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NEWS October 2024
OCTOBER 2024 The recent cyber attack on the Internet Archive is deplorable and can be reasonably compared with the repeated burning of the Great Library of Alexandria. I have used the Wayback Machine extensively, but, until the full extent of the permanent damage is clear, I am unable to assess its effect on Atlantipedia. At […]Read More »
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 »
Acropolis
Late Bronze Age Collapse
Late Bronze Age Collapse of civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC has been variously attributed to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and severe climate change. It is extremely unlikely that all these occurred around the same time through coincidence. Unfortunately, it is not clear to what extent these events were interrelated. As I see it, political upheavals do not lead to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or drought and so can be safely viewed as an effect rather than a cause. Similarly, climate change is just as unlikely to have caused eruptions or seismic activity and so can also be classified as an effect. Consequently, we are left with earthquakes and volcanoes as the prime suspects for the catastrophic turmoil that took place in the Middle East between the 15th and 12th centuries BC. Nevertheless, August 2013 saw further evidence published that also blamed climate change for the demise of Bronze Age civilisations in the region.
In 2022, a fourth possible cause emerged from a genetic research project -disease. The two disease carriers in question were the bacteria Salmonella enterica, which causes typhoid fever, and the infamous Yersinia pestis, the bacteria responsible for the Black Death plague that decimated the population of medieval Europe. These are two of the deadliest microbes human beings have ever encountered, and their presence could have easily triggered significant heavy population loss and rampant social upheaval in ancient societies(d).
Robert Drews[865] dismisses any suggestion that Greece suffered a critical drought around 1200 BC, citing the absence of any supporting reference by Homer or Hesiod as evidence. He proposes that “the transition from chariot to infantry warfare as the primary cause of the Great Kingdoms’ downfall.”
Diodorus Siculus describes a great seismic upheaval in 1250 BC which caused radical topographical changes from the Gulf of Gabes to the Atlantic. (181.16)
This extended period of chaos began around 1450 BC when the eruptions on Thera took place. These caused the well-documented devastation in the region including the ending of the Minoan civilisation and probably the Exodus of the Bible and the Plagues of Egypt as well. According to the Parian Marble, the Flood of Deucalion probably took place around the same time.
Professor Stavros Papamarinopoulos has written of the ‘seismic storm’ that beset the Eastern Mediterranean between 1225 and 1175 BC(a). Similar ideas have been expressed by Amos Nur & Eric H.Cline(b)(c). The invasion of the Sea Peoples recorded by the Egyptians, and parts of Plato’s Atlantis story all appear to have taken place around this same period. Plato refers to a spring on the Athenian acropolis (Crit.112d) that was destroyed during an earthquake. Rainer Kühne notes that this spring only existed for about 25 years but was rediscovered by the Swedish archaeologist, Oscar Broneer, who excavated there from 1959 to 1967. The destruction of the spring and barracks, by an earthquake, was confirmed as having occurring at the end of the 12th century BC. Tony Petrangelo published two interesting, if overlapping, articles in 2020 in which he discussed Broneer’s work on the Acropolis(e)(f).
>A recent review of two books on subject in the journal Antiquity begins with the following preamble;
“The collapse c.1200 BC’ in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean—which saw the end of the Mycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite state and its empire and the kingdom of Ugarit—has intrigued archaeologists for decades. As Jesse Millek points out in (his book) Destruction and its impact, the idea of a swathe of near-synchronous destructions across the eastern Mediterranean is central to the narrative of the Late Bronze Age collapse: “destruction stands as the physical manifestation of the end of the Bronze Age” (p.6). Yet whether there was a single collapse marked by a widespread destruction horizon is up for debate.” (g)<
(b) https://academia.edu/355163/2001_Nur_and_Cline_Archaeology_Odyssey_Earthquake_Storms_article (this is a shorter version of (c) below)
(e) https://atlantis.fyi/blog/platos-fountain-on-the-athens-acropolis
(f) A General Program of Defense | Atlantis FYI
(g) Getting closer to the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, c. 1200 BC | Antiquity | Cambridge Core*
Broneer, Oscar Theodore
Oscar Theodore Broneer (1894-1992) was born in Sweden but moved to the 
United States in 1913. Plato described both the Acropolis of Athens as well as Atlantis at the time of their war. He noted that a spring on the Acropolis had been destroyed by an earthquake at that time. Then in 1939, Broneer rediscovered the spring together with evidence that it had been destroyed around 1200 BC, giving us a possible anchor for dating the Atlantis conflict. Broneer’s papers are archived at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.
