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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 »
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 »
Aegean Sea
Kyrki, Costa
Costa Kyrki is a successful Italian architect with an interest in Atlantis. In 2014, after twenty years of research, he published a paper entitled Lost Atlantis in which he placed Atlantis, also known as Aigas, in the Aegean Sea, from which it got its name. He specifically locates sunken Atlantis between the island of Samos and Miletus on what is now mainland Turkey. The destruction of Atlantis he attributes to ‘a fall of meteorites’ sometime between 5000 and 3000 BC(a)!
Euclid of Megara
Euclid of Megara (435-365 BC) was a Greek philosopher and a pupil of Socrates. Although he wrote six dialogues, none have survived. Our principal source is Diogenes Laërtius who used his text.
Josiah Priest refers to Euclid as a believer in the reality of Atlantis in his 1835 book American Antiquities [1143.82/3]. Apparently, Euclid met with Anacharsis the Scythian philosopher and their discussions turned to the ‘convulsions of the globe’ including the separation of Sicily from Italy and the destruction of Atlantis.
Similarly, in the Atlantic, “there existed, according to ancient traditions, an island as large as Africa, which, with all its wretched inhabitants was swallowed up by an earthquake.”
Beyond the isthmus, of which I have just spoken, said Euclid, according to ancient traditions, an island as large as Africa, which, with all its wretched inhabitants, was swallowed up by an earthquake.
Priest then refers to Euclid again [p.83] claiming that “here, then, is another witness, besides Solon, who lived 300 years before the time of Euclid, who testifies to the past existence of the island of Atalantis.”
Furthermore, according to Euclid, it was the Black Sea that broke into the Aegean Sea, rather than the other way round. Since Anacharsis came from the northern coast of the Black Sea we can reasonably assume that he had local knowledge to back up this suggestion!
Daily Express (UK)
The Daily Express is a well-known British tabloid newspaper. Together with its sister publications, The 
Sunday Express and its online Express.co.uk, it has recently set a new record for the number of ‘might be Atlantis’ articles published, all with the byline of Callum Hoare. During the first three weeks of 2019, he has managed to produce four stories suggesting four different locations for Atlantis – Doggerland(a), Malta(b), Azores(c) and the Bahamas(d). But I did not have to wait long for the next regurgitation from Hoare, with another piece mined from a recent Amazon Prime documentary, where the Atlantis in the Canaries theory is reviewed (21.1.19)(e). I note that Hoare was also the author of similar BS Atlantis stories for another alleged UK newspaper, The Daily Star. The quality of research continues to be abysmal, citations are often years old, facts are mangled and quite misleading. Definitely ‘Fake News’.
Unfortunately, this outpouring of nonsense continued on in 2020. June 30th saw the ‘Express’ publish another article(f) by Hoare with an “Atlantis Located” headline. This gem begins by repeating the view of ‘expert’ Matthew Sibson, who advocates Rockall as the site of Atlantis and then switches to the opinions of Christos Djonis who claims the Aegean Sea as the home of Atlantis. According to Hoare, in this instance, Djonis refers to the research of Mark McMenamin of around 25 years ago who noticed on some Carthaginian gold staters of the fourth century BC that they had tiny engravings that he subjectively interpreted as rough maps showing both Asia and America and centred on Sardinia(g). This, according to Djonis, indicates the possibility that the Greeks may have had knowledge of America!
Djonis and Hoare were obviously unaware that in 2000, McMenamin was obliged to confirm that the coins in question were fakes(k) as revealed in his book, Phoenicians, Fakes and Barry Fell [1738].
Furthermore, Djonis is contradicted by the clear statement of Herodotus that the Greeks only knew three continents, Europe, Asia and Libya (Africa)(h). Finally, if Djonis thinks that Atlantis was located in the Aegean what has America got to do with his theory?
July 2020 saw Hoare pollute the Express with another ‘Atlantis Found’ piece, this time locating it off the coast of Cornwall(j). This story is a quarter of a century old and a few years ago its credibility and even the existence of the institution to which its original author, Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev, was supposed to belong to, was brought into question(i).
Hoare ended the year with another pathetic attempt(l) to revive interest in the Minoan Hypothesis as well as the failed claim that the Spanish Donana Marshes held the remains of Atlantis or Tartessos!
