Chile
Greek Colonisation *
Greek Colonisation is something of misnomer on two counts. First of all is the fact that there was no unified Greek state until the time of Alexander the Great. Instead the territory was fragmented into a number of competing city- states (poleis) that formed shifting alliances to meet the exigencies of the day.
Secondly, the term ‘colonisation’ did not mean the same then as it does today. Individual city states had their own expansion ambitions, which were generally concerned with trade rather than territory. It seems that most of the colonies began as trading posts, known as emporia(a), some developing into towns, others grew into urban centres and even established colonies of their own.
In the first millennium BC, some of the Greek city-states gradually expanded their influence(c) eastward into Asia Minor and the Black Sea and westward along the northern coast of the Mediterranean, eventually founding Massalia (modern Marseilles), which established emporia in eastern Spain.
Some writers, such as Henriette Mertz, have proposed that the ancient Greeks travelled as far as America and that Homer’s story of Odysseus was a retelling of such a voyage(k). More recently, Minas Tsikritsis has claimed that the Greeks had contact with North America, at least as far back as 86 AD!(d) Some time later he expanded on the idea in a paper published on the Researchgate website(e). Manolis Koutlis went further in his book, In the Shadow: The Greek Colonies of North America and the Atlantic 1500 BC -1500 AD [1617].
Even more extreme is the odd claim by Lonko Kilapan that ancient Greeks colonists settled in Chile and whose descendants are known now as Mapuche and earlier as Araucans or Araucanians(f) . Michael Issigonis has championed the idea of early Greeks in South America and elsewhere on the Academia.edu website(g)(h).
Tara MacIsaac published an article(i) supporting this idea of ancient Greeks in South America, apparently influenced by Enrico Mattievich and earlier comments by José Imbelloni.
The greek-thesaurus.gr website offers three pages of images of artefacts found in the Americas that can be interpreted as evidence of ancient Greek influence in the region(j). The compiler claims that “If these pictures are not proofs for the existence of the ancient Greeks in America the word “proof” has lost it’s meaning.”
The Phoenicians had their own city-states such a Tyre, Sidon and Byblos. They established ‘colonies along north Africa, and Spain. They competed with the Greeks, particularly in the central Mediterranean, where at one point they shared Sicily. Settlers from Tyre founded Carthage, which in turn became more powerful than and independent of its parent city and became more belligerent, eventually engaging in a series of wars with Rome, which it lost.
There is much more relevant information to be found on the excellent Ancient History Encyclopedia website(b) .
(a) https://www.academia.edu/1505105/The_origins_of_Greek_colonisation_and_Greek_polis_some_observations
(b) https://www.ancient.eu/edu/
(c) https://www.ancient.eu/Greek_Colonization/
(e) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321319687/download
(f) THE UNKNOWN HELLENIC COLONIZATION.THE CASE OF THE ARAUCANS OF CHILE (archive.org) *
(g) https://www.academia.edu/9066795/Did_the_Mapuche_of_Chile_travel_from_Homeric_Age_Greece
(h) https://www.academia.edu/32921347/ANCIENT_GREEKS_TRAVELLED_WORLDWIDE
(j) https://www.greek-thesaurus.gr/Ancient-Greeks-existence-America.html
Serrano, Miguel
Miguel Serrano (1917-2009) was a former Chilean diplomat in which capacity he was appointed ambassador to India from 1953 until 1962. He was also an unrepentant nazi sympathiser since 1939 and over time he developed what became known Esoteric Nazism, which continues to have support particularly in his native Chile, where there are still substantial numbers of Nazi followers(a).
*Joscelyn Godwin relates[789.126] how Serrano claimed that “the Germans also found there was a way of communication with the Hollow Earth and its secret cities, where the First Hyperboreans had taken refuge from the disaster that reversed the Poles. There a secret base was prepared during the war years, and thither Adolf Hitler escaped in a vimana (flying saucer plane) to direct the “esoteric war” to this day.”*
The spitfirelist website notes that when “Serrano returned to Chile after the Pinochet coup in 1973. Finding the regime unsympathetic to his ideas, he adopted “the role of intellectual gadfly“.[9] In May 1984, Serrano gave the Nazi salute at the funeral in Santiago of SS Colonel Walter Rauff.[9] He convened a rally in Santiago on 5 September 1993, in honor of Rudolf Hess, and in memory of the 62 young Chilean Nazi supporters who were shot dead while occupying a social security building during an abortive coup in 1938.[1][10] “(c)
Two books by the Chilean historian, Rafael Videla Eissmann, are concerned with Serrano’s views on Atlantis. Many of his other works, mainly in Spanish, are available as pdf files(b).
(a) https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/fellows/chile_2008/
(b) https://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/Se
(c) https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-873-the-new-age-fascism-and-the-atlantis-myth/
Rengifo, Robert
Robert Rengifo was a little known Chilean professor who flourished in the early decades of the 20th century. He had an intense interest in the prehistory of America and presented his views in the Proceedings of the prestigious Societe Scientifique du Chili(The Scientific Society of Chile) from 1904 until 1935. He focused on the aboriginal peoples of Chile and in particular Patagonia in the extreme south. His attention was drawn even further south to Antarctica where he controversially concluded that man had originated (rather than Africa). Then following a catastrophic axial pole shift that destroyed Atlantis, which was located in Antarctica, people were forced to migrate, populating the rest of the Americas and then the world.
Rafael Videla Eissmann, who has championed Rengifo’s work has drawn attention to an excerpt from the epic poem, La Araucana, by Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (1533-1594) which translates from the original Castilian as
“Chile, fertile and known land
in the famous Antarctic region
from ancient nations respected
because of being strong, important and powerful”.
Eissmann believes that this suggests knowledge of an ancient Antarctic polar civilisation!
While many of his conclusions may now appear purely speculative, in fact, Rengifo thought his views would eventually be vindicated by archaeology. The Monte Verde site in southern Chile has since been dated to around 11,000 BC. In addition, the enormous dressed stone blocks of El Enladrillado, also in Chile, raise questions about the technological capabilities of the region’s early inhabitants.
This apparent movement of peoples from south to north was endorsed by Arthur Posnansky in his 1919 book La Hora Futura [0941] The ensuing half century saw more of his conclusions echoed by researchers such as Charles Hapgood, the Flem-Aths, Hugh Auchincloss Brown and Robert Argod.
His work has recently been highlighted in a 2008 book[792] by Rafael Videla Eissmann as well as in a series of papers on his website(a). Another overview of Rengifo’s theories is available online(b).
(a) https://obrasrafaelvidelaeissmann.blogspot.com/ (Spanish) [use search facility]
*(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20160326042154/https://www.alertaaustral.cl/articulo.php?id=190*
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) Archaeologists uncover oldest mine in the Ame | EurekAlert! (archive.org) *
(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)
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
(c) https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Hector-Gonzalez-Cortez-2013982837 *