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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 »
Ashley A. Saunders
Bimini Road/Wall
The Bimini Road/Wall is located in about ten feet of water off Paradise Point on Bimini Island in the Bahamas. It was investigated in 1968 by Dr. J. Manson Valentine, Jacques Mayol, Harold Climo and Robert Angove. The discovery coincided with the ‘prophecy’ of Edgar Cayce, the American 
psychic, who pronounced in 1933 that parts of Atlantis would re-emerge in the late 1960s. His exact words are recorded as: “A portion of the temples may yet be discovered under the slime of ages and seawater near Bimini. Expect it in ‘68 or ‘69 – not so far away.”
Naturally, there was intense media interest and the idea of Atlantis in the Americas was given a new lease of life. Unfortunately, the exact nature of this unusual ‘J’ shaped feature was fiercely debated and controversy continues to this day. Eugene A. Shinn, a geologist and devout sceptic, has offered(a) a more critical interpretation of the Bimini discoveries. In an article in Nature magazine some years ago>(Vol. 287, 4 September 1980) Shinn and Marshall McKusick described Cayce followers as members of ‘a cult’.(h)
>Peter James in The Sunken Kingdom [047.53] commented on the Bimini controversy noting that “If the ‘Road’ were man-made we would not expect the grains and microstructure within the stones to be consistent from one ‘block’ to another. Yet they proved to be so, in every conceivable test test that was applied, showing that they were laid by natural means. Further, radiocarbon tests on shells included in the stones show that the ‘Road’ was formed between only 2,500 and 3,500 years ago, far short of the 11,000 years believed by Atlantologists.”<
Greg Little offered a vigorous refutation of Shinn’s claims in an article in the May/June 2006 edition of Atlantis Rising magazine(g). Little continued his criticism of Shinn in a 2017 article(e).
Without wishing to rain on anybody’s parade it should be pointed out that Manson Valentine was a fan of Cayce’s and as a consequence, it has sometimes been inferred that the date of his discovery might have been engineered to agree with Cayce’s prediction and enhance the subsequent publicity. Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince have pointed out[705.61] that the Bimini Road was known to the local islanders for years and even offered to show it to its eventual ‘discoverers’!
A comparable alignment of blocks in 22 metres of water was found off the coast of Lanzarote in the Canaries and originally reported in the Belgian magazine Kadath in 1987 and noted in the Science Frontiers website(d).
The Bahamas Geotourism website offers the following additional information “In the 1930s, an American psychic named Edgar Cayce reported that he had spoken with a person who had lived in the Lost City of Atlantis in a former life. This Atlantean told Cayce that Atlantis had been near Bimini.”(i). I have been unable to verify the source of this embellishment.
Dr David Zink carried out a detailed examination of the Bimini Road, which he outlined in his own book, The Stones of Atlantis[178]. Zink’s conclusion was to accept that Atlantis had been situated in the Atlantic but regarded “Bimini as an Atlantean colonial site or the location of a different culture parallel in time to Atlantis.” Not the ringing endorsement one might have expected.
In an interview with Peter Tompkins son, Ptolemy, he revealed that his “dad was convinced that the Edgar Cayce readings about the rising of Atlantis were correct. He spent thousands and thousands of dollars photographing the limestone formations off Bimini – the so-called “Bimini Road.” My father loved the idea of Atlantis returning because he wanted the world to become a kind of new Eden. He was a true father of the New Age in this sense – he had the core New Age belief that the world once was, and would be again a better place. But not better in some mundane sense, but in the sense of being elevated back into a spiritualised condition that it had fallen away from. That’s what the Bimini stuff was all about.”(j) Tompkins left Bimini unconvinced that it had Atlantean credentials.
A local Bimini writer and healer, Ashley B. Saunders, has produced a definitive two-volume history[179] of the island as well as a book[180] on Atlantis. Saunders has been described as “the gatekeeper of Atlantis”(c).
The most recent study of structures off the coast of Bimini by a team that included Greg Little and William Donato in 2005 and 2006, when Andrew Collins joined them, has produced evidence of ancient harbours that are now submerged at two locations. They also discovered a number of stone anchors, now in the Bimini Museum. However, acceptance of the reality of this evidence is a long way from proving any connection with Atlantis.
Gavin Menzies, a supporter of the Minoan Hypothesis has speculated, in his book 1421[0939], he speculated that the Chinese fleet suffered damage during a storm and landed at Bimini where they used their large square ballast stones to build an emergency drydock, the remains of which is now the Bimini Road!
A YouTube film including an interview with Greg Little is worth viewing(b). Less interesting is a new documentary from Amazon Prime, aided and abetted by the UK’s Daily Express, which has apparently resurrected some interest in the Atlantis – Bimini connection(f).
(b) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DbaA6NItNQ
(c) https://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/printer_8736.shtml
(d) https://www.science-frontiers.com/sf058/sf058a02.htm
(e) https://apmagazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=956
(h) https://www.academia.edu/12724731/Bahamian_Atlantis_reconsidered