An A-Z Guide To The Search For Plato's Atlantis

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    NEWS September 2023

    September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we move to Sicily and Malta. The trip is purely vacational. Unfortunately, I am writing this in a dreadful apartment, sitting on a bed, with access to just one useable socket and a small Notebook. Consequently, I possibly will not […]Read More »
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    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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Stuart L. Harris

5760 BC

5760 BC according to Stuart L. Harris was the probable date of the impact of an extraterrestrial intruder on the continental shelf of Texas that caused the sea to rise to a height of 1.9 km. generating a tsunami that spread in all directions.

In particular, Harris deals with its effects when it crossed the Atlantic causing devastation, not only in coastal regions but inland as far as the Rhine Valley. He offers a selection of data in support of that contention(a).

(a) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=771

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

Marduk & Tiamat

Marduk & Tiamat were two of the leading gods of the Babylonian pantheon (a). The controversial writer Zecharia Sitchin, in The Twelfth Planet [1599] identifies Marduk and Tiamat as planetary bodies that were involved in a re-ordering of the solar system through catastrophic collisions some millions of years ago (b). However, his proposed Sumerian cosmology includes another planet in our solar system, ‘Nibiru’ with an orbital period of 3,600 years, whose inhabitants visited Earth during their previous close encounters and genetically manipulated the development of humans!

Now, Stuart L. Harris has published a paper(c) naming a body, Marduk/Nibiru, that had a number of close encounters with Earth causing global catastrophes, which included the destruction of Atlantis in 9577 BC, which he believes had been situated in the North Atlantic near Rockall. He proposes that this event generated a tsunami 1,500 metres high that swept across Europe. Harris also credits Marduk with the destruction of the planet Tiamat, which led to the creation of the asteroid belt.

The Babylonian Marduk is frequently associated with the Greek Phaëton.

(a) https://www.ancient.eu/Marduk/

(b) https://www.tokenrock.com/explain-tiamat-planetary-theory-144.html

(c) https://www.academia.edu/37958235/Sinking_of_Atlantis_by_Marduk_in_9577_BC_Part_4_Destruction_from_the_flood

Harris, Stuart L.

Stuart L. Harris is an American researcher, self-described as an linguist, historian and archaeologist. He has contributed over eighty papers to the Migration & Diffusion website(a) and dozens to the Academia.edu site(b). He has touched on a wide variety of subjects; from Comet Encke to Glozel and Newgrange to Noah’s Flood. Although I am not a linguist, I think that that Harris’ penchant for ‘finding’ evidence of the Finnish language in locations as far apart as Dacia, Gaul, Teotihuacan and Hawaii is highly questionable, but I shall leave it to others, more skilled than I, to comment further.

Inspired by Felice Vinci, Harris has promoted the idea of Troy in Finland, but until lately he had not directly addressed the question of Atlantis, but in recent private correspondence with me, he has claimed that Plato’s lost island had been situated in the vicinity of Rockall and destroyed around 9577 BC. He later published these ideas in a number of papers on the Academia.edu website(c-f) in which he proposed that a close encounter with Nibiru (Marduk) that resulted in a number of its satellites impacting the Earth, causing devastation which included the demise of Atlantis. He also equated Nibiru with Marduk. The article contains a lot of wild speculations including the suggestion that Nibiru on a return to Earth in 9417 BC, lost another of its satellites, which became our Moon!

(a) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?authorid=113

(b) https://independent.academia.edu/StuartHarris3

*(c) https://www.academia.edu/37216922/Sinking_of_Atlantis_by_Nibiru_in_9577_BC_Part_1_discovery_west_of_Eire

(d) https://www.academia.edu/37216928/Sinking_of_Atlantis_by_Nibiru_in_9577_BC_Part_2_Mechanics_of_Sinking

(e) https://www.academia.edu/37216933/Sinking_of_Atlantis_by_Nibiru_in_9577_BC_Part_3_Nibiru_sinks_Atlantis

(f)https://www.academia.edu/37958235/Sinking_of_Atlantis_by_Marduk_in_9577_BC_Part_4_Destruction_from_the_flood*

 

Northcote, Jonathan

Jonathan Northcote is a South African legal practitioner and the author of 16.484ºW 58.521ºN Atlantis, Found?[1369] in which he applies his professional forensic skills to the question of Atlantis. Although initially brought to the subject by Otto Muck’s book[0098],  he found aspects of Muck’s ideas unacceptable and began an investigation of his own that led him to conclude that the region of Rockall in the North Atlantic is the most likely candidate as the location of Atlantis,

There is no doubting the quality of Northcote’s research, particularly relating to the geology and underwater topography of the Rockall region, which is fully referenced. However I cannot agree with his treatment of a number of critical items in Plato’s text. These relate to words and phrases such as, continent, Pillars of Heracles, Atlantic, greater than Libya and Asia combined and elephants.

*In 2018, Stuart L. Harris, citing Northcote’s work, published four papers (a-d) on the academia.edu website endorsing the Rockall Plateau as the location of Atlantis. Harris adopts some of Emilio Spedicato’s theories and attributes the destruction of Atlantis to a catastrophic encounter with Nibiru in 9577 BC.*

In January 2019, Northcote revised his book with additional material and published this second edition with the title of Atlantis, Found? An investigation into ancient accounts, bathymetry and climatology [1611]. I am currently working my way through this latest offering and hope to review it in the near future.

(a) https://www.academia.edu/37216922/Sinking_of_Atlantis_by_Nibiru_in_9577_BC_Part_1_discovery_west_of_Eire

(b) https://www.academia.edu/37216928/Sinking_of_Atlantis_by_Nibiru_in_9577_BC_Part_2_Mechanics_of_Sinking

(c) https://www.academia.edu/37216933/Sinking_of_Atlantis_by_Nibiru_in_9577_BC_Part_3_Nibiru_sinks_Atlantis

(d)

https://www.academia.edu/37958235/Sinking_of_Atlantis_by_Marduk_in_9577_BC_Part_4_Destruction_from_the_flood

 

Moon, The *

The Moon and its origin have been the subject of speculation for centuries, examples of which are reviewed below. Professor Robert M. Hazen of George Mason University tells us in The Origin and Evolution of the Earth(ad) that “three competing theories—the fission theory,  the capture theory,  and the co-accretion theory—were all in contention prior to 1969, but the treasure trove of Apollo Moon rocks provided the answer: None of the pre-1969 theories worked……….The Moon is now thought to have formed as the result of an epic impact with a Mars-sized planet that was competing for the same solar system real estate as Earth. Earth was bigger and won, but the Moon was formed from the debris of the impact.”

