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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Mu

Séguin, Xavier

Xavier Séguin (1949-  ) is the French author of the Eden Saga website(a). We have encountered Séguin in Atlantipedia in relation to a number of subjects. Some of his ideas are, in my opinion, simply daft. For example, he suggests that megalithic dolmens and menhirs can generate vril energy, which can be used to expedite the maturing of wine(b)!

The most exotic suggestion regarding the Etruscans comes from Séguin, who has claimed that they share a common ancestry with the Yoruba of West Africa, as both originated in Atlantis(c), a concept ‘borrowed’ from Leo Frobenius. He also offered a most extreme theory regarding the Olmecs with the claim that they were astronauts. This idea was expressed(d) by Séguin, quoting US astronaut Gordon Cooper [1757]!

However, I considered Séguin to be totally unreliable when I found that he also quoted a fictional character, Professor Mortimer, from a work by the renowned writer, Edgar P. Jacobs, as supposedly uttered by a real scientist(e), in relation to the Pillars of Heracles.

He denies that Atlantis was situated on the floor of the Atlantic, instead he proposes that Atlantis, Punt, Mu and Hyperborea had all been satellites(f)! Similar ideas were put forward Dieter Bremer.

(a) Sources Archives – Eden Saga – english (eden-saga.com)

(b) http://eden-saga.com/en/atlantis-thunder-energy-plants-earth-acupuncture-electric-wires-christened-vril-menhirs.html

(c) http://eden-saga.com/en/survivors-from-atlantis-frobenius-sixteen-gods-oracle-of-fa.html

(d) http://eden-saga.com/en/gordon-cooper-finds-olmecs-deep-knowledge-in-astronautics.html

(e) http://eden-saga.com/en/mythology-deluge-cataclysm-plato-flood-atlantis-location-piri-reis-last-days-in-atlantis.html

(f) https://eden-saga.com/en/mythology-deluge-cataclysm-plato-flood-atlantis-location-piri-reis-last-days-in-atlantis.html

Moore, Tom T.

Tom T. Moore is an American self-help author and self-declared telepath, who has written on a variety of subjects including Atlantis and Lemuria(a). He conventionally places Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean and Lemuria in the Pacific. According to Moore, Atlantis was destroyed by a natural disaster 31,000 years ago and again 12,500 years ago as a result of a war!

Lemuria was larger than Australia and was formerly connected to Japan and for thousands of years was an idyllic place with its inhabitants vacationing in Hawaii!

However, Lemuria, also known as Mu, destroyed itself in an atomic war 7,500 years ago.

This ‘male cow effluent’, is expanded on in his Atlantis & Lemuria: The Lost Continents Revealed [1556].

(a) Atlantis & Lemuria—Latitudes & Longitudes | Ancient Code (archive.org)*

Civilisation Collapse

Civilisation Collapse has occurred many times over the past millennia in all parts of the world. The American anthropologist, Joseph A. Tainter[1539] defines collapse as “a rapid shift to a lower level of complexity(a) .” Societal disintegration immediately brings to mind the Maya, the Indus Valley and in what are relatively more modern times, the Western Roman Empire.

The causes are usually a combination of factors, such as climate change, warfare, disease or excessive expansionism. Global catastrophes such as encounters with comets or asteroids are rare, while more local events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or tsunamis can also be thrown into the mix. These have all been encountered from time to time, but have rarely been blamed for the collapse of a society; full recovery from such limited regional events is usually possible.

The Mediterranean has seen its share of all these catastrophic events. A major tsunami on Sardinia, volcanic eruptions in Italy, and earthquakes in North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. Close encounters with extraterrestrial bodies have also been proposed in that region.

Perhaps the best-documented civilisation collapse is that which occurred around 1200 BC and affected many societies, particularly in the Middle East(b) . Israel Finkelstein, a leading Israeli archaeologist, has attributed this event to climate change and is of the view that this disruption was global in extent.

