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NEWS October 2024
OCTOBER 2024 The recent cyber attack on the Internet Archive is deplorable and can be reasonably compared with the repeated burning of the Great Library of Alexandria. I have used the Wayback Machine extensively, but, until the full extent of the permanent damage is clear, I am unable to assess its effect on Atlantipedia. At […]Read More »
Joining The Dots
I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
Heather Pringle
Ancient Seafaring
Ancient Seafaring is a controversial subject owing principally to a dearth of physical evidence. The earliest known boat is the Pesse
Pesse Canoe
Canoe (see right) which was discovered in The Netherlands and thought to be around 10,000 years old. The second oldest boat was also a canoe, found in Malawi and dated to about 8,000 years ago(g). Wikipedia lists all the surviving boats, which shows that until the third millennium BC all that have been found are canoes.
Seafaring and Atlantis are inextricably linked. In Critias 117d Plato anachronistically refers to the shipyards of Atlantis being full of triremes, which were not developed until the 7th century BC, long after the demise of Atlantis. However, the term ‘trireme’ was probably employed by Plato to make his narrative more relevant to his audience. He credits the Atlantean navy with 1200 ships, which for me seems like borrowing and rounding the numbers of either the Achaean fleet of 1186 vessels in Homer’s Iliad or that of the 1207 ships of the later Persian invaders. That ships were used in the war with Athens can be inferred from the fact that Atlantis, or at least its capital, was situated on an island.
Professor Seán McGrail (1928-2021) wrote in his monumental work, Boats of the World “There is no direct evidence for water transport until the Mesolithic even in the most favoured regions, and it is not until the Bronze Age that vessels other than logboats are known” [1949.10]. For those that adhere to a 10th millennium BC date for the Atlantean War with Athens, this lack of naval evidence to support such an early date undermines the idea. An invasion fleet of canoes travelling from beyond the Pillars of Herakles to attack Athens seems rather unlikely!
Khufu Boat
Apart from the Solar Boats of the Egyptians, such as the Khufu Boat (see left),
discovered at Giza in 1954 and dated to 2500 BC. Fifty years later Kathryn A. Bard, Professor Emerita of Archaeology and Classical Studies at Boston University and Rodolfo Fattovich, an archaeologist at the Orientale University of Naples, discovered an ancient port at Mersa Gawasis on the Red Sea. Evidence at the site indicated that it had been used around 1800 BC as an embarcation point for expeditions to the legendary land of Punt. Andrew Curry has written a review(l) of the work carried on at the site. Curry’s article is headed with the claim that the discovery of the harbour “proves ancient Egyptians mastered oceangoing technology”. In my opinion, this is possibly overstating it as the remains of the vessels found there may have suited the relatively calm Red Sea, a voyage in the Atlantic would probably have been too much.
Nevertheless, Heather Pringle published an article in 2008 in which she reviewed the suggestion by Jon Erlandson(k), an archaeologist at the University of Oregon, that early humans may have travelled the oceans 70,000 years ago(j).
Seldom referred to, but perhaps even more interesting is to be found earlier in Critias 113e which describes the mythological beginnings of Atlantis and which reads “for at that time neither ships nor sailing were as yet in existence”. However, we are given little information to bridge the time up to its development as a major trading entity. It is reasonable to assume a gap of several thousand years.
Recent studies(a) have suggested that primitive seafaring took place in the Mediterranean thousands of years earlier than originally thought and may even have been engaged in by Homo Erectus and Neanderthals in the form of island hopping and coastal-hugging, the latter continuing into historical times.
Plato describes an advanced maritime trading nation with a powerful naval capacity. How much was part of the original story brought from Egypt by Solon or whether it was in any way embellished by Plato is unclear. The earliest known trading empire is that of the Minoans which began in the 3rd millennium BC and has led to many identifying them with the Atlanteans. However, there are very many other details in Plato’s narrative that seriously conflict with this hypothesis.
The limitations of ancient seafaring raise many questions regarding the navigation supports available to these early sailors(b). Initially, sailing, probably for fishing, would have been confined to daytime travel and keeping within the sight of land. With the development of maritime trade, the demand for improved navigation methods also grew.
It has been generally accepted that sailing in the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages was not undertaken between October and March because of the dangerous weather usually encountered at that time of the year. Some cities, such as Pisa, Venice and Genoa had ordinances forbidding commercial voyages in winter! Understandably, many considered that this was also the case in Greek and Roman times when shipbuilding skills and navigational technology were probably more primitive. A 2015 paper by T.M.P. Duggan demonstrates that commercial maritime activity in winter was commonplace in medieval times(m).
In time sailors acquired a familiarity with the night sky that enabled them to use the stars as navigational aids, given clear skies. Gradually, as nighttime travel became more common, the use of beacons and later lighthouses also expanded. The lighthouse at Pharos near Alexandria came to be counted as one of the wonders of the Old World. Similarly, it is thought that the Colossus at Rhodes performed a similar function.
Different navigation skills have been identified in different parts of the world. In the Pacific, the navigational capabilities of the Polynesians are legendary(c). A November article on the BBC website expanded on this ‘ancient art of wayfindlng’ (i). The ancient Chinese employed magnetism(e) and in the cloudy North Atlantic, the Vikings used their ‘sunstones’(d).
In their book, Atlantis in America [244] Ivar Zapp & George Erikson claimed that the stone spheres of Costa Rica had a navigational function [p34] as Zapp discovered that the sightlines of all the stones remaining in their original positions, did point to important ancient sites such as Giza, Stonehenge and Easter Island!
