An A-Z Guide To The Search For Plato's Atlantis

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    NEWS September 2023

    September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we move to Sicily and Malta. The trip is purely vacational. Unfortunately, I am writing this in a dreadful apartment, sitting on a bed, with access to just one useable socket and a small Notebook. Consequently, I possibly will not […]Read More »
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    Joining The Dots

    I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
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Ark of the Covenant

Queen of Sheba *

The Queen of Sheba is one of the few ancient historical figures that has not been linked with Atlantis. Wikipedia refers to her as “a figure first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In the original story, she brings a caravan of valuable gifts for the Israelite King Solomon………..modern historians identify Sheba with the South Arabian kingdom of Saba in present-day Yemen and Ethiopia. The queen’s existence is disputed among historians.”(a)

In Arabia she was known as Bilqis, to the Christians of Ethiopia she was Makeda, while Josephus referred to her as Nicaule.

Nevertheless, she is mentioned from time to time on these pages, particularly regarding her identity and the time of her reign. In the 1950s Immanuel Velikovsky, proposed, in Ages in Chaos [039] that either six centuries were missing from Israel’s history or had six hundred ghost years crept into Egyptian history. One of the keys to his revised chronology was the identification of the Queen of Sheba as the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut.

This caused quite a stir at the time and generated a degree of support for Velikovsky. However, in 1986 John Bimson published a paper, ‘Hatshepsut and the Queen of Sheba’, debunking Velikovsky’s contention, which had the effect of eroding that support. Then in 1997, Damien Mackey re-ignited the controversy with a paper challenging Bimson’s conclusion(f) and so the debate continues(h).

There are a number of 21st-century commentators who still accept Velikovsky’s identification of Hatshepsut as the Queen of Sheba including Emmet Sweeney [1867.25] and Emmet Scott(d), Damien Mackey(f), as well as Ken Griffith & Darrell K. White(e) and, I might add, no lack of opponents either.

Eulalio Eguia jr. offered a different Egyptian identification suggesting Nefertiti instead of Hatshepsut(b). Riaan Booysen went further, not only agreeing with Eguia but proposing that Nefertiti was also Helen of Troy(c)!

Among the Ethiopians, there is a tradition that the Queen of Sheba and Solomon had a child, Menelik, who visited Jerusalem and returned to Ethiopia with the Ark of the Covenant. There is no evidence to support this tale which is thought to have been originally created to legitimize Yukuno Amlak’s rule of the late 13th century AD who had killed the Zagwa king to obtain power.”

(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Sheba

(b) Nefertiti – The Queen of Sheba | PDF | Tutankhamun | Akhenaten (scribd.com) *

(c) Thera and the Exodus – Graham Hancock Official Website

(d) Hatshepsut: Queen of Sheba: Scott, Emmet: 9780875869452: Amazon.com: Books (I suspect that Emmet Sweeney, a Scot, and Emmet Scott are the same person and share the same publisher)

(e) (99+) (PDF) Hatshepsut and the Queen of Sheba A Chronological Proof | Kenneth Griffith and Darrell K White – Academia.edu 

 (f) (83) Solomon and Sheba | Damien Mackey – Academia.edu

Sirius *

Sirius is a binary star in the constellation Canis Major and the brightest star in the night sky and is expected to remain so for the next 210,000 years. In relative terms, it is a near neighbour of ours.

One wild theory speculates that Sirius and our Sun had once been binary partners(i).

Many people of my vintage were first made aware of Sirius when Robert Temple published his bestselling The Sirius Mystery [735]. In which he supported the idea of extraterrestrial influence on human cultural development, citing as evidence, the ‘knowledge’ of the Dogon people regarding the Sirius star system before verification by modern astronomy. This idea has now come under serious attack with the claim that Sirius C does not even exist(a). The controversy is still raging as the Bad Archaeology website demonstrates(b) as well as an article from the Armagh Planetarium website(c). Jason Colavito has also added a few critical comments regarding the knowledge of the Dogon(j). Colavito also reveals(k) that Arthur M. Young (1905-1995), the helicopter pioneer and Robert Temple’s mentor also believed he had been in contact with extraterrestrials from Sirius who served as the creator gods of Egypt.”

Two decades ago, Laird Scranton wrote in Atlantis Rising magazine(q) that, “the answers to Temple’s mysteries can no longer be reasonably found in the Sirius question itself because the debate has succeeded in casting doubt on so many of Temple’s assertions. However, there are many other fascinating aspects of the Dogon religion and cosmology not entangled in this debate which, due to the continuing glare of the star Sirius, seem to have been overlooked for study. Some of the most promising of these are the Dogon symbols relating to the structure of matter.” and the blub for his book Hidden Meanings [1916] added that The mythology of the Dogon tribe of Mali describes how their one true god Amma created all of the matter of the universe. But the system defined by these tribal myths bears a striking resemblance to the actual scientific structure of matter, starting with the atom and continuing all the way down to the vibrating threads of string theory. Moreover, many of the Dogon words, symbols and rituals used to describe this structure are a close match for those found in the myths of ancient Egypt and in the daily rituals of Judaism.

For the ancient Egyptians Sirius, known to them as Sothis, had great importance, as the heliacal rising of Sirius coincided with the summer solstice which heralded the next flooding of the Nile. They also associated Sirius with the goddess Isis. John deSalvo claims in his list of old pyramid theories(s) that Several Arabian writers have seen a mystic correlation between the design of the pyramid and the revolutions of Sirius, the judge-god of the dead.”

A 2008 report from the University of Hamburg said scientists led by Helmut Ziegert had found remains of a 10th-century-B.C. palace at Axum-Dungur (Ethiopia) under the palace of a later Christian king. There was evidence the early palace had been torn down and realigned to the path of the star Sirius.”(l)

Additionally, it is also suggested that the earlier structure was the palace of the legendary Queen Of Sheba. Today, Axum is claimed by the Ethiopian Church to be the current home of the Ark of the Covenant, a claim given widespread attention by Graham Hancock some decades ago in The Sign and the Seal.

In the 19th century, Theosophists claimed Sirius as having particular esoteric significance. Blavatsky stated that the star Sirius exerts a mystic and direct influence over the entire living heaven and is linked with every great religion of antiquity.

Alice Bailey sees the Dog Star as the true ‘Great White Lodge’ and believes it to be the home of the ‘Spiritual Hierarchy’. For this reason, she considers Sirius as the ‘star of initiation’.”(m)

Even today, Sirius plays a part in the symbology of Freemasonry, where it is referred to as the ‘Blazing Star’.

Amanda Laoupi has written a five-part paper in which she expands on the significance of Sirius for the Pelasgians, among others(h).

Giulio Magli (1964- ) is an Italian archaeoastronomer with a website in English(d) dedicated to the application of the discipline in Egypt. In 2013, Magli proposed that aspects of the Göbleki Tepe site are related to the recent appearance of Sirius in the night sky around 9300 BC(e). Andrew Collins and Rodney Hale argue against this interpretation(f), which is perhaps understandable as they support a linkage with the Cygnus constellation.

A 2004 paper by Magli, on precessional effects in ancient astronomy(g), has recently been applied by Lenie Reedijk to her contention that the Maltese temples were oriented to Sirius[1631].

In 2012, E. A. James Swagger published The Newgrange Sirius Mystery [1683] in which he endeavoured to link Ireland’s most important megalithic site with both an early understanding of precession and the symbology of the Dogon.

Further to the east, in Armenia, Sirius was closely studied by the people of Metsamor at what is claimed as one of the oldest observatories in the world. In a series of six articles(o) by Rick Ney, Metsamor and the ancient site of Karahundj, sometimes dubbed ‘Armenia’s Stonehenge’, whose 204 stones stand near the town of Sissian are fully discussed. The Trip Advisor website(n) offers several enticing images.

Going from the serious to the silly, I note that the late Flying Eagle (1920-2007) and his partner Whispering Wind specified the planet Xylanthia(f) in the Sirius star system as the original home of a visitor who fell in love with an earthling and later became known as Poseidon!

The Wessex Research Group offer more nonsense in a paper by Murray Bruce in which the author endeavours to convince us that there were ancient astronauts, who originally came to Earth from Sirius and are remembered in our mythologies as the Gods, the Old Ones etc. Bruce suggests that these visitors probably inspired the description of the Sumerian god Oannes!(r)

The Sirius Research institute is concerned with the study of binary stars, precession and, of course, Sirius(p).