>In January 2021, he continued his recycling of old Atlantis claims, with the 35-year-old story of the submerged rock formation off Yonaguni in Japan(m). Later in the same month we were regaled with yet another “Atlantis Found?” headline(n), which led on to report that the remains of another submerged city had been discovered off the Greek island of Zakynthos. No direct link with Atlantis was claimed!<
(g) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236000049_Cartography_on_Carthaginian_Gold_Staters
(h) Herodotus, Histories 4.42.
(i) https://shimajournal.org/issues/v10n2/k.-Hallerton-Shima-v10n2.pdf
Rambling, J. P.
J. P. Rambling (a pseudonym?) is the author of the Redefining Atlantis website(a), which started in January 2016 and offers a serious investigation of matters relating to Atlantis. He favours an Aegean location for Atlantis with the city situated in the south of an enlarged landmass, where Santorini lies today.
Greece
Greece as the home of Atlantis was unknown until the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries when the Minoan Hypothesis began to evolve and is still one of the more popular theories today. Other locations in the Aegean have been proposed by researchers such as Paulino Zamarro and C. A. Djonis as well as three Italian linguists, Facchetti, Negri and Notti, who presented a paper(a) to the 2005 Atlantis Conference outlining their reasons for supporting an Aegean backdrop to the Atlantis story.
Mainland Greece has also been proposed as home to Atlantis. In the middle of the 20th century R. L. Scranton suggested Lake Copaïs in Boeotia, an idea later modified by Oliver D. Smith, who subsequently completely abandoned the idea of Atlantis as a reality. More recently, it has been proposed that Atlantis was just an allegory of Athens and that its port, ancient Piraeus, was partly the inspiration behind Plato’s description of Atlantis(b). On the other hand, the Dutch linguist, Joannes Richter, also views the Plato’s story as fiction and suggested that “probably Plato used the model of the draining and irrigation system at Lake Copais as a model for the ancient metropolis at the ‘island Atlantis’ in an imaginary war between Athens and Atlantis.”(c)
The sunken Greek cities of Pavlopetri and Helike have also prompted suggestions of a connection with Plato’s lost island.
(a) https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/document-250811/
(b) Archive 2887 | (atlantipedia.ie) (see last paragraphs)
(c) https://www.academia.edu/41219454/The_War_against_Atlantis?sm=a (link broken) *
Apulia, Izabol *
Izabol Apulia (1977- ) is a young dedicated hobbyist cartographer, who lives in Mesa, Arizona. She has developed a huge collection of maps(a), principally of Mediterranean islands, that depicts them at various stages between the Last Glacial Maximum and the present, showing how the rising sea levels gradually reduced them in size. She is highly critical of the sea level data developed and published by Kurt Lambeck and his team, preferring to use her own figures .
Apulia is also an inveterate blogger, using the name of ‘mapmistress’. She frequently published text to accompany individual maps that are often quite interesting. However, when she commented on Atlantis, in my opinion, she was seriously in error. Her big claim is that English translations of Plato’s text have been ‘botched’, in particular the work of Benjamin Jowett, whom she claims ‘invented’ the word Atlantis, which she further claims reads as ‘Atlas’ in the original text!
Not content with that, she places the Pillars of Heracles on Rhodes, with Atlantis to the north of that island in the Aegean.(b)
(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20180215195713/https://mapmistress.com/
(b) https://pseudoastro.wordpress.com/2009/02/01/planet-x-and-2012-the-pole-shift-geographic-spin-axis-explained-and-debunked/ (about half way down page)
(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20160624002531/https://mapmistress.blog.com/timescale/ or See Archive 2566 | (atlantipedia.ie) *
Djonis, Christos A.
Christos A. Djonis is a Greek Cypriot now living in the United States. His first book Cyprus-The Island of Aphrodite, is a travel guide to that island. He has now ventured into much deeper waters with his latest book Uchronia-Atlantis Revealed[0935]. The central core of his theory is that Atlantis lay in the Aegean Sea, to the north of Thera, which itself contained the capital city of the Atlantean confederation. He gives no credit to Paulino Zamarro who proposed a similar location fifteen years ago[0024].
