Latest News
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 »
Arctic
d’Eraines, Jean (L)
Jean d’Eraines was the author of the 1914 book, Le probleme des origines et des migrations[1056], in which, according to Sprague deCamp, he identified the Arctic as the home of Atlantis. The original French text is available online(a). I note that he was not mentioned in Joscelyn Godwin’s Arktos and has also been accused of being pseudo-scientific(b).
(a) https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6571245x.r=.langES
Tilak, Bal Gangadar
Bal Gangadar Tilak (1856-1920) was India’s first Independence Movement leader. He was greatly 
impressed by William Fairfield Warren’s 1885 book, Paradise Found [078], which placed the cradle of humanity in the Arctic. So much so, that when Tilak wrote Arctic Home in the Vedas [1296]+, he proposed the Arctic Sea as the location of the Aryan homeland of ‘Airyana Vaêjo’.
Rand & Rose Flem-Ath have suggested that Tilak’s Airyana Vaêjo might have been a garbled version of the lost paradise of Kumari Kandam, which is traditionally located south of India. They then propose that since Antarctica is also south of India and covered with ice like Airyana Vaêjo, perhaps Tilak had chosen the wrong polar region and that the Aryan homeland had been Antarctica, which just happens to be the location of Atlantis according to the Flem-Aths!(a)?
[1296]+ Available online: https://www.rarebooksocietyofindia.org/book_archive/ID-1606385932.pdf *
(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20080607014518/https://www.flem-ath.com:80/kumari.htm
Italian Atlantology *
Italian Atlantology can be traced back to the 16th century when Fracastoro, Garimberto and Ramusio, identified the Americas as Atlantis. In fact, we should look to the 15th century when Ficino was the first to translate Plato’s entire works into Latin giving medieval Europe its first access to the complete Atlantis texts. Not much happened until 1788 when Carli attributed the destruction of Atlantis to a close encounter with a comet. In 1840, Angelo Mazzoldi proposed Italy as the location of Atlantis and as the hyper-diffusionist mother culture of the great civilisations of the Eastern Mediterranean region. He was followed by others such as Giuseppe Brex(b).
Two years after Donnelly published his Atlantis in 1882 the Italian, D’Albertis followed him and opted for the Azores as the remains of Atlantis.
Not much developed in pre-war Italy apart from Russo’s journal which ran from 1930 until 1932. After the war, other Atlantis journals were established by Gianni Belli(d) in 1956 and Bettini in 1963 and reportedly one in Trieste by Antonio Romain & Serge Robbia(c).
After that, there was a wide range of theories advanced by Italian researchers. Spedicato located Atlantis in Hispaniola, Stecchini opted for São Tomé, Barbiero, who although Croatian by birth was an admiral in the Italian Navy nominated the Antarctic as the home of Atlantis before the Flem-Aths published their Antarctic ideas. Bulloni chose the Arctic, Pincherle identified the Mandaeans as the last of the Atlanteans and Monte links Thera with Tarshish.
In recent years the most widely reported Atlantis theory to emanate from Italy came from Sergio Frau who advocates Sardinia as the original Atlantis. However, this idea is not new having been promoted by Poddighe in 1982. Frau has subsequently been supported by other commentators such as Tozzi and Novo. I cannot help feeling that there might be a trace of nationalism underlying this theory, a suspicion that I have held regarding writers of other nationalities.
The latter end of the 20th century saw the development of the Internet which enabled the instant promotion of Atlantis theories, both silly and serious, to a global audience. Italy was no exception, where websites, such as Edicolaweb that are sympathetic to the exploration of historical mysteries emerged(a).
