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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 »
Greg Little
Bauval, Robert *
Robert Bauval (1948- ) was born in Egypt of Belgian and Maltese extraction. He is probably best known 
as the original promoter of the Orion Correlation Theory (OCT), which claims that the layout of three principal Giza pyramids mirrors ‘Orion’s Belt’ in that constellation. This received widespread coverage when it was outlined in The Orion Mystery [1707] written by Bauval and Adrian Gilbert and in Keeper of Genesis [1050] written with Graham Hancock, published two years later. In fact, Bauval had first published his theory in 1989 in Discussions in Egyptology(a).
Nevertheless, Andrew Collins, in a recent paper(h) has disputed Bauval’s OCT and has instead offered evidence that the alignment of the three principal Giza pyramids matches more closely the ‘wing’ stars of the Cygnus constellation than the ‘belt’ of Orion!
Greg Little in considering the Orion vs Cygnus debate concluded that “the truth is that Cygnus fits the three pyramids at Giza far better than Orion does. Does that mean that Cygnus is correct? No, not really. It means that there is a lot more investigation has to be done. It also means that we may never know. I’m sure that somewhere in the night sky there are three stars that can fit rather precisely onto Giza.” (I).
In 2008, Bauval published a paper(j) on the place of astrology in the ‘Sacred Sciences of the ancient Egyptians. Although this is not a popular view among Egyptologists, Bauval concluded that “it is my opinion that the ancient Egyptians practised an esoteric form of ‘religious astrology’ related to the conception and birth of their kings. It is also my opinion that this ‘religious astrology’ originated many millennia before in prehistoric times in the Eastern Sahara, as the astronomical alignments of the megaliths at Nabta Playa suggest. If this is true, then the stellar observations that originated in the Western Desert of Egypt some time between 8000 – 5000 BC events on earth lie at the root of ‘Astrology’.”
Bauval and Thomas G. Brophy co-authored two books, Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt [1508B] and Imhotep the African [1509], in which they trace the origins of pharaonic Egypt back to a time before the Sahara became a desert and when dark-skinned people created the Nabta Playa megaliths. When the climate changed these people were forced to move eastward into the Nile Valley developing what we now call Ancient Egypt.
In 2019 a paper(k) by Larry Pahl, looked again at the Orion Correlation Theory and concluded that Bauval should not have confined his theory to Orion’s ‘belt’, but looked at the entire constellation and sought a more extensive reflection on the monuments of ancient Egypt. Prahl then proceeds to do exactly that.
Similarly, Jean-Pierre Lacroix claimed that other Egyptian structures may have been located to reflect the layout of other constellations in the sky. Specifically, he focuses on Aries and Thebes(l).
Alessandro Berio went further with the claim(m) that the entire Nile was ‘designed’ to be a reflection of the constellations above!
Another writer, Wayne Herschel, is claimed to have reinterpreted Bauval’s Orion theory in his book The Hidden Records [1706] and not only claims that the Giza pyramids reflect the layout of stars in Orion’s Belt, but that a similar arrangement of ‘pyramids’ in the Cydonia region of Mars is also to be found. Emilio Spedicato is another supporter of this Cydonia-Giza-Orion association(g)!
Herschel’s volume is a glossy collection of balderdash, which includes such delights as the Martians having a penal colony on Earth, as well as a promise of a sequel that will reveal “two further shocking secrets of the Sphinx.” Eventually, The Alpha Omega Taurus Star Gate was published with a new collection of balderdash. The odd idea of Earth as an alien penal colony has also been put forward by Dr Ellis Silver an American ecologist(f).
During one interview Bauval declared that “To be very honest, I am not a believer in Atlantis.”(b) However, he has no difficulty in adopting the idea of ancient astronaut visitors a la von Däniken, as revealed in Cosmic Womb [1708], written with Chandra Wickramasinghe and reviewed by Jason Colavito(c). This conversion to the idea of ancient astronauts was seen by Len Kasten as a natural progression. In an article published in Atlantis Rising (Issue 5), Kasten noted that Bauval “didn’t start out with the extraterrestrial hypothesis, but arrived at it after a painstaking study of the Pyramid Texts, and a corresponding highly scientific astronomical study of the monuments.” [Kasten, a UFO researcher, was a regular contributor to Atlantis Rising.]
Zahi Hawass, the former Egyptian Minister of Antiquities has repeatedly clashed with Bauval, particularly in connection with the proposed Orion correlation. In April 2015, Hancock was due to engage in a debate with Hawass on the subject of their conflicting views of ancient history. However, when Hawass saw that Hancock included an image of Robert Bauval in his presentation, he refused to continue with the arranged format(d)(e) and after a lot of shouting, from Hawass, he stormed out. This sort of ‘prima donna’ behaviour, although not very professsional, is consistent with Hawass’s well-known temperamental manner.
The antipathy between Bauval and Hawass reached a new level with the publication of Breaking the Mirror of Heaven [1913]+ written by Bauval and Ahmed Osman in 2012. The authors claim that “it is not merely the story of a man who dominated and controlled Egyptian antiquities for several decades as if they were his own but also the story of Egyptian archaeology itself and the way modern Egypt created such a man. These topics need to be properly reviewed, first to understand how, and why, Zahi Hawass became what he is and, second, to provide a new vision that is desperately needed to save Egyptian antiquities from decline and perhaps even total destruction.” David Rohl commented that “This is a book that needed to be written.”
In 2020, Massimo Barbetta published a review of Bauval’s OCT(n).
[1913]+ Available online: Breaking the Mirror of Heaven: The Conspiracy to Suppress the Voice of Ancient Egypt – PDFDrive.com (archive.org) (link broken) *
(a) Discussions in Egyptology, volume 13, 1989, pp. 7-18
(b) https://grahamhancock.com/interview-robert-bauval/
(d) https://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/HancockG15.php
(g) https://www.q-mag.org/the-pyramids-of-giza-the-belt-of-orion-and-three-volcanoes-on-mars.html
(h) (99+) (PDF) Orion: The Eternal Rise of the Sky Hunter | Andrew Collins – Academia.edu
(j) (99+) (PDF) ASTROLOGY IN ANCIENT EGYPT | Robert Bauval – Academia.edu
(k) https://www.academia.edu/41868838/Expanding_the_Orion_Correlation_Theory_OCT_
(l) http://www.ancientcartography.net/index1.html
(n) https://www.larazzodeltempo.it/2020/bauval-piramide/
Denisovans
Denisovan is the name given to an extinct sub-species of hominid(a). Their name is derived from the Denisova cave in the Altai mountains of Siberia. Only fragments of four individuals have been identified so far. While the first Denisovan remains were found in Siberia, there is now evidence that they were the earliest hominins on the Tibetan Plateau (b).
It has also been determined that they interbred with Neanderthals, while a recent DNA study(d) indicates that the Denisovans and modern humans were possibly ‘makin whoopee’ as recently as 15,000 years ago!
It did not take long for the speculative history brigade to jump on this new bandwagon. Andrew Collins has now prepared for publication The Cygnus Key[1509] in which he claims to present “compelling evidence showing that the earliest origins of human culture, religion, and technology derive from the Denisovans, the true creators of the lost civilization long known to exist but never before proved.”
In 2019, Collins co-authored a new book together with Greg Little in which they combine their speculative abilities to produced a full book on the physical and intellectual attributes of the Denisovans, based on a few bone fragments! >The full title of the book is rather revealing – Denisovan Origins : Hybrid Humans, Göbekli Tepe, and the Genesis of the Giants of Ancient America [1672]. Collins discusses the book in an interview in New Dawn magazine(e).<
The book received the imprimatur of Graham Hancock, so the collective name recognition value of Collins, Hancock and Little should boost sales. Jason Colavito has critiqued this volume(c), highlighting the amount of dubious material that the authors have previously published is included in this offering.
