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Leo Frobenius

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113-902: Leo Viktor Frobenius (29 June 1873 – 9 August 1938) was a German self-taught ethnologist and archaeologist and a major figure in German ethnography . He was born in Berlin as the son of a Prussian officer and died in Biganzolo , Lago Maggiore , Piedmont , Italy . He undertook his first expedition to Africa in 1904 to the Kasai district in Congo , formulating the African Atlantis theory during his travels. During World War I , between 1916 and 1917, Leo Frobenius spent almost an entire year in Romania , travelling with

226-515: A book or referenced in a reading list), YouTube , Udemy , Udacity and Khan Academy in particular, have developed as learning centers for many people to actively and freely learn together. Organizations like The Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE) have been formed to publicize and provide guidance for self-directed education. Entrepreneurs like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates are considered influential self-teachers. The first philosophical claim supporting an autodidactic program to

339-496: A gestalt , a manner of creating meaning ( Sinnstiftung ), that was typical of certain economic structures. Thus, the Frankfurt cultural morphologists tried to reconstruct "the" world-view of hunters, early planters, and megalith -builders or sacred kings . This concept of culture as a living organism was continued by his most devoted disciple, Adolf Ellegard Jensen , who applied it to his ethnological studies. It also later influenced

452-554: A learning space , where one uses critical thinking to develop study skills within the broader learning environment until they've reached an academic comfort zone . The term has its roots in the Ancient Greek words αὐτός ( autós , lit.   ' self ' ) and διδακτικός ( didaktikos , lit.   ' teaching ' ). The related term didacticism defines an artistic philosophy of education . Various terms are used to describe self-education. One such

565-536: A political state starts to implement restrictions on the profession, there are issues related to the rights of established self-taught architects. In most countries the legislation includes a grandfather clause , authorising established self-taught architects to continue practicing. In the UK, the legislation allowed self-trained architects with two years of experience to register. In France, it allowed self-trained architects with five years of experience to register. In Belgium,

678-457: A subject -of-study's aboutness through self-study. This educative praxis (process) may involve or complement formal education . Formal education itself may have a hidden curriculum that requires self-study for the uninitiated. Generally, autodidacts are individuals who choose the subject they will study, their studying material, and the studying rhythm and time. Autodidacts may or may not have formal education, and their study may be either

791-716: A "Nordic-Atlantean" or "Aryan-Nordic" master race that spread from Atlantis over the Northern Hemisphere and beyond. The Hyperboreans were contrasted with the Jewish people. Party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg (in The Myth of the Twentieth Century , 1930) and SS-leader Heinrich Himmler made it part of the official doctrine. The idea was followed up by the adherents of Esoteric Nazism such as Julius Evola (1934) and, more recently, Miguel Serrano (1978). The idea of Atlantis as

904-561: A clause, and many established and competent practitioners were stripped of their professional rights. In the Republic of Ireland, a group named " Architects' Alliance of Ireland " is defending the interests of long-established self-trained architects who were deprived of their rights to practice as per Part 3 of the Irish Building Control Act 2007. Theoretical research such as Architecture of Change, Sustainability and Humanity in

1017-581: A complement or an alternative to formal education. Many notable contributions have been made by autodidacts. The self-learning curriculum is infinite. One may seek out alternative pathways in education and use these to gain competency ; self-study may meet some prerequisite-curricula criteria for experiential education or apprenticeship . Self-education techniques used in self-study can include reading educational textbooks , watching educational videos and listening to educational audio recordings , or by visiting infoshops . One uses some space as

1130-449: A consequence, Atlantis has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations and continues to inspire contemporary fiction, from comic books to films. While present-day philologists and classicists agree on the story's fictional nature, there is still debate on what served as its inspiration. Plato is known to have freely borrowed some of his allegories and metaphors from older traditions, as he did with

1243-406: A given area. Furthermore, massive open online courses (MOOCs) make autodidacticism easier and thus more common. A 2016 Stack Overflow poll reported that due to the rise of autodidacticism, 69.1% of software developers appear to be self-taught. Some notable autodidacts can be broadly grouped in the following interdisciplinary areas: Most governments have compulsory education that may deny

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1356-484: A given skill or about a given topic, supporting one another by pooling resources, materials, and knowledge. Secular and modern societies have given foundations for new systems of education and new kinds of autodidacts. As Internet access has become more widespread the World Wide Web (explored using search engines such as Google ) in general, and websites such as Misplaced Pages (including parts of it that were included in

1469-582: A mystical mediation and communion with God. The hero rises from his initial state of tabula rasa to a mystical or direct experience of God after passing through the necessary natural experiences. The focal point of the story is that human reason, unaided by society and its conventions or by religion, can achieve scientific knowledge, preparing the way to the mystical or highest form of human knowledge. Commonly translated as "The Self-Taught Philosopher" or "The Improvement of Human Reason", Ibn-Tufayl's story Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan inspired debates about autodidacticism in

1582-527: A number of parallels between the physical organisation and fortifications of Syracuse and Plato's description of Atlantis. Gunnar Rudberg was the first who elaborated upon the idea that Plato's attempt to realize his political ideas in the city of Syracuse could have heavily inspired the Atlantis account. Some ancient writers viewed Atlantis as fictional or metaphorical myth; others believed it to be real. Aristotle believed that Plato, his teacher, had invented

