Latest News
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 »
Ian Wilson
Michanowsky, George *
George Michanowsky (1920-1993) was a science writer and linguist, from New York, who produced a ground-breaking book in 1977, 
The Once and Future Star[282], which explored the link between a supernova in the Vela constellation and the development of civilisation as a consequence of its radiation. He has been described as a specialist in Mesopotamian astronomy, who believed that this spectacular event was witnessed and recorded by the Sumerians around 4000 BC(b).
A refutation of Michanowsky’s views by Duane Hamacher of Missouri University is available online(a)(c). Ian Wilson in The Exodus Enigma refers to the further controversy that Michanowsky was involved in when he accused the renowned Egyptologist, Dr Hans Goedicke of falsifying a translation of hieroglyphics that possibly related to the tsunami that followed the eruption of Thera[0979.137].
His book goes much further and claims that the Sumerians had known Atlantis under the name of NI-DUK-KI, known today as Dilmun. The renowned Henry Rawlinson interpreted this name to mean ‘blessed hill’ or ‘blessed isle’. While Michanowsky’s suggestion is highly speculative, if correct, it would be the earliest known reference to Atlantis.
Nearly twenty years later Allan & Delair published When the Earth Nearly Died (later republished as Cataclysm[014]), in which they also nominate the Vela supernova as the source of ejecta which nearly destroyed our Earth. However, they date the event to 9500 BC and its encounter with Earth was recorded in mythology, for example, known as Phaëton by the Greeks and referred to by Plato. Allan & Delair did not mention Michanowsky’s book.
(a) https://blacktaj.homestead.com/files/documents/The_Vela_Supernova_and_Mysteries_in_Archaeo-astronomy.pdf (link broken) [See(c)] *
(c) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261635919_Are_Supernovae_Recorded_in_Indigenous_Astronomical_Traditions (see section 5.1) *
Turkey
Turkey is the preferred location of Atlantis according to authors Peter James and Eberhard Zangger. In his book[047] James asserts that Plato took the idea for Atlantis from the city of Tantalis, which was located in what is today the Province of Manisa in Western Turkey, just north-east of the ancient port of Smyrna (today’s Izmir). Zangger also opts for Turkey but favours ancient Troy as the original Atlantis[483].
Coincidentally, Çatal Hüyük, one of the world’s oldest cities, is located in Turkey just over 200 km south of the capital Ankara. Like Atlantis, Çatal Hüyük also had a bull cult and a Great Mother Goddess reminiscent of ancient Malta. After decades of work, excavations are continuing at the site(a). Mysteriously, this early city of some seven thousand people apparently abandoned their homes around 5600-6000 BC. They were not the only settlement to be abandoned around this period. Cyprus, Palestine and Syria and more famously Jericho all provide evidence of abandonment at the same time.
Ian Wilson has pointed out that following the Younger Dryas mini Ice Age of around 9000 BC a further mini Ice age occurred between 6200 BC and 5800 BC, a period that coincides with this unexplained desertion of Çatal Hüyük and elsewhere.
However exciting Çatal Hüyük may be, its antiquity would appear to have been overshadowed by the discoveries made at Göbekli Tepe where the site has been dated to 9600BC. Also noteworthy is Asikli Höyük which is 1,000 years older than the Çatal Hüyük settlement on the Konya plain and as the earliest village settlement founded in the Cappadocia region, the site is no less important(b).
Although Zangger and James have had little support for their Turkish locations for Atlantis, a more recent attempt to situate Atlantis near the west coast of the Asian landmass of Turkey is offered by an American researcher, Joe Plegge. In 2012 Plegge published Turkish Stonehenge: Göbekli Tepe [1909] in which he claims that the two sites share some similar astronomical features. In his Atlantis paper, he reveals how he also sought to link Göbekli Tepe with Atlantis but found no evidence to support this idea. Plegge accepts Plato’s apparent early date for Atlantis of circa 9600 BC even though by his own admission this date conflicts with Plato’s anachronistic references to metalworking, a one-million-man army, horses and chariots. However, for me, Plegge’s use of Paul Schliemann as a source destroys his credibility as a researcher.