>An interesting 2020 review by Tony Petrangelo of Broneer’s work and particularly his discovery of the Acropolis spring, can be found on his Atlantis.FYI website(a)(c).<
Some years ago, Rainer W. Kühne drew attention to the fact that Plato referred to a spring (Crit.112d) on the Acropolis that was destroyed during an earthquake, which he noted had only existed for about 25 years, but was rediscovered by Broneer. This discovery has implications for the historical reality of Atlantis as well as the time of its demise.
The full text of this important illustrated paper is available online(b).
(a) A General Program of Defense | Atlantis FYI
(b) https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/uploads/media/hesperia/146495.pdf
(c) Plato’s Fountain on the Athens Acropolis | Atlantis FYI *
Linear B
Linear B is the name given to the script used in Mycenaean Greece from 1450 BC until around 1200 BC. It was deciphered in 1952 by the British architect, Michael Ventris, who found it to be based on archaic Greek. What is not generally known is that in America at the same time, classicist Alice Kober was engaged in a parallel quest but unfortunately died of cancer in 1950, before she could complete her work(b).
Edo Nyland in his Linguistic Archaeology controversially claimed that the same texts translated by Ventris using archaic Greek could also be translated using Basque! Examples are given on the University of California, Riverside website(c).
The script is similar to Linear A(a) used in Minoan Crete, which has still to be decoded. Writing disappeared from Greece in the 12th cent. BC and did not reappear until the 9th cent. BC, when an alphabetic script came into use. Those three centuries are known as the ‘Dark Ages’ of Greek history. Plato explained the lack of writing as a consequence of a catastrophic flood which left just a few illiterate ‘mountaineers’ as survivors, who orally transmitted their history until literacy returned.
The scale of Greek catastrophes during this period is indicated by the work of V.R.Desborough[908][909] who gathered comparative data on the number of population centres on the Peloponnese in the 12th and 13th centuries that shows an average drop of 80%. Spanuth lists those figures in Atlantis of the North[015.161].
Plato is often denounced by Atlantic sceptics as just a philosopher and therefore unreliable as a historian. However, in Critias, he outlines quite accurately a number of features of ancient Greece that were only verified in recent times, such as the layout and earthquake damage to the Acropolis as well as the ‘Dark Ages’ mentioned above. This is like saying that a historian cannot have valid philosophical views or a philosopher should not discuss historical matters.
It has been suggested that the Atlantis story was brought to Egypt and written in the Minoan scripts. Both employed numerals where the symbol for ‘hundred’ was very similar to that for ‘thousand’, leading to later transcription errors that eventually gave us Plato’s apparently exaggerated numbers! Both James Mavor and Rodney Castleden have advocated this explanation.
>The relevant entry in the World History Encyclopedia offers an informative overview of what we know about Linear B(d).<
(a) https://jarnaes.wordpress.com/1-minoan-crete-linear-a/
(b) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22782620
(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20190605060214/https://faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/linerb.htm
Kühne, Dr. Rainer Walter *
Dr Rainer Walter Kühne was born in Braunschweig, Germany in 1970 and has a Ph.D. in Physics (Dortmund 2001). He has proposed a modification of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED), which predicts a second kind of photon (’magnetic photon’) and a second kind of light (’magnetic photon rays’). He has also offered evidence for the existence of a rotating universe. He lectured in the Institute of Physics at Dortmund University.
Kühne had studied Plato’s Atlantis story and concluded that many of its elements are fictional although based on three historical but unconnected sources. For example, on the basis of Plato’s description of the Acropolis at the time of the ‘Atlantean’ war, it can be dated to around 1200 BC, not 9600 BC. He linked the Atlantean war with the invasion of the ‘Sea Peoples’ recorded by the Egyptians and locates Atlantis in Andalusia in Southern Spain and places its capital in the valley of the Guadalquivir, south of Seville. Satellite photos of this same area have recently revealed rectangular structures surrounded by parts of concentric circles with dimensions similar to Plato’s description of Atlantis. Werner Wickboldt, a teacher, who lives in Braunschweig (Kühne’s birthplace) announced the discovery of these features on January 8th, 2003. These structures include a rectangle of size 180 meters x 90 meters (Temple of Poseidon?) and a square of length 180 meters (Temple of Poseidon and Cleito?). Concentric circles surround these two rectangular structures so that the site closely resembles Plato’s description of the Atlantean capital. However, the dimensions of this location are approximately 20% larger than Plato’s figures, so Kühne has suggested that the unit of measurement used by Plato, the stade, may have been greater than usually accepted(i).
