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

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  • NEWS September 2023

    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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Kurt Lambeck

Apulia, Izabol *

Izabol Apulia (1977- ) is a young dedicated hobbyist cartographer, who lives in Mesa, Arizona. She has developed a huge collection of maps(a), principally of Mediterranean islands, that depicts them at various stages between the Last Glacial Maximum and the present, showing how the rising sea levels gradually reduced them in size. She is highly critical of the sea level data developed and published by Kurt Lambeck and his team, preferring to use her own figures .

Apulia is also an inveterate blogger, using the name of ‘mapmistress’. She frequently published text to accompany individual maps that are often quite interesting. However, when she commented on Atlantis, in my opinion, she was seriously in error. Her big claim is that English translations of Plato’s text have been ‘botched’, in particular the work of Benjamin Jowett, whom she claims ‘invented’ the word Atlantis, which she further claims reads as ‘Atlas’ in the original text!

Not content with that, she places the Pillars of Heracles on Rhodes, with Atlantis to the north of that island in the Aegean.(b)

(a)  See: https://web.archive.org/web/20180215195713/https://mapmistress.com/

(b) https://pseudoastro.wordpress.com/2009/02/01/planet-x-and-2012-the-pole-shift-geographic-spin-axis-explained-and-debunked/ (about half way down page)

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20160624002531/https://mapmistress.blog.com/timescale/ or See Archive 2566 | (atlantipedia.ie) *

Djonis, Christos A.

CHRISTOS A. DJONIS ATLANTIS VICINITYChristos A. Djonis is a Greek Cypriot now living in the United States. His first book Cyprus-The Island of Aphrodite, is a travel guide to that island. He has now ventured into much deeper waters with his latest book Uchronia-Atlantis Revealed[0935]. The central core of his theory is that Atlantis lay in the Aegean Sea, to the north of Thera, which itself contained the capital city of the Atlantean confederation. He gives no credit to Paulino Zamarro who proposed a similar location fifteen years ago[0024].

Djonis accepts 9600 BC as the time of its existence as the lower sea level then would have created a single landmass with a large central plain. Among his other Djonis2claims is the idea that during the Bronze Age the Minoans “were not only heavily mining copper from the area around Lake Superior, but they were regularly carrying tobacco and other spices from the Americas back to Santorini.”(d)

He supports this link with North America with the geographical spread of the human mitochondrial DNA designated Haplogroup X. In his own words(e),

“While most geneticists today maintain that haplogroup X walked to America via the Bering Strait, genetic maps show that the furthest region east of the Mediterranean with small traces of haplogroup X, is the Altai Republic in Southern Russia. No traces of haplogroup X exist between Altai Republic and the greater region of the Great Lakes. If haplogroup X infiltrated North America via the Bering Strait, why then does the greatest concentration of haplogroup X (away from the Mediterranean) exist around the Great Lakes and not in Alaska or alongside the west coast? Most importantly, how do we otherwise explain that heavy traces of haplogroup X incidentally also exist in Scotland, Orkney Islands, Faroe islands and Iceland, essentially all the island stops to North America from Europe.”

Not unexpectedly, Jason Colavito, who denies the existence of Atlantis, wrote a highly critical review of Djonis’ claims and had further exchanges with Djonis in the comments section of his blog(i).

Even more damning is that Djonis cites the 1996 claim of Mark McMenamin that ancient Carthaginian coins depicted America. Unfortunately, Djonis was apparently unaware that in 2000, McMenamin was obliged to confirm that the coins in question were fakes(k) as revealed in his book, Phoenicians, Fakes and Barry Fell [1738]. Nevertheless, as recently as 2020 Djonis was still being quoted in the media(m)(n) as using the fake coins as evidence for the existence of Atlantis. He continued to tout this falsehood into September 2021(o).

