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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 »
Atalantis
Priest, Josiah
Josiah Priest (1788-1851) was a well-known American non-fiction writer of the early 19th century. Much of what he wrote is considered pseudo-scientific. Today he is probably best known for his racism and particularly his fundamentalist use of the Bible to justify slavery.
In his 1835 book American Antiquities[1143] he refers a number of times to ‘Atalantis’, a spelling variant frequently used at that time. Apart from Plato, Priest also believed that Euclid (fl. c.300 BC) referred to Atlantis when he spoke of the catastrophic separation of Sicily from Italy, Euboea from Boetia “and a number of other islands from the continent of Europe.” Priest clearly considered Atlantis to have been a large island in the Atlantic that provided a stepping-stone to the Americas.
More recently, Jason Colavito has unearthed details of a row had that developed between Priest and Constantine Rafinesque(b) .
American Antiquities is now available as a free ebook(a).
(a)https://archive.org/details/americanantiquities
Kirwan, Richard
Richard Kirwan (1733-1812) was an Irish scientist, who had a brief (no pun intended) career as a barrister, which he abandoned in favour of his scientific interests, ending up as president of the Royal Irish Academy from 1799 until his death.
Kirwan is usually linked with Buffon, Whitehurst and Pennant regarding the reality of Atlantis (Atalantis) and its location in the Atlantic.
Atalantis
Atalantis is an alternative spelling of Atlantis sometimes found in the literature of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, by writers such as Delarivier Manley (1709)(a), James H. McCulloh (1829), Hyde Clarke (1886) and W.G. Wood-Martin (1902).
McCulloh, Dr. James Haines (L)
Dr. James Haines McCulloh (1793-1870) was an officer in the U.S. Army, who wrote(a) a number of books on the origins of the native Americans. In the course of his work he touched on the subject of Atlantis, or as he called it Atalantis, supporting the idea of it being located in the Atlantic in the following words;
“The speculations of Ray, Whitehurst, Buffon, Kirwan, and Pennant, upon the subject of the island Atlantis, are all in favour of its former existence, and the arguments they produce from the present appearance of the Azores, Canaries, etc., are as plausible as can be expected when the great antiquity of the subject is considered. If to their considerations our few proofs be added, it may not be presumptuous to think the tradition almost well established.” [0876].
(a) https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5hQOAAAAQAAJ&q=atlantis#v=snippet&q=atlantis&f=false