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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 »
Ahnenerbe
Pringle, Heather (M)
Heather Pringle “is a Canadian science writer who specializes in 
archaeology.” She has written many articles as well as a number of books and has her own website(a). Among her work is the prize-winning The Master Plan[0032], in which she charts the work of the Nazi Ahnenerbe, founded by Himmler, “whose mission was to search for the lost civilization of an ancient master race.” Included in this fascinating book is an interesting account of the Hermann Wirth’s obsession with Atlantis in the North Atlantic as well as Edmund Kiss’ work at Tiwanaku in Bolivia.
*[A recent paper(b) by Pringle and Krista Langlois offers evidence that the Bering Strait during the last Ice Age was in fact a vast area of land the size of Australia and that it provided a crossing point, for humans and animals earlier and for longer than previously believed.
Pringle has also turned her attention to the Vikings in an interesting National Geographic article(c).]*
(a) https://heatherpringle.com/
*[(b) https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-long/sunken-bridge-size-continent
(c) National Geographic, March 2017 p.34]*
Evola, Julius
Julius Evola (1898-1974) was an Italian philosopher and although he was 
politically right-wing in his views, he did not formally join the National Fascist Party. However, when Italy surrendered to the Allies in September 1943, he moved to Germany where he worked as a researcher for the SS Ahnenerbe.
According to Evola in his Rivolta contro il mondo modern[1326], he claimed that the Atlanteans were Hyperboreans, Nordic supermen, who originated at the North Pole. It has been noted that many of his ideas regarding prehistory are closely related to Theosophy(b). This book has been translated into English[1327] and is available online.
According to Evola in his Revolt Against the Modern World (1934), he claimed the Atlanteans were Hyperboreans, Nordic supermen, who originated at the North Pole.
The New York Times of February 10th 2017(c) has, worryingly, identified racist Evola as a possible influence on the thinking of Stephen K. Bannon, one of Donald Trump’s top advisors.
There is a website dedicated to Evola’s work(a).
(a) Julius Evola – His Main Views In His Own Words (archive.org) *
(b) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Evola
(c) Steve Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists – The New York Times (archive.org)
Czeppan, Rudolf *
Rudolf Czeppan (1923-2003) was an ardent supporter of Jürgen Spanuth’s theory of Atlantis in the North Sea. Czeppan proposed that an impact by an extraterrestrial body south of Heligoland caused the sinking of Atlantis. He also details the unprofessional manner in which so many academics, particularly German, treated Spanuth’s Atlantis theories.
Czeppan’s paper, originally in German(a), can be read here interlined with a machine translation in English(b).
There have been suggestions that Spanuth was more than a mere nazi ‘sympathiser’ and consequently may have had access to Ahnenerbe files relating to their Atlantis research. This might partly explain why Czeppan, a convicted neo-nazi, was so enthusiastic in his endorsement of Spanuth.
(a) VffG 4/2001: Rudolf Czeppan: Zur Forschung und Ausgrenzung von Jürgen Spanuth (archive.org) (German) *
Zschaetzsch, Karl Georg
>Karl Georg Zschaetzsch (1870-1946?) was a German intellectual and supporter of the Völkisch Movement, who, in 1920, placed Atlantis in the Atlantic and identified its people as Aryans. He also classified the Phoenicians as Aryan!<
He described the Atlanteans as having had blonde hair and blue eyes, which sounds sadly familiar. His views were adopted by the Nazi Ahnenerbe. Zschaetzsch also supported the idea of a cometary impact being involved in the destruction of Atlantis.
Zschaetzsch suggested that Atlantis was situated in the Azores and published a map illustrating this.
For those who can read German and are interested in the madness of that period, Zschaetzsch’s book Atlantis – die Urheimat der Arier (Atlantis: The Original Home of the Aryans) can be downloaded from the Internet(a) for €5. As a bonus, Zschaetzsch eventually reveals that he is descended from Jupiter and that his unpronounceable name is really just a corruption of Zeus!
(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20041011020316/https://www.germanische-freunde.de/zschaetzsch.html
Spanuth, Dr Jürgen
Dr Jürgen Spanuth (1907-1998) was born in Austria and studied theology and archaeology at university. He became the pastor of Bordelum in Northern Germany.