More recently, Marin, Minella & Schievenin had The Three Ages of Atlantis[0972] published in 2014. This is an English translation of their original 2010 work. In it, they suggest that Atlantis had originally existed in Antarctica and after its destruction survivors established two other Atlantises in South America and the Mediterranean. Perhaps more credible is the theory of Capuchin friar, Antonio Moro(f)who, in 2013, suggested that Atlantis had included Iberia, the south coast of France and the west coast of Italy![0974]
I must include here a mention of the website of Pierluigi Montalbano where he and various guest authors have written many interesting articles, particularly about Sardinia and its Nuraghic past as well as Atlantis. The site is well worth a browse and as it has Google Translate built-in it is accessible to all(e).
(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20140625081839/https://edicolaweb.net/cerca.htm
(c) Atlantis, Vol 16, No.2, April 1963.
(d) 025_028.PDF (uranialigustica.altervista.org)
(e) https://pierluigimontalbano.blogspot.com/2014/04/uno-tsunami-cancello-la-civilta-nuragica.html
(f) Atlantide (archive.org) (Italian) *
Bennett, John Godolphin
John Godolphin Bennett (1897-1974) is considered one of the leading 
British philosophers of the 20th century. An extensive biography is available on the Internet(a).
In 1925 was Bennett was a witness to low level volcanic activity on Santorini, which led him to investigate the possibility many historical events were triggered by volcanic eruptions.
Bennett published an interesting paper(c) in 1963, in which he argued cogently for the linking of the destruction of Minoan Crete, the Biblical Exodus, the ten plagues of Egypt, the Flood of Deucalion as well as the demise of Plato’s Atlantis. A more controversial paper(d) was delivered the same year promoting the idea of a Hyperborean or Arctic origin for the Indo-European culture.
(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Bennett
(d) https://www.systematics.org/journal/vol1-2/geophysics/systematics-vol1-no3-203-232.htm
Avalon
Avalon is the legendary resting place of Britain’s King Arthur. Tradition has it that it was also famous for its apples and this feature led some to link it with the legend of the Hesperides considered another name for Atlantis. This linkage of Avalon with Atlantis is extremely tenuous. The apple connection is also suggested by the Welsh for Avalon which is Ynys Afallon, possibly derived from afal, the Welsh for apple.
Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historiae (xxxvii.35) named Helgoland as ‘insulam Abalum’, which has been suggested as a variant of Avalon. Other locations such as Sicily and Avallon in Burgundy have been also been proposed. A series of YouTube clips(a) bravely links Avalon, Mt.Meru and Atlantis, which is supposedly situated in the Arctic!
The isle of Lundy in Britain’s Bristol Channel has been speculatively identified as Avalon(b).>Other leading contenders are the Isle of Man and Glastonbury(c).<
(a) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrSr594L70c
Hyperboreans *
The Hyperboreans in Greek mythology lived to the far north of Greece in a land called Hyperborea, which means beyond the North Wind or Boreas, which has been linked by a number of writers with the Atlanteans. Even more exotic is the claim on one loony website that the Hyperboreans were an ancient extraterrestrial race (see end)! (j)
Researchers have variously identified this land of Hyperborea with Iceland, the British Isles, and the North Sea. Like many classical references and later commentators, there is no clear consensus on a precise location. Hecataeus of Abdera, a 4th century BC Greek historian, noted that the Hyperboreans were located “in the lands of the Celts, in the ocean, (where) there is an island no smaller than Sicily.”
Diodorus Siculus described Hyperborea as a northern island with a temple to which the god returns every nineteen years. This was initially thought by many to be a reference to England’s Stonehenge, but the renowned Aubrey Burl considered Stonehenge to be 500 miles too far south and instead proposed the Hebridean island of Lewis home to the famous Callanish megalithic site, which includes the ability to record the return of the stars to the same position every nineteen years(c).
Olof Rudbeck‘s over-enthusiastic nationalism not only brought him to associate Atlantis with Sweden but also linked the writings of Homer and other classical writers with the prehistory of his homeland. This inevitably led him to declare ancient Sweden as Hyperborea. David King outlines how Rudbeck came to this conclusion [530.71].
