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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 »
Henry Eichner
de Camp, Lyon Sprague
L. Sprague deCamp (1907-2000) is probably better known as a science fiction writer with over 120 books to his credit, including two non-fiction titles, Citadels of Mystery (First ed.: Ancient Ruins and Archaeology) [0820] and Lost Continents [0194], in which he was extremely sceptical of the reality of the Atlantis described by Plato. He offers the blunt declaration that Plato concocted the whole story, basing the tale on a mixture of the wealth of Tartessos in Spain, the destruction of the Greek island of Atalanta all intermingled with the mythology of Atlas. Although his criticism is harsh, it should be said that deCamp does display a reasonable degree of objectivity. It is probably because of his perceived integrity that other Atlantis sceptics continually trot out his views in support of their own position.
A few years after Lost Continents was published, Nikolai Zhirov wrote a critique of the book(c), rejecting both its style and content. He notes that “the work shows a bad one-sided knowledge of geology and oceanography which is not counterbalanced by a critical examination of the published geological and oceanographical facts, although it is only by a study of these last that the Atlantis problem can be fully resolved.” Personally, I think that Zhirov’s comments are a reflection of his own bias towards an Atlantic location for Atlantis and ignore many other aspects of the Atlantis question, such as the date when Atlantis existed, as well as the identity of the Atlanteans.
One of deCamp’s most quoted extracts is that “you cannot change all the details of Plato’s story and still claim to have Plato’s story.” While I fully endorse this comment, I must point out that there is a difference between changing and interpreting. For example when Plato refers to Asia or Libya, even deCamp accepted that in Plato’s day ‘Asia’ was not the landmass we know, stretching from the Urals to Japan, but a much smaller territory [0194.27]. In fact the term ‘Asia’ at one point was just applied to a small region of modern Turkey. Similarly, ‘Libya’ was not the country we know by that name today, but the term was often employed to designate all of North Africa west of Egypt. There are a number of other details in Plato’s narrative that require explanation or interpretation and so as long as any such elucidation is based on evidence and reason they cannot be glibly dismissed as substantive ‘changes’.
He scathingly refutes the more outlandish Atlantis theories that have deviated dramatically from Plato’s narrative, commenting that without matching the “date, location, size and island character” with the text we do not have Atlantis.
DeCamp also considered Alfred Wegner’s theory of continental drift as “very doubtful”, but corrected this statement in a 1970 edition of his book. Immanuel Velikovsky also received the sharp end of deCamp’s pen, describing his catastrophic theories as ‘mad’. Further information on deCamp can be found on the internet(a) where excerpts from his Lost Continents are also available(b).
Henry Eichner drew attention [0287] to the fact that in three books relating to Atlantis authored by deCamp he describes a ring found by Adolf Schulten at the site of Tartessos, but slightly differently in all three! In Lost Continents it is plain, in Lands Beyond it is copper, while in Ancient Ruins and Archaeology it became gold!
Frank Joseph incorrectly claimed in the July/August 2011 issue of AtlantisRising magazine that DeCamp “formerly a staunch disbeliever in Atlantis, was later convinced it did indeed exist in south-coastal Iberia.”
>DeCamp had the misfortune to have an excerpt from his book The Ancient Engineers [2073] the notorious Unabomber in America(d).<
(a) https://www.lspraguedecamp.com/ (offline August 2016)
(b) https://books.google.com/books/about/Lost_continents.html?id=3YHwFivT-ykC
(c) Atlantis, Volume 11, No.5, July/August 1958
(d) https://spraguedecampfan.wordpress.com/2023/06/16/sprague-de-camp-and-the-unabomber/ *
Minoan Hypothesis
The Minoan Hypothesis proposes an Eastern Mediterranean origin for Plato’s Atlantis centred on the island of Thera and/or Crete. The term ‘Minoan’ was coined by the renowned archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans after the mythic King Minos. (Sir Arthur was the son of another well-known British archaeologist, Sir John Evans). Evans thought that the Minoans had originated in Northern Egypt and came to Crete as refugees. However, recent genetic studies seem to indicate a European ancestry!
It is claimed(a) that Minoan influence extended as far as the Iberian Peninsula as early as 3000 BC and is reflected thereby what is now known as the Los Millares Culture. Minoan artefacts have also been found in the North Sea, but it is not certain if they were brought there by Minoans themselves or by middlemen. The German ethnologist, Hans Peter Duerr, has a paper on these discoveries on the Academia.edu website(e). He claims that the Minoans reached the British Isles as well as the Frisian Islands where he found artefacts with some Linear A inscriptions near the site of the old German trading town of Rungholt, destroyed by a flood in 1362(f).
