An A-Z Guide To The Search For Plato's Atlantis

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  • NEWS September 2023

    NEWS September 2023

    September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we move to Sicily and Malta. The trip is purely vacational. Unfortunately, I am writing this in a dreadful apartment, sitting on a bed, with access to just one useable socket and a small Notebook. Consequently, I possibly will not […]Read More »
  • Joining The Dots

    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 »
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Brittany

2200 BC *

2200 BC is frequently referred to as a time of great social and political upheaval in the Mediterranean and what used to be called the Near East. It is also considered to mark the beginning of the Bronze Age in Central Europe(h).

Helmut Tributsch suggested that the island of Gavrinis near Carnac in Brittany had been the capital of this Atlantean civilisation(d). He dated the destruction of Atlantis to 2200 BC.

The Bronze Age in the Mediterranean region saw two periods of great political turbulence, the first, around 2200 BC and the second a millennium later, generally known as the Bronze Age Collapse.

In 2001 Professor Fekri Hassan, from University College London, studied ancient reports that so many people had died from hunger in southern Egypt that people had resorted to cannibalism. Hassan found evidence of extreme weather conditions around 2200 BC both in Egypt and further afield from a study of cores from ancient lakes(c).

According to some commentators, the Los Millares culture also ended around the same time. W. Sheppard Baird in a paper on the Sea Peoples maintains that the Los Millares culture lasted until 2200 BC and was succeeded by the Argaric named after the el Argar site.

The Oera Linda Book puts the destruction of Atlantis circa 2200 BC(f).

Two of Gavin Menzies‘ specific claims are that transoceanic travel began 100,000 years ago and that the Chinese regularly began visiting America from 2200 BC!

Dr Anton Mifsud has used the reign of King Ninus of Assyria as an anchor for his preferred date for the destruction of Atlantis, in Malta, of around 2200 BC. He points out [209] that Eumelos of Cyrene dated the demise of Plato’s island to the reign of Ninus and links this with the calculation of the Roman historian Aemilius Sura (2nd cent. BC) who placed the reign of Ninus around 2192 BC. Several other authorities attribute similar dates to his reign as recorded by John Jackson in volume one of his 1752 Chronological Antiquities [1555.251].

The collapse of the Egyptian Old Kingdom also took place around 2200 BC.

A 2022 paper(g) by Huw S. Groucutt et al. has investigated the coincidence of the ending of the Temple Building Period in Malta with the so-called 4.2 ka Event, thought by many to be the result of climate change. However, this would need to coincide with a severe seismic or tectonic event on Malta in order to support Mifsud’s theory of a Maltese Atlantis.

Timo Niroma (? – 2009) from Helsinki in Finland had an extensive website(e) in which he discussed various worldwide catastrophes including two main events around 2200 BC and 3100 BC.

In 2001, Tom Slattery published a paper(a) regarding the Comet Hale-Bopp which had been discovered 1n 1995. He speculated that it may have been seen much earlier in 2213 BC and that a fragment of it may have struck the Earth with dire consequences and may have been the trigger for the widespread collapse of civilisations around 2200! While comets are traditionally considered to be harbingers of doom, they certainly were in this instance when “thirty-nine members of the Heaven’s Gate cult committed mass suicide in March 1997 with the intention of teleporting to a spaceship which they believed was flying behind the comet.”(b)

(a) http://www.mgr.org/comet3.html

(b) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Hale–Bopp

(c) BBC News | SCI/TECH | Disaster that struck the ancients

(d)Die gläsernen Türme von Atlantis: Erinnerungen an Megalith-EuropaDie gläsernen Türme von Atlantis: Erinnerungen an Megalith-EuropaDie gläsernen Türme von Atlantis: Erinnerungen an Megalith-Europa – Helmut Tributsch (archive.org)  (German)  *

(e) Astronomical Aspects of Mankind’s Past and Present, Jupiter and Sun, Solar Influence upon Climate (archive.org)

(f) https://earth-history.com/europe/book-the-oera-linda-book/1173-oera-intro  

(g) (PDF) The 4.2 ka Event and the End of the Maltese “Temple Period” (researchgate.net)

(h) https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0139705&type=printable 

Woods, Anthony

 Anthony Woods is the author of Atlantis Ireland, published under the auspices of the unaccredited Keystone University(a) in Dublin, with Woods listed as CEO(b). To be blunt, for me as an Irishman, in spite of such an interesting title, I was greatly disappointed. In fact, I was by turn uncertain whether I should laugh or cry.

