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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Stelios Pavlou

Lynch, George

George LynchGeorge Lynch (1868-1928) was listed by Sprague deCamp[0194.329] as a supporter of a Brazilian Atlantis in 1925. Until recently, that was all that I could find about him. However, I discovered that Stelios Pavlou had unearthed much more information.

Lynch was an Irish war correspondent, reporting on conflicts such as the Spanish-American War, the Boer War and the Chinese Boxer Rebellion and recounted in his Impressions of a War Correspondent [1639].

Towards the end of his life, Lynch was a fund-raiser for Percy Fawcett’s expedition to find the lost city of ‘Z’ in Brazil, which, apparently, they both believed to have a possible connection with Atlantis.

However, the Atlantisforschung website is adamant that there is no evidence that Lynch favoured Brazil as the location of Atlantis!(a)

(a) George Lynch – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)

 

Pepper, Martin

HOW THE EARTH WORKS

Martin Pepper is an American geologist who is intent on demonstrating that Santorini was the site of Atlantis, claiming to have new supportive evidence. He had his ideas revealed in a History Channel program, Atlantis Found, which first aired on October 19th, 2015(a) as part of their How the Earth Works series.

I found it interesting that the advertising blurb for the show never once mentions Plato!

Unsurprising, Jason Colavito, an Atlantis sceptic, offers a scathing critique of the two-hour show (b).

>Additionally, the German website, Atlantisforschung, criticises(c) the selective manner in which Pepper chose excerpts from Plato, carefully ignoring details that might conflict with Santorini being Atlantis.

Furthermore, Martin Pepper commits the same mistake as almost all supporters of the Creto-Minoan Atlantis theories: He seeks out exactly those details from Plato’s Atlantis report that correspond to his own ideas and a supposedly unalterable ‘state of scientific knowledge’, while ignoring everything which doesn’t fit.” Atlantisforschung ends with a quote from Stelios Pavlou who commented – “Although Pepper relies heavily on factual science, much of the criticism of [his] theory boils down to the fact that his claim is based on ignoring much of Plato’s real text.”<

For my part, I cannot accept the Santorini/Thera theory without a convincing explanation for where, in the 2nd millennium BC, the Atlantean military of over a million men, plus an even larger civilian population actually lived, not to mention the elephants. Then there is also a small matter of the Plain of Atlantis 370x550km (230×345 miles); where was that? Finally, for good measure, we are missing “the mountains which surrounded it (that) were at that time celebrated as surpassing all that now exist in number, magnitude and beauty.” (Critias.118b). I think Pepper should try again or better still, forget Atlantis altogether!

(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20160417204840/https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3amelg

(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-historys-atlantis-found-documentary

(c) Martin Pepper – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *

Atlantipedia.com

Atlantipedia.com is a website(a) also dedicated to the study of Atlantis and founded by Stelios Pavlou. It was active until mid-2011 at which point it became dormant, and so it remained until around September, 2013, when material was again added to the site. There is extensive content, which is divided into a number of sections: Plato’s description, Atlantis theories, Theorists, Flood myths and Bibliography. The site is now closed.

*(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20170610214719/https://www.atlantipedia.com:80/doku.php*

Jakubowski, Peter

Peter JakubowskiPeter Jakubowski (1947- ) was born in Poland and after attaining a doctoral degree in physics he moved to Germany in 1985. His principal area of interest ‘is a complete refoundation of physics and its practical applications in modern industry’. His ideas are explained in his book, Naturics [734] and his website(a).

Jakubowski had devoted space on his website to air his thoughts regarding Atlantis but later removed them during a 2011 revamp of the site. He appears to closely follow the views of Axel Hausmann(c). He located Atlantis on Sicily and the Malta Plateau and explained that the circular features of the capital city were in fact the remnants of an asteroid impact crater.

Stelios Pavlou has noted that “In 2001, Jakubowski published Atlantis of the Neanderthals, in which he argues that Atlantis was a Neanderthal civilization that was destroyed in 4804 BC. After that, civilizations of [modern] man ruled. He also argues that all of humanity descended from Atlantis. It is unclear whether he means this in a spiritual, scientific, or physical sense. Jakubowski further claims that the people of Atlantis were [up to] about five or six meters tall.

The most recent revised edition of his book is dated February 2014 and draws extensively on the work of Colin Wilson. Jakubowski formerly supported the notion of Atlantis in Sicily and Malta. It is unclear if this is still the case as all mentions of Sicily and Malta were removed in the book’s recent revision.”(d)

>In 2014, coincidentally shortly after Wilson died, Jakubowski revised and expanded the 2001 paper into an ebook, Atlantis of the Neanderthals [1970] with the subtitle of Colin Wilson Corrected. The book, available online(e), offers a review of Wilson’s Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals [0336]. However, the purpose of the book seems to be to promote Jakubowski’s theories of ‘unified physics’ (naturics) rather than to criticise Wilson’s ideas.<

In 2016, Jakubowski sent an open letter(b) to Graham Hancock following the publication of Magicians of the Gods. In this somewhat rambling missive, he touches on the Younger Dryas, ancient giants and the evolution of human civilisation.

(a) https://naturics.info/

(b) https://naturics.info/an-open-letter-to-graham-hancock/

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20040629174606/https://www.naturics.de/atlantis/index.html

(d) Peter Jakubowski – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *

(e) Atlantis-of-the-Neanderthals-250314.pdf (naturics.info) *

Sahara Desert

The Sahara Desert and in particular its northern regions have attracted its share of attention from Atlantis investigators. However unlikely it may appear as a possible location for Atlantis it must be kept in mind that the Sahara of prehistory was very different from what we see today. Not only was it wetter at various periods in the past, but also there is clear evidence for the existence of a large inland sea extending across the borders of modern Algeria and Tunisia. This evidence is in the form of the chotts or salt flats in both countries. This proposed sea is considered by some to have been the Lake Tritonis referred to by classical writers. It is suggested that some form of tectonic/seismic activity, common in the region, was responsible for isolating this body of seawater from the Mediterranean and eventually turning it into the salt flats we see today.

An even more extensive inland sea, further south, was proposed by Ali Bey el Abbassi and based on his theory a map was published in 1802 which can be viewed online(c).

More recently, Riaan Booysen has published an illustrated paper on the ancient inland Saharan seas as indicated on the 16th-century maps of Mercator and Ortelius(i). King’s College London runs The Sahara Megalakes Project which studies the Megalakes and the Saharan Palaeoclimate record(m).

A 2013 report in New Scientist magazine(d) revealed that 100,000 years ago the Sahara had been home to three large rivers that flowed northward, which probably provided migration routes for our ancestors. Depending on how long the African Humid Period lasted, this article may be read in conjunction with George Sarantitis‘ theory regarding the Voyage of Hanno that he claims took place in the interior of Africa.

Other studies(h) have shown the previous existence of a huge river system in the Western Sahara, which flowed into the Atlantic on the Mauritanian coast.

An article in the Sept. 2008 edition of National Geographic pointed out that the Saharan climate has been similar for the past 70,000 years except for a period beginning 12,000 years ago when a number of factors combined to alter this fact. A northerly shift by seasonal monsoons brought additional rain to an area the size of the contiguous USA. This period of a greener Sahara lasted until around 4,500 years ago.

More recent studies claim that there’s geologic evidence from ocean sediments that these orbitally-paced Green Sahara events occur as far back as the Miocene epoch (23 million to 5 million years ago), including during periods when atmospheric carbon dioxide was similar to and possibly higher than today’s levels. So, a future Green Sahara event is still highly likely in the distant future.” (p)

Henri Lhote contributed an article to Reader’s Digest‘s, The World’s Last Mysteries [1083], regarding the ‘green’ Sahara that existed prior to 2500 BC. Two German climatologists Rudolph Kuper and Stefan Kröpelin have estimated that this last greening of the Sahara began around 8500 BC and ended sometime between 3500 BC and 1500 BC(r)(u)* .

