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

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    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 »
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    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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concentric circles

Jacobovici, Simcha

Simcha Jacobovici (1953- ) is an Israeli-born film director and producer as well as a best-selling author. One of his more controversial books was The Jesus Family Tomb [1709], co-authored with Charles Pellegrino. Jacobovici subsequently directed a documentary, The Lost Tomb of Jesus, with James Cameron as executive producer.

Following in the footsteps of Dan Brown, Jacobovici (with Barrie Wilson) published The Lost Gospel [1931] in which they recycle an old claim that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had two children with her.

The Jacobvici-Cameron collaboration goes back further to 2006 when they worked on The Exodus Decoded, a two-hour documentary in which, among other matters, it claims that the biblical Exodus took place a couple of hundred years before the generally accepted date(c). A review in The Jerusalem Post(e) noted that none of the arguments made in the film were accepted by mainstream archaeology and that Jacobovici freely admitted his lack of academic credentials. 

Cameron also joined Jacobovici on the 2017 National Geographic documentary, Atlantis Rising. The documentary did not produce anything of substance despite a lot of pre-broadcast hype. During the programme, Jacobovici threw in the extraordinary claim that the Jewish menorah represents the concentric circles of the Atlantean capital cut in half(b), a daft idea, already suggested by Prof. Yahya Ababni(a).

A 2011 article(d)  in The Jerusalem Post reported that  according to Jacobovici, “it is generally acknowledged that the Biblical Tarshish is what the historians call Tartessos, which was in southern Spain. In the Tanach, Tarshish is a great city with a huge navy, with silver and gold. Jonah sails towards Tarshish. Solomon has naval expeditions with Tarshish. Tarshish disappears from the Biblical record. Tartessos disappears from the historical record.”

Says Jacobovici, “Tarshish is Atlantis itself.”

 

(a) https://mosestablet.info/en/menorah-tablet.html

(b) https://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/5/5/1659107/-Descendants-of-Lost-Atlantis-may-be-wait-for-it-Jews

(c) https://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Documentary-sets-new-date-for-Exodus

(d) https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-news/the-deepest-jewish-encampment *

(e) Documentary sets new date for Exodus – The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com) *

Pitterson, Ryan

Ryan Pitterson is the author of Judgement of the Nephilim [1620]which he claims to be “the first comprehensive biblical study of the nephilim.” In a US promotional radio interview the subject of Atlantis was touched on and was later highlighted by the UK’s Express newspaper with the hackneyed ‘Atlantis Found?’ headline.

Pitterson contends that Atlantis was situated on the Golan Heights, currently occupied by Israel. The region is home to Gilgal Refaim, an archaeological site consisting of a number of concentric stone walls with demonstrable astronomical alignments.

The area around the site is a kilometer above sea level and has no connection with the sea now or evidence of it in the past. Pitterson claims that the Bible supports his speculation, but the most cursory investigation of his ideas shows otherwise.

(a) https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1091174/Atlantis-found-lost-city-Atlantis-Israel-Gilgal-Refaim-ruins-plato-bible-conspiracy

National Geographic *

National Geographic or Nat Geo are the registered trademarks of the National Geographic Society and are now, sadly, part of the Murdoch communications empire. Its magazine and TV channel enjoy global recognition. Undoubtedly, NG has enhanced our view of the world around us. One piece of NG trivia is that the word ‘tsunami’ first appeared in an English language publication in the September 1896 edition of National Geographic Magazine.

In May 1922 NG published its first picture of Stonehenge, now a century later it returned to this remarkable monument for its cover story in its August 2022 edition. It highlights how the use of new technologies has greatly enhanced our knowledge of the site and the people who built it. Jim Leary, a lecturer in field archaeology at the University of York admits that “a lot of the things we were taught as undergraduates in the 1990s we know now simply aren’t true.”  This beautifully illustrated article is a useful update on developments at this huge UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Generally, NG has avoided controversy, but not always(a), so it will be interesting to see how its new chief James Murdoch, a climate change denier(b), will deal with the NG views on the subject up ’til now(c). However, for me, it was something of a surprise when NG tackled the subject of Atlantis.

