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 »
  • Joining The Dots

    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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Hristo Smolenov

Ryan & Pitman

William Ryan & Walter Pitman published evidence, in 1997, that extensive flooding of the Black Sea occurred through the Bosphorus around 5600 BC. Controversy still surrounds various aspects of their

Pitman (l) & Ryan (r)

Pitman (l) & Ryan (r)

theory, some even claiming that the Black Sea broke into the Aegean, an idea that may be partially true(d)(e).

Nevertheless, their conclusions were challenged in a paper(c)  by Yanko-hombach, Gilbert and Dolukhanov, who offered evidence that the flooding of the Black Sea was not the rapid event claimed, but was spread over millennia, initially in the form of freshwater from the Caspian Sea via the Manych Spillway(d) as the glaciers retreated and later with seawater from the Mediterranean. The same paper concludes with the following; “The public perception that ‘Noah’s Flood’ happened there is not supported by any scientific evidence.”

Ryan & Pitman later published their theories in book form as Noah’s Flood[0025] and was understandably seized upon by many as proof of the veracity of the Bible. In fact a year before Ryan & Pitman launched their book, René & Denise Capart published l homme et les déluges[1062], in which they linked the Black Sea with the Deluge of Noah. A Bulgarian father and son team, Petko & Dimitar Dimitrov, refer to the pre-flood Varna civilisation existing on the Black Sea plain[0998], but not calling it Atlantis by name. Their book is available online(a).

Inevitably, I suppose, Atlantis has been more firmly linked with this event by some commentators, particularly, Christian & Siegfried Schoppe(b). However, Hristo Smolenov also claimed that swathes of the Varna civilisation were inundated by the rising waters of the Black Sea but had no hesitation identifying it with Atlantis.

>The gold found at Varna amounted to 7kg, a record for a site 7,000 years old. Further background information about the site is available on an Italian website(f).<

>The work of Ryan & Pitman has also inspired the Black Sea Atlantis theories of George K.Weller.<

So, 25 years after Ryan & Pitman’s book the matter is still unresolved. Did the Black Sea flow into the Aegean or was it the other way round? Was it a fast (R&P) or slow (Y-h) process? Did the event lead to the story of Noah’s Flood? 

>Professor Maria Kuman has published a paper that throws further light on the flooding of the Black Sea and any link with the biblical Flood of Noah. She concluded with This article claims that the Black Sea experienced two sets of two floods – each consisting of one fresh-water flood and one salty-water flood. This can be seen on the Dr. Ballard’s side-scan sonar image of the ancient shoreline of the Black Sea (Fig 2). The first two floods were Big Floods, and they took place when the huge Ice caps of the Big Ice Age were melting. Based on a study of the glaciers we dated the Big Floods as 9,500 years ago, which agrees with Prof. Petko Dimitrov’s dating published in 1982 and Dr. Ballard’s dating of the first layer of shells in Fig 2.

The second pair of floods were local floods, which took place when the ice caps were melting of the First Mini Ice Age after the Big Ice Age. Based on a study of the glaciers we dated them as 7,000 years ago (5000 B.C.), which is in perfect agreement with Dr. Ballard’s dating with C14 of a piece of wood retrieved from a flooded house on the bottom of the Black Sea. This second pair of floods displaced many of the descendants of Noah mixed with Aryans, who lived around the Black Sea at that time.(g)<

(a) Wayback Machine (archive.org) 

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

(c) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223177419_Controversy_over_the_great_flood_hypotheses_in_the_Black_Sea_in_light_of_geological_paleontological_and_archaeological_evidence

(d) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618206001984

(e) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282223495_The_late_glacial_great_flood_in_the_Ponto-Caspian_basin

(f) Varna: the mystery of the oldest treasure in the world – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it) *

(g) The Mystery of the Black Sea Floods Solved (omicsonline.org) *

Bulgaria

Bulgaria has not been totally excluded from the search for Atlantis. In 2012 it was announced that the oldest European town had been discovered in Bulgaria(a), near the town of Provadia and dated to about 4500 BC. Recently there were metal beads discovered in Bulgaria tentatively dated to 6000 BC. Along with recent discoveries of hoards of Thracian gold it is obvious that Bulgaria was no backwater, although identifying it with Atlantis is not a runner. Nevertheless, some have attempted(e) to link Atlantis with the ancient region of Thrace, which today would occupy a section of Bulgaria along with parts of Greece and Turkey.