Some have suggested a connection between the latest aridification of the Sahara and the migration of settlers to the Nile Valley, where, coincidentally, the ancient Egypt we know about was founded around 3100 BC.

Others have endeavoured to link the last aridification of the Sahara with the destruction of Atlantis! 

More recently, human activity has been blamed as a major contributory factor for the desertification of the Sahara region less than 10,000 years ago.(n)

Related to the above is a recent study of sediments off the west coast of Africa, which resulted in the discovery of what was “primarily a new “beat,” in which the Sahara vacillated between wet and dry climates every 20,000 years, in sync with the region’s monsoon activity and the periodic tilting of the Earth.” (o) 

In Mauritania, a huge natural feature known as the Richat Structure has been claimed as the remnant of Atlantis by George Sarantitis [1470as well as by Alexander & Rosen and others.

In 1868, it was proposed by D.A. Godron, the French botanist, that the Sahara was the location of Atlantis. In 2003, the non-existent archaeologist Dr.Carla Sage announced that she was hoping to lead an international expedition to the Sahara in search of Atlantis. Her contention was that “Atlantis was the capital of a vast North African empire with ports on the Gulf of Sidra”. This report is now confirmed to have been a hoax! I am indebted to Stel Pavlou for uncovering the origin of this story(e).

The idea of an African Atlantis was highlighted in 2021 with the publication of Atletenu [1821], in which the author, Diego Ratti, identified the Hyksos as Atlanteans with their capital at Avaris in the eastern Nile Delta. At the other end of North Africa, the chotts of Tunisia and Algeria were nominated by Holden Zhang as the location of Atlantis in a YouTube clip(q).

Gary Gilligan, the well-known catastrophist, wrote a thought-provoking article(k) on the origin of the Saharan sands, which he claims are extraterrestrial in origin and expands on the idea in his 2016 book Extraterrestrial Sands [1365].>A March 2024 report(t). on the BBC website has revealed that a particular type of sand dune has now been dated. They are known as ‘star’ or ‘pyramid’ dunes – “are named after their distinctive shapes and reach hundreds of metres in height.” They are found in Africa, Asia and North America, as well as on Mars – but experts had never before been able to put a date on when they were formed. Now scientists have discovered that a dune called Lala Lallia in Morocco formed 13,000 years ago.”<

David Mattingly, an archaeologist at Leicester University has found that an ancient people known as the Garamantes had an extensive civilisation in the Sahara(l). He has evidence of at least three cities and twenty other settlements. The Garamantes reached their peak around 100 BC and then gradually diminished in influence as fossil water supplies reduced until in the 7th century AD they were subjected to Islamic domination. Some researchers such as Frank Joseph have identified the Garamantes as being linked with the Sea Peoples. Bob Idjennaden has published short but informative Kindle books about both the Garamantes [1194] and the Sea Peoples [1195], without a suggestion of any connection between the two.

The discovery of megalithic structures discovered at Nabta Playa (Nabta Lake) in the Egyptian Sahara has provided evidence for the existence of a sophisticated society in that area around 5000 BC. In the same region, near the Dakhleh Oasis, archaeologists have produced data that supports the idea that pre-Pharaonic Egypt had Desert Origins rather than being an importation from Mesopotamia or elsewhere(a).

Nabta Playa is not unique, in fact, the largest megalithic ellipse in the world is to be found at Mzorah, 27 km from Lixus in Morocco(b). It appears that the construction methods employed at both Mezorah and Nabta Playa are both similar to that used in the British Isles. An even more impressive site is Adam’s Calendar in South Africa which has been claimed as 75,000-250,000 years old.

West of Cairo near the border with Libya is the Siwa Oasis, where it has now been demonstrated that “it is in fact home to one of Ancient Egypt’s astounding solar-calendar technologies– the solar equinox alignment between the Timasirayn Temple and the Temple of Amun Oracle in Aghurmi.”(j).

I think we can expect further exciting discoveries in the Sahara leading to a clearer picture of the prehistoric cultures of the region and what connections there are, if any, with Plato’s Atlantis. In the meanwhile in the Eastern Egyptian Desert, Douglas Brewer, a professor of archaeology at the University of Illinois, has discovered over 1,000 examples of rock art, including numerous depictions of boats although the sites, so far undisclosed, are remote from water.

Even more remarkable is the report(e) of March 2015 that a survey of the Messak Settafet escarpment in the central Sahara revealed that there were enough discarded stone tools in the region to build more than one Great Pyramid for every square kilometre of land on the continent”! Coincidentally, around the same time, it was reported that over a thousand stone tools had been found in the Northern Utah Desert(g). What the Utah discovery lacked in quantity was made up for in quality with the finding of the largest known Haskett point spearhead, measuring around nine inches in length.

(a) Saudi Aramco World (2006, Vol. 57, No.5 p.2-11)

(b) https://www.ancientpages.com/2015/09/05/was-megalithic-stone-circle-of-mzoura-the-tomb-of-giant-antaeus/

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20201019061756/http://catalog.afriterra.org/zoomMap.cmd?number=1036

(d) NewScientist.com, 16 September 2013, https://tinyurl.com/mg9vcoz

& https://zeenews.india.com/news/science/lost-river-helped-lead-early-ancestors-out-of-africa_877125.html 

(e) https://books.google.com/books?id=GvMDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA46&dq=dr.+carla+sage+archaeologist&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GSENVKiaO9W0yASJgoIY&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=dr.%20carla%20sage%20archaeologist&f=false

(f) https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/saharan-carpet-of-tools-is-the-earliest-known-man-made-landscape

(g) Over 1,000 Ancient Stone Tools, Left by Great Basin Hunters, Found in Utah Desert – Western Digs (archive.org)  

(h) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/10/ancient-river-network-discoverd-buried-under-saharan-sand

(i) 7. The lakes in the middle of the Sahara desert – Page 8 (archive.org)

(j) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/astronomically-aligned-temple-siwa-oasis-ancient-calendar-device-006852?nopaging=1

(k) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170614023816/https://www.godkingscenario.com/articles/origin-sahara-desert

(l) See: Archive 3268

(m) https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=&oq=&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGHP_enIE665IE665&q=the+sahara+megalakes+project&gs_l=hp..0.41l52.0.0.0.2769………..0.&gws_rd=ssl

(n) https://popular-archaeology.com/issue/winter-2017/article/did-humans-create-the-sahara-desert

(o) https://phys.org/news/2019-01-sahara-swung-lush-conditions-years.html#jCp

(p) https://www.livescience.com/will-sahara-desert-turn-green.html

(q) Revive Eden 3 Convincing Atlantis – YouTube 

(r) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/uncovering-secrets-of-the-sphinx-5053442/

(s) https://las.illinois.edu/news/2006-09-01/oasis-art-egyptian-desert *

(t) Star dune: Scientists solve mystery behind Earth’s largest desert sands – BBC News *

(u) Shift From Savannah to Sahara Was Gradual, Research Suggests – The New York Times (nytimes.com) *

Neanderthals

The Neanderthals were claimed by the late Colin Wilson to have possessed highly sophisticated mathematical and astronomical knowledge and were precursors of the Atlantis civilisation. This extremely speculative assertion is made in Wilson’s Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals [336], a book that wanders all over the place with references to an extensive range of ancient mysteries from the Maya to Mary Magdalene without offering anything tangible to substantiate his central thesis.

