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

Latest News

  • 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 »
Search

Recent Updates

Canary Islands

Lissner, Jonah G. *

Jonah Gabriel Lissner is a prolific American author with an output that includes both fiction and non-fiction. His scientific interests are too numerous to record here as a perusal of his CV reveals(b).

Lissner has written on Jewish origins in Turkmenistan(d) and Europe, particularly their place in the history of the Khazars, a subject recently (24/01/13) in the news(c) . Another website(e) claims that Atlantis was founded by Hebrew Khazars!

His interest in archaeology and ancient history led to a 2002 paper entitled The Mariners of Elysium: Evidence for the Ancestors of the Guanches as Founders of Predynastic Egypt(a). Although this paper is not directly concerned with Atlantis, Lissner is sympathetic to its existence maintaining “the probability of a generalised mesolithic (circa 8,000 BCE) megaculture in maritime Western Europe including geographically what is now the Canary Islands, coastal Northwest Africa/Sahara, Southwest Europe and the British Isles, e.g. ‘Atlantia’; contemporary with early Jericho, Catal Huyuk, Gobekli Tepe, and other recent archaeological discoveries in the Near East.”

His paper on the Guanche ancestors is no longer available online and is now excluded from the Wayback Machine. However, in a 2022 paper(f), Lissner returned to the matter of possible Guanche influences in predynastic Egypt.

(a) https://lunis1.free.fr/spip.php?article24 (link broken)

(b) https://jonahlissner.weebly.com/  (link broken Feb ’20)

(c) https://www.heritagedaily.com/2013/01/new-study-sheds-light-on-the-origin-of-the-european-jewish-population/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HeritageDaily+%28Heritage+Daily+-+Archaeology+%26+Palaeontology+News%29

(d) https://siberiandragon.weebly.com/jewish-history-in-turkmenistan.html (link broken Feb ’20)

(e) https://www.tribwatch.com/kassite.htm

(f) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366739114_Artifacts_of_Guanche_Culture_and_Comparison_to_Ancient_North_African_Southwest_European_and_Egyptian_Analogues/link/63b0d66e097c7832ca7f033c/download  (link broken) *

Beuzelin, Jean-Marie

beuzelinJean-Marie Beuzelin is the former literary editor of the newspaper France-Antilles and is now the author of Atlantide, la cité disparue, l’enquête[1334] (Atlantis, the lost city, the investigation). After a fairly conventional review of a range of locations, Beuzelin opts for the Canary Islands as the home of Atlantis.

Vandecruys, Gerd

Gerd Vandecruys, a Belgian researcher, has been involved in a number of the controversies of the day, such as the dating of the Sphinx(a) and was a frequent contributor to Graham Hancock’s website. He was a supporter of the Canary Islands as the remains of Atlantis, a view he expressed in an essay entitled Insula Atlantidis: A Time Machine of Amnesia”, which, unfortunately, is no longer available on the GH website, but is accessible from archive.org(b) in six parts.

(a) https://www.davidpbillington.net/sphinx8.html

>(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20041212173539/https://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/VandecruysG1.php?p=1<

 

Idjennaden, Bob (m)

Bob Idjennaden is a Belgian author now living in Ireland, working in the field of business organisation. IdjennadenHis private interests include the study of North African prehistory and history. This has led to the writing of a series of short books, sometimes with co-authors, which deal with specific aspects of North African history and culture.

*[An article on the tribes of the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis, centred around modern Tunisia should be read(b) in conjunction with Idjennaden’s work.]*

I am not aware of Idjennaden touching on the subject of Atlantis, in spite of the fact that Plato clearly states that the Atlanteans controlled Libya as far as Egypt. Nevertheless, many of the books deal with specific matters related to different Atlantis theories, such as the Sea Peoples[1195] , the Canary Islands and Berbers.

(a) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bob-Idjennaden/e/B0079G2BM8

(b) https://melitainsula.blogspot.ie/2010/10/indigenous-tribes-of-africa.html

Recuenco Andrés, Javier

Javier Recuenco Andrés (1973- ) is an IT engineer from Cadiz in Spain. He has a passion for chess, history and mythology. His interest in the latter has led to his publication of a heavily illustrated The Historical Reality of Javier Recuenco AndresAtlantis in Spanish and English (Kindle only).

He begins with an in-depth examination of a ‘Tartessian’ gold disk that led on to an etymological investigation of the ‘K-N’ inscription on it, which he believes referred to the Conii people who settled in what is now southern Portugal. He speculates that the design of the disk reflects the layout of the acropolis of Atlantis! He has suggested that this acropolis was probably located in the vicinity of the Canary Islands.