This comment is nearly identical to that expressed by the late Colin Wilson relating to the Neanderthals whom he claimed had possessed highly sophisticated mathematical and astronomical knowledge and were precursors of the Atlantis civilisation. This extremely speculative assertion is made in Wilson’s Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals[0336].
(a) https://www.ancient.eu/Denisovan/
(d) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/denisovans-mated-modern-humans-0011688
>(e) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia3/historia_humanidad217.htm<
Daughtrey, Peter
Peter Daughtrey is a British researcher and the author of Atlantis and the 
Silver City in which he identifies a location in Portugal, where he lived until recently, for Atlantis. The publicity blurb looks promising as it reads as follows: “Over 2000 books have previously attempted to find the answer but invariably stumbled by matching only a handful of Plato´s clues for this fabled lost civilisation. This book matches almost 60 and includes the discovery of the ancient capital with its harbour that Plato described in great detail and the great sunken plain with at least one group of submerged ruins. Everything fits – the precise location, climate, topography, crops and animals, even the incredible wealth. It sits uneasily by one of the world’s most lethal seismic fault lines which in the past has wreaked havoc up to ten times more powerful than the recent quake off Japan with tsunamis 100 feet high. The great Atlantis empire is traced together with their leader’s odysseys to civilize South America and Egypt. The unique Atlantean physical characteristics are pinpointed and an ancient alphabet traced from which Phoenicians and Greek developed.” However, a pre-publication critique(a) has been rather less than encouraging.
Now that I have read the book I must declare that Daughtrey has produced a work that offers a spirited argument for considering Portugal’s Algarve as the location of Plato’s Atlantis. In fact, he designates not just the Algarve and the submerged area in front of it as Atlantis, but the whole of that southwest Iberian region, starting immediately outside the straits of Gibraltar. The first half of it is the Costa da Luz in Spain. I note that Greg Little has written a positive review of Daughtrey’s book.(f)
Daughtrey recently elaborated that his “position for the great plain that Plato referred to is now the seabed front of southern Portugal and southern Andalucia as far Gibraltar. I think it would also have extended onto the submerged area of northern Morroco and onto the existing mainland. There would only have been much extended narrow straits from Gibraltar dividing it for a good length.”
More specifically he identifies the town of Silves, just west of Faro, as the Silver City in the title.
In order to compile Atlantipedia, I have had to read many books supporting a wide range of theories. I can say that Daughtrey’s offering would be in my top dozen Atlantis titles, along with those of Jim Allen, Andrew Collins, Anton Mifsud, Otto Muck and Jürgen Spanuth. They have all made valuable contributions to Atlantology even though I do not accept all of their conclusions.
Nevertheless, without going into a string of nitpicking comments, I would prefer to clearly state where I believe Daughtrey is fundamentally wrong. Which is in accepting Plato’s (or should that be Solon’s) 9,000 years literally. He is not the first to take this approach as the consequence is that either Atlantis attacked Athens (and Egypt) which did not even exist as organised societies at the time or the science of archaeology as we know it must be abandoned. It is interesting that when it suits him, Daughtrey is prepared to revise Plato’s dimensions for the Plain of Atlantis. I prefer to reinterpret all of Plato’s numbers, which I believe are seriously flawed.
In spite of the above, this book is a valuable addition to any Atlantis library.
September 2014 saw the History Channel preparing to broadcast a documentary on Atlantis in the Algarve that includes extensive interviews with Daughtery(b). However, following the airing of the program he seemed rather disappointed(c) that many of what he considered his most important arguments had been omitted from the final cut and that the producers were more interested in extraterrestrials.
Daughtrey’s book has been updated and a second edition [1957] was published in 2021 and contains what he calls “dramatic new evidence”. His book is supported by a website(e), where you will find additional articles, interviews and reviews.>An extensive press release to promote the new edition can be read here.<
In 2015, Daughtrey published a paper entitled ‘Mark Adams’ Atlantis in Morocco Theory Debunked’(g). This is rather misleading as Adams did not endorse any theory [1070]. The author of the Moroccan theory referred to by Daughtrey was the late Michael Hübner, who is not mentioned once. In fact, Daughtrey’s article offers no debunking but was just a promotional piece for his own book. I have a personal interest in this as I had been impressed by Hübner’s carefully constructed theory and had suggested that Adams should meet Hübner. I subsequently identified a serious flaw in Hübner’s theory.
(a) https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-60598-415-5
(b) https://www.portugalresident.com/2014/09/03/history-channel-features-algarves-connection-to-atlantis/ See: Archive 2227
(e) https://www.atlantisandthesilvercity.com/
(g) http://atlantisandthesilvercity.com/atlantis-blog/?p=123
Ancient Astronauts and Atlantis *
Ancient Astronauts and their technology is often promoted as the inspiration behind aspects of many ancient religions such as the vimanas of the Hindus, the flying chariots of Ezekiel as well as the gods of Mesopotamia. The most widely known proponents of these ideas are Erich von Däniken and the late Zecharia Sitchin.
However, I must also include Josef Blumrich who proposed that the biblical Ezekiel had encountered an alien spaceship in his 1973 book [0692]. It is worth noting that a decade earlier Arthur W. Orton wrote The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel which was recently republished [1735] and offers similar ideas as Blumrich. Ulrich Magin has written a critical review of Bloomrich’s interpretation of Ezekiel’s visions(m).
Extraterrestrial visitors have been suggested by a few of the more imaginative and sometimes unscrupulous authors and their publishers, as the source of an advanced civilisation in the past, remembered today as Atlantis. Martin Brady makes such a claim in a brief paper available online(s).
Another example of this genre of b.s. is offered by Tricia McCannon, who delights us with an account of Atlantis as “the seat of a Great Galactic Empire, with many extraterrestrial races coming and going from its shores”, with lots more of the same(t).
Decades before von Däniken, Harold T. Wilkins was already suggesting prehistoric extraterrestrial visitors in the 1950s. He also wrote a couple of books about Atlantis[363][364]. Not long after that, Egerton Sykes wrote some short articles for his Atlantis magazine(i) that were sympathetic to the idea of ancient astronauts.
R. Cedric Leonard is another Atlantis researcher who has written about Atlantis and ancient alien technology. A more recent attempt to link Atlantis with ancient astronauts came from Kevin Falzon, who closely follows Sitchin while locating Atlantis in his native Malta[869]. Richard Mooney speculated on a connection between Atlantis and ancient aliens four decades ago[842].
However, Professor Emilio Spedicato may have added some degree of respectability to the concept when he wrote(u) “There are significant indications in worldwide traditions that intelligent people from planets within a few hundred light-years from Earth visited our planet and intelligently interacted with our biosphere”. He went on to claim that around 5500 BC some of these visitors landed in the Hunza valley of Pakistan where they engaged in a little genetic engineering which led to the ‘creation’ of Adam and Eve!
It should be noted that Plato’s account does not relate any technology beyond that of a Late Bronze Age society, whereas any civilisation founded by alien astronauts should offer some evidence of technologies at least equal to if not more advanced than that of our present-day capabilities.