(a) Kein dritter Stern im Sirius-System: Astronomen finden keinen Beleg für Dogon-Mythologie | Mysteria3000 (Prä Astronautik, PaläoSETI, Atlantis-Forschung) (archive.org) 

(b) Did the Dogon of Mali know about Sirius B? (archive.org) 

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20190212112317/https://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/the-sirius-mystery.html/

(d) https://web.archive.org/web/20180903021842/https://archaeoastronomy-egypt.com/?page=introduction

(e) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253646486_Sirius_and_the_project_of_the_megalithic_enclosures_at_Gobekli_Tepe

(f) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Gobekli_Sirius.htm

(g) https://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0407/0407108.pdf

(h)  https://www.q-mag.org/amanda-laoupi-the-pelasgian-spiritual-substratum-of-the-bronze-age-mediterranean-and-circum-pontic-world-1.html

(i) https://humanoriginproject.com/sirius-mythology-two-sun-solar-system/

(j) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-ancient-aliens-s14e04-the-stat-gods-of-Sirius

(k) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/robert-temple.html

(l) https://www.wnd.com/2008/05/63998/

(m) https://vigilantcitizen.com/hidden-knowledge/connection-between-sirius-and-human-history/

(n) https://www.tripadvisor.ie/Attraction_Review-g1055321-d1036334-Reviews-Karahundj_Armenia_s_Stonehenge-Sisian_Syunik_Province.html

(o) Astrology on the Web: Armenia’s Stonehenge (archive.org)  (to view all six papers, just change the number in the URL) *

(p) Binary Research Institute 

(q) Atlantis Rising magazine  #29  https://archive.org/details/Atlantis_Rising_29/page/n3/mode/2up

(r) http://www.wessexresearchgroup.org/download/pdf_are_our_roots_in_sirius.pdf

(s) THEORIES ON WHY THE GREAT PYRAMID WAS BUILT (gizapyramid.com) 

Natawidjaja, Danny Hilman *

Danny Hilman Natawidjaja is an Indonesian geologist who is no stranger danny-hilman-natawidjajato media interest, as he is regularly wheeled out for comment after the all-too-frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in his country.

In 2013 he garnered further attention with two dramatic claims. The first was a declaration that the huge megalithic site at Gunung Padang on Java was also home to the oldest pyramid in the world(a). Not content with that, he has also stated that the same site is evidence for Atlantis in Indonesia(b). Apart from the media attention he also received support from the Indonesian president. Graham Hancock and Robert Schoch have both visited the site along with Danny Hilman(c).

National pride would appear to drive the current claims for the great antiquity of Gunung Padang, where Göbekli Tepe, in Turkey, is seen to have garnered the lion’s share of attention as the world’s oldest verified megalithic site(g).

Natawidjaja published his Atlantis theory in a Kindle ebook, Plato Never Lied: Atlantis Is in Indonesia[961]. To be candid, I found the Atlantis in Indonesia theory[1093] by Dhani Irwanto to be far superior.

In his review of Hancock’s Magicians of the Gods, Jason Colavito refers to  Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, the Indonesian geologist who declared the site of Gunung Padang on Sumatra to be ten or twenty thousand years old, and thus making Indonesia the cradle of civilization. Natawidjaja is a true believer in fringe history and suspects that Plato was speaking of Gunung Padang when writing of Atlantis. His opinions are noteworthy only because the previous government of Indonesia gave him the money and resources to excavate the site in search of proof of Indonesian primacy in history before the current government shut down the investigation for becoming an international laughingstock. Like Semir Osmanogich in Bosnia, Natawidjaja sees artificial layers of construction in the deepest layers of what his colleagues in Indonesia and archaeologists around the world believe to be a natural hill crowned with later ruins.”(f)

November 2016 saw a further incredible claim coming from Natawidjaja, namely that a 2500-year-old ‘electrical device’ had been found on Gunung Padang, which is claimed to be some form of a capacitor and has been compared with the design of the biblical Ark of the Covenant. The report(d) that I’ve seen does not include any images, but until more concrete information is available, my scepticism is on ‘red alert’.

In May 2017, Rebecca Bradley, in an open letter, wrote(e) an extensive attack on Natawidjaja’s Gunung Padang claims.

Wikipedia has also noted criticism coming from local scientists(i)  “Thirty-four Indonesian scientists signed a petition questioning the motives and methods of the Hilman-Arif team. Vulcanologist Sutikno Bronto states that the site is the neck of an ancient volcano and not a man-made pyramid. An archaeologist who did not wish to be named due to the involvement of the country’s president who had set up a task force said that: ‘In archaeology, we usually find the ‘culture’ first … Then, after we find out the artefact’s age we’ll seek out historical references to any civilisation which existed around that period. Only then will we be able to explain the artefact historically. In this case, they ‘found’ something, carbon-dated it, then it looks like they created a civilisation around the period to explain their finding.'” (h)

(a) https://beforeitsnews.com/beyond-science/2013/08/indonesian-pyramid-is-20000-years-old-claims-archaeologist-discovery-may-rewrite-history-2442948.html

(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20140306231657/https://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2013/05/indonesian-geologist-says-region-perfect

(c)  Gunung Padang, “The Mountain Of Light”, West Java, Indonesia. | Shift Frequency (archive.org) 

(d) https://web.archive.org/web/20170811003647/https://mysteriousearth.net/2016/05/11/amazing-2500-year-old-electrical-device-found-at-gunung-padang/

(e) https://www.skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2017/05/14/gunung-padang-open-letter-danny/

(f) Magicians of the Gods Review – JASON COLAVITO 

(g) https://www.asiangeo.com/2019/heritage/the-pyramid-of-gunung-padang/ (link broken) *

(h) Digging for the truth at controversial megalithic site (smh.com.au) 

(i) Gunung Padang Megalithic Site – Wikipedia 

Aden

Yemen-mapAden was formerly a British possession and is now part of war-torn Yemen. Stan Deyo, author of The Vindicator Scrolls[784], in 1989 located Atlantis in Aden. A Dutch amateur Egyptologist, Alexander Muster, also promotes a similar idea through a variety of Internet forums. A former French police chief, Jacques Hébert, has proposed that the Yemeni island of Socotra was part of the Atlantean civilisation.

>Yemen’s long history was highlighted just before the end of the last century, when a group of megaliths were discovered, by chance, on the coastal plain of western Yemen(c).<

In 2008, Gary Vey and John McGovern claimed to have evidence that the Ark of the Covenant had been buried in Yemen (the ancient kingdom of Saba)(b).

>Immanuel Velikovsky placed the Garden of Eden in Aden(d).<

A recent Russian website(a) also places Atlantis in the Gulf of Aden opposite the legendary land of Punt in what is now Somalia.

(a) https://sites.google.com/view/atlantis-aden/main

(b) Proto-Canaanite / First Tongue / Ark of the Covenant (viewzone.com)

>(c) https://archive.archaeology.org/online/news/yemen.html

(a) http://www.varchive.org/ce/baalbek/eden.htm

Joseph, Frank *

Frank Joseph (1944- ) or more correctly Francis Joseph Collin, was born in Chicago. His father was Max Simon Cohen, who is said to have spent time in Dachau concentration camp. Incredibly, in the late seventies, Frank Joseph was the leader of the American Nazi Party. In 1981, Joseph was arrested and convicted of molesting young boys. He was released after serving three of a seven-year sentence (a)(b).

Since his release, he has established himself as an author, writing a Frank Josephnumber of books on Atlantis and Diffusionism[102108]. In them, he has emphasised at length the enormous quantities of copper mined in ancient times in North America that he maintains were brought to Europe to feed the demand there, for bronze making. He maintains that this is clear evidence of trading contacts between the Old and New Worlds in prehistoric times. Among his more unusual claims are that Noah was an Atlantean and that the Trojan War was just part of the conflict with the Sea Peoples.

One of Joseph’s early books, Edgar Cayce’s Atlantis and Lemuria[106], was heavily criticised in some quarters(e) including an accusation of including in the book a ‘heavily retouched’ photo of the underwater Yonaguni site.

In Joseph’s The Destruction of Atlantis, he dates that event to 1198 BC(o) quoting such sources as the Ipuwer Papyrus and temple inscriptions at Medinet Habu.

He then claims that eight years later the Atlanteans re-emerged as the Meshwesh, one of the Sea Peoples, attacked Egypt and were defeated by Ramses III [1535]. The authoritative D’Amato & Salimbeti have identified the Meshwesh as possibly being a tribe related to the Libyans [1152.8].

The author concurs with others that the catastrophe was triggered by an impact from a comet/asteroid in the region of the Mid Atlantic Ridge. Joseph supports an Atlantis located in the Atlantic of which the Canary Islands and Azores(g) are among its remnants. He draws attention to the fact that The Laws by Plato also refers to the ‘Great Deluge’. In the same book, Joseph returns to his hobbyhorse of the huge amounts of copper that were mined in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in prehistoric times. He is convinced that Atlanteans carried out this massive extraction and transported it to the east to feed the emerging Bronze Age. This book is useful for someone coming to the subject for the first time but it contains little that new and is really just a reworking of existing material.

His next offering, The Atlantis Encyclopedia, was promoted as an encyclopaedia of Atlantis-related references, yet it omits any mention of many of the leading theories and their promoters, which is not what you would expect from such a reference work on the subject. It also suffers from an overabundance of references to Native American mythologies, which at best have only the shakiest connection with Plato’s Atlantis.

Although The Atlantis Encyclopedia was published in 2005, it was only recently (July 2022) that Thorwald C. Franke, in his newsletter #197(r), applied his very sharp scalpel to the contents of the book. Franke points out a number of errors, but reserves his most detailed criticism for Joseph’s entry relating to the ‘Third Reich’. Franke’s conclusion is that Joseph has produced ‘a really bad book’. When Franke’s comments are combined with the many errors that I have listed below, it is obvious that Frank Joseph is a most unreliable source of information regarding Atlantis.

He followed this with Survivors of Atlantis, a sequel to The Destruction of Atlantis, which focuses on four global catastrophes linked to the cyclical return of a comet, that led to the destruction of Atlantis and the subsequent dispersal of its survivors and their influence on the cultures of their adopted homelands. As usual, he returns to the mystery of the Michigan copper mines but covers a wide range of global prehistory speculating on possible links with Atlantis. Unlike its prequel, ‘Survivors’ does not include an index.

