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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 »
Avebury
Langdon, Robert John *
Robert John Langdon is the Brighton based British author of Prehistoric Britain: The Stonehenge Enigma[919], the first part of a trilogy(b). The book was first published in 
2010 with a second edition brought out in 2013. The final chapter of the second edition is now available online(a). In it, he contends that the megalith builders came from Africa to Doggerland at the end of the last Ice Age, however, as the waters rose submerging Doggerland, the megalith builders had to move to higher ground on what we now know as Great Britain, eventually constructing Stonehenge as a memorial! Furthermore, he claims that Doggerland was Atlantis(g).
Langdon claims that the Altar Stone at Stonehenge points to Doggerland, which he identifies as the location of Atlantis. He also claims that the Slaughter Stone is in fact a representation of the flooded world of those megalith builders. Langdon is highly critical of the generally accepted interpretation of various features found at Stonehenge, listing 13 items that he claims “don’t make sense”(f).
Another of Langdon’s claims is that “Cro-Magnon/Atlanteans colonised America” based on a study of blood group distribution(e).
Additionally, Langdon has now entered the debate regarding the location of Troy, moving it to the North Atlantic and citing the work of both Iman Wilkens and Felice Vinci(h).
In September 2014, Langdon changed his website(c) and published further excerpts from his books.
His second volume was published in 2016[1242]. There are also a number of related free pdf books available on his website.
In 2022, he self-published 13 Ancient Things That Don’t Make Sense in History [2069], with some excerpts offered online(b)(h). Langdon has also published a book on the ‘lost stone avenue’ at Avebury, which is now available on the Academia website(i).
(a) The Post Glacial Flooding Hypothesis (archive.org)
(b) http://www.prehistoric-britain.co.uk/
(c) http://www.the-stonehenge-enigma.info/
(e) The Post Glacial Flooding Hypothesis: Cro-Magnon/Atlanteans colonised America (archive.org)
(f) The Post Glacial Flooding Hypothesis: The Great Stonehenge Hoax (archive.org)
(g) Chapter 3 – Atlantis – Dawn of the Lost Civilisation (archive.org) *
(i) https://www.academia.edu/11335093/Aveburys_Lost_Stone_Avenue
Vega, Manuel
Manuel Vega (1967- ) was born in Spain and studied Chemistry there and later worked as a research scientist in America and Japan. He travelled widely in the Far East before returning to the United States where he spent five years training a Buddhist monk before resuming a more secular life.
In 2012 he published Sailors of Stonehenge[868] in which he reviews the principal megalithic sites of Western Europe, including
some interesting speculation. For example he describes the English Avebury complex as a site of ‘monarchical renewal’ and proposes related ceremonies at Stonehenge. Another of what I consider his more fanciful ideas is his suggestion that Ireland’s Boyne Valley, which includes Newgrange, was used as a ‘royal funerary complex’ for dead English kings! He maintains that the location of many of these sites was determined by the position of astronomical features in the night sky.
Vega ends the book with a chapter on Atlantis, which he locates in the Atlantic and identifies the Atlanteans as the Megalith Builders. “By the end of the 4th millennium BC they designed a huge celestial mirror over the Atlantic territories, which served to regulate themselves politically and religiously (implementing Heavens on Earth). The largest and most unique constructions, such as those at Carnac, Avebury, Stonehenge and Newgrange, were royal monuments erected at key sites of this celestial mirror according to a megalithic technology designed to attain the rebirth of the sacrificed kings again as princes, keeping an unbroken royal lineage.”
* Vega returned to the subject of the megalith builders in 2015 with the publication of Voyage Zero[1443]. However, in 2017 he became even more contentious in Madrid is Atlantis[1444], which as the title implies, claims that Atlantis was located in the vicinity of the author’s native city.*
I found it very hard to accept most of his claims.
Those interested in reading more of Vega’s ideas can read his blogs(a).
Pole Shift *
Pole Shift is a term used to describe a range of theories that includes an alteration to or even the complete reversal of the magnetic poles, a change to the axis of rotation of the entire planet as well as a possible sudden movement of the outer crust of the Earth relative to its axis.
