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

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Delisle de Sales

Hissmann, Michael (m)

Michael Hissmann (1752-1784) was a German philosopher of some repute. He also translated a number of French works into German., including that of Delisle de Sales, in which he added his own view that Atlantis had been situated in the Atlantic contrary to the view of the original author. He died of tuberculosis while in his early thirties,*[in the same year that he became a full professor. For German readers, Thorwald C. Franke has a more extensive account[1255.385] of Hissmann’s work.]*

Caucasus Mountains

The Caucasus Mountains lie between the Black and Caspian Seas and contain the highestCaucasus_Borders4 mountain in Europe, Mount Elbrus (Russia). In ancient times it was the location of several kingdoms of whom two were known as Albania and Iberia.(d)>Today, they contain a small part of the Russia Federation along with the former Soviet republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.<

>Delisle de Sales was probably the first to suggest the Caucasus as the home of the original Atlantis, with refugees from there establishing Plato’s Atlantis in the Central Mediterranean. However, the greatest proponent of the Caucasus location for Atlantis was R.A. Fessenden who wrote, The Deluged Civilisation of the Caucasus Isthmus, an extensive multi-volume work [1012] on the subject published early in the 20th century.<

>Regarding the Pillars of Herakles  being in the Caucasus Fessenden noted “The fact that Nebuchadnezzar, after reaching them in his northern expedition, next went to the north shore of the Black Sea and to Thrace; and that Hercules, coming back from the pillars with the cattle of Geryon, traversed the north shore of the Black Sea (see Megasthenes, quoted by Strabo and Herodotus, 4.8), puzzled the ancient geographers because they thought that the Pillars were at the straits of Gibraltar. And because they had overlooked the fact that the Phoenicians of Sidon had known that the Pillars had been lost and that the Phoenicians had sent out four expeditions to look for them but had reached no conclusion from these expeditions except that the straits of Gibraltar were not the true Pillars of Hercules.” See Strabo, 2.5 (m)<

More recently, Ronnie Gallagher, an admirer of Fessenden, has studied the Caucasus region, in particular, Amazons.Caucasus 1895the hydrology of the Caspian Sea(a), where he identified strandlines up to 225 metres above sea level (ASL), which he considers to be evidence of a vast inland Eurasian sea at the end of the last Ice Age. In Azerbaijan, he also found cart ruts similar to those on Malta as well as stone circles on the Absheron Peninsula(b). Professor E. N. Badyukova has offered some critical comments regarding Gallagher’s claims(k).

Flinders Petrie also referenced Fessenden in his (1926) paper The Origins of the Book of the Dead(f), in which he concluded that the cultural connections of the earliest Egyptians, as well as the physical descriptions in their mythology, point to the Caucasus region. When, further, we find there the names of the principal places of the mythology in their relative positions, it gives strong grounds for regarding that region as the homeland of the earliest civilisation of the Egyptians.”

A few years later, an article by Margaret A. Murray in Antiquity (Volume 15 – Issue 60 – Dec. 1941)  noted that Petrie’s “opinion was based entirely on literary and philological evidence” resulting in archaeologists being slow to accept it. To partially counter this Murray offered two pieces of evidence in support of Petrie’s proposed Egyptian-Caucasus connection.(i)

However, I must point out that in 1874 Hyde Clarke delivered a paper to the Royal Anthropological Institute in which he claimed that the Colchians in the Caucasus had been an Egyptian colony(h). Clarke also employed language similarities>and Herodotus’ Histories (Bk2.102-106)< to support his contention. So we can reasonably ask, who was right or were both Clarke and Flinders Petrie wrong?

A forum on Graham Hancock’s website offered some more discussion about an Egyptian link with the Caucasus(j).

Jean-Michel Hermans has claimed that the megalith builders of Brittany originally came from the Caucasus, and arrived there after a stop in what is now Bulgaria around 5000 BC(l),>and while there, they discovered mathematical relationships such as ‘pi’ and the ‘golden ratio’ !<

The Amazons of Greek mythology are thought by some to have originated in the Caucasus and as late as 1671, Sir John Chardin reported that a tribe of Amazons existed in Georgia. Interestingly, a 19th-century photo shows two armed ladies from Armenia captioned as ‘Amazons of Armenia 1895’.

An added mystery was offered by Alexander Braghine, who recounted that “I was present when a former Russian officer of Georgian origin found himself able to talk with the natives of Vizcaya immediately upon his arrival in Northern Spain: he spoke Georgian, but the Basques understood this language.” [156.187]

Currently, Bruce Fenton has claimed the Caucasus as the home of giants. However, Jason Colavito has demonstrated the unreliability of his claims(c).

In the Krasnodar region of southern Russia hundreds (actually 3,000 and counting) of dolmens are to be found on both sides of the Caucasus. Interestingly, they show a distinctive form of megalithic architecture(g).

I feel that the Caucasus will have a lot more to tell us.

(a) Wayback Machine (archive.org) 

(b) https://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai103_folder/103_articles/103_cart_ruts.html

(c) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/did-bruce-fenton-find-the-homeland-of-bible-giants-in-the-caucasus-mountains

(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_Albania

(e) https://www.academia.edu/37625564/Observations_of_Caspian_strandlines_their_use_as_highstand_indicators_with_consideration_for_their_implications_with_regard_to_regional_geomorphology_paleodrainage_and_biodiversity 

(f) Archive 6947 | (atlantipedia.ie)

(g) The mysterious dolmens and megaliths of the Caucasus – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it) 

(h) https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2841305.pdf  

(i)  Antiquity, Vol. 15, Issue 60, Dec. 1941 p.384-386

(j) New article: Observations on Late Pleistocene Flooding of the… – Graham Hancock Official Website 

(k) Archive 7221 | (atlantipedia.ie) 

