Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
English
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
SpanishLatest News
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 »
Immanuel Velikovsky
Younger Dryas, The (YD)
The Younger Dryas, also known as Dryas III, was a mini Ice Age that lasted from about 10,700 BC until around 9600 BC. It is named after a wildflower called Dryas octopetala that flourished during this relatively short timespan. In Ireland, the event is known as the Nahanagan Stadial and in Britain as the Loch Lomond Stadial. In 2015, a paper constraining the date of the event to within 100 years, using Bayesian statistical analyses, proposed a period between 12,835 and 12,735 years ago(h).
For about thirteen hundred years the glaciers had been slowly retreating until within a short time-span temperature dropped and they began to advance again. The cause of this cooling is not entirely clear.
CAUSES
One view is that a sudden release into the North Atlantic of vast quantities of freshwater that had been contained by huge ice dams is assumed to have closed down the Gulf Stream, resulting in a twelve hundred year lowering of global temperatures. There is evidence that the change only took one or two decades. The same threat is said to exist today with the possibility of the melting of the Greenland ice cap. It also seems that this YD cooling ended with the same rapidity.
The most popular and controversial theory is that YD was caused by an extraterrestrial encounter. This is now known as the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH) and can trace is origins back to 2006 (see below). This impact has been attributed to various bodies such as a large asteroid or comet, with Halley’s(ay) or Encke’s Comets and even a second Moon have sometimes been specified as possible culprits! Others have suggested reduced solar activity(ag) or volcanism on a global scale.
The November 2013 issue of the BBC Focus magazine [p.30] had a brief article on the impact theory, noting that the northern hemisphere saw a drop of as much as 15°C around 11,000BC. In the absence of a suitable impact crater of the right age, there is still much scientific scepticism(b).
A recent application of archaeoastronomy by Martin Sweatman and Dimitrios Tsikritsis led them to conclude that the carved symbols at Göbekli Tepe recorded an encounter, involving the explosion or impact with part of Encke’s Comet around 13,000 years ago, which triggered the Younger Dryas Event, (sometimes referred to as the 13kya event) that provided the impetus for the Neolithic Revolution. Sweatman later expanded their work in his book Prehistory Decoded [1621] and an article on the Ancient Origins website(k). In June 2021, Sweatman had a paper entitled ‘The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: review of the impact evidence’ published in the journal ‘Earth Science Review’ of the University of Edinburgh(u).
Kevin A. & Patrick J. Casey also maintain that a globally catastrophic event occurred 13,000 years ago(j). The kernel of their theory is that originally the Earth had two moons that at some later point collided, producing our current Moon, while the remnant of the second one eventually exploded over North America kick-starting what we refer to as the cooler Younger Dryas period. They are adamant that it was not a comet or asteroid that caused the devastation, and so clash with the conclusions of Richard Firestone and his colleagues.
A somewhat technical paper, published in July 2020, challenges the comet impact theory because of geochemical anomalies, Instead, they argue that the YD event was a consequence of widespread volcanic activity(s), rather than an impact! Martin Sweatman refutes this in a paper on Graham Hancock’s website(i).
A completely different view is expressed in Rod (Carl) Martin‘s latest book [1623], where he proposes that the Younger Dryas ended as a result of a catastrophic event. Is it possible that there were two cataclysmic episodes with opposite effects?
John Ackerman, a keen follower of Immanuel Velikovsky did claim that there were two such events related to “the capture of the Moon into its current orbit,” marking the beginning and the end of the Younger Dryas period(q).
Coincidentally, Professor Emilio Spedicato independently concluded that it was a cometary impact in the North Atlantic that was responsible for the Younger Dryas. Subsequently, when temperatures rose again it resulted in the flooding of vast areas of low-lying landmasses that in Spedicato’s opinion included Atlantis, which he locates in Hispaniola.
In 2020, Tony Petrangelo argued that the Younger Dryas event did not destroy Atlantis, but that it was more compatible with the story of Phaeton(ac).
A 2014 paper(ak) entitled Nanodiamond-Rich Layer Across Three Continents Consistent with Major Cosmic Impact at 12,800 Cal BP by Charles R. Kinzie et al., has developed further the idea of this event being associated with the Younger Dryas. In a similar vein is an article(ai) from Megan Gannon.