Stelios Pavlou has noted that in 2001, Peter Jakubowski published Atlantis of the Neanderthals, in which he argues that Atlantis was a Neanderthal civilization that was destroyed in 4804 BC’.”(ah) In 2014, Jakubowski revised and expanded the paper into an ebook [1970] with the subtitle Colin Wilson Corrected. Pavlou also noted that “Jakubowski formerly supported the notion of Atlantis in Sicily and Malta. It is unclear if this is still the case as all mentions of Sicily and Malta were removed in the book’s recent revision.”

The idea of a Neanderthal connection with Atlantis is totally at variance with Plato’s description of a literate Bronze Age civilisation. While many atlantologists have chosen to reinterpret, modify or ignore aspects of Plato’s narrative, they have usually made some effort to justify their stance. Wilson, however, simply disregards the consistent Bronze Age references by Plato without any attempt at an explanation for this omission. Although it is generally accepted that the Neanderthals had died out by 20,000 BC and Wilson seems to believe that the cataclysmic flooding of Atlantis took place around 9500 BC, it leaves an insurmountable gap of over 10,000 years unexplained by him.

neanderthal

Model by Alfons and Adrie Kennis

Neanderthals are accepted to have been indigenous to Europe, although the are sites in Israel attributed to them. As far as I’m aware, the most southerly evidence in Europe of Neanderthal activity has been in Malta(l), which is outlined in Dr. Anton Mifsud’s beautifully illustrated book, Dossier Malta – Neanderthal [1587]+, which can now be read online.

In a 2008 article, NatGeo reported on a study of skulls that suggested that the Human-Neanderthal divergence took place around 300,000 to 400,000 years ago.

A January 2010 report(a) dated the demise of the last Neanderthal at around 35,000 BC, which conflicts with the last paragraph. An even more eyebrow-raising claim was made two years later in February 2012, when New Scientist magazine published an article(b) that suggested that the Neanderthals had a maritime history in the Aegean 130,000 years ago! However, to make such a claim does not seem to take adequate account of the fact that at the time sea levels were much lower and as a consequence, some islands were considerably larger and in many cases, individual islands that we know today were joined to each other or generally required shorter sea journeys between them.

Nevertheless, ongoing excavations at a site on the coast of Jersey, one of the British Channel Islands off the coast of France are indicating that Jersey may have been one of the last outposts of the Neanderthals in north-west Europe.”(u)

Now the suggestion has been made that the Neanderthals were possibly the first cave artists. This claim was put forward in the journal Nature (15/6/12). The El Castillo cave in northern Spain has some of this art dated to at least 40,800 years ago.

A 2021 study has suggested that a reversal of the magnetic poles around 42,000 years may have been a cause of the demise of the Neanderthals!(ac)

It was also proposed by Peter Fotis Kapnistos, who worked with Spyridon Marinatos, that Neanderthal Man may also have mastered sea travel and possibly played a part in the development of the Atlantis story(c). The idea of Neanderthal sailors has gained further support in a paper(s) by Professor George Ferentinos of the University of Patras.

Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado’s Museum of Natural History has recently (April 2004) expressed the view that the intellectual abilities of the Neanderthals have been seriously underestimated(d). Similar views are expressed in an article(e) which traces the early characterisation of Neanderthals as ‘primitive’ and contrasts that with the current revised opinions that attribute much greater intellectual capabilities to them.

In 2018, an article by Joanna Gillen on the Ancient Origins website offers more evidence that the Neanderthals had a more sophisticated lifestyle than previously thought(n). This is based on the finds from the cave at Abric Romani in Spain’s Catalonia. For obvious reasons, the technological capabilities of Neanderthals are only hinted at from the scanty evidence available so far. One such clue was the discovery(r) that they seemed to have used birch tar to haft projectile points.

A December 2022 article offers evidence for possible technology transfer from Neanderthals to modern humans(aj).

Neanderthal cave discoveries continue to surprise. In 2016, Nature published(t) details of investigations carried out in the Bruniquel Cave in southwest France. The occupation was dated to around 175,000 years ago. Furthermore, apart from evidence of the use of fire, broken stalagmites are carefully arranged in circles.

An extensive two-part article describing the Neanderthals as ‘human’ is available online(g). This view is currently championed by Portuguese archaeologist João Zilhão, whose views are featured in an interesting article(m) in the May 2019 edition of the Smithsonian Magazine.

There appears to be an acceptance that many of us have some Neanderthal DNA within us. While this is usually in the form of small snippets, an article in New Scientist magazine has reported that longer strings have been identified in Melanesian populations(o) in the Pacific!

In 2015 the results of the mapping of the entire genome of a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal were published, which concluded that “There is now conclusive evidence that Neanderthals bred with Homo sapiens.”(f)

Further support has come in an article by Ashley Cowie with the eye-catching title of “Neanderthal Interbreeding with Humans Rampant on Jersey?” He relates that “Now, re-analysis of thirteen ‘48,000-year-old Neanderthal teeth’ originally discovered in Jersey between 1910 and 1911 has revealed that while they have always been assumed to have come from a single Neanderthal, they actually came from at least two individuals. Furthermore, the thirteen Neanderthal teeth from both individuals ‘share traits that are distinctive of modern humans.’ In short, this means Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had a “shared ancestry.”(ab)

Also in 2015, genetic studies pushed back the origins of Neanderthals to a startling 765,000 years ago(i), twice as old as previously thought.

A 2020 report(v) claims that African populations have been revealed to share Neanderthal ancestry for the first time, in findings that add a new twist to the tale of ancient humans and our closest known relatives.” and that “The latest findings suggest human and Neanderthal lineages are more closely intertwined than once thought and point to far earlier interbreeding events, about 200,000 years ago.”

Geneticist David Reich had been sceptical of the idea that humans and Neanderthals had interbred until he engaged in a study of the DNA extracted from 40,000-year-old Neanderthal bones found in a Croatian cave. The result was that he was forced to conclude “that humans and Neanderthals did interbreed in their time together in Europe. Possibly even more than once.”(p)

>“Until now (October 2023), Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) were believed to have first interbred earlier than 75,000 years ago, according to a 2016 genetic analysis in the journal Nature. However, a new analysis, published Oct. 13, in the journal Current Biology, has revealed that one group of Homo sapiens from Africa interbred with Neanderthals in Eurasia around 250,000 years ago.”(ak)<

By way of contrast, another 2020 report highlighted the conflict between Neanderthals and humans, suggesting that The best evidence that Neanderthals not only fought but excelled at war, is that they met us and weren’t immediately overrun. Instead, for around 100,000 years, Neanderthals resisted modern human expansion.” (z)

In April 2016, the results of a study(j) of their ‘Y’ chromosome suggested that Neanderthals had diverged “almost 590,000 years ago from humans.”

Earlier studies based on skull size and shape suggested that the split took place between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago(af). This research is ongoing as one commentator(ag) in 2013 expressed it – “Researchers have suggested a range of dates for when the last common ancestor of our lineage and Neanderthals could have lived.

The dates range from more than 800,000 years ago to less than 300,000, with many estimates in the neighborhood of 400,000 years ago. According to some studies, this time frame would seem to match that of the extinct species Homo heidelbergensis, which has been found in Africa, Europe, and possibly Asia.

But this may not be so. A new study theorizes that the last common ancestor of H. sapiens and Neanderthals lived longer ago than previously expected, with fossil evidence yet to be uncovered.”

A study(x), published on 3 June 2020 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B concluded that “Ancient humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans were genetically closer than polar bears and brown bears, and so, like the bears, were able to easily produce healthy, fertile hybrids according to a study, led by the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology.”

The apparent relatively rapid extinction of the Neanderthals has, understandably, led to a great amount of speculation. One suggestion is that the massive eruption of Campi Flegrei, a supervolcano west of Naples, 39,000 years ago led to consequent cooling that may even have helped bring about the end of the Neanderthals(aa).

