An A-Z Guide To The Search For Plato's Atlantis

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  • NEWS September 2023

    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

    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 »
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Gene Matlock

Abraham

Abraham is generally accepted as the Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, possibly living in the 2nd millennium BC. The name Abraham and its variants has been identified(a) in many cultures, although the existence of Abraham as a real historical person has been disputed.

Nevertheless, there have been a number of efforts to connect Abraham with the religion of ancient India(b) . The most publicised proponent of this view is Gene Matlock who offered his evidence in a paper titled Who was Abraham?(c)

He begins this document with three citations from ancient sources;

“In his History of the Jews, the Jewish scholar and theologian Flavius Josephus (37-100 A.D.), wrote that the Greek philosopher Aristotle had said: “…These Jews are derived from the Indian philosophers; they are named by the Indians Calani.” (Book I:22.)

Clearchus of Soli wrote, “The Jews descend from the philosophers of India. The philosophers are called in India Calanians and in Syria Jews. The name of their capital is very difficult to pronounce. It is called ‘Jerusalem.'”

“Megasthenes, who was sent to India by Seleucus Nicator, about three hundred years before Christ, and whose accounts from new inquiries are every day acquiring additional credit, says that the Jews ‘were an Indian tribe or sect called Kalani…'” (Anacalypsis, by Godfrey Higgins, Vol. I; p. 400.)”

Matlock believes that India ruled our prehistoric world including parts of America and furthermore. that Atlantis was located in South-East Mexico at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan [0472]. In an attempt to link his Mexican location with Plato’s description of Atlantis, Matlock contends that the elephants mentioned by him were the long-snouted tapirs of Meso-America!(e) Furthermore, he claims that there was a connection between India, the Phoenicians, Atlantis and Mexico.

However, Matlock by way of clarification added “My readers should know that the ‘Atlantis’ described in this book may not be the same as Plato’s ‘Atlantis’. I’m just proving that there was once a part of the world called ‘Atlantis’ – that a part of Mexico once had the Sanskrit name Atlán, Tlan or Toltán, whose citizens were known as Atlantecas and Atlantl.” He then continues with “if my ‘Atlantis’ is not the real ‘Atlantis’ no one will ever find the one Plato mentioned.”

Matlock’s widely quoted internet article(c) begins with the identification of Abraham and his wife Sarai with the Hindu god Brahma and his wife Saraisvati.

In 2000, Matlock published Jesus and Moses Are Buried in India, Birthplace of Abraham and the Hebrews[0473], in which he develops this theme further.

A book supporting Matlock by the controversial Sri G. Ananda (Gregory Alexander) entitled Brahma: The God of Abraham [1187] was published in 2014. However, the idea is hotly debated on the internet by all interested parties, Christian, Muslim and Hindu.

Roger M. Pearlman tackled the subject of Atlantis in Plato’s Atlantis Legend Resolution: Abraham is the Real Atlas [1596]. Apart from the unexpected identification of Abraham, he also equates Hercules with the biblical Samson and places the Pillars of Hercules at Gaza. Disturbingly, he suggests that Sodom can be identified as Atlantis. Then, for good measure, he maintains that Göbekli Tepe was founded by Noah‘s family!

Jason Colavito had a critical view(d) of the recent (2017) Turkish documentary, supported by the government, which claims that Göbekli Tepe was built by Telah, Abraham’s father, and destroyed by Abraham.

 

(a) So Many Abrahams by Hiberia (archive.org)

(b) WELCOME TO AUM-SHALOM.COM (archive.org)

(c) Abraham – Who Was He? / Viewzone

(d) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/turkish-government-funds-documentary-claiming-gobekli-tepe-was-built-by-abrahams-father-and-destroyed-by-abraham

(e) http://viewzone.com/atlantis22.html

Atlantis II Deep (l)

Atlantis II Deep is the name of the largest submarine basin in the Red Sea reaching a maximum depth of 7,160 feet where hot brine is produced at 56°C. The Red Sea is an extension of the Rift Valley and is in a tectonically active region.

Atlantis II Deep

Gene Matlock quotes Rajeswar Gupta(a), the Bengali historian, who states that the Red Sea and the Mediterranean had in earlier times been connected by a strait. Coincidentally, the controversial Oera Linda Book supports this contention(b).

(a) https://www.mondovista.com/ancientturks.html

(b) https://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/olb/olb29.htm
(p.105)

Fauna of Atlantis

The Fauna of Atlantis as described by Plato has done little to pinpoint its location and is clearly a subject for further investigation.  However, pinpointing is the wrong word since Atlantis stretched from North Africa as far north as central Italy, so there is probably a wide geographical spread to the fauna noted by Plato.

In Critias he refers to ‘flocks’ (111c) implying sheep and/or goats; bees (111c), elephants (114e); horses (117b); bulls (119d). He also mentions sable clothing (120b) but these were possibly imported.

The most problematic of these is the reference to elephants, a term that could be loosely applied to a number of related species including mastodons, mammoths, the Indian, the African and dwarf elephants. The habitat of the latter diminutive creatures stretched from Siberia as far south as the equator. The remains of dwarf elephants have been found on the islands of the Mediterranean from Sardinia to Cyprus.

Pygmy elephant is the term applied to some species found today in parts of Asia and Africa. However ‘pygmy’ or ‘dwarf’ elephants could hardly be described as “largest and most voracious” of animals (Critias 115a).

