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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Christine Pellech

Symplegades

The Symplegades or ‘Clashing Rocks’, situated at the Bosporus, are known in Greek mythology as one of the challenges encountered by Jason and the Argonauts. Pindar describes Jason’s journey to the ‘Inhospitable Sea’ (Black Sea) via the Clashing Rocks [1787.61].

Rosario Vieni has suggested that the Symplegades, were precursors of the Pillars of Heracles, John Lundwall in Mythos and Cosmos [1747.305-6] also suggests a linkage between the Symplegades and the Pillars of Herakles!(a)

>According to Atlantisforschung Christine Pellech suggested that the Symplegades was a reference to the Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of South America(b)!<

(a) https://www.quora.com/Where-are-the-pillars-of-Hercules  (just over halfway down the page)

(b) Symplegaden – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *

Acholonu-Olumba, Catherine

Catherine Acholonu-Olumba (1951-2014 ) was from Orlu in Nigeria and well Catherine Acholonuknown as a writer(d), researcher and former lecturer on African Cultural and Gender Studies. She was a frequent contributor to the migration-diffusion website(b). In a recent paper(a) she proposed “that ancient West Africans nurtured a high civilization that was an off-shoot of the fall of Atlantis and the migrations of its peoples in search of new lands.” She also maintained that the West African Igbo language was, in earlier times, a global lingus franca.

Some of her ideas seemed like a melange from Blavatsky/Cayce/Daniken as the following excerpt from a video clip(c) demonstrates,

“By 208,000 BC human evolution was interrupted and Adam, a hybrid, was created through the process of genetic engineering. However, our findings reveal that the creation of Adam was a downward climb on the evolutionary ladder, because he lost his divine essence, he became divided, no longer whole, or wholesome. All over Africa and in ancient Egyptian reports, oral and written traditions maintain that homo erectus people were heavenly beings, and possessed mystical powers such as telepathy, levitation, bi-location, that their words could move rocks and mountains and change the course of rivers. Adam lost all that when his right brain was shut down by those who made him.”

Another paper by Acholonu once again endeavours to link the Igbo language with that of the ancient Egyptians(e).

Even more intriguing is the claim of an association between Ogham and the Igbo language. Erich Fred Legner noted that “All the words that (Edo)Nyland and (Barry)Fell transcribed were Igbo words, which Dr Catherine Acholonu could easily read and translate. She told Edo Nyland that she had translated the words he transcribed from Ogam stones, but he didn’t believe her at first. When Hugo Kennes found Dr Acholonu’s work on the Internet and started telling all the Ogam researchers he knew including Nyland, Nyland then asked him to get an Igbo dictionary from her.  It was only after her meeting with (Christine)Pellech in Belgium when she “read “all Acholonu’s books and convinced her to write for her site, that it was decided to do the “Igbo Ogam VCV Dictionary”(g)

Acholonu was one of the authors of They Lived Before Adam: Pre-Historic Origins of the Igbo[1134] which includes some rather wild Igbo-centric claims.

A few years later, she published Eden in Sumer On The Niger [1833], which continued in a similar vein. According to an abstract on ResearchGate,(f) “It provides multidisciplinary evidence of the actual geographical location in West Africa of the Garden of Eden, Atlantis and the original homeland of the Sumerian people before their migration to the “Middle East”. By translating hitherto unknown pre-cuneiform inscriptions of the Sumerians, Catherine Acholonu and Sidney Davis have uncovered thousands of years of Africa’s lost pre-history and evidences of the West African origins of the earliest Pharaohs and Kings of Egypt and Sumer such as Menes and Sargon the Great.” 

>In 2017, Michelle Lopez Wellansky presented a paper in which she investigated the Igbo people, the majority of whom “today are practicing Christians. Though they identify as Christian, many consider themselves to be “cultural” or “ethnic” Jews.”(h)

John Boze has contributed a series of unconventional posts on Facebook promoting the idea of a West African Genesis including the claim that “Noah, Abraham and Moses were all born, lived and died in West Africa! Not unexpectedly, Boze also claims that Atlantis was situated in Mauritania. For good measure he further claims that the ten Hebrew nations lived in West Africa 4000BC-3000BC! I think comment is unnecessary.<

(a) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=218

(b) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?authorid=98

(c) https://igboacienthistory.weebly.com/igbo-language-a-former-global-lingua-franca.html