Djonis accepts 9600 BC as the time of its existence as the lower sea level then would have created a single landmass with a large central plain. Among his other 
claims is the idea that during the Bronze Age the Minoans “were not only heavily mining copper from the area around Lake Superior, but they were regularly carrying tobacco and other spices from the Americas back to Santorini.”(d)
He supports this link with North America with the geographical spread of the human mitochondrial DNA designated Haplogroup X. In his own words(e),
“While most geneticists today maintain that haplogroup X walked to America via the Bering Strait, genetic maps show that the furthest region east of the Mediterranean with small traces of haplogroup X, is the Altai Republic in Southern Russia. No traces of haplogroup X exist between Altai Republic and the greater region of the Great Lakes. If haplogroup X infiltrated North America via the Bering Strait, why then does the greatest concentration of haplogroup X (away from the Mediterranean) exist around the Great Lakes and not in Alaska or alongside the west coast? Most importantly, how do we otherwise explain that heavy traces of haplogroup X incidentally also exist in Scotland, Orkney Islands, Faroe islands and Iceland, essentially all the island stops to North America from Europe.”
Not unexpectedly, Jason Colavito, who denies the existence of Atlantis, wrote a highly critical review of Djonis’ claims and had further exchanges with Djonis in the comments section of his blog(i).
Even more damning is that Djonis cites the 1996 claim of Mark McMenamin that ancient Carthaginian coins depicted America. Unfortunately, Djonis was apparently unaware that in 2000, McMenamin was obliged to confirm that the coins in question were fakes(k) as revealed in his book, Phoenicians, Fakes and Barry Fell [1738]. Nevertheless, as recently as 2020 Djonis was still being quoted in the media(m)(n) as using the fake coins as evidence for the existence of Atlantis. He continued to tout this falsehood into September 2021(o).
>In a December 2022 article, Djonis suggested that Atlantis lies under 400 feet of water in the Aegean(p). Unfortunately, this conflicts with Plato’s text which tells us that as late as Plato’s time the place where Atlantis had been submerged was still a maritime hazard. Keeping in mind that Kurt Lambeck has demonstrated(q) from a study of Roman fish pens that the sea level along the Italian coast, 2000 years ago, was just 1.35 metres below today’s levels and if we add a generous additional foot to take us back to Plato’s day, we can calculate that Atlantis should now be in around 5, not 400 feet, of water.<
Djonis does not explain why Plato unambiguously stated that the Atlanteans came from the west (Tim.25b & Crit.114c) and yet Djonis’ Atlantis is situated to the southeast of Athens and north of Egypt? In fact, what Plato said was that the invasion came from the Atlantic Sea (pelagos). Although there is some disagreement about the location of this Atlantic Sea, all candidates proposed so far are far west of both Athens and Egypt.
Instead, he prefers to parrot the discredited ancient astronaut theories of Zechariah Sitchin, based on his flawed interpretation of Sumerian texts. These include claims that humans were ‘created’ by these extraterrestrial visitors. In fact, he wastes over half his book discussing UFOs and ETs.
In April 2016 Djonis had an article published on the Ancient Origins website(j), in which he discussed Sitchin’s theory of Planet X without arriving at any conclusions. Why?
I did not find Djonis convincing regarding either the Annunaki or Atlantis.
January 2016 had Djonis plunge into the muddy waters relating to the early discovery of America with a three-part article on the Ancient Origins website(f). Not unexpectedly, Jason Colavito had few caustic comments to offer on this latest offering from Djonis(g).
Recently, Djonis and I exchanged emails in which I offered some of my reasons for rejecting his ideas. Clearly unhappy with my comments, he has now used Ancient Origins to rehash(h) his flawed ideas. Included in his offering is a sarcastic reference to me as an ‘expert’, a title I have never used or claimed. Apart from his support for the idea of ancient astronauts, which he carefully avoided in this recent article, my main gripe is that Djonis’ is content to discard elements in Plato’s account without any justifiable reason. Djonis presumptuously wrote of me that there is “no doubt in his mind that Atlantis was a myth.” On the contrary, I believe that it is highly probable that Atlantis existed, but, it is also quite clear that Plato’s narrative contains mythical elements that may have impeded researchers seeking to identify the historical Atlantis.
In 2021, Djonis published Atlantis: The Find of a Lifetime [1857], in which, unsurprisingly, he just recycles the Uchronia material along with a degree of padding. This new and ‘expanded’ edition is in fact listed as 20 pages shorter. As of June 21st, I found it strange that the book is not mentioned on Djonis’ website(l)!
A YouTube clip(b) and PowerPoint presentation(c) are also available.