For a number of years, Joseph was editor-in-chief of Ancient American magazine(c), owned by Wayne May, a Mormon, whose church has a vested interest in demonstrating the existence of early, advanced pre-Columbian peoples in America. A one-hour lecture given by Joseph in 1997 is available on YouTube(h), in which he outlines a number of very early pre-Columbian contacts between West Africa, particularly Mali and the Americas that led to the giant stone heads being carved by the Olmecs.

In 2008, Joseph published Unearthing Ancient America in which he revisits the pre-Columbian remains of North America. As usual, he denounces orthodox archaeologists as a means to bolster his own extreme ideas. For example “Louisiana’s Poverty Point, the ‘oldest city in North America’, is a dead-ringer for Plato’s description of Atlantis…[108.178]

With his book The Opening of the Ark of the Covenant[670] Joseph moved into slightly different territory, linking the Ark with Atlantis and the Templars. Joseph co-authored this book with Laura Beaudoin who claims to be a descendant of the founder of the Knights Templar in Jerusalem.

Not one to miss an opportunity, the prolific Mr Joseph then jumped on the 2012 bandwagon with the publication of Atlantis and 2012[694]. As the world did not end, Joseph revised this book and republished it as Atlantis and the Coming Ice Age[1074] in 2015. An excerpt is available online(i).

April 2012 saw Joseph as editor of Lost Worlds of Ancient America[824]  which is an anthology of articles describing various pre-Columbian visitors from both east and west. It also includes a suggestion that the Bahamas had a landmass to match Plato’s description of Atlantis. Jason Colavito, a well-known sceptic, has written an extensive and highly critical review(f) of this collection of articles culled from the Ancient American magazine.   While the book has little to do with Atlantis, Colavito’s comments cast doubts on Joseph’s credibility as well as that of the other contributors.

Before Atlantis[1459]  was published by Joseph in 2013, in it he focuses on the ‘aquatic ape theory’(k) and the existence of ‘pre-human cultures’ going back 20 million years. Atlantis plays a minor part in this offering and it is probable that it is only in the title to assist sales! In May 2017, we have a report(l) of pre-human remains dated 7.2 million years ago being discovered in the Balkans. How Joseph can apply the term ‘culture’ to such primitive creatures is hard to understand.

In 2016, Joseph published Our Dolphin Ancestors [1871] in which he reveals that we and dolphins are both descended from the aquatic ape! For good measure, he “explores the ‘connections’ between dolphins and Atlantis and Lemuria.”

Joseph frequently touches on the subject of Lemuria and in 2006 published The Lost Civilisation of Lemuria [107] which was devoted to it. Leaving aside that Joseph equates Lemuria with Mu and that both names are inventions from Philip Sclater and Brasseur de Bourbourg respectively, the advertising blurb for his book tells us that “Joseph painstakingly re-creates a picture of this civilization in which people lived in rare harmony and possessed a sophisticated technology that allowed them to harness the weather, defy gravity, and conduct genetic investigations far beyond what is possible today.” This is reminiscent of some of the b.s.produced by Blavatsky and Cayce, among others.

Joseph then followed ‘Lost Worlds’ with Lost Colonies of Ancient America in 2014[1124], receiving rave reviews on Amazon, while Bradley T. Lepper(j) cites Larry Zimmermann(n), an archaeologist from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, who offered a different view in the July/Oct 2015 edition of American Antiquity.

In 2014, Joseph republished Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds[636] as a paperback and a Kindle book. which is just a recycling of some of his earlier material and adds nothing of value. His reliance on speculation rather than evidence has not diminished. While his conjecture is bad enough, his misquoting of Plato is unforgivable. One example is his claim that Atlantis had 14,400 naval personnel, for 1,200 ships, which would mean that each ship had only a crew of 12! The only ships mentioned by Plato were triremes, which had a crew of 200(m). What Plato actually said (Critias 119a-b) was that in time of war each of the managers of the 60,000 allotments on the plain of Atlantis, had to supply four men for naval duty, which amounts to a total of 240,000 and matches the number of men required for 1200 triremes. This is just one of a number of similar errors in that passage. However, the same book also sets a record for the number of mistakes that Joseph managed to squeeze into a single sentence. At this point, I decided to look back at all my references to Joseph’s work and was shocked to find that he has been consistently guilty of at least sloppy research, if not dishonesty, and for me, must therefore be considered unreliable.

I was recently perusing the Kindle version of Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds and discovered a number of obvious inaccuracies. For example, Joseph refers to G.R.Corli as a French astronomer, whereas in fact his name was Carli and he was born in Capodistria, formerly Italian, but now part of Slovenia (loc.2511). Joseph claims that Carli believed that a fragment of a comet had hit the Earth, when, in fact, he had only postulated that a close encounter with a comet had occurred.

He added a ‘d’ to Edgerton Sykes name (loc. 2543, 3573) and removed the ‘e’ from that of Arthur C. Clarke (loc.2783). In an article in Atlantis Rising magazine #35(p), he retained the ‘d’ in Sykes’ name and described Hanns Hörbiger as a physicist when he was a mining engineer by profession. He also recycled his errors relating to Giovanni Rinaldo Carli mentioned above. Still, on the first page of the article, he claimed that meteorites were not recognised by the scientific establishment when Ignatius Donnelly wrote Ragnarok in 1884, when, according to Smithsonian magazine, meteorites were discussed much earlier, in 1803(q). 

His section on the Atlantean Army and population(loc.312) is full of numerical errors. He has the whole population of Atlantis at over one million, whereas Plato tells us that on their own, the Atlantean armed forces totalled around a million, including 480,000 foot -soldiers, 120,000 horsemen, 160,000 manning the 10,000 heavy chariots and 60,000 light chariots, and 240,000 sailors. From this, Otto Muck extrapolated a total population of between 20 and 40 million for Atlantis. Joseph proposes that the 1,200 Atlantean ships were serviced and manned by 14,400 men (just twelve each). However, the triremes referred to by Plato, each required a crew of 140 rowers!

Joseph ends the book with a Bibliography, but heads it Biography!

This book was clearly not proofread and its research was slipshod. Unfortunately, this does not appear to have been an isolated example. I therefore decided to review all Atlantipedia entries that referred to Frank Joseph.

Amber is not exclusive to the Baltic and can be found in the Americas, Lebanon, Siberia, Australia and Japan. A highly prized blue amber is to be found in the Dominican Republic. Frank Joseph in an effort to support his speculations regarding mythical Electra claims[0636.109] that the Atlantic islands of the Azores, Madeira and the Canaries are one of the two major sources of amber. This is blatantly untrue, as revealed in a comprehensive website(a) by Susie Ward Aber, a mineralogist at Emporia State University, Kansas. Amber sources worldwide are listed, but nothing in the Atlantic. Mr Joseph has, once again, some explaining to do.

However, there is also another trend becoming more obvious, which is that there are an increasing number of instances, particularly on the internet, of the Ark of the Covenant being linked to Atlantis. There is, of course, no evidence ever offered to support such speculation. One of the most recent of these is Opening the Ark of the Covenant, co-authored by the inventive Frank Joseph, where he traces the Ark back to Atlantis. There are probably few people that don’t accept that the Ark had been a real artefact, while many doubt the reality of Atlantis. It is possible that by linking the two, the authors hope to achieve credibility transference from one to the other!

In his Atlantis Encyclopedia, Frank Joseph has suggested[104.33] that Atalya or Atalia was, through time, transformed into Italy, adding that Atalia means ‘Land of Atlas’. This entry has been copied on a number of websites. However, the etymology of ‘Italy’ is not clear, but the most common proposal is that  “Latin Italia may derive from Oscan víteliú, meaning “[land] of young cattle” (from Latin vitulus “calf”, Umbrian vitlu), via Greek transmission (evidenced in the loss of initial digamma). The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes”. In passing, I should mention that Plato tells us that the Atlanteans who controlled southern Italy as far as Tyrrhenia also had a bull cult.

The following excerpt from a paper entitled Atlantis and the Great Pyramid from the July/August 2006 edition of Atlantis Rising magazine. “They (the Egyptians) somehow foresaw some inevitable celestial catastrophe with a potential for extraordinary destructiveness. As the object’s orbit began to noticeably decay, ground observers concluded that an impact with our planet was unavoidable, and began to prepare for the event by constructing a device that would bolster earth’s ionosphere, thereby deflecting the course of the falling object. The pyramid builders erected their geo-transducer because they understood that the earth was periodically endangered by recurring cycles of celestial bombardments. The Great Pyramid was built to guard against future collisions from outer space.”

The Balearic Islands of the Western Mediterranean were not occupied until around 2200 BC. Although the two larger islands of Majorca and Minorca have many megalithic monuments, principally taulas and talayots, they have not, so far, been part of any Atlantis location theory. The only mention that I can find is the unsubstantiated claim by Frank Joseph[0104.66] that the early settlers were invaders from Atlantis.