Additionally, in early 2017, further possible evidence of an impact at the start of the Younger Dryas was offered by a team led by Christopher Moore of the University of South Carolina, when they identified a distinct layer of platinum in the soil that coincided with the start of YD. Commenting on this anomaly Moore noted that “Platinum is very rare in the Earth’s crust, but it is common in asteroids and comets.”(e) In 2019, Moore published further data(m) supporting the extraterrestrial impact theory, based on studies carried out on sediments, which date back 20,000 years, from White Pond Lake, situated in southern Kershaw County, South Carolina. “Other examples of excessive platinum grains have been found across Europe, western Asia, Chile, South Africa(r) and North America.” (n)
The previous year saw two papers published online(i), reinforcing the YD impact theory as a global event and adding evidence that the event resulted in a conflagration that “may have consumed ?10 million km2, or ?9% of Earth’s terrestrial biomass.”
Related to this is a paper by Andrew Collins that draws attention to the ‘Usselo horizon’, a charcoal-rich layer of between 1 and 8 inches, found on all continents, indicating widespread fires, now dated to 12,900 years ago(l). An additional paper by Hans Kloosterman offers additional background information on the charcoal-rich layer(ab).
Ice cores from Greenland indicate a further cooling period circa 6200 BC that may be related to the abandonment of many Neolithic settlements during this period. Other periods of abrupt climate change have been identified from 3800 BC to 3500 BC and 2800 BC to 2000 BC.
The fact that Plato’s apparent date for the demise of Atlantis, circa 9600 BC, roughly corresponds with the current, best estimate for the date of the Younger Dryas is interesting but unfortunately not conclusive proof of any direct connection. On the contrary, the fact that Athens did not exist until millennia later would have made it rather difficult to have been attacked by Atlanteans at that early date. In the absence of any supportive archaeological evidence, a linkage between Atlantis and the Younger Dryas will have to remain a matter of faith rather than fact. Interesting but inconclusive.
In December 2014 Graham Hancock raised the issue of a cometary encounter as the cause of the Younger Dryas and its possible association with ancient Egypt(ah). In 2017, he reviewed the Younger Dryas debate over the previous decade in a lengthy essay(v). This was prior to the publication of America Before. He finished with the the following comment. “Perhaps the lost civilization that I have spent the last quarter of a century trying to track down had its most significant outpost, possibly even its heartland, in North America in the period BEFORE the Younger Dryas cataclysms of 12,800 to 11,600 years ago?” Hancock is inferring here that there was a single global civilisation, a hyperdiffusionist stance that I consider indefensible.
A short paper by John Patrick Hill offers a theory that requires more than faith to accept it; he wrote “Just over 12 thousand years ago, the world was struck by an immense meteor group. It destroyed all of North America and much of Europe and went weIl beyond……… I found proof to support that the creators of the Giza Three and Stonehenge used the Barringer Crater in Arizona as part of the geometry for their for their massive structures.” Later he reveals that at “Giza, when one takes the distance between the outside corners of the three large pyramids there, that distance is equal to 0.72 miles, the exact distance (diameter) at Barringer.” An extended version of Hills’s paper is available online(t).
In another paper, Hill(aa) says that “the Younger Dryas Meteor Event struck 12.8 thousand years ago and it was so large, it is wrote down not only in geologic records but also in holy books, as Noah’s Flood.”
Recent discoveries in northern Sudan of dozens of skeletons, the majority of whom were killed by flint-tipped arrows, have led to the suggestion(c) they were the result of food shortages resulting from the Younger Dryas that in turn led to warfare over diminished food availability.
In 2020, James Lawrence Powell (1936- ), a noted geologist, author, former college president and museum director entered the Younger Dryas debate with the publication of Deadly Voyager[1911]. In it, Powell offers wholehearted support to the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH), understandably generating a favourable review from Graham Hancock(w). Even more important, is that Powell’s book induced a number of heavy-duty critics of YDIH, including Michael Shermer to change their opinion(x). In 2022 Powell concluded a paper reviewing the YDIH debates with the following; “Finally, we can now assess Sweatman’s suggestion that the YDIH may be ready for promotion from hypothesis to the status of theory. If we combine the definitions of “theory” from the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, it would read something like this:
‘A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence. One of the most useful properties of scientific theories is that they can be used to make predictions about natural events or phenomena that have not yet been observed.’