Woods engages in a generous level of speculation, which was certainly attention seeking. He selectively uses some mythological stories as if history whenever it suits his purpose [p.71]. The content is irritatingly repetitious throughout, references should have been numbered, which along with a few typos, all cry out for an editor.

His core contention is that Stone Age Ireland was a cultural hyperdiffusionist centre. He claims that megalith building, language and religion, all spread globally from Ireland, also known as Atlantis!

Among his many outlandish claims are that:

1.The ancient Irish language is the oldest in the world and is the most extensive with almost a million words [p.142], which is completely wrong by about a factor of six!

2.Irish megaliths are the most spectacular – obviously Woods has never heard of Brittany!

3.Megalith construction spread from Ireland to the world. However respected archaeologists such Aubrey Burl, Mike Parker Pearson and Robert Hensey [1766.6] burst that particular bubble with the their shared view that megalith building originated in France.

According to Woods, “the high concentration of megaliths on the west cost of Britain and France proves that Ireland was the fountainhead, the source of the megalithic mother culture.” The ‘logic’ here eludes me!

4.For some reason Woods thinks islands are ideal for evolution(p139), and that Cro-Magnon Man evolved in Ireland[p.103]!

5.Although Ireland was the island of Atlantis, the city of Atlantis (Cerne) was in Mauritania and is known today as the Richat Structure!

6.The Celts didn’t come to Ireland, they came from Ireland![p.99]

7.Woods makes the modest claim that the Irish visited America thousands of years before Columbus. Which may or may not be true, but what has that to do with Atlantis? [p.93]

In all, this book is not just an Hibernocentric rant. Woods also offers a lengthy diatribe against British imperialism and Vatican political interference, which, although probably justifiable, has also nothing to do with Atlantis

He introduces a range of subjects such as giants, Machu Picchu, Gobekli Tepe and the Garden of Eden, all with Woods’ imagined connection with ancient Ireland!

Apart all the nonsense about ancient Ireland, he barely touches on Plato’s dialogues, except to rubbish his narrative with “It’s clear that Plato’s legend is useful but unreliable, that it combined two separate related places, a lot of exaggeration and several historical errors.”[p.13] and twice patronisingly refers to Plato’s account as “useful but unreliable.”[p.50]

Woods did quote from Ulf  Erlingsson, who made a more valliant attempt to link Ireland with Atlantis some years. Erlingsson matched the dimensions of 2000 x 3000 stadia (340 x 227 miles) given by Plato with the diagonal dimensions of Ireland [319.16]. Unfortunately, Erlingsson got it very wrong and Woods copied his error. Plato’s figures were the dimensions of the Plain of Atlantis, while the Central Plain of Ireland is just a fraction of its size(c), being very roughly 150 x 100 miles in extent. Now, who’s unreliable?

At which point, I could take no more and gave up.

(a) https://www.keystone.ie     

(b) https://ie.linkedin.com/in/anthonymwoods

(c) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Ireland

Carnac

Carnac is arguably Europe’s most visually remarkable megalithic site. It is situated near the town of the same name in Brittany. Many will have seen images of the rows of standing stones there, often unaware that there are four main sets of them close to Carnac as well as cromlechs and solitary menhirs, including the largest, Le Grand Menhir Brisé, now broken, but originally 70 ft long and weighing around 300 tons. In their 1978 book [1771.180], Alexander Thom and his son, Archie, in the conclusion to their book, in spite of their extensive studies of the stone rows, agreed that “we do not know what these were for” and although various theories have been proposed since; we still don’t.

I always thought that the stone rows at Carnac were unique, until I saw an image of a similar arrangement of stones at Vibhuthihalli at Karnataka in India. It may be pure coincidence, but the similar sounds of Carnac and Karnataka is remarkable(f)(g).

Jean Markale presumed that there was a connection between Atlantis and the megalithic standing stones of Carnac in Brittany. Rather than solve these two mysteries, his book, Carnac et L’enigme de L’atlantide (Carnac and the Enigma of Atlantis) [0470]  would seem to deepen them.>Paul Johnson offered a review of Markale’s book in 1987(j).<

Helmut Tributsch suggested that the island of Gavrinis near Carnac in Brittany had been the capital of this Atlantean civilisation(h). He dated the destruction of Atlantis to 2200 BC, a date also favoured by Anton Mifsud.