Readers may find it of interest that in April 2019 there were media reports that “researchers compared DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains found across Britain with that of people alive at the same time in Europe. The Neolithic inhabitants were descended from populations originating in Anatolia (modern Turkey) that moved to Iberia before heading north. They reached Britain in about 4,000 BC. Details have been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. The migration to Britain was just one part of a general, massive expansion of people out of Anatolia in 6,000 BC that introduced farming to Europe.” (d). This has led to the conclusion that Stonehenge was built by descendants of these Anatolian settlers!
(c) (99+) (PDF) Atlantis in the Meander Valley, Turkey | Joe Plegge – Academia.edu
Lake Tritonis *
Lake Tritonis is frequently referred to by the classical writers. Ian Wilson refers to Scylax of Caryanda as having “specifically described Lake Tritonis extending in his time over an area of 2,300 km2.“ He also cites Herodotus as confirming it as still partly extant in his time, a century later, describing it as a ‘great lagoon’, with a ‘large river’ (the Triton) flowing into it.[185.185]
Lake Tritonis was considered the birthplace of Athene, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom, after whom Athens is named. The exact location of the lake is disputed but there is some consensus that the salty marshes or chotts of central Tunisia and North-East Algeria are the most likely candidates. It appears that these marshes originally formed a large inland sea connected to the Mediterranean but due to seismic activity in the area were cut off from the sea. Diodorus Siculus records this event in his third book.
I should also mention that Lake Tritonis along with the Greek island of Lemnos and the river Thermodon in northern Turkey, now known as Terme Çay, have all been associated with the Amazons(d).
Edward Herbert Bunbury, a former British MP, included a chapter(a) on Lake Tritonis in his 1879 book on the history of ancient
geography [1531.v1.316]+.
In 1883, Edward Dumergue published[659]+ a brief study of the Tunisian chotts, which he concluded were the remnants of an ancient inland sea that had been connected to the Mediterranean Sea at the Gulf of Gabes.
Lucile Taylor Hansen in The Ancient Atlantic[572], has included a speculative map taken from 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.
In 1967 Egerton Sykes published a paper entitled The Sahara Inland Sea in which he describes a vast inland sea of ‘remarkable proportions’ and “is attested not only by classical references but also by the fact that beneath most of it lies a layer of brackish water ranging from 200 to 500 feet below the ground. The various oases are believed to be located on patches where the depth is only about 50 feet, conducive to plant survival. The climatic change seems to have happened quite recently, around 5000 BC. B.C., since the classics contain numerous references to its [the inland sea] existence.”(e)
I should mention here that the Atlantis theory of George Sarantitis is entirely dependent on extensive inland waterways including the chotts of Tunisia and Algeria as well as a number of other large lakes and rivers in what is now the Sahara.
In modern times, Alberto Arecchi has taken the idea further[079] and suggested that the inland sea, where the chotts are now, was the original ‘Atlantic Sea’ and that the city of Atlantis was situated on an extended landmass to the east of Tunisia and connected to Sicily due to a lower sea level. Arecchi’s identification of the chotts with Lake Tritonis has now been adopted by Lu Paradise in a May 2015 blog(c). The Qattara Depression of Northern Egypt also contains a series of salt lakes and marshes and is believed by others to have been Lake Tritonis.
Cindy Clendenon is the author of a book [801.397] on hydromythology in which she concludes that “the now-extinct Lake Tritonis once was a Cyrenaican lagoon-sabkha complex near today’s Sabkha Ghuzayyil and Marsa Brega, Libya”(b), not in Tunisia! Clyde Winters also placed Lake Tritonis in Libya(f).