1695-580: A possible connection with Plato's island. John V. Luce notes that when Plato writes about the genealogy of Atlantis's kings, he writes in the same style as Hellanicus, suggesting a similarity between a fragment of Hellanicus's work and an account in the Critias . Rodney Castleden suggests that Plato may have borrowed his title from Hellanicus, who may have based his work on an earlier work about Atlantis. Castleden has pointed out that Plato wrote of Atlantis in 359 BC, when he returned to Athens from Sicily. He notes

1808-432: A process outside conscious control. To interact with the environment, a framework has been identified to determine the components of any learning system: a reward function, incremental action value functions and action selection methods. Rewards work best in motivating learning when they are specifically chosen on an individual student basis. New knowledge must be incorporated into previously existing information as its value

1921-612: A range of historical fields from classical Islamic philosophy through Renaissance humanism and the European Enlightenment. In his book Reading Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan: a Cross-Cultural History of Autodidacticism, Avner Ben-Zaken showed how the text traveled from late medieval Andalusia to early modern Europe and demonstrated the intricate ways in which autodidacticism was contested in and adapted to diverse cultural settings. Autodidacticism apparently intertwined with struggles over Sufism in twelfth-century Marrakesh; controversies about

2034-423: A self-directed learning experience. Several studies show these programs function most effectively when the "teacher" or facilitator is a full owner of virtual space to encourage a broad range of experiences to come together in an online format. This allows self-directed learning to encompass both a chosen path of information inquiry, self-regulation methods and reflective discussion among experts as well as novices in

2147-469: A story which exemplifies such a society. Critias mentions a tale he considered to be historical, that would make the perfect example, and he then follows by describing Atlantis as is recorded in the Critias . In his account, ancient Athens seems to represent the "perfect society" and Atlantis its opponent, representing the very antithesis of the "perfect" traits described in the Republic . According to Critias,

2260-476: A system where working is also learning, where self-education is associated with creativity and productivity within a working environment. While he was primarily interested in naval architecture , William Francis Gibbs learned his profession through his own study of battleships and ocean liners . Through his life he could be seen examining and changing the designs of ships that were already built, that is, until he started his firm Gibbs and Cox . Openness

2373-605: A technologically sophisticated, more advanced culture . Donnelly drew parallels between creation stories in the Old and New Worlds, attributing the connections to Atlantis, where he believed the Biblical Garden of Eden existed. As implied by the title of his book, he also believed that Atlantis was destroyed by the Great Flood mentioned in the Bible. Donnelly is credited as the "father of

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2486-637: A theme that Bacon discussed in The New Atlantis ( c.  1623 ). A character in the narrative gives a history of Atlantis that is similar to Plato's and places Atlantis in America. People had begun believing that the Mayan and Aztec ruins could possibly be the remnants of Atlantis. Much speculation began as to the origins of the Maya , which led to a variety of narratives and publications that tried to rationalize

2599-450: A time your State stayed the course of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot. For the ocean there was at that time navigable; for in front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, 'the pillars of Heracles ,' there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together; and it

2712-651: A word it is evident that all of them borrow from Moses, and publish his statements as their own. Aside from Plato's original account, modern interpretations regarding Atlantis are an amalgamation of diverse, speculative movements that began in the sixteenth century, when scholars began to identify Atlantis with the New World . Francisco Lopez de Gomara was the first to state that Plato was referring to America, as did Francis Bacon and Alexander von Humboldt ; Janus Joannes Bircherod said in 1663 orbe novo non-novo ("the New World

2825-463: Is heutagogy , coined in 2000 by Stewart Hase and Chris Kenyon of Southern Cross University in Australia; others are self-directed learning and self-determined learning . In the heutagogy paradigm, a learner should be at the centre of their own learning. A truly self-determined learning approach also sees the heutagogic learner exploring different approaches to knowledge in order to learn; there

2938-472: Is an element of experimentation underpinned by a personal curiosity. Andragogy "strive[s] for autonomy and self-direction in learning", while Heutagogy "identif[ies] the potential to learn from novel experiences as a matter of course [...] manage their own learning". Ubuntugogy is a type of cosmopolitanism that has a collectivist ethics of awareness concerning the African diaspora . Autodidacticism

3051-463: Is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island. The logographer Hellanicus of Lesbos wrote an earlier work entitled Atlantis , of which only a few fragments survive. Hellanicus' work appears to have been a genealogical one concerning the daughters of Atlas (Ἀτλαντὶς in Greek means "of Atlas"), but some authors have suggested

3164-841: Is not new"). Athanasius Kircher accepted Plato's account as literally true, describing Atlantis as a small continent in the Atlantic Ocean. Contemporary perceptions of Atlantis share roots with Mayanism , which can be traced to the beginning of the Modern Age , when European imaginations were fueled by their initial encounters with the indigenous peoples of the Americas. From this era sprang apocalyptic and utopian visions that would inspire many subsequent generations of theorists. Most of these interpretations are considered pseudohistory , pseudoscience , or pseudoarchaeology , as they have presented their works as academic or scientific , but lack