The impact theory received a boost from the results of a study carried out at Durham University involving the use of a supercomputer for modelling(ag).

The Moon has little connection with Plato’s Atlantis story apart from the more extreme speculations of some writers. One of the wildest is that the Atlanteans had established a research facility on the Moon(a), an idea rivalled by that of Alan Butler & Christopher Knight in their book, Who Built the Moon[0937], in which they propose that the Moon was ‘constructed’! This idea has now been revived by Rob Shelsky[1584]. In 1965, the Umland brothers[833] proposed that the Moon was a communications relay station for the Maya to make contact with their home planet!

In his recent book, Dead Men’s Secrets [1910.299], Jonathon Gray suggested that ancient texts support the idea that man has visited the Moon in the distant past! This is available as a pdf file(ac).

In 1970, Michael Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, of what was then the Soviet Academy of Sciences, advanced a hypothesis that the Moon is a spaceship created by unknown beings(k). These ideas inspired the title of Don Wilson’s 1976 book, Our Mysterious Spaceship Moon [1704].

In 2018 and in a number of previous editions of Ancient Aliens, David Hatcher Childress endorsed the daft idea that our Moon is hollow and artificial. Jason Colavito noted that this idea has been going around for the past half-century, based on a piece of Russian propaganda from the 1960s aimed at Western audiences. Childress alleged that aliens created the moon by inflating an asteroid. Yes, really. “Like a glass blower blows glass, you go out into the asteroid belt, get yourself an asteroid, and with your alien technology you superheat that asteroid. Then you blow into it to make a giant space station,” he said. That seems like rather a lot of work to avoid showing yourself to the humans(ao).

In 2023, Shane Leach tried to resuscitate this daft idea. He also recycled the suggestion that the Martian satellite, Phobos, was an alien construction. However, neither he nor Butler & Knight can claim originality as the idea of artificial moons was floated decades ago by the Russian I. S. Shklovskii(g) among others mentioned above.

Some years later Arnold L. Lieber published The Lunar Effect [1888] in which he put forward his theory of ‘biological tides’ that proposes that the Moon affects human behaviour. This seemed to reinforce the popular belief that aggression and even suicides were affected by the phases of the Moon. Commenting on Lieber’s theory at the time, astronomer Dr Nicholas Sanduleak debunked his claims(aa).

The idea that the Moon was to some extent hollow was given impetus in the 1970s when a study of moonquakes revealed that the Moon ‘rang like a bell’ (i). Now, nearly half a century later, Wallace Thornhill, a leading Electric Universe proponent, has endorsed the hollow Moon idea and seems sympathetic to the idea of a hollow Earth. This was expressed at a recent EU conference and be viewed at the 40-minute mark of a YouTube video.(j)

Neal Adams, a respected graphic artist(s), is probably best known for his work on the DC Comics characters Batman and Green Arrow. He is a vocal supporter of the Expanding Earth Hypothesis(t), but, he has gone further and also proposed a growing Moon as well(u)(r). Not content with that, he has extended his expansion investigations to other bodies in our Solar System, such as Mars, Ganymede & Europa(v). Adams considers the term “Expanding Earth” a misnomer and has named his proposed expansion process ‘pair production’!

The origins of the Moon have also been the subject of extensive controversy with one side claiming that it had been ‘captured’ moonby the earth, while the other extreme argues that it had been ‘expelled’ from our planet. The expulsion theory posits(b) that a collision with another celestial body tore material from the Earth, which in time became our Moon(h). Nils Olof Bergquist writing in the 1940s supported the expulsion scenario and had his original Swedish book on the subject translated into English as The Moon Puzzle[0786].

Aloys Eiling (1952- ) is a German researcher who has offered a variation on the Moon capture theory, suggesting that it took place when our planet was already populated – somewhere between 40,000 and 13,000 BC. He notes(ab) 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.”

The most radical of the captured moon school was Hanns Hörbiger, who proposed that there had been a series of Moon captures. Many of his ideas were adopted by H.S. Bellamy, who added that the capture of our current satellite had destroyed Atlantis. Kurt Bilau has also proposed a moon capture theory that incorporates two near encounters before finally becoming our current satellite(ah)(ai).

Georg Hinzpeter was influenced by the Moon-capture ideas of Hanns Hörbiger, with whom he had personal contact. However, when he suggested some modifications he fell foul of the Nazis and was informed “that his work was no longer going to be supported by the regime because it deviated from Hörbiger’s original theory.” (an) 

After the war, he contributed to Sykes Atlantis magazine, where, like Bellamy, he theorised that the destruction of Atlantis coincided with the capture of our present satellite, an event that he claimed to have taken place around 11,500 years ago(am).

Nikolay Bonev, the astronomer, caused a stir in 1961 when he expressed the view that our Moon had once been an independent planet(d) that had experienced violent volcanic eruptions that were powerful enough to have produced a ‘recoil’ effect, which nudged it towards our Earth’s orbit and was eventually captured as our satellite.

In 1948, an amateur astronomer, L.C. Suggars, endorsed the idea of the Moon as a captured planet, based on its diameter/density ratio, which was consistent with that of the other minor planets (Mercury, Mars, Venus & Earth).(w)

More recently Emilio Spedicato expressed similar ideas(c) and in another paper(aj) he wrote “we consider the Sumerian tradition of a planet, called Nibiru, claimed to approach Earth every 3600 years. We argue that the real period was 20 years and that a close passage of that body near  Earth around 9500 BC ended the last Ice Age and the Atlantis civilization. Moreover, Earth a satellite of Nibiru became our Moon, in addition to the previous satellite, that was Mars. We discuss ancient statements that the Moon originally looked bigger and brighter than now and that the period of about 2400 years when there were two satellites explains the myth of Isis and Osiris. We argue that Nibiru around 6900 BC disappeared in a giant impact on Jupiter.

Stuart L. Harris has proposed(m) that the planet Nibiru had a close encounter with our Earth in 9577 BC that destroyed Atlantis, followed by another visit in 9417 BC during which it lost one of its satellites, which became our Moon!

