Evidence (or not) for Atlantis and the common origins of Civilization

I was once discussing one of my favorite books "Guns, Germs and Steel" http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/ about how various civilizations happened to have the right ingredients such as tameable animals and cultivatable crops while others did not and that these differences along with geographical differences and boundaries explained pretty much all the differences between the rate of technilogical progress of different civilizations and basically, 'who discovered whom'.

At this point someone launched into a vehement diatribe about Atlantis and how the differences were concious choices of the various dispersed groups from the fall of Atlantis, i.e., Native Americans chose to be more spiritual and less technilogical.

This, of course, led to a discussion about whether Atlantis existed or not, which was met even more vehemently with a list of supposed 'overwhelming' evidence all from one recent author.

Here I will list the 'evidence' and explain why I feel it is not evidence at all.

1. How do you explain the sudden appearence of Egyptian civilization and the sudden appearance of huge pyramids?

This is a misconception based on what people knew of Egyptian civilization back in the 1940s or even earlier.
And oddly enough, people are still using it today. Back in the early days of archeology, and especially Egyptian archeology, all we knew and all we had discovered werer these huge monuments, temples, pyramids without any preceding development. This lead to the misconception that the Egyptian civilization had suddenly appeared out of nothing.
Since then we have discovered all the preceding generations leading up to the great pyramids and grand monuments. It took the Egyptians hundreds and hundreds of years to develop the first pyramid. There is a very long and very steady progression of architectural acheivment without any sudden leaps forward of any kind in the archeological evidence. It took a long time to get to the point where they were able to get to the point of producing the great pyramids of Giza, they did NOT suddenly appear out of nowhere and neither did the Egyptian civilization. It was not suddenly plopped down from some Atlantian refugees or aliens or any other outside 'injection' of inventiveness. This is actually true of all civilizations as long as you take the time to actually investigate thoroughly.

2. How do you explain the similarities of Egyptian and Mesoamerican pyramids?, they MUST have come from a common source, i.e. Atlantis!

A. Egyptian pyramids were built at least 1000 years before Christ and the the Mesoamerican pyramids were built at least 1000 years after Christ. If the idea of pyramid building sprang from the one source civilization, why would they have waited over 2000 years to start building pyramids in the Americas? If they were both from Atlantean refugees, then wouldn't they have sprung up in at least the same millenium???
I mean, I'll give them a few hundred years or so, but 2000+ years? Different cultures, different pyramids, different sources.

B. The structure and function of Egyptian pyramids and Mesoamerican pyramids are very different as well.

C. How else do people of limited technology build something out of stone vertically. You only have one choice: a basic pyramid shape. It's just the nature of the material. The Egyptians learned this over many hundreds of years and countless mistakes. If you try to build to high to steeply with stone, either the structure will fail or the weight will cause it to sink. So any commonality was just nature. From burial mounds to stone mounds to more elaborate stone pyramids. Everyone had to take the same route because they used the same material: stone. If they were truely advanced, they would have used Steel frames or such to build something beyond just stone structures.

3. How do you explain the common mythologies such as that of a seed dying in the ground and coming to life after it is buried?

A. This one is really unbelievable that it would be attributed to some other ancient civilization. The first time any primitive civilization noticed a seed being stuck in the ground and a plant springing up shortly afterwards would have and DID figure this one out. DUH! All civilizations discovered this and thought it to be wonderful, because it is wonderful. It is a wonderful commonality of nature around the world, which is why it is common to all civilizations.

4. There is just so much overwhelming evidence for Atlantis it is just too much to ignore.

Ok, where is that evidence? If you take a look at each individual piece, it doesn't stand up and the 'overwhelming' becomes just a house of cards. The only 'evidence' we truely have of Atlantis is one paragraph in one piece of literature from Homer. That's it. It is never mentioned in any other piece of ancient literature of any culture. One would think if it were the one true source of all the ancient civilizations that they would perhaps make some even oblique reference to it somewhere, maybe just once. But no such reference exists in ANY culture except that SINGLE paragraph from Homer.

My take on it.

New archeological discoveries are almost daily coming to light. We actually know very little about our own ancient past, especially before writing was invented. Some ancient stories were written down after writing was invented. The Bible is a particularly good source as are the ancient Babylonian and other Mesopotamian writings. The story of creation, the great flood, and especially the Tower of Babel are very interesting. It seems to me that modern day people have taken the Tower of Babel idea, mixed it with that one very enticing paragraph about Atlantis and now, more recently ideas about aliens and made it into a modern day myth. The evidence only seems overwhelming because anyone can write anything they want whether it is well founded evidence or pure conjecture. So even though it is all baseless conjecture, after a while the general public thinks that it is actually evidence based on archeological findings. After all, how could so many untruthful, ficitious and baseless writings be wrong?