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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 »
Alexandria
Dokras, Uday
Uday Dokras is a prolific writer with a focus on Eastern religions and history. Many of his papers are available on the Academia website(a). He is reputed to have written the highest number of books and research papers! Included in his extensive output is a book entitled Atlantis – The Lost Continent. In it he reviews the subject of sunken cities and land both in the West and in the Orient, such as Kumari Kandam(b). His chapter on Atlantis offers little that is new and is simply a brief review of current theories.
>He also produced a paper on the ancient lighthouse at Alexandria (Pharos)(c).
Arguably his most contentious offering is an extensive paper(d) on the existence of the vimanas of ancient India and Pakistan. He presents an array of evidence from Hindu scriptures and concludes with a review of modern writers and the unsuccessful attempts to design and build a vimana today using these old texts.
Although Dokras’ paper is worth a read, I suggest that it be undertaken along with the more critical responses of debunkers, such as, Jason Colavito has drawn attention to the fact that
“The concept of these flying chariots as UFO-style airships originates in a fraud, the Vaimanika Shastra, allegedly an ancient Sanskrit epic, but one “channeled” from the astral realm by a Hindu psychic in 1918. No evidence of this text exists prior to 1952, and even the “translator” of the text makes explicit that it was channeled from the spirit world between 1918 and 1923. The fake text specifically compares the vimanas to modern aircraft, describing their propulsion systems and other modern technological achievements.”(e) David Hatcher Childress’ story of the Vaimanika Shastra has been challenged elsewhere including an article by Andrew May(f).<
(a) https://su-se.academia.edu/DrUdayDokras
(b) https://www.academia.edu/95153127/ATLANTIS_The_lost_Continent_BOOK
(c) https://archive.org/stream/lighthouse-of-alexandria-book/Lighthouse%20of%20Alexandria-BOOK_djvu.txt *
(d) (99+) VIMANA Ancient Conquests of Wind | Dr. Uday Dokras – Academia.edu *
Sunken Cities, Harbours and Islands *
Sunken Cities, Harbours and Islands are to be found all over the world. Sometimes these were caused by local seismic, tectonic or volcanic events. A greater number were undoubtedly caused by the rising sea levels that followed the deglaciation at the end of the last Ice Age. This deglaciation continues today as the greenhouse gases produced by human activity threaten to raise sea levels further which could inundate a number of our major cities and could lead to dramatic social and economic consequences.
The flooding of Atlantis, as recorded by Plato, continues to prompt opportunistic writers to try to link any new discovery of submerged structures with this prehistoric catastrophe. Cuba, The Baltic Sea, Malta, and Southern Spain, among others, have all been touted as Atlantis on this basis. Many more are yet to be discovered that will attract this same spurious identification. There is also the possibility that a sunken structure from Atlantis will be discovered that will not be identified as such.
Even more depressing is the possibility that mankind may have to wait until the inevitable next ice age when the sea levels again drop before we will have our best opportunity to identify the true location of Plato’s city. That is assuming that we are still around and in a position to scientifically search for the site of this enduring mystery.
The most spectacular sunken city recently discovered is undoubtedly that of Thonis-Heracleion off the coast of modern Alexandria(c). A close second might be the city found in the Gulf of Cambay in India, for which claims of extreme antiquity have been made, in a paper(f) by Badrinaryan Badrinaryan.
However, archaeologist Justin Morris from the British Museum said more work would need to be undertaken before the site could be categorically said to belong to a 9,000-year-old civilisation.
The sunken town of Dunwich was once the 10th largest settlement in England and is frequently referred to as ‘Britain’s Atlantis’. However, it was inundated relatively recently, in 1286 AD, and obviously has no connection with Plato’s Atlantis. Modern technology has now enabled accurate mapping of this old town(b). Less than a century later, in 1362, Ravenser Odd ( Ravensr Aude) situated near the entrance to Britain’s Humber Estuary, disappeared beneath the waves.
Similarly, the German city of Rungholt was flooded by the Wadden Sea less than a century later(d).
In 2007, an undersea city was discovered off the coast of Lebanon at depths between three and seventeen metres. It has been identified as Yarmuta, a 4,000-year-old city mentioned in the Amarna tablets(h).