Nevertheless, the idea of visitors from other worlds is often traced back to the 18th century and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772)(e), who not only argued that extraterrestrial beings had visited our planet, but that he had met them[1583]! Greg Little has also recently(g) credited Swedenborg as the originator of the alien visitors’ idea, but Jason Colavito has rubbished Little’s article(f) and traced the concept of extraterrestrial encounters back to Lucian (125-180 AD) together with a few others before Swedenborg. Colavito and Little are not ‘best friends’, so I can only conclude that Colavito simply wished to undermine Little’s credibility as a researcher.
Ever since Kenneth Arnold saw ‘flying saucers’ near Mt. Rainier in 1947, his report paved the way for the ancient astronaut idea to evolve into the prolific writings of W. Raymond Drake and later Erich von Däniken, among others. In turn, this seemed to lead naturally to speculation of a possible linkage with Atlantis.
Jason Colavito has also drawn attention(a) to an exhibition held in Beijing in July 2012, which purported to offer evidence of these ancient visitors, and has published(b) the official U.S. Government view on ancient astronauts. He also offers an overview of alien theories and scathingly criticises their proponents(c). In 2011 Colavito published a free ebook with the self-explanatory title of The Origins of the Space Gods(j).
Colavito has also an interesting blog for 29/08/14 which quotes from a 1977 magazine that has an article suggesting that Jesus was an American astronaut who came back from the future, no doubt inspired by the film Planet of the Apes!(d)
Bill Hanson and Bert Thurlings are some of the more recent promoters of this idea of an alien origin for Atlantis. Hanson has been joined by the German researcher, Dieter Bremer, who claims(v) that the winged disks found in Sumerian art represent a space station, which crashed! Bremer also provides a spirited defence of The Manna Machine[755] by George Sassoon (1936-2006) and Rodney Dale, combined with some bizarre theories regarding Christ. Incredibly, Bremer was invited to deliver a paper to the 2011 Atlantis Conference on the concentric circles of Plato’s Atlantean capital. He has published two books on his view of Atlantis[1022/3]. A more rational review of The Manna Machine is offered by Frank Dörnenburg(w).
The late Flying Eagle and his partner Whispering Wind specified the planet Xylanthia((aa) in the Sirius star system as the original home of a visitor who fell in love with an earthling and later became known as Poseidon!
The History Channel’s series entitled Ancient Aliens(y) has been heavily criticised on the Bad Archaeology website(x) and elsewhere. October 2011 saw another claim that the Maya had contact with extraterrestrials and that a documentary providing evidence is planned(z).
A sceptical review of extraterrestrial visitations was published in the 26th January 2014 edition of Ohio’s Columbus Dispatch(ab).
I feel compelled to include a quote from the Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson who wrote “The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that they have never tried to contact us.”
Perhaps even more disconcerting is the results of a survey(h) carried out by Chapman University that show 20% of Americans believe in ancient astronauts!
In 2020, we had a bizarre tweet from the billionaire, Elon Musk, claiming that “aliens built the pyramids”(l), I hope that this was a tongue-in-cheek comment!
Nevertheless, there are still (2021) attempts to promote the ancient astronaut idea using the same material that has failed to convince in the past(k).
An example of this is the 2023 book, Prehistory Explained [2007] by Shane Leach, who recycled some of the ideas of von Däniken and Sitchin and then for good measure threw in the old suggestion that our Moon and the Martian moon Phobos are artificial. Of course, Atlantis was not ignored, which he placed in Antarctica and deemed that Stonehenge had been laid out like the Pleiades constellation!
More depressing is the study by Graham E.L.Holton, which surveyed the ancient astronaut literature and found nothing but superior white blond ‘gods’, usually male, such as Quetzalcoatl(n). This theme was continued in later UFO reports. Erich von Däniken is arguably the best-known of the ancient astronaut proponents, but he was not the first and certainly not the last(n). Jason Colavito has reviewed the racism expressed by von Däniken(o). Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews was equally critical of Däniken’s racist views(p).
2023 also saw the publication of Gods of the Bible [2059] by Mauro Biglino, who also wrote a paper as ‘Author of the Month’ for Graham Hancock’s website(q). In both, he explores the Bible for evidence of ancient extraterrestrial visitors who interacted with humans, just as Zechariah Sitchin had done nearly half a century ago using Mesopotamian texts.
There are also some who have endeavoured to use the Palermo Stone as evidence of extraterrestrial visitors in our ancient past(r)!
Avi Loeb who is probably better known as a contributor to the Ancient Aliens TV series has recently (Nov. 2023) endeavoured to develop his ‘fame’, by offering by offering an alternative to the conventional theories offered to explain UFOs, now redesignated UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena). Jason Colavito(ad) has drawn attention to an attempt by Loeb to suggest that UFOs, sorry, UAPs, might be remnants from a very early highly technologically advanced civilisation.
“Any technological infrastructure left on the surface of Earth from that early civilization could have been demolished by geological activity including subduction, covered by water or tarnished by meteor impacts and weathering.
However, functional relics could have been preserved in space. Within the past century of modern technology, our civilization has launched many thousands of functional devices in orbit around Earth. A more advanced or longer-lived technological civilization could have used more sophisticated devices. Are there unfamiliar technological relics in our sky?” (ac).
For those interested in having a look at other entries touching on the subject of Atlantis and ancient astronauts see: Jack Countryman, Christos A. Djonis, Andrew Greig, Kurt Jurgen Hepke, Marius Lleget, Louis Millette, Semir Osmanagic, Hubert Zeitlmair.
(a) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2012/07/chinese-government-endorses-ancient-astronauts.html
(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/the-von-daniken-letter.html
(c) http://www.swans.com/library/art18/jcolav01.html
(d) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/a-bizarre-1977-article-on-jesus-the-ancient-astronaut
(e) https://web.archive.org/web/20200731011955/https://www.swedenborgproject.org/2007/09/08/the-life-on-other-planets-question/ or See: Archive 2262
(g) https://apmagazine.info/index.php/component/content/article?id=570
(h) https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2015/10/13/this-haunted-world/
(i) Atlantis, Volume 20, No.3, May/June 1967.
(j) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/origin-of-the-space-gods.html
(k) Evidence of Aliens and Ancient Astronauts – Strange Unexplained Mysteries (archive.org)
(m) Spaceship or God’s apparition? The Visions of Ezekiel – Mysteria3000 (link broken)
(n) https://www.academia.edu/30755438/Ancient_White_Astronauts_Race_and_Religion
(o) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2014/01/the-astonishing-racial-claims-of-erich-von-daniken.html
(p) https://badarchaeology.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/is-pseudoarchaeology-racist/
(q) https://grahamhancock.com/biglinom1/
(r) Reddit – Dive into anything (archive.org)
(s) Earth, Aliens and The Universe | PDF | Atlantis | Calendar (archive.org)
(t) https://www.triciamccannon.com/dvd-time-travel-ufos-atlantis-and-world-changes/ (Link Broken) *
(u) https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-2090/
(v) https://www.atlantisbremer.de/
(w) https://web.archive.org/web/20201021072640/http://fdoernenburg.de/alien/alternativ/manna/man01_e.php
(y) https://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens/episodes/season-3#slide-9
(z) Mayan Filmmaker Offers Photo as Proof of Aliens, Says Hawking Agrees (Exclusive) (archive.org)
(aa) https://atlantis-today.com/Great_Atlantis_Flood.htm
(ab) See: Archive 2098
(ac) https://avi-loeb.medium.com/are-uaps-relics-from-an-earlier-civilization-on-earth-86d1190c6539
Schoch, Robert M. *
Robert M. Schoch is a Yale scholar, geologist and paleontologist. At the invitation of John Anthony West, he agreed to inspect 
the Sphinx and offer an opinion on the nature of the erosion to be seen on it. He found that the cause of this erosion was precipitation rather than windblown sand. As Egypt has had an arid climate for many thousands of years, Dr Schoch reached the conclusion that at least the front of the Sphinx had been carved between 7000 and 5000 BC, when the climate had been considerably wetter.