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

(e) (99+) (PDF) Egypian Sacred and Religious Lexicon – Its Ancient Igbo Foundations and Implications for Egyptology | Chizoro Okeke – Academia.edu

(f) (PDF) Eden In Sumer On The Niger (researchgate.net)

(g) <Ogam (Ogham) Writing System & Ogam Alphabet (ucr.edu)

(h) https://kulanu.org/wp-content/uploads/nigeria/Igbo-Jews-Senior-Project.pdf *

Migration and Diffusion

Migration and Diffusion is the brainchild of Dr. Christine Pellech who wrote that “the basic theme of my website is cultural contacts and migration covering the time range from human origins up to the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492.” For over ten years it has been regularly publishing articles by a range of writers on subjects that frequently touch on aspects of Atlantology. While Pellech does not refer directly to Atlantis, she does claim that the Caribbean had been the centre of an extensive maritime trading culture, millennia before Columbus. I highly recommend the site(a) for anyone interested in our ancient past.

It is relevant to refer you to a paper(b) delivered to the 12th International Congress of the Geological Society of Greece in 2010 by Professor Ilias D. Mariolakos. In it he concluded that the Mycenaeans had extensive knowledge of the Atlantic and its islands as well as the Michigan copper mines which they exploited for their bronze industry. He believes that this lasted from the beginning or middle of the 3rd millennium BC until some time after the Trojan War at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. There then followed the Dark Ages which resulted in this maritime knowledge being lost and the succeeding Greek civilisation began again from scratch.

(a) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/index.php

(b) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313128161_THE_FORGOTTEN_GEOGRAPHIC_AND_PHYSICAL_-_OCEANOGRAPHIC_KNOWLEDGE_OF_THE_PREHISTORIC_GREEKS  (p.92)

Vinci, Felice

Felice Vinci (1946- ) is an Italian nuclear engineer with a background in Latin and Greek studies Felice_Vinciand is a member of MENSA, Italy. He believes that Greek mythology had its origins in Northern Europe.

His first book on the subject in 1993, Homericus Nuncius[1358], was subsequently expanded into Omero nel Baltico[0018] and published in 1995. It has now been translated into most of the languages of the Baltic as well as an English version with the title of The Baltic Origins of Homer’s Epic Tales[0019]. The foreword was written by Joscelyn Godwin.

Vinci explained that “I have been interested in the Greek poet Homer and Greek mythology since I was seven years old. My elementary school teacher gave me a book about the Trojan War, so the leading characters of Homer’s poem, ‘Iliad,’ were as important for me as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

“In 1992, I found the Greek historian Plutarch‘s key-indication which positioned the island Ogygie in the North Atlantic ocean. I decided to dedicate myself to this research. The ancient Greek that I had studied in secondary school helped me very much. Subsequently, I was helped and encouraged by Professor Rosa Calzecchi Onesti, a famous scholar who has translated both of Homer’s poems, ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey,’ into Italian. Her translations are considered a point of reference for scholars in Italy.”(s)

Readers might find two short reviews of Vinci’s book on an Icelandic website (in English) of interest(t)(u).

However, the idea of a northern source for Homeric material is not new. In the seventeenth century, Olof Rudbeck insisted that the Hyperboreans were early Swedes and by extension, were also Atlanteans. In 1918, an English translation of a paper by Carus Sterne (Dr Ernst Ludwig Krause)(1839-1903) was published with the title of The Northern Origin of the Story of Troy(m).

Vinci offers a compelling argument for re-reading Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey with the geography of the Baltic rather than the Mediterranean as a guide. A synopsis of his research is available on the Internet(a).

His book has had positive reviews from a variety of commentators(j). Understandably, Vinci’s theory is not without its critics whose views can also be found on the internet(d)(b)and in particular I wish to draw attention to one extensive review by Andreas Pääbo which is quite critical(k).>His objections are based on a firm contention that the Odyssey and the Iliad came from two different authors(v).<

Stuart L. Harris has written a variety of articles for the Migration and Diffusion website(c) including a number specifying a Finnish location for Troy following a meeting with Vinci in Rome. M.A. Joramo was also influenced by Vinci’s work and has placed the backdrop to Homer’s epic works in northern European regions, specifically identifying the island of Trenyken, in Norway’s Outer Lofoten Islands, with Homer’s legendary Thrinacia. An Italian article also links the Lofotens with some of Homer’s geographical references(r).