Frank Joseph erroneously claims[0108.117] that the only known ‘Cerne’ was Cerne Abbas in England, the site of the famous naked giant carved into the chalk. There is certainly no suggestion of any Amazon invasion there and the physique of the giant was certainly never matched by even the most butch Amazon. There is also the island of Cerne off the west coast of Africa and mentioned in the voyage of Hanno. Furthermore, Cerne is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus (iii.54) and is considered by some to be the Tunisian island of Kerkennah. Clearly, there was more than one Cerne known in our ancient past and so, not for the first time, Joseph is blatantly wrong.

Joseph also proposed that copper was the foundation for the wealth of Atlantis. He is convinced that there is evidence of extensive copper mining activities in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula around 1000 BC. He refers to these miners as Atlanteans[0102] and maintains that the extracted copper was brought to the Mediterranean, as he claims that there is no trace of it in North America. Joseph offers no real evidence.

Frank Joseph incorrectly claimed in the July/August 2011 issue of Atlantis Rising magazine that DeCamp “formerly a staunch disbeliever in Atlantis, was later convinced it did indeed exist in south-coastal Iberia.”  No evidence was offered for this wild claim.

Frank Joseph echoed others with the idea that “the Etruscans were themselves nothing more than the late Atlanteans who colonised western Italy, so their surviving material culture offers us a glimpse of Atlantis at is cultural height.”[0636.21]  This is an odd claim as Plato twice, unambiguously, placed Tuscany (Tyrhennia) beyond Atlantean control (Tim.25b & Crit.114c).

Evaemon (Euaemon) is the name of one of the fourth pair (with Ampheres) of twins who became the first kings of Atlantis. Frank Joseph[0104] identifies Euaemon with the ‘pre-Celtic’ king of Ireland, Eremon! This is somewhat incorrect as the Milesians are generally accepted as having been Celtic, with Eremon being one of eight Milesian brothers who invaded Ireland from Spain and defeated the Tuatha dé Danaan.

I found more of Joseph’s entries relating to Ireland that were, for me, particularly annoying. The first was his entry in his Encyclopedia for ‘crannóg’ where he attempts to link it with a sunken city. Crannógs are small artificial islands built in lakes for defensive purposes. When abandoned they usually became covered in small trees. The word is derived from the Irish word crann which means a tree, while óg means young or small. There are many such crannógs to be found among the numerous lakes of County Leitrim where I live. My second gripe is the entry ‘Tir-nan-Og’, which should in fact be ‘Tir na nÓg’ which means Land of Youth, implying land of perpetual youth. There is no connection with Og or Ogygia. I respectfully suggest that Frank Joseph and anyone else should tread more warily when trying to link similar-sounding words from different languages.

Frank Joseph has related speculative ideas claiming that “the early date for New Grange, its circular construction, sophisticated solar orientation and mythic tradition all point to Atlantean origins.” [0636.70] A nonsensical conclusion based on nothing but his fertile imagination

Frank Joseph erroneously claims that Plato could not have been influenced by the Helike disaster, because according to Joseph the Atlantis dialogues were written 25 years before the obliteration of Helike[1074.14], when in fact Plato wrote his last dialogues about 25 years after the demise of Helike.

Lemmings are small rodents that primarily live in northern regions. Early zoologists and the more gullible readers assumed that the creatures have been seen committing mass suicide in an attempt to find their ancient homeland, Atlantis. Unfortunately, Frank Joseph[0102.51], among others, has chosen to perpetuate this canard. It should be obvious that if Atlantis had been destroyed 12,000 years ago, as Joseph claims, the lemmings should have all died out millennia ago due to their alleged destructive homing instinct.

Frank Joseph links the destruction of ‘Lemuria’ with the Plagues of Egypt [0106][0107]!

Frank Joseph contends[0636.42] that the Phaistos Disk was ‘a sophisticated astrological chart’ and ‘is an example of Atlantean Bronze Age technology’.

Frank Joseph contends that conflict between the Egyptians and the Sea Peoples was part of the Trojan War[0108.11] and has identified the Meshwesh, one of the Sea Peoples, as Atlantean [1535].

Christopher Volpe records that in 1906, Alexander Strath-Gordon founded the Atlantean Research Society, in East Orange, New Jersey. This date conflicts with the foundation date of 1928 proposed by Frank Joseph. A book published by Strath-Gordon in 1934 confirms the 1906 date on its cover and records him as the founder and life president of the Atlantean Research Society.

In view of all of the above, it is more than reasonable to classify Frank Joseph as unreliable.

(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20190127004837/https://www.flavinscorner.com/collin.htm

(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20100612064814/https://www.robertghostwolf.com/kimball.htm

(c) Ancient American Magazine (archive.org) *

(e) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/atlantida_mu/esp_lemuria_4.htm

(f) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2012/05/the-los-angeles-monolith-frank-josephs-archaeology-by-hearsay.html   (and subsequent blogs)

(g) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgEgzGsc9DOpnLlIP5Q8DAQ

(h) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7n7kPnuZUY

(i) Archive 2627   

(j)   https://web.archive.org/web/20161204161137/http:/www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2015/09/20/01-book-about-americas-discovery-gets-it-all-wrong.html or See: Archive 2694

(k) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis

(l) https://popular-archaeology.com/issue/spring-2017/article/scientists-find-7-2-million-year-old-pre-human-remains-in-the-Balkans

(m) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trireme#Crew

(n) https://www.academia.edu/15087000/Book_Review_Lost_Colonies_of_Ancient_America-A_Comprehensive_Guide_to_the_Precolumbian_Visitors_Who_Really_Discovered_America

(o) https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/eternal-atlantis

(p) Atlantis Rising magazine #35   http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At 

(q) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1803-rain-rocks-helped-establish-existence-meteorites-180963017/ 

(r) Review of: Frank Joseph, The Atlantis Encyclopedia – Atlantis-Scout

Exodus

The Biblical Exodus has been linked by some with the time of the destruction of Atlantis. J. G. Bennett has firmly identified the 2nd millennium BC eruption of Thera with the destruction of Atlantis(f) and in turn, the effect of the volcanic fallout on the Egyptian nation generating the Plagues of Egypt recorded in Exodus.

The fixing of the date of the biblical Exodus is still debated, compounding the broader problem of synchronising the Bronze Age chronologies of the eastern Mediterranean. The early arguments were usually the preserve of biblical scholars(t). However, a wider audience became aware of some of the difficulties when Immanuel Velikovsky published Ages in Chaos [039] and offered some solutions. Since then further revisions have been proposed by Peter James and David Rohl, but the Exodus date is still not definitively fixed(m)(y)(z)*. On top of all that, other events that should provide reliable chronological ‘anchors’, such as the Trojan War or the eruption of Thera continue to generate dispute as well.

Dr Hans Goedicke, a leading Austrian Egyptologist, expressed a similar view regarding an Exodus link in a 1981 lecture, leading to quite a media stir(c). Ian Wilson, best known for The Turin Shroud, has calculated that the volcanic plume from the Theran eruption would have been clearly visible from the Nile Delta [979.112].

Riaan Booysen believes(b) that two Exodus events can be linked with three possible Theran eruptions and has identified the Israelites as the Hyksos. Ralph Ellis has also linked the biblical Exodus with the expulsion of the Hyksos and devoted a short book[0656] to the idea.

Russell Jacquet-Acea, an American researcher, has written a three-part paper on dating the biblical Exodus, that includes the radical suggestion that there were three exoduses from Egypt(m)(n)(o).

Immanuel Velikovsky and others believed that the controversial Ipuwer Papyrus provides evidence in support of the biblical Exodus as well as the ‘Plagues of Egypt’(d). In 2018, Anne Habermehl delivered a paper to a creationist conference in which she concluded: “that the Ipuwer Papyrus displays strong extra-biblical evidence for the historicity of the Exodus in its description of a chaotic Egypt that would have resulted from the biblical 10 plagues.”(i).

Emilio Spedicato links the biblical Exodus with the explosion of Phaëton in 1447 BC, without any reference to the destruction of Atlantis, which, based on his interpretation of Plato’s text, he associates with a much earlier catastrophe(a).>He also associates these events with the Flood of Deucalion as well as some people migrations that “took place essentially at the same time”(x).<

Alfred de Grazia offers a radical interpretation of the Exodus in God’s Fire [1538],  in which he saw the Exodus as a highly organised, rather than an opportunistic event. He also attributed some level of electrical knowledge to Moses, whom he credits with the construction of the Ark of the Covenant, if not the ‘invention’ of Yahweh himself!

Perhaps the most extreme Exodus theory has been presented by Finkelstein & Silberman, who have claimed that “the saga of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt is neither historical truth nor literary fiction” [280.70]. However, the same disbelieving Finkelstein is now going on a search for the Ark of the Covenant(e)!

Flavio Barbiero has now produced an extensive paper(g) in which he precisely dates the Exodus to the night between the 14th and 15th of July of 1208 B.C. (2/3 July of today).

It is important to point out that the historical reality of the Exodus is now being scrutinised as never before, generating growing scepticism. Both Jewish and Christian scholars have expressed serious doubts(s).