Kühne also proposes that Tartessos can be identified as the biblical Tarshish and is the model for Plato’s Atlantis(d).
It was a surprise to many when, in their June 2004 edition[429], the highly respected journal Antiquity published details of this discovery and Kühne’s interpretation(a).
To add a bit of spice to Kühne’s investigations, he, together with Jacques Collina-Girard, has been accused of plagiarism by Georgeos Diaz-Montexano(b).
Overall, despite offering a number of interesting thoughts regarding Plato’s Atlantis, we find Kühne sceptical regarding its actual existence, describing Plato’s account of it as a “philosophical fiction invented to describe Plato’s fictitious ideal state in the case of war.” Nevertheless, he is keen to point out that the narrative does contain historically factual elements.(e)
The excellent German site, atlantisforschung.de has described Kühne in the following terms(g), “Dr Kühne is one of the most distinguished representatives of university-scientifically oriented Atlantis research in Germany. Among other things, he discusses the possibility that Plato in his Atlantis story mixed an account of the Sea Peoples and Athens around 1200 BC with traditions about a Spanish city, which could have been the Iberian metropolis of Tartessos – probably destroyed in the 6th century BC by a Carthaginian expeditionary corps.”
The site also includes a link to an interesting paper by Kühne in which he lists the main references to Atlantis in the scientific literature(h).
An outline of Kühne’s theories, in English, is also available on the Internet(c).
In issue #46 of Atlantis Rising magazine Kühne published a letter outlining his experiences when he sought to present his diploma thesis and later his Ph.D. thesis including material that ran counter to that of his professor. In his words “To conclude, what can happen when a young researcher thinks he has an important theory? From my own experience, I learned that he will get difficulties with the acceptance of his diploma thesis. It will become impossible to start a Ph.D. thesis at the same university. His professor will decline to accept his dissertation. After completion of his Ph.D. thesis, he will be unemployed, although by then he has ten scientific publications, eight of them authored by him alone.”(f)
(a) https://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/kuhne/ (if offline, see Archive 2081)
(b) eListas.net – Mis eListas: odiseo: Mensajes (archive.org) *
(c) Location and Dating of Atlantis (archive.org)
(d) https://vixra.org/pdf/1104.0035v1.pdf
(e) Did Ulysses Travel to Atlantis – https://vixra.org/pdf/1103.0058v1.pdf
(f) Atlantis Rising magazine #46 p6 At – PDF Archive
(g) Rainer W. Kühne – Atlantisforschung.de (German)
(h) Atlantis in the Scientific Literature – Atlantisforschung.de (German)
Archive 7057 | (atlantipedia.ie) (English)
Parthenon
The Parthenon atop the Acropolis of Athens is one of the best-known monuments in the world. In its glory days, it must have been even more impressive as it is now known that the edifice was painted in ‘dazzling’ colours(e). When it was first realised that the Greeks and Romans had made such an extensive use of colour on their statuary and buildings it must have come as a shock to many. However, the painting of statues may have a very ancient history as a recent discovery at Karahan Tepe, a life-size statue of a wild boar, dated to between 8700 BC and 8200 BC, has demonstrated, where “Archaeologists detected red, black and white pigments on its surface, indicating that the sculpture was once painted.” (i)
It has been long claimed that the Parthenon incorporated the Golden Ratio (1:1.618) in its design(b). This is now strongly refuted by Chris Budd OBE, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Bath(c) and Samuel Arbesman a senior scholar at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation(d).
The Parthenon was claimed by David Pinnegar(a) to have been constructed to commemorate the victory of the Athenians over the Atlanteans. He further contends that the frieze that adorned the Parthenon holds a representation of the debate to which Plato referred at the end of the Critias text. If this interpretation is true, is it not likely that Plato or any other classical writer would have referred to it? The frieze also appears to depict the Athenian war with the Amazons.