A most imaginative proposal has come from Crichton E.M. Miller who proposed [1918] that the ubiquitous Celtic Cross is an image of an ancient navigational device. He further claims that “This instrument can tell the time, find latitude and longitude, measure the angles of the stars, predict the solstices and equinoxes and measure the precession of the equinoxes. It can also find the ecliptic pole as well as the north and south poles; it can make maps and charts, design pyramids and henges and—used in combination with these sites—can record and predict the cycles of nature and time(f) “. Then for good measure, he proceeded to patent the device.
(a) http://news.yahoo.com/ancient-mariners-did-neanderthals-sail-mediterranean-192112855.html
(b) http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/navigation.htm
(c) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation
(d) https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20052-vikings-crystal-clear-method-of-navigation/
(e) http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/magnetism.htm
(f) Atlantis Rising magazine #35 http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At
(g) https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-technology/pesse-canoe-0017298
(i) https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231128-what-we-can-learn-from-the-ancient-art-of-wayfinding
(j) https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/did-humans-colonize-the-world-by-boat
Paulsen, Peter
Peter Paulsen (1902-1985) was a German professor of archaeology, who belonged to the Ahnenerbe-SS and was heavily involved in the plundering of museums and libraries in Poland after the German invasion. Heather Pringle records his wartime activities in great detail in The Master Plan[0032.196].
He had a keen interest in Norse mythology, which led to the publication of Axt und Kreutz in 1939[1364]. So it is not surprising that after the war when Jürgen Spanuth published his theory of a North Sea Atlantis and identified the Sea Peoples as the ‘North Sea Peoples’, Paulsen was quick to describe Spanuth’s work as “very significant and valuable research which should in every way be supported.” Another former member of Ahnenerbe, Professor Otto Huth is also recorded[1339.217] by Felix R. Paturi as supporting Spanuth’s work.
Elsewhere(a) we are told “After the war Peter Paulsen did his best to bury his past and in 1981 landed a prestigious job as a medieval expert in Würtemberg”.
Bering Strait *
The Bering Strait between Asia and America has been a source of ongoing controversy regarding the peopling of America. James Howell (1594-1666) relates how even in the 17th century the existence of the strait, then known as the Anian, was disputed, although, at the same time, there was also a theory that the nomadic Scythians had originally crossed over the Strait from America[1313].
In 1985, Nicholas Flemming published an article(y) in the Woods Hole Oceanographic magazine Oceanus in which he touched on the matter of the Bering Strait. “There was dry land from Siberia to Alaska, the Bering Land Bridge, for most of the time from 80,000 to 14,000 years ago. Shallow episodes of flooding occurred at about 45,000 and 35,000 B.P Cores from the land and the sea bed provide evidence for the pollen types at different dates, the sediment movements, and the stages of marine transgression or emergence. From the point of view of human occupation, the inhospitable nature of Beringia was not just because of the cold, but also the severe dryness for most of the time from 60,000 to 14,000 B.P.” Contrast this with the next paragraph.
A 2022 report of “A new study that reconstructs the history of sea level at the Bering Strait shows that the Bering Land Bridge connecting Asia to North America did not emerge until around 35,700 years ago, less than 10,000 years before the height of the last ice age (known as the Last Glacial Maximum).”(x)
By the end of the 18th century, the importance of the Strait had been recognised, when Paul Felix Cabrera wrote “That most troublesome of all the difficulties hitherto started by authors respecting the passage of animals to America, particularly of the ferocious kinds at enmity with man, even retaining in full force the plausible reasons so ingeniously urged, if not entirely removed, is nearly surmounted by the discovery and examination of Anian or Behring’s straits’ which are of no greater breadth than thirteen leagues from shore to shore, and where, by means of the ice, the two continents of Asia and America are connected; this would afford a practical route not only for animals but men, from whom it is possible to suppose that those who inhabit the most northerly countries from the straits as far as Hudson’s and Baffin’s Bays, and from the Frozen Sea to California, New Mexico, and Canada to the southward, are descended.” (s)
In certain circumstances, it is still possible to walk across the Bering Strait. “A 2.5-mile stretch divides Russia’s Big Diomede island from Alaska’s Little Diomede island. In the winter, the water separating the two islands freezes, allowing you to trek from one destination to the other.”(n) Wikipedia notes that “numerous successful crossings without the use of a boat have also been recorded since at least the early 20th century.” (o)
There is little doubt that at some point in prehistory a landbridge linked the two continents.
Although it is frequently claimed that the Hadji Ahmed Map of 1559 shows a landbridge between the two continents, it only appears to be so because of the way the map is drawn.
A recent paper(a) by Heather Pringle and Krista Langlois offers evidence that the link was more than just an isthmus but was in fact a vast area of land, Beringia, the size of Australia, and that it provided a crossing point, for humans and animals earlier and for longer than previously believed (See map above right).
After crossing the Strait there were two southward routes, one along the coast and the other via what is known as the Ice-Free Corridor Route which ran between two vast ice sheets, the Laurentide to the east and the Cordilleran to the west(c). According to a 2018 report(i), the coastal route which followed deglaciation “was physically and environmentally viable for early human migration to the Americas.” Another report in 2018 claims that the earliest settlers in America were island-hopping seafarers from Asia(j)(k).
However, there is now compelling evidence that people reached South America before the existence of the northern ice-free corridor, suggesting the alternative coastal migration route, which, so far, has little evidence to support it. This recent report is the result of excavations at the Huaca Prieta ceremonial mound, 600 Km north of the Peruvian capital, Lima. Human activity there has now been dated to around 15,000 years ago(e). Further evidence has now emerged(p) that the peopling of America was not carried out by a single group, but by immigrants from different geographical areas.
Professor Jody Hey of Rutgers University published in 2011 the results of his North American DNA studies, which confirmed the arrival of the first migrants from Asia around 14,000 years ago in a group of not more than 70 people(r).
