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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 »
Alewyn J. Raubenheimer
Raubenheimer, Alewyn J.
Alewyn J. Raubenheimer is a retired South African engineer and a member 
of the South African Archaeological Society. In 2010 he published Survivors of the Great Tsunami[0744], in which he links Noah’s Deluge with the flood, dated at 2193 BC, which is referred to in the controversial Oera Linda Book. He suggests that this flood was caused by the impact of the asteroid which created the submarine Burkle Crater in the Indian Ocean.
Raubenheimer touches on the subject of Atlantis, but is reluctant to identify it with the Atland destroyed in the Oera Linda Book.
Raubenheimer’s defence of the OLB has generated considerable support(a)(b).
On the other hand while there is little doubt that the OLB is also widely believed to be a hoax or a forgery, a contribution to Wikipedia on the subject notes that “The current article mentions several times that the book is a hoax/parody/forgery. The sources (from the article) which I have been able to check do not go in to detail about why the book is a hoax.”(c)
(a) https://www.merkuriusz.wieczorna.pl/historia-starozytna/pseudohistoria-czy-autentyczna-relacja-ksiega-oera-linda (Polish) (offline Jan. 2018)
(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20161012193633/https://home.nordnet.fr/~jacfermaut/pointdevueheemstra02.html (French)
Burckle Crater *
The Burckle Abyssal Impact Crater is named after Dr Lloyd Burckle (1931-2014) of Columbia University in the United States. It is a 30km wide underwater crater around 1500km southeast of Madagascar, considered by some to have been the 
result of a cometary impact less than 6,000 years ago. Wikipedia describes it as a hypothetical underwater feature(a) founded on a study of chevron dune formations in Madagascar and Australia. The Holocene Impact Working Group has an interesting article on the global extent of these dunes(b).
The chevron-tsunami linkage is disputed by University of Washington geologist and tsunami expert Jody Bourgeois(e), among others.
Chevrons on Madagascar
A paper(l) presented by Burckle et al at the 2005 Atlantis Conference explored the possibility that this impact resulted in one of the inundations referred to by Plato that preceded the flood of Deucalion. Acceptance of this view would add weight to the claim that Plato’s Atlantis story contains some historically factual details. However, if Plato’s floods were localised in the Mediterranean, it is difficult to understand how an impact in the middle of the Indian Ocean could have caused them.
In 2010 a South African writer, Alewyn J. Raubenheimer, published Survivors of the Great Tsunami [744], in which he linked the Burckle Impact with the inundation described in the widely discredited Oera Linda Book. He placed his megatsunami in 2193 BC, borrowing the date from the Oera Linda Book. Raubenheimer’s defence of the OLB has generated widespread support(c)(d).
The suggestion that Burckle impact was the possible cause of a global deluge was given due consideration in a paper(h) by a team of prominent scientists, including Lloyd Burckle, which concluded that “We have strong evidence for at least one large oceanic impact event during Holocene time. This event produced the Burckle crater and its ejecta layer. It may also have produced numerous subsidiary craters that are too small to see with our present data. We infer that the Burckle impact was part of a Shoemaker-Levy-type impact of a comet, which vaporized enough seawater to produce a global deluge. It also produced megatsunamis in many parts of the world. An expanded sample of deluge myths, additional study of the Burckle crater site, studies of potential megatsunami locations, and the search for contemporaneous craters in the Pacific will help refine and validate our inferences.”
Raubenheimer’s dating of the megatsunami is rather different from that of Kevin Curran in his Fall of a Thousand Suns[1113], in which he offers more compelling evidence for a date of 3067 BC. Readers may find it useful to read Curran’s book along with the work of Dallas Abbott who has dated the Burckle Event to 2870 BC and sees the impact as just one of a number generated by a fragmented comet(f).
Dallas Abbott is described by Wikipedia(j) as “a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and is part of the Holocene Impact Working Group. The primary focus of her present research is on submarine impact craters and their contribution to climate change and megatsunamis. She also has presented research regarding a large impact crater in the Gulf of Maine.” Abbott has dedicated years to the study of the Burckle Crater and the gathering of evidence that will convince her more sceptical colleagues of the reality of the impact theory(i).
