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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 »
Cuba
Trowbridge, John T.
John T. Trowbridge (1827-1916) was an American poet, author and newspaper editor. He is also known to have had friendships with both Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. Atlantisforschung.de has drawn attention to Trowbridge’s interest in Atlantis(a).
Just months before Ignatius Donnelly published his seminal work, a poem about Atlantis by Trowbridge was published and produced the following comments in The Weekly Kansas Chief.(b) “For years, the world has been hanging on to speculation, traditions, romance and poetry about the sunken continent of Atlantis, which is said to have once been located in the Atlantic Ocean, in the middle of Europe and America. If you look at Cuba and the surrounding islands on a map, you are quite impressed by the idea that they are fragments of a sunken continent.
On page 1 [of this issue] of our newspaper, we publish an article and a poem on the subject of ‘Atlantis’. Mr Trowbridge suggests in his poem a theory that seems plausible. Numerous pieces of evidence have been found on the American continent indicating that there was once a people here who had a high degree of civilization. But there are no records of him, and the oldest races found on this continent have no traditions of such a people. Mr Trowbridge’s Theory is that said relics were the work of wandering or scouting groups from the continent of Atlantis. When all traces of that country, people, records and everything else, sank into the ocean, there was nothing left to tell this story.”
(a) John Townsend Trowbridge – Atlantisforschung.de
(b) The Weekly Kansas Chief, March 2, 1882
Laestrygonians
Laestrygonians, we are told by Homer were mythical giants encountered by Odysseus on his return journey to Ithaca.
Wikipedia tells us that “according to Thucydides (6.2.1.) and Polybius (1.2.9) the Laestrygones inhabited southeast Sicily. The name is akin to that of the Lestriconi, a branch of the Corsi people of the northeast coast of Sardinia (now Gallura). Later Greeks believed that the Laestrygonians, as well as the Cyclopes, had once inhabited Sicily.
“According to historian Angelo Paratico, the Laestrygonians were the result of a legend originated by the sight by Greek sailors of the Giants of Mont’e Prama, recently excavated in Sardinia. Earlier, Victor Bérard had also suggested Sardinia.
Some writers have also sought to attribute a historical reality to the Laestrygonians, often proposing locations very different to that of Thucydides and Polybius. Emmet Sweeney [700.23] has noted that Robert Graves who invariably placed the Greek myths in a Mediterranean setting, suggested that the home of the Laestrygonians was to be found in the far north of Europe, in the Land of the Midnight Sun!
Equally exotic is the suggestion from Gerard W.J. Janssen of Leiden University who places the voyages of Odysseus in the Atlantic(b). However, although he situates most of the places visited in the eastern Atlantic, he does claim(a) that Homer‘s Laestrygonians were to be found in Cuba, an interpretation supported by both Théophile Cailleux and Iman Wilkens.
(a) LAISTRUGONIACUBA, LA HAVANA (homerusodyssee.nl)
(b) https://www.academia.edu/38535990/ATLANTIC_OGUGIA_AND_KALUPSO?email_work_card=view-paper
Seven Cities of Antilia, The
The Seven Cities of Antilia are legendary cities reputed to have existed on the island of Antilia situated somewhere in the Atlantic. Medieval cartographers show Antilia (with a variety of spellings) at different locations in that ocean. Belief in its existence was firmly established by the time of Christopher Columbus. His son, Ferdinand, wrote of the many attempts to find it[1536].
For a time it had been thought by some that the Azores was location of Antilia, while Zhirov who believed the Island of the Seven Cities had some association with the North Atlantic Ridge[p.257].
In the early 20th century geographer, W. H. Babcock, identified Cuba as Antilia, while later in 2000, Andrew Collins, in his Gateway to Atlantis[072] devoted two chapters to the subject of the Seven Cities and also concluded that Cuba was its most likely location and by extension was also the home of Atlantis.
Warmkessel, Dr. Barry
Dr. Barry Warmkessel is the author of an extensive website(a) dealing with extraterrestrial impacts. He speculates(b) on the existence of a brown dwarf star, he calls Vulcan, in our solar system 
with an orbital period of around 5,000 years. Warmkessel claims that Vulcan has been responsible for capturing bodies from the Kuiper Belt leading to regular impacts(c) with Earth over many thousands of years. I suppose it was inevitable that the subject of the then impending disaster of 2012 was included(d) and so we are told that ‘Planet X’ or Nibiru is in fact a comet swarm that should be detectable from August 2012!
Atlantis has not been overlooked by Warmkessel who has included(c) a number of related papers (a third of the way down the page). He appears to favour circa 9600BC as the date for the destruction of Atlantis but includes links to various commentators who differ greatly on details such as cause and location.
