Latest News
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 »
Expanding Earth Hypothesis
Moon, The *
The Moon and its origin have been the subject of speculation for centuries, examples of which are reviewed below. Professor Robert M. Hazen of George Mason University tells us in The Origin and Evolution of the Earth(ad) that “three competing theories—the fission theory, the capture theory, and the co-accretion theory—were all in contention prior to 1969, but the treasure trove of Apollo Moon rocks provided the answer: None of the pre-1969 theories worked……….The Moon is now thought to have formed as the result of an epic impact with a Mars-sized planet that was competing for the same solar system real estate as Earth. Earth was bigger and won, but the Moon was formed from the debris of the impact.”
The impact theory received a boost from the results of a study carried out at Durham University involving the use of a supercomputer for modelling(ag).
Irrespective of the controversies surrounding the formation of the Moon, what is less contentious is that for prehistoric man, the moon was a readymade calendar. An article(ap) by Rebecca Boyle has the following introductory paragraph.
“The sun’s rhythm may have set the pace of each day, but when early humans needed a way to keep time beyond a single day and night, they looked to a second light in the sky. The moon was one of humankind’s first timepieces long before the first written language, before the earliest organized cities and well before structured religions. The moon’s face changes nightly and with the regularity of the seasons, making it a reliable marker of time.”
The Moon has little connection with Plato’s Atlantis story apart from the more extreme speculations of some writers. One of the wildest is that the Atlanteans had established a research facility on the Moon(a), an idea rivalled by that of Alan Butler & Christopher Knight in their book, Who Built the Moon[0937], in which they propose that the Moon was ‘constructed’! This idea has now been revived by Rob Shelsky[1584]. In 1965, the Umland brothers[833] proposed that the Moon was a communications relay station for the Maya to make contact with their home planet!
In his recent book, Dead Men’s Secrets [1910.299], Jonathon Gray suggested that ancient texts support the idea that man has visited the Moon in the distant past! This is available as a pdf file(ac).
In 1970, Michael Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, of what was then the Soviet Academy of Sciences, advanced a hypothesis that the Moon is a spaceship created by unknown beings(k). These ideas inspired the title of Don Wilson’s 1976 book, Our Mysterious Spaceship Moon [1704].
In 2018 and in a number of previous editions of Ancient Aliens, David Hatcher Childress endorsed the daft idea that our Moon is hollow and artificial. Jason Colavito noted that this idea has “been going around for the past half-century, based on a piece of Russian propaganda from the 1960s aimed at Western audiences. Childress alleged that aliens created the moon by inflating an asteroid. Yes, really. “Like a glass blower blows glass, you go out into the asteroid belt, get yourself an asteroid, and with your alien technology you superheat that asteroid. Then you blow into it to make a giant space station,” he said. That seems like rather a lot of work to avoid showing yourself to the humans(ao).“
In 2023, Shane Leach tried to resuscitate this daft idea. He also recycled the suggestion that the Martian satellite, Phobos, was an alien construction. However, neither he nor Butler & Knight can claim originality as the idea of artificial moons was floated decades ago by the Russian I. S. Shklovskii(g) among others mentioned above.
Some years later Arnold L. Lieber published The Lunar Effect [1888] in which he put forward his theory of ‘biological tides’ that proposes that the Moon affects human behaviour. This seemed to reinforce the popular belief that aggression and even suicides were affected by the phases of the Moon. Commenting on Lieber’s theory at the time, astronomer Dr Nicholas Sanduleak debunked his claims(aa).
The idea that the Moon was to some extent hollow was given impetus in the 1970s when a study of moonquakes revealed that the Moon ‘rang like a bell’ (i). Now, nearly half a century later, Wallace Thornhill, a leading Electric Universe proponent, has endorsed the hollow Moon idea and seems sympathetic to the idea of a hollow Earth. This was expressed at a recent EU conference and be viewed at the 40-minute mark of a YouTube video.(j)
Neal Adams, a respected graphic artist(s), is probably best known for his work on the DC Comics characters Batman and Green Arrow. He is a vocal supporter of the Expanding Earth Hypothesis(t), but, he has gone further and also proposed a growing Moon as well(u)(r). Not content with that, he has extended his expansion investigations to other bodies in our Solar System, such as Mars, Ganymede & Europa(v). Adams considers the term “Expanding Earth” a misnomer and has named his proposed expansion process ‘pair production’!
The origins of the Moon have also been the subject of extensive controversy with one side claiming that it had been ‘captured’ 
by the earth, while the other extreme argues that it had been ‘expelled’ from our planet. The expulsion theory posits(b) that a collision with another celestial body tore material from the Earth, which in time became our Moon(h). Nils Olof Bergquist writing in the 1940s supported the expulsion scenario and had his original Swedish book on the subject translated into English as The Moon Puzzle[0786].
