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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Morocco

Bisceglia, Carlos Alberto

Carlos Alberto Bisceglia is the author of Atlantis 2021 – Lost Continent Discovered [1895]. He has several other books currently being translated from their original Italian.

Bisceglia’s central claim is that Atlantis was situated on an ‘island’ in northwest Africa. He claims “that the ‘geographical coordinates’ left by Plato indicate that the empire of Atlantis included the regions enclosed by Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, the adjacent islands, and possibly southern Spain.” He further claims that this territory was known to the Egyptians as ‘Ma’, being an abbreviation of Meshwash!

The African Humid Period which ended between 6,000 and 5,000 years ago, saw North Africa as home to some very extensive river systems and huge lakes. In what is now Western Sahara, the Tamanrasset River flowed from the Atlas Mountains southward and then west to the Atlantic. This creates a virtual ‘island’ enclosing the Atlantean territory delineated above, leaving a relatively small ‘isthmus’ in the Atlas mountains between the Mediterranean and the source of the river.

A comparable claim was made by Michael Hübner in 2008, when he described the Souss-Massa plain of Morocco as an island, surrounded as it is by mountains and called ‘island’ by the native Amazigh people!

I did not find Bisceglia’s claim convincing. His insistence that the Atlantis war took place 9,000 years before Solon, millennia before Athens even existed and certainly well past the African Humid Period is, for me, untenable. His book lacks focus and could have been fruitfully edited to half its size. Having described his Atlantis, he wanders off all over the world to Göbekli Tepe, Gunung Padang, Nan Madol along with many other places, all interesting, but without any real connection to Atlantis in NW Africa. He names the Richat Structure along with the 50km distant Semsiyat Dome as the capital(s) of Atlantis! According to Bisceglia, the larger structure (Richat) was reserved for the deity, the smaller one (Semsiyat) for his ‘people’!

Nevertheless, Bisceglia offers a pathetic explanation as to why his chosen Atlantis location is not submerged by suggesting that his Land of Ma was confused with the Land of Mu (Sundaland) in the Pacific and that the two separate accounts ‘were merged into one’. He adds “how the Egyptian priests knew this is a mystery. Evidently, some survivors from Sundaland arrived in some way in Egypt”

>However, Bisceglia made one simple but highly pertinent comment – “If Plato had thought that Atlantis was an island located in what we today call the Atlantic Ocean, he would have written that his Atlantis was ‘in the Middle of Okeanos’.” For the Greeks of Plato’s time, Okeanos referred specifically to the great river that encircled the known world. Instead. he placed Atlantis in the Atlantic Sea, which in my opinion brings us back to the Mediterranean.

In 2022, Bisceglia’s entire book was plagiarised under the name of Annabel Caras and is still (8th May 2023) on sale at Amazon.<

Bittner, Stefan

Stefan Bittner is a German historian, who published a substantial book of over 500 pages [1730] >Atlantis – wissenschaftlich analysiert (Atlantis-Scientifically Analysed). Atlantisforschung commenting on Bittner’s book suggests that he has“made a challenging contribution to solving the Atlantis problem. He comes to the remarkable conclusion that ‘Plato uses a historical source and reinterprets it as a philosophical metaphor’.”

Bittner proposes a ‘new’ location for Atlantis in the valley of the river Oued Laou, the Wadi Laou east of Tangier in Morocco. Over the past century, a number of researchers have proposed a variety of specific locations within Morocco as the original home of Atlantis, with varying degrees of credibility. What is clear is that Plato did indicate that at least some of North Africa constituted a part of the Atlantean domain, so designating an individual valley as the totality of Atlantis is, for me, not credible and to claim that Atlantis was flooded but did not sink, contradicts Plato, which I consider an unwise position to take, as it also fails to explain how a flooded inland valley can become a hazard for navigation (Timaeus 25d).

Thorwald C. Franke has now written a more extensive review(a) of Bittner’s book.

(a) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis-stefan-bittner-engl.htm

Gough, Andrew

Andrew Gough is a well-known TV presenter of historical mysteries programs and a contributor to The Heretic Magazine, which explains why he has written a lengthy article about Atlantis on his website(a). In it, he admits to having been initially attracted to the Minoan Hypothesis, but further research brought him to conclude that the Moroccan Atlantis location proposed by the late Michael Hübner was more credible.

Gough has written a series of fascinating papers on the cultural importance of the Bee in very many ancient societies.

>In 2023, Gough published another lengthy paper on the possibility that we might be living inside a hollow Earth(b). He suggests that this has been hidden from us through a conspiracy by ‘the powers that be’. I had always considered Gough to be a rational person, so, to say I was surprised by this article is an understatement.<

(a) https://andrewgough.co.uk/was-atlantis-in-morocco/

(b) Are We Living Inside the Earth? | Andrew Gough *

Ugas, Giovanni *

ugas on leftGiovanni Ugas is an archaeologist at the University of Cagliari, Sardinia, who has written extensively about the Shardana, their name, origin and language(c). The Shardana are usually counted as one of the Sea Peoples.