In 2013, Recuenco Andrés and Diaz-Montexano jointly published a paper(a) on the academia.edu website offering comparable interpretations of the disk with the same conclusion that it was connected with Atlantis.

Javier dates the foundation of Atlantis to a period between 21,000 and 12,000 BC. Andrés has a hyperdiffusionist view of Atlantis showing rock carvings in North Africa, America, Australia, China and of course his native Iberia as evidence for their global influence. The fall of the Atlantean ‘Empire’ he suggests was between 12,000 and 9,000 BC, as the last Ice Age was ending.

He subscribes to the idea that there was a Gibraltar landbridge, which was breached around 5,500 BC that eventually led to the linking of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, an event originally revealed by Ryan & Pitman.

Javier also believes that Egypt was occupied by Atlanteans from 7000–5500 BC, but that their influence led to the building of the pyramids! In fact, he attributes the pyramids of China and America  to Atlantean influence. He identifies Knossos in Crete as an Atlantean colony in the eastern Mediterranean.

In my opinion, Javier has produced an original work, unlike the regurgitated offerings of so many others. Nevertheless, I think his work has too many assumptions based on excusable subjectivity.

(a) See: https://atlantisng.com/blog/javier-recuenco-georgeos-diaz-el-disco-de-bensafrim-simbolo-de-la-capital-de-atlantis-un-ensayo-de-atlantologia-historico-cientifica/comment-page-1/ (Spanish)

Gonzalez Cortez, Hector

Héctor Gonzalez Cortez who was born in the Canary Islands has a degree in archaeology and is currently head of the anthropology department of the University of Tarapaca in Arica, Chile.>He has written several papers about the peoples of the Altiplano that are now available, in Spanish, on the Researchgate website(c).<

It is reported(a) that after a study of ancient Canarian and Chilean funeral practices he concluded their similarity could be explained by a common link with Atlantis. His further studies led him to suggest that Atlantis was located in the unexplored Guyana Highlands of South America.

>As of November 2022, no further information has been received(b).<

(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20150320100535/https://ufodigest.com/article/riddles-distant-past

or Archive 2472

(b) Héctor Gonzalez Cortez: Atlantis in the Guiana Mountains? – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *

(c) https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Hector-Gonzalez-Cortez-2013982837 *

Ledru, Andre-Pierre

Andre-Pierre Ledru (1761-1825) was a French priest and after the Revolution became a historian and later was appointed a professor of law. He also squeezed in a military career as a general and was wounded at the Battle of Jena (1806).

In a two-volume work published in 1810, Voyage aux îles de Ténériffe, la Trinité, St-Thomas, Ste-Croix et Porto-Rico[1261]he voiced his support for the idea of Atlantis in the Atlantic.

However, Thorwald C. Franke‘s research has revealed “that this is clearly not the case but also shows how this error came about. In fact, the term ‘ Atlantis ‘ is there, but it wasn’t introduced into this book by Ledru himself! Rather, as Franke states, ‘a historical digression from Charles-Nicolas-Sigisbert Sonnini de Manoncourt (1751-1812), a French naturalist who was for a time Buffon’s secretary and co-authored a book on reptiles with Latreille. In this digression, Sonnini presented Golbéry ‘s thesis about Atlantis in the Canary Islands as an interesting possibility, without deciding to do so himself.’ Ledru in any case has not commented on this or taken it up in any way, and so here is neither from him nor from Sonnini regarding Atlantis making a clear statement in favor of the Canary Islands – or any other location in the Atlantic.”(a)

 

(a) André Pierre Ledru – Atlantisforschung.de

Schoch, Robert M. *

Robert M. Schoch is a Yale scholar, geologist and paleontologist. At the invitation of John Anthony West, he agreed to inspect robert schochthe Sphinx and offer an opinion on the nature of the erosion to be seen on it. He found that the cause of this erosion was precipitation rather than windblown sand. As Egypt has had an arid climate for many thousands of years, Dr Schoch reached the conclusion that at least the front of the Sphinx had been carved between 7000 and 5000 BC, when the climate had been considerably wetter.

In the same book, Voices of the Rocks [454], he endorsed (p.123) the conclusions of Mary Settegast [545] who claimed that Plato’s Atlantis story was a reference to the Magdalenian culture that inhabited the coastal regions of the Western Mediterranean during the 9th millennium BC. Schoch devotes a chapter to the subject of Atlantis and interestingly lists a number of sites to which the Greeks applied the appellation ‘Pillars of Heracles‘ apart from the Strait of Gibraltar.