Pre-Columbian contact between Asia and Alaska was confirmed by a report(b) from Purdue University in September 2016. artefacts were discovered in a house dated between 700 and 900 years old. The bronze items were identified as having been smelted in Asia, while a leather strap was radiocarbon-dated to between 500 and 800 years old.
Another 2016 report(d) added genetic evidence for the Beringia migration route, when the remains of two infants, dated to around 10,000 years ago were discovered at the Upward Sun River site in Alaska.
Further supportive evidence of the use of the Beringia landbridge was uncovered at Alaska’s Swan Point site where human occupation has been dated as far back as 14,000 years ago. “Another notable aspect of Swan Point is the role it has played in understanding the prehistoric migration of peoples into the Americas. A type of stone tool, the microblade, which was unearthed at the site, has been found to resemble those used by the Dyuktai people, who lived in Siberia around the same period. This shows that people crossed from Siberia to Alaska on the Beringia land bridge.”(t)
The ‘received wisdom’ regarding the origins of the Clovis people was that they had crossed into the Americas from Asia via the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago. This has been challenged in a book[1516] by two archaeologists, the late Dennis J. Stanford and Bruce A. Bradley, who claim “that the first Americans crossed the Atlantic by boat and arrived earlier than previously thought. Supplying archaeological and oceanographic evidence to support this assertion, the book dismantles the old paradigm while persuasively linking Clovis technology with the culture of the Solutrean people who occupied France and Spain more than 20,000 years ago.” In 2014, Stephen Oppenheimer endorsed the work of Stanford and Bradley(h). Coincidentally, an article(m) in the August 2017 edition of Antiquity offers evidence that humans lived in Brazil more than 20,000 years ago, which is many millennia before the Clovis people arrived in North America.
A sceptical view of their work should also be read(f). Furthermore, in 2016 the Solutrean Hypothesis also appears to have been contradicted by recent genetic studies(g).
Late August 2019 saw the dating controversy surrounding the arrival of the First Americans re-ignited with a study that pushes the date back to over 16,000 years ago(l). This is based on archaeological discoveries at Cooper’s Ferry in Idaho. This earlier date suggests that the ice-free corridor would not have been available to these people, but are more likely to have used the coastal route from Asia via the Bering Strait. A secondary matter raised by these finds is that “Based on their analysis of the stone tools from Cooper’s Ferry, the researchers suggest that they are most similar to artifacts of the same general period found on the other side of the Pacific. Specifically, they appear to share many traits with tools produced on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido 13,000-16,000 years ago!”
The idea that the Clovis people were the first Americans is gradually losing support as the evidence found at Cooper’s Ferry and other sites indicates otherwise. A recent paper on the National Geographic website supports such a revised view(q).
Itztli Ehecatl published a two-part paper(u)(v) on the Atlantisforschung website denouncing the Bering Strait theory with the complaint that “Although some archaeologists have good intentions, most do not want to consider that Native Americans preserved an ancient history in their oral traditions. The unwillingness to reach a compromise between archaeological and indigenous knowledge is a tragedy that the discipline should work hard to overcome, otherwise, archeology will perpetually rely on flawed data.”
Michael Collins, a Texas State University archaeologist, is one of a number of academics who question whether the Bering Strait was the route used by the First Americans. Although the theory has been generally accepted for at least a century, support is weakening in the face of mounting evidence. An article in the journal Archaeology(w) (Aug.10, 2014) reports on Collins’ evidence up to that date.
It was depressing to read that ” the few scholars who dared challenge the Clovis lace theory on the basis of solid evidence were furiously ostracized and their careers destroyed. In 1951 Dr. Thomas Lee, working at the National Museum of Canada, identified a site in Sheguiandah, Canada. When the site was analyzed it was dated between 30,000 and 100,000 BP. Because his work conflicted with accepted Clovis doctrine, the museum he had worked for fired him, and his records of the finds were mysteriously stolen. Lee explained that both Canadian and American scholars blacklisted him and enforced an eight-year professional ban on him.” This period also saw the academic arrogance that Velikovsky had to endure in the USA.
The first direct connection of the Bering Strait with Atlantis has been suggested by Albert. M. Chelchelnitsky, who proposed that Atlantis had been situated in Alaska and placed the Pillars of Herakles in the Strait itself.
More recently, Michael Szymczyk, the author of Atlantis & Its Fate In The Postdiluvian World [1964], in which, like Chelchelnitsky, he makes some extraordinary claims without providing any evidence. He pinpoints an underwater site
In recent years, the the Bering Sea has also been the location for a reality TV show Bering Sea Gold based in the Alaskan city of Nome(z).
(a) https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-long/sunken-bridge-size-continent
(h) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00438243.2014.966273?journalCode=rwar20
(j) Boulder-Size Clues to How Humans Settled the Americas – The New York Times (archive.org)
(k) https://gizmodo.com/humans-may-have-reached-north-america-by-more-than-one-1828194893?lR=T
(m) https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/stone-age-people-brazil-20000-years-ago
(o) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bering_Strait
(q) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2019/08/coopers-landing-idaho-site-americas-oldest/
(s) https://olivercowdery.com/texts/1822DRio.htm
(w) First Americans – Archaeology Magazine (archive.org) *
(x) Bering Land Bridge formed surprisingly late during last ice age, study finds – Search (bing.com)
(y) https://www.academia.edu/21168111/Ice_Ages_and_Human_Occupation_of_the_Continental_Shelf
Pringle, Heather (M)
Heather Pringle “is a Canadian science writer who specializes in 
archaeology.” She has written many articles as well as a number of books and has her own website(a). Among her work is the prize-winning The Master Plan[0032], in which she charts the work of the Nazi Ahnenerbe, founded by Himmler, “whose mission was to search for the lost civilization of an ancient master race.” Included in this fascinating book is an interesting account of the Hermann Wirth’s obsession with Atlantis in the North Atlantic as well as Edmund Kiss’ work at Tiwanaku in Bolivia.