[659]+ https://archive.org/details/chottstunisorgr01dumegoog
[1531.v1.316]+ https://archive.org/stream/historyofancient01bunb#page/n6/mode/1up/search/Tritonis Vol.1
(a) Lake Tritonis – Jason and the Argonauts (archive.org) *
(b) https://www.abebooks.com/9780981842103/Hydromythology-Ancient-Greek-World-Earth-0981842100/plp
(d) https://www.myrine.at/Amazons/mobilIndex.html
(e) The Saharan Inland Sea – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)
(f) https://africanbloodsiblings.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/fertile-african-crescent-by-clyde-winters/
Exodus
The Biblical Exodus has been linked by some with the time of the destruction of Atlantis. J. G. Bennett has firmly identified the 2nd millennium BC eruption of Thera with the destruction of Atlantis(f) and in turn, the effect of the volcanic fallout on the Egyptian nation generating the Plagues of Egypt recorded in Exodus.
The fixing of the date of the biblical Exodus is still debated, compounding the broader problem of synchronising the Bronze Age chronologies of the eastern Mediterranean. The early arguments were usually the preserve of biblical scholars(t). However, a wider audience became aware of some of the difficulties when Immanuel Velikovsky published Ages in Chaos [039] and offered some solutions. Since then further revisions have been proposed by Peter James and David Rohl, but the Exodus date is still not definitively fixed(m)(y)(z). On top of all that, other events that should provide reliable chronological ‘anchors’, such as the Trojan War or the eruption of Thera continue to generate dispute as well.
Dr Hans Goedicke, a leading Austrian Egyptologist, expressed a similar view regarding an Exodus link in a 1981 lecture, leading to quite a media stir(c). Ian Wilson, best known for The Turin Shroud, has calculated that the volcanic plume from the Theran eruption would have been clearly visible from the Nile Delta [979.112].
Film-makers Simcha Jacobvici and James Cameron collaborated on the 2006 two-hour documentary The Exodus Decoded, in which, among other matters, it claims that the biblical Exodus took place a couple of hundred years before the generally accepted date(aa). A review in The Jerusalem Post(ab) noted that none of the arguments made in the film were accepted by mainstream archaeology and that Jacobovici freely admitted his lack of academic credentials.
Riaan Booysen believes(b) that two Exodus events can be linked with three possible Theran eruptions and has identified the Israelites as the Hyksos. Ralph Ellis has also linked the biblical Exodus with the expulsion of the Hyksos and devoted a short book[0656] to the idea.
Russell Jacquet-Acea, an American researcher, has written a three-part paper on dating the biblical Exodus, that includes the radical suggestion that there were three exoduses from Egypt(m)(n)(o).
Immanuel Velikovsky and others believed that the controversial Ipuwer Papyrus provides evidence in support of the biblical Exodus as well as the ‘Plagues of Egypt’(d). In 2018, Anne Habermehl delivered a paper to a creationist conference in which she concluded: “that the Ipuwer Papyrus displays strong extra-biblical evidence for the historicity of the Exodus in its description of a chaotic Egypt that would have resulted from the biblical 10 plagues.”(i).
Emilio Spedicato links the biblical Exodus with the explosion of Phaëton in 1447 BC, without any reference to the destruction of Atlantis, which, based on his interpretation of Plato’s text, he associates with a much earlier catastrophe(a). He also associates these events with the Flood of Deucalion as well as some people migrations that “took place essentially at the same time”(x).
Alfred de Grazia offers a radical interpretation of the Exodus in God’s Fire [1538], in which he saw the Exodus as a highly organised, rather than an opportunistic event. He also attributed some level of electrical knowledge to Moses, whom he credits with the construction of the Ark of the Covenant, if not the ‘invention’ of Yahweh himself!
Perhaps the most extreme Exodus theory has been presented by Finkelstein & Silberman, who have claimed that “the saga of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt is neither historical truth nor literary fiction” [280.70]. However, the same disbelieving Finkelstein is now going on a search for the Ark of the Covenant(e)!