In March 2014, Warmkessel published another wide-ranging paper(e) on Atlantis and asteroid impacts (Updated July 2015). In it he identifies a site off the west coast of Cuba as the location of Atlantis, which was destroyed by an asteroid impact. Which coincides with the views of Kelso de Montigny and others. He also predicted that “next passage of a comet cluster through the inner solar system will be in 2016 to 2017.” He subsequently advanced the date to 2020-2023!(a)
Warmkessel’s has produced a considerable body of work, but for me, his rationality must be questioned by his claim that extraterrestrials helped Noah construct his Ark! (f)
(a) VULCAN, COMETS AND THE IMPENDING CATASTROPHE (archive.org)
(b) VULCAN REVEALED (archive.org)
(c) COMET/EARTH IMPACT CHRONOLOGY RELATED SITES (archive.org)
(d) NIBIRU AND THE 2012 IMPACT THREAT (archive.org)
(e) THE ATLANTIS CATASTROPHE – Plato Was Right (archive.org)
(f) Archive 3514 <
Homer
Homer (c. 8th cent. BC) is generally accepted as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, regarded as the two greatest epic poems of ancient Greece. A recent study of the Greek used by Homer has enabled scientists from the University of Reading to confirm that the language used is compatible with that used in the 8th century BC, in fact dating it to around 762 BC(i).
Nevertheless, there are questions raised regarding the authorship of the ‘Homeric’ epics. For example, Andreas Pääbo is certain that the Odyssey and the Iliad came from two different authors(ar).
Even more extreme was the opinion of the ancient geographer, Eratosthenes who was a persistent critic of Homer, whom he considered to be a fantasist. Strabo reported what the geographer said in the late 3rd century BC: “You will find the scene of Odysseus’ wanderings when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of winds”(av).
Manolis Manoledakis, a professor of Classical Archaeology, in a paper(as) on the Academia website “examines an aspect of the broader issue of the geography of the Odyssey, the primary stimulus being the references of the poem to places that could be associated with the Black Sea, namely the Aeaea and the entrance to the Underworld. As we shall see, while these particular places are indeed relevant to the Black Sea region, they do not belong to the context of a specific journey with specific halts in a specific geographical sequence. The Odyssey is a synthesis of many different episodes, and there is no point in trying to trace a complete geographical course for Odysseus’ voyage.”
It should also be noted that over 130 quotations from the Illiad and Odyssey have been identified in Plato’s writings(s). George Edwin Howes (1865-1942), an American classicist, produced a dissertation[1458]+ on Homeric quotations in Plato and Aristotle.
Almost nothing is known of Homer’s life. He has been variously described as mad, blind and even mythical. Andrew Dalby, the English linguist, has gone so far as to claim[0591] that the author of the two famed epics was a woman! While in 1897 Samuel Butler, the novelist, was even more specific when he proposed that Homer was a Sicilian woman(j).
For centuries it was assumed that the content of these Homeric poems was the product of his imagination, just as the historical reality of Homer himself has been questioned. In 1795, F.A. Wolf, a German academic declared that ‘Homer’ was just a collective name applied to various 
poets whose works were finally combined into their present form in the 6th century BC. Wolf’s ideas sparked furious argument among Greek scholars that still resonates today. Now (2015), historian, Adam Nicholson has claimed that the author ‘Homer’ should not be thought of as a person but instead as a ‘culture’(o).
In a 2021 review of Victor Davis Hanson’s Who Killed Homer? [1854], Adam Kirsch outlines how “Milman Perry proved that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not written by a lone genius(ah). They were originally not written at all, but through fieldwork in Yugoslavia, Perry (1902-1935) demonstrated how the Homeric epics were the result of traditional bardic storytelling. Wikipedia describes Perry as “an American Classicist whose theories on the origin of Homer’s works have revolutionized Homeric studies to such a fundamental degree that he has been described as the ‘Darwin of Homeric studies’.”
Ed Whelan, an Irish classical scholar, published a brief paper in 2021 that endorsed the Homeric ‘multiple authors’ theory(ap).
An anonymous author offered “Although there has been a great deal of controversy about the question of whether Homer alone wrote the two famous poems, much of the evidence points towards Homer being the author due to the consistent style of writing. Also, some analysts argue that Homer may have written one of the poems but not the other since both differ greatly in style. In contrast, the reason other analysts state for this difference is that Iliad was written in his youth while Odyssey was created during Homer’s years of age.” (aq).
The identification of the site at Hissarlik in modern Turkey as Troy by Heinrich Schliemann led to a complete re-appraisal of Homer’s work and, of course, further controversy. Homer’s Iliad is the story of the Trojan War and it has been suggested that in fact, he had compressed three or more Trojan wars into one narrative. What is not generally known is that there are also ancient non-Homeric accounts of the Trojan War(q).
Kenneth Wood and his wife Florence have built on the research of his mother-in-law, the late Edna Leigh, and produced Homer’s Secret Iliad[391], a book that attempts to prove that the Iliad was written as an aide-memoire for a wide range of astronomical data.
Allied to, but not directly comparable with, is the astronomical information identified in the Bible by the likes of E. W. Maunder (1851-1928)[1137].
