Eberhard Zangger was born in Switzerland in 1958. He is a geoarchaeologist who has written a number of books and articles on ancient civilisation. He is the leading proponent of the controversial idea that Troy and Atlantis are the same. In 1989 he initially advanced the idea while working for Cambridge University. His views were first published in English^[483] shortly afterwards and he followed that up a decade later with a second book^[484] that in part returns to the subject. In The Future of the Past Zangger matches a range of features in the Atlantis narrative with the available description of Troy. He then describes how he applied an objective statistical analysis system known as a ‘Monte-Carlo Method’, to these matching details, as well as those of other popular theories, and found that his theory, which situates Atlantis at Troy, scored the highest probability rating as its location. While I do not doubt the objectivity of the system’s results, I would have some misgivings regarding the objectivity of the data entry, a view supported by Zangger himself. For example, if Zangger has entered the location of the Pillars of Heracles as the Dardanelles and ignores the Straits of Messina and Gibraltar, then the results must be considered biased. Consequently, I would suggest that the exercise be repeated by a number of disinterested mathematicians and then collate their results.  

Zangger points out that the library of books and articles relating to Atlantis all stem from two excerpts from Plato’s Dialogues that amount to no more than 6,000 words, many of which he claims to be mistranslated.

There is a scholarly critique of Zangger’s work by Edmund F. Bloedow to be found on the Internet^(a).

Zangger has a partly bilingual website^(b).

^(a) http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1995/95.02.18.html

^(b) http://www.atlantis-troja.ch/