Latest News
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 »
Henri Lhote
Ahaggar Mountains
The Ahaggar Mountains, also known as the Hoggar Mountains are highlands situated in Southern Algeria.
Stephen E. Franklin also opted for an African location for the Garden of Eden, placing it south of the Ahaggar Mountains near the Wadi Tafanasseta) He also claims that Mt. Tahat, the highest peak in the Ahaggars, was the original Atlas mountain referred to by Herodotus as the home of the Atlantes (sometimes Atarantes(b)).
Sprague de Camp noted [194.191] that Paul Borchardt identified ancient Mt. Atlas with the Ahaggar Mountains rather than the Atlas range in the Maghreb!
Lucile Taylor Hansen in The Ancient Atlantic [572], has included a speculative map taken from the Reader’s Digest showing Lake Tritonis, around 11.000 BC, as a megalake covering much of today’s Sahara, with the Ahaggar Mountains turned into an island. Atlantis is shown to the west in the Atlantic.
George Sarantitis, who identifies west Africa as Atlantis has also proposed(c) a vast network of huge inland lakes and waterways in what is now the Sahara, before its desertification. If true, this would probably left the Ahaggars as an island.
Count Khun de Prorock became convinced that Atlantis had a North African origin, specifically on the Hoggar Plateau.He also claimed to have identified the tomb of the legendary Tuareg queen, Tin Hinan, at the oasis of Abalessa in the Hoggar region(d) .
To the east and adjacent to the Ahaggar Mts.is Tassili National Park, where archaeologist Henri Lhote studied the remarkable neolithic cave paintings in Tassili-n’Ajjer [442]. Some of these depicted masked humanoid figures that led Lhote to suggest that they were evidence of prehistoric extraterrestrial visitors. One of these was dubbed the ‘Great Martian God’ and a decade later it was exploited by Erich von Däniken in the promotion of his ‘ancient astronauts’ ideas.
(a) Eight: Adam and Atlas–Eden and the Fall of Atlantis (lordbalto.com)
(b) W. W. How, J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus, BOOK IV, chapter 184 (tufts.edu)
(c) The Peninsula of Libya and the Journey of Herodotus – Plato Project (archive.org)
(d) Tin Hinan – Wikipedia *
Sahara Desert
The Sahara Desert and in particular its northern regions have attracted its share of attention from Atlantis investigators. However unlikely it may appear as a possible location for Atlantis it must be kept in mind that the Sahara of prehistory was very different from what we see today. Not only was it wetter at various periods in the past, but also there is clear evidence for the existence of a large inland sea extending across the borders of modern Algeria and Tunisia. This evidence is in the form of the chotts or salt flats in both countries. This proposed sea is considered by some to have been the Lake Tritonis referred to by classical writers. It is suggested that some form of tectonic/seismic activity, common in the region, was responsible for isolating this body of seawater from the Mediterranean and eventually turning it into the salt flats we see today.
An even more extensive inland sea, further south, was proposed by Ali Bey el Abbassi and based on his theory a map was published in 1802 which can be viewed online(c).
More recently, Riaan Booysen has published an illustrated paper on the ancient inland Saharan seas as indicated on the 16th-century maps of Mercator and Ortelius(i). King’s College London runs The Sahara Megalakes Project which studies the Megalakes and the Saharan Palaeoclimate record(m).
A 2013 report in New Scientist magazine(d) revealed that 100,000 years ago the Sahara had been home to three large rivers that flowed northward, which probably provided migration routes for our ancestors. Depending on how long the African Humid Period lasted, this article may be read in conjunction with George Sarantitis‘ theory regarding the Voyage of Hanno that he claims took place in the interior of Africa.
Other studies(h) have shown the previous existence of a huge river system in the Western Sahara, which flowed into the Atlantic on the Mauritanian coast.
An article in the Sept. 2008 edition of National Geographic pointed out that the Saharan climate has been similar for the past 70,000 years except for a period beginning 12,000 years ago when a number of factors combined to alter this fact. A northerly shift by seasonal monsoons brought additional rain to an area the size of the contiguous USA. This period of a greener Sahara lasted until around 4,500 years ago.
