Why is Atlantis a belief/myth and not a scientific theory?

Part1- Structure of the Pyramids

Plato, in his writings, talked about a powerful civilization that existed 10,000 years before his times in a city called Atlantis. It is believed that the city of Atlantis was lost in a deluge and some of the Atlantians escaped in ships to come back to teach their ways and technology to the world- technologies such as The Pyramids in Egypt and Central/South America.

At a glance, the structure of Pyramids point towards something close to what Atlantian belief says- that there probably was a technologically advanced civilization that helped humans build them. But then why do scientists tend to discard Atlantis as a reliable scientific theory and call it a belief or a myth? Why is structure of the Pyramids, its complexity or similarity between that of Egyptian and Central/South American Pyramids, not considered as an evidence of Atlantian intervention? Let’s break two of the popular beliefs into three parts- Assumption, Atlantian conclusion, and Scientific Speculation.

Assumption#1: The Pyramids are huge and perfectly built structures.

Atlantean Conclusion: Since the technology at the time when Pyramids were built was extremely incipient for the complexities involved in Pyramid construction humans could not have made such structures without any external/technologically advanced or superior help.

Scientific Speculation: The basic question is how did we learn to build anything? The answer lies in structures built by humans earlier than pyramids. When archaeologists dig around the area of the Great Pyramids of Giza and those built by the Mayans they see remnants of a rigorous trial and error method to build something like the Pyramids. The scientists claim these structures to be “the lousy attempts to build Pyramids”. The amazing but not so surprising fact is that these “lousy Pyramids” date back to a time hundreds of years before the “prefect Pyramids” were built. A rigorous trial and error method that spanned hundreds of years indicates a gradual progression in the development of the complexity of Pyramid building which in turn states that humans were rather self taught in the art of Pyramid building no matter which continent they belonged to. If the technology was just given to these people by some other civilization, then there should have been no signs of trial and a sudden appearance of perfect Pyramids, built from the knowledge conferred to humans by Atlantians, would have been observed.

Assumption#2: The Pyramids of Egypt and Central America look almost similar to each other. How did they know about each others designs?

Alantian Conclusion: There was someone who communicated same designs to these people and that was achieved through a higher level of communication which indicates a technologically advanced civilization (Atlantians).

Scientific Speculation: Look at the structure of Pyramids. They are all tetrahedrons. This is because it was the only structure that could have been built using only stones without any binding agent to make the walls stand. That is why all these structures taper at the top. People in those times had not figured out a binding agent except for mud which couldn’t have been strong enough to hold a structure like a straight wall. Also, scientists don’t seem to find any common denominator in the languages spoken by the peoples of these two continents which would have proved the existence of a common instructional-language that Atlantians would have used to teach humans about building Pyramids. A detailed discussion of language diversity requires a new blog entry.

The skepticism that scientists show towards Atlantis arises due the nature of science and its ways. Archeology, just like any other science, has very stringent ways to authenticate an observed pattern as a theory. In science, a phenomenon, although is the beginning of a theory, cannot be the basis of the generalization required to form a reliable theory. This is the biggest reason why structure of Pyramids cannot be used as an evidence of Atlantian existence since its pattern directs us more towards thousands of years of evoultion in contruction technology and not a sudden upsurge of any kind of new or astrounding technology. More on this…next time!