In 2009, the lost city of Bathonea was rediscovered just 20 km from Istanbul. Evidence of human habitation in an area dating to earlier than 10,000 BC has been found. Millennia later, a Greek settlement was established on the site and later expanded by the Romans. Excavation of the partially submerged city may take up to a century. The discovery of cities such as Bathonea understandably raises hopes that someday the remains of Atlantis may also be found.
In 2017, also in Turkey, a sunken city was found in the waters of Lake Van in the far east of the country(e).
A Swedish website dedicated to underwater archaeology lists a number of known sunken cities(a).
(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20190525231859/https://www.abc.se/~pa/uwa/sunkcity.htm
(b) https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/10414260.How_I_helped_discover_Britain_s_Atlantis/?ref=rss
(d) https://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/umwelt/article9750988/Wie-eine-Flut-das-Atlantis-der-Nordsee-verschlang.html (German)
(f) https://web.archive.org/web/20060226235141/http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/BadrinaryanB1.php?
(h) https://www.ancientportsantiques.com/wp-content/uploads/Documents/PLACES/Levant/BurakSareptaYarmuta-Pedersen2011.pdf *
McQuillen, R(ich)
R(ich) McQuillen is an American investigator who has cogently argued for an Egyptian location for Atlantis. He has diligently gathered an impressive array of evidence from classical writers including Hellanicus, Solinus and Aeschylus to support his view and arranged the morass that is Greek mythology to construct a credible timeframe for the Atlantis narrative.
However, McQuillen is not the first to locate Atlantis in or near Egypt, in fact, the earliest I have found is in the late 19th century by A.N. Karnozhitsky, while the most recent was published by Diego Ratti in 2021.
McQuillen places the Pillars of Heracles at Canopus, which was formerly in the Western Nile delta but is now submerged about 6.5 km from the coast in the Bay of Aboukir. He is also of the opinion that the Egyptians used lunar ‘years’ rather than solar years bringing the backdrop to the Atlantis story into the 2nd millennium BC. However, he now seems to favour the ‘factor ten’ interpretation of Plato’s date.
McQuillen locates Atlantis at Pharos, which was near modern Alexandria. His website(a) is well worth a visit.
Extensive underwater excavations in the region have been undertaken in recent years by Franck Goddio and his team with remarkable results (b).
It is also worth noting that the late Ulf Richter reasoned that a river delta was the most likely topographical setting for Atlantis (c).
In March 2022 McQuillen added six papers(d-i) expanding on background details employed in his interpretation of the Atlantis story. All six are available on the Academia.edu website.
In 2020, McQuillen published A Simple Chronology of Greek Mythology(k) adding a further paper(j) in 2022 that offered a radical reappraisal of Biblical chronology that included the following.
1 People have been questioning Standard Biblical Chronology (the literal times), for 2000 years, and yet this still persists in modern Biblical Archaeology
2 I have thrown out the early dates entirely and introduced a different paradigm to try to find some of these elusive characters. This paper talks about the Pre-Noachian Kings, like Cainan, and links him to the real-world Syrian Hyksos King Khyan, and finds archaeological evidence of the existence of other Hyksos Kings.
3 It links the flood of Noah to the flood of Ahmose and Atrahasis, and shows it to be a real flood caused by Santorini.
4 It finds Jacob at the same time as the Israel stele of Merneptah. It finds Joseph as the Semitic Pharoah Siptah, whose mother has the same name as Jacob’s second wife. It finds Moses around the time of the Smallpox plague in Egypt (ranging from Ramses 4 to 9)(1182?1136BC).
In his paper ‘Perfecting Plato’ McQuillen is critical of some available translations available to us, of passages in Plato’s Atlantis texts. In his summary of the paper
“There are a bunch of controversial passages within the Timaeus. This has led to 50k books on the topic with a bunch of different interpretations of the same passages. These stem from mistranslations, intentional mistakes, wild speculation, etc… The purpose of this paper is to identify and correct the mistakes and add additional insight. The Timaeus is long and in most parts well-translated and irrelevant, so I’m selecting only interesting passages, where I can add insight. I’m using the Bury Translation, with a little bit of Calcidius thrown in.
Plato’s myth has been described as a fable and a description of an idealized society. Instead, it was intended as a story about 18th dynasty Egypt, and its interactions with the Haunebu (Aegaens). The past is often romanticized and idealized in the history books; History is written by the winners.” He then proceeded to comment on a number of specific passages in Timaeus(h).