Inevitably, Atlantis has been cited as an example of civilisation collapse, particularly among supporters of the Minoan Hypothesis, who link the 2nd millennium BC eruptions of Thera with the demise of the Minoans on Crete. Also popular is the idea that Atlantis had been a large island in the Atlantic Ocean destroyed by a cometary impact or the rising sea levels as the glaciers melted at the end of the last Ice Age.>However these Atlantic suggestions would appear to be ruled out by Plato’s clear statement that Atlantis was destroyed by an earthquake.<

A variety of other theories have associated Atlantis with the collapse of a civilisation. For example, Frank Joseph claims that 40,000 years ago “sudden sea-level rises triggers migration from Mu around. The Pacific motherlanders settle on a large, fertile island about 380 kilometers due west from the Straits of Gibraltar. There, the newcomers merge with the native Cro-Magnon inhabitants, resulting in a new, hybrid culture – Atlantis.”>Unsurprisingly, Joseph fails to explain why refugees from the Pacific would travel all the way from the Pacific to settle in the Atlantic when their previous homeland was surrounded by more accessible alternatives such as the Americas, Australia, Asia and Africa. He also fails to explain how the migrants had the seafaring ability to travel such a distance. Furthermore, since all the oceans are connected this sudden sea level rise would also have had a similar effect in the Atlantic generating mass migrations there also.

(a) Wayback Machine (archive.org)

(b) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse

Bugby, William

William Bugby (1852-1928) was an Australian schoolteacher who frequently wrote to his local Daily Post in Hobart, Tasmania on the subject of Atlantis. He was a keen supporter of Le Plongeon’s theories(a)(b)(c), placing Mu (Atlantis) in the Atlantic and that the survivors of its destruction fled to the Yucatan, where they established what became the Mayan civilisation.

(a) https://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/187875670?searchTerm=Atlantis discovered&searchLimits=sortby=dateAsc

(b) https://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/187876598?searchTerm=Atlantis discovered&searchLimits=sortby=dateAsc

(c) https://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/187880760?searchTerm=Atlantis discovered&searchLimits=sortby=dateAsc

Hyperdiffusion

>Hyperdiffusion is defined by Wikipedia(n) as “a pseudoarchaeological hypothesis suggesting that certain historical technologies or ideas originated with a single people or civilization before their adoption by other cultures. Thus, all great civilizations that share similar cultural practices, such as construction of pyramids, derived them from a single common progenitor. According to its proponents, examples of hyperdiffusion can be found in religious practices, cultural technologies, megalithic monuments, and lost ancient civilizations.”<

Hyperdiffusion with Atlantis at its centre was argued at great length by Ignatius Donnelly when he proposed Atlantis as the mother culture, located in the Atlantic. Through colonisation and migration, their civilisation was brought to the Americas and the Mediterranean, particularly Egypt. The idea received widespread support at the time and has persisted until today(a),>with Graham Hancock being currently the best-known proponent of hyperdiffusion. In 2022, Marco Vigato also advocated Atlantis as a hyperdiffusionist hub.<

A similar hyperdiffusionist proposal was made by James Churchward regarding his Pacific island of Mu.

Angelo Mazzoldi expressed support for a form of regional hyperdiffusion that had his Italian Atlantis as the mother culture which seeded all the great civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean region.

However, even earlier, in the seventeenth century, Olof Rudbeck  “purported to prove that Sweden was Atlantis, the cradle of civilization, and Swedish the original language of Adam from which Latin and Hebrew had evolved.”(i)

Since Atlantis in the Atlantic is considered by many to be highly improbable and Mu only existed in Churchward’s imagination, a more likely explanation is that diverse ideas emerged independently in different locations, possibly around the same time. These developments then diffused through trade and migration in various directions, sometimes returning in an improved format. The result is that today we are finding that most ancient civilisations show evidence of cultural influences from more than one source.

Lawrence Freeman is the American author of Beyond The Pillars: a search for Antediluvian civilizations(l) in which he reviews almost every civilisation and prehistoric mystery that you ever heard of. He refers to Atlantis throughout the book, but in rather sceptical tones, with the nearest to a conclusion being that –  Atlantis may well have never existed, but if it did exist, then it was likely only as part of a worldwide antediluvian civilization that is now coming to light.”