More recent studies claim that “there’s geologic evidence from ocean sediments that these orbitally-paced Green Sahara events occur as far back as the Miocene epoch (23 million to 5 million years ago), including during periods when atmospheric carbon dioxide was similar to and possibly higher than today’s levels. So, a future Green Sahara event is still highly likely in the distant future.” (p)
Henri Lhote contributed an article to Reader’s Digest‘s, The World’s Last Mysteries [1083], regarding the ‘green’ Sahara that existed prior to 2500 BC. Two German climatologists Rudolph Kuper and Stefan Kröpelin have estimated that this last greening of the Sahara began around 8500 BC and ended sometime between 3500 BC and 1500 BC(r)(u)* .
Some have suggested a connection between the latest aridification of the Sahara and the migration of settlers to the Nile Valley, where, coincidentally, the ancient Egypt we know about was founded around 3100 BC.
Others have endeavoured to link the last aridification of the Sahara with the destruction of Atlantis!
More recently, human activity has been blamed as a major contributory factor for the desertification of the Sahara region less than 10,000 years ago.(n)
Related to the above is a recent study of sediments off the west coast of Africa, which resulted in the discovery of what was “primarily a new “beat,” in which the Sahara vacillated between wet and dry climates every 20,000 years, in sync with the region’s monsoon activity and the periodic tilting of the Earth.” (o)
In Mauritania, a huge natural feature known as the Richat Structure has been claimed as the remnant of Atlantis by George Sarantitis [1470] as well as by Alexander & Rosen and others.
In 1868, it was proposed by D.A. Godron, the French botanist, that the Sahara was the location of Atlantis. In 2003, the non-existent archaeologist Dr.Carla Sage announced that she was hoping to lead an international expedition to the Sahara in search of Atlantis. Her contention was that “Atlantis was the capital of a vast North African empire with ports on the Gulf of Sidra”. This report is now confirmed to have been a hoax! I am indebted to Stel Pavlou for uncovering the origin of this story(e).
The idea of an African Atlantis was highlighted in 2021 with the publication of Atletenu [1821], in which the author, Diego Ratti, identified the Hyksos as Atlanteans with their capital at Avaris in the eastern Nile Delta. At the other end of North Africa, the chotts of Tunisia and Algeria were nominated by Holden Zhang as the location of Atlantis in a YouTube clip(q).
Gary Gilligan, the well-known catastrophist, wrote a thought-provoking article(k) on the origin of the Saharan sands, which he claims are extraterrestrial in origin and expands on the idea in his 2016 book Extraterrestrial Sands [1365].>A March 2024 report(t). on the BBC website has revealed that a particular type of sand dune has now been dated. They are known as ‘star’ or ‘pyramid’ dunes – “are named after their distinctive shapes and reach hundreds of metres in height.” They are found in Africa, Asia and North America, as well as on Mars – but experts had never before been able to put a date on when they were formed. Now scientists have discovered that a dune called Lala Lallia in Morocco formed 13,000 years ago.”<
David Mattingly, an archaeologist at Leicester University has found that an ancient people known as the Garamantes had an extensive civilisation in the Sahara(l). He has evidence of at least three cities and twenty other settlements. The Garamantes reached their peak around 100 BC and then gradually diminished in influence as fossil water supplies reduced until in the 7th century AD they were subjected to Islamic domination. Some researchers such as Frank Joseph have identified the Garamantes as being linked with the Sea Peoples. Bob Idjennaden has published short but informative Kindle books about both the Garamantes [1194] and the Sea Peoples [1195], without a suggestion of any connection between the two.
The discovery of megalithic structures discovered at Nabta Playa (Nabta Lake) in the Egyptian Sahara has provided evidence for the existence of a sophisticated society in that area around 5000 BC. In the same region, near the Dakhleh Oasis, archaeologists have produced data that supports the idea that pre-Pharaonic Egypt had Desert Origins rather than being an importation from Mesopotamia or elsewhere(a).
Nabta Playa is not unique, in fact, the largest megalithic ellipse in the world is to be found at Mzorah, 27 km from Lixus in Morocco(b). It appears that the construction methods employed at both Mezorah and Nabta Playa are both similar to that used in the British Isles. An even more impressive site is Adam’s Calendar in South Africa which has been claimed as 75,000-250,000 years old.
West of Cairo near the border with Libya is the Siwa Oasis, where it has now been demonstrated that “it is in fact home to one of Ancient Egypt’s astounding solar-calendar technologies– the solar equinox alignment between the Timasirayn Temple and the Temple of Amun Oracle in Aghurmi.”(j).