>In 2004, Robert Bowie Johnson jr, published The Parthenon Code [2078], in which the author claims “that both the Book of Genesis and the artwork found on the Parthenon are telling the same story — but from a reversed perspective. He writes that Genesis tells the story of the submissive, “the line of Seth.” The Parthenon, meanwhile, tells the story of those who resist the God of the Bible, the “line of Cain,” (spelled “Kain” in some non-biblical material).
The author compares the art found on ancient Greek vases with the statuary found on the Parthenon, and discerns a detailed story of the Greek gods and their resistance to and struggle against the God of the Bible. A common, unambiguous story, opposite from that told in Scripture, is detected when that evaluation is made. It is a story in which the God of Noah — the God of Seth — is actually defeated by the Greek gods!”<
In 2008, Evan Hadingham wrote an article for Smithsonian Magazine reporting on behind-the-scenes discoveries at the Parthenon encountered during the current extensive restoration work there(g). A 2021 article in the same magazine has drawn attention to controversies that have arisen over details of the renovation work(h).
A full-scale copy of the Parthenon was constructed in 1897 in Nashville, Tennessee to celebrate the state’s centennial(f). Inside is the tallest (over 41ft) indoor sculpture in the Western world, depicting a stunning gold-covered image of Athena.
(a) http://www.hammerwood.mistral.co.uk/elgin.htm
(d) Math as Myth – Nautilus | Science Connected (archive.org)
(e) https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180119-when-the-parthenon-had-dazzling-colours
(f) https://www.nashvilleparthenon.com
(g) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/unlocking-mysteries-of-the-parthenon-16621015/
(i) 11,000-year-old statue of giant man clutching penis unearthed in Turkey | Live Science
Parian Marble
The Parian Chronicle or Marmor Parium is inscribed on a stele made of high-quality semi-translucent marble found on the Aegean island of Paros, which was greatly prized throughout the Hellenic world during the 1st millennium BC. The site of the quarries is now being turned into an Archaeological Park with the intention of it eventually becoming a World Heritage Site.(o)
An enhanced view of the Middle section of the Parian Marble.
Two sections of the stele were found on the island in the 17th century by Thomas Arundell (1586-1643), 2nd Baron Arundell of Wardour, an ancestor of the 12th Baron, John Francis Arundell (1831-1906), who wrote a rebuttal [0648] of Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis theory. A final third section was found on Paros in 1897, silencing claims that the first two were fakes.
As early as 1788, Joseph Robertson (1726-1802) declared the Chronicle to be a modern fake(e) in a lengthy dissertation[1401]+, a claim disproved by the discovery of the final piece over a century later. Even before the third fragment was found, Franke Parker published an in-depth study of the inscription in 1859(f). More recently Peter N. Lindfield has reconstructed the debate that raged around the authenticity of the Parian Marble in the late 1780s(q).
This important register recounts the history of Greece in chronological sequence from 1581 BC until 264 BC and it is reasonably assumed that the latter date was the year it was written.
The first king of Athens is noted on the stele as the mythical Cecrops commencing 1582 BC. This is important as Cecrops is also mentioned by Plato in the Atlantis texts (Critias 110a). This date is far more realistic than the 9,600 BC told to Solon by the Egyptian priests to be the time of the foundation of Athens. The Parian Chronicle seems to have been given little attention regarding the Atlantis mystery. This lack of a direct reference to the Atlantean war may be explained by a comment in Britannica and cited elsewhere(k) which notes(g) that “the author of the Chronicle has given much attention to the festivals, and to poetry and music; thus he has recorded the dates of the establishment of festivals, of the introduction of various kinds of poetry, the births and deaths of the poets, and their victories in contests of poetical skill. On the other hand, important political and military events are often entirely omitted; thus the return of the Heraclidae, Lycurgus, the wars of Messene, Draco, Solon, Cleisthenes, Pericles, the Peloponnesian War and the Thirty Tyrants are not even mentioned.”
Of the philosophers, I note that Anaxagoras, Aristotle and Socrates are listed, but Plato is excluded(m). The high 29% of the entries focused on cultural events and personalities may explain this. So, although the Marble is a valuable document it is very far from being comprehensive.
The Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University has published a series of lengthy papers by Andrea Rotstein in which she reviews(i) various aspects of the Parian Marble and commented that “The Parian Marble, as many have noted, may be disappointing as a historical source. People and events that we deem important are missing: Lycurgus, Solon, Cleisthenes, Pericles, and the Peloponnesian wars, do not appear in the extant text.” (j)
Furthermore, Wikipedia lists pages(h) of wars, battles and sieges involving the Greeks, few of which are mentioned in Parian Marble, although quite a number of Alexander’s exploits are recorded. Even the critical naval Battle of Salamis with the Persians is encapsulated on the ‘Marble’ in a mere seven words – “in which battle the Hellenes were victorious”.
Another name mentioned on the stele and by Plato is that of Deucalion. While there is some debate regarding the exact date of the deluge named after him, all commentators agree that it occurred in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. J.G. Bennett(b) has calculated the date of this Flood to around 1478 BC, while Britannica(c) offers 1529 BC. Stavros Papamarinopoulos developed his own king list based on other ancient sources, which generally parallels the Parian content(d).
A further item of interest is the date ascribed to the Trojan War, on the stele, as 1218 BC, but again some controversy surrounds this precise date. While there are a number of flawed details in the Parian Chronicle, probably due to the use of defective sources or perhaps transcription errors, the very specificity of the recorded dates strongly suggests that it was produced in order to offer a real historical record and not merely to recount Greek mythology.
The chronicle is far from being comprehensive, particularly regarding the earlier years when understandably information is more sparse.
I believe that the full implication of the inscriptions for the Atlantis debate has yet to be realised.
A paper in 2018 by George Kokkos took a brief look at some important events confirmed by the Parian Chronicle(p).
It is interesting that Valerius Coucke (1888-1951) a Belgian theologian who had studied the controversial subject of the chronology of the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel, employed the Parian Marble to support his theories(l). Independently, Edwin R. Thiele (1895-1986), an American archaeologist, who engaged in a study of the same period arrived at similar conclusions and is in complete agreement that the start of the divided monarchy began in Nisan of 931 BC, despite using different methods to arrive at this date. This may be interpreted as confirmation of the historical value of the Parian Marble!
A 2020 paper by Tony Petrangelo offers his view of the Parian Marble and its relevance to both the Atlantis Story and the dating of the Trojan War.(n)
>In March 2024, Caleb Howells writing for Greek Reporter also invoked(r) the Parian Marble to support circa 1500 BC as the era in which Atlantis existed. He particularly refers to the mention of Cecrops, Erechtheus, Erichthonius, and Erysichthon by both Plato and the Parian Marble, mythical kings of Athens, thought by some to have been real historical figures.
Although this is far from conclusive, I note that Plato refers to a spring on the Athenian acropolis (Crit.112d) that was destroyed during an earthquake, apparently at the time of Atlantis. Rainer Kühne notes that this spring only existed for about 25 years but was rediscovered by the Swedish archaeologist, Oscar Broneer, who excavated there from 1959 to 1967. The destruction of the spring and barracks, by an earthquake, was confirmed as having occurring at the end of the 12th century BC. This evidence also points to the 2nd millennium BC as the time of Atlantis!<
An English translation of the Parian Marble is available on the internet(a).
[1401]+ https://archive.org/details/parianchronicle00robegoog
(a) https://www.attalus.org/translate/chronicles.html#239.0
(b) https://www.systematics.org/journal/vol1-2/geophysics/systematics-vol1-no2-127-156.htm#9
(e) https://archive.org/details/parianchronicle00robegoog
(f) http://dbooks.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/books/PDFs/590755570.pdf
(g) https://www.britannica.com/topic/Parian-Chronicle
(h) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Greece
(i) Andrea Rotstein, Literary History in the Parian Marble (archive.org)
(j) 4. The Parian Marble as a Literary Text (archive.org) (Chapter 4)
(k) https://theodora.com/encyclopedia/p/parian_chronicle.html (link broken) See Archive 3638
(l) Valerius Coucke – Wikipedia
(m) https://chs.harvard.edu/chapter/6-literary-history-in-the-parian-marble/ (Chapter 6)
(n) https://atlantis.fyi/blog/the-parian-marble-and-platos-atlantis
(o) Paros Marathi Archaeological Park – Parian Marble Lychnitis
(p) Parian Marble: An incredible ancient chronicle – George Kokkos
(r) When Exactly Is Atlantis Believed to Have Existed? – GreekReporter.com *
Panathenaea
Panathenaea was an important annual festival of Pallas Athene that according to tradition dated from the time of the legendary king Theseus. From 566 BC Pisistratus, the Athenian aristocrat, arranged that every fourth year, when the festival would be known as the Greater Panathenaea, music and poetry competitions were included, together with games and the festival was extended by three or four days.