Hans-Pény Hirmenech expressed the wild idea that the rows of standing stones at Carnac marked the tombs of Atlantean soldiers who fought in the Trojan War! Wikipedia notes that “A Christian myth associated with the stones held that they were pagan soldiers in pursuit of Pope Cornelius when he turned them to stone.”(a)

Hank Harrison supports the idea of a megalithic Atlantis with its centre of power, probably located in the Morbihan area of Brittany.

Based on the picture and the data present, Schulz Paulsson believes that the megaliths were first constructed by dwellers of northwest France during the second half of the fifth millennium BC.”(b) Mike Parker Pearson, Stonehenge’s leading authority, has endorsed this idea of a French origin for megalith building(c).

Neil L. Thomas in a 2021 paper(d) has studied three sites near Carnac that hold long rows of standing stones whose purpose was uncertain. Thomas concluded that they had a calendrical function relating to the sun and moon. I cannot help wondering why such extensive and labour-intensive structures were needed to achieve this relatively simple objective.

R. Cedric Leonard has published an interesting overview of the Carnac mystery, suggesting that the erection of the three rows of standing stones may have been originally connected. He further proposes that the builders of the monuments were possibly a Cro-Magnon people, namely, the Azilians.

In 2017, Arthur Faram published a short paper with the interesting title of The Carnac Stones Decoded. Frankly, I could not understand his theory at all(i).

(a) Carnac stones – Wikipedia

(b) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/articles/europe-megalithic-monuments-france-sea-routes-mediterranean-180971467/

(c) Stonehenge, other ancient rock structures may trace their origins to monuments like this | Request PDF (researchgate.net) 

(d) (99+) Academia.edu 

(e) https://atlantisquestscience.wordpress.com/science/the-stones-of-carnac/ 

(f)  (99+) Mystery of the Similarities of Indian, European and British Megaliths: a Consideration of Possible Influences in Antiquity | Subhashis Das – Academia.edu (Plate 9) 

(g) Stone Alignment of Vibhutihalli | PDF | Sunset | Neolithic (scribd.com) 

(h) Die gläsernen Türme von Atlantis: Erinnerungen an Megalith-EuropaDie gläsernen Türme von Atlantis: Erinnerungen an Megalith-EuropaDie gläsernen Türme von Atlantis: Erinnerungen an Megalith-Europa – Helmut Tributsch (archive.org)(German) *

(i)  Carnac Stones (thefaramfoundation.com) 

(j) https://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/anceur/eu-john.htm *

Megalithic Yard, The

The Megalithic Yard is a controversial unit of measurement originally proposed by Alexander Thom following a study of hundreds of megalithic sites in Britain and Brittany. Very many attempts have been made to verify his conclusions but to no avail. Wikipedia(d) offers an interesting overview of the wide-ranging theories that the controversy has thrown up.

Humans have used their body parts as measuring tools right up to the present day, e.g. foot, finger or hand, so it was not surprising that the human pace provided a unit of measurement that has been suggested by many as the original megalithic ‘yard’.

Paul Screeton in his Quicksilver Heritage [1882.48] noted  that “the first person to write on prehistoric standard distances was Edward Milles Nelson (1851-1938).” He concluded that the megalith builders used a unit of measurement of 12.96 inches.

Not unexpectedly, some researchers, such as Ulf Erlingsson(a), Sylvain Tristan(b) and Jim Allen(c) have endeavoured to link the megalithic yard with their interpretation of Plato’s Atlantis, sometimes using convoluted associations with ancient Egyptian and/or Sumerian metrics!

There is also an ancient unit of measurement known as the ‘long foot’ of 12.7 inches (32.2 cm).>In 1889, a set of small carved chalk drums were discovered near the village of Folkton in Yorkshire. In early 2019, archaeologists from the University of Manchester and University College London concluded, after a study of three of the ‘drums’, that they “could be ancient replicas of measuring devices used for laying out prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge.” They found that “a string wound 10 times around the smallest of the drums would give a measure of exactly 10 long feet — a length used to lay out several ancient henge monuments(e). A similarly engraved fourth drum was discovered in 2015 in Burton Agnes, also in Yorkshire(g) and is thought to be 5,000 years old.<

Douglas C. Heggie [1837], an astronomer and mathematician as well as the late Aubrey Burl (1926-2020) [1838], arguably the leading authority on British stone circles, have both expressed the view that Thom’s evidence was at best ‘marginal’.(f)

>The Academia.edu website has a 2020 paper by Robert Carl that reexamines some key arguments concerning the validity of the Megalithic Yard’s existence and some of the specific critiques that have been aimed at it(h).<

(a) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242275382_A_geographic_comparison_of_Plato’s_Atlantis_and_Ireland_as_a_test_of_the_megalithic_culture_hypothesis

(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20200217205938/http://spcov.free.fr/site_nicoulaud/en/article.php

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20190730190157/http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/elcastillocubits.htm

(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalithic_Yard

(e) Ancient carved ‘drums’ give exact Stonehenge measurements, say archaeologists – WSBuzz.com (archive.org)

(f) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalithic_yard#:~:text=The%20megalithic%20yard%20is%20a,the%20construction%20of%20megalithic%20structures.