In 2004 NG News published a short article(d) highlighting the theories of Ulf Erlingsson and Rainer Kühne, who, respectively, were advocates for Ireland and Spain as Atlantis locations. Also in 2004, Zeilitsky and Weinzweig claimed to have found submerged man-made structures near Cuba and subsequently sought US government funding for further research there. It has been suggested that NG objected and further exploration did not take place! In 2006 NG gave the Atlantis in America theory of Zapp & Erikson an airing(e).

However, in 2012, Andrew Collins offered a different account of the Zelitsky funding difficulties(m).

In a short 2011 article(l)., NG trotted out the now generally abandoned idea that Atlantis had been a continent. The idea was obviously later dumped by NG as well when James Cameron et al. went looking for Atlantis in Malta, Sardinia and Santorini in 2016.

December 2012 saw NG publish an article on Doggerland, without any reference to the suggestion that there might be an Atlantis connection. NG has also voiced the scepticism of well-known commentators, such as Robert Ballard and Charles E. Orser jnr(f).

However, I find that the NG treatment of Atlantis is inconsistent. In October 2011 an anonymous article(k) on one of their sites, entitled The Truth Behind Atlantis: Facts, declared that Atlantis was continental in size (and so must have been located in an Ocean?) This is based on a misinterpretation of the Greek word meison. Nevertheless last year NG had Simcha Jacobovici, remotely guided by James Cameron, scouring the Mediterranean, from Spain to Sardinia, Malta, and Crete for evidence of Atlantis. This attention-seeking exercise found nothing but a few stone anchors that proved nothing and inflicted on viewers an overdose of speculation!

NatGeo TV aired a documentary(g) in 2015 relating to earlier excavations in the Doñana Marshes of Southern Spain by a Spanish team and partly hijacked by Richard Freund. A new NG documentary, hyped with the involvement of James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici, was filmed in 2016, and later broadcast at the end of January 2017. Initially, it was thought by Robert Ishoy to be in support of his Atlantis location of Sardinia, but at the same time, Diaz-Montexano was convinced that his Afro-Iberian theory was to be the focus of the film. To coincide with the airing of the new documentary D-M has published a new book, NG National Geographic and the scientific search for Atlantis[1394] with both English and Spanish editions.

Jason Colavito was promised a screener but had the offer subsequently withdrawn. One wonders why.

Once again NG promotes the region of the Doñana Marshes as a possible location for Atlantis(i), based on rather flimsy evidence, such as six ancient anchors found just outside the Strait of Gibraltar. They estimate the age of the anchors at 3,000-4,000 years old. unfortunately, they are not marked ‘made in Atlantis’. Rabbi Richard Freund, never afraid to blow his own shofar, makes another NG appearance. Jacobovici throws in the extraordinary claim that the Jewish menorah represents the concentric circles of the Atlantean capital cut in half, a daft idea, previously suggested by Prof. Yahya Ababni(k).

What I cannot understand is why this documentary spends time dismissing Santorini and Malta as possible locations for Plato’s Atlantis and at the same time ignoring the only unambiguous geographical clue that he left us, namely that the Atlantis alliance occupied part of North Africa and in Europe the Italian peninsula as far as Tyrrhenia (Tuscany) and presumably some of the islands between the two.

Overall, I think the NG documentaries have done little to advance the search for Atlantis as they seem to be driven by TV ratings ahead of the truth. Perhaps, more revealing is that Cameron is not fully convinced by the speculative conclusions of his own documentary.

Jason Colavito, an arch-sceptic regarding Atlantis has now published a lengthy scathing review(j) of  NG’s Atlantis Rising, which is well worth a read. While I do not agree with Colavito’s dismissal of the existence of Atlantis, I do endorse the litany of shortcomings he identified in this documentary.