Guy Gervis has adopted some of their work and, in a lengthy article, specifies a date of around 2300 BC for the events described in the Iliad and Odyssey, based on an analysis of this astronomical data(n). Harald A.T. Reiche held similar views which followed some of the ideas expressed in Hamlet’s Mill[0524] by Santillana & Dechend who were colleagues of Reiche at M.I.T. They also claimed that “myths were vehicles for memorising and transmitting certain kinds of astronomical and cosmological information.”
Much has been written about the historicity of Homer’s epic accounts, including a good overview on Wikipedia(ab). Many have concluded that Homer did use real events, even if they were frequently dressed in mythological clothing compatible with the literary conventions of his day. I consider Plato to have treated the story of Atlantis similarly.
A recent study of solar eclipses recorded in Odyssey using data from NASA has confirmed that Odysseus returned to Ithaca on the 25th of October 1207 BC(r).
Scholars have generally supported the idea that Homer’s works have a Mediterranean backdrop with regular attempts to reconcile his geography with modern locations, such as the claim in 2005 by Robert Brittlestone, a British investigator to have located the site of Ithaca, the homeland of Odysseus, on the Greek island of Cephalonia. This popular idea should be put alongside the views of Zlatko Mandzuka who maintains[1396] that all the locations mentioned in the Odyssey can be identified in the Adriatic.
Kazmer Ujvarosy of San Francisco State University, has noted that there are 22 different places currently on offer as the location of Ithaca(ax).
Nevertheless, there has been a growing body of opinion that insists that this Mediterranean identification is impossible. A range of alternative regions has been proposed(f) as the setting for the epics, which extend from Portugal as far northward as the Baltic.
In his Odyssey (VII: 80), Homer wrote about the island of Scheria in the western sea. His description of the island has been compared with Plato’s description of Atlantis and has led to the theory that they refer to the same place. There is little doubt that both the detailed geography and climatic descriptions that are provided by Homer cannot be easily reconciled with that of the Mediterranean. Consequently, the Odyssey has had many interpretations, ranging from Tim Severin’s conclusion[392] that it refers entirely to the Eastern Mediterranean to Iman Wilkens’ book, Where Troy Once Stood[610], which has the voyage include the west coast of Africa, then across to the West Indies and following the Gulf Stream returns to Troy which he locates in Britain.
Location is not a problem exclusive to the writings of Plato. Wilkins’s claims are a reflection of similar ideas expressed by Théophile Cailleux[393] in the 19th century. Gilbert Pillot has also argued for voyages of Ulysses having taken him into the North Atlantic [742]. A Spanish review of Pillot’s book is available(ag). In 1973, Ernst Gideon (? – 1975) wrote in a similar vein in Homerus Zanger der Kelten, reprinted later as Troje Lag in Engelan[1643].
It is worth noting that Bernard Jones in The Discovery of Troy[1638] has recently moved Troy to Britain, probably in the vicinity of Cambridge, a location also preferred by Wilkens! 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! Jones’ book has been reviewed on the Hall of Maat website(at) as well as by Jason Colavito(au).
An interesting overview of the various attempts to transfer the Odyssey from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe is available(w). Damien Mackey has also endorsed the idea of a Northern European backdrop to Homer’s Odyssey(aa).
Another researcher who places most of Odysseus’ travels in the eastern Atlantic is Gerard. W.J. Janssen of Leiden University on the academia.edu website(v). In a series of six papers(ai-an), he systematically reviews Homer’s geography, identifying locations referred to by him with places in the Atlantic. He compares his identifications with other commentators including Iman Wilkens and Théophile Cailleux. His website, with an English translation, offers additional information, including the suggestion(ao) that Homer’s Laestrygonians were to be found in Cuba, an interpretation also offered by Cailleux and Wilkens. They also claim that Odysseus’ Caribbean trip included a visit to Saba, a Dutch possession, which is identified as the Aeolian Isle!
The idea of an Atlantic backdrop to the Homeric epics will not go away. The Dutch researcher, N.R. De Graaf(ae). continues to write extensively on his Homeros Explorations website(ad)(x) regarding many of the specifics in Homer’s accounts. He has proposed Lanzarote in the Canaries as the location of Scheria, which concurs with the views of Wilkens and Janssen. Other specifics are that Ithaca was near Cadiz and that Sparta was Cordoba, while the ancient city of Carmona on the plains of Andalucia are, for De Graaf, Mycenae!(af)
E.J. de Meester also argued(ac) for the British Isles as the location of many of Homer’s references. It struck me as quite remarkable that the level of debate regarding the date, source and geographical details of Homer’s works is rather similar to the controversy surrounding Plato’s Atlantis in Timaeus and Critias. The late Edo Nyland was another researcher who had also opted for a Scottish backdrop to the Odyssey and had recently published his views[394].
Felice Vinci also supports[019] a Northern European background to the Iliad and Odyssey. However, in Vinci’s case, Scandinavia, and in particular the Baltic Sea, is identified as the location for the adventures in Homer’s classic. An English language synopsis of his book is available on the Internet. The persuasiveness of Vinci’s argument has recently renewed interest in the idea of a Baltic Atlantis. The assumption is that if Troy could be located in the Baltic, so might Atlantis. Vinci’s views are comparable with those of J. Rendel Harris expressed in a lecture delivered in 1924(p) in which he claims that “we are entitled to take Homer and his Odysseus out of the Mediterranean or the Black Sea, and to allow them excursions into Northern latitudes.”
