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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Ptolemy

Irwanto, Dhani

Dhani Irwanto (1962- ) is an Indonesian hydraulic engineer, who is the latest proponent of the IrwantoSundaland location for Atlantis, in his April 2015 book, Atlantis: The lost city is in the Java Sea[1093]. A review of his book online(a), shows quite clearly that the author has made a serious effort to match Plato’s narrative with his chosen location for Atlantis, namely off the southern coast of the island of Kalimantan in the Java Sea. Irwanto also uses his professional expertise to analyse Plato’s many references to the waterways of the Atlantean capital and its extensive plain. The review also includes a number of maps and video clips used to support Irwanto’s views.

Irwanto has also adopted(c) the 32-point checklist of dos Santos and expanded it to 60 points. He has now published a YouTube video supporting his theory(d). The first 30 pages of his book can be read online(f).

Irwanto also claims that the biblical Garden of Eden and the legendary island of Taprobane were situated on the island of Kalimantan*. In an extensive online(b) article in November 2015, he identified the Indonesian island of Sumatra as the land of Punt, which he thinks was also known as the Ophir referred to in the Old Testament (1 Kings 9.26 & 10.11).

In June 2017, Irwanto published an illustrated paper(e) on Aurea Chersonesus, referred to by Ptolemy in his 2nd century Geographia . Irwanto has matched the details in Ptolemy’s description with a place in western Sumatra called Tanjungemas renowned for its gold mines in ancient times.

On his website, since the publication of his book, Irwanto had continued to add a number of detailed articles that are of interest to students of Atlantology. One example came in late 2021, when he added an extensive paper entitled Decoding Plato’s Narrative to Find Atlantis, using a visual format, infographics(g) that is worth a look.

(a) https://ahmadsamantho.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/a-new-theory-of-atlantis-disclosed/

(b) https://atlantisjavasea.com/2015/11/14/land-of-punt-is-sumatera/

(c) https://atlantisjavasea.com/2015/10/28/professor-arysio-nunes-dos-santos-initiator-of-indonesian-atlantis-theory/

(d) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT23A12-tDc&feature=youtu.be

(e) https://atlantisjavasea.com/2017/06/08/aurea-chersonesus-is-in-sumatera/

(f) https://www.academia.edu/18597541/Atlantis_in_Java_Sea 

(g) https://atlantisjavasea.com/2021/10/17/decoding-platos-narrative-to-find-atlantis-in-infographics/ 

Russo, Lucio

Lucio Russo (1944- ) is an Italian mathematician, physicist and science historian. In his 2013 offering L’ America dimenticata[1060] (The Forgotten America) he bravely suggests that America was discovered bylucio_russo-272x300   * the Phoenicians or the Carthaginians. He also claims that the longitude of the Lesser Antillies (known as the Isles of the Blest) was known precisely to Hipparchus (190-120BC), but that Ptolemy (90-168AD) later identified the Isles of the Blest with the Canaries and made a catastrophic error when he reduced the circumference of the Earth to 180,000 stadia from the nearly exact figure of 252,000 stadia calculated by Eratosthenes centuries earlier.

Having unravelled Ptolemy’s error Russo was then able to locate the position of Thule on the coast of Greenland(a). Jason Colavito had a few critical words to offer regarding Russo’s theory(b).

>Nevertheless, in an interview, Russo defends the central thesis of his L’ America dimenticata regarding early transatlantic travel. In the link below(c) which offers an English translation of the interview, a number of excerpts from his book are also added.<

(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucio_Russo

(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/italian-mathematician-ancient-greeks-discovered-America

(c) https://maddmaths-simai-eu.translate.goog/divulgazione/varie/lamerica-dimenticata-intervista-a-lucio-russo/?_x_tr_sl=it&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc  *

 

Thule

Thule is the name given in ancient Greek and Roman literature for the most northerly part of the world. Around 300 BC the Greek navigator Pytheas claimed to have visited Thule, six days of travel beyond Northern Britain. This may have been Iceland and in support of this idea, a paper was submitted to the 2008 Atlantis Conference in Athens by two Italian researchers, G. Giancarlo and M. Stucchi. In Germanic and Scandinavian traditions the name is applied to a long-lost continent in the North Atlantic.

>The Thule-in-Iceland theory has the support of the renowned Professor of European Archaeology, Barry Cunliffe, author of The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek [2081].<

The archaeologist, Rhys Carpenter, in a study of Pytheas‘ travels in the North Sea, concluded that the Shetland Islands should be identified as Thule shown on Ptolemy’s map just north of the Orkneys, He argues that “it is an unchallengeable inference that Ptolemy’s data for the location of Thule must go back to Pytheas since no one else in late antiquity ever claimed to have visited that remote region.” [221.183]

Another candidate is the Estonian island of Saaremaa(d), which is also home to the Kaali meteor craters. This meteorite “was a coarse octahedrite, with surviving fragments being only a few grams in weight. Despite the intensity of investigation both inside the craters and outside in nearby peat bogs, the actual date of the impact has been estimated at four widely spaced times: 6400 BC  based on microspherules in peat (Raukas 2000); 5000 BC on similar evidence (Tiirmaa and Czegka 1996); 1740–1620 BC  based on bulk sediment samples from the near the bottom of the crater lake, or a similar 1690–1510 BC  date based on associated terrestrial macrofossils from the deepest part of the lake (Veskiet al. 2004); and 800–400 BC based on peat associated with impact ejecta and iridium in nearby bogs (Veski et al. 2004). Veski and his colleagues argue for the calibrated date range of around 800–400 BC, speculating that the microspherules possibly relate to a separate earlier impact event.”