According to Life magazine of Sept. 8, 1952(g), after twenty years of research, he organised a dive around Heligoland and found extensive underwater structures. These explorations led to his book Das Entraselte Atlantis [0016] being published in 1953. It was later translated into English and published as Atlantis of the North [0015] and is now available to read on the internet(a).
Spanuth’s basic thesis was that following a major catastrophe in the North Sea around 1250 BC, the Mediterranean experienced an invasion of Scandinavians, whom he referred to as the ‘North Sea Peoples’. Part of the physical evidence he produced was the horn-helmeted Sea Peoples depicted at Medinet Habu. Since we are all used to seeing Vikings depicted with horned helmets, many are surprised to find that it is a late 19th-century invention(e)(f).
Spanuth’s theory implies that such helmets had been a standard army issue in the region for over a millennium. In fact, the Vikings used rather plain helmets which they did not manufacture themselves but traded for them from other Germanic peoples in mainland Europe(d). On the other hand, one of the Sea Peoples, the Shardana, generally believed to have come from Sardinia, did use horned-helmets. However, there are aspects of this claim that are the subject of continuing debate, but the suggestion of a North Sea connection has weakened considerably.
Spanuth considered Basileia, the royal island of Atlantis, to have been located near Heligoland. He produced a mass of evidence to support his views but found his book under severe attack by many academics, which, in general, had the support of the public. After being publicly labelled, among other things, a liar, Spanuth was forced to challenge his detractors in the courts. After some six years, he was vindicated when ten professors withdrew their plea, admitting that their arguments against the pastor were untenable. Felix R. Paturi has more information[1339.215] on this disgraceful episode, as well as a note of scientists who supported Spanuth.
>The late Bernhard Beier expanded on the list of academics who did endorse Spanuth(i)(j) and in some ways more interesting is an article he wrote giving an account of the efforts of many academics to silence Spanuth completely. Coincidentally, around the same time, Immanuel Velikovsky was under a similar attack in the USA.<
A study of Spanuth’s references would suggest that he had access to the prehistoric research archives of the Ahnenerbe and has successfully collated and analysed a lot of this extensive material in his books. Vidal-Naquet bluntly labels him a Nazi[580.124], although his publisher, Wolfram Zeller, denied it. It may be relevant to mention that in the 1930s, Heinrich Pudor an avowed German anti-Semite also proposed Helgoland as Atlantis, but I have been unable to find any reference to Pudor by Spanuth!
The German Wikipedia claims that Spanuth was a member of the NSDAP (Nazi Party) from 1933 until 1945. Similar claims that he had been in the SS have also been refuted(c). In 2002, Frank Doenenburg, on his website(b) discussed Spanuth’s politics at length. In my view, all these matters, however unsavoury, risk distracting us today from discussing dispassionately the merits or otherwise of Spanuth’s Atlantis theories.
Spanuth’s second book[017] had a much better reception. His final offering was Die Atlanter(1976), which was also published in English[015], however, this is just a revised and expanded version of his 1965 book[048].
Atlantisforschung has highlighted Spanuth’s opposition to the Minoan Hypothesis in a discussion paper on its website. I have published here a translation of a short excerpt from Die Atlanter that shows his disdain for the idea of an Aegean Atlantis.
“Neither Thera nor Crete lay in the ‘Atlantic Sea’, but in the Aegean Sea, which is expressly mentioned in Crit. 111a and contrasted with the Atlantic Sea. Neither of the islands lay at the mouth of great rivers, nor did they “sink into the sea and disappear from sight.” ( Tim. 25d) The Aegean Sea never became “impassable and unsearchable because of the very shallow mud”. Neither Solon nor Plato could have said of the Aegean Sea that it was ‘still impassable and unsearchable’
or that ‘even today … an impenetrable and muddy shoal’ ‘blocks the way to the opposite sea’ ( Crit. 108e). Both had often sailed the Aegean Sea, and their contemporaries would have laughed at them for telling such follies.”(h)
Spanuth has still a lot of supporters and is constantly referred to, particularly by German investigators such as Arn Strohmeyer[557] and Gerhard Herm[382]. Felice Vinci, who strongly favours a Northern European origin for Homer’s epic tales, also places Atlantis in a northern context. The Danish writer, Kirsten Bang, published a short book [679] in which she also placed Atlantis in the Wadden Sea where Helgoland is located. She also supports a date of 1300 BC for its destruction.
