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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José Angel Hernández

Hernández, José Angel (t)

José Angel Hernández is an Independent Spanish researcher with an interesting website(a), which, although in Spanish, translates quite well with Google into English. Although his subject matter is wide-ranging he has produced a number of papers relevant to the subject matter of this site.

He first(b) compares the bull cult of Atlantis with the status of the bull in the Indus Valley civilisation. He then takes a sceptical view of the Atlantis story arguing strongly against the idea that the 9,000 years recorded by Plato should be treated as ‘months’ or ‘seasons’. In another section(c) he outlines parallels between Tartessos and ancient India and goes so far as to suggest the Indus Valley city of Lothal established colonies north and south of the Strait of Gibraltar and known as Tartessos. Unexpectedly, he then proceeds to identify the Tarshish of the Bible with the coast of the Indus Valley!

(a) https://joseangelh.wordpress.com/

(b) https://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/mito-y-religion/

(c) https://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/arqueologia-e-historia/

Tartessos

Tartessos or Tartessus is generally accepted to have existed along the valley of the Guadalquivir River where the rich deposits of copper and silver led to the development of a powerful native civilisation, which traded with the Phoenicians, who had colonies along the south coast of Spain(k).

A continuing debate is whether Tartessos was developed by a pre-Phoenician indigenous society or was a joint venture by locals along with the Phoenicians.(o) One of the few modern English-language books about Tartessos was written by Sebastian Celestino & Carolina López-Ruiz and entitled Tartessos and the Phoenicians in Iberia [1900].

>A 2022 BBC article offers some additional up-to-date developments in the studies of Tartessos(v).<

It is assumed by most commentators that Tartessos was identical to the wealthy city of Tarshish that is mentioned in the Bible. There have been persistent attempts over the past century to link Tartessos with Atlantis. The last king of Tartessia, in what is now Southern Spain, is noted by Herodotus to have been Arganthonios, who is claimed to have ruled from 630 BC until 550 BC. Similarly, Ephorus a 4th century BC historian describes Tartessos as ‘a very prosperous market.’ However, if these dates are only approximately true, then Atlantis cannot be identified with Tartessos as they nearly coincide with the lifetime of Solon, who received the story of Atlantis as being very ancient.

However, the suggested linkage of Tartessos with Atlantis is disputed by some Spanish researchers, such as Mario Mas Fenollar [1802] and Ester Rodríguez González(n). Mas Fennolar has claimed that at least a thousand years separated the two. Arysio dos Santos frequently claimed that Atlantis was Tartessos throughout his Atlantis and the Pillars of Hercules [1378]. 

Rodrigo Caro

Rodrigo Caro

The existence of a ‘Tartessian’ empire is receiving gradual acceptance. Strabo writes of their system of canals running from the Guadalquivir River and a culture that had written records dating back 6,000 years. Their alphabet was slightly different to the ‘Iberian’. The Carthaginians were said to have been captured by Tartessos after the reign of Arganthonios and after that, contact with Tartessos seems to have ended abruptly!

The exact location of this city is not known apart from being near the mouth of the Guadalquivir River in Andalusia.  The Guadalquivir was known as Baetis by the Romans and Tartessos to the Greeks. The present-day Gulf of Cadiz was known as Tartessius Sinus (Gulf of Tartessus) in Roman times. Cadiz is accepted to be a corruption of Gades that in turn is believed to have been named after Gaderius. This idea was proposed as early as 1634 by Rodrigo Caro, the Spanish historian and poet, in his Antigüedades y principado de la Ilustrísima ciudad de Sevilla, now available as a free ebook(i).

Tartessos

In 1849, the German researcher Gustav Moritz Redslob (1804-1882) carried out a study of everything available relating to Tartessos and concluded that the lost city had been the town of Tortosa on the River Ebro situated near Tarragona in Catalonia. The idea received little support.