Felice Vinci is a co-author (with Syusy Blady & Karl Kello) of Il meteorite iperboreo [1906]. in which the Kaali meteor is discussed along with its possible association with the ancient story of  Phaeton.

In 2013 Lucio Russo located Thule on the coast of Greenland, having identified errors in Ptolemy’s geographical calculations[1060].

Marin, Minella & Schievenin in The Three Ages of Atlantis [972.375] propose that the island of Thule described by Pytheas was the legendary Hi-Brasil, which in turn they claim was part of the Porcupine Bank that they argue was only ‘recently submerged’.

A 2014 paper(b) by Cameron McPhail addressed the problem of Thule’s location. He “offers a new approach, using information supplied in the fragments of Eratosthenes’ Geography, supports assertions that Pytheas exited the Mediterranean sailing via the Strait of Gibraltar, and that Thule, the most distant locale reached, should be identified with Norway.” and concluded that The problems of Pytheas’ route of travel cannot all be solved. The two discussed here, on account of the scant primary source information, will remain open to interpretation.

>Support for a Norwegian Thule received a recent boost when two German investigators from the Technical University of Berlin proposed that the island of Smøla was the Thule of Pytheas. In September 2020, Smithsonian Magazine reprinted an article by F. Salazar from Hakai Magazine(f) outlining this new theory(e).<

A recent article(c) on the National Geographic website noted that “Today, historians aren’t sure if Pytheas’s remote land was based on a real location or whether it is simply a stand-in for any place. Whatever the case, it shows up in the phrase “Ultima Thule”—any extremely remote place on Earth. And the name Thule lives on in Greenland with the Thule Air Force Base; in the Sandwich Islands, one of which is South Thule; and in the name of the 69th element, thulium, discovered by a Swedish chemist.”

(a) (99+) The Archaeology and Anthropology of Quaternary Period Cosmic Impact | Agustin Domingo – Academia.edu 

(b) (99+) (PDF) Pytheas of Massalia’s Route of Travel | Cameron McPhail – Academia.edu 

(c) These six mystery islands existed only in the imaginations of ancient explorers—or did they? (nationalgeographic.com) 

(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule 

(e)  This Norwegian Island Claims to Be the Fabled Land of Thule | Travel | Smithsonian Magazine*

(f) Hakai Magazine *

Savona-Ventura, Charles

Charles SavonaVentura is a specialist obstetrician-gynaecologist with a strong interest in the Natural Sciences, particularly savona-venturaGeology, Herpetology and Mammology. His interests also include Medical Epidemiology, and Medical History.

Dr. Savona-Ventura was one of the co-authors of Malta: Echoes of Plato’s Island. He has also collaborated with his colleague Anton Mifsud on a number of other books and articles relating to ancient Malta. They have commented on unusual ancient skulls that have been found in the prehistoric temples of the island that Andrew Collins(a) has linked with similar skulls dating from pre-dynastic Egypt.

Dr. Savona has his own website(b) that includes much regarding his medical interests. Rather oddly, in 2010, he independently published a fourteen-page booklet, In Search of Atlantis [1332], which like ‘Echoes’ supported Malta as Atlantis. He also contends that Malta had in earlier times been part of a much larger landmass and supports this idea with the fact that the Maltese and Pelagian islands share species of flora and fauna not found on Sicily or the Italian mainland. This would appear to be reinforced by a map of Ptolemy printed in Ulm in 1482 which shows a large island southeast of Sicily.

(a) https://andrewcollins.com/page/articles/maltaskulls.htm

(b) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20091027150352/https://www.geocities.com/rainforest/3096/

America *

America as the home of Atlantis took off as an idea shortly after its discovery (or perhaps more correctly, rediscovery) by Columbus. Initially, reports sent back to Europe designated America as ‘Paradise’ Waldseemuller-America

until its identification as Atlantis quickly took hold. John Dee in the time of Elizabeth I was convinced that the newly discovered Americas were in fact, Atlantis, an idea endorsed by Francis Bacon. The first time that America was so named on a map was on the 1507(c) Waldseemüller map, sometimes referred to as “America’s birth certificate.” A rare copy of this map was recently found in Germany(e).

Nevertheless, from the early 1600’s dissenting voices were raised, such as those of José de Acosta, and Michel de Montaigne.

As late as 1700, a map of the world by Edward Wells was published in Oxford that highlights the paucity of information regarding the Americas at that time. However, in this instance the accompanying text notes that “this continent with the adjoining islands is generally supposed to have been anciently unknown though there are not wanting some, who will have even the continent itself to be no other than the Insula Atlantis of the ancients.”

For over five centuries a variety of commentators have associated Atlantis with America and many of its ancient cultures together with a range of location theories that stretch from Maine through the Caribbean and Central America to Argentina.

Although most proponents of an American Atlantis, particularly following the continent’s discovery, did not specify a location but were happy to consider the Americas in their entirety as Plato’s lost land. In 2019, Reinoud de Jonge published a paper declaring that from 2500-1200 BC America had been an Egyptian colony. He expanded on this in 2912(l), when he claimed that the American colonies, North and South had supplied the copper and tin for the Bronze Age of the Mediterranean. For good measure, he threw in a wildly speculative translation of the Phaistos Disk to support these contentions.

Over time attention was more focused on Mesoamerica and the northern region of South America, where the impressive remains of the Maya and Incas led many to consider them to be Atlantean.