Jürgen Spanuth based his Atlantis theory[015] on an unambiguous identification of the Atlanteans with the Hyperboreans of the Baltic region. More specifically, he was convinced [p88] that the Cimbrian peninsula or Jutland, comprised today of continental Denmark and part of northern Germany had been the land of the Hyperboreans.

As a corollary to his theory, Vinci feels that the Atlantis story should also be reconsidered with a northern European origin at its core. He suggests that an island existed in the North Sea between Britain and Denmark during the megalithic period that may have been Plato’s island. He also makes an interesting observation regarding the size of Atlantis when he points out that ‘for ancient seafaring peoples, the ‘size’ of an island was the length of its coastal perimeter, which is roughly assessable by circumnavigating it’. Consequently, Vinci contends that when Plato wrote of Atlantis being ‘greater’ than Libya and Asia together he was comparing the perimeter of Atlantis with the ‘coastal length’ of Libya and Asia.

Malena Lagerhorn, a Swedish novelist, has written two books, in English, entitled Ilion [1546] and Heracles [1547], which incorporate much of Vinci’s theories into her plots(l). She has also written a blog about the mystery of Achilles’ blond hair(n).

Alberto Majrani is another Italian author, who, influenced by Vinci, is happy to relocate the origins of many Greek myths to the Nordic regions [1875]. Although his focus is on the Homeric epics, he has also touched on Plato’s Atlantis story, proposing, for example, that the Pillars of Heracles were a reference to the thousands of basaltic columns, known as the ‘Giant’s Causeway’ to be found on the north coast of Ireland with a counterpart across the sea in Scotland’s Isle of Staffa.(o)

Not content with moving the geography of Homer and Plato to the Baltic, Vinci has gone further and transferred[1178]  the biblical Garden of Eden to the same region(e). Then in a more recent blog(q) he repeats his views on the location of Eden in Lapland and reiterates his core thesis that the real scenario of the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey was the Baltic-Scandinavian world, the primitive seat of the blond Achean navigators: they subsequently descended into the Mediterranean, where, around the beginning of the sixteenth century BC., they founded the Mycenaean civilization.”

A 116 bullet-pointed support for Vinci from a 2007 seminar, “Toija and the roots of European civilization” has been published online(h). In 2012 John Esse Larsen published a book[1048] expressing similar views.

Vinci.Eden An extensive 2014 audio recording of an interview with Vinci on Red Ice Radio is available online(f). It is important to note that Vinci is not the first to situate Homer’s epics in the Atlantic, northern Europe and even further afield. Henriette Mertz has Odysseus wandering across the Atlantic, while Iman Wilkens also gives Odysseus a trans-Atlantic voyage and just as controversially locates Homer’s Troy in England[610]. Edo Nyland has linked the story of Odysseus with Bronze Age Scotland[394].

Christine Pellech has daringly proposed in a 2011 book[0640], that the core narrative in Homer’s Odyssey is a description of the circumnavigation of the globe in a westerly direction(i). These are just a few of the theories promoting a non-Mediterranean backdrop to the Illiad and Odyssey. They cannot all be correct and probably all are wrong. Many have been seduced by their novelty rather than their provability. For my part I will, for now, stick with the more mundane and majority view that Homer wrote of events that took place mainly in the central and eastern Mediterranean. Armin Wolf offers a valuable overview of this notion(g).

It is worth noting that Bernard Jones has recently moved [1638] Troy to Britain, probably in the vicinity of Cambridge! Like many others, he argues that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were not set in the Mediterranean as so many of the details that he provides are incompatible with the characteristics of that sea. However, Jones has gone further and claimed that there are details in Virgil’s Aeneid, which are equally inconsistent with the Mediterranean[p.6-10], requiring a new location!

Felice Vinci is also a co-author (with Syusy Blady, and Karl Kello) of Il meteorite iperboreo [1906] in which the Kaali meteor is discussed along with its possible association with the ancient Greek story of Phaeton.

More recently, Vinci wrote a lengthy Preface(p) to Marco Goti‘s book, Atlantide: mistero svelato[1430], which places Atlantis in Greenland!