I think we can expect further exciting discoveries in the Sahara leading to a clearer picture of the prehistoric cultures of the region and what connections there are, if any, with Plato’s Atlantis. In the meanwhile in the Eastern Egyptian Desert, Douglas Brewer, a professor of archaeology at the University of Illinois, has discovered over 1,000 examples of rock art, including numerous depictions of boats although the sites, so far undisclosed, are remote from water.
Even more remarkable is the report(e) of March 2015 that a survey of the Messak Settafet escarpment in the central Sahara revealed that there were enough discarded stone tools in the region “to build more than one Great Pyramid for every square kilometre of land on the continent”! Coincidentally, around the same time, it was reported that over a thousand stone tools had been found in the Northern Utah Desert(g). What the Utah discovery lacked in quantity was made up for in quality with the finding of the largest known Haskett point spearhead, measuring around nine inches in length.
(a) Saudi Aramco World (2006, Vol. 57, No.5 p.2-11)
(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20201019061756/http://catalog.afriterra.org/zoomMap.cmd?number=1036
(d) NewScientist.com, 16 September 2013, https://tinyurl.com/mg9vcoz
(e) https://books.google.com/books?id=GvMDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA46&dq=dr.+carla+sage+archaeologist&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GSENVKiaO9W0yASJgoIY&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=dr.%20carla%20sage%20archaeologist&f=false
(f) https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/saharan-carpet-of-tools-is-the-earliest-known-man-made-landscape
(i) 7. The lakes in the middle of the Sahara desert – Page 8 (archive.org)
(l) See: Archive 3268
(n) https://popular-archaeology.com/issue/winter-2017/article/did-humans-create-the-sahara-desert
(o) https://phys.org/news/2019-01-sahara-swung-lush-conditions-years.html#jCp
(p) https://www.livescience.com/will-sahara-desert-turn-green.html
(q) Revive Eden 3 Convincing Atlantis – YouTube
(r) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/uncovering-secrets-of-the-sphinx-5053442/
(s) https://las.illinois.edu/news/2006-09-01/oasis-art-egyptian-desert *
(t) Star dune: Scientists solve mystery behind Earth’s largest desert sands – BBC News *
(u) Shift From Savannah to Sahara Was Gradual, Research Suggests – The New York Times (nytimes.com) *
Lhote, Henri
Henri Lhote (1903-1991) was a French explorer and ethnologist who is best 
known for his study of the remarkable cave paintings in the Sahara at Tassili-n’Ajjer[442]. Lhote built on the discoveries of a French Lieutenant Brenans, who began exploring the region in the 1930s.
Some of these depicted masked humanoid figures leading Lhote to suggest that they were evidence of prehistoric extraterrestrial visitors. One of these was dubbed the ‘Great Martian God’ and a decade later exploited by Erich von Däniken in the promotion of his ‘ancient astronauts’ ideas.
Jürgen Spanuth notes[017.22] that in 1950, Lhote organised an expedition to Tanzerouft in the Sahara with the hope of finding Atlantis although there was no subsequent claim by Lhote of any such discovery. However, Phyllis Young Forsyth quoted Lhote as giving a somewhat contradictory view when he wrote in The Search for the Tassili Frescoes “The fact is that there is no possibility whatsoever of the Sahara having been the site of Plato’s mysterious island.”[442.184] Zhirov noted[0458.18] that Lhote expressed the view that “it must be admitted that there is much in Plato’s idea that is positive.”
Lhote also contributed an article to Reader’s Digest’s, The World’s Last Mysteries[1083], regarding the ‘green’ Sahara that existed prior to 2500 BC.
A blog(a) by Dale Drinnon of a decade ago expanded on some of the numerous examples of Saharan rock art that we know of and their possible connection with Dynastic Egypt. Philip Coppens has also written an article(d) in which he speculated on the possibility that Tassili n’Ajjer may offer the origins of ancient Egypt’s culture. The Bradshaw Foundation has an extensive archive(b) of African rock art as well as a section on rock art along the Nile(c). Similarly, Jose Manuel Delgado’s website also offers an overview of the rock art of the region and its creators, before they spread to the Nile Valley(e).
(a) Frontiers of Anthropology: Possible Prehistoric Prototype Of Kircher’s Atlantis Map (archive.org) *
(b) Bradshaw Foundation – Africa Rock Art Archive *
(c) The Pyramids of Egypt (archive.org) *