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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Portugal

Usai, Luigi

Luigi Usai is the author of La Mappa di Atlantide (The Map of Atlantis) [1814], which, by his own admission, is the result of twenty days of intense study of the subject in early 2021!

Some of his principal claims are that Plato’s mention of the Atlantic Sea was a reference to the Western Basin of the Mediterranean, in the middle of which lay the island of Atlantis that today are the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, but was then conjoined. He specifies the Sardinian region of Sulcis as the home of the Atlantean capital!

His website(a) offers a list of 27 points in support of his thesis. The site itself seems to lack focus wandering into unrelated areas such as suggesting a link between his Corsican/Sardinian Atlantis and the pre-Etruscan Villanovan culture of central Italy. He then proposes that ‘Moors heads’ on the flags of Corsica and Sardinia may have a Sumerian origin!

While I also favour a Central Mediterranean location for Atlantis, I must totally reject his date of 10,000 years ago for its existence as there was no civilisation in Athens or Egypt to attack at that time.

His paper ATLANTIDE ESISTE ED ERA IL GIARDINO DELL’EDEN (ATLANTIS EXISTS AND WAS THE GARDEN of EDEN) added the further claim that his Sardinian Atlantis was also home to the Garden of Eden.

At the very end of 2021, Usai claimed that he had discovered a hidden unknown mysterious submerged civilization in Sicily-Malta Escarpment”(b). Unfortunately, he has not. In July 2021 I was sent several images, including the large image used by Usai, that purported to show anomalous underwater images in the Central Mediterranean, northeast of Malta. At first sight, they appeared to show extensive manmade features. However, further investigation by my correspondent eventually revealed that the images were the consequence of a flawed computer interpretation of sonar data.

>In 2022, Usai published a number of images purporting to show underwater anomalies off the coast of Cuba(c). As Usai has already designated the central region of the Mediterranean as the location of Atlantis I cannot understand his reason for showing such images. Similar anomalies have been found in various parts of the world and explained by Google as data-gathering glitches (see Satellite Imagery). If any of the rectangular features were city walls or streets they would have been kilometres wide – a nonsensical suggestion.<

(a) Why didn’t scientists find Atlantis before Usai Luigi? ? Atlantis found!

(b) Amazing discovery of a hidden unknown mysterious submerged civilization in Sicily-Malta Escarpment by Luigi Usai – Atlantis exists! Found by Dr. Luigi Usai (atlantisfound.it) 

(c) Cuba high resolution bathymetry – Atlantis exists! Found by Dr. Luigi Usai (atlantisfound.it) *

Sarkar, Pabhat Rainjan (L)

SarkarPabhat Rainjan Sarkar (1921-1990) was an Indian philosopher and spiritual leader with followers in over 130 countries. I am reliably informed that he expressed a number of beliefs regarding Atlantis, the core of which was that it was a huge continent that existed in the Atlantic. He also believed that Atlantis joined Africa and Iberia with a landbridge at Gibraltar. The destruction of Atlantis by an extensive earthquake separated Europe from Africa and also led to the creation of the Sahara.

In the book, Travels with the Mystic Master(a) by Dada Dharmavedananda, Sarkar is quoted as saying that ” The old Atlantis is now underwater except for parts of Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Iceland.”[1209.208]

(a) https://www.scribd.com/doc/11386818/Travels-With-the-Mystic-Master

MacRae, Michael

Michael MacRae (1949- ) is an Australian artist, writer and documentary maker who specialises in comparative mythology. His 2014 book, Sun Boat:The Odyssey Deciphered[985]offers the theory that Homer’s epic poem is an account of Odysseus’ circumnavigation of the world circa 1160-1130 BC.

In June 2015 he was ‘the author of the month’ on Graham Hancock’s website(a) with an article promoting his book. However, Jason Colavito has responded to that with a dismissive critique of MacRae’s idea(b).

This tussle has continued back and forth on Hancock’s website(c).

MacRae notes the suggestion that Homer’s Scheria can be identified with Atlantis and as such was probably situated off the western end of the Bay of Cadiz, Portugal’s Cape Vincent.