One of the most recent(h) suggests that the lack of control of fire by the Neanderthals, in contrast with their human neighbours, was probably a factor that led to their demise! However, the use of fire by Neanderthals in Tuscany now appears settled with the discovery of tools shaped with fire(q).

2020 saw evidence emerge which suggested that even as far back as 41,000 – 52,000 years ago the Neanderthals had mastered the making of cords(w).

Even more important is the long-running debate on whether Neanderthals had the physical equipment that enabled them to speak. For a long time, it was thought that they were missing a pharynx and a larynx and so lacked speech. A 2021 paper brings the discussion up to date with evidence that Neanderthal speech was a possibility although not of the same quality as modern humans(ai).

It has now been reliably demonstrated that Neanderthals also played music using a flutelike instrument made of bear bone around 50,000 years ago(y).

Although we see above, various claims about the various technologies employed by Neanderthals, there is still debate regarding a fundamental capability, namely whether they had the ability to communicate with speech. The evidence seems to favour that they had.

More relevant to life today is a report(k) that the average 3% that modern Europeans share with Neanderthals has left us with a greater risk of nicotine addiction and depression.

A number of interesting articles relating to Neanderthals are also available on the q-mag website(ae).

 [1587]+ https://www.academia.edu/40076100/DOSSIER_MALTA_-_NEANDERTHAL?email_work_card=view-paper 

(a) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100126220321.htm

(b) https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328544.800-neanderthals-were-ancient-mariners.html

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20090321022014/https://ufodigest.com/news/0309/more-terrible4.php

(d) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140430133054.htm

(e)  https://nautil.us/our-neanderthal-complex-235115/ 

(f) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/entire-neanderthal-genome-finally-mapped-amazing-results-001138

(g) https://theorbo1.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/neanderthals-they-were-human/

(h) https://www.livescience.com/50532-neanderthals-died-no-fire.html

(i) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/scientific-breakthrough-oldest-partial-genome-sequenced-reveals-020531

(j) https://popular-archaeology.com/issue/spring-2016/article/neanderthal-y-chromosome-offers-clues-to-what-kept-us-separate-species

(k) https://www.q-mag.org/neandertals-transmitted-a-taste-for-nicotine-and-a-propensity-to-depression.html

(l) https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20160619/local/could-the-first-maltese-have-been-neanderthals.615901

(m) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/new-research-redefining-what-we-thought-about-neanderthals-180971918/

(n) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/discoveries-spanish-cave-suggest-neanderthals-had-hot-water-020505

(o) https://www.newscientist.com/article/2220381-long-strand-of-dna-from-neanderthals-found-in-people-from-melanesia/#ixzz639ABebgu

(p) https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/03/ancient-dna-history/554798/

(q) https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/neanderthals-used-fire-to-make-tools/

(r) https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/neanderthal-glue-was-a-bigger-deal-than-we-thought/

(s) https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328544-800-neanderthals-were-ancient-mariners/

(t) https://www.nature.com/articles/nature18291

(u) https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51299755

(v) https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/30/neanderthal-genes-found-for-first-time-in-african-populations

(w) https://www.capradio.org/news/npr/story?storyid=828400733

(x) https://phys.org/news/2020-06-humans-neanderthals-polar-brown.html

(y) https://amp.classicfm.com/discover-music/instruments/flute/worlds-oldest-instrument-neanderthal-flute/

(z) https://www.sciencealert.com/how-neanderthals-and-humans-battled-for-supremacy-for-over-100-000-years

(z) Campanian Ignimbrite volcanism, climate, and the final decline of the Neanderthals | Geology | GeoScienceWorld

(aa) Campanian Ignimbrite volcanism, climate, and the final decline of the Neanderthals | Geology | GeoScienceWorld

(ab) Neanderthal Interbreeding with Humans Rampant on Jersey? | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)

(ac) Reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles may have triggered Neanderthal extinction — and it could happen again – CNN

(ad) Did Neanderthals Have the Capacity for Verbal Language? gizmodo.com)

(ae) https://www.q-mag.org/_search.html?req=Neanderthals

(af) Archive 6625 | (atlantipedia.ie)

(ag) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/131021-neanderthal-human-evolution-teeth 

(ah) Peter Jakubowski – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) 

(ai) https://www.sapiens.org/biology/did-neanderthals-speak/

(aj) https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-technology/toolmaking-teachers-surprising-skills-shared-between-neanderthals-and-021532 *

(ak) Humans and Neanderthals mated 250,000 years ago, much earlier than thought | Live Science *

 

 

Manetho

Manetho of Sebennytos in the Nile Delta was an Egyptian priest and historian who flourished in the 3rd century BC(c). He produced a significant history of Egypt in three volumes, Aegyptiaca[1373.40], but unfortunately, only fragments have survived(b).

Manetho’s lists of Egyptian kings continue to be used as one of the pillars of Egyptian chronology. Interestingly, he would seem to claim that the earliest of the kings ruled in a foreign land. This has been taken speculatively by some, such as R. Cedric Leonard, to mean Atlantis(a).>Leonard has also highlighted errors and corruption in the text of Manetho available to us(f).<

Stelios Pavlou has also written an interesting paper(d) on Manetho’s King List and is its relevance to the dating of Atlantis. His forensic study led him to conclude that Plato’s 9,000 years were, in reality, only 3,942 years, placing the time of Atlantis somewhere around 4532 BC.

Also relevant is that Manetho wrote of the ancient Egyptians counting time in months rather than years  – The year I take, however, to be a lunar one, consisting, that is, of 30 days: what we now call a month the Egyptians used formerly to style a year.”

>A 2020 paper offers an up-to-date review of Manetho studies(e).<

(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20170608084749/http://www.atlantisquest.com:80/Hiero.html *

(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/manetho.html

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20200202093625/https://www.crystalinks.com/manetho.html

(d) https://www.researchgate.net/project/Extrapolating-from-Manethos-King-List-to-Address-the-Critias-108e-Problem

(e) https://www.ancient-egypt.co.uk/people/pages/manetho.htm *

(f) Problems with Manetho’s “Reign of the Gods” (archive.org) *

Wilson, Colin

Colin Wilson (1931-2013) was born in Leicester, England. He has been a most prolific author with around a hundred titles to his credit. The range of early colin_wilsonsubjects that he has covered is breathtaking; from Jack the Ripper to Sex to Atlantis. A 2004 article in The Observer described him as a self-declared genius and knicker fetishist!

Initially, he was a supporter of the Minoan Hypothesis, then in 1996 he linked the controversial redating of the Sphinx by Robert Schoch, with the influence of earlier sophisticated Atlanteans. It is revealing to note that the original title of Wilson’s book was Before the Sphinx but this was altered at the insistence of his publishers(d) in order to include ‘Atlantis’ on the cover!

A few years later he was co-author with Rand Flem-Ath, the promoter of the Atlantis in Antarctica theory, of The Atlantis Blueprint[063] again promoting the idea of the Atlantean civilisation having spread to other parts of the world that is now visible in the remains of so many megalithic cultures around our planet. Wilson revealed later, in a 2007 edition of From Atlantis to the Sphinx [335]+, that he was unhappy with the final content of The Atlantis Blueprint stating that “it did not represent his views”[p381] and wrote an account in the Fortean Times(b), of how that book evolved.

Wilson joined the Sarmast expedition in October 2004, as he had then shifted his preference(d) to the Cyprus region as the location of Atlantis. He eventuallyColin Wilson found the idea of Atlantis in the Antarctic waging war against Athens, a distance of many thousands of miles, untenable. Unfortunately, this brief display of critical thinking was short-lived as he shifted his support to Cyprus as Atlantis’ location. I believe that he might have revised his position again if he had just given some consideration to Plato’s report of how the flooded Atlantis was still a hazard to shipping centuries later. Sarmast’s Cyprus site is in water over a mile deep and could never have been a shipping hazard!