In the mid-20th century the noted Bulgarian astronomer Nikola Bonev placed Atlantis in the Atlantic. However, the flooding of the Black Sea as revealed by Ryan & Pitman triggered the imagination of a number of people. The Schoppe father and son team who favour a Black Sea location for Atlantis have broken with the generally held view that Gadeiros, the twin brother of Atlas, gave his name to the city of Gades, now Cadiz in southwest Spain and proposed the more radical view that he gave his name to the Getae who occupied parts of today’s Bulgaria and Romania(b).

In 2012, Hristo Smolenov went further and suggested a closer connection between Bulgaria and Atlantis on his website(c), a video(c) and a book[1003], Zagora – Varna: The Hidden Superculture.

(a) https://www.nbcnews.com/id/49645182/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/bulgaria-claims-find-europes-oldest-town/#.VLgVH4tFBy0

>(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20190830053312/https://www.black-sea-atlantis.com/black-sea-atlantis/<

(c) https://atlantisblacksea.wordpress.com/tag/hristo-smolenov/

(d) https://atlantisblacksea.wordpress.com/atlantis-in-the-black-sea-videos/

(e) https://www.home2b.nl/home2b-secret-history/secret-history-atlantis1.html

Smolenov, Hristo (L)

smolenovHristo Smolenov (1954- ) was born in Bulgaria’s second largest city, Plovdiv. He is a recognised expert in counterterrorism and mathematics and is also the latest advocate of a Black Sea Atlantis, which he identifies with what he calls the Aurolithic Varna Civilisation that existed 3,000 years before the pyramids. Varna today is situated in the Bulgarian province of Stara Zagora on the Black Sea coast. He has publicised his views through a website(a), video(b) and a book[1003], Zagora – Varna: The Hidden Superculture.

(a) https://atlantisblacksea.wordpress.com/tag/hristo-smolenov/

(b) https://atlantisblacksea.wordpress.com/atlantis-in-the-black-sea-videos/

Black Sea

The Black Sea was known to the Greeks as the Euxine Sea and according to Strabo (1.2.10), in antiquity was often simply referred to as “the sea” (pontos).  It has also been known as the Scythian Sea after the people who lived on its northern shore. Pindar referred to it as the ‘Inhospitable Sea’.

It received little attention in connection with the Atlantis mystery until the 19th century when two French writers, André de Paniagua and Moreau de Jonnès, independently located Atlantis in the Sea of Azov. Some years later in 1923, R.A. Fessenden, a Canadian professor of BlackSeaMapMathematics and Electrical Engineering wrote about the prehistoric flooding of a civilisation in the Caucasus region, which he linked with Plato’s Atlantis. The text of this extensive work is now available on the Internet(a).

Trevor Palmer has written a useful paper (2009) on the Black Sea and the gradual development of theories relating to its dramatic connection with the Mediterranean and how it may have influenced the mythologies of the Middle East and possibly further afield.

Palmer concluded that The various groups currently investigating the area are agreed that cataclysmic flooding took place during the Late Pleistocene, but remain divided about whether similar floods also occurred during the Holocene. Eye-witness accounts of catastrophic floods in the Black Sea basin at either time could have been passed on to future generations, eventually giving rise to the later Mesopotamian legend of Uta-napishtim and, subsequently, the Biblical story of Noah. However, in the absence of any direct evidence of cultural transmission, that can presently only be regarded as plausible speculation.”(p)

Little was heard of the region again until 1998 when Ryan &  Pitman identified the flooding of the Black Sea with Noah’s Flood[025]. This was followed in 2001 by Ian Wilson‘s Before the Flood [185], which reflected a similar line of thought.