Aloys Eiling (1952- ) is a German researcher who has offered a variation on the Moon capture theory, suggesting that it took place when our planet was already populated – somewhere between 40,000 and 13,000 BC. He notes(ab) that “the capture of the Moon caused worse than a flood; it changed the geography of the world. Earth’s surface was devastated, millions died, and life in total was brought to the brink of extinction. In the collective memory of mankind, the event indelibly remained in the myths about a Deluge.”
The most radical of the captured moon school was Hanns Hörbiger, who proposed that there had been a series of Moon captures. Many of his ideas were adopted by H.S. Bellamy, who added that the capture of our current satellite had destroyed Atlantis. Kurt Bilau has also proposed a moon capture theory that incorporates two near encounters before finally becoming our current satellite(ah)(ai).
Georg Hinzpeter was influenced by the Moon-capture ideas of Hanns Hörbiger, with whom he had personal contact. However, when he suggested some modifications he fell foul of the Nazis and was informed “that his work was no longer going to be supported by the regime because it deviated from Hörbiger’s original theory.” (an)
After the war, he contributed to Sykes Atlantis magazine, where, like Bellamy, he theorised that the destruction of Atlantis coincided with the capture of our present satellite, an event that he claimed to have taken place around 11,500 years ago(am).
Nikolay Bonev, the astronomer, caused a stir in 1961 when he expressed the view that our Moon had once been an independent planet(d) that had experienced violent volcanic eruptions that were powerful enough to have produced a ‘recoil’ effect, which nudged it towards our Earth’s orbit and was eventually captured as our satellite.
In 1948, an amateur astronomer, L.C. Suggars, endorsed the idea of the Moon as a captured planet, based on its diameter/density ratio, which was consistent with that of the other minor planets (Mercury, Mars, Venus & Earth).(w)
More recently Emilio Spedicato expressed similar ideas(c) and in another paper(aj) he wrote “we consider the Sumerian tradition of a planet, called Nibiru, claimed to approach Earth every 3600 years. We argue that the real period was 20 years and that a close passage of that body near Earth around 9500 BC ended the last Ice Age and the Atlantis civilization. Moreover, Earth a satellite of Nibiru became our Moon, in addition to the previous satellite, that was Mars. We discuss ancient statements that the Moon originally looked bigger and brighter than now and that the period of about 2400 years when there were two satellites explains the myth of Isis and Osiris. We argue that Nibiru around 6900 BC disappeared in a giant impact on Jupiter.“
Stuart L. Harris has proposed(m) that the planet Nibiru had a close encounter with our Earth in 9577 BC that destroyed Atlantis, followed by another visit in 9417 BC during which it lost one of its satellites, which became our Moon!
Immanuel Velikovsky wrote a short paper(af) reviewing the three most popular theories regarding the origins of our satellite and concluded that “Since mankind on both sides of the Atlantic preserved the memory of a time when the Earth was without the Moon, the first hypothesis, namely, of the Moon originating simultaneously with the Earth and in its vicinity, is to be excluded, leaving the other two hypotheses to compete between themselves.” I think it noteworthy that Velikovsky makes no reference to the theories of Hörbiger in this paper. In 2020, Velikovsky’s unfinished book, In the Beginning [1956], promoted as a prequel to Worlds in Collision, was finally published, where he returns to the matter of the Earth without its Moon.
John Ackerman, a keen follower of Immanuel Velikovsky claimed that there were two catastrophic events related to “the capture of the Moon into its current orbit,” marking both the beginning and the end of the Younger Dryas period(p). Although Ackerman was an admirer of Velikovsky’s work, he was also critical of some of his conclusions(x).
The Moon controversies continue with the recent suggestion by Erik Asphaug, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who claims that originally the Earth had two moons that coalesced into a single satellite (n)! A few years earlier, Dr Martin Jutzi from the University of Bern, Switzerland put forward a similar theory involving a smaller second moon that had a slow-motion collision with the larger satellite. He proposed that this event explains “why the near side of the Moon – the one visible from Earth – is flat and cratered while the rarely-seen far side is heavily cratered and has mountain ranges higher than 3,000m.”(z) Jutzi thought that samples from the far side of the Moon might confirm the theory.