Flavio Barbiero has now produced an extensive paper(g) in which he precisely dates the Exodus to the night between the 14th and 15th of July of 1208 B.C. (2/3 July of today).
It is important to point out that the historical reality of the Exodus is now being scrutinised as never before, generating growing scepticism. Both Jewish and Christian scholars have expressed serious doubts(s).
Walter R. Mattfeld wrote in a 2021 paper “My research on the Exodus has concluded that it is fiction, but a myth or fiction which has behind it real events which can be recovered via archaeological findings. My research endeavors are to identify the possible real events that came to be recast or reinterpreted as the Bible’s fictional Exodus. In other words, What’s behind these events that is recoverable via archaeological findings? Basically, I see two historical events, grounded in archaeological data, as behind the Exodus: (1) The Hyksos Expulsion of circa 1530 BC (2) The Iron Age I settlements that suddenly appear in Edom, Moab and Canaan 1200 BC to 1100 BC.These two events are separated in time by roughly 300 years.“ (w)
William Austin is just one of many who have devoted years to a study of the Exodus dating controversy. The result of his labours is Before the Exodus, a 500-page offering and a condensed version of From Noah to Moses now available on the academia.edu website(u) together with a number of other papers.
“If and when the Exodus occurred is one of the most controversial topics in biblical scholarship. Religious fundamentalists believe it is absolutely true. Skeptics doubt it occurred at all, and neither has any means to prove their case! My approach to the problem has been to assume that much of the controversy is due to an erasure of factual Israelite history in the Old Testament account. It is very difficult to read the Old Testament, then to scroll through Egyptian history and say, “Aha! There’s the Exodus. Read the Bible here; read the papyrus there… See, it all matches. Case closed.” It is very difficult, or it would have been done. This is not to say that the Exodus didn’t occur, it just didn’t occur exactly as recorded in the Old Testament of Christian Bibles.”
Gérard Gertoux noted that estimates for the date of the Exodus ranged from 2150 to 650 BC and so to narrow such an extensive range, he embarked on a forensic study of the problem. In a book(p), The Pharaoh of the Exodus: Fairy tale or real history? [1890] and a 22-page paper(h)(h2) he identified Pharoah Seqenenre Taa, who died on 10 May 1533 BC, as the Pharoah of the Exodus.
Unfortunately, the biblical Exodus has generated several controversies; was it a historical reality, its precise date, the route taken and the identity of the pharaoh of the Exodus? Regarding the last, Rameses II is linked by many with the Exodus, while others have nominated Tutankhamun (Collins & Ogilvie-Herald [1898]), Dudimose (Velikovsky(j), Rohl [229]), Amenemhat IV (Habermehl(k)) Ramesess V (Aboulfotouh(l)) and to these, we may add many others who have been proposed(k). This debate has a long way to go yet.
A more recent (April 2022) article by Jonah Cohen highlights the range of individuals proposed as the pharaoh of the Exodus and suggests that the mystery may not be solvable!(q) Another 2022 article by Gerald Eising opted firmly for Amenhotep II(r).
As you can see the actual date of the Exodus is disputed, but the difficulties don’t end there. Moses the charismatic leader of the Israelites has generated a separate set of problems. Ahmed Osman is just one commentator who has has identified Moses as the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten [1849]. Graham Phillips, among others, claims that Moses was two different people, living at different times [0034]! Immanuel Velikovsky has linked Akhenaten with Oedipus in Greek mythology [2041]. D.M.Murdock concluded [2058] that Moses cannot be discovered in history, whether as Akhenaten or another historical personage. Compounding all this confusion is the idea that Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch and yet, in it, he managed to describe his own death and burial!!
