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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 »
E.F.Berlioux
D’Arbois de Jubainville. Henri
Henri D’Arbois de Jubainville (1827-1910) was a French historian and philologist. Following Plato and Theopompus he proposed [1626] that the Iberians were descendants of the invaders from an Atlantic Atlantis, 9,000 years before Plato.
>>E.F. Berlioux noted that “M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, in his learned study, The First Inhabitants of Europe, discards the geographical question; he only notes that Atlantis may well be the Atlas Mountains.”<<
Sargasso Sea
The Sargasso Sea is a region of the North Atlantic surrounded by ocean currents. Its limits are roughly 70-40° W and 25-35° N. It has a number of remarkable features, (i) it is very salty, (ii) it contains masses of seaweed of the genus ‘Sargassum’, giving the region 
its name, and (iii) it is the place where the European eel migrates to, in order lay their eggs. The spawning habits of the European eel are indeed a mystery!
Wikipedia notes(b) that “The Sargasso Sea may have been known to earlier mariners, as a poem by the late 4th-century author Rufus Festus Avienus describes a portion of the Atlantic as being covered with seaweed, citing a now-lost account by the 5th-century BC Carthaginian Himilco the Navigator.” This early reference is used by supporters of the idea of the possibility of very early visits by Phoenicians or Greeks to America.
Chedomille Mijatovich, the Serbian politician, was probably one of the first to associate the Sargasso Sea with Plato’s ‘shoal of mud’ in a letter to Hyde Clarke.
In 2000, Andrew Collins in an effort to justify his Cuban location for Atlantis needed to find Plato’s ‘shoals of mud’ in the Atlantic and for me, in what seems to have been an act of desperation he decided that the Sargasso Sea fitted the bill [072.42]. Emilio Spedicato, promoting Hispaniola as Atlantis, also opted for the Sargasso as the ‘shoals of mud’. However, nobody has explained how anyone can mistake seaweed for mud!
In 1925, Dr A. Selwyn Brown wrote an article in the New York Herald, which was relayed around the world(a) in which he supported the Sargasso Atlantis theory. Around the same period the American naturalist, William Beebe, following an intensive study of the Sargasso was also reported(b) to have subscribed to the idea of the Sargasso as the location of Atlantis.
>>According to E.F. Berlioux, Paul Gaffarel speculated that Atlantis might be found under the Sargasso Sea.<<
It is obvious that the Sargasso Sea is centred to the west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and not over it as implied by some writers, particularly those who want to link it with an Atlantis situated on the MAR. Clearly, Plato’s account of the aftermath of the sinking of Atlantis describes impassable waters due to mud, not seaweed. Contrary to popular belief the Sargasso Sea is not a hindrance to navigation, however, for those under sail, a lack of wind presents a bigger problem.
(c) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Phoenician_discovery_of_the_Americas
Berlioux, Etienne Félix
Étienne Félix Berlioux (1828-1910) was a 19th century French professor of geography in Lyon. In an 1883 book he placed Atlantis on the Atlantic coast of Morocco between Agadir (a variant of Gades) and Casablanca[163]. According to Berlioux this location was the site of the city of Cerne the capital of the Atlantes referred to by Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus(c).
In 1907 he presented a series of papers entitled ‘Morocco and the Atlanteans’ for the Academy of Sciences at Lyons. Berlioux also wrote an account of the slave trade in Africa in the 1870’s[164].
Jonas Bergman places Atlantis further north near Rabat.
His book on Atlantis, in French, can be read online(a).>>The Introduction to which has been translated into English by Jason Colavito(b).<<
(a) https://archive.org/details/lesatlanteshist00berlgoog
(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/atlantis-in-morocco.html *
(c) Atlanteans in Africa: Herodotus and Dionysius Skytobrachion (arcus-atlantis.org.uk) *
Godron, Dominique Alexandre
Dominique Alexandre Godron (1807-1880) was a French botanist and professor of natural history at Nancy University, who, in 1868, founded 
“The School of Atlantis” in North Africa. Godron believed that Atlantis was to be found in the Sahara desert and delivered a series of lectures(a) on the subject at the University. Both Godron and Berlioux were inspired by the writings of Diodorus Siculus who wrote extensively about ancient North Africa.
>Atlantisforschung informs us that Godron was also interested in pre-Columbian voyages to America by Asian and European seafarers at the same time, and published at least two papers on this(b).<
Godron was known to have corresponded with his contemporary Charles Darwin, on botanical matters.
