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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Sicily

Sant, Carmelo Raymond

Carmelo Raymond Sant is a retired engineer and the author of two books [1701][1702] concerning the Maltese temples and their function as calendars, which are supported by a fully illustrated website(a) . His intense study of the temples and the evidence that over time their orientation changed, led him to conclude that within human experience some form of tectonic rotation south of Sicily has taken place, while the temples had to be realigned.

To quote Sant However, two main anomalies became evident in the megalithic calendar. The first obvious one was related to alignment. Unknown geological events had taken place, which contradict the established view on plate tectonics (see micro-plate rotations). The second concerns Earth dynamics. The evidence in the design hint strongly to abrupt changes in the Earth axial tilt, in contradiction to established thinking.”

It is interesting that the first article(b) that I encountered dealing with tectonic rotation began with a review of the evidence for such events south of Sicily.

 

(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20240105111355/https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/about/

(b) Tectonic Rotation – an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

Howells, Caleb

Caleb Howells is a British teacher of English with a passion for ancient history. He has already published a book about King Arthur [2077] and next year will offer a new look at the story of Brutus the Trojan king of Britain [2076] in The Trojan Kings of Britain.

Among other publications Howells is also a content writer for the Greek Reporter website, where he has recently endeavoured to revive the ailing Minoan Hypothesis (a)(b).

Plato came from Athens, a city frequently damaged by earthquakes, he also spent time in Sicily where he must have been made aware of the continually active volcano, Mount Etna. Consequently, it is reasonable to assume that Plato could distinguish between an earthquake and a volcano, so when he wrote that Thera had been destroyed by an earthquake, that is what he intended to say. Furthermore, his description of the submergence of Atlantis as a result of the ‘quake sound very much like liquefaction frequently associated with such events. The Minoan Hypothesis does not match Plato’s account.

Although I disagree with Howells identification of Atlantis as Minoan, I was pleasantly surprised that in a December 2023 article(c)  he tackled the question of the Pillars of Herakles which included many of the points already published in Atlantipedia. He notes the use of the phrase as a metaphor, particularly by Pindar who used it as an expression denoting the outermost limit of something. His use of the phrase ‘beyond that the wise cannot set foot’ indicates that he was not merely talking about athletic limits, but limits in general.” Howells also points out the multiplicity of locations designated as ‘Pillars’ and that more than one location were so called at the same time. Nevertheless, he cannot let go of a Minoan connection and so proposed the Gulf of Laconia where the Capes Matapan (Tainaron) and Maleas in the Peloponnese are the two most southerly points of mainland Greece. They have been proposed over forty years ago by Galanopoulos & Bacon [0263] as the Pillars of Heracles when the early Greeks were initially confined to the Aegean Sea and the two promontories were the western limits of their maritime knowledge at that time. Overall, Howells’ article is interesting but unoriginal.

A few days later (12/12/23) he cast doubts on the Capes Matapan and Maleas as the location of the Pillars of Herakles(d). Howells is like a dog with a bone where the Minoan Hypothesis is concerned and and by now should be realising the true complexity of the Atlantis story.

Atlantis was destroyed by submergence following an earthquake, not a volcanic eruption. The Minoans were traders not invaders, so if Crete was Atlantis where is there mention of a war between Athens and the Minoans? Atlantis was a confederation of some sort, so who were its constituents? Why did Plato not simply name the not-too-distant Cretans as the attackers of Athens and laud the victory of the Athenians?

>In late January 2024 Howells expanded his efforts to bolster the Minoan Hypothesis. This time, using some rather convoluted reasoning, he identifies ancient Crete as the Caphtor referred to in the Bible.

This is another contentious issue among historians. The matter is discussed more fully in the Caphtor-Keftiu entry here, where you will find a number of locations identified as Caphtor, including Cyprus, Crete, Cilicia and the Nile Delta. Although currently the most popular would appear to be Crete, Wikipedia seems to favour the Egyptian region of Pelusium(e)!

Cyprus had previously been the most favoured location, about whom Immanuel Velikovsky noted(f) “if Caphtor is not Cyprus, then the Old Tesrament completely omits referenceto this large island close to the Syrian coast.” The Cypriot identification has been endorse by a number of commentators such as John Strange, author of Caphtor/Keftiu: A new Investigation[1052]. I think that with so much controversy surrounding the indentity of the Caphtorim that its possible value as support for the equally controversial Minoan Hypothesis is substantially weakened.

Furthermore, I note that in 2022, Phil Butler published a paper that also suggested identifying the Keftiu as Atlantean(g).<

A number of commentators have supported the idea of Atlantis in the Aegean region. The most convincing, in my opinion, have come from Peter James [047], Eberhard Zangger [483] and more recently Nicholas Costa [2072] , all of whom designated an Anatolian location for Atlantis. They all have their shortcomings but have built stronger cases than Howells for their chosen locations.

(a) Was Atlantis’ Temple of Poseidon the Palace of Knossos in Crete? (greekreporter.com)

(b) Was Atlantis a Minoan Civilization on Santorini Island? (greekreporter.com)

(c) https://greekreporter.com/2023/12/07/pillars-hercules-greek-mythology/

(d) https://greekreporter.com/2023/12/12/mythical-atlantis-located/

(e) Caphtor – Wikipedia *

(f) Ages in Chaos p.210 n.79  *

(g) The Keftiu: Were They Absorbed and Erased from History? (argophilia.com) *

Euclid of Megara

Euclid of Megara (435-365 BC) was a Greek philosopher and a pupil of Socrates. Although he wrote six dialogues, none have survived. Our principal source is Diogenes Laërtius who quoted excerpts from him.

Josiah Priest refers to Euclid as a believer in the reality of Atlantis in his 1835 book American Antiquities [1143.82/3]. Apparently, Euclid met with Anacharsis the Scythian philosopher and their discussions turned to the ‘convulsions of the globe’ including the separation of Sicily from Italy and the destruction of Atlantis.

Similarly, in the Atlantic, “there existed, according to ancient traditions, an island as large as Africa, which, with all its wretched inhabitants was swallowed up by an earthquake.”

Beyond the isthmus, of which I have just spoken, said Euclid, according to ancient traditions, an island as large as Africa, which, with all its wretched inhabitants, was swallowed up by an earthquake.

Priest then refers to Euclid again [p.83] claiming that “here, then, is another witness, besides Solon, who lived 300 years before the time of Euclid, who testifies to the past existence of the island of Atalantis.”

Furthermore, according to Euclid, it was the Black Sea that broke into the Aegean Sea, rather than the other way round. Since Anacharsis came from the northern coast of the Black Sea we can reasonably assume that he had local knowledge to back up this suggestion!

Sea Peoples *

The Sea Peoples is the name given by modern scholarship to a group of allies who caused havoc among the nations of the Eastern Mediterranean including Egypt, which they invaded at least twice, in the 2nd millennium BC. The phrase ‘Sea Peoples’ was never used in ancient records, in fact, the coining of the term in 1855 is now generally attributed to French Egyptologist, Emmanuel de Rougé who used the term ‘peuples de la mer’ (literally “peoples of the sea”) in a description of reliefs at Medinet Habu. The phrase was later popularized by another French Egyptologist, Gaston Maspero (1846-1916). Eckart Kahlhofer has recently suggested that even earlier, J. F. Champollion (1790–1832) employed an equivalent term gens navales’ to describe the occupants of the invading swan-necked boats.

Also related to the carvings at Medinet Habu is an interesting study of the Sea Peoples’ ships depicted there, by the nautical archaeologist Professor Andrea Salimbetti’s website has a lengthy paper on Aegean Bronze Age ships(al) as well as the Sea Peoples(am).

Cyprian Broodbank in The Making of the Middle Sea [1127] argues that the Sea People “never actually existed as a single people. Instead, small roving bands were a symptom of the collapse, not the cause, and they were blown out of proportion by Egyptian propagandists working for Ramasses III.” (ai)

Broodbank is a co-author with Giulio Lucarini of a paper(av) about Mediterranean Africa that “draws on a new surge in data to present the first up-to-date interpretative synthesis of this region’s archaeology from the start of the Holocene until the threshold of the Iron Age (9600–1000 bc).”

Andrew Mark Henry offers a video in which he highlights the multiple mysteries surrounding the Sea Peoples primarily due to a lack of original documentation(bf).

Motivation

One website(h) describes the Sea People as groups of dispossessed raiders driven by hunger following crop failures resulting from climate change. The same idea is expanded on by Lu Paradise in an extensive article(v).