(See: Red Sea)
(a) https://interval.louisiana.edu/conferences/2007_Stenger/Slides_of_talks/mose8-6.pdf
(b) https://riaanbooysen.com/misc/167-book-announcement (link broken) See (v)
(c) Archive 2490 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(e) https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/02/new-search-begins-for-the-ark-of-the-covenant/
(f) https://www.systematics.org/journal/vol1-2/geophysics/systematics-vol1-no2-127-156.htm
(g) https://www.q-mag.org/a-precise-chronology-of-exodus.html
(h) (99+) (PDF) Absolute chronology of Exodus | Gerard GERTOUX – Academia.edu
(i) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329770320_The_Ipuwer_Papyrus_and_the_Exodus
(j) The True Story of Moses and the Pharaoh According to Velikovsky (hermetics.org)
(q) Who was the Exodus Pharaoh? (jns.org)
(r) Who was the Pharaoh of Exodus? – Tidings
(s) https://aroyking.wordpress.com/2016/04/02/has-archaeology-proven-that-the-biblical-exodus-is-a-myth/
(t) https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_exodus_date.html
(u) https://www.academia.edu/20426570/The_Hebrew_chronology_from_Noah_to_Moses_corrected_for_half-years
(v) Microsoft Word – Addendum to Thera_and_the_Exodus -Nov_2020.docx (riaanbooysen.com)
(w) (99+) The Archaeological Evidence for the Exodus being a Myth | Walter R. Mattfeld – Academia.edu
(x) The-Deucalion-catastrophe.pdf (atlantis.fyi)
(y) bmh_exodusdate_kmtsummer94.pdf (biblemythhistory.com)
(z) Talk Reason
(aa) https://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Documentary-sets-new-date-for-Exodus *
(ab) Documentary sets new date for Exodus – The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com) *
Red, White and Black
The Red, White and Black stone which Plato said had adorned the buildings of its port city, has led Atlantis seekers to eagerly follow up this apparently obvious clue. However, as with so many aspects of the Atlantis story, this particular detail does not provide us with anything like a clear pointer to any specific location.
Jürgen Spanuth relates[015.125] how the ancient Canarians decorated their temple with red, white and black rock, the colours of tufa, pumice and lava. The cliffs of Santorini are also known to display red, white and black rock. These three materials are frequently found in the vicinity of volcanoes(b) and may be considered a valuable clue to the location of Atlantis. However, this combination of rock colours is not exclusive to volcanic localities as Jim Allen has demonstrated at Pampa Augallas in the Andes and Peter Daughtrey at his Silves site in Portugal[0893.120].
Although Atlantis was destroyed by an earthquake, volcanoes are often located in the same general region such as in the Central Mediterranean which is both seismically and volcanically very active and, in my opinion, the prime candidate as the home of Atlantis. This view is endorsed by Plato himself who twice (Tim.25b & Crit.114c) told us that the territory of the Atlantean alliance stretched from North Africa as far as Tyrrhenia in Italy. I further propose that this was on a north/south axis.
Jim Allen has found the same three rock colours at his Bolivian site and further afield, Ian Wilson points out[185] that red, white and black bricks were used extensively in Çatal Hüyük. Not to be excluded, Diaz-Montexano has produced photos on his website of pre-Roman structures near Gibraltar that incorporate red, white and black blocks in their construction. Jonas Bergman has indicated that similarly coloured stone is to be found in Morocco. Other locations include the Azores, Algeria and Sardinia.
Andrew Jones, a professor of archaeology, has noted that the builders of Carn Ban, one of the ‘Clyde Cairns’ on Scotland’s Isle of Arran employed red white and black stones in its design – pure coincidence I’m sure! Robert Hensey in his book on Newgrange [1766.39] refers to Jones and the growing interest in the use of colour in ancient monuments.
>Fatih Hodzic in an attempt to enhance his claim of an Adriatic Atlantis has noted; “The Atlanteans used stone for building: ‘one kind was white, another black, and a third red’. White and black stone is still quarried on Island Bra? (Croatia) and red stone in the Bay of Kotor (Montenegro).”(c)<
Some(a) have sought to link the red, white and black of the Nazi swastika with Plato’s reference!