Another recent supporter of Spanuth’s Atlantis theory is Holger Kalweit who has written a trilogy, the first of which is Irrstern über Atlantis [1024]. This initial volume is concerned with the destruction of Atlantis by a comet (Phaeton) in 1222 BC, leaving Helgoland as a remnant. Refugees fled south to the Eastern Mediterranean leaving their cultural imprint on the region. Unfortunately. this huge 700-page book is to be followed by two more in which the author moves on to expand on the subject of ‘lizard people’, which for me has him as a fully paid-up member of the lunatic fringe.
(a) https://archive.org/details/atlantisofnorth00span/mode/2up Read Only
(b) https://www.fdoernenburg.de/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1213 (page closed, July 2017)
(d) https://www.quora.com/Where-did-the-myth-about-the-Vikings-having-horned-helmets-originate
(h) Jürgen Spanuth über ‘Atlantis in der Ägäis’ – Atlantisforschung.de
(i) An “illustrious society” – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *
(j) An “illustrious society” (II) – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *
Kiss, Edmund
Edmund Kiss (1886-1960) was a German architectural student with an interest in archaeology. After the First World War, he wrote a number of adventure novels. In the 1920’s he began his foray into the world of ‘alternative archaeology. Later in that decade, he made his first visit to Tiahuanaco.
The only known official photo of Kiss
During this period Kiss worked with Arthur Posnansky and advanced the idea that Tiahuanaco had been built by Nordic refugees from Atlantis (Thule) more than 17,000 years ago. Their work included a search for evidence to support the theories of Hanns Hörbiger.
Matthew Gildner, a professor of Latin American history has written an interesting essay on the background to Kiss’ theories and work in Bolivia(b).
During the Third Reich Kiss was requested by Heinrich Himmler to take a team of researchers from the Ahnenerbe to continue his studies at Tiahuanaco but the expedition was called off. Following that he briefly joined the Waffen SS. After the war he continued his interest in Atlantis, writing a book on Plato’s Critias and contributing to Egerton Sykes’ Atlantean Research newsletter in the 1950s.
Rafael Videla Eissmann is a historian at the Catholic University of Chile and has written a number of articles in Spanish(a) regarding Kiss, as well as a wide range of other historical subjects.
>Dr. Graham Horton has written about the pseudo-science of Kiss and Posnansky in the early 20th century relating to their work at Tiwanaku(d).<
As late as 1953, Kiss was still defending Hörbiger’s idea of an ice-covered Moon>as was Egerton Sykes(c). Further related articles were available on the now defunct geocities website(e).<
(a) https://charlasylecturas.blogspot.com/
(b) https://theappendix.net/issues/2013/4/andean-atlantis-race-science-and-the-nazi-occult-in-bolivia
(c) Atlantis, Volume 6, No.1, May 1953
(e) titicaca (archive.org) *
Hörbiger, Hanns
Hanns Hörbiger (1860-1931) was an Austrian mining engineer by profession and in his spare time was an amateur astronomer. Today, he is probably better known as the father of the actors Paul and Attila Hörbiger. Another son, Hans Robert Hörbiger (1885-1955), followed in his father’s misguided cosmological footsteps, eventually working for Heinrich Himmler’s Ahnenerbe(ac).
By gazing at the moon Hanns, Snr. became convinced that he was looking at a bright outer layer of ice. Hörbiger published his “Doctrine of Eternal Ice” around 1913 in a book[389] co-authored with a schoolteacher named Philip Fauth. Hörbiger proposed an early form of catastrophism that saw the Earth capture several moons in succession. Periodically, each of these moons disintegrated as they spiralled to earth producing enormous ‘ice showers’ followed by meteors of iron. He saw the effects of these impacts as the source of Flood myths and claimed that when our current Moon was captured around 9500 BC it triggered earthquakes that led to the destruction of Atlantis. His theories were hailed in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s and were officially backed by the Nazis (see Ahnenerbe). Heather Pringle notes[0032.180] Hitler’s personal support for Hörbiger’s theories.