A different view was expressed by the Egyptologist Robert Anderson who commented “It would seem that, rather than bands of plunderers, the Sea People were probably part of a great migration of displaced people. The migration was most likely the result of widespread crop failures and famine.”(d)

Evidence is mounting that climate change played a significant part in the Late Bronze Age collapse of civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean region. There is a school of thought that believes that the widespread societal disintegration was more the result of environmental factors rather than the depredations of the Sea Peoples(ag).

Origins

The Sea Peoples’ exact origin continues to be a matter of intense speculation(ad). The debate regarding their true identity has been ongoing for a long time and will probably continue as long as the chronologies of the Middle East are not fully harmonized to the satisfaction of most. One site offers 10 of the most popular identification theories(bh).

There is, however, some agreement that the Sea Peoples mounted two separate invasion attempts on Egypt around 1208 & 1176 BC (Facchetti & Negri).

Sea Peoples from the Adriatic

“While most of the Sea Peoples came from either the Aegean or the wider Mediterranean, many historians argue that groups from the Adriatic Sea also joined the migration. Specifically, Austrian historian Fritz Schachermeyr asserted in 1982 that the Sherden and Shekelesh were originally from the Adriatic and had connections to the ancient Illyrians.

Although Schachermeyr’s theory is not commonly held among students of the Sea Peoples, there are those who continue to believe that a famine in the Balkans drove several tribes, including the Illyrians, to migrate over land and over water(ba).”

Mycenaean Sea Peoples

The Oxford Companion to the Bible [0605] is certain that the Sea Peoples were originally Mycenaean, who moved south, following the collapse of their civilisation at the end of the Late Bronze Age. They were repelled by the Egyptians and then moved on to the Levant where they later became known as the Philistines. A paper(ab) that also links the Philistines with the Sea Peoples from a biblical perspective is available.

Shelley Wachsmann(aj), also offers evidence that at least some Mycenaeans were involved with the Sea Peoples(ak).

There is a claim that the Sea Peoples also attacked Mycenaean Greece on two occasions and that Athens survived both(ae). Contrast that with the contention that there was a Mycenaean group within the Sea Peoples. The confusion surrounding the Sea Peoples is exemplified by the response to a question on the quora.com website(af).

Sea Peoples from Anatolia (Northern Levant)

Erick Wright, formerly a regular contributor to the now-defunct Atlantis Rising forums(b) had initially thought that Atlantis had been situated in Morocco but further research led him to conclude that Atlantis was located in what today is Southern Turkey and that Atlanteans were among the Sea Peoples who attacked Egypt in 1200 BC. Another Atlantis Rising forum(e) on the subject is also worth a look as is another illustrated site(f) which includes a map of the homelands of the Sea Peoples.

The historian, Sanford Hoist, published a paper in which he argued(j) for an Anatolian origin for the Sea Peoples together with other groups such as the Phoenicians.

David Rohl, a high-profile archaeologist, has proposed an Anatolian homeland for most of the Sea Peoples listed by the Egyptians in his book, The Lords of Avaris [0232].

The most recent addition to our knowledge of the Sea Peoples appears to be imminent with the publication of a paper in the December 2017 issue of the journal Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society. Written by Frederik Woudhuizen and Eberhard Zangger, the authors offer a translation of a 3200-year-old inscription That may refer to the Sea Peoples and link them with western Turkey. You can read more, now, on the Livescience website(z). In a 2006 paper(ac), The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples, Woudhuizen included some groups from the Central Mediterranean as part of the Sea Peoples.

Erich Fred Legner offers an extensive paper(au) on the diversity of the Sea Peoples. Brian Janeway explored the idea that the Sea Peoples originated in the Northern Levant(aw).

Sea Peoples from Southern Levant (Modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel & Palestine)

Joseph Morris in his thesis(m) presented to the Classics Department of Florida State University in 2006 defined the Sea Peoples as “a coalition consisting of the indigenous populations of Syria-Palestine led by the neo-Hittite states.”

Eric Cline noted in 1117 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed [1005] that the only member of the Sea Peoples alliance whose identity has been ‘firmly established’ is that of the Peleset who are accepted as Philistines. He also comments that identifying the Shekelesh with Sicily and the Shardana with Sardinia is based in part on the ‘consonantal similarities’ [p.4]. In a 2016 article, Cline wrote, “As for what role the Sea Peoples actually played in the destruction of civilizations around 1200 BCE and shortly thereafter, I personally think that they have been set up as a scapegoat, because of the Egyptian inscriptions, and that they were as much victims as oppressors. I doubt that they were responsible for all of the destructions that we blame on them and I think that they are only one of the many factors that together contributed to a “perfect storm” that ended the Bronze Age. These stressors, as they are sometimes called, probably also included drought, famine, earthquakes, and possible internal rebellions in addition to external invaders, all of which combined to cause a system to collapse.” (az)

In another paper(bi), Cline concluded as follows; “Let us simply restate the obvious, but frequently overlooked, observation that the earliest records attesting to the existence of Israel and the first indications of the phenomenon known as the Sea Peoples occurred simultaneously, in the fifth year of Merneptah’s reign. It is possible that these are not independent events, although they are usually treated as such in published studies of ancient Israel, and instead were related processes.

To the legendary figures of Moses and Joshua associated with the biblical stories of the Exodus and the Conquest of Canaan, we might want to now add the far less legendary but still anonymous and mysterious warriors within the Sea Peoples – the Eqwesh, Teresh, Lukka, Shardana, and Shekelesh coming across the sea from Greece, Turkey, Sicily, and Sardinia – or without the chaos and destructions that they wrought in the land of Canaan, and the power vacuum that they created in the area, the Israelites might never have taken over the region and the history of Western Civilization might have taken a radically different course.”

Sea Peoples or North Sea Peoples?

Until the middle of the 20th century, there was a consensus that the Sea Peoples originated in the Mediterranean region. That is until Jürgen Spanuth published his claim that Atlantis had been located in the North Sea and equated the Atlanteans with the Sea Peoples. This radical idea, with some variations, was adopted by several commentators and unsurprisingly, many were from Northern Europe. Spanuth referred to them as the North Sea Peoples [0015] and offered a range of evidence from the Egyptian inscriptions at Medinet Habu to support this idea. This evidence includes a variety of features that Egyptians used to portray the Sea Peoples such as types of swords, the shape of ships, shields and helmets as well as hair, clothing and shaving fashions. He then identified these Scandinavians as Atlanteans who later attacked Egypt. His opinion in this regard was strongly supported by Felix R. Paturi [1339.218]. More recently, Spanuth’s ideas have also been echoed by Walter Baucum in his Bronze Age Atlantis [0183].

In the 2007 DVD, Atlantis: Secret Star-Mappers of a Lost World, Childress identifies the Baltic as the original home of the Sea Peoples, reminiscent of the theories of Jürgen Spanuth, half a century earlier.

Similarly, Ellis Peterson endorses Spanuth’s Scandinavian location for Atlantis(ax).

Eckart Kahlhofer has now (2022) been investigating the idea of ‘North Sea Peoples’ for thirty years and supports the concept in his free ebook. He claims that in the twelfth century BC, the Egyptians referred to the Sea Peoples as the Nine Bows people, which is a geographical term.

Before the emergence of these Bronze Age seafarers, there was a history of Northern Boat-Peoples who gradually expanded globally after the last Ice Age. A paper by Andres Pääbo charts their story(k). Zach Zorich is a freelance journalist and contributing editor at Archaeology magazine. In January 2016 he wrote an article(r) that would seem to contradict the idea of Northern European ‘Sea People’ invading Egypt, for the simple reason that sailing boats were not developed in Scandinavia until around the time of the Vikings! – “The plank boats and log boats being built in northern Europe were not the most advanced watercraft of their time. The Greeks, Egyptians, and other cultures around the Mediterranean Sea used sailing ships to conduct trade, and sails wouldn’t be used in Northern Europe until the Iron Age, during the seventh or eighth century CE.”

Another site(an) also describes the various ships of the period used by the Egyptians, Greeks and the Sea Peoples. One unusual suggestion on the same site is that some of the Sea Peoples, although allied with groups from across the Mediterranean, came from Britain and Northern Europe(ao)!

The Sea Peoples’ Alliances

I have used the plural because the evidence suggests that over the extended period of the Sea Peoples activities, the alliances did experience some change in members.

Federico Bardanzellu offers several papers on his Museo dei Dolmen website(n) in which he suggests specific homelands for many of the members of the alliance(o).

Bob Idjennaden along with co-author, Mebarek S. Taklit, have produced The Mysterious Sea Peoples attack Egypt [1195], which provides an overview of the various incursions against Egypt during the 2nd millennium BC. The prominent part played by the Berbers or their ancestors in varying alliances that constituted the Sea Peoples is highlighted.