In the same book, Voices of the Rocks [454], he endorsed (p.123) the conclusions of Mary Settegast [545] who claimed that Plato’s Atlantis story was a reference to the Magdalenian culture that inhabited the coastal regions of the Western Mediterranean during the 9th millennium BC. Schoch devotes a chapter to the subject of Atlantis and interestingly lists a number of sites to which the Greeks applied the appellation ‘Pillars of Heracles‘ apart from the Strait of Gibraltar.
“The Greeks, however, used the name Pillars of Herakles to mark other sites besides Gibraltar, some outside the Mediterranean – namely, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic and the Strait of Kerch dividing the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov – and even more inside – specifically, the Strait of Bonifacio between Corsica and Sardinia, the Strait of Messina between mainland Italy and Sicily, the Greek Peloponnese, the mountainous coast of Tunisia, and the Nile Delta.” [p.87] A highly critical review of Schoch’s ‘Voices’ can be read online(n).
In his Voyages of the Pyramid Builders [455], he reiterates his conviction “that Plato’s story is, at least in part, a fictionalized account of a great Mediterranean war at a time of intense climatic change between the tenth and eighth millennia BC.” A critique by William P Eigles tackles ‘Voyages’ in Atlantis Rising magazine # 37, where Schoch endeavours to link the global presence of pyramids as a possible expression of hyperdiffusion. Eigles comments that Schoch “may simply be trying to prove too much here. Many of the motivations, reasons and interpretations he offers for the various activities and actions on the part of the ancients are clearly speculative in nature.(ad)”
This 1990 declaration regarding the Sphinx generated an international reputation for Schoch. Such a controversial conclusion was obviously greeted warmly by the supporters of the 9,000-year-old date for Atlantis allegedly given by the Egyptian priests to Solon. This accidental intervention by Schoch in the debate regarding the dating of Atlantis has unfortunately done nothing to resolve the issue. Fierce debate continues regarding the date of the Sphinx. However, there appears to be a gradual acceptance of Schoch’s views by other professional geologists such as David Coxhill. Another geologist, Colin Reader, while not accepting all of Schoch’s conclusions, believes that the Sphinx predates King Khufu, the father of Khafre, who has been traditionally accepted as the builder of the Sphinx, with the monument bearing his image(v)(w)(x).
Schoch subsequently pushed the date of the Sphinx as far back as circa 10,000 BCE and he now suggests that the monument was carved in the shape of a lioness.(ae)
It appears that Schoch’s experiences regarding the Sphinx have whetted his appetite for prehistory as he has now written a further book[455], again with R.A. McNally about the origins of the pyramid builders. Unfortunately, he includes a reference to Ireland’s Newgrange as a form of ‘pyramid building’, an idea I reject, since it shares neither form nor function with the Egyptian pyramids. The goodreads.com website offers a very critical review of this book(a) as has Professor Garrett Fagan(ag).
Schoch and McNally have recently dared to enter into the highly charged debate regarding the dating of the Great Pyramid at Giza[456][457].
Schoch seems to be venturing further and further from his natural comfort zone of geology. In 2007, he wrote an article on Telepathy(d) and was later due to address the Electric Universe Conference in Las Vegas in 2012(c) and deliver a paper entitled The Catastrophic Termination of the Last Ice Age. In it, he will claim that around 10,000 BC the Earth underwent ‘dramatic catastrophic changes’ as a result of ‘our unstable Sun erupting at the end of the last Ice Age, melting the extensive glaciers and triggering climate warming. The full paper should be an interesting read. He continues to argue against the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis(r).
His retreat from conventional science may be now complete as he delves into the strange world of lycanthropy (the study of werewolves)(o).
Schoch’s work is now promoted through his own website(b), which includes a wide range of articles. On it, both he and his associate, Colette Dowell, have been very critical of the Bosnian pyramid claims of Semir Osmanagic following a visit there in 2006. However, in what appears to be an article(l) written in 2011 or 2012, Osmanagic responds with scathing criticism of Schoch’s work. His attack on Schoch was later added to by an assault from Jock Doubleday in a very lengthy article(y) in which, among other matters, he accuses Schoch of a series of thirteen lies! I should perhaps mention that Doubleday has been featured for some years now in the burgeoning Encyclopedia of American Loons(z). As well as that, elsewhere, a very personal attack has also been made on Collette Dowell(aa). Support for Schoch’s claim of a Bosnian pyramid hoax is also available(ab).
Schoch has now turned his attention to the emergence and demise of very early civilisations, before that of dynastic Egypt or Sumeria. When he combined his early date for the Sphinx with other discoveries such as that of Nabta Playa and Göbekli Tepe and Gunung Padang(m), he concluded that the origins of civilisation go back much further than generally accepted. He then looked at the bigger and perhaps more important question of the cause of their collapse. In a 2009 special edition (N0.8) of New Dawn magazine, he speculated on the possibility that the ending of such early civilisations was caused by the earth’s encounter with one or more asteroids or comets.
In his book(f), Forgotten Civilization[867], Schoch claims that coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the sun around 9700 BC devastated our planet with electrical discharges, triggering seismic and volcanic activity as well as ending the Ice Age with its consequent floods. All this ‘eradicated the civilisation of the time and set humanity back thousands of years, only to re-emerge around 3500 BC with scattered memories and nascent abilities.’ In an article written(g) in March 2012, Schoch wrote about the ‘Carrington Event’ of 1859 which resulted from a massive solar event that year.
Schoch’s paper had the somewhat disturbing title of ‘Death Star’ and perhaps even more unsettling was the revelation in March 2019 that evidence of at least three major solar ‘proton attacks’ over the past 3,000 years. The suggestion is that these episodes are to be expected with some degree of regularity, which may create ever-increasing disruption as our dependency on electricity expands. The recent report(q) indicates that the most powerful event identified so far took place around 610 BC. Without a power grid to damage at the time, we are unaware of what effect it had on the people of that time and I would hope that a review of the literature of that era might reveal some corroboration.
A video clip from his recent Las Vegas lecture is now available on YouTube(h). His talk is based on an article(i) in the July-August 2010 edition of New Dawn magazine, which is now available online and will play a large part in his Forgotten Civilization. He highlights some fascinating similarities between the Rongorongo script of Easter Island, the Nasca petroglyphs and the plasma figures of Dr Anthony L. Peratt together with their possible association with the ending of the last Ice Age.
For me, the most disturbing aspect of Schoch’s book is his apocalyptic vision of global catastrophes that he anticipates may again turn the few survivors back into troglodytes!
“The revised and expanded edition of Forgotten Civilization, which bears a new subtitle, was released in March of 2021. It includes everything in the first edition plus a new final chapter and various updates to other chapters throughout the book. Thus, the new edition is approximately 150 pages longer, including over 40 new/additional photographs. As I detail in this revision, a number of new discoveries made since the first edition was published reinforce my contention that true civilization existed prior to the end of the last ice age, some 12,000 years ago, and that civilization was decimated by the solar outburst(s) that occurred then, throwing humanity into a Solar-Induced Dark Age for some 6,000 years before the reemergence of civilization around 4000–3000 BCE.”(ai)
However, Jason Colavito has reviewed Schoch’s claims relating to both the Rongorongo script(j) and Göbekli Tepe(k) and has found his ideas wanting. Colavito found further ammunition in the forthcoming book, Origins of the Sphinx[1374], which Schoch co-authored with Robert Bauval, describing it as ‘a virtual rewriting of’ Keeper of Genesis(p). In 2019, Schoch expanded further on his opinions regarding the importance of Göbekli Tepe with a claim that its builders possessed some level of literacy(s), provoking further criticism from Colavito(r). Schoch expanded on this claim in a subsequent post(ac), but for me, I find this proposed literacy at Göbekli Tepe a push too far.