In 2006 Wilson continued[336] his support for Sarmast but added a new dimension with the claim on the cover notes that ‘the Neanderthals had been the civilising force behind Atlantis’. However, in his earlier book [335.390], he stated clearly that he was “not suggesting there was some connection between Atlantis and Neanderthal man”. Perhaps the cover notes were just a concoction of Wilson’s publisher.

At best, Wilson’s book, Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals can be described as disappointing. Laura Knight-Jadczyk goes further, classifying it as ’embarrassing’(c).

>Stelios Pavlou has noted(e) that in 2001, Peter Jakubowski published a paper Atlantis of the Neanderthals, in which he argues that Atlantis was a Neanderthal civilization that was destroyed in 4804 BC’.” In 2014, Jakubowski revised and expanded the paper into an ebook titled Atlantis of the Neanderthals [1970] with the subtitle of Colin Wilson Corrected, which is offered as a review of Wilson’s book but is more of a promo for Jakubowski’s own ideas of unified physics (naturics)

Pavlou also noted that Jakubowski formerly supported the notion of Atlantis in Sicily and Malta. It is unclear if this is still the case as all mentions of Sicily and Malta were removed in the book’s  recent revision.”<

[335]+ Available online: https://archive.org/details/FromAtlantisToTheSphinx.ColinWilson 

(b) https://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/5167/a_100000yearold_civilisation.html (offline November 2015)

(c) https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RZWH2PZ425PJW

(d) See Archive 2719

(e) Peter Jakubowski – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)  *

Dating Atlantis

Dating Atlantis is one of the most contentious difficulties faced by Atlantology. The critical problem is to identify the time of the Atlantean War and that of the later destruction of Atlantis itself; two events possibly separated by a period not recorded by Plato. This entry is primarily concerned with the date of the war. However, it should be pointed out that Plato also reveals that the Atlantis story has a very long history before the war, back to a time when ships and sailing did not yet exist (Crit.113e), so it is understandable when Plato filled that historical gap with mythological characters, namely five sets of twins sired by Poseidon. Of course, Poseidon being a sea god did not require a boat to get to the island of Atlantis! Plato also informs us that the twins and their descendants lived on the island for ‘many generations’ and extended their rule over many other islands in the sea (Crit.114c).

There are roughly three schools of thought regarding this important detail. The first group persists in accepting at face value Plato’s reference to a period of 9,000 solar years having elapsed since the War with  Atlantis up to the time of Solon’s visit around 550 BC. The second group is convinced that the 9,000 refers to periods other than solar years, such as lunar cycles or seasons. The third group seeks to identify the time of Atlantis by linking it to other known historical events.

While these groups offered some level of evidence, however flimsy, to support their claims, some individuals have placed Atlantis up to millions of years in the past based on nothing more than their fertile imaginations or delusions. Arguably the best-known was Edgar Cayce, but purveyors of such daft ideas are still lurking among us!(m)

>Rene Malaise writing in Egerton SykesAtlantis journal (#108, January/February 1967, Vol. 20 No. 1) challenged the idea that Plato’s 9,000 years was a reference to years of 12 months. Atlantisforschung has now republished the article in German and I have added an English translation below(s).<

Desmond Lee has commented[0435] that “the Greeks, both philosophers and others…….seem to have been curiously lacking in their sense of time-dimension.”

[1.0] 9550 BC is factually correct

This view has a slowly dwindling number of supporters among serious investigators. Massimo Rapisarda is one such promoter, who has offered his reasons for accepting this early date(p). To support this idea proponents usually cite a wide range of evidence to suggest the existence of advanced cultures in the 10th millennium BC. Matters such as an earlier than conventionally accepted date for the Sphinx, early proto-alphabets a la Glozel or the apparently anomalous structures such as the Lixus foundations or the controversial Baalbek megaliths have all been recruited to support an early date for Atlantis, many, if not all, have their dates hotly disputed. Apart from the contentious dates, there is NOTHING to definitively link any of them with Plato’s Atlantis.

In common with most nations, the Egyptians competitively promoted the great antiquity of their own origins. Herodotus reports that while in Egypt he was told of a succession of kings extending over 17,000 years. The priests of Memphis told him firmly that 341 kings and a similar number of high priests had until then, ruled their country. (Herodotus, Book II, 142). ), of course, there is not a shred of archaeological evidence to support such a claim. Even an average reign of 20 years would give a total of nearly 7000 years whereas a more improbable 26-year average would be required to span the necessary 9000 years.

It is therefore obvious that the 17,000 years related to Herodotus is not credible raising a question regarding the trustworthiness of the 9000 years told to Solon.

In The Laws Plato refers to Egyptian art going back 10,000 years, seemingly, indicating consistency in his belief in the great antiquity of civilisation and fully compatible with his date for Atlantis. However, I have discovered that in Plato’s time ‘ten thousand’ was frequently used simply to express a large but indefinite number.

A Bible study site tells us that The use of definite numerical expressions in an indefinite sense, that is, as round numbers, which is met with in many languages, seems to have been very prevalent in Western Asia from early times to the present day.”(h)

The acceptance of Plato’s 9,000 years as literally correct defies both commonsense and archaeological evidence, which demonstrates that neither Athens nor a structured Egypt existed at such an early period. The onus is on those, who accept the prima facie date of 9,600 BC, to explain how Atlantis attacked a non-existent Athens and/or Egypt.

A major difficulty in accepting Plato’s 9,000 years at face value is that it conflicts with our current knowledge of ancient seafaring. Professor Seán McGrail (1928-2021) wrote in his monumental work, Boats of the World “There is no direct evidence for water transport until the Mesolithic even in the most favoured regions, and it is not until the Bronze Age that vessels other than logboats are known” [1949.10]. Wikipedia’s list of ancient boats supports this view(r). For those that adhere to a 10th millennium BC date for the Atlantean War with Athens, this lack of naval evidence to support such an early date undermines the idea. An invasion fleet of canoes travelling from beyond the Pillars of Herakles to attack Athens or Egypt seems rather unlikely!

Even more incongruous is Plato’s description of horse baths (Crit.117b), a facility that was highly unlikely around 9600 BC, when you consider that this is probably millennia before the domestication of horses.

In a 2021 article(h) concerning 10,000 BC, Thorwald C. Franke offered the following opinion; “Many scientists seem to live quite comfortably with Graham Hancock and similar authors speculating about 10,000 BC because these hypotheses are so nonsensical that they do not interfere with real science. Sometimes you have the impression that many scientists even prefer such misleading popular errors over more informed hypotheses because they would make the audience ask more serious questions and then the questions could not be dismissed so easily anymore. But this is only an impression. In truth, scientists shy away from the effort to overcome these popular errors. It is much easier to stay silent and to ignore them.”

Alexandros Angelis wrote(q) of how he is “always suspicious of coincidence. Whenever I hear this word, an alarm sets off in my head. In my book ‘Our Unknown Ancient Past: Thoughts and Reflections on the Unexplained Mysteries of Prehistory’ I state that it cannot be a coincidence that Plato’s date of Atlantis’ destruction (9.600 BC) is spot on, coinciding with the abrupt end of the Younger Dryas (9.600 BC).”

When I first encountered this ‘coincidence’ I was also suspicious. However, as I investigated further I realised that all of Plato’s large numbers seemed to be inflated by what was arguably a common factor – another coincidence? I have devoted an entire chapter in Joining the Dots to this problem.

Angelis considers the ‘rapid’ gradual melting of the ice at the end of the Younger Dryas as the cause of Atlantis’ submergence, which might have been true except that Plato tells us that the catastrophe took place over a day and a night and that the event was triggered by an earthquake. Angelis seems unaware that isostatic rebound is a very slow process of readjustment involving centuries and sometimes thousands of years and even when glaciers melt rapidly, sea levels, because of the vastness of our oceans, rise slowly.

