Atlantis Located

    I don't often think about the Atlantis story, but it came to mind recently as a part of a story that I started writing. I needed something like that as a plot device. Well, to make a longish story brief, I didn't find Atlantis, but I am 99% certain that I have figured out where Tartessos is, and one theory is that Atlantis was based on Tartessos. But it turns out that the location of Tartessos is uncertain, or was until earlier today, when I found it.

    I was looking for a good Bronze Age, or so, setting for a story that I am writing. One of the characters was going to make fake ancient metal things for resale, and Tartessian styles became the models. I was aware that there is a large region in the Iberian Peninsula that has very high grade metal ores, especially copper, tin, silver, and gold; that region is called the Iberian Pyrite Belt, and it is the reason why the Rio Tinto has been polluted pretty much for ever. The Rio Tinto itself, its gravel and bed, also has been mined for thousands of years for tin and other metals in its gravel.

    Sierra Moreno is one place where the Pyrite Belt is above ground, and on the Northwesterly side of it there has been active mining since before 2000 BCE. The mine was only closed in the twentieth century; the copper mass was depleted by about 1890, but taking pyrites for sulfur continued after that. The name of this mine, and the associated town, is Tharsis, and they have been called that for a long time. The name is unusual for Spanish, and it certainly appears to be a shortened version of Tartessos. I just found out that gold is still being mined at Tharsis; a gold mine, Filon Sur, produces 1000 kg per year.

    The Tharsis mine is about thirty miles North of Huelva, the regional capital, and about twenty miles West of the Rio Tinto, where there also still is some mining; although Rio Tinto Mining now does its mining in other places around the world, but it started out by reopening ancient mines on the Rio Tinto.

    While archeologists haven't said pinned down the location of Tartessos; it is well accepted that Huelva was the port of Tartessos. There have been enough archeological finds, including ship wrecks in the river, that there is no doubt, and there are two rivers that empty into the ocean there, the Rio Tinto to the East and the Rio Odiel to the West. Rio Odiel is rather small, but it probably would have been useful for hauling metal from Tartessos to the port. It appears that there has been a town adjacent to the ore body at Tharsis since very early times, but it appears that there is little or nothing remaining from thousands of years ago, because buildings were torn down and replaced when they had deteriorated. There are mentions of some pieces of mining equipment from Roman times having been found in abandoned pits, but it appears that all of the earliest sections of the mine were completely dug away when it was turned into an open pit mine during the Roman era. The same is true of the Rio Tinto mine, which is even bigger, but soil was moved from one section to another when it was expanded.

    Within the last decade, or so, someone theorized that Atlantis ended up under the marshes of the Park National of Donana about thirty miles southeast of Huelva. As I recall it, the theory is that there was a rise in sea level that flooded the city, and Plato wrote that the city subsided beneath the ocean. Someone else guessed that Atlantis was somewhere else in that area. I'm not certain about Atlantis, but I think that it was dreamed up in Plato's mind based on data that could not be readily checked; it was 9000 years before Plato's time. In Plato’s time Tartessos was a place that was almost unreachable, and it was beyond the Pillars of Heracles, so Plato put his fictional city beyond the Pillars of Heracles.

    I would love to go to that area and look around; it's the oldest industrial region on the planet. There was mining and smelting on a substantial scale before 2000 BCE, and it's the closest that I could ever get to Atlantis. There is a lot more to the Iberian Pyrite Belt, so maybe someone will decide to mine even deeper.

    References:
    MBendi's listing for Filon Sur, Gold Mine (1000 kg/year), located in Tharsis, Huelva, Spain
    http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tharsis_%28Alosno%29

    A blog about Tharsis
    http://amigosdetharsis.blogspot.com/

    Google view of Tharsis showing mining pits now filled with water.
    https://www.google.com/maps/place/21...b7cd4b6b788f70

    About archeology at the Rio Tinto mine
    http://barryyeoman.com/2010/09/the-m...built-empires/
    http://www.spainthenandnow.com/spani...efault_37.aspx
    A site on Huelva including history, museums, etc.
    http://www.andalucia.com/cities/huelva/history.htm

    The websites of the archaeological museum seville and Huelva, If your Spanish is good, then they will be useful.
    http://www.museosdeandalucia.es/cult...te/museos/MHU/
    http://www.museosdeandalucia.es/cult...ect=S2_3_1.jsp

Self- Delusion for Your Own Good

Remain calm. All actions are futile.

We all know in our subconscious minds that there is no hope, and that everything is predetermined, so our actions and decisions are predetermined, so we might as well not do anything. Yes, life is completely pointless, except as a tool for DNA to develop more complicated organisms. We are all in the same position as the character on The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut who produced a replacement part for the Tralfamadorians by a series of acts that appeared to be random or accidental. While our innermost thoughts accept the facts, our DNA demands that it be given the opportunity to reproduce, so even the ugliest misbegotten person tries its best to do the best in its life.

To further that end, our subconscious minds create the personality complete with the delusion that each of us is the most wonderful, beautiful, brilliant, sexy, strong, etc. person in the world, or something close to that. Alas, the delusional thinking isn't confined top personal attributes, and many people think that they are less than completely successful in all things only because there are forces acting against them. Thoughts of this sort sometimes lead to conspiracy theories by the subconscious mind creating or borrowing something that could prevent the individual from being happy and successful.

It is possible that people of low intelligence have minds that are superior in creating delusions. As an example, people who are more intelligent usually have a more realistic view of their abilities, while people of lower intelligence frequently can't imagine that anyone is more intelligent than they are. The result is that the people with lower intelligences rush in where angels fear to tread. Alexander Pope recognised that fact three hundred years ago, and the fools still don't have the sense to be cautious, and wiser heads may be overcautious.

But the most important sort of delusion that I know of are those things that people believe that keep them from abandoning all hope, even though they all know that there is no hope. I have mentioned the matter of “free will” before, and all humans know that there is none (at least they know that when they pull aside the curtain of self-delusion), but language, common activities, and even religion are set up as if there were free will; this is true even in areas where the culture is nominally deterministic.

The linked article is quite good. It amplifies what I have written, and even someone who has deluded himself into thinking that he is worthy of continued life finds agreement gratifying. I advise that you read the article for your own good. It is well written, and explains the matter more thoroughly than I was willing to.

Both that author of that article and I think that you are doing the wise thing by thinking that you are the most beautiful, wonderful, intelligent, etc. person in the universe, because you are, and anyone who disagrees is simply deluded. Just keep that in mind, and you probably will be able to continue.

How Our Delusions Keep Us Sane: The Psychology of Our Essential Self-Enhancement Bias
by Maria Popova
http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06...ancement-bias/
http://www.rantlifestyle.com/2014/04...blade#slide_84