Those who have read this article and Sweatman’s have the information to decide whether the YDIH meets this definition. In this author’s opinion, there is a strong case that it does. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that no other single theory can explain the YD and its associated effects.”(y)
The YDIH is based on the claim that around 12,800 years ago the Earth had an encounter with a very large asteroid or comet that broke up in an airburst over North America and of which some fragments possibly hit the ground directly(ad).
Many effects have been linked with this event with varying levels of enthusiasm including a suggested association with the demise of Atlantis. Elsewhere, megafaunal extinctions, cataclysmic floods, the disappearance of the Clovis people and the creation of the Carolina Bays(aj), have all been proposed as consequences of this episode.
In 2006, Richard Firestone, Allen West & Simon Warwick-Smith published the foundations of the YDIH in The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes [110]. A year later the hypothesis had a more public airing at the American Geophysical Union Press Conference, Acapulco, Mexico, May 23(ag). This was followed the same year by the publication of a formal paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America(ai).
Since then volumes have been written on the subject, both pro and con(af).
Martin Sweatman brought further evidence to bear on this debate in an article(al)on the Graham Hancock website. This focuses on the investigations at Hall’s Cave in Texas described in a paper by N.Sun et al, where the team concluded that the trace elements found there could indicate a volcanic rather than an impact as the cause of the Younger Dryas cooling! Sweatman disagrees with their conclusions claiming that there seems to be an element of selectivity in choosing data, leading to a wrong conclusion.
2019 also gave us a paper that included an extensive bibliography and overview of the YDIH debate(an). A Thai site also offers a wide-ranging look at the YDIH(ae). Conflicting evidence regarding the possibility of the Younger Dryas being caused by such an impact is impartially outlined on many internet sites(a).
I note that Robert Schoch claims that there is no evidence to support the Younger Dryas impact theory, instead, he believes that “it was most likely due to reduced solar activity at that time, a solar shut-down.”(aq) Schoch’s wide-ranging critique has been refuted by the Comet Research Group.(ar)
In 2012, Jennifer Marlon et al published a paper, now made available by her on the Academia website, in which they presents “arguments and evidence against the hypothesis that a large impact or airburst caused a significant abrupt climate change, extinction event, and termination of the Clovis culture at 12.9 ka. It should be noted that there is not one single Younger Dryas (YD) impact hypothesis but several that conflict with one another regarding many significant details.”(ap)
In 2011, an article by Nicholas Pinter et al offered a critical review of the evidence available at that time, which, from its perspective, did not fully support the YDIH(ax).
Scienceopen.com is a website offering “A peer-reviewed open-access journal collection covering all aspects of airbursts and impacts on Earth by comets and asteroids”. October 2023 brought the publication of five papers on the subject(as).
In March 2024, The New York Times Magazine published an updated overview of the history and current status of the YDIH(at). The sceptical tone of the article includes an interesting look at the psychological drivers behind the popularity of the hypothesis with the general public. It concludes noting that “In a sense, what West and his collaborators think now hardly matters. The hypothesis has already penetrated deeply, and perhaps indelibly, into the public imagination, seemingly on its way to becoming less a matter of truth than a matter of personal and group identity. Nobody I spoke with seemed to think it would go away soon, if ever. West, though, took a measured view. “All we can say is this is a hypothesis,” he said. “It’s still a debate. We may be wrong; we may be right. But only time will tell.”
In April 2024, geoarchaeologist Marc Young published a lengthy article(au) on Graham Hancock’s website, rebutting arguments put forward by YDIH sceptics.
Sweatman’s support for the YDIH has been challenged twice by archaeologist and geologist Vance T. Holliday and his associates(aw), the latest in December 2024, which was reviewed by Jason Colavito(av).