According to Raffaele D’Amato & Andrea Salimbeti [1152.20]+, the Denyen was one of the major groups of the Sea Peoples and have been known in ancient sources by different names; Danai, Danaoi, Danaus, Danaids, Dene, Danaids, Danuna. Others have linked them with the Danaan of Irish mythology. The Tuatha de Danaan invaded Ireland in prehistoric times. Having noted that Dan/Don/Danu were ancient words for water, it is not such a wild supposition that the Tuatha de Danaan were at least a constituent part of the Sea Peoples, an idea promoted by Leonardo Melis. A short review of D’Amato’s and Salimbeti’s book is available(bb).

On the other hand, Egerton Sykes thought that the Tuatha de Danaan were refugees from Atlantis, an idea he expressed in his 1949 edition of Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis. A paper offering a sober Irish (not an oxymoron) view of the Tuatha de Danaan should also be read(bc).

Sykes was convinced that Murias one of the four legendary cities of the de Danann had been located in Bimini. This highly speculative idea failed to bear fruit as have all efforts to identify the location of the other three cities, Falias, Finias and Gorias.

Speculation regarding the identity of individual tribes in the federation can be found on various websites(i)(f). One of the most comprehensive is provided by two Italian military historians, D’Amato & Salimbeti in their 2015 booklet [1152]+ and on the internet(l) and both are to be highly recommended. They highlight the complexities involved in definitively identifying the members of the varying alliances that were loosely described as the ‘Sea Peoples’ over a three-hundred-year period.

Atlantis and the Sea Peoples

The German classical scholar, Wilhelm Christ, was probably the first to identify the invading Sea Peoples with the Atlanteans(p), predating Jürgen Spanuth’s theory by the better part of a century. Christ’s idea was also supported to varying degrees by Theodor Gomperz, Spyridon Marinatos, John V. Luce, and Herwig Görgemanns. A translation of the relevant text of Christ’s 1886 paper was recently published by Jason Colavito(bd).

Quite a number of other writers have identified the Atlanteans as the Sea Peoples whose invasion of the Eastern Mediterranean has been recorded in some detail by the Egyptians. One such high-profile identification in the 20th century was by Spyridon Marinatos. One of the latest to join this school is Dr Rainer W. Kühne who not only makes the same identification but, using satellite images, believes that he has pinpointed the capital of Atlantis in Southern Spain. His website has a list of comparisons of Atlanteans to the Sea Peoples(a), which is worth consideration.

‘Rider’, the anonymous author of an article(ae)  concerning ‘the campaigns of the Sea Peoples’ on the allempires.com website also suggests that Plato’s Atlanteans can be identified with the Sea Peoples.

Frank Joseph contends that conflict between the Egyptians and the Sea Peoples was part of the Trojan War [0108.11] and has identified the Meshwesh, one of the Sea Peoples, as Atlantean [1535]. His speculation extended to describing ‘the Atlantean Sea Peoples’ as culture bearers who were responsible for, among other matters, the famous Serpent Mound of Ohio(ay).

Eberhard Zangger argues that the Sea Peoples were survivors of the Trojan War that fled to various parts of both the central and eastern Mediterranean(g). He has written further on this identification and more on the Luwian Studies website(s). Zangger claims that the Sea Peoples were an alliance of Libyans and Western Anatolian (Luwian) states(w)(y), which seems odd since Plato describes the Atlanteans as mightier than Libya and Asia combined. If Zangger is correct in identifying Troy as Atlantis [0483], he is also implying that according to Plato, a part (Troy) is greater than the whole (Libya and Asia combined), Troy being part of Asia! Something is wrong with his theory.

In a 2022 article in Popular Archaeology (Oct.15 2022)(bg) Zangger returns to the identification of Luwians as part of the Sea Peoples.

In 2020, Sean Welsh maintained that survivors of the eruption of Thera, which held the capital of Atlantis ‘morphed’ into the Sea Peoples [1874].

Other Theories

A more recent (2017) paper(aa) on a conservative website suggests that the Sea Peoples were ‘early Western Europeans’.

W.S. Baird has also offered a western Mediterranean identification for the Sea Peoples, whom he considers to have originally been colonists from the Aegean who settled in the southeast of Spain and are known as the El Argar culture! Their society suffered some form of collapse around 1350 BC and according to Baird is in some way connected with the emergence of the Sea Peoples!(ap)

The most radical suggestion regarding the Sea Peoples has come from Jim Allen, who promotes a South American location for Atlantis. He also seemingly equates at least some of the Sea Peoples with his South American Atlanteans [077.123], and has drawn attention to the similarity of some of the Sea Peoples’ headgear with that of Amazonian ‘Indians’(c)!

The Malagabay website published a lengthy article(t) in July 2016, offering evidence along with some conjecture, supporting the equally extreme idea that the Sea Peoples had originated in India and having migrated westward, some of them reached the Aegean and became known as Dorians! The author of the article appears to have followed the ideas of Edward Pococke (1604-1691) published in his India in Greece [1231].

Another unexpected twist is the claim by the discoverer of the Phaistos Disk, Luigi Pernier, that the characters used on the Disk are similar to the representations of the Sea Peoples at Medinet Habu.

Peter Adamis, an Australian ex-military serviceman has devoted a section of his website to the question of the Sea Peoples’ identity. It offers a large number of related videos and papers(be).

Two contributors to the Sea Peoples debate in the 1970s were Alessandra Nibbi (1923-2007) [1670] and Nancy K. Sandars (1914-2015) [1671] who, although they had their differences, appear to have agreed on: “(a) the ‘Sea Peoples’ were not one particular people, (b) their label as being ‘of the sea’ is misleading, and (c) earlier attempts to blame the cataclysmic collapse throughout the East Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age on the Sea Peoples is untenable.”

Sources

The earliest book devoted entirely to the Sea Peoples, which I am aware of, was Immanuel Velikovsky’s Peoples of the Sea. However, Velikovsky was more concerned with revising the chronologies of the Middle East and so focused on dating the invasion of the Sea Peoples rather than identifying their origins. Velikovsky has an interesting footnote in his Peoples of the Sea [758.4], which reads; “When Ramses III speaks of ‘Peoples of the Sea’ he specifies the Tkeker, the Shekelesh, the Teresh, the Weshesh and the Sherden (or Sardan); he specifies the Denyen as ‘Peoples of the Isles.'”  It would be interesting to know the reason for the distinction.

Trude & Moshe Dothan have added another valuable book to the Sea Peoples’ literature with their People of the Sea which has the interesting sub-title of The Search for the Philistines [1524]. Related to their work, is the result of recent excavations at Ashkelon, an important Philistine city, which suggests that the city had received migrants from southern Europe during the Bronze Age, who may have constituted a component of the Sea Peoples(ah). Clearly, further investigation will be required to confirm these indications.

An extensive review of all the available material relating to the Sea Peoples was also published online in October 2015(q). The MalagaBay website (now closed) had also a wide-ranging illustrated article(u) about the Sea Peoples, although without reaching any firm conclusions.

[1152.20]+ https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1498/88/1498880873171.pdf  

(a) Location and Dating of Atlantis (archive.org)

(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20130718184625/http://forums.atlantisrising.com:80/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000855.html

(c) http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/headgear.htm (link broken) see part atlantis bolivia part 4 conclusion, mummies,uente magna and links 

(d)  https://web.archive.org/web/20181014190855/http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/seapeople.htm

(e) https://web.archive.org/web/20080820154251/http://forums.atlantisrising.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000911.html

(f) Egyptian art records the Invasion of the Sea People, sea faring in the 12th Century BCE (archive.org) 

(g) http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/199503/who.were.the.sea.people.htm

(h) http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsMiddEast/AnatoliaSeaPeoples.htm

(i) Archive 2813 | (atlantipedia.ie) *

(j) http://www.phoenician.org/sea_peoples.htm

(k) Archive 2337 (all three parts)

(l) http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/index.htm

(m) http://web.archive.org/web/20060903164435/http:/dscholarship.lib.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1199HYPERLINK 

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

(o) http://www.museodeidolmen.it/englishpopomare.html

(p) Abhandlungen der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vol.. XVII, 2nd part, Munich 1886, pp. 451-512. (German)

(q) http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/sea.htm 

(s) https://luwianstudies.org/the-sea-peoples-inscriptions-and-excavation-results/

(t) https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2016/07/07/catastrophic-english-india-in-greece/