The magnetic poles are always on the move and well documented, while their complete reversal is a much slower process, previous reversals have left us with geological ‘fingerprints’. It is suggested that another reversal is imminent, while some ‘prophets of doom’ have nominated late 2013 for the event, with dire consequences for mankind(f).
The latest data shows drift of about 40 miles a year, with a recent movement of 161 miles in just six months, creating navigation problems and the re-designation of airport runways which are named after their compass orientation(i).
Jason Colavito has unearthed an early reference to some form of an axial pole shift, proposed as early 1883 in a book [1595] by the somewhat eccentric Australian, John Wood Beilby (1818-1903)(q). However, according to Colavito, there was an even earlier reference to a Pole Shift by Brasseur de Bourbourg in his Historical Chronology of the Mexicans of 1873(r). He also linked this event to the destruction of Atlantis(n). However, it seems that Robert Hooke controversially suggested the idea of pole shift as early as the seventeenth century(z).
David Hatcher Childress recently (2023) offered another 19th-century reference to pole shift when he wrote that “About 1885, (James)Churchward found his way to Siberia and the valley of the Lena River. He was now looking for evidence of ancient cataclysms, which, if it could be found, would lend credence to the idea that an ancient, advanced civilization such as Mu could disappear. Churchward wanted to see the piles of mammoth bones and tusks washed up in tidal waves on the Lackoff Islands (The Islands of Bones) just beyond the mouth of the Lena. He was convinced by these giant piles of ivory and bones that a ‘pole shift’ phenomenon had occurred in the past, where the earth’s crust slipped several degrees toward the equator causing massive tidal waves to wash over portions of the earth and ultimately cause the sinking of entire continents such as Mu.” (y).
The suggestion that an ancient axial pole shift was the consequence of plate tectonics has been disputed by William Sager & Anthony Koppers of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Although conceding that plate tectonics may have played a part they describe the 16-21 degree change, 84 million years ago as “an odd event.”(t)
The idea of wandering (magnetic) Poles was first proposed by the German priest Damian Kreichgauer(1859-1940)(g) in 1902[513], although at the time he found little support for the concept. The late Terrence Aym was of the opinion(l) that a magnetic pole reversal was a sign that the next Ice Age was beginning! Today, NASA provides us with a more sober view of the phenomenon of magnetic pole shifts(k).
Another theory suggests that a severe reduction in sunspot activity may herald the imminent return of another ‘little ice age’ such as was experienced in the 17th century and known as the Maunder Minimum. During that period only 50 sunspots were recorded instead of the usual 40-50 thousand(w). NASA has denied that there is any such impending cooling and that the possible effect of any reduced solar activity would be more than offset by the warming caused by human activity(x).
There are a number of variations on the basic concept of an axial change and an array of suggestions for the date of the last displacement. Generally speaking, the mechanism required to cause such a catastrophe is believed to be an impact by or close encounter with a large asteroid or comet. The continuing discovery of huge impact craters around the globe reinforces this possibility. However, recent studies have identified other processes that may have led to polar changes in the past(e).
The suggestion of an Antarctic location for Atlantis, as proposed by Rose and Rand Flem-Ath[062], is totally dependent on a pole shift. The Flem-Aths have interpreted the characteristics of our present icecaps as strong evidence for a number of previous pole shifts. This idea was inspired by the work of Charles Hapgood[369], who was convinced by such evidence as the Piri Reis Map and other ancient maps that seemed to indicate the existence of an Ice Age civilisation now partly covered by the Antarctic icecap. Hapgood has noted[1494.71] that in the 1950’s Karl A. Pauly[1496] and George W. Bain[1498] also supported a form of crustal shift, the former building on the work of A. S. Eddington[1497] of some decades earlier.
Nevertheless, a more critical look at Hapgood’s theory reveals a number of flaws(s), which should be considered in the light of the fact that Hapgood was a professor of history and not a geologist and Graham Hancock, who heavily endorsed Hapgood’s ideas is neither.
‘Project Atlantis’ is the title of an assignment(p) given to first-year geology students at Malaspina University-College in British Columbia. It was set by lecturer Professor Steven Earle with the intention of developing the critical thinking of his students. The objective of the task is to investigate the Crustal Displacement theory of the Flem-Aths, whose ‘Atlantis in the Antarctic’ hypothesis is totally dependent on the occurrence of a pole shift resulting from some form of earth crustal displacement. Kyle Bennett has written a book and a number of papers on the subject.