Morocco
Morocco was known in ancient times as Maurusia and Mauretania and was mentioned by both Herodotus and Strabo. Herodotus referred to its inhabitants as Atalantes. It is the only African country with a coast on both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Its capital is Rabat and the largest city is Casablanca.
The very early human occupation of Morocco was confirmed in 2007 when beads were discovered in a cave in Eastern Morocco dated to around 80000 BC. A few years earlier a prehistoric city, dated to 13000 BC, was discovered in Western Sahara controlled by Morocco(f).
This has now been overshadowed by a 2017 report(c) that the remains of early relatives of homo sapiens had been discovered in Morocco and dated to between 300,000 and 350,000 years ago.
The Mzora Stone Circle is a huge megalithic monument in Morocco and is reputed to be the largest stone ellipse in the world. However, there are many other megalithic monuments in the country and across the Maghreb generally. Over twenty years ago Natalya Marquand published a study of ‘Megaliths and Stone Circles of Morocco and Their Relation to Those of the Mediterranean and Europe’. In conclusion, she noted that “The relations between the megaliths of Morocco may not be directly related to those in the rest of North Africa, and may be related to those in Spain. We can never really be sure, but in some way, all the megaliths of the Euro-Mediterranean region are connected (and they even extend further, into sub-Saharan Africa) connecting people, beliefs and culture the whole region over.” >Marquand’s paper is available on the Internet Archive website(e).<
Morocco was suggested as the possible location of Atlantis as early as 1868 by D.A. Godron. A few years later E.F Berlioux and Gustave Lagneau, a French anthropologist adopted the same idea. They were followed by a number of other commentators such as A.F.R. Knötel and Eduardo Saavedra, but the theory seems to have had little support beyond the 1920s.
However, the speculations of these researchers were replaced at the end of the 20th century with a more scientific approach by writers such as Jonas Bergman. He is considered by many to be today’s leading exponent of the ‘Atlantis in Morocco’ school of thought. His ideas can be read on an Atlantis Rising forum(a). Bergman bases his theory on a topographical comparison of Morocco with Plato’s text.
Originally, Bergman had opted for the ancient city of Lixus as the site of Atlantis but later changed his opinion and now favours a location near Rabat that had been an ancient Phoenician colony on the river Bou Regreg, called Salé, Sala or Chellah. Bergman presented three papers to the 2005 Atlantis Conference outlining his theories[629 .473-506].
>M.P. Courville has proposed that Atlantis was a Phoenician colony situated on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. He expands on this in his 2022 book, Ancient Navigators [1960].<
Erick Wright, another regular contributor to Atlantis Rising forums, had supported Bergman’s idea of Atlantis in Morocco. However, he later found that his investigations forced him to review his position and has now opted for a location in southern Turkey.
Georgeos Diaz-Montexano favours the region on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar as the original realm of Atlantis with the location of the capital city now submerged. In a similar manner, Thomas Dietrich in The Origin of Culture[217] considers Morocco an Atlantean colony.
More recent support for a Moroccan Atlantis was presented in a paper presented at the 2008 Atlantis Conference in Athens, by the late M. Hübner an independent German researcher, which offered circumstantial evidence for the existence of Atlantis in the southern Moroccan region of Souss-Massa-Draâ. His theory is supported by a website(b) that includes a number of video clips and a 32-page synopsis of his book, Atlantis? Ein Indiezienbeweis, which has yet to be published in English.
>In 2019, Stefan Bittner joined the ‘Atlantis in Morocco Club’ with the publication of Atlantis – wissenschaftlich analysiert (Atlantis Scientifically Analysed) [1730]. Atlantisforschung commenting on Bittner’s book noted that he has “made a challenging contribution to solving the Atlantis problem. He comes to the remarkable conclusion that ‘Plato uses a historical source and reinterprets it as a philosophical metaphor’.”<
Thorwald C. Franke has written an interesting review(d) (in English) of Bittner’s 500-page book. Translating from the original German, Franke reveals that Bittner places Atlantis around 1650 BC and locates it “in the valley of the river Oued Laou, the Wadi Laou in northeast Morocco, which flows into the Mediterranean Sea at a small town of the same name.”
(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20200817115805/http://asalas.org/doku.php
(c) https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40194150
(d) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis-stefan-bittner-engl.htm
(e) Mzora: Moroccan Megaliths and Stone Circles (archive.org) *
(f) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2004-08-20/prehistoric-desert-town-found-in-western-sahara/2028740 *