(l) Amazon.fr

Delisle de Sales, Jean-Baptiste Izouard

Jean-Baptiste Izouard Delisle de Sales (1741-1816) was a French philosopher who ventured into the dangerous waters of speculative atlantology with the idea that Atlantis had been originally situated in the Delisle_de_SalesCaucasus. In volume 3[1013] of his multi-volume work, Histoire nouvelle de tous les peuples du monde ou Histoire des homes, he hypothesized  that following a catastrophic flood in that region, refugees migrated east and west. Some ended up in the Atlas Mountains from where they got their name. Delisle de Sales believed that the Atlantis of Plato was situated between Italy and Carthage. This view was a consequence of identifying Homer’s Ogygia, the island of Calypso, with Atlantis. He then assumed that Sardinia was a remnant of this island.This led to his identification of the Gulf of Tunis as the location of the Pillars of Heracles. The original French text of Book III, which relates to Atlantis can be read online(a)

*Jason Colavito has translated a relevant section of volume IV of Histoire Philosophique du Monde Primitif? [1669].*

Delisle de Sales, writing in the 18th century cited an anonymous source who placed Atlantis in Taprobane, considered at the time to be a reference to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), not Dhani Irwanto’s Indonesian Kilmantan.

Michael Hissmann (1752-1784) who translated the first book of Delisle de Sales’ Histoire into German added his own commentary that supported an Atlantic location for Atlantis.

It is worth noting that Delisle de Sales included Fabre d’Olivet, the occultist, in his social circle.

(a) https://books.google.ie/books?id=NatGgw0_gBoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Histoire++nouvelle+de+tous+les+peuples+du+monde+ou+Histoire+des+homes&source=bl&ots=6U1LrS9FGJ&sig=nWR6&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Histoire%20%20nouvelle%20de%20tous%20les%20peuples%20du%20monde%20ou%20Histoire%20des%20homes&f=false

Carthage

Carthage is today a suburb of the North African city of Tunis.

Al Barone wrote(k) that it “was founded by Phoenician settlers from the city of Tyre, who brought with them the city-god Melqart. Philistos of Syracuse dates the founding of Carthage to c. 1215 BC, while the Roman historian Appian dates the founding 50 years prior to the Trojan War (i.e. between 1244 and 1234 BC, according to the chronology of Eratosthenes). The Roman poet Virgil imagines that the city’s founding coincides with the end of the Trojan War. However, it is most likely that the city was founded sometime between 846 and 813 BC.

Gerard Gertoux argues(h) that recent discoveries push this date back to at least 870 BC, if not further. Prior to that, the Roman poet, Silius Italicus (100-200 AD), tells us that according to legend the land there had been occupied by Pelasgians(e).

South of Carthage, in modern Tunisia, there are fertile plains that were the breadbasket of Rome and even today can produce two crops a year, despite a much-disimproved climate.

In 500 BC Hanno, the Navigator was dispatched from Carthage with the intention of establishing new African colonies. Around a century later another Carthaginian voyager, Himilco, is also thought to have travelled northward(f) in the Atlantic and possibly reached Ireland, referred to as ‘isola sacra’. Christopher Jones has claimed on his website(d) that Himilco reached Britain and Ireland in the 5th century BC.

Cecil Torr (1857-1928) the British antiquarian and author published a paper in 1891 entitled The Harbours of Carthage(j) in which he suggested that the layout of Carthage may have inspired some of Plato’s descriptions of Atlantis. However, we are now aware that some of these features did not exist until after Plato’s time.

>Sometime later Victor Bérard,  pointed out[0160] the similarity of Carthage with Plato’s description of Atlantis. The prominent Atlantis sceptic Sprague de Camp at least complimented Bérard that his theory was ” more difficult to eliminate ” than those of other researchers and authors. After all, de Camp concedes that Carthage was ” in the right direction from the point of view of Greece “, which cannot be said of Crete, for example. Atlantisforschung discusses at some length de Camp’s view of Bérard’s Atlantean Carthage theory(I).<

Frank Joseph followed Lewis Spence in suggesting that Carthage may have been built on the remains of an earlier city that had been Atlantis or one of her colonies. In like manner, when the Romans destroyed Carthage after the Punic Wars, they built a new Carthage on the ruins, which became the second-largest city in the Western Empire.

The circular laycarthagenorthafrica200bcout of the city with a central Acropolis on Byrsa hill, surrounded by a plain with an extensive irrigation system, has prompted a number of other authors, including Massimo Pallotino[222] and C. Corbato[223] to suggest that it had been the model for Plato’s description of Atlantis. This idea has now been adopted by Luana Monte(c).

Andis Kaulins has suggested that “ancient Tartessus (which was written in Phoenician as Kart-hadasht) could have been the predecessor city to Carthage on the other side of the Strait of Sicily. Plato reported that Tartessus was at the Pillars of Herakles.”(a)  Kaulins places the ‘Pillars’ somewhere between the ‘toe of Italy’ and Tunisia.

Richard Miles has written a well-received history[1540] of Carthage, a task hampered by the fact that the Carthaginian libraries were destroyed or dispersed after the fall of the city, perhaps with the exception of Mago’s agricultural treatise, which was translated into Latin and Greek and widely quoted.

Delisle de Sales placed the Pillars of Heracles in the Gulf of Tunis.

A book-length PhD thesis by Sean Rainey on Carthaginian imperialism and trade is available online(b).

