nermal

It's been some time, but I recall reading a reference to Atlantis in Grahm Herm's "The Celts."
I believe he had some evidence that exposure to Celts inspired the Atlantis stories primarily due to the outrageous amount of gold they carried on their persons. They were assumed to be from a very wealthy, distant region (were the truth only known!).
Just more to chew on.

Ed

Normus

I do find it intresting that egyptian rulers from ancient times were found to have been cocain and tobacco addicts, proving that there was at least trade between egypt and south america.

Arken

That is hardly an accepted fact. A couple of scientists claim to have found 'traces' of both substances in mummies but their results could easily have been tainted by modern substances.

Vorkosigan

Right. If you read on it in detail, you'll soon find that (1) the mummies tested may well have been 19th century fakes, in which there was a lively market and (2) there were nicotine sources in the Old World.

Vorkosigan

Misso

A few weeks ago I saw a documentary on Belgium television (Canvas, show's title was Het Derde Oog [The Third Eye]) about Atlantis.

Theory was that it was at Antarctica, and that Antarctica had once been somewhere different than on the south pole. To support that, they linked their story with fossils in North America of animals that supposedly only lived in a certain climate, a different climate than is now. To explain the difference of climate was another theory: the huge icecaps in one of the iceages (probably the last great one, can't remember) caused an imbalance around the Earth's axis, causing the Earth's crust to shift around the core, moving continents to a different place relative to the Earth's axis - changing climate everywhere.
Their guess that Antarctica had not always been where it was now was also supported, they felt, by medieval maps, showing Antarctica as the separate group of islands it actually is, instead of a landmass covered with ice. They figured teh mdieval mapmakers had copied older maps, maps from before the continents shifted, before Antarctica was covered in ice.

Jesse

This was the theory that Graham Hancock was pushing in Fingerprints of the Gods. Here are some critiques of "crustal displacement" and ancient "Antarctic" maps:

http://www.thehallofmaat.com/maat/article.php?sid=48
(from a list of articles debunking 'lost civilization' theories in general, which can be found here)

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mom/atlantis.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mom/oronteus.html

http://www.diegocuoghi.it/Piri_Reis/PiriReis_eng.htm

http://www.pibburns.com/smmia5.htm

http://www.antiquityofman.com/pseudoscience.html (scroll down to the section 'Ancient maps, crustal displacement and mammoths')

http://www.ramtops.co.uk/ (scroll down to the 'Ancient Maps' subsection of 'Cult Archaeology')

http://www.intersurf.com/~chalcedony...e.shtml#link10