Atlantis 2 Before Writing
The Elder Egyptian Priest said: “As for those genealogies of yours which you have recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children; for, in the first place, you remember one deluge only, whereas there were many of them; and, in the next place, you do not know that there dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, of whom you and your whole city are but a seed or remnant. And this was unknown to you, because for many generations the survivors of that destruction died and made no sign.”
Before Greek
The eruption of Thera did not completely spell the end the Minoans, though the explosions and lava flows were said to have caused title waves which destroyed most Minoan towns on other islands. On Crete, home of the famous/infamous Palace of Knossos, the Minoans survived for a least a few generations. However, greatly weakened, they were replaced by the Mycenaeans of Greece, who became the dominant force of the area.
The Minoans wrote tablets in an unknown language dubbed Linear A, which is mostly yet to be deciphered. Linear B, the Cretan writing system adopted by the Mycenaeans, was only deciphered when decoders realized that it was sounding out an early Greek dialect. Linear B consisted of about 90 signs made with straight or curved linear strokes. It was a syllabic script; in addition to their syllabaries, both Linear A and Linear B also contained a number of ideograms, or symbols for words or concepts,
Interpretation of a recently discovered Linear B stone (pictured) appears to greatly resemble Homers opening of the Iliad, a novel written in Greek 300 years later using the Phoenician Alphabet. (7).
While they apparently spoke different languages, the Minoans (Linear A) and the Mycenaeans(Linear B) were related, DNA studies showing a common ancestry, perhaps in more ancient Anatolia.
Somewhere between 1200 and 1100 BC, most of the then known world was attacked and destroyed by unknown armies, including almost every city in Mycenaean Greece. By 1100 BC, all the Mycenean’s cities but Athens had either been burned or abandoned. Writing was forgotten for 200 years as Greece went into its dark age. When Greek re-emerged, it was instead written in the Phoenician alphabet.
Plato said (Salon said):
The vast power thus gathered into one, endeavored to subdue at one blow our country and yours, and the whole of the land which was within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind; for she was the first in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes."
“Of the combatants on the one side the city of Athens was reported to have been the ruler, and to have directed the contest; the combatants on the other side were led by the kings of the islands of Atlantis, which, as I was saying, once had an extent greater than that of Libya and Asia (Turkey); and, when afterward sunk by an earthquake, became an impassable barrier of mud to voyagers sailing from hence to the ocean.
While Thera makes a good Atlantis , a good deal of what Plato reported does not seem to exactly match the Minoans. Plato described the Atlantians as a great conquering power, taking over the known world except for Athens and Egypt, wheras the Minoans seemed to have had a cooperative society. Their cities were not walled as they were not in danger of attacking each other. Their murals depict trading vessels, and not vessels of war. Both the Minoans and Myceneans (considered the first Greek speakers) seemed to trade with Egypt, rather than attack them.
Several civilizations collapsed around 1175 BCE including the Hittite, Mycenaean, and Mitanni kingdoms. Their cities were often burned and destroyed The proposed invaders are often collectively called: "The Sea Peoples".
In How to Join the Dots, Atlantipedia’s Tony O’Connell puts together 20 years of Atlantis research. His book concludes:
“Individually, most of the dots listed above have limited evidential value, but, when put together, the cumulative effect is to decisively push the balance of probabilities in favor of accepting the existence of a military alliance in the Central Mediterranean collectively known as Atlantis, who waged war on Athens and Egypt in the 2nd millennium BC, coincidentally around the dame time that the Sea Peoples were active in the eastern Mediterranean.”
The best records of the time were kept by the Egyptians:
Reaching Egypt, the Sea Peoples were apparently defeated by Ramses III around 1210 BC in three separate attacks, each a few years apart. Other Egyptian records identify prisoners.
Although the fall of civilization blamed on the Sea Peoples may have been caused by many separate groups, they are often thought to be an alliance of many Canaanite Tribes. Included are the Denyen, thought to be the Israeli tribe of Dan, When Israel fought off an attack by the armies of “Sisera”, Deborah laments, “why did Dan remain in ships?” (Judges 5:17).
The Shardana are thought to be the Sardinians, Sardian the site of thousand of small Nuragic CultureBronze age Statues depicting warriors matching the garb depicted in Egyptian murals. The Sardian’s Nuragioc Culture is sometimes claimed to be the origin of Atlantis legend, although their castles seemed to lack the plumbing and murals of Thera.
Except for the much greater age, this series of events fits nicely with the Sedon's/Plato story of great invaders ending Greece, except for Athens. Still, such a collection of peoples making up the Sea Peoples, even if they were organized under one leader, say of Phoenicia, does not quite fit the bill. Phoenicia lasted until nearly 500 BC when they were taken by the Assyrians, and then later incorporated into the domain of reemerging Greece under Alexander the Great, and thus did not disappear beneath the waves in a single day.
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