(a) The Location of Troy | Felice Vinci (archive.org)

(b) https://mythopedia.info/Vinci-review.pdf

(c) http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?authorid=113

(d) https://homergeography.blogspot.ie/

(e) http://www.cartesio-episteme.net/episteme/epi6/ep6-vinci2.htm

(f) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6QPtcZWBPs

(g) Wayback Machine (archive.org) See: Note 5

(h) https://www.slideshare.net/akela64/1-aa-toija-2007-English

(i) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/books.php

(j) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=44

(k) https://www.paabo.ca/reviews/BalticHomericVinci.html

(l) https://www.ilionboken.se

(m) The Open Court magazine. Vol.XXXII (No.8) August 1918. No. 747

(n) https://ilionboken.wordpress.com/insight-articles/the-mystery-of-achilless-blond-hair/

(o) https://ilionboken.wordpress.com/insight-articles/guest-article-where-were-the-pillars-of-hercules/

(p) Atlantis: Mystery Unveiled – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it) 

(q) The climatic optimum, the Indo-European paradise and the Garden of Eden – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it)

(r) Lofoten Islands: the Sirens, the Wandering Cliffs, Scylla and Charybeds, the Maelstrom and the island of Trinachia – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it) 

(s) https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/vinci-felice-1946

(t) https://nome.unak.is/wordpress/05-1/reviews51/felice-vinci-the-baltic-origins-of-homers-epic-tales-the-iliad-they-odyssey-and-the-migration-of-myth-rochester-vermont-inner-traditions-2006/ 

(u) https://nome.unak.is/wordpress/06-1/reviews61/felice-vinci-omero-nel-baltico-le-origini-nordiche-dellodissea-e-delliliade-5th-edition-rome-palombi-editori-2009/ *

(v) (26) The Odyssey’s Northern Origins and a Different Author Than Homer | Andres Pääbo – Academia.edu *

Finaeus, Oronteus

Oronteus Finaeus (1494-1555) was a celebrated cartographer who produced a map in 1531 which is claimed by some that, like the Piri Reis Oronteus FinaeusMap, it depicts the coast of an ice-free Antarctica. Charles Hapgood rediscovered it in 1959(a) in the Library of Congress. This idea is then used to support the concept of the existence of a very early civilisation that was capable of sophisticated map-making. It is then just a short step to name this civilisation ‘Atlantis’. Some, such as the Flem-Aths went further and actually nominated Antarctica as the home of Atlantis.

Robert Argod has used the Oronteus Finaeus Map to support his contention that the Polynesians had originated in Antarctica.

>Christine Pellech has an article published on the Atlantisforschung website taken from her 2013 book Die Entdeckung von Amerika [1188]  (The Discovery of America), in which she reviews the range of medieval maps displaying geographical details ‘unknown’ until centuries later!(e) Her reference to the Mark McMenamin coins can be ignored as they have since been shown to be forgeries (See: Sardinia).<

However, a contrary view has been expressed by Paul Heinrich who commenting on Graham Hancock’s assertion that the map shows an ice-free Antarctica, points out that in the case of West Antarctica, the underlying bedrock is, in the main, hundreds of feet below sea level and would not show on a real map of the region(c).

A more recent website(b), although not endorsing an Antarctic Atlantis, discusses some of these old maps in very great detail and on Graham Hancock’s website. The site is based on a number of chapters from a work-in-progress, The Atlantis Maps: The Rise of Atlantis and the Fall of a Paradigm by Doug Fisher. He identifies the Plain of Mesopotamia in Northern Argentina as the location of Atlantis.

(a) https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/198001/piri.reis.and.the.hapgood.hypotheses.htm

(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20180831132132/https://www.atlantismaps.com/  ^30.10.2020  “This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine.”

(c) https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3967/

(d) https://grahamhancock.com/author/doug-fisher/

(e) Knowledge of America, the Arctic, Antarctica and Australia on old maps – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *

Mattievich Kucich, Enrico Clemente *

Enrico Clemente Mattievich Kucich is of Italian descent and lectures at Lima mattievichUniversity, in Peru. Professor Kucich follows the work of Henriette Mertz and is convinced that the ancient Greeks discovered America and that a local Peruvian language, Chuetsua, is based on classical Greek. In his book, Journey to the Mythological Inferno[400] he locates Troy in America and then equates Atlantis with Troy. In 1986 he wrote a paper(a) that focused on orichalcum, which he claimed were mined in the Atlas Mountain that was located in the Peruvian Andes. In 2015, two further articles were published on the Epoch Times website(b)(c) that related to other aspects of Mattievich’s theories.