>Walter R. Mattfeld wrote in a 2021 paper My research on the Exodus has concluded that it is fiction, but a myth or fiction which has behind it real events which can be recovered via archaeological findings. My research endeavors are to identify the possible real events that came to be recast or reinterpreted as the Bible’s fictional Exodus. In other words, What’s behind these events that is recoverable via archaeological findings? Basically, I see two historical events, grounded in archaeological data, as behind the Exodus: (1) The Hyksos Expulsion of circa 1530 BC (2) The Iron Age I settlements that suddenly appear in Edom, Moab and Canaan 1200 BC to 1100 BC.These two events are separated in time by roughly 300 years. (w)<

William Austin is just one of many who have devoted years to a study of the Exodus dating controversy. The result of his labours is Before the Exodus, a 500-page offering and a condensed version of From Noah to Moses now available on the academia.edu website(u) together with a number of other papers.

“If and when the Exodus occurred is one of the most controversial topics in biblical scholarship. Religious fundamentalists believe it is absolutely true. Skeptics doubt it occurred at all, and neither has any means to prove their case! My approach to the problem has been to assume that much of the controversy is due to an erasure of factual Israelite history in the Old Testament account. It is very difficult to read the Old Testament, then to scroll through Egyptian history and say, “Aha! There’s the Exodus. Read the Bible here; read the papyrus there… See, it all matches. Case closed.” It is very difficult, or it would have been done. This is not to say that the Exodus didn’t occur, it just didn’t occur exactly as recorded in the Old Testament of Christian Bibles.”

Gérard Gertoux noted that estimates for the date of the Exodus ranged from 2150 to 650 BC and so to narrow such an extensive range, he embarked on a forensic study of the problem. In a book(p), The Pharaoh of the Exodus: Fairy tale or real history? [1890] and a 22-page paper(h)(h2) he identified Pharoah Seqenenre Taa, who died on 10 May 1533 BC, as the Pharoah of the Exodus.

Unfortunately, the biblical Exodus has generated several controversies; was it a historical reality, its precise date, the route taken and the identity of the pharaoh of the Exodus? Regarding the last, Rameses II is linked by many with the Exodus, while others have nominated Tutankhamun (Collins & Ogilvie-Herald [1898]), Dudimose (Velikovsky(j), Rohl [229]), Amenemhat IV (Habermehl(k)) Ramesess V (Aboulfotouh(l)) and to these, we may add many others who have been proposed(k). This debate has a long way to go yet.

A more recent (April 2022) article by Jonah Cohen highlights the range of individuals proposed as the pharaoh of the Exodus and suggests that the mystery may not be solvable!(q) Another 2022 article by Gerald Eising opted firmly for Amenhotep II(r).

As you can see the actual date of the Exodus is disputed, but the difficulties don’t end there. Moses the charismatic leader of the Israelites has generated a separate set of problems. Ahmed Osman is just one commentator who has has identified Moses as the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten [1849]. Graham Phillips, among others, claims that Moses was two different people, living at different times [0034]! Immanuel Velikovsky has linked Akhenaten with Oedipus in Greek mythology [2041]. D.M.Murdock concluded [2058] that Moses cannot be discovered in history, whether as Akhenaten or another historical personage. Compounding all this confusion is the idea that Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch and yet, in it,  he managed to describe his own death and burial!!

>(See: Red Sea)<

(a) https://interval.louisiana.edu/conferences/2007_Stenger/Slides_of_talks/mose8-6.pdf

(b) https://riaanbooysen.com/misc/167-book-announcement (link broken) See (v)

(c) Archive 2490 | (atlantipedia.ie) 

(d) https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-writings/does-ipuwer-papyrus-provide-evidence-events-exodus-006951?utm_source=Ancient-Origins+Newsletter&utm_campaign=7295e85219-Top_Trending_Stories_Nov_No3_REAL_11_14_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2dcd13de15-7295e85219-85158329

(e) https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/02/new-search-begins-for-the-ark-of-the-covenant/

(f) https://www.systematics.org/journal/vol1-2/geophysics/systematics-vol1-no2-127-156.htm

(g) https://www.q-mag.org/a-precise-chronology-of-exodus.html

(h) (99+) (PDF) Absolute chronology of Exodus | Gerard GERTOUX – Academia.edu 

(h2) https://www.academia.edu/30200722/The_Pharaoh_of_the_Exodus_Fairy_tale_or_real_history_Outcome_of_the_investigation 

(i) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329770320_The_Ipuwer_Papyrus_and_the_Exodus

(j) The True Story of Moses and the Pharaoh According to Velikovsky (hermetics.org) 

(k) Revising the Egyptian Chronology: Joseph as Imhotep, and Amenemhat IV as Pharaoh of the Exodus (cedarville.edu)

(l) (PDF) LOCATION OF PI-HAHIROTH OF MOSES’S EXODUS IN SUEZ GULF AND THE NEW KINGDOM’S SCENARIO: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH | Hossam Aboulfotouh – Academia.edu 

(m) (99+) Re-calculating the Historical Age of the Israelites in Egypt and the Date of the Exodus (Part One) | Russell Jacquet-Acea – Academia.edu 

(n) (99+) Re-calculating the Historical Age of the Israelites in Egypt and the Date of the Exodus PART TWO | Russell Jacquet-Acea – Academia.edu  

(o) (99+) Re-calculating the Historical Age of the Israelites in Egypt and the Date of the Exodus Part THREE | Russell Jacquet-Acea – Academia.edu 

(p) https://www.lulu.com/en/ie/shop/gerard-gertoux/the-pharaoh-of-the-exodus-fairy-tale-or-real-history/paperback/product-1vjrmky7.html?page=1&pageSize=4  

(q) Who was the Exodus Pharaoh? (jns.org) 

(r) Who was the Pharaoh of Exodus? – Tidings 

(s) https://aroyking.wordpress.com/2016/04/02/has-archaeology-proven-that-the-biblical-exodus-is-a-myth/ 

(t) https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_exodus_date.html

(u) https://www.academia.edu/20426570/The_Hebrew_chronology_from_Noah_to_Moses_corrected_for_half-years

(v) Microsoft Word – Addendum to Thera_and_the_Exodus -Nov_2020.docx (riaanbooysen.com)

(w) (99+) The Archaeological Evidence for the Exodus being a Myth | Walter R. Mattfeld – Academia.edu *

(x) The-Deucalion-catastrophe.pdf (atlantis.fyi) *

(y) bmh_exodusdate_kmtsummer94.pdf (biblemythhistory.com)*

(z) Talk Reason *

Deucalion, Flood of *

The Flood of Deucalion is recorded in Greek mythology in terms that are reminiscent of the biblical Deluge. Prometheus the brother of Atlas the Titan, warned his son Deucalion to build an ark and fill it with all he needed. Rain fell ceaselessly, flooding valleys, submerging cities, destroying all people and leaving just some mountain peaks to be seen above the sea. After nine days the rain stopped and Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha emerged and produced the ancestors of the Greeks.

Ogyges was the founder and king of Thebes whose reign was ended by a flood that covered ‘the whole world’ and so devastated Thebes that it remained without a king until the reign of Cecrops. It is still something of an open question whether the Flood of Deucalion and the Flood of Ogyges are identical or not, although it seems more likely that they were separate events (see Mosenkis below).

The Arcus-Atlantis website notes “that Aristotle, while agreeing in many respects with the Platonic notion of survivors of catastrophes, envisaged the flood of Deucalion as a relatively small-scale affair limited to one part of the Greek world:The deluge in the time of Deucalion, for instance, took place chiefly in the Greek world and in it, especially about ancient Hellas, the country about Dodona and the Achelous, a river which has often changed its course. Here the Selli dwelt and those who were formerly called Graeci and now Hellenes.
– Aristotle, Meteorology [1.14].”
(i)

J. G. Bennett has pointed out(a) that a fractured marble pillar, discovered on the Greek island of Paros and known as the Parian Marble, records important events in early Greek history including lists of the early kings, including Deucalion who is noted to have reigned at the same time as the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III (1504-1450 BC). It records his reign as having been 700 years before the first Olympiad, which itself is dated to 778 BC, thus giving a date for the flood named after him to around 1478 BC, This period coincides with the biblical Exodus and the eruption of Santorini. Orosius, a 5th century AD writer, placed the Flood of Deucalion 810 years before the foundation of Rome giving it a date broadly around 1500 BC. This is suspiciously close to the date accepted by most archaeologists for the great eruption of Thera.

James Mavor also commented that “the flood of Deucalion, a natural event, was certainly caused by some massive tectonic commotion. This earth- and sea-shaking catastrophe has been at least roughly dated. From several sources, the Deucalion flood can be set approximately between 1519 and 1382 BC. That these dates straddle those of the cataclysmic activity of Thera, as based on archaeological evidence, lends credence to the relation of the Deucalion flood to Thera.” [265.66]

Ukrainian professor Iurii Mosenkis noted that “the interval between the Ogyges and Deucalion floods was 250 years (Eusebius) or 260 years (my calculations from 1775 BCE to 1515 BCE).” (h)

Giovanni Rinaldo Carli quotes Clement of Alexandria (150-215 AD) who notes that Stenelas (Sthenelus), father of Cydas (Cycnus) the king of the Ligurians, lived at the same time as the fire of Phaëton and the Flood of Deucalion. This is probably one of the earliest references suggesting a linkage between these two catastrophic 2nd millennium BC events.

Siegfried and Christian Schoppe have assumed that ” the Flood of Deukalion is identical with the Flood of Atlantis – although the Egyptian priest denies this.” (c)

Emilio Spedicato has also linked the Flood of Deucalion with the Exodus and dates them to 1447 BC(f)(g). However, he believes that these events followed the explosion of a comet or asteroid over southern Denmark. He presented three papers to the 2005 Atlantis Conference on the subject of Deucalion’s Flood and Phaeton[629.115].

