Plato describes how the Atlantean empire, after expanding its power, launched a massive and unprovoked war of conquest against the peoples of the Mediterranean.
Writing a universal history, Diodorus synthesized earlier Greek sources and presented events in the western Mediterranean and Atlantic regions (near Mount Atlas) in a rationalized historical framework.
The Phoenicians were a real people of the eastern Mediterranean.
In Britannica's account, Phoenicia was an ancient region on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, matching modern Lebanon with parts of modern Syria and Israel.
The Phoenicians were merchants, traders and colonizers, and Carthage, one of their colonies, became the chief sea power of the western Mediterranean.
They had advanced knowledge of navigation, trade and craft, and their influence spread across the Mediterranean, like that of the legendary Atlanteans.
The priest also says the Greeks forgot their deeper history because of these disasters, and Homeric myths may in the same way hold fragments of earlier contact around the Mediterranean.
In his account the empire ran from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.
I pass, for lack of space, over the hieroglyphics and other evidences which I have discovered that show that the civilizations of Egypt, of Mycenae, of Central America, South America and the Mediterranean had a common origin.
A GREAT island in the Atlantic opposite the Mediterranean; the remnant of a mighty continent which once reached from the west coast of Africa and Europe to the shores of Central America.
It colonized Egypt, the west coast of Africa and Europe, Central America, the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi Valley, the Pacific Coast of South America, the Mediterranean, the Baltic, the Black Sea and the Caspian.
Now turn to a map: Suppose the ships of Atlantis to have reached the shores of Syria, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, where dwelt a people who, as we have seen, used the Central American Maya alphabet; the Atlantis ships are then but two hundred miles distant from Armenia.
The Mediterranean Aryans are known to have been in Southeastern Europe, along the shores of the Mediterranean, 2000 B.C.
"The conflicts between the Kelts (an Aryan race) and the Iberians were far anterior in date to the settlements of the Phœnicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, and Noachites on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea." ("American Cyclopædia," art.
The Atlanteans were, as Plato tells us, a maritime, commercial people, trading up the Mediterranean as far as Egypt and Syria, and across the Atlantic to "the whole opposite continent that surrounds the sea;" the Phœnicians, as their successors and descendants, and colonized on the shores of the Mediterranean, inherited their civilization and their maritime habits, and with these that invention without which their great voyages were impossible.
Here, too, we have the Pillars of Hercules, supposed to have been placed at the mouth of the Mediterranean, and the tree of life or knowledge, with the serpent twined around it, which appears in Genesis; and in the combination of the two pillars and the serpent we have, it is said, the original source of our dollar mark [$].
The Phœnicians dealt in silks in the most remote past; they imported them from India and sold them along the shores of the Mediterranean.
"On the northern coast of Africa, between the Mediterranean and the Great Desert, including Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Benzazi, there is a continuous system of highlands, which have been included under the general term Atlas--anciently Atlantis, now the Barbary States.
The Nubians and Foolahs are classed as Mediterraneans.
The oval face gives them a Mediterranean type.
He considers these structures to be simply sepulchral monuments, and, after examining five or six thousand of them, maintains that the dolmens of Africa and of Europe were all constructed by the same race, during their emigration from the shores of the Baltic to the southern coast of the Mediterranean.
Here it would establish its outlying colonies at the terminus of its western line of advance, arrested only by the Pacific Ocean, precisely as we have seen it advancing up the valley of the Mississippi, and carrying on its mining operations on the shores of Lake Superior; precisely as we have seen it going eastward up the Mediterranean, past the Dardanelles, and founding Aryan, Hamitic, and probably Turanian colonies on the farther shores of the Black Sea and on the Caspian.
There can be little doubt that a fair-skinned, light-haired, bearded race, holding the religion which Plato says prevailed in Atlantis, carried an Atlantean civilization at an early day up the valley of the Amazon to the heights of Bolivia and Peru, precisely as a similar emigration of Aryans went westward to the shores of the Mediterranean and Caspian, and it is very likely that these diverse migrations habitually spoke the same language.
In fact, kindred races, with the same arts, and speaking the same tongue in an early age of the world, separated in Atlantis and went east and west--the one to repeat the civilization of the mother-country along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, which, like a great river, may be said to flow out from the Black Sea, with the Nile as one of its tributaries, and along the shores of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf; while the other emigration advanced up the Amazon, and created mighty nations upon its head-waters in the valleys of the Andes and on the shores of the Pacific.
In that reading, Mansi rise spills through the Turgay spillway toward the Aral, then along routes such as the Uzboy toward the Caspian, then through the Manych toward the Black Sea and on toward the Mediterranean.