(aPillars of Heracles – Alternative Location (archive.org)

(b) https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/4354

(c) ARTICOLO: Cartagine come Atlantide? (archive.org)

(d) https://gatesofnineveh.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/high-north-carthaginian-exploration-of-ireland/

(e) http://www.loebclassics.com/view/silius_italicus-punica/1934/pb_LCL277.425.xml?result=1&rskey=K0cyB6&readMode=recto

(f) http://phoenicia.org/himilco.html

(h) https://www.academia.edu/2421053/Dating_the_foundation_of_Carthage?email_work_card=view-paper

(i) Atlantis Rising magazine  #39 p69  http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At

(j)  The Classical Review5 (6): 280–284. June 1891

(k) https://www.academia.edu/5333030/The_Amazingh_Warriors_of_Amazon_and_Carthage

(l) Atlantis in Karthago – Die Lokalisierung des Victor Bérard – Atlantisforschung.de (German) *

Atlantis in Carthage – The localization of Victor Bérard – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) (English) *

Ogygia*

Ogygia is the home of Calypso, referred to by Homer in Book V of his Odyssey. It is accepted by some as an island in the Mediterranean that was destroyed by an earthquake before the Bronze Age. The Greek writers Euhemerus in the 4th  century BC and Callimachus who flourished in the 3rd century BC,  identified the Maltese archipelago as Ogygia. Others have more specifically named the Maltese island of Gozo as Ogygia. Anton Mifsud has pointed out[209] that Herodotus, Hesiod and Diodorus Siculus have all identified the Maltese Islands with Ogygia.

John Vella has added his support to the idea of a Maltese Ogygia in a paper published in the Athens Journal of History (Vol.3 Issue 1) in which he noted that “The conclusions that have emerged from this study are that Homer’s Ogygia is not an imaginary but a reference to and a record of ancient Gozo-Malta.”

Adding to the confusion, Aeschylus, the tragedian (523-456 BC) calls the Nile, Ogygian, and Eustathius, a Byzantine grammarian (1115-1195), claimed that Ogygia was the earliest name for Egypt(j).

Isaac Newton wrote a number of important works including The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended [1101]in which he discussed a range of mythological links to Atlantis, including a possible connection with Homer’s Ogygia. There is now evidence that he concurred(c) with the idea of a Maltese Ogygia in The Original of Monarchies(d).

Strabo referred to “Eleusis and Athens on the Triton River [in Boiotia]. These cities, it is said, were founded by Kekrops (Cecrops), when he ruled over Boiotia (Boeotia), then called Ogygia, but were later wiped out by inundations.”(i) However, Strabo also declared that Ogygia was to be found in the ‘World Ocean’ or Atlantic (j). To say the least, these two conflicting statements require explanation.

Richard Hennig opted for Madeira following the opinion of von Humboldt. Spanuth argued strongly against either Madeira or the Canaries[0017.149] and gave his support to the Azores as the most likely location of Calypso’s Island.. Not unexpectedly the Azores, in the mid-Atlantic, have also been nominated as Ogygia by other 20th century researchers such as Sykes(e) and Mertz[397]. In a 2019 paper(f), Gerard Janssen also placed Ogygia in the Azores, specifically naming the island of Saõ Miguel, which both Iman Wilkens [610.239] and Spanuth [015.226] also claimed. Spanuth added that until the 18th-century Saõ Miguel was known as umbilicus maris, which is equivalent to the Greek term, omphalos thallasses, used by Homer to describe Ogygia in chapter eight of the Odyssey!

Homer in his Odyssey identifies Ogygia as the home of Calypso. The Roman poet Catullus writing in the 1st century BC linked Ogygia with Calypso in Malta(g). However, Gozo’s claim is challenged by those supporting Gavdos in Crete(k). This opinion has been expounded more fully by Katerina Kopaka in a paper published in the journal Cretica Chronica(l), where her starting point is the claim that Gavdos had been previously known as Gozo! Another Greek claimant is Lipsi(o) in the Dodecanese. We must also add Mljet in Croatia to the list of contenders claiming(p) to have been the home of Calypso. Mljet is also competing with Malta as the place where St. Paul was shipwrecked!

>Further south is the beautiful Greek island of Othoni near Corfu where local tradition claims an association with Calypso. An article on the Greek Reporter website(r) suggests that Evidence confirming this legend appears in the writings of Homer, who described a strong scent of cypress on Ogygia. Many cypress trees are grown on Othonoi.

Shortly after departing the island on a raft, Odysseus is shipwrecked on Scheria, which we know of today as Corfu. This implies that the two islands Homer described were relatively close. Likewise, the islands of Othonoi and Corfu are separated by a relatively short distance. Due to this mythological connection, during the 16th century, many naval maps described Othonoi as ‘Calypso island.‘”

Mifsud quotes another Roman of the same period, Albius Tibullus, who also identified Atlantis with Calypso. Other Maltese writers have seen all this as strong evidence for the existence of Atlantis in their region. Delisle de Sales considered Ogygia to be between Italy and Carthage, but opted for Sardinia as the remains of Calypso’s island.

Other researchers such as Geoffrey Ashe and Andrew Collins have opted for the Caribbean as the home of Ogygia. Another site supports Mesoamerica as the location of Ogygia, which the author believes can be equated with Atlantis(h).  An even more extreme suggestion by Ed Ziomek places Ogygia in the Pacific(b)!

In the Calabria region of southern Italy lies Capo Collone (Cape of Columns). 18th-century maps(m) show two or more islands off the cape with one named Ogygia offering echoes of Homer’s tale.  Respected atlases as late as 1860 continued to show a non-existent island there. It seems that these were added originally by Ortelius, inspired by Pseudo-Skylax and Pliny(n) . Additionally, there is a temple to Hera Lacinia at Capo Colonne, which is reputed to have been founded by Hercules!

By way of complete contrast, both Felice Vinci and John Esse Larsen have proposed that the Faeroe Islands included Ogygia. In the same region, Iceland was nominated by Gilbert Pillot as the location of Ogygia and Calypso’s home[742]. Ilias D. Mariolakos, a Greek professor of Geology also makes a strong case(a) for identifying Iceland with Ogygia based primarily on the writings of Plutarch. He also supports the idea of Minoans in North America.