3277-453: Is sometimes a complement of modern formal education. As a complement to formal education, students would be encouraged to do more independent work. The Industrial Revolution created a new situation for self-directed learners. Before the twentieth century, only a small minority of people received an advanced academic education. As stated by Joseph Whitworth in his influential report on industry dated from 1853, literacy rates were higher in

3390-656: Is the largest predictor of self-directed learning out of the Big Five personality traits , though, in a study, personality only explained 10% of the variance in self-directed learning. The role of self-directed learning continues to be investigated in learning approaches, along with other important goals of education, such as content knowledge, epistemic practices and collaboration. As colleges and universities offer distance learning degree programs and secondary schools provide cyber school options for K–12 students, technology provides numerous resources that enable individuals to have

3503-559: Is to be assessed. Ultimately, these scaffolding techniques, as described by Vygotsky (1978) and problem solving methods are a result of dynamic decision making. In his book Deschooling Society , philosopher Ivan Illich strongly criticized 20th-century educational culture and the institutionalization of knowledge and learning - arguing that institutional schooling as such is an irretrievably flawed model of education - advocating instead ad-hoc co-operative networks through which autodidacts could find others interested in teaching themselves

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3616-499: The Republic , the Atlantis story is meant to bear witness to the superiority of his concept of a state. Despite its minor importance in Plato's work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. The allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up in utopian works of several Renaissance writers, such as Francis Bacon 's New Atlantis and Thomas More 's Utopia . On

3729-630: The German Army for scientific purposes. His team performed archaeological and ethnographic studies in the country, as well as documenting the day-to-day life of the ethnically diverse inmates of the Slobozia prisoner camp. Numerous photographic and drawing evidences of this period exist in the image archive of the Frobenius Institute . Until 1918 he travelled in the western and central Sudan , and in northern and northeastern Africa. In 1920 he founded

3842-566: The Greek and Mayan languages , which produced a narrative of the destruction of Atlantis. The 1882 publication of Atlantis: the Antediluvian World by Ignatius L. Donnelly stimulated much popular interest in Atlantis. He was greatly inspired by early works in Mayanism , and like them, attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from Atlantis, which he saw as

3955-568: The Hellenic deities of old divided the land so that each deity might have their own lot; Poseidon was appropriately, and to his liking, bequeathed the island of Atlantis. The island was larger than Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined, but it was later sunk by an earthquake and became an impassable mud shoal, inhibiting travel to any part of the ocean. Plato asserted that the Egyptians described Atlantis as an island consisting mostly of mountains in

4068-673: The Institute for Cultural Morphology in Munich . Frobenius taught at the University of Frankfurt . In 1925, the city acquired his collection of about 4700 prehistorical African stone paintings, kept at the University's institute of ethnology, which was named the Frobenius Institute in his honour in 1946. In 1932 he became honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt, and in 1935 director of

4181-568: The Maya peoples had descended from the Toltecs , people he believed were the surviving population of the racially superior civilization of Atlantis. His work combined with the skillful, romantic illustrations of Jean Frederic Waldeck , which visually alluded to Egypt and other aspects of the Old World , created an authoritative fantasy that excited much interest in the connections between worlds. Inspired by Brasseur de Bourbourg's diffusion theories,

4294-559: The Nazis with a mythological precedent and a pretext for their ideological platform and their subsequent genocide . However, Blavatsky's writings mention that the Atlantean were in fact olive-skinned peoples with Mongoloid traits who were the ancestors of modern Native Americans , Mongolians , and Malayans . The idea that the Atlanteans were Hyperborean , Nordic supermen who originated in

4407-460: The Socratic method in order to discuss contrary positions within the context of a supposition. The Timaeus begins with an introduction, followed by an account of the creations and structure of the universe and ancient civilizations. In the introduction, Socrates muses about the perfect society, described in Plato's Republic ( c.  380 BC ), and wonders if he and his guests might recollect

4520-502: The Timaeus gives a description of the geography of Atlantis: That an island of such nature and size once existed is evident from what is said by certain authors who investigated the things around the outer sea. For according to them, there were seven islands in that sea in their time, sacred to Persephone , and also three others of enormous size, one of which was sacred to Hades, another to Ammon , and another one between them to Poseidon,

4633-491: The United States . However, even in the U.S., most children were not completing high school . High school education was necessary to become a teacher. In modern times, a larger percentage of those completing high school also attended college, usually to pursue a professional degree, such as law or medicine, or a divinity degree. Collegiate teaching was based on the classics (Latin, philosophy, ancient history, theology) until

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4746-482: The arrival of the European colonisers , and that it was this white residue that enabled native Africans to exhibit traits of military power, political leadership and... monumental architecture. Frobenius's racist theory stated that historical contact with immigrant whites of Mediterranean origin was responsible for advanced native African culture. He stated that such a civilization must have disappeared long ago, to allow for

4859-516: The hubris of nations. In the story, Atlantis is described as a naval empire that ruled all Western parts of the known world , making it the literary counter-image of the Achaemenid Empire . After an ill-fated attempt to conquer "Ancient Athens," Atlantis falls out of favor with the deities and submerges into the Atlantic Ocean . Since Plato describes Athens as resembling his ideal state in