(b) How are volcanoes and earthquakes related? | Volcano World | Oregon State University (archive.org)
Wilson, Ian
Ian Wilson was born in 1941. He graduated in Modern History from Magdalen College, Oxford. He is a prolific writer on religious and scientific subjects.
He has written a number of books about the Turin Shroud and has won a BAFTA for a documentary on the Shroud and has also written and presented a three part TV series based on his book, Jesus: The Evidence. He lived in Bristol, England for twenty-six years and now resides in Brisbane, Australia with his wife.
His recent book, Before the Flood[185], links the Biblical Deluge with the flooding of the then smaller freshwater Black Sea by the Mediterranean. He discusses the possible connection between the demise of Plato’s Atlantis and this flooding of the Black Sea. Wilson, with a good ear for a sound bite he cautions readers to treat the Atlantis story as “neithed holy writ or wholly rot.”
Black Sea
The Black Sea was known to the Greeks as the Euxine Sea and according to Strabo (1.2.10), in antiquity was often simply referred to as “the sea” (pontos). It has also been known as the Scythian Sea after the people who lived on its northern shore. Pindar referred to it as the ‘Inhospitable Sea’.
It received little attention in connection with the Atlantis mystery until the 19th century when two French writers, André de Paniagua and Moreau de Jonnès, independently located Atlantis in the Sea of Azov. Some years later in 1923, R.A. Fessenden, a Canadian professor of 
Mathematics and Electrical Engineering wrote about the prehistoric flooding of a civilisation in the Caucasus region, which he linked with Plato’s Atlantis. The text of this extensive work is now available on the Internet(a).
Trevor Palmer has written a useful paper (2009) on the Black Sea and the gradual development of theories relating to its dramatic connection with the Mediterranean and how it may have influenced the mythologies of the Middle East and possibly further afield.
Palmer concluded that “The various groups currently investigating the area are agreed that cataclysmic flooding took place during the Late Pleistocene, but remain divided about whether similar floods also occurred during the Holocene. Eye-witness accounts of catastrophic floods in the Black Sea basin at either time could have been passed on to future generations, eventually giving rise to the later Mesopotamian legend of Uta-napishtim and, subsequently, the Biblical story of Noah. However, in the absence of any direct evidence of cultural transmission, that can presently only be regarded as plausible speculation.”(p)
Little was heard of the region again until 1998 when Ryan & Pitman identified the flooding of the Black Sea with Noah’s Flood[025]. This was followed in 2001 by Ian Wilson‘s Before the Flood [185], which reflected a similar line of thought.
In 2004, the Bulgarian father and son oceanographers, Petko and Dimitar Dimitrov published their book, The Black Sea, the Flood and the Ancient Myths, in English, which supported much of Ryan and Pitman’s work. Unlike them, who based much of their conclusions on a study of molluscs, the Dimitrovs focused on sedimentation evidence. Their book is now available, in English, as a free pdf file(d). They also suggest that this Holocene influx into the Black Sea also triggered the Vedic Aryan migration to India(g).
>>In 2006 a short paper, with 11 authors that included Petko Dimitrov, William Ryan and Robert Ballard, noted how the Black Sea Flood was initially met with “great hostility” by Bulgarian scientists.
The paper considers “the most important scientific arguments in favor of the flood are as follows:
- The presence of the shelf periphery of an old shoreline that existed around 9,500-8,000 BP. The old shoreline is located at depths of 90-120 m.
- The existence of catastrophic-type deepwater organogenic-mineral sediments (sapropels) that are products of the catastrophe. A rapid change of macro- and microfauna from the brackish lake organisms that existed more than 8,000 years ago to typical marine organisms.
- The occurrence of hydrogen sulfide contamination, which resulted from the catastrophe.”
