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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 »
Charles Berlitz
Fasold, David (L)
David Franklin Fasold (1939-1998) was an American marine salvage expert, who is best known for his book The Discovery of Noah’s Ark[1054], in which he claimed to have identified the landing site of the Ark. However his location was not on Mount Ararat but Mount Masher Dagi some seventeen miles away. A critical review of his research is available online(a). This was not the only controversy with which he was associated. He was also involved in claiming that the Mount Sinai of biblical fame was not in the Sinai peninsula but further east across the Gulf of Aqaba in Saudi Arabia. The story is told in The Gold of Exodus by Howard Blum[1434].
Fasold refers briefly to Atlantis in his ‘Ark’ book (p.298), where he cites a Portuguese tradition that “Atlantida, existed west of their shores.” He also mentions a southern Spanish belief that identified the Canaries as ‘Atalya’, which coincidentally is the preferred Atlantis location of Charles Berlitz, who wrote the Introduction to Fasold’s book. He also devotes some pages to discussing the possibility that Tiwanaku was a pre-Flood city (p.299).
Steiner, Sarah
Sarah Steiner was a Swiss student who had opted for the Caribbean as the most likely location for Atlantis, in a German language 2002 graduation paper(a). Her contribution is fairly standard with a brief overview of the more popular theories. She seems strongly influenced by Charles Berlitz, Klaus Aschenbrenner and Andrew Collins, concurring with the latter’s thesis. Atlantisforschung has an extensive review of her paper(b). See Archive 5042
(b) https://atlantisforschung.de/index.php?title=Sarah_Steiner:_Matura_mit_Atlantis
Aksyonov, Andrei
Andrei Aksyonov was a deputy director of the Institute of Oceanology of the Soviet
Academy of Sciences when he revealed in 1979(a) that photographs of man-made walls
and staircases had been taken at a depth of 200 feet in the Atlantic, 275 miles
southwest of Portugal, by a colleague, Vladimir Marakuyev. The location was the
underwater summit of the Ampere Seamount, part of the submerged Horseshoe
Archipelago.
The controversial images had been taken a few years earlier and consisted of two
photos. One shows eight stones, four rounded, four square, in a line just over
a metre in length. The second has three equally spaced stones which appear to
be part of a staircase. Aksyonov, believed that these ‘structures’ had once
stood on dry land, but did not claim them as Atlantean. However, a 1979 newspaper report(a) contradicts this.
Nevertheless, a couple of years later when better quality images were obtained Akysonov declared that the original features were natural, ruling out an Atlantean explanation. However an Atlantis Rising article noted that Akysonov “Like his colleagues, was shocked by official termination of all on-going and future research at Ampere before the close of their 1986 expedition season. Director Akysonov had peremptorily declared that re-examination of the photographic surveys proved that all the seamount’s features were entirely natural, and no similar investigations would be government sponsored. He refused to disclose any alleged counter evidence and was the only scientist who reversed his long-held stance that the underwater features were artificial.” (b)
A somewhat indistinct copy of the image of the wall was formerly online, which seemed to have been copied from Charles Berlitz’s book, Atlantis, the Eight Continent[166].
This is no more convincing than Sarmast’s mile-deep wall off Cyprus.
(a) https://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/110939505?searchTerm=Atlantis&searchLimits=
(b) https://atlantisrisingmagazine.com/atlantic/did-the-russians-find-atlantis/
Chronos (t)
Chronos in Greek mythology is considered the personification of time, giving us words today such as chronology, chronometer, and chronicle. Chronos is not to be confused with the Titan, Kronos, father of Zeus. Paul Schliemann in his fraudulent Atlantis story erroneously refers to King Kronos of Atlantis, a canard frequently repeated by later writers. Charles Berlitz relates[0743.115 how Chronos was considered by some legends to be the last king of Atlantis.
Valentine, J. Manson
J. Manson Valentine (1902-1994), together with divers Jacques Mayol, Harold Climo and Robert Angove, discovered the so-called “Bimini Wall” in 1968. It appears that Valentine saw his discovery as a confirmation of Edgar Cayce’s Atlantis prediction. During earlier explorations off Gonova Island near the coast of Haiti, in 1966, he discovered ‘sophisticated artefacts of possible Atlantean origin’ in ten feet of water.
It is worth noting that Lynn Picknett & Clive Prnce have pointed out[0705.61] that the Bimini Road was known to the local islanders for years and even offered to show it to its ‘discoverers’! If true, the date of the find could have been manipulated to coincide with Cayce’s ‘prognostication’.
Brad Steiger records[129] that Valentine expressed the view that Atlantis was technologically more advanced than we are today! If so I find it strange that although Athens defeated such a highly developed Atlantis, it did so without leaving any evidence of it being an equally advanced society!
Dr. Valentine also collaborated with Charles Berlitz in the writing of his best-seller, The Bermuda Triangle and its sequel Without a Trace. He was a consultant on the production of a 1979 documentary also titled The Bermuda Triangle.
Dr. Valentine died of complications following a bite from a venomous recluse spider.
Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle is the name given to an area of sea encompassed by Miami, Puerto Rico and Bermuda. In his article, “Sea Mystery at Our Back Door”, George X. Sand described the disappearance of several aeroplanes and ships, including the story of Flight 19 in the October 1952 issue of Fate magazine. Sand was the first to define the borders of the then, unnamed Bermuda Triangle. It wasn’t until February 1964 that Vincent Gaddis coined the name “Bermuda Triangle” in an article published by Argosy Magazine(i).