In 2024, McQuillen published a new paper(l) focused on the work of Manetho. “This paper explores other Egyptan Sources to verify the veracity of Plato’s tale; specifically, intends a lot of the peculiarites in Plato’s text, that also exist in Manetho’s writngs. Plato says this tale comes from Solon in the days of Amasis; there are, in fact, Egyptan elements within this tale which were not invented by Plato, and can be confirmed to also exist in the Egyptan writngs from Manetho and others. Manetho specifically does menton 9000 years, and a war, and a flood, and a city, similar to Plato.”
In this more recent paper, he identifies Avaris as the City of Atlantis although as you can see above he previously(2007) named Pharos, near Alexandria. In the same paper he also identifies the Atlantean Gadir with Rhakotis, an ancient city near Alexandria.
In 2020, McQuillen published the first draft of A Simple Chronology of Greek Mythology, in which he was inspired by Herodotus to develop his own methodology and applied it to the histories of Athens, Crete and Egypt(m). He concluded “I have attempted to create a mythological timeframe for a majority of the Greek Mythological Kings in Greece. These timeframes have been tied to real world events like Troy. They have been synchronized with known timeframes of Egyptian Pharaohs. I list the kings of 20 different ancient cities and attempted to synchronize their history. I have created a framework to compare likes with likes and show when and where one might expect to find these names in Archaeology.”
(a) http://gizacalc.freehostia.com/Atlantis.html
(b) Franck Goddio: Homepage (archive.org)
(c) Archive 6142 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(d) https://www.academia.edu/43493561/A_Simple_Chronology_of_Greek_Mythology_First_Draft
(e) https://www.academia.edu/69049558/Dissecting_Diodorus_The_Legend_of_Myrina_and_Orus
(f) https://www.academia.edu/76436465/Finding_a_God_Phaethon_King_Tut_and_the_Amarna_Period
(g) https://www.academia.edu/76548637/Defining_Danaus_and_Egyptus
(h) https://www.academia.edu/76880053/Perfecting_Plato_A_colorful_commentary_on_the_Timaeus
(i) https://www.academia.edu/77235625/Perfecting_Plato_A_colorful_commentary_on_the_Critias_Part_1
(j) (99+) A Simple Chronology for Biblical Archaeology | Rich McQuillen – Academia.edu
(k) https://www.academia.edu/43493561/A_Simple_Chronology_of_Greek_Mythology_-First_Draft
(m) (99+) A Simple Chronology of Greek Mythology -First Draft | Rich McQuillen – Academia.edu *
Avaris
Avaris (Tell el Dab’a) located in the Nile Delta, was the capital of the Hyksos rulers of northern Egypt during the second millennium BC. Recent excavations have unearthed Minoan-style frescoes, including bull leaping. At least one commemtator has remarked on the similarity of this ‘island’ city to Plato’s Atlantis (The Jerusalem Post, July 12th 2006).
Manfred Bietak (1940- ) the celebrated Austrian archaeologist spent many years excavating at two sites in the Nile Delta and identified Tell El-Dab’a as the location of Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos period; and Piramesse, which was the capital of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt(b). In 1991 he delivered an illustrated lecture at the British Museum on his most recent discoveries in Egypt(c).
In 2021, Diego Ratti published Atletenu(a), in which he identified the Hyksos as Atlanteans and situated their capital as Avaris! He claims to have matched Plato’s description of the city of Atlantis with the Egyptian location. I identified a number of discrepancies and was not convinced.
>In a recent (2024) paper(e), R(ich) McQuillen also identified Avaris as the City of Atlantis although you can see that he previously (2007) named Pharos, near Alexandria as Atlantis(d). In that earlier paper he also identified the Atlantean Gadir with Rhakotis, an ancient city near Alexandria.<
Also See: Meizon
(a) About | Atletenu (archive.org)
(b) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Bietak
(c) (99+) Avaris: Capital of the Hyksos | Manfred Bietak – Academia.edu
(d) http://gizacalc.freehostia.com/Atlantis.html (See Summary) *
(e) (99+) Manifestin with Manetho: Finding commonality from Plato’s Atlantis and Egyptian Sources | Rich McQuillen – Academia.edu *
*
Marcellinus, Ammianus
Ammianus Marcellinus (330-395 AD) was a Greek historian, who was well-known to the Roman Emperor Julian.>He is one of a number of classical authors accepted as supporting the existence of Atlantis.<
He is widely quoted on the internet as having written that the destruction of Atlantis was an accepted fact by the intelligentsia of Alexandria. However, I am indebted to Bernhard Beier of Atlantisforschung.de for pointing out that no such statement was made by Marcellinus, referring to the English translations of his work by John C. Rolfe(a) and Charles D. Yonge(b). On the Atlantisforschung website(c) be suggests that the quote originated from an overly liberal interpretation of a line from Lewis Spence’s The History of Atlantis[259.33]. He described a class of earthquakes that suddenly swallows up large tracts of land as had happened in the Atlantic to a large island.