(a) https://www.atlantisislandrevealed.com/
(b) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7PphlD9mw&feature=youtu.be
(c) https://vimeo.com/79041220
(d) https://www.atlantisislandrevealed.com/#!the-minoans/cr2t
(i) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/new-atlantis-claim-places-lost-continent-in-Cyclades
(l) ChristosDjonis.com: Author | BOOKS (cdjonis.com)
(p) Atlantis: How Plato’s Story Corresponds to Real History (greekreporter.com) *
Pindar
Pindar (522-443 BC) was one of the nine ancient Greek lyric poets. He refers to the ‘Pillars of Heracles’ in three of his victory odes, Olympian 3.43-45, Nemean 3.19-23 and Isthmian 4.11-13, doing so in a manner which indicates that the term was used as a metaphor for the limit of human (Greek) experience. As such, the location of the Pillars would have changed as the colonial and commercial expansion of the Greeks developed beyond the Aegean.
>One commentator has interpreted Pindar’s Olympian Ode 3 as referring to the Pillars of Herakles being placed at the ‘Springs of Ister’ on the Danube near Belgrade, noting that “this is the very edge of Pindar’s Celtic world and a point beyond which a Greek probably did not want to venture.“(b)<
Oliver D.Smith has drawn attention to the Nemean Ode 4, 65-70 as having echoes of Plato’s description in it(a).
(a) https://atlantisresearch.wordpress.com/ (now offline)
Strait of Gibraltar
The Strait of Gibraltar according to Greek mythology was created by Herakles. Neville Chipulina explains that “it seems that the person responsible for the myths about Hercules was Peisander of Rhodes, a 7th century BC Greek epic poet who apparently got the story from an unknown Pisinus of Lindus who almost certainly plagiarised it from somebody else. In other words, it’s a pretty old story.”(c)
The Strait is very much a part of many current Atlantis theories. Primarily, it is contended that the region itself held the location of Atlantis. This is based on Plato’s statement that Eumelos, also known as Gadeirus, the twin brother of Atlas the first king of Atlantis gave his name to Gades, known today as Cadiz. Andalusia in Southern Spain has been the focus of attention for over a hundred years. In recent years Georgeos Diaz-Montexano and his rival Jacques Colina- Girard have been investigating the waters of the Strait itself while south of the Strait Jonas Bergman has advanced his theory that Atlantis was located just across the Strait in Morocco.
Although there is general acceptance that the Pillars of Heracles had their final resting place in the vicinity of the Strait of Gibraltar, it must be noted that there have been other candidates at different times with equally valid claims. The location of the ‘Pillars’ referred to by Plato at the time of Atlantis is the subject of continuing debate.
Strato, the philosopher, quoted by Strabo, spoke of a dam separating the Atlantic and the Mediterranean being breached by a cataclysm. This idea was reinforced by comments of Seneca. Furthermore, a number of Arabic writers, including Al-Mas’udi, Al-Biruni and Al-Idrisi, have all concurred with this idea of a Gibraltar land bridge in late prehistory.
A more radical theory is that of Paulino Zamarro who contends that the Strait was in fact closed by a landbridge during the last Ice Age because of the lower sea levels together with silting. When the waters rose and breached the landbridge, he believes that the flood submerged Atlantis, which he situates in the Aegean. Others support Zamarro’s idea of a Gibraltar Dam amongst whom are Constantin Benetatos and Joseph S. Ellul.
Terry Westerman on his heavily illustrated website surveys impact craters globally. He suggests that “The Strait of Gibraltar was formed by two meteor impacts. The first blasted the round area in the western Mediterranean Sea to form a land bridge between Spain and Morocco.” He maintains that a second impact broke the landbridge around 5.33 million years ago, creating what is called the Zanclean Flood which refilled the then desiccated Mediterranean(d).
A German-language website(a) presented some of the following data+, apparently recording the dramatic widening of the Strait of Gibraltar between 400 BC and 400 AD. The same list was included in the ‘Strait of Gibraltar’ entry of the German Wikipedia(b) until a few years ago. It has since been removed.
Alexander Braghine offered [156.139] similar data*, which, unfortunately, is also unreferenced.