Pole Shift [0795] by John White, frequently associates the destruction of Atlantis with a pole shift and anticipates another one in the near future, but unfortunately, most of the ‘evidence’ he offers in support of this contention comes from psychic sources, which cannot be accepted as reliable. However, it seems that some years later White completely revised his opinions according to a 1996 report(m).
Although the majority opinion is that pole shifts occurred as a result of encounters with extraterrestrial bodies, Hapgood contended that only the outer crust of the earth shifted and that this was the result of a build-up of ice at the Poles causing instability. However, it has since been calculated that the polar ice constitutes such a small percentage of the mass of the crust that it could not possibly have caused the slippage proposed by Hapgood. This idea and others are discussed on the Pole Shift Forum(o).
Another researcher, S.F.Wells, was prompted by Flem-Ath’s work to examine the Avebury stone circle to see if there was any evidence of a pole shift there. To his surprise, he did discover at Avebury and at other ancient monuments in the locality clear evidence of a pole change of up to 30° in the past. In 2003, he wrote a paper outlining his observations(c).
Flavio Barbiero has written a paper proposing that an impact with an asteroid as small as half a kilometre in diameter could result in a rapid pole shift(aa).
A number of facts are proposed to support the idea of a pole shift. One of the most popular is the extermination of the mammoth, which once again was central to a recent book by Charles Ginenthal, The Extinction of the Mammoth [0514]+, which dates the last pole shift to around 1500 BC. Perhaps the most impressive evidence came from Sweden in November 2009(b) when settlements dating to 9000 BC were discovered in the north of the country in a region that according to accepted theory should have been covered by ice at that time.
Wolter Smit points out that the orientation of some Mayan Temples is apparently out by around 17 degrees from what would be expected. A structural feature at the 4,000-year-old temple of Saar in Bahrain is believed to have been used to record the summer solstice is now out by 10 degrees. Similar anomalies were noted by G.F. Dodwell during his study of ancient gnomons. A further indication that our present knowledge of polar changes may be flawed is highlighted by the fact that on April 15th 136 BC we have a record of an eclipse that completely darkened Babylon that should have had its zone of totality over the Balearic Islands in the Western Mediterranean. This is a difference of nearly 50 degrees and implies that either the Earth has slowed or the polar axis has shifted.
The idea that Pole Shift(s) can be linked to the location and orientation of many ancient sites is explored by Mark Carlotto in his new book, Before Atlantis [1600].
Amy Smith also claims that the Earth ‘tilted’ around 10,000 BC(d) referring to two ancient quotations that may support the reality of this Pole Shift – one from Plato (Tim.22d) and the other from the Book of Enoch/Noah (65.1).
The Hutton Commentaries(a) contain many articles relating to an impending pole shift based on the readings of Edgar Cayce.
In October 2004, Alexander Chechelnitsky, a Russian astrophysicist claimed that Atlantis was located in the Yukon River valley in Alaska[515]. This, he believes, was the result of a pole shift although he admits that scientific evidence is lacking for this theory!
A recent overview of the Pole Shift theory was published in July 2014(h).
[0514]+ Available online: Free Electric Universe theory ebooks and related research papers (archive.org)
(a) Hutton Commentaries – Archives
(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20091130170746/https://www.thelocal.se/23546/20091129/
(c) https://grahamhancock.com/wellssf1/
(d) https://www.angelfire.com/ar/josephus/Atlantis.html#Support
(e) See Archive 3029
(f) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztaWff0TtHU
(g) https://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Arrhenius%201906,%20final.pdf
(h) Antartica, Atlantis, and the Earth crustal displacement theory | CanadaNewsLibre (archive.org)
(i) See {2268}
(j) https://endtimesand2019.wordpress.com/my-newest-magazine-article-pole-shifts/
(k) https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-poleReversal.html
(m) NHNE: Pole Shift Torpedoed by Author (archive.org)
(o) https://www.poleshift.org/index.html
(r) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/historical-chronology-of-the-mexicans.html
(s) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_earthchanges33.htm
(t) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/01/000125053438.htm
(u) https://www.christianhospitality.org/resources/pole-shift.pdf
(v) https://en.was-this-atlantis.info/deplacer-poles.html
(w) https://q-mag.org/a-new-little-ice-age-by-2030.html
(x) https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/2953/there-is-no-impending-mini-ice-age/
Mestdagh, Marcel
Marcel Mestdagh, (1926-1990) was a Belgian historian whose curiosity was 
sparked by the discovery of unusual street patterns in the Belgian city of Ghent. This led to a lifelong interest in the Viking culture that had settled on both sides of the English Channel. It was this study of the Vikings that led him to realise that they had knowledge, now forgotten, of the purpose of many of the megalithic monuments which Mestdagh identified as a form of a road system, laid out in giant ovals with radials. At the centre of these ovals was the ancient city of Sens where the greatest concentration of megalithic monuments in France existed.