Immanuel Velikovsky wrote a short paper(af) reviewing the three most popular theories regarding the origins of our satellite and concluded that “Since mankind on both sides of the Atlantic preserved the memory of a time when the Earth was without the Moon, the first hypothesis, namely, of the Moon originating simultaneously with the Earth and in its vicinity, is to be excluded, leaving the other two hypotheses to compete between themselves.” I think it noteworthy that Velikovsky makes no reference to the theories of Hörbiger in this paper. In 2020, Velikovsky’s unfinished book, In the Beginning [1956], promoted as a prequel to Worlds in Collision, was finally published, where he returns to the matter of the Earth without its Moon.  

John Ackerman, a keen follower of Immanuel Velikovsky claimed that there were two catastrophic events related to “the capture of the Moon into its current orbit,” marking both the beginning and the end of the Younger Dryas period(p). Although Ackerman was an admirer of Velikovsky’s work, he was also critical of some of his conclusions(x).

The Moon controversies continue with the recent suggestion by Erik Asphaug, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who claims that originally the Earth had two moons that coalesced into a single satellite (n)! A few years earlier, Dr Martin Jutzi from the University of Bern, Switzerland put forward a similar theory involving a smaller second moon that had a slow-motion collision with the larger satellite. He proposed that this event explains why the near side of the Moon – the one visible from Earth – is flat and cratered while the rarely-seen far side is heavily cratered and has mountain ranges higher than 3,000m.”(z) Jutzi thought that samples from the far side of the Moon might confirm the theory.

Gary Gilligan, a catastrophist, also supports the concept of moon capture but dated this event to as recent as 2000 BC(f) and then later advanced it to 1200 BC(g). He claims that he can “show that the moon could not have existed during prehistory as evidenced by the absence of the moon in Neolithic artwork and artefacts.” A comment that ignores the maxim ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’

Researcher, Mark Andrew commenting on Gilligan’s claims wrote that Although Gilligan promises more evidence to come, his theory has to contend with the varied evidence of an earlier Moon, including the earliest known written myth of the Moon’s death and rebirth, the epic poem Descent of Inanna (dating from 1750 BC), and also the oldest known map of the moon (dating from 2800 BC).”(l)

Ticleanu, Constantin & Nicolescu in their paper delivered to the 2008 Atlantis Conference very briefly touched on the origin of the Moon. They claim that our Moon, a former planet, was captured by our Earth sometime within the last 40,000 years [750.368].

Two American commentators, Kevin A. & Patrick J. Casey maintain that a globally catastrophic event occurred 13,000 years ago(ae). The kernel of their theory is that originally the Earth had two moons that at some later point collided, producing our current Moon, while the remnant of the second one eventually exploded over North America kick-starting what we refer to as the cooler Younger Dryas period. They are adamant that it was not a comet or asteroid that caused the devastation, and so clash with the conclusions of Richard Firestone and his colleagues. They refer to this as the 13K Event, which is also known as the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH).

The moon could have formed immediately after a cataclysmic impact that tore off a chunk of Earth and hurled it into space, a new study has suggested. Since the mid-1970s, astronomers have thought that the moon could have been made by a collision between Earth and an ancient Mars-size protoplanet called Theia; the colossal impact would have created an enormous debris field from which our lunar companion slowly formed over thousands of years.

But a new hypothesis, based on supercomputer simulations made at a higher resolution than ever before, suggests that the moon’s formation might not have been a slow and gradual process after all, but one that instead took place within just a few hours. The scientists published their findings on October 4, 2022, in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters(al).

Unexpectedly, the orbital speed of the Moon appears to vary on its trip around the Earth(e).

Some of the ideas above regarding the origin of the Moon are extremist and are far more radical than a recent theory regarding the Sun proposed by Ev Cochrane, a comparative mythologist, in a YouTube clip(o), where he offers evidence that the Sun as observed in ancient times seemed quite different to how we see it today. This is borne out by the related mythologies and petroglyphs from our ancient past and shows a global consistency that cannot be explained by imagination.

Professor Neil F. Comins of the University of Maine challenged his students with the question ‘what if the Moon didn’t exist?’ The responses were interesting (no eclipses) and amusing (a new word for ‘lunatic would be required), but not always correct (no tides). One important consequence would be an eight-hour day(q).

Even more challenging are recent comments from Randall Carlson in an exchange between Carlson and Jesse Michels(ak).

JM  “Do you believe that there are survivors of ancient Atlantis among us, perhaps with underwater bases or bases on the Moon and advanced technology!”

RC  “Now there’s a loaded question, Jesse.” [pause] “I would say, a very provisional – Yes!”

Unfortunately, Michels did not pursue the matter in the clip available.

(a) See: Archive 3334

(b) https://www.q-mag.org/moon-mars-impacts-and-collisions.html

(c)  https://aisberg.unibg.it/retrieve/handle/10446/316/1369/WPMateRi05%282008%29SpedicatoPetruzzi.pdf

(d) https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2229&dat=19611112&id=VQIzAAAAIBAJ&sjid=7QAGAAAAIBAJ&pg=4738,1928190&hl=en

(e)  The Clockwork Moon | MalagaBay (archive.org)

(f) https://grahamhancock.com/earth-capture-the-moon-gilligan/

(g) https://www.gks.uk.com/moon-origin-egyptian/

(h) https://www.q-mag.org/moon-mars-impacts-and-collisions.html

(i) Wayback Machine (archive.org) *

(j) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gouqy4OghyY

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

(l) https://web.archive.org/web/20160710150837/https://atlantisrisingmagazine.com/article/late-arrival/

(m) https://www.academia.edu/37216933/Sinking_of_Atlantis_by_Nibiru_in_9577_BC_Part_3_Nibiru_sinks_Atlantis

(n) When the Earth Had Two Moons – Issue 74: Networks – Nautilus (archive.org)  

(o) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eAwUiadZHY

(p) https://www.firmament-chaos.com/va_scenario.html

(q) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/what-if-the-moon-didnt-exist-the-fun-of-counterfactuals-in-science/

(r) Neal Adams: 01 – The Growing Earth | MalagaBay (archive.org)

(s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Adams

(t) https://www.naturalphilosophy.org/site/dehilster/2014/09/22/is-the-earth-expanding-and-even-growing/

(u) Neal Adams: 02 – The Growing Moon | MalagaBay (archive.org)

(v) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy3_sWF7tv4

(w) Atlantean Research, Vol.1, No.2, September/October 1948

(x) Velikovsky’s Mistakes | Acksblog (cycliccatastrophism.org)