+Damastes of Sigeum, circa 400 BC. – about 1.3 km
+Pseudo-Skylax, probably fourth Century BC – about 1.3 km
*Turiano Greslio? 300BC – 8.0 km
*+Titus Livius (Livy) 59 BC- 17 AD – 10.5 km
+Strabo 63 BC- 24 AD – from 9.5 to 13.0 km
+Pomponius Mela , 50 AD – about the 15.0 km
+Pliny the Elder, 50 AD – about 15.0 km
*+Victor Vicensa (*Vitensa?), 400 AD – about 18 km
>Procopius, 550 AD – about 15.0 km<
The above figures suggest that in the latter half of the first millennium BC, the Strait of Gibraltar was gradually widened.>However, the figures given suggest that between 400 and 550 AD the Straits narrowed again seems absurd.<Nevertheless, until the methods used and all the data on offer have been verified, the idea must be treated with great caution.
My list had originally included Euctemon, the 5th century BC Athenian astronomer, however, Werner E. Friedrich notes that Euctemon was referring to the Sea of Marmara near the entrance to the Black Sea [0695.38].
However, more recently, John Jensen Jnr. has offered a comparable, if shorter, number of dates showing the reducing width of the strait the further back you go, from which he extrapolated that around 3450 YBP when he believes that a landbridge there was breached(e).
Georgeos Diaz-Montexano has also referred to the descriptions by ancient writers of the Strait of Gibraltar indicating a width of around two kilometres. Unfortunately, he does not cite references(f). He also is sympathetic to the existence of an earlier landbridge at Gibraltar.
(a) https://de.academic.ru/dic.nsf/dewiki/1337738
(b) https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stra%C3%9Fe_von_Gibraltar&oldid=60093153
(c) https://gibraltar-intro.blogspot.ie/2015/10/bc-pillars-of-hercules-if-ordinary.html
(d) The Formation of the Strait of Gibraltar (archive.org)
(e) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=514
(f) https://web.archive.org/web/20200630064033/http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1011563/posts
Neanderthals
The Neanderthals were claimed by the late Colin Wilson to have possessed highly sophisticated mathematical and astronomical knowledge and were precursors of the Atlantis civilisation. This extremely speculative assertion is made in Wilson’s Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals [336], a book that wanders all over the place with references to an extensive range of ancient mysteries from the Maya to Mary Magdalene without offering anything tangible to substantiate his central thesis.
Stelios Pavlou has noted that in 2001, Peter Jakubowski published ‘Atlantis of the Neanderthals‘, in which he argues that Atlantis was a Neanderthal civilization that was destroyed in 4804 BC’.”(ah) In 2014, Jakubowski revised and expanded the paper into an ebook [1970] with the subtitle Colin Wilson Corrected. Pavlou also noted that “Jakubowski formerly supported the notion of Atlantis in Sicily and Malta. It is unclear if this is still the case as all mentions of Sicily and Malta were removed in the book’s recent revision.”
The idea of a Neanderthal connection with Atlantis is totally at variance with Plato’s description of a literate Bronze Age civilisation. While many atlantologists have chosen to reinterpret, modify or ignore aspects of Plato’s narrative, they have usually made some effort to justify their stance. Wilson, however, simply disregards the consistent Bronze Age references by Plato without any attempt at an explanation for this omission. Although it is generally accepted that the Neanderthals had died out by 20,000 BC and Wilson seems to believe that the cataclysmic flooding of Atlantis took place around 9500 BC, it leaves an insurmountable gap of over 10,000 years unexplained by him.
Model by Alfons and Adrie Kennis
Neanderthals are accepted to have been indigenous to Europe, although the are sites in Israel attributed to them. As far as I’m aware, the most southerly evidence in Europe of Neanderthal activity has been in Malta(l), which is outlined in Dr. Anton Mifsud’s beautifully illustrated book, Dossier Malta – Neanderthal [1587]+, which can now be read online.
In a 2008 article, NatGeo reported on a study of skulls that suggested that the Human-Neanderthal divergence took place around 300,000 to 400,000 years ago.
A January 2010 report(a) dated the demise of the last Neanderthal at around 35,000 BC, which conflicts with the last paragraph. An even more eyebrow-raising claim was made two years later in February 2012, when New Scientist magazine published an article(b) that suggested that the Neanderthals had a maritime history in the Aegean 130,000 years ago! However, to make such a claim does not seem to take adequate account of the fact that at the time sea levels were much lower and as a consequence, some islands were considerably larger and in many cases, individual islands that we know today were joined to each other or generally required shorter sea journeys between them.