*[A recent paper(b) by Pringle and Krista Langlois offers evidence that the Bering Strait during the last Ice Age was in fact a vast area of land the size of Australia and that it provided a crossing point, for humans and animals earlier and for longer than previously believed.
Pringle has also turned her attention to the Vikings in an interesting National Geographic article(c).]*
(a) https://heatherpringle.com/
*[(b) https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-long/sunken-bridge-size-continent
(c) National Geographic, March 2017 p.34]*
Clovis People
The Clovis People, named after the Clovis archaeological site in New Mexico were initially accepted as the earliest identifiable human population in the Americas. It was thought that they arrived on that continent around 9,000 BC. Now, however, at a site at Buttermilk Creek in Texas(a), archaeologists have found stone tools in thick sediments beneath what is accepted as typical Clovis material. It is believed that these artifacts may be as much as 15,500 years old, once again pushing back the date of the earliest Americans.
Nearly a century ago it became a popular theory that the Clovis people had contributed to the extinction of the mammoths in North America after some of their tools were discovered among mammoth remains. This is now seriously challenged by the simple explanation that “More often, these tools served as knives to cut meat off carcasses of already dead mammoths or as dart tips hurled to scare away other scavenging animals drawn to mammoth remains.“(o)
The Gault site, also in Texas, has produced tools and some human remains that have been dated to up to 16,700 years ago, which further argues against the Clovis People as the earliest Americans. This was reinforced by the discovery of a 22,000-year-old mastodon skull along with a flaked blade made of volcanic rock.(f)
October 2018 brought claims by researchers from the Texas A & M University that the oldest weapons ever found in North America had been discovered at another Texan location named the Debra L. Friedkin site(j). They have dated the artefacts as 15,500 years old.
The ‘received wisdom’ regarding the origins of the Clovis people was that they had crossed into the Americas from Asia via a landbridge that spanned the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago. This has been challenged in a book[1516] by two archaeologists,>>Bruce A. Bradley and the late Dennis J. Stanford<<, who claim “that the first Americans crossed the Atlantic by boat and arrived earlier than previously thought. Supplying archaeological and oceanographic evidence to support this assertion, the book dismantles the old paradigm while persuasively linking Clovis technology with the culture of the Solutrean people who occupied France and Spain more than 20,000 years ago.”
Stephen Oppenheimer as added his support to this idea of prehistoric transatlantic travel during the last Ice Age, using studies that identified the genetic haplogroup 2Xa among indigenous people in northeast America and western Europe. This was outlined in a recent CBC documentary Ice Bridge, featuring Stanford, Bradley and Oppenheimer. However, for balance, a critique of the show should also be read(i).
A further sceptical view of their work should also be considered(g). However, in 2016, the Solutrean Hypothesis appears to have been contradicted by genetic studies(h).
Until 1999, the existence of pre-Clovis populations was denied by mainstream archaeology(b). Today, there is almost universal acceptance of these very early settlers in both North and South America(c).
Heather Pringle has written a revelatory article about the Canadian archaeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars who has fought the establishment view since 1979 and only now has his claim of pre-Clovis hunters in North America 24,000 years ago been vindicated(e).
Nevertheless, Professors Jennifer Raff and Deborah Bolnick co-authored a paper offering evidence(d) that the genetic data only supports migration from Siberia to America.
“A new (2022) analysis of archaeological sites in the Americas challenges relatively new theories that the earliest human inhabitants of North America arrived before the migration of people from Asia across the Bering Strait.
Conducted by University of Wyoming Professor Todd Surovell and colleagues from UW and five other institutions, the analysis suggests that misinterpretation of archaeological evidence at certain sites in North and South America might be responsible for theories that humans arrived long before 13,000-14,200 years ago.”(l)
It seems clear to me that the debates surrounding the earliest Americans have a long way to run yet. It did not take long before the presence of pre-Clovis humans was pushed back further to as early as 33,000 years ago. This is contained in a July 2020 report, based on evidence found at Chiquihuite Cave, a high-altitude rock shelter in central Mexico.(k)
Items discovered even further south, in Brazil, at the Vale de Pedra Furada site have been dated to before the accepted Clovis date of around 11,500 BC. One particular tool has been firmly dated to at least 24,000 years ago(m). Unsurprisingly this has led to disputes, but it is clear that the idea of the Clovis people as the first ‘Americans’ is under persistent attack>and in my opinion is now close to complete abandonment!
A 2023 paper has now updated the evidence showing that the peopling of the Americas was well underway long before the arrival of the Clovis people(n).<
See Also: Younger Dryas
(a) https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/science/25archeo.html
(b) https://archaeology.about.com/od/upperpaleolithic/qt/Guide-To-Pre-Clovis.htm
(c) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/texas-stone-tools-pre-clovis/
(d) https://phys.org/news/2016-01-genetic-ancient-trans-atlantic-migration-professor.html
(e) https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-long/vilified-vindicated-story-jacques-cinq-mars
(i) https://bonesstonesandbooks.com/2018/01/15/sprinkling-some-grains-of-salt-on-ice-bridge/
(k) https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53486868
(l) Study challenges theories of earlier human arrival in Americas (phys.org)
(m) https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0247965
(n) The 1st Americans were not who we thought they were | Live Science
(o) Ancient Clovis hunters may not have wiped out mammoths after all | Science News
Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco)
Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco) is an ancient city whose remains are located over two miles above sea level near the southern end of Lake Titicaca on the Altiplano of Bolivia. It was first encountered by Spanish conquistadors in 1549. Tiwanaku has all the features of a harbour, which has led some to describe it as the seaport of nearby Puma Punku another remarkable ancient site(o).