Richard Cassaro and Jim Allen have both published online large collections of images(b)(c)(d) that clearly demonstrate widespread diffusion. This is particularly so in the case of South America where influences from both east and west are clearly evident. While it is regularly claimed that Egypt influenced South American civilisations it is obvious that Asian inspiration was equally, if not solely, at work. The existence of pyramids in both Egypt and Mesoamerica is put forward as evidence of contact between them. However, the problem is that the American pyramids were constructed hundreds if not thousands of years later than the Egyptian ones. However, in spite of this separation by time and distance, the Egyptians and the Aztecs also shared feathered-serpent deities(g)! What appears to be overlooked is the fact that the Chinese pyramids are more like Mesoamerican examples and are dated to the second half of the first millennium BC, again closer to the development of pyramids in Mesoamerica.

Christian O’Brien contended that global cultural hyperdiffusion was centred in Southern Lebanon (the Garden of Eden) and was spread from there by ‘The Shining Ones’ leading to the establishment of some of the great civilisations of our ancient past!(m)

An even more unusual hyperdiffusionist opinion was expressed by the Argentine palaeontologist, Florintino Ameghino (1854-1911), who thought that mankind originated in South America(h) and spread globally from there!

In 2020, Anthony Woods [1775] attempted to prove that Atlantis was Ireland and also the source of the mother culture for the entire world. As an Irishman, when reading this, I did not know whether to laugh or cry.

In March 2021, Hugh Newman published a paper drawing attention to the similarity of megalithic building techniques, using polygonal stones, found in America, Asia, Europe and Africa. He goes further, noting that “Peruvian relief carvings match those at Göbekli Tepe.” How much of this might be the result of coincidence or hyperdiffusion is a matter of opinion.(k)

Carl Feagans offers a paper that is highly critical of hyperdiffusion and its promoters, denouncing them as “willfully ignorant and grossly racist. Though they don’t say it directly, the message is still the same: “white people did it, not savages.”(j)

A 1986 paper(f) by Ben Urish entitled Cultural Diffusion[0969] should be read in this connection.

(a) https://www.africaspeaks.com/reasoning/index.php?topic=5106.0

(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20200629021253/http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/artefacts.htm

(c) https://www.richardcassaro.com/suppressed-by-scholars-twin-ancient-cultures-on-opposite-sides-of-the-pacific

(d) https://www.richardcassaro.com/pagan-god-self-icon-found-worldwide-rewrites-history-reveals-lost-golden-age-religion

(e) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_pyramids

(f) https://soar.wichita.edu/bitstream/handle/10057/1746/LAJ_v11_no1_p75-87.pdf?sequence=3

(g) See: Archive 2827

(h) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20180329154212/https://webs.advance.com.ar/lae_tor/teorias.htm

(i) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaus_Rudbeck

(j) https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2016/12/hyper-diffusion-archaeology/ 

(k)  https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places/megalithic-origins-g-bekli-tepe-and-ancient-peru-same-architects-008402

(l) https://lfreeman.blogspot.com/2006/11/beyond-pillars-search-for-antediluvian.html

(m) https://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/shining.php

(n) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperdiffusionism *

Macmillan Brown, John

McMillanBrownJohn Macmillan Brown (1845-1935) although Scottish by birth, he spent his academic life in New Zealand, where he was a professor of Classics and English at Canterbury College in Christchurch. He had an enlightened attitude towards the education of women.

In 1924, he published Riddle of the Pacific[1155] in which he expressed the view that there had been a continent in the Pacific with some of today’s island groups its only remnants. This was some years before James Churchward started publishing his books on Mu.

Cattoi, Costantino

CattoiCostantino Cattoi (1894-1975) was an officer in the Italian Air Force during the First World War, during which he developed the cartographic value of aerial photography. In 1955 he got considerable media coverage for his concept of lost civilisations, which included Lemuria, Mu and Atlantis in the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans respectively. He also posited an extension of Atlantis reaching into the Mediterranean as far as Italy and added his view that just offshore from Ansedonia, 70 miles north of Rome, may have been the location of the Atlantean capital!

Cattoi also announced that he had located three of the cities of Tirrenide between Porto Santo Stefano and Isola del Giglio, but he died without being able to find funding for the underwater exploration that would have proved his hypothesis(b).