(u) https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/deja-vu-vikings/

(v) https://ancientpatriarchs.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/were-sea-peoples-invading-egypt-from-atlantis-due-to-global-climate-change/

(w) https://luwianstudies.org/the-sea-peoples-inscriptions-and-excavation-results/ 

(x) http://rlebling.blogspot.ie/2012/03/where-was-ogygia-isle-of-calypso.html

(y) 3,000 years ago, the mysterious ‘Sea Peoples’ civilization was wiped out by ‘World War Zero’ | Ancient Code (archive.org) 

(z) https://www.livescience.com/60629-ancient-inscription-trojan-prince-sea-people.html

(aa) Archive 3429

(ab) https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1498/88/1498880873171.pdf

(ac) https://www.academia.edu/7287651/The_Ethnicity_of_the_Sea_Peoples_dissertation_

(ad) https://listverse.com/2016/06/06/10-theories-regarding-the-sea-peoples/

(ae) The Campaigns of the Sea Peoples – All Empires (archive.org) 

(af)  https://www.quora.com/Where-did-the-Sea-Peoples-the-people-who-invaded-Greece-Egypt-and-the-Hittite-Empire-in-the-Late-Bronze-Age-come-from

(ag) http://www.q-mag.org/cyprus-salt-lakes-exonerate-peoples-of-the-sea-from-causing-the-destruction-of-bronze-age-civilizations.html 

(ah) https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/7/eaax0061

(ai) https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/c3fm5j/who_were_the_mysterious_sea_people_during_the/  (halfway down page)

(aj) https://www.academia.edu/4594906/The_Ships_of_the_Sea_Peoples

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

(al) http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/ships.htm

(am) http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/sea.htm

(an) Ancient Ships: The Ships of Antiquity (archive.org)  

(ao) Egyptian art records the Invasion of the Sea People, sea faring in the 12th Century BCE (archive.org)  

(ap) https://minoanatlantis.com/Origin_Sea_Peoples.php

(aq) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2020/03-04/pirates-once-swashbuckled-across-ancient-mediterranean/

(ar) https://www.academia.edu/173946/M_J_Adams_and_M_E_Cohen_The_Sea_Peoples_in_Primary_Sources

(as) Cambridge Ancient History Ist edition, Vol.II, p.8

(at) https://www.academia.edu/34555497/The_Sea_Peoples_Superior_on_Land_and_at_Sea      

(au) File: <seapeopl (archive.org) 

(av) (99+) (PDF) The Dynamics of Mediterranean Africa, ca. 9600-1000 bc: An Interpretative Synthesis of Knowns and Unknowns | Giulio Lucarini – Academia.edu     

(aw) https://www.academia.edu/38648258/Sea_Peoples_of_the_Northern_Levant 

(ax) https://hiddenhistorysecrets.blogspot.com/2008/01/hidden-history-scandinavia-atlantis.html

(ay) Atlantis Rising magazine #36  http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At  

(az) ANE TODAY – 201609 – Ask a Near Eastern Professional: Who are the Sea Peoples and what role did they play in the devastation of civilizations that occurred shortly after 1200 BCE? – American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR) (archive.org)

(ba) https://listverse.com/2016/06/06/10-theories-regarding-the-sea-peoples/ 

(bb) https://www.ancient-origins.net/book-reviews/sea-peoples-bronze-age-mediterranean-c-1400-bc-1000-bc-002830  

(bc) https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/tuatha-de-danann-irish-gods-aliens 

(bd) Atlantis and the Sea Peoples – JASON COLAVITO 

(be) SEA PEOPLES – ABALINX (archive.org) 

(bf) https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/who-were-the-sea-peoples 

(bg) (88) Ancient Troy and its Neighbors: Acknowledging the Luwian Culture at Last | Eberhard Zangger – Academia.edu 

(bh) Wayback Machine (archive.org)  

(bi) https://www.academia.edu/355166/2009_Cline_Sea_Peoples_and_Israelites_article 

 

Deluge of Noah *

The Deluge or Noah’s Flood are the commonly used terms when referring to the biblical flood of Genesis. It might perhaps be more accurate to use the plural, as there is evidence of several large-scale catastrophic inundations within the human memory. The Noachian deluge has been the subject of continuous debates: was it real or pure fantasy, was it local, regional or global and is the Ark to be found on Mt. Ararat?

Reginald Fessenden controversially noted in his The Deluged Civilization of the Caucasus Isthmus [1012] that “the traditions were collected, tabulated and compared. This developed the fact that there were only five traditions of an inundation of more than local character.”

1. The Greek tradition; of Deucalion; the Aegean, 100 to 250 miles southwest of the Black Sea.

2. The Egyptian-Phoenician; of Atlantis and the Greeks; the western and northeastern shores of the Black Sea.

3. The Cimmerian; of the Crimea; the north shore of the Black Sea.

4. The Hebrew-Babylonian; of Noah and Atra-Hasis; the southeast shore of the Black Sea.

5. The Phrygian; of Noe; the south shore of the Black Sea.

The Flood of Noah is an echo of the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, which in turn has a resonance with the deluge story of Manu in Indian mythology. If all three relate to the same event it would be of great interest to discover if there was an even earlier shared origin.

Noah is the hero of the Deluge story in Genesis. He was also an accomplished shipbuilder and viticulturist. According to some he was also an Atlantean! Cosmas Indicopleustes a 6th century AD theologian and geographer from Alexandria wrote of Atlantis as a large island in the western ocean. He also added a twist to the tale by recording an ancient tradition that Noah had resided on Atlantis! More recently, Frank Joseph [108.85] has endorsed this daft idea.

Interestingly, so many of the deluge stories include a scenario where the ’hero’ is warned of impending doom. To me, this would make sense that where a landbridge was threatened by gradually rising waters on one side, simple observation would have provided adequate time to warn those at risk on the other side. 

Another identification, by Robert Bowie Johnson Jr., is that Noah is Nereus in Greek mythology and widely depicted in Greek art(c). Confusingly, it has also been suggested(a) that Enoch, usually accepted as the grandfather of Noah, was the same person.

According to Plato, Atlantis was destroyed by the gods as a punishment for their wickedness, while the same reason is given in the Bible for the obliteration of Noah’s people. Coincidentally, both Atlantis and Noah’s homeland, which was probably located in Mesopotamia, were destroyed by water leading to the not unreasonable suggestion that the two stories are related.

While the biblical account of the Deluge does not stand up to detailed scrutiny(j), the global ubiquity of Flood stories is seldom adequately explained. Some possibilities that occur to me are related to the ending of the last Ice Age, which had watery consequences around the world. While the rising sea level took place in fits and starts, there were more dramatic events during this period such as the huge meltwater lake discharges and Heinrich Events that occurred across North America and Eurasia. The effect in the southern hemisphere was less spectacular. Survivors would have been forced to migrate in all directions, bringing their account of these floods with them. Another explanation, but in my view, a more likely cause of global floods would have been a close encounter with a large extraterrestrial body, an idea promoted by various researchers such as Emilio Spedicato.

Apart from the story of the actual flood, global or otherwise, the detailed biblical account of the building of the Ark along with the gathering of the animals and the voyage itself does not hold water (sorry)(y). Some decades ago, Roger A. Moore offered a forensic study of the account, which, is still impressive(x).

In March 2019, a paper by Roger M. Pearlman put forward another radical idea, namely, that Göbekli Tepe had been founded by Noah (Noach) and his sons(u).

A more light-hearted look at the story of Noah is also worth a read(n).

Every aspect of Noah’s Deluge story in the Bible has been a source of controversy for centuries. From the nature and cause of the Flood itself, as well as the building of the Ark and its final resting place and of course the date of the event.

Some years ago, Pastor Bertrand L. Comparet (1901-1983), a staunch racist(w), denied that the Flood of Noah had been a global event(v).

2018 began with matters hitting rock-bottom when an English-language newspaper offered the following headline(l) Turkish academic claims Prophet Noah used a cell phone to call his son before the flood.Unsurprisingly, Jason Colavito has covered this story with an interesting blog(m).

DATE

Plato’s Atlantis story contains a curious reference in Timaeus (23a-c) to a series of floods that occurred in the Eastern Mediterranean(ah) since the Atlantean war, namely, those of Ogyges, Deucalion and Dardanus. If based on historical fact, on its own, the Biblical Flood or the breach of a landbridge cannot explain this succession of inundations but suggests that there could be a much more complex story, still to be revealed, which was spread over millennia.