The late Philip Coppens informed us[1275.184] that a further strange discovery by Mestdagh was that the ancient road network he identified, centred on Sens, was mirrored by a similar network of roads in England centred on Nottingham!
In the course of his investigations, Mestdagh discovered an aspect of the 
Stonehenge-Avebury complex that had been overlooked, namely that the two sites were situated on the circumference of a huge oval. He further discovered that this oval was on a scale of 1/10th of the ovals that he had discovered in France.
{Filip} Philip Coppens, following Mestdagh’s work, has persuasively argued that Atlantis was the centre of a far-flung megalithic civilisation with its centre located where the ancient city of Sens now stands(e). Coppens returned to Mestdagh’s theories in his 2012 book, The Lost Civilisation Enigma[1275], which in turn led to two supportive essays from Bruce Jeffries-Fox in 2015(c)(d), who includes the observation that while Coppens was initially happy to follow Mestdagh and identify Sens as Atlantis he executed a volte-face and declared that “from c. 4500 to 1200BC, a major civilization existed in Europe about which we know very little.”
In a 1997 lecture(f) Coppens said “I believe that the megalithic civilization was instrumental in creating and propagating certain knowledge about things we are only now beginning to realise…….I wholeheartedly believe the megalithic civilization unravel certain enigmas that the Great Pyramid and all the wonders of Egypt and Sumer combined will not be able to solve.” Unfortunately, Coppens did not elaborate on the enigmas that he was referring to.
A Dutch website(a) give a brief overview of Mestdagh’s theory. Mestdagh’s Atlantis ideas were published posthumously by Coppens in two books, Atlantis [1289] and Pre-Atlantis[1290], both in Dutch.
A YouTube clip(b) also gives some idea of Mestdagh’s theory.
(a) https://www.kunstgeografie.nl/mestdagh1.htm (Dutch) (offline Dec. 2015)
(b) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUHe8iOojqc
(c) Atlantis in France 1 (archive.org)*
(d) Atlantis in France 2 (archive.org)*
Dodwell, George F.
George F. Dodwell (1879-1963) was a leading Australian astronomer, who made an extensive study of ancient gnomons and discovered that they deviated from what had been anticipated. A gnomon is the part of a sundial that casts the shadow. He concluded that there was consistent evidence that the tilt of the earth’s rotational axis was altered around 2345 BC. This view supported those that have claimed that the poles shifted within the memory of man, possibly as a result of a close encounter or impact with an extraterrestrial body such as a comet. Some have gone further and attribute the destruction of Atlantis to this clash. Dodwell’s complete work on the subject can now be read on Barry Setterfield’s website(a).
Dodwell, a devout Christian, concluded that it was this sudden shift of the earth’s axis that led to the Flood of Noah. Reinaud de Jonge proposed a similar linkage between the 2345 BC cosmic encounter and the biblical Deluge. He also claimed that a large collection of petroglyphs at Mougau-Bihan in Brittany were inspired by this event.
Rene Noorbergen (1928-1995) mentions in his Secrets of the Lost Races [612.20] that Dodwell wrote to Professor Arthur J. Brandenberger of Ohio State University, outlining his theory in the following manner; “I have been making during the last 26 years an extensive investigation of what we know in astronomy as the secular variation of the obliquity of the ecliptic. From a study of the available ancient observations of the position of the sun at the solstices during the last three thousand years, I find a curve which, after allowing for all known changes, shows a typical exponential curve of recovery of the Earth’s axis after a sudden change from a former nearly vertical position to an inclination of 26½ degrees, from which it was returned to an equilibrium at the present inclination of 23½ degrees during the interval of the succeeding 3,194 years to A.D. 1850. The date of the change in the Earth’s axis, 2345 B.C., is none other than that of the flood recorded in the Bible, and the resulting conclusion is that the Biblical account of the flood as a universal one, together with its story of Noah’s Ark, is historically true.”