In 2020 an Indian astronomy site had an article(k) by Dr Manish Pandit supporting this idea, dating the event to some time between 2800 and 3050 BC and speculating that the impact was caused by the Comet Soho which was seen in Feb. 3030 BC and may have led to the destruction of Dwarka.
A recent paper by Bibhu Dev Misra on Graham Hancock’s website has also proposed that the comet or cometary fragment that created the Burckle Crater generated a megatsunami that submerged the legendary city of Dwarka. Drawing on the Mahabharata, archaeology and geology, the author has deduced that the impact event took place around 3700 BC(g). However, I have some difficulty with this as tsunami floodwaters eventually return to the sea!
(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burckle_crater
(b) http://tsun.sscc.ru/hiwg/chevrons.htm
(c) https://joshualightningwarrior.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/the-fryan-question-part-i/
(f) Dallas Abbott: The Burckle Impact | MalagaBay (archive.org)
(g) https://grahamhancock.com/dmisrab12/
(h) https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D89P31F3
(i) Dallas Abbott: The Burckle Impact | MalagaBay (wordpress.com)
(l) https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D89P31F3
Oera Linda Book
The Oera Linda Book, sometimes referred as the Ura-Linda Chronicle, is a highly controversial book from Holland that occasionally is referred to in books and articles relating to Atlantis. It is claimed to be one of the oldest books ever discovered.
The Oera Linda Book came to light in 1867 when Cornelis Over de Linden (1811–1874) handed the manuscript, which he claimed to have inherited from his grandfather, via his aunt, over to Eelco Verwijs (1830–1880), the provincial librarian of Friesland, for translation and publication. Verwijs rejected the manuscript, but in 1871 Jan Gerhardus Ottema (1804–1879), a prominent member of the Frisian Society for History and Culture, published a Dutch translation. Ottema believed it to be written in authentic Old Frisian(r).
While a Dutch translation appeared in 1871, it was not until 1876 that the first English translation of the Oera Linda Book by William R. Sandbach was published by Trubner & Co(k). This was allegedly a translation of a 13th-century Frisian manuscript based on much earlier traditions.
The book tells the story of the destruction of a large landmass in the North Sea known as ‘Atland’ following earthquakes and tidal waves. Atland means Old Land in Frisian. It dates this catastrophe to 2193 BC. However, the current consensus is that the landbridge between the Shetlands Isles and Norway was submerged around 5500 BC and not the date given in the Oera Linda Book.
Nearly seventy years were to pass before the book came under scrutiny again in Britain, when Harold T. Wilkins wrote an article in Egerton Sykes’ first issue of Atlantis magazine, supporting its authenticity. Thirty years later another English writer, Robert Scrutton, wrote two books[117][118] on the Oera Linda Book. These again opened up the controversy regarding the authenticity of the book.
Andrew Collins has written a short paper(g) casting doubt on the authenticity of the book.
Now Anthony Radford presents a new review of the Book and offers the first edition of his book free online (f).
Andi Zeneli, the Albanian researcher, has used the text of the Oera Linda Book in an attempt to support his claim of an Albanian connection with Atlantis. Georg Lohle also follows the Oera Linda Book in suggesting[446] a North Sea location for Atlantis(s)*.
The English text of the book is available on the internet(b)(c) with the original 212 Frisian language pages, which is accessible on a Dutch site(d). A recent (2012) vindication of the OLB is now available online(h).
It is reported(p) that when Heinrich Himmler was given a translation of the OLB by his friend Hermann Wirth he was totally besotted with its contents and it became known as ‘Himmler’s Bible’. However, even within the Nazi party, there were many sceptical voices, which led to much dispute. Finally, “The two opposing camps officially “squared off” during a panel discussion centred on The Oera Linda Book that took place on May 4th 1934 at the aforementioned University of Berlin. The discussion turned into a heated debate, but in the end, The Oera Linda Book was officially declared “a hoax” by the NSDAP, and “Himmler’s Bible” receded once again into obscurity.”
I must mention that the American neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement has taken an interest in the Oera Linda Book(e), promoting it as ‘positive’ reading material!