The authors also briefly touch on artifacts and legends associated with the Black Sea Flood and in reference to the latter they make the following unexpected comment – “Juxtaposing the data from the Black Sea’s natural events and archaeo-mythology, as well as the legend of Noah’s ark, we can claim with a high degree of reliability that the remains of the ark are located within the Black Sea bottom.”<<
Hristo Smolenov is another Bulgarian and a recognised expert in counter-terrorism and mathematics and is another advocate of a Black Sea Atlantis, which he identifies with what he calls the Aurolithic Varna Civilisation that existed 3,000 years before the pyramids. Varna today is situated in the Bulgarian province of Stara Zagora on the Black Sea coast. He has publicised his views through a website(r), video(s) and a book [1003], Zagora – Varna: The Hidden Superculture.
Ryan and Pitman’s book unintentionally triggered the imaginations of a number of people into considering the possibility of a possible link between this inundation and the sinking of Atlantis. While Ryan and Pitman have made no such suggestion, others such as Ian Wilson[185] have seen a distorted memory of the event as a possible inspiration for Plato’s story. In 2009, Liviu Giosan, a geologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute published a paper(e) which suggested that prior to the intrusion of the Mediterranean, the level of the Black Sea had been just 30 metres below its present level rather than the 80 metres proposed by Ryan and Pitman. This would imply a less extensive degree of flooding than previously thought. Giosan has offered a sceptical Ryan an opportunity to replicate his tests.
Although the scenario pictured by Ryan & Pitman and others is of very rapid flooding of the original smaller Black Sea, more recent studies appear to indicate a more gradual rising of the water levels. “With more data to be analysed, it supports the idea that the waters rose unnoticeably, by metres over centuries, even millennia.”(o)
Nick Thom, a British engineer, wrote The Great Flood [776] which includes a section on the Black Sea in which he suggests that the flow of water was from the Black Sea into the Sea of Marmara rather than the other way around.
Nearly two hundred years ago Josiah Priest in his 1835 book American Antiquities [1143] also offered evidence from Euclid of Megara that the flow of water had been from the Black Sea to the Aegean. Apparently, Euclid heard this from Anacharsis a philosopher from the northern coast of the Black Sea related how the inflow from the rivers of Europe and Asia raised the level of the ‘Sea’ until it breached the landbridge and spilled over into the Sea of Marmara.
Paul Dunbavin has entered the Black Sea flood(s) debate with a 2020 paper entitled Diodorus Siculus and the Black Sea Flood(q). This lengthy essay covers a lot of ground, in particular the comments of Diodorus Siculus who described a Samothracian flood story that appears to contradict the flood described by Ryan & Pitman as it describes a flow of water in the opposite direction. Consequently, the evidence offered by Diodorus is often discounted as ‘unreliable’. Dunbavin, however, offers a possible solution with the suggestion that “The Samothracian flood, as described by Diodorus, could only have occurred after the Black Sea Flood.”
The question of whether the Black Sea Flood was from the east or the west may be answered by consideration of Ronnie Gallagher’s claim of a vast post-glacial Eurasian sea that included the Caspian and Aral Seas. Modern proponents of Atlantis in the Sea of Azov have suggested(t) that at the end of the last Ice Age floods of meltwater poured into the Caspian Sea, which in turn escaped through the Manych-Kerch Gateway(u) into what is now the Sea of Azov, but at that time contained the Plain of Atlantis and from there to the Black Sea proper! This theory suggests that the flooding came from the Black Sea into the Aegean.
More recently, Christian & Siegfried Schoppe, two German researchers have also asserted that the Black Sea was the original ‘Atlantis Ocean and that Atlantis was located in that region [186]. They have suggested that Snake Island located east of the mouth of the Danube was the probable site of Plato’s city. Their contention is that around 5500 BC a landbridge at the Bosporus was breached causing extensive flooding that created what we now know as the Black Sea. Until that time there had only been a small freshwater lake in the region. Although their book was published in German, the Schoppes have a website(b) with a useful amount of English content.