4972-473: The municipal ethnographic museum . Frobenius was influenced by Richard Andree , and his own teacher Friedrich Ratzel . In 1897/1898 Frobenius defined several "culture circles" ( Kulturkreise ), cultures showing similar traits that have been spread by diffusion or invasion. Bernhard Ankermann was also influential in this area. A meeting of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory

5085-529: The right to education on the basis of discrimination ; state school teachers may unwittingly indoctrinate students into the ideology of the oppressive community and government via a hidden curriculum . Atlantis Atlantis ( Ancient Greek : Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος , romanized :  Atlantìs nêsos , lit.   'island of Atlas ') is a fictional island mentioned in Plato 's works Timaeus and Critias as part of an allegory on

5198-591: The story of Gyges . This led a number of scholars to suggest possible inspiration of Atlantis from Egyptian records of the Thera eruption , the Sea Peoples invasion, or the Trojan War . Others have rejected this chain of tradition as implausible and insist that Plato created an entirely fictional account, drawing loose inspiration from contemporary events such as the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BC or

5311-491: The " Akashic Records " (a term borrowed from Theosophy ), Cayce declared that he was able to give detailed descriptions of the lost continent. He also asserted that Atlantis would "rise" again in the 1960s (sparking much popularity of the myth in that decade) and that there is a " Hall of Records " beneath the Egyptian Sphinx which holds the historical texts of Atlantis. As continental drift became widely accepted during

5424-505: The 1930s, Frobenius claimed that he had found proof of the existence of the lost continent of Atlantis . "African Atlantis" is a hypothetical civilization thought to have once existed in northern Africa, proposed by Leo Frobenius around 1904. Named after the mythical Atlantis , this lost civilization was conceived as the root of African culture and social structure. Frobenius surmised that a white civilization must have existed in Africa prior to

5537-524: The Athenians, that it is neither a mere myth nor unadorned history, although some take it as history and others as myth", he is treating "Crantor's view as mere personal opinion, nothing more; in fact he first quotes and then dismisses it as representing one of the two unacceptable extremes". Cameron also points out that whether he refers to Plato or to Crantor, the statement does not support conclusions such as Otto Muck's "Crantor came to Sais and saw there in

5650-454: The Athenians, while that island itself was submerged by God under the sea. Both Plato and Aristotle praise this philosopher, and Proclus has written a commentary on him. He himself expresses views similar to our own with some modifications, transferring the scene of the events from the east to the west. Moreover he mentions those ten generations as well as that earth which lies beyond the Ocean. And in

5763-403: The Atlantean empire, and as the alliance disintegrated, prevailed alone against the empire, liberating the occupied lands. But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts

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5876-505: The Betsileo in Madagascar shows already a certain progress from the primitive worm to the soul-animal. The Betsileo squeeze the putrefying liquid out of the bodies of the dead at the feet and catch it in a small jar. After two or three months a worm appears in it and is regarded as the spirit of the dead. This jar is then placed in the grave, where the corpse is laid only after the appearance of

5989-465: The Built Environment or older studies such as Vers une Architecture from Le Corbusier describe the practice of architecture as an environment changing with new technologies, sciences, and legislation. All architects must be autodidacts to keep up to date with new standards , regulations , or methods . Self-taught architects such as Eileen Gray , Luis Barragán , and many others, created

6102-422: The Egyptians this story about the Athenians and Atlanteans, so as to make them say that the Athenians really once lived according to that system. The next sentence is often translated "Crantor adds, that this is testified by the prophets of the Egyptians, who assert that these particulars [which are narrated by Plato] are written on pillars which are still preserved." But in the original, the sentence starts not with

6215-514: The Fanany. A bamboo rod connects the jar with the fresh air (corresponding to the " soulholes" of Northern stone graves). After six to eight months (corresponding possibly to the embryonic period) the Fanany (so the Betsileo believe) then appears in daylight in the form of a lizard. The relatives of the dead receive it with great celebrations and then push it back down the rod in the hope that this ancestral ghost will prosper exceedingly down below and become

6328-532: The Mediterranean, lending credence to many details in Plato's discussion. The fourth-century historian Ammianus Marcellinus , relying on a lost work by Timagenes , a historian writing in the first century BC, writes that the Druids of Gaul said that part of the inhabitants of Gaul had migrated there from distant islands. Some have understood Ammianus's testimony as a claim that at the time of Atlantis's sinking into

6441-580: The Northern Atlantic or even in the far North, was popular in the German ariosophic movement around 1900, propagated by Guido von List and others. It gave its name to the Thule Gesellschaft , an antisemite Münich lodge, which preceded the German Nazi Party (see Thule ). The scholars Karl Georg Zschaetzsch  [ de ] (1920) and Herman Wirth (1928) were the first to speak of

6554-462: The United States began to increase sharply in the early twentieth century. This phenomenon was seemingly related to increasing mechanization displacing child labor . The automated glass bottle-making machine is said to have done more for education than child labor laws because boys were no longer needed to assist. However, the number of boys employed in this particular industry was not that large; it

