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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 »
Cornwall
Daily Express (UK)
The Daily Express is a well-known British tabloid newspaper. Together with its sister publications, The 
Sunday Express and its online Express.co.uk, it has recently set a new record for the number of ‘might be Atlantis’ articles published, all with the byline of Callum Hoare. During the first three weeks of 2019, he has managed to produce four stories suggesting four different locations for Atlantis – Doggerland(a), Malta(b), Azores(c) and the Bahamas(d). But I did not have to wait long for the next regurgitation from Hoare, with another piece mined from a recent Amazon Prime documentary, where the Atlantis in the Canaries theory is reviewed (21.1.19)(e). I note that Hoare was also the author of similar BS Atlantis stories for another alleged UK newspaper, The Daily Star. The quality of research continues to be abysmal, citations are often years old, facts are mangled and quite misleading. Definitely ‘Fake News’.
Unfortunately, this outpouring of nonsense continued on in 2020. June 30th saw the ‘Express’ publish another article(f) by Hoare with an “Atlantis Located” headline. This gem begins by repeating the view of ‘expert’ Matthew Sibson, who advocates Rockall as the site of Atlantis and then switches to the opinions of Christos Djonis who claims the Aegean Sea as the home of Atlantis. According to Hoare, in this instance, Djonis refers to the research of Mark McMenamin of around 25 years ago who noticed on some Carthaginian gold staters of the fourth century BC that they had tiny engravings that he subjectively interpreted as rough maps showing both Asia and America and centred on Sardinia(g). This, according to Djonis, indicates the possibility that the Greeks may have had knowledge of America!
Djonis and Hoare were obviously unaware that in 2000, McMenamin was obliged to confirm that the coins in question were fakes(k) as revealed in his book, Phoenicians, Fakes and Barry Fell [1738].
Furthermore, Djonis is contradicted by the clear statement of Herodotus that the Greeks only knew three continents, Europe, Asia and Libya (Africa)(h). Finally, if Djonis thinks that Atlantis was located in the Aegean what has America got to do with his theory?
July 2020 saw Hoare pollute the Express with another ‘Atlantis Found’ piece, this time locating it off the coast of Cornwall(j). This story is a quarter of a century old and a few years ago its credibility and even the existence of the institution to which its original author, Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev, was supposed to belong to, was brought into question(i).
Hoare ended the year with another pathetic attempt(l) to revive interest in the Minoan Hypothesis as well as the failed claim that the Spanish Donana Marshes held the remains of Atlantis or Tartessos!
>In January 2021, he continued his recycling of old Atlantis claims, with the 35-year-old story of the submerged rock formation off Yonaguni in Japan(m). Later in the same month we were regaled with yet another “Atlantis Found?” headline(n), which led on to report that the remains of another submerged city had been discovered off the Greek island of Zakynthos. No direct link with Atlantis was claimed!<
(g) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236000049_Cartography_on_Carthaginian_Gold_Staters
(h) Herodotus, Histories 4.42.
(i) https://shimajournal.org/issues/v10n2/k.-Hallerton-Shima-v10n2.pdf
Scylla and Charybdis
Scylla and Charybdis were a sea monster and a whirlpool in Greek mythology that according to Homer and other writers were located opposite each other across a narrow strait. This led to the idiomatic phrase “between Scylla and Charybdis” similar to our more modern phrase of being “between the devil and the deep blue sea” describing being caught between two opposing forces.
Many, such as Heinrich Schliemann[1243], assume the original to have been located between Sicily and the Italian mainland at the Strait of Messina.>However, Ernle Bradford, who retraced the voyage of Odysseus, voiced his view that Corfu was the land of the Phaeacians and noted that “the voice of antiquity is almost as unanimous about Scheria being Corfu as it is about the Messina Strait being the home of Scylla and Charybdis.”<
Arthur R. Weir in a 1959 article(d) refers to ancient documents, which state that Scylla and Charybdis lie between the Pillars of Hercules(c).
