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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Daniel Fleck

Alkyone

Alkyone in Greek mythology was a daughter of Atlas. Homer, in his story of Jason and the Argonauts, refers at length to Alcinous (Alkinoos) as the ruler of Scheria.

>Daniel Fleck who. among others, associated Scheria with Atlantis suggested therefore that Alkyone/Alcinous was a king of Atlantis(a). He suggested that Alkinoos was possibly Atlas, and so was the ruler of Atlantis.

I think it more likely that two different characters are being discussed.<

(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20150327060629/https://www.atlantia.de/atlantis_english/myth/empire/atlantis_homer_odyssee.htm

Quetzalcoatl

QuetzalcoatlQuetzalcoatl is a Mesoamerican deity, whose name in the local Nahuatl language means ‘feathered serpent’. To the Aztecs he was a creator god and also had a parallel in Mayan culture to whom he was known as Kukulcan or Gucumatz.

For some centuries it has been generally thought that the Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II initially believed that Hernán Cortés’ arrival to be the anticipated return of their deity Quetzalcoatl. The veracity of this story has come under increased attack, exemplified by a paper from Jordan Baker(b).

It is a commonly held belief among Mormons that Quetzalcoatl was Jesus Christ!

More widespread and a little less contentious is the idea that St. Thomas the Apostle was Quetzalcoatl(e). Within two decades of the Conquest, Quetzalcoatl was identified with St. Thomas, the wandering apostle. Since that time Quetzalcoatl has been described as a Viking, a Chinese Explorer, an extraterrestrial, Moses, and Jesus Christ. Similarly, most Mormons assume that the legends of Quetzalcoatl were simply distorted reminiscences of the visit of Christ to the New World as detailed in the Book of Mormon”(f).

An Indian website vehemently disputes the association of St. Thomas with Quetzalcoatl and for good measure also argues against the idea of St. Thomas in India!(g)

Harold T. Wilkins claimed [363.97] that Quetzalcoatl was from Atlantean Brazil.

Pierre Honoré claimed[0956] that these white gods had come from the region of Crete and had brought with them their script. As Linear A & B had both ceased being used by 1400 BC, Honoré surmised that visits of these deities had taken place before that date.

Lewis Spence also claimed an Atlantis connection for Quetzalcoatl, identifying the Mesoamerican deity as Atlas.

Daniel Fleck had some interesting thoughts on Quetzalcoatl(c).

Christian O’Brien has proposed that Quetzalcoatl had been one of the Sages who originated in Sumeria and travelled the world spreading advanced knowledge, including astronomy and megalith building [1797.117]!

>In 1900 Peter de Roo concluded, “that Quetzalcoatl was a Christian prelate who landed in America, accompanied by several inferior missionaries and a number of people from some part of Christian Europe, and that he established a settlement in the territories of the Mexican empire or, perhaps, on the eastern coasts of our United States, from whence they eventually extended their race and religion along the Mexican Gulf.” [890+.1.582]<

These ideas are just pure conjecture but are relatively tame compared with the wilder speculations of writers such as Peter Kolosimo, who claimed that the legends actually describe a race of white men who were born in spaceships and migrated to Atlantis; then after Atlantis was destroyed, they moved to the Americas to be treated as “white gods” by the “primitive earth-dwellers.”(a)

[890.1.]https://archive.org/details/historyamericab02roogoog vol.1

(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_gods

(b) The Real Story of the ‘Bearded God’ Named Quetzalcoatl | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20160903185759/http://www.atlantia.de/atlantis_english/myth/myth/atlantis_quetzalcoatl_columbus.htm *

(d) https://ishwarsharan.com/2019/09/17/how-st-thomas-quetzalcoatl-myth-was-manufactured-justified-and-continued-in-the-new-world-k-v-ramakrishna-rao/ 