The Greeks, however, used the name Pillars of Herakles to mark other sites besides Gibraltar, some outside the Mediterranean – namely, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic and the Strait of Kerch dividing the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov – and even more inside – specifically, the Strait of Bonifacio between Corsica and Sardinia, the Strait of Messina between mainland Italy and Sicily, the Greek Peloponnese, the mountainous coast of Tunisia, and the Nile Delta.” [p.87] A highly critical review of Schoch’s ‘Voices’ can be read online(n).

In his Voyages of the Pyramid Builders [455], he reiterates his conviction “that Plato’s story is, at least in part, a fictionalized account of a great Mediterranean war at a time of intense climatic change between the tenth and eighth millennia BC.”  A critique by William P Eigles tackles ‘Voyages’ in Atlantis Rising magazine # 37, where Schoch endeavours to link the global presence of pyramids as a possible expression of hyperdiffusion. Eigles comments that Schoch “may simply be trying to prove too much here. Many of the motivations, reasons and interpretations he offers for the various activities and actions on the part of the ancients are clearly speculative in nature.(ad)” 

This 1990 declaration regarding the Sphinx generated an international reputation for Schoch. Such a controversial conclusion was obviously greeted warmly by the supporters of the 9,000-year-old date for Atlantis allegedly given by the Egyptian priests to Solon. This accidental intervention by Schoch in the debate regarding the dating of Atlantis has unfortunately done nothing to resolve the issue. Fierce debate continues regarding the date of the Sphinx. However, there appears to be a gradual acceptance of Schoch’s views by other professional geologists such as David Coxhill. Another geologist, Colin Reader, while not accepting all of Schoch’s conclusions, believes that the Sphinx predates King Khufu, the father of Khafre, who has been traditionally accepted as the builder of the Sphinx, with the monument bearing his image(v)(w)(x).

Schoch subsequently pushed the date of the Sphinx as far back as circa 10,000 BCE and he now suggests that the monument was carved in the shape of a lioness.(ae)

It appears that Schoch’s experiences regarding the Sphinx have whetted his appetite for prehistory as he has now written a further book[455], again with R.A. McNally about the origins of the pyramid builders. Unfortunately, he includes a reference to Ireland’s Newgrange as a form of ‘pyramid building’, an idea I reject, since it shares neither form nor function with the Egyptian pyramids. The goodreads.com website offers a very critical review of this book(a) as has Professor Garrett Fagan(ag).

Schoch and McNally have recently dared to enter into the highly charged debate regarding the dating of the Great Pyramid at Giza[456][457].

Schoch seems to be venturing further and further from his natural comfort zone of geology. In 2007, he wrote an article on Telepathy(d) and was later due to address the Electric Universe Conference in Las Vegas in 2012(c) and deliver a paper entitled The Catastrophic Termination of the Last Ice Age. In it, he will claim that around 10,000 BC the Earth underwent ‘dramatic catastrophic changes’ as a result of ‘our unstable Sun erupting at the end of the last Ice Age, melting the extensive glaciers and triggering climate warming. The full paper should be an interesting read. He continues to argue against the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis(r).

His retreat from conventional science may be now complete as he delves into the strange world of lycanthropy (the study of werewolves)(o).

Schoch’s work is now promoted through his own website(b), which includes a wide range of articles. On it, both he and his associate, Colette Dowell, have been very critical of the Bosnian pyramid claims of Semir Osmanagic following a visit there in 2006. However, in what appears to be an article(l) written in 2011 or 2012, Osmanagic responds with scathing criticism of Schoch’s work. His attack on Schoch was later added to by an assault from Jock Doubleday in a very lengthy article(y) in which, among other matters, he accuses Schoch of a series of thirteen lies! I should perhaps mention that Doubleday has been featured for some years now in the burgeoning Encyclopedia of American Loons(z). As well as that, elsewhere, a very personal attack has also been made on Collette Dowell(aa). Support for Schoch’s claim of a Bosnian pyramid hoax is also available(ab).

Schoch has now turned his attention to the emergence and demise of very early civilisations, before that of dynastic Egypt or Sumeria. When he combined his early date for the Sphinx with other discoveries such as that of Nabta Playa and Göbekli Tepe and Gunung Padang(m), he concluded that the origins of civilisation go back much further than generally accepted. He then looked at the bigger and perhaps more important question of the cause of their collapse. In a 2009 special edition (N0.8) of New Dawn magazine, he speculated on the possibility that the ending of such early civilisations was caused by the earth’s encounter with one or more asteroids or comets.

