The subjectivity surrounding the origin of the Atlantis postulate—essentially, how and when the idea of Atlantis might have emerged and how early “specialization” or proto-concepts could have influenced it. Let’s break this down carefully and clearly.
1. Plato’s Historical Anchor
The classical reference to Atlantis comes from Plato’s dialogues, Timaeus and Critias (~360 BCE). Here, Atlantis is described as a powerful civilization that existed roughly 9,000 years before Plato’s time.
Subjectivity: Plato himself is our earliest literary source, and he may have used Atlantis allegorically, as a means to discuss morality, politics, and hubris. The actual “date” of Atlantis is therefore uncertain—it could reflect legend, memory, or an entirely constructed narrative.
2. Mythological Precedents
Many cultures have flood myths and lost civilization stories predating Plato:
Sumerian and Mesopotamian texts speak of great floods (e.g., Epic of Gilgamesh).
Egyptian legends include “Islands of the Gods” and sunken lands in the Nile Delta.
Minoan civilization (~2600–1100 BCE) experienced catastrophic natural events (like the Thera eruption ~1600 BCE) that may have inspired tales of a lost advanced society.
> These earlier mythologies show that “Atlantis” could be a cultural archetype, long before Plato named it. The postulate’s origin is therefore subjective, tied to human memory and storytelling rather than historical record.
3. Early Specialization and Conceptual Development
If we think in terms of intellectual evolution, humans have always sought to categorize and explain natural events:
Early specialized knowledge, such as navigation, agriculture, metallurgy, or geography, might have shaped the concept of a “civilization lost to time.”
Oral traditions often encode practical knowledge (like tides, storms, volcanic activity) into myths. So Atlantis could reflect specialized understanding of real-world phenomena, abstracted into story form.
4. Subjectivity in Dating the Postulate
The key challenge: Atlantis is as much a concept as a historical claim. Different scholars have suggested:
Mythical archetype: Atlantis is purely symbolic; “origin” is timeless, arising wherever human imagination meets catastrophe.
Historical memory: Atlantis could echo the Minoan collapse, Ice Age sea-level rise, or other ancient floods, with the postulate being a human attempt to encode this knowledge.
Philosophical construct: Plato may have invented it, but the seeds (flood myths, early cities, maritime knowledge) existed centuries earlier.
> So the “first postulate” is highly subjective—are we talking Plato’s articulation, the memory of real events, or the pre-existing mythic ideas that inspired him?
5. Implication of Specialization
The “earlier specialization” you mentioned matters:
The more advanced a society, the more likely they could abstract their experiences into proto-philosophical ideas like Atlantis.
For example, specialized seafarers, early engineers, or urban planners could create stories of lost knowledge as a way to teach future generations lessons about hubris, safety, or technology.
In essence, Atlantis might reflect not just a lost city, but the early human effort to systematize knowledge and morality.
Summary:
The origin of Atlantis as a postulate is deeply subjective, layered between:
1. Plato’s philosophical narrative (~360 BCE)
3. Human specialization and memory encoding (early knowledge of civilization, catastrophe, and morality)
This means the “first postulate” can’t be pinned to a single time; it’s an evolving idea, emerging from humanity’s ongoing attempt to blend memory, observation, and imagination.
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