However, there is general acceptance that the North African Elephant inhabited the Atlas Mountains until they became extinct in Roman times(b)(e). Atlantis sceptic, Ronald H. Fritze, an Atlantis sceptic, acknowledges[709.25] the existence of elephants in North Africa until the Romans.

The species of elephant used by Hannibal has been a source of debate for years(c). The Numidians of North Africa (202 BC–46 BC) also used local elephants in warfare (d). It would seem to me that the North African Elephant, rather than the Asian or African species, would have been more suited to the trek across the Alps. Needless to say the Atlas Mountains were part of the Atlantean sphere of influence (Timaeus 25a-b).

Eckart Kahlhofer believes that the elephants referred to by Plato were in fact deer, claiming that a scribal error resulted in the Greek word elaphos (deer) being transcribed as elephas (elephant).

>Hyde Clarke proposed that Plato’s ‘elephants were in fact tapirs in an effort to bolster his Hispaniola location for Atlantis. Gene Matlock ‘borrowed’ this idea to suit his Mexican Atlantis. Tapirs are only found in S.E. Asia as well as Central and South America. Apart from that, Plato described his elephants as ‘the largest and most voracious’ (Crit. 114e & 115a), which would clearly exclude tapirs or deer.<

R. Cedric Leonard has written an interesting paper(a) on the early domestication of animals and its possible connection with Atlantis.

*(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20161210225952/https://www.atlantisquest.com/Taming.html*

(b) https://interesting-africa-facts.com/Africa-Landforms/Atlas-Mountains-Facts.html

(c) https://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/18/science/the-mystery-of-hannibal-s-elephants.html

(d) https://nabataea.net/elephants.html

(e) https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2014/08/137456/5-animals-that-once-roamed-morocco-but-no-longer-exist/

Elephants *

Elephants are specifically mentioned by Plato as being indigenous to Atlantis. This must have significance for anyone trying to arrive at a credible location for Atlantis. For example, supporters of the Theran Atlantis School cannot show where such large animals could have lived on the small volcanic island. There are no physical remains, no frescos and no historical references. Rodney Castleden who supports the Minoan Hypothesis admits that “no raw elephant ivory has been found (on Thera) and very little in the way of worked ivory”[225.70]. He later speaks of the importation of ivory into Crete[p.172] having bravely denounced Plato’s description (Critias 115a) of herds of elephants on Atlantis as “false”[p.136].

Similarly, Spanuth’s Heligoland location would have been climatically unsuited to elephants. Spanuth himself admits that the elephant reference “is hard to explain“. Nevertheless, Felice Vinci who champions a Northern European origin for Greek mythology believes that Plato’s elephant reference may be a lingering memory of the woolly mammoths that inhabited Arctic regions as recently as 2500-2000 BC(t)(u).  In the late 17th century Olof Rudbeck, recognising the problem that Plato’s reference to elephants presented for his Swedish Atlantis, argued that Plato had been speaking figuratively when describing the large voracious animals and had actually been referring to wolves, the Swedish word for wolf being ‘ulf’, which sounds like the beginning of ‘elephant’!!

Elephants in Western Europe were undoubtedly represented by mammoths, remains of which have been recovered from the North Sea – Doggerland and dated to around 40,000 years ago. Coincidentally, a tool made of mammoth bone, used for making rope, has also been dated to 40,000 years ago(i)(n). This discovery(s) by Nicholas Conard from the University of Tubingen was made shortly before Ashley Cowie published his interesting book[1454] on the history of rope-making. Further information on string, ropes and knots was published in March 2017(o). This ingenuity of our very distant ancestors, so often underestimated, is slowly being revealed by modern archaeology. In 2000, in the Czech Republic, it was discovered that woven cloth was being produced on looms 27,000 years ago(v). A few years later a team from Harvard’s Peabody Museum reported the discovery of fibres that ‘were spun, twisted or knotted’ and dated to at least 34,000 years ago(x). 2020 saw evidence emerge which suggested that even as far back as 41,000 – 52,000 years ago the Neanderthals had mastered the making of cords(w). Later the same year, further evidence was offered that string-making may have begun even earlier(y).

Allied to the demise of the Siberian mammoths is the often-repeated fib that when the remains were first discovered, their flesh was still fresh enough to eat, which has recently been debunked by Jason Colavito(j). He has also unearthed the truth behind that other canard relating to a Siberian mammoth, namely that fresh buttercups were found in its mouth(j). He has now(q) traced back the earliest reference to the frozen mammoths to George Cuvier in 1822 [1586.11].

Eckart Kahlhofer, in a forthcoming book[715] advocates a North-West European location for Atlantis, and suggests that where Plato referred to elephants he actually meant deer! Kahlhofer offers, as a simple explanation for this seemingly daft contention, the fact that the Greek for elephant, elephas, is very similar to the Greek elaphos which means deer. He claims that a simple transcription error by a scribe could have caused the mix-up.

The elk was the largest species of deer to be found in the northern hemisphere and is still to be found in Scandinavia. The Great Irish Deer which died out around 5500 BC had an antler span of 11ft and a maximum height of 10ft, though usually less. The tallest African elephant ever recorded was 13 feet at the shoulder, which would appear to give the elephant the edge over the deer heightwise. Furthermore, It is worth pointing out, again, that Plato described his elephants as the ‘largest and most voracious’ animal, so when we realise that an adult elephant eats 250-300 lbs a day, while a moose manages on 40-60 lbs, there seems to be no contest.