Nevertheless, ongoing excavations at a site on the coast of Jersey, one of the British Channel Islands off the coast of France are indicating that “Jersey may have been one of the last outposts of the Neanderthals in north-west Europe.”(u)
Now the suggestion has been made that the Neanderthals were possibly the first cave artists. This claim was put forward in the journal Nature (15/6/12). The El Castillo cave in northern Spain has some of this art dated to at least 40,800 years ago.
A 2021 study has suggested that a reversal of the magnetic poles around 42,000 years may have been a cause of the demise of the Neanderthals!(ac)
It was also proposed by Peter Fotis Kapnistos, who worked with Spyridon Marinatos, that Neanderthal Man may also have mastered sea travel and possibly played a part in the development of the Atlantis story(c). The idea of Neanderthal sailors has gained further support in a paper(s) by Professor George Ferentinos of the University of Patras.
Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado’s Museum of Natural History has recently (April 2004) expressed the view that the intellectual abilities of the Neanderthals have been seriously underestimated(d). Similar views are expressed in an article(e) which traces the early characterisation of Neanderthals as ‘primitive’ and contrasts that with the current revised opinions that attribute much greater intellectual capabilities to them.
In 2018, an article by Joanna Gillen on the Ancient Origins website offers more evidence that the Neanderthals had a more sophisticated lifestyle than previously thought(n). This is based on the finds from the cave at Abric Romani in Spain’s Catalonia. For obvious reasons, the technological capabilities of Neanderthals are only hinted at from the scanty evidence available so far. One such clue was the discovery(r) that they seemed to have used birch tar to haft projectile points.
A December 2022 article offers evidence for possible technology transfer from Neanderthals to modern humans(aj).
Neanderthal cave discoveries continue to surprise. In 2016, Nature published(t) details of investigations carried out in the Bruniquel Cave in southwest France. The occupation was dated to around 175,000 years ago. Furthermore, apart from evidence of the use of fire, broken stalagmites are carefully arranged in circles.
An extensive two-part article describing the Neanderthals as ‘human’ is available online(g). This view is currently championed by Portuguese archaeologist João Zilhão, whose views are featured in an interesting article(m) in the May 2019 edition of the Smithsonian Magazine.
There appears to be an acceptance that many of us have some Neanderthal DNA within us. While this is usually in the form of small snippets, an article in New Scientist magazine has reported that longer strings have been identified in Melanesian populations(o) in the Pacific!
In 2015 the results of the mapping of the entire genome of a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal were published, which concluded that “There is now conclusive evidence that Neanderthals bred with Homo sapiens.”(f)
Further support has come in an article by Ashley Cowie with the eye-catching title of “Neanderthal Interbreeding with Humans Rampant on Jersey?” He relates that “Now, re-analysis of thirteen ‘48,000-year-old Neanderthal teeth’ originally discovered in Jersey between 1910 and 1911 has revealed that while they have always been assumed to have come from a single Neanderthal, they actually came from at least two individuals. Furthermore, the thirteen Neanderthal teeth from both individuals ‘share traits that are distinctive of modern humans.’ In short, this means Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had a “shared ancestry.”(ab)
Also in 2015, genetic studies pushed back the origins of Neanderthals to a startling 765,000 years ago(i), twice as old as previously thought.
A 2020 report(v) claims that “African populations have been revealed to share Neanderthal ancestry for the first time, in findings that add a new twist to the tale of ancient humans and our closest known relatives.” and that “The latest findings suggest human and Neanderthal lineages are more closely intertwined than once thought and point to far earlier interbreeding events, about 200,000 years ago.”
Geneticist David Reich had been sceptical of the idea that humans and Neanderthals had interbred until he engaged in a study of the DNA extracted from 40,000-year-old Neanderthal bones found in a Croatian cave. The result was that he was forced to conclude “that humans and Neanderthals did interbreed in their time together in Europe. Possibly even more than once.”(p)
>“Until now (October 2023), Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) were believed to have first interbred earlier than 75,000 years ago, according to a 2016 genetic analysis in the journal Nature. However, a new analysis, published Oct. 13, in the journal Current Biology, has revealed that one group of Homo sapiens from Africa interbred with Neanderthals in Eurasia around 250,000 years ago.”(ak)<
By way of contrast, another 2020 report highlighted the conflict between Neanderthals and humans, suggesting that “The best evidence that Neanderthals not only fought but excelled at war, is that they met us and weren’t immediately overrun. Instead, for around 100,000 years, Neanderthals resisted modern human expansion.” (z)
In April 2016, the results of a study(j) of their ‘Y’ chromosome suggested that Neanderthals had diverged “almost 590,000 years ago from humans.”