>In a December 2022 article, Djonis suggested that Atlantis lies under 400 feet of water in the Aegean(p). Unfortunately, this conflicts with Plato’s text which tells us that as late as Plato’s time the place where Atlantis had been submerged was still a maritime hazard. Keeping in mind that Kurt Lambeck has demonstrated(q) from a study of Roman fish pens that the sea level along the Italian coast, 2000 years ago, was just 1.35 metres below today’s levels and if we add a generous additional foot to take us back to Plato’s day, we can calculate that Atlantis should now be in around 5, not 400 feet, of water.<

Djonis does not explain why Plato unambiguously stated that the Atlanteans came from the west (Tim.25b & Crit.114c) and yet Djonis’ Atlantis is situated to the southeast of Athens and north of Egypt? In fact, what Plato said was that the invasion came from the Atlantic Sea (pelagos). Although there is some disagreement about the location of this Atlantic Sea, all candidates proposed so far are far west of both Athens and Egypt.

Instead, he prefers to parrot the discredited ancient astronaut theories of Zechariah Sitchin, based on his flawed interpretation of Sumerian texts. These include claims that humans were ‘created’ by these extraterrestrial visitors. In fact, he wastes over half his book discussing UFOs and ETs.

In April 2016 Djonis had an article published on the Ancient Origins website(j), in which he discussed Sitchin’s theory of Planet X without arriving at any conclusions. Why?

I did not find Djonis convincing regarding either the Annunaki or Atlantis.

January 2016 had Djonis plunge into the muddy waters relating to the early discovery of America with a three-part article on the Ancient Origins website(f). Not unexpectedly, Jason Colavito had few caustic comments to offer on this latest offering from Djonis(g).

Recently, Djonis and I exchanged emails in which I offered some of my reasons for rejecting his ideas. Clearly unhappy with my comments, he has now used Ancient Origins to rehash(h) his flawed ideas. Included in his offering is a sarcastic reference to me as an ‘expert’, a title I have never used or claimed. Apart from his support for the idea of ancient astronauts, which he carefully avoided in this recent article, my main gripe is that Djonis’ is content to discard elements in Plato’s account without any justifiable reason. Djonis presumptuously wrote of me that there is “no doubt in his mind that Atlantis was a myth.” On the contrary, I believe that it is highly probable that Atlantis existed, but, it is also quite clear that Plato’s narrative contains mythical elements that may have impeded researchers seeking to identify the historical Atlantis.

In 2021, Djonis published Atlantis: The Find of a Lifetime [1857], in which, unsurprisingly, he just recycles the Uchronia material along with a degree of padding. This new and ‘expanded’ edition is in fact listed as 20 pages shorter. As of June 21st, I found it strange that the book is not mentioned on Djonis’ website(l)!

A YouTube clip(b) and PowerPoint presentation(c) are also available.

(a) https://www.atlantisislandrevealed.com/

(b) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7PphlD9mw&feature=youtu.be

(c) https://vimeo.com/79041220

(d) https://www.atlantisislandrevealed.com/#!the-minoans/cr2t

(e) https://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/atlantis-revealed-platos-cautionary-tale-was-based-real-setting-003224

(f) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/legendary-hyperborea-and-ancient-greeks-who-really-discovered-america-005258

(g) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/hyperborean-hyperbole-atlantis-theorist-alleges-that-greeks-reached-america-via-the-arctic

(h) https://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/atlantis-examining-legendary-tale-plato-005750?nopaging=1

(i) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/new-atlantis-claim-places-lost-continent-in-Cyclades

(j) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-science-space/planet-x-there-scientific-evidence-005768?utm_source=sendy&utm_medium=email&utm_content=top5_lastyear&utm_campaign=email_regular&page=0%2C2

(k) https://www.academia.edu/37093408/PHOENICIANS_FAKES_AND_BARRY_FELL_SOLVING_THE_MYSTERY_Of_CARTHAGINIAN_COINS_FOUND_IN_AMERICA

(l) ChristosDjonis.com: Author | BOOKS (cdjonis.com)

(m) https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1303092/atlantis-found-location-america-greek-legend-plato-archaeology-news-coin-found-spt

(n) https://www.econotimes.com/Author-says-2400-year-old-coin-artefact-may-be-proof-that-Atlantis-is-real-1586677

(o) The Legendary Hyperborea and the Ancient Greeks: Who Really Discovered America? | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)

(p) Atlantis: How Plato’s Story Corresponds to Real History (greekreporter.com) *