Gene Matlock in an attempt to bolster his Mexican location for Atlantis has suggested that Plato’s elephants were in reality the long-snouted tapirs of Meso-America!(c), an idea ‘borrowed’ from Hyde Clarke 

While the elephant issue should not be dealt with in isolation it does serve to illustrate the difficulties involved in analysing Plato’s text. Consider the possibility that the early date of 9600 BC for Atlantis is accepted, then the islands that are too small today to accommodate elephants may have been considerably larger and sometimes connected to each other or a mainland during the Ice Age, when sea levels were lower, and consequently capable of supporting pachyderms. In this regard, Sundaland would have been the most suitable candidate. Not only would today’s South China Sea archipelagos have been a single landmass, but there would have been access to the region from the Asian mainland, home today to large numbers of elephants.

Strangely enough, even the Andes, considered by some as the home of Atlantis, reveal the fact that during the last Ice Age, a species of elephant called Cuvieronius lived there but became extinct around 8000 BC. These animals are to be found carved on the great Gateway of the Sun in Tiahuanaco suggesting that they were common in the region. Supporters of an Atlantis link with Tiahuanaco have highlighted this fact.

James Bailey who supports[149][150] the idea of Atlantis in America believes that Plato’s mention of elephants could be a reference to the American mammoth, generally believed to have died out circa 10,000 BC, although Victor von Hagen, the American explorer, contentiously maintained that they survived as late 2000 BC. A similar idea was presented at the 2005 Atlantis Conference by the American researcher, Monique Petersen.

The Schoppes, in support of their theory of Atlantis in the Black Sea region, contend(l) that Indian elephants existed there until 800 BC and support this with a reference to the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmosis III who killed 120 elephants ‘there’ around 1200 BC, which is a strange claim as Thutmosis did not venture beyond Syria and he died circa 1426 BC!

Elephas Antiquus (Palaeoloxodon), is a dwarf species whose remains have been found throughout the islands of the Mediterranean from Sardinia to Cyprus. All those found were dated 200,000 BC or earlier! In sharp contrast, Simon Davis, in an article in New Scientist (3 Jan.1985), dated Mediterranean dwarf elephants to as recent as 6000 BC(p). Some writers, such as Roger Coghill, have tried to use the pygmy elephant as an explanation for Plato’s text (Crit. 114e & 115a) where we find that he describes the elephants as being ‘of its nature the largest and most voracious’. This is not a description of pygmy elephants.

Victoria Louise Herridge is a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. She has published a lengthy paper in two parts(z)(aa) offering an in-depth technical study of dwarf elephant species found on Mediterranean islands.

However, Ghar Hasan or Hasan’s Cave in southeast Malta has palaeolithic cave paintings that depict elephants, indicating more recent contact with the animals. Whether these represented full-sized or the pygmy variety is unclear. A small booklet[214] by Dr. Anton Mifsud and Dr. Charles Savona-Ventura describes this cave system.

In Dossier Malta – Neanderthal [1587] Mifsud has drawn attention to another cavern, not far away, formerly known as Ghar Dulam, now Ghar Dalam, where thousands of dwarf elephant bones were discovered. Dulam means ‘small elephant’ in Arabic. This is one of the mainstays of his ‘Atlantis in Malta’ theory. Whether these diminutive creatures justify Plato’s description that they were the “largest and most voracious” of animals (Crit.115a) is clearly debatable. For me, this is not a description of pygmy elephants and so in all probability is an indication of a North African location or, as some claim, an Asian one!

The Atlanteans had control in Europe as far as Tyrrhenia and Egypt, which would have included what is now modern Tunisia, the home of the last recorded wild elephants in that region!

The exact extent of Egyptian-controlled territory in Libya at the time of Atlantis is unclear. We do know that  “In the mid-13th century, Marmarica was dominated by an Egyptian fortress chain stretching along the coast as far west as the area around Marsa Matruh; by the early 12th century, Egypt claimed overlordship of Cyrenaican tribes as well. At one point a ruler chosen by Egypt was set up (briefly!) over the combined tribes of Meshwesh, Libu, and Soped.”(ac)

A Wikipedia(ab) map suggests that the Egyptian New Kingdom control stretched at least halfway towards Syrtis Major, which has been proposed by some as the location of Atlantis.

Readers should be aware that there is general acceptance that the North African Elephant inhabited the Atlas Mountains until they became extinct in Roman times(e)(h). The New Scientist magazine of 7th February 1985(d) outlined the evidence that Tunisia had native elephants until at least the end of the Roman Empire.

H.R. Stahel in Atlantis Illustrated [560] is the only commentator that I have encountered who suggested that elephants were used in the construction of the magnificent buildings described by Plato. This would make sense as Stahel calculated that surrounding the city of Atlantis “the aggregate length of the walls was almost 50 miles; they were 50 feet broad and twice as high. To build them, and their gates and towers, was a feat as impressive as the construction of the canals. The quantity of stone required was roughly 27 times that used in an Egyptian pyramid.” [p94]

In Elephant Destiny[1301] Martin Meredith records that one of the earliest references to the African elephant came from Hanno, the 5th century BC Carthaginian explorer, who related how he came across marshes at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, which “were haunted by elephants and multitudes of other grazing beasts.” Meredith also mentions that stables for as many as 300 elephants were to be found within the city of Carthage itself.