However, Homer reportedly(h) placed Boreas in Thrace, and therefore Hyperborea, according to him, would be located north of Thrace, in Dacia, modern Romania!
Jürgen Spanuth based his Atlantis theory[0015] on an unambiguous identification of the Atlanteans with the Hyperboreans of the Baltic region, specifically nominating Jutland, part of today’s Denmark, as the land of the Hyperboreans [p.88].
The renowned Flemish cartographer, Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594), showed a large archipelago near the North Pole on one of his charts. This inclusion by him and other cartographers of the period stemmed from a now-lost book by an English Franciscan friar entitled Inventio Fortunatae (The Discovery of the Fortunate Isle).
Based on ancient maps and the work of other researchers such as Emilio Spedicato, Stuart L. Harris has proposed(e) that Hyperborea was also known as Atland to the Frisians. He further suggests that this land disappeared in 2194 BC as noted in the controversial Oera Linda Book, and that today’s Faroe Plateau topped by the Faroe Islands are its remnants.
It also appears that in the 18th century, the Russian Empress Catherine II organised an expedition in an attempt to find Hyperborea in the vicinity of the North Pole, in a pathetic attempt to discover ‘the elixir of eternal youth” allegedly invented by the Hyperboreans. She was apparently captivated by the descriptions of the classical writers who related that the Hyperboreans lived in total happiness for a thousand years.
It was reported in 2006(a) that a Russian scientist, Valery Dyemin, inspired by the work of Jean-Sylvain Bailly and William Fairfield Warren was attempting to prove the reality of Hyperborea in the Arctic region. Another Russian, Sergey Teleguin has also attributed a North Pole origin to both the Maya and the Indo-Europeans(b).
J.G. Bennett, a British philosopher, has opted for a Hyperborean origin for the Indo-European culture, a claim that has resonances with the Nazi claim that Hyperborea has been the ancestral home of the ‘master race’. He also supported the idea of an Arctic Hyperborea(i), inspired by the ideas of Bal Gangadar Tilak, although at the same time, he was critical of Warren’s reasoning.
Luciano Chiereghin, who promotes the idea of Atlantis being situated in Italy’s Po Valley, also claims that the same river valley and its plain were also previously known as Hyperborea! The authors of The Three Ages of Atlantis, Marin, Minella and Schievenin, also refer to “the Hyperboreans of the Po Valley” [972.181].
Wikipedia includes some of the more bizarre ideas regarding Hyperborea(h).
“Robert Charroux first related the Hyperboreans to an ancient astronaut race of “reputedly very large, very white people” who had chosen “the least warm area on the earth because it corresponded more closely to their own climate on the planet from which they originated” [766.29]. Miguel Serrano was influenced by Charroux’s writings regarding the Hyperboreans.”
An extensive internet article outlines the mythology associated with Hyperborea and recent efforts to determine its location(d). The Theoi.com website(g) offers a list of all classical references to Hyperborea.
(a) http://english.pravda.r science/mysteries/29-11-2006/85697-paradise u/science/mysteries/29-11-2006/85697-paradise-0/
(b) https://mayanarchaeology.tripod.com/id23.html
(c) A Hyperborean Temple? The Stone Circles of Callanish | Humans Are Free (archive.org) *
(d) Mysterious Hyperborea | Earth Chronicles News (archive.org)
(e) https://www.academia.edu/36044603/Identification_of_Hyperborea_with_Atland_and_Frisland
(f) History, 3a.264. F.7.5.
(g) https://www.theoi.com/Phylos/Hyperborea.html
(h) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperborea
(i) THE HYPERBOREAN ORIGIN OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN CULTURE by J. G. Bennett from SYSTEMATICS I/3
(j) Hyperboreans: An ancient alien race that lived on Earth – Infinity Explorers
Pagé, Jean-Louis (L)
Jean-Louis Pagé (1949- ) is the Canadian author of a 2001 bilingual, French/English; book, Atlantis Messages[501] that maintains that artefacts such as the Phaistos disk as well as Mayan and Aztec disks together with Egyptian frescos contain messages from Atlantean ancestors! He locates Atlantis in the Arctic and attributes its destruction to a rapid pole shift in 9792 BC. Some of this book would appear to be strongly influenced by the work of Albert Slosman.