The somewhat eccentric duo of the late Flying Eagle (1920-2007) and Whispering Wind, who also advocated a Black Sea location for Atlantis(a)(f), claimed a specific site on the Strait of Kerch between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Their theory was first expounded in their book [138] in 2004. They also followed the Ryan and Pitman date of 5500 BC for the inundation of the Black Sea.
The evidence to date suggests that the flooding of the Black Sea coincided with a storegga event, which would require a catastrophe on a scale not previously considered. In a 2017 paper(i), John M. Jensen offers a range of evidence to support this contention.
A rather different approach is taken by the German researcher Werner E. Friedrich[695], who pushes back the expansion and the raising of the level of the Black Sea to around 10000 BC, at the end of the last Ice Age. He believes that this led to the flooding of Atlantis, which he claims to have been situated on a plain that had lain between ancient extensions of the rivers Donau and Don. Friedrich located the Pillars of Heracles in the Sea of Marmara[p.39].
A.I. Zolotukhin places Atlantis in western Crimea on his multilingual website with the inviting title of Homer and Atlantis(j).
The legendary destroyed city of Ancomah is frequently compared to Plato’s description of the destruction of Atlantis. It was reputed to have existed in the vicinity of the ancient port city of Trabzon, which is located on the southeast coast of the Black Sea.
Michael A. Cahill in his 2012 two-volume[818][819] publication on the development of civilisation locates Atlantis near what is modern Istanbul in the pre-Diluvian Stone Age.
The concept of a Black Sea Atlantis has the support of the rather eccentric Church of Vrilology(h)!
In October 2018, an attempt was made to breathe new life into the idea of Crimea as a remnant of an Atlantis submerged under the Black Sea. Unfortunately, it offers no evidence or references in the badly translated article(k). In the same month, it was reported that the oldest intact shipwreck was discovered in the Black Sea by an Anglo-Bulgarian team. It was identified as a Greek trading vessel dated to 400 BC(l). The oxygen-free waters at the bottom of the Black Sea had preserved it and dozens of others located by the team.
In early 2019, George K. Weller, building on the theories of the Schoppes, also proposed the Black Sea as Atlantis’ home, again nominating Snake Island as the home of Mr. and Mrs. Poseidon, which, before the Black Sea was flooded, would have been the central peak of their island home, as referred to by Plato(n).
One of the most comprehensive internet papers on all aspects of the history of the Black Sea can be found on the Encyclopaedia Iranica website(m).
(a) https://www.radiocom.net/Deluge/Deluge1-6.htm
(b) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3914/
(d) http://io-bas.bg/noahproject/BOOK_PETKO.pdf
(e) Danube Delta Holds Answers To ‘Noah’s Flood’ Debate | ScienceDaily (archive.org) *
(f) https://atlantis-today.com/Great_Atlantis_Flood.htm
(h) https://web.archive.org/web/20130108091223if_/https://www.vrilology.org/Atlantis_page.htm
(i) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2017&id=505
(j) https://homerandatlantis.com/?lang=en
(k) https://ktelegram.com/scientists-crimea-may-be-a-fragment-of-the-lost-city-of-atlantis/43728/ (link broken Jan. 2019)
(m) https://www.iranicaonline.org/
(o) https://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20191021-the-sea-of-60-ghostly-wrecked-ships
(q) e5604c_67fd983e0b934a56ac5b31ee9dd1f41e.pdf (third-millennium.co.uk)
(r) https://atlantisblacksea.wordpress.com/tag/hristo-smolenov/
(s) https://atlantisblacksea.wordpress.com/atlantis-in-the-black-sea-videos/
(t) https://atlantis-today.com
(u) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(v) (PDF) The Flood in the Black Sea – Science and Mythology (researchgate.net) *