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

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Guanches

d’Ascanio, Alfonso

Alfonso d’Ascanio is a Spanish legal expert with a long-standing interest in Plato’s Atlantis. He is the author of El naufrago del Julán [1734], which is a novel that explores the history of the Canaries and the origins of its Guanche inhabitants. His grandfather published a book in 1922 which investigates the geology of the Canaries. His father, also Alfonso d’Ascanio, was also preparing to finish a book in the late 1950’s(a), which was intended to demonstrate that Atlantis had been situated in the Atlantic, where its remnants are now the Macaronesian groups of islands (Canaries, Azores, Madeira & Cape Verde). D’Ascanio snr also contributed to Egerton SykesAtlantis magazine.

(a) Atlantis, Vol.12, No.1, Nov/Dec 1958

Lissner, Jonah G. *

Jonah Gabriel Lissner is a prolific American author with an output that includes both fiction and non-fiction. His scientific interests are too numerous to record here as a perusal of his CV reveals(b).

Lissner has written on Jewish origins in Turkmenistan(d) and Europe, particularly their place in the history of the Khazars, a subject recently (24/01/13) in the news(c) . Another website(e) claims that Atlantis was founded by Hebrew Khazars!

His interest in archaeology and ancient history led to a 2002 paper entitled The Mariners of Elysium: Evidence for the Ancestors of the Guanches as Founders of Predynastic Egypt(a). Although this paper is not directly concerned with Atlantis, Lissner is sympathetic to its existence maintaining “the probability of a generalised mesolithic (circa 8,000 BCE) megaculture in maritime Western Europe including geographically what is now the Canary Islands, coastal Northwest Africa/Sahara, Southwest Europe and the British Isles, e.g. ‘Atlantia’; contemporary with early Jericho, Catal Huyuk, Gobekli Tepe, and other recent archaeological discoveries in the Near East.”

His paper on the Guanche ancestors is no longer available online and is now excluded from the Wayback Machine. However, in a 2022 paper(f), Lissner returned to the matter of possible Guanche influences in predynastic Egypt.

(a) https://lunis1.free.fr/spip.php?article24 (link broken)

(b) https://jonahlissner.weebly.com/  (link broken Feb ’20)

(c) https://www.heritagedaily.com/2013/01/new-study-sheds-light-on-the-origin-of-the-european-jewish-population/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HeritageDaily+%28Heritage+Daily+-+Archaeology+%26+Palaeontology+News%29

(d) https://siberiandragon.weebly.com/jewish-history-in-turkmenistan.html (link broken Feb ’20)

(e) https://www.tribwatch.com/kassite.htm

(f) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366739114_Artifacts_of_Guanche_Culture_and_Comparison_to_Ancient_North_African_Southwest_European_and_Egyptian_Analogues/link/63b0d66e097c7832ca7f033c/download  (link broken) *

Retzius, Anders *

Anders Retzius (1796-1860) was a Swedish anthropologist who studied the skulls of the Guanches of the Canaries and noted a similarity with those of the Guaranas of Brazil and others. He suggested in 1859 that the existence of the continent of Atlantis might explain such connections(a).

Today, the survival of the Guarani people is under threat(b).

(a) https://www.nephilimgiants.net/2020/07/smithsonian-scientist-claims-native.html *

(b) https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/guarani

 

Bernard, Jean-Louis

Jean-Louis Bernard (1918-1998) was a French novelist with a passion for Bernard J.L.the esoteric and ancient history,>which can be deduced from this bibliography(b).< He is the author of L’Atlantide des géants[0143] in which he touches on the Guanches of the Canaries, Bimini, Crete and Mexico.

Earlier in 1978,  he had authored a science fiction dictionary, Les archives de l’insolite, in which, before Richard Firestone, he commented on a catastrophic period in the earth’s prehistory around 10,000 BC and was quoted by Michel-Alain Combes(a).

