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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 »
El Argar
Aldamiz, Luis
Luis Aldamiz (aka Maju) is an independent Basque researcher who has 
concluded that the Atlantean Empire was at the centre of the VNSP (Vila Nova de São Pedro) culture in ancient Portugal(a)(b). Its capital Zambujal was situated near the modern city of Torres Vedras, just north of Lisbon. He bases his idea on a number of topographical and historical parallels between the VNSP region and Plato’s description of Atlantis(c).
In order to have Plato’s account of the Atlantean War conform to his location theory, he suggests that the Mycenaean Greeks fought alongside the El Argar people in southeast Spain against VNSP Atlanteans! The evidence for such a military alliance is at best tenuous or more likely, purely speculative.
However, the idea is not as farfetched as it might seem when combined with the views of W.Sheppard Baird who claims that Minoans had been the colonisers of Los Millares in Andalusia as early as 4000 BC. In due course, the culture of Los Millares was superseded by that of El Argar. This begs the question as whether the Mycenaeans who had succeeded the Minoans on Crete also replaced them in their Andalusian colonies!
Nevertheless, no matter how interesting the theories of Aldamiz and Baird may be, they have still to explain Plato’s claim that the Atlanteans ‘controlled’ Europe as far as Tyrhennia, along with part of North Africa, before their eastward invasion! Furthermore, the part that Egypt played in their alliance with Athens in the war with Atlantis is totally ignored by them.
(b) https://www.geocities.ws/luis_aldamiz/Atlantis/Atlantis.html
Baird, W. Sheppard
W. Sheppard Baird is an American researcher and the author of a wide range of articles on the Minoan civilisation, which can be read on his website(a) and the academia.edu website(f). He writes on the maritime expertise of the Minoans and their colonisation of Spain. Baird has also incorporated his knowledge of the Minoans into a historical novel, The Minoan Psychopath[1426].
Baird added an interesting paper(b) on the possible use by the Minoans of a signalling system using bronze mirrors reflecting sunlight between the many mountain peaks of Crete>and speculated that it may even have permitted heliographic communication between mountain tops in Crete and the heights of Thera (Santorini)! He went further and suggested the possibility of a Minoan communication network throughout the Aegean.!<
Perhaps even more important is his essay(c) debunking the theory that a tsunami resulting from the 2nd millennium BC eruption of Thera destroyed the Minoan civilisation on Crete and proposes instead that it was more likely to have been a pyroclastic surge from the same source. The latest studies have concluded(d) that it was the violent entry of pyroclastic flows into the sea which triggered the tsunamis.
Baird has also offered his identification of the Sea Peoples, whom he considers to originally have been colonists from the Aegean who settled in the southeast of Spain and are known as the El Argar culture. Their society suffered some form of collapse around 1350 BC and according to Baird is in some way connected with the emergence of the Sea Peoples.
Unfortunately, despite of the name of his website, Baird makes few direct references to Atlantis>explainong(g) that; “As the creator of this Minoan Atlantis website you should know that I actually could care less about Atlantis. The name of the website is a reflection of the thought – if there ever was an Atlantis it was most probably the highly advanced Minoan civilization and their “Ringed Islands of Thera” whose marine volcano colossally erupted somewhere around 1600 BC. This titanic eruption changed the economic and political fundamentals of the entire Mediterranean basin.”<
(a) https://www.minoanatlantis.com
(b) https://www.minoanatlantis.com/Minoan_Mirror_Web.php
(c) https://www.minoanatlantis.com/Sinking_Atlantis_Myth.php
(d) https://www.livescience.com/56791-santorini-tsunamis-caused-by-volcanic-flow.html
(e) https://www.minoanatlantis.com/Origin_Sea_Peoples.php