The approach in this website is that the stories that have come down to us via classical Greece and other very early literature of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent are in essence, true-ish.

There are so many ways in which ancient stories from prehistory are regarded. Opinions of the academic community range from a cautious acceptance of a basis in truth…. to those who think they are entirely fictitious parables or allegories with an entirely mythological meaning. On the other hand, the New-Age opinion seems often to be a full acceptance of stories as told with no allowances for ancient errors of perception or textural translation.

For preliterate peoples oral and visual representations were pretty much all they had to rely on to maintain a tangible link with their ancestors and past history as an important part of their identities. It is small wonder that stories of extremely important world and life-changing events were diligently passed down from generation to generation as folk history; so these stories should be regarded with trust and respect by the modern world.

When looking at these stories with modern eyes it’s important to bear in mind that magic and the spirit world were inseparable from the physical world of perception and experience. In other words, events in the physical world had their corresponding meaning in magic and the spiritual realm. This idea was conveyed in great detail by Sir James Frazer in the Golden Bough, published in 1890ce.

When we think of war, it is in the form of a violent intense, relatively short-lived event, generally less than a century. The war referred to by Plato need not necessarily be thought of in this way.

I contend that Plato’s war was one of idealogical conflict that manifested at the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age in the Middle East and in effect, still continues to this day. Perhaps the earliest expression of these conflicts can be found in the ancient stories of the war between the Titans and the Gods and the story of Prometheus’ theft of fire from the gods–as presented in ‘Prometheus Bound’ by Aeschylus (c.525 bce to c.456 bce). There is good reason to assume that this story represents events at the very beginning of the Middle Bronze Age somewhere around 3500 bce in Trans-Caucasia.

The times and places of the on-going conflict, generation after generation, can be traced–through the work of innumerable archaeologists and scientists–from the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age in the Caucasus to the later Middle Bronze Age of Greece and the Aegean Sea around 2000 bce. The wars that Plato refers to, between the Atlanteans and the Athenians on Greek soil, spanned the time from about 2000 bce to 1620 bce when hostilities were brought to an end by the volcanic (Minoan) eruption of Thera ca 1620 bce in the very early stages of the Late Bronze Age; a period of about 380 to 400 years or about 20 generations. The Thera eruption devastated the Minoan culture of Crete and disrupted trade and interactions in the Aegean region, making way for the Mycenaean culture to emerge as the dominant trading culture of the Middle Sea. (As can be seen in the modern world, hatred and mistrust can be handed down through many generations).

There is very little in the following that has not been expressed in various ways, put forward by many scholars from the earliest stages of Greek archaeology. The aim here is to examine the complex patterns of events expressed in ancient stories and compare them to the patterns that are being revealed by the extensive work of modern archaeologists and other scholars.

As an outsider to the established academic community, it is my fondest hope that the ideas presented herein are considered seriously enough to warrant honest and open criticism because it is the product of more than a quarter of a century of serious research and thought.