A more recent suggestion has come from Manolis Koutlis[1617], who, after a forensic examination of various versions of Plutarch’s work, in both Latin and Greek, also placed Ogygia in North America, specifically on what is now the tiny island of St. Paul at the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, a gulf that has also been proposed as the location of Atlantis.

Jean-Silvain Bailly also used the writings of Plutarch to sustain his theory of Ogygia, which he equated with Atlantis having an Arctic location[0926.2.299],  specifically identifying Iceland as Ogygia/Atlantis with the islands of Greenland, Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen (Svalbard) as the three islands equally distant from it and each other.

The novelist Samuel Butler (1835-1902) identified Pantelleria as Calypso’s Island, but the idea received little support(q).

However, Ireland has been linked with Ogygia by mainly Irish writers. In the 17th century historian, Roderick O’Flaherty(1629-1718), wrote a history of Ireland entitled Ogygia[0495], while in the 19th century, Margaret Anne Cusack (1832-1899) also wrote a history in which she claimed[1342] a more explicit connection. This was followed in 1911 by a book[1343] by Marion McMurrough Mulhall in which she also quotes Plutarch to support the linking of Ireland and Ogygia. More recently, in The Origin of Culture[0217Thomas Dietrich promotes the same view, but offers little hard evidence to support it.

>In 2023, an article on the Greek Reporter website renewed speculation regarding the possible identification of Ireland with Ogygia(s).

This matter would appear to be far from a resolution.

[0495]+ http://archive.org/stream/ogygiaorchronolo02oflaiala/ogygiaorchronolo02oflaiala_djvu.txt

(a) https://greeceandworld.blogspot.ie/2013_08_01_archive.html

(b) https://www.flickr.com/photos/10749411@N03/5284413003/

(c) See: Archive 3439

(d) http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00040

(e) ‘Where Calypso may have Lived’ (Atlantis, 5, 1953, pp 136-137)

(f)https://www.academia.edu/38535990/AT LANTIC_OGUGIA_AND_KALUPSO (Eng)

https://www.homerusodyssee.nl/id26.htm (Dutch)

(g) Lib. iv, Eleg. 1

(h) See: Archive 3439

(i) Strabo, Geography 9. 2. 18

(j) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogygia

(k) https://gavdosgreece.page.tl

(l) https://www.academia.edu/24851908/Kopaka_K._2011_Gozo_of_Malta_Gozo_of_Crete_Gavdos_._Thoughts_on_a_twinned_Mediterranean_micro-insular_toponymy_and_epic_tradition_???????_???????_??_13-32

(m) https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/734438651719489108/

(n) See: Note 5 in Armin Wolf’s Wayback Machine (archive.org)

(o) http://www.wiw.gr/english/lipsi_niriedes/

(p) National Park The island of Mljet Croatia | Adriagate (archive.org) *

(q) https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/snap-shots-samuel-butler-esq-1893-94 

(r) https://greekreporter.com/2022/10/17/othonoi-island-westernmost-point-greece/ 

(s) https://greekreporter.com/2023/01/21/odysseus-travel-ireland/ 

 

 

Indonesia

Indonesia in recent years has seen an increasing number of supporters for the idea of Atlantis being located in the vicinity of today’s archipelago, prior to the ending of the last Ice Age, on the submerged continental shelf now frequently referred to as Sundaland. The redating of cave paintings on the island of Sulawesi suggests that they are as old as any in Europe(h), possibly stretching back as far as 40,000 years. A 2016 report(j) has now pushed back the earliest human occupation on Sulawesi to 100,000 years ago.

indonesiaAs far as I can ascertain the earliest suggested linkage between Atlantis and Indonesia came from the leading Theosophist, C. W.Leadbeater (1854-1934). In a booklet, The Occult History of Java[1094],  published in 1951 he proposed that Java had been an Atlantean colony.

However, it is reported(g) that Sukarno (1901-1970), the first president of Indonesia, spoke of Atlantis nearly half a century ago when he located it in the Atlantic

William Lauritzen was probably the first to advocate this idea of a Sundaland connection on his website, but it seems that the concept was given a huge boost by the publication of the late professor Arysio Nunes dos Santosbook Atlantis: The Lost Continent Finally Found[320].

The idea was given a boost in February 2012 when it was reported(a) by a somewhat incredulous Jakarta Post that the Indonesian president had given his support to a search for an ancient sunken civilisation in Indonesian waters following meetings with researchers including British author Stephen Oppenheimer.

May 2013 saw The Jakarta Post report(b) the publication of a book by local geologist, Danny Hilman Natawidjaja in which he claims that Atlantis was part of prehistoric Indonesia. In the book, entitled Penemuan Atlantis Nusantara (The Discovery of Atlantis in the Archipelago) he claims to base his theory on Plato’s text. However, commenting on the book the Indonesian archaeologist Daud Aris Tanudirjo said that Natawidjaja’s claim was ‘premature’, pointing out that the author had only an English translation of Plato’s text to work with and suggesting that Natawidjaja had no knowledge of ancient Greek. Further background information was subsequently made available(c).

Natawidjaja also claims that a site at Gunung Padang, 120 km southwest of Jakarta may be more than 9,000 years old! Graham Hancock   has expanded on this idea(e). Nevertheless, a recent assault on Natawidjaja’s theories in an open letter(m) from Rebecca Bradley, has laid bare the weaknesses in his contentions.

