Hispaniola*

Published February 11, 2010

Hispaniola is the second largest island in the West Indies, containing Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Before Columbus, Hispaniola was known by the locals as Quisqueya – Mother of the Lands. It is sometimes spelt Kiskeya.

In 1794 a Guatemalan doctor and scholar, Paul Felix Cabrera, proposed that Hispaniola was Atlantis as well as a mysterious Atlantic island called Septimania. However, his theories, although revolutionary, were flawed by political bias against neighbouring Cuba. In the mid-19^th century, Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg was another who proposed that Hispaniola was in fact a remnant of Plato’s Atlantis. In 1885 the American historian, Hyde Clarke, also suggested Hispaniola as a possible location.

The most recent advocate is Prof. Emilio Spedicato who proposes⁽^a) the island as the home of Atlantis and contends that a consideration of the topography of Hispaniola suggests that the ruins of the capital city, if not completely destroyed by the catastrophic event (most probably a huge tsunami due to either an oceanic impact of a comet or an Apollo object or to the tidal effects of a planet passing close to the Earth) lie under thick sediments in the bottom of Lake Henriquillo, close to the southern coast of Santo Domingo, near the border with Haiti.

In January 2010 an archaeologist, Fianchy Torres, claimed⁽^b) that a site in Manzanillo Bay in the northwest of the Dominican Republic, near the Haitian border, was the location of Plato’s Atlantis^(c). He based his contention on anomalies he found on Google Earth images and sea level changes. Similar underwater anomalies have been identified in Peru, near Puerto Rico as well as the Canaries, which appear to be the result of data processing errors.

The idea of Atlantis in Hispaniola, inspired by the work of Spedicato, is now supported by the Kiskeya-Atl Research Center^(d), which has announced that it will host a three-day conference in November 2018, with an invited panel of “renowned scholars and researchers on the topic.” Hervé Fanini-Lemoine, is one of the founders and current chairman of the Research Centre. Its purpose “is to research and find artefacts to sustain the hypothesis which says the lost land of Atlantis is, in fact, KU-ISH-KU-EYA, ‘Mother of Lands'”.

Andrew Collins who proposes Cuba as the location of Atlantis has offered a critical response to Spedicato’s Hispaniola theory in both Gateway to Atlantis and its revised version Atlantis in the Caribbean.

⁽^a)https://www.academia.edu/10973532/ATLANTIS_IN_HISPANIOLA_

^(b) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20110321094118/https://www.dominicancentral.com/newsarticle/the_lost_city_of_atlantis_near_dominican_coast/

^(d) Kiskeya Atl Research Center – Overview, News & Competitors | ZoomInfo.com (link broken) *

Tagged Brasseur de Bourbourg, Dominican Republic, Emilio Spedicato, Fianchy Torres, Haiti, Hervé Fanini-Lemoine, Hispaniola, Hyde Clarke, Kiskeya, Kiskeya-Atl Research Center, Paul Felix Cabrera, Septimania, Underwater Anomalies

Amber

Published January 3, 2010

Amber was known to the ancient Greeks as electron and ancient myth has it that it was first created when Phaëton drove across the heavens. In Germanic languages, it is called Bernstein meaning ‘stones that burn’. Since ancient times, it was brought from northern Europe to the Mediterranean. Jürgen Spanuth^[⁰⁰²^.47^] was convinced that amber was in fact the orichalcum that Plato claimed to have adorned the walls of Atlantis. Spanuth’s theory is based on the fact that amber was mined in large quantities in the Baltic region as well as

Baltic Amber

Eiderstedt opposite Heligoland where he was convinced that Atlantis had been located. In ancient times amber was second only to gold in value. Although Spanuth’s location theory is carefully argued and was initially well-received, it has received diminishing support in recent years.

My initial reaction to the idea of amber as orichalcum was one of incredulity, but this was somewhat assuaged when I read the following comment in Helen O’Clery’s book “It was well known to the ancients that amber could be liquefied by heat and that by adding oil was possible to use it as a paint”^[⁴⁹⁴^.52]. Spanuth also noted this use of liquid amber^[⁰¹⁷^.92].

Ellis Peterson notes⁽^b⁾that an Egyptian tomb inscription records that around 1500 BC the Haunebu, claimed by him to be the (North) Sea Peoples sent a gift of 8943 pounds of amber to ThutmosesIII. There were a number of amber trade routes between the Baltic and the Mediterranean, dating as far back as the middle of the fourth millennium BC indicated by beads found in pharaonic tombs.^(f)Traffic was apparently two-way as Egyptian beads from 3,400 years ago have been discovered in Denmark and thought “to be from the workshop that made the blue beads buried with the famous boy-king Tutankhamun.” ^(g)

Amber is not exclusive to the Baltic and can be found in the Americas, Lebanon, Siberia, Australia and Japan⁽ⁱ⁾. However, 90% of amber comes from the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad⁽ⁱ⁾. A highly prized blue-tinted amber is found in the Dominican Republic⁽^c⁾. While Baltic stocks of amber have diminished, it was reported that in 1966, Dominican miners, in less than ideal conditions, extracted 4,000 pounds of amber every month^(h). Today, Myanmar (Burma) is the leading source of amber, where in even more appalling conditions, 10 tons of it are recovered every year.>>However, a 2006 article suggests that Poland alone has amber deposits of 650,000 tons^(j).<<

Frank Joseph in an effort to support his speculations regarding the mythical Electra claims^[⁶³⁶^.109] that the Atlantic islands of the Azores, Madeira and the Canaries are one of the two major sources of amber. This is blatantly untrue, as revealed in a comprehensive website⁽^a⁾ by Susie Ward Aber, a mineralogist at Emporia State University, Kansas. Amber sources worldwide are listed, but nothing in the Atlantic. Mr Joseph has some explaining to do.

In August 2018 a paper from the University of Cambridge published in Plos One offered evidence that amber found in Iberia had come from Sicily two thousand years before Baltic amber reached the Mediterranean. It also appeared that the Sicilian amber had not been traded directly with Iberia but had been routed through North Africa.^(e)

A report in 2010 revealed that the 3,550-year-old skeleton of a teenage boy discovered 5 km from Stonehenge was adorned with an amber necklace, indicating his high status and perhaps just as interesting was that a study of his teeth revealed that he had come from the Mediterranean⁽^d⁾.

Over three thousand years later the King of Prussia presented Peter the Great of Russia with an Amber Room which was eventually installed, using 100,000 pieces, in the Catherine Palace in Pushkin near St. Petersburg. It was looted by the Nazis during the war and was never found again, although still thought to be somewhere in Germany. Nevertheless, a replica was reconstructed and after 25 years was opened to the public in 2003. It required $11 million to reproduce what was once described as the “Eight Wonder of the World”

^(a)https://web.archive.org/web/20200315191323/https://academic.emporia.edu/abersusa/amber.htm

⁽^b⁾ https://hiddenhistorysecrets.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html

⁽^c⁾ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_amber

⁽^d⁾https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11421593

^(e)https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/uoc-sai082818.php

^(f) https://www.amberartisans.com/amberroutes1.html

^(g) https://www.haaretz.com/amp/archaeology/kig-tut-beads-found-in-3-400y-old-danish-graves-1.5414758

^(h) https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/amber-fossil-supply-chain-has-dark-human-cost/594601/

⁽ⁱ⁾90% Of Amber Is Extracted Here – English Russia (archive.org)

^(j) https://www.iol.co.za/technology/amber-an-ancient-treasure-that-grew-on-trees-294269 *