The Aral–Caspian–Black–Mediterranean cascade is a labeled research hypothesis, not consensus fact.
Further spillway cascade through Aral, Caspian, Black Sea, and Mediterranean is a labeled hypothesis, not settled consensus.
Lake Mansi / Aral–Caspian–Black–Mediterranean cascade claims appear in outreach and encyclopedia summaries.
The classical claim is already a Mediterranean culture-transfer story in myth form.
Where was Atlantis discusses Mediterranean and Minoan–Thera location hypotheses that sometimes meet the Europa–Crete trail in later research talk.
Where was Atlantis: Mediterranean / Minoan–Thera Atlantis hypotheses as soft diffusion context, kept as interpretation.
The Phoenicians were known for their wide trade networks and cultural influence in the ancient Mediterranean.
The ancient Mediterranean world blended religions to a high degree.
The equation of Kronos with Israel could be an attempt to reconcile and reinterpret myths as Mediterranean cultures met.
The aim was to create cohesion in the ancient Mediterranean world.
It is his power base overlooking the Mediterranean coast.
It rises on the Mediterranean coast near the mouth of the Orontes.
It also spread into Egypt, including Pelusium / Egyptian Kasios, and other Mediterranean sites named in the secondary literature.
It was one of the Hesperides, the islands at the westernmost edge of the known world in the Mediterranean.
Some ancient writers, including Strabo, located Erytheia in the region of Gadeira (modern-day Cádiz), and it has been speculated that the island represents early Greek contact with the western Mediterranean and beyond.
Luce, in his book The End of Atlantis (1969), explored the idea that Atlantis could be connected to the geography and mythical traditions of the western Mediterranean, including the mythological islands like Erytheia.
In Phœnician legends he conquers the savage races of distant coasts, founds the ancient settlements on the Mediterranean, and plants the rocks in the Straits of Gibraltar.
We find the barbarians of the coast of the Mediterranean regarding the civilized people of Atlantis with awe and wonder: "Their physical strength was extraordinary, the earth shaking sometimes under their tread.
Chronos, or Saturn, Dionysos, Hyperion, Atlas, Hercules, were all connected with "a great Saturnian continent;" they were kings that ruled over countries on the western shores of the Mediterranean, Africa and Spain.
"Hyperion, Atlas, and Saturn, or Chronos, were sons of Uranos, who reigned over a great kingdom composed of countries around the western part of the Mediterranean, with certain islands in the Atlantic.
The kingdom was then divided between Atlas and Saturn--Atlas taking Northern Africa, with the Atlantic islands, and Saturn the countries on the opposite shore of the Mediterranean to Italy and Sicily." (Baldwin's Prehistoric Nations," p.
Hence the references to statues, swords, etc., that fell from heaven, and were preserved in the temples of the different states along the shores of the Mediterranean from a vast antiquity, and which were regarded as the most precious possessions of the people.
He founded many colonies along the shores of the Mediterranean; "he helped to build the walls of Troy;" the tradition thus tracing the Trojan civilization to an Atlantean source.
They were human in their attributes; they loved, sinned, and fought battles, the very sites of which are given; they founded cities, and civilized the people of the shores of the Mediterranean.
If the civilized people of the Mediterranean added lead to their bronzes, it can scarcely be doubted that the calculating Phœnicians would have done as much, and, at least, with distant and half-civilized tribes, have replaced the more costly tin by the cheaper metal.
Now there is room to suppose that if these Tokhari were energetic enough to measure their strength on the sea with one of the powerful kings of Egypt, they must, with stronger reason, have been in a condition to carry on a commerce along the coasts of the Mediterranean, and perhaps of the Atlantic.
We shall find, as we proceed, that the Phœnicians were unquestionably identified with Atlantis, and that it was probably from Atlantis they derived their god Baal, or Bel, or El, whose name crops out in the Bel of the Babylonians, the Elohim, and the Beelzebub of the Jews, and the Allah of the Arabians, And we find that this great deity, whose worship extended so widely among the Mediterranean races, was known and adored also upon the northern and western coasts of Europe.
I argue from these facts, not that the worship of Baal came to Ireland and Norway from Assyria or Arabia, but that the same great parent-race which carried the knowledge of Baal to the Mediterranean brought it also to the western coasts of Europe, and with the adoration of Baal they imported also the implements of bronze now found in such abundance in those regions.
The magnetic needle must certainly have been an object of great interest to a people who, through its agency, were able to carry on commerce on all the shores of Europe, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic.
20) shows that more than three hundred and fifty bronze swords have been found in Denmark, and that the Dublin Museum contains twelve hundred and eighty-three bronze weapons found in Ireland; "while," he says, "I have only been able to hear of six bronze swords in all Italy." This state of things is inexplicable unless we suppose that Ireland and Denmark received their bronze implements directly from some maritime nation whose site was practically as near their shores as it was to the shores of the Mediterranean.