In 2015 Dahni Irwanto published Atlantis: The lost city is in Java Sea[1093], in which he located the biblical Garden of Eden and the legendary island of Taprobane on the Indonesian island of Kalimantan* (Borneo) and placed Atlantis off its coast. Irwanto has built on the work of  Santos, expanding Santos’ 32-checklist to 60 headings. In his well-illustrated book, Irwanto goes further with the suggestion that Atlantean Indonesia was a cultural centre from which post-diluvian refugees spread throughout the world influencing the great civilisations of Asia, the Mediterranean and the Americas.(p.143) He subsequently published Sundaland: Tracing the Cradle of Civilization (1618) in which he develops his idea that ancient Indonesia was a hyperdiffusionist hub. Although I found this book interesting, I thought it was over speculative.

Coincidentally, Delisle de Sales, writing in the 18th century cited an anonymous source who placed Atlantis in Taprobane, considered at the time to be a reference to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), not Irwanto’s Indonesian Kalimantan*.

A short April 2016 blog(k) suggests that Quranic Archaeology may be used to support the idea of an Indonesian Atlantis, a sentiment expressed again a month later(l).

The ‘Atlantis in Indonesia’ bandwagon became more crowded in 2019 when an entire group climbed aboard. They are known as Turangga Seta, whose founder and spokesman Timmy Hardati claims that Atlantis was submerged in the Java Sea. They also claim that there is a 300-metre-high pyramid inside Bandung’s Mount Lalakon! However, the twist in the tale is that the group has no interest in conventional science preferring to depend on psychic ‘conversations with ancestors’.(o) While Irwanto’s theories may be hard to accept, at least he presents them in a rational coherent manner, the same cannot be said of the Turangga Seta(n).

(a) See: Archive 3629

(b) https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/05/28/ri-was-home-atlantis-says-geologist.html

(c) See; https://web.archive.org/web/20140306231657/https://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2013/05/indonesian-geologist-says-region-perfect

(d) https://www.dailygrail.com/Sacred-Sites/2013/7/Indonesian-Megalithic-Site-Could-Be-More-9000-Years-Old-And-Part-Ancient-Pyramid

(e) https://www.sott.net/article/271881-Gunung-Padang-The-lost-records-of-Atlantis

(f) https://theosophists.org/library/books/occult-history-of-java/

(g) https://web.archive.org/web/20170725051521/https://www.berdikarionline.com/ketika-bung-karno-membicarakan-atlantis

(h) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rockart-ages-indonesian-cave-paintings-are-40000-years-old-180952970/?no-ist

(i) https://atlantisjavasea.com/tag/plato/

(j) https://media.uow.edu.au/releases/UOW208488.html

(k) https://www.islamsejati.com/2016/03/ahli-arkeologi-fakta-dari-al-quran.html  (offline Jan. 2017)

(l) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20160714100743/https://www.kesehatan-media.com/2016/05/subhanallah-al-quran-menguatkan.html

(m) https://www.skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2017/05/14/gunung-padang-open-letter-danny/

(n) https://web.archive.org/web/20190515025053if_/https://www.vice.com/en_asia/article/zmpne3/atlantis-location-java-sea-indonesia-proof

(o) https://www.vice.com/en/article/zmpne3/atlantis-location-java-sea-indonesia-proof 

Also See: Zia Abbas, Sunil Prasannan and Panji R. Hadinoto

Sardinia

Sardinia is an autonomous region of Italy and after Sicily is the second largest island in the Mediterranean. Before the end of the last Ice Age, Sardinia had been joined to the European mainland because of the lower sea levels, which provided an easy access route for early settlers. Recent genetic studies revealed that an exceptionally high proportion of the population is seemingly descended from people who have occupied it since the Neolithic and Bronze Age, between 8,000 and 2,000 years ago.”(al) Known to the Greeks as ‘Hyknusa’, during its long history, Phoenicians, Etruscans, Greeks and Romans have all left their mark on Sardinia. Before that, the megalith builders(j) were active in Sardinia and Corsica. A comprehensive history of Sardinia from the time of Atlantis is available online, in Italian and English(m). There is a tradition that Sardinia got its name from Sardus, son of Hercules(aa).

 

Sardinia’s important position in the ancient world was suggested by Mark McMenamin, a geologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, who announced in Numismatist Magazine in November 1996(ar), that he believed that the Carthaginians produced gold coins, between 350 and 320 BC, depicting small maps of the Mediterranean world with India to the east and America to the west(e). When computer enhancement was applied to the images on some of those coins, he was amazed to note how the strange markings on them resembled maps made by Ptolemy, the Greek astronomer and geographer, who lived around 500 years later. The maps show what appears to emphasise the Mediterranean region, with Sardinia as a dot in the centre. The north coast of Africa appears at the bottom with Europe at the top, above the Phoenician homeland and India. The Strait of Gibraltar lies to the west; after that is the landmass of America. Some sceptics have been convinced of the correctness of McMenamin’s interpretation after seeing the enlarged images.

However, in 2000, McMenamin was obliged to confirm that the coins in question were fakes(as) as revealed in his book, Phoenicians, Fakes and Barry Fell [1738].

It has been suggested(p) that the ancient city (2000-1400 BC) of Nora, just south of today’s Pula, was thriving long before the arrival of the Phoenicians in the 8th cent. BC. It appears that contact between Sardinia and its trading partners suddenly ceased around 1400 BC, until the arrival of the Phoenicians. Phoenician inscriptions, one dated to the 11th century BC, were been found at Nora(q) in 1773. These inscriptions refer to Pygmalian, King of Tyre and to a battle between Sardinians and Phoenicians at Tarshish!

It has been postulated that the Shardana, one of the Sea Peoples of the 2nd millennium BC, gave their name to Sardinia and were probably the builders of the hundreds of Nuraghi there. Leonardo Melis, a native Sardinian, has studied and written at length on the subject. David Rohl, the archaeologist and advocate of revising generally accepted ancient chronologies, has argued[0232] that the Shardana were in fact originally from Sardis in ancient Anatolia and that they migrated westward to Sardinia following the collapse of the Hittite Empire.