(b) http://www.livescience.com/39362-younger-dryas-meteor-quebec.html
(d)
(f) http://www.space.com/17676-comet-crash-ice-age.html
(i) https://www.dailygrail.com/2018/02/a-comet-impact-13000-years-ago-set-fire-to-10-of-the-planet/
(j) https://www.academia.edu/38380799/13k_Theory_Atlantis_Revisited.pdf
(k) https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/younger-dryas-0012216
(l) http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Lommel.htm
(n) https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/29/world/ice-age-extraterrestrial-impact-scn/index.html
(o) https://www.robertschoch.com/plasma_iceage.html
(p) Comet Research Group responds to Robert Schoch – The Cosmic Tusk (archive.org)
(q) Firmament and Chaos (archive.org)
(s) https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/31/eaax8587
(t) Archive 6555 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(u) The_Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis_MBS.pdf (ed.ac.uk)
(v) The Younger Dryas Impact research since 2007 – The Cosmic Tusk
(w) https://grahamhancock.com/deadly-voyager/
(x) In praise of intellectual honesty – The Cosmic Tusk
(y) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00368504211064272
(aa) Migration & Diffusion (migration-diffusion.info)
(ac) https://atlantis.fyi/blog/atlantis-and-the-younger-dryas-impact-hypothesis
(ad) https://humanoriginproject.com/evidence-younger-dryas-impact-hypothesis/
(ae) YDIH: Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis | Thongchai Thailand (archive.org)
(af) https://cometresearchgroup.org/publications/
(ag) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1GCgOI3B1o
(ah) http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/HancockG13.php
(ai) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1994902/
(aj) Carolina bays….in the Midwest? – The Cosmic Tusk (archive.org)
(an) YDIH: Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis | Thongchai Thailand (tambonthongchai.com)
(ao) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00368504211064272
(ap) (99+) Arguments and Evidence Against a Younger Dryas Impact Event | Jennifer Marlon – Academia.edu
(aq) https://www.robertschoch.com/plasma_iceage.html
(ar) Comet Research Group responds to Robert Schoch – The Cosmic Tusk (archive.org)
(as) https://blog.scienceopen.com/2023/10/introducing-comet-research-group-on-scienceopen/
(at) The Comet Strike Theory That Just Won’t Die – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
(au) The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis: A Guide For The Perplexed – Graham Hancock Official Website
(ax) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012825211000262
New Chronology
New Chronology is a term that was coined in the 20th century and applied to two very different schools of chronological revisionism.
One described the theories of Anatoly Fomenko(a), a Russian mathematician, “that challenge the traditional timeline of history, suggesting that events we know as ancient and early medieval actually occurred much later, between 1000 to 1500 AD, and that the construction of ancient history was done in the 17th and 18th centuries.” Nevertheless, he also had prominent supporters, such as Heribert Illig(c) and Gunnar Heinsohn(b) as well as Garry Kasparov the former World Chess Champion(d).
The other application of the term was to describe a possible realignment of the ancient chronologies of the Eastern Mediterranean. More particularly, it refers to the work of David Rohl and Peter James that grew out of the revisionism in Velikovsky‘s Ages in Chaos[039] and the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS).
There have been many variants of Velikovsky’s proposed revisions, such as those put forward by Emmet Sweeney. The matter remains unsettled to the satisfaction of all. This lack of resolution was referred to in a 2023 paper(e) by Donald Keith Mills, who offered some interesting observations. “I am sympathetic to the need for chronological revision but do not have a preference for any one model. In recent years, my relation to chronological revisionism, both in my role as part of the SIS C&C Review editorial team, and in my articles, has not been to prove or “disprove” chronological revisions, but to identify “errors, inconsistencies, and deficiencies” in the data and/or interpretations on which specific parts of Velikovskian-style revisions are based. It is important to clear the field of misinformation and infeasible interpretations that make it difficult to define what chronological revisions in general, or any revision in particular, may legitimately encompass.“
(b) https://www.q-mag.org/_search.html?req=heinsohn
(c) The Phantom Time Hypothesis • Damn Interesting
Amalekites
The Amalekites are usually described in encyclopedias as “a biblical people and enemy of the Israelites. They were reportedly wiped out almost entirely as the result of Israelite victories against them in wars beginning shortly after the Exodus and continuing into the period of the early Israelite monarchy(a).”