Anastasios Stamou presented a paper [750.183] to the 2008 Atlantis Conference in which he reviewed the evidence relating to three floods that befell ancient Greece and alluded to by Plato. Drawing on ancient Greek texts including the Parian Marble, he places these events in chronological order beginning with the flood of Ogyges, then Deucalion’s and finally that of Dardanos.

Three very ancient global floods are proposed by Marin, Minella & Schievenin in The Three Ages of Atlantis [972] and date them to 10,500, 9600 and 6700 BCE.

Stamou accepts that conventional wisdom has it that these flood events occurred in the 2nd millennium BC and based his paper on that assumption. However, he expressed serious doubts about this dating suggesting a much earlier date for some inundations and promising a future paper dealing with this revision.

Stephen Oppenheimer mentions [0004] three sudden ice melts, 14,000, 11,500 and 8,000 years ago that would have had a global effect. It should be considered that the second date is close to Plato’s apparent date for the destruction of Atlantis.

Since writing, as we know it, did not develop until long after de-glaciation, it is virtually impossible to precisely identify the date, location or extent of any of the early myths relating to these possible de-glaciation inundations.

In an August 2017 paper, on the Migration & Diffusion website(s), Stuart L. Harris put forward his reasons for dating the Flood of Noah to 3161 BC and the Exodus Flood to 1445 BC.

Similarly,  Gérard Gertoux places the Deluge circa 3200 BC in a lengthy paper(z), in which he also controversially touches on subjects such as radiocarbon dating, the age of the patriarchs, the Ice Ages, evolution and more.

China has its own ‘Great Flood’ tradition, which in the August 2016 edition of Science journal had its reality given strong support in a paper(bi) by a mainly Chinese team of researchers, who date the event to 1920 BC.

Recent years have seen the above-mentioned flooding of the Black Sea or even more controversially, the flooding of the desiccated Mediterranean basins, following the breaching of a suggested landbridge at Gibraltar, proposed as possible sources of the story of Noah in the Bible. These inundations are dated to around 5600 BC and their memory should have survived in the traditions and mythologies of the region. In addition to that, the Persian Gulf is also accepted by many to have been dry during the last Ice Age but also began to flood around 5000 BC. In Northern Europe, the Baltic Sea and the Celtic Shelf both suffered post-glacial inundations, while around the same time in the South China Sea the enormous Sunda Shelf suffered extensive flooding.

The flooding of the Celtic Shelf along with parts of southwest Britain and southeast Ireland is the subject of a 2016, thought-provoking book [1166] by Philip Runggaldier

On a more controversial level, Donald Patten and Samuel Windsor presented evidence [0277] for a series of close encounters between Mars and the Earth during the 1st millennium BC. David Rohl, the Egyptologist, dates Noah’s Flood to 3114 BC [0229] and links it with the climatic consequences of a major catastrophe in the Aleutian Islands.

Alexander and Edith Tollman linked the Noachian Deluge with the consequences of a cometary impact in 7552 BC. On the other hand, G.F. Dodwell the Australian astronomer, after studying ancient gnomons, concluded that it was a worldwide catastrophe in 2345 BC that altered the Earth’s tilt, leading to the Deluge. This is comparable with the 1696 claim by William Whiston that the earth had an encounter with a comet in 2346 BC, which caused the Flood of Noah. Emilio Spedicato advocates 3161 BC as the date of the biblical Deluge(ac), which has also been endorsed by Stuart L. Harris(ad).

In a paper(r) revised in 2017, Barry Warmkessel noted that theologians and historians have attempted dating Noah’s Flood event, both recently and as far back as the time of Christ. The following are just a few of the results from these attempts:

  • JOSEPHUS GREAT FLOOD DATE: (3148 BC)
  • HALES GREAT FLOOD DATE: (3155 BC)
  • SEPTUAGINT GREAT FLOOD DATE: (3246 BC)
  • SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH GREAT FLOOD DATE: (2998 BC)

Therefore. theologically at least, it seems quite reasonable (to Warmkessel) that Noah’s Flood occurred between 3000 and 3250 BC and the Ark would have been built slightly before that time.

When Ryan & Pitman(ae) published their 1997 theory that around 5600 BC, the Black Sea had been flooded by water from the Aegean breaching the Bosporus, it did not take long before it was speculated that the event was reflected in the story of Noah’s Deluge. With little delay, strong objections to the idea were raised by many others(af)(bz)*.

T.R.Holme has an interesting article(ax) on the flooding of the Black Sea and the migration from the region that resulted. He also links that event with the work of the late Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994).

Nick Thom, an engineering lecturer at Nottingham University has written The Great Flood [776] which gives an overview of many Flood myths, but more importantly, he identifies the emptying of glacial Lake Agassiz around 6250 BC as the mechanism that caused a tilting of the Earth, which in turn generated a global deluge remembered by the survivors in myth and later recorded in scriptures. This is also fully outlined in a lengthy entitled, A Re-interpretation of the 8.2ky BP Event(ag). Also relevant to our subject is his claim that the flow of water was from the Black Sea into the Aegean rather than the other way around!

The most radical date for the Flood of Noah comes from Rich McQuillen who in a 2022 paper links the flood of Noah to the flood of Ahmose and Atrahasis, and shows it to be a real flood caused by Santorini”!(bv)

THE CAUSE

Jeffrey Goodman, the controversial author of Psychic Archaeology [781], maintains that “Noah’s Flood was, in reality, a tsunami caused by a comet” and supports this contention with a retranslation of Genesis 7:11 (ar).

Kirk Kirchev in a recent (April 2018) two-part article(bb) “offers a unifying scientific hypothesis that connects diverse ancient flood myths with mainstream scientific fact.” and concluded that “If my calculations and assumptions are correct, an object of around 900 km in diameter passing the earth at an altitude of less than 1000 kilometres (621.37 miles) (of average, rocky density) would be large and heavy enough to create a strong localized tidal uplift in the oceans beneath its flight path (approximately 50 times the current tidal amplitude). That is large enough to destroy most of humankind, and a large portion of the fauna, but small enough to not cause a major extinction event or to disturb earth’s orbital path and rotation.”

Immanuel Velikovsky’s controversial cosmological ideas suggest that our Earth had at one point been a satellite of Saturn! In his unpublished book, In the Beginning (bk), he proposed that “The conflict between the larger planets resulted in long-stretched filaments ejected by a disturbed Saturn to cross the Earth’s orbit. The hydrogen of the planet combined with the oxygen of the terrestrial atmosphere in electrical discharges and turned into water” and so generated the Deluge!

In 1993, Alexander Tollman and his wife Edith published, Und die Sintflut gab es doch. Vom Mythos zur historischen Wahrheit, “which claimed that Noah’s flood was the consequence of a bolide impact about 9500 years ago, and supported the claim through geology (impact craters, iridium, shatter cones, stress lamination of minerals, radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology, a peak of acid in the Greenland ice) and legends and folk traditions.”(bj) Christian O’Brien has endorsed the Tollmans’ ideas(bl).

Aloys Eiling (1952- ) a German researcher has offered a variation on the close encounter theory, suggesting that the Deluge was one of the consequences of the capture of our Moon that took place when our planet was already populated – somewhere between 40,000 and 13,000 BC. He notes(bn) that “the capture of the Moon caused worse than a flood; it changed the geography of the world. Earth’s surface was devastated, millions died, and life in total was brought to the brink of extinction. In the collective memory of mankind, the event indelibly remained in the myths about a Deluge.”

Nevertheless, there is one rather disturbing element to be found alongside some of the flood myths, namely that the deluge event was concurrent with the sun seemingly standing still and in some cases, it is recorded that the Moon also appeared to stop(o)(av)! One explanation on offer is that it is a reference to an eclipse(aw). This might be acceptable if it was compatible with other myths from different parts of the world, which does not appear to be the case. Furthermore, it does not explain the association of the stopping of the sun with the global deluge. A very close encounter between the Earth and another large celestial body might.

As I see it, we are left with the two popular explanations for the global flood myths, either a close encounter with an extraterrestrial body that created a megatsunami that was on such a scale that it swept around the globe, perhaps many times before dissipating or the melting of the Ice Age glaciers produced the cyclical bursting of ice-dams and landbridges and the inundation of vast areas of low-lying land. I’m inclined to believe that the balance of probabilities favours the latter explanation, although I find it difficult to accept that gradual deglaciation would or could have generated floods that ‘covered mountains’ (Gen. vii.19)!

Other floods may have been caused by tsunamis resulting from underwater earthquakes and/or storegga. Quite recently it was discovered(bh) that around 6000 BC, a calamitous tsunami was generated in the Mediterranean when Mt. Etna in Sicily sent approximately 6 cubic miles of rock and rubble crashing into the sea. One could be forgiven for speculating that this event may have triggered the flooding of the Black Sea, which is dated to this same period.