Angelo Paratico also proposed a connection between the Lydian capital Sardis and Sardinia in a lecture delivered in Hong Kong in 2004(an). Wikipedia includes the following information According to Timaeus, one of Plato’s dialogues, Sardinia and its people as well, the “Sardonioi” or “Sardianoi”, might have been named after “Sardò”, a legendary woman from Sardis, capital of the ancient Kingdom of Lydia in Anatolia.”(ao)

Apart from the enigmatic remains of the Nuraghic period, Sardinia has presented archaeologists with a greater mystery in the form of a structure at Monte d’Accoddi that closely resembles a Mesopotamian ziggurat. The earliest parts of the monument have been dated to circa 3000 BC – the same period during which comparable step pyramids were being built in Mesopotamia. Leonardo Melis has speculated that the name of the site, Accoddi, may be connected to the Akkadian civilisation. Step pyramids are also found in Sicily(c) and additionally the Le Barnenez cairn(ad) (4500-4700 BC), in Brittany, has a superficial resemblance to some of the Western Mediterranean ‘pyramids’.

>Philip Coppens, author of The New Pyramid Age [759] has also written a paper(az) on Sardinia’s only known pyramid Monte d’Accoddi concluded that despite almost forty years of excavation on the site, we know little as to what Monte d’Accoddi was, beyond the “visually obvious”. We do not know its use, nor why it was built, or why it was unique. However, the fact that there are so many questions, illustrates how little we truly know about “the pyramid movement” and how it inspired people all over the world, whether in Egypt, Peru, Mesopotamia or here in Sardinia, to begin the construction of pyramids. Currently, the oldest pyramids have been found in Peru. And though in the “Old World” we link pyramids specifically with Egypt, one group of people in north-western Sardinia had built one long before the Egyptian Pyramid Age ever began. That’s all we know, and that’s not much, is it?”<

sardinia mapRecent discoveries of statue menhirs on Sardinia have suggested that in the 4th millennium BC the island was part of a culture which spread from the Black Sea to the Atlantic(f).

The ancient-wisdom.com website, in a well-illustrated article, has drawn attention to the fact that the nuraghi, while very numerous are not the only distinct form of megalithic monuments on the island, but there are two others known as ‘Tombes Gigantes’ (Giants Tombs) and ‘Domus de Janas’ (Spirit Homes).(ap)

Statue menhirs are also found on adjacent Corsica.

>Apart from the Monte d’Accoddi feature, the statue menhirs and the thousands of nuraghi, Sardinia has another mystery to offer, in the form of cart ruts comparable with the better-known ruts on Malta. Dr Dominique Görlitz has also studied the cartruts found in Sardinia(ax). Images of these ruts can also be seen in a YouTube video(ay).<

The end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries saw Antoine Court de Géblin and Delisle de Sales suggesting Sardinia as a remnant of Atlantis. However, the first person in more recent times to promote a Sardinian Atlantis was Paolo Valente Poddighe, who did so in 1982, but, it was 2006 before he published a book[711] supporting this claim.

It was nearly another twenty years before Robert Paul Ishoy was the first to have a website(a) that promoted Sardinia as the site of Atlantis. His contention is that Atlantis was a powerful state based in Sardinia that controlled most of the western Mediterranean and was at its peak between 2000 BC and 1400 BC. Ishoy further contends that the Keftiu, Atlantean and Nuraghi cultures were all one. He contends that they made attempts to conquer the principal civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean including the Minoans, Athenians and Egyptians. During one of these attacks, the Athenians with the unexpected support of floods and earthquakes defeated the Atlanteans. Ishoy has been planning an expedition to Sardinia to seek further evidence in support of his thesis.

In 2002, the Italian journalist, Sergio Frau, published a book[302], in Italian, which firmly located Atlantis just south of Sardinia, where it is now covered by water(ah). He argued that the Pillars of Heracles were at one time located as a boundary marker at the Strait of Sicily and later moved to Gibraltar as the Greek awareness of the western Mediterranean developed through expanded trade. Frau attributes this change of location to the geographer Eratosthenes who flourished more than a century after Plato. Understandably, his theory has been greeted with the usual hail of criticism but was given support by UNESCO when it organised a symposium on the theory in Paris in 2005 followed by an exhibition in Rome the following year.

In the interest of balance, Thorwald C. Franke’s critique(n) of Frau’s work is required reading, as well as a 21-point refutation of his book signed by 71 Sardinian historians, geologists and archaeologists(w).  However, others such as Silvio Diego Novo have followed Frau’s lead(aq), while Aldo Bonincontro has also nominated Sardinia as Atlantis, which he did in a 2007 article, but without any reference to Frau!

It is obvious that there is considerable local support for the idea of a Sardinian Atlantis, but for some, this seems to be often linked with the independence movement on the island.

In June 2015 Frau together with a number of Italian scientists joined him when he visited Sardinia(x). They included historian Mario Lombardo; archaeologist Maria Teresa Giannotta; Claudio Giardino, a specialist in ancient metallurgy; cartographer Andrea Cantile; archivist Massimo Faraglia; and Stefano Tinti, a geophysicist and expert on tidal waves. Their objective was to study the evidence of a huge tsunami inundating the southern part of the island in ancient times.

A report in The Guardian (15/8/15) noted(y) that “Professor Tinti explained that until the 1980s no one was aware that tidal waves had occurred in the Mediterranean. But since 2004 scientists have identified 350 events of this type over a 2,500-year period,” and regarding the Sardinian tsunami “So what would have been required in our case?” he then asked. “We’re talking about a huge volume of water, some 500 metres high [the elevation up to which the nuraghi were affected]. Only a comet could do that if the impact occurred very close to the coast and in a very specific direction,” he asserted. An event of this sort may have occurred near Cagliari, with the resulting wave devastating the plain of Campidano.”