The work[280] of Finkelstein and Silberman has recently cast doubts over the historical reality of the Exodus, but of course, this does not affect the reality of the Flood of Deucalion. It is odd that with such a sceptical view of Bible history that it was announced in February 2017(b) that Finkelstein is to start a search for the Ark of the Covenant.

David Rohl, a leading advocate for a drastic revision downwards of the dates of many events in ancient Egyptian history by at least three hundred years, has concluded that Deucalion’s Flood occurred during the reign of Thutmose III[232] and most controversially that it was concurrent with the eruption of Thera and its consequent tsunami. According to Rohl’s ‘New Chronology’, this would place the Flood at around 1100 BC rather than the conventionally accepted date of circa 1450 BC for the Theran eruption!

Geologist David R. Montgomery, a professor at the University of Washington, has authored The Rocks Don’t Lie [2029] which offers a fresh open-minded look at Noah’s Flood and how it is viewed today by both science and religion. He concluded – Like most geologists, I had come to see Noah’s Flood as a fairy tale—an ancient attempt to explain the mystery of how marine fossils ended up in rocks high in the mountains. Now I’ve come to see the story of Noah’s Flood like so many other flood stories—as rooted in truth.”

“It appears that humanity’s rich legacy of flood stories reflects a variety of ancient disasters. The global pattern of tsunamis, glacial outburst floods and catastrophic flooding of lowlands like Mesopotamia or the Black Sea basin, fits rather well the global distribution and details of flood stories.”

 So Montgomery considers the source of Noah’s Flood to have been a local event such as the flooding of the Black Sea region and refers to Angelos Galanopoulos who similarly associated the tsunamis generated by the mid-second millennium BC eruption of Thera (Santorini) with the Flood of Deucalion.

Montgomery’s views were given further exposure on the LiveScience website(j).

Over the last couple of millennia, something of a consensus has emerged that the Flood of Deucalion occurred in the middle of the second millennium BC. This leaves supporters of an early date for Atlantis obliged to produce evidence of a comparable catastrophe around 9600 BC, a task compounded by the probable erosion of any such evidence during the passage of such a considerable period.

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that a short paper by Roula Papageoriou-Haska proposed that geological evidence together with Herodotus’ (Bk 7.129) description of the emptying of the lake of Thessaly supports a possible date of about 10,000 BC!(d)(e)

We can expect this particular debate to run for some time yet.

(ahttps://www.systematics.org/journal/vol1-2/geophysics/systematics-vol1-no2-127-156.htm#9

(b) https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/02/new-search-begins-for-the-ark-of-the-covenant/

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20190819053842/http:/www.black-sea-atlantis.com/schoppe.pdf 

(d) HELLENIC COSMOGONY-DEUCALION’S CATACLYSM (archive.org)  

(e)  HELLENIC COSMOGONY-BEFORE AND AFTER DEUCALION’S CATACLYSM (archive.org) 

(f) The-Deucalion-catastrophe.pdf (atlantis.fyi) 

(g) LA CATASTROFE DI DEUCALIONE E IL PASSAGGIO DEL MAR ROSSO (2008-paris-conference.org)

(h)  https://www.academia.edu/28737349/HIGH_PRECISION_ASTRONOMICAL_CHRONOLOGY_OF_ENEOLITHIC_BRONZEGREECE

(i) The Phaethon myth and ancient catastrophism (arcus-atlantis.org.uk) (link broken) *

(j) Did Noah’s flood really happen? | Live Science 

Childress, David Hatcher

childressDavid Hatcher Childress (1957- )(d) >was born in France to American parents.<He is a prolific writer on the subject of ancient civilisations, having written a series on ‘Lost Cities’. He describes himself as a ‘rogue archaeologist’. He has had an exciting life(a) worthy of a book itself. His literary output, which deals extensively with ‘ancient technologies’, is somewhat speculative and inclined to veer close to the ravings of Erich von Däniken.

A link to several of Childress’ papers is available(h).

In 2016, Childress, in Ark of God [1743], repeated old speculation that the Ark of the Covenant was capable of flight, suggesting that the Ark was an example of advanced ancient technology!>Which begs the question, if it could fly, why did it need carrying poles?<

Childress extended his interest in the possibility of advanced ancient technology in Vimana Aircraft of Ancient India and Atlantis [1252]. I can only assume that ‘Atlantis’ was added to the title as a marketing ploy, as it would be more recognisable than ‘vimana. He also offers some of the content in a short paper(g).

Some time ago Jason Colavito tackled the matter of Childress’ vimanas, noting the development of the use of the word in Hindu mythology, but crucially pointing out that “The concept of these flying chariots as UFO-style airships originates in a fraud, the Vaimanika Shastra, allegedly an ancient Sanskrit epic, but one “channeled” from the astral realm by a Hindu psychic in 1918. No evidence of this text exists prior to 1952, and even the “translator” of the text makes explicit that it was channeled from the spirit world between 1918 and 1923. The fake text specifically compares the vimanas to modern aircraft, describing their propulsion systems and other modern technological achievements.” (i).

However, on the subject of Atlantis, he has kept his options open by listing ten possible locations for Atlantis(b). You would imagine that an archaeologist ‘rogue’ or otherwise would be prepared to express a clearer opinion. However, if you are a book publisher as well, there is no point in competing with your clients, so it is safer to sit on the fence. Nevertheless, in the 2007 DVD, Atlantis: Secret Star-Mappers of a Lost World, Childress identifies the Baltic as the original home of the Sea Peoples, reminiscent of the theories of Jürgen Spanuth, half a century earlier.

>In 2018 and in a number of previous editions of Ancient Aliens, Childress endorsed the daft idea that our Moon is hollow and artificial. Jason Colavito noted that this idea has been going around for the past half-century, based on a piece of Russian propaganda from the 1960s aimed at Western audiences. Childress alleged that aliens created the moon by inflating an asteroid. Yes, really. “Like a glass blower blows glass, you go out into the asteroid belt, get yourself an asteroid, and with your alien technology you superheat that asteroid. Then you blow into it to make a giant space station,” he said. That seems like rather a lot of work to avoid showing yourself to humans.(k)<

His Lost Cities of Atlantis, Ancient Europe and the Mediterranean[0620] is a volume that does not lead to any firm conclusions as it tends to see evidence of Atlantis everywhere. Nevertheless, although Childress has written at least six books in the ‘Lost Cities’ series, only the one dealing with Europe and the Mediterranean that includes Atlantis in the title, which may indicate his belief that it had existed in that region of the world! However, he does offer a number of interesting tidbits such as his view [p.61] that the ancient Egyptians and the Hittites were successors of the Atlanteans and his suggestion that the landbridge linking Europe and Africa at Gibraltar was breached around 9000 BC [p.261]. Unfortunately, he offers nothing by way of evidence to support these claims. 

Childress claims that he was researching a book on Atlantis [p.450] but nowhere does he unequivocally reveal his conclusions on the subject. On the other hand, he may have wished to avoid conflicting with the opinions of his clients as he was also the founder of Adventures Unlimited Press, which has published a number of books on Atlantis including reprints of many of the classic books on the subject.

2000 finally saw Childress reveal his preferred location for Atlantis in his Technology of the Gods, where he says “Atlantis, I believe, is beneath the mid-Atlantic in the vicinity of the Azores and the Bahamas[1355.334]

Jason Colavito has written a four-part review of this book(e) in which he is highly critical of Childress’ penchant for recycling his own work, provocatively referring to it as self-plagiarism! Colavito also records Childress’ courtroom appearances(f).

(a) https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/atlantis-ho/Content?oid=923072

(b) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/atlantida_mu/esp_atlantida_17.htm

(c) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog.html

(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hatcher_Childress

(e) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/reviewing-david-childresss-technology-of-the-gods-pt-1-plagiarism-of-the-gods

(f) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/david-childress.html

(g) Ancient Indian Aircraft Technology (bibliotecapleyades.net)

(h) The Discoveries of David Hatcher Childress (bibliotecapleyades.net)

(i) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/vimana-aircraft-of-india-more-sloppy-scholarship-from-david-childress

(j) Knowledge from Nowhere | Mysterious Universe *

(k) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/david-childress-aliens-living-in-the-hollow-moon-created-bigfoot-to-serve-as-missing-link-between-humans-and-apes *

Advanced Technology*

Advanced Technology is regularly claimed by ‘fringe’ writers to have existed in ancient, even prehistoric, times. These claims usually have one of two aims, either to support the idea that in ancient times there was a civilisation/s with highly advanced technology since lost, or that such technology was given to ancient societies by aliens from other planets and which was also lost over time. Both schools of thought offer the same ‘evidence’ to support their claims.

Technology can be defined as techniques, skills, methods and processes, usually intended to improve the human lifestyle. ‘Advanced’ is a relative term implying superiority over what had previously existed – wheeled vehicles were an improvement on sledges or bronze tools were better than copper ones.

When such writers refer to advanced technology, they really mean apparent anachronistic technology, which is frequently inferred from the existence of structures that cannot be duplicated with today’s technology. It is argued by proponents of ancient advanced technology that many ancient monuments, such as Stonehenge, Lixus, Baalbek or the Pyramids, could not have been built without some unknown power source, frequently attributing the existence of such technologies to extraterrestrials from the planet ‘Zog’.