The ruins are scattered over a number of square miles through which the Guayqui-La Paz railway was constructed, which was responsible for the breaking up of many monuments to provide ballast. Before that, stone from the site was used in the construction of nearby homes and a church.
Belisario Díaz Romero believed that Tiwanaku had been built by a race of people he calls Homo atlanticus, who had come to America from Atlantis over a landbridge from the east, outlined in his 1906 book Tiahuanacu[1235]. Heather Pringle notes(t) that before Romero, “Francis de Castelnau (1810-1880), for example, proposed in the mid-19th century that Tiwanaku was the work of wandering Egyptian pharaohs, as opposed to the ‘imbecilic race that inhabits the country today’.”
The controversial Arthur Posnansky, who linked Tiahuanaco with Aztlan, the mythical “white” island homeland of the Aztecs investigated them in the early 20th century. The similarity of Aztlan with the name of Plato’s city has excited some straw-clutching Atlantis seekers into claiming a definite connection between the two.
Posnansky also noted that the expected alignments of structures at Tiwanaku were offset by an amount that suggested their construction at a time when they would have been correctly aligned to the cardinal points. He, after many years of study, was convinced that Tiahuanaco was the oldest civilisation on Earth [516] dating it to around 15,000 BC, which he later reduced to 10,000 BC.
In the 1920s, Edmund Kiss studied the ruins of Tiwanaku and concluded that it had been constructed by Nordic refugees from Atlantis which had been destroyed by a falling moon! His ideas were enthusiastically received back in Nazi Germany. A further expedition was planned but never materialised because of the start of World War II.(u)
Dr Graham Holton, an Australian commentator has written about the pseudo-science practised in the early 20th century at Tiwanaku by the likes of Posnansky and Kiss and endorsed by Hörbiger and Hans Bellamy(al)(am).
Although, as you can see below, Posnansky’s work and particularly his dating of Tiwanaku has been rejected by many, he still has supporters. In Graham Hancock‘s 1995 book Fingerprints of the Gods [275], he supported Posnansky’s date, referring to his work throughout the book. Ian Alex Blease, a devout sceptic took issue with this endorsement (aa). For my part, I note that Hancock was happy to support Posnansky in ‘Fingerprints’, but in America Before [1680], despite its title, he gives Posnansky’s date no mention, perhaps because it clashed with his new date for the destruction of his ‘Lost Civilisation’!
>>Hancock has been highly critical of Carbon-14 as a dating method, particularly for megalithic sites and specifically Tiwanaku. The late Garrett Fagan took issue with Hancock regarding the dating of Tiwanaku in a 2000 post on Hancock’s site(ar). Hancock responded with a challenge to Fagan that led to a further article from him(aq). The temperature rose with a further article from Hancock(as).<<
Charles Orser Jnr. debunked Posnansky’s dating in a 2001 article(k) as did Paul Heinrich(n).
Marin, Minella & Schievenin [972.97] “Between 1927 and 1930 several scientists, including Hans Ludendorf, at the time director of the Astronomical Observatory of Potsdam; astronomer Arnold Kohlshutter, University of Bonn; Dr Rolf Muller, University of Potsdam and Dr Friedrich Becker, Specula Vatican, meticulously checked the archaeological-astronomical research of Posnansky for accuracy. After three years of work these scientists corroborated his thesis.”
Before retirement, R. Cedric Leonard supported Posnansky’s early date for Tiwanaku citing a number of atronomers who endorsed his chronology. “Between 1927 and 1930 Prof. Posnansky’s conclusions were studied intensively by a number of authorities. Dr. Hans Ludendorff (Director of the Astronomical Observatory of Potsdam), Friedrich Becker of the Specula Vaticana, Prof. Arnold Kohlschutter (astronomer at Bonn University), and Rolf Müller (astronomer of the Institute of Astrophysics at Potsdam) verified the accuracy of Posnansky’s calculations and vouched for the reliability of his conclusions.
The conventional practice of dating Tiahuanacu as beginning c. 200 A.D. and collapsing c. 1000 A.D. started with Wendell Bennett’s excavations, which turned up numerous examples of pottery, small statues and other artifacts. Since it is common for later arrivals to be awed by massive ruins (sometimes attributing their origin to supernatural beings, thus replicating the “sacred” images on their own pottery and textiles), I think it is a mistake to fuse the two cultures into one, implying that the later arrivals were the same people who built the original ruins. I believe Bennett and his successors are all guilty of such an error.” (ap)
R. Cedric Leonard believed that Posnansky’s date addressed all of the mysteries associated with the site and “Thus I think it likely that Tiahuanaco was built at sea level c.15,000 B.C. as an Atlantean port.”(z)
The American archaeologist, Neil Steede, while reviewing Posnansky’s date, thought that a date of 7000-5000 BC was more appropriate(aj).
At the other end of the spectrum, Emmet Sweeney, an ardent chronology revisionist claimed that “most probably, Tiahuanaco was built around the same time as pharaoh Djoser’s Step Pyramid at Sakkara in Egypt. It can thus claim to be among the oldest of human monuments [700.208].” Tiwanaku is conventionally dated between 200 BC and 100 AD, while the Step Pyramid is thought to have been constructed around 2650 BC.
Some researchers, including Jim Allen, have studied Tiwanaku’s remarkable Gate of the Sun and identified the figures carved on it as a sophisticated calendar(v).