According to the Old Testament “God ordered Saul (1079-1007 BCE), King of Israel (1049-1007 BCE) to “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” (1 Samuel 15.2-10)
The Amalekites were responsible for attacking the Israelites after the Exodus from Egypt. There is no mention of the Amalakites ever being in Egypt.
However, I therefore find it strange that many scholars, including Velikovsky, identify the Amalekites with the Hyksos who invaded Egypt in the 2nd millennium BC and ruled it for over a hundred years until defeated by the Egyptian Pharaoh Amasis I.
>Donald Keith Mills considers Velkovsky’s identification of the Hyksos as Amalekites to be deeply flawed and outlines his reasons in his paper Velikovsky and the Amalekites(e).<
Damien Mackey has noted(b) that “Dr. I. Velikovsky’s identification of the Hyksos conquerors of Egypt with the biblical Amalekites has been widely accepted by revisionists – even those who have since rejected his Ages in Chaos.
David Rohl, whose own biblico-historical revision is some centuries apart from Velikovsky’s, had nonetheless accepted the latter’s identification of the Hyksos conquerors of Egypt with the Amalekites of the Book of Exodus (Pharaohs and Kings: A Biblical Quest, 1997).
Debbie Hurn, in 2003, wrote a solid article(c) in support of this Velikovskian thesis. I thoroughly recommend that one reads her insightful article written for Testimony Magazine.”
Mackey continued with his own support for the Hyksos Amalakite identification, adding a further twist with his suggestion that the Amalakites were also known as the Amu, following the opinion of the 19th-century German Orientalist Johann Christian Friedrich Tuch and quoted by Velikovsky, endorsing it in Ages in Chaos [0039].
In March 2021, Diego Ratti published Atletenu [1821], in which he places Atlantis in Egypt, with its capital located at Avaris, better known as the capital of the Hyksos(d). He identifies Atlas as “Shamshi-Shu I: the Amorite Prince of Ugarit who in 1646 BC led a coalition of Foreign Kings to conquer Egypt starting the XV Dynasty of the ‘Hyksos’.”
So we now have the following mixture – Amalekites = Hyksos = Amu = Amorites = Atlanteans! Unfortunately, it is beyond my competence to unravel this tangle.
(a) https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Amalekite
(b) https://mosesegyptianised.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/the-hyksos-as-amalekites/
(c) http://www.testimony-magazine.org/back/dec2003/hurn.pdf
(d) About | Atletenu (archive.org)
(e) https://www.academia.edu/97365447/VELIKOVSKY_AND_THE_AMALEKITES *
Queen of Sheba *
The Queen of Sheba is one of the few ancient historical figures that has not been linked with Atlantis. Wikipedia refers to her as “a figure first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In the original story, she brings a caravan of valuable gifts for the Israelite King Solomon………..modern historians identify Sheba with the South Arabian kingdom of Saba in present-day Yemen and Ethiopia. The queen’s existence is disputed among historians.”(a)
In Arabia she was known as Bilqis, to the Christians of Ethiopia she was Makeda, while Josephus referred to her as Nicaule.
Nevertheless, she is mentioned from time to time on these pages, particularly regarding her identity and the time of her reign. In the 1950s Immanuel Velikovsky, proposed, in Ages in Chaos [039] that either six centuries were missing from Israel’s history or had six hundred ghost years crept into Egyptian history. One of the keys to his revised chronology was the identification of the Queen of Sheba as the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut.
This caused quite a stir at the time and generated a degree of support for Velikovsky. However, in 1986 John Bimson published a paper, ‘Hatshepsut and the Queen of Sheba’, debunking Velikovsky’s contention, which had the effect of eroding that support. Then in 1997, Damien Mackey re-ignited the controversy with a paper challenging Bimson’s conclusion(f) and so the debate continues(h).
There are a number of 21st-century commentators who still accept Velikovsky’s identification of Hatshepsut as the Queen of Sheba including Emmet Sweeney [1867.25] and Emmet Scott(d), Damien Mackey(f), as well as Ken Griffith & Darrell K. White(e) and, I might add, no lack of opponents either.