GLOBAL or LOCAL

The scientific case against a global deluge is presented in a paper by Lorence G. Collins.(bt)

In 2013, Geologist David R. Montgomery, a professor at the University of Washington, authored The Rocks Don’t Lie [2029] which offers a fresh open-minded look at Noah’s Flood and how it is viewed today by both science and religion. He concluded – Like most geologists, I had come to see Noah’s Flood as a fairy tale—an ancient attempt to explain the mystery of how marine fossils ended up in rocks high in the mountains. Now I’ve come to see the story of Noah’s Flood like so many other flood stories—as rooted in truth.”

“It appears that humanity’s rich legacy of flood stories reflects a variety of ancient disasters. The global pattern of tsunamis, glacial outburst floods and catastrophic flooding of lowlands like Mesopotamia or the Black Sea basin, fits rather well the global distribution and details of flood stories.”

So Montgomery considers the source of Noah’s Flood to have been a local event such as the flooding of the Black Sea region and refers to Angelos Galanopoulos who similarly associated the tsunamis generated by the mid-second millennium BC eruption of Thera (Santorini) with the Flood of Deucalion. Montgomery’s views were given further exposure on the LiveScience website(bx).

A decade later (May 2023), the Greek Reporter website re-examined the possible extent of Noah’s Flood(by).

THE ARK

An interesting overview of traditional as well as modern thinking regarding the possible historical reality behind the Deluge of Genesis is presented(ai) by Robert Squillace on the New York University website.

On January 1st 2010 it was revealed(b) that a 3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet which, unlike the biblical record, describes an ark made of reeds, 70 metres in width and round in shape(aj)(ak). This would have been recorded a thousand years before the Genesis story was written down. Understandably, this has caused the knickers of some fundamentalist Christians to become seriously twisted! The discovery has now been expanded on by a cuneiform specialist at the British Museum, Irving Finkel, in The Ark before Noah [0995]. Jason Colavito offers an interesting review of the book(d).

Even more radical is the result of a high-tech study of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls which suggest that Noah’s Ark was pyramidal in shape(al)! Commenting on this report, Jason Colavito has pointed out that the concept of a pyramid-shaped ark is not new(am).

There is an unexpectedly large number of books written over the last century on the subject of Noah’s Ark that is listed on a specialist website(e). One such offering, resurrected by Jason Colavito(f), provides some comic relief with the claim in 1922 by C. E. Getsinger, who wrote that Noah’s Ark was the Great Pyramid!(g)  Even earlier, John Taylor (1781-1864) claimed [1451] that Noah had built the Great Pyramid! Nevertheless, a recently deciphered fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls has suggested that the Ark was shaped like a pyramid!(h)(i)

Barry Warmkessel also entered the fray with the suggestion that aliens had been involved in the design and construction of the Ark(r)! Nevertheless, that idea certainly competes with the suggestion of Xavier Séguin that the ‘Ark’ of Noah had been an Earth satellite(aa)!

Even more radical is the claim by Hebrew scholar Richard Seary that the Ark never actually existed, but that conventionally accepted understanding of the Genesis text is the result of some incorrect translations(aq). One example is that there is no such material as gopher wood and that the word ‘gofer’ means lava!

A life-sized replica of Noah’s Ark was due to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Holland in the summer of 2016(an). It was built over four years by a carpenter, Johan Huibers, completing it in 2012. It is 410 feet long, 95 feet wide and 75 feet tall. It weighs 2,500 tons and is said to hold more than 5,000 people at any one time. However, there is no provision for live animals! The replica was sold to Aad Peters, a Dutch artist, who in 2019 brought it to Ipswich in Britain. Unfortunately, it has been impounded by the authorities there as it lacks the appropriate paperwork to permit it to leave. There are also serious concerns regarding its seaworthiness and it is also clocking up port fees of £500 a day(ao)(ap).

Michael Hearns, an Irish researcher, has just published (Aug.2023), an interesting article on the Ancient Origins website recounting the many anomalies in the biblical story of the Ark(bw).

UBIQUITY OF FLOOD MYTHS

Flood myths are found throughout the world and for centuries were seen as confirmation of the reality and universality of the Biblical Flood of Noah. However, when it was discovered that the Earth had endured a series of Ice Ages and that following each of these, the melting ice caps led to worldwide inundations with consequent immortalisation of these events through locally developed myths, it led to speculation that Noah’s Flood may have been just a regional but a catastrophic event. It is also probable that separate regional inundations would have occurred as deglaciation continued at the end of the last ice age, so when recounted through mythology many centuries later they may appear to refer to a single global event.

The competing concepts of global deluge versus local inundations are discussed in a brief paper(bc) by L. James Gibson, who concluded that “these local floods do not explain important features of the biblical flood.”

Nevertheless, megafloods are not necessarily only caused by tsunamis and melting glaciers. “A 43-day storm that began in December 1861 put central and southern California underwater for up to six months” a catastrophic event that is now generally forgotten. An extensive 2013 article(bd) in Scientific American has full details.

These ancient flood stories are to be found to contain content with a remarkable similarity of detail. It is worth pointing out that none of these legends ever recount the ‘hero’ of their particular tale returning to his former home. One simple explanation for this might be that the original homelands no longer existed. This would not normally be the case if the floods in question were tidal, storm-driven or even giant tsunamis. However, if the inundations were the result of rising sea levels, resulting from the melting of Ice Age glaciers, we could expect two principal effects. The first would have been the gradual submergence of all low-lying flood plains that are now identified as continental shelves. Two of the best known of these would be the Sunda Shelf (Sundaland) and the area stretching from the west coast of mainland Europe across the North Sea encompassing the British Isles and into the Atlantic beyond Ireland. The second effect would have been the dramatic inundation of valleys and basins protected by low landbridges or dams. Again, we have examples, some debatable, such as the Baltic, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and perhaps the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Sea of Japan.

An extensive and more general collection of Flood myths can be found on the internet(be). A USGS list of the world’s greatest floods, ancient and recent, is available as a pdf file(bf). Similarly, a website by Mark Isaak offers an extensive overview of flood myths around the world, although the site does not appear to have been updated for some years(bg).

Despite the existence of these huge collections of worldwide flood myths(ay) there appears to be one glaring omission, from all such databases, namely a contribution from Egypt where, inexplicably, there is no such deluge tradition apart from the predictable annual flooding of the Nile. However, there is the Egyptian story of Hathor/Sekhmet(az)(ba) who flooded the land with blood, which some may interpret as a mythological code for water!

The flooding of all these worldwide locations would have occurred quite slowly over an extended period following the last Ice Age, possibly providing the basis for the widespread existence of these flood myths. However, it could not explain the biblical claim that the flood covered mountains.

Dhani Irwanto, author of Atlantis: The Lost City in Java Sea [1093], offers a number of interesting articles on his website including an extensive overview of the ubiquity of Deluge stories, concluding with the following comment “Thus, Noah and the waters of the great Flood are not only recalled in the ancient traditions of all nations, but their names have also become incorporated in many and varied ways into the very languages of his descendants. The trails are tenuous and often almost obliterated so that some of the inferred connections are speculative and possibly mistaken, but the correlations are too numerous to be only coincidental, thus adding yet one more evidence for the historicity of the Great Flood.(bs)

 Many Atlantologists have sought to link the Deluge with the inundation of Atlantis. As early as 1915, Garrett Serviss put forward the possibility that a lost continent in the Arctic Ocean, containing Atlantis, was destroyed and that this cataclysm also generated Noah’s Flood(ca).

Egerton Sykes was a keen supporter of the idea of a connection between the destruction and Noah’s Deluge. Joseph S. Ellul has interpreted the biblical story to support the idea of a landbridge at Gibraltar, which eventually collapsed when the waters of the Atlantic rose after the last Ice Age. Ellul maintains that Genesis 7:11 ‘All the springs of the Great Deep broke through’ is a reference to the percolation of the Atlantic waters, through the Gibraltar dam, which eventually led to its collapse as the sea level rose or was shattered by seismic or tectonic movements. I find it hard to accept this, because the pressure that is exerted by the Atlantic, would have rapidly changed any such seepage into a major breach and the subsequent collapse of the dam. Gerhard F. Hasel, Professor of Old Testament and Biblical Theology offers a more conventional interpretation of “the fountains of the great deep” in a paper with the same name(ab).