North America received minimal attention until the 19th century when an 1873 newspaper report(i) claimed that there was support from unnamed scientists for locating remnants of Atlantis in the Adirondacks and some of the mountains of Maine! More recently Dennis Brooks has advocated Tampa Bay, Florida, while John Saxer supports Tarpon Springs, also in Florida as Atlantean. To confuse matters further, Mary Sutherland locates Atlantis in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky and for good measure suggests that King Solomon’s mines are to be found in the same region!

For example, the discovery of the remains of the remarkable cultures of Mesoamerica generated speculation on the possibility of an Atlantean connection there. This view gained further support with the publication of Ignatius Donnelly’s groundbreaking work on Atlantis.

Some have seen an Atlantic location for Atlantis as a conduit between the culture of ancient Egypt and that of Meso-America(d).

Half a century ago Nicolai Zhirov claimed that Plato had knowledge of America [458.22] indicated by his statement that Atlantis was in a sea with a continent encompassing it. He thought that this was the earliest record of a continent beyond the Atlantic.

However, Plato also said that Atlantis was surrounded ‘on all sides’ by this continent, which is not compatible with the Azores, advocated by Zhirov as the location of Plato’s sunken island. In an effort to strengthen this claim Zhirov also claims that there is evidence that King Sargon of Akkad travelled to America in the middle of the third millennium BC, an idea that has gained little traction.

The idea of Sumerians in America was promoted by A.H. Verrill and his wife Ruth, who claimed [838] that King Sargon travelled to Peru, where he was known as Viracocha. The Verrills support their contention with a range of cultural, linguistic and architectural similarities between the Sumerians and the Peruvians.

More recently, Andrew Collins has promoted the idea of Atlantis in the Caribbean, specifically Cuba. Followers of Edgar Cayce are still expecting the Bahamas to yield evidence of Plato’s island. Gene Matlock supports the idea of a Mexican location with an Indian connection, while Duane McCullough opts for Guatemala. Ivar Zapp and George Erikson have also chosen Central America for investigation. Further south Jim Allen has argued strongly for Atlantis having been located on the Altiplano of Bolivia. A website entitled American Atlantis Research from Edward Alexander , now offline, was rather weak on content and irritatingly referred to the ‘Andies’.

Although much of what has been written about an American location for Atlantis is the result of serious research, it all falls far short of convincing me that the Atlantis of which Plato wrote is to be found there. No evidence has been produced to even hint that any American culture had control of the Mediterranean as far Tyrrhenia in the north and Libya in the south. No remains or carvings of triremes or chariots have been found in the Americas. How could an ancient civilisation from America launch an attack across the Atlantic and at the furthest end of the Mediterranean 9,000 or even 900 years before Solon? An even more important question is, why would they bother? There is no evidence of either motive, means or opportunity for an attack from that direction.

A number of Plato’s descriptions of Atlantis would seem to rule out America as its location.

(a) As mentioned above, the ‘opposite continent’ referred to by Plato (Timaeus 25a) is described as encompassing the sea in which Atlantis lay. America cannot be described as enclosing the Atlantic. Around 550 AD, Procopius noted that when viewed from the southern side of the Strait of Gibraltar “the whole continent opposite this was named Europe”(m) (not America)!

(b) The Greeks only knew of three continents, Europe, Asia and Libya. Armin Wolf, the German historian, when writing about Scheria relates(f) that “Even today, when people from Sicily go to Calabria (southern Italy) they say they are going to the “continente.” I suggest that Plato used the term in a similar fashion and was quite possibly referring to that same part of Italy which later became known as ‘Magna Graecia’. Robert Fox in The Inner Sea[1168.141] confirms that this long-standing usage of ‘continent’ refers to Italy.

(c) Herodotus described Sardinia as “the biggest island in the world” (Hist.6.2). In fact Sicily is marginally larger but as islands were measured in those days (Felice Vinci) [019] by the length of their coastal perimeter Herodotus was correct. Consequently, it can be argued that since Cuba and Hispaniola are much more extensive than Sardinia, the Greeks had no knowledge of the Caribbean.

(d) Plato makes frequent references to horses in Atlantis. The city itself had a track for horseracing (Critias 117c). The Atlanteans had thousands of chariots (Critias 119a). The Atlanteans even had horse baths (Critias 117b). All these references make no sense if Plato was describing an American Atlantis as there were no horses there for over 12,000 years, when they died out, until brought back by the Spaniards millennia later. Furthermore, it makes even less sense if you subscribe to the early date (9600 BC) for Atlantis as it is thousands of years before we have any evidence for the domestication of the horse, anywhere.

A recent study of worldwide DNA patterns suggests that “no more than 70 people inhabited North America 14,000 years ago.”(b) But a more important claim has been offered by Professors Jennifer Raff and Deborah Bolnick who have co-authored a paper offering evidence(j) that the genetic data only supports a migration from Siberia to America. This certainly runs counter to any suggestion of transatlantic migration from Europe.In 1900,

Peter de Roo put forward the idea that the ancient Greeks had knowledge of America, despite the fact that Herodotus clearly said that only three continents were known to them [Histories 4.42]. A 2013 book, L’America dimenticata [1060], by Italian physicist and philologist Lucio Russo, also claims that the ancient Greeks had knowledge of America and it was gradually forgotten because of mistakes made by Ptolemy including a 15-degree error for the latitude of the Canaries(g).

However, the idea that the Greeks had an awareness of America persists, with some claiming that they had colonies in Canada. Among these are Lucio Russo, Ioannis Liritzis(n) and Minas Tsikritsis(p). Manolis Koutlis has gone one further and claims that not only were there Greek Colonies in Canada but that Atlantis had been situated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence(o).