>A paper on the Atlantisforschung website ends with the following balanced comment;
“It certainly seems legitimate to classify the Roman historian as one of the ancient advocates of the historicity of the Platonic Atlantis account. However, his preoccupation with the subject was apparently only peripheral, and his apparent acceptance of the idea that a great island once sunk in the Atlantic is probably mainly due to his special esteem for Solon, Plato and the Ancient Egyptians to understand. After all, he apparently assumed the existence of a highly developed – in a completely unbiblical sense – ‘antediluvian’ culture that left its traces in later Egypt. It is possible that the lost parts of his ‘Res gestae’ contained other interesting clues to the mysteries of the prehistory, but this can only be speculated on.”<
(a) https://archive.org/details/ammianusmarcelli01ammiuoft
(b) https://archive.org/details/romanhistoryof00ammiiala
(c) https://atlantisforschung.de/index.php?title=Ammianus_Marcellinus (German) *
Papamarinopoulos, Stavros *
Stavros Papamarinopoulos is a retired Professor of Applied Geophysics, formerly at the University of Patras in Greece. In 2003 he led a team from his university in an attempt to locate the tomb of Alexander the Great in the cemetery quarter of Alexandria.
Papamarinopoulos was one of the organisers of the Atlantis Conferences of 2005 [0629], 2008 [0750] and 2011. He was also the editor of the published proceedings of those conferences. Furthermore, he delivered a number of papers to all three conferences. I am informed that after a delay of many years the publication of the proceedings of the third conference is now imminent.
Papamarinopoulos is currently (2024) the president of Society for the Study of the Ancient Hellenic Mythology (EMAEM)(r). I’m informed that the “society is a non-profit association being entirely supported by its friends and members aiming among other topics to the elaboration and promotion of matters associated with the Ancient Hellenic Mythology, which are highlighted by publishing books and papers in international journals and currying out monthly public lectures and meetings by distinguished scholars, researchers and academics.” The society will be linking to Atlantipedia in the near future.
Mark Adams, author of Meet Me in Atlantis[1070] describes Papamarinopoulos as “the world’s most respected Atlantis expert”(h).
In his paper A Bronze Age Catastrophe in the Atlantic Ocean?, he points out some of the pitfalls associated with the interpretation of prehistoric events when using the language of 4th century B.C. “For instance, a literary differentiation between ‘island’ and ‘peninsula’ did not exist in alphabetic Greek before Herodotus’ in the 5th century B.C. Similarly, there was not any distinction between the coast and an island in Egyptian writing systems, up to the 5th century B.C.” Papamarinopoulos maintains that a lack of knowledge of such linguistic shortcomings has been used unwittingly by many who deny the existence of Atlantis.
Papamarinopoulos personally supports the idea of an Iberian Atlantis(f)(g). He presented this view in a series of six papers(b)(j-o) presented to a 2010 International Geological Congress in Patras, Greece. Papamarinpoulos has written several other papers including one which discusses Phaeton as a comet and its possible coincidence with the Trojan War(a).
Stavros Papamarinopoulos at the 2005 Atlantis Conference highlighted(p) the part played by earthquakes in the description of the ancient Athenian Acropolis in the Atlantis narrative, which he saw as part of a 50-year ‘seismic storm’ which ravaged the Eastern Mediterranean around the 12th century BC [629.499]. Amos Nur & Eric H. Cline discuss the same intense seismic activity in a paper on the Academia.edu website(q).
Papamarinopoulos is also co-author with John S. Kopper of a paper(c) which concluded that there is “a strong correlation between times of abrupt physical and cultural changes in man and reversals of the earth’s magnetic field.”
In 2012, Papamarinopoulos et al published a paper(d)(e) that carefully analyses astronomical data enabling them to conclude that a solar eclipse of 30th October 1207 BC occurred just five days after Homer’s Odysseus returned to Ithaca.
In the book Science and Technology in Homeric Epics(i) Papamarinopoulos has a chapter included entitled Atlantis in Homer and Other Authors Prior to Plato, which was based on a paper presented at the international symposium, Olympia, Greece, August 27–30, 2006.
(b) https://www.researchgate.net/search?q=ATLANTIS%20IN%20SPAIN%20I
(c) Human Evolution and Geomagnetism on JSTOR
(d) (PDF) A new astronomical dating of the Trojan war’s end | Stavros P Papamarinopoulos – Academia.edu *
(e) The exact date of the return of Odysseus to Ithaca (q-mag.org) *
(f) https://atlantis.fyi/sources/atlantis-in-spain-part-v
(g) https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/geosociety/article/view/11164/11216
(i) https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-8784-4_37
(j) https://atlantis.fyi/sources/atlantis-in-spain-part-ii
(k) https://atlantis.fyi/sources/atlantis-in-spain-part-iii
(l) https://atlantis.fyi/sources/atlantis-in-spain-part-iv
(m) https://atlantis.fyi/sources/atlantis-in-spain-part-i
(n) https://atlantis.fyi/sources/atlantis-in-spain-part-vi
(o) https://atlantis.fyi/sources/atlantis-in-spain-part-v
(r) https://emaem.gr *
Shoals of Mud
A Shoal of mud is stated by Plato (Tim.25d) to mark the location of where Atlantis ‘settled’. He described these shallows in the present tense, clearly implying that they were still a maritime hindrance even in Plato’s day.
Three of the most popular translations clearly indicate this:
….the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.
…..the ocean at that spot has now become impassable and unsearchable, being blocked up by the shoal of mud which the island created as it settled down.”
…..the sea in that area is to this day impassible to navigation, which is hindered by mud just below the surface, the remains of the sunken island.
Wikipedia has noted(h) that “during the early first century, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo wrote about the destruction of Atlantis in his On the Eternity of the World, xxvi. 141, in a longer passage allegedly citing Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus.
‘ And the island of Atalantes [translator’s spelling; original: “????????”] which was greater than Africa and Asia, as Plato says in the Timaeus, in one day and night was overwhelmed beneath the sea in consequence of an extraordinary earthquake and inundation and suddenly disappeared, becoming sea, not indeed navigable, but full of gulfs and eddies’.”
Since it is probable that Atlantis was destroyed around a thousand years or more before Solon’s Egyptian sojourn, to have continued as a hazard for such a period suggests a location that was little affected by currents or tides. The latter would seem to offer support for a Mediterranean Atlantis as that sea enjoys negligible tidal changes, as can be seen from the chart below. The darkest shade of blue indicates the areas of minimal tidal effect.
If Plato was correct in stating that Atlantis was submerged in a single day and that it was still close to the water’s surface in his own day, its destruction must have taken place a relatively short time before since the slowly rising sea levels would eventually have deepened the waters covering the remains of Atlantis to the point where they would not pose any danger to shipping. The triremes of Plato’s time had an estimated draught of about a metre so the shallows must have had a depth that was less than that.
The reference to mud shoals resulting from an earthquake brings to mind the possibility of liquefaction. This is perhaps what happened to the two submerged ancient cities close to modern Alexandria. Their remains lie nine metres under the surface of the Mediterranean.
Our knowledge of sea-level changes over the past two and a half millennia should enable us to roughly estimate all possible locations in the Mediterranean where the depth of water of any submerged remains would have been a metre or less in the time of Plato.
Some supporters of a Black Sea Atlantis have suggested the shallow Strait of Kerch between Crimea and Russia as the location of Plato’s ‘shoals’(e) .
The tidal map above offers two areas west of Athens and Egypt that do appear to be credible location regions, namely, (1) from the Balearic Islands, south to North Africa and (2), a more credible straddling the Strait of Sicily. This region offers additional features, making it much more compatible with Plato’s account.
By contrast, just over a hundred miles south of that Strait, lies the Gulf of Gabés, which boasts the greatest tidal range (max 8 ft) within the Mediterranean.