(g) https://the-past.com/news/elaborately-carved-burton-agnes-chalk-drum-goes-on-display/ *

(h) https://www.academia.edu/43164917/A_Brief_Reconsideration_of_Alexander_Thoms_Megalithic_Yard *

Caucasus Mountains

The Caucasus Mountains lie between the Black and Caspian Seas and contain the highestCaucasus_Borders4 mountain in Europe, Mount Elbrus (Russia). In ancient times it was the location of several kingdoms of whom two were known as Albania and Iberia.(d)>Today, they contain a small part of the Russia Federation along with the former Soviet republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.<

>Delisle de Sales was probably the first to suggest the Caucasus as the home of the original Atlantis, with refugees from there establishing Plato’s Atlantis in the Central Mediterranean. However, the greatest proponent of the Caucasus location for Atlantis was R.A. Fessenden who wrote, The Deluged Civilisation of the Caucasus Isthmus, an extensive multi-volume work [1012] on the subject published early in the 20th century.<

>Regarding the Pillars of Herakles  being in the Caucasus Fessenden noted “The fact that Nebuchadnezzar, after reaching them in his northern expedition, next went to the north shore of the Black Sea and to Thrace; and that Hercules, coming back from the pillars with the cattle of Geryon, traversed the north shore of the Black Sea (see Megasthenes, quoted by Strabo and Herodotus, 4.8), puzzled the ancient geographers because they thought that the Pillars were at the straits of Gibraltar. And because they had overlooked the fact that the Phoenicians of Sidon had known that the Pillars had been lost and that the Phoenicians had sent out four expeditions to look for them but had reached no conclusion from these expeditions except that the straits of Gibraltar were not the true Pillars of Hercules.” See Strabo, 2.5 (m)<

More recently, Ronnie Gallagher, an admirer of Fessenden, has studied the Caucasus region, in particular, Amazons.Caucasus 1895the hydrology of the Caspian Sea(a), where he identified strandlines up to 225 metres above sea level (ASL), which he considers to be evidence of a vast inland Eurasian sea at the end of the last Ice Age. In Azerbaijan, he also found cart ruts similar to those on Malta as well as stone circles on the Absheron Peninsula(b). Professor E. N. Badyukova has offered some critical comments regarding Gallagher’s claims(k).

Flinders Petrie also referenced Fessenden in his (1926) paper The Origins of the Book of the Dead(f), in which he concluded that the cultural connections of the earliest Egyptians, as well as the physical descriptions in their mythology, point to the Caucasus region. When, further, we find there the names of the principal places of the mythology in their relative positions, it gives strong grounds for regarding that region as the homeland of the earliest civilisation of the Egyptians.”

A few years later, an article by Margaret A. Murray in Antiquity (Volume 15 – Issue 60 – Dec. 1941)  noted that Petrie’s “opinion was based entirely on literary and philological evidence” resulting in archaeologists being slow to accept it. To partially counter this Murray offered two pieces of evidence in support of Petrie’s proposed Egyptian-Caucasus connection.(i)

However, I must point out that in 1874 Hyde Clarke delivered a paper to the Royal Anthropological Institute in which he claimed that the Colchians in the Caucasus had been an Egyptian colony(h). Clarke also employed language similarities>and Herodotus’ Histories (Bk2.102-106)< to support his contention. So we can reasonably ask, who was right or were both Clarke and Flinders Petrie wrong?

A forum on Graham Hancock’s website offered some more discussion about an Egyptian link with the Caucasus(j).

Jean-Michel Hermans has claimed that the megalith builders of Brittany originally came from the Caucasus, and arrived there after a stop in what is now Bulgaria around 5000 BC(l),>and while there, they discovered mathematical relationships such as ‘pi’ and the ‘golden ratio’ !<

The Amazons of Greek mythology are thought by some to have originated in the Caucasus and as late as 1671, Sir John Chardin reported that a tribe of Amazons existed in Georgia. Interestingly, a 19th-century photo shows two armed ladies from Armenia captioned as ‘Amazons of Armenia 1895’.