(z) Earth may once have had two moons – BBC News  

(aa) SCIENCE WATCH – The Moon and Lunacy – NYTimes.com (archive.org)  

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

(ac) Dead men’s secrets : tantalising hints of a lost super race : Gray, Jonathan, 1933- author : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive 

(ad) The Origin and Evolution of Earth: From the Big Bang to the Future of Human Existence (archive.org)

(ae) https://www.academia.edu/38380799/13k_Theory_Atlantis_Revisited.pdf 

(af) The Earth Without the Moon (varchive.org) 

(ag) How did the moon form? A supercomputer may have just found the answer | Live Science 

(ah) The moon capture report according to Daniel and Johannes – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) 

(ai) The Revelations of John – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) 

(aj) (99+) Nibiru-tiamat rel 6 June 13 | Emilio Spedicato – Academia.edu 

(ak) Graham Hancock: Aliens, Atlantis & the Apocalypse – YouTube 

(al)  How did the moon form? A supercomputer may have just found the answer | Live Science 

(am) Atlantis, Vol.4, No,4, November 1951 

(an) https://www.academia.edu/16833657/Hitlers_Supernatural_Sciences 

(ao) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/david-childress-aliens-living-in-the-hollow-moon-created-bigfoot-to-serve-as-missing-link-between-humans-and-apes 

Nibiru

Nibiru was a Sumerian astronomical term used to describe a planetary body that periodically approached Earth. This account was hijacked by the late Zechariah Sitchin to construct his Planet X theory in which he claimed that this planet had an orbit that took it to the outer limits of the solar system returning every 3600 years to the vicinity of Earth. Sitchin claimed that during one of these visits some of its inhabitants came to earth and become the ‘gods’ of the Sumerians. However, Sitchin failed to explain how the inhabitants of this Planet X survived the lack of heat and light that it would have had to endure as it moved away from the proximity of the Sun. For us inhabitants of Earth, a drop of just a few degrees is fatal.

However, Emilio Spedicato has a radically different and certainly more rational view of this Sumerian planet.  He ascribes a much shorter orbital period of 20 years to Nibiru and claims that close encounters with this planet (and its satellites) had a dramatic physical effect on the prehistory of our planet including the capturing of our Moon, the destruction of Atlantis and later the biblical Exodus! His scenario has elements that can be traced to Velikovsky, Ackerman and Hörbiger.

Robert Solarion was a keen follower of Immanuel Velikovsky and like him was convinced that in the first and second millennia BC the Earth had suffered a catastrophic Pole Shift as a result of a close flyby of a large extraterrestrial body or bodies. Velikovsky identified these as Venus and Mars, but Solarion differed, suggesting that it was the putative Nibiru!(h)

Professor Spedicato’s November 2012 paper, From Nibiru to Tiamat, an Astronomic Scenario for Earliest Sumerian Cosmology, can be read or downloaded from the excellent Diffusion and Migration website(a). A number of his other papers can be found on the same website and are certainly worth studying.

In sharp contrast to the serious work of Spedicato, for the past couple of years, we have been subjected to a barrage of silly articles(b) linking Nibiru with the promised 2012 global catastrophes ‘predicted’ by the Mayan calendar.

A debunking of both Sitchin’s scholarship and the existence of Nibiru has been offered by a number of sites(c).

Nevertheless, in 2018, Stuart L. Harris published three papers(e-g) proposing Rockall as the location of Atlantis, which was destroyed by an encounter with Nibiru in 9577 BC.

However, some people, such as David Meade (a pen-name) who describes himself as a ‘Christian numerologist’ predicted that Nibiru would collide with Earth on September 23, 2017! When this did not happen he moved the event to October, but again nothing happened. But he persisted and subsequently moved our demise to March 2018, then April, with a final suggestion for that year of between May and December(d).

In early 2021, an article on the BBC offered a potted history of the search for Planet X from the time of Percival Lowell until now(i). Although, Planet X has proved elusive, “either way, the search for the legendary ninth planet has already helped to transform our understanding of the solar system. Who knows what else we’ll find before the hunt comes to an end.”

(a) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2012&id=351

>(b) Search Results Nibiru : Your Own World USA (yowusa.com)<

(c) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-2994/

(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Meade_(author)

(e) https://www.academia.edu/37216922/Sinking_of_Atlantis_by_Nibiru_in_9577_BC_Part_1_discovery_west_of_Eire

(f) https://www.academia.edu/37216928/Sinking_of_Atlantis_by_Nibiru_in_9577_BC_Part_2_Mechanics_of_Sinking

(g) https://www.academia.edu/37216933/Sinking_of_Atlantis_by_Nibiru_in_9577_BC_Part_3_Nibiru_sinks_Atlantis>

(h) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/cosmic_tree/nightsun.htm

>(i) If Planet Nine exists, why has no one seen it? – BBC Future (archive.org)<

Frisland *

Frisland is the name given to one of the legendary islands of the North Atlantic, ‘located’ just south of Iceland. The story goes that it was discovered around 1380 by the Venetian, Nicolo Zeno (1326-1402) and that a record of his adventures there, together with a now-famous map (see below), was published in 1558 by a descendant. A decade later the celebrated Flemish cartographer, Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594), published a comparable map, which also showed Frisland at much the same location and with a similar outline. Cornelius Wytfliet produced a map of the North Atlantic in 1597 depicting Frisland at the same location(c). It did not take long for doubts to be expressed about both the map and its accompanying narrative. Donald S. Johnson in his excellent Phantom Islands of the Atlantic[0652] concluded that Frisland was probably a case of ‘mistaken identity’, incorporating “the geography of the Faroe Islands and the contour of Iceland.”

The Malagabay website offers a comprehensive illustrated review of the cartographic evidence favouring the relatively recent existence of Frisland(k).

A January 2018 National Geographic article(e) also discusses the story of non-existent islands, including Frisland, which are the subject of a new book, The Un-Discovered Islands[1545], by Malachy Tallack.

Stuart L. Harris has identified Frisland as the Hyperborea of Greek mythology and Atland in the controversial Oera Linda Book (i) and in a second paper(j), he describes its demise on October 24th, 2194 BC and the catastrophic consequences “when it partially slid down the Judd Anticline toward the Icelandic Basin, 2 km deep. A remnant remained, the Faroe Plateau, topped by the Faroe Islands. The resulting tsunami, about 185m high, terminated other groups of islands, plus the Bell Beaker people in Britain and Ireland, plus most farmers in Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Germany, Poland, Finland and Estonia.”