A minority have opted for the Scylla being Calpe (The Rock of Gibraltar) and Charybdis being Mt. Abyla across the strait in North Africa or in other words the Pillars of Heracles(a). However, Professor Arysio Santos promoting his Atlantis in Indonesia theory suggested that the ‘original’ Pillars of Heracles were in at Sunda Strait and later brought to ancient Greece where it was included by Homer in his Odysseus as Scylla and Charybdis!(b)
Anatoly Zolotukhin has proposed that Scylla & Charybdis had been situated in the Bosporus near the Pillars of Heracles, while he located Atlantis itself in Crimea near Evpatoria(e).
Writers who have located the wanderings of Ulysses in the North Atlantic have gone further afield in their search for Scylla and Charybdis with suggestions such as the west coast of Scotland (Pillot[742] and Nyland[394]), the Orkneys (Sora)[395] southwest Cornwall (Janssen)(f) and near the Scilly Isles (Wilkens)[610].
More recently, Andres Pääbo wrote that ” many of the details in Odysseus’ (or Ulysses’) travels can be easily associated with locations along the Norwegian coast and islands north of the British Isles. The starkest northern location found in the Odyssey is the large whirlpool called Charybdis, identifiable with the famous Maelstrom off the Lofoten Islands (g)”
Perhaps the most distant Atlantic location was proposed by Henriette Mertz in The Wine Dark Sea [0397] to have been in Canada’s Bay of Fundy, reputed to experience the world’s greatest tidal range averaging 52 feet.
In January 2022, Kalju Pattustaja published a paper(h) in which he placed Scylla off the Kola Peninsula in northwest Russia. Coincidentally, Russia claims to have ancient pyramids on the Kola Peninsula(i).
(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20120224202757/https://www.cadiznews.co.uk/info2.cfm?info_id=29858
(c) https://drive.google.com/file/d/10JTH401O_ew1fs8uhXR9C5IjNDvqnmft/view
(d) Atlantis – A New Theory, Science Fantasy #35, June 1959 pp 89-96
(e) https://homerandatlantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Scylla-CharybdisJAH-1.pdf
(f) http://www.homerusodyssee.nl/id24.htm
(h) https://new-etymology.livejournal.com/466128.html
(i) https://culturacolectiva.com/travel/russia-pyramids-kola-peninsula-discovery-older-egypt/
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) https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/uocp-auo051811.php
(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)
Steuerwald, Hans (L)
Hans Steuerwald is another unconventional German writer who favours the idea of the capital of Atlantis being located on the Celtic Shelf near Penzance in Cornwall. This he expressed in his 1983 book, Der Untergang von Atlantis (The Fall of Atlantis)[564], in which he also dated its demise to 1240 BC.
He has also supported[565] the idea that Homer’s Odysseus (Roman Ulysses} visited Scotland on his famous travels.
Scilly Isles
The Scilly Isles are located southwest of Cornwall’s Land’s End in the Atlantic Ocean. The islands were more extensive before the end of the last Ice Age and their inundation following the melting of the glaciers undoubtedly produced numerous legends in the region of sunken cities and lost civilisations. Apparently, there was once a paved causeway joining some of the islands and according to an 18th-century report, it was then under 8 feet of water. Even earlier in the 3rd century AD, Solinus referred to the Scillies in the singular as insulam Siluram.
O.G.S. Crawford, who was the first Archaeology Officer with the British Ordnance Survey, was also the founder in 1927 of Antiquity which continues today. In its first edition(c) he wrote of the earlier Scillies as a single landmass and its relationship to the legend of Lyonesse(b).
Some writers have identified the Scillies as the Cassiterides (Isles of Tin) referred to by Pliny the Elder. However, there are no known tin deposits on the islands, although it is possible that before the ocean levels rose ore deposits were accessible, similar to those in nearby Devon and Cornwall, but this inundation probably occurred before the technology existed to exploit its use.