During annual Lesser Panathenaea there was a solemn procession to the Acropolis in thanksgiving to Athene for having saved the city, giving it victory over the ‘nation of Poseidon’. Ammianus Marcellinus recounts how the peplum, a richly embroidered robe of Minerva (the Roman equivalent of Athena) was carried in this procession, on which could be seen a representation of the war between the Athenians and the Atlantides. That this was a clear reference to the defeat of the Atlanteans is supported by Humboldt, Böckh, Donnelly[1179.91], Baldwin[0653.396] and Joseph.
*Justin Winsor relates the same story with some minor changes “In the Scholia to Plato’s Republic it is said that at the great Panathenaea there was carried in procession a peplum ornamented with representations of the contest between the giants and the gods, while on the peplum carried in the little Panathenaea could be seen the war of the Athenians against the Atlantides. Even Humboldt accepted this as an independent testimony in favor of the antiquity of the story ; but Martin has shown that, apart from the total inconsistency of the report with the expressions of Plato, who places the narration of this forgotten deed of his countrymen at the celebration of the festival of the little Panathenaea, the scholiast has only is read Proclus, who states that the peplum depicted the repulse of the barbarians, i.e. Persians, by the Greeks.” [1673.1.42]
The Persian interpretation is a minority view, which is greatly weakened by the fact that this ceremony was performed at least 138 years before Plato was even born would appear to demonstrate that he could not have invented the existence of Atlantis and in fact the celebratory procession was inaugurated long before the Persian Wars began. Apart from that, the ancient Greeks arrogantly referred to all non-Greeks as ‘barbarians’ and could, in this instance, be applied more aptly to the Atlanteans rather than the Persians.*
The Parian Marble allows us to calculate the date of the first Panathenaea occurring in 1506/5 BC. If ‘the nation of Poseidon’ is not a reference to Atlantis, what does it refer to? One suggestion, perhaps more contentious, is that it is an illusion to the Sea Peoples.
The contest between Athena and Poseidon on the West pediment of the Acropolis is related to the later conflict between Erechtheus, an early king of Athens, and the Eleusinians under the leadership of Eumolpos. Keep in mind that Poseidon is the father of Eumolpos, dated by some to reigning around 1400 BC.
New research by Professor Efrosyni Boutsikas of the University of Kent has shown(a) that the start of the annual festival was signalled by the appearance of the Draco constellation over the Erechtheion on the Acropolis of Athens.
(a) https://www.unreportedheritagenews.com/2011/04/rising-above-acropolis-constellation.html
Earthquake *
An earthquake, not a volcanic eruption resulted in the inundation of Atlantis according to Plato’s account. Although, for those who believe that the destruction of ancient Santorini was the inspiration behind Plato’s Atlantis story, it is not difficult to imagine an earthquake accompanying an eruption such as that which occurred on Thera in the 2nd millennium BC, particularly in an area that had been prone to frequent earthquakes over thousands of years.
My reading of Plato’s description of the demise of Atlantis is that there is no suggestion whatsoever of a volcanic eruption causing its destruction, which rules out the Minoan Hypothesis. Instead, Plato describes it as sinking into a shallow watery grave following an earthquake. Many commentators have suggested that this was the result of a tsunami generated by the earthquake, which can be a common occurrence. Usually, flood waters created by tsunamis eventually return to the sea, exposing the land again. So I have concluded that the most likely explanation is that Atlantis sank as a result of liquefaction, which can accompany earthquakes, depending on the type of soil upon which structures have been built.
Stavros Papamarinopoulos at the 2005 Atlantis Conference highlighted(h) the part played by earthquakes in the description of the ancient Athenian Acropolis in the Atlantis narrative, which he saw as a part of a 50-year ‘seismic storm’ which ravaged the Eastern Mediterranean around the 12th century BC [629.499]. Amos Nur & Eric H. Cline have written about this period of intense seismic activity in a paper on the Academia.edu website(l).
Later, in 365 AD, a massive earthquake near Crete, killed thousands, caused damage in Alexandria and submerged the Roman city of Neapolis on the east coast of Tunisia, which has only recently been rediscovered(j). On Crete, some land was uplifted by as much as 30 feet.