(a) https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19550605&id=H7lOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kAAEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5424,765131&hl=en (Toledo Blade Pictorial, June 5, 1955)

(b) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20190414214546/https://www.tuttomisteri.it/tirrenide/ (Italian)*

Geerts, L.C. *

L. C. Geerts is the Dutch author of the earth-history.com website. His background provides interesting reading(a). He has an extensive section regarding Atlantis, where he concludes as follows:

“In my book I will explain that there were at least 3 sunken continents (islands) in ancient times :

1. Atlantis, situated in the Atlantic Ocean, about 9,000 BC.

2. Lemuria (Mu), situated in the Pacific Ocean, about 20,000 BC.

3. The Egyptian Keftiu, situated in the Aegean See (Santorini, Thera), about 1,600BC.” 

The working title of the book referred to by Geerts was ‘Earths Ancient History, a theory about ancient times and dawn of Mankind’ and was due for publication in 2013 – so far only available on his website(c).

Geerts has also written a history of Dordrecht, Holland’s oldest city(b).

Even though Geerts ventures onto subjects even more contentious than Atlantis, his site is worth a visit.

In April 2018 Geerts’ website appeared to go offline. However, some of his ideas could still be read elsewhere(d). However, Geerts revamped his site and it is now available again with slightly modified web addresses..

(a) Preface by L.C.Geerts (archive.org) *

(b) Welcome (archive.org)

(c) My-Manuscript (archive.org) 

(d) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/alien_watchers09.htm

Nan Madol*

Nan Madol is a large stone city on the Micronesian island of Pohnpei in the Western Pacific. The entire site covers 170 acres and according to Frank Joseph is comprised of an estimated 250 million tons of basalt!(b) An article on the Smithsonian website offers very different figures(c).

The city Nan_Madolhas a series of canals connecting the structures, which were built on nearly a hundred artificial islands. It has been called both the ‘Venice’ and the ‘Atlantis’ of the Pacific. Conventional archaeology dates the site to around 1200 AD.

James Churchward claimed Nan Madol as part of his concocted Mu. David Hatcher Childress has proposed that the site was part of Lemuria, another invention. Erich von Däniken in his The Gold of the Gods was happy to claim that as a result of extraterrestrial intervention, the ancient Micronesians, had mastered flight and used this ability to transport the stone for the construction of the city!

In 1979, Bill S. Ballinger published Lost City of Stone [1920], following the author’s visit to the island a few years earlier. In common with other commentators, he could not offer any credible explanation as to the identity of the site’s builders or its purpose.

Recent archaeological research in 2017, led by Mark McCoy from Texas Southern Methodist University, has, not unexpectedly, regenerated foolish speculation that the remarkable site might in some way be connected with Plato’s Atlantis(a).

Dr Heinrich Kruparz, the Austrian author of Atlantis und Lemuria [990] has also penned a paper (in English) on the mysterious megaliths of Nan Madol(d).

>Another site offers a series of interesting images from Nan Madol(e).<

(a) https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4840708/mysterious-ancient-city-found-on-a-remote-island-sends-conspiracy-theorists-wild-as-theyre-convinced-atlantis-has-finally-been-found/

(b) Atlantis Rising magazine  #51  p.46 https://atlantisrising.com/product/issue-51-atlantis-in-the-bahamas/

(c) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nan-madol-the-city-built-on-coral-reefs-147288758/

(d) https://migration-diffusion.info/pdfdownload.php?id=445&file=1 · 

(e) Scientists are puzzled by this mysterious ancient city (msn.com) *

Churchward, Albert

Albert Churchward (1852-1925) was a younger brother of James Churchward, the ‘inventor’ of Mu. Although trained as a medical practitioner,albert churchward his real passion was the study of the early development of religion[943] and the later development of Christianity from Egyptian origins. In that respect he was greatly influenced by the work of Gerald Massey(a)(c). He makes no reference to Mu or Atlantis, because he either disagreed with his brother’s views or just did not wish to tread on his literary toes! His book The Origin and Evolution of the Human Race[903] can now be read online(b).

(a) https://www.peuplesawa.com/fr/bnlogik.php?bnid=759&bnk=&bnrub=&vip=581

(b) https://www.cedarcitylodge.org/books/origin_and_evolution.pdf

(c)  See: https://web.archive.org/web/20180316022505/https://gerald-massey.org.uk/massey/cmc_churchward.htm