The late Professor Antonis Kontaratos placed the capital of Atlantis at Poverty Point in Louisiana or it at least inspired some of Plato’s description since “there is also solid evidence that the Greeks were travelling to America in prehistoric times too and could have witnessed firsthand the impressive earthworks at Poverty Point, information which could have reached Plato independently as a fading legend [0750].” Kontaratos cited Plutarch to support his contention of Greek transatlantic travel in prehistory.

I note that there is a suspiciously disproportionate number of Greeks supporting the idea of pre-Columbian Hellenic visitors to America!

While there is extensive debate regarding the Americas being visited by ancient Greeks (Minoans), Phoenicians and even Sumerians, there seems little doubt that America had been visited by various other peoples prior to Columbus such as Welsh, Vikings or Irish. The case for the latter is strengthened by a 500-year-old report(h) of a long-established Irish colony in North America called Duhare.

America as Atlantis and the source of freemasonry knowledge was recently repackaged in a brief article on the Odyssey website(k) quoting Manly P. Hall who in turn cited Plato and Sir Francis Bacon. It then proceeds to speculate on what lessons the story of this original American Atlantis offers the America of today!

(b) https://www.sott.net/articles/show/228315-North-America-Was-Populated-by-no-More-Than-70-People-14-000-Years-Ago-Claims-Stunning-New-DNA-Research

(c) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldseem%C3%BCller_map

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

(e) Librarians find lost copy of Waldseemuller map, ‘America’s birth certificate’ | GlobalPost (archive.org)  *

(f) Wayback Machine (archive.org)

(g) Reconsidering History: Ancient Greeks Discovered America Thousands of Years Ago (archive.org) *

(h) https://web.archive.org/web/20161203182356/https://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.ie/2014/03/490-year-old-spanish-documents-describe.html

(i) https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=PRP18730215.2.8.2&srpos=11&e=——-en–20–1-byDA-txt-txIN-Plato+Atlantis——-1

(j) https://phys.org/news/2016-01-genetic-ancient-trans-atlantic-migration-professor.html

(k) https://www.theodysseyonline.com/america-as-atlantis

(l) https://www.academia.edu/3894415/COPPER_AND_TIN_FROM_AMERICA_c.2500-1200_BC_

(m) Vandal Wars 1.1.7

(n)  https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/did-ancient-greeks-sail-to-canada/ 

(o) ENSKIA (archive.org)

(p) http://canada.greekreporter.com/2012/04/21/researcher-claims-ancient-greeks-made-it-to-america-before-columbus/

Canary Islands *

canary-islands-jpg-183The Canary Islands are situated in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Morocco. They were (re)discovered in 1402 by Jean de Béthencourt (1362-1425). He found the fair-skinned Guanches living on some of the islands. He described them as cave dwellers. After overthrowing the local chiefs, de Béthancourt became King of the Canaries under King Henry III of Castile.

However, there has been widespread acceptance of the idea that the Berbers of North Africa established the first populations on the islands. Recently (2019) published DNA studies have reinforced this concept, putting the arrival of the Berbers at around 1000 AD(h).

Pliny the Elder is frequently quoted to provide the etymology of the name, where he claims that it is derived from a species of large dog – canis in Latin – found there in ancient times. This derivation is disputed by the historian and Arabist, Paul Lunde, who prefers the idea that the islands were named after an ancient people who lived on the opposite mainland and who now inhabit north-eastern Nigeria and are known today as the Kanuri. Pliny also records that the islands were uninhabited but had ancient ruined buildings when visited by the Carthaginians. Centuries later they were inhabited by a Berber people known as the Guanches who were finally conquered by the Spanish in the 15th century. When sea levels were lower during the last Ice Age, the land area of the islands would have been more extensive and a possible claimant as the location of some or part of Plato’s empire of Atlantis.

A popular belief is that the Canaries were the location of the Garden of Hesperides referred to in Greek mythology. However, this identification is difficult to substantiate firmly.

Frank Joseph noted[216] how the islands conform in many ways to Plato’s description of Atlantis. Natural hot and cold springs are to be found there, as are red, white and black rock, a combination also observed on the Azores and elsewhere. In the past, the Canaries have been densely forested and also contain rivers and fertile plains that produce a variety of fruit.

In the 2nd century AD, the Greek astronomer and geographer Ptolemy suggested that the prime meridian should be located through the Canaries, then known as the Fortunate Islands.

The earliest suggestion of a connection between the Canaries and Atlantis was proposed by Athanasius Kircher in 1664, referring to the Guanches as the last Atlanteans and the islands as the remains of Plato’s lost land.

Ignatius Donnelly, who did so much to kick-start modern interest in Atlantis, considered that the Canaries, Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde Islands were its remnants. However, a newspaper report from 1899(g) refers back to a local cleric and historian, José Viera y Claviejo, who proposed around the beginning of the 19th century that the Canaries, the Azores and Madeira were remnants of Atlantis, nearly a century before Donnelly.

Gilbert De Jong is a Dutch landscape designer with an interest in investigating the mysteries of our ancient past. His contention is that Atlantis was located at El Fuerte – in the Canary Islands.

In 1984, Manuel Gómez Márquez also ‘revealed’ the Canaries as the location of Atlantis in a book[0599] using the Piri Reis Map as a source.

One of the more recent proponents of a Canarian location for Atlantis is Charles D. Pfund in his extensive 2011 book, Antediluvian World: The End of the Myth[1079].