(a) https://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/MacRaeM1.php

(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/fringe-author-claims-odysseus-circumnavigated-the-earth-in-1160-bce

(c) https://www.grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?f=8&i=35955&t=35950

 

Recuenco Andrés, Javier

Javier Recuenco Andrés (1973- ) is an IT engineer from Cadiz in Spain. He has a passion for chess, history and mythology. His interest in the latter has led to his publication of a heavily illustrated The Historical Reality of Javier Recuenco AndresAtlantis in Spanish and English (Kindle only).

He begins with an in-depth examination of a ‘Tartessian’ gold disk that led on to an etymological investigation of the ‘K-N’ inscription on it, which he believes referred to the Conii people who settled in what is now southern Portugal. He speculates that the design of the disk reflects the layout of the acropolis of Atlantis! He has suggested that this acropolis was probably located in the vicinity of the Canary Islands.

In 2013, Recuenco Andrés and Diaz-Montexano jointly published a paper(a) on the academia.edu website offering comparable interpretations of the disk with the same conclusion that it was connected with Atlantis.

Javier dates the foundation of Atlantis to a period between 21,000 and 12,000 BC. Andrés has a hyperdiffusionist view of Atlantis showing rock carvings in North Africa, America, Australia, China and of course his native Iberia as evidence for their global influence. The fall of the Atlantean ‘Empire’ he suggests was between 12,000 and 9,000 BC, as the last Ice Age was ending.

He subscribes to the idea that there was a Gibraltar landbridge, which was breached around 5,500 BC that eventually led to the linking of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, an event originally revealed by Ryan & Pitman.

Javier also believes that Egypt was occupied by Atlanteans from 7000–5500 BC, but that their influence led to the building of the pyramids! In fact, he attributes the pyramids of China and America  to Atlantean influence. He identifies Knossos in Crete as an Atlantean colony in the eastern Mediterranean.

In my opinion, Javier has produced an original work, unlike the regurgitated offerings of so many others. Nevertheless, I think his work has too many assumptions based on excusable subjectivity.

(a) See: https://atlantisng.com/blog/javier-recuenco-georgeos-diaz-el-disco-de-bensafrim-simbolo-de-la-capital-de-atlantis-un-ensayo-de-atlantologia-historico-cientifica/comment-page-1/ (Spanish)

Bell Beaker People

The Bell Beaker People identified by their distinctive pottery existed from around 2800 BC until 1800 BC. They occupied large areas of Iberia, Central Europe and the British Isles as well as some of the western Mediterranean Bell Beakerislands. Melville Nicholls claims that they originated in Portugal. Associated with them are the Wessex people divided into Wessex I and Wessex II, who are found in western Europe and southern Britain, the latter, dated to 1650-1400, were involved with the construction of the later stages of Stonehenge.

Uwe Topper associates the beginning of metallurgy with the Bell-Beaker People(e).

Nicholls and others(b) have linked Atlantis with the Bell Beaker culture, identifying a location near Gibraltar as the site of Atlantis. He published his views in Children of the Sea God[944], a 2013 Kindle ebook(a) and a second ebook, The Real and Imaginary Atlantis[945] generally reprising the first, later the same year! Further comment from Nicholls can be found on an internet forum(f).

David D. Miner, is an American Doctor of Medicine, who published a paper linking the Beaker People, Atlantis and Salisbury Plain. He makes a serious and imaginative effort to explain details in Plato’s narrative in the context of this proposed association.

Donald Ingram was more specific equating the Atlanteans with the Wessex II culture in The Unlost Island[665].

The Beaker People are also claimed to have crossed the Atlantic, where they have been linked to the Adena culture of North America. A leading exponent of this theory is undoubtedly Jay S. Wakefield, co-author of How the SunGod reached America [0751]. He has reprised his views in a 2018 paper on the Diffusion & Migration website(c)(g) . Others have expanded on his concepts(d).

(a) https://www.amazon.com/Children-Sea-God-ebook/dp/B00CNCD9GA

(b) https://widespreadblyss.blogspot.ie/2013/02/platos-atlantis-and-bell-beaker-culture.html (link broken Sept. 2018)

(c) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2018&id=558

(d) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/adena-people-and-prehistoric-colonization-north-america-003342

(e) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=545

(f) https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/29303-A-New-Atlantis-Theory

>(g) https://migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2020&id=699<

 

Aldamiz, Luis

Luis Aldamiz (aka Maju) is an independent Basque researcher who has 666concluded that the Atlantean Empire was at the centre of the VNSP (Vila Nova de São Pedro) culture in ancient Portugal(a)(b).  Its capital Zambujal was situated near the modern city of Torres Vedras, just north of Lisbon. He bases his idea on a number of topographical and historical parallels between the VNSP region and Plato’s description of Atlantis(c).

