>>32564
>The god Ea (whose Sumerian equivalent was Enki) is one of the three most powerful gods in the Mesopotamian pantheon, along with Anu and Enlil. He resides in the ocean underneath the earth called the abzu (Akkadian apsû), which was an important place in Mesopotamian cosmic geography.
http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/enki/
>When Enlil was a young god, he was banished from Dilmun, the home of the gods, to the Underworld, for raping his future consort, the young grain goddess Ninlil.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Enlil
>Anu was described as the father of the 50 "great gods," as the god of heaven, lord of constellations, king of gods, and the father of spirits and demons.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Anu
The similarity between the Sumerian and Greek trinities is pretty obvious…
>And if the myth of Atlantis wasn't Plato's invention, why do all mentions of it stem from his work?
They don't, that's just a popular misconception. Check this out:
http://www.atlantisquest.com/Timeline.html
Atlantis was talked about centuries before Plato, it just had slightly different names or it wasn't referenced to by name. The oldest known account is 6,000 years old, in other words, as old as writing itself.
>As for Atlantis being the primordial civilization from which all others derived (something that Plato doesn't even hint at), that's even less believable. Did all those peoples just forget about their cradle?
No, which is why so many cultures around the world have a flood myth, but the memory has faded and become distorted after so many generations. Keep in mind that we're talking about a story that's 116 centuries old. It's a miracle that it has even survived this long. Ignatius Donnelly spent almost a hundred pages talking about the traditions of Atlantis in his famous book 'Atlantis, the Antediluvian World'.
"We thus find the sons of Ad at the base of all the most ancient races of men, to wit, the Hebrews, the Arabians, the Chaldeans, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Mexicans, and the Central Americans; testimony that all these races traced their beginning back to a dimly remembered Ad-lantis."
>Why are the oldest civilizations so far from the Atlantic Ocean, deeply rooted in the prehistoric valleys of great rivers?
You answered your own question. In ancient times, it was considered a good idea to build a city or village near a river, because it provided easy access to water.
>Atlantis was inhabited by men, not gods, men that were defeated by the noble Athenians.
When the Athenians fought them, the Atlanteans were no longer what they once had been. The first 10 rulers of Atlantis were all sons of Poseidon, they had divine blood flooding through their veins. After many generations however, the divine blood became diluted with human blood, and Atlantis became corrupted and warlike.
>How it was considered when it "still existed" is not something you or anyone would know.
Plato tells us that Atlantis received gifts from many foreign countries, and as far as we know it was the richest, most powerful, most civilised country at the time. Thus the Atlanteans would have been considered gods by the less civilised peoples of the world (even disregarding the fact that its kings and princes were descendants of Poseidon).
>What idea? That would have never crossed the mind of an ancient man, for whom the gods were very much present and world-ruling.
World-ruling, sure, but from afar. The actual physical rulers were human, ruling over other humans, while in a remote past you would have answered directly to a god.