Riaan Booysen who controversially locates Atlantis on a large landmass of which Australia is a ‘remnant’(a) has also written about Frisland(b). He concluded that Frisland along with many other ‘mythical’ North Atlantic islands shown on Mercator’s map can be matched with present-day underwater features in the ‘relatively’ shallow waters suggesting that they were dry land during the last Ice Age when sea levels were considerably lower. He believes that their inclusion on extant maps is the result of copying much earlier charts that recorded those exposed landmasses.

D.S. Allan & J.B. Delair in their acclaimed book Cataclysm [0014] discuss the Zeno map at some length and conclude that its depiction of Greenland is based on earlier maps, “which apparently antedate Greenland’s present glacial regime” and “there are, apparently no genuine arguments for regarding the Zeno map – curious though it may seem to modern eyes – as portraying anything but that which actually once existed on Greenland in the not so very remote past.” [p.249]

Dr. Gunnar  Thompson, the author of Early New World Maps(m), has offered a staunch defence of the reliability of the Zeno Map, including the following interesting comment  “I suspected that maps of Frisland were made in the 13th or 14th century using the magnetic compass – thus, all Frisland Maps were disoriented with respect to true geographical coordinates as seen on modern maps. I further suspected that the error of declination could be resolved by tipping the maps upside down to account for the fact that in the 14th century, the Magnetic North Pole was situated someplace between Labrador and Foxe Basin near Baffin Island. The magnetic error was about 180°.”(l)

Jason Colavito has also highlighted the controversy surrounding the Zeno Map (see below)(d).

At the end of September 2018, the UK’s Daily Star, a well-known comic for adults, tried to revive the idea of Atlantis in Frisland(f). They based their brief article on the speculations of Matt Sibson, presented as an ‘expert’, who admits that “there are still some questions that need clearing up.” I would like to know why Frislanders in the middle of the last Ice Age would want to attack a non-existent Athens 4,000 km away? If Sibson is considered to be an expert historian, my cat is a brain surgeon. Colavito had a few words to add regarding Sibson’s pathetic claims(g).

Incredibly, a week later the same ‘newspaper’ cited Sibson again, this time claiming that Rockall was the remains of Atlantis(h), an equally silly idea that is not new.

Zeno-map

Zeno-map

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(a) http://www.riaanbooysen.com/ *

(b) https://www.riaanbooysen.com/terra-aus/87-terraproof1?start=7 (link broken)

(c) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20191013063349/https://lib-dbserver.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/northwest-passage/wytfliet.htm

(d) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/apps/search?q=Zeno+Map

(e) Ancient Maps Show Islands That Don’t Really Exist (archive.org) 

(f) https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/732388/Atlantis-found-Brit-historian-sunken-lost-city-coast-Ireland-conspiracy-video

(g) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/dissecting-this-past-weekends-faulty-claims-about-ancient-history

(h) https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/734235/Atlantis-pictured-tip-lost-city-discovered-Ireland-British-historian-video

(i) https://www.academia.edu/36044603/Identification_of_Hyperborea_with_Atland_and_Frisland

(j) https://www.academia.edu/36044703/Catastrophic_demise_of_Hyperborea_Atland_Frisland_on_October_24_2194_BC?email_work_card=view-paper

(k) Finding Frisland | MalagaBay (wordpress.com) 

(l) The Isle of Frisland on Zeno Map (1380) is Real! – Ancient America 

(m) Early New World Maps – Ancient America 

 

Vinci, Felice

Felice Vinci (1946- ) is an Italian nuclear engineer with a background in Latin and Greek studies Felice_Vinciand is a member of MENSA, Italy. He believes that Greek mythology had its origins in Northern Europe.

His first book on the subject in 1993, Homericus Nuncius[1358], was subsequently expanded into Omero nel Baltico[0018] and published in 1995. It has now been translated into most of the languages of the Baltic as well as an English version with the title of The Baltic Origins of Homer’s Epic Tales[0019]. The foreword was written by Joscelyn Godwin.

Vinci explained that “I have been interested in the Greek poet Homer and Greek mythology since I was seven years old. My elementary school teacher gave me a book about the Trojan War, so the leading characters of Homer’s poem, ‘Iliad,’ were as important for me as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

“In 1992, I found the Greek historian Plutarch‘s key-indication which positioned the island Ogygie in the North Atlantic ocean. I decided to dedicate myself to this research. The ancient Greek that I had studied in secondary school helped me very much. Subsequently, I was helped and encouraged by Professor Rosa Calzecchi Onesti, a famous scholar who has translated both of Homer’s poems, ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey,’ into Italian. Her translations are considered a point of reference for scholars in Italy.”(s)

Readers might find two short reviews of Vinci’s book on an Icelandic website (in English) of interest(t)(u).

However, the idea of a northern source for Homeric material is not new. In the seventeenth century, Olof Rudbeck insisted that the Hyperboreans were early Swedes and by extension, were also Atlanteans. In 1918, an English translation of a paper by Carus Sterne (Dr Ernst Ludwig Krause)(1839-1903) was published with the title of The Northern Origin of the Story of Troy(m).

Vinci offers a compelling argument for re-reading Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey with the geography of the Baltic rather than the Mediterranean as a guide. A synopsis of his research is available on the Internet(a).

His book has had positive reviews from a variety of commentators(j). Understandably, Vinci’s theory is not without its critics whose views can also be found on the internet(d)(b)and in particular I wish to draw attention to one extensive review by Andreas Pääbo which is quite critical(k).>His objections are based on a firm contention that the Odyssey and the Iliad came from two different authors(v).<

Stuart L. Harris has written a variety of articles for the Migration and Diffusion website(c) including a number specifying a Finnish location for Troy following a meeting with Vinci in Rome. M.A. Joramo was also influenced by Vinci’s work and has placed the backdrop to Homer’s epic works in northern European regions, specifically identifying the island of Trenyken, in Norway’s Outer Lofoten Islands, with Homer’s legendary Thrinacia. An Italian article also links the Lofotens with some of Homer’s geographical references(r).

Jürgen Spanuth based his Atlantis theory[015] on an unambiguous identification of the Atlanteans with the Hyperboreans of the Baltic region. More specifically, he was convinced [p88] that the Cimbrian peninsula or Jutland, comprised today of continental Denmark and part of northern Germany had been the land of the Hyperboreans.