Also from Egypt is the claim that there is compelling evidence of powered stone cutting ‘machinery’ there in antiquity. Similar evidence is also claimed to be found in South America. A one-hour Russian video with English dialogue, relating to this, is quite thought-provoking(g). While the evidence is strong, we cannot rule out the possible existence of long-forgotten techniques rather than mechanical technologies, of which nothing has been found. In the case of ancient Egypt, we have the remains of their primitive tools as well as tomb walls decorated with the same implements. If they had possessed some advanced technology, why did they need those simple tools, which are still available to us, or depict such technology on their tomb walls?

For me, it is also remarkable that cultures such as that of the Pueblo people of the American Southwest managed to create architectural complexes using advanced geometry — with incredible mathematical accuracy”(o) despite having no written language or system of numerical notation.

Chris Dunn, famous for his belief that the Great Pyramid was in fact built as a power generator[1234], has also claimed that the ancient Egyptians were capable of advanced machining(k) . Margaret Morris, a respected Egyptologist, took issue with Dunn, challenging him to a debate, which, as far as I can ascertain, never materialised. Morris encapsulated her objections thus(l): In short, Chris Dunn’s methodology is so poor that he has resorted to inventing a cataclysm that cannot be scientifically substantiated and he elevates the pyramid builders to the technological level of space travelers, with no physical evidence at all for either assertion.”

 Amenhotep III

Amenhotep III

For my part, if the 2.9m high red granite head of Amenhotep III was carved by the Egyptians, without alien intervention, Dunn’s claims are pretty shallow. However, I think it is only fair that readers should have access to Dunn’s side of the dispute(m), which can be found in Atlantis Rising magazine #26(aa). The debate continued in issue #27 with further comments from Morris and Stephen Mehler joining the fray, generally in support of Dunn(ab).

However, I must point out that the late Dr Jose Alvarez Lopez was insistent that he had seen evidence of ancient machining on exhibits in the Cairo Museum that were later removed!(t).

Sometimes the process is reversed and simple technology is discovered today, which could have been known in the past, but since lost, which might explain the megalithic structures that still fill us with awe. An example of this is the discovery by W.T. Wallington(j), which he calls a ‘rediscovery’, of a simple method using a lever and a couple of pivots, for moving concrete blocks weighing many thousands of pounds.

Another or comparable technology may have been used by Edward Leedskainin when he single-handedly built Coral Castle in Florida City(n). What is certain is that Leedskainin had no help from intergalactic visitors. In 2016, Jim Solley published an unnecessarily long paper(ab) claiming that Coral Castle had been built using artificial stone, poured or cast, rather than sculpted. This would have been similar to the building method proposed by Professor Joseph Davidovits that he claims was used for the building of the Egyptian pyramids, as well as other ancient structures!

While Wallington’s ‘rediscovery’ may not answer all the mysteries of the past it does raise the real possibility that future discoveries may provide unexpected explanations for some of today’s ‘mysteries’.

A recent article on the Ancient Origins website by Lia Mangolini(r) offers her view that crude chemistry, using plant extracts, provided the means of dissolving rock, which could explain how some quality artefacts as well as tight-fitting ancient masonry, such as found in Peru and Egypt, may have been achieved. This is certainly worth a read, but I would prefer to see a demonstration. She expanded on the use of this acid, known in the Middle East as ‘shamir’, in a separate paper(ae).

The idea that advanced technology existed in Atlantis has been regularly claimed by various writers since the latter part of the 19th century. However, I must emphasise that Plato offered no suggestion of the existence of any such technology.

In 1886, Frederick S. Oliver (1866-1899) wrote a channelled book entitled A Dweller on Two Planets[1014]  in which he attributed a number of technologies to the Atlanteans including anti-gravity and flying machines. This book has been the source of much more recent New Age drivel. Edgar Cayce also spoke of Atlantis having flying machines, but more entertainingly, he had them made of elephant skins!

However, leaving all that speculative nonsense aside, is it not strange that this ‘technologically advanced’ civilisation was defeated by the Athenians and that such a culturally sophisticated society was referred to by Plato as barbarians? Even more important is the fact that Plato, who provided such a detailed description of Atlantis, never gave the slightest hint that the Atlanteans had anything more technologically advanced than the chariot.

Technology worldwide, circa 9600 BC, is generally accepted as having been greatly inferior to that described by Plato in Atlantis. The reconciliation of this conflict is the greatest challenge facing supporters of such an early date for Atlantis. Their stance is quite understandable given that Plato refers to the war with Atlantis occurring 9,000 years before Solon’s visit to Egypt around 600 BC and that Atlantis was destroyed ‘afterwards’.

Plato’s description is totally consistent with a Late Bronze Age society. Not only does Plato’s Atlantis appear to be technologically advanced, in Bronze Age terms, but also their military might imply the existence of equally powerful potential enemies supported by similar technology. Consequently, it is not sufficient to claim that Atlantis disappeared along with its superior skills. It would be reasonable to expect that archaeology would uncover comparable technologies in various locations that existed around the same time, particularly since imperial Atlantis is supposed to have occupied or at least heavily influenced both north and south of the Mediterranean as far as Tyrrhenia and Libya respectively.

Some authors in an effort to verify Solon’s date have highlighted a number of controversial instances of apparently anachronistic advanced technology to support the possibility of an early Atlantis date. Artefacts such as the Antikythera Mechanism, the Baghdad Battery(a) and even the Ark of the Covenant(b) have all been adduced to give credence to such an idea. Even more daring are the independent claims that both the lighthouses at Pharos in Egypt and Faro in Portugal were powered by electricity. The claim of ancient Egyptian electricity is regularly trotted out(f) and was the subject of a recent book[0948], edited by Larry Brian Radka. More recently, engineer Andrew Hall offers his evidence for claiming that the ancient Egyptians had used electricity in a YouTube video(ai). However interesting his ideas are they are still based on speculation and a subjective interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphs and wall paintings.

In all these instances hard proof is clearly lacking, with the sole exception of the Antikythera Mechanism, which was mechanical, not electrical, cannot be dated earlier than the 2nd century BC. The ingenuity of our ancestors was often underrated until something such as the Antikythera Mechanism was found and we were forced to modify our view of the past, but not necessarily abandon the accepted view that technology has evolved gradually, even if there are a few ‘missing links’ in the chain.

Even more worrying is the recurrent claim that atomic warfare was engaged in on the Indian subcontinent thousands of years ago(z). The late Philip Coppens wrote a short paper on this possibility in 2005(c). David Hatcher Childress has also endeavoured to cash in on the same claim in a number of his books [1355] and online(u). Childress also offers a list of his top-ten technologically advanced ancient civilisations(y). Nick Redfern has also entered this market with his Weapons of the Gods [1832].

Debunking such ideas is a free 25-page ebook published by Jason Colavito(v).

Equally persistent are claims of flying machines in ancient India(w) which were given impetus by the publication of Aeronautics, a Manuscript From the Prehistoric Past, a translation of the 3,000-year-old Vymanika Shastra by G.R.Joyser[1340].Some have gone so far as to claim that space flight had been achieved thousands of years ago in India(x). 

Casey Terry notes[1542.36] that Pavel Smutny, a Slovakian researcher has proposed that “maybe it is unusual and surprising, but in ornaments in old carpets are woven-in schemes, and principle plans of advanced technologies, which come from vanished cultures and thousands-year-old civilizations. These residues are probably the last ones, which can help revive forgotten, very sophisticated technologies and methods for exploitation of natural electrostatic energy sources.”

Smutny goes on to claim that the layouts of Egyptian temples “to a person familiar with the basics of computer technologies or even better to a person experienced with the construction of microwave circuits in bands above 1 gigahertz (GHz), he will tell you that these plans (of the temples) are schemes of PCB’s (boards for electronic circuits).”

Commenting on the Maltese temples Smutny proposes in his book Atlantis Unveiled [1733], that the complexes “were used probably as generators of high-frequency acoustic waves. Purpose was (maybe) to arrange a communication channel between various islands.”

Although the idea of electricity in ancient Egypt is a recurrent speculation, the possibility of electricity in ancient India is only marginally more credible. However, James Hartman refers(p) to another Sanskrit text which supports this belief, telling us that In another amazing Indian text, the Agastrya Samhita, gives the precise directions for constructing electrical batteries:

‘Place a well-cleaned copper plate in an earthenware vessel. Cover it first by copper sulfate and then moist sawdust.  After that put a mercury-amalgamated-zinc sheet on top of an energy known by the twin name of Mitra-Varuna. Water will be split by this current into Pranavayu and Udanavayu. A chain of one hundred jars is said to give a very active and effective force.’  Agastya Samhita   (Indian Princes’ Library)

By the way, MITRA-VARUNA is now called cathode-anode, and Pranavayu  and Udanavayu are to us oxygen and hydrogen. This document again demonstrates the presence of electricity in the East, long, long ago. In the not-so-distant past strange events are recorded in Europe’s past.”

A sceptical view of these claims is presented by Jason Colavito(d)(e)(q) who points out that, according to some sources, the passage quoted above is not to be found in the original text!