One of the great mysteries of Göbekli Tepe is that it was deliberately reburied but fortunately for us, this left it in perfect condition for us to study. Schoch has suggested that this was done to protect it from damage by CME’s such as occurred around 9700 BC (see above). This sounds like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. He then takes this idea further and proposes in a lengthy article that the Egyptians did something similar(ah), but uncovered them later for the pharaohs to develop. I’m not convinced.
ORACUL – The Organization for the Research of Ancient Cultures is a not-for-profit body, co-founded by Schoch “dedicated to the scientific study of civilization’s origins. It is our hope that through research advocacy, publishing, and educational outreach, further evidence for mankind’s remote and forgotten past will be uncovered.”(af)
(a) Greg’s review of Voyages of the Pyramid Builders (goodreads.com)
(c) https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/
(f) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forgotten-Civilization-Solar-Outbursts-Future/dp/1594774978
(g) https://dailygrail.com/Guest-Articles/2012/3/Death-Star
(h) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUqdYBxbbck
(j) https://robertschoch.com/plasma_iceage.html
(n) https://anamericaninbosnia.blogspot.ie/2013/03/witchcraft-cartography-and-clairvoyant.html
(o) https://www.dailygrail.com/Guest-Articles/2016/10/The-Werewolf
(q) https://www.livescience.com/64964-huge-ancient-solar-storm-hit-earth.html
(t) New Dawn Magazine -July August 2010
(u) New Dawn Magazine- Special Issue No.8 2009)
(v) https://www.academia.edu/21651229/Giza_Before_The_Fourth_Dynasty
(w) (99+) (PDF) Khufu Knew the Sphinx | Colin Reader – Academia.edu
(y) An American in Bosnia: The Mysterious Anti-Scientific Agenda of Robert Schoch
(z) https://americanloons.blogspot.com/2015/12/1555-jock-doubleday.html
(ab) Heavy Futz: Don’t bother making a pligrimage to the “Bosnian Pyramids”
(ac) https://www.robertschoch.com/gobekli_tepe_writing.html
(ad) Atlantis Rising magazine #37 http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At
(ae) https://www.robertschoch.com/sphinx.html
(af) Robert M. Schoch: ORACUL (robertschoch.com)
(ag) https://www.hallofmaat.com/lostciv/review-of-voyages-of-the-pyramid-builders/
(ah) https://www.robertschoch.com/ancient_burial_of_egypt.html
(ai) https://www.robertschoch.com/publications.html
Little, Drs. Gregory and Lora *
Dr. Gregory and Dr. Lora Little are a husband and wife team who for twenty years have been members of the Association for
Greg Little
Research and Enlightenment which was set up to promote the ideas of Edgar Cayce. They are the authors of the Association’s newsletter(a) and have written several books[060] on the search for Atlantis in the Bahamas region. Greg was initially sceptical about Cayce’s readings on ancient history, but as a result of the archaeological discoveries of the last decade, he is now convinced of their fundamental veracity. However, in November 2010 he stated(b) “I don’t even know for certain that Atlantis existed.”A video clip(f) from the History Channel shows Little presenting some of his views.
So, after spending years searching for Edgar Cayce’s Atlantis in the Bahamas, he reveals that he is unsure of its existence and to confuse us further, he is also quoted as describing Peter Daughtrey’s Atlantis and the Silver City in AP Magazine as matching “all of Plato”(h)!
Greg Little is also the author of a comprehensive encyclopedia(c) of Native American mounds and earthworks[791].
He has also delved into the subject of giants’ remains discovered in Indian mounds in the 19th and early 20th centuries(d). Jason Colavito has challenged(e) his ideas and a state of undeclared war now appears to exist between them.
Little recently teamed up with Andrew Collins as co-author of Denisovan Origins [1672], which has led to another joint offering, Origins of the Gods due for publication soon, in which the authors explore “how our ancestors used shamanic rituals at sacred sites to create portals for communication with non-human intelligences”!
A number of his older articles are available online(g).
(a) Ancient Mysteries | Edgar Cayce Readings |Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E. | Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E. (archive.org) *
(b) https://www.mysterious-america.com/final2010atlanti.html
(c) https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0940829460/edgarcayceshallo
(d) https://www.apmagazine.info/index.php/component/content/article?id=546
(e) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/greg-little-is-still-mad-about-my-2013-post-on-giant-bones
(f) https://www.history.com/topics/atlantis
(g) Atlantis Related Articles Authored by Dr Little (systemagicmotives.com)
(h) ATLANTIS FOUND. Where is Atlantis? Peter Daughtrey (atlantisandthesilvercity.com)
Brown, Ray
Ray Brown, a naturopathic practitioner from Arizona is constantly referred in books and websites as having found evidence of Atlantis off the Bahamas. The claim is that in 1970 while diving in 135 feet of water near the Bari Islands he discovered a 120ft high pyramid that he described as ‘shining like a mirror’. The story relates that only 90 feet of the pyramid was visible above the sand and that there were the remains of a ruined city around it that stretched for 5 miles.
This is quite an unbelievable tale. If such a pyramid with its tip only 45 feet under water had been found, why has there been no subsequent exploration over the following decades? An organisation such as A.R.E. would have been expected to have pursued the matter without any delay but obviously did not place any credence in it either.
How could Brown have known that the base of the pyramid was 30 ft under sand without digging to that depth? If the base of the pyramid had been covered to a height of 30ft, would not the alleged remains of any ruined city have also been completely covered?
A December 2010 article(a) by Greg Little provided further information on the Ray Brown story and his ‘Atlantean’ crystal and in which he concludes that the whole affair was probably just an attentionseeking hoax. Little also advises us thar Brown died in the mid-1990’s.
The late Philip Coppens also wrote a paper(b) on this controversial subject, which was rather more sympathetic. On the other hand Wolter Smit, whom I expected to have had more carefully honed critical faculties, seems to have been completely taken in by Brown’s fantasy tale[887.182].
In 2012 there was a report that in the same region “oceanographer Dr. Meyer Verlag discovered giant glass pyramids at a depth of two-thousand meters. The use of other devices have allowed scientists to determine that these glass giants are both made of a crystal-like substance, and are nearly 3 times bigger than the pyramid of Cheops in Egypt.” It did not take long before it was realised that Dr. Verlag was non-existent and that the whole story was pure b.s.
(a) https://www.mysterious-america.com/brown%27scrystal.html
*(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20190206131342/https://www.eyeofthepsychic.com/nap_art15/*
Bimini Road/Wall
The Bimini Road/Wall is located in about ten feet of water off Paradise Point on Bimini Island in the Bahamas. It was investigated in 1968 by Dr. J. Manson Valentine, Jacques Mayol, Harold Climo and Robert Angove. The discovery coincided with the ‘prophecy’ of Edgar Cayce, the American 
psychic, who pronounced in 1933 that parts of Atlantis would re-emerge in the late 1960s. His exact words are recorded as: “A portion of the temples may yet be discovered under the slime of ages and seawater near Bimini. Expect it in ‘68 or ‘69 – not so far away.”