A popular view is that the mythical sunken land of Lyonesse was situated between the Scillies and Land’s End in Cornwall. This is often seen as a parallel with the Breton legend of Ys.
In more recent times the Russian Scientist Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev was convinced that Atlantis was located on the Celtic Shelf near the Scilly Isles. He specifically identified an underwater feature known as the Little Sole Bank, whose highest point is just 75 metres beneath the ocean’s surface. He had been promoting his theory since 1995 and eventually obtained official government permission to carry out explorations in the area, but he was unable to raise the necessary funds to carry out the operation.
In 2009, excavations on St. Agnes in the Scillies revealed a remarkable Bronze Age pottery sherd which seems to depict the earliest know image of a sailing boat ever found in the United Kingdom(a).
In 1651, the Netherlands declared war on the Scillies, a little detail that was forgotten until 1986, when a peace treaty was finally signed(d) !
(c) https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/lyonesse/37725F1992B3D4ADF36561E144227F11 (Jan. 2019 access restricted)
(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Hundred_and_Thirty_Five_Years%27_War
O’Brien, Christian
Christian O’Brien, (1915-2001) was a geologist and head of the Iranian oil industry until his retirement in 1970. He was convinced that Atlantis had been located in the Azores and has suggested a possible geographical outline of Atlantis based on the bathymetric data available for the region(c).
He has also written a number of books in collaboration with his wife Barbara Joy on a range of subjects[492][493].
The O’Briens supported hyperdiffusion and proposed that ‘the Shining Ones’ better known as the Elohim(d) in the Bible were responsible for the sudden development of agriculture, city-states and monumental building sometime before 8000 BC. Eventually, they developed colonies, spreading their knowledge which in due course was responsible for the great civilisations of Egypt, Asia and America.
In The Megalithic Odyssey [1797] O’Brien offers an overview of the many megalithic stone circles and cairns on Cornwall’s Bodmin Moor. However, from chapter 6 until the end, he takes his hobby-horse for a ride, offering a convoluted account involving an order of Sumerian ‘Sages’ who brought advanced knowledge to Egypt, Britain and Ireland and further afield. Along the way, they or their leaders are remembered by different names, Osiris, Tuatha dé Danann, Druids or in Mexico as Quetzalcoatl. O’Brien attributes the megaliths of Bodmin Moor to the influence of some of these Sages, probably the Tuatha dé Danann on their way to or from Ireland!
Included in O’Brien’s contention was the idea that the biblical Garden of Eden, designated by him as ‘Kharsag’, had been located in what is now the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. A paper(b) outlining this idea includes criticism of Zechariah Sitchin’s translation of Sumerian texts.
The Cretan Phaistos Disk was also studied by O’Brien, who concluded that the pictograms had been derived from ancient Sumerian scripts, which enabled him to offer a complete translation of the Disk(e).
One would have thought that O’Brien has ruffled enough feathers with his range of controversial issues, but went further with his support for the claim that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had been married and blessed with three children(f).
O’Brien’s work is now carried on by Edmund Marriage, his nephew, through an extensive website(a).
(a) Index Main Subjects (archive.org)*
(b) Christian O’Brien v Zecharia Sitchin Comparing Historical Records (archive.org)*
(c) Survey of Atlantis (archive.org)*
(d) Alternative Genesis 1:1 (goldenageproject.org.uk)
(e) The enigma of the Phaistos Disc – a question of language (goldenageproject.org.uk)
(f) Press Release of further comments on the content of The Genius of the Few (goldenageproject.org.uk)
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is the second of the generalised three part division of prehistory into Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. I say generalised because different parts of the world developed bronze technology at different times(g), while some moved straight from Stone to Iron, others had a Copper Age before their Bronze Age(t). There is now clear evidence that tin-bronze was used at a Vinca site in Serbia as early as 4650 BC(d).