Afterwards, Frau’s claim was given further attention(u) when an exhibition in the museum in Sardara, focused on that catastrophe which hit the island around 1175 BC. This cataclysm mainly affected the southern portion of Sardinia covering it with a layer of mud. A geophysicist, Stefano Tinti, claims that the most likely cause of such an incursion would be an enormous tidal wave resulting from the impact of a comet in the Mediterranean. It was not surprising that Jason Colavito debunked(v) any linkage of Sardinia with Atlantis as well as the claim of a cometary impact, but avoided offering any explanation for the layer of mud.

A French website offers an interesting titbit regarding the extent of the mud, noting that A nuraghe was discovered not far from the Sardinian town of Barumini.Les archéologues ont mis 14 ans pour ôter les 12 mètres de boue qui recouvraient ce monument. The archaeologists took 14 years to remove the 12 meters of mud that covered this monument”.

An alternative view of Sardinia and its nuraghi was offered(z) by Brian Cairns on the Thunderbolts website, where he claimed that the nuraghi were constructed to offer protection from cosmic electrical strikes. In his conclusion, he states that “while the evidence above is circumstantial, it seems that Sardinia had a very active electric environment.”

The late Vittorio Castellani who had advocated locating Atlantis in the British Isles was so impressed by Frau’s book that he changed his mind and supported the idea of a Sardinian Atlantis. Another keen supporter of Frau is Mario Tozzi who has also suggested that if Sardinia was Atlantis that the mysterious Etruscans may have been Sardinians(r)(s). Further support has come from Mario Cabriolu and architect Paolo Macoratti, who identifies the Plain of Campidano with the Plain of Atlantis and locates the Atlantean capital further south in the Gulf of Cagliari, illustrated on a map on the sardolog.com site(t).

As Sardinia is still very much above water, it might seem an unlikely choice as the location of Atlantis. However, if it is accepted that the Pillars of Heracles were in fact situated in the Strait of Sicily, there are a number of features on Sardinia that would support the theories of Ishoy and Frau. There is evidence that the large plain of Campidano was inundated, from the south, by a tsunami, following an earthquake, in the Central Mediterranean in the 2ndmillennium BC. Professor Mauro Perra has argued against this(o) using extensive stratigraphic evidence. However, this tsunami also covered Punic and Roman remains indicating a much later date.

Furthermore, there are mountains protecting the plain from cold northern winds and rich mineral deposits are also found in the locality. Sardinia was well-known in ancient times as a source of silver as well as copper, iron and lead(af). There is also some evidence that a small but important quantity of tin was available on the island according to Stephen L. Dyson and Robert J. Rowland Jnr., in their recent history of Sardinia[1530]. The excellent phoenicia.org website comments that Sardinia can scarcely have been occupied by the Phoenicians for anything but its metals. The southern and south-western parts of the island, where they made their settlements, were rich in copper and lead; and the position of the cities seems to indicate the intention to appropriate these metals.

In 2010, Giuseppe Mura published a book of nearly 600 pages, in which he identifies the Gulf of Cagliari as the location of the Pillars of Heracles that previously led to a channel which gave access to the Plain of Campidano, which he claims(g)(h) was the Plain of Atlantis described by Plato.

Furthermore, another young Sardinian has recently pointed out that colours associated by Plato with Atlantis, namely red, white and black, are found naturally on the island as well as excavated buildings of the Nuraghic period being painted in red and black stripes. The Sardinian regional flag also uses these colours.

We can expect that the future will see further development of the Sardinian Theory, which shows more promise than many of the other suggested locations.

For those interested in reading more about the history of Sardinia from its prehistory until the present should visit Claudio de Tisi’s website(i) (In Italian and English). It includes a review of Sergio Frau’s book on Atlantis. In 2011, travel writer Angela Corrias wrote a two-part article)(ab)(ac), which also includes a review of Frau’s theory.

There would appear to be growing support from local researchers on the island for a Sardinian Atlantis. One of the more recent is Giorgio Valdés who equates Sardinia with Tartessos and Atlantis. This idea of Sardinia and Tartessos being identical goes back to the middle of the 20th century when Wikipedia(k) tells us “that W.F. Albright (1941) and F.M. Cross (1972) suggested Tarshish was Sardinia because of the discovery of the ‘Nora Stone’ or ‘Nora Fragment’.” An extensive article(l) on the Nora Stele, in Italian, was written in January 2014, based on a translation by Jose Stromboni.

In 2013, Marin, Minella & Schievenin stated [972.43] that Sardinia was called Tartessos in ancient times, unfortunately, without providing any references.

In August 2016, Frau’s theory received a further spurt of publicity with an interview in Sputnik News, which was followed a few days later by the announcement that National Geographic was planning a documentary, co-produced by James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici, based on Robert Ishoy’s Atlantis in Sardinia theory(ae).

However, Diaz-Montexano is also certain that the documentary will focus on his theory(ai). In the end, both theories were featured in what turned out to be a disappointing documentary.

In late 2016, Nicola Betti, Luciano Melis & Alessandro Mugria published Il mare addosso. L’isola che fu Atlantide e poi divenne Sardegna [1571] in which they add their support to the idea of Atlantis in Sardinia. They believe “with reasonable certainty that a large area of south-west Sardinia was hit by a swarm of iron meteorites in a period between 11,000 and 9000 BC,” which would have caused a catastrophic mega-tsunami(am).