(q) https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1192397/posts *

Persian Gulf, The

The Persian Gulf is just one of a variety of areas identified as having been mainly exposed land prior to the melting of the glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age(a).  Archaeologist Dr Jeffery Rose(b) recounts how this land which contained a large oasis used by humans from at least 74,000 years ago was finally inundated by the Indian Ocean around 6000 BC(c)(j) Rose believes that “there is compelling evidence to suggest that both the Flood and Eden myths may be rooted in these events around the Gulf basin.” His views are more fully outlined in the December 2010 issue of the distinguished journal Current Anthropology(d) and can now be accessed on the Academia.edu website(g).>He also suggests that the flooding of the Black Sea and the Persian Gulf took place at the same time.<

>Kurt Lambeck has also studied the Persian Gulf and concluded that it had been a fertile valley that was slowly inundated as the last Ice Age was ending, forcing the inhabitants to move inland and leading to the establishment of intriguing Mesopotamian civilisations such as the Sumerians. This flooding of the Persian Gulf(b) may have inspired the Epic of Gilgamesh which contains a Deluge story accepted by many to be an earlier version of the Biblical flood of Noah.<

In 2004, Jim Teller a geologist at the University of Manitoba and his team offered evidence for the inundation of the Persian Gulf at the end of the last Ice Age. Teller suggested that the devastation caused to the communities could have inspired the flood stories found in early historical documents(h).

>Trevor Palmer offers further evidence to support the association of the Persian Gulf inundation with the Uta-Napishtim/Noah Flood story(i).<

persian-gulf-map-101210-02It has also been speculated that the Gulf may have been home to Plato’s Atlantis(e). This theory would place the Pillars of Heracles at the Strait of Hormuz.

A recent article(f) by Marilyn Luongo placing Atlantis in Mesopotamia, also identifies Hormuz as the location of the ‘Pillars’.

However, the Gulf is just one of a number of sites such as Doggerland in the North Sea and Sundaland in the South China Sea that have been proposed as the location of submerged Atlantis. At this point we are only dealing with speculation as no coherent argument has been adduced to identify any of those locations with the possible exception of Sundaland, where at least a credible case has been put forward by researchers such as dos Santos and Lauritzen, but not without weaknesses in their contention.

(a) https://www.livescience.com/10340-lost-civilization-existed-beneath-persian-gulf.html

(b) https://bham.academia.edu/JeffreyRose

(c) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101208151609.htm

(d) Ancient Desert Oasis Echoes Eden – Seeker 

(e) https://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/The_Rise_of_Civilization_-_15,000_BC

(f) https://web.archive.org/web/20200220020342/http://www.middle-east.mavericsa.co.za/history.html

(g) https://www.academia.edu/386944/New_Light_on_Human_Prehistory_in_the_Arabo-Persian_Gulf_Oasis

(h) icult — Noah’s flood: the Canada connection (treyf.com) 

(i) https://www.academia.edu/22814109/Catastrophic_Black_Sea_Floods_and_the_Story_of_Noah_Chronology_and_Catastrophism_Review_2009_pp_45_54  *

(j) https://www.livescience.com/10340-lost-civilization-existed-beneath-persian-gulf.html *

Sea-Level Changes *

Sea-Level Changes. Recent years have seen the production of ever more detailed data relating to sea-level changes following the last Ice Age. In 2006 researchers discovered that the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska was created around 9000 BC, a thousand years earlier than previously thought.

Such changes could have had a direct bearing on the Atlantis mystery, particularly if Plato’s assertion that its inundation took place in 9600 BC is true, as this would place the event at the end of the last Ice Age and the melting of the glaciers with the consequent raising of the level of the oceans. Although we are usually given the impression that this deglaciation progressed steadily it would appear that in reality the process continued at different rates and was at times temporarily reversed.

Recent studies(f) have clearly indicated that aboriginal Australians have preserved memories of the rising sea level at the end of the last Ice Age.

A 2000 report(c) from Dr Robert Baker and Professor Peter G.Flood from the University of New England in New South Wales, suggests that 4,000 years ago sea levels “may have been up to two metres higher than at present and that sea levels have risen and fallen like a roller coaster over the last 6,000 years.” I would expect that sea levels two metres higher around 2000 BC would have left archaeological evidence on a global scale. Until that is forthcoming, I would treat this claim with caution.