While Mattievich identifies the entrance to Hades of Greek mythology as El Pongo de Manseriche in the Amazon Basin(d), Christine Pellech locates it much further north where the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers join in Ontario, Canada.(e)

Originally published in Portuguese his book has been translated into Greek as well as English(f).

(a) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2011&id=268

(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20220608023046/https://www.theepochtimes.com/ancient-greek-legend-seems-to-describe-a-place-in-peru-early-contact_1362438.html *

(c) Could Ancient Greek Myths Hint at Contact With South America? | Ancient Origins (archive.org) *

(d) https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-europe/could-ancient-greek-myths-hint-contact-south-america-008134?page=0%2C1

(e) Download: Pellech Weltkarte 7-2-2020.pdf (5.30 MB)

(f) (99+) ENRICO MATTIEVICH – Academia.edu

Cuba *

Cuba is a Caribbean island favoured by some as a serious contender for the location of Atlantis.

” A two-page article appeared in the February 1952 edition of the magazine ECOS entitled  ’Formó Cuba Parte de la Atlándida?’. Written by Francisco Garcia-Juarez, the press secretary of the Instituto Cubano de Arqueologia (Institute of Cuban Archaeology, or ICA) it posed the question: did Cuba once form part of Atlantis? He explained how members of the Institute were investigating the idea that traces of an Atlantean culture might be found in Cuba and Hispaniola.”  This study had been prompted by a suggestion from Egerton Sykes(e).

Some years ago, Leicester Hemingway, the brother of Ernest, claimed to have spotted off the northern coast of Cuba “an expanse of stone ruins, several acres in area”.

cuba-mapIn more recent years, it was reported that Paulina Zelitsky and her team of underwater explorers found formations, in 2000 feet of water off the western tip of Cuba that resembled submerged cities.

Although there was a widespread media reaction to Zelitsky’s discovery, many commentators drew parallels with Plato’s city of Atlantis. However, Zelitsky was unwilling to make such comparisons. The story is a myth, said Zelitsky.“What we have found is more likely remnants of a local culture”, once located on a 100-mile “land bridge” that joined Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula with Cuba. 

Although further explorations were planned it is reported that the U.S. government applied pressure to have any further funding denied. May 2013 had Zelitsky trying to revive interest in her theories in an interview with Luis Mariano Fernandez(d). However, in 2012, Andrew Collins offered a different account of the Zelitsky funding difficulties(g).

Barry Warmkessel, who is normally just concerned with the threat to Earth posed by asteroids and comets, digressed slightly in an illustrated paper updated in 2015(l). He discusses in great detail the possible destruction of Atlantis by a comet/asteroid impact off the west coast of Cuba.

Andrew Collins is probably the best-known supporter of a Cuban Atlantis. His book[072] and website(a) list eleven points in favour of this theory. He contends that Cuba’s western plain, which stretches from Havana westwards to Pinar del Rio was the great Plain of Atlantis described by Plato. He believes that the main city was located near the present Isle of Youth (Isla de la Juventud) situated in the south of the island. In 2009 Norman Frey wrote a paper(b) supporting the Gulf of Batabanó which lies north of the Isle of Youth as Atlantis’ location at the end of the last Ice Age. He supports his contention with satellite images and the work of Dr Christine Pellech. Frey also claims that the two plains of Cuba match Plato’s description of the Plain of Atlantis(k).

A.R.E. is also a supporter of Cuba as a possible location for the capital of Atlantis. They have suggested an underwater ‘island’ at Zapata, located on the southern side of Cuba, north of the Isle of Youth and just to the west of the infamous Bay of Pigs. This ‘island’ is surrounded by a small ring of water and is about 7 miles in diameter, consistent with Plato’s description of the outer ring of Atlantis. A.R.E.’s Greg Little obtained old depth and bottom contour charts of the site and found that the island was comprised of a series of rings. Little also identified other features in the locality that match Plato’s story; ancient manmade canals north of the underwater island. These canals have been attributed to the Taino Culture, a mound-builder culture present in Cuba about 3,000 years ago that became extinct shortly after the Spanish conquest. Further north there is a mountain range enclosing the area with a wide river running at its base — a further match with Plato. Little also found that the centre of the underwater island is not only the tallest portion but also has several springs on it.