A website dealing with a variety of British and World mysteries(d) has a series of papers on Atlantis and reluctantly considers the Canaries as the most likely location of Plato’s lost land.

In 1939 the Ahnenerbe, led by theologian turned archaeologist Otto Huth, planned to visit the Canaries to study  Guanche mummies as part of their efforts to find the Aryan homeland and locate Atlantis. However, the outbreak of war postponed the trip, but the Spanish dictator, General Franco, at the behest of his Nazi mentors appointed his archaeologist friend Julio Martinez Santa Olalla to carry out investigations on their behalf.

In 2008, Francisco Gracia Alonso, professor of history at the University of Barcelona published a book revealing the level of cooperation between Franco’s archaeologists and the Nazi Ahnenerbe(c)(k). An article(j) in The Telegraph in the UK, claimed that Spanish fascists “wanted to promote the idea that the Aryan race could be traced to the Canary Islands, amid claims they were all that remained of the lost continent of Atlantis.”

 A 2010 book, Nazi Archaeology in the Canary Islands [762] by author and journalist Jaime Rubio Rosales also explores the whole subject of the Spanish links with the Ahnenerbe.

Thor Heyerdahl inspected the pyramids at Guimar and was convinced of their ceremonial use in ancient times(b). Atlantisforschung has a lengthy article about the stepped pyramids of the Canaries, which also refers to stepped pyramids in Sicily and Sardinia(i). The late Philip Coppens also wrote an article(e) on these structures. A 2015 article(f) can now be added to this list.

(b) https://www.travelexplorations.com/guimar-tenerife-the-lost-pyramids-in-europe.4497328-25678.html

(c) www.archaeologybulletin.org/article/download/bha.18102/104 (Link broken) *

(d) https://www.aquiziam.com/where-is-atlantis/ OR See Archive 3028

(e) Archive 2142)

(f) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/mystery-guanches-and-pyramids-tenerife-003232

(g) https://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/111076350?searchTerm=Atlantis discovered&searchLimits=

(h) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190320141027.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Ffossils_ruins%2Fancient_civilizations+%28Ancient+Civilizations+News+–+ScienceDaily%29

(i) Die Schwarzen Pyramiden von Teneriffa – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) (Eng)

(j) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1584732/Franco-collaborated-with-Nazis-to-prove-Canary-Islands-were-home-to-Aryan-race.html 

(k) https://www.academia.edu/3588792/RELATIONS_BETWEEN_SPANISH_ARCHAEOLOGISTS_AND_NAZI_GERMANY_1939_1945_A_PRELIMINARY_EXAMINATION_OF_THE_INFLUENCE_OF_DAS_AHNENERBE_IN_SPAIN  

Sardinia

Sardinia is an autonomous region of Italy and after Sicily is the second largest island in the Mediterranean. Before the end of the last Ice Age, Sardinia had been joined to the European mainland because of the lower sea levels, which provided an easy access route for early settlers. Recent genetic studies revealed that an exceptionally high proportion of the population is seemingly descended from people who have occupied it since the Neolithic and Bronze Age, between 8,000 and 2,000 years ago.”(al) Known to the Greeks as ‘Hyknusa’, during its long history, Phoenicians, Etruscans, Greeks and Romans have all left their mark on Sardinia. Before that, the megalith builders(j) were active in Sardinia and Corsica. A comprehensive history of Sardinia from the time of Atlantis is available online, in Italian and English(m). There is a tradition that Sardinia got its name from Sardus, son of Hercules(aa).

 

Sardinia’s important position in the ancient world was suggested by Mark McMenamin, a geologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, who announced in Numismatist Magazine in November 1996(ar), that he believed that the Carthaginians produced gold coins, between 350 and 320 BC, depicting small maps of the Mediterranean world with India to the east and America to the west(e). When computer enhancement was applied to the images on some of those coins, he was amazed to note how the strange markings on them resembled maps made by Ptolemy, the Greek astronomer and geographer, who lived around 500 years later. The maps show what appears to emphasise the Mediterranean region, with Sardinia as a dot in the centre. The north coast of Africa appears at the bottom with Europe at the top, above the Phoenician homeland and India. The Strait of Gibraltar lies to the west; after that is the landmass of America. Some sceptics have been convinced of the correctness of McMenamin’s interpretation after seeing the enlarged images.

However, in 2000, McMenamin was obliged to confirm that the coins in question were fakes(as) as revealed in his book, Phoenicians, Fakes and Barry Fell [1738].

It has been suggested(p) that the ancient city (2000-1400 BC) of Nora, just south of today’s Pula, was thriving long before the arrival of the Phoenicians in the 8th cent. BC. It appears that contact between Sardinia and its trading partners suddenly ceased around 1400 BC, until the arrival of the Phoenicians. Phoenician inscriptions, one dated to the 11th century BC, were been found at Nora(q) in 1773. These inscriptions refer to Pygmalian, King of Tyre and to a battle between Sardinians and Phoenicians at Tarshish!

It has been postulated that the Shardana, one of the Sea Peoples of the 2nd millennium BC, gave their name to Sardinia and were probably the builders of the hundreds of Nuraghi there. Leonardo Melis, a native Sardinian, has studied and written at length on the subject. David Rohl, the archaeologist and advocate of revising generally accepted ancient chronologies, has argued[0232] that the Shardana were in fact originally from Sardis in ancient Anatolia and that they migrated westward to Sardinia following the collapse of the Hittite Empire.