A paper from Marco Antonio Cabero regarding the ‘Gate’ throws a modicum of doubt on its possible use as a calendar. Instead, he focused on the other side of the monument where he claims there is evidence that the ancient people of Tiwanaku knew the ‘golden number’, phi.
“The composition of the front face of the Gate of the Sun in Tiwanaku presents, anthropometric, and bilateral symmetry. On the back side, there are also harmonic proportions but with less significance. These proportions were not found before because the study of the content of its engraving frieze was believed to be a calendar, an idea that has been so widely extended, that any other interpretations were ignored (however, the presence of these proportions does not exclude the possible existence of some type of calendar). The Gate of the Sun may not be part of a temple, but its content could also be considered as the expression of a monument in itself; a work that testifies to the importance of knowledge, art, and science “(ac).
Ashley Cowie has recently proposed that Tiwanaku was located on an ancient Prime Meridian(w).
Also eye-catching is the claim(l) by Roger Elefant that later construction at Tiwanaku was carried out by the Vikings!
However, a more recent, but catastrophic, explanation is offered by Stephen Smith(d) on the Thunderbolts.info website. Perhaps Smith’s ideas might be combined with the studies of George Dodwell to produce a more comprehensive hypothesis. Posnansky’s date is greatly at variance with conventional dating that puts the flourishing of Tiwanaku from 1200 BC until 1200 AD. The latter part of that period roughly coincides with the existence of the Wari Empire, a possible rival of Tiwanaku(e).
In 2013, Jason Yaeger and Alexei Vranich published a detailed study of the chronological development of Tiwanaku and Puma Punku. This is now available on the Academia.edu website(ao). Anyone seeking support for ancient astronauts, giants or Atlantis will be greatly disappointed. The authors confirmed a starting date for monumental construction at the site of no earlier than 200 BC, which continued intermittently until the arrival of the Spanish invaders. Their report is the result of the ‘hard slog’ required by real archaeology.
Several claims attempting to link Tiahuanaco with Atlantis have been made, with one anonymous blog(y) insisting that it was the capital of Atlantis. James Bailey was an early advocate [149] of a Peruvian Atlantis with its capital at Tiwanaku or Chan Chan, which was probably the largest pre-Colombian city in South America.
The claim of a direct connection between Tiahuanaco and Atlantis is hard to accept on a number of grounds; for example, the idea of an army travelling from the west coast of South America to attack Greece in the east of the Mediterranean is not tenable. That there was an advanced culture in the Andes is undeniable but to link it to Plato’s story is stretching credibility to extremes. Lake Titicaca and Tiahuanaco have plenty of mysteries still to be explained. In 1980 the Bolivian scholar, Hugo Boero Rojo, aided by one of the local natives, Elias Mamani, located underwater ruins off the coast of Puerta Acosta[576]. His discoveries included megalithic temples, flights of stairs and stone roads.
More recently, Dave Truman has written about an alignment known as ‘The Way of Viracocha’ that runs from Cajamarca in the north, through Cuzco and Tiwanaku and finishing at Pukara Grande(p), oriented exactly 45° west of true north. Truman has built on the work of Maria Sholten d’Ebneth (1926-2007), who wrote of the La Ruta de Wiracocha[1236] in the 1970s(q). Others have expanded on her work, but usually in Spanish. Truman has speculated on whether “Viracocha, the great teacher and restorer of civilisation in the Andes, in some way embodied the scientific knowledge of a sophisticated, but long-forgotten high culture?” Truman 
also discusses the ‘chakana’ or Andean stepped cross (see right) and its possible meaning.
It was reported in October 2013(g) (that a team of Belgian and Bolivian archaeologists had found an assortment of ceramics, gems and gold objects at an apparent ceremonial site beneath the waters of Lake Titicaca, which was sacred to the Incas and Tiwanakus. It was not until 2019 that images of some of the artefacts recovered from the lake were widely published(x).
We cannot leave the matter of mysterious Tiahuanaco without referring to the fact that some miles further south is Lake Poopó beside which Jim Allen is convinced that the city of Atlantis was located. Allen claims that the large plain to the west of the lake is the plain mentioned by Plato as being adjacent to the city of Atlantis. In a recent documentary “Atlantis in the Andes” broadcast by ‘Discovery Civilization’, Allen identified Tiahuanaco as one of the ten kingdoms of Atlantis. However, I cannot help noticing that while Tiwanaku, claimed to be 17,000 years old, provides us with an astonishing wealth of structures and finely dressed stone, Allen’s chosen Atlantis site, Pampa Aullagas, offers little more than rubble!
Another supporter of an Andean Atlantis is Sean Bambrough, who has been developing a theory since 1999 that identifies Tiwanaku as the city of Atlantis(h). He has now published his magnum opus on the academia.edu website(ae).
In February 2015, Marcelo Ozorio also suggested a link with Plato’s Atlantis and most interesting is the huge number of images included on his site(i). There is also a large collection of related images on a YouTube clip(m).
In 2022, Marco Vigato‘s book, Empires of Atlantis [1830] was published, which included Tiwanaku as part of the evidence for his hyperdiffusionist Atlantis(ab).
In 2008, David E. Flynn brought to public attention an astonishing series of satellite photos(a) that show a vast network of the remains apparently of man-made structures that extend for many miles around Lake Titicaca. These ‘geoglyphs’ encompass Tiahuanaco.
The most remarkable collection of early photos of the Tiwanaku site can be found on the Above Top Secret website(b). The accompanying text makes a strong case for treating the location as archaeologically contaminated and as a consequence that many of the dates proposed for the site should be considered suspect. Other mysteries are the fact that saltwater Lake Titicaca contains known sea life and that old waterlines are slanted(c).