As a corollary to his theory, Vinci feels that the Atlantis story should also be reconsidered with a northern European origin at its core. He suggests that an island existed in the North Sea between Britain and Denmark during the megalithic period that may have been Plato’s island. He also makes an interesting observation regarding the size of Atlantis when he points out that ‘for ancient seafaring peoples, the ‘size’ of an island was the length of its coastal perimeter, which is roughly assessable by circumnavigating it’. Consequently, Vinci contends that when Plato wrote of Atlantis being ‘greater’ than Libya and Asia together he was comparing the perimeter of Atlantis with the ‘coastal length’ of Libya and Asia.

Malena Lagerhorn, a Swedish novelist, has written two books, in English, entitled Ilion [1546] and Heracles [1547], which incorporate much of Vinci’s theories into her plots(l). She has also written a blog about the mystery of Achilles’ blond hair(n).

Alberto Majrani is another Italian author, who, influenced by Vinci, is happy to relocate the origins of many Greek myths to the Nordic regions [1875]. Although his focus is on the Homeric epics, he has also touched on Plato’s Atlantis story, proposing, for example, that the Pillars of Heracles were a reference to the thousands of basaltic columns, known as the ‘Giant’s Causeway’ to be found on the north coast of Ireland with a counterpart across the sea in Scotland’s Isle of Staffa.(o)

Not content with moving the geography of Homer and Plato to the Baltic, Vinci has gone further and transferred[1178]  the biblical Garden of Eden to the same region(e). Then in a more recent blog(q) he repeats his views on the location of Eden in Lapland and reiterates his core thesis that the real scenario of the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey was the Baltic-Scandinavian world, the primitive seat of the blond Achean navigators: they subsequently descended into the Mediterranean, where, around the beginning of the sixteenth century BC., they founded the Mycenaean civilization.”

A 116 bullet-pointed support for Vinci from a 2007 seminar, “Toija and the roots of European civilization” has been published online(h). In 2012 John Esse Larsen published a book[1048] expressing similar views.

Vinci.Eden An extensive 2014 audio recording of an interview with Vinci on Red Ice Radio is available online(f). It is important to note that Vinci is not the first to situate Homer’s epics in the Atlantic, northern Europe and even further afield. Henriette Mertz has Odysseus wandering across the Atlantic, while Iman Wilkens also gives Odysseus a trans-Atlantic voyage and just as controversially locates Homer’s Troy in England[610]. Edo Nyland has linked the story of Odysseus with Bronze Age Scotland[394].

Christine Pellech has daringly proposed in a 2011 book[0640], that the core narrative in Homer’s Odyssey is a description of the circumnavigation of the globe in a westerly direction(i). These are just a few of the theories promoting a non-Mediterranean backdrop to the Illiad and Odyssey. They cannot all be correct and probably all are wrong. Many have been seduced by their novelty rather than their provability. For my part I will, for now, stick with the more mundane and majority view that Homer wrote of events that took place mainly in the central and eastern Mediterranean. Armin Wolf offers a valuable overview of this notion(g).

It is worth noting that Bernard Jones has recently moved [1638] Troy to Britain, probably in the vicinity of Cambridge! Like many others, he argues that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were not set in the Mediterranean as so many of the details that he provides are incompatible with the characteristics of that sea. However, Jones has gone further and claimed that there are details in Virgil’s Aeneid, which are equally inconsistent with the Mediterranean[p.6-10], requiring a new location!

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

More recently, Vinci wrote a lengthy Preface(p) to Marco Goti‘s book, Atlantide: mistero svelato[1430], which places Atlantis in Greenland!

(a) The Location of Troy | Felice Vinci (archive.org)

(b) https://mythopedia.info/Vinci-review.pdf

(c) http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?authorid=113

(d) https://homergeography.blogspot.ie/

(e) http://www.cartesio-episteme.net/episteme/epi6/ep6-vinci2.htm

(f) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6QPtcZWBPs

(g) Wayback Machine (archive.org) See: Note 5

(h) https://www.slideshare.net/akela64/1-aa-toija-2007-English

(i) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/books.php

(j) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=44

(k) https://www.paabo.ca/reviews/BalticHomericVinci.html

(l) https://www.ilionboken.se

(m) The Open Court magazine. Vol.XXXII (No.8) August 1918. No. 747

(n) https://ilionboken.wordpress.com/insight-articles/the-mystery-of-achilless-blond-hair/

(o) https://ilionboken.wordpress.com/insight-articles/guest-article-where-were-the-pillars-of-hercules/

(p) Atlantis: Mystery Unveiled – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it) 

(q) The climatic optimum, the Indo-European paradise and the Garden of Eden – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it)

(r) Lofoten Islands: the Sirens, the Wandering Cliffs, Scylla and Charybeds, the Maelstrom and the island of Trinachia – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it) 

(s) https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/vinci-felice-1946

(t) https://nome.unak.is/wordpress/05-1/reviews51/felice-vinci-the-baltic-origins-of-homers-epic-tales-the-iliad-they-odyssey-and-the-migration-of-myth-rochester-vermont-inner-traditions-2006/ 

(u) https://nome.unak.is/wordpress/06-1/reviews61/felice-vinci-omero-nel-baltico-le-origini-nordiche-dellodissea-e-delliliade-5th-edition-rome-palombi-editori-2009/ *

(v) (26) The Odyssey’s Northern Origins and a Different Author Than Homer | Andres Pääbo – Academia.edu *

Tsunami

A Tsunami was probably first described in the 5th century BC by Thucydides when he wrote “in my opinion, the cause of the phenomenon watsunami-formations this: where the earthquake was most violent, the sea receded and was then pushed back with even greater violence, thus bringing about a flood. Such a thing would not have happened without an earthquake” (Peloponnesian War, Book III.89)(b). However, there are also conditions that can produce tsunamis inland, such as occurred around 500 AD inundating Geneva in the Alps(k)(m).

The word ‘tsunami’ first appeared in an English language publication in the September 1896 edition of National Geographic Magazine in which the devastation caused by an earthquake wave in Japan was graphically described.

Recent studies(g) indicate that a similar tsunami saved the Greek town of Nea Poteidaia from a Persian attack in 479 BC. Herodotus in reporting the event attributed the Persian defeat to divine intervention by Poseidon, god of the sea.