“A series of catastrophes which took place around the year 9,000 or

10,000 before our era,which affected the whole planet,and about which

Tradition and modern science are in agreement. Let’s list these

cataclysms: in Europe, the end of the last ice age, maybe as a

consequence of the shifting of the pole towards its present position in the

North; in compensation, a drying up of the Sahara was started or

accelerated; probable end of the archipelago of Atlantis; in East Africa,

a sudden sur-elevation of mounds,and disappearance of an interior sea

(at the sources of the Nile) and of an archipelago (Pount) in the Indian

Ocean; possible sur-elevation of the Andes,with disappearance of

archipelagos in the Pacific Ocean (and isolation of the famous Easter

Island)…”

(a) https://www.2008-paris-conference.org/mapage9/macombes-younger-dryas-event-1-xx.html.pdf

>(b) Jean-Louis Bernard (1918-1998) (bnf.fr)<

 

Verneau, René

René Verneau (1852-1938) was respected French anthropologist who included Verneauamong his work a study of the Guanches. In 1888 he also wrote a paper entitled L’Atlantide et les Atlantes(a) (Atlantis and the Atlanteans), in which he reviewed the range of theories on offer from various French researchers of the 18th and 19th centuries. He discusses at length the Canaries as the home of Atlantis,but dismisses them on geological grounds. In conclusion he deemed Atlantis to be a fiction.

(a) https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/L%E2%80%99Atlantide_et_les_Atlantes (French)

Dodson, Frederick

Frederick Dodson is the author of Atlantis and the Garden of Eden[0989] and has published a number of

Unfinished Aswan Obelisk

Unfinished Aswan Obelisk

excerpts from it on his website(a).  These deal with, the Basques, Berbers, Etruscans, Minoans and Guanches among other subjects. He also includes a commentary on ancient maps(c).

He has devoted much space in his book and his website to the mystery of very large megaliths, such as at Baalbek and the unfinished obelisk at Aswan(d).

What I read seemed fairly standard fare, but then in a second book[1657], he advanced into ‘ancient astronaut’ territory, at which point I parted company with him.

Even more hilarious is his The Pleiades and Our Secret Destiny[1658] in which he tells the story of his encounters with blue-skinned beings from the Pleiades!

Dodson is also self-promoted as a ‘reality creation’ coach(b). Hmm.

(a) https://www.ancient-atlantis.com/ (offline October 2017)

(b) https://www.realitycreation.org/

*(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20160716093553/https://www.ancient-atlantis.com:80/anomalous-ancient-maps/

(d) https://web.archive.org/web/20161104202527/https://www.ancient-atlantis.com:80/largest-mysterious-ancient-megaliths*

(e) https://www.realitycreation.org/ancient-aliens-of-atlantis/

Charroux, Robert (L)

Robert Charroux (1909-1978) was the pen-name of Robert Grugeau who originally was a fiction writer and whose critics unkindly claim that he never deviated from that Robert Charrouxgenre. During World War II he was Minister for Cultural Affairs in the French Vichy government. In the 1960’s he turned his attention to a study of ancient history and proceeded to publish a series of best-selling books on forgotten civilisations, ancient astronauts and a range of historical mysteries.*[He placed Hyperborea between Hudson Bay and Greenland[875.98] where it had been the home of a blond blue-eyed Nordic race.]*

He frequently touched on the subject of Atlantis*[in a number of his books, The Mysterious Unknown[1039], The Mysterious Past[0766] and Lost Worlds[0875],]*suggesting that Atlantis was located in the Atlantic and possibly known as Antilia, the Fortunate Isles or the island of the Seven Cities. He suggested that the final remnants of Atlantis may have existed on the Canary Islands and may have lasted until the fifteenth century AD in the form of the Guanches.

Charroux also thought that the Azores had been part of Atlantis but was adamant that the ‘geological convulsions’ in the region will have destroyed any physical evidence[875.93].

Geise, Gernot & Prahl, Reinhard *

Gernot L. Geise (1945- ) & Reinhard Prahl (1967- ) Geise has written on a number of mysteries ancient and modern(b), the Pyramids, Revised Chronologies and three books on the alleged moon landing hoax(c).

Gernot Geise

Gernot Geise

As a guest author he offered a controversial paper on the Atlantisforschung.de website with the self-explanatory title of ‘The Giza pyramids were not built by ancient Egyptians’(d).