In 1966, Egerton Sykes wrote that “in addition, Hitler requiring a Teutonic cosmology as well as a Germanic Europe, adopted Hoerbiger’s hypothesis, probably one of the few sensible acts that the Nazis ever made”(w).
It seems that the adoption of World Ice Theory by National Socialism was intended to present a German alternative to ‘Jewish science’, specifically, to the theory of relativity, developed by Albert Einstein(x).
There was a Viennese Hörbiger Institute for World Ice Science founded in 1932(p). Their publication Mitteilungen had two volumes published from 1941 to 1944 and a third volume 1971-1976(o).
An interesting 1949 report by Manfred Reiffenstein describes the problems that the Hörbiger Institute had encountered with the Nazis from 1938 onwards. While efforts were made to close the Institute down and transfer its archives to Himmler’s Ahnenerbe organisation, this was prevented by the efforts of Hörbiger’s sons(s), which might be considered an example of postwar revisionism.
A recent paper by Graham Holton explicitly accuses Hörbiger of ‘archaeological racism’, along with Edmund Kiss, Posnansky and others in the Ahnenerbe(t). Holton also noted that Hörbiger also subscribed to Blavatsky‘s daft idea of Root Races.
His ideas were adopted and developed further by Hans Bellamy in a number of his books[092][096][097]. During the first half of the 20th century, many beyond the Nazi realm frequently referred to Hörbiger’s moon theory as authoritative.
Hörbiger refused to accept the evidence that his ‘icy’ moon had a daytime temperature of 100°C. Followers of Hörbiger existed in Germany, Britain and France after the war, until an actual landing on the Moon demonstrated that it was composed of neither ice nor cheese.
Of course, the moon landing is denounced by some as faked and according to one 2019 blogger, it must be so because it contradicts Hörbiger’s theories!!! The same blogger lists his religion as ‘Hitlerism’(y).
A bizarre consequence of Hörbiger’s status with the Nazi leadership is recounted by Pauwels and Bergier [910.170] who tell us that: “The German engineers, whose work was fundamental to the construction of those rockets that sent the first artificial satellites up into the sky, were prevented by the leaders of the NSDAP themselves from using the V2 for it to be completed at the scheduled time.
Work on the V2 in Peenemünde had to be interrupted several times because Hitler and the apologists of the Hörbiger doctrine feared that rocket launches could result in a world catastrophe.
General Walter Dornberger led the tests in Peenemünde, where the guided missiles were created. These experiments were stopped in order to submit the general’s reports to the apostles of Hörbiger’s cosmology. Above all, one wanted to know how the “eternal ice” would react in space and whether this violation of the stratosphere would not result in some kind of catastrophe in the world.
In his book “V2 – The shot into the universe” General Dornberger tells that shortly afterwards his work had to be interrupted again for two months. The guide had dreamed that the V2 would not work, or rather that heaven would take its revenge. This dream was to carry more weight for the leading men of the Third Reich than the view of the technicians. Behind the Germany of science and organization, the spirit of ancient magic was still alive.“(z)
Several other writers developed theories that were variations on Hörbiger’s ideas. 1954 saw the publication of The Moon Puzzle[786] by the Swedish engineer, N.O. Bergquist, in which he suggested that Earth had a close encounter with a planetoid which caused the ejection of a large amount of matter, which became our Moon leaving a huge scar we call the Pacific. Although many details of Berquist’s theory differ greatly from Hörbiger’s, he never refers to the then widely supported views of Hörbiger.
In 1955, G. Demortier published a theory of cosmic catastrophe that was somewhat similar to Hörbiger’s. However, a couple of years earlier, doubts were beginning to emerge regarding aspects of Hörbiger’s theories as our cosmological knowledge advanced(u), nevertheless, in the same magazine Edmund Kiss attempted to justify Hörbiger’s idea of an ice-covered Moon!