[2.0] 9000 refers to units of time other than solar years

Advocates of this view, understandably point out, that the Atlantis described in such detail by Plato belongs to the Bronze Age and could not have existed at an earlier date. It is worth noting that the technology is coincidental with the most advanced known to Plato and his audience. For those who argue that mankind has been destroyed on one or more occasions and has had to start again from scratch, it is not credible that if this was the case, the culture and technology described by Plato as existing in 9500 BC is precisely what he would have experienced himself. There is nothing in the Atlantis texts to connect it with a pre-Bronze Age society, nor is there anything to suggest any technology or cultural advance beyond that of the 4th century BC. Plato’s tale tells of the existence of at least three major nations before the destruction of Atlantis: Egypt, Athens and Atlantis itself. There is no archaeological evidence to indicate anything other than Neolithic cultures existing in Egypt or Athens around 9500 BC. The currently accepted date for the beginning of Egyptian civilisation is circa 3100 BC and also for the existence of a primitive culture around Athens at about the same time. This would parallel the time of the Western European megalithic builders.

It is noteworthy that researchers who support a 9,600 BC date for the war between Atlantis and Athens cannot explain how this took place millennia before there was any structured society in Greece or Egypt.

It may be worth noting the comments of Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman who have argued[280] for a 7thcentury BC date for the final draft of the Exodus narrative rather than during the 2nd millennium BC as suggested by the text“In much the same way that European illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages depicted Jerusalem as a European city with turrets and battlements to heighten its direct impact on contemporary readers” (p68). Similarly,  it is possible that Plato added architectural and technological details of his day to a more ancient tale of a lost civilisation to make a more powerful impression on his audience.

According to Bury’s translation, Plato mentions (Crit. 119e) that iron was used for utensils and weapons in Atlantis and so forcing us to look to a date later than 2000 BC for its destruction. Olaf Rudbeck drew attention to this reference around 1700.

[2.1]

Diaz-Montexano claims that the ‘9000 years’ in Critias has been mistranslated. He refers to the earliest versions of Critias that are available and insists that the texts permit a translation of either ‘9 times in a 1000 years’ or ‘1009’, the first being the more rational! Frank Joseph has also used this 1009 number, quoting private correspondence from Kenneth Caroli, in his 2015 regurgitation[1074] of Atlantis and 2012. Diaz-Montexano has also drawn attention to the commentary on Timaeus by Proclus, writing in the 5th century AD, where he treats Plato’s use of 9000 as having symbolic rather than literal meaning. It should also be kept in mind that many cultures, ancient and modern use specific numbers to indicate indefinite values(e). In a more recent paper, Diaz-Montexano concluded that we can place their military and colonizing expansion towards the end of 3.500 BC, at the earliest, and the end of their civilization (with Atlantis sinking) between 2.700 and 1.700 BC.”(o)

[2.2] In June 2017, a forum on the Historum.com website included the following possible explanation for the Atlantean dates:

The date 8000 is given as a fraction of 8 since the Greeks commonly used fractional notation. Plato wrote in 400 BC and Solon obtained the account in 570 BC.

No Egyptian Annals ever went back 9000 or even 8000 years. The furthest back the Egyptian annals went at the time of Herodotus was to 3050 BC to the reign of Menes the first Pharaoh who Herodotus knew about. Therefore it is obvious that the number of years has been given as a fraction which was extremely common in Greek numerology.

Thus the war between Atlantis and Athens occurred in 9000/8 + 570 = 1695 BC (+/-63 years) which is pretty close to the date of the war between the Titans and the Gods c.1685-1675 BC. The entire story of Atlantis runs concurrent to the time of the Thera Eruption. You even have 10 kings ruling the land equivalent to the 12 Titans.”

The Bible too denotes years as fractions, i.e. seasons, equinoxes/solstices etc. That is why you have biblical patriarchs that lived 800 and 900 years old. The ages to Noah are all counted in Lunar months.”(i)

While I’m aware that the Egyptians also had a different way of dealing with fractions, I really cannot fully understand any of the suggestions made above.

 [2.3] 900, not 9000 years

To address these apparent dating problems, some have suggested that the stated 9000 years, which allegedly elapsed since the catastrophe, are the result of incorrect transcription by someone along what is a very long chain of transmission and that hundreds have somehow been confused with thousands and that the correct figure should be 900 years. Another suggestion is that the Egyptian hieroglyphics for ‘hundred’ and ‘thousand’ are easily confused. This explanation does not hold water, as there is little room for confusion between these hieroglyphics as illustrated below. This idea has been adopted by Don Ingram and incorporated into his Atlantis hypothesis.

Immanuel Velikovsky also endorsed the idea of a tenfold discrepancy in Plato’s date for the time of Atlantis in Worlds in Collision [037.152].

However, 900 years earlier than Solon would place the conflict with the Atlanteans during the XVIIIth Dynasty and would have been well recorded. More recently Diaz-Montexano put forward the idea that the Egyptian words for ‘100’ and ‘1000’ when spoken sounded similar leading to Solon’s error. This idea has now been taken up by James Nienhuis and in greater detail by R. McQuillen(a).

Another explanation offered by James W. Mavor Jnr. is that the original Egyptian story emanated from Crete where it may have been written in either the Linear A or Linear B script where the symbols for 100 and 1000 are quite similar. In both scripts, the symbol for 100 is a circle whereas the symbol for 1000 is a circle with four equally spaced small spikes or excrescences projecting outward.

Nevertheless, the most potent argument against the ‘factor ten’ solution is that if the priests did not intend to suggest that Egypt was founded 8000 years before Solon’s visit but had meant 800 years, it would place the establishment of Egypt at around 1450 BC, which is clearly at variance with undisputed archaeological evidence. However, I contend that they were referring to the establishment of Sais as a centre of importance, not the foundation of the entire nation of Egypt.

In Joining the Dots, I supported the ‘factor ten’ explanation but did so because all of Plato’s large numbers relating as they do to dimensions, manpower and time invariably appear to be exaggerations, but become far more credible when reduced by a factor of ten. Supporters of Plato’s 9,000 years as factual seem to ignore all the other numbers that also appear to be seriously inflated!

[2.4] 9000 months not years

The earliest suggestion that I have found which implied that the age of Atlantis noted by Plato referred to months rather than solar years comes from the early fourteenth century.

Thorwald C. Franke has drawn attention to Thomas Bradwardine‘s rejection of Plato’s, or more correctly the Egyptian priest’s, apparent claim of a very early date for Atlantis [1255.242]. It seems that he found such a date conflicted with biblical chronology. In the end, he proposed that Plato’s ‘years’ were lunar cycles. Similarly, Pierre d’Ailly (1350-1420), a French theologian who became cardinal, arrived at the same conclusion for similar reasons. 

Around two and a half centuries later in 1572 Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa suggested the application of lunar ‘years’ rather than solar years to Plato’s figures. Augustin Zárate expressed the same view in 1577, quoting Eudoxus in support of it. 

In the 18th century, Cornelius De Pauw also believed that Plato’s 9000 ‘years’ was a reference to lunar cycles.