Angelo Paratico also proposed a connection between the Lydian capital Sardis and Sardinia in a lecture delivered in Hong Kong in 2004(an). Wikipedia includes the following information According to Timaeus, one of Plato’s dialogues, Sardinia and its people as well, the “Sardonioi” or “Sardianoi”, might have been named after “Sardò”, a legendary woman from Sardis, capital of the ancient Kingdom of Lydia in Anatolia.”(ao)

Apart from the enigmatic remains of the Nuraghic period, Sardinia has presented archaeologists with a greater mystery in the form of a structure at Monte d’Accoddi that closely resembles a Mesopotamian ziggurat. The earliest parts of the monument have been dated to circa 3000 BC – the same period during which comparable step pyramids were being built in Mesopotamia. Leonardo Melis has speculated that the name of the site, Accoddi, may be connected to the Akkadian civilisation. Step pyramids are also found in Sicily(c) and additionally the Le Barnenez cairn(ad) (4500-4700 BC), in Brittany, has a superficial resemblance to some of the Western Mediterranean ‘pyramids’.

>Philip Coppens, author of The New Pyramid Age [759] has also written a paper(az) on Sardinia’s only known pyramid Monte d’Accoddi concluded that despite almost forty years of excavation on the site, we know little as to what Monte d’Accoddi was, beyond the “visually obvious”. We do not know its use, nor why it was built, or why it was unique. However, the fact that there are so many questions, illustrates how little we truly know about “the pyramid movement” and how it inspired people all over the world, whether in Egypt, Peru, Mesopotamia or here in Sardinia, to begin the construction of pyramids. Currently, the oldest pyramids have been found in Peru. And though in the “Old World” we link pyramids specifically with Egypt, one group of people in north-western Sardinia had built one long before the Egyptian Pyramid Age ever began. That’s all we know, and that’s not much, is it?”<

sardinia mapRecent discoveries of statue menhirs on Sardinia have suggested that in the 4th millennium BC the island was part of a culture which spread from the Black Sea to the Atlantic(f).

The ancient-wisdom.com website, in a well-illustrated article, has drawn attention to the fact that the nuraghi, while very numerous are not the only distinct form of megalithic monuments on the island, but there are two others known as ‘Tombes Gigantes’ (Giants Tombs) and ‘Domus de Janas’ (Spirit Homes).(ap)

Statue menhirs are also found on adjacent Corsica.

>Apart from the Monte d’Accoddi feature, the statue menhirs and the thousands of nuraghi, Sardinia has another mystery to offer, in the form of cart ruts comparable with the better-known ruts on Malta. Dr Dominique Görlitz has also studied the cartruts found in Sardinia(ax). Images of these ruts can also be seen in a YouTube video(ay).<

The end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries saw Antoine Court de Géblin and Delisle de Sales suggesting Sardinia as a remnant of Atlantis. However, the first person in more recent times to promote a Sardinian Atlantis was Paolo Valente Poddighe, who did so in 1982, but, it was 2006 before he published a book[711] supporting this claim.

It was nearly another twenty years before Robert Paul Ishoy was the first to have a website(a) that promoted Sardinia as the site of Atlantis. His contention is that Atlantis was a powerful state based in Sardinia that controlled most of the western Mediterranean and was at its peak between 2000 BC and 1400 BC. Ishoy further contends that the Keftiu, Atlantean and Nuraghi cultures were all one. He contends that they made attempts to conquer the principal civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean including the Minoans, Athenians and Egyptians. During one of these attacks, the Athenians with the unexpected support of floods and earthquakes defeated the Atlanteans. Ishoy has been planning an expedition to Sardinia to seek further evidence in support of his thesis.

In 2002, the Italian journalist, Sergio Frau, published a book[302], in Italian, which firmly located Atlantis just south of Sardinia, where it is now covered by water(ah). He argued that the Pillars of Heracles were at one time located as a boundary marker at the Strait of Sicily and later moved to Gibraltar as the Greek awareness of the western Mediterranean developed through expanded trade. Frau attributes this change of location to the geographer Eratosthenes who flourished more than a century after Plato. Understandably, his theory has been greeted with the usual hail of criticism but was given support by UNESCO when it organised a symposium on the theory in Paris in 2005 followed by an exhibition in Rome the following year.

In the interest of balance, Thorwald C. Franke’s critique(n) of Frau’s work is required reading, as well as a 21-point refutation of his book signed by 71 Sardinian historians, geologists and archaeologists(w).  However, others such as Silvio Diego Novo have followed Frau’s lead(aq), while Aldo Bonincontro has also nominated Sardinia as Atlantis, which he did in a 2007 article, but without any reference to Frau!

It is obvious that there is considerable local support for the idea of a Sardinian Atlantis, but for some, this seems to be often linked with the independence movement on the island.

In June 2015 Frau together with a number of Italian scientists joined him when he visited Sardinia(x). They included historian Mario Lombardo; archaeologist Maria Teresa Giannotta; Claudio Giardino, a specialist in ancient metallurgy; cartographer Andrea Cantile; archivist Massimo Faraglia; and Stefano Tinti, a geophysicist and expert on tidal waves. Their objective was to study the evidence of a huge tsunami inundating the southern part of the island in ancient times.

A report in The Guardian (15/8/15) noted(y) that “Professor Tinti explained that until the 1980s no one was aware that tidal waves had occurred in the Mediterranean. But since 2004 scientists have identified 350 events of this type over a 2,500-year period,” and regarding the Sardinian tsunami “So what would have been required in our case?” he then asked. “We’re talking about a huge volume of water, some 500 metres high [the elevation up to which the nuraghi were affected]. Only a comet could do that if the impact occurred very close to the coast and in a very specific direction,” he asserted. An event of this sort may have occurred near Cagliari, with the resulting wave devastating the plain of Campidano.”