In 2004, the Bulgarian father and son oceanographers, Petko and Dimitar Dimitrov published their book, The Black Sea, the Flood and the Ancient Myths, in English, which supported much of Ryan and Pitman’s work. Unlike them, who based much of their conclusions on a study of molluscs, the Dimitrovs focused on sedimentation evidence. Their book is now available, in English, as a free pdf file(d). They also suggest that this Holocene influx into the Black Sea also triggered the Vedic Aryan migration to India(g).

>Hristo Smolenov is another Bulgarian and a recognised expert in counter-terrorism and mathematics and is another advocate of a Black Sea Atlantis, which he identifies with what he calls the Aurolithic Varna Civilisation that existed 3,000 years before the pyramids. Varna today is situated in the Bulgarian province of Stara Zagora on the Black Sea coast. He has publicised his views through a website(r), video(s) and a book [1003], Zagora – Varna: The Hidden Superculture.<

Ryan and Pitman’s book unintentionally triggered the imaginations of a number of people into considering the possibility of a possible link between this inundation and the sinking of  Atlantis. While Ryan and Pitman have made no such suggestion, others such as Ian Wilson[185] have seen a distorted memory of the event as a possible inspiration for Plato’s story. In 2009, Liviu Giosan, a geologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute published a paper(e) which suggested that prior to the intrusion of the Mediterranean, the level of the Black Sea had been just 30 metres below its present level rather than the 80 metres proposed by Ryan and Pitman. This would imply a less extensive degree of flooding than previously thought. Giosan has offered a sceptical Ryan an opportunity to replicate his tests.

Although the scenario pictured by Ryan & Pitman and others is of very rapid flooding of the original smaller Black Sea, more recent studies appear to indicate a more gradual rising of the water levels. “With more data to be analysed, it supports the idea that the waters rose unnoticeably, by metres over centuries, even millennia.”(o)

Nick Thom, a British engineer, wrote The Great Flood [776] which includes a section on the Black Sea in which he suggests that the flow of water was from the Black Sea into the Sea of Marmara rather than the other way around.

Nearly two hundred years ago Josiah Priest in his 1835 book American Antiquities [1143] also offered evidence from Euclid of Megara that the flow of water had been from the Black Sea to the Aegean. Apparently, Euclid heard this from Anacharsis a philosopher from the northern coast of the Black Sea related how the inflow from the rivers of Europe and Asia raised the level of the ‘Sea’ until it breached the landbridge and spilled over into the Sea of Marmara.

Paul Dunbavin has entered the Black Sea flood(s) debate with a 2020 paper entitled Diodorus Siculus and the Black Sea Flood(q). This lengthy essay covers a lot of ground, in particular the comments of Diodorus Siculus who described a Samothracian flood story that appears to contradict the flood described by Ryan & Pitman as it describes a flow of water in the opposite direction. Consequently, the evidence offered by Diodorus is often discounted as ‘unreliable’. Dunbavin, however, offers a possible solution with the suggestion that The Samothracian flood, as described by Diodorus, could only have occurred after the Black Sea Flood.”

More recently, Christian & Siegfried Schoppe, two German researchers have also asserted that the Black Sea was the original ‘Atlantis Ocean and that Atlantis was located in that region [186]. They have suggested that Snake Island located east of the mouth of the Danube was the probable site of Plato’s city. Their contention is that around 5500 BC a landbridge at the Bosporus was breached causing extensive flooding that created what we now know as the Black Sea. Until that time there had only been a small freshwater lake in the region. Although their book was published in German, the Schoppes have a website(b) with a useful amount of English content.

flying eagle and whisperingThe somewhat eccentric duo of the late Flying Eagle (1920-2007) and Whispering Wind, who also advocated a Black Sea location for Atlantis(a)(f),  claimed a specific site on the Strait of Kerch between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Their theory was first expounded in their book [138] in 2004. They also followed the Ryan and Pitman date of 5500 BC for the inundation of the Black Sea.

The evidence to date suggests that the flooding of the Black Sea coincided with a storegga event, which would require a catastrophe on a scale not previously considered. In a 2017 paper(i), John M. Jensen offers a range of evidence to support this contention.