It is even more astounding that as late as 1964, Egerton Sykes, the leading British atlantologist of the day, was still clinging to the concept of an ice-covered lunar surface. In fact, after re-reading the old editions of Sykes’ Atlantis newsletter, I am amazed at the number of contributors that offered so many articles based on Hörbiger’s flawed ideas. My personal view is that having read Sykes’ newsletters, he can only be considered a gullible British gentleman.
Egerton Sykes founded and promoted an English post-war Hoerbiger Institute through his Atlantis magazine(q). In March 1948 Bellamy contributed a short article (Hoerbiger Monograph No. 1. 2nd Edition)(n) to the newsletter, reiterating his support for the idea that the capture of our moon led to the destruction of Atlantis.
Commander E.H. Nutter, a Royal Navy engineer, who contributed many articles to Sykes’ Atlantis magazine was considered “the leading technical authority on the Hoerbiger Theory in England” in the 1950s(v).
Although Hörbiger wrote extensively about the origins of our satellite, when Immanuel Velikovsky wrote a short paper in 1973 entitled Earth without a Moon(v) he made no reference to the theories of Hörbiger.
Henry M. Eichner was also drawn to Hörbiger’s Moon theory as a mechanism to explain the worldwide Deluge myths. However, as the first Moon landing took place just two years before his death, Eichner was forced to admit that Hörbiger got his claim of an icy Moon wrong, but still believed that some of Hörbiger’s ideas had merit [287.57].
Uwe Topper, the controversial German researcher has continued to support much of Hörbiger’s ideas. Additionally, in 2003, Gary Gilligan, a prominent catastrophist, first proposed that our Moon had been captured around 2000 BC, which he has now revised to 1200 BC(I)!
The August 2010 edition of the BBC’s Focus magazine (p.81), informed us that the Moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of 3.8cm per year, destroying the foundation of Hörbiger’s basic theory. The 9th Nov. 2011 issue of New Scientist published further evidence supporting this view(h), with further claims that this recession will reverse in the very distant future as the Earth’s rotation slows(r).
In the 17th century Johannes Kepler demonstrated that when an object’s orbital velocity increases, its orbital radius will expand; thus, the Moon slowly recedes from Earth(d). This idea was discussed further in a BBC documentary broadcast on Feb.1st, 2011(b).
The 9th Nov. 2011 issue of New Scientist published further evidence supporting this view(h), with further claims that this recession will reverse in the very distant future as the Earth’s rotation slows(r).
The Live Science website in April 2023 offered more information on the future of the Earth-Moon relationship(ab). “In about 50 billion years, Earth’s slowing rotation would make it tidally lock with the moon so that Earth would permanently show just one side to the moon, Jean Creighton, director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, told Live Science. At this point, the moon and Earth would stop moving away from each other, Eric Klumpe, a professor of astronomy at Middle Tennessee State University, told Live Science.
However, about 5 billion years from now, as the sun begins to die, it will swell to become a red giant star, “at which point the Earth-moon system will almost certainly be disrupted and destroyed,” David Trilling, chair of the Astronomy and Planetary Science Department at Northern Arizona University, told Live Science.”
Nevertheless, updated Moon capture theories have been developed since Hörbiger. Emilio Spedicato has published a brief overview of recent contributions on the subject as well as his version(c), dating it to around 9450 BC, triggering the end of the Ice Age and the destruction of Atlantis!
It was long-accepted wisdom that a moonless earth would have made the development of complex life more difficult because of greater climatic fluctuations. However, a new study challenges this, calculating that Jupiter together with other factors would minimise the effect of not having our satellite(g)
The story of lunar history took an unexpected turn in 2011 when the journal Nature published a paper by planetary scientists Erik Asphaug of the University of Santa Cruz and Martin Jutzi of the University of Berne who proposed that originally the Earth had two moons that later collided and formed our present satellite(e). At the end of 2011, two NASA lunar probes were launched(j) which may resolve this particular question.