6667-567: The ancient culture of Atlantis. The book was published in 1940. Blavatsky was also inspired by the work of the 18th-century astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly , who had "Orientalized" the Atlantis myth in his mythical continent of Hyperborea , a reference to Greek myths featuring a Northern European region of the same name, home to a giant, godlike race. Dan Edelstein claims that her reshaping of this theory in The Secret Doctrine provided

6780-512: The animal skin has its mythical counterpart in the swallowing of the living by a dangerous animal, out of which he escapes by a miracle. Following an ancient microcosmic symbolism, Anaximander compared the mother's womb with the shark. This conception is later found in religious form as the Jonah myth, and also appears in a cosmological adaptation in the whale myths collected in Oceania by Frobenius. Hence,

6893-466: The area. As a form of discovery learning , students in today's classrooms are being provided with more opportunity to "experience and interact" with knowledge, which has its roots in autodidacticism. Successful self-teaching can require self-discipline and reflective capability. Some research suggests that the ability to regulate one's own learning may need to be modeled to some students so that they become active learners, while others learn dynamically via

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7006-408: The central island itself was five stades in diameter [about 0.92 km; 0.57 mi]. In Plato's metaphorical tale, Poseidon fell in love with Cleito, the daughter of Evenor and Leucippe, who bore him five pairs of male twins. The eldest of these, Atlas , was made rightful king of the entire island and the ocean (called the Atlantic Ocean in his honor), and was given the mountain of his birth and

7119-409: The civilization of Atlantis reached its peak between 1,000,000 and 900,000 years ago, but destroyed itself through internal warfare brought about by the dangerous use of psychic and supernatural powers of the inhabitants. Rudolf Steiner , the founder of anthroposophy and Waldorf Schools , along with other well known Theosophists, such as Annie Besant , also wrote of cultural evolution in much

7232-427: The destruction of Helike in 373 BC. The only primary sources for Atlantis are Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias ; all other mentions of the island are based on them. The dialogues claim to quote Solon , who visited Egypt between 590 and 580 BC; they state that he translated Egyptian records of Atlantis. Plato introduced Atlantis in Timaeus , written in 360 BC: For it is related in our records how once upon

7345-639: The discoveries within the context of the Bible and that had undertones of racism in their connections between the Old and New World. The Europeans believed the indigenous people to be inferior and incapable of building that which was now in ruins and by sharing a common history, they insinuated that another race must have been responsible. In the middle and late nineteenth century, several renowned Mesoamerican scholars, starting with Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg , and including Edward Herbert Thompson and Augustus Le Plongeon , formally proposed that Atlantis

7458-460: The double meaning of the king's ritual murder, and the cultural development of soul belief: "Certain African traditions (Frobenius: Erythraa) lead to the assumption that the emphasizing of one or another of the inherent tendencies of the ritual was influenced by the character of the slain king, who in one case may have been feared and in another wanted back again." "The Fanany myth, mentioned below, of

7571-677: The early nineteenth century. There were few if any institutions of higher learning offering studies in engineering or science before 1800. Institutions such as the Royal Society did much to promote scientific learning, including public lectures. In England, there were also itinerant lecturers offering their service, typically for a fee. Prior to the nineteenth century, there were many important inventors working as millwrights or mechanics who, typically, had received an elementary education and served an apprenticeship. Mechanics, instrument makers and surveyors had various mathematics training. James Watt

7684-711: The existence of Atlantis were Strabo and Posidonius . Some have theorized that, before the sixth century BC, the "Pillars of Hercules" may have applied to mountains on either side of the Gulf of Laconia , and also may have been part of the pillar cult of the Aegean. The mountains stood at either side of the southernmost gulf in Greece, the largest in the Peloponnese, and it opens onto the Mediterranean Sea. This would have placed Atlantis in

7797-505: The extent of which was a thousand stadia [200 km; 124 mi]; and the inhabitants of it—they add—preserved the remembrance from their ancestors of the immeasurably large island of Atlantis which had really existed there and which for many ages had reigned over all islands in the Atlantic sea and which itself had like-wise been sacred to Poseidon. Now these things Marcellus has written in his Aethiopica . Marcellus remains unidentified. Other ancient historians and philosophers who believed in

7910-400: The frequent suggestion that the seat of the soul after death (macrocosmic underworld) is in the belly of an animal (fish, dragon). The fact that in these traditions the animals are always those dangerous to man indicates that the animal womb is regarded not only as the scene of a potential rebirth but also as that of a dreaded mortality, and it is this which led to all the cosmic assimilations to

8023-487: The fullest and truest sense, a continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power, which held sway over all the island, and over many other islands also and parts of the continent. The four people appearing in those two dialogues are the politicians Critias and Hermocrates as well as the philosophers Socrates and Timaeus of Locri , although only Critias speaks of Atlantis. In his works Plato makes extensive use of

8136-700: The homeland of the Caucasian race would contradict the beliefs of older Esoteric and Theosophic groups, which taught that the Atlanteans were non-Caucasian brown-skinned peoples. Modern Esoteric groups, including the Theosophic Society, do not consider Atlantean society to have been superior or Utopian—they rather consider it a lower stage of evolution. The clairvoyant Edgar Cayce spoke frequently of Atlantis. During his "life readings", he claimed that many of his subjects were reincarnations of people who had lived there. By tapping into their collective consciousness ,

