Ancients. The very meaning of this word has been dragged into the Atlantis debate. The argument claims that (i) ’ancient’ means ’of times long past’ (ii) its Latinised form is ’antiants’ (iii) this is linked to ‘atl-antiants’ (iv) in turn this is stretched to mean ‘those that came from Atlantis’.

In reality, the word is derived from a compound of two Latin words ‘ante’ and ‘annus’ that mean ‘before’ and ’year’. It originally had a specific historical meaning of ‘years prior to’ (the fall of the Western Roman Empire).

It is nonsensical comments like this that discredits the efforts of serious Atlantis investigators.