St. Lawrence River

The St. Lawrence River>was suggested as the site of an ancient Greek colony by Verplanck Colvin (1847-1920), an American lawyer, in a lecture^(a) to the Albany Institute of Boston in 1893. He based this idea primarily on his interpretation of Plutarch’s On the Apparent Face in the Moon’s Face.

It was over a century later when the St. Lawrence River<unexpectedly became an Atlantis candidate in 2018 when Manolis Koutlis published In the Shadow ^[1617], in which he claims the existence of Greek colonies in Canada as early as 1500 BC. However, at the 2005 Atlantis Conference, Emilio Spedicato presented a paper ^[629.411], in which he also claimed that the the St. Lawrence region had been visited by what he described as “the ancestors of the Greeks”. Both writers cite Plutarch in support of their contentions. While these conclusions may be the result of ambiguity and/or translation problems, in my opinion the strongest arguments against their claims are (1) There is no archaeological evidence to support the idea of a Greek colony in the region over hundreds of years, (2) A Greek colony in North America lasting that long would not have been ignored by the classical writers of the period – but it has. (3) The Greeks only knew three continents – Europe, Asia and Africa and (4) How does Koutlis explain how or why would a Greek Atlantis situated in the mouth of the St. Lawrence launch an attack on Athens or Egypt?

>^(a) Atlantis,Vol.23, No.3,May/June, 1970<