A few years ago, Richard Cassaro endeavoured to link the megalithic walls of old Tarragona with the mythical one-eyed Cyclops and for good measure suggest a link with Atlantis(l). Concerning the giants, the images of doorways posted by Cassaro are too low to comfortably accommodate giants! Cassaro has previously made the same claim about megalithic structures in Italy(m)

The German archaeologist Adolf Schulten spent many years searching unsuccessfully for Tartessos, in the region of the Guadalquivir. He believed that Tartessos had been founded by Lydians in 1150 BC, which became the centre of an ancient culture that was Atlantis or at least one of its colonies. Schulten also noted that Tartessos disappeared from historical records around 500 BC, which is after Solon’s visit to Egypt and so could not have been Atlantis.

Otto Jessen, a German geographer, also believed that there had been a connection between Atlantis and Tartessos. Jean Gattefosse was convinced that the Pillars of Heracles were at Tartessos, which he identifies as modern Seville. However, Mrs E. M. Whishaw, who studied in the area for 25 years at the beginning of the 20th century, believed that Tartessos was just a colony of Atlantis. The discovery of a ‘sun temple’ 8 meters under the streets of Seville led Mrs Whishaw to surmise[053] that Tartessos may be buried under that city. Edwin Björkman wrote a short book, The Search for Atlantis[181] in which he identified Atlantis with Tartessos and also Homer’s Scheria.

Steven A. Arts, the author of Mystery Airships in the Sky, also penned an article for Atlantis Rising in which he suggests that the Tarshish of the Old Testament is a reference to Tartessos and by extension to Atlantis(r)!

More recently Karl Jürgen Hepke has written at length, on his website(a), about Tartessos. Dr Rainer W. Kühne,  following the work of another German, Werner Wickboldt, had an article[429] published in Antiquity that highlighted satellite images of the Guadalquivir valley that he has identified as a possible location for Atlantis. Kühne published an article(b) outlining his reasons for identifying Tartessos as the model for Plato’s Atlantis.

Although there is a consensus that Tartessos was located in Iberia, there have been some refinements of the idea. One of these is the opinion of Peter Daughtrey, expressed in his book, Atlantis and the Silver City[0893] in which he proposes that Tartessos was a state which extended from Gibraltar around the coast to include what is today Cadiz and on into Portugal’s Algarve having Silves as its ancient capital.

It was reported(c) in January 2010 that researchers were investigating the site in the Doñana National Park, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, identified by Dr Rainer Kühne as Atlantis in a 2011 paper(s). In the same year, Professor Richard Freund of the University of Hartford garnered a lot of publicity when he visited the site and expressed the view that it was the location of Tartessos which he equates with Atlantis. The Jerusalem Post in seeking to give more balance to the discussion quoted archaeology professor Aren Maeir who commented that  “Richard Freund is known as someone who makes ‘sensational’ finds. I would say that I am exceptionally skeptical about the thing, but I wouldn’t discount it 100% until I see the details, which haven’t been published as far as I know.”(u)

A minority view is that Tarshish is related to Tarxien (Tarshin) in Malta, which, however, is located some miles inland with no connection to the sea. Another unusual theory is offered by Luana Monte, who has opted for Thera as Tartessos. She bases this view on a rather convoluted etymology(e) which morphed its original name of Therasia into Therasios, which in Semitic languages having no vowels would read as ‘t.r.s.s’ and can be equated with Tarshish in the Bible, which in turn is generally accepted to refer to Tartessos.

>Giorgio Valdés favours a Sardinian location for Tartessos(f), an idea endorsed later by Giuseppe Mura in his 2018 book, published in Italian, Tartesso in Sardegna [2068], the full title of which translates as Tartessos in Sardinia: Reasons, circumstances and methods used by ancient historians and geographers to remove Tartessos (the Tarshish of the Bible) from Caralis and place it in Spanish Andalusia. Caralis is an old name for Cagliari, the Sardinian capital.<

Andis Kaulins has claimed that further south, in the same region, Carthage was possibly built on the remains of Tartessos, near the Pillars of Heracles(j).

A more radical idea was put forward in 2012 by the Spanish researcher, José Angel Hernández, who proposed(g)(h) that the Tarshish of the Bible was to be found in the coastal region of the Indus Valley, but that Tartessos was a colony of the Indus city of Lhotal and had been situated on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar!

A recent novel by C.E. Albertson[130] uses the idea of an Atlantean Tartessos as a backdrop to the plot.