In late March 2015, the Bolivian government announced(j) that ground-penetrating radar had identified what appeared to be a buried pyramid in the Tiwanaku complex as well as other ‘anomalies’ and that excavations may start in May or June.
A mixed Spanish and English website(f) offers a number of interesting papers including a chapter from Posnansky’s book Tiahuanaco: The Cradle of American Man.
Archaeology magazine has an interesting Q & A paper relating to the history and current state of preservation at the Tiwanaku site(s).
A May 2017 report(r) confirmed that the entire Tiwanaku complex is much more extensive than previously thought, covering an area of at least 650 hectares (1,675 acres).
Joseph Davidovits who controversially proposed that Giza’s Great Pyramid stones had been cast rather than carved has also claimed that other well-known structures had been created in a similar manner, such as at Tiwanaku and Puma Punku in Bolivia(ah) and Easter Island(ai). He offers scientific evidence to support this claim in a very interesting video(ak). My objection to his ‘cast rather than carved’ hypothesis, particularly in relation to Easter Island, is that partially finished statues are visible today in a quarry still attached at the back to the rock from which they were carved as well as some of the tools used for the job. Images of these can be seen in Thor Heyerdahl’s Aku-Aku [1938].
Brien Foerster is an American writer who now lives in Cuzco, the former Inca capital in Peru. He has studied the ancient cultures of the Andes and believes that many predated the Incas and had advanced technologies that permitted the precise drilling of stone(af), the quality of which he has compared with examples found in Egypt and like Chris Dunn concluded that their level of accuracy could not have been achieved without possession of a high technology, now lost(ag). He has expanded on this in his 2014 book, Lost Ancient Technology of Egypt [1487].
A fully illustrated guide to the intriguing monuments of Tiwanaku/Puma Punku is now available which is an excellent introduction to the site including a map by Javier Escalante Moscoso(an).
(a) https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1977971/posts
(b) https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread732575/pg1
(c) https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2012/04/30/tiwanaku/
(d) https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/04/03/tiwanaku-3/
(e) http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/science-wari-tiwanaku-rival-empire-01473.html
(f) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/arqueologia/esp_tiahuanaco5.htm
(h) https://2rbetterthan1.wordpress.com/atlantis-south-americatiahuanaco/
(i) Tiwanaku, pre-columbian archaeological and world heritage site at Bolivia (viagem.space)
(k) https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg62910.html
(l) https://atlantide-mu.over-blog.com/2013/12/terre-creuse.html
(m) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkuoXm9uafI
(n) http://www.intersurf.com/~chalcedony/Tiwanaku.html
(o) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170601230717/https://www.atlantisquest.com/prehistcity.html
(p) https://grahamhancock.com/trumand1/
(q) https://puri-aprendiendovida.blogspot.ie/2013/02/la-ruta-de-viracocha-camino-de.html
(s) https://interactive.archaeology.org/tiwanaku/qanda.html
(t) https://archive.archaeology.org/blog/the-fantasy-world-of-tiwanaku/
(u) https://theappendix.net/issues/2013/4/andean-atlantis-race-science-and-the-nazi-occult-in-bolivia
(v) https://blog.world-mysteries.com/science/the-gate-of-the-sun-calendar-from-ancient-tiwanacu/
(w) https://www.ancient-origins.net/events/unearthing-lost-meridian-tiwanaku-s-temple-builders-0010322
(y) https://grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?1,1063585,1063585#msg-1063585
(z) https://web.archive.org/web/20161107001948/https://www.atlantisquest.com/prehistcity.html
(aa) https://www.oocities.org/debunkinglc/tiwanaku.html (link broken)
(ab) https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Atlantis-Civilizations-Traditions-throughout/dp/1591434335
(ad) (PDF) Mathematics in Tiwanaku-The gold number in the gate of the sun (researchgate.net)
(ae) https://www.academia.edu/61088843/Atlantis_Found_in_the_Andes_by_V_Sean_Bambrough
(af) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR7of1Lkef0
(ag) https://ahotcupofjoe.net/
(ah) https://www.geopolymer.org/archaeology/tiahuanaco-monuments-tiwanaku-pumapunku-bolivia/
(ai) https://www.geopolymer.org/library/video/they-came-from-america-to-build-easter-island/
(aj) QC2K – Neil Steede (archive.org)
(ak) https://www.geopolymer.org/library/video/they-came-from-america-to-build-easter-island/
(am) (99+) 2007 Chapter 3 Tiwanaku.doc | Graham Holton – Academia.edu
(an) Tiwanaku, the mysterious pre-Inca capital – mapaymochila.es
(ap) Tiahuanacu, The Mysterious City (archive.org)
(aq) https://www.hallofmaat.com/methodological/an-answer-to-graham-hancock/ *
Nazis and Atlantis
Nazis and Atlantis
One of the most bizarre and tragic outcomes of Plato’s 2,400-year-old story is the fact that it was seized upon by elements in the Nazi regime as part of the foundation for their extreme nationalistic and racist views. The Nazi search for Atlantis was institutionalised with the creation of the SS Ahnenerbe by Heinrich Himmler.
Vanessa Ward has written a useful review of the nationalistic use of the Atlantis story by both Rudbeck and the Nazis(a).
Heather Pringle adds further insights in her excellent book, The Master Plan[0032].
Since the war, Nazi philosophy has persisted in a variety of forms, the most extreme being the killing of 77 people by the Norwegian, Anders Breivik in 2011.
Less violent were the writings of Miquel Serrano who offered what he called ‘Esoteric Hitlerism.’(b) Other Nazi factions are outlined in Joscelyn Godwin‘s book, Arktos[0789].