He has contributed regularly to the German EFODON magazine, of which he is a founding member.

Prahl has written on possible connections between the Guanches and the ancient Egyptians(a) and has collaborated with Geise to produce Auf der Suche nach der Mutterkultur (In Search of the Mother Culture) [730]  in which they support the idea of Atlantis in the Antarctic.

(a) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?subject=trade&id=96

(b) https://www.glgeise.de/ (German)

(c) https://www.amazon.de/Die-dunkle-Seite-von-Apollo/dp/3895396079

(d) Archive 6401 | (atlantipedia.ie) *

Russian Atlantology

Russian Atlantology was quite unknown to the general reader in the West until the fall of communism. This was mainly due to a combination of the strictures of the communist regime and the language barrier. A recent submission to Wikipedia on the subject of Russian Atlantology was rejected but can be read here(i).

It is accepted that Russian Atlantology began in the 18th century with brief references in a number of technical and poetic works. However, it was not until the 19th century that Avraam Norov attempted the first serious scientific attempt to locate Atlantis. Following a study of Greek and Arabic sources, Norov was convinced that Plato’s lost civilisation had been situated in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Later in the same century, a new element was introduced to the subject with the ‘revelations’ of Elena Blavatsky and the creation of Theosophy. To this day her esoteric waffle is quoted and accepted unthinkingly by many otherwise rational beings. The renowned Russian novelist Alexei Tolstoy devoted an episode in his novel Aelita to the subject of Atlantis.

In 1912, Vladimir Bogachev, a noted geologist published a short work on the geology of Atlantis entitled Atlantida. Bogachev lectured at the University of Dorpat in Estonia and is often labelled ‘the father of Russian Atlantology’. A few years later,  the poet and historian, Valery Bryusov, wrote of Atlantis flourishing at the end of the last Ice Age. In 1923 the geographer, Boris Bobrynin, identified the  Guanches of the Canaries as the descendants of the Atlanteans.

The doyen of Russian atlantologists in the latter half of the 20th century was undoubtedly Nikolai Zhirov whose studies over many years were published in English in 1970 and again in 2001[458]. It is a work of great erudition although it is a little dated as most of the material was originally published in Russian in the 1950s. Zhirov uncompromisingly determined to promote the Atlantic as the original location of Atlantis. He wrote a short overview of Russian Atlantology for Egerton SykesAtlantis journal in 1959(j).

More recently Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev published his thesis regarding the location of Atlantis on the Internet(a). He is convinced that it was located on the Celtic Shelf near the Scilly Isles. Vladimir Pakhomov is another supporter of the ‘Atlantis in the Atlantic’ school of thought and also promotes his views on the Internet(b).

In 1994 Vlaceslav Jurikov proposed that Atlantis had been located near the Lipari Islands and its refugees fled to Ukraine resulting in the modern symbol of Ukraine being the trident of Poseidon. Coincidentally, the Ukrainian connection has also received support from non-Russians, the exotic-sounding Flying Eagle and Whispering Wind[138](c) and the Schoppes(d).

The late Alexander Voronin was the president of the Russian Society for Studying the Problem of Atlantis  [ROIPA], which has held three congresses on the subject. At the last congress, Alexander Gorodnitsky, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, spoke controversially of the existence of highly advanced civilisations in the distant past. Voronin was also the chief editor of Atlantis: Problems, Searches, Hypotheses.

Konstantin Dukarev has written a review of scientific Atlantology with particular reference to Russian studies(e).  Although the paper is in Russian it translates well, but without paragraphs, making it more difficult to read.

A hyperdiffusionist view of Russia as the world’s mother culture, employing a level of hyperbole not endured since the days of Stalin, can be now read(f) online for your added enjoyment. 

There are aspects of modern Russian nationalism that seem to employ some of the rhetoric of the Nazi regime as well as their ideas of an Arctic homeland and even more worryingly, anti-Semitism(g). The linkage of Atlantis with this Arctic homeland was highlighted a few years ago on the Pravda website(h).