Gary Gilligan, a catastrophist, also supports the concept of moon capture but dated this event to as recent as 2000 BC(f) and then later advanced it to 1200 BC(g). He claims that he can “show that the moon could not have existed during prehistory as evidenced by the absence of the moon in Neolithic artwork and artefacts.” A comment that ignores the maxim ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’
Researcher, Mark Andrew commenting on Gilligan’s claims wrote that “Although Gilligan promises more evidence to come, his theory has to contend with the varied evidence of an earlier Moon, including the earliest known written myth of the Moon’s death and rebirth, the epic poem Descent of Inanna (dating from 1750 BC), and also the oldest known map of the moon (dating from 2800 BC).”(l)
Ticleanu, Constantin & Nicolescu in their paper delivered to the 2008 Atlantis Conference very briefly touched on the origin of the Moon. They claim that our Moon, a former planet, was captured by our Earth sometime within the last 40,000 years [750.368].
Two American commentators, Kevin A. & Patrick J. Casey maintain that a globally catastrophic event occurred 13,000 years ago(ae). The kernel of their theory is that originally the Earth had two moons that at some later point collided, producing our current Moon, while the remnant of the second one eventually exploded over North America kick-starting what we refer to as the cooler Younger Dryas period. They are adamant that it was not a comet or asteroid that caused the devastation, and so clash with the conclusions of Richard Firestone and his colleagues. They refer to this as the 13K Event, which is also known as the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH).
The moon could have formed immediately after a cataclysmic impact that tore off a chunk of Earth and hurled it into space, a new study has suggested. Since the mid-1970s, astronomers have thought that the moon could have been made by a collision between Earth and an ancient Mars-size protoplanet called Theia; the colossal impact would have created an enormous debris field from which our lunar companion slowly formed over thousands of years.
But a new hypothesis, based on supercomputer simulations made at a higher resolution than ever before, suggests that the moon’s formation might not have been a slow and gradual process after all, but one that instead took place within just a few hours. The scientists published their findings on October 4, 2022, in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters(al).
Unexpectedly, the orbital speed of the Moon appears to vary on its trip around the Earth(e).
Some of the ideas above regarding the origin of the Moon are extremist and are far more radical than a recent theory regarding the Sun proposed by Ev Cochrane, a comparative mythologist, in a YouTube clip(o), where he offers evidence that the Sun as observed in ancient times seemed quite different to how we see it today. This is borne out by the related mythologies and petroglyphs from our ancient past and shows a global consistency that cannot be explained by imagination.
Professor Neil F. Comins of the University of Maine challenged his students with the question ‘what if the Moon didn’t exist?’ The responses were interesting (no eclipses) and amusing (a new word for ‘lunatic would be required), but not always correct (no tides). One important consequence would be an eight-hour day(q).
Even more challenging are recent comments from Randall Carlson in an exchange between Carlson and Jesse Michels(ak).
JM “Do you believe that there are survivors of ancient Atlantis among us, perhaps with underwater bases or bases on the Moon and advanced technology!”
RC “Now there’s a loaded question, Jesse.” [pause] “I would say, a very provisional – Yes!”
Unfortunately, Michels did not pursue the matter in the clip available.
(a) See: Archive 3334
(b) https://www.q-mag.org/moon-mars-impacts-and-collisions.html
(c) https://aisberg.unibg.it/retrieve/handle/10446/316/1369/WPMateRi05%282008%29SpedicatoPetruzzi.pdf
(e) The Clockwork Moon | MalagaBay (archive.org)
(f) https://grahamhancock.com/earth-capture-the-moon-gilligan/
(g) https://www.gks.uk.com/moon-origin-egyptian/
(h) https://www.q-mag.org/moon-mars-impacts-and-collisions.html
(i) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(j) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gouqy4OghyY
(k) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Moon
(l) https://web.archive.org/web/20160710150837/https://atlantisrisingmagazine.com/article/late-arrival/
(n) When the Earth Had Two Moons – Issue 74: Networks – Nautilus (archive.org)
(o) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eAwUiadZHY
(p) Firmament and Chaos (archive.org) *
(r) Neal Adams: 01 – The Growing Earth | MalagaBay (archive.org)
(s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Adams
(t) https://www.naturalphilosophy.org/site/dehilster/2014/09/22/is-the-earth-expanding-and-even-growing/
(u) Neal Adams: 02 – The Growing Moon | MalagaBay (archive.org)
(v) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy3_sWF7tv4
(w) Atlantean Research, Vol.1, No.2, September/October 1948
(x) Velikovsky’s Mistakes | Acksblog (cycliccatastrophism.org)
(z) Earth may once have had two moons – BBC News
(aa) SCIENCE WATCH – The Moon and Lunacy – NYTimes.com (archive.org)
(ab) https://grahamhancock.com/eilinga2/
(ad) The Origin and Evolution of Earth: From the Big Bang to the Future of Human Existence (archive.org)
(ae) https://www.academia.edu/38380799/13k_Theory_Atlantis_Revisited.pdf
(af) The Earth Without the Moon (varchive.org)
(ag) How did the moon form? A supercomputer may have just found the answer | Live Science
(ai) The Revelations of John – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)
(aj) (99+) Nibiru-tiamat rel 6 June 13 | Emilio Spedicato – Academia.edu
(ak) Graham Hancock: Aliens, Atlantis & the Apocalypse – YouTube
(al) How did the moon form? A supercomputer may have just found the answer | Live Science
(am) Atlantis, Vol.4, No,4, November 1951
(an) https://www.academia.edu/16833657/Hitlers_Supernatural_Sciences
(ap) Ancient humans used the moon as a calendar in the sky (sciencenews.org)
Expanding Earth Hypothesis *
The Expanding Earth Hypothesis.