The advanced shipbuilding techniques of the Minoans are claimed to have been unmatched for around 3,500 years until the 1950s (l).
The Hypothesis had its origin in 1872 when Louis Guillaume Figuier was the first to suggest [0296] a link between the Theran explosion and Plato’s Atlantis. The 1883 devastating eruption of Krakatoa inspired Auguste Nicaise, in an 1885 lecture(c) in Paris, to cite the destruction of Thera as an example of a civilisation being destroyed by a natural catastrophe, but without reference to Atlantis.
The Minoan Hypothesis proposes that the 2nd millennium BC eruption(s) of Thera brought about the destruction of Atlantis. K.T. Frost and James Baikie, in 1909 and 1910 respectively, outlined a case for identifying the Minoans with the Atlanteans, decades before the extent of the massive 2nd millennium BC Theran eruption was fully appreciated by modern science. In 1917, Edwin Balch added further support to the Hypothesis [151].
As early as April 1909, media speculation was already linking the discoveries on Crete with Atlantis(h), despite Jowett’s highly sceptical opinion.
Supporters of a Minoan Atlantis suggest that when Plato wrote of Atlantis being greater than Libya and Asia he had mistranscribed meison (between) as meizon (greater), which arguably would make sense from an Egyptian perspective as Crete is between Libya and Asia, although it is more difficult to apply this interpretation to Thera which is further north and would be more correctly described as being between Athens and Asia. Thorwald C. Franke has now offered a more rational explanation for this disputed phrase when he pointed out [0750.173] that “for Egyptians, the world of their ‘traditional’ enemies was divided in two: To the west, there were the Libyans, to the east there were the Asians. If an Egyptian scribe wanted to say, that an enemy was more dangerous than the ‘usual’ enemies, which was the case with the Sea Peoples’ invasion, then he would have most probably said, that this enemy was “more powerful than Libya and Asia put together”.
It has been ‘received wisdom’ that the Minoans were a peace-loving people, however, Dr Barry Molloy of Sheffield University has now shown that the exact opposite was true(d) and that “building on recent developments in the study of warfare in prehistoric societies, Molloy’s research reveals that war was, in fact, a defining characteristic of the Minoan society, and that warrior identity was one of the dominant expressions of male identity.”
In 1939, Spyridon Marinatos published, in Antiquity, his opinion that the eruption of Thera had led to the demise of the Minoan civilisation. However, the editors forbade him to make any reference to Atlantis. In 1951, Wilhelm Brandenstein published a Minoan Atlantis theory, echoing many of Frost’s and Marinatos’ ideas, but giving little credit to either.
However, Colin MacDonald, an archaeologist at the British School in Athens, believes that “Thira’s eruption did not directly affect Knossos. No volcanic-induced earthquake or tsunami struck the palace which, in any case, is 100 meters above sea level.” The Sept. 2019 report in Haaretz suggests it’s very possible the Minoans were taken over by another civilization and may have been attacked by the Mycenaeans, the first people to speak the Greek language and they flourished between 1650 B.C. and 1200 B.C. Archaeologists believe that the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations gradually merged, with the Mycenaeans becoming dominant, leading to the shift in the language and writing system used in ancient Crete.
The greatest proponents of the Minoan Hypothesis were arguably A.G. Galanopoulos and Edward Bacon. Others, such as J.V. Luce and James Mavor were impressed by their arguments and even Jacques Cousteau, who unsuccessfully explored the seas around Santorini, while Richard Mooney, the ‘ancient aliens’ writer, thought [0842] that the Minoan theory offered a credible solution to the Atlantis mystery. More recently Elias Stergakos has proposed in an overpriced 68-page book [1035], that Atlantis was an alliance of Aegean islands that included the Minoans.
Moses Finley, the respected classical scholar, wrote a number of critical reviews of books published by prominent supporters of the Minoan Hypothesis, namely Luce(aa), Mavor(y)(z) as well as Galanopoulos & Bacon(aa)(ab). Some responded on the same forum, The New York Review of Books.