Nevertheless,  the species of elephant used by Hannibal has been a source of debate for years(f). The Numidians of North Africa (202 BC–46 BC) also used local elephants in warfare(g). It would seem to me that the North African Elephant, rather than the Asian or African species, would have been more suited to the trek across the Alps. Needless to say, the Atlas Mountains were part of the Atlantean sphere of control (Timaeus 25a-b) and so may be the reason that Plato mentioned them. It is also reported that during the reign of the Ptolemies in Egypt (323 BC-30 BC), they imported war elephants from Eritrea in East Africa(r).

Dustin Kolb, is a German researcher, who also advocates a Mexican location for Atlantis and endeavoured, unconvincingly, to explain away Plato’s mention of elephants as a reference to bulls and bison!

The latter half of 2010 saw a new piece of nonsense hit the blogosophere when a claim that the Atlanteans had flying machines made of elephant skins suddenly appeared and before you could say “cut and paste” it was ‘adopted’ by a variety of websites(a)(b). So Dumbo was not the first flying elephant! In fact, this daft idea was just a recycling of one of Edgar Cayce’s ‘revelations’ (Reading 364-6)(m).

(a) https://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Speaking-of-Atlantis/1872335  (Offline October 2017)

(b) https://www.saching.com/Articles/Historical-Proof-of-Atlantis-2888.html

(c) https://viewzone.com/atlantis22.html

(d) New Scientist, 7 February 1985 

(e) https://interesting-africa-facts.com/Africa-Landforms/Atlas-Mountains-Facts.html

(f) https://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/18/science/the-mystery-of-hannibal-s-elephants.html

(g) https://nabataea.net/elephants.html

(h) https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2014/08/137456/5-animals-that-once-roamed-morocco-but-no-longer-exist/

(i) https://www.seeker.com/how-rope-was-made-40000-years-ago-1943454415.html

(j) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/dining-on-frozen-mammoth-steaks-the-evolution-of-a-strange-rumor

(k) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/flash-frozen-mammoths-and-their-buttercups-yet-another-case-of-repetition-and-recycling-of-bad-data

(l) https://web.archive.org/web/20190830053312/https://www.black-sea-atlantis.com/black-sea-atlantis/

(m) Edgar Cayce Reading 364-6 (hpage.com) 

(n) https://www.q-mag.org/40000-years-of-rope-making.html

(o) https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-long-knotty-world-spanning-story-of-string/

(p) New Scientist (3 Jan.1985)  *

(q) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-claim-of-flash-frozen-mammoths-is-older-than-i-thought

(r) https://www.livescience.com/64407-ancient-egypt-fortress-war-elephants.html

(s) https://www.seeker.com/how-rope-was-made-40000-years-ago-1943454415.html

(t) https://www.dailygrail.com/2013/12/did-you-know-woolly-mammoths-still-walked-the-earth-when-the-pyramids-were-built/

(u) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island#Flora_and_fauna

(v) https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/790569.stm

(w) https://www.capradio.org/news/npr/story?storyid=828400733

(x) https://web.archive.org/web/20090930011321/https://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=529173

(y) 120,000-calendar year-outdated necklace tells of the origin of string (archive.org)

(z)  https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/133456/1/133456_Vol.1.pdf

(aa) https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/133456/2/133456_Vol.2.pdf

(ab) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Kingdom_of_Egypt 

(ac) https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/egyptians-and-libyans-in-the-new-kingdom/ 

The Last Atlantis Book

The Last Atlantis Book [472] by Gene Matlock, claims on its cover that this is the last Atlantis book you will ever have to read. He attempts to prove that Mexico was the location of a Meso-American Atlantis that was essentially a Phoenician colony, established about 4000 BC. Although, a fairly slim volume, he covers a lot of ground, linking Mexico, India and Atlantis. He deals extensively with possible linguistic connections between Mesoamerica and Atlantis and Sanskrit. However, his linguistic abilities, not to mention his conclusions, have been subjected to severe criticism, as was the book generally. I think many more books other than Matlock’s will have to be read before the truth can be finally established.

Matlock identifies a site near San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán as matching Plato’s description of Atlantis. Matlock claims “the archaeological remains in San Lorenzo supposedly belong to the Olmec culture. The Olmecs themselves were either survivors of the Atlantis disaster or latecomers to the area”.

The back cover notes claim that over 25,000 books have been written about Atlantis. This is utter nonsense – at most the figure is in the mid hundreds. This sort of inaccuracy raises doubts about the quality of research and the rest of the book. Two further quibbles are that this book is surprisingly short at 140 pages and unforgivably, it has no index.

Matlock has also ventured into other contentious areas claiming that the story of Abraham and Sara of the Old Testament was based on Brahm and Saraisvati in Hindu mythology(a).

(a) https://www.lightforcenetwork.com/shabda-preceptor/who-was-abraham-paper-gene-d-matlock-ba-ma

Nahuatl

Nahuatl is the language that was spoken by the Aztec and Toltec peoples of Mexico. Nahuatl enthusiasts are keen to have it elevated to become the official language of Mexico. It is constantly stated that this language provides a definitive explanation for the word Atlantis, Gene Matlock who favours a Mexican location for Atlantis suggests that it mean People of the Water(a). However, Jim Allen who supports the idea of a Bolivian Atlantis claims that Atlantis are native South American words that mean Water and Copper(b).