For thousands of years, it was accepted that the surface of the earth was in a static state. This belief persisted until the rediscovery of America in 1492 and the cartographic improvements during the following century before Abraham Ortelius in his 1596 Thesaurus Geographicus[1225] proposed that the Americas had once been joined to Europe and Africa. It is often claimed that in 1620 Francis Bacon commented on the close fit of eastern South America with the west coast of Africa, however, this, according to G.L. Herries Davies, is an exaggerated interpretation of what he actually said(o).
A number of others concurred with the jig-saw suggestion until 1858 when the French geographer Antonio Snider-Pellegrini offered[0555] a theory of crustal movement that was more fully developed in 1912 by Alfred Wegener, which he came to label ‘continental drift’(e). Snider-Pellegrini also thought that the Earth had been much smaller at the time of the biblical Genesis(ac)! The big objection to the theory was a lack of a convincing mechanism to explain it(f).
A number of writers have attempted to bring the theory of Continental Drift (CD) into the Atlantis debate. They seem to overlook the fact CD was proposed as a very very slow process, while Plato describes the demise of Atlantis as occurring in a single day and a night.
Wegener’s theory was debated until the late 1950’s when it morphed into the theory of Plate Tectonics (PT) following new developments in earth sciences in particular the recognition of seafloor spreading at mid-ocean ridges. However, PT as we know it demands subduction(z), which in itself has created new problems(aa)(ab).
The theory divides the lithosphere into a number of plates that are constantly moving in various directions at rates of a few centimetres a year. Competing with PT in the early years was the theory of Earth Crustal Displacement advocated by Charles Hapgood which claims that the entire crust of the earth moved as a unit. Endorsed by Albert Einstein it is fundamental to the theory of an Antarctic location for Atlantis proposed by Rose & Rand Flem-Ath.
Unfortunately, Plate Tectonics does not explain everything and ever since it gained the pre-eminence it currently enjoys, various writers have questioned what they perceive as its shortcomings(g)(h)(i).
A totally different proposal is that the earth is expanding. Although the concept did not get much attention until the 1980’s there are antecedents stretching back to 1888(a), when the earliest suggestion was made by the Russian, Ivan Yarkovsky (1844-1902). A year later the Italian geologist (and violinist) Roberto Montovani (1854-1933) proposed(I) a similar mechanism. In 1933, Ott Christoph
Hilgenberg
Hilgenberg(t) published Vom wachsenden Erdbal (The Expanding Earth) [1328].
In 1963, a Russian lady, Kamilla Abaturova, wrote to Egerton Sykes expressing the view that although her theory of an expanding Earth involved a ‘slow’ process, she proposed that at the time of Atlantis’ the radius of the Earth was 600 km shorter(af). In geological terms, this is far from ‘slow’!
The leading proponent of the theory today is arguably the, now retired, geologist Dr James Maxlow(b). A detailed outline of the theory is also offered on his website(c). For laymen like myself, a series of YouTube clips(d) are probably more informative. I have stated elsewhere that I am sympathetic towards the idea of earth expansion finding it somewhat more credible than plate tectonics. The truth of the matter is that since Ortelius first suggested that the continents of our planet had moved, all that has emerged since is a refinement of that basic idea leading to CD which became PT and as the latter still does not answer all the questions it raises, it is clear that further modification will be required. In December 2021, Maxlow published an overview of his current thinking on Expansion Tectonics(ag).
The Expanding Earth Hypothesis may, as its proponents claim, supply all those answers. Others do not think so, which brings me to J. Marvin Herndon who has ‘married’ the theory of an expanding earth with the idea of crustal plates(j) , naming his 2005 concept Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics (WEDD).
The Thunderbolts.info website has a three-part article seeking to offer “an alternative to plate and extension tectonics”. The anonymous author suggests that an electrical element is involved in the development of our planet. An extensive look at mountain building is also included(y).