An added mystery was offered by Alexander Braghine, who recounted that “I was present when a former Russian officer of Georgian origin found himself able to talk with the natives of Vizcaya immediately upon his arrival in Northern Spain: he spoke Georgian, but the Basques understood this language.” [156.187]

Currently, Bruce Fenton has claimed the Caucasus as the home of giants. However, Jason Colavito has demonstrated the unreliability of his claims(c).

In the Krasnodar region of southern Russia hundreds (actually 3,000 and counting) of dolmens are to be found on both sides of the Caucasus. Interestingly, they show a distinctive form of megalithic architecture(g).

I feel that the Caucasus will have a lot more to tell us.

(a) Wayback Machine (archive.org) 

(b) https://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai103_folder/103_articles/103_cart_ruts.html

(c) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/did-bruce-fenton-find-the-homeland-of-bible-giants-in-the-caucasus-mountains

(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_Albania

(e) https://www.academia.edu/37625564/Observations_of_Caspian_strandlines_their_use_as_highstand_indicators_with_consideration_for_their_implications_with_regard_to_regional_geomorphology_paleodrainage_and_biodiversity 

(f) Archive 6947 | (atlantipedia.ie)

(g) The mysterious dolmens and megaliths of the Caucasus – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it) 

(h) https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2841305.pdf  

(i)  Antiquity, Vol. 15, Issue 60, Dec. 1941 p.384-386

(j) New article: Observations on Late Pleistocene Flooding of the… – Graham Hancock Official Website 

(k) Archive 7221 | (atlantipedia.ie) 

(l) Amazon.fr

Bretons *

The Bretons are a cultural grouping located in Brittany in northwest France, where the most outstanding megalithic monuments of Europe are situated. Today, the Bretons consider themselves a separate Celtic people, with a strong nationalist movement(c).

It was in 1839 that the Rev. Algernon Herbert (1792-1855), Dean of Merton College, Oxford, was the first to use the term ‘megalithic’ in a paper describing the monuments of England and Brittany.

Since the middle of the 19th century a number of commentators right up to the present have labelled the Bretons as Atlantean. These include R. Cedric Leonard(a), who In support of this idea cites both Stephen Oppenheimer and Herodotus, although he does so some reservations. Hank Harrison wrote Finding Atlantis in which, he supported the idea of a megalithic Atlantis with its centre of power probably located in the Morbihan area of Brittany.

In the 19th century, Ignatius Donnelly quoted Eugene Bodichon as expressing a similar view[021.389]. Bodichon’s opinion is simply based on the temperament and physical similarities between the Bretons and the Berbers of North Africa. Similarly, Gerry Forster refers to Bodichon’s opinion in his The Lost Continent Rediscovered(b). I do not think that the case is proven, even if the legendary kingdom of Ys, reputedly off the Brittany coast, is brought into the debate.

(a) See:  https://web.archive.org/web/20170113172907/https://www.atlantisquest.com/Bretons.html

(b) Gerry Forster (archive.org) *

(c) https://ansionnachfionn.com/2011/08/18/at-home-amongst-the-bretons/

Mining

Mining as a human activity dates back many thousands of years in various parts of the world Recently, the earliest example of mining in the Americas was an iron oxide mine in Chile dating back to around 10,000 BC(a). However, metals, such as gold, silver, copper and tin were not the only material extracted in this way, pigments, flint and salt were also mined in ancient times. The silver mines of Lavrio in Greece employed 29,000 slaves at its peak.

In the Mediterranean itself, Cyprus was an important source of copper, giving the island its name. However, the most important mineral source was probably Sardinia, which for the Romans was one of the three most important sources of metals, along with Spain and Brittany. Although there was a limited amount of tin mined in the Mediterranean region, most came from Spain, Brittany as well as Devon and Cornwall.

Mining in Atlantis is recorded by Plato in Critias 114e where he states that there were many mines producing orichalcum as well as other metals. Mrs. Whishaw contended that the pre-Roman copper mines of Southern Spain was the source of the Atlantean orichalcum.

However, the most extensive ancient mines were probably those of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where copper mining was carried on between 3000 and 1200 BC. It has been guesstimated that up to 1.5 billion pounds of the metal was extracted. It is further speculated that much of this was used to feed the Bronze Age needs of Europe and the Mediterranean(b)(c). This is hotly disputed by local archaeologists(d). 

