Thursday, November 19, 2020

Episode #174: Bronze Age Atlantis

We are joined once again by Snakeforce member Tony Petrangelo to continue discussing the topic of Plato's Atlantis, and whether this story could have possibly been referring to the time period of the bronze age collapse and the invasion of Egypt by the mysterious "Sea People".

Tony leads us through the complexities of bronze age civilizations in the Mediterranean, looking at clay tablets of letters being written from one king to another describing the state of their kingdoms and the problems they were facing.  We also look at the description of the invasion and defeat of the Sea People in Egypt, how they were described, and what they were called, and where they may have been from.

In the end, what Tony is showing us are the correlations to these events and some of the details given by Plato. He doesn't have a "location" of Atlantis, or an idea of "who" the "Atlanteans" were. Rather, he is looking at the evidence to see if this may have been the time period for the events described by Plato.

Here is a list of the sources Tony used for this episode:

Books

Meet me in Atlantis by Mark Adams

Sunken Kingdom by Peter James

1177 BC by Eric Cline

Sea Peoples of the Bronze Age Mediterranean c.1400 BC–1000 BC by Andrea Salimbeti & Raffaele D’Amato

Seagoing Ships & Seamanship in the Bronze Age Levant by Shelley Wachsmann

Exodus to Arthur by Mike Baillie


Papers

Literary History in the Parian Marble by Andrea Rotstein

A Mycenaean Fountain on the Athenian Acropolis by Oscar Broneer

Athens in the Late Bronze Age by Oscar Broneer

Landscape Changes around Tiryns during the Bronze Age by Eberhard Zangger

The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah: Grand Strategy in the 13th Century B.C. by Colleen Manassa Darnell

Libyan Trade and Society on the Eve of the Invasions of Egypt by Seth Richardson

The Role of the Lukka People in Late Bronze Age Anatolia by Trevor Bryce

The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples by Frederik Christiaan Woudhuizen

Connected Histories: the Dynamics of Bronze Age Interaction and Trade 1500–1100 bc by Kristian Kristiansen & Paulina Suchowska-Ducke

New technologies and transformations in the European Bronze Age: the case of Naue II swords by Paulina Suchowska-Ducke





4 comments:

  1. I'm sorry.... I got as far 1:22 and realised that I'd completely forgotten the point. I read the show title again and could find no correlation between that and what I was listening to.
    The kicker came when Tony belted out a collection of names and then said he would explain them all later....
    I'm done.
    Looking forward to next week.

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  2. I haven't listened to this episode yet, but there's another book I've read on the subject of Bronze-Age Atlantis by Tony O'Connor called Joining the Dots.

    He's also the compiler of a reference site on the subject of Atlantis: Atlantipedia.ie.

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  3. I want to send you a gift for all the pleasures I've enjoyed since lockdown. SNAKES!!!!

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  4. Fascinating stuff. Challenging list of references; almost like plunging into a new degree program! •••• Question occurs to me, In the context of a world-wide CATACLYSM that clearly WIPED CLEAN all evidence of human advancement before the Younger Dryas ---> Why should we rule out Tri-remes for a sea-faring culture that reputedly had trade far into the Mediterranean basin. AntiKythera Mechanism shouts that Many technologies have been lost and reinvented in historical times. Bi-remes and tri-remes are simply elaborations on the idea of using human rowers to propel a vessel. Given a few generations, it seems an inevitable development, and one that does not depend on development of steam, steel, or other technologies. Seemingly depends on access to sturdy trees.

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