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

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  • NEWS September 2023

    NEWS September 2023

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

    Joining The Dots

    I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
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Titans

Furdui. Alexandra

Alexandra Ioana Furdui, is Romanian by birth, an architect by profession, who now lives in Australia. Her interest in ancient history has resulted in a book entitled Island: Myth…Reality …or Both? [1598] in which she posits Atlantis as a large island in the antediluvian freshwater Black Sea ruled by the Titans of Greek mythology, some of whom later started another civilisation in the lower Danube, where she claims the Pillars of Herakles were situated, which is probably the result of being influenced by the earlier work of Nicolae Densusianu.

Perrone, Giacinto (L)

Giacinto Perrone was an Italian academic who wrote of Atlantis and its contribution to the Bronze Age in a 1928 book, Atlantide Leggende e testimonianze[809], republished in 1986 with the title of Atlantide, l’Impero del Bronzo[810]. He saw the Titans of Greek mythology as Atlanteans with a far flung empire. He attributes to them the invention of bronze and the exploitation of the vast copper deposits of Michigan, an idea now promoted by Gavin Menzies.

Chronos (t)

Chronos in Greek mythology is considered the personification of time, giving us words today such as chronology, chronometer, and chronicle. Chronos is not to be confused with the Titan, Kronos, father of Zeus. Paul Schliemann in his fraudulent Atlantis story erroneously refers to King Kronos of Atlantis, a canard frequently repeated by later writers. Charles Berlitz relates[0743.115 how Chronos was considered by some legends to be the last king of Atlantis.

Vineta

Vineta was a legendary city on the Baltic in what is now the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The city was destroyed when it sank into the sea and thought by some to be the source of the Atlantis story. It is reputed to have existed near the north German city of Barth.

vinetakarteIt was considered to be the most important trading city in Europe with links as far as the Mediterranean. The Arabic writer Ibrahim Ibn Yaqub described it (c. 970) as “a large city by the ocean with twelve gates, the greatest of all cities in Europe, farthest north-west in the country of Misiko (Poland) in the marshes by the ocean”.(a)

Doris Manner has written a book[466] on the subject and also has a website(b), which is available in German and English. She courageously identifies Atlantis with Vineta, Titans with Teutons and Vineta, in the past referred to as Niniveta, with the Nineveh of the Bible.

A more conventional history of the lost Baltic city is offered by Ingrid & P. Werner Lange in their Vineta, Atlantis des Nordens (Vineta: Atlantis of the North)[1125].. Two other German researchers who are also on the trail of Vineta, are Dr. Klaus Goldmann (Vineta: Die Wiederentdeckung einer versunkenen Stadt) and Günter Wermusch (Das Vineta Rätsel)

The excellent German website, Atlantisforschung.de, offers further information about Manner’s work.(d)

(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20120204201941/https://marebalticum.natmus.dk/vinetaUK.asp?ID=29

(b) https://www.atlantis-niniveta.de/

(d) https://atlantisforschung.de/index.php?title=Atlantis_lag_an_der_deutschen_Ostseek%C3%BCste (German)

Tantalis (L)

Tantalis is referred to, by Pliny, as the capital of ancient Lydia in western Turkey. It was later known as Magnesium ad Sipylum. Tantalis was apparently named after the legendary King Tantalus, who had remarkable similarities with Atlas; they were both Titans, supported the heavens and had mountains named after them(a).  This powerful city was flooded following an earthquake and is now reputed to be located beneath the now dried-up Lake Saloe. Also note that Atlantis is an anagram of Tantalis – coincidence?

British archaeologist Peter James has identified Tantalis as the original Atlantis and that it was located just north east of modern Izmir (Smyrna). James reached this conclusion[047] after a study of classical writers, comparative mythology and local place-names. Unfortunately, there has, as yet, been no archaeological expedition to confirm James’ contention.

Objections to James’ theory are that Tantalis was:

i) not on an island.

ii) not outside the conventional location of the Pillars of Hercules.

iii) too close to Greece (James raises this objection against the Santorini theory).

iv) not a circular city (?).

N.B. Sardis was also known as the capital of Lydia by the early 7th century BC.