(e) http://gnosis.org/thomasbook/ch20.html 

(f) https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/055-06-10.pdf

(g) https://ishwarsharan.com/2019/09/17/how-st-thomas-quetzalcoatl-myth-was-manufactured-justified-and-continued-in-the-new-world-k-v-ramakrishna-rao/ 

Asgård

Asgård, according to Norse mythology contained in the Eddur (Eddas), was a city or country which was the home of the gods (Aesir). A number of researchers, such as the controversial Joachim Rittstieg have sought to link Asgard with Atlantis(a)(d)Daniel Fleck also hints at a possible connection between the two(b). Ignatius Donnelly in the first page of his book mentioned Asgard among a list of legendary places which included the Garden of Eden, Olympus and the Elysian Fields,  as “representing a universal memory of a great land, where early mankind dwelt for ages in peace and happiness” in an Antediluvian world. Other writers, such as the late Walter Baucum, Jürgen Spanuth and Felice Vinci, who all locate Atlantis in northwest Europe, understandably associate Asgard with Atlantis.

Paul A. LaViolette has proposed “that Asgård, like Atlantis, represents the North American ice sheet” and “that the Bifrost bridge most likely signifies the ice sheet bridge that spanned Baffin Bay and the North Sea to connect the North American and Greenland ice sheets with the European ice sheet.” [432.250]

Since the end of the 19th century there have been regular claims of a link between the Indian Vedas and the Norse Edda(c).*In fact, it is also claimed that India has a cultural influence on ancient Egypt as far back as the 2nd millennium BC.*

(a) https://www.asgard-atlan.de/index-Dateien/AtlantisGB.htm

*(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20110809124408/https://www.atlantia.de/atlantis_english/myth/culture/atlantis_atzlan_asgard.htm*

(c) https://odinicriteofaustralia.wordpress.com/odinist-cosmology-backed-by-science/

*(d) https://web.archive.org/web/20150528085707/https://www.nornirsaett.de/die-bild-schatzsuche-die-maya-wikinger-und-atlantis/*

Scheria *

Scheria is the name of a Phaeacian island mentioned by Homer in his Odyssey and identified by some, including Ignatius Donnelly, as Atlantis. Scheria has been noted as only second to Atlantis for the array of locations ascribed to it. For example, Heinrich Schliemann,  as well as many ancient and modern commentators, considered Scheria to have been Corfu. K. T. Frost in the early part of the 20th century associated Atlantis with Homer’s Scheria and both with  the Minoan Empire, an idea also supported by Walter Leaf(l).

Others, such as Felice Vinci suggest Norway, while Iman Wilkens[610] offers the Canaries.

A recent paper by Gerard Janssen, of Leiden University, also places Scheria in the Canaries, specifically on Lanzarote(f). This is one of an extensive series of papers by Janssen, which links Homer’s geography with locations in the Atlantic(g). An introductory paper(h) might be the best place to start.

An Atlantic location for Homer’s epic poems is advocated by N.R. De Graaf, the Dutch author of the Homeros Explorations website(i). Specifically, he also concluded that Scheria can be identified with Lanzarote in the Canaries concurring with Wilkens and Janssen.

According to Pierluigi Montalbano, his native Sardinia was the Homeric land of the Phaeacians(j). Massimo Pittau offered the same conclusion “However the fact is that the Odyssey- as we have seen before – never mentions Sardinia. How, therefore, can this great and singular historical-documentary inconsistency be overcome? It can be overcome by assuming and saying that the poet of the Odyssey actually mentions Sardinia, but not calling it with his name, which will later become traditional and definitive, but with some other name relating to one of its regions or its population. And this is precisely my point of view, the one I am about to indicate and demonstrate: the poet of the Odyssey mentions Sardinia and its Nuragic civilization when he speaks of the «Scherìa or island of the Phaeacians».”(k)

Armin Wolf (1935- ), the German historian, suggests(b) that Calabria in Southern Italy was Scheria and even more controversially that the Phaeacians were in fact Phoenicians!