Ogygia *
Ogygia is the home of Calypso, referred to by Homer in Book V of his Odyssey. It is accepted by some as an island in the Mediterranean that was destroyed by an earthquake before the Bronze Age. The Greek writers Euhemerus in the 4th century BC and Callimachus who flourished in the 3rd century BC, identified the Maltese archipelago as Ogygia. Others have more specifically named the Maltese island of Gozo as Ogygia. Anton Mifsud has pointed out[209] that Herodotus, Hesiod and Diodorus Siculus have all identified the Maltese Islands with Ogygia.
John Vella has added his support to the idea of a Maltese Ogygia in a paper published in the Athens Journal of History (Vol.3 Issue 1) in which he noted that “The conclusions that have emerged from this study are that Homer’s Ogygia is not an imaginary but a reference to and a record of ancient Gozo-Malta.”
Adding to the confusion, Aeschylus, the tragedian (523-456 BC) calls the Nile, Ogygian, and Eustathius, a Byzantine grammarian (1115-1195), claimed that Ogygia was the earliest name for Egypt(j).
Isaac Newton wrote a number of important works including The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended [1101], in which he discussed a range of mythological links to Atlantis, including a possible connection with Homer’s Ogygia. There is now evidence that he concurred(c) with the idea of a Maltese Ogygia in The Original of Monarchies(d).
Strabo referred to “Eleusis and Athens on the Triton River [in Boiotia]. These cities, it is said, were founded by Kekrops (Cecrops), when he ruled over Boiotia (Boeotia), then called Ogygia, but were later wiped out by inundations.”(i) However, Strabo also declared that Ogygia was to be found in the ‘World Ocean’ or Atlantic (j). To say the least, these two conflicting statements require explanation.
Richard Hennig opted for Madeira following the opinion of von Humboldt. Spanuth argued strongly against either Madeira or the Canaries[0017.149] and gave his support to the Azores as the most likely location of Calypso’s Island.. Not unexpectedly the Azores, in the mid-Atlantic, have also been nominated as Ogygia by other 20th century researchers such as Sykes(e) and Mertz[397]. In a 2019 paper(f), Gerard Janssen also placed Ogygia in the Azores, specifically naming the island of Saõ Miguel, which both Iman Wilkens [610.239] and Spanuth [015.226] also claimed. Spanuth added that until the 18th-century Saõ Miguel was known as umbilicus maris, which is equivalent to the Greek term, omphalos thallasses, used by Homer to describe Ogygia in chapter eight of the Odyssey!
Homer in his Odyssey identifies Ogygia as the home of Calypso. The Roman poet Catullus writing in the 1st century BC linked Ogygia with Calypso in Malta(g). However, Gozo’s claim is challenged by those supporting Gavdos in Crete(k). This opinion has been expounded more fully by Katerina Kopaka in a paper published in the journal Cretica Chronica(l), where her starting point is the claim that Gavdos had been previously known as Gozo! Another Greek claimant is Lipsi(o) in the Dodecanese. We must also add Mljet in Croatia to the list of contenders claiming(p) to have been the home of Calypso. Mljet is also competing with Malta as the place where St. Paul was shipwrecked!
Further south is the beautiful Greek island of Othoni near Corfu where local tradition claims an association with Calypso. An article on the Greek Reporter website(r) suggests that “Evidence confirming this legend appears in the writings of Homer, who described a strong scent of cypress on Ogygia. Many cypress trees are grown on Othonoi.