However, a scathing review of Vinci’s book can be found on the Internet(d) and in issue 216 (2006) of Fortean Times written by Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs.
Further support for a Northern European Troy has come from the historian Edward Furlong, a former naval navigation officer, who has advocated for over twenty years that the journey of Odysseus went as far north as Norway>>after visting Ireland and the Scottish Islands.<< His particular views are outlined on the Internet(c).
Other writers, such as the late Henrietta Mertz [0396/7], have suggested that Homer’s epic refers to a trip to North America. Professor Enrico Mattievich Kucich of Lima University is also certain that the ancient Greeks discovered America America[400]. However revolutionary this idea may seem it shows how this particular subject is growing and would probably justify a reference book of its own.
The idea of an Atlantic backdrop to the Homeric epics will not go away. The Dutch researcher, N.R. De Graaf continues to write extensively on his Homeros Explorations website(x) regarding many of the specifics in Homer’s accounts.
In 1973, James Bailey also proposed in his well-received The God-Kings and the Titans[149] that the Odyssey recorded a trans-Atlantic trip. Evidence exists for large-scale mining in the Americas as early as the 5th millennium BC. Bailey maintained that the Europeans imported enormous quantities of copper and tin from Central and South America to feed the demands of the Old World Bronze Age, an idea that was later heavily promoted by Frank Joseph and in great, if overly speculative, detail by Reinoud de Jong(y).
Finally, the Atlantis connection with this entry is that if, as now appears to be at least a possibility, Homer’s Odyssey was about a journey to the North Sea then the possibility of the North Sea setting for the Atlantis story is somewhat reinforced.
A recent book[395] by Steven Sora has developed the Atlantic notion further with the suggestion that not only was Troy located outside the Strait of Gibraltar but that both Homer’s Trojan War and Plato’s Atlantean war are two versions of the same war with the understandable distortions and embellishments that can occur with a narrative, probably involving some degree of oral transmission and then written down hundreds of years after the events concerned.
Ukraine is soon to be added to the growing list of alternative locations for the setting of Homer’s epics with the publication of Homer, The Immanent Biography, a book by A.I. Zolotukhin(g). He claims that Homer was born in Alibant (Mykolayiv, Ukraine) on September 14, 657 BC(t). He follows the views of Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876) who believed that most of Odysseus’s travels took place in the Black Sea rather than the Mediterranean. Additionally, he locates Atlantis in the western Crimean area of Evpatoria(l). His 60-page book is available on his website(m).
An interesting paper(e) by the German historian, Armin Wolf, relates how his research over 40 years unearthed 80 theories on the geography of the Odyssey, of which around 30 were accompanied by maps. One of the earliest maps of the travels of Odysseus was produced by Abraham Ortelius in 1597(u), in which the adventures of Odysseus all take place within the Central and Eastern Mediterranean, arguably reflecting the maritime limits of Greek experience at the time of Homer or his sources! Another website(z) by Jonathan S. Burgess, Professor of Classics at the University of Toronto offers further information on this, including some informative bibliographical material.
In 2009, Wolf published, Homers Reise: Auf den Spuren des Odysseus[669] a German-language book that expands on the subject, also locating all the travels of Odysseus within the Central and Eastern Mediterranean.
Wolf’s ideas were enthusiastically adopted by Wolfgang Geisthövel in Homer’s Mediterranean[1578], who also concurs with the opinion of J.V. Luce [1579], who proposed that Homer was “describing fictional events against authentic backgrounds.” This would be comparable to a James Bond movie, which has an invented storyline set in actual exotic locations around the world.
Perhaps the most radical suggestion has come from the Italian writer, Michele Manher, who has proposed(h) that Homer’s Iliad originated in India where elements of it can be identified in the Mahabharata!
In August 2015, a fifteen-hour reading of the Iliad was performed in London.
