whereby they were degraded and rendered wicked.
Note here how he flattens how the sin comes about: Children of Angels in Genesis are wicked, but the Children of Gods in Plato are good.
We can also note that the Nephilim/Giants were “men of renown” and didn’t actually apparently do very much to deserve their punishment. The character of G_d talks much about their wickedness, but the only thing they do is think wicked thoughts. There’s “much violence” but it’s not detailed.
Contrast with Atlantis who’s spiritual failings become them literally trying to take over the world by force and enslaving everyone else.
So, yes, in fact Donnelly does mention the divine miscegenation as a primary cause of both stories.
Now the next question is… does that actually matter any? Donnelly himself wasn’t a fan of racism. At least, about as well as white men got in 1882. He wasn’t John Brown, but he was a big supporter of ending slavery and wanted to see Black people freed from the awful conditions they were in.
But that caveat comes at a harsh price and perhaps a good lesson for any white person with good intentions.
Because the history of Donnelly’s ideas being received regularly plays into white supremacist fantasies. This isn’t merely intellectual problem either. Atlantis, filtered through Blavatsky, Steiner, and eventually the Thule society played a significant role in Nazi archology propaganda.
It’s part of a whole system of thought that contributed to WW2.
That’s not his fault, of course. But it’s also part of the story.
Indeed, plenty of far right woo ties in through Atlantis right through today.
Anyway, if folks want me to talk more about Donnelly I can. I’d kind of like to get back to The Dawn of Everything after another episode with this new Atlantis documentary I can’t find.
Wrapping Up
Alright.
This pile of shit is out of the way.
I’m almost free of Atlantis for a while.
He says, lying.
Anyway, we’ll be seeing you.
-SF