Volume 2, Issue 7
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Volume 2, Issue 7 |
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Archives The Sons of
Javan
published:
June 18, 2004
When the Romans finished the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, they gave the entire contents of the Carthaginian library to the Numidians of Africa. By this inexplicable act the entire history and knowledge of the secretive Phoenicians and their successors, the Carthaginians, was lost forever.1 What an irony that the people credited by the Greeks as having invented the alphabet were silenced forever by such caprice. If we had the scrolls of that fabled library at hand we could easily confirm the recent announcement of Dr. Rainer Kuehne in the June 2004 edition of Antiquity, Vol 78, No 300 that the ruins of the ancient city of Atlantis have been discovered. However, is the whole matter a great shim-sham dreamt up by Plato? We do have his own admission that it was merely a setting for his concept of a utopian society. Or is there any truth at all to the matter? The harder one tries to find Atlantis, the further it recedes into imagination, and in imagination the tale takes on fantastic and obsessive dimension. Atlantis is the realm of Edgar Cayce and Madame Blavatsky and a whole host of gibbering fools waving crystals about and bleating about reincarnation and hidden chambers beneath pyramids. Mythical location of Atlantis According to Plato who wrote about it in 360 BC, "an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles" (Timaeus) - the present day Straits of Gibraltar. Here on an island was a city of concentric belts of sea and land ruled by the High King Atlas and his successors, ten in number. Eventually, as the people of Atlantis fell prey to ambition and vice, it "disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island." Plato is not the first Greek to write of an island beyond the Straits. Three hundred years before Plato writes of Atlantis, Hesiod (700 BC) tells of the Tenth Labor of Herakles, and of the theft of the red kine (cattle) of Geryon. But the island was called Erythia. There were three large islands to the west of the narrowest parts of the Straits during the last glacial low sea level as confirmed by the Instituto Espanol de Oceanografia in 1994. These islands which disapeared 11,500 years are now 50 to 100 meters below sea level, and are now known as the shoals of the Banco de Majuan, or Spartel. Regardless of who put forth these locations as the site of Atlantis in modern times (Georgeos or Collina-Girard) the problem with these islands are the dates named for their subsidence into the ocean. The traditional date mentioned by Plato "...that nine thousand was the sum of years which had elapsed." does match, but we have no proof or evidence aside from Plato that any civilization existed at these locations. Until the necessary marine expedition takes place anything mentioned is mere speculation. (note: Collina-Girard is supposed to lead an expedition with a two man submersible to the Banco de Majuan this month, I do not know the operational status.) Discovery by Satellite? So what then has Dr. Rainer Kuhne claimed to have found?
These structures lie in a mud region named "Marisma de Hinojos''. It is within the Parque Nacional de Donana. The distance of the structures from Spartel Island (Banco de Majuan)is 120 kilometres.
Dr Rainer Kuehne believes the "island" of Atlantis as described by Plato was a region of the southern Spanish coast that was possibly destroyed by a flood between 800 BC and 500 BC. For Atlantis was situated on a plain between mountains, and those mountains says Dr. Kuehne, could be the Sierra Morena and Sierra Nevada. Werner Wickboldt, a self-described Atlantis enthusiast spotted the remains of the structures from satellite photos. "This is the only place that seems to fit [Plato's] description," he told BBC News Online, adding that the Greek story may have confused an Egyptian word referring to a coastline with one meaning island which has led to the confusion over the centuries. If that line of thinking is true, then Plato did more than confuse "coastline" with "island." For if the structures are indeed an archaeological site and they can be dated to 800-500 BC, it is far more likely that the lost city of Tartessos, not Atlantis, has been found. The ancients, specifically Pausanius state that:
The German archaeologist Adolph Schulten spent years unsuccessfully looking for the ruins of Tartessos (he didn't have satellite pictures available to him in the 1950's), for the area over the course of the centuries has become a wetland, the river delta of the Guadalquivir having been blocked off by an enormous sandbar that stretches from the mouth of the Rio Tinto to the opposite riverbank. This area now known as the Marisma de Hinojos lies within the boundaries of the Parque Nacional de Doņana, Spain's largest national park. It is also home to such unique and endangered animals such as the Imperial Eagle and the Iberian Lynx. The Biblical Tarshish What do we know of Tartessos? In the Bible the people who live there are said to be of the sons of Javan: "Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim." Genesis 10:4, and if that claim is true they somehow linked to the ancient Minoans of Krete (Kittim.) If so, one could speculate that Tarshish (Tartessos) could have been founded by the Minoans as a colony, as