Wolf also claims[669.326]  that although the country of the Phaeacians is in some translations called an island, the original Greek text never calls it ‘island’  just Scheria, which, Wolf informs us, etymologically means ‘continent’ – perfectly fitting Calabria. Even today, when people from Sicily go to Calabria they say they are going to the ‘continente’. Wolf puts Scheria in the vicinity of Catanzaro, the capital of Calabria. It has been suggested to me in private correspondence(d) that the etymology of Catanzaro is strongly indicative of a Phoenician influence! Catanzaro is also Catanzaro2known as ‘the city of the two seas’, having the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west and the Ionian Sea to the east. It is Wolf’s contention that it was across this isthmus that Odysseus travelled[p.327].

A further mystery is that, according to Dr Ernst Assmann quoted by Edwin Bjorkman, “both the vessel of Odysseus, as pictured in Greek art, and the term applied to it, are of Phoenician origin.”

Daniel Fleck(a) lists ten similarities between Scheria and Atlantis. Jürgen Spanuth[015] quoted and added to an even more extensive list of comparisons between the two compiled by R. Hennig. Rainer W. Kühne has also written a paper(c) on the similarities. Walter Leaf perceived a connection between the two and wrote accordingly[434]. Edwin Björkman went further and wrote a book[181] that linked Tartessos, Scheria and Atlantis. More recently, Roger Coghill stressed the similarity of Homer’s Scheria to Plato’s Atlantis in The Message of Atlantis [0494]Ernle Bradford notes that the name Scheria itself is thought by some to be derived from the Phoenician word ‘schera’, which means marketplace, which is not incompatible with Plato’s description of Atlantis as a hive of commercial activity. [1011.204] 

Michael MacRae in his Sun Boat: The Odyssey Deciphered[985] also thinks that Scheria could be identified with Atlantis and as such was probably situated at the western end of the Gulf of Cadiz near Portugal’s Cape Vincent. A number of 20th-century researchers such as Sykes and Mertz have placed the travels of Odysseus in the Atlantic. More recently, Gerard Janssen has followed this school of thought and as part of his theories identifies Scheria as the island of Lanzarote in the Canaries (e).

This identification of Scheria with Atlantis has induced Eberhard Zangger, who advocates Atlantis as Troy, to propose that Troy is also Scheria![483]

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.”

A paper by John Black concluded with the following paragraph that fairly sums up what we actually know about the Phaeacians. “Who were the Phaeacians and where was their place of abode? No definite answers and no clues have been found but yet their extraordinary seafaring abilities and the intriguing description by Homer make them appear to be either a fascinating advanced civilization of the past yet to be discovered, or a fiction of the imagination for the sake of a good story. It is worth mentioning that Homer’s description of Troy was also once considered to be a work of fiction. However, the city of Troy has now been discovered, turning myth into reality.” (m)

(aSee: Archive 2087

(b) Wayback Machine (archive.org) 

(c) https://rxiv.org/pdf/1103.0058v1.pdf

(d) Private correspondence Jan. 2016

(e) https://www.homerusodyssee.nl/id16.htm

(f) https://www.academia.edu/38347562/ATLANTIC_SCHERIA_AND_THE_FAIAKANS_LANZAROTE_AND_THE_FAYCANS

(g) https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/GerardJanssen

(h) https://www.academia.edu/38537104/ATLANTIC_TROY

(i) https://www.homeros-explorations.nl

(j) Honebu History and Archaeology Newspaper: Search results for Atlantis (pierluigimontalbano.blogspot.com) 

(k) Massimo Pittau – The Odyssey  and Nuragic Sardinia (www-pittau-it.translate.goog)  

(l) Miscellanea Homerica, VI, The Classical Journal, Vol. 23, No. 8 (May, 1928), pp. 615-617 (3 pages) *

(m) https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/mythic-scheria-and-legendary-phaeacians-001034