Andrew Collins is also opposed to the Minoan Hypothesis, principally because “we also know today that while the Thera eruption devastated the Aegean and caused tsunami waves that destroyed cities as far south as the eastern Mediterranean, it did not wipe out the Minoan civilization of Crete. This continued to exist for several generations after the catastrophe and was succeeded by the later Mycenaean peoples of mainland Greece. For these reasons alone, Plato’s Atlantic island could not be Crete, Thera, or any other place in the Aegean. Nor can it be found on the Turkish mainland at the time of Thera’s eruption as suggested by at least two authors (James and Zangger) in recent years(ad).“
Alain Moreau has expressed strong opposition to the Minoan Hypothesis in a rather caustic article(i), probably because it conflicts with his support for an Atlantic location for Atlantis. In more measured tones, Ronnie Watt has also dismissed a Minoan Atlantis, concluding that “Plato’s Atlantis happened to become like the Minoan civilisation on Theros rather than to be the Minoan civilisation on Theros.” In 2001, Frank Joseph wrote a dismissive critique of the Minoan Hypothesis referring to Thera as an “insignificant Greek island”.(x)
Further opposition to the Minoan Hypothesis came from R. Cedric Leonard, who has listed 18 objections(q) to the identification of the Minoans with Atlantis, keeping in mind that Leonard is an advocate of the Atlantic location for Plato’s Island.
Atlantisforschung has highlighted Spanuth’s opposition to the Minoan Hypothesis in a discussion paper on its website. I have published here a translation of a short excerpt from Die Atlanter that shows his disdain for the idea of an Aegean Atlantis.
“Neither Thera nor Crete lay in the ‘Atlantic Sea’, but in the Aegean Sea, which is expressly mentioned in Crit. 111a and contrasted with the Atlantic Sea. Neither of the islands lay at the mouth of great rivers, nor did they “sink into the sea and disappear from sight.” ( Tim. 25d) The Aegean Sea never became “impassable and unsearchable because of the very shallow mud”. Neither Solon nor Plato could have said of the Aegean Sea that it was ‘still impassable and unsearchable’ or that ‘even today……….an impenetrable and muddy shoal’ ‘blocks the way to the opposite sea (Crit.108e). Both had often sailed the Aegean Sea and their contemporaries would have laughed at them for telling such follies.” (ac)
Lee R. Kerr is the author of Griffin Quest – Investigating Atlantis [0807], in which he sought support for the Minoan Hypothesis. Griffins (Griffons, Gryphons) were mythical beasts in a class of creatures that included sphinxes. Kerr produced two further equally unconvincing books [1104][1675], all based on his pre-supposed link between Griffins and Atlantis or as he puts it “whatever the Griffins mythological meaning, the Griffin also appears to tie Santorini to Crete, to Avaris, to Plato, and thus to Atlantis, more than any other single symbol.” All of which ignores the fact that Plato never referred to a Sphinx or a Griffin!
The hypothesis remains one of the most popular ideas with the general public, although it conflicts with many elements in Plato’s story. A few examples of these are, where were the Pillars of Heracles? How could Crete/Thera support an army of one million men? Where were the elephants? There is no evidence that Crete had walled cities such as Plato described. The Minoan ships were relatively light and did not require the huge harbours described in the Atlantis story. Plato describes the Atlanteans as invading from their western base (Tim.25b & Crit.114c); Crete/Santorini is not west of either Egypt or Athens
Gavin Menzies attempted to become the standard-bearer for the Minoan Hypothesis. In The Lost Empire of Atlantis [0780], he argues for a vast Minoan Empire that spread throughout the Mediterranean and even discovered America [p.245]. He goes further and claims that they were the exploiters of the vast Michigan copper reserves, which they floated down the Mississippi for processing before exporting it to feed the needs of the Mediterranean Bronze industry. He also accepts Hans Peter Duerr’s evidence that the Minoans visited Germany, regularly [p.207].
Tassos Kafantaris has also linked the Minoans with the exploitation of the Michigan copper, in his paper, Minoan Colonies in America?(k) He claims to expand on the work of Menzies, Mariolakos and Kontaratos. Another Greek Professor, Minas Tsikritsis, also supports the idea of ancient Greek contact with America. However, I think it is more likely that the Minoans obtained their copper from Cyprus, whose name, after all, comes from the Greek word for copper.
Oliver D. Smith has charted the rise and decline in support for the Minoan Hypothesis in a 2020 paper entitled Atlantis and the Minoans(u).
Frank Joseph has criticised [0802.144] the promotion of the Minoan Hypothesis by Greek archaeologists as an expression of nationalism rather than genuine scientific enquiry. This seems to ignore the fact that Figuier was French, Frost, Baikie and Bacon were British, Luce was Irish and Mavor was American. Furthermore, as a former leading American Nazi, I find it ironic that Joseph, a former American Nazi leader, is preaching about the shortcomings of nationalism.
While the suggestion of an American connection may seem far-fetched, it would seem mundane when compared with a serious attempt to link the Minoans with the Japanese, based on a study(o) of the possible language expressed by the Linear A script. Gretchen Leonhardt(r) also sought a solution in the East, offering a proto-Japanese origin for the script, a theory refuted by Yurii Mosenkis(s), who promotes Minoan Linear A as proto-Greek. Mosenkis has published several papers on the Academia.edu website relating to Linear A(t). However, writing was not the only cultural similarity claimed to link the Minoans and the Japanese offered by Leonhardt.