Carthage was founded by the Phoenicians? Silver, iron, lead and tin came in the ships of Tartessos to Mediterranean ports such as Tyre. In Chronicles II 9:21, it is stated that "...every three years once came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold, and silver, ivory, apes and peacocks." Gold and silver that could have come from the mines of the Sierra Morena. The other exotic goods would have come from the nearby African coastal region. They were also famous for exporting garum, a fish flavoring of sorts made in a manner that I think most of us nowadays would find nauseating! But it was popular back then...2 Other Accounts Herodotus wrote of Tartessos in his history. According to his account, the Tartessians were discovered (probably to the amusement of the maritime Tartessians who had been trading for centuries with the Phoenicians and Kretans) by a Greek merchant named Kolaios who became fabulously wealthy through this enterprise. It is from the Greeks that we get the name Tartessos, from the root trt/trd, that is seen in a number of indigenous names used for the southern region of the Iberian peninsula. Regardless of any speculative thoughts of Kretan colonists being the germinal inspiration behind the founding of Tartessos, the peoples who lived on the southwest Iberian coast were the Turdetanians or Turduli, a mixture of the North African Iberians, and the European Celts who had displaced or subjugated the even older Ligureans whose origins are unknown. From the Ora Maritima of Avienus we hear the claim that by the time of the Greek encounters in the sixth century BC, that Tartessos is an empire extending from the Spanish levant to Portugal. The merchant ships of Tartessos trade with the maritime Euzkaldunak (the Basque) and Veneti of the Brittany Coast and are said to go as far north as the Scilly Islands (the British Isles). The Greek traders are met with gifts by the legendary king Arganthonius and the future looks bright for relations between the Greeks and Tartessians with colonies being established on the south of France to facilitate trade. Tartessos Vanishes from History By the time Isaiah is written by the Jewish scribes, something has happened, in 23:1 we are left with this cryptical pronouncement of doom: "The burden of Tyre. Howl, ye ships of Tarshish: for it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entering in: from the land of Chittim it is revealed to them." Was Tartessos, whose great temples may have been found by satellite reconnaisance have been overwhelmed by a deluge? Could a period of heavy rains in the mountainous regions of the Sierra Morrena have created a great mudflow that overwhelmed the city with it's concentric rings of earth and water? Such events have happened even within our memory. For exampe,the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia erupted on November 13 1985 AD, and a lahar, or heated mudflow, caused the total destruction of the city of Armero with terrible loss of life. More likely the blame can be put on the expanding Carthaginian Empire, for by the end of the sixth century they had claimed the Western Mediterranean for their own. The political machinations of Arganthonius with the Greeks apparently roused their anger. The wealth of the Iberian peninsula was something they desired and were not going to share with their rivals the Greeks. There was to be no commerce by any other nations beyond the Pillars of Herakles while the Carthaginians ruled the waves. One wonders if the Carthaginian general who destroyed Tartessos (if they did) wondered like Scipio at the destruction of Carthage. For if Tartessus was an offshoot of the Kretans, so too were the Carthaginians of the same stock as the Phoenicians. More ironies. Archaeological Finds and Links The Lady of Elche is a stone bust that was uncovered August 4, 1897. It has been claimed to be either of Tartessian origin, or a complete fake. The sculpure is thought to be a woman wearing a very complex head dress.
Of greater validity was the discovery of the cult temple of Rancho Coano in 1978 AD. Until we get confirmation of the "discovery", this is the best example to date of Tartessian architecture and culture. I strongly recomend the following site for an in-depth article of this find: http://www.olympicwatch2004.com/bswbOWsubpage.asp?PubID=BSAO&Volume=6&Issue=6&ArticleID=1 I intend to keep up to date on the investigation into Dr. Rainer Kuhne's inquiries on the matter. This will be an ongoing project for the online magazine of antiquities: update: the magazine of antiquities has removed this article. http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/kuhne/ 1 Except for some dubious fragments from Sanchoniatho of Berytus (modern day Beirut). Avienus claims the Ora Maritimus is based on punic sources. 2 Ancient Garum Recipe: Use fatty fish, for example, sardines, and a well-sealed (pitched) container with a 26-35 quart capacity. Add dried, aromatic herbs possessing a strong flavor, such as dill, coriander, fennel, celery, mint, oregano, and others, making a layer on the bottom of the container; then put down a layer of fish (if small, leave them whole, if large, use pieces) and over this, add a layer of salt two fingers high. Repeat these layers until the container is filled. Let it rest for seven days in the sun. Then mix the sauce daily for 20 days. After that, it becomes a liquid.
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