Plato says that there was a "passage west from Atlantis to the rest of the islands, as well as from these islands to the whole opposite continent that surrounds that real sea." He calls it a real sea, as contradistinguished from the Mediterranean, which, as he says, is not a real sea (or ocean) but a landlocked body of water, like a harbor.
And how could he have known that the Mediterranean was only a harbor compared with the magnitude of the great ocean surrounding Atlantis?
How comes it that all the civilizations of the Old World radiate from the shores of the Mediterranean?
The Mediterranean is a cul de sac, with Atlantis opposite its mouth.
We hear of no civilization coining to the Mediterranean from Asia, Africa, or Europe--from north, south, or west; but north, south, east, and west we find civilization radiating from the Mediterranean to other lands.
We see the Aryans descending upon Hindostan from the direction of the Mediterranean;
and we find the Chinese borrowing inventions from Hindostan, and claiming descent from a region not far from the Mediterranean.
The Mediterranean has been the centre of the modern world, because it lay in the path of the extension of an older civilization, whose ships colonized its shores, as they did also the shores .of America.
Plato says, "the nations are gathered around the shores of the Mediterranean like frogs around a marsh."
All the traditions of the Mediterranean races look to the ocean as the source of men and gods.
504.) The worship of Priapus was found in Asia, Egypt, along the European shore of the Mediterranean, and in the forests of Central America.
Sculpture.--The Atlanteans possessed this art; so did the American and Mediterranean nations.
Among the Caribs in the West Indies (and the Caribs, Brasseur de Bourbourg says, were the same as the ancient Carians of the Mediterranean Sea) the man takes to his bed as soon as a child is born, and kills no animals.
210-211.) Beautiful girls were sacrificed to appease the anger of the gods, as among the Mediterranean
Their mission has been to kill, not to heal the people; yet here, at the very dawn of Mediterranean history, we find the son of the first king of Egypt recorded "as a physician, and as having left anatomical books."
When we consider the resemblance of the civilizations of the Mediterranean nations to one another, no man is silly enough to pretend that Rome, Greece, Egypt, Assyria, Phœnicia, each spontaneously and separately invented the arts, sciences, habits, and opinions in which they agreed; but we proceed to trace out the thread of descent or connection from one to another.
Why should a rule of interpretation prevail, as between the two sides of the Atlantic, different from that which holds good as to the two sides of the Mediterranean Sea?
As seafarers and traders they carried their alphabet and culture across the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to North Africa and Spain.
The Greeks lived in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean.
The Romans ruled Italy, the Mediterranean and Europe.
The Roman Empire shaped law, politics and culture across Europe and the Mediterranean, and it ruled Judea in New Testament times.
Tyre is a city in southern Lebanon, on the Mediterranean coast.
It helped spread Phoenician culture and trade across the Mediterranean.
Tyre is still an important Mediterranean city.
It had two harbors, and these served its trade routes across the Mediterranean.
The old island is now part of a narrow peninsula reaching into the Mediterranean.
Places in the eastern Mediterranean or Anatolia.
It may have been in the western Mediterranean, like Tartessos in Spain.
The Nile River does not have seven separate rivers leading into the Mediterranean Sea.
In ancient times the Nile Delta had seven main distributaries that carried the river's water into the Mediterranean.
Today, though, there are not seven distinct rivers reaching the Mediterranean.
The Mediterranean Aryans, including the Greeks and other ancient European civilizations, appear to have been influenced by the Atlantean culture.
The idea of a "real sea" contrasting with the Mediterranean aligns with the vast Atlantic Ocean and the surrounding landmasses of the Americas, knowledge that seems unlikely for Plato to have guessed without some historical basis.
Civilizations around the Mediterranean, including the Aryans, Egyptians, and Chinese, trace their origins or significant influences to this region, suggesting a shared connection to Atlantis.
This centrality of the Mediterranean as a cultural and civilizational hub is consistent with the idea of an advanced Atlantean civilization spreading its influence through colonization and trade.
The Carians, ancient navigators and pirates of the Mediterranean, share a name and cultural similarities with the Caribs of the West Indies and Central America.
Ancient Mediterranean traditions, including those of Homer and Orpheus, refer to the ocean as the source of gods and life.
There is a range of complexions from the fair Swedes to the darker-skinned inhabitants of the Mediterranean coast, similar to the Berbers and Moors.
Similarly, Europe and the Mediterranean are populated by a mongrel race resulting from the intermixture of dark and light races over long periods.