[1458]+ https://archive.org/stream/jstor-310358/310358_djvu.txt
(c) https://www.academia.edu/8167048/WHERE_DID_ODYSSEUS_GO_
(d) https://mythopedia.info/Vinci-review.pdf
(e) https://authorzilla.com/9AbvV/armin-wolf-mapping-homer-39-s-odyssey-research-notebooks.html (link broken)
(f) https://codexceltica.blogspot.com/search?q=atlantis
(g) https://pushkinclub.homerandatlantis.com/english/homer.html
(h) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=100
(i) https://www.insidescience.org/content/geneticists-estimate-publication-date-iliad/946
(j) https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/aoto/index.htm
(k) https://web.archive.org/web/20180320072706/https://www.nwepexplore.com (see ‘n’)
(l) https://homerandatlantis.com/?lang=en
(m) https://homerandatlantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Homer_The_Immanent_biography_pdf2.pdf
(n) https://web.archive.org/web/20180320072706/https://www.nwepexplore.com
(o) https://www.newser.com/story/200859/homer-wasnt-a-person-historian.html
(p) https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:1m1163&datastreamId=POST-PEER-REVIEW-PUBLISHERS-DOCUMENT.PDF (link broken)
(q) https://luwianstudies.org/the-homeric-epics/
(r) Scientists provide evidence that Homer´s Odyssey is not fiction (archive.org)
(s) https://plato-dialogues.org/tools/char/homerqot.htm
(t) https://homerandatlantis.com/?p=4938&lang=en
(u) https://kottke.org/19/03/mapping-the-odyssey-isnt-easy
(v) https://www.academia.edu/38535990/ATLANTIC_OGUGIA_AND_KALUPSO?email_work_card=view-paper
(w) https://codexceltica.blogspot.com/2009/10/homers-north-atlantic-odyssey.html
(x) http://www.homeros-explorations.nl/
(y) https://www.academia.edu/3894415/COPPER_AND_TIN_FROM_AMERICA_c.2500-1200_BC_
(z) https://wakeofodysseus.com/
(ab) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Homeric_epics#History
(ac) https://web.archive.org/web/20090907222615/https://home-3.tiscali.nl/~meester7/engodyssey.html
(ad) Homeros Explorations – Homer, facts or fiction? (homeros-explorations.nl)
(ae) https://www.homeros-explorations.nl
(af) Mycenae, rich in gold – Homeros Explorations (homeros-explorations.nl)
(ag) Perijóresis: Odisea (perijoresis.blogspot.com) (Spanish)
(ah) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/14/the-classicist-who-killed-homer
(ai) https://www.academia.edu/40668880/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_I
(aj) https://www.academia.edu/40849368/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_II
(ak) https://www.academia.edu/40982169/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_III
(al) https://www.academia.edu/41200642/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_IV
(am) https://www.academia.edu/41474241/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_PART_V
(an) https://www.academia.edu/41625852/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_PART_VI
(ao) LAISTRUGONIACUBA, LA HAVANA (homerusodyssee.nl)
(ap) The Homeric Question – Who WAS Homer? (bibliotecapleyades.net)
(aq) Homer | Biography, Books and Facts (famousauthors.org)
(ar) (26) The Odyssey’s Northern Origins and a Different Author Than Homer | Andres Pääbo – Academia.edu
(at) http://www.hallofmaat.com/migrations/the-discovery-of-troy-and-its-lost-history/
(av) Strabo 1.2.15
Fisher, Mel
Mel Fisher (1922-1998) was colourful treasure hunter who claimed that he had discovered Atlantis in the Caribbean, but never revealed its location. He ran 
a tourist shop in Key West where also sold ancient gold coins. Unfortunately, shortly before his death, he was accused of minting some of the coins himself, which he denied. However, it adds to probability that his Atlantis story was also manufactured. Mel’s grandson, Sean, has also taken up salvaging and with regard to Atlantis is reported as saying “It was always my grandfather’s dream to find Atlantis,” Sean Fisher says. “I’m serious. We have some idea where it is. But it’s a hard salvage operation that will cost a lot of money and resources.”
Andrew Collins has told us[0072.333] of a number of telephone conversations that he had with Fisher shortly before his death, in which he claimed to have initially discovered Atlantis using satellite imagery. He also claimed to have subsequently verified his discovery using sonar scans not far from Cuba.
Zelitsky, Paulina
Paulina Zelitsky was born in Poland and studied engineering in the former Soviet 
Union. During the Cold War she worked on a submarine base in Cuba but defected to Canada, where she married Paul Weinzweig and together set up a company called (ADC). The company specialises in deep-sea exploration. The Cuban government had employed them to assist in the location of sunken treasure that is believed to lie off the coast in a variety of vessels.
In 2001, they announced the discovery of megalithic structures 9 km off Cabo San Antonio on the western tip of Cuba, in water half a mile deep. The expedition was a joint venture between ADC, the National Geographic Society and the Centre for Marine Archaeology and Anthropology at the Cuban Academy of Sciences in Cuba. Subsequent announcements included a claim that inscriptions had been found on some of stones that appear vaguely similar to Greek. Other carvings seem to be related to Central American symbols including what is sometimes referred to as the Central American Cross. Cuban academics are studying these incisions. It has been suggested that the US State Department applied pressure on The National Geographical Society to withdraw a promise of two million dollars to fund further investigations because of US Administration’s antipathy towards Cuba at that time. Later that year Zelitsky gave an interview to Linda Moulton Howe that can be read online(a).
In late 2004, Zelitsky led a team to explore the sea floor between the Yucatan peninsula and Cuba where sonar reading had suggested manmade structures. Apparently they think that an island was submerged ten or twelve thousand years ago as a result of seismic activity.
May 2013 saw Zeilitsky and Weinzweig attempt to reprise the attention that they received when they first made their claim a dozen years earlier. A recent interview(b) with journalist Luis Mariano Fernandez has Zeilitsky rehashing her original claim with the addition, perhaps by Fernandez, of the old story of a glass pyramid in the Bermuda Triangle touted by the late Ray Brown.