In order to have Plato’s account of the Atlantean War conform to his location theory, he suggests that the Mycenaean Greeks fought alongside the El Argar people in southeast Spain against VNSP Atlanteans! The evidence for such a military alliance is at best tenuous or more likely, purely speculative.

VNSPHowever, the idea is not as farfetched as it might seem when combined with the views of W.Sheppard Baird who claims that Minoans had been the colonisers of Los Millares  in Andalusia as early as 4000 BC. In due course, the culture of Los Millares was superseded by that of El Argar. This begs the question as whether the Mycenaeans who had succeeded the Minoans on Crete also replaced them in their Andalusian colonies!

Nevertheless, no matter how interesting the theories of Aldamiz and Baird may be, they have still to explain Plato’s claim that the Atlanteans ‘controlled’ Europe as far as Tyrhennia, along with part of North Africa, before their eastward invasion! Furthermore, the part that Egypt played in their alliance with Athens in the war with Atlantis is totally ignored by them.

*(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20160611101052/https://allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=8257&PN=1*

(b) https://www.geocities.ws/luis_aldamiz/Atlantis/Atlantis.html

(c) https://atlantisforschung.de/index.php?title=Atlantis_in_der_portugiesischen_Estremadura_%28Basics%29

Nicholls, Melville

Mel NichollsMelville Nicholls is a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado where he studies atmospheric science, mainly relating to hurricanes. In May 2013, he published Children of the Sea God[944] as a Kindle ebook. One of his main contentions is that Atlantis existed  during the early Bronze Age at the time of the Bell Beaker culture, >which he claims originated in Portugal around 2800 BC.<

He also contends that Britain was the large island of Atlantis described by Plato. However he also proposes that the main port city of Atlantis, with the concentric rings of land and water was situated in southwest Spain near Gibraltar. He proposes that this port was destroyed by an event such as a tsunami.

While all these features have been proposed individually as characteristics of Atlantis, Nicholls brings them together in a comprehensive theory, but not without indulging in a liberal amount of speculation.

He devotes a considerable amount of space attempting to link Stonehenge with the Atlanteans. While I was not won over by Nicholl’s book, it is worth a read and might best be studied along with Donald Ingram’s book, The Unlost Island[665].

The idea of  ‘two’ Atlantises was probably first promoted by Lewis Spence and more recently by Karl Jürgen Hepke. In fact, were there not ten Atlantises?

In November 2013, Nicholls published a second ebook, The Real and Imaginary Atlantis[945], in which he revisits his theory of a British/Spanish Atlantis and its relationship to the Bell Beaker People. In conclusion, he seems to reluctantly write that “I still come down in favor of the theory that Plato invented the story as the one most likely to be correct.”

 

Coghill, Roger

Roger Coghill (1940- ) is an English research biologist with an interest in bioelectromagnetics and alternative medicine. He also has a passion for ancient history and in that connection he proposed in a 2002 interview that the region of Portugal’s Faro was the original home of Atlantis(a). He has now expanded his theory in the form of a Kindle book, The Message of Atlantis, in which he also identifies Scheria as Atlantis.

In his review of the history of Atlantis theories, Coghill inevitably came to the ravings of Churchward, Blavatsky and Steiner, inter alia, leading to his rather depressing conclusion that “the Atlantis story finally crawled and staggered into the 20th Century, maimed and mutilated by charlatans, scarred by ignoramuses and mystics, raped and prostituted by sick minds, like some ancient warrior-champion shot through with arrows, which have somehow missed vital organs, but still alive”

Portugal is also promoted by Peter Daughtrey[893], who proposes a location a few miles west of Faro, in the town of Silves.

Coghill has also published a biographical volume, Memoirs Of An Inconvenient Scientist as a Kindle book[1249].

(a) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-2086/ 

Daughtrey, Peter

Peter Daughtrey is a British researcher and the author of Atlantis and the Silver City in which he identifies a location in Portugal, where he lived until recently, for Atlantis. The publicity blurb looks promising as it reads as follows: “Over 2000 books have previously attempted to find the answer but invariably stumbled by matching only a handful of Plato´s clues for this fabled lost civilisation. This book matches almost 60 and includes the discovery of the ancient capital with its harbour that Plato described in great detail and the great sunken plain with at least one group of submerged ruins. Everything fits – the precise location, climate, topography, crops and animals, even the incredible wealth. It sits uneasily by one of the world’s most lethal seismic fault lines which in the past has wreaked havoc up to ten times more powerful than the recent quake off Japan with tsunamis 100 feet high. The great Atlantis empire is traced together with their leader’s odysseys to civilize South America and Egypt. The unique Atlantean physical characteristics are pinpointed and an ancient alphabet traced from which Phoenicians and Greek developed.” However, a pre-publication critique(a) has been rather less than encouraging.

Now that I have read the book I must declare that Daughtrey has produced a work that offers a spirited argument for considering Portugal’s Algarve as the location of Plato’s Atlantis.  In fact, he designates not just the Algarve and the submerged area in front of it as Atlantis, but the whole of that southwest Iberian region, starting immediately outside the straits of Gibraltar. The first half of it is the Costa da Luz in Spain.  I note that Greg Little has written a positive review of Daughtrey’s book.(f)

Daughtrey recently elaborated that hisposition for the great plain that Plato referred to is now the seabed front of southern Portugal and southern Andalucia as far Gibraltar. I think it would also have extended onto the submerged area of northern Morroco and onto the existing mainland. There would only have been much extended narrow straits from Gibraltar dividing it for a good length.”

More specifically he identifies the town of Silves, just west of Faro, as the Silver City in the title.

In order to compile Atlantipedia, I have had to read many books supporting a wide range of theories. I can say that Daughtrey’s offering would be in my top dozen Atlantis titles, along with those of Jim Allen, Andrew Collins, Anton Mifsud, Otto Muck and Jürgen Spanuth. They have all made valuable contributions to Atlantology even though I do not accept all of their conclusions.

Nevertheless, without going into a string of nitpicking comments, I would prefer to clearly state where I believe Daughtrey is fundamentally wrong. Which is in accepting Plato’s (or should that be Solon’s) 9,000 years literally. He is not the first to take this approach as the consequence is that either Atlantis attacked Athens (and Egypt) which did not even exist as organised societies at the time or the science of archaeology as we know it must be abandoned. It is interesting that when it suits him, Daughtrey is prepared to revise Plato’s dimensions for the Plain of Atlantis. I prefer to reinterpret all of Plato’s numbers, which I believe are seriously flawed.

In spite of the above, this book is a valuable addition to any Atlantis library.

September 2014 saw the History Channel preparing to broadcast a documentary on Atlantis in the Algarve that includes extensive interviews with Daughtery(b). However, following the airing of the program he seemed rather disappointed(c) that many of what he considered his most important arguments had been omitted from the final cut and that the producers were more interested in extraterrestrials.

Daughtrey’s book has been updated and a second edition [1957] was published in 2021 and contains what he calls “dramatic new evidence”. His book is supported by a website(e), where you will find additional articles, interviews and reviews.>An extensive press release to promote the new edition can be read here.<

In 2015, Daughtrey published a paper entitled ‘Mark Adams’ Atlantis in Morocco Theory Debunked’(g). This is rather misleading as Adams did not endorse any theory [1070].  The author of the Moroccan theory referred to by Daughtrey was the late Michael Hübner, who is not mentioned once. In fact, Daughtrey’s article offers no debunking but was just a promotional piece for his own book. I have a personal interest in this as I had been impressed by Hübner’s carefully constructed theory and had suggested that Adams should meet Hübner. I subsequently identified a serious flaw in Hübner’s theory.

(a) https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-60598-415-5

(b) https://www.portugalresident.com/2014/09/03/history-channel-features-algarves-connection-to-atlantis/ See: Archive 2227 

(c) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/friday-grab-bag-project-news-another-h2-guest-claims-producers-misled-him-and-more

(e) https://www.atlantisandthesilvercity.com/

(f) https://apmagazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=352:atlantis-discovered-again-march-2013&Itemid=194

(g) http://atlantisandthesilvercity.com/atlantis-blog/?p=123