Then there are others, such as Émile Mir Chaouat and Jürgen Hepke who also subscribe to the view that the 9000 ‘years’ recorded by Plato referred to months rather than solar years, as the early Egyptians extensively used a lunar calendar and continued to use it throughout their long history, particularly for determining the dates of religious festivals and since Solon received the Atlantis story from Egyptian priests it would be understandable if they used lunar ‘years’ in their conversations. Eudoxus of Cnidos (c.400 BC- c. 350 BC), a mathematician and astronomer, who spent a year in Egypt, declared, “The Egyptians reckon a month as a year”. Diodorus Siculus (1st cent. BC) echoes this statement. (see Richard A. Parker[682]) and Manetho (3rd cent.BC) (Aegyptiaca[1373.40])

Olof Rudbeck also proposed that Plato misunderstood the Greek priesthood’s use of lunar cycles rather than solar years to calculate time. This in turn led him to date the Atlantean War to 1350 BC.

Robert Argod wrote [065.254] “This story, which was supposedly related to Solon by Egyptian priests, speaks of 8,000 years, which are certainly in fact moons – for this was how the Egyptians counted. This dates the story reasonably accurately to the 13th century BC, at the memorable period of the battles between Rameses II and Rameses III against the Sea Peoples.” A coincidence?

This use of months rather than years would give us a total of just 750 years before Solon’s visit and so would place the Atlantis catastrophe around 1300 BC, nearly coinciding with the eruption of Thera and the collapse of the Minoan civilisation.

A similar explanation has been offered by J.Q. Jacobs to rationalise the incredible time spans found in ancient Indian literature, who suggested that numbers referred to days rather than years(b).

Stefan Bittner seemed to date the Atlantean War in 1644 BC using a combination of treating Plato’s years as months and reducing the same years by a factor of ten!

Even more bizarre is the suggestion from Patrick Dolciani that Plato’s 9000 ‘years’ were in fact periods of 73 days because it agrees with both the synodical revolution of Venus and our solar year!!

[2.5] 5,000 not 9,000 years

A claim was made on Graham Hancock’s website in 2008(c) that Plato did not write 9,000 but instead wrote 5,000, but that the characters for both were quite similar leading to the misunderstanding. This claim was originally made by Livezeanu Mihai. However, my reading of Greek numerals makes this improbable as 9,000 requires five characters ( one for 5,000 and one for each of the other four thousand), while 5,000 needs just one.

Adrian Bucurescu claims that Plato originally said 5,000, not 9,000 years had elapsed between the Atlantean war and Solon’s visit to Egypt. He bases this claim on the fact that the works of the Greek philosophers were preserved in Arabic translations after the fall of Constantinople and that their numbers ‘5’ and ‘9’ were sufficiently similar to have led to a transcription error!(b) This is difficult to accept as the Arabic character for nine is rather like our ‘9’, while the Arabic five is like our zero!

[3.1] Sometime after 9500 BC.

Jonas Bergman correctly points out that according to the story related by the priests of Sais to Solon, the Egyptian civilisation was founded 1000 years after Athens was first established in 9600 BC. Although this probably just refers to the founding of the city of Sais rather than the early Egyptian state.

Plato describes the original division of the earth between the gods of old, Poseidon got Atlantis and Athena got Greece. The implication is that both were founded at the same time, namely in 9600 BC. Realistically, the 9000-year time span is better treated as an introductory literary cliché such as ‘once upon a time’ or the Irish ‘fado, fado’ (long, long ago). Plato’s text describes the building of Atlantis and informs us that no man could get to the island ‘for ships and voyages were not yet’. Since Atlantis had twelve hundred warships at the time of the conflict with Athens, the war could not have taken place in 9600 BC. The development of seafaring and shipbuilding would have taken considerable time. Bergman concludes that the war with Atlantis took place long after 9600 BC.

Another date was proposed by Otto Muck [098] in 1976 when he maintained that Atlantis had been situated in the Atlantic and was destroyed by an asteroidal impact in 8498 BC and proposed that the same event also created the Carolina Bays!

Felipoff, a Russian refugee living in Algiers presented a paper to the French Academy of Sciences in which he claimed to have astronomically calculated the exact date of the destruction of Atlantis as 7256 BC! Felipoff has been described as an astronomer whose ideas received some attention around the 1930s, apart from which little else is known about him.

[3.2] Peter James as quoted in Francis Hitching’s The World Atlas of Mysteries[307.138] is reported to have accepted the orthodox date of 3100 BC as the start of Egyptian civilisation and considering the priest’s statement that the events outlined took place one thousand years before the creation of Egypt and so added only 500 years to compensate for nationalistic exaggeration and has concluded that 3600 BC is a more realistic date for the destruction of Atlantis.

[3.3] Early in the 20th century, the German scholar Adolf Schulten and the classicist H. Diller from Kiel, both advocated an even more radical date of around 500 BC, having identified the narrative of Plato as paralleling much of the Persian wars (500-449 BC) with the Greeks. This however would be after Solon’s trip to Egypt and have made little sense of Plato’s reference to him.

[3.4] 4015 BC is the precise date offered by Col. Alexander Braghine who credits the destruction of Atlantis to a close encounter with Halley’s Comet on the 7th of June in that year. This is close to the date favoured by de Grazia.

[3.5] 3590-1850 BC has been suggested by the Czech writer Radek Brychta who has developed an ingenious idea based on the fact that the Egyptians who were so dependent on the Nile, divided their year into three seasons related to their river, the flooding, the blossom and the harvest periods. Brychta points out that counting time by seasons rather than solar years was common in the Indus civilisation that occupied part of modern Pakistan. Even today Pakistan has three seasons, cool, hot and wet. Brychta contends that the 9000 ‘years’ related to Solon were in fact seasons and should be read by us as 3000 years which when added to the date of Solon’s Egyptian visit would give an outside date of 3590 BC. If Brychta is correct this 9000-year/season corruption could easily have occurred during the transmission and translation of the story during its journey from the Indus to the Nile valley.

In the 18th century, Samuel Engel also interpreted Plato’s 9,000 years as a reference to seasons of four months each. (See: Axel Hausmann)

[3.6] 3100 BC as a date for the destruction of Atlantis has been proposed by several investigators including, David Furlong, Timo Niroma, and Duncan Steel. Hossam Aboulfotouh has proposed a similar  3070 BC as the date of Atlantis’ demise(f).

[3.7] 2200 BC is the proposed date put forward by Dr Anton Mifsud for the end of Atlantis, located in the vicinity of his native Malta. He arrived at this conclusion after studying the comments of Eumelos of Cyrene who dated the catastrophe to the reign of King Ninus of Assyria. Around the same time, in Egypt, unusually low Nile floods led to the collapse of centralised government and generations of political turmoil(f). According to some commentators(g), the Los Millares culture in Iberia also ended around the same time.

[3.8] Circa 1200 BC is a date favoured by investigators such as Eberhard Zangger  [483] and Steven Sora [395] who both identify the Atlantean War with the Trojan War. Frank Joseph is more precise proposing that “it appears, then, that the destruction of Atlantis took place around the first three days of November 1198 BCE. [102.208]. It may be worth noting that this date has also been linked to the suggested close encounter with the Phaëton comet and its destructive effects globally.

[3.9] Stelios Pavlou has taken a different approach, basing his conclusion on a close analysis of the Egyptian King Lists with particular reference to that of Manetho. Pavlou’s paper is well(l) worth studying. In the end, he contends that the time of Atlantis was in or around 4532 BC.

[4.0] More than one Atlantis!

It is not unreasonable to consider Plato’s Atlantis narrative as a literary amalgam of two or more historically based stories or myths. One possibility is that the Egyptian priests related to Solon the tale of the inundation of a powerful and advanced culture in the dim and distant past. Such an event did occur, worldwide, when the Ice Age glaciers melted, resulting, for example, in the eastern Atlantic, the flooding of the North Sea, the Celtic Shelf and dramatically reducing in size of the Canaries and the Azores and creating the British Isles. The entire world was affected by this event so there were also major inundations in the West Indies and the South China Sea. However, events off the coasts of Europe and Africa would be more likely to become part of folklore on this side of the Atlantic.