A rather different approach is taken by the German researcher Werner E. Friedrich[695], who pushes back the expansion and the raising of the level of the Black Sea to around 10000 BC, at the end of the last Ice Age. He believes that this led to the flooding of Atlantis, which he claims to have been situated on a plain that had lain between ancient extensions of the rivers Donau and Don. Friedrich located the Pillars of Heracles in the Sea of Marmara[p.39].

A.I. Zolotukhin places Atlantis in western Crimea on his multilingual website with the inviting title of Homer and Atlantis(j).

The legendary destroyed city of Ancomah is frequently compared to Plato’s description of the destruction of Atlantis. It was reputed to have existed in the vicinity of the ancient port city of Trabzon, which is located on the southeast coast of the Black Sea.

Michael A. Cahill in his 2012 two-volume[818][819] publication on the development of civilisation locates Atlantis near what is modern Istanbul in the pre-Diluvian Stone Age.

The concept of a Black Sea Atlantis has the support of the rather eccentric Church of Vrilology(h)!

In October 2018, an attempt was made to breathe new life into the idea of Crimea as a remnant of an Atlantis submerged under the Black Sea. Unfortunately, it offers no evidence or references in the badly translated article(k). In the same month, it was reported that the oldest intact shipwreck was discovered in the Black Sea by an Anglo-Bulgarian team. It was identified as a Greek trading vessel dated to 400 BC(l). The oxygen-free waters at the bottom of the Black Sea had preserved it and dozens of others located by the team.

In early 2019, George K. Weller, building on the theories of the Schoppes, also proposed the Black Sea as Atlantis’ home, again nominating Snake Island as the home of Mr. and Mrs. Poseidon, which, before the Black Sea was flooded, would have been the central peak of their island home, as referred to by Plato(n).

One of the most comprehensive internet papers on all aspects of the history of the Black Sea can be found on the Encyclopaedia Iranica website(m).

(a) https://www.radiocom.net/Deluge/Deluge1-6.htm

(b) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3914/

(d) http://io-bas.bg/noahproject/BOOK_PETKO.pdf 

(e)  See: https://web.archive.org/web/20150922224701/https://www.whoi.edu/main/news-releases/2009?tid=3622&cid=54863

(f) https://atlantis-today.com/Great_Atlantis_Flood.htm

(g) https://www.academia.edu/1293293/INITIATION_OF_THE_MIGRATION_OF_VEDIC_ARYANS_TO_INDIA_BY_A_CATASTROPHIC_FLOODING_OF_THE_FRESH_WATER_BLACK_SEA_BY_MEDITERRANEAN_SEA_DURING_THE_HOLOCENE._Yavor_Y._Shopov1_odor_Yalamov_Petko_Dimitrov_Dimitar_Dimitrov_and_Bono_Shkodrov

(h) https://web.archive.org/web/20130108091223if_/https://www.vrilology.org/Atlantis_page.htm

(i) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2017&id=505

(j) https://homerandatlantis.com/?lang=en

(k) https://ktelegram.com/scientists-crimea-may-be-a-fragment-of-the-lost-city-of-atlantis/43728/ (link broken Jan. 2019)

(l) https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/archaeology/worlds-oldest-intact-shipwreck-discovered-at-the-bottom-of-the-black-sea/news-story/a2c3f39449fd7164712b2b708636d33e

(m) https://www.iranicaonline.org/

(n) Comparison of Plato’s Critias with George K. Weller’s concept of ancient Atlantis and its actual location. – The Weller Farm (archive.org)

(o) https://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20191021-the-sea-of-60-ghostly-wrecked-ships

(p) https://www.academia.edu/22814109/Catastrophic_Black_Sea_Floods_and_the_Story_of_Noah_Chronology_and_Catastrophism_Review_2009_pp_45_54

(q) e5604c_67fd983e0b934a56ac5b31ee9dd1f41e.pdf (third-millennium.co.uk)

(r) https://atlantisblacksea.wordpress.com/tag/hristo-smolenov/ *

(s) https://atlantisblacksea.wordpress.com/atlantis-in-the-black-sea-videos/ *