Furthermore, Crete has quite clearly not sunk beneath the waves. Henry Eichner commented, most tellingly, that if Plato’s Atlantis was a reference to Crete, why did he not just say so? After all, in regional terms, ‘it was just down the road’. The late Philip Coppens was also strongly opposed to the Minoan Hypothesis.(g)
Eberhard Zangger, who favours Troy as Atlantis, disagrees strongly [0484] with the idea that the Theran explosion was responsible for the 1500 BC collapse of the ‘New Palace’ civilisation.
Excavations on Thera have revealed very few bodies resulting from the 2nd millennium BC eruptions there. The understandable conclusion was that pre-eruption rumblings gave most of the inhabitants time to escape. Later, Therans founded a colony in Cyrene in North Africa, where you would expect that tales of the devastation would have been included in their folklore. However, Eumelos of Cyrene, originally a Theran, opted for the region of Malta as the remnants of Atlantis. How could he have been unaware of the famous history of his family’s homeland?
A 2008 documentary, Sinking Atlantis, looked at the demise of the Minoan civilisation(b). James Thomas has published an extensive study of the Bronze Age, with particular reference to the Sea Peoples and the Minoans(j).
In the 1990s, art historian and museum educator, Roger Dell, presented an illustrated lecture on the art and religion of the Minoans titled Art and Religion of the Minoans: Europe’s first civilization”, which offered a new dimension to our understanding of their culture(p). In this hour-long video, he also touches on the subject of Atlantis and the Minoans.
More extreme is the theory of L. M. Dumizulu, who offers an Afrocentric view of Atlantis. He claims that Thera was part of Atlantis and that the Minoans were black!(m)
In 2019, Nick Austin attempted [1661] to add further support to the idea of Atlantis on Crete, but, in my opinion, he failed. The following year, Sean Welsh also tried to revive the Minoan Hypothesis in his book Apocalypse [1874], placing the Atlantean capital on Santorini, which was destroyed when the island erupted around 1600 BC. He further claims that the ensuing tsunami led to the biblical story of the Deluge.
Evan Hadingham published a paper(v) in 2008 in which he discussed the possibility that the Minoan civilisation was wiped out by the tsunami generated by the eruption(s) of Thera. Then, seven years later he produced a second paper(w) exonerating the tsunami based on new evidence or lack of it.
In April 2023, an attempt was made to breathe some new life into the Minoan Hypothesis in an article(ae) on the Greek Reporter website. This unconvincing piece claims “Plato describes in detail the Temple of Poseidon on Atlantis, which appears to be identical to the Palace of Knossos on the island of Crete.” The writer, Caleb Howells, has conveniently overlooked that Atlantis was submerged creating dangerous shoals and remained a maritime hazard even up to Plato’s day (Timaeus 25d). The Knossos Palace is on a hill and offers no evidence of ever having been submerged. Try again.
The same reporter did try again with another unconvincing piece supporting the Minoan Hypothesis, also on the Greek Reporter site, in October 2023(af). This time, he moved the focus of his claim to Santorini where he now placed the Palace of Poseidon relocating it from Crete! I suppose he will eventually make his mind up. Nevertheless, Howells revisited the subject of the Palace of Poseidon just a few weeks later, once again identifying it as the Palace of Knossos – “Plato’s account of the lost civilization of Atlantis includes a description of a marvelous temple of god Poseidon. It was said to have been in the center of Atlantis, so it was a very prominent part. However, in most investigations into the origin of Atlantis, this detailed temple description is ignored. In fact, an analysis of Plato’s details indicates that the Temple of Poseidon on Atlantis was actually identical to the Palace of Knossos on the island of Crete, Greece.” (ag)
Most Atlantis theories manage to link their their chosen site with some of the descriptive details provided by Plato. The Minoan Hypothesis is no exception, so understandably Howells has highlighted the similarities, while ignoring disparities. The Minoans were primarily concerned with trading, not territorial expansion. When did they engage in a war with Athens or threaten Egypt? If Howells can answer that he may have something relevant to build upon!