In America, the WEL-Institute is dedicated to investigating Hörbiger’s ‘World Ice Theory’(k). I note that the U.S. is also home to associations concerned with both a Hollow Earth(l) and a Flat Earth(m)!
(b) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12311119
(c) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(d) Ive heard that the Moon is moving away from Earth by about an inch 25 cm each year Why is this happening – Astronomy Magazine (archive.org)
(e) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20160320161310/https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390413,00.asp
(h) https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21147-how-the-cold-dead-moon-stayed-magnetic.html
(I) https://www.gks.uk.com/moon-origin-egyptian/
(j) GRAIL and the Mystery of the Missing Moon | Science Mission Directorate (archive.org)
(k) https://welinstitute.wordpress.com/about/
(l) https://www.ourhollowearth.com/
(m) https://theflatearthsociety.org/home/
(o) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3042/
(p) See: Archive 3043
(q) https://www.amazon.ca/Atlantis-Organ-Hoerbiger-Institute-1965-1974/dp/B00MOKVR2Y (Link broken Sept. 2020)
(r) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4199400/Earth-moon-COLLIDE-65-billion-years.html
(s) Atlantean Research, Volume 1, Number 5, January/February 1949
(u) Atlantis Vol.6, No.1 & 2, May & July 1953
(v) Atlantis, Vol. 9, No. 2, January 1956, p.39
(w) Atlantis, Vol.19, No.5, September/ October 1966
(y) https://forums.skadi.net/threads/183985-Moon-Landing-was-FAKE/page8 (Link broken) See: Archive 6966
(aa) https://www.lewrockwell.com/2011/12/immanuel-velikovsky/the-earth-without-the-moon/
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands are situated in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Morocco. They were (re)discovered in 1402 by Jean de Béthencourt (1362-1425). He found the fair-skinned Guanches living on some of the islands. He described them as cave dwellers. After overthrowing the local chiefs, de Béthancourt became King of the Canaries under King Henry III of Castile.
However, there has been widespread acceptance of the idea that the Berbers of North Africa established the first populations on the islands. Recently (2019) published DNA studies have reinforced this concept, putting the arrival of the Berbers at around 1000 AD(h).
Pliny the Elder is frequently quoted to provide the etymology of the name, where he claims that it is derived from a species of large dog – canis in Latin – found there in ancient times. This derivation is disputed by the historian and Arabist, Paul Lunde, who prefers the idea that the islands were named after an ancient people who lived on the opposite mainland and who now inhabit north-eastern Nigeria and are known today as the Kanuri. Pliny also records that the islands were uninhabited but had ancient ruined buildings when visited by the Carthaginians. Centuries later they were inhabited by a Berber people known as the Guanches who were finally conquered by the Spanish in the 15th century. When sea levels were lower during the last Ice Age, the land area of the islands would have been more extensive and a possible claimant as the location of some or part of Plato’s empire of Atlantis.
A popular belief is that the Canaries were the location of the Garden of Hesperides referred to in Greek mythology. However, this identification is difficult to substantiate firmly.
Frank Joseph noted[216] how the islands conform in many ways to Plato’s description of Atlantis. Natural hot and cold springs are to be found there, as are red, white and black rock, a combination also observed on the Azores and elsewhere. In the past, the Canaries have been densely forested and also contain rivers and fertile plains that produce a variety of fruit.
In the 2nd century AD, the Greek astronomer and geographer Ptolemy suggested that the prime meridian should be located through the Canaries, then known as the Fortunate Islands.
The earliest suggestion of a connection between the Canaries and Atlantis was proposed by Athanasius Kircher in 1664, referring to the Guanches as the last Atlanteans and the islands as the remains of Plato’s lost land.
Ignatius Donnelly, who did so much to kick-start modern interest in Atlantis, considered that the Canaries, Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde Islands were its remnants. However, a newspaper report from 1899(g) refers back to a local cleric and historian, José Viera y Claviejo, who proposed around the beginning of the 19th century that the Canaries, the Azores and Madeira were remnants of Atlantis, nearly a century before Donnelly.
Gilbert De Jong is a Dutch landscape designer with an interest in investigating the mysteries of our ancient past. His contention is that Atlantis was located at El Fuerte – in the Canary Islands.