Dr Robert Haworth who worked with Dr Baker endorsed the conclusions of Baker and Flood(k). A few years later Haworth found further evidence of higher temperatures and sea levels in the Sydney area 6,000 years ago(l).

Holocene_Sea_LevelEstimates of the total change in sea levels vary between 300 and 500 ft. The most recent studies have estimated the rate of sea-level rise at an average of one metre per century punctuated by occasionally increased rates of 2.5 metres per century(a). To complicate the picture further, many areas in northern latitudes that had been depressed by the weight of the enormous ice sheets of the last Ice Age, rose considerably as a result of isostatic rebound when the glaciers melted.

There is general agreement that the raising of the sea-levels had dramatic consequences worldwide. Vast landmasses, such as Sundaland, the Celtic Shelf, and the Caribbean were totally or partially submerged, leaving many of today’s islands as remnants. Communities that had flourished in these regions during the last Ice Age must have been devastated which naturally led to the generation of myths recalling their former glory. Atlantis is assumed to be one such legend with a firm basis in reality.

Other, more controversial effects have also been proposed, such as the breaching of a landbridge that had existed between Spain and North Africa at Gibraltar and/or a similar isthmus between Sicily and Tunisia. James Bramwell reports that in the 1930s geologists spoke freely of the breaching of a Gibraltar dam around 15,000 years ago. More recently, writers such as Joseph S. Ellul, Sergio Frau and Paulino Zamarro have convincingly based their Atlantis theories on this concept. The Mediterranean sea level is discussed elsewhere.

Other writers have proposed an asteroidal or cometary impact as the cause of catastrophic flooding, but such inundations would have receded fairly rapidly. In the end, we are left with the ending of the last Ice Age as the primary cause of profound changes in the topography of our planet that probably included the submergence of one civilisation that we now refer to as Atlantis.

However, Plato introduces another detail into his Atlantis narrative, namely that following the submergence of Atlantis, it created a maritime hazard in the form of shoals. Plato wrote that “wherefore also the ocean at that spot has now become impassable and unsearchable, being blocked up by the shoal of mud which the island created as it settled down.” (Timaeus 25d). The implication of this is that the shoals still existed in either Solon’s or Plato’s lifetime. We must also keep in mind that the draft of ships, such as triremes, at that time was about a metre. The attached chart shows how between 5000 BC and the present, the rate of sea level has been relatively slow. Even allowing for any local seismic, tectonic or isostatic activity I would interpret the data to suggest two important facts; first, the flooding of Atlantis could not have taken place before 5000 BC and still be a hazard in the first millennium BC and secondly if it occurred after 5000 BC Atlantis must be still in shallow water.

Kurt Lambeck has demonstrated from a study of Roman fish pens that the sea level along the Italian coast, 2000 years ago, was 1.35 metres below today’s levels. His investigations also included a study of land elevations along the coast that may have been affected by seismic or tectonic processes and found that they had raised the land by 1.22 metres, indicating that global sea levels had risen by just 13cm over the past two millennia, most of which has occurred over the past century(d)! Lambeck’s conclusions have been severely criticised by Izabol Apulia(e).

Professor Nicholas Flemming of the University of Southampton has written extensively on the subject of sea-level changes [1682], particularly in the Mediterranean(h). A more localised study of sea-level changes around Malta during the Holocene has been produced by an Italian team led by Stefan Furlani(i).

Furthermore, if the destruction took place before 5000 BC then either Solon or Plato concocted the description of the shoals, which would have no purpose whatsoever!

Sea level changes in the Gulf of Mexico are discussed in an online pdf file(b). In the same region, there is now claimed to be evidence(g) confirming that sea levels were lower during the last Ice Age and that the Yucatan Peninsula was very much larger.

A June 2021 report(j) concluded that  Israeli sea levels rose at a relatively fast rate of 2 – 2.5 metres within 200 years between the Hellenistic and Roman periods. I am not aware of any corroboration from other sites in the region, so, lacking any such evidence, I am forced to conclude that this is more likely to have been the consequence of localised seismic activity rather than a more general rise in sea levels. On the other hand, seismic events are usually instant and not spread over centuries! Further investigation is required.