Eulalio Eguia jr. offered a different Egyptian identification suggesting Nefertiti instead of Hatshepsut(b). Riaan Booysen went further, not only agreeing with Eguia but proposing that Nefertiti was also Helen of Troy(c)!
Among the Ethiopians, there is a tradition that the Queen of Sheba and Solomon had a child, Menelik, who visited Jerusalem and returned to Ethiopia with the Ark of the Covenant. There is no evidence to support this tale which is thought to have been “originally created to legitimize Yukuno Amlak’s rule of the late 13th century AD who had killed the Zagwa king to obtain power.”
(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Sheba
(b) Nefertiti – The Queen of Sheba | PDF | Tutankhamun | Akhenaten (scribd.com) *
(c) Thera and the Exodus – Graham Hancock Official Website
(d) Hatshepsut: Queen of Sheba: Scott, Emmet: 9780875869452: Amazon.com: Books (I suspect that Emmet Sweeney, a Scot, and Emmet Scott are the same person and share the same publisher)
Radlof, Johann Gottlieb
Johann Gottlieb Radlof (1777-1829) was a German linguist, who from 1818 to 1822 held a professorship at the University of Bonn and from 1823 to 1826 he taught at the University of Berlin. His later research led to an investigation of catastrophes in the solar system and their effects on the Earth.
Radlof’ supported his claim of cataclysmic celestial encounters with some material [1438] later employed by Immanuel Velikovsky over a century later. Some commentators have mentioned how Velikovsky seemed reluctant to credit earlier writers, such as W.C.Beaumont and Radlof(a), with their contributions to the development of the theory of planetary Catastrophism. Others, such as Clube & Napier offer a more generous attribution(b).
(a) http://www.mythopedia.info/radlof.htm
(b) Johann Gottlieb Radlof – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)
Gilligan, Gary*
Gary Gilligan (1957- ) is a British author who has “studied Egyptology, Astronomy and Geology with an almost obsessive passion. When he first came across the theory of catastrophism, he was intrigued by the possibility that the Solar System had undergone recent upheavals due to cosmic chaos.”
Gilligan is arguably the most radical of the catastrophists and ancient chronology revisionists publishing today. Some of his ideas make those of Velikovsky as well as James and Rohl seem somewhat tame.
Among his many extreme claims are (1) Our Moon was only captured in the first millennium BC(a), (2) The Saharan sands, he claims are extraterrestrial in origin [1365], (3) The ancient year had only 360 days [1385.61] and (4) The ancient Egyptian climate was milder than today as indicated by a red sun, rather than today’s yellow disk!(c)
In a short 2012 paper now republished in October 2022 on the Thunderbolts website Gilligan proposes that the Amazon rainforest is only a few thousand years old. He argues that the Amazon region is today dependent on the 54,000 tons of fine dust received daily from the Sahara and since the Sahara did not exist 6,000 years ago neither did the Amazon rainforest which he says is claimed to be 55 million years old!(d) However, an article from Scientific American (July 7, 2014) also offers an even more recent date for the development of the rainforest, suggesting that “the people of the Amazon from2,500 to 500 years ago were farmers.”(e)
(a) http://www.gks.uk.com/moon-origin-egyptian/
(b) http://www.everythingselectric.com/forum/index.php?topic=347.0 (link broken) *
(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest
(e) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amazon-rainforest-is-much-younger-than-commonly-believed/
Sea Peoples *
The Sea Peoples is the name given by modern scholarship to a group of allies who caused havoc among the nations of the Eastern Mediterranean including Egypt, which they invaded at least twice, in the 2nd millennium BC. The phrase ‘Sea Peoples’ was never used in ancient records, in fact, the coining of the term in 1855 is now generally attributed to French Egyptologist, Emmanuel de Rougé who used the term ‘peuples de la mer’ (literally “peoples of the sea”) in a description of reliefs at Medinet Habu. The phrase was later popularized by another French Egyptologist, Gaston Maspero (1846-1916). Eckart Kahlhofer has recently suggested that even earlier, J. F. Champollion (1790–1832) employed an equivalent term ‘gens navales’ to describe the occupants of the invading swan-necked boats.