Pier Paolo Saba, another Sardinian, suggests in his book Atlantide [739], that following a catastrophe around 10,000 BC Atlantis was destroyed and survivors were dispersed to the Americas, Northern Europe and the Mediterranean. One group settled in Saba’s native Sardinia, where they became the Shardana and were responsible for the building of the thousands of nuraghi found throughout the island and were part of the Sea Peoples who attacked Egypt(au)(av).

Luigi Usai is now promoting [1814] the idea that a conjoined Sardinia and Corsica had constituted the island of Atlantis and its capital located at Sulcis at the southern end of Sardinia!(at)

In July 2021 I was sent a number of images that purported to show anomalous underwater images in the Central Mediterranean northeast of Malta. At first sight, they appeared to show extensive manmade features. However, further investigation by the person who sent them to me eventually discovered that the images were the consequence of the flawed computer interpretation of sonar data. In December 2021 Luigi Usai produced the same flawed imagery as evidence that he had discovered a lost submerged civilisation!

So that there is no misunderstanding let me state that I have advocated a Central Mediterranean location for Atlantis for some years. If Sardinia holds that location, I am more than happy to congratulate Usai and Frau. But, I am not convinced by satellite imagery that has so often been proven to be flawed.

I must include here a mention of the website of Pierluigi Montalbano where he and various guest authors have written many interesting articles about Sardinia and its Nuraghic past as well as Atlantis. The site is well worth a browse and as it has Google Translate built-in, making it accessible to all(aw).

(a) http://www.atlantisdiscovered.org/Thesis.htm

(b) See Archive 2139)

(c) See: Archive 2650

(e) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?authorid=22

(f) https://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/004449.html

(g) https://gianfrancopintore.blogspot.com/2011/03/atlantide-in-sardegna-e-cagliari-i.html

(h) https://gianfrancopintore.blogspot.com/2011/03/atlantide-in-sardegna-e-cagliari-ii.html

(i) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20180204153209/https://www.lamiasardegna.it/files/storia-index.htm

(j) http://www.museodeidolmen.it/englishdefault.html

(k) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarshish

(l) https://web.archive.org/web/20151021154531/https://it.paperblog.com/la-stele-di-nora-traduzione-di-jose-stromboni-2139447/

(m) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20180204153209/https://www.lamiasardegna.it/files/storia-index.htm 

(n) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis-sergio-frau-english.htm

(o) https://pierluigimontalbano.blogspot.ie/2014/04/uno-tsunami-cancello-la-civilta-nuragica.html (Italian)

(p) https://www.avidcruiser.com/2014/03/12/search-atlantis-clues-cagliari-sardinia/

(q)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nora_Stone

(r) https://tozzi-national-geographic.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2010/11/17/atlantide-sardegna/  (Italian)

(s) https://tozzi-national-geographic.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2011/07/06/atlantide-sardegna-etruschisardi/comment-page-1/#comment-9421

(t) SardoLog – Sardegna è Atlantide? (archive.org) 

(u) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/15/bronze-age-sardinia-archaeology-atlantis

(v) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/did-a-comet-destroy-atlantis-in-bronze-age-Sardinia

(w) https://www.colonnedercole.it/spip/spip.php?article67 (Italian)

(x) https://anthropologistintheattic.blogspot.ie/2015/11/was-sardinia-home-to-mythical.html

(y) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/15/bronze-age-sardinia-archaeology-atlantis

(z) https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2015/11/20/neolithic-man-and-the-electric-universe/

(aa) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardus

(ab) See Archive 2898

(ac) https://web.archive.org/web/20150908020106/https://www.chasingtheunexpected.com/2011/09/sardinia-land-of-mystery-part-2-atlantis-lost-civilization

(ad) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/cairn-de-barnenez-one-oldest-structures-world-005771?nopaging=1

(ae) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20190331144818/https://www.myheraldreview.com/free_access/national-geographic-calls-on-sierra-vista-researcher-about-atlantis/article_c3685cf8-7229-11e6-9512-b390b32f6ba7.html

(af) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mining_in_Sardinia

(ag) https://phoenicia.org/minning.html

(ah) https://en.yibada.com/articles/155860/20160831/atlantis-really-sardinia-claims-expert.htm

(ai) https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=https://atlantisng.com/blog/&prev=search

(aj) https://fr.sputniknews.com/sci_tech/201608241027440170-sardaigne-atlantide-hypothese/

(ak) https://www.academia.edu/4635111/Were_the_Sea_Peoples_Mycenaeans_The_Evidence_of_Ship_Iconography

(al)  https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-04/uoh-afu040617.php

(am) https://www.lanuovasardegna.it/tempo-libero/2017/01/18/news/storia-misteriosa-dell-isola-che-fu-atlantide-1.14735432

(an) https://www.gingkoedizioni.it/is-there-an-association-between-sardis-and-sardinia/

(ao) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_people

(ap) http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/italysardinia.htm

(aq) See: Archive 2353 (Italian)

(ar) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236000049_Cartography_on_Carthaginian_Gold_Staters

(as) https://www.academia.edu/37093408/PHOENICIANS_FAKES_AND_BARRY_FELL_SOLVING_THE_MYSTERY_Of_CARTHAGINIAN_COINS_FOUND_IN_AMERICA

(at) https://www.atlantisfound.it/2021/01/24/why-didnt-scientists-find-atlantis-before-usai-luigi/

(au) http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread345932/pg1

(av) http://www.commuicati-stampa.ws/2009/02/10/1413

(aw) https://pierluigimontalbano.blogspot.com/2014/04/uno-tsunami-cancello-la-civilta-nuragica.html

(ax) On the trail of the Cart Rut mystery – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *

(ay) Cart Ruts of Ancient Sardinia and The Hypogeum Tombs of Su Crucifissu Mannu | Megalithomania – Bing video *

(az) https://www.eyeofthepsychic.com/nap_art13/  *