The late Antonis Kontaratos was favourably disposed to quote the OLB in support of Atlantis, in a paper delivered to the 2005 Atlantis Conference [629.435], although he also noted that “the authenticity of the Oera Linda Book still awaits official approval or disapproval”.
Alewyn J. Raubenheimer has theorised[744] that an asteroid impact created the Burckle Crater in the Indian Ocean which in turn generated a megatsunami recorded in the bible as Noah’s Flood and in the Oera Linda Book as the flooding of Atland in 2193 BC. With regard to Atlantis he states categorically (p.49)“that no attempt is made here to equate Atland with Atlantis although there may be a connection.” His defence of the Oera Linda Book has been hailed by some as an important scholarly contribution(i) while others have endeavoured to discredit the book’s authenticity(j).
James Nienhuis also accepts the historicity of the OLB(n), but today’s leading proponent of its authenticity is arguably Jan Ott, a Dutch researcher, born in West Friesland, who has released video and audio interviews on YouTube(l)(m) in support of his views. A list of all translations of the OLB can be accessed on his website(o) as well as many other aspects of Oera Linda studies. Ott has been interviewed on Red Ice Radio, a Swedish right-wing broadcaster.
A 2022 critical review of the OLB by an Indian researcher, Bipin Dimri, added support to the more generally accepted view that the OLB is a forgery. He suggests that “Either Cornelis Over de Linden or Eelco Verwijs (or possibly an acquaintance of both men) are the two most likely authors, writing a comedy text to poke fun at an overtly nationalistic audience in the late 19th century. It was likely never to be taken seriously(q).
>The Oera Linda Foundation is a Dutch organisation founded in 2020. Its Dutch/English website(t) aims to support the authenticity of the OLB. This interesting website, includes a forum, a wiki and up-to-date translations of the Book.<
(b) https://archive.org/stream/oeralindabookfr00sandgoog#page/n40/mode/2up
(c) https://www.earth-history.com/Europe/index.htm
(d) https://archive.org/details/oeralindabookfr00ottegoog
(f) https://earth-history.com/Europe/God-king/radford-intro.htm
(g) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/interactive/northeur.htm
(h) https://www.historum.com/speculative-history/36777-oera-linda-book-7.html
(i) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AOera_Linda_Book
(j) https://spiritualitydiscussiongroup.yuku.com/topic/793/The-Oera-Linda-Book (link broken)*
(k) https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CDgQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forgottenbooks.org%2Fdownload_pdf%2FThe_Oera_Linda_Book_1000847682.pdf&ei=vhw3U9WULZDT7Abd34GIBA&usg=AFQjCNHcQ7T8MwZfRDYovr0BdftweYTKBA&bvm=bv.63808443,d.ZGU
(l) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kflHJpB9f1s
(m) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CAoZS52CoU
(o) https://fryskednis.blogspot.ie/2017/12/inventory-of-earlier-oera-linda.html
(p) https://joshualightningwarrior.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/the-fryan-question-part-i/
(q) https://www.historicmysteries.com/oera-linda/
(r) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oera_Linda_Book
Phocaea
Phocaea was an ancient port and the most northerly of the Ionian Greek cities in Asia Minor. It is now known as Foça, located north of Izmir in modern Turkey.
The Phocaeans were noted by Herodotus as being the first Greeks to make long sea journeys (Book I. 163) and had ventured as far as Tartessos. They also founded a colony at Massalia, modern Marseilles around 600 BC*and later the trading settlement of Emporion along what is now the eastern coast of Catalonia in Spain.*
At one point the Carthaginians feared that their dominance of the Western Mediterranean was at risk and so with the aid of their allies, the Etruscans, they engaged the Phocaean colonists in a large naval battle, which resulted in the elimination of this Greek threat.
Alewyn J.Raubenheimer strongly disputes[0744.91] this accepted account of the foundation of Massalia, claiming a much earlier date of around 2000 BC for the development there of a harbour by the Tyrians.* Unfortunately, this bold assertion is based on Raubenheimer’s reading of the controversial Oera Linda Book, without any other supporting references or other evidence of any kind!*