One completely off-the-wall suggestion has been that the Cuban Missile Crisis was instigated to prevent the Soviets from finding Atlantis(f)!!

A project to compile an archaeological Atlas of Cuba has so far identified over 3,000 pre-Columbian sites. Cuba’s westernmost province, Pinar del Rio and the central region of Villa Clara have the highest density of sites, with 500 each(c).

Gerard W.J. Janssen of Leiden University places the voyages of Odysseus in the Atlantic(i). However, although he situates most of the places visited in the eastern Atlantic he does claim(h) that Homer‘s Laestrygonians were to be found in Cuba, an interpretation supported by both Théophile Cailleux and Iman Wilkens.

Luigi Usai has recently (2022) published a number of images purporting to show underwater anomalies off the coast of Cuba(j). As Usai has already designated the central region of the Mediterranean as the location of Atlantis I cannot understand his reason for showing such images. Similar anomalies have been found in various parts of the world and explained by Google as data-gathering glitches (see Satellite Imagery). If any of the rectangular features were city walls or streets they would have been kilometres wide – a nonsensical suggestion.

(a) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/news/Atlantisfile.htm

(b) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=162

(c) Archive 2952 | (atlantipedia.ie) *

(d) https://wolfke74.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/atlantis-found

(e) https://thewadeword.wordpress.com/tag/bimini/

(f) Archive 2462

(g) https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread374842/pg11

(h) LAISTRUGONIACUBA, LA HAVANA (homerusodyssee.nl) 

(i) https://www.academia.edu/38535990/ATLANTIC_OGUGIA_AND_KALUPSO?email_work_card=view-paper 

(j) Cuba high resolution bathymetry – Atlantis exists! Found by Dr. Luigi Usai (atlantisfound.it) 

(k) The level of Atlantis – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)

(l) THE ATLANTIS CATASTROPHE – Plato Was Right (archive.org) 

 

Pellech, Christine

Christine Pellech (1947- ) attained her Ph.D. at the University of Vienna in 1974. She is a trained ethnologist and an ardent diffusionist. She was Dr_Christine_Pellech_2inspired by the work of Henriette Mertz, who bravely suggested in Dark Wine Sea that Homer’s Odyssey was a description of a very early voyage from the Mediterranean to America. Pellech expanded on Mertz’s theory in a book of her own[0640], in which she claims that the core narrative in Homer’s Odyssey is a description of the circumnavigation of the globe in a westerly direction.

Unfortunately, the book was only published in German, as are her other books on the subject. She has written a synopsis of her theory on the Atlantisforschung.de website, which can be easily translated(c).

Pellech has published Die Entdeckung von Amerika[1188] (The Discovery of America) in which she deals with the discovery of the Americas starting from Egypt via Asia across land and sea.”(d)

>In a review of her book by Dr Horst Frederick (1931-2015 he concluded The value of this new Pellech opus lies primarily in having shown beyond any doubt that both the Odyssey and the Argonautica contain such a quantity of evidence that only one conclusion can be drawn: far prehistoric, seafaring advanced civilizations have already had very precise geographical knowledge of the surface of our planet Earth(h).”<

However, Pellech has established an English language journal, Migration & Diffusion, together with an associated website(a). In 2020, she added two papers to the M & D website regarding Odysseus and ancient maps(f)(g).

Pellech’s starting point are prehistoric maps drawn on cave walls in Spain and France(b) that have been dated to 12,000 BC, which she interprets as an indication of early sea links between Europe and America. I am unaware that Pellech refers directly to Atlantis, but she does claim that the Caribbean had been the centre of an extensive maritime trading culture, millennia before Columbus. This idea has been used by Norman Frey to underpin his theory of Atlantis having been located off the coast of Cuba at the end of the Ice Age. In a joint paper(b) by Pellech and Frey they offer support for America as the location of Plato’s Atlantis.

Something completely different is offered by Pellech in a paper involving the Irish myth of Hy-Brasil, a famous UFO incident and a Catalan map of 1375(e)!