A similar event on an even greater scale has been one of the suggestions as the possible cause of the flooding of Atlantis. A 2002 paper(a), by Louisiana State University geologist, Gary Byerly and his team, identified an ancient asteroid impact that generated a tsunami that “swept around the earth several times, inundating everything except the mountains”. The study of ancient tsunamis is at a very early stage of development.

A 2019 report was published online in 2022 in which it was revealed that the Yucatan asteroid impact credited with wiping out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago generated mile-high tsunamis that travelled halfway around the world. One wave was estimated to have been 1.8 miles high(ae).

Ivan T. Sanderson in one of his books, Investigating the Unexplained [768], recounts an 1863 report of a 200-foot high tsunami that sped up the Ganges and Houghli Rivers in India killing tens of thousands of people without ‘snapping-off’ trees. He contrasts this with the tree stumps covering acres around East Creek, New Jersey that have all been broken off at the same height and where he suggested that only a tsunami could have caused such widespread and uniform destruction. In view of the fact that some of these cedar trees had six-foot diameter trunks, he speculates on the possible size of a tsunami that could bring about such extreme damage.

Perhaps even more relevant to the study of Atlantis is the evidence gathered by Jürgen Spanuth in his chapter on the ‘Natural Catastrophes of the 13th Century’ including an interesting section on tsunamis [015.167].

Marc-André Gutscher of the University of Western Brittany in Plouzané, France, has discovered evidence of an ancient tsunami on Spartel Island, an Atlantis candidate, in the Gulf of Cadiz. Georgeos Diaz-Montexano has pointed out that Josephus, the 1st-century Jewish historian, seems to describe the devastation caused by its assault on the Atlantic coast of Spain and Portugal at the time of the Lusitanians and Cantabrians in the 1st millennium BC.

>Some years ago, Richard Freund, a professor from the University of Hartford, expressed support for the Donana Marshes of Southern Spain as the location of Atlantis, he attributed the swamping of the locality and the submergence of Atlantis to the power of a tsunami(ah). In 2003, Werner Wickboldt claimed that following an examination of satellite photos of Doñana, he detected structures that very closely resemble those, which Plato described in Atlantis. Freund, claims to have led a team to study the area and has had work included in a March 2011 National Geographic documentary, Finding Atlantis. However, Spanish anthropologist Juan Villarias-Robles who has worked on the site for some years has declared that Freund did not lead the investigations on the site and in fact spent less than a week there. Wickboldt’s images turned out to be either smaller than expected or were from the Muslim period. Evidence for Atlantis (or Tartessos) has not been found there.<

In the late 1970s, Booth & Fitch suggested in Earthshock[1295] that tsunamis may have been responsible for the devastation of Atlantis, an idea that has gained in popularity.

Sergio Frau has postulated that the Atlantean civilisation on Sardinia was destroyed by a tsunami.

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

Tinti has also noted(w) that generally speaking, the majority of tsunamis are generated by seismic rather than volcanic activity. Globally, volcanic tsunamis account for only 2% of the total, however, the profusion of volcanoes in Southern Italy has considerably increased this percentage. Furthermore, according to a recent article on the BBC website “The scale of the tsunami hazard from volcanoes that collapse into the sea has been underestimated.”(x)

A 2022 report of a recent study(ac) revealed some new interesting information.

“Archaeologists have found evidence of the largest known earthquake in human history — a terrifying magnitude-9.5 megaquake that caused a 5,000-mile-long (8,000 kilometres) tsunami and prompted human populations to abandon nearby coastlines for 1,000 years.

The earthquake struck about 3,800 years ago in what is now northern Chile when a tectonic plate rupture lifted the region’s coastline. The subsequent tsunami was so powerful, it created waves as high as 66 feet (20 meters) and travelled all the way to New Zealand, where it hurled car-size boulders hundreds of miles inland, the researchers found.” 

More recently, Dhani Irwanto has written about the probable effect of tsunamis on his Indonesian Atlantis(y). Studies of the sedimentary record in a sea cave in Sumatra have revealed the frequency and strength of tsunamis in the region over a five-thousand-year span from 5900 BC until 900 BC(u).

Tsunamis are also associated with the destruction on Crete following the eruption of Thera in the 2nd millennium BC. A TV documentary entitled Sinking Atlantis(i), provided graphic evidence of tsunami damage on Minoan Crete(h).

J.V.Luce cited[120.119] a number of local legends from around the Aegean that may have originated with the tsunami that followed the eruption on Thera.

However, the extent of this damage is strongly contested by W. Sheppard Baird(j) and he proposes instead that it was in fact more likely to have been a pyroclastic surge from the Theran eruption that caused the most damage.

A recent report(d) concludes that a large tsunami generated by the volcanic activity of Mt. Etna around 6000 BC produced waves up to 43 feet high that struck the coasts of Greece and Libya. This event would have caused devastation on nearby Malta, where evidence of past tsunamis was published in the journal Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie. The research was carried out over three years by scientists from the University of Portsmouth, led by Dr Malcolm Bray with assistance from colleagues at the Department of Geography at the University of Malta(n). A 1693 earthquake generated the earliest recorded tsunami on Malta and as recent as 1908 Malta was hit by a tsunami that resulted from a catastrophic earthquake in the vicinity of the Strait of Messina(p).

On the Atlantic west coast of Ireland, we have a 250 km2 region, in County Clare, known as the Burren, which consists of limestone denuded of soil cover. Recently, strong evidence was discovered suggesting a 4000 BC tsunami in the region(o). For me, the karst landscape of the Burren is reminiscent of parts of Malta.

Plato’s description does not support the idea of a tsunami as the primary cause of Atlantis’ inundation since tsunamis will eventually subside and return to the ocean, whereas Atlantis was still underwater centuries after the event, causing a permanent navigation hazard. John Michael Greer makes a similar point [345.126] in relation to the megatsunami which struck Madagascar in 2800 BC. Evidence of other ancient megatsunamis in Hawaii was presented at the 2012 meeting of the American Geophysical Union(l). The power of megatsunamis is highlighted in an article on the UK’s MailOnline website(t). Atlantisforschung also offers a lengthy article about megatsunamis(af).

Recent excavations at Olympia on the Peloponnese peninsula, the location of the original Olympic Games, have pointed to the site having been repeatedly hit by devastating tsunamis during the past 7,000 years(c).

The Bunurong tribe in Australia has a ‘myth’ that explains the creation of Melbourne’s Port Philip Bay. A recent article(e) has linked this to a tsunami that resulted from the impact of Comet Manhuika southwest of New Zealand in the 15th century. A more cautious view of this event is expressed elsewhere(f).