Naturally, there was intense media interest and the idea of Atlantis in the Americas was given a new lease of life. Unfortunately, the exact nature of this unusual ‘J’ shaped feature was fiercely debated and controversy continues to this day. Eugene A. Shinn, a geologist and devout sceptic, has offered(a) a more critical interpretation of the Bimini discoveries. In an article in Nature magazine some years ago>(Vol. 287, 4 September 1980) Shinn and Marshall McKusick described Cayce followers as members of ‘a cult’.(h)
>Peter James in The Sunken Kingdom [047.53] commented on the Bimini controversy noting that “If the ‘Road’ were man-made we would not expect the grains and microstructure within the stones to be consistent from one ‘block’ to another. Yet they proved to be so, in every conceivable test test that was applied, showing that they were laid by natural means. Further, radiocarbon tests on shells included in the stones show that the ‘Road’ was formed between only 2,500 and 3,500 years ago, far short of the 11,000 years believed by Atlantologists.”<
Greg Little offered a vigorous refutation of Shinn’s claims in an article in the May/June 2006 edition of Atlantis Rising magazine(g). Little continued his criticism of Shinn in a 2017 article(e).
Without wishing to rain on anybody’s parade it should be pointed out that Manson Valentine was a fan of Cayce’s and as a consequence, it has sometimes been inferred that the date of his discovery might have been engineered to agree with Cayce’s prediction and enhance the subsequent publicity. Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince have pointed out[705.61] that the Bimini Road was known to the local islanders for years and even offered to show it to its eventual ‘discoverers’!
A comparable alignment of blocks in 22 metres of water was found off the coast of Lanzarote in the Canaries and originally reported in the Belgian magazine Kadath in 1987 and noted in the Science Frontiers website(d).
The Bahamas Geotourism website offers the following additional information “In the 1930s, an American psychic named Edgar Cayce reported that he had spoken with a person who had lived in the Lost City of Atlantis in a former life. This Atlantean told Cayce that Atlantis had been near Bimini.”(i). I have been unable to verify the source of this embellishment.
Dr David Zink carried out a detailed examination of the Bimini Road, which he outlined in his own book, The Stones of Atlantis[178]. Zink’s conclusion was to accept that Atlantis had been situated in the Atlantic but regarded “Bimini as an Atlantean colonial site or the location of a different culture parallel in time to Atlantis.” Not the ringing endorsement one might have expected.
In an interview with Peter Tompkins son, Ptolemy, he revealed that his “dad was convinced that the Edgar Cayce readings about the rising of Atlantis were correct. He spent thousands and thousands of dollars photographing the limestone formations off Bimini – the so-called “Bimini Road.” My father loved the idea of Atlantis returning because he wanted the world to become a kind of new Eden. He was a true father of the New Age in this sense – he had the core New Age belief that the world once was, and would be again a better place. But not better in some mundane sense, but in the sense of being elevated back into a spiritualised condition that it had fallen away from. That’s what the Bimini stuff was all about.”(j) Tompkins left Bimini unconvinced that it had Atlantean credentials.
A local Bimini writer and healer, Ashley B. Saunders, has produced a definitive two-volume history[179] of the island as well as a book[180] on Atlantis. Saunders has been described as “the gatekeeper of Atlantis”(c).
The most recent study of structures off the coast of Bimini by a team that included Greg Little and William Donato in 2005 and 2006, when Andrew Collins joined them, has produced evidence of ancient harbours that are now submerged at two locations. They also discovered a number of stone anchors, now in the Bimini Museum. However, acceptance of the reality of this evidence is a long way from proving any connection with Atlantis.
Gavin Menzies, a supporter of the Minoan Hypothesis has speculated, in his book 1421[0939], he speculated that the Chinese fleet suffered damage during a storm and landed at Bimini where they used their large square ballast stones to build an emergency drydock, the remains of which is now the Bimini Road!
A YouTube film including an interview with Greg Little is worth viewing(b). Less interesting is a new documentary from Amazon Prime, aided and abetted by the UK’s Daily Express, which has apparently resurrected some interest in the Atlantis – Bimini connection(f).
(b) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DbaA6NItNQ
(c) https://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/printer_8736.shtml
(d) https://www.science-frontiers.com/sf058/sf058a02.htm
(e) https://apmagazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=956
(h) https://www.academia.edu/12724731/Bahamian_Atlantis_reconsidered
Azores
The Azores (Açores) is a group of Portuguese islands in the Atlantic, situated 1,500 km from the mainland. The first recorded instance of their discovery is in 1427 by the Portuguese, although there is some evidence to suggest that the Norse reached the islands 700 years earlier(z). However, they were not the first as recent discoveries have shown clearly that megalith builders and others had occupied the archipelago’s island of Terceira long enough to construct a number of megalithic monuments(aa). Professor Felix Rodrigues has claimed that these structures were stylistically related to European megaliths. The island also has a number of cart ruts, a subject about which Rodrigues et al have published a paper(ad). The significance of the megaliths on Terceira is far greater than might be first thought. Received wisdom has it that apart from coastal hugging, ocean-going vessels were not available until the time of the Phoenicians. The Azorean megaliths suggest otherwise. Furthermore, it throws new light on the possibility of Neolithic and/or Bronze Age visits to America from the Old World. A BBC video(ab) has some interesting images, while for Portuguese speakers a RTP video(ac) has an interview with Professor Rodrigues, who has also written a paper on early Atlantic navigation(ae).
The earliest association of the Azores with Atlantis dates from 1499 when Maximillian I of the Holy Roman Empire (1459-1519) appointed Lukas Fugger vom Reh as the ‘titular’ king of Atlantis. The certificate of appointment nominated the Azores as the remnants of Atlantis. Markus Fugger a descendant of Lukas has published a 2013 paper defending this identification of the Azores with Atlantis(x).
In 2012, the president of the Portuguese Association of Archeological Research (APIA), Nuno Ribeiro, revealed(c) that rock art had been found on the island of Terceira, supporting his belief that human occupation of the Azores predates the arrival of the Portuguese by many thousands of years. A further article(a) in October 2016 expanded on this matter. Ribeiro’s research was trotted out in a more recent documentary from Amazon Prime with the tabloid title of New Atlantis Documentary – Proof that Left Historians Speechless(u), which explores the claim that the Azores are the mountain tops of sunken Atlantis!
However, the Portuguese authorities set up a commission to look into Ribeiro’s contentions and concluded(q) that any perceived remnants of an ancient civilization were either natural rock formations or structures of more modern origin. Nevertheless, as the Epoch Times reports(r) that “Antonieta Costa, a post-doctoral student at the University of Porto in Portugal, remained unconvinced and continued research into the hypothesis that the Azores were inhabited in antiquity and even in prehistory.” In 2013, Costa, published, in English, The Mound of Stones [1967] about the megaliths of the Azores.
It seems to me that the research of Rodrigues, Ribeiro and Costa should be looked at again as a combined study so that the ancient history of the Azores can be more clearly understood and its mysteries resolved.
It is thought that the Phoenicians and Etruscans competed for control of the Azores in later years. In 2011, APIA archaeologists reported that they had discovered on Terceira island, a significant number of fourth-century BC Carthaginian temples. They believe the temples were dedicated to the ancient Phoenician/Carthaginian goddess Tanit(c). The Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, in his 1665 book Mundus Subterraneus, was the first to propose that these islands were the mountain peaks of sunken Atlantis. This view was adopted by Ignatius Donnelly and developed by successive writers and is still supported by many today. The latest recruit is Carl Martin, who is currently working on a book locating Atlantis in the Azores and destroyed around 9620 BC.
