Stahel, H. R.

Hans Rudolf Stahel is possibly Swiss^(a) and an architect by profession, he is also the author of a guide to Atlantis entitled Atlantis Illustrated ^[560]+, with a foreword by Isaac Asimov. While Stahel located Atlantis in the Atlantic, Asimov opted for the destruction of Thera as the inspiration for Plato’s story.

The illustrations are good but unfortunately are only in black and white. Stahel based all the designs and plans of Atlantis on Plato’s descriptions. His drawings, more than anything else, demonstrate the improbability of dimensions recorded by Plato. The consistent degree of over-engineering forces us to question the accuracy of Plato’s numbers and consider whether this perceived exaggeration is the result of an erroneous transcription of numerals or a misunderstanding of the units of measurement employed.

Stahel depicted Atlantis as a 77,000 square mile island, centred on the Azores with a chain of islands stretching from there to Newfoundland more or less in a straight line. He also envisages an Atlantean Empire stretching from parts of the west coast of America to include the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio river basins, Central America and as far south as the Amazon basin. East of the capital he includes all of coastal Europe and the Mediterranean (except Greece), along the coast of north and west Africa, the Middle East and on into India. Imaginative if nothing else^[p10]!

>Stahel is the only commentator that I have encountered who suggested that elephants were used in the construction of the magnificent buildings described by Plato. This would make sense as Stahel calculated that surrounding the city of Atlantis “the aggregate length of the walls was almost 50 miles; they were 50 feet broad and twice as high. To build them, and their gates and towers, was a feat as impressive as the construction of the canals. The quantity of stone required was roughly 27 times that used in an Egyptian pyramid.” ^[p94]<

The only other book attributed to H.R. Stahel is Die Pfahlbauer – Entstehung und Geschichte eines Pfahlbaudorfes^[1527],  which deals with ancient European pile-dwellings that are comparable with the numerous crannogs of Ireland^(b).

^[560]+ borrow from https://archive.org/details/atlantisillustra00stah *

^(a) https://atlantisforschung.de/index.php?title=Hans_Rudolf_Stahel (German)

^(b) https://www.enjoy-irish-culture.com/Crannog.html