(a) https://www.viewzone.com/atlantis2.html

>(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20200811094111/http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/atlantisboliviapart1.htm<

Maya

The Maya of ancient Mexico and Guatemala have generated much controversy regarding their origins(w).  Recent studies indicate that the story of the development of this remarkable civilisation may be more complex than previously thought(k). The demise of the Mayan culture (800-950 AD) has now been definitively shown to be the result of persistent drought, particularly in the southern lowlands(o).

maya_map

Maya Area of Occupation

Nevertheless, a recent (Sept.2021) article(ac) with contributions from several authorities, highlights the complexity referred to above, while one area might be collapsing another could be flourishing – “A number of Maya cities rose and fell at different times, some within that 800 to 1000 time period, and some afterwards, according to scholars. For example, while areas in southern Mesoamerica, such as Tikal in what is now Guatemala, declined in the eighth and ninth centuries due to environmental problems and political turmoil, populations rose in other areas, such as Chichén Itzá, in what is now the Mexican Yucatán Peninsula,”  and “When Chichén Itzá declined, largely because of a lengthy drought during the 11th century, another Yucatán Peninsula city, called Mayapán, started to thrive.”

“We should always remember, the last Maya state, Nojpetén, fell only in 1697 — pretty recent,” said Guy Middleton, a visiting fellow at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Newcastle University in the U.K. “It is really important to get the message out there that though classic Maya cities and states did collapse, and culture did transform, the Maya in no way disappeared,” said Middleton, adding that “we should pay attention to the story, the state and status of the Maya descendent population in Mesoamerica now.” 

The commonly held idea, that the Maya were destroyed by drought is now disputed(ah).

The Maya of Central America today are estimated to number seven million.

Inevitably the Maya have been linked with Atlantis by some writers such as Lewis Spence and E.H. Thompson who claimed that the Maya were descendants of Atlanteans. The maverick, Augustus Le Plongeon, was alone in identifying Atlantis as a colony of the Maya and that their language was in fact Greek!   Others, such as Jean-Frédérick Waldeck, included an Egyptian linkage as well.

Richard Cassaro has published a fascinating collection of parallels between the Mayan and Egyptian cultures on Graham Hancock’s website (ag).

The controversial American politician Charles Gates Dawes was convinced that there had been a connection between Atlantis and the Maya.

Joachim Rittstieg claimed that the Maya and the Vikings had contact for nearly 500 years (754-1224 AD)(ae).

However, trumping all that is a recent claim that the Maya had contact with extraterrestrials and that a documentary providing evidence is planned(b). In a similar vein is the latest English language publication from Erich von Däniken entitled: Astronaut Gods of the Maya[1422].  Semir Osmanagic, of Bosnian pyramid fame, added a twist to this proposed linkage when he claimed[0519]  that the Maya had come from Atlantis, which in turn had been founded by visitors from the Pleiades!

For some comic relief, I can suggest a 1976 book[833] by brothers Eric & Craig Umland which ‘reveals’ that the Maya ‘are remnants of space explorers whose attempts to colonise our solar system went awry more than 40,000 years ago.’ Nearly every page is full of hilarious nonsense and nearly worth the £0.01 currently quoted on Amazon.co.uk. A website(i) dealing with ‘unreason’ uses extracts from the Umlands as good examples! If you wish to read about the Maya in Antarctica, the Canaries as well as the Moon, this is the book for you.

July 2012 saw a report(j) on the discovery of the largest Mayan manmade dam at Tikal in Guatemala, which was 33ft high and 260ft long and included sand filters.

The Maya had a sophisticated writing system that occupied the attention of some 19th-century writers including Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg and Le Plongeon. Unfortunately, de Bourbourg followed the work of the 16th-century bishop of Yucatán, Diego de Landa whose interpretation was seriously erroneous. It was Constantine Rafinesque who partially deciphered some of the Mayan numerals in 1832. 

A report in 2013(l) indicated that substantial progress has been made in the decipherment of any outstanding difficulties in the translation of the Mayan script through Internet cooperation.

July 2012 saw a report(j) on the discovery of the largest Mayan man-made dam at Tikal in Guatemala, which was 33ft high and 260ft long and included sand filters. Ten years later, it was discovered that the Maya had also the ability to engineer a water fountain in their city of Palenque(v) and had advanced water management systems(z). A recent BBC article(ab) took an in-depth look at the remarkable hydrological capabilities of the Maya.

>Since Tikal was first seen by a European, probably in 1696, it became recognised as Guatemala’s largest archaeological site. In 2021 the use of lidar revealed that the city was four times more extensive than previous thought. The March 2024 edition of National Geographic has an article highlighting the wonderful discoveries regarding the sophisticated society of the Maya revealed by lidar. Unfortunately, looting continues to be a serious problem compounded by a lack of funds to properly exploit the tourism potential of places such as Tikal.<

In 2020, the largest and oldest Mayan monument in Mexico was identified. It is in the form of a ceremonial platform that is between 33 and 50 feet tall and is nearly a mile long(x). The structure, dated to around 3,000 years ago and was discovered with the help of LIDAR in the state of Tabasco.

James O’Kon, an engineer, has investigated Mayan technology for decades, including the discovery of a suspension bridge at the ancient Mayan city of Yaxchilan in Mexico in 1995, which is believed to be the longest bridge of the ancient world(r). This and other aspects of Mayan technology he explores in his book, The Lost Secrets of Maya Technology[1490]

One of those technological secrets was the unusual acoustics found at Mayan sites, particularly Chichen Itza(ad). In 1931 Leopold Stokowski, the renowned conductor, spent four days at the site to determine the acoustic principles that could be applied to an open-air concert theatre he was designing. He failed to learn the secret.