(a) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/

(b) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=162

(c) https://atlantisforschung.de/index.php?title=Die_Odyssee_-_Eine_antike_Weltumsegelung

(d) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2016&id=493

(e) Hy Brasil (archive.org)

(f) https://migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2020&id=672

(g) https://migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2020&id=671

(h) Christine Pellech: The Discovery of America, Vol. 1 (Review I) – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *

Frey, Norman

Norman Frey, a German researcher, published a paper in 2009 entitled Atlantis Rediscovered in which he identified the Gulf of Batabanó off the southwest coast of  Cuba as the location of Atlantis. He bases his claim on his interpretation of Plato’s text, the topography of the area as revealed by satellite imagery, all reinforced by the views of the Austrian ethnologist, Dr.Christine Pellech[640] who identified Central America as the centre of a maritime economic power at the end of the last Ice Age.

cuba-imageUnfortunately, Frey’s chosen locality has already been claimed by Greg Little as the home of Atlantis on behalf of A.R.E.  Additionally,  Andrew Collins in his acclaimed book[072]  also situated Plato’s lost city, north of the Isle of Youth (Isla de la Juventud) where the Gulf of Batabanó lies.

>Frey has also matched Plato’s description of the Plain of Atlantis with the two plains of Cuba in a paper on the Atlantisforschung website(b). However, he does admit that Plato’s  irrigation ditches do present a difficulty for his theory and concluded that “For this reason, this point should be left out of the localization as an exception.”<

Frey’s views are expressed in a joint paper with Pellech(a).

(a) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=162

(b) The level of Atlantis – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) (English) *

Mertz, Henriette

Henriette Mertz (1898-1985) During World War II she worked as a code-Henriette_Mertzbreaker in the U.S. government’s cryptography department, while later she became an American patent lawyer in Chicago. Her interest in archaeology led her to be the first[0396][0397]  to propose that Odysseus, after wandering about the Atlantic, was the earliest European to set foot in America: an idea now taken up by others including Enrico Mattievich[0400].

Mertz recognised that ancient America was host to guests if not residents from both east and west and has written in Pale Ink[0398] on the evidence for the existence of persistent pre-Columbian Chinese contacts. This book was later re-published as a paperback and retitled Gods from the Far East.

Her book The Mystic Symbol[0621] argues that some early Christians fled to America to escape persecution in the Roman Empire. Wayne N. May, the Mormon publisher of Ancient American, has also published a paper on the Mystic Symbol(b).

In a paper reprinted in the Ancient America website, Mertz decried the fact that thousands of inscribed artefacts recovered from mounds in the State of Michigan, between 1890 and 1920, were destroyed, in particular the controversial Newberry Tablet(c).

Her reputation as a serial heretic also forced her to privately publish a volume on Atlantis[0399] following rejection by twenty publishers. She gave a lecture on her views in London in 1964(d) and enjoyed extensive coverage in the Greek press including the serialisation of her book.

Her contention is that Atlantis was located in the southeast of the United States. She begins with the legend of the Seven Cities of Antillia and its depiction on the 1436 map of Andrea Bianco. A comparison of this map with a modern map of Florida convinced her that they referred to the same region. She discusses many aspects of Plato’s story and their compatibility with the archaeology, geography and legends of her chosen location. She also offers a map of Atlantis that encompasses the land bound by the Mississippi, Ohio and Potomac rivers as well as the Atlantic giving us the ‘island’ of Atlantis. To support this possibility she ingeniously suggests that Plato used the word  ‘sea’ in the sense of being navigable and so was also applicable to rivers.

Mertz’s book, Wine Dark Sea, which claims that Homer’s Odyssey describes a Merts mapvery ancient trip to America, inspired the Austrian ethnologist, Christine Pellech, to expand on her work with a number of books on diffusionism together with a website on the subject. Unfortunately, Pellech’s books are only available in German but she has also established an English language magazine and website(a).>However, Pellech references Mertz’s theory but goes further with her contention that Homer’s Odyssey was a description of an ancient circumnavigation of the globe.(e)<

 

(a) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/index.php

(b) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=73

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20200527174258/https://ancentamerica.com/the-lost-gods-and-tablet-of-prehistoric-michigan/

(d) Atlantis, Volume 17, No.6, October 1964.

(e) Dr. Christine Pellech – Atlantisforschung.de (German) (See Archive 7097 mixed English & German) *