In 1984, Manuel Gómez Márquez also ‘revealed’ the Canaries as the location of Atlantis in a book[0599] using the Piri Reis Map as a source.
One of the more recent proponents of a Canarian location for Atlantis is Charles D. Pfund in his extensive 2011 book, Antediluvian World: The End of the Myth[1079].
A website dealing with a variety of British and World mysteries(d) has a series of papers on Atlantis and reluctantly considers the Canaries as the most likely location of Plato’s lost land.
In 1939 the Ahnenerbe, led by theologian turned archaeologist Otto Huth, planned to visit the Canaries to study Guanche mummies as part of their efforts to find the Aryan homeland and locate Atlantis. However, the outbreak of war postponed the trip, but the Spanish dictator, General Franco, at the behest of his Nazi mentors appointed his archaeologist friend Julio Martinez Santa Olalla to carry out investigations on their behalf.
In 2008, Francisco Gracia Alonso, professor of history at the University of Barcelona published a book revealing the level of cooperation between Franco’s archaeologists and the Nazi Ahnenerbe(c)(k). An article(j) in The Telegraph in the UK, claimed that Spanish fascists “wanted to promote the idea that the Aryan race could be traced to the Canary Islands, amid claims they were all that remained of the lost continent of Atlantis.”
A 2010 book, Nazi Archaeology in the Canary Islands [762] by author and journalist Jaime Rubio Rosales also explores the whole subject of the Spanish links with the Ahnenerbe.
Thor Heyerdahl inspected the pyramids at Guimar and was convinced of their ceremonial use in ancient times(b). Atlantisforschung has a lengthy article about the stepped pyramids of the Canaries, which also refers to stepped pyramids in Sicily and Sardinia(i). The late Philip Coppens also wrote an article(e) on these structures. A 2015 article(f) can now be added to this list.
>>August 14, 2024, brought a number of ‘Atlantis Found?’ headlines following the discovery of several large sunken islands near the Canaries(l). What I found strange, is that the these islands disappeared beneath the waves millions of years ago and could have no connection with Plato’s Atlantis, which at the earliest, he claimed to have been submerged around 9600 BC. Thorwald C. Franke dug deeper and revealed that the Atlantis association may, at best, have been a journalistic embellishment or at worst, a hoax(m).<<
(b) https://www.travelexplorations.com/guimar-tenerife-the-lost-pyramids-in-europe.4497328-25678.html
(c) www.archaeologybulletin.org/article/download/bha.18102/104 (Link broken)
(d) Lost City Atlantis – Aquiziam (archive.org) OR See Archive 3028
(e) Archive 2142)
(f) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/mystery-guanches-and-pyramids-tenerife-003232
(g) https://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/111076350?searchTerm=Atlantis discovered&searchLimits=
(i) Die Schwarzen Pyramiden von Teneriffa – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) (Eng)
(l) https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1935828/canary-islands-africa-islands-atlantis *
(m) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_newsl_archive.htm (#226) *
Wirth, Hermann
Hermann Wirth (1885-1981) was a Dutch historian who became one of the co-founders of Himmler’s Ahnenerbe-SS. He was obsessed with Atlantis 
and sought to prove that it had existed in the North Atlantic where he believed that it had stretched from Iceland to the Azores. He thought that the only parts of Atlantis to remain above water after its submergence were Cape Verde and the Canary Islands. Wirth named this North Atlantic Atlantis, Thule after the ancient writer Pytheas. He also concluded that a pure monotheistic religion had originated in a common homeland, possibly Plato’s Atlantis(a).
The Nazis who came to believe that the Aryan race had originated on Thule adopted the idea. Wirth also translated the controversial Oera Linda Book, using it to support the party line on Germanic origins(b).
Ahnenerbe-SS *
Ahnenerbe-SS or to give it its full title, Ahnenerbe Forschungs und Lehrgemeinschaft (The Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society), was founded by Heinrich Himmler in 1935 but did not become part of the SS until 
1940. It was one of the more bizarre aspects of the Nazi regime, as it attempted to give legitimacy to the notion of German supremacy by claiming that they were direct descendants from an original perfect race, the Atlanteans.