MT. ARARAT

Nevertheless, 2017 finished with renewed interest in Noah’s Ark being generated by media reports(k) of statements emanating from The Geoscience Research Institute, which is sponsored by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which claims that a 2010 expedition to Mount Ararat in Turkey, carbon-dated timbers found there to 4,800 years ago.

A sceptical 2019 article has looked critically at many aspects of the story of the Ark, including the most commonly offered Turkish site as the resting place of the Ark – “One of the most famous supposedly-Noah’s-ark sites is the admittedly very boat-looking Durupinar site in the Mount Tendurek area in Turkey. According to Atlas Obscura, the site was exposed in the late 1940s after a series of earthquakes and storms.”(an)

The late David Allen Deal was another investigator to propose the Ararat region as the landing place of the Ark, with Mt. Judi (Judi Dagh) as the specific location(o). A more recent article supports his ideas(p). David Rohl has also been drawn to Mt. Judi as a probable contender(bu). The precise location of the biblical Ararat is a matter of continuing and intense debate(q).

The UK’s Daily Mail added that talking after the initial claims in 2010, Mike Pitt, a British archaeologist, said the evangelical explorers had yet to produce compelling evidence. He said: ‘If there had been a flood capable of lifting a huge ship 2.5 miles [4km] up the side of a mountain 4,800 years ago, I think there would be substantial geological evidence for this flood around the world. And there isn’t.’

In his 2020 book, Apocalypse [1874], Dr Sean Welsh agreed that Noah’s Ark finally rested on Mt. Ararat, but took everyone by surprise by claiming that it was not Ararat in Turkey but Ararat mountain on Crimea’s Kerch Peninsula! Welsh does not explain where Shinar was in relation to his Ararat. Conventional wisdom locates it in southern Mesopotamia, placing them around 2,500 km apart.

Angelo Palegro was an Italian researcher who spent 35 years seeking Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat (Mount Agiri) on the Turkish-Iranian border(bq). Unfortunately, in 2021 he fell ill while in Turkey and died on August 15th, aged  86, and in accordance with his wishes was buried on the slopes of Mt. Ararat(bp).

However, a more valuable offering was a paper(ab) delivered in 2008 to the Sixth International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh, PA by Anne Habermehl. She finished her contribution, Review of the Search for Noah’s Ark, with the following conclusions;

“(1) It would appear that the Ark cannot have landed on Mount Ararat, because scientists have shown that this mountain did not exist until some time after the Flood had ended. (Also, the area that Mount Ararat occupies was probably not yet included in Urartu at that time.)

(2)  In light of historical and geographical considerations, Mount Cudi near Cizre, Turkey, is the most likely place where the Ark landed.

(3)  It seems doubtful that anyone has actually seen the  Ark anywhere in modern times. The alleged sightings all seem to evaporate on careful examination.

(4) It is unlikely that very much of the Ark exists today; it is probable that over the millennia it has decayed, and various scavengers have taken most of it away.

(5) Because of 14C dating problems, it may not be possible to prove that any given samples are or are not the right age to have come from the Ark.

(6) More archaeological work needs to be done if we are ever to reasonably prove the Ark’s landing spot anywhere.

(7)  It is probable that no matter what is found in any location, there are those who will remain unconvinced.

(8) Interest in finding the Ark is unabated, and the Ark search will go on.

At the end of the day, we have to face the reality that it may be difficult, or even impossible, ever to prove where the Ark landed. This author would have liked to end on an optimistic note for the soon recovery of a largely intact, proven Ark, but this seems unlikely; and this paper therefore ends, in the words of T. S. Eliot (1925): “Not with a bang but a whimper.”

In 2021, author S.H. Scholar in a short book entitled Heavenly Flood [1891]  modestly claimed to have “uncovered history’s greatest secret – the influence of ancient astrology on the development of Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood Tale.” John McHugh has also offered a comparable zodiacal link with the biblical Deluge story in The Celestial Code of Scripture [1892] which has been critiqued by Gary D. Thompson(bm).

Eugenio Ralbadisole who advocates India as the home of Atlantis also locates the landing place of Noah’s Ark in the same region. Based on texts in the Vedas where we read that a man after a catastrophic flood arrived with his ship full of animals in a village called Naubandhana. A location with similar names can be found near “Barda Hills” in Gujarat.” (bo)


(a) The First Eden (archive.org)  *

(b) http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/01/noahs-ark-was-circular  

(c) http://njbiblescience.org/presentations/Greek%20Mythology%20and%20Genesis.pdf

(d) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2014/05/on-irving-finkels-the-ark-before-noah.html

(e) http://www.throneofgod.com/SBG/sbg.htm

(f) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/wednesday-roundup-templar-carvings-masonic-pyramids-and-a-bizarre-claim-about-noahs-ark

(g) The Thomson Review, Thomson, Illinois, July 19th, 1922 – p.3,

(i) http://www.worldreligionnews.com/religion-news/christianity/was-noahs-ark-shaped-like-a-pyramid-digitized-dead-sea-scrolls-reveal-new-secrets

(j) https://www.scientificexploration.org/forum/noah%E2%80%99s-ark-the-biblical-flood-reality-or-nonsense

(k) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5020131/Experts-claim-Noah-s-Ark-Mount-Ararat.html

(m) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/turkish-chemist-claims-noah-had-nuclear-powered-ark-called-son-on-cellphone 

(n) https://web.archive.org/web/20190926154926/http://www.jokesoftheday.net/joke-NOAH-S-ARK-2017/2017050249

(o) https://noahsfloodnoahsark.wordpress.com/category/chapter-13-discovery-of-lost-ancient-city/

(p) http://www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-religions/evidence-noah-s-ark-landed-mountain-17-miles-south-ararat-009725  

(q) https://web.archive.org/web/20190128072213/http://compmyth.org/journal/index.php/cm/article/view/15

(r)  Archive 3514

(s) http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=540

(t) The First Eden – Part One (archive.org)

(u) https://www.academia.edu/38664571/Gobekli_Tepe_founded_by_Noah_and_sons

(v) https://israelect.com/ChurchOfTrueIsrael/comparet/comp19.html 

(w) https://web.archive.org/web/20200608082026/https://truth-over-tradition.com/2018/12/26/god-is-racist-and-you-should-be-too/ 

(x) https://ncse.ngo/impossible-voyage-noahs-ark 

(y) https://www.grunge.com/145325/the-untold-truth-of-noahs-ark/ 

(z) https://www.academia.edu/17026643/Noah_and_the_Deluge_Chronological_Historical_and_Archaeological_Evidence

(aa) https://eden-saga.com/en/looking-noahs-ark.html

(ab) https://www.academia.edu/39177466/A_Review_of_the_Search_for_Noahs_Ark 

(ac) http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=498

(ad) http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=540

(ae) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222471228_An_Abrupt_Drowning_of_the_Black_Sea_Shelf

(af) https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/why-black-sea-is-not-site-of-noahs-flood.html

(ag) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304674803_A_Re-interpretation_of_the_82ky_BP_Event

(ah) https://web.archive.org/web/20200216200648/http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/mythologyhome.htm 

(ai) Untitled Document (archive.org)  (link broken) 

(aj) https://web.archive.org/web/20170102033030/http://www.isciencetimes.com/articles/6746/20140128/noahs-ark-round-mesopotamia-flood-cuneiform-instructions-mathematically-accurate.htm

(ak) https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/noahs-ark-round/283335/

(al) http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/07/digital-analysis-of-dead-sea-scrolls-says-ark-was-a-pyramid/

(am) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/fringe-writers-shocked-by-text-from-dead-sea-scrolls-claiming-noahs-ark-was-pyramid-shaped

(an) https://www.grunge.com/145325/the-untold-truth-of-noahs-ark/

(an) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/life-sized-noahs-ark-to-sail_us_571f99cbe4b0b49df6a91ffc  

(ao) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan%27s_Ark 

(ap) Noah’s Ark Replica Faces Biblical Fines For Return Voyage To Holland! | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)

(aq) Fortean Times, April 2014, p.55

(bl) Giant Comet Launched Noah’s Ark (goldenageproject.org.uk)

(ar) http://www.newscientificevidenceforgod.com/2011/03/noahs-flood-was-really-tsunami-caused.html

(as) https://grahamhancock.com/eilinga2/

(at) http://religiondocbox.com/Judaism/67170515-A-r-t-i-c-l-e-s-the-fountains-of-the-great-deep-gerhard-f-hasel-associate-professor-of-old-testament-biblical-theology-andrews-university.html

(av) https://biblehub.com/joshua/10-13.htm

(aw) https://www.timesofisrael.com/3224-years-later-scientists-see-first-ever-recorded-eclipse-in-joshuas-battle/