A relatively recent claim associating Tartessos with Atlantis came from Simcha Jacobovici in a promotional interview(p) for the 2017 National Geographic documentary, Atlantis Rising. In it, Jacobovici was joined by James Cameron as producer, but unfortunately, the documentary did not produce anything of any real substance despite a lot of pre-broadcast hype.

There is an extensive website(d) dealing with all aspects of Tartessos, including the full text of Schulten’s book on the city. Although this site is in Spanish, it is worthwhile using your Google translator to read an English version.

“Today, researchers consider Tartessos to be the Western Mediterranean’s first historical civilization. Now, at an excavation in Extremadura—a region of Spain that borders Portugal, just north of Seville—a new understanding of how that civilization may have ended is emerging from the orange and yellow soil. But the site, Casas del Turuñuelo, is also uncovering new questions.”(q) First surveyed in 2014 it was in late 2021, a report emerged of exciting excavations there that may have a bearing on the demise of Tartessos. Work is currently on hold because of a dispute with landowners, with only a quarter of the site uncovered. The project director is Sebastian Celestino Perez. The Atlas Obscura website offers further background and details of discoveries at the site(t).

(a) http://web.archive.org/web/20170716221143/http://www.tolos.de/History%20E.htm

(b) Meine Homepage (archive.org)

(c) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/7019522/Lost-city-of-Atlantis-could-be-buried-in-southern-Spain.html

(d) TARTESSOS.INFO: LA IBERIA BEREBER (archive.org)

(e) http://xmx.forumcommunity.net/?t=948627&st=105

(f) http://gianfrancopintore.blogspot.ie/2010/09/atlantide-e-tartesso-tra-mito-e-realta.html

(g) http://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/mito-y-religion/

(h) http://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/arqueologia-e-historia/

(i) http://books.google.ie/books/about/Antiguedades_y_Principado_de_la_ilustr%C3%AD.html?id=mIxBueFRuk0C&redir_esc=y

(j) Pillars of Heracles – Alternative Location (archive.org)

(k) Archive 3283 | (atlantipedia.ie) 

(l) https://www.richardcassaro.com/atlantis-ruins-europe-megalithic-master-masonry-cyclopean-colony-tarraco-spain/

(m) https://www.richardcassaro.com/atlantis-ruins-europe-megalithic-master-masonry-cyclopean-colony-tarraco-spain/

(n) (PDF) Tarteso vs la Atlántida: un debate que trasciende al mito (researchgate.net)

(o) (PDF) Definiendo Tarteso: indígenas y fenicios (researchgate.net) 

(p) Lost City of Atlantis And Its Incredible Connection to Jewish Temple (israel365news.com) 

(q) The Ancient People Who Burned Their Culture to the Ground – Atlas Obscura

(r) Atlantis Rising magazine #36  http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At 

(s) https://atlantis.fyi/sources/the-archaeological-search-for-tartessos-tarshish-atlantis-and-other-human-settlements-in-the-donana-national-park 

(t) https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/tartessos-casas-del-turunuelo 

(u) https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-news/the-deepest-jewish-encampment

(v) https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220727-the-iberian-civilisation-that-vanished *

 

Indus Valley

The Indus Valley civilisation is dated to 2600-1900 BC (preceded by the Mehrgarh People) is now referred to as the Harappan civilisation. To date, over a thousand settlements and five cities have been identified, but only 10% have been excavated(v).

The origins of the Indus people has been debated for some time, but a DNA study of four skeletons discovered, some years ago, at Rakhigarhi, in India, may offer some clues. However, three years later (2017) the results have still not been made public(z)(aa)! A September 2019 report in Live Science highlighted the fact that gathering usable DNA from the Indus Valley is extremely difficult as the climate there degrades it rapidly. Attempts to extract DNA from 61 individuals in the cemetery in Rakhigarhi were successful in only one instance. Unfortunately, only limited information was gleaned from this study, namely that “about two-thirds to three-fourths of the ancestry of all modern South Asians come from a population group related to that of this Indus Valley individual.” according to Vagheesh Narasimhan, one of the authors of the report.