It alleged that within this area there has been an inordinate loss of ships and aircraft. It is an issue that captured the attention 
of the ever-present ‘batty brigade’, who linked the area with UFO’s, underwater crystals and, of course, Atlantis. Much has been written about the subject, beyond the efforts of one or two authors, writers in the main, have offered very little original material, preferring to re-hash existing and sometimes rather dubious material.
The writer most readily identified with the Bermuda Triangle is Charles Berlitz who gave us two books[168][169] on the subject, in which he linked it with alien abductions, UFO’s and of course, Atlantis. Bill Hanson is also a supporter of an Atlantis connection.
More recently, a German historian, Dr Michael Preisinger, has claimed to have mapped magnetic anomalies in the area(j), which have led some to conclude that they may be caused by micro-wormholes. Preisinger has suggested that there may be some connection between these anomalies and the fact that the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Centre (AUTEC) are based in the area with a possible UFO connection. Before anyone jumps to the conclusion that Dr Preisinger is just another attention-seeking nut, it must be pointed out that he has offered a rational explanation for many of the allegedly man-made stones of the “Bimini Wall” namely, the fact large quantities of ballast stones were jettisoned in the area during the American Civil war. Gavin Menzies made a similar suggestion but with a twist, in his book 1421, 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!
Gian Quasar, who appears to be attempting to take up Berlitz’s mantle, has written a comprehensive volume[174] on the Bermuda Triangle supported by an interesting website(a), which is to be transferred to a new address(d). A sequel to his book is also in preparation. Quasar barely touched on the subject of Atlantis in his book, where he wrote “It is true, of course, that the greatest electromagnetic and undersea phenomena do recur where Cayce predicted that Atlantean ruins would exist.”
In December 2015, The Telegraph (UK) published a sober review(b) of the Bermuda Triangle story, in my view, effectively debunking it. A year later Norwegian scientists claimed(c) that underwater methane explosions were responsible for losses in the ‘Triangle’.
The British tabloid The Daily Star in its January 29th, 2017 edition(e) published a pathetic article that vaguely attempts to link Atlantis with the Bermuda Triangle. I can only assume it was a slow news day! Marina Michaels, the psychic, also locates the centre of Atlantis as almost congruent with that of the Bermuda Triangle(f). On May 13th, 2018, The Daily Star regurgitated the previous year’s nonsense.
In 2020, a further lame attempt to link Atlantis with the so-called Bermuda Triangle was made on the American TV show, Forbidden History. Needless to say, it gave Jason Colavito an opportunity to dispose of this hogwash(h).
Statistically, it would appear that the Bermuda Triangle is no more dangerous than anywhere else, a view borne out by the fact that insurance underwriters do not load premiums for travelling there. This view was highlighted in 2017 by Australian scientist Dr Karl Kruszelnicki(g).
>The Popular Mechanics website had a 2023 article reiterating the conclusions of scientists who attribute losses of ships or planes in the ‘triangle’ over the past century to probabilities. An explanation endorsed by Lloyd’s of London(k), the world’s greatest insurance market.<
(a) https://www.bermuda-triangle.org/index.html (offline April 2016)
(c) https://www.thelocal.no/20160314/have-norwegian-scientists-solved-the-bermuda-triangle-mystery
(d) https://www.thequesterfiles.com/html/gian_quasar_s_the_bermuda_tria.html
(g) https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/07/scientist-claims-hes-solved-the-bermuda-triangle-mystery/
(i) https://www.paranormal-encyclopedia.com/b/bermuda-triangle/
(j) Atlantis Rising magazine – Issue 18
(k) https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43827267/bermuda-triangle-mystery-solved-says-scientist/
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Berlitz, Charles
Charles Berlitz (1913-2003) was born in New York, as Charles Frambach and was the grandson of Maximilian D. Berlitz, founder of the well-known language school. At his grandfather’s request, he changed his name to Frambach-Berlitz, subsequently dropping the Frambach completely. He spoke a wide range of languages and wrote extensively on the subject.
>He graduated from Yale and eventually became a vice-president of the family company in charge of the New York based publishing house. “He left the company in the late 1960s, not long after the publishing firm Crowell, Collier & Macmillan took over. In a strange legal maneuver, the new owners obtained a temporary court order preventing Mr. Berlitz from using his surname professionally, arguing that Berlitz was a trademark.” Berlitz won the case along with a $350,000 settlement(d) .<
He spent 26 years of his life in the US Army, half of that on active duty, serving as an intelligence officer. He served in World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.
He developed an interest in mysteries and published a number of related books[165–173] including two about Atlantis that support an Atlantic location for the lost civilisation, with the Canaries and Azores as leading contenders.
As a linguist, Berlitz wrote a critical review of the claims of Brasseur deBourboug and Le Plongeon that they had deciphered the Mayan script(c).
Unfortunately, his obsession with the Bermuda Triangle led him into lunatic fringe territory when he suggested a link between the ‘Triangle’ and Atlantis citing the ‘prophecies’ of Edgar Cayce and further extending his appeal to various factions of the aforementioned lunatic fringe, by hinting at a possible connection between Atlantis and UFOs.
More serious is that Berlitz has been accused of perpetrating ‘an elaborate Atlantis pyramid hoax in his 1978 book Without a Trace.’ He claims the discovery of a 470 feet high pyramid with a 4×520 feet base(a). Various suggestions regarding the real source of the story(b). For me, it sounds like a slightly garbled rerun of the Ray Brown hoax.
(a) Pyramid Schemes: A Brief History of the Mysterious Monuments (archive.org)
(d) Linguist Charles Berlitz Dies – The Washington Post *