>For a useful backdrop to the Minoan civilisation I suggest that readers have a look at a fully illustrated 2019 lecture by Dr. Gregory Mumford of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In it he give a broad overview of the Eastern Mediterranean, with a particular emphasis on the Aegean Sea, during the Middle- Late Bronze Age (2000-1200 BC). (ah) <
(a) http://www.minoanatlantis.com/Minoan_Spain.php
(b) http://video.pbs.org/video/1204753806/
(c) http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Terres_disparues
(d) http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/article00826.html
(e) See: Archive 3928
(f) http://dienekes.blogspot.ie/2008/08/minoans-in-germany.html
(g) https://web.archive.org/web/20180128190713/http://philipcoppens.com/lectures.php (June 3, 2011)
(j) https://medium.com/the-bronze-age
(k) https://www.scribd.com/document/161156089/Minoan-Colonies-in-America
(m) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqTQeF2gLpg
(o) Archive 3930 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(p) https://vimeo.com/205582944 Video
(q) https://web.archive.org/web/20170113234434/http://www.atlantisquest.com/Minoan.html
(r) https://konosos.net/2011/12/12/similarities-between-the-minoan-and-the-japanese-cultures/
(t) https://www.academia.edu/31443689/Researchers_of_Greek_Linear_A
(u) https://www.academia.edu/43892310/Atlantis_and_the_Minoans
(v) Did a Tsunami Wipe Out a Cradle of Western Civilization? | Discover Magazine
(w) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/megatsunami-may-wiped-europes-first-great-civilization/
(x) Atlantis Rising magazine #27 http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At
(y) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(z) https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/12/04/back-to-atlantis-again/
(aa) Back to Atlantis | by M.I. Finley | The New York Review of Books (archive.org)
(ab) The End of Atlantis | by A.G. Galanopoulos | The New York Review of Books (archive.org)
(ac) Jürgen Spanuth über ‘Atlantis in der Ägäis’ – Atlantisforschung.de
(ad) Kreta oder Thera als Atlantis? – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)
(ae) Was Atlantis’ Temple of Poseidon the Palace of Knossos in Crete? (greekreporter.com)
(af) Was Atlantis a Minoan Civilization on Santorini Island? (greekreporter.com)
(ag) https://greekreporter.com/2023/12/01/atlantis-temple-poseidon-palace-knossos-crete/
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
(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
(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
(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 *
Atlantis: Mother of Empires (L)
Atlantis: Mother of Empires [607] was written by Robert B Stacy-Judd, a Californian architect and artist. This large-format volume studies the links between the Maya and Atlantis and is lavishly illustrated by the author. Stacy-Judd touches on
a wide range of subjects such as the Mormons and the Maya, the Iberian connection, Quetzalcoatl and of course ancient architecture.
Commenting on the theories of James Churchward, who claimed that Mu had been the birthplace of the Mayan civilisation Stacy-Judd wrote “I cannot accept his arguments as they lack corroboration, are illogical and unconvincing.”
Henry Eichner glowingly referred to Stacy-Judd’s tome as “the finest book on Atlantology today”.
Stacy-Judd introduced Mayan features into many of his own architectural designs that at the time were considered sensational. This development was later the subject of a book[596] by David Gebhard.
Hörbiger, Hanns
Hanns Hörbiger (1860-1931) was an Austrian mining engineer by profession and in his spare time was an amateur astronomer. Today, he is probably better known as the father of the actors Paul and Attila Hörbiger. Another son, Hans Robert Hörbiger (1885-1955), followed in his father’s misguided cosmological footsteps, eventually working for Heinrich Himmler’s Ahnenerbe(ac).
By gazing at the moon Hanns, Snr. became convinced that he was looking at a bright outer layer of ice. Hörbiger published his “Doctrine of Eternal Ice” around 1913 in a book[389] co-authored with a schoolteacher named Philip Fauth. Hörbiger proposed an early form of catastrophism that saw the Earth capture several moons in succession. Periodically, each of these moons disintegrated as they spiralled to earth producing enormous ‘ice showers’ followed by meteors of iron. He saw the effects of these impacts as the source of Flood myths and claimed that when our current Moon was captured around 9500 BC it triggered earthquakes that led to the destruction of Atlantis. His theories were hailed in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s and were officially backed by the Nazis (see Ahnenerbe). Heather Pringle notes[0032.180] Hitler’s personal support for Hörbiger’s theories.
In 1966, Egerton Sykes wrote that “in addition, Hitler requiring a Teutonic cosmology as well as a Germanic Europe, adopted Hoerbiger’s hypothesis, probably one of the few sensible acts that the Nazis ever made”(w).
It seems that the adoption of World Ice Theory by National Socialism was intended to present a German alternative to ‘Jewish science’, specifically, to the theory of relativity, developed by Albert Einstein(x).
There was a Viennese Hörbiger Institute for World Ice Science founded in 1932(p). Their publication Mitteilungen had two volumes published from 1941 to 1944 and a third volume 1971-1976(o).