8249-509: The immortal stars." Frobenius also confirmed the role of the moon cult in African cultures, according to Rank: "Bachofen [ Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815-1887)] was the first to point out this connexion in the ancient primitive cultures in his Mutterrecht, but it has since received widespread corroboration from later researchers, in particular Frobenius, who discovered traces of a matriarchal culture in prehistoric Africa (Das unbekannte Afrika, Munich, 1923)." Frobenius' work gave Rank insight into

8362-600: The island of Atalantes [translator's spelling; original: " Ἀτλαντίς "] which was greater than Africa and Asia, as Plato says in the Timaeus, in one day and night was overwhelmed beneath the sea in consequence of an extraordinary earthquake and inundation and suddenly disappeared, becoming sea, not indeed navigable, but full of gulfs and eddies. The theologian Joseph Barber Lightfoot ( Apostolic Fathers , 1885, II, p. 84) noted on this passage: "Clement may possibly be referring to some known, but hardly accessible land, lying without

8475-469: The island of Atlantis on the authority of Solon is not a figment." The term " utopia " (from "no place") was coined by Sir Thomas More in his sixteenth-century work of fiction Utopia . Inspired by Plato 's Atlantis and travelers' accounts of the Americas , More described an imaginary land set in the New World . His idealistic vision established a connection between the Americas and utopian societies,

8588-487: The island to teach philosophy. The philosopher Crantor , a student of Plato's student Xenocrates , is cited often as an example of a writer who thought the story to be historical fact. His work, a commentary on Timaeus , is lost, but Proclus , a Neoplatonist of the fifth century AD, reports on it. The passage in question has been represented in the modern literature either as claiming that Crantor visited Egypt, had conversations with priests, and saw hieroglyphs confirming

8701-468: The law allowed experienced self-trained architects in practice to register. In Italy, it allowed self-trained architects with 10 years of experience to register. In The Netherlands, the " wet op de architectentitel van 7 juli 1987 " along with additional procedures, allowed architects with 10 years of experience and architects aged 40 years old or over, with 5 years of experience, to access the register. However, other sovereign states chose to omit such

8814-461: The legitimate guardians of so much loveliness," Soyinka called such sentiments "a direct invitation to a free-for-all race for dispossession, justified on the grounds of the keeper's unworthiness." Otto Rank relied on Frobenius' reports of the Fanany burial in Madagascar to develop his idea of macrocosm and microcosm in his book Art and Artist ( Kunst und Künstler [1932]) "Certainly the idea of

8927-428: The marrow of their bones"( Discourse on Colonialism ), instead of the degrading vision encouraged by colonial propaganda. On the other hand, Wole Soyinka , in his 1986 Nobel Lecture, criticized Frobenius for his "schizophrenic" view comparing Yoruba art and artists. Quoting Frobenius's statement that "I was moved to silent melancholy at the thought that this assembly of degenerate and feeble-minded posterity should be

9040-617: The moats, and were covered with brass , tin , and the precious metal orichalcum , respectively. According to Critias, 9,000 years before his lifetime a war took place between those outside the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar and those who dwelt within them. The Atlanteans had conquered the parts of Libya within the Pillars of Hercules, as far as Egypt, and the European continent as far as Tyrrhenia , and had subjected its people to slavery. The Athenians led an alliance of resistors against

9153-407: The moon-cult (compare mooncalf ) and belongs therefore to the maternal culture-stage, at which the rebirth idea also made use of maternal animal symbols, the larger mammals being chosen. Yet the "mother's womb symbolism" denotes more than the mere repetition of a person's own birth: it stands for the overcoming of human mortality by assimilation to the moon's immortality. This sewing-up of the dead in

9266-442: The mountain, making a route to the rest of the island. They dug a great canal to the sea, and alongside the bridges carved tunnels into the rings of rock so that ships could pass into the city around the mountain; they carved docks from the rock walls of the moats. Every passage to the city was guarded by gates and towers, and a wall surrounded each ring of the city. The walls were constructed of red, white, and black rock, quarried from

9379-425: The myth of the end of the world is in itself only a formal expression of the principle of rebirth." Autodidacticism Autodidacticism (also autodidactism ) or self-education (also self-learning , self-study and self-teaching ) is the practice of education without the guidance of schoolmasters (i.e., teachers , professors , institutions ). Autodidacts are self-taught humans who learn

9492-424: The name Crantor but with the ambiguous He ; whether this referred to Crantor or to Plato is the subject of considerable debate. Proponents of both Atlantis as a metaphorical myth and Atlantis as history have argued that the pronoun refers to Crantor. Alan Cameron argues that the pronoun should be interpreted as referring to Plato, and that, when Proclus writes that "we must bear in mind concerning this whole feat of

9605-546: The nineteenth century Atlantis revival" and is the reason the myth endures today. He unintentionally promoted an alternative method of inquiry to history and science, and the idea that myths contain hidden information that opens them to "ingenious" interpretation by people who believe they have new or special insight. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky , the founder of the Theosophists , took up Donnelly 's interpretations when she wrote The Secret Doctrine (1888), which she claimed

9718-422: The northern portions and along the shore and encompassing a great plain in an oblong shape in the south "extending in one direction three thousand stadia [about 555 km; 345 mi], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about 370 km; 230 mi]." Fifty stadia [9 km; 6 mi] from the coast was a mountain that was low on all sides ... broke it off all round about ...