Over 70 years ago, Daniel Duvillé suggested, that there had been two Atlantises, one in the Atlantic and the other in East Africa.

[5.0] My preference is to treat the use of 9000 by Solon/Plato as an expression of a large but indefinite number or an exaggeration by a factor of ten. At the beginning of my research, I strongly favoured the former, but as I proceeded to investigate other aspects of Plato’s Atlantis story, I realised that virtually all other large numbers used by him also appeared to be inflated by a comparable amount. In seeking a solution to this I found myself drawn to Occam’s Razor, which states that where there are competing theories, the simpler is to be preferred.

It is worth noting that the Egyptian hieratic numerals also stopped with the highest value, expressed by a single character, being 9000. However, having studied the matter more closely I am reluctantly drawn to the ‘factor ten’ theory. This I have written about at some length in Joining the Dots.

The 1st millennium BC saw the introduction and gradual development of new writing and numerical systems by the Greeks. Some claim that the Greeks borrowed the Egyptian numbers(k). 

At an early stage, 9000 was the highest number expressed by a single character in Greek, which in time came to be used to denote a large but uncertain value. As the needs of commerce and science demanded ever higher numbers a new character ‘M’ for myriad with a value of 10,000 was introduced. It also was used to indicate a large indefinite number, a practice that continues to this very day. Greek numerical notation was still being developed during Plato’s life.

Today, we use similar expressions such as ‘I have a million things to do’ with no intention of being taken literally, but simply to indicate ‘many’(e).  Unfortunately, this interpretation of 9,000 does little to pinpoint the date of the Atlantean war, but it is not unreasonable to attribute a value to it of something above 1,000 and possibly a multiple of it.

Diaz-Montexano has drawn attention to the writings of Proclus, who in his commentary on Timaeus declared the number 9,000 to have had a symbolic value (Timaeus 45b-f).

However, having said that, I am also attracted to the ’factor ten’ theory after a study of other numbers in the Atlantis narrative which all seem to be consistently exaggerated by a similar amount, which seems to be a factor of ten!

Andrew Collins in his Gateway to Atlantis[072.52] wrote “a gross inconsistency has crept into the account, for although Critias affirms that Athens’ aggressor came from ‘without’ the Pillars of Hercules, the actual war is here said to have taken place ‘nine thousand years’ before the date of the dialogue, c.421 BC. This implies a date in the region of 9421 BC, which is not what was stated in the Timaeus. Here 9000 years is the time that has elapsed between the foundation of Athens and Solon’s visit to Sais c. 570 BC. Since Egypt was said to have been founded a full thousand years later, and the ‘aggressor’ rose against both Athens and Egypt, it provides a date post 8570 BC. These widely differing dates leave us with a glaring anomaly that defies explanation. The only obvious solution is to accuse Plato of a certain amount of sloppiness when compiling the text.”

Collins’ suggestion of ‘sloppiness’ is made somewhat redundant if my suggestion that Plato was using 9,000 as a large but indefinite idiomatic value, could be substantiated.

The late Ulf Richter was quite unwilling to accept Plato’s 9,000 years as reliable after a close study of the relevant texts.

Others have produced evidence to suggest that this period in the Earth’s history saw one or more major catastrophic events that may or may not have been interconnected; (i) a collision or near-miss with an extraterrestrial body, (ii) a pole shift, (iii) the melting of the glaciers of the last Ice Age and the consequent raising of sea levels worldwide. This rise provides a credible mechanism that could account for the ’sinking’ of Atlantis.

Mary Settegast, an archaeological researcher, has defended the early date of Atlantis with a remarkable book[545] that delves extensively into Mediterranean and Middle Eastern prehistory and mythologies.

(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20181215223457/https://gizacalc.freehostia.com/Atlantis.html

(b) http://www.jqjacobs.net/astro/aryabhata.html

(c) https://www.grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?f=1&i=249446&t=249446

(d) https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=255909

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

(f) Archive 2668 | (atlantipedia.ie) *

(g) https://www.minoanatlantis.com/Origin_Sea_Peoples.php

(h) https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/number/

(i) https://historum.com/speculative-history/128055-atlantis-truth-myth-3.html

(j) https://web.archive.org/web/20100708140347/www.fotouh.netfirms.com/Aboulfotouh-Atlantis.htm

(k) https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3109806.stm

(l) https://www.researchgate.net/project/Extrapolating-from-Manethos-King-List-to-Address-the-Critias-108e-Problem

(m) https://matthewpetti.com/atlantis/  

(n) Do you believe in 10,000 BC? – Atlantis-Scout  

(o) https://www.academia.edu/31339700/Atlantisng_com_Correct_chronology_of_Atlantis_When_did_Atlantis_appear_and_when_did_it_disappear 

(p) http://cab.unime.it/journals/index.php/AAPP/article/view/AAPP.932C1/AAPP932C1 

(q) https://ourunknownancientpast.blogspot.com/2021/08/plato-atlantis-probability-of.html 

(r) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_surviving_ships 

(s) Dating the Atlantis catastrophe – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)

 

Madeira

Madeira, an autonomous region of Portugal, is a small group of islands in the Atlantic, just north of the Canaries. The archipelago includes the tiny independent Principality of Pontinha(a), which today has bitcoin as its official currency.

The French philosopher, Voltaire, seems to have been somewhat sceptical about the existence of Atlantis, remarking in his Essai sur le moeurs [1504] that“ if it were true that such a part of the world ever existed. Most likely it was none other than the island of Madeira.”

Ignatius Donnelly proposed it as one possible location for Atlantis. This followed soundings taken in the area at the end of the 19th century, which suggested that there existed a submerged map-madeiraridge linking the islands with the European mainland. Madeira is frequently linked with the Azores and the Canaries as visible remains of Atlantis.

In the 1920s Edwin Bjorkman noted [0181.68] that many of his peers, including Richard Hennig(d), considered Madeira to have been Homer’s Ogygia, itself frequently associated with Atlantis.

>By way of balance, I must include reasons offered by Stelios Pavlou for not identifying the Madeiras as one the remnants of Atlantis

1.) There is no evidence that this archipelago was once a larger island.

2.) There is no evidence that it was ever connected to the Canary Islands or the Azores.

3.) There are no traces of a megalithic civilization there(f).<

Atlantisforschung has published a short list of other commentators who have considered the Madeiras as possible remnants of Atlantis,

Andrew Collins in Gateway to Atlantis [072.80] refers to a work by Pseudo-Aristotle, On Marvellous Things Heard, in which the author describes a prosperous island with navigable rivers, outside the Pillars of Heracles. There are no rivers on Madeira, a fact that has not gone unnoticed. Cyrus H. Gordon wrote that ‘west of Africa there are no navigable rivers until Haiti, Cuba and the American mainland’. Cuba being Collins’ preferred Atlantis location, such comments tenuously supported his claim and also ruled out Madeira.

Some commentators such as Gilbert Pillot[742.46] have remarked on the similarity of Madeira to the island of Aeolia described in Homer’s Odyssey.

There are a couple of YouTube clips(a)(b) that purport to show the remains of Atlantis on Madeira. In fact, all they show are ruins, subjectively identified as Atlantis. Apart from this, unlike Atlantis, Madeira is obviously not submerged.

Unfortunately, I’m afraid the closest you’ll come to Plato’s famous island of Madeira is in a bottle of Blandy’s Atlantis rosé wine.

(a) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Rkg1T2dl4

(b) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGswJuo0cE8

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20170905084632/https://principality-pontinha.com/index.html

(d) Neue Erkenntnisse zur Geographie Homers”, Rheinischen Museum für Altphilologie (N. F) Band 75, 1926, S. 266, 282

(e) Madeira (Archipel) – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) 

(f) Maria Lamas – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *