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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 »
Antonije Shkokljev
Danube *
The River Danube is the second-longest river in Europe, which was known to the ancient Greeks as ‘Istros’. It rises in Germany’s Black Forest and after passing through many countries, including four capital cities, it eventually empties into the Black Sea.
A number of researchers have associated the river with Plato’s Atlantis. One of the earliest was Nicolae Densusianu who proposed that Atlantis had been situated in ancient Dacia, his native Romania. Over a century later some of his ideas have been revived by other Romanian commentators such as Adrian Bucurescu and Alexandra Furdui, who also translated Densusianu’s monumental work into English.
Densusian’s nationalism is now frowned upon and there is an understandable suspicion that his modern Romanian supporters may have similar underlying motivations.
There is a gorge on the Danube known as the Iron Gates which provides part of the boundary between Serbia and Romania. Densusianu located the Pillars of Heracles at the Iron Gates, an idea supported by Ticleanu, Constantin & Nicolescu at the 2008 Atlantis Conference, who place Atlantis further west on the Pannonian Plain [750.365]. In 2020, Veljko Milkovic also placed the ‘Pillars’ at the Iron Gates on the Danube and Atlantis in the Pannonian Basin(c) in his book Panonska Atlantida [1932].
However, Ranko Jakovlievic expressed the view that the Iron Gates section of the Danube was the location of Atlantis!
Related to this, is the claim by an anonymous ‘Sherlock’ that Pindar’s Olympian Ode 3 suggested that the Pillars of Herakles had been situated at the confluence of the Seva and Danube rivers near modern Belgrade(b).
A recent book [1742] by Antonije Shkokljev & Slave Nikolovski–Katin also recount an ancient version of the ‘Labours of Hercules’ that took place in the Balkans.
Christian and Siegfried Schoppe locate Atlantis east of the Danube Delta on Snake Island (Zimiinyi) in the Black Sea, an idea now adopted by George K. Weller(a). [Zimiinyi, Ukrainian territory, was occupied by the Russians 25.02.22 as part of their invasion of Ukraine]
Bucurescu, Adrian
Adrian Bucurescu is a Romanian ethnographer and a prolific article writer and also the author of Dacia Secreta and Dacia Magica. He identifies the Black Sea and what is now mainland Romania as the home of Atlantis. He locates the Pillars of Hercules at the Danube gorge at the mouth of S-W Romanian river Cerna (also known as Acheron, Charon, Geryon) and that the capital of Atlantis was the city of Tulcea (Tul=atlas+Cea=land) at the Danube Delta.
>A recent book [1742] by Antonije Shkokljev & Slave Nikolovski–Katin have related an ancient version of the ‘Labours of Hercules’ based in the Balkan-Danube region.<
Furthermore, Bucurescu claims that Plato originally said 5,000 not 9,000 years had elapsed between the Atlantean war and Solon’s visit to Egypt. He bases this idea on his claim that the works of the Greek philosophers were preserved in Arabic translations after the fall of Constantinople and that their numbers ‘5’ and ‘9’ were sufficiently similar to have led to a transcription error!(b)>This is difficult to accept as the Arabic character for nine is rather like our ‘9’, while the Arabic five is like our zero!<
Bucurescu’s ideas should be compared with those of Densusianu and the more recent book of Alexandra Furdui.
However, a further contribution on Graham Hancock’s website has him listing the ten kingdoms (of Atlantis) extending over a much larger region, including Poland, Egypt and Sumeria(a)!
(a) https://grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?1,176280,176318
(b) https://grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?1,176280,176305#msg-176305
Iron Gate(s), The
The Iron Gate(s) is the name given to a gorge on the River Danube that forms part of the boundary between Serbia and Romania. A century ago, Nicolae Densusianu proposed The Iron Gate as the location for the Pillars of Heracles, on the Danube in ancient Dacia, modern Romania.
A recent book [1742] by Antonije Shkokljev & Slave Nikolovski–Katin has related an ancient version of the ‘Labours of Hercules’ based in the Balkan-Danube region.
Recently, Ranko Jakovljevic expressed the view that the Iron Gate section of the Danube in Serbia was the location of Atlantis.
A paper presented to the 2008 Atlantis Conference by Ticleanu, Constantin & Nicolescu [750.375] has the ‘Pillars of Heracles’ located at the Iron Gate but placed Atlantis a little further west on what is now the Pannonian Plain.
>In 2020 Veljko Milkovic also placed the ‘Pillars’ at the Iron Gates on the Danube and Atlantis in the Pannonian Basin(c)(d) in his book Panonska Atlantida [1932].<
This minority view of Atlantis located in Eastern European is seen by a few commentators to be vindicated by the literate Vinca culture(b) of the Danubian region, although the Schoppes see the Vinca people as refugees from their original home in the Black Sea region(a).
For me, all those theories conflict with Plato’s unambiguous statement that the invading Atlanteans came from the west (Tim.25b & Crit.114c). In fact, what Plato actually 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 west of both Athens and Egypt.
(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20190819053842/https://www.black-sea-atlantis.com/schoppe.pdf