In recent years, the Indus region has received several nominations as the source of the Atlantis story. Dr Ashok Malhotra has identified the submergence of the city of Dwarka as the inspiration for the story, which was then brought to Sumeria and later Egypt Indus Regionalbefore transmission to Greece.

However, Radek Brychta has opted[203] for the ancient city of Dholavira as a more likely candidate, while independently Yashwant Koak arrived at the same conclusion and intends to publish soon.

A 2014 blogger offered similar ideas with a paper(n) entitled ‘Atlantis was Indus Valley plateau?’ but then proceeds to describe Indonesia as the hyperdiffusionist source for the great civilisations such as those of the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Cretans and the Mesopotamians. These also included the Jews, the Phoenicians, and the Aryans, driven away from their ancestral lands in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.”

In Thorwald C. Franke’s Newsletter No.119 he draws attention to a review by Professor Heinz-Günther Nesselrath of a new over-priced book by Erika Daniels-Qasim. Although the book is published in German[1580], Nesselrath’s highly critical review is in English(ac), Nesselrath reveals that this is just another useless attempt to link Plato’s Atlantis with the Indus Valley civilisation. Franke describes it as a ‘sad book’.

Although the ‘ancient alien’ idea has nothing to back it up, the claim that a very ancient nuclear war destroyed the Indus civilisation has had some support(ad). However, Jason Colavito has also debunked the story of the ‘radioactive skeleton’ there(ab).>A decade ago (2013) Dale Drinnon also published a blog refuting the ancient atomic war claims(aj).<

In 2012, the Spanish researcher, José Angel Hernández, proposed that the Tarshish of the Bible was to be found on the coastal region of the Indus Valley, but that Tartessos was a colony of the Indus city of Lhotal and had been situated on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar! He also compared the bull cult of Plato’s Atlantis with that of the Indus civilisation(f)(g).

The central Indus city of Mohenjo-Daro was only rediscovered in 1922(m) and a curious more recent discovery there, was that 10% of artefacts found there related to play! Clusters of game pieces suggested the use of communal social centres.  Unrelated, but perhaps more relevant to our study is the fact that there is a dearth of weaponry fortifications or evidence of warfare in the Indus culture(d), which is in sharp contrast to the belligerent Atlantean society described by Plato. More details of the city and the Indus culture can be read on the Italian larazzodeltempo.it website(ag)(ah).

A frequently referred to anomaly at Mohenjo-Daro is evidence of vitrification and radioactivity that some have attributed to atomic warfare or attacks by ancient aliens(af). A more balanced view(k)(l) can be found online. A 2015 article on this subject is also worth a look(o).  Jason Colavito has unearthed(ab) the origin of this claim, tracing it back to the 1960s and an unreliable Russian writer, Alexander Gorbovsky, compounded by later distortions by ‘fringe investigators.

A 2012 conference on Harappan archaeology saw the origins of that culture pushed back to the 7th millennium BC, contemporary with that of Sumer(j). The same conference saw linguistic connections between the two cultures under discussion. However, despite numerous attempts over the past century the Indus Valley script remains undeciphered(p), although there are regular claims of successful decipherment, 2007(q), 2009(r), 2011(s), 2013(t), to date totalling nearly 100, somewhat reminiscent of the constant flow of Atlantis theories. Now linguists are turning to computer technology to finally solve the problem(x).

A radical theory regarding Mohenjo-Daro has been proposed by an Indian researcher, Jeyakumar Ramasami, in which he claims that the city was a necropolis and not a metropolis. His book on the subject can be downloaded as a free Word file(e).  A similar theory was proposed by Hans Georg Wunderlich regarding the Minoan ‘palace’ of Knossos on Crete.

A comprehensive website(a) with many photos and diagrams relating to the Indus Valley civilisation is available. A related article by Patrick Chouinard is also of interest(b).

A recent discovery off the Konkan Coast in the State of Maharashtra in western India has revealed a remarkable structure that is based on sea-level changes that may be 8,000 years old(c). A wall 24 km long, 2.7 metres high and 2.5 metres in width was discovered in just three metres of water. Speculation has centred on the possibility of it being evidence of a completely unknown civilisation that could pre-date that of the Indus Valley. A second site, thought to be pre-Harappan, located in Rakhigarhi village in Haryana’s Hisar district, over 200 km from Chandigarh, is now under investigation.