A more critical review of the Zeilitsky-Weinzweig claims is to be found on the Bad Archaeology website(c).
(b) https://wolfke74.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/atlantis-found/
(c) https://badarchaeology.wordpress.com/2012/10/28/an-underwater-city-west-of-cuba/
Spence, Lewis*
James Lewis Thomas Chalmers Spence (1874-1955) attended Edinburgh University, after which he began a career in journalism that included a stint as sub-editor of The Scotsman. His book publishing began in 1908 with the first English translation of the sacred Mayan book Popul Vuh [257], followed by A 
Dictionary of Mythology, so eventually, he had over forty works to his name. He was a keen Scottish Nationalist and stood for parliament in 1929. He was a founder member of the political movement that later evolved into today’s Scottish National Party (SNP).
Among his literary output, which included mythology, occultism and poetry, were five books relating to Atlantis [256,258,259,260 262]. In 1932 he was editor of the Atlantis Quarterly magazine. He corresponded with Percy Fawcett and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, advising the latter on the subject of Atlantis preceding the writing of The Maracot Deep and recently republished as Atlantis – Discovering the Lost City [235], another example of cynical publishing!
Spence at one point became the Chosen Chief of British Druidism and there is a claim that he was a member of at least one continental Rosicrucian organisation, although this report may be the result of confusion with H. Spencer Lewis, an American Rosicrucian. In 1941 he wrote [261] about the occult and the war, then raging in Europe. In that book he argued that the war was the result of a satanic conspiracy centred in Munich and the Baltic States. The following year he wrote [262] of his view that Atlantis had been destroyed as a form of divine retribution and that Europe was in danger of a similar fate.
His books were very popular with the general public but scorned by the scientific establishment, whom Spence mockingly referred to as “The Tape Measure School”. In truth his theories relating to Atlantis were highly speculative and often based on rather tenuous links. Spence believed that Atlantis was situated in the Atlantic and linked by a land bridge with the Yucatan Peninsula and that after the destruction of Atlantis, 13,000 years ago, the Atlantean refugees fled across this landbridge and are now recognised as the ancient Maya. A recent website(d) supports the idea of a landbridge from Cuba to the Yucatan Peninsula.
Spence believed that the ancient traditions of Britain and Ireland contain memories of Atlantis. An article of his on the subject can be found on the Internet.
In The Problem of Atlantis [258.205] Spence quoted a report that allegedly came from the Western Union Telegraph Company, which claimed that while searching in the Atlantic for a lost cable in 1923 that when taking soundings at the exact same spot where it had been laid twenty-five years before they found that the ocean bed had risen nearly two and a quarter miles. The account was quoted widely; however, not long afterwards, Robert B. Stacy-Judd made direct enquiries of his own to Western Union and the U.S. Navy, who denied knowledge of any such report[607.47]! It would be interesting to know the source of this ‘fake news’.
Spence’s The History of Atlantis [259] can now be downloaded or read online(c). In this book Spence offers his own composite translation of the Atlantis texts based on the English and French translations of Jowett, Archer-Hind, Jolibois and Negris.
A 2005 edition of the book from Barnes & Noble has an introduction by Professor Trevor Palmer.
Sprague de Camp in his Lost Continents [194] chose Spence as one of “the few sane and sober writers on the subject” of Atlantis and then proceeded to debunk much of what Spence wrote. [p.95].
It appears that among others, Spence’s work inspired the backdrop to a number of works by the pulp fiction writer, Robert E. Howard(e), who is perhaps best known as the creator of Conan the Barbarian.
(c) https://www.archive.org/details/historyofatlanti00spenuoft
Hesperides
The Hesperides in Greek mythology were the daughters of Atlas. They lived on an island in the far west guarding a tree that bore golden apples made famous in the story of the twelve labours of Hercules who was charged with obtaining some of the apples.
The Hesperides have also been referred to as the Fortunate Islands and is the name applied by classical writers to islands off the west coast of Africa that have been variously identified with the Azores, Canaries or Cape Verde islands. Other opinions place the garden at Gades or on the Atlantic coast of Morocco,> such as Pliny’s suggested location of Lixus(b).<
>According to Wikipedia “the Sicilian Greek poet Stesichorus, in his poem the “Song of Geryon”, and the Greek geographer Strabo, in his book Geographika (volume III), the garden of the Hesperides is located in Tartessos, a location placed in the south of the Iberian peninsula.”(c)<
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés writing in the 16th century [1117] considered the Antilles in the Caribbean to have been the legendary Isles of Hesperides.
While the majority opinion is that the name specifically refers to the Canaries, a minority view espoused by Andrew Collins[072](a) is similar to that of Oviedo, namely that Hesperides refers to the Caribbean, where he is convinced that Cuba had been the home of Atlantis.