An interesting 1949 report by Manfred Reiffenstein describes the problems that the Hörbiger Institute had encountered with the Nazis from 1938 onwards. While efforts were made to close the Institute down and transfer its archives to Himmler’s Ahnenerbe organisation, this was prevented by the efforts of Hörbiger’s sons(s), which might be considered an example of postwar revisionism.
A recent paper by Graham Holton explicitly accuses Hörbiger of ‘archaeological racism’, along with Edmund Kiss, Posnansky and others in the Ahnenerbe(t). Holton also noted that Hörbiger also subscribed to Blavatsky‘s daft idea of Root Races.
His ideas were adopted and developed further by Hans Bellamy in a number of his books[092][096][097]. During the first half of the 20th century, many beyond the Nazi realm frequently referred to Hörbiger’s moon theory as authoritative.
Hörbiger refused to accept the evidence that his ‘icy’ moon had a daytime temperature of 100°C. Followers of Hörbiger existed in Germany, Britain and France after the war, until an actual landing on the Moon demonstrated that it was composed of neither ice nor cheese.
Of course, the moon landing is denounced by some as faked and according to one 2019 blogger, it must be so because it contradicts Hörbiger’s theories!!! The same blogger lists his religion as ‘Hitlerism’(y).
A bizarre consequence of Hörbiger’s status with the Nazi leadership is recounted by Pauwels and Bergier [910.170] who tell us that: “The German engineers, whose work was fundamental to the construction of those rockets that sent the first artificial satellites up into the sky, were prevented by the leaders of the NSDAP themselves from using the V2 for it to be completed at the scheduled time.
Work on the V2 in Peenemünde had to be interrupted several times because Hitler and the apologists of the Hörbiger doctrine feared that rocket launches could result in a world catastrophe.
General Walter Dornberger led the tests in Peenemünde, where the guided missiles were created. These experiments were stopped in order to submit the general’s reports to the apostles of Hörbiger’s cosmology. Above all, one wanted to know how the “eternal ice” would react in space and whether this violation of the stratosphere would not result in some kind of catastrophe in the world.
In his book “V2 – The shot into the universe” General Dornberger tells that shortly afterwards his work had to be interrupted again for two months. The guide had dreamed that the V2 would not work, or rather that heaven would take its revenge. This dream was to carry more weight for the leading men of the Third Reich than the view of the technicians. Behind the Germany of science and organization, the spirit of ancient magic was still alive.“(z)
Several other writers developed theories that were variations on Hörbiger’s ideas. 1954 saw the publication of The Moon Puzzle[786] by the Swedish engineer, N.O. Bergquist, in which he suggested that Earth had a close encounter with a planetoid which caused the ejection of a large amount of matter, which became our Moon leaving a huge scar we call the Pacific. Although many details of Berquist’s theory differ greatly from Hörbiger’s, he never refers to the then widely supported views of Hörbiger.
In 1955, G. Demortier published a theory of cosmic catastrophe that was somewhat similar to Hörbiger’s. However, a couple of years earlier, doubts were beginning to emerge regarding aspects of Hörbiger’s theories as our cosmological knowledge advanced(u), nevertheless, in the same magazine Edmund Kiss attempted to justify Hörbiger’s idea of an ice-covered Moon!
It is even more astounding that as late as 1964, Egerton Sykes, the leading British atlantologist of the day, was still clinging to the concept of an ice-covered lunar surface. In fact, after re-reading the old editions of Sykes’ Atlantis newsletter, I am amazed at the number of contributors that offered so many articles based on Hörbiger’s flawed ideas. My personal view is that having read Sykes’ newsletters, he can only be considered a gullible British gentleman.
Egerton Sykes founded and promoted an English post-war Hoerbiger Institute through his Atlantis magazine(q). In March 1948 Bellamy contributed a short article (Hoerbiger Monograph No. 1. 2nd Edition)(n) to the newsletter, reiterating his support for the idea that the capture of our moon led to the destruction of Atlantis.
Commander E.H. Nutter, a Royal Navy engineer, who contributed many articles to Sykes’ Atlantis magazine was considered “the leading technical authority on the Hoerbiger Theory in England” in the 1950s(v).
Although Hörbiger wrote extensively about the origins of our satellite, when Immanuel Velikovsky wrote a short paper in 1973 entitled Earth without a Moon(v) he made no reference to the theories of Hörbiger.
Henry M. Eichner was also drawn to Hörbiger’s Moon theory as a mechanism to explain the worldwide Deluge myths. However, as the first Moon landing took place just two years before his death, Eichner was forced to admit that Hörbiger got his claim of an icy Moon wrong, but still believed that some of Hörbiger’s ideas had merit [287.57].