(a) “https://www.jstor.org/stable/262536?seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents

Pelasgians

Pelasgians or Pelasgi is the term applied to early populations of the Aegean, prior to the Flood of Deucalion and the subsequent arrival of the Hellenic peoples to the region. Pelasgian Greeks are recognised as having occupied Crete at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. It is unclear from classical sources(b) exactly what regions the Pelasgians occupied, not to mention when or where they originated.

Some writers such as Densusianu have postulated a Pelasgian Empire extending over a large stretch of central Europe.

Euripides stated that the Pelasgians were later called Danaans.

Spiro N. Konda believes that today’s Albanians are descendants of the Pelasgians and has written The Albanians and the Pelasgian Problem in support of this idea, unfortunately, it is in Albanian, but some of his arguments can be read, in English, online(a).

Oliver D. Smith in his book Atlantis in Greece identified “the Pelasgians with both the Atlanteans and prehistoric Athenians – as two regional tribes at war with each other”.

A more radical, highly speculative and quite incredible, alternative definition is offered by Marin, Minella and Schievenin[0972.471],  which is that Pelasgians were refugees from their homeland in Antarctica after its catastrophic destruction. They claim that these refugees were also known as Titans, Tyrrhenians and Atlanteans, among other names! They also propose that the Pelasgians arrived in Egypt in 10,500 BCE “led by Osiris/Menes, and joined the local people, who were indigenous Negroid such as the image engraved in the Sphinx.” They further claim that anthropology calls them Cro-Magnon!

James Bailey noted in The God-Kings & the Titans [149.158] that the Pelasgians were equated with the Peoples of the Sea in the Cambridge Ancient History(c).

>Lars Karlsson is Professor in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University and in a 2023 paper(e)  he offered the theory “that the Pelasgians were ‘proto-Etruscans’, since the Pelasgian island of Lemnos has inscriptions in Etruscan.”

The degree of confusion surrounding the identity of the Pelasgians is clearly demonstrated in the Wikipedia article on the subject(d).<

(a) https://at001.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/the-etymology-of-the-names-of-pelasgian-gods-2/

(b) https://stoa.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/the-pelasgians-in-the-ancient-historians-texts/

(c) https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.283059/page/n33/mode/2up  (2nd. Edition, Vol. II, p.8)

(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelasgians *

(e) https://isvroma.org/en/2023/01/13/research-seminar-the-early-history-of-the-etruscans-2/ *

 

Hesiod

Hesiod was one of ancient Greece’s foremost poets and is generally assumed to have flourished around 750 BC. Two of his works have been identified as having parallels with Plato’s Atlantis. The first, his Works and Days, describes the deterioration of mankind in a similar manner to the moral decline of the inhabitants of Atlantis related by Plato.

The second,  Theogony, prompted Haraldur Sigurdsson, a volcanologist has identified imagery that could be a reflection of the eruption of Thera seven hundred years earlier. Professors Mott Greene[575] and J. V. Luce among others support this idea. This poem contains in line 938 what is probably the earliest use of the name ‘Atlantis’ that we have. “And Maia, the daughter of Atlas, bare to Zeus glorious Hermes, the herald of the deathless gods, for she went up into his holy bed.”(a)

Greene lists fifteen details in Titanomachy and compares them with the characteristics of the mid 2nd millennium BC eruption of Thera and finds a remarkable correspondence (p.61/2).

The Titanomachy or the war between the Titans and the Olympians recorded in the Theogony has been perceived as a parallel of the conflict between Athens and Atlantis. He also refers to the Hesperides, identified by some with Atlantis, as being located in the west

In the same work Hesiod notes that a wall of bronze ran around Tartarus (equivalent to Hell in Greek mythology), which brings to mind the walls covered with orichalcum in Plato’s Atlantis. It is not unreasonable to suggest the possibility of a common inspiration for both.

(a) https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/theogony.htm

 

Kronos (Cronos)

Kronos (Cronos) was one of the Titans of Greek mythology and usually associated with Cronosagriculture and frequently portrayed holding a sickle. He was the father of Poseidon who received Atlantis as his realm.

Cronos is not to be confused with Chronos the Greek personification of time, remembered today in our language through words such as chronology and chronometer.