(a) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101201120605.htm

(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20120713234249/https://www.gly.fsu.edu/~donoghue/pdf/donoghue-climatic-change.pdf

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20110912071448/https://www.abc.net.au/quantum/stories/s112352.htm

(d) https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1192397/posts

(e) See: Archive 2566

(f) https://theconversation.com/ancient-aboriginal-stories-preserve-history-of-a-rise-in-sea-level-36010

(g) https://phys.org/news/2016-11-dino-killing-crater-clues-ice-age.html

(h) https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/humanity-and-million-years-sea-level-change *

(i) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235606249_Holocene_sea_level_change_in_Malta

(j) https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/israel-sea-level-rose-2-m-in-hellenistic-period-could-explain-decline-671173

(k) Atlantis Rising magazine  # 22 p11 

(l) https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/04/01/1078868.htm?site=tv&topic=latest 

 

 

Lambeck, Kurt L.

LambeckKurtKurt L. Lambeck (1941- ) is a Professor of Geophysics at The Australian National University in Canberra. He has carried out a study in many parts of the world of sea level changes and together with A. Purcell presented a paper to the 2005 Melos Atlantis Conference with the tantalising sub-title of “Was Atlantis on the doorstep of Athens”.

Lambeck particularly charts the reduction of the Cyclades from a landmass of approximately 160 x 85 km (13,600 km2)  to the archipelago we know today, which has an area of 2,572 km2.

He suggests that a memory of the break-up of this large landmass may have been the source of Plato’s Atlantis. His findings in the Aegean have been published in Antiquity[430] and maps of sea level changes, based on his investigations, are also available on the Internet. It is interesting to compare Lambeck’s findings with the theory of Paulino Zamarro who firmly places Atlantis in the Aegean.

Lambeck’s sea level data has been harshly criticised by Izabol Apulia(d), who has developed a large series of maps showing the ancient coastlines of most Mediterranean islands at various stages since the Last Glacial Maximum.  

Lambeck has also studied the Persian Gulf and concluded that it had been a fertile valley that was inundated after the last Ice Age forcing the inhabitants to move inland and leading to the establishment of the intriguing Mesopotamian civilisations such as that of the Sumerians. This flooding of the Persian Gulf(b) may have inspired the Epic of Gilgamesh which contains a Deluge story, accepted by many, to be an earlier version of the Biblical flood of Noah. The December 2010 issue of Current Anthropology discusses this subject and suggests that the flooding of both the Persian Gulf and the Black Sea took place around the same time(c).

>In 2004, Jim Teller a geologist at the University of Manitoba and his team offered evidence for the inundation of the Persian Gulf at the end of the last Ice Age. The devastation that was caused to the communities could have inspired the flood stories found in early historical documents(a).<

(a) icult — Noah’s flood: the Canada connection (treyf.com) *

(b) http://people.rses.anu.edu.au/lambeck_k/pdf/171.pdf

(c) https://www.seeker.com/ancient-desert-oasis-echoes-eden-1765150780.html

(d) See: Archive 2566

Aegean Sea

The Aegean Sea is located in the eastern Mediterranean, bounded by the Greek mainland in the north and west, Turkey in the east and extending to Crete in the south. In 1899, R.F. Scharff claimed that it was commonly accepted that the Aegean had been dry land until after the appearance of man(c). Zhirov wrote of this landmass being referred to as ‘Aegeida’ before it subsided to form the Aegean Sea [0458.96],  but he doubted that it occurred before ‘thinking man’ arrived there.

The 15th-century map of Ibn Ben Zara appears to show the islands of Aegean as larger and more numerous than today!

The importance of the Aegean to the ancient Greeks is highlighted by Plato when he described their relationship as one where the Greeks “are like frogs around a pond.” (Phaedo 109a-b)

However, it has been noted(i) that the Homeric poems (and the works attributed to Hesiod) studiously avoid any reference to the Aegean Sea, an avoidance that appears all the more striking when juxtaposed with the fact that there are other named seas in the poems.

