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NEWS September 2023
September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we move to Sicily and Malta. The trip is purely vacational. Unfortunately, I am writing this in a dreadful apartment, sitting on a bed, with access to just one useable socket and a small Notebook. Consequently, I possibly will not […]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 »
flora and fauna
Short, John Thomas (L)
John Thomas Short (1850-1883) was the American author of The North Americans of Antiquity[1192] written two years before Donnelly’s ground-breaking publication. He draws on some of the same material as Donnelly, such as the similarity of flora and fauna on both sides of the Atlantic as well as the then newly discovered Mid-Atlantic Ridge and concluded (chap.XI) that Atlantis had been located on the MAR.
Savona-Ventura, Charles
Charles Savona–Ventura is a specialist obstetrician-gynaecologist with a strong interest in the Natural Sciences, particularly 
Geology, Herpetology and Mammology. His interests also include Medical Epidemiology, and Medical History.
Dr. Savona-Ventura was one of the co-authors of Malta: Echoes of Plato’s Island. He has also collaborated with his colleague Anton Mifsud on a number of other books and articles relating to ancient Malta. They have commented on unusual ancient skulls that have been found in the prehistoric temples of the island that Andrew Collins(a) has linked with similar skulls dating from pre-dynastic Egypt.
Dr. Savona has his own website(b) that includes much regarding his medical interests. Rather oddly, in 2010, he independently published a fourteen-page booklet, In Search of Atlantis [1332], which like ‘Echoes’ supported Malta as Atlantis. He also contends that Malta had in earlier times been part of a much larger landmass and supports this idea with the fact that the Maltese and Pelagian islands share species of flora and fauna not found on Sicily or the Italian mainland. This would appear to be reinforced by a map of Ptolemy printed in Ulm in 1482 which shows a large island southeast of Sicily.
(a) https://andrewcollins.com/page/articles/maltaskulls.htm
(b) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20091027150352/https://www.geocities.com/rainforest/3096/
Flora and Fauna of Atlantis
The Flora and Fauna of Atlantis is mentioned in great detail by Plato in Critias;
“Besides all this, the earth bore freely all the aromatic substances it bears today, roots, herbs, bushes and gums exuded by flowers or fruit. There were cultivated crops, cereals which provide our staple diet. And pulse (to use its generic name) which we need in addition to feed us; there were the fruits of trees, hard to store but providing the drink and food and oil which gives us pleasure and relaxation and which we serve after supper as a welcome refreshment to the weary when appetite is satisfied – all these were produced by that sacred island, then still beneath the sun, in wonderful quality and profusion.” (115a-b)
James Bramwell noted how Leo Frobenius was convinced that his chosen Atlantis location of Yorubaland in Nigeria was reinforced by Plato’s description of the flora of his disappeared island [0195.119].
The lack of sufficient detail in the extract from Critias has led to a variety of interpretations. Jürgen Spanuth in support of his North Sea location for Atlantis has claimed [015.68] that during the Bronze Age the snow line in that region was higher than at any other time since the last Ice Age at 1,900 metres. He claims that as a result, grapes and wheat were cultivated there during that period.
The existence of the same species of plants and animals on both sides of the Atlantic has been noted for some time, so when the Mid Atlantic Ridge (MAR) was discovered in the 19th century and subsequently combined with the realisation that sea levels had dropped during the last Ice Age, it was thought that a stepping-stone/s, if not an actual landbridge, between the continents had been identified. This idea was popular with many geologists and botanists at the beginning of the 20th century, such R.F. Scharff and H.E. Forrest, both of whom also saw the MAR as the location of Atlantis, an idea that still persists today. Emmet Sweeney is a modern writer who also sees the earlier exposed MAR as an explanation for the shared transatlantic biota and is happy to identify the Azores as the last remnants of Atlantis[0700].
Andrew Collins has attempted to squeeze a reference to coconuts out of this text to support his Caribbean location for Atlantis. However, coconuts were not introduced into that region until colonial times(c). Ivar Zapp & George Erikson, driven by similar motivations had made the same claim earlier.
>Dhani Irwanto has noted that “DNA analysis of more than 1,300 coconuts from around the world reveals that the coconut was brought under cultivation in two separate locations, one in the Pacific basin and the other in the Indian Ocean basin. (Baudouin et al, 2008; Gunn et al, 2011).(d)“<
My reading of the text is that Plato is describing food with which he is personally familiar and is unlikely to have been referring to coconuts.
>Michael Hübner in support of his Moroccan location for Atlantis has drawn attention to the argan tree, native to Southern Morocco, from which a valuable oil is produced. He goes further and claims that the appearance of the fruit of the argan tree may also have been the source of the story of the ‘golden apples’ stolen by Hercules from the Hesperides. Critias 114e tells us how Atlantis “brought forth also in abundance all the timbers that a forest provides for the labours of carpenters”. Even today, across the northern regions of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, woodlands and forests still cover an area of nearly 360,000 square kilometers(e).<
Mary Settegast points out that around 7300 BC there is evidence of crop rotation including cereals at the Tell Aswad site in Syria.
The olive tree thrives best in regions with a Mediterranean climate. Olive trees are mainly found between 25° and 45° N. latitude, while in France, they are only found in its southern Mediterranean region.
Ignatius Donnelly devoted Chapter VI(a) of his Atlantis tome to a review of the Atlantean flora and fauna. The print media at the start of the 20th century kept the general public aware of these theories(b).
Those that believe that Plato’s Atlantis narrative was just an invention to promote Plato’s political philosophy cannot explain the level of detail that is provided relating to the flora and fauna of Atlantis. In Plato’s dialogue Laws, Magnesia, another ideal city-state, which was an invention, had no such embellishment included. For me, the minutiae of the plants and animals noted by Plato in Critias is not what you would expect in a philosophical or political dissertation, but is more in keeping with a factual report.
(a) https://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/ataw/ataw106.htm
(b) https://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/189397134?searchTerm=Atlantis discovered&searchLimits=
(d) Coconuts | Atlantis in the Java Sea (atlantisjavasea.com) *
(e) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_woodlands_and_forests *
Couissin, Paul
Paul Couissin (1885-1932) was a French writer on ancient history who wrote[245] of his conviction that Atlantis existed in
the Atlantic, offering a stepping-stone between the two continents. He based his views on the similarity between the flora and fauna to be found on both sides of the Atlantic(b).>This linkage was popular in Couissin’s time having been promoted by Ignatius Donnelly and others such as J.T. Short.<
>The concept of an Atlantic landbridge was proposed as early as the 17th century and later by John B. Newman in 1849 [488.8], who wrote that “in former times an island of enormous dimensions, named Atlantis, stretched from the north-western coast of Africa across the Atlantic Ocean and that over this continental tract both man and beast migrated westward.”
The Atlantic landbridge idea became quite popular by the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries and even as late as the 1970s when it was still espoused by Rene Malaise(a), but is now completely abandoned.<
(a) Atlantis, Vol.27, No.1, Jan-Feb 1974.