From the calm of 21st century rural Ireland, it seems incredible to this compiler, that something as horrific as the Jewish Holocaust could have had any connection, however vague, with the writings of a Greek philosopher who wrote nearly two and a half millennia ago.
Thorwald C. Franke has highlighted(c) that recently(2017), a small German right-wing group, ‘Pro Deutschland’, has cited on their website the ‘superior civilisation’ of Atlantis in support of their extremist views.
More recently (2021), Franke has taken issue with a Smithsonian video, which implied that a belief in Atlantis was prevalent among the upper echelons of Germany’s National Socialism. However, Franke maintains that apart from Himmler, most senior Nazis, including Hitler had no interest in Atlantis. Anyway, when Franke wrote to the Smithsonian pointing out how they had overstated this Nazi support for Atlantis, he found that his comments were blocked and the same institution failed to respond to a follow-up email(d)!>In a subsequent newsletter (No. 173), he added further evidence that most of the top Nazi echelons had little or no interest in Atlantis(e).<
(a) http://pseudoarchaeology.org/a10-ward.html
(b) https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-873-the-new-age-fascism-and-the-atlantis-myth/
(c) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_newsl_archive.htm Newsletter No. 90
>(d) Atlantis Newsletter Archive – Atlantis-Scout Newsletter No. 167
(e) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_newsl_archive.htm Newsletter No. 173<
Ahnenerbe-SS *
Ahnenerbe-SS or to give it its full title, Ahnenerbe Forschungs und Lehrgemeinschaft (The Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society), was founded by Heinrich Himmler in 1935 but did not become part of the SS until 
1940. It was one of the more bizarre aspects of the Nazi regime, as it attempted to give legitimacy to the notion of German supremacy by claiming that they were direct descendants from an original perfect race, the Atlanteans.
When you add this to the Nazi support for Hans Hoerbiger’s crazy cosmology(i), strange expeditions to Tibet, and SS agents attempting to steal Crystal Skulls in South America, you cannot help wondering how such eccentric activities could have been accepted by the higher echelons of the Nazi establishment. It is contended that the Germans maintained strong links with Tibet and it is reported that when the Russians entered Berlin in 1945 they found many Tibetan corpses in SS uniforms, apparently after committing ritual suicide. This frequently quoted account is more than suspect.
The Ahnenerbe also studied the occult, a matter that has been investigated by a number of writers, including an early work[027] by Herbie Brennan, whose book is complemented by The Occult History of the Third Reich website(a). The same site reviews the place of Atlantis in Nazi thinking(g) as well as an overview of the Ahnenerbe(h).
The attitude towards occultism in Nazi Germany seems to have been ambivalent, as represented in a paper(j) by Eric Kurlander who noted that “In her groundbreaking work on German esotericsm, Corinna Treitel represents the views of much recent scholarship when she concludes, ‘Occultism ceased its highly public presence as part of Germany’s refomist milieu of cultural experimentation only after 1937, when the Nazi regime suppressed occultism as one of its many ideological enemies.’
The evidence in this chapter, while not entirely incompatible with this statement, suggests a more complex picture. First and most importantly, the Nazi regime was much more selective in its suppression of occult and other border sciences than Treitel and other revisionist accounts suggest.”
The quest for the Holy Grail was also high on the Ahnenerbe agenda, which was led by one Otto Rahn(k). He eventually fell from favour and as punishment was assigned to work in the SS-run Dachau concentration camp(a)(l).
The Ahnenerbe attracted many seeking to avoid military service, as its work was considered essential to the war effort. It had fifty different research branches known as ‘Institutes’ and also ran a large publishing operation. It had Institutes dealing with Celtic Studies, Musicology and Norse Gods, but its most abhorrent activities were the carrying out of experiments on live humans, mainly from the concentration camps.
Anton Loibl
The unbelievable ideas, including an Atlantean ancestry for the Nazis that were peddled by the Ahnenerbe are extensively covered in the recent ‘must read’ book(m), The Master Plan by Heather Pringle[032]. Her fascinating book includes an account of Himmler’s bizarre plan to exploit the mandatory use of bicycle reflectors to fund the activities of the Ahnenerbe!
Incidentally, the reflectors was invented in 1936 by one of Hitler’s chauffeurs, Anton Loibl, who formed a limited company (Anton Loibl GmbH)(e) with the SS(b) which channelled part of the royalty income to the Ahnenerbe, to fund their expeditions around the world seeking evidence for the origins of the Aryan ‘master race’.
However, Pringle also exposes the involvement of the Ahnenerbe in the plundering of museums in occupied countries and, more seriously, the painful and often fatal medical ‘experiments’ carried out on concentration camp inmates.
Film clips, in German, relating to the Anenerbe are available on the Internet(c).
Another site offers further insights into Nazi archaeology(d).
(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Rahn
(b) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Loibl_GmbH Also See Archive 2663
(c) Hitler’s Search for the Holy Grail 1 – Bing video
(d) http://alfrye04.wix.com/nazi-archaeology#! (link broken)
(e) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Loibl_GmbH
(f) http://thirdreichocculthistory.blogspot.ie/p/c0ntents.html
(g) http://thirdreichocculthistory.blogspot.ie/2013/02/atlantis-und-das-dritte-reich.html
(h) http://thirdreichocculthistory.blogspot.ie/2014/03/die-deutsche-ahnenerbe.html
(i) https://www.academia.edu/10932522/The_Nazis_and_the_Search_for_Atlantis_2011_
(j) (99+) (PDF) Hitler’s Supernatural Sciences | Eric Kurlander – Academia.edu
(k) https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/otto-rahn-the-quest-for-the-holy-grail
(m) http://www.benespen.com/journal/2019/8/11/the-long-view-the-master-plan *