The relatively new Genomic Atlantis(s) offers “a website dedicated to archaeogenetics and modern population genetics as well as history, archaeology and linguistics. Genetics can help us understand history in a way that was impossible prior to the advance of DNA sequencing.”
There is now evidence that Bronze itself was used as an early form of currency, according to a recent study(r). by Maikel H. G. Kuijpers and Catalin N. Popa of Leiden University, Netherlands, who concluded that “The euros of Prehistory came in the form of bronze rings, ribs and axes. These Early Bronze Age artefacts were standardized in shape and weight and used as an early form of money.”
However, the Bronze Age was clearly the literary if not the historical backdrop to Plato’s Atlantis narrative. In Greece this is generally accepted as the 2nd millennium BC. Plato refers to Triremes (developed around 600 BC), Chariots (Mesopotamia around 3000 BC), Horse-racing (first domesticated in Asia around 4500 BC), writing, metallurgy etc., etc. Recently, the date of the end of the Greek Bronze Age has been pushed back by approximately a century to around 1125 BC(f).
The Bronze Age in the Mediterranean region saw two periods of great political turbulence, the first around 2200 BC and the second a millennium later(h) and generally known as the Bronze Age Collapse(q).
However, when Plato twice states that Atlantis was destroyed 9,000 years before Solon’s visit to Egypt, he presents us with a serious problem, as the Bronze Age is incompatible with a 9600 BC date. Which is right or are they both wrong and consequently is the entire story a complete fiction? Alternatively, it is possible that Plato’s story is a combination of more than one story or is Plato’s narrative a combination of fact and fiction.?
In general terms, although there was copper in North America and tin in South America, it seems that they were not brought together in any meaningful way to give America a Bronze Age comparable with Europe or Asia(n).
Frank Joseph, among others, has suggested that the enormous quantities of copper mined in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan were destined for the bronze manufacturers of Europe(I). He considers this extraction and exportation to have been the work of the Atlanteans. Gavin Menzies attributes the exploitation of the Michigan mines to the Minoans[780].
In 2018, it was claimed in a new paper(m) that Plutarch may have referred to Greek visits to Canada in the first century AD. The authors who included Greek archaeologist Ioannis Liritzis, do admit that the claim is speculative.
The America Unearthed TV series, presented by Scott Wolter, also examined the idea of Minoans mining in Michigan (S1 E3). Jason Colavito wrote a highly critical review of the episode(j), while an even more extensive critique can be found on the archyfantasies.com website(k).
It is interesting that this mining appears to have ceased around 1200 BC or approximately at the same time that the Bronze Age came to an end in Europe. This idea of the Michigan copper mining being the work of Old World traders is hotly disputed by local archaeologists such as Susan R. Martin(b).
Recent years have seen the discovery of numerous Bronze Age mines in the British Isles and across Europe, including the vast Great Orme Mines in Wales accepted by the Guinness Book of Records as the largest Bronze Age copper mine in the world that were rediscovered again in 1987(a), a view reinforced, more recently, with research, by scientists from the University of Liverpool(o)(p). When you consider the output of these copper mines and the huge amount of tin produced in Cornwall, it is clear that Britain made a major contribution to the development of the European Bronze Age. These Welsh mines are estimated to have been abandoned around 600 BC.
Such European mines together with those found in the Near East have naturally led to a questioning of Joseph’s thesis. If copper was so widely available to the Europeans at home, what was the incentive for Atlanteans to mine copper in Michigan and ship it to Europe with the relatively primitive vessels and navigation available at that time?
It is interesting to note that the geophysicist Marc-André Gutscher who had supported Collina-Girard’s contention that Spartel Island near the Strait of Gibraltar had been the possible location of Atlantis, withdrew his support(c) for the idea following the evidence presented at the 2005 Atlantis Conference, which convincingly demonstrated the Bronze Age setting of Plato’s story. Gutscher found this incompatible with the fact that Spartel Island had been submerged about 12,000 years ago.