For me, NG’s credibility as a TV documentary maker has diminished in recent years.  Just one reason is the “2010 National Geographic Channel programme, 2012: The Final Prophecy, enthused about an illustration in the Mayan document known as the Dresden Codex (because of where it is now kept), which was claimed to show evidence of a catastrophic flood bringing the world to an end in 2012. This illustration included a representation of a dragon-like figure in the sky spewing water from its mouth onto the Earth beneath, which has been taken by some, although by no means all, experts in Mesoamerican mythology to indicate the onset of a terminal world-flood. However, no date was given, so the link with 2012 is entirely spurious (Handwerk, 2009; Hoopes, 2011).”(n)

(a) National Geographic Shoots Itself in the Foot — Again! (archive.org) 

(b) https://gizmodo.com/national-geographic-is-now-owned-by-a-climate-denier-1729683793

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20200717231929/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/climate-change/

(d) See: Archive 3582

(e) https://www.dcourier.com/news/2006/oct/02/atlantis-theory-by-local-anthropologist-makes-nat/ (not available in EU) *

(f) http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/archaeology/atlantis/

(g) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyEY0tROZgI & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=choIyaPiMjo

(h) https://mosestablet.info/en/menorah-tablet.html

(i) https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/more-signs-mythical-city-atlantis-its-mysterious-civilisation-found-spanish-marsh-1603470

(j) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/nat-geos-atlantis-rising-a-stew-of-fake-experts-motivated-reasoning-and-weird-claims-that-judaism-contains-atlantean-theology

(k) https://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/5/5/1659107/-Descendants-of-Lost-Atlantis-may-be-wait-for-it-Jews

(l) https://channel.nationalgeographic.com/the-truth-behind/articles/the-truth-behind-atlantis-facts/

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

(n) Doomsday Cults and Recent Quantavolutions, by Trevor Palmer (q-mag.org)  (about 2/3rds down page)

Bremer, Dieter

Dieter BremerDieter Bremer (1952- ) is a German researcher, who has written two Atlantis-related books[1022/3]. Unfortunately, he has a number of strange beliefs that cast doubts on his ability to engage in critical thinking. For example, he contends that Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy (the anthem of the European Union) contains references to Atlantis(a) and also claims that the winged disks found in Sumerian art represent a space station, which crashed! In brief, he proposes that Plato’s Atlantis was a prehistoric space station(b). Bremer also provides a spirited defence of The Manna Machine[0755] by George Sassoon and Rodney Dale, combined with some bizarre theories regarding Christ(e). Incredibly, Bremer was invited to deliver a paper to the 2011 Atlantis Conference on the concentric circles of Plato’s Atlantean capital.

In February 2018, Bremer published the third volume in his Atlantis series, which is entitled Die Lokalisierung von Atlantis (The localisation of Atlantis) [1552] with an English translation in the offing. However, until that is available, Atlantisforschung offers an illustrated article by Bremer giving a broad outline of his theories(d).

On the Atlantisforschung website Bremer describes the demise of his orbiting ‘Atlantis’ as follows – Afterwards, the basic spacecraft known as “Atlantis” had unrecoverable propulsion problems. As a result, year after year, Earth’s gravity pulled it further and further downward in a spiral.” Not satisfied with this tragic event he also considers the impact of his Atlantis as the cause of the biblical Deluge!(d).

Some of Bremer’s ideas regarding Atlantis were apparently influenced by those of Jakob Vorberger(c). 

(a) Dieter Bremer | Atlantis Mythologie (archive.org) 

(b) https://www.atlantisbremer.de/wp-content/uploads/Kurzzusammenfassung-der-Atlantis-Hypothese-von-Dieter-Bremer3.pdf

(c) Mesopotamische Überlieferungen | Atlantis Mythologie (archive.org)

(d) The sinking of Atlantis – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) (English)

(e) https://www.atlantisbremer.de/wp-content/uploads/Atlantis_under_new_point_of_view.pdf *