Diodorus Siculus (Bk.III 61.3) describes Cronos as lord of Sicily, Libya and Italy. This reminds me of Plato’s Atlantis that controlled the Mediterranean as far as Tyrrhennia and Libya as far as Egypt “as well as islands” (Timaeus 25b)!*It should be noted that outside of the Aegean, the greatest number of island in the Mediterranean is to be found in the Central region.*

When Paul Schliemann launched his Atlantis hoax in 1912, he included a reference to Cronos as ‘king of the Atlanteans’!

Manner, Doris

Doris Manner was born in Stuttgart in 1936. She is one of the very few females, and probably the only non-academic lady to have produced a book on the subject of Atlantis apart from a few others who claim mystical powers and offer channelled nonsense.

She began her research in 1985 and gathered material over the following years until its publication in 1991. Her book[466] is in German only and develops the idea that the legendary Baltic city of Vineta was linked to Atlantis. There is no absolute proof that Vineta actually existed although legend has it that at one point it was the most powerful city in the region that was subsequently inundated. It is generally accepted that Vineta disappeared in the Middle Ages!

She daringly links Titans with Teutons and the Biblical Ninevah with Vineta, which also has been referred to as Niniveta.

More recently, Manner has written[467] under the pen name of Darja Reither.

Manner returned to the subject of Atlantis again in her 2008 offering, Atlantis, Nazca und Andere Rätsel[1376] (Atlantis, Nazca and Other Puzzles).

*Manner has now added English content as well as additional material to her website(a).

(a) https://www.atlantis-niniveta.de/*

 

Lydia

Mysia-Lydia_map Lydia was a small but powerful kingdom in the west of modern Turkey. It flourished in the 6th and 7th centuries BC. The inhabitants were famous as merchants and credited with having invented gold and silver coinage and the concept of permanent retail shops.

>Tantalis is referred to by Pliny as the capital of ancient Lydia in Western Turkey. It was later known as Magnesium ad Sipylum. Tantalis was allegedly named after the legendary King Tantalus, who shared remarkable similarities with Atlas; they were both Titans, supported the heavens and had mountains named after them(a). This powerful city was flooded following an earthquake and is now reputed to be located beneath the now dried-up Lake Saloe. Also, note that Atlantis is an anagram of Tantalis – coincidence? British archaeologist Peter James has identified Tantalis as the original Atlantis and that it was located just north-east of Smyrna, now the modern port of Izmir [0047].<

>Early in the 20th century the German archaeologist Adolf Schulten spent many years searching unsuccessfully, in the region of the Guadalquivir, for Tartessos. He believed that Tartessos had been founded by Lydians in 1150 BC, which became the centre of an ancient culture that was Atlantis or at least one of its colonies.<

It must be pointed out that apart from his famous visit to Egypt, Solon travelled extensively throughout the eastern Mediterranean including Lydia where he encountered Croesus the fabulously wealthy monarch. It is possible that during these trips further information regarding the history of the region was gathered and included in his notes that were to pass down through Plato’s family.

Herodotus claimed that the Etruscans migrated from Lydia to Tyrrhenia, a claim that is supported by recent studies of DNA carried out at Pavia University in Italy. Dr. Barry Fell, the renowned, and controversial expert in ancient scripts, translated Etruscan inscriptions using the language of the ancient Hittites who ruled Anatolia, including Lydia, in the 2nd millennium BC.

Angelo Paratico recently proposed a connection between the Lydian capital Sardis and Sardinia during a lecture delivered in Hong Kong in 2004(a). This idea was put forward earlier by archaeologist David Rohl [0232].>Massimo Pittau also supports the idea of Lydian Sardis was the original home of nuragic Sardinians!(c)<

Wikipedia includes the following information According to Timaeus, one of Plato’s dialogues, Sardinia and its people as well, the “Sardonioi” or “Sardianoi”, might have been named after “Sardò”, a legendary woman from Sardis, capital of the ancient Kingdom of Lydia in Anatolia.”(b)

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

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

(c) Massimo Pittau – The Odyssey and Nuragic Sardinia (www-pittau-it.translate.goog) *