Afterwards, Frau’s claim was given further attention(u) when an exhibition in the museum in Sardara, focused on that catastrophe which hit the island around 1175 BC. This cataclysm mainly affected the southern portion of Sardinia covering it with a layer of mud. A geophysicist, Stefano Tinti, claims that the most likely cause of such an incursion would be an enormous tidal wave resulting from the impact of a comet in the Mediterranean. It was not surprising that Jason Colavito debunked(v) any linkage of Sardinia with Atlantis as well as the claim of a cometary impact, but avoided offering any explanation for the layer of mud.

A French website offers an interesting titbit regarding the extent of the mud, noting that A nuraghe was discovered not far from the Sardinian town of Barumini.Les archéologues ont mis 14 ans pour ôter les 12 mètres de boue qui recouvraient ce monument. The archaeologists took 14 years to remove the 12 meters of mud that covered this monument”.

An alternative view of Sardinia and its nuraghi was offered(z) by Brian Cairns on the Thunderbolts website, where he claimed that the nuraghi were constructed to offer protection from cosmic electrical strikes. In his conclusion, he states that “while the evidence above is circumstantial, it seems that Sardinia had a very active electric environment.”

The late Vittorio Castellani who had advocated locating Atlantis in the British Isles was so impressed by Frau’s book that he changed his mind and supported the idea of a Sardinian Atlantis. Another keen supporter of Frau is Mario Tozzi who has also suggested that if Sardinia was Atlantis that the mysterious Etruscans may have been Sardinians(r)(s). Further support has come from Mario Cabriolu and architect Paolo Macoratti, who identifies the Plain of Campidano with the Plain of Atlantis and locates the Atlantean capital further south in the Gulf of Cagliari, illustrated on a map on the sardolog.com site(t).

As Sardinia is still very much above water, it might seem an unlikely choice as the location of Atlantis. However, if it is accepted that the Pillars of Heracles were in fact situated in the Strait of Sicily, there are a number of features on Sardinia that would support the theories of Ishoy and Frau. There is evidence that the large plain of Campidano was inundated, from the south, by a tsunami, following an earthquake, in the Central Mediterranean in the 2ndmillennium BC. Professor Mauro Perra has argued against this(o) using extensive stratigraphic evidence. However, this tsunami also covered Punic and Roman remains indicating a much later date.

Furthermore, there are mountains protecting the plain from cold northern winds and rich mineral deposits are also found in the locality. Sardinia was well-known in ancient times as a source of silver as well as copper, iron and lead(af). There is also some evidence that a small but important quantity of tin was available on the island according to Stephen L. Dyson and Robert J. Rowland Jnr., in their recent history of Sardinia[1530]. The excellent phoenicia.org website comments that Sardinia can scarcely have been occupied by the Phoenicians for anything but its metals. The southern and south-western parts of the island, where they made their settlements, were rich in copper and lead; and the position of the cities seems to indicate the intention to appropriate these metals.

In 2010, Giuseppe Mura published a book of nearly 600 pages, in which he identifies the Gulf of Cagliari as the location of the Pillars of Heracles that previously led to a channel which gave access to the Plain of Campidano, which he claims(g)(h) was the Plain of Atlantis described by Plato.

Furthermore, another young Sardinian has recently pointed out that colours associated by Plato with Atlantis, namely red, white and black, are found naturally on the island as well as excavated buildings of the Nuraghic period being painted in red and black stripes. The Sardinian regional flag also uses these colours.

We can expect that the future will see further development of the Sardinian Theory, which shows more promise than many of the other suggested locations.

For those interested in reading more about the history of Sardinia from its prehistory until the present should visit Claudio de Tisi’s website(i) (In Italian and English). It includes a review of Sergio Frau’s book on Atlantis. In 2011, travel writer Angela Corrias wrote a two-part article)(ab)(ac), which also includes a review of Frau’s theory.

There would appear to be growing support from local researchers on the island for a Sardinian Atlantis. One of the more recent is Giorgio Valdés who equates Sardinia with Tartessos and Atlantis. This idea of Sardinia and Tartessos being identical goes back to the middle of the 20th century when Wikipedia(k) tells us “that W.F. Albright (1941) and F.M. Cross (1972) suggested Tarshish was Sardinia because of the discovery of the ‘Nora Stone’ or ‘Nora Fragment’.” An extensive article(l) on the Nora Stele, in Italian, was written in January 2014, based on a translation by Jose Stromboni.

In 2013, Marin, Minella & Schievenin stated [972.43] that Sardinia was called Tartessos in ancient times, unfortunately, without providing any references.

In August 2016, Frau’s theory received a further spurt of publicity with an interview in Sputnik News, which was followed a few days later by the announcement that National Geographic was planning a documentary, co-produced by James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici, based on Robert Ishoy’s Atlantis in Sardinia theory(ae).

However, Diaz-Montexano is also certain that the documentary will focus on his theory(ai). In the end, both theories were featured in what turned out to be a disappointing documentary.

In late 2016, Nicola Betti, Luciano Melis & Alessandro Mugria published Il mare addosso. L’isola che fu Atlantide e poi divenne Sardegna [1571] in which they add their support to the idea of Atlantis in Sardinia. They believe “with reasonable certainty that a large area of south-west Sardinia was hit by a swarm of iron meteorites in a period between 11,000 and 9000 BC,” which would have caused a catastrophic mega-tsunami(am).