However, earthquakes in the region have continued ever since. Dr. Iain Stewart recounts how an earthquake in Greece in the 5th century BC led to the death of 20,000 Spartans(i).
Earthquakes were once thought to be a form of divine retribution, so when an earthquake in 1570, caused death, damage, and the alteration of the River Po’s course, ‘infallible’ Pope Pius V declared it to be the consequence of god’s wrath against the Jews!(b)
A Ph.D. Dissertation by Jamie Rae Bluestone investigates early understanding of earthquakes, which inevitably touches on the Atlantis story(a).
A recent paper by Marc-Andre Gutscher discussed the Cadiz subduction zone, which appears to be ‘locked’ and consequently liable to generate very strong earthquakes over long return periods. Gutscher offered evidence of deposits dated to 12000 BC which ‘may correspond to the destructive earthquake and tsunami described by Plato’. However, he recognised that Plato describes a Bronze Age society, while Spartel Island in the Strait of Gibraltar would only have been inhabited by ‘simple fishermen’ unlikely to have merited a mention in the records of the Egyptian priests.
In the Mediterranean, the Aegean and Turkey are the most seismically active, followed by Italy (including Sicily)(f) and North Africa from Morocco to Tunisia. There is a European Earthquake Catalogue that graphically illustrates earthquake activity over the past 1,000 years(e). Italy is also home to most of the active volcanoes in the Med.
Ben Davidson, promotes the idea that earthquakes are caused by solar activity (c) and offers what he considers compelling evidence on a YouTube clip(d).
Up-to-date earthquake information is available on the Geofon website(g).
A recent (April 2022) report(k) offered evidence “For the biggest earthquake in human history”……. “a terrifying magnitude-9.5 megaquake that caused a 5,000-mile-long (8,000 kilometers) 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 traveled all the way to New Zealand, where it hurled car-size boulders hundreds of miles inland, the researchers found.”
[The words ‘seismology’ and ‘epicentre’ were coined in 1858 by an Irishman, Robert Mallet (1810-1881)]
(b) https://www.newser.com/story/211354/medieval-quake-rocked-city-moved-big-river-forever.html
(c) https://www.suspicious0bservers.org/
(d) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBvo7lvf
(e) https://www.emidius.eu/SHEEC/catalogue/
(f) https://gisetc.com/european-earthquake-risk-concentrated-around-the-mediterranean/
(g) https://geofon.gfz-potsdam.de/eqinfo/eqinfo.php
(i) https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/greeks/atlantis_01.shtml
(j) Submerged Ancient Roman City Of Neapolis Discovered In Tunisia (archive.org) *
(k) Scientists find evidence for biggest earthquake in human history | Live Science
(l) (99+) 2000 Nur and Cline JAS “Poseidon’s Horses” article | Eric H Cline – Academia.edu
Acropolis
Acropolis is the name given to the central highest position in ancient Greek cities, occupied by the principal religious and civic buildings. The Athenian acropolis was crowned by the magnificent Parthenon, constructed between 447-432 BC. An interesting claim is that the Parthenon was once ‘a riot of colour’(d). Another remarkable feature of the building is that its breadth has been carefully measured at 101.34 feet, which is exactly a second of latitude at the equator(b). The acropolis of Athens is the best known and often erroneously referred to as ‘The’ Acropolis. It is worth noting that the general description of an acropolis is mirrored in Plato’s description of the central buildings of Atlantis 
that were also located on elevated ground. Writers such as Jürgen Spanuth[015], Rainer W. Kühne(a) as well as Papamarinopoulos(c) have concluded that the acropolis of Athens provides convincing evidence that the war between Atlantis and Athens took place around 1200 BC. Papamarinopoulos comments further that the “Athens of Critias, is proved a reality of the 12th century B.C., described only by Plato and not by historians, such as Herodotus, Thucydides and others. Analysts of the past have mixed Plato’s fabricated Athens presented in his dialogue Republic with the non-fabricated Athens of his dialogue Critias. This serious error has deflected researchers from their target to interpret Plato’s text efficiently.” (e)
Plato referred to dwellings for warriors (Crit. 112b) situated to the north of the Acropolis that were built in the 15th century BC and were not located again until the earlier part of our 20th century. He also refers to a spring (Critias 112d) that was destroyed during an earthquake. Kühne notes that this spring only existed for about 25 years but was found by the Swedish archaeologist, Oscar Broneer (1894-1992), who excavated there from 1959 to 1967. The destruction of the spring and barracks, by an earthquake, was confirmed as having occurring at the end of the 12th century BC. Plato describes how these catastrophes, of inundation and earthquake, that caused the destruction on the Acropolis, were only survived by those living inland, who were uneducated illiterate people, resulting in the knowledge of writing being lost.