A 1998 paper(ah). by Bill Mundy an American Professor of Physics is still relevant. In it, he discusses the pros and cons of both plate tectonics and the expanding earth hypothesis and concluded that “Despite the success that standard plate-tectonics theory has enjoyed, there are phenomena that it currently is not able to model. Perhaps the most adequate model would incorporate Owens’ suggestion that there is both subduction and expansion. This would allow the earth to expand at a modest rate with reasonable changes in surface gravitation and also require some subduction for which the evidence seems convincing. But such a model presents the difficulty of finding suitable mechanisms for expansion, plate motion and subduction!”
In October 2022 Doug Fisher published a paper on Graham Hancock’s website highlighting weaknesses in the generally accepted theory of plate tectonics and seeking a review of the expanding earth hypothesis(ai).
Keith Wilson, an American researcher, has also developed a website(k) devoted to the EEH and linked it to Pole Shift. However, he goes further and introduces Mayan prophecies into the subject, which in my view is unwise in the light of recent events or rather non-events!
In the meanwhile, a number of Atlantis researchers have endorsed the EEH including, Stan Deyo, Georg Lohle and Rosario Vieni. Nicolai Zhirov referred to the growing support both in Russia and elsewhere for the EEH citing a number of its supporters, adding that “the idea of the Earth expanding (within reasonable limits) cannot be ruled out altogether as absurd.”[458.126]
A number of websites have dismissed the EEH as pseudoscience, which is confirmed by satellite measurements(m)(n).
There is also a variation of the standard expansion theory which proposes(q) that expansion may have occurred in fits and starts. There also seems to be evidence that the Earth is not alone with Venus expanding(r) and Mercury contracting(s).
Another matter that may be related to the claim of an expanding Earth is the question of the size of dinosaurs and other creatures and plants millions of years ago, which is claimed to have been impossible if gravity then was the same as today. A book[1218] by Stephen Hurrell has expanded on this idea. There is an interesting website(p) that deals with the enormous size of the dinosaurs as well as other creatures at the same period and the support it may offer the EEH.
Neal Adams, a respected graphic artist(u), is a vocal supporter of the EEH(v), but, he has gone further and has also proposed a growing Moon as well(w). Not content with that, he has extended his expansion investigations to other bodies in our Solar System, such as, Mars, Ganymede & Europa(x). Adams considers the term “Expanding Earth” a misnomer and has named his proposed expansion process ‘pair production’.(ad)
A December 2018 paper by Degezelle Marvin offers some new support for the EEH(ae). The author includes an interesting comparison of the problems of the currently accepted paradigm of plate tectonics with possible solutions offered by EEH. The author concludes with;
“The problems with plate tectonics were presented in this paper. Earth scientists dogmatically follow the plate tectonics theory that is falsified by geological data while Earth expansion is clearly a viable candidate to replace plate tectonics. Analysis map of the age of the oceanic lithosphere showed that the isochrons only ft on a smaller Earth with a calculated radius. Mountain formation has even been presented as a logical result of the Earth’s expansion. The average rate of the growth of the Earth’s radius is 1.22cm/year, obtained by geological methods.”
Finally, I cannot help thinking about those Victorians who thought that they had reached the pinnacle of scientific understanding. They were wrong and, I believe, that so are we, although we are slowly, very slowly, edging towards the truth, which may or may not involve the vindication of the Expanding Earth Hypothesis.
(a) https://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=394&Itemid=59
(b) https://www.expansiontectonics.com/page2.html
(c) https://www.expansiontectonics.com/page3.html
(d) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUkEu6YYR3s
(e) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift
(f) https://www.scientus.org/Wegener-Continental-Drift.html
(g) https://davidpratt.info/ncgt-jse.htm
(h) https://davidpratt.info/lowman.htm
(i) https://www.newgeology.us/presentation21.html
(j) https://web.archive.org/web/20200926204322/http://nuclearplanet.com/
(l) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Mantovani
(n) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/2014/05/12/the-expanding-earth/
(o) Francis Bacon and Continental Drift (archive.org) *
(p) The Inflating Earth: 4 – Gravity | MalagaBay (archive.org)
(q) https://web.archive.org/web/20161203151134/http://www.xearththeory.com/expansion/
(r) https://web.archive.org/web/20200808000231/https://www.xearththeory.com/expanding-venus/
(s) https://web.archive.org/web/20200807234839/https://www.xearththeory.com/mercury/
(u) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Adams
(v) https://www.naturalphilosophy.org/site/dehilster/2014/09/22/is-the-earth-expanding-and-even-growing/
(w) Neal Adams: 02 – The Growing Moon | MalagaBay (archive.org)
(x) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy3_sWF7tv4
(y) https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16534 (link broken Oct. 2019) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3326/
(z) https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-subduction-3892831
(aa) https://www.newgeology.us/presentation8.html
(ac) https://www.annalsofgeophysics.eu/index.php/annals/article/view/4622
(ad) https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2015/12/17/neal-adams-01-the-growing-earth/
(ae) https://www.gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Research%20Papers-Astrophysics/Download/7531
(af) Atlantis, Volume 16, No. 1, February 1963.