Uwe Topper, the controversial German researcher has continued to support much of Hörbiger’s ideas. Additionally, in 2003, Gary Gilligan, a prominent catastrophist, first proposed that our Moon had been captured around 2000 BC, which he has now revised to 1200 BC(I)!
The August 2010 edition of the BBC’s Focus magazine (p.81), informed us that the Moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of 3.8cm per year, destroying the foundation of Hörbiger’s basic theory. The 9th Nov. 2011 issue of New Scientist published further evidence supporting this view(h), with further claims that this recession will reverse in the very distant future as the Earth’s rotation slows(r).
In the 17th century Johannes Kepler demonstrated that when an object’s orbital velocity increases, its orbital radius will expand; thus, the Moon slowly recedes from Earth(d). This idea was discussed further in a BBC documentary broadcast on Feb.1st, 2011(b).
The 9th Nov. 2011 issue of New Scientist published further evidence supporting this view(h), with further claims that this recession will reverse in the very distant future as the Earth’s rotation slows(r).
The Live Science website in April 2023 offered more information on the future of the Earth-Moon relationship(ab). “In about 50 billion years, Earth’s slowing rotation would make it tidally lock with the moon so that Earth would permanently show just one side to the moon, Jean Creighton, director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, told Live Science. At this point, the moon and Earth would stop moving away from each other, Eric Klumpe, a professor of astronomy at Middle Tennessee State University, told Live Science.
However, about 5 billion years from now, as the sun begins to die, it will swell to become a red giant star, “at which point the Earth-moon system will almost certainly be disrupted and destroyed,” David Trilling, chair of the Astronomy and Planetary Science Department at Northern Arizona University, told Live Science.”
Nevertheless, updated Moon capture theories have been developed since Hörbiger. Emilio Spedicato has published a brief overview of recent contributions on the subject as well as his version(c), dating it to around 9450 BC, triggering the end of the Ice Age and the destruction of Atlantis!
It was long-accepted wisdom that a moonless earth would have made the development of complex life more difficult because of greater climatic fluctuations. However, a new study challenges this, calculating that Jupiter together with other factors would minimise the effect of not having our satellite(g)
The story of lunar history took an unexpected turn in 2011 when the journal Nature published a paper by planetary scientists Erik Asphaug of the University of Santa Cruz and Martin Jutzi of the University of Berne who proposed that originally the Earth had two moons that later collided and formed our present satellite(e). At the end of 2011, two NASA lunar probes were launched(j) which may resolve this particular question.
In America, the WEL-Institute is dedicated to investigating Hörbiger’s ‘World Ice Theory’(k). I note that the U.S. is also home to associations concerned with both a Hollow Earth(l) and a Flat Earth(m)!
(b) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12311119
(c) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(d) Ive heard that the Moon is moving away from Earth by about an inch 25 cm each year Why is this happening – Astronomy Magazine (archive.org)
(e) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20160320161310/https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390413,00.asp
(h) https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21147-how-the-cold-dead-moon-stayed-magnetic.html
(I) https://www.gks.uk.com/moon-origin-egyptian/
(j) GRAIL and the Mystery of the Missing Moon | Science Mission Directorate (archive.org)
(k) https://welinstitute.wordpress.com/about/
(l) https://www.ourhollowearth.com/
(m) https://theflatearthsociety.org/home/
(o) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3042/
(p) See: Archive 3043
(q) https://www.amazon.ca/Atlantis-Organ-Hoerbiger-Institute-1965-1974/dp/B00MOKVR2Y (Link broken Sept. 2020)
(r) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4199400/Earth-moon-COLLIDE-65-billion-years.html
(s) Atlantean Research, Volume 1, Number 5, January/February 1949
(u) Atlantis Vol.6, No.1 & 2, May & July 1953
(v) Atlantis, Vol. 9, No. 2, January 1956, p.39
(w) Atlantis, Vol.19, No.5, September/ October 1966
(y) https://forums.skadi.net/threads/183985-Moon-Landing-was-FAKE/page8 (Link broken) See: Archive 6966
(aa) https://www.lewrockwell.com/2011/12/immanuel-velikovsky/the-earth-without-the-moon/
Galanopoulos, Angelos
Angelos Georgiou Galanopoulos (1910- 2001) was a Greek seismologist with the Athens Seismological Institute. To a great extent, his views on Atlantis are based on the work of Spyridon Marinatos. Dr Galanopoulos’ best-known work on Atlantis [263] was co-authored with the British archaeologist Edward Bacon. This book offers probably the best argument in support of the Minoan Hypothesis. In 1960 he listed 19 of Plato’s statements that could be related to Minoan Crete or Thera[264]. The geologist Dorothy Vitaliano considered this list in her book[306] and thought that up to 14 of them ‘could be made to fit’ Plato’s description. Francis Hitching also refers to this list in the work he edited on world mysteries[307.137], while personally supporting a Minoan influence on Plato’s account[578.166].