Earlier studies based on skull size and shape suggested that the split took place between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago(af). This research is ongoing as one commentator(ag) in 2013 expressed it – “Researchers have suggested a range of dates for when the last common ancestor of our lineage and Neanderthals could have lived.
The dates range from more than 800,000 years ago to less than 300,000, with many estimates in the neighborhood of 400,000 years ago. According to some studies, this time frame would seem to match that of the extinct species Homo heidelbergensis, which has been found in Africa, Europe, and possibly Asia.
But this may not be so. A new study theorizes that the last common ancestor of H. sapiens and Neanderthals lived longer ago than previously expected, with fossil evidence yet to be uncovered.”
A study(x), published on 3 June 2020 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B concluded that “Ancient humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans were genetically closer than polar bears and brown bears, and so, like the bears, were able to easily produce healthy, fertile hybrids according to a study, led by the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology.”
The apparent relatively rapid extinction of the Neanderthals has, understandably, led to a great amount of speculation. One suggestion is that the massive eruption of Campi Flegrei, a supervolcano west of Naples, 39,000 years ago led to consequent cooling that may even have helped bring about the end of the Neanderthals(aa).
One of the most recent(h) suggests that the lack of control of fire by the Neanderthals, in contrast with their human neighbours, was probably a factor that led to their demise! However, the use of fire by Neanderthals in Tuscany now appears settled with the discovery of tools shaped with fire(q).
2020 saw evidence emerge which suggested that even as far back as 41,000 – 52,000 years ago the Neanderthals had mastered the making of cords(w).
Even more important is the long-running debate on whether Neanderthals had the physical equipment that enabled them to speak. For a long time, it was thought that they were missing a pharynx and a larynx and so lacked speech. A 2021 paper brings the discussion up to date with evidence that Neanderthal speech was a possibility although not of the same quality as modern humans(ai).
It has now been reliably demonstrated that Neanderthals also played music using a flutelike instrument made of bear bone around 50,000 years ago(y).
Although we see above, various claims about the various technologies employed by Neanderthals, there is still debate regarding a fundamental capability, namely whether they had the ability to communicate with speech. The evidence seems to favour that they had.
More relevant to life today is a report(k) that the average 3% that modern Europeans share with Neanderthals has left us with a greater risk of nicotine addiction and depression.
A number of interesting articles relating to Neanderthals are also available on the q-mag website(ae).
[1587]+ https://www.academia.edu/40076100/DOSSIER_MALTA_-_NEANDERTHAL?email_work_card=view-paper
(a) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100126220321.htm
(b) https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328544.800-neanderthals-were-ancient-mariners.html
(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20090321022014/https://ufodigest.com/news/0309/more-terrible4.php
(d) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140430133054.htm
(e) https://nautil.us/our-neanderthal-complex-235115/
(g) https://theorbo1.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/neanderthals-they-were-human/
(h) https://www.livescience.com/50532-neanderthals-died-no-fire.html
(p) https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/03/ancient-dna-history/554798/
(q) https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/neanderthals-used-fire-to-make-tools/
(r) https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/neanderthal-glue-was-a-bigger-deal-than-we-thought/
(s) https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328544-800-neanderthals-were-ancient-mariners/
(t) https://www.nature.com/articles/nature18291
(u) https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51299755
(w) https://www.capradio.org/news/npr/story?storyid=828400733
(x) https://phys.org/news/2020-06-humans-neanderthals-polar-brown.html
(ab) Neanderthal Interbreeding with Humans Rampant on Jersey? | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)
(ad) Did Neanderthals Have the Capacity for Verbal Language? gizmodo.com)
(ae) https://www.q-mag.org/_search.html?req=Neanderthals
(af) Archive 6625 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(ag) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/131021-neanderthal-human-evolution-teeth
(ah) Peter Jakubowski – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)
(ai) https://www.sapiens.org/biology/did-neanderthals-speak/
(ak) Humans and Neanderthals mated 250,000 years ago, much earlier than thought | Live Science *