(ag) NCGTJV9N4_Pub.pdf (registeredsite.com)
(ah) https://www.grisda.org/assets/public/publications/origins/15053.pdf
(ai) Maps, Myths & Paradigms – Graham Hancock Official Website
Vieni, Rosario *
Rosario Vieni (1941- ) is an Italian Professor of History who was born in Messina, Sicily and currently lives in Pistoia in Northern Italy. He has studied the Phaistos Disk and published a calendrical interpretation of that artefact(e)(f).
Vieni also presented a paper(a) to the 2005 Atlantis Conference on Melos entitled “11,500 years ago….” He proposes that prior to the ending of the last Ice Age; the Mediterranean was 150-200 metres lower than at present. He also suggests that the Strait of Messina was closed and that a landmass extended south to encompass the Maltese Islands.
Consequently, Vieni opted for a then narrower Strait of Sicily as the location for the Pillars of Heracles and provided strong documentary evidence for this view.
He was greatly annoyed that Sergio Frau has claimed to have been the first to make this assertion a couple of years after he did(g). Which explains why, when Vieni subsequently published his theories in book form in 2011, he entitled it Atlantide e le Colonne d’Ercole (Atlantis and the Pillars of Hercules)[1177].
Although Vieni does not opt for any particular location for Atlantis, the focus of his paper is on the matching of Plato’s description with the Central Mediterranean. The title of his 2005 paper clearly indicates his support for the very early date for Plato’s Atlantis.
Not content with the Atlantis controversy, Vieni ventured into even more heretical territory when he indicated support for the Expanding Earth Hypothesis. James Maxlow, a leading proponent of this theory claims that the concept, sometimes referred to as Earth Expansion Tectonics, explains all existing physical geological data better than Plate Tectonics(b).
Obviously Vieni came to realise that Plato’s mention of 9,000 years could not be taken as a reference to solar years and therefore to suggest that Atlantis was destroyed 11,500 years ago was no longer tenable. Consequently, when he addressed the 2008 Atlantis Conference he revised the title of his paper to “about 5,600 years ago….” in which he offered strong arguments in support of the idea that when Plato wrote of 9,000 years he was referring to ‘seasons’ of which there were three in the Egyptian solar year. This idea is not new having been suggested by the naturalist C. S. Rafinesque in 1836, referring to even earlier sources[896.231]. These included Giovanni Carli who dated Atlantis at 3890 BC.
He also suggests volcanic activity as the probable cause of Atlantis’ demise, pointing to the ongoing volcanic activity in the Central Mediterranean. A website dealing briefly with this region’s volcanology is worth a visit(c) as well as the Wikipedia article on Italian volcanoes(d).
(a) See: Archive 3424
(b) http://www.expansiontectonics.com/page3.html
(c) Category:Volcanoes of the Mediterranean Sea – Wikipedia *
(d) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanology_of_Italy
(e) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(f) http://www.antikitera.net/articoli.asp?ID=85 (Italian)
(g) http://www.antikitera.net/articoli.asp?ID=28 (Italian)
Snider-Pellegrini, Antonio
Antonio Snider–Pellegrini (1802-1885), was a French geographer, who, in 1858[555], offered a theory(a) that has been seen as a precursor to that of Alfred Wegner’s concept of Continental Drift, which developed into today’s widely accepted model of plate tectonics. It also appears that he,>along with Roberto Montovani(c),<thought that the Earth had been much smaller at the time of the biblical Genesis(c), anticipating the Expanding Earth Hypothesis!
>Snider-Pellegrini published his theories in La Création et ses mystères dévoilés[555], where he is credited with creating the first representation of the Americas joined to Europe and Africa. This is shown below with the ‘before’ image marked ‘Atlantide’ where Brazil is.<
However, it is claimed that as early as 1620, Francis Bacon was one of the first to note the close fit between eastern South America and the west coast of Africa. Half a century ago, this attribution was heavily criticised by G. L. Herries Davies(b), who claimed that the idea came from a ”careless reading of the text.”