>Reginald Fessenden argued that the Hesperides lay in the east not the west in chapter one of The Deluged Civilization of the Caucasus[1012].<
(a) https://www.grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?f=1&i=122922&t=122922
(b) Pliny the Elder. Historia Naturalis – Book V. *
(c) Hesperides – Wikipedia *
Collins, Andrew
Andrew Collins was born in England in 1957. Several of his earlier books are concerned with psychic questing(v). However, he eventually shifted his focus to a study of alternative history.
Over the past twenty years, he has been investigating the possible existence of ancient advanced civilisations. He has written three books on the subject of pre-history[072][073][074]. His volume on Atlantis has been well received as an example of how the subject should be researched. Although Collins initially thought that Antarctica had been home to Atlantis, he eventually concluded that Cuba was its location and provided a wealth of evidence to support this view in his book, Gateway to Atlantis. David Rohl wrote a sympathetic Introduction for the book and repeated and expanded on his expressed views at a subsequent lecture(h).
What did surprise Collins, was that following the publication of his carefully-argued ‘Gateway’ was that most responses to his book indicated that the dominant theory regarding the location of Atlantis favoured Antarctica!(ac)
Collins also wrote of why his chosen Cuba is a better candidate for the location of Atlantis than the Bahamas(r). He seems to have been reluctant to exclude the Bahamas completely from the Atlantis story. In an article in Atlantis Rising magazine(z), he commented “There is no question that if the Bahamian landmass did once support a prehistoric culture, then it was also present on Cuba as well”.
Collins has recently written another controversial book[075], on the place of the constellation Cygnus in prehistoric consciousness. Arising from this study, it appears that the position of the Cygnus stars correlates more accurately with the Giza pyramids than those of Orion, which was proposed some years ago by Robert Bauval. Incredibly, a fifteen-year-old Canadian boy has produced a comparable theory(e) involving Mayan cities and a star map. The site proposed by him has now been identified, by people who personally know the location, as either an abandoned cornfield or a marijuana crop(f).
In 2018, Gustavo Muniz posted a number of videos on YouTube suggesting an Orion connection with a site in the Amazon Basin(i)!>His ideas were developed into a book, Orion: The Connection between Heaven and Earth [2082].<
However, Collins has not been completely seduced by Bauval’s discovery and prudently remarks that the correlation may just be a coincidence. Jason Colavito has written a brief critique(b) of this book.
In 2002 Collins teamed up with Chris Ogilvie-Herald to write Tutankhamun [1898]. It is a great read involving as it does, unexplained deaths, political intrigue and possible blackmail. Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon are also accused of looting some of the treasures from Tutankhamun’s tomb. However, for me, the core weakness in this book is that it is dependent on a claim that the plunder taken by Carter and Carnavon had included papyrus documents, the contents of which allegedly contained material that was still deemed politically sensitive even three thousand years later! Without the papyrus, there is no book.
In 2007, he wrote an article(q) for Alternate Perceptions Magazine reviewing the comet impact theory of Richard Firestone et al and its possible implication for his Atlantis theory.
In 2005, Collins published The Cygnus Mystery[075]in which he explored the significance of the Cygnus constellation in the ancient cultures of America, Egypt and Britain. (a condensed version of the book is available online(s)). Furthermore, in August 2013 he published a paper(c) with Rodney Hale suggesting that the Göbekli Tepe site is probably aligned with the star Deneb in the Cygnus constellation. This idea has now been expanded on in Collins’ 2014 book, Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods[0983], although his treatment has been heavily criticised as pseudoscience(g).
In a recent paper(t), Andrew Collins disputed Bauval‘s Orion Correlation Theory and instead offered evidence that the alignment of the three principal Giza pyramids matches more closely the ‘wing’ stars of the Cygnus constellation than the ‘belt’ of Orion! Greg Little offered some rather lukewarm support for Collins’ alternative to the OCT(u).
Nevertheless, Little & Collins teamed up as co-authors of Denisovan Origins [1672] in 2019, a literary bromance that has led to another joint offering, Origins of the Gods due for publication in 2022, in which the authors explore “how our ancestors used shamanic rituals at sacred sites to create portals for communication with non-human intelligences”. If that does not sufficiently whet your appetite, the news that the well-known convicted fraudster Erich von Däniken has written the Foreword should clinch it for you.
Collins has made some dramatic claims regarding the significance of Cygnus including the proposal that “The veneration of Cygnus as a bird associated with cosmic life and death goes back 17,000 years to when the constellation occupied pole position in the northern night sky” and perhaps even more extreme, the idea that “Cygnus is at the root of all the world’s religions.”
Collins continues with the Cygnus-Giza connection in a subsequent offering Beneath the Pyramids[631]. This book reveals the tunnels and chambers beneath the Giza pyramids and their possible connection with the “Hall of Records” predicted by Edgar Cayce to be located there and due for discovery.
In a paper(d), co-authored with Rodney Hale, published in April 2016, Collins returned to the theory of a Cygnus-Giza correlation based on a master plan that they claim can now be demonstrated mathematically.
Collins has now moved on to new ground with his Lightquest[895], in which he attempts to offer a new explanation for the UFO phenomena. He claims that what has been described as UFOs are “the product of sentient light forms and light intelligences that co-exist with humanity, and have done so since time immemorial.”