A 2008 article(i) adds further information about the Indus Valley, which includes a reference to the Neolithic site at Mehrgarh a precursor to the Indus civilisation and dated to 7000 BC, a date that has now been pushed back to 8000 BC according to a paper published(u) in the May 25th, 2016 edition of Nature.

A recent paper(w) has revealed how the Indus people coped with the consequences of climate change when their civilisation was at its height around 2500-1900 BC. Another paper suggests that the demise of the Indus Valley civilisation was the result of climate change caused by changing monsoon patterns. The author, Nishant Malik, assistant professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Mathematical Sciences, used mathematical modelling to support his claim(ae). 

Until now it was thought that many of the Indus settlements had been dependent on a major Himalayan river, the Ghaggar-Hakra, now dried up. However, recent studies(y) indicate that this river changed course over 8,000 years ago suggesting that when the Indus people settled the area, there was only an abandoned large river valley occupied by seasonal monsoon river flow instead of a large Himalayan river.” So it seems that, unlike the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations the Indus people did not require a substantial permanent river!

>Joanna Gillan published an article giving a potted history of Mohenjo Daro and including a critical review of those, including David Davenport, who have tried to prove that the site was the location of an ancient atomic war. Supporters of this idea have pointed to quotations from the Mahabharata in support of this idea. However, Gillan revealed that “Rather than being entirely fictitious, the passage is composed of a merging together of various unrelated passages scattered throughout the 200,000-verse epic, some of which are also questionable English translations of a questionable French translation of the original Sanskrit. When viewed in their original context, they are a little less convincing”(ak).<

Another article on the Ancient Origins website, also by Gillan, in January 2022 reviews the history of Mohenjo Daro and unfortunately highlights that Although it has survived for five millennia, Mohenjo Daro now faces imminent destruction. While the intense heat of the Indus Valley, monsoon rains, and salt from the underground water table is having damaging effects on the treasured site, it is the visitors that flock in their thousands to the site that are the biggest threat. Adding to the problem is a lack of funding, public indifference, and government neglect. The government even approved a festival being held at the site back in 2014, where tents, lights and stages were hammered into the walls of the delicate ruins.

Mohenjo Daro is already in an incredibly fragile condition. It is estimated that at its current rate of degradation, the World Heritage-listed site could be gone within 20 years(ai).

(a) https://www.harappa.com/ 

(b) https://newagearchaeology.weebly.com/the-indus-valley.html

(c) A civilisation as old as Indus valley? (archive.org)

(d) Indus Valley Civilization: The Demise of Utopia (archive.org) 

(e) https://archive.org/details/NewInterpretationsOnIndusValleyCivilization

(f) https://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/mito-y-religion/

(g) https://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/arqueologia-e-historia/

(h) https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/is-haryana-home-to-older-larger-harappan-era-site-113062400485_1.html

(i) https://wondersofpakistan.wordpress.com/2009/02/21/mehrgarh-the-lost-civilisation-2/

(j)  Archive 2329

(k) Mohenjo Daro – The Thunderbolts Project™ (archive.org) (new link)

(l) See: Archive 3516

(m)  https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2959492/posts

(n) See: Archive 3617

(o) https://dailygrail.com/Hidden-History/2015/2/Mohenjo-Daro-Ancient-Nuclear-Mystery

(p) https://www.nature.com/news/ancient-civilization-cracking-the-indus-script-1.18587

(q) https://www.hindunet.org/hvk/articles/0207/56.html (offline Nov. 2016)

(r) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/apr/23/indus-civilisation-language-symbols

(s) https://www.boloji.com/articles/10657/a-new-light-on-the-decipherment-of

(t) https://sites.google.com/site/indusharappacivilization/home

(u) https://scroll.in/latest/808978/indus-era-dates-back-further-than-thought-older-than-egypt-mesopotamia-iit-asi-scientists

(v) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3791308/The-forgotten-utopia-Indus-people-lived-700-years-without-war-weapons-inequality.html