Shortly after departing the island on a raft, Odysseus is shipwrecked on Scheria, which we know of today as Corfu. This implies that the two islands Homer described were relatively close. Likewise, the islands of Othonoi and Corfu are separated by a relatively short distance. Due to this mythological connection, during the 16th century, many naval maps described Othonoi as ‘Calypso island.‘”
Mifsud quotes another Roman of the same period, Albius Tibullus, who also identified Atlantis with Calypso. Other Maltese writers have seen all this as strong evidence for the existence of Atlantis in their region. Delisle de Sales considered Ogygia to be between Italy and Carthage, but opted for Sardinia as the remains of Calypso’s island.
Other researchers such as Geoffrey Ashe and Andrew Collins have opted for the Caribbean as the home of Ogygia. Another site supports Mesoamerica as the location of Ogygia, which the author believes can be equated with Atlantis(h). An even more extreme suggestion by Ed Ziomek places Ogygia in the Pacific(b)!
In the Calabria region of southern Italy lies Capo Collone (Cape of Columns). 18th-century maps(m) show two or more islands off the cape with one named Ogygia offering echoes of Homer’s tale. Respected atlases as late as 1860 continued to show a non-existent island there. It seems that these were added originally by Ortelius, inspired by Pseudo-Skylax and Pliny(n) . Additionally, there is a temple to Hera Lacinia at Capo Colonne, which is reputed to have been founded by Hercules!
By way of complete contrast, both Felice Vinci and John Esse Larsen have proposed that the Faeroe Islands included Ogygia. In the same region, Iceland was nominated by Gilbert Pillot as the location of Ogygia and Calypso’s home[742]. Ilias D. Mariolakos, a Greek professor of Geology also makes a strong case(a) for identifying Iceland with Ogygia based primarily on the writings of Plutarch. He also supports the idea of Minoans in North America.
A more recent suggestion has come from Manolis Koutlis[1617], who, after a forensic examination of various versions of Plutarch’s work, in both Latin and Greek, also placed Ogygia in North America, specifically on what is now the tiny island of St. Paul at the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, a gulf that has also been proposed as the location of Atlantis.
Jean-Silvain Bailly also used the writings of Plutarch to sustain his theory of Ogygia, which he equated with Atlantis having an Arctic location[0926.2.299], specifically identifying Iceland as Ogygia/Atlantis with the islands of Greenland, Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen (Svalbard) as the three islands equally distant from it and each other.
The novelist Samuel Butler (1835-1902) identified Pantelleria as Calypso’s Island, but the idea received little support(q).
Writing over a century ago, George H. Cooper proposed Calypso’s Cave was now known as Fingal’s Cave on the Scottish Isle of Staffa [236.150].
However, Ireland has been linked with Ogygia by mainly Irish writers. In the 17th century historian, Roderick O’Flaherty(1629-1718), wrote a history of Ireland entitled Ogygia[0495], while in the 19th century, Margaret Anne Cusack (1832-1899) also wrote a history in which she claimed[1342] a more explicit connection. This was followed in 1911 by a book[1343] by Marion McMurrough Mulhall in which she also quotes Plutarch to support the linking of Ireland and Ogygia. More recently, in The Origin of Culture[0217] Thomas Dietrich promotes the same view, but offers little hard evidence to support it.
In 2023, an article on the Greek Reporter website renewed speculation regarding the possible identification of Ireland with Ogygia(s).
This matter would appear to be far from a resolution.