(a) https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/uocp-auo051811.php

(b) https://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/WakefieldJS1.php

(c) https://www.superiorreading.com/copperhistory.html

(d) https://www.ramtops.co.uk/copper.html   (offline Sept. 2017) (see Archive 2102)

Brittany *

Brittany in northwestern France is sometimes referred to as Little or Lesser Britain. It is one of the most exciting regions of Megalithic Europe. The stone rows of Carnac are unequalled, Le Grand Menhir Brisé was once the largest standing stone in Europe, while BrittanyMorbihan contains a huge number of dolmens and standing stones.2019 saw a report that Bettina Schulz Paulsson, an archaeologist at the University of Gothenburg, reexamined some 2,410 radiocarbon dating results that have been assigned to Europe’s megaliths and put them through a Bayesian statistical analysis. Based on the picture the data presents, Schulz Paulsson believes that the megaliths were first constructed by dwellers of northwest France during the second half of the fifth millennium BC.” (b) Both Robert Hensey, who has studied and written about Newgrange [1766.6] and Mike Parker Pearson, Stonehenge’s leading, authority, have endorsed this idea of a French origin for megalith building(c). 

The earliest suggestion that Atlantis may have been connected with the Armorican peninsula came from François Gidon in the 1930s when he proposed that Atlantis had been situated on an exposed Celtic Shelf stretching from Brittany to Ireland. Unfortunately, he dates the submergence of this land to between 3000 and 1200 BC, which was millennia after that part of the Celtic Shelf had been inundated by the Flandrian Transgression.

Jean Markle was convinced that the Carnac stones were connected with Atlantis. Recently, Sylvain Tristan followed the work of Jean Deruelle in supporting a megalithic Atlantis. Further support has come from Alfred deGrazia and Helmut Tributsch who saw Megalithic Europe as Atlantis with the island of Gavrinis in Brittany as its capital.

The American researcher, Hank Harrison, considers the Morbihan départment as a significant Atlantean location if not the home of its capital.

Reinoud deJonge proposes even greater significance for the Brittany megaliths with his claim that they record the Flood of Noah in 2344 BC(a).

A fairly lengthy illustrated paper regarding ancient catastrophes in Brittany is available online(d).

(a) See: Archive 2501

(b) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/articles/europe-megalithic-monuments-france-sea-routes-mediterranean-180971467/

(c) Stonehenge, other ancient rock structures may trace their origins to monuments like this | Request PDF (researchgate.net) *

(d) finistere-catastrophes-chronology.pdf (wordpress.com)

Whiston, William

William Whiston (1667-1752) was an English historian and theologian. In his Whiston1696 book, A New Theory of the Earth [1162]+,  he contended that an encounter with a comet, in 2346 BC, caused the biblical Deluge, which in turn led to the destruction of Atlantis (p.262, 5th edition). His book is now freely available online as a pdf file(a).

Immanuel Velikovsky, in his unpublished book, In the Beginning(d), has pointed out that Whiston conclusions were strongly influenced by several earlier writers, particularly mentioning Abraham Rockenbach (1536-1611).

Both George Dodwell and Mike Baillie have also offered evidence for a globally catastrophic event in 2345 BC. The ancient Chinese document, Huai-nan Tzu, recounts a legend of ten suns appearing in the sky, an account which might be related if the suggested(b) date of 2345 BC for the event could be verified.

Reinoud de Jonge offered a paper(c) linking petroglyphs found at Mougau-Bihan in Brittany with a cosmic catastrophe circa 2345 BC. He associated the event with the biblical Deluge.

He had the idea that the antediluvian population had been much greater than the present continents could accommodate and he reasoned that an additional landmass was required to cater for these extra people. Whiston took Plato’s description, of the submerged Atlantis being greater than Libya (North Africa) and Asia combined, at face value and assumed that such a large piece of extra territory would have been adequate to meet the needs of his presumed enlarged world population.

[1162]+ https://archive.org/details/newtheoryofearth0000whis/page/n417/mode/2up *

(a) https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k61715d.r=.langEN

(b) http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread482680/pg1

(c) THE COMET CATASTROPHE OF c.2345 BC – 1 (archive.org)

(d) http://varchive.org/itb/index.htm

Dodwell, George F.

Dodwell1George 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 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).

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.

(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20201111220109/http://www.setterfield.org/Dodwell/Dodwell_Manuscript_1.html

(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)