A 280-page overview of the Aegean civilisations from the Neolithic to the Hellenistic period(f) is worth a look.

It can be reasonably argued that initially, the Greeks had little knowledge of the world beyond the Aegean, which might explain why Plato did not seem to know the exact identity of the Atlanteans. In this regard, a quote from an AtlantisOnline forum seems relevant – “There is evidence, moreover, that the Greeks were restricted by the Phoenicians to the Aegean Sea for a period of many centuries from 1200 BC onwards, and Naval Historians attribute this to the availability exclusively to the Phoenicians of two elements in ship construction, namely long straight cedar timbers (compared to short sinuous olive timbers available to the Greeks) and Bronze for fixings, claddings and battering rams, which were used in battle to perforate hulls, sinking the enemy.”(e)

Many researchers have suggested the Aegean as a possible location for Atlantis with Thera and Crete as the leading contenders. In fact, it is Thera, with its dramatic volcanic eruption, in the middle of the second millennium BC that still aegean_mapmanages to command considerable support after nearly one hundred years since it was first mooted. Its advocates view it as the most likely source of inspiration for Plato’s tale, in spite of the fact that it conflicts with many of the details described by him.

One regular blogger, ‘mapmistress’, proposed (2010) that the Pillars of Heracles were situated at Rhodes with Atlantis situated north of the island in the Aegean. This suggestion is based on the claim that all English translations of Timaeus 24e are ‘botched’ and that the original does not say “larger than Libya and Asia together” but instead should read “north of Libya and west of Asia”! In fact, she goes further with the claim that the very word ‘Atlantis’ was invented by Benjamin Jowett!(d)

Three Italian linguists, Facchetti, Negri, and Notti, presented a paper to the Atlantis conference on Melos outlining their reasons for supporting an Aegean backdrop to the Atlantis story. Another paper was presented by four members of the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research which demonstrates how three-quarters of the Cyclades Plateau was submerged between 16000 BC and 6000 BC as the sea levels rose after the last Ice Age. Kurt Lambeck and Anthony Purcell also presented a paper along similar lines.

>However, not everyone is happy with Atlantis being placed in the Aegean. About 20 years ago an anonymous contributor to the now-defunct geocities website wrote the following piece regarding the matching of Atlantis with the eruption of Thera(o).

“To arrive at this conclusion is simple enough – take the numbers Plato uses for the dimensions and antiquity of Atlantis, divide them by ten, then keep all the fabulous details about the architecture and pretend it applies to the structures and artifacts recovered by archaeology – then throw out all the details about its conquering armies, its location, and its complete disappearance. No wonder there’s such an exact match!”<

Paulino Zamarro has offered a very radical theory, outlined in his book [024], which claims that Atlantis was located in the Aegean, with its capital on Melos, at a time when sea levels were lower and the islands more extensive in area, with some of them joined together. He postulates an isthmus or land bridge between Gibraltar and Morocco, which he believes was breached around 5500 BC. An idea supported by Strato and Seneca. He contends that this breach not only flooded the Aegean but also was also responsible for the subsequent inundation of the Black Sea, which until then was a smaller freshwater lake.

Diamantis Pastras, a Greek-Australian confectioner presented to the Atlantis Conference in 2005 [0629.295] his theory that Atlantis had been situated in the Aegean Cyclades along with nearby Astipalea in the Dodecanese, which he maintains constituted a single larger landmass 3,500 years ago.

Recent studies have revealed(b) the extent of very early seafaring in the Aegean can be pushed back to around 10,000 BC with evidence of obsidian trading at that period. However, the lower sea level at that time would have meant that the Aegean islands would have been much larger with shorter distances, if any, between them, so it may be unwise to read too much into the obsidian evidence.

A 2018 article pushes back Mediterranean seagoing even further(h). Consider how this evidence may relate to Plato’s comment that when Atlantis was established “at that time neither ships nor sailing were as yet in existence”  (Crit.113e). However, December 2022 brought a claim of even earlier seafaring in the Aegean, possibly as far back as 450,000 years ago, according to a team from the University of Patras in Greece led by George Ferentinos(n).

