Talk:African Atlantis

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A fact from African Atlantis appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 31 January 2008.

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[edit] gaps

1. when was the theory published?
2. how was it received?
3. what specifics did the propoents state?
4. when was the theory abandoned?
5. what dispproved the theory? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.254.200.218 (talk) 14:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

You seem to have in mind something like a mathematical physics hypothesis which gives precise testable predictions of natural phenomena, and so could be suddenly disproved by a specific observational experiment conducted on an exact specified date -- but I really don't think things worked that way in this particular area. The idea took shape because some people wanted to recognize certain civilizational achievements in pre-19th-century sub-Saharan Africa, but felt a priori that blacks on their own were incapable of meaningful sustained civilizational achievements. Some form of the idea was probably maintained as late as the end of the 1970's by the government of unilaterally-independent Rhodesia, but most had abandoned it a good while previous to that, not only because it came to be seen as unpleasantly racist, but because the style of archaeological/anthropological explanation heavily-dependent on hypothetical historical long-distance "diffusions" had fallen out of favor. The main continuing influence is in various fictional worls by Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard which are still read. AnonMoos (talk) 16:20, 2 February 2008 (UTC)