9831-461: The other hand, nineteenth-century amateur scholars misinterpreted Plato's narrative as historical tradition, most famously Ignatius L. Donnelly in his Atlantis: The Antediluvian World . Plato's vague indications of the time of the events (more than 9,000 years before his time ) and the alleged location of Atlantis ("beyond the Pillars of Hercules ") gave rise to much pseudoscientific speculation. As

9944-451: The perceived dilution of their civilization to the levels that were encountered during the period. Due to his studies in African history , Frobenius remains a figure of renown in many African countries. In particular, he influenced Léopold Sédar Senghor , one of the founders of Négritude , who once claimed that Frobenius had "given Africa back its dignity and identity." Aimé Césaire quoted Frobenius as praising African people "civilized to

10057-466: The philosopher Timaeus also describes this Earth as surrounded by the Ocean, and the Ocean as surrounded by the more remote earth. For he supposes that there is to westward an island, Atlantis, lying out in the Ocean, in the direction of Gadeira (Cadiz), of an enormous magnitude, and relates that the ten kings having procured mercenaries from the nations in this island came from the earth far away, and conquered Europe and Asia, but were afterwards conquered by

10170-425: The pillars of Hercules. But more probably he contemplated some unknown land in the far west beyond the ocean, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato ..." Other early Christian writers wrote about Atlantis, although they had mixed views on whether it once existed or was an untrustworthy myth of pagan origin. Tertullian believed Atlantis was once real and wrote that in the Atlantic Ocean once existed "[the isle] that

10283-453: The powerful protector of the family and, for that matter, the whole village." "Later totemism- the idea of descent from a definite animal species - seems to emerge only from a secondary interpretation of the soul-worm idea or the soul-animal idea in accordance with a 'law of inversion' (Frobenius) peculiar to mythical thought; just as the myth of the Creation as the projection backward in time of

10396-533: The pseudoarchaeologist Augustus Le Plongeon traveled to Mesoamerica and performed some of the first excavations of many famous Mayan ruins. Le Plongeon invented narratives, such as the kingdom of Mu saga, which romantically drew connections to him, his wife Alice, and Egyptian deities Osiris and Isis , as well as to Heinrich Schliemann , who had just discovered the ancient city of Troy from Homer 's epic poetry (that had been described as merely mythical). He also believed that he had found connections between

10509-578: The role of philosophy in pedagogy in fourteenth-century Barcelona ; quarrels concerning astrology in Renaissance Florence in which Pico della Mirandola pleads for autodidacticism against the strong authority of intellectual establishment notions of predestination; and debates pertaining to experimentalism in seventeenth-century Oxford. Pleas for autodidacticism echoed not only within close philosophical discussions; they surfaced in struggles for control between individuals and establishments. In

10622-426: The same vein. Other occultists followed the same lead, at least to the point of tracing the lineage of occult practices back to Atlantis. Among the most famous is Dion Fortune in her Esoteric Orders and Their Work . Drawing on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner and Hanns Hörbiger , Egon Friedell started his book Kulturgeschichte des Altertums  [ de ] , and thus his historical analysis of antiquity, with

10735-556: The sea, its inhabitants fled to western Europe; but Ammianus, in fact, says that "the Drasidae (Druids) recall that a part of the population is indigenous but others also migrated in from islands and lands beyond the Rhine " ( Res Gestae 15.9), an indication that the immigrants came to Gaul from the north (Britain, the Netherlands, or Germany), not from a theorized location in the Atlantic Ocean to

10848-627: The south-west. Instead, the Celts who dwelled along the ocean were reported to venerate twin gods, ( Dioscori ), who appeared to them coming from that ocean. During the early first century, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo wrote about the destruction of Atlantis in his On the Eternity of the World , xxvi. 141, in a longer passage allegedly citing Aristotle's successor Theophrastus : ... And

10961-421: The standards or criteria. The Flemish cartographer and geographer Abraham Ortelius is believed to have been the first person to imagine that the continents were joined before drifting to their present positions. In the 1596 edition of his Thesaurus Geographicus he wrote: "Unless it be a fable, the island of Gadir or Gades [ Cadiz ] will be the remaining part of the island of Atlantis or America, which

11074-660: The story of Black American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams presents a historical account to examine Black American's relationship to literacy during slavery , the Civil War and the first decades of freedom. Many of the personal accounts tell of individuals who have had to teach themselves due to racial discrimination in education. Many successful and influential architects , such as Mies van der Rohe , Frank Lloyd Wright , Violet-Le-Duc , Tadao Ando were self-taught. There are very few countries allowing autodidacticism in architecture today. The practice of architecture or

11187-463: The story, or, as claiming that he learned about them from other visitors to Egypt. Proclus wrote: As for the whole of this account of the Atlanteans, some say that it is unadorned history, such as Crantor, the first commentator on Plato. Crantor also says that Plato's contemporaries used to criticize him jokingly for not being the inventor of his Republic but copying the institutions of the Egyptians. Plato took these critics seriously enough to assign to