(a) Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev’s Hypothesis on Plato’s Atlantis (archive.org)

(b) Atlantis. Map of Atlantis (archive.org) *

(c) https://www.atlantis-motherland.com/home.html

(d) https://web.archive.org/web/20190819053842/https://www.black-sea-atlantis.com/schoppe.pdf

(e)  https://www.proza.ru/2012/12/20/355

(f) https://www.facebook.com/notes/739187389451526/ 

(g) See: Archive 2415

(h) https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GUEA_enIE624IE624&q=Mankind+descended+from+civilization+of+Atlanteans+in+the+Arctic

(i) See: Archive 3918

(j) Atlantis Vol.13 No.1 Dec 1959

Guanches

Guanches and Canarios were the names given to the natives of the Canary Islands when conquered by the Spanish in the 15th century following a hundred-year campaign. They are generally considered to be of Cro-Magnon origin having fair or red hair and blue/grey eyes, characteristics that are still to be seen today. Many writers have been convinced that the Guanches were the remnants of the Atlantean civilisation, a belief noted by W.G. Wood-Martin over a century ago [388.1.212]+. Recent DNA studies(j) reveal a diversity of origins for the descendants of Guanches, comparable with the general Canarian population today.

However, a number of recent genetic studies(l)(m) have established a clear relationship with the Berbers of North Africa, probably mountain Berbers(z). Furthermore, it is claimed that the aboriginal language of the Guanches is related to one of the Berber dialects(n). Further evidence favouring a Berber connection was provided in 2017(o). A 2018 paper develops this further with particular reference to the Lybico-Berber script(p).

>A review of our current knowledge of the early Canarians was published in February 2024 on the science.org website(aa) “European archaeologists were fascinated with the early Canarians. The French thought the first settlers were Cro-Magnon, like prehistoric people in France; German archaeologists thought they must have been Aryan; the Spanish thought they were Stone Age relatives of the same North Africans who settled the Iberian Peninsula.

By analyzing ancient DNA from radiocarbon-dated bones, archaeologists in the past 15 to 20 years have found that the first islanders had the strongest genetic ties to the Amazigh cultures of northwestern Africa, also known as Berbers. Rock inscriptions on the islands also echo Amazigh alphabets.”<

Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, it is claimed that the population numbered over 20,000. It is not commonly known that in the 15th century many of the Guanches were abducted and brought to the Madeiras to work as slaves(g).

The Guanches were reported to have had no boats or maritime heritage. If they were all that was left following a catastrophic event, the Guanches were probably the descendants of mountain people who had no seagoing heritage. This view was queried by Henry Eichner who claims that this idea was generated by the faulty assumptions of one of the first Spaniards to visit the island, Nicoloso de Recceo. In 2013, Sergio Navio decided to disprove this notion with a practical demonstration. The plan is to use a basic raft-like boat, named ‘Ursa Minor’ to sail from Lanzarote to La Palma, a distance of 250 miles(f).      

The Spanish conquerors of the Canary Islands may have been able to shed more light on the subject, had they been more interested in history than in territory. According to these early explorers, the natives were surprised to learn that other people had survived the disaster that had flooded their world and submerged much of their homeland. They excitedly asked the conquistadors for help translating ancient inscriptions left by their ancestors that they could no longer read, but unfortunately – for the natives and for history – the Spanish exterminated their tribe before any more information was learned about their history and legends. Their inscriptions remain undeciphered.

The Guanches have been linked with both ancient Egypt and America on a number of grounds including similar methods of mummification(i) and the step pyramids found at both locations(d). In a 2020 documentary(y)and subsequent review(x) the mummification procedures of the Guanches was investigated in minute detail.

Perhaps the most radical idea to emerge in recent times from Jonah G. Lissner was the suggestion that the Guanches or more correctly their ancestors were the founders of predynastic Egypt(q). In a similar vein, Helene E. Hagan wrote The Shining Ones[660], in which she identified the Tamazigh, related to the Guanches, as the founders of Egyptian civilisation.

Reinhard Prahl has published a paper(k) on the Migration & Diffusion website in which he also highlights cultural similarities of the Guanches and ancient Egyptians.