Dr. Galanopoulos was a supporter of the idea that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for 100 was misread as 1000 and so decreased all numbers in Plato’s text by factor of ten. This explanation does not stand up to scrutiny, as the Egyptian hieroglyphics are distinctly different and in any case the Egyptian priests who presumably would have a clear understanding of their own inscriptions would have carried out the interpretation.
Immanuel Velikovsky also proposed a factor ten reduction of Plato’s 9,000 years in 1950[037.152], although he was not certain regarding the specific source of the error. My own study of Plato’s large numbers in the Atlantis narrative led me to also conclude that all of them made more sense is reduced by a factor of ten, but a definitive explanation of how this may have occurred has so far eluded me (see: Factor Ten).
In December 1969, the classical scholar, Moses I. Finley (1912-1986), wrote a critical review of ‘Atlantis’ for The New York Review of Books(a), to which Galanopoulos duly responded(b).
>There was a similar response from James W. Mavor to Finley’s review of his Voyage to Atlantis(c).<
Henry Eichner noted[287.129] that Galanopoulos referred to the Pillars of Heracles in 1967 as a Platonic invention.
(a) https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/12/04/back-to-atlantis/
(b) https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1970/03/12/the-end-of-atlantis/
(c) https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/12/04/back-to-atlantis-again/ *
Eichner, Henry M.
Henry M. Eichner (1909-1971) had the uncommon profession of Medical Artist. His book on Atlantis[287] covers all the main theories of his day and in it, Eichner admitted that while he was initially a firm supporter of an Atlantic location for Plato’s Atlantis, after six years of study for his book he ended up as a strong advocate for the Minoan Hypothesis. It’s a pity more researchers do not display the same degree intellectual honesty.
Eichner was also drawn to the Hoerbiger’s Moon theories as a mechanism to explain the worldwide Deluge myths. However, as the first NASA Moon landing took place just two years before his death, Eichner was forced to admit that Hörbiger got his claim of an icy Moon wrong but he still believed that some of Hörbiger’s ideas had merit.
My copy of The Atlantis Myth by H. S. Bellamy, another Hoerbiger fan, was originally in Eichner’s personal library. However, he did not include this title in his bibliography.
The first portion of Eichner’s book dealing directly with the most popular Atlantis theories of his time is rather short at 134 pages. Eichner has added an extensive section on fictional literature inspired by the Atlantis story and has included a bibliography of both English language and foreign non-fiction books on the subject. Unfortunately, the author chose not to include an index.
Eel Enigma *
The Eel Enigma was first noted by the Danish biologist Johannes Schmidt (1877-1933) at the beginning of the 20th century. The American eel spawns in the western part of the Sargasso Sea and their European relatives in the eastern sector. When the larvae hatch, the European eels are carried on the Gulf Stream towards Europe; a trip that takes about three years. The survivors of this long journey split up when they reach the shores of Europe. The males remain at sea and the females swim up the rivers and remain there for two years. They then rejoin the males and return together to the Sargasso where they mate, after a short journey of only one hundred and forty days.
A number of investigators, such as Otto Muck, have cited this mystery of nature as the result of the eels ’remembering’ a former landmass in the middle of the Atlantic. These writers have equated this landmass with Atlantis. However, a landmass is not what the eels require but the protective cover provided by the seaweed of the Sargasso while mating. I find it hard to accept this eel theory, although many find it credible. Perhaps millions of years ago before the tectonic plates had separated the European and American continents as far as they are today, the eels had originally only a short distance to travel. Over the ages, the journey became longer until it is now close to the physical limitations of the creatures.
A similar observation was made by Henry Eichner who pointed out the existence of shellfish in the Sargasso which is normally found in shallow waters along shorelines. Eichner suggested that this adaptation by the shellfish may be evidence for the existence of an earlier shoreline now lost through inundation!
More recently, Daniel Schwamm added a related claim in a 2012 paper – “There are many animals that are guided by a primal instinct to find their way to where Atlantis is said to have once been. For example, the lobsters of the Azores move unerringly to the west, deeper and deeper into the sea, as if they expected a rise in the seabed there sooner or later.”(b)
Equally intriguing but unconnected to any Atlantis claim is the migratory path of monarch butterflies(a).
(a) Butterflies remember a mountain that hasn’t existed for millennia (archive.org) *
(b) http://www.daniel-schwamm.de/index.php?pg=texte/atlantis.htm