Date Posted:06:54 Author: Eponymous-21Apr02 Subject: Re: Atlantis's proof In reply to:
Anon-21Apr02
's message, "Re: Atlantis's proof" on 06:53
"...Troy and the Minoan ruins were just a legend until one day a visionary man decided to find the truth...."
The fact that some myths and stories make mention of actual places is no reason to hold out hope that any given place mentioned in any given myth might be an actual place. Compare a contemporary example: The movie "Superman" is set in part in San Francisco; it is also set in Metropolis. San Francisco is real; Metropolis is not. The reality of the former gives no warrant to posit the reality of the latter.
There's another fact underlying the disanalogy, which is that while no one in Schliemann's day doubted that ancient cities like Troy did exist, there is today no mainstream archaeologist, geologist or historian who would take seriously the idea that anything like Plato's Atlantis ever existed.
There are of course several other reasons why Atlantis was almost certainly fictional (and probably intended as such by Plato); the above just shows why Troy is a poor analogy.