Nevertheless, Collins returns to the subject of Atlantis with a new book, Atlantis in the Caribbean[1197], which is a revised version of Gateway to Atlantis. In it, he follows some of Otto Muck’s ideas and “Explains how Atlantis was destroyed by a comet, the same comet that formed the mysterious Carolina Bays“.
Collins, who proposes Cuba as one of the legendary Hesperides and also the location of Atlantis, has offered a critical response to Emilio Spedicato‘s Hispaniola theory in both Gateway to Atlantis and its revised version Atlantis in the Caribbean, which can be read online(ad).
When the Denisovans were recently identified as an extinct species of hominid, related to the Neanderthals It did not take long for speculative history enthusiasts to jump on board this new bandwagon. Andrew Collins has now published The Cygnus Key[1509], in which he claims to present “compelling evidence showing that the earliest origins of human culture, religion, and technology derive from the Denisovans, the true creators of the lost civilization long known to exist but never before proved.” Jason Colavito also presents a critique of this latest ‘Cygnus’ book in a two-part(m)(n) offering.
While the first Denisovan remains were found in Siberia, now there is evidence that they were also the earliest hominins on the Tibetan Plateau(j).
Before the identification of the Denisovans, Colin Wilson had claimed that the Neanderthals “were the civilising force behind Atlantis”![0336] One cannot help wondering if another early hominid species is discovered, which is quite possible, will they also be claimed as the progenitors of Plato’s lost civilisation?
In this new book Collins also “explains how the stars of Cygnus coincided with the turning point of the heavens at the moment the Denisovan legacy was handed to the first human societies in southern Siberia some 45,000 years ago, catalyzing beliefs in swan ancestry and an understanding of Cygnus as the source of cosmic creation.” Hmm.
Collins and chartered engineer, Rodney Hale have studied the Gunung Padang site in Indonesia, which has generated claims of antiquity greater than that of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. While their investigation raised a number of minor matters, they were unable to endorse the rather extreme dates suggested until more convincing data is available(x).
Collins and Hale have also co-authored a paper on the possible astronomical significance of images on what is known as Pillar 43 or sometimes the ‘Vulture Stone’ at Göbekli Tepe(af). This is not the first such suggestion, but their new interpretation should be considered.
In June 2019, Collins published a two-part article(l) on the Ancient Origins website, in which he explores the possibility of Giza’s Great Pyramid having sound technology incorporated into its construction and that “its Dead-end passage function as an infrasound generator?”
Later in 2019, Collins had his 1996 book, From the Ashes of Angels, banned in Turkey(p), it is not clear yet if he is personally banned as well. Apparently, it all stems from some perceived support that Collins gave to the Kurdish cause in ‘Ashes’! I hope he refrains from mentioning the Armenians. A YouTube video from Collins offers his account of the episode(y).
Collins has seemingly made peace with the Turkish authorities as he is now planning a tour of Karahan Tepe later in 2022(ab). This link has some interesting images.
Andrew Collins maintains a useful website(a) that has plenty of information on his books and lectures. He also offers an extended section relating to his Atlantis theories(o). Nevertheless, he does seem to have retained his interest in metaphysical subjects, which is where he started.
An article on Graham Hancock’s website offers a rebuttal of a series of Collins’ claims(ae).
Collins is now a regular contributor to Ancient Origins. His website lists the articles published there so far(aa).
(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2012/10/did-cosmic-rays-from-cygnus-create-religion.html
(c) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Gobekli_Sirius.htm
(g) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(h) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/mysteries/drohl.htm
(i) Gustavo Muniz – YouTube and Bing Videos (Spanish) *
(k) https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/great-pyramid-0012166
(l) https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/great-pyramid-0012179
(m) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-the-cygnus-key-by-andrew-collins-part-1
(n) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-the-cygnus-key-by-andrew-collins-part-2
(o) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/news/Atlantisfile.htm
(p) https://www.reddit.com/r/kurdistan/comments/d6u3zu/another_attack_to_the_kurds_in_turkey_andrew/
(q) https://andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Firestorm.htm
(r) https://andrewcollins.com/page/interactive/bahamas.htm
(s) The Cygnus Mystery (archive.org)
(t) (99+) (PDF) Orion: The Eternal Rise of the Sky Hunter | Andrew Collins – Academia.edu
(v) Psychic Questing (andrewcollins.com)
(w) Andrew Collins – author – books & DVDs
(x) http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/gp.htm
(y) Andrew Collins Book Ban in Turkey and Abuse at Gobekli Tepe – Bing video
(z) Atlantis Rising magazine #37 http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At
(aa) http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/AO_articles.htm
(ab) Andrew Collins – Earthquest News – January 2022 (ymlp.com)
(ac) QC2K – Andrew Collins (archive.org)
(ae) http://www.grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?f=1&i=122922&t=122922
(af) Göbekli Tepe’s Pillar 43 – The Vulture Stone (andrewcollins.com)