In 1998 William Ryan and Walter Pitman published[025] their evidence for the enlargement of the Black Sea with seawater. The book received widespread attention that led to a subsequent expedition to the area by Robert Ballard, the famous discoverer of the Titanic.

However, Zamarro’s ideas have received very little notice, probably because he has only been published in Spanish. His theory regarding the silting and closure of the mouth of the Mediterranean deserves further consideration, as its confirmation would have a profound effect on the course of future studies of the prehistory of the region and in particular Atlantology.

C.C.M. Hardy was a regular contributor to SykesAtlantis journal, in which he suggested that remnants of Atlantis would be found in the seas around Greece. Hans-Henning Klein favours the island of Samothrace in the northern Aegean as the home of Atlantis(l).

A half-hearted attempt to link the Greek island of Thasos with Atlantis is to be found on the German de.pluspedia.org website(j).

A recent recruit to the ‘Atlantis in the Aegean’ camp is Christos A, Djonis with his theory[935] that Atlantis lay in the Aegean Sea, to the north of Thera, which itself contained the capital city of the Atlantean confederation. He makes no reference to Zamarro, who proposed a similar location fifteen years ago and consequently, considers Djonis’ work as a form of plagiarism! Apart from that, my gripe is that Djonis wastes over half his book discussing UFOs and ancient astronauts. Another proponent of a Theran Atlantis is Elias Stergakos, who also published his short book[1035] on the Minoan Hypothesis in 2014.

In the same year, the Italian architect Costa Kyrki published a paper entitled Lost Atlantis in which he proposed that the sunken Atlantis was situated between the island of Samos and Miletus on mainland Turkey(k).

J.P. Rambling on his Redefining Atlantis website(g) has now added his support to the concept of an Aegean Atlantis, situated on a large landmass, now mostly submerged, and which included what is now Santorini.

It is worth noting that Jürgen Spanuth In defending his North Sea location for Atlantis scornfully denounced the possibility of an Aegean Atlantis in Atlantis of the North [015.247]. “Neither Thera nor Crete lie in the ‘Atlantic sea’ but in the sea of Crete, which is clearly referred to in Crit.111a and is obviously not the Atlantic sea of Tim.24. Neither island lies at the mouth of a great river; neither was ‘swallowed up by the sea and vanished’ (Tim.25d): the Aegean never became ‘impassable to navigation’ (ibid.) Solon and Plato could never have said of the Aegean that passage there was hindered by ‘impenetrable mud’ (Crit.108e) for both had sailed through it – their contemporaries would have laughed at them if they had made such an absurd assertion.” Spanuth failed to highlight that Plato referred to the shoal of mud in the present tense indicating that it was still a hazard in his day!

What I cannot understand is that if Atlantis had existed in the Aegean, why did Plato not simply say so?

The Atlantisforschung website offers a selection of articles dealing with many aspects of the Aegean and its possible connection with Atlantis(m).

(a) https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/document-250811/

(b)https://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/004698.html

(c) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33236/33236-h/33236-h.htm#Page_61

(d) https://pseudoastro.wordpress.com/2009/02/01/planet-x-and-2012-the-pole-shift-geographic-spin-axis-explained-and-debunked/ (about half way down page)

(e) https://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php?topic=3238.1260

(f) https://www.slideshare.net/darkyla/greeks-9775861

(g) https://redefiningatlantis.blogspot.ie/ 

(h) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/neandertals-stone-age-people-may-have-voyaged-mediterranean

(i) https://www.academia.edu/2921202/Naming_the_Aegean_Sea_in_Water_and_Identity_in_the_ancient_Mediterranean_special_issue_of_MHR?email_work_card=interaction-paper

(j) Atlantis Verortung in der Ägäis (Thasos) – PlusPedia

(k) https://www.behance.net/gallery/17045455/LOST-ATLANTIS

(l) ATLANTIS ERAT ! – Es gab ATLANTIS! – Samothrake ist Atlantis – Atlantisforschung.de 

(m) The Aegean as a field of modern Atlantis research – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) 

(n) Ancient Humans May Have Sailed The Mediterranean 450,000 Years Ago : ScienceAlert

(o) Sunken Civilizations — www.geocities.com/sunkenciv/index.html (archive.org) *