Pier Paolo Saba, another Sardinian, suggests in his book Atlantide [739], that following a catastrophe around 10,000 BC Atlantis was destroyed and survivors were dispersed to the Americas, Northern Europe and the Mediterranean. One group settled in Saba’s native Sardinia, where they became the Shardana and were responsible for the building of the thousands of nuraghi found throughout the island and were part of the Sea Peoples who attacked Egypt(au)(av).

Luigi Usai is now promoting [1814] the idea that a conjoined Sardinia and Corsica had constituted the island of Atlantis and its capital located at Sulcis at the southern end of Sardinia!(at)

In July 2021 I was sent a number of images 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 the person who sent them to me eventually discovered that the images were the consequence of the flawed computer interpretation of sonar data. In December 2021 Luigi Usai produced the same flawed imagery as evidence that he had discovered a lost submerged civilisation!

So that there is no misunderstanding let me state that I have advocated a Central Mediterranean location for Atlantis for some years. If Sardinia holds that location, I am more than happy to congratulate Usai and Frau. But, I am not convinced by satellite imagery that has so often been proven to be flawed.

I must include here a mention of the website of Pierluigi Montalbano where he and various guest authors have written many interesting articles about Sardinia and its Nuraghic past as well as Atlantis. The site is well worth a browse and as it has Google Translate built-in, making it accessible to all(aw).

(a) http://www.atlantisdiscovered.org/Thesis.htm

(b) See Archive 2139)

(c) See: Archive 2650

(e) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?authorid=22

(f) https://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/004449.html

(g) https://gianfrancopintore.blogspot.com/2011/03/atlantide-in-sardegna-e-cagliari-i.html

(h) https://gianfrancopintore.blogspot.com/2011/03/atlantide-in-sardegna-e-cagliari-ii.html

(i) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20180204153209/https://www.lamiasardegna.it/files/storia-index.htm

(j) http://www.museodeidolmen.it/englishdefault.html

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

(l) https://web.archive.org/web/20151021154531/https://it.paperblog.com/la-stele-di-nora-traduzione-di-jose-stromboni-2139447/

(m) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20180204153209/https://www.lamiasardegna.it/files/storia-index.htm 

(n) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis-sergio-frau-english.htm

(o) https://pierluigimontalbano.blogspot.ie/2014/04/uno-tsunami-cancello-la-civilta-nuragica.html (Italian)

(p) https://www.avidcruiser.com/2014/03/12/search-atlantis-clues-cagliari-sardinia/

(q)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nora_Stone

(r) https://tozzi-national-geographic.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2010/11/17/atlantide-sardegna/  (Italian)

(s) https://tozzi-national-geographic.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2011/07/06/atlantide-sardegna-etruschisardi/comment-page-1/#comment-9421

(t) SardoLog – Sardegna è Atlantide? (archive.org) 

(u) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/15/bronze-age-sardinia-archaeology-atlantis

(v) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/did-a-comet-destroy-atlantis-in-bronze-age-Sardinia

(w) https://www.colonnedercole.it/spip/spip.php?article67 (Italian)

(x) https://anthropologistintheattic.blogspot.ie/2015/11/was-sardinia-home-to-mythical.html

(y) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/15/bronze-age-sardinia-archaeology-atlantis

(z) https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2015/11/20/neolithic-man-and-the-electric-universe/

(aa) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardus

(ab) See Archive 2898

(ac) https://web.archive.org/web/20150908020106/https://www.chasingtheunexpected.com/2011/09/sardinia-land-of-mystery-part-2-atlantis-lost-civilization

(ad) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/cairn-de-barnenez-one-oldest-structures-world-005771?nopaging=1

(ae) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20190331144818/https://www.myheraldreview.com/free_access/national-geographic-calls-on-sierra-vista-researcher-about-atlantis/article_c3685cf8-7229-11e6-9512-b390b32f6ba7.html

(af) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mining_in_Sardinia

(ag) https://phoenicia.org/minning.html

(ah) https://en.yibada.com/articles/155860/20160831/atlantis-really-sardinia-claims-expert.htm

(ai) https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=https://atlantisng.com/blog/&prev=search

(aj) https://fr.sputniknews.com/sci_tech/201608241027440170-sardaigne-atlantide-hypothese/

(ak) https://www.academia.edu/4635111/Were_the_Sea_Peoples_Mycenaeans_The_Evidence_of_Ship_Iconography

(al)  https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-04/uoh-afu040617.php

(am) https://www.lanuovasardegna.it/tempo-libero/2017/01/18/news/storia-misteriosa-dell-isola-che-fu-atlantide-1.14735432

(an) https://www.gingkoedizioni.it/is-there-an-association-between-sardis-and-sardinia/

(ao) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_people

(ap) http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/italysardinia.htm

(aq) See: Archive 2353 (Italian)

(ar) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236000049_Cartography_on_Carthaginian_Gold_Staters

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

(at) https://www.atlantisfound.it/2021/01/24/why-didnt-scientists-find-atlantis-before-usai-luigi/

(au) http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread345932/pg1

(av) http://www.commuicati-stampa.ws/2009/02/10/1413

(aw) https://pierluigimontalbano.blogspot.com/2014/04/uno-tsunami-cancello-la-civilta-nuragica.html

(ax) On the trail of the Cart Rut mystery – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *

(ay) Cart Ruts of Ancient Sardinia and The Hypogeum Tombs of Su Crucifissu Mannu | Megalithomania – Bing video *

(az) https://www.eyeofthepsychic.com/nap_art13/  *