The excellent livescience.com website has an interesting list of ten history-making tsunamis(q), while Wikipedia offers an extensive list of European tsunamis from prehistoric times until the present(s).

A 100-metre-high tsunami, caused by a landslide, one of the highest ever recorded was experienced in a remote area of Greenland in June 2017. Four lives were lost and eleven houses were destroyed in the fishing village of Nuugaatsiaq, located on an island about 20 kilometres away(v).

The Greenland event would have been greatly overshadowed, literally, by the tsunami generated by the asteroid that struck Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula around 66 million years ago that killed off the dinosaurs. According to a 2021 report(z) it has been estimated that the impact produced a tsunami nearly a mile high!

In 2020, David Keys, author of Catastrophe [1330] wrote an article for the UK’s Independent newspaper outlining the most recent research into the 6200 BC tsunami that destroyed Doggerland. It is estimated that multiple giant waves inundated some 2,700 square miles of land – from Scotland in the north to Norfolk in the south. New underwater research carried out by the universities of Bradford, Warwick, St Andrews and Wales has for the first time discovered that the tsunami devastated parts of East Anglia and adjacent land which is now submerged beneath the southern part of the North Sea.” (ab)

>However, 6200 BC would seem too early for the destruction of Plato’s Atlantis, apart from which the idea that at such an early date anyone living on Doggerland would have any knowledge of Athens or have the means or even a reason to invade a city 3,000km away (over 6,000km by sea). Even if they undertook such a venture, on arrival they would have to wait around for a couple of millennia before anything worth invading was developed there!<

Stuart L. Harris published a paper in 2020 entitled 5760 BC: tsunami at Rhine Valley caused by Planet X(ad). This was based on a translation of a long inscription written on a cliff face in Germany. Harris explains that in 5760 BC “satellites from a mysterious Planet X struck the continental shelf of Texas “that pushed a piece of the shelf the size of Massachusets into the Gulf.  Above the displaced shelf, the sea towered 1.9 km high. The resulting tsunami dispersed in all directions and obliterated coastal communities around the North Atlantic.

In Germany, it surged over the Ruur Mountains west of the Rhine Valley, flooded the middle Rhine between Mainz and Karlsruhe, and continued over the eastern escarpment toward Heilbronn. It left extensive ripple marks in the Rhine Valley and the eastern plateau.” Harris offers some interesting data to support this claim.”

On August 12, 2021, within minutes of each other, two earthquakes struck the South Sandwich Islands of the South Atlantic. National Geographic reported “These rumblings, which occurred on August 12, 2021, were not unusual on their own, since the islands sit atop a combative meeting of tectonic plates. The odd part is that they were followed by a tsunami powerful enough to show up on distant shores along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Although the swell wasn’t destructive, it was the first since the catastrophic tsunami of 2004 to be recorded in three different oceans(aa).

The Live Science website reported(ag)  On Jan. 15, 2022, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai submarine volcano — a large, cone-shaped mountain located near the islands of the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific — erupted with a violent explosion. The eruption generated the highest-ever recorded volcanic plume, which reached 35 miles (57 kilometers) tall. The outburst triggered tsunamis as far away as the Caribbean, as well as atmospheric waves that traveled around the globe several times.” and “The Tonga underwater volcanic eruption rivaled the strength of the largest U.S. nuclear bomb and produced a “mega-tsunami” nearly the height of a 30-story skyscraper.”

(a) See: Archive 2931

(b) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War/Book_3#Sixth_Year_of_the_War_-_Campaigns_of_Demosthenes_in_Western_Greece_-_Ruin_of_Ambracia

(c) Olympia hypothesis: Tsunamis buried the cult site on the Peloponnese (archive.org)

(d) https://www.livescience.com/1170-towering-ancient-tsunami-devastated-mediterranean.html

(e) https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2012/02/10/mega-tsunamis-chinese-junks-and-port-phillip-bay/

(f) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240420231_Analysis_of_the_Mahuika_comet_impact_tsunami_hypothesis

(g) https://www.livescience.com/19809-ancient-wave-real-tsunami.html

(h) Sinking Atlantis | Full Episode | Secrets of the Dead | PBS (archive.org)

(i) https://video.pbs.org/video/1204753806/

(j) https://www.minoanatlantis.com/Sinking_Atlantis_Myth.php

(k) Tsunamis in the Alps? (archive.org)

(l) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20161209170519/https://www.livescience.com/25293-hawaii-giant-tsunami-landslides.html

(m) https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/science/earth/a-tsunami-in-switzerland-lake-evidence-says-yes.html?ref=science&_r=0

(n) https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140901/local/scientists-find-evidence-of-great-tsunami-in-malta.533987

(o) https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/6000-year-old-settlement-poses-tsunami-mystery-193230.html

(p) https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20050109/letters/tsunami-events-in-malta.102636  (link broken) *

(q) https://www.livescience.com/28296-tsunamis-that-changed-history.html

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

(s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis_in_Europe

(t) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4082550/The-terrifying-power-mega-tsunamis-Video-reveals-wave-wipe-ENTIRE-east-coast-s-unlikely-happen.html

(u) 5,000-Year-Long Tsunami Record Found in Guano-Encrusted Sumatran Cave – Seeker (archive.org)

(v) https://www.nature.com/news/huge-landslide-triggered-rare-greenland-mega-tsunami-1.22374

(w) https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780792323167

(x) https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49568107

(y) https://atlantisjavasea.com/2015/08/31/earthquakes-and-tsunamis/

(z) Chicxulub Asteroid Impact Created a Giant Tsunami Nearly a Mile High | Mysterious Universe

(aa) Source of mysterious global tsunami found near Antarctica (nationalgeographic.com)

(ab) https://news.knowledia.com/GB/en/articles/how-a-giant-tsunami-devastated-britain-s-atlantis-3d966568f069ce0cc79d391c7f4a28ee51e59cfa 

(ac) Scientists find evidence for biggest earthquake in human history | Live Science

(ad) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=771 

(ae) Tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid had mile-high waves and reached halfway across the world | Live Science

(af) Mega-Tsunami – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)

(ag) 1st mega-tsunami on record since antiquity was triggered by Tonga volcanic eruption | Live Science 

(ah) Lost city of Atlantis, swamped by tsunami, may be found | Reuters *