In The Atlantis Encyclopedia [104.130], Frank Joseph wrote, “In 45 A.D., he (Marcellus) recorded that “the inhabitants of the Atlantic island of Poseidon preserve a tradition handed down to them by their ancestors of the existence of an Atlantic island of immense size, of not less than a thousand stadia [about 115 miles], which had really existed in those seas, and which, during a long period of time, governed all the islands of the Atlantic Ocean.” Pliny the Elder seconded Marcellus, writing that the Guanches were in fact the direct descendants of the disaster that sank Atlantis. Proclus reported that they still told the story of Atlantis in his day, circa 410 A.D.” Joseph expanded on some of this in an article in issue #34 of Atlantis Rising(u).

José Luis Concepción (1948- ), a Canarian, has written a number of books with a local theme including The Guanches, Survivors and their Descendant [825], a booklet providing a brief history of the islands. He concurs with the view that the Guanches have an African Cro-Magnon ancestry and are related to modern Berbers. The author also claims that the Guanches are still the dominant race on the Canaries. The booklet has been translated into a number of languages and includes an extensive Spanish bibliography.

A website(a) discussing the Guanches has some interesting if controversial suggestions regarding their origins. Another site highlights a possible connection with the Dravidians of Southern India(c). This Dravidian connection is supported by the late Edo Nyland(e) in his Linguistic Archaeology[1190]Some time ago, Arysio dos Santos wrote a paper, claiming that “we provide linguistic evidence that the Guanche language is very likely of Dravidian derivation, and not indeed Hamito-Semitic, as usually stated(v). The present article is intended to be read in connection with the one entitled: The Mysterious Origin of the Guanches(w).”

Two Russian writers, B.F. Dobrynin[347] and B. L. Bogaevsky[182] in the first quarter of the 20th century wrote articles that supported the idea that there were links between the Guanches and the original Atlanteans.

A 2020 article(t) on the BBC website reiterates the Guanche – Berber connection but adds that “They adapted caves and grottoes to be used as silos and temples. Some of those structures have been preserved to this day and indicate the Guanches’ sophisticated astronomical knowledge: holes on the caves’ walls allowed sunlight in at certain positions during different times of the year, marking solstices and equinoxes.”

[388.1.212]+ https://archive.org/details/traceselderfait00martgoog

(a) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_guanches_1.htm

(c) https://ositorojo.blogspot.com/2009/12/mystery-of-guanches.html

(d) https://www.google.ie/search?q=%22the+origin+of+the+guanches%22+prahl&rls=com.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLS_en

(e) https://web.archive.org/web/20190605101058/https://faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/guanche.htm

(f) https://www.abc.es/local-canarias/20131110/abci-navegar-guanches-lanzarote-lapalma-201311091742.html

(g) https://menceymacro.blogspot.ie/2013/08/la-punta-del-sol-la-historia-de-los.html (Spanish)

(i) See Archive 2617

(j) https://web.archive.org/web/20190620152221/https://www.nature.com/articles/5201075

(k) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=96

(l) https://phys.org/news/2017-10-guanches-north-africa-dna-study.html

(m) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171026135349.htm

(n) https://web.archive.org/web/20161028034438/https://www.aulaorientalis.org/AuOr%20escaneado/AuOr%206-1988/Volumen%20VI/N_2/4.pdf

(o) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/researchers-get-closer-finding-origins-enigmatic-guanches-and-no-they-021687

(p) https://journals.openedition.org/corpus/2641

(q) https://joe3998.tripod.com/guanches/ (link broken)

(r) The Mysterious Origin of the Guanches | Atlantis (archive.org)

(s) http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/39792/Abstract (Link Broken)

(t) https://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200528-the-guanches-spains-mysterious-mummies

(u) Atlantis Rising magazine #34  http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At

(v) Guanche language derived from Dravida? | (archive.org)

(w) The Mysterious Origin of the Guanches | (archive.org)

(x) https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/guanche-mummies-0015257 

(y) “Las mumias guanches”, a documentary that reveals all the secrets of mummification in the Canary Islands – | Ministry of Culture and Sport (man.es)

(z) https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/arid-20228475.html

(aa)  How did humans survive alone for 1000 years on desert islands off Africa? | Science | AAAS *