More recently, Lorraine Stobbart has written Utopia: Fact or Fiction[0476], which suggests that the ‘Utopia’ of Sir Thomas More was inspired by the Mayan culture although his text was written before Mexico was ‘officially’ discovered. Stobbart recently revealed that she is now revising her views.

However, a more serious claim relates to the idea that Mayan inscriptions revealed that a global catastrophe was to occur in 2012. This nonsense(g) turned into a minor publishing industry.  Some even tried to link this daft idea to Atlantis. Fortunately, May 2012 saw evidence from excavations in Guatemala that shows the Mayan calendar extending well beyond 2012(h).

The Mayan calendar has provoked speculation and controversy ever since its discovery. Its origins are obscure, but one interpretation is that the world we live in was created on this day in 3114 B.C. A quite different view was proposed over seventy years ago by Georg Hinzpeter of the German Hoerbiger Society who claimed that our Moon was captured by the Earth in June of 8498 BC and that it became the zero date for the Maya.(y)

Aloys Eiling, the German researcher, commented on the accuracy of the Mayan calendar “The Mayan calendar even surpasses the precision of the Gregorian calendar in use today. Not only did the Mayan calendar measure the duration of the Earth’s orbit around the sun more accurately than our current calendar, but the Maya gave an even more precise value for the average duration of the Moon’s orbit around Earth. The precision achieved is all the more remarkable as the Moon in deserts or regions with clear skies may have played an important role in everyday life as a nightly source of light. But of what use is its dull light in the rainforest or cloudy regions of the world?”(af)

The late David H. Kelley, a Harvard-educated archaeologist and epigrapher at Canada’s University of Calgary, had been investigating ancient links between Asia and pre-Columbian America. In that regard, he published a paper outlining similarities between the Mayan and ancient Chinese calendars that were too numerous to be explained by independent development(p). A more sceptical view is offered(q) by Jason Colavito, who traces the idea back to Alexander von Humboldt.

In a paper entitled On the Mayan Chronology, Emilio Spedicato offers several ideas regarding ancient Meso-American chronologies. For example, he proposes that the large numbers used by the Maya and Toltecs record days rather than years. Many of his ideas stem from the work of Immanuel Velikovsky, John Ackerman and the Tollmans.

The work of Teobert Maler at the end of the 19th century was invaluable in the advancement of Mayan studies. Subsequent researchers have seized upon his discovery of a frieze at Tikal, which he interpreted as a depiction of the destruction of Atlantis, as evidence of the existence of Atlantis in the Atlantic.  Apart from Maler’s conjectural ideas, no tangible link has been found between the Maya and Atlantis apart from the use in their glyphs of elephants, an animal that features in Plato’s narrative.

The authenticity of the photo of the frieze has been called into question by Jason Colavito and his related blog(n) is worthy of consideration.

 Otto Muck overstated it somewhat when he wrote “If Atlantis had not existed there would be no way of explaining the origins of the Maya civilisation”[098.243]

In late 2011 controversy erupted when it was claimed that the Itza Maya had migrated to North America, more specifically Georgia(c). It was also suggested that earthen pyramids in Georgia and Florida can be attributed to the Maya(e). Richard Thornton led the charge with this claim, which understandably generated considerable controversy. This led to a frosty exchange between Thornton and Jason Colavito(ai).

Among their other accomplishments is the claim that the Maya were capable of predicting meteor showers(s).

Gene Matlock, the well-known advocate of Atlantis in Mexico, is certain that the Maya were originally Tamils from Sri Lanka(a) and Sumerians!

Kurt Schildmann’s 2003 book [1759],  was reviewed by Dr Horst Friedrich who commented that “One of the provisional results of Schildmann’s decipherment of the Maya script, and study of the Maya language, is the rather sensational discovery that words from several Old World languages (Sumerian, Accadian, Indo-Iranian, Phoenician, Hebrew and Basque) have somehow found their way into the Maya language.”(aa) I’m sure this will be disputed!

A recent article(f) gives an interesting firsthand account of encountering the important Mayan city of Calakmul deep in the Yucatan jungle. Potentially even more important are recent LiDAR surveys carried out in Guatemala that have revealed an astounding number of previously unidentified Mayan structures. The number of additional Mayan sites identified through the use of LiDAR continues to grow at an incredible rate(u). It was estimated in 2022 that “researchers using laser technology have located nearly 1,000 previously unknown Maya settlements in Guatemala – the sites include ceremonial centers, sporting facilities, roads, and reservoirs”(ak).

In June 2023, it was announced that once again that LiDAR had enabled another forgotten Mayan city to be located in the Yucatan(aj).

Muddying the waters further is an Islamic site that claims that the Maya were Atlantean(m).