Snider-Pellegrini also added the suggestion that Brazil had been the location of Atlantis.
(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20200913123630/https://www.xearththeory.com/
(b) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238388608_Francis_Bacon_and_Continental_Drift
(c) https://www.annalsofgeophysics.eu/index.php/annals/article/view/4622
Lohle, Georg
Georg Lohle is a German researcher, but unfortunately, he has had his book, Die Weltgeschichte – Der wahre Ursprung[446], only published in German. However, Lohle’s website(a) has a considerable amount of its content in English. There are a number of excerpts from his book, in German, that can be read online(c).
His book has chapter two focused on Atlantis, in which he relies heavily on the controversial Oera Linda Book and not surprisingly leads Lohle to believe that its location was in the middle of the North Sea.
Lohle is also a keen exponent of the ‘Expanding Earth Hypothesis’ and he has compounded his nonconformist views with his acceptance of the old theory of a ‘hollow’ Earth.
The prominent Australian geologist Dr. James Maxlow is also a supporter of the idea of an expanding Earth and estimates that it is currently doing so at a rate of 22mm per year. A more technical explanation of the theory, in English, can be found elsewhere on the Internet(b).
A report in early 2007 added a further confusing element to the subject when it was announced by Dr. Chris MacLeod, of Cardiff University, that the earth’s crust appeared to be completely missing in an area thousands of kilometres across in the Atlantic between Cape Verde Islands and the Caribbean on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20160731211043/https://www.vanaheim.de
(b) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20180307141731/https://www.grisda.org/origins/15053.htm
(c) https://www.hohle-erde.de/?s=Georg+Lohle
Deyo, Stan
Stan Deyo is American by birth but moved to Australia in the early 1970’s. He is the author of The Vindicator Scrolls[784] in which he opted for Aden (Eden), now part of Yemen, as the site of Atlantis(a). He places the Plain of Atlantis in what is now eastern Saudi Arabia adjacent to a Persian Gulf extending further north(e)>>and claims that the Persian Gulf itself was originally the Old Atlantic Sea!(i)<<
Alexander Muster, an amateur Dutch Egyptologist puts forward(c) a vaguely similar idea. Deyo identifies the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains as the Pillars of Heracles!
In 2014, Deyo chose Tanzania as the location of the Garden of Eden(h). This idea has been echoed elsewhere and more recently on a website dealing with the history of Israel(f) and on a Christian website where the Ngorongoro Crater is specified(g).
Deyo seems to subscribe to his own brand of religious fundamentalism, referring constantly to biblical characters and events. He dates the creation of the world to around 6000 BC and It appears that he believes that India was connected to Africa less than 5,000 years ago!
He also subscribes to the Expanding Earth Hypothesis, to which I am also sympathetic. However, when he ventured into the realms of ‘free energy, anti-gravity and extraterrestrial visitors he lost me completely. A lot of research has gone into The Vindicator Scrolls although some readers may find his use of so many mathematical formulae makes much of the content inaccessible.
Some less than complimentary comments regarding Deyo are to be found on the Internet(d).
(a) https://www.standeyo.com/bio.Stan.html
(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20171002114120/https://www.mythicalireland.com/other/atlantis.php
(c) https://mainzerbeobachter.wordpress.com/tag/atlantis/
(d) https://web.archive.org/web/20181022120234/https://www.christianmediaresearch.com/deyo.html
(e) https://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.ie/2017/02/the-asteroid-flood-atlantis-and-alien.html
(h) https://www.standeyo.com/Podcast/Show_Images/Eden_Images.html
(i) Bing Videos *
Plate Tectonics
Plate Tectonics is the name given to the widely accepted geological theory that explains the observable fact of continental drift. Abraham Ortelius, a 16th-century cartographer was one of the first to suggest that Africa, Europe and the Americas had at one time been joined together. In the 17th century Sir Francis Bacon is claimed to have been similarly struck by the complementary profiles of South America and Africa, but this, according to G.L. Herries Davies, is an exaggeration of what Bacon actually wrote(j). Alexander von Humboldt writing at the end of the 18th century, also commented that the ”lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean had once been joined.” Decades later Snider-Pellegrini expressed similar ideas that eventually led to the theories of ‘continental drift’ and plate tectonics.
In 1912, Alfred Wegener and Frank Taylor first outlined the concept of continental drift, which proposed that the surface of the Earth is in motion albeit very slowly. At first the idea was considered preposterous by the scientific community but gradually gained acceptance as evidence in its favour accumulated. In the early 1960’s the theory of ‘sea-floor spreading’ was developed and gradually the idea that the Earth’s surface consists of a number of plates that move relative to each other gained acceptance and evolved into the theory of plate tectonics that we have today. However, there are some anomalies that the present theory does not explain so further revision is probably required.