(w) https://popular-archaeology.com/issue/winter-2017/article/the-ancient-indus-civilization-s-adaptation-to-climate-change

(x) https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14371450/indus-valley-civilization-ancient-seals-symbols-language-algorithms-ai

(y) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171128112209.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Ffossils_ruins%2Fancient_civilizations+%28Ancient+Civilizations+News+–+ScienceDaily%29

(z) https://www.quora.com/When-will-Rakhigarhi-excavations-DNA-results-be-published

(aa) https://www.quora.com/Shouldn%E2%80%99t-the-Rakhigarhi-DNA-research-papers-be-further-delayed-and-gradually-released-to-prevent-possible-shock-waves-and-unrest-in-southern-parts-of-South-Asia-where-lots-of-people-were-in-a-low-social-status-due-to-the-Vedic-traditions

(ab)  https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-radioactive-skeleton-of-mohenjo-daro-how-soviet-propaganda-spiraled-into-a-extreme-fringe-history-claim

(ac) https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2018/2018.08.23/

(ad) Nuclear War In Ancient Times | War Between Rama Empire and Atlantis? (archive.org) 

(ae) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200903105605.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Ffossils_ruins%2Fancient_civilizations+%28Ancient+Civilizations+News+–+ScienceDaily%29

(af) The Secrets of Mohenjo Daro – Destroyed by ‘atomic heat’ 4000 years ag – Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net) 

(ag) Mohenjo-Daro, a Bronze Age metropolis – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it) 

(ah) The Indus Civilization May Be Prior to Egypt and Mesopotamia – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it) 

(ai) Mohenjo Daro and The Mounds That Hid a Civilization | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net) 

(aj) Archive 2324 | (atlantipedia.ie) *

(ak) Was the Mohenjo Daro ‘Massacre’ Real? | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net) *

 

Tarshish

Tarshish is a city referred to about a dozen times in the Bible and has been widely accepted as another version of Tartessos. Josephus, the Jewish historian who wrote during the 1st century AD, was confident that it referred to Tarsus in Cilicia, Turkey, the birthplace of St. Paul. The Septuagint Bible uses Karkendonos where it refers to Tarshish in Isaiah 23:1, which was the Greek form of the name for North African Carthage.  This could imply that the founders of Carthage and Tarsus were the same. We know that Carthage was founded by Tyrians and we also know that Cilix, a Tyrian, gave his name to Cilicia when he settled it. Andis Kaulins has claimed that Carthage was possibly built on the remains of Tartessos (i)!

Immanuel Velikovsky was of the opinion that Tarshish was the name employed by the writers of the Old Testament to designate Crete as a whole, or its chief city Knossos.” as explained in a paper by his former associate Jan Sammer(m).

In 2008, Rainer Kühne published a paper titled Tartessos-Tarshish was the model for Plato’s Atlantis in which he identifies Tartessos as Tharshish, locates it in the Donana Marshes of southern Spain and suggests that it lasted from the tenth to the sixth centuries BC(p). 

Utica was a Phoenician port city on the northern coast of what is now Tunisia. It no longer exists and its site is now some miles inland because of silting. It is also one of a number of suggested locations for Tarshish(f).

Tarshish/Tartessos is thought by many others to be alternative names for Atlantis. There is a consensus that it was a coastal city in Southern Spain, near modern Cadiz. Despite the efforts of many, its location is still unknown, which can probably be explained by the fact that the coastline has altered considerably over time. Adolf Schulten, who was convinced that Tartessos was Atlantis, spent many years searching, unsuccessfully, for Tarshish in Andalusia. Louis Millette is a modern writer who supports this identification but has offered little by way of evidence.

In 1927, Edwin Björkman devoted a third of his book, Search for Atlantis [181] to a discussion of Tarshish and its possible connection with Atlantis.

Other locations have been suggested, such as Tharros in Sardinia, Troy and even Malta where Tarxien may be considered an echo of Tarshish. Tharros sometimes referred to as a ‘second Carthage’ had its port located as recently as 2008(d). The suggestion that Tharros was Tarshish was based on their similar-sounding names and the reference to Tarshish in the Phoenician inscription on the ‘Nora Stone’ discovered at Nora on the south coast of Sardinia in 1773.