(a) https://viewzone2.com/ancientturksx.html

(b) Mayan Filmmaker Offers Photo as Proof of Aliens, Says Hawking Agrees (Exclusive) (archive.org) 

(c) http://www.billdawers.com/2011/12/22/is-there-an-1100-year-old-mayan-site-in-north-georgia/ 

(e) http://www.mayainamerica.com/2012/01/pyramids-in-florida-and-georgia.html

(f) https://travel4wildlife.com/deep-jungle-puerta-calakmul-mexico/#.U5K8MpAU9to

(g) https://web.archive.org/web/20140811054919/https://2012hoax.wikidot.com/oldstart

(h) https://www.christianpost.com/news/earliest-mayan-mural-contradicts-dec-21-2012-doomsday-74788/

(i) https://web.archive.org/web/20200925184903/https://www.jfk-online.com/exploring.html

(j) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120716191443.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Ffossils_ruins%2Fancient_civilizations+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Fossils+%26+Ruins+News+–+Ancient+Civilizations%29

(k) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130425142343.htm

(l) https://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/28/maya-script-glyph-language-decoding?INTCMP=SRCH

(m) https://mashiyah.blogspot.ie/ (offline 1/8/14)

(n) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2014/02/did-the-maya-depict-the-end-of-atlantis-at-tikal.html

(o) https://popular-archaeology.com/issue/spring-2015/article/new-findings-on-drought-and-the-ancient-maya-collapse

(p) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/mayan-calendar-similar-ancient-chinese-early-contact-006612

(q) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/newly-published-articles-claim-mexican-calendar-derives-from-chinese-original

(r) The Lost Secrets of Maya Technology (archive.org)

(s) https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/09/the-amazing-mayans-may-have-predicted-meteor-showers/

(t) https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/lasers-shed-some-light-on-the-maya-snake-kingdom/

(u) https://news.artnet.com/art-world/technology-transforming-mayan-archaeology-1558456

(v) https://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/03/maya-pyramid-plumbing-unearthed-by-archaeologists/1#.Xm-Nb2BFBVc (link broken) 

(w) Mexico and atlantis | Truth Control (archive.org)

(x)  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/largest-and-oldest-maya-structure-found-mexico-lidar-180975037/

(y) Atlantean Research, Vol 3, No.1, May, 1950

(z) Maya Water System Discoveries Show the Ancient Civilization in a New Light | Discover Magazine

(aa)  https://www.migration-diffusion.info/books.php

(ab) The Maya’s ingenious secret to survival – BBC Travel

(ac) https://www.livescience.com/why-maya-civilization-collapsed.html

(ad) https://www.nature.com/articles/news041213-5

(ae) http://atlantisorschung.de/index.php?title=Joachim_Rittstieg 

(af) https://grahamhancock.com/eilinga3/ 

(ag) The Ancient Egyptians and Mayans: Ten Unexplained Parallels – Graham Hancock Official Website 

(ah)  Ancient Maya lessons on surviving drought: Huge variety of plant foods made their starvation unlikely — ScienceDaily 

(ai) Richard Thornton and the “Maya” of Georgia – JASON COLAVITO

(aj) https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/lost-maya-city-discovered-deep-in-the-jungles-of-mexico 

(ak) https://news.artnet.com/art-world/guatemala-mirador-calakmul-karst-basin-lidar-maya-settlements-2235254 

Atala *

Atala is the name given by ‘Asiatic-Indians’ to Meso-America according to Gene Matlock. This Sanskrit word is used in Hindu traditions to describe a sunken paradise in the Far East. While Matlock uses the word to bolster his claim that Atlantis was located in Mexico, Col. Francis Wilford, an early (1808) translator of the ancient Asiatic Indian Vishnu Purana, claimed[114] that the original text (Book II, Chaps i, ii, and iii) placed Atala at a latitude of between 24° and 28° north. R. Cedric Leonard used this as an endorsement of his Mid Atlantic Ridge location for Atlantis.

Although it has been pointed out that this matches the latitude of the Canaries, without a mention of the longitudinal position it could just as easily have been in central or northern Mexico.

Dennis Brooks disingenuously cites Leonard(a) as if they were in agreement, but then uses the Atala co-ordinates to support his preferred site for Atlantis, namely, Florida, claiming that they match the location of the Plain of Florida. However, the Coastal Plain of Florida lies mainly outside the co-ordinates, north of the 28° parallel.

Atala is also said to be inhabited by “white men who never have to sleep or eat”. (Santi Parva, Section CCCXXXVII).  The Greek historian Herodotus (450 B.C.) describes a tribe of Atlanteans who “never dream and eat no living thing”. (History, Book IV). Can this be coincidence?” An explanation for this is to be found in the second paragraph of the entry in Herodotus.

[See Attala]

(a)  Atlantis of the Sands – Beyond Imagination | Historic Mysteries (archive.org) *

 

Matlock, Gene

Gene D. Matlock (1928- ) was born in El Dorado, Kansas. He claims that from the age of twelve onward, he developed an interest in foreign languages and human beliefs.

gene-matlock-02After high school, he went to study at the University of New Mexico, and then went to Mexico City College, in Mexico, where he got a B.A. degree in Spanish and Latin American Affairs in December 1951. While in Mexico he became aware that somehow the ancient Mexicans had maintained close cultural and religious ties with India. He was drafted into the Marine Corps after graduating from Mexico City College and sent to Korea. After getting out of the Marines, he ‘travelled up and down Central America, from Mexico to Panama‘.

In New Orleans he earned a Masters Degree in Spanish at Tulane University. After teaching for a year in a New Orleans high school, he returned to Kansas where he taught for a year at Campus High School in Haysville, a few miles outside Wichita. He became a high school teacher in the Azusa Unified School District and retired after 27 years. He now lives in the California High Desert and spends his time researching the origins of Native Americans and their religions.