In his book(f), Forgotten Civilization[867],  Schoch claims that coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the sun around 9700 BC devastated our planet with electrical discharges, triggering seismic and volcanic activity as well as ending the Ice Age with its consequent floods. All this ‘eradicated the civilisation of the time and set humanity back thousands of years, only to re-emerge around 3500 BC with scattered memories and nascent abilities.’ In an article written(g) in March 2012, Schoch wrote about the ‘Carrington Event’ of 1859 which resulted from a massive solar event that year.

Schoch’s paper had the somewhat disturbing title of ‘Death Star’ and perhaps even more unsettling was the revelation in March 2019 that evidence of at least three major solar ‘proton attacks’ over the past 3,000 years. The suggestion is that these episodes are to be expected with some degree of regularity, which may create ever-increasing disruption as our dependency on electricity expands. The recent report(q) indicates that the most powerful event identified so far took place around 610 BC. Without a power grid to damage at the time, we are unaware of what effect it had on the people of that time and I would hope that a review of the literature of that era might reveal some corroboration.

A video clip from his recent Las Vegas lecture is now available on YouTube(h). His talk is based on an article(i) in the July-August 2010 edition of New Dawn magazine, which is now available online and will play a large part in his Forgotten Civilization. He highlights some fascinating similarities between the Rongorongo script of Easter Island, the Nasca petroglyphs and the plasma figures of Dr Anthony L. Peratt together with their possible association with the ending of the last Ice Age.

For me, the most disturbing aspect of Schoch’s book is his apocalyptic vision of global catastrophes that he anticipates may again turn the few survivors back into troglodytes!

“The revised and expanded edition of Forgotten Civilization, which bears a new subtitle, was released in March of 2021. It includes everything in the first edition plus a new final chapter and various updates to other chapters throughout the book. Thus, the new edition is approximately 150 pages longer, including over 40 new/additional photographs. As I detail in this revision, a number of new discoveries made since the first edition was published reinforce my contention that true civilization existed prior to the end of the last ice age, some 12,000 years ago, and that civilization was decimated by the solar outburst(s) that occurred then, throwing humanity into a Solar-Induced Dark Age for some 6,000 years before the reemergence of civilization around 4000–3000 BCE.”(ai)

However, Jason Colavito has reviewed Schoch’s claims relating to both the Rongorongo script(j) and Göbekli Tepe(k) and has found his ideas wanting. Colavito found further ammunition in the forthcoming book, Origins of the Sphinx[1374] which Schoch co-authored with Robert Bauval, describing it as ‘a virtual rewriting of’ Keeper of Genesis(p). In 2019, Schoch expanded further on his opinions regarding the importance of Göbekli Tepe with a claim that its builders possessed some level of literacy(s), provoking further criticism from Colavito(r). Schoch expanded on this claim in a subsequent post(ac), but for me, I find this proposed literacy at Göbekli Tepe a push too far.

One of the great mysteries of Göbekli Tepe is that it was deliberately reburied but fortunately for us, this left it in perfect condition for us to study. Schoch has suggested that this was done to protect it from damage by CME’s such as occurred around 9700 BC (see above). This sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. He then takes this idea further and proposes in a lengthy article that the Egyptians did something similar(ah), but uncovered them later for the pharaohs to develop. I’m not convinced.

ORACUL – The Organization for the Research of Ancient Cultures is a not-for-profit body, co-founded by Schoch “dedicated to the scientific study of civilization’s origins. It is our hope that through research advocacy, publishing, and educational outreach, further evidence for mankind’s remote and forgotten past will be uncovered.”(af)

(a) Greg’s review of Voyages of the Pyramid Builders (goodreads.com)

(b) https://robertschoch.com/

(c)  https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/

(d) https://web.archive.org/web/20160805112624/https://atlantisrisingmagazine.com/article/telepathy-a-sympathy-of-souls/

(e) https://web.archive.org/web/20160121150912/https://www.robertschoch.com/articles/schochnewdawnjune2009.pdf

(f) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forgotten-Civilization-Solar-Outbursts-Future/dp/1594774978

(g) https://dailygrail.com/Guest-Articles/2012/3/Death-Star

(h) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUqdYBxbbck

(i)  https://web.archive.org/web/20160305085118/https://robertschoch.com/articles/schochancientwarningnewdawnjuly2010.pdf

(j) https://robertschoch.com/plasma_iceage.html

(k) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2012/08/robert-schochs-wacky-easter-island-gobekli-tepe-theory-the-hypocrisy-of-alternative-dating.html

(l) HOW MANY TIMES HAS DR. ROBERT SCHOCH BEEN WRONG? – Welcome to the official web page of the ‘Archaeological Park: Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun’ Foundation / Dobrodošli na službenu web stranicu Fondacije ‘Arheološki park: Bosanska piramida Sunca’al Park: Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Foundation (archive.org) *