He has also touched on the subject of Atlantis, describing it as a fabulous story with a political message, but this does not preclude the existence of a physical and historical substratum on which the myth is built. The task of tracing the shreds of history and geography of this story is fraught with pitfalls.”

Ugas places Atlantis in northwest Africa across Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and has concluded that in the second millennium BC, the Atlanteans joined forces with the Sea Peoples to attack Egypt.

He also claims that the Mediterranean coast of southern Spain and France, along with the Italian peninsula was the ‘true continent‘ referred to by Plato (Timaeus 25a).

 

 

 

(a) http://www.sardegnasoprattutto.com/archives/9496

(b) L’Isola del continente: L’Atlantide tra fantasia e storia (1) [di Giovanni Ugas] | Sardegna Soprattutto (archive.org)

(c) SP INTERVISTA>GIOVANNI UGAS: SHARDANA  – Sardinia Point (archive.org) *

 

Mille, Pierre

mille-pierrePierre Mille (1864-1941) was a noted French journalist. In the 1920’s Mille declared(a) that the argan tree, which grows in Morocco, Madeira and Azores was the last survivor of Plato’s Atlantis. He was an honorary member of Paul le Cour’s Atlantis Association.

The fruit of the argan tree was claimed by Michael Hübner to have been the ‘golden apples’ sought by Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides.

(a) https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=MT19290810.2.36&srpos=53&e=——-en–20–41-byDA-txt-txIN-Plato+Atlantis——-1

Greig, Andrew (L)

Andrew Greig is the author of Mysteries of the Ancient World: The Secrets of Atlantis[1165], which is a Kindle offering of a few dozen pages. Greig suggests that the Atlanteans were the descendants of extraterrestrials from Osiris, who became stranded on Earth. He claims that they eventually settled off the Atlantic coast of Morocco on an island that was destroyed by a meteorite! This book is full of inaccuracies as well as unsubstantiated speculation. Keep you money in your pocket.

Two Crops a Year

Two Crops a year is one of the characteristics of Atlantean agriculture according to Plato (Critias 118e).

The North African climate was slightly wetter at the time of Hannibal (2nd & 3rd cent. BC), later, Algeria, Egypt and particularly Tunisia, were the ‘breadbasket’ of Rome(b) and may also have been so for the Atlanteans who earlier had control from North Africa to Tyrrhenia! Even today well-irrigated plains in Tunisia can produce two crops a year, usually planted with the autumnal rains and harvested in the early spring and again planted in the spring and harvested in late summer. The Berbers of Morocco produce two crops a year—cereals in winter and vegetables in summer(a).

*It is worth noting that Mago, the Carthaginian author of a 28-book work on the agricultural practices of North Africa. had his books brought to Rome after the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, where they were translated from Punic into Latin and Greek and were widely quoted. It is clear that Mago’s work was a reflection of a highly developed agricultural society in that region, a description that could also be applied to Plato’s Atlantis!*

Although two crops are possible annually in other parts of the world, I must emphasise that North Africa is the only part of the Atlantean territory referred to by Plato (Timaeus 25b) that was so productive and continued to be so until the Romans, who depended on it along with Egypt to feed Rome.

(a) https://www.britannica.com/place/Atlas-Mountains

(b) https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Tunisia

Pätznick, Jean-Pierre

PatznickJean-Pierre Pätznick is a French Egyptologist who is due to address a conference in May 2015 with the theme of L’Atlantide et l’Égypte (Atlantis and Egypt). His own paper is entitled Atlantis and the Land of the Pharaohs: Egyptian origin of the myth?

I’m given to understand that Pätznick was influenced by the theories of the late Michael Hübner.

In August 2020, Thorwald C. Franke drew attention to a recent article by Päznick in the French Egyptological magazine Pharon>(No 41)(b).<Franke has written a review of the article (in English)(a) , expressing overall disapointment with its content. Päznick now appears to favour Spain and/or Morocco as the location of Atlantis?

(a) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis-paetznick.htm

(b) (99+) (PDF) Atlantis: ‘Lost in Translations’ – In Search of the Egyptian Version | Jean-Pierre PÄTZNICK – Academia.edu  (French with English translation available) *

Bourgon, Emilio

Emilio Bourgon is an Italian researcher, and a keen follower of the work of Albert Slosman. Bourgon agrees with BourgonSlosman that a terrible cataclysm 12,500 years ago resulted in the destruction of Atlantis recorded by Plato(a). Subsequently, survivors reached Morocco and eventually travelled to Egypt where they brought their civilisation and the memory of their origins.

(a) https://mrubioarmas.eresmas.com/egit%20atlant.html (Spanish) (offline)

See: Archive 2399  (Rnglish machine translation)