When you add this to the Nazi support for Hans Hoerbiger’s crazy cosmology(i), strange expeditions to Tibet, and SS agents attempting to steal Crystal Skulls in South America, you cannot help wondering how such eccentric activities could have been accepted by the higher echelons of the Nazi establishment. It is contended that the Germans maintained strong links with Tibet and it is reported that when the Russians entered Berlin in 1945 they found many Tibetan corpses in SS uniforms, apparently after committing ritual suicide. This frequently quoted account is more than suspect.
The Ahnenerbe also studied the occult, a matter that has been investigated by a number of writers, including an early work[027] by Herbie Brennan, whose book is complemented by The Occult History of the Third Reich website(a). The same site reviews the place of Atlantis in Nazi thinking(g) as well as an overview of the Ahnenerbe(h).
The attitude towards occultism in Nazi Germany seems to have been ambivalent, as represented in a paper(j) by Eric Kurlander who noted that “In her groundbreaking work on German esotericsm, Corinna Treitel represents the views of much recent scholarship when she concludes, ‘Occultism ceased its highly public presence as part of Germany’s refomist milieu of cultural experimentation only after 1937, when the Nazi regime suppressed occultism as one of its many ideological enemies.’
The evidence in this chapter, while not entirely incompatible with this statement, suggests a more complex picture. First and most importantly, the Nazi regime was much more selective in its suppression of occult and other border sciences than Treitel and other revisionist accounts suggest.”
The quest for the Holy Grail was also high on the Ahnenerbe agenda, which was led by one Otto Rahn(k). He eventually fell from favour and as punishment was assigned to work in the SS-run Dachau concentration camp(a)(l).
The Ahnenerbe attracted many seeking to avoid military service, as its work was considered essential to the war effort. It had fifty different research branches known as ‘Institutes’ and also ran a large publishing operation. It had Institutes dealing with Celtic Studies, Musicology and Norse Gods, but its most abhorrent activities were the carrying out of experiments on live humans, mainly from the concentration camps.
Anton Loibl
The unbelievable ideas, including an Atlantean ancestry for the Nazis that were peddled by the Ahnenerbe are extensively covered in the recent ‘must read’ book(m), The Master Plan by Heather Pringle[032]. Her fascinating book includes an account of Himmler’s bizarre plan to exploit the mandatory use of bicycle reflectors to fund the activities of the Ahnenerbe!
Incidentally, the reflectors was invented in 1936 by one of Hitler’s chauffeurs, Anton Loibl, who formed a limited company (Anton Loibl GmbH)(e) with the SS(b) which channelled part of the royalty income to the Ahnenerbe, to fund their expeditions around the world seeking evidence for the origins of the Aryan ‘master race’.
However, Pringle also exposes the involvement of the Ahnenerbe in the plundering of museums in occupied countries and, more seriously, the painful and often fatal medical ‘experiments’ carried out on concentration camp inmates.
Film clips, in German, relating to the Anenerbe are available on the Internet(c).
Another site offers further insights into Nazi archaeology(d).
(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Rahn
(b) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Loibl_GmbH Also See Archive 2663
(c) Hitler’s Search for the Holy Grail 1 – Bing video
(d) http://alfrye04.wix.com/nazi-archaeology#! (link broken)
(e) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Loibl_GmbH
(f) http://thirdreichocculthistory.blogspot.ie/p/c0ntents.html
(g) http://thirdreichocculthistory.blogspot.ie/2013/02/atlantis-und-das-dritte-reich.html
(h) http://thirdreichocculthistory.blogspot.ie/2014/03/die-deutsche-ahnenerbe.html
(i) https://www.academia.edu/10932522/The_Nazis_and_the_Search_for_Atlantis_2011_
(j) (99+) (PDF) Hitler’s Supernatural Sciences | Eric Kurlander – Academia.edu
(k) https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/otto-rahn-the-quest-for-the-holy-grail
(m) http://www.benespen.com/journal/2019/8/11/the-long-view-the-master-plan *