(m) https://web.archive.org/web/20140716174346/https://atlantisrisingmagazine.com/2014/03/01/journey-to-gunung-padang/

(n) https://anamericaninbosnia.blogspot.ie/2013/03/witchcraft-cartography-and-clairvoyant.html

(o) https://www.dailygrail.com/Guest-Articles/2016/10/The-Werewolf

(p) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-the-origin-of-the-sphinx-by-robert-schoch-and-robert-bauval

(q) https://www.livescience.com/64964-huge-ancient-solar-storm-hit-earth.html

(r) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/geologist-robert-schoch-claims-to-be-able-to-translate-alleged-writing-at-gobekli-tepe

(s) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330759548_World’s_First_Known_Written_Word_at_Gobekli_Tepe_on_T-Shaped_Pillar_18_Means_God

(t) New Dawn Magazine -July August 2010

(u) New Dawn Magazine- Special Issue No.8 2009)

(v) https://www.academia.edu/21651229/Giza_Before_The_Fourth_Dynasty

(w) (99+) (PDF) Khufu Knew the Sphinx | Colin Reader – Academia.edu

(x) (99+) (PDF) Further considerations on development at Giza before the 4th Dynasty | Colin Reader – Academia.edu

(y) An American in Bosnia: The Mysterious Anti-Scientific Agenda of Robert Schoch 

(z) https://americanloons.blogspot.com/2015/12/1555-jock-doubleday.html 

(aa) Aliens to Science – Welcome to the official web page of the ‘Archaeological Park: Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun’ Foundation / Dobrodošli na službenu web stranicu Fondacije ‘Arheološki park: Bosanska piramida Sunca’al Park: Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Foundation (archive.org)

(ab) Heavy Futz: Don’t bother making a pligrimage to the “Bosnian Pyramids” 

(ac) https://www.robertschoch.com/gobekli_tepe_writing.html 

(ad)  Atlantis Rising magazine  #37   http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At 

(ae) https://www.robertschoch.com/sphinx.html

(af) Robert M. Schoch: ORACUL (robertschoch.com) 

(ag) https://www.hallofmaat.com/lostciv/review-of-voyages-of-the-pyramid-builders/

(ah) https://www.robertschoch.com/ancient_burial_of_egypt.html 

(ai) https://www.robertschoch.com/publications.html 

 

 

Linguistic Connections (t)

Linguistic Connections have been frequently advanced between Europe and the Americas as evidence of either an ancient sea link between the two or an intermediate landmass, Atlantis. Some of these supposed connections have been demonstrated as being totally without substance and merely coincidences resulting from the limited number of sounds that can be produced by human speech. Unfortunately, many of these purported links are still referred to in some books and even more frequently on websites, as credible evidence for the existence of Atlantis. Quite frankly the whole matter of similarities between languages is a complete red herring in the search for Atlantis. While it is perfectly possible that prehistoric Europeans and Africans travelled to the Americas and brought their languages with them, it does nothing to prove that Plato’s Atlantis existed.

The Basques, frequently linked with Atlantis, call their language, Euskara, which is a seemingly unique tongue, unrelated to any Indo-European speech. Strangely, Euskara shares some affinity with Finno-Urgic Patumnili (allegedly spoken in ancient Troy), Etruscan (belonging to the pre-Roman civilizers of western Italy, traditionally descended from the Trojans), Guanche (spoken by the early, supposedly Atlantean, inhabitants of the Canary Islands) and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. These long-dead languages are themselves only very imperfectly understood today but the fact that Basque Euskara contains legitimate cognates with the languages of four arguably Atlantean peoples may not be without significance.

To add further confusion, in the middle of the last century, Dr. Yoshitomi drew attention to similarities between the Basque and Japanese languages.

Following the work of Dr. Pierre L. Collignon, Egerton Sykes supported the view that a number of North American place names have a possible Egyptian origin.

Tennessee – Ta-N-Ese meaning ‘Land of Isis’

Kentucky/Quantuck named after the Egyptian Anubis

Missouri – Mesu-Ra meaning ‘Children of the Sun’

Kansas/Arkansas named after the Third Great God of Thebes

Massachusettes –Mesu-Tchesert refers to ‘Children of the Red One’

Niagara – Nga-Ra equates with ‘Bull of Ra’, bull being another title of the Nile.

All that can be said to readers is to tread warily and generally speaking take all that is read on this subject with a grain of proverbial salt. Nevertheless, those interested in recent developments in language studies the website below(a) should be of interest.

Also See: Augustus le Plongeon, Brasseur de Bourbourg, Ignatius Donnelly

(a) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120920135321.htm