The Brit-Am organisation, which seeks to identify the ten lost tribes of Israel has published an extensive series of papers about Tarshish(n). Responding to a question about Atlantis and Tarshish they wrote – “Atlantis does seem to have existed and does appear to have been somewhere in the Atlantic coastal area. Tarshish is a good candidate or at the least would have had some contact with Atlantis.”(o)

Quite a variety of locations have been offered as the site of Tarshish(f)(k).

Aaron Arrowsmith (1750-1832), a British cartographer and geographer was of the view that Tartessus was a territory established by adventurous traders who settled in the Iberian peninsula after moving from the ancient city of Tarsus in Asia Minor (modern Turkey).” [1761]

It is accepted that biblical silver was sourced from ‘Tarshish’, initially assumed to be Tartessos in Spain. Recent studies employing lead isotope tests, when applied to Phoenician silver hoards(g) revealed that both Spain and Sardinia were possible sources. However, it might be argued that the Nora Stone may give Sardinia a somewhat stronger claim.

>A contribution to a historum.com forum offers additional support for the idea of a Sardinian Tarshish(r).<

A more radical idea was put forward in 2012 by the Spanish researcher, José Angel Hernández, who proposed that the Tarshish of the Bible was to be found in the coastal region of the Indus Valley and that Tartessos was a colony of the Indus city of Lhotal and had been situated on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar!(a)(b)  This view is apparently supported by biblical references (1 Kings 9:26, 22:48; 2 Chr. 9:21) that note that the ‘ships of Tarshish’ sailed from Ezion-Geber on the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba!

Jim Allen, who has been the leading supporter for decades of the idea of Atlantis being situated in the northern Andes, has also proposed that Tarshish had been a South American city. “The more probable site of Tarshish however lies on an island at the entrance to the Pilcomayo River opposite Asuncion, since satellite photos show that at this point the Pilcomayo forks into two arms exactly as per the ancient text, creating an island between the arms of the river. Moreover also in accordance with the ancient text, the river discharges into a broad bay – the Bay of Asuncion and this part of the Paraguay River also comprises shallows and sandbanks.”(l) This demonstrates that Allen saw Atlantis and Tarshish as separate entities.

However, if Tarshish was another name for Atlantis and according to the bible it existed at the time of Solomon, circa 1000 BC, we are confronted with a contradiction of Plato’s 9,000 years elapsing since the destruction of Atlantis and the visit of Solon to Sais. King Jehoshaphat reigned around 860 BC and planned to send a fleet to Tarshish,  just 200 years before Solon, so the likelihood of Tarshish being Atlantis is a rather remote possibility.

A recent suggestion by a Dutch commentator, Leon Elshout, places the biblical Tarshish in Britain(h) an idea supported by a Christadelphian website(j).

(a) https://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/mito-y-religion/

(b) https://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/arqueologia-e-historia/

(c) https://www.academia.edu/5812547/Tharros_the_megalithic_city

(d) https://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?195801-discovered-the-Phoenician-city-of-Tharros-in-Sardinia

(f) https://www.notjustanotherbook.com/tarshish.htm

(g) https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/news/tarshish-hacksilber-hoards-pinpoint-solomons-silver-source/

(h) https://roodgoudvanparvaim.nl/8-tarshish-as-great-britain-and-the-paradox-with-atlantis/

(i) Pillars of Heracles – Alternative Location (archive.org)

(j) Incredible Archaeological Find Proves Tarshish Is Britain! (archive.org) *

(k) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarshish#Sardinia

(l) http://www.geocities.ws/myessays/LocationofTarshish.htm 

(m) https://www.varchive.org/nldag/tarshish.htm 

(n) https://www.britam.org/Questions/QuesTarshish.html  

(o) Scroll down to Question 2 in (n) 

(p) https://vixra.org/pdf/1103.0040v1.pdf 

(q) tarshishtarsus (bibleorigins.net) 

(r) https://historum.com/t/the-nuragic-civilization-of-sardinia-was-it-tarshish.127443/ *