My scepticism was reinforced when I looked at details presented in a paper(s) claiming to offer 17 artefacts thatsuggest high-tech prehistoric civilizations existed.” Similar lists, frequently citing many of the items on the list below have been offered on various sites.

  1. Prehistoric Wall Near Bahamas? Explained(aj)
  2. 500,000-year-old spark plug? Debunked (ad)
  3. Million-year-old bridge? Debunked(ac)
  4. Prehistoric work site?
  5. 100-million-year-old hammer?
  6. Viking sword Ulfberht Explained
  7. The Iron Pillar of Delhi Explained
  8. 2.8-billion-year-old spheres?
  9. Drill bit in coal
  10. The Antikythera Mechanism
  11. 150,000-year-old pipes? (Explained)(ah)
  12. 2,000-year-old earthquake detector Invented by Zhang Heng – So what?
  13. Piri Reis Map (An ongoing controversy)
  14. 1.8-billion-year-old nuclear reactor. (a natural phenomenon)(af)
  15. Great Wall of Texas (An unusual but a natural geological formation)
  16. Ancient Egyptian light bulb? Debunked
  17. 2,000-year-old batteries (So-called Baghdad Battery – debunked)(ag)
  18. Columbian (Quimbaya) Gold aircraft –>debunked(ak)<

When a newcomer is first confronted with a list such as the above they are often overwhelmed. However, if you dig beneath the headlines the picture is less clear. For starters, a third of them are not prehistoric (6,7,10,12,13,17 & 18) and would appear to be deliberately included as ‘red herrings’ or just padding. Most of the remainder have been effectively debunked over the past century (1,2,3,11,&16), others are the result of misinterpretation and/or wild speculation (1,2,4,11), while others are natural features (1,3,8,11&14). If you look up ‘concretion’ in Wikipedia and the related images offered by Google you will see that nature has created some highly symmetrical concretions that could easily be thought to be manmade (2&8). Tara MacIsaac, the author of this list, in discussing (4) conceded that “as stated in the case of the hammer above (5), limestone has been known to form relatively quickly around modern tools. 

However, people believe what they want to believe, irrespective of any evidence to the contrary. Along with this, one should keep in mind Carl Sagan’s aphorism which demands that “extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence”. The list above does not provide ‘extraordinary evidence’.

(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20200927011940/http://www.unmuseum.org/bbattery.htm

(b) https://thothweb.com/article-print-3190.html

(c) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ancientatomicwar/esp_ancient_atomic_07.htm

(d) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/the-case-of-the-false-quotes.html

(e) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2013/11/searching-for-the-winged-iron-chariot-in-the-mahabharata.html

(f) https://www.theepochtimes.com/ancient-egypt-illuminated-by-electricity_996220.html

(g) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyxtFkjBWk8

(h) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20181226050814/https://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/trades/tools.htm

(j) https://www.anvilfire.com/bookrev/index.php?bodyName=wallington/forgotten_technology.htm&titleName=The%20Forgotten%20Technology%20by%20Wallace%20Wallington

(k) https://www.gizapower.com/Advanced/Advanced%20Machining.html

(l)  See: Archive 3113 & Archive 3118

(m) https://rense.com/general5/morris.htm

(n) https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/overcoming-gravity-enigma-coral-castle-005051

(o) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170125091645.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Ffossils_ruins%2Fancient_civilizations+%28Ancient+Civilizations+News+–+ScienceDaily%29

(p) https://www.sacred-texts.com/ufo/ourpast.htm

(q) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/did-an-ancient-indian-sage-record-a-recipe-for-making-a-battery-a-forgotten-chapter-in-fringe-history

(r) https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/ancient-stonework-0012197

(s) https://www.theepochtimes.com/17-out-of-place-artifacts-said-to-suggest-high-tech-prehistoric-civilizations-existed_1767391.html

(t) https://www.taringa.net/+info/dr-jose-alvarez-lopez-y-las-piramides-de-egipto_h8ubr English

(u) https://www.456fis.org/EVIDENCE_FOR_ANCIENT_ATOMIC_WARFARE.htm (link broken)

(v) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/ancient-atom-bombs.html

(w)  Vimanas: Greater Understanding on a Hotly Debated Topic | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)

(x) Speakers at Science Congress says ancient India mastered advanced space flight thousands of years ago | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)

(y) Top Ten Civilizations With Advanced Technology (bibliotecapleyades.net)

(z) Ancient Atomic Warfare – Antiguas Guerras Atómicas (bibliotecapleyades.net)

(aa) Atlantis Rising magazine #26  http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At  Abbreviated version of (m) 

(aa) Atlantis Rising magazine #27  http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At

(ab) Coral Castle – Proving Ancient Megalith Construction – WORLD MYSTERIES (archive.org)

(ac) https://ianchadwick.com/blog/debunking-the-adam-bridge/ 

(ad) http://www.hallofmaat.com/oops/the-coso-artifact-mystery-from-the-depths-of-time/ 

(ae) https://www-cartesio–episteme-net.translate.goog/episteme/epi6/ep6-mangol.htm?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=it&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc 

(af) https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/10/04/earths-first-nuclear-reactor-is-1-7-billion-years-old-and-was-made-naturally/?sh=7ded1fbe5d94 

(ag) https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/03/08/debunking-the-so-called-baghdad-battery/ 

(ah) https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4181 

(ai) Andrew Hall: Electricity in Ancient Egypt | Thunderbolts – YouTube 

(aj) Bimini Road/Wall – Fake Archaeology (archive.org) *

(ak) Tolima Fighter Jets – Ancient Aliens Debunked *

 

 

Phillips, Graham

Graham PhilipsGraham Phillips is a British investigator with a number of books [034][035][036] on ‘alternative history’ to his credit. One of them [034] originally entitled Act of God was republished in the USA with the title of Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt. This 358-page volume contains just TWO pages on Atlantis where the author suggests that the 2nd millennium BC eruption of Thera was the cause of the destruction of Atlantis. This unscrupulous retitling is a sad reflection of the standards of American publishers.

In 2004, Phillips published Templars and of the Ark of the Covenant [1345] in which the promotional blurb claims that he has compelling evidence that the Knights Templar may have taken the Ark of the Covenant to the British Isles” and “offers compelling documentation that the Ark may be located in the English countryside, not far from the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon.” I note the repeated use of the word ‘may’.>He also suggests that at least one of the stone tablets on which the original Ten Commandments were inscribed may have been brought to England!<

His most recent book [036] offers evidence of a close encounter between the earth and a comet in 1485 BC that produced an apparition that may have appeared twenty times the size of a full moon. Phillips claims that it had a profound effect on those that witnessed it and led to widespread forms of monotheism, including that of Moses and Akhenaten. What is even more radical is his claim that the comet’s tail contained an amino acid such as vasopressin that can make humans more aggressive and which led to a simultaneous outbreak of wars in many parts of the world between nations that had previously lived in harmony with each other. This particular aggressive phase appears to have subsided after a period of about ten years.

His most recent (2019) offering, Wisdomkeepers of Stonehenge [1914] has a different approach to understanding Stonehenge, as explained by the cover notes “Graham argues that, with stones aligned to the sun, stars, and positions of the moon, stone circles were not just astronomical calendars, as some scholars have proposed, but were part of an elaborate system to determine precise timings necessary for the cultivation of medicinal plants. The Druids, he reveals, had medical knowledge well beyond their time, and may even have found a cure for cancer. Graham also discovers that the Megalithic people developed phenomenal memory techniques, resulting in a priesthood that became both the guardians of the stone circles and the living libraries of inherited knowledge. Wisdomkeepers of Stonehenge uncovers the long-forgotten secrets of the Megalithic people and the true extent of their astonishing achievements: a vast network of monuments, as important to the ancient peoples of the British Isles as the internet is for us today. The true purpose of Stonehenge is ultimately revealed. It was not just a religious monument, but served a vital, practical function – as a prehistoric healthcare facility.”

Late July 2023 saw the publication of Phillips’ The Mystery of Doggerland: Atlantis in the North Sea [2063]. To be candid, this has book little to do with Atlantis, as Phillips believes that only two locations are worthy of consideration as the inspiration for the Atlantis myth – Santorini (Thera) and the Caribbean (Bahamas). Since there is no evidence that Plato even knew that the Bahamas existed and the Minoan Hypothesis conflicts with too much of Plato’s account, there is little left. His speculations extend to suggesting that ‘orichalcum’ was an early word for platinum!

However, I would prefer to end on a positive note and advise that if you are interested in Neolithic megaliths, you will find this book informative, particularly if you are intrigued by the history and ancient monuments of Orkneys, where the earliest stone circles in the British Isles are to be found. He places a sunken Thule (Tu-lay) just north of the Orkneys. The distance from the Orkneys to Doggerland is nearly 1000 km so the connection eluded me.

>Phillips has been featured as ‘Author of the Month’ on Graham Hancock’s website(b) and his book has been reviewed briefly by Jason Colavito(c).<

I consider the inclusion of Atlantis and Doggerland in the title was the work of publishers to boost sales, but they could at least have ended the subtitle with an exclamation or question mark.

Graham Phillips has also an official website(a).

(a) http://www.grahamphillips.net/

(b) The Mystery of Doggerland – Graham Hancock Official Website *

(c) Review of Ancient Aliens S19E16: “The Gods of Greece” – JASON COLAVITO *