Dodwell was also impressed by the work of the creationist, George McCready Price (1870-1963), who had also concluded[1616] that the Earth’s axial tilt had been altered as a result of an impact with a celestial body. Price also linked the event with the biblical Deluge.
Dodwell referred to a paper of F.S.Richards on the orientation of the Temple of Ammon at Karnak(b), which indicated an anomalous obliquity of the ecliptic of 25°9’55”. This led to considerable debate regarding the age of the temple. William Fix drew attention[871.264] to the widespread reuse of very ancient sacred sites by successive cultures, which might explain the incompatibility between the apparent age of the most recent temple and the greater antiquity suggested by the obliquity of the ecliptic. Alternatively, it might also indicate an encounter with an extraterrestrial body that affected the Earth’s axis and caused widespread destruction, including, according to some theories, the destruction of Atlantis!
S.F. Wells published a paper(h) on Graham Hancock’s website in which he investigated the Avebury stone circle and its associated monuments and found evidence that they “show knowledge of past Polar positions”.
In the interests of balance, I must refer readers to an extensive 2013 paper(f) by a creationist, Dr Danny Faulkner, who has cast doubts on Dodwell’s conclusions. More recently Paul Dunbavin also published a positive critique of Dodwell’s work in Prehistory Papers [1758.71]. This essay was written a few years ago and is now available on his website(k)>>as well as the academia.edu website(l).<<
Another interesting comment is offered by Barry Setterfield, who wrote(a) that “ Dodwell has assumed here that the original axis tilt of the earth, before 2345 B.C., was nearly upright. For that reason, he supposed a very strong impact was necessary to jolt the earth from that position to its current 23.5-degree tilt. This is why a number of astronomers have rejected Dodwell’s work in this area. However, if the axis tilt was greater than its current axis tilt before 2345 B.C., then an impact of much less force would have been required to restore the earth to a slightly more upright position. The evidence for this greater axis tilt may be seen in the evidence of the ice age which covered most of Europe prior to 2345 B.C.”
Malcolm Bowden, the author of True Science Agrees with the Bible[1612], also wrote a pamphlet[590] supporting Dodwell’s findings and later produced a YouTube video explaining in detail Dodwell’s axial tilt theory(g). Paul D. Ackerman offers another review of Dodwell’s work from a creationist viewpoint(j). Ackerman is an ardent supporter of the concept of a young Earth [1727].
In 2011, Mike Baillie, the renowned dendrochronologist, gave a PowerPoint presentation(d) at the Quantavolution Conference in Athens, which offered tree-ring evidence that clearly demonstrated an ‘event’ in 2345 BC, which has counterparts in early Chinese and Middle East records suggesting a cometary encounter/impact! Baillie also notes that Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley both thought that Archbishop Ussher’s Flood of 2349 BC was due to a comet.
As early as 1696, William Whiston claimed that the earth’s encounter with a comet led to the biblical Deluge.
More recently, Andrew Bourmistroff, a Russian researcher, has determined that the orientation of the Great Pyramid at Giza is off by 9.85 degrees west of true north(e). The full significance, if any, of all these details has yet to be fully determined.
(b) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(d) https://www.qconference-athens-2011.grazian-archive.com/the2345topicmbai/index.html
(e) https://web.archive.org/web/20150909160031/https://www.world-mysteries.com/andb1.htm
(f) https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/earth/an-analysis-of-the-dodwell-hypothesis/
(g) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21WvVH4CXR4
(h) https://grahamhancock.com/wellssf1/
(i) THE COMET CATASTROPHE OF c.2345 BC – 1 (archive.org)
(j) https://creationism.org/csshs/v07n4p02.htm
(k) Updating George F Dodwell | pauldunbavin (third-millennium.co.uk)
(l) (96) Updating George F. Dodwell | Paul Dunbavin – Academia.edu *