Also related to the carvings at Medinet Habu is an interesting study of the Sea Peoples’ ships depicted there, by the nautical archaeologist Professor Andrea Salimbetti’s website has a lengthy paper on Aegean Bronze Age ships(al) as well as the Sea Peoples(am).
Cyprian Broodbank in The Making of the Middle Sea [1127] argues that the Sea People “never actually existed as a single people. Instead, small roving bands were a symptom of the collapse, not the cause, and they were blown out of proportion by Egyptian propagandists working for Ramasses III.” (ai)
Broodbank is a co-author with Giulio Lucarini of a paper(av) about Mediterranean Africa that “draws on a new surge in data to present the first up-to-date interpretative synthesis of this region’s archaeology from the start of the Holocene until the threshold of the Iron Age (9600–1000 bc).”
Andrew Mark Henry offers a video in which he highlights the multiple mysteries surrounding the Sea Peoples primarily due to a lack of original documentation(bf).
Motivation
One website(h) describes the Sea People as groups of dispossessed raiders driven by hunger following crop failures resulting from climate change. The same idea is expanded on by Lu Paradise in an extensive article(v).
A different view was expressed by the Egyptologist Robert Anderson who commented “It would seem that, rather than bands of plunderers, the Sea People were probably part of a great migration of displaced people. The migration was most likely the result of widespread crop failures and famine.”(d)
Evidence is mounting that climate change played a significant part in the Late Bronze Age collapse of civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean region. There is a school of thought that believes that the widespread societal disintegration was more the result of environmental factors rather than the depredations of the Sea Peoples(ag).
Origins
The Sea Peoples’ exact origin continues to be a matter of intense speculation(ad). The debate regarding their true identity has been ongoing for a long time and will probably continue as long as the chronologies of the Middle East are not fully harmonized to the satisfaction of most. One site offers 10 of the most popular identification theories(bh).
There is, however, some agreement that the Sea Peoples mounted two separate invasion attempts on Egypt around 1208 & 1176 BC (Facchetti & Negri).
Sea Peoples from the Adriatic
“While most of the Sea Peoples came from either the Aegean or the wider Mediterranean, many historians argue that groups from the Adriatic Sea also joined the migration. Specifically, Austrian historian Fritz Schachermeyr asserted in 1982 that the Sherden and Shekelesh were originally from the Adriatic and had connections to the ancient Illyrians.
Although Schachermeyr’s theory is not commonly held among students of the Sea Peoples, there are those who continue to believe that a famine in the Balkans drove several tribes, including the Illyrians, to migrate over land and over water(ba).”
Mycenaean Sea Peoples
The Oxford Companion to the Bible [0605] is certain that the Sea Peoples were originally Mycenaean, who moved south, following the collapse of their civilisation at the end of the Late Bronze Age. They were repelled by the Egyptians and then moved on to the Levant where they later became known as the Philistines. A paper(ab) that also links the Philistines with the Sea Peoples from a biblical perspective is available.
Shelley Wachsmann(aj), also offers evidence that at least some Mycenaeans were involved with the Sea Peoples(ak).
There is a claim that the Sea Peoples also attacked Mycenaean Greece on two occasions and that Athens survived both(ae). Contrast that with the contention that there was a Mycenaean group within the Sea Peoples. The confusion surrounding the Sea Peoples is exemplified by the response to a question on the quora.com website(af).
Sea Peoples from Anatolia (Northern Levant)
Erick Wright, formerly a regular contributor to the now-defunct Atlantis Rising forums(b) had initially thought that Atlantis had been situated in Morocco but further research led him to conclude that Atlantis was located in what today is Southern Turkey and that Atlanteans were among the Sea Peoples who attacked Egypt in 1200 BC. Another Atlantis Rising forum(e) on the subject is also worth a look as is another illustrated site(f) which includes a map of the homelands of the Sea Peoples.
The historian, Sanford Hoist, published a paper in which he argued(j) for an Anatolian origin for the Sea Peoples together with other groups such as the Phoenicians.