These anomalies together with the geographical match between the two continents led to the formulation of the Expanding Earth Hypothesis(b).
When sea-floor spreading was identified in the Atlantic, some writers investigated where it might fit into the drama of Atlantis. It is not surprising that plate tectonics has been claimed by some, such as Frank Joseph, to support the existence of Atlantis, while others, including sceptic Paul Jordan, maintain that it makes the existence of Atlantis in the Atlantic an impossibility.
A further sceptical view of Atlantis in the Atlantic, by Benjamin Radford, claims(k) that “plate tectonics demonstrate that Atlantis is impossible; as the continents have drifted, the seafloor has spread over time, not contracted. There would simply be no place for Atlantis to sink into. As Ken Feder notes, ‘The geology is clear; there could have been no large land surface that then sank in the area where Plato places Atlantis. Together, modern archaeology and geology provide an unambiguous verdict: There was no Atlantic continent; there was no great civilization called Atlantis.'” This, of course, is perfectly true, except that Plato placed Atlantis in the Atlantic Sea, which many believe was a reference at that particular time to the Western Mediterranean!
An interesting website on the subject of the problems associated with the theory of plate tectonics by David Pratt is worth a read(a)(d)(i).>N.C. Smoot has also written(p) about anomalies encountered with the conventional theory of plate tectonics and possible solutions.<
Equally critical is the opening chapter of Thomas J. Krupa’s book Biblical Flood, Noah’s Ark and the Star of David[1010]. Sustained opposition to the theory has found expression in the NCGT Journal(e)since 1996.
Robert Bauval has written a paper on the possible effect that plate tectonics may have had on the accuracy of the orientation of the Giza pyramids(m).
Marvin Herndon has proposed a new theory, which he has entitled ‘Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics’; a subtle combination of plate tectonics and the Expanded Earth Hypothesis(g). The idea of subduction is also challenged by the New Pangaea Theory (NPT)(h).
The starting point of NPT is that “252 million years ago our planet was impacted by a massive comet, a comet far larger than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. This previous impact was so powerful it fractured the Earth’s crust, began the breakup of Pangaea and wiped out most of the life on the planet.”(o) The author, J. Chris Everett, proposes the comet, 100km in diameter, was absorbed into the body of our planet.
P.P. Flambas, author of Plato’s Caribbean Atlantis[1368] in which he has proposed a modification to the current theory of PT, which he has called the ‘Hydraulic Hypothesis’ to explain shortcomings in accepted PT theory and support his Atlantis location.
A July 2016 report was published on the rate of tectonic movement, estimated to be comparable to the speed of fingernail growth(f).
In 2020, it was reported that “scientists are beginning to understand the importance of another characteristic of any planet likely to support life, and it is one that fits squarely into (James) Lovelock’s view of Earth as a dynamic participant rather than a passive backdrop: an active system of drifting continents, otherwise known as plate tectonics. On the face of it, the connection between life, with its relatively brief cycles and dizzying complexity, and plate tectonics, with its much slower cycles and ostensibly simpler interactions, appears tenuous. But on Earth, at least, that connection is direct and deep.” (n).
Evidence of plate tectonics has now been identified on Mars(c)! In October 2019 NASA confirmed that a number of ‘marsquakes’ have been confirmed on the ‘Red Planet’(l). So far, the evidence suggests that our planet is more moon-like than earth-like.
(a) https://davidpratt.info/tecto.htm
(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20171105200137/https://www.grisda.org/origins/15053.htm
(c) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120809155831.htm
(d) https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2012/11/27/serious-issues-with-plate-tectonics-2/
(e) http://www.ncgtjournal.com/index.html
(g) http://www.nuclearplanet.com/510090.pdf
(h) https://web.archive.org/web/20170429173617/https://newpangaeatheory.com/the-enigmas/
(i) An Alternative to Plate and Expansion Tectonics – Thunderbolts Forum (v2.0) (archive.org) (new link) *
(j) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238388608_Francis_Bacon_and_Continental_Drift
(k) https://www.livescience.com/23217-lost-city-of-atlantis.html
(l) https://www.universetoday.com/143625/insight-has-already-detected-21-marsquakes/
(m) http://www.robertbauval.co.uk/articles/articles/platetectonicsandgp.html
(n) https://nautil.us/why-aliens-and-volcanoes-go-together-1879/
(o) https://web.archive.org/web/20170429211143/https://newpangaeatheory.com/the-new-pangaea-theory/
(p) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253098613_Earth_Geodynamic_Hypotheses_Updated *