The late Christian O’Brien was a long-time proponent of the Atlantis in Azores theory. A bathymetric study of the area suggested to O’Brien that the archipelago had been a mid-Atlantic island 480 x 720 km before the end of the last Ice Age. Apart from the inundation caused by the melting of the glaciers, he found evidence that seismic activity caused the southern part of this island to sink to a greater degree than the north. O’Brien pointed out that six areas of hot spring fields (associated with volcanic disturbances) are known in the mid-Atlantic ridge area, and four of them lie in the Kane-Atlantis area close to the Azores.
Klaus Aschenbrenner was originally happy to consider the Azores as a possible location for Atlantis, but further research led him to conclude that this was unlikely(ag).
In 1982 Peter Warlow suggested [135] that a sea-level drop of 200 metres would have created an island as large as England and Wales with the present islands of the Azores as its mountains. However, Rodney Castleden contradicts that idea[225.187] saying that if the sea level was lowered by 200m “the Azores would remain separate islands.” Bathymetric maps of the archipelago, above and on the Internet(g), verify Castleden’s contention. This together with a 1982 paper from P.J.C. Ryall et al, demonstrates more clearly that the Azores are just the summits of volcanic seamounts that rise from an underwater plateau that is 1000 metres below sea level. Professor Ryall and his associates were dealing objectively with the geology of the area and were not promoting any view regarding Atlantis. The geological evidence supporting an Azorean Atlantis is therefore very weak, verging on non-existent.
Andrew Collins, the leading proponent of a Cuban Atlantis, has written a short review of the Azorean Hypothesis(h).
Frank Joseph has offered his views on Atlantis in the Azores in a YouTube video(l).
Nikolai Zhirov recounts in his book[458.363] how Réne Malaise wrote to him regarding a Danish engineer named Frandsen who identified a plateau, 2/3rds the size of Finland, south of the Azores, whose summits were 4,000-5,000m metres higher than it. Adding canals gave Frandsen a configuration that closely matched Plato’s description of Atlantis. Zhirov also noted[p403] that in 1957 a journal entitled Atlantida was published in the Azores.
In 1976, Jürgen Spanuth pointed out[015.249] that the Azores are not the mountain peaks of a sunken continent but are instead volcanic rock created through an eruption. He quotes similar sentiments expressed by Hans Pettersson. A 2003 paper(b) by four French scientists demonstrated that the Azores had been greatly enlarged during the last Ice Age. However, showing that the Azores were more extensive is not disputed, but it in no way demonstrates that it was the location of Atlantis. In fact, Plato’s description of the magnificent mountains to the north and the mud shoals that were still a hazard in Plato’s day do not match the Azores. The geologist, Darby South, strongly denied that the Azores could have been the location of Atlantis according to a couple of articles posted on the internet some years ago(a). However, natives of the archipelago are quite happy to assert a link with Atlantis, as travel writer David Yeadon found on a visit there(d).
Nevertheless, advocates of Atlantis in the Azores must accept that when the Portuguese arrived on the island in the 15th century they were found to be uninhabited and without any evidence of an earlier advanced civilisation there, such as described by Plato. Initially, the only hint of earlier visitors was some 3rd-century BC coins from Carthage discovered on the island of Corvo. However, in recent years Bronze Age rock art(f) and what is described as a Carthaginian temple(e) have both been discovered on the island of Terceira.
Otto Muck
among others was certain that the enlarged Azores had deflected the Gulf Stream during the Ice Age, contributing to the extent of the Western European glaciation. However, a 2016 report(m) from the Center for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Climate and Environment (CAGE) offered evidence that the Gulf Stream was not interrupted during the last Ice Age, which would seem to undermine one of Muck’s principal claims.
Nevertheless, it is still far from clear what caused the ending of the last Ice Age. A number of writers including Muck speculated that an asteroidal impact in the Atlantic was responsible. When the Azores were discovered in the 15th century they were uninhabited and without any evidence of an earlier civilisation. It can be reasonably argued that since the Azores today are just the mountain peaks of a larger mainly submerged island, any remains would be more likely to be found on the plains and estuaries that are now underwater. One undeveloped theory is that the name ‘Azores’ might be linked to the ninth king of Atlantis,
Azaes, listed by Plato. This idea is supported by the linguist Dr Vamos-Toth Bator. However, a Portuguese correspondent has pointed out that the Azores is named after a goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) commonly found on the islands and portrayed on the regional flag. The renowned writer, Dennis Wheatley, used the possibility of Atlantis being located in the Azores as a backdrop to his 1936 thriller, They Found Atlantis.
In August 2013 Portuguese American Journal reported that the many pyramidal structures on Pico are clear evidence of extensive human activity in the archipelago long before the arrival of the Portuguese(o). A YouTube video(p) offers some interesting views of the pyramids.>If these pyramid builders were capable of sailing from mainland Europe as far as the Azores, understandably, it has prompted some to question whether the same people were able to complete the journey to the Americas! In 2014, Dominique Görlitz gave a lecture on the pyramids(ai) and the Atlantisforschung website has an article on the debate between Nuno Ribeiro and Portuguese archaeologists regarding the authenticity of the pyramids(aj).<
The following month the same journal announced the discovery of a pyramidal structure 60 metres high at a depth of 40 metres off the coast of the Azorean island of Terceira(i). Shortly afterwards the Portuguese Navy denied the existence of any such structure(j). Not exactly a surprise! Nevertheless, an Italian website has attempted to breathe new life into the story by linking this underwater pyramid report with pyramidal structures found on the island of Pico(k).
Atlantisforschung published an article that included critical comments about the ‘pyramid’ from both Greg Little and Andrew Collins.“A Portuguese Navy commander states that there is a read error of the sonar data and that the alleged pyramid was a volcanic mound. Afterwards, the Portuguese Hydrographic Institute [also] stated that the “ Pyramid ” was a known volcanic mound and posted actual underwater bottom contours of the site obtained from a hydrographic survey.
For the Portuguese Navy and its officials (who were originally said to be excited and involved), that was the end of the matter. But allegations arose almost immediately that this was a cover-up. Apparently, there was a Pyramid of Atlantis there, some claimed, and for obscure reasons, the government didn’t want anyone to know about it. At least that’s what is claimed. But of course, none of the people claiming a cover-up will ever go there and dive or lower a camera themselves. It’s probably [from their point of view; much better to keep it alive as a mystery. At the end of the day, no one wants to admit the truth — or know the truth.”(z).
The Wikiversity website has an extensive article(s) on the location of Atlantis, which is focused on the Azores and the bathymetric evidence for that archipelago having been a large single landmass at the end of the last Ice Age when sea levels were much lower. However, it is based on the literal acceptance of Plato’s 9,000 years before Solon for the date of the Atlantean War.
April 2018, saw British tabloid interest in Atlantis revived with further speculation on the Azores as the location of Plato’s submerged island(t). However, the details of the claim were rejected by Dr Richard Waller a lecturer at Keele University. Not content with recycling the old Azores theory, The Star also throws in the even more nonsensical idea of an Antarctican Atlantis.
A paper by Gerard Janssen of Leiden University places Homer’s Ogygia in the Azores(v).
In 2019, Fehmi Krasniqi published a three-and-a-half-hour video on the building of the Egyptian pyramids. For Krasniqi, the Ancient Black Egyptians travelled to the Americas and many other parts of the world(af). He claims that these ancient Egyptians travelled to America using Atlantis, now the Azores as a stepping-stone. This is offered as an explanation for the huge Olmec stone heads with African features!