[0495]+ http://archive.org/stream/ogygiaorchronolo02oflaiala/ogygiaorchronolo02oflaiala_djvu.txt
(a) https://greeceandworld.blogspot.ie/2013_08_01_archive.html
(b) https://www.flickr.com/photos/10749411@N03/5284413003/
(c) See: Archive 3439
(d)‘‘The Original of Monarchies’ (Normalized) (archive.org) *
(e) ‘Where Calypso may have Lived’ (Atlantis, 5, 1953, pp 136-137)
(f)https://www.academia.edu/38535990/AT LANTIC_OGUGIA_AND_KALUPSO (Eng)
https://www.homerusodyssee.nl/id26.htm (Dutch)
(g) Lib. iv, Eleg. 1
(i) Strabo, Geography 9. 2. 18
(j) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogygia
(k) https://gavdosgreece.page.tl
(m) https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/734438651719489108/
(n) See: Note 5 in Armin Wolf’s Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(o) http://www.wiw.gr/english/lipsi_niriedes/
(p) National Park The island of Mljet Croatia | Adriagate (archive.org)
(q) https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/snap-shots-samuel-butler-esq-1893-94
(r) https://greekreporter.com/2022/10/17/othonoi-island-westernmost-point-greece/
(s) https://greekreporter.com/2023/01/21/odysseus-travel-ireland/
Nationalism
Nationalism was clearly the motivation behind some of the Atlantis theories that have been proposed over recent centuries. Olaf Rudbeck audaciously promoted his native Sweden in the 17th century, just as the eccentric William Comyns Beaumont claimed that Britain was Atlantis in the early 20th century and some Albanians, Azoreans, Maltese and Sardinians make comparable claims today. However, the most sinister manifestation of Atlantis based nationalism was the attempt to hijack it as the original homeland of the Aryan predecessors of the Nazis, probably borrowing the idea from Blavatsky. This was partly to replace the Abrahamic cultural lineage claimed by so many western nations. Today elements of modern Russian nationalism also look to an Aryan ancestry based in the Arctic.
*The linking of nationalism with (pseudo)archaeology is exemplified by the Bosnian pyramid claims of Samir Osmanagich and the manner in which the local media and politicians have used them to boost national pride, in spite of the contrary views expressed by qualified geologists and archaeologists(b).*
Vanessa Ward gives a good overview of the Atlantis based nationalism of both Rudbeck and the Nazis(a).
(a) https://pseudoarchaeology.org/a10-ward.html
*(b) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-mystery-of-bosnias-ancient-pyramids-148990462/*
Warren, William Fairfield
Rev. Dr William Fairfield Warren (1833-1929) was a professor of systematic theology and first president of Boston University and a member of a number of learned societies. In 1885 he published a work[078]+ in which he advanced the idea of the North Pole having held the cradle of the human race>including the Garden of Eden(d)<which was submerged in The Deluge. His book also touches on the possibility of a Pole Shift.
Warren’s book can now be accessed online(a), where a review of it, is also available(b).
Incidentally, it is recorded that one Rev. W. F. Warren presided at the wedding of ‘Wild Bill’ Hickock to Agnes Lake between 1869 and 1872!
Jason Colavito reviewed Warren’s book over a century later, in which he also notes that the British Prime Minister and Homeric scholar, William Gladstone, already a fan of Ignatius Donnelly was supportive of some of Warren’s ideas(c).
Bal Gangadar Tilak, an Indian independence campaigner, was so impressed by Warren’s ideas that in his own book, Arctic Home in the Vedas, he chose to locate the lost Paradise of Airyana Vaejo in the Arctic.
More recently, Professor Sergey Teleguin has again drawn attention to Tilak’s work that identifies elements in the Mayan Popul Vuh that suggest that its origins were in the far north, in Ultima Thule. He concludes with the thought that perhaps the Indo-European and Mayan ancestors came from the true North Pole. Teleguin’s article although originally in Russian was published, in Spanish, on an Argentinian website.
Teleguin has written more extensively on a possible Arctic origin for civilisation in his 2011 book, Hyperborea – The Sacred Birthplace of Humanity: Scientific Reference Book (Russian).
[078]+ https://archive.org/details/paradisefound00warruoft *
(a) https://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/pf/index.htm
(c) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/was-the-garden-of-eden-at-the-north-pole
(d) Eden at the North Pole – Atlantis Rising (archive.org) *