In spite of Gutscher’s withdrawal of support Collina-Girard continues to promote his theory, having published a book, L’Atlantide retrouvée, in support of it, in 2009.
The other half of bronze production requirements is a supply of tin. In this connection, recent research has show that the eastern Mediterranean is virtually devoid of any sources of tin(e), contrasting sharply with the western basin which had Cassiterite in Sardinia, Spain and Morocco.
Also See: Factor Ten
(a) https://www.greatormemines.info/
(b) See Archive 2547
(c) https://archaeology.about.com/od/controversies/a/atlantis05_3.htm
(d) https://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/005197.html
(e) See: Archive 2100
(f) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141009100924.htm
(g) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age#Age_sub-divisions
(i) See Archive 3645
(j) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-America-unearthed-s01e03-great-lakes-copper-heist
(l) https://medium.com/the-bronze-age
(m) https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/did-ancient-greeks-sail-to-canada/
(n) https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/2519/was-there-a-bronze-age-in-the-americas
(p) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-50213846
(q) https://www.ancient.eu/Bronze_Age_Collapse/
(s) Welcome to Genomic Atlas – Genomic Atlas *
(t) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age *
Lyonesse
Lyonesse is a mythical land between Cornwall and the Scilly Isles that reputedly sank into the sea. Ancient maps indicate that most of the Scillies were united in Roman times(a) noted by Peter Stanier in his book[0997] about the region. Legend has it that it contained 140 temples. Mordred is said to have fought his final battle with King Arthur at Lyonesse. This ancient tale has been regularly linked with the destruction of Atlantis.
There is a parallel Breton legend of Kêr-Is (Ker-Ys in French).
A group of rocks called the “Seven Sisters” lies six miles (10 km) off Land’s End, the southernmost tip of Britain. According to legend, these rocks mark the site of a kingdom that once linked Britain to France. The site description fits in with the Cornish myth of the kingdom of Lyonesse – also known as the City of Lions. In the 5th century A.D., Lyonesse was inundated and disappeared beneath the sea. The legend has it that there was only one survivor. Since then, local fishers have caught pieces of buildings and other remains in their nets. They claim that these come from Lyonesse.
Henry Beckles Willson in a 1902 booklet[1427] claimed that land now lost, once extended from Land’s End to the Scilly Isles. Contrast that with a speculative map in Lucile Taylor Hansen’s book The Ancient Atlantic[572], which shows Lyonesse as a large landmass west of the Scillies. She also informed us that the island of Tresco, which today is roughly 2 miles long and a mile across at its widest, had a circumference of ten miles in 1538.
A team of Russian scientists were hoping to answer the two and a half thousand-year-old mystery regarding Plato’s Atlantis, with an investigation of the underwater ‘Celtic Shelf’ beyond the Scilly Isles. Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev, of the Moscow Institute of Meta-history, has used a re-interpretation of the classical Greek texts to locate the possible position of the fabled ancient lands. It is claimed that in the 1990s the British authorities were set to issue a six-week licence for the exploration of Little Sole Bank, a conical submerged hill lying only 50m below the surface approximately 100 miles south-west of the mainland, but apparently, due to a lack of funding, nothing has been heard of the project since.
>Paul Dunbavin offers a valuable overview of the history and mythology relating to the story of Lyonesse on his website(d) and in Prehistory Papers [1758].<
In 2012 the ‘micronation’ self-styled as the Principality of Lyonesse declared its ‘independence’(b)(c).
Also see: Micropatrology
(a) https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isles_of_Scilly
(b) https://lyonesse.weebly.com/
(c) https://shimajournal.org/issues/v10n2/k.-Hallerton-Shima-v10n2.pdf
>(d) Lyonesse – Lost | Paul Dunbavin (third-millennium.co.uk)<