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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 »
Duke University
Acosta, José de
José de Acosta (1540-1600) was a Spanish Jesuit missionary who worked in South America and the Caribbean and is sometimes referred to as the “Pliny of the New World”. Acosta studied the mythologies of the natives of Peru and was convinced that the American Indians had originated in Asia in his Historia natural y moral de las Indias[592]. This view was to gain supporters in the following centuries including Thomas Jefferson.
>Acosta was highly sceptical of Plato’s Atlantis story, commenting in his ‘Historia’ that “Whether Plato wrote it as history or allegory, what I find obvious is that everything he said about the island, beginning with the dialogue of Timaeus and continuing to the dialogue of Critias cannot be told as true, except to children and old women.”<
A 2002 English translation of his Historia was published by Duke University[965].