A recent (2021) advocate of Atlantis in the region of the Azores is Victor Staner(w). In the same year, I was made aware of the work of Matthew Chinn who also pinpointed a location (38° 32′ 06″ N, 29° 24′ 09″ W) in the Azores region as the site of Atlantis, using satellite imagery and bathymetric data.
Support for the Azores continued with a book from Michael le Flem, Visions of Atlantis [1958] in 2022, an excerpt from which was published on the Ancient Origins website in January 2023(ah).
My leading questions regarding the proposed Azorean location for Atlantis are (a) why and (b) how would Atlanteans situated in the middle of the Atlantic launch an attack on Athens or Egypt that were over 4,200 km away? Unless those two questions are satisfactorily answered the Azores fails as the home of Atlantis.
(g) https://www.internalwaveatlas.com/Atlas2_PDF/IWAtlas2_Pg049_Azores.pdf
(h) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/interactive/midatlan.htm
(i) https://portuguese-american-journal.com/terceira-subaquatic-pyramidal-shaped-structure-found-azores/
(j) https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=255178&st=75
(k) https://www.stampalibera.com/?a=28020#sthash.EUkbmusn.dpuf
(l) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRABMVIV0pQ
(m) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160219134816.htm
(p) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmd89nPH4WM
(q) https://www.scribd.com/document/327357287/Relatorio-Comissao (Portuguese)
(r) https://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2171870-controversy-surrounds-artifacts-on-azores-islands-evidence-of-advanced-ancient-seafarers/
(u) https://www.amazon.com/New-Atlantis-Documentary-Historians-Speechless/dp/B07F2Z1272
(v) http://homerusodyssee.nl/id27.htm
(w) Atlantis | Captainvic (wixsite.com)
(z) Viking mice: Norse discovered Azores 700 years before Portuguese | CALS (cornell.edu)
(aa) Megalithic Constructions Discovered in the Azores, Portugal (scirp.org)
(ab) (57) Were the Azores home to an ancient civilisation? – BBC REEL – YouTube (Eng)
(ac) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBPyCYo97VQ (Port)
(ad) (99+) Dating the Cart-Ruts of Terceira Island, Azores, Portugal | Félix Rodrigues – Academia.edu
(af) Solving The Mystery Behind the Building of the Great Pyramid – Rising Tide Foundation
(ag) Was Atlantis in the Azores? – Klaus-Aschenbrenner (archive.org)
(ah) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/azores-atlantis-0017844
Cuba *
Cuba is a Caribbean island favoured by some as a serious contender for the location of Atlantis.
” A two-page article appeared in the February 1952 edition of the magazine ECOS entitled ’Formó Cuba Parte de la Atlándida?’. Written by Francisco Garcia-Juarez, the press secretary of the Instituto Cubano de Arqueologia (Institute of Cuban Archaeology, or ICA) it posed the question: did Cuba once form part of Atlantis? He explained how members of the Institute were investigating the idea that traces of an Atlantean culture might be found in Cuba and Hispaniola.” This study had been prompted by a suggestion from Egerton Sykes(e).
Some years ago, Leicester Hemingway, the brother of Ernest, claimed to have spotted off the northern coast of Cuba “an expanse of stone ruins, several acres in area”.
In more recent years, it was reported that Paulina Zelitsky and her team of underwater explorers found formations, in 2000 feet of water off the western tip of Cuba that resembled submerged cities.
Although there was a widespread media reaction to Zelitsky’s discovery, many commentators drew parallels with Plato’s city of Atlantis. However, Zelitsky was unwilling to make such comparisons. The story is a myth, said Zelitsky.“What we have found is more likely remnants of a local culture”, once located on a 100-mile “land bridge” that joined Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula with Cuba.
Although further explorations were planned it is reported that the U.S. government applied pressure to have any further funding denied. May 2013 had Zelitsky trying to revive interest in her theories in an interview with Luis Mariano Fernandez(d). However, in 2012, Andrew Collins offered a different account of the Zelitsky funding difficulties(g).
Barry Warmkessel, who is normally just concerned with the threat to Earth posed by asteroids and comets, digressed slightly in an illustrated paper updated in 2015(l). He discusses in great detail the possible destruction of Atlantis by a comet/asteroid impact off the west coast of Cuba.
Andrew Collins is probably the best-known supporter of a Cuban Atlantis. His book[072] and website(a) list eleven points in favour of this theory. He contends that Cuba’s western plain, which stretches from Havana westwards to Pinar del Rio was the great Plain of Atlantis described by Plato. He believes that the main city was located near the present Isle of Youth (Isla de la Juventud) situated in the south of the island. In 2009 Norman Frey wrote a paper(b) supporting the Gulf of Batabanó which lies north of the Isle of Youth as Atlantis’ location at the end of the last Ice Age. He supports his contention with satellite images and the work of Dr Christine Pellech. Frey also claims that the two plains of Cuba match Plato’s description of the Plain of Atlantis(k).
A.R.E. is also a supporter of Cuba as a possible location for the capital of Atlantis. They have suggested an underwater ‘island’ at Zapata, located on the southern side of Cuba, north of the Isle of Youth and just to the west of the infamous Bay of Pigs. This ‘island’ is surrounded by a small ring of water and is about 7 miles in diameter, consistent with Plato’s description of the outer ring of Atlantis. A.R.E.’s Greg Little obtained old depth and bottom contour charts of the site and found that the island was comprised of a series of rings. Little also identified other features in the locality that match Plato’s story; ancient manmade canals north of the underwater island. These canals have been attributed to the Taino Culture, a mound-builder culture present in Cuba about 3,000 years ago that became extinct shortly after the Spanish conquest. Further north there is a mountain range enclosing the area with a wide river running at its base — a further match with Plato. Little also found that the centre of the underwater island is not only the tallest portion but also has several springs on it.
One completely off-the-wall suggestion has been that the Cuban Missile Crisis was instigated to prevent the Soviets from finding Atlantis(f)!!
A project to compile an archaeological Atlas of Cuba has so far identified over 3,000 pre-Columbian sites. Cuba’s westernmost province, Pinar del Rio and the central region of Villa Clara have the highest density of sites, with 500 each(c).
Gerard W.J. Janssen of Leiden University places the voyages of Odysseus in the Atlantic(i). However, although he situates most of the places visited in the eastern Atlantic he does claim(h) that Homer‘s Laestrygonians were to be found in Cuba, an interpretation supported by both Théophile Cailleux and Iman Wilkens.
Luigi Usai has recently (2022) published a number of images purporting to show underwater anomalies off the coast of Cuba(j). As Usai has already designated the central region of the Mediterranean as the location of Atlantis I cannot understand his reason for showing such images. Similar anomalies have been found in various parts of the world and explained by Google as data-gathering glitches (see Satellite Imagery). If any of the rectangular features were city walls or streets they would have been kilometres wide – a nonsensical suggestion.
(a) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/news/Atlantisfile.htm
(b) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=162
(c) Archive 2952 | (atlantipedia.ie) *
(d) https://wolfke74.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/atlantis-found
(e) https://thewadeword.wordpress.com/tag/bimini/
(f) Archive 2462
(g) https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread374842/pg11
(h) LAISTRUGONIACUBA, LA HAVANA (homerusodyssee.nl)
(i) https://www.academia.edu/38535990/ATLANTIC_OGUGIA_AND_KALUPSO?email_work_card=view-paper
(j) Cuba high resolution bathymetry – Atlantis exists! Found by Dr. Luigi Usai (atlantisfound.it)
(k) The level of Atlantis – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)
(l) THE ATLANTIS CATASTROPHE – Plato Was Right (archive.org)