He believes that India ruled our prehistoric world including parts of America and that Atlantis was located in South-East Mexico at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan[472]. In an attempt to link his Mexican location with Plato’s description of Atlantis Matlock contends that the ‘elephants’ mentioned by Plato were in fact the long-snouted tapirs of Meso-America!(c) Furthermore, he claims that there was a connection between India, the Phoenicians, Atlantis and Mexico. Matlock has a widely quoted Internet article(a) on the connection between Abraham and India, beginning with the identification of Abraham and his wife Sarai with the Hindu god Brahma and his wife Saraisvati.>In 2000, Matlock published Jesus and Moses Are Buried in India, Birthplace of Abraham and the Hebrews[473], in which he develops this theme further.<

A supportive book by the controversial Sri G. Ananda (Gregory Alexander) entitled Brahma: The God of Abraham[1187] was published in 2014. However, this idea is hotly debated on the Internet by all interested parties, Christian, Muslim and Hindu.

Matlock is forced to admit that “My readers should know that the ‘Atlantis’ described in this book may not be the same as Plato’s ‘Atlantis’. I’m just proving that there was once a part of the world called ‘Atlantis’ – that a part of Mexico once had the Sanskrit name Atlán, Tlan or Toltán, whose citizens were known as Atlantecas and Atlantl”. He then continues with “if my ‘Atlantis’ is not the real ‘Atlantis’ no one will ever find the one Plato mentioned”.

In 2014, Matlock wrote an article(d) advocating the rewriting of ancient history. He appears to have been inspired by the amazing discoveries at Gobekli Tepe.

Matlock has written a number of books[474][475] none of which have generated any serious critical endorsement, in fact some critiques have been more than unkind. You can judge for yourself by reading some of his radical ideas on the Viewzone website(a)(b).

>He has also contributed to Graham Hancock’s website under the name of Gene Douglas!(e)<

(a) https://www.viewzone.com/hinduturk.html

(b) https://www.viewzone.com/abraham.html  

(c) https://viewzone.com/atlantis22.html

(d) https://www.turk.org.au/must-we-rewrite-ancient-history-by-gene-d-matlock/

>(e) https://grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?1,139807,139807<

Arctic Region

The Arctic Region offers evidence of human activity as long as 45,000 years ago, 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a report(f) in 2016.

Of interest to us is that Spitzbergen was proposed as the location of Atlantis by the French astronomer Jean Silvain Bailly in the 18th century. In 1885, Dr. arctic-ocean-mapW. F. Warren,a former president of Boston University published a book[078]that proposed that the cradle of the human race was situated at the North Pole and had been inundated at the time of the Deluge. Warren’s book can now be accessed online(d), while a brief, but caustic, review of his theory was undertaken by Jason Colavito a few years ago(i).

Bal Gangadar Tilak, an Indian independence campaigner, was so impressed by Warren’s ideas that in his book, Arctic Home in the Vedas [1296]he chose to locate the lost Paradise of Airyana Vaejo in the Arctic(e). The British philosopher, J.G. Bennett was sympathetic to Tilak’s ideas and proposed their further investigation, while being more dismissive of Warren’s reasoning(j).

More recently Gene Matlock also claimed that the Garden of Eden had been situated at the North Pole(h).

Modern Russian nationalism seems to have adopted some of the dafter notions of Nazi Germany including the idea of an Aryan master race, from which they claim to be descended, that was formerly located in the Arctic. It was revealed in 2016 that a former Nazi base had been discovered in the Arctic, which had been used to search for ancient artefacts(g).

Such ideas are expounded by the new darling of Russian neo-fascism, Alexander Dugin, who likes to blend nationalism with mysticism. It is rather worrying that some elements of this nationalism have also adopted anti-semitism as part of their rhetoric(b).

More recently Professor Sergey Teleguin has again drawn attention to Tilak’s work in an article that identifies elements in the Mayan Popul Vuh, which suggest that its origins were in the far north, in Ultima Thule. He concludes with the thought that perhaps the Indo-European and Mayan ancestors came from the true North Pole! Teleguin has outlined his ideas further in an article for (Nov/Dec 2013) Issue 102 of Atlantis Rising magazine.

>In 1906, the American explorer, Robert Peary, made a failed attempt to be the first to reach the North Pole. On his return, he claimed that he had seen a previously unknown, massive landmass complete with soaring mountains and deep valleys, which he called Crocker Land after one of his sponsors. His story received a mixed reception, but another well-known explorer, Donald Baxter MacMillan, took Peary’s account at face value and organised an expedition to find Crocker Land, that set out in July 1913. Where Peary’s attempt was a failure, MacMillan’s was a disaster that ended in murder. Needless to say, Crocker Land was not found, as it does not exist in the Arctic any more than Atlantis does. The story is a fascinating read(k).<

(b) Archive 2415)

(d) https://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/pf/index.htm

(e) https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.9566/page/n7/mode/2up

(f) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/grisly-find-suggests-humans-inhabited-arctic-45000-years-ago

(g) https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a23692/mysterious-arctic-nazi-base-finally-discovered/

(h) http://www.viewzone.com/edenpole.html

(i) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/was-the-garden-of-eden-at-the-north-pole

(j) THE HYPERBOREAN ORIGIN OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN CULTURE by J. G. Bennett from SYSTEMATICS I/3 (archive.org)

(k) The Quest for the Mysterious Lost Atlantis of the Far North | Mysterious Universe *