(ax) http://www.geocities.ws/gardenofdanu/the_great_deluge.htm

(ay) https://web.archive.org/web/20200922201924/http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

(az) A Drunk, Bloodthirsty Goddess: The Flood Myth Of Egypt – Parallel Myths (wordpress.com)

(ba) https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1443&context=honors-theses

(bb) http://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/did-astronomical-body-fly-earth-and-produce-floods-myths-12000-years-ago-021883 

(bc) https://www.grisda.org/origins-52053  

(bd) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/atmospheric-rivers-california-megaflood-lessons-from-forgotten-catastrophe/

(be) http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

(bf) http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2004/circ1254/pdf/circ1254.pdf 

(bg) http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

(bh) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061128083754.htm

(bi) http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6299/579

(bj) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Tollmann

(bk) http://varchive.org/itb/hydrox.htm

(bl) Giant Comet Launched Noah’s Ark (goldenageproject.org.uk)

(bm) Critique of John McHugh’s Astronomical Interpretation of Noah’s Flood (westnet.com.au) (Link Broken)

(bn) https://grahamhancock.com/eilinga2/ 

(bo) City of Atlantis – Atlantide (archive.org) 

(bp) Italian researcher buried in Turkey after decades… | Rudaw.net 

(bq) Studies by Palego (noahsark.it) 

(bs) Great Flood and the Repopulation of Man | Atlantis in the Java Sea (atlantisjavasea.com) 

(bt) https://ncse.ngo/yes-noahs-flood-may-have-happened-not-over-whole-earth 

(bu) https://davidrohl.blogspot.com/2012/03/ 

(bv) (99+) A Simple Chronology for Biblical Archaeology | Rich McQuillen – Academia.edu

(bw) Stairway To Heaven In Noah’s Ark | Ancient Origins Members Site (ancient-origins.net) 

(bx) Did Noah’s flood really happen? | Live Science 

(by) https://greekreporter.com/2023/05/15/noah-flood/ 

(bz) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jan-19-adfg-noah-story.html 

(ca) https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045389/1915-01-03/ed-1/seq-46/ 

* See Atlantis Vol.6, Nos.1,2&3,  May, July & September 1953

Central Mediterranean

The Central Mediterranean is a very geologically unstable region containing as it does all of Europe’s land-based active volcanoes(a), regular seismic(b) activity with the attendant risk of tsunamis. It is now estimated that a devastating tsunami will hit the Mediterranean every 100 years(c). While the Aegean region experiences the greatest number of earthquakes, the Central Mediterranean, particularly around Sicily is also prone to regular tremors.

The idea that Atlantis was situated in this region is advocated by a number of researchers, including Alberto Arecchi, Férréol Butavand, Anton Mifsud, Axel Hausmann, as well as this compiler. Plato unambiguously referred to only two places as Atlantean territory (Crit.114c & Tim 25b) North Africa and Southern Italy as far as Tyrrhenia (Tuscany) plus a number of unspecified islands.

The area between Southern Italy and Tunisia has had a great number of sites proposed for the Pillars of Herakles, while possible locations for Gades are on offer with a number places still known today by cognates of that name.

Plato clearly includes continental territory as part of the Atlantean domain as well as a number of important islands. Within a relatively small geographical area, you have two continents, Africa and Europe represented by Tunisia and Italy respectively, as well as the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and Malta together with a number of smaller archipelagos, matching Plato’s description exactly. The later Carthaginian Empire also occupied much of the same territory apart from eastern Sicily and southern Italy which by then was controlled by the Greeks and known as Magna Graecia.

For me, the clincher is that within that region we have the only place in the entire Mediterranean to have been home to elephants up to Roman times – Northwest Africa.

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

(b) The Europeam Mediterranean Seismic Centre – EMSC, records all activity in the region.

(c) Tsunami Alarm System – A3M Tsunami Alarm System (tsunami-alarm-system.com)  (German & English)

Greek Colonisation

Greek Colonisation is something of misnomer on two counts. First of all is the fact that there was no unified Greek state until the time of Alexander the Great. Instead the territory was fragmented into a number of competing city- states (poleis) that formed shifting alliances to meet the exigencies of the day.

Secondly, the term ‘colonisation’ did not mean the same then as it does today. Individual city states had their own expansion ambitions, which were generally concerned with trade rather than territory. It seems that most of the colonies began as trading posts, known as emporia(a), some developing into towns, others grew into urban centres and even established colonies of their own.

In the first millennium BC, some of the Greek city-states gradually expanded their influence(c) eastward into Asia Minor and the Black Sea and westward along the northern coast of the Mediterranean, eventually founding Massalia (modern Marseilles), which established emporia in eastern Spain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

>Some writers, such as Henriette Mertz, have proposed that the ancient Greeks travelled as far as America and that Homer’s story of Odysseus was a retelling of such a voyage. More recently, Minas Tsikritsis has claimed that the Greeks had contact with North America, at least as far back as 86 AD!(d) Some time later he expanded on the idea in a paper published on the Researchgate website(e). Manolis Koutlis went further in his book, In the Shadow: The Greek Colonies of North America and the Atlantic 1500 BC -1500 AD [1617].

Even more extreme is the odd claim by Lonko Kilapan that ancient Greeks colonists settled in Chile and whose descendants are known now as Mapuche and earlier as Araucans or Araucanians(f) . Michael Issigonis has championed the idea of early Greeks in South America and elsewhere on the Academia.edu website(g)(h).<

The Phoenicians had their own city-states such a Tyre, Sidon and Byblos. They established ‘colonies along north Africa, and Spain. They competed with the Greeks, particularly in the central Mediterranean, where at one point they shared Sicily. Settlers from Tyre founded Carthage, which in turn became more powerful than and independent of its parent city and became more belligerent, eventually engaging in a series of wars with Rome, which it lost.

There is much more relevant information to be found on the excellent Ancient History Encyclopedia website(b) .

(a) https://www.academia.edu/1505105/The_origins_of_Greek_colonisation_and_Greek_polis_some_observations

(b) https://www.ancient.eu/edu/

(c) https://www.ancient.eu/Greek_Colonization/

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

(e) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321319687/download

(f) https://www.heliodromion.gr/palaio/e_araoukanoi.htm

(g) https://www.academia.edu/9066795/Did_the_Mapuche_of_Chile_travel_from_Homeric_Age_Greece

(h) https://www.academia.edu/32921347/ANCIENT_GREEKS_TRAVELLED_WORLDWIDE<

Chiereghin, Luciano

Luciano Chiereghin is an Italian researcher who has a great interest in the history of the Po Valley, both ancient and modern. In his 2007 book Atlantide al Microscopio (Atlantis Under the Microscope)[1572] he has the plain of the Valley as the location of Atlantis (=Hyperborea) and specifically the ancient town of Adria. He also proposes that Majorca, Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Crete and the Peloponnese constituted the island territories of Atlantis.

However, he is not the only one to link this region with Atlantis, as Morven Robertson published a book[1164] in 2015 with a similar theme. Both authors were drawn to the Po Valley by its size and its proximity to the magnificent mountains of the Alps, which protect the plain from the northern winds.

Diego Marin has favourably reviewed Chiereghin’s book(a).

(a) Atlantide al microscopio – Il sito ufficiale di diego marin (archive.org)*

Bucher, Raimondo

Raimondo Bucher (1912-2008) was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was originally an aviator, who took part in the Second World War. However, it was as a diver and underwater explore that he is best known. Arguably his best know discovery was the locating of the sunken Roman city of Baia in the Gulf of Pozzouli.

In 1957, Bucher discovered the ruins of what he considered to be remnants of an ancient civilisation in the vicinity of Linosa, one of the Pelagie Islands. He speculated on a possible link with Atlantis, noting “that the legend of Atlantis handed down by the Greeks just talk about a land that, in past centuries would have to be in the region of North Africa and Sicily.”(a)

(a) https://fortunadrago.wordpress.com/the-never-ending-story/colonello-c-cattoi/raimondo-bucher/

Linosa

Linosa is a small volcanic island in the Strait of Sicily, which along with Lampedusa and Lampione make up thePelagie Islands. In 1957, Raimondo Bucher, the celebrated underwater explorer, discovered the ruins of what he considered to be remnants of an ancient civilisation in the vicinity of Linosa. He speculated on a possible link with Atlantis noting “that the legend of Atlantis handed down by the Greeks just talk about a land that, in past centuries would have to be in the region of North Africa and Sicily.(a)

(a) https://fortunadrago.wordpress.com/the-never-ending-story/colonello-c-cattoi/raimondo-bucher/