>Papamarinopoulos claims [750.73] that the Athens described by Plato in the Critias is an accurate description of Mycenaean Athens and then leaps to the conclusion that because the details of ancient Athens provided by Plato are correct then it must follow that his depiction of Atlantis is equally reliable! For me this is an unacceptable non sequitur, as Plato lived ln Athens and would have been fully aware of the city’s landmarks and tradition. On the other hand, he had not been to Atlantis, and in fact, he was somewhat vague regarding its actual location. Jason Colavito also took issue with Papamarinopoulos’ contention(f).<
J. Chadwick & Michael Ventris have shown that Linear B was written in an early Greek language and that in Greece it remained in use until around 1200 BC. Subsequently, the Greeks were without a script until the 8th century BC. This date of 1200 BC would appear to match the end of the war between Athens and Atlantis except for Plato’s reference to the earthquake being accompanied by a flood that was the third before the flood of Deucalion, usually dated to at least some centuries before 1200 BC, which implies an earlier date for the Atlantean war.
Collina-Girard in common with many others seems convinced that Atlantis was destroyed around 9500 BC but that Plato’s description of Atlantis is fictional. Collina-Girard’s theory of an Atlantis in the Gibraltar Strait inundated at the end of the Ice Age many thousands of years before the Acropolis existed, forced him to denounce Plato’s Bronze Age descriptions as fiction otherwise he could not justify the exploration of Spartel Island.
(a) Location and Dating of Atlantis (archive.org)
(b) https://www.dioi.org/kn/stade.pdf
(d) https://www.livescience.com/649-parthenon-riot-color.html
(e) https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/geosociety/article/view/11165
Antelo Justiano, David
David Antelo Justiano (1971- ) is a Bolivian engineer who has identified a plain in the Beni region of Bolivia, north-east of La Paz, as that referred to by Plato as being adjacent to Atlantis. Antelo has posted a video on YouTube(a), which offers a comparison of the topography of the region with Plato’s description of Atlantis. It includes a network of pre-Columbian waterways and a 
circular feature, which might have been the city. Antelo gives the following co-ordinates for the acropolis, 13° 09′ 35.6” S and 65º 33′ 36 .5” W.
Allan & Delair note that the Beni Basin is also home to features comparable with the Carolina Bays of North America[014.287]. In August 2013 the discovery was announced(d) of middens in the Beni region that were dated to 8000 BC.
Jim Allen, is the leading advocate of Atlantis in the Andes, specifically on the Altiplano to the west of Lake Poopo. Allen refutes Antelo’s claim at the end of a website(b) dealing with Plato’s Plain of Atlantis.
>However, the following excerpt from one of Allen’s essays(f) seems contradictory – “To the NW of the marsh exists the Beni and Mojos territories in Bolivia where recent archaeology reveals another unknown civilisation which dug canals connecting complete river systems and created a system of agriculture using raised plots extending throughout Bolivia into Amazonia.
Marshes are good places for the growing of reeds, excellent for constructing the giant reed ships which may have roamed the world’s oceans and this civilisation which existed on mounds in the Beni region has as yet no name, but as their lands are under water due to flooding for several months of the year, surely there can be no better name than people of Atlantis”<
Antelo published his thesis in 2008 in a book entitled La Conspiración Atlante (The Atlantis Conspiracy).
In 2021, Antelo published Atlantida – Los Paraisos Perdidos: Civilización Hidráulica de los Antis (Atlantis – Paradise Lost: Hydraulic Civilization of the Antis).[1933] A YouTube clip (in Spanish) offers further information(e).
(a) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwAvqvI-ZQU
(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20200707234820/http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/plaincomparison.htm
(c) https://noatlantida.galeon.com/Index.htm (Spanish) (offline October ’14)
(d) https://www.livescience.com/39269-ancient-trash-heaps-reveal-human-settlement.html
(e) ATLANTIS MOXOS – YouTube (Spanish)
(f) http://www.geocities.ws/myessays/LocationofTarshish.htm *