11300-714: The study of nature and God was in the philosophical novel Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (Alive son of the Vigilant), whose titular hero is considered the archetypal autodidact. The story is a medieval autodidactic utopia, a philosophical treatise in a literary form, which was written by the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Tufail in the 1160s in Marrakesh . It is a story about a feral boy, an autodidact prodigy who masters nature through instruments and reason, discovers laws of nature by practical exploration and experiments, and gains summum bonum through

11413-655: The surrounding area as his fiefdom . Atlas's twin Gadeirus, or Eumelus in Greek, was given the extremity of the island toward the pillars of Hercules. The other four pairs of twins—Ampheres and Evaemon, Mneseus and Autochthon, Elasippus and Mestor, and Azaes and Diaprepes—were also given "rule over many men, and a large territory." Poseidon carved the mountain where his love dwelt into a palace and enclosed it with three circular moats of increasing width, varying from one to three stadia and separated by rings of land proportional in size. The Atlanteans then built bridges northward from

11526-420: The temple of Neith the column, completely covered with hieroglyphs, on which the history of Atlantis was recorded. Scholars translated it for him, and he testified that their account fully agreed with Plato's account of Atlantis" or J. V. Luce's suggestion that Crantor sent "a special enquiry to Egypt" and that he may simply be referring to Plato's own claims. Another passage from the commentary by Proclus on

11639-501: The theories of Oswald Spengler . His writings with Douglas Fox were a channel through which some African traditional storytelling and epic entered European literature. This applies in particular to Gassire's lute , an epic from West Africa which Frobenius had encountered in Mali . Ezra Pound corresponded with Frobenius from the 1920s, initially on economic topics. The story made its way into Pound's Cantos through this connection. In

11752-400: The use of the title "architect", are now protected in most countries . Self-taught architects have generally studied and qualified in other fields such as engineering or arts and crafts . Jean Prouvé was first a structural engineer. Le Corbusier had an academic qualification in decorative arts. Tadao Ando started his career as a draftsman, and Eileen Gray studied fine arts . When

11865-468: The womb as an animal has been widespread among different races of all ages, and it 'furnishes an explanation of (for instance) the second burial custom discovered by Frobenius along with the Fanany burial in South Africa. This consisted in placing the dead king's body in an artificially emptied bull's skin in such a manner that the appearance of life was achieved. This bull-rite was undoubtedly connected with

11978-567: Was a surveyor and instrument maker and is described as being "largely self-educated". Watt, like some other autodidacts of the time, became a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Lunar Society . In the eighteenth century these societies often gave public lectures and were instrumental in teaching chemistry and other sciences with industrial applications which were neglected by traditional universities. Academies also arose to provide scientific and technical training. Years of schooling in

12091-427: Was equal in size to Libya or Asia" referring to Plato's geographical description of Atlantis. The early Christian apologist writer Arnobius also believed Atlantis once existed, but blamed its destruction on pagans. Cosmas Indicopleustes in the sixth century wrote of Atlantis in his Christian Topography in an attempt to prove his theory that the world was flat and surrounded by water: ... In like manner

12204-666: Was held on November 19, 1904, which was to become historical. On this occasion Fritz Graebner read a paper on "Cultural cycles and cultural strata in Oceania", and Bernhard Ankermann lectured on "Cultural cycles and cultural strata in Africa". Even today these lectures by two assistants of the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin are frequently considered the beginning of research on cultural history, although in fact Frobenius' book "Der Ursprung der afrikanischen Kulturen" could claim this honour for itself. With his term paideuma , Frobenius wanted to describe

12317-541: Was mechanization in several sectors of industry that displaced child labor toward education. For males in the U.S. born 1886–90, years of school averaged 7.86, while for those born in 1926–30, years of school averaged 11.46. One of the most recent trends in education is that the classroom environment should cater towards students' individual needs, goals, and interests. This model adopts the idea of inquiry-based learning where students are presented with scenarios to identify their own research, questions and knowledge regarding

12430-490: Was not sunk (as Plato reports in the Timaeus ) so much as torn away from Europe and Africa by earthquakes and flood... The traces of the ruptures are shown by the projections of Europe and Africa and the indentations of America in the parts of the coasts of these three said lands that face each other to anyone who, using a map of the world, carefully considered them. So that anyone may say with Strabo in Book 2, that what Plato says of

12543-461: Was originally dictated in Atlantis. She maintained that the Atlanteans were cultural heroes (contrary to Plato , who describes them mainly as a military threat). She believed in a form of racial evolution (as opposed to primate evolution). In her process of evolution the Atlanteans were the fourth " root race ", which were succeeded by the fifth, the " Aryan race ", which she identified with the modern human race. In her book, Blavatsky reported that

12656-399: Was possible for the travelers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean. For all that we have here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, is evidently a haven having a narrow entrance; but that yonder is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in

12769-414: Was somehow related to Mayan and Aztec culture. The French scholar Brasseur de Bourbourg traveled extensively through Mesoamerica in the mid-1800s, and was renowned for his translations of Mayan texts, most notably the sacred book Popol Vuh , as well as a comprehensive history of the region. Soon after these publications, however, Brasseur de Bourbourg lost his academic credibility, due to his claim that

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