Carlson starts of by explaining the history of Atlantis and how it basically originated or came to us by one work; Plato’s accounts given in Timaeus and Critias. He then cites a number scholarly works that where dedicated to Atlantis and sort of gives a rundown on how exactly "what we commonly know" about Atlantis has been created/changed over the decades, mainly by a few scholarly works in which straw man arguments and red herrings were established, based on which the subject and people who work on it got ridiculed and distracted from what Plato actually told us. If you are not familiar with the hard science and the terms scholar use in their works (in geology for example), it is hard to understand what they say. Carlson explains many of those terms, so that it is understandable for a layperson what they are actually saying. So it is easy for nefarious "scientist" to fool the public by making authoritative statements about the subject. If you look closely on what has actually been published in scientific works though, as Randall has over the decades, it becomes quite clear that there already existed a wealth of good scientific work on the subject and the surrounding circumstances and related fields/studies. So even at the time those straw man scientists established their dismissal of the subject, it was clear that what they stated so categorically isn't true, for people who look closely at things. To really understand that though, you have to be able to read and understand scientific language which most people can't.
Those few works, even though they were clearly flawed and plain wrong in what they stated as "facts" then became what most scholars and critical people referred to, when they tried to discredit the idea. That happened in the 70ies. Before that point there were a number of very interesting scholarly works published, reaching back all the way to the 19hundreds (and actually centuries back), that set out very well reasoned arguments based on different kinds of evidences. Then the straw man "scientific works" in the 70ies set out to basically destroy all that. For example; the idea that we are talking about a "sunken Continent" was first really established as a straw man argument in a work in 1978 in which the authors ever so slyly changed what Plato actually said from an "Island" to a "continent" in a matter of a couple of sentences. Plato talked about an Island though and the authors of this work changed it to "continent" (on purpose I think) in order to discredit previous good works.
He cites a number of examples in that regard in which the language was changed ever so slyly and thus what we actually know about Atlantis today (or think we know). With the end result that beginning in the 70ies, scientist and ordinary people began to look for Atlantis anywhere and everywhere on the globe except at the pretty explicit area Plato has given us. He also explains how then all sorts of things that were never mentioned by Plato (partly a result of works like the above) started to emerge where people all of a sudden talked about things like "electricity" and "flying planes" (and other "high tech" things) in regard to the Atlantis story. All of which was never mentioned by Plato. Carlson also gives historical context about the controversy that goes back centuries about what Plato said and that there are different camps. Some think everything he told us there is basically fantasy or myth while others take a more literal approach on it (he really meant what he said, so to say) and so on.
Then Carlson cites extensively out of Plato's own writing (while also explaining some translation controversies) and what some translated words and phrases meant in the original greek. What becomes clear is, that our main source on Atlantis, namely Plato, was very explicit both in terms of location and on the actual reality of what happened to Atlantis in his work.
Then Carlson takes this as a hypothesis (that much of it can be interpreted literally), and looks for evidence of what Plato told us there in the scientific literature (and he has read a lot of it!). Then Carlson walks us through one scientific paper after the other and explains what those scientists already knew decades, even centuries ago, about the mid Atlantic ridge for example and in particular the exact area that Plato describes. He also explains the mechanisms and scientific terms applied by those scientists, like "isostatic rebound" and "emersion" versus "immersion" and "subarial recrystallization".
Carlson also refers to a work published in 1880 by Ignatius Donnelly called "Atlantis: The Antediluvian World" which set forth 13 proportions (that were later attacked and "disproved" by the aforementioned fraudulent works in the 1970ies on the basis of its "wrong geology", which Carslon shows wasn't wrong even at that time). Donelly's propositions involving various fields including geology, linguistics etc. were as follows:
Carlson also explores a bit the myth of Phaeton. One work he cites there is The Commentaries of Proclus on Timaeus of Plato in Five books (translated from the Greek by Thomas Taylor, 1820). Randall makes it clear that very early on, the myth of Phaeton was explicitly referred to as a real event by authors like Proclus (*412–485 C.E.) and even in their own words connected to a comet. So very early on, after Plato mentioned Atlantis, there were already well established traditions that Phaeton as well a number of other things like the fall of Atlantis could have had a lot to do with comets. So Carlson suggest therefore, that it would be foolish, given that fact, to not look into that direction when discussing Atlantis from the get go.
Carlson also exemplifies what the scientific literature said and says by explaining it in layman terms and using the latest satellite image capabilities and so on to get a better grasp of what they are actually talking about visually. That also applies to things like crystallization of certain stones in the air versus under water and other mechanisms known in geology and other fields.
Carlson also makes it clear that later works like Edgar Casey viewing of Atlantis are interesting but that one doesn't even need to go into that speculative direction to prove that what Plato mentioned has a high probability of actually have taken place, based on scientific papers alone.
Pashlis;
I've listened to all Carlson's videos and he sure is a born storyteller with a very impish attitude. Wonderfully engaging and brilliant.
Your précis had the same wonderful style of story-telling and I thoroughly enjoyed the information all over again. Thank you.
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