The Gulf of Gabes formerly known as Syrtis Minor and the larger Gulf of Sidra to the east, previously known as Syrtis Major, was greatly feared by ancient mariners and continue to be very dangerous today because of the shifting sandbanks created by tides in the area.
There are two principal ancient texts that possibly support the gulfs of Syrtis as the location of Plato’s ‘shoal’. The first is from Apollonius of Rhodes who was a 3rd-century BC librarian at Alexandria. In his Argonautica (Bk IV ii 1228-1250)(a) he unequivocally speaks of the dangerous shoals in the Gulf of Syrtis. The second source is the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 27 13-18) written three centuries later, which describes how St. Paul on his way to Rome was blown off course and feared that they would run aground on “Syrtis sands.” However, good fortune was with them and after fourteen days they landed on Malta. The Maltese claim regarding St. Paul is rivalled by that of the Croatian island of Mljet as well Argostoli on the Greek island of Cephalonia. Even more radical is the convincing evidence offered by Kenneth Humphreys to demonstrate that the Pauline story is an invention(b).
Both the Strait of Sicily and the Gulf of Gabes have been included in a number of Atlantis theories. The Strait and the Gulf were seen as part of a larger landmass that included Sicily according to Butavand, Arecchi and Sarantitis who named the Gulf of Gabes as the location of the Pillars of Heracles. Many commentators such as Frau, Rapisarda and Lilliu have designated the Strait of Sicily as the ‘Pillars’, while in the centre of the Strait we have Malta with its own Atlantis claims.
Zhirov[458.25] tried to explain away the ‘shoals’ as just pumice stone, frequently found in large quantities after volcanic eruptions. However, Plato records an earthquake, not an eruption and Zhirov did not explain how the pumice stone was still a hazard many hundreds of years after the event. Although pumice can float for years, it will eventually sink(c). It was reported that pumice rafts associated with the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa were found floating up to 20 years after that event. Zhirov’s theory does not hold water (no pun intended) apart from which, Atlantis was destroyed as a result of an earthquake. not a volcanic eruption and I think that the shoals described by Plato were more likely to have been created by liquefaction and could not have endured for centuries.
Nevertheless, a lengthy 2020 paper(d) by Ulrich Johann offers additional information about pumice and in a surprising conclusion proposes that it was pumice rafts that inspired Plato’s reference to shoals!
Andrew Collins in an effort to justify his Cuban location for Atlantis needed to find Plato’s ‘shoals of mud’ in the Atlantic and for me, in what seems to have been an act of desperation he decided that the Sargasso Sea fitted the bill [072.42]. Similarly, Emilio Spedicato in support of a Hispaniola Atlantis also opted for the Sargasso. However, neither Collins or Spedicato were the first to make this suggestion. Chedomille Mijatovich (1842-1932), a Serbian politician, economist and historian was one of the first in modern times to suggest that the Sargasso Sea may have been the maritime hazard described by Plato as a ‘shoal of mud’, which resulted from the submergence of Atlantis. However, neither explains how anyone can mistake seaweed for mud!
The late Andis Kaulins believed that Atlantis did exist and considered two possible regions for its location; the Minoan island of Thera or some part of the North Sea that was submerged at the end of the last Ice Age when the sea levels rose dramatically. Kaulins noted that part of the North Sea is known locally as ‘Wattenmeer’ or Sea of Mud’ reminiscent of Plato’s description of the region where Atlantis was submerged, after that event.
An even more absurd suggestion came from the American scholar William Arthur Heidel (1868-1941), who denied the reality of Atlantis and wrote a critical paper [0374] on the subject (republished July 2013(g)). He claimed that an expeditionary naval force sent by Darius in 515 BC under Scylax of Caryanda to explore the Indus River, eventually encountered waters too shallow for his ships, and that this was the inspiration behind Plato’s tale of unnavigable seas. Heidel further claimed that Plato’s battle between Atlantis and Athens is a distorted account of the war of invasion between the Persians and the peoples of the Indus Valley (Now Pakistan)!
(a) https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/argo/argo53.htm
(b) The Curious Yarn of Paul’s “Shipwreck” (archive.org) *
(c) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170523144110.htm
(e) Index (atlantis-today.com)
(f) https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread61382/pg1
(g) A Suggestion concerning Plato’s Atlantis on JSTOR (archive.org)
(h) Atlantis – Wikipedia_?s=books&ie=UTF&qid=1376067567&sr=-