David Rohl, a high-profile archaeologist, has proposed an Anatolian homeland for most of the Sea Peoples listed by the Egyptians in his book, The Lords of Avaris [0232].
The most recent addition to our knowledge of the Sea Peoples appears to be imminent with the publication of a paper in the December 2017 issue of the journal Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society. Written by Frederik Woudhuizen and Eberhard Zangger, the authors offer a translation of a 3200-year-old inscription That may refer to the Sea Peoples and link them with western Turkey. You can read more, now, on the Livescience website(z). In a 2006 paper(ac), The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples, Woudhuizen included some groups from the Central Mediterranean as part of the Sea Peoples.
Erich Fred Legner offers an extensive paper(au) on the diversity of the Sea Peoples. Brian Janeway explored the idea that the Sea Peoples originated in the Northern Levant(aw).
Sea Peoples from Southern Levant (Modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel & Palestine)
Joseph Morris in his thesis(m) presented to the Classics Department of Florida State University in 2006 defined the Sea Peoples as “a coalition consisting of the indigenous populations of Syria-Palestine led by the neo-Hittite states.”
Eric Cline noted in 1117 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed [1005] that the only member of the Sea Peoples alliance whose identity has been ‘firmly established’ is that of the Peleset who are accepted as Philistines. He also comments that identifying the Shekelesh with Sicily and the Shardana with Sardinia is based in part on the ‘consonantal similarities’ [p.4]. In a 2016 article, Cline wrote, “As for what role the Sea Peoples actually played in the destruction of civilizations around 1200 BCE and shortly thereafter, I personally think that they have been set up as a scapegoat, because of the Egyptian inscriptions, and that they were as much victims as oppressors. I doubt that they were responsible for all of the destructions that we blame on them and I think that they are only one of the many factors that together contributed to a “perfect storm” that ended the Bronze Age. These stressors, as they are sometimes called, probably also included drought, famine, earthquakes, and possible internal rebellions in addition to external invaders, all of which combined to cause a system to collapse.” (az)
In another paper(bi), Cline concluded as follows; “Let us simply restate the obvious, but frequently overlooked, observation that the earliest records attesting to the existence of Israel and the first indications of the phenomenon known as the Sea Peoples occurred simultaneously, in the fifth year of Merneptah’s reign. It is possible that these are not independent events, although they are usually treated as such in published studies of ancient Israel, and instead were related processes.
To the legendary figures of Moses and Joshua associated with the biblical stories of the Exodus and the Conquest of Canaan, we might want to now add the far less legendary but still anonymous and mysterious warriors within the Sea Peoples – the Eqwesh, Teresh, Lukka, Shardana, and Shekelesh coming across the sea from Greece, Turkey, Sicily, and Sardinia – or without the chaos and destructions that they wrought in the land of Canaan, and the power vacuum that they created in the area, the Israelites might never have taken over the region and the history of Western Civilization might have taken a radically different course.”
Sea Peoples or North Sea Peoples?
Until the middle of the 20th century, there was a consensus that the Sea Peoples originated in the Mediterranean region. That is until Jürgen Spanuth published his claim that Atlantis had been located in the North Sea and equated the Atlanteans with the Sea Peoples. This radical idea, with some variations, was adopted by several commentators and unsurprisingly, many were from Northern Europe. Spanuth referred to them as the North Sea Peoples [0015] and offered a range of evidence from the Egyptian inscriptions at Medinet Habu to support this idea. This evidence includes a variety of features that Egyptians used to portray the Sea Peoples such as types of swords, the shape of ships, shields and helmets as well as hair, clothing and shaving fashions. He then identified these Scandinavians as Atlanteans who later attacked Egypt. His opinion in this regard was strongly supported by Felix R. Paturi [1339.218]. More recently, Spanuth’s ideas have also been echoed by Walter Baucum in his Bronze Age Atlantis [0183].
In the 2007 DVD, Atlantis: Secret Star-Mappers of a Lost World, Childress identifies the Baltic as the original home of the Sea Peoples, reminiscent of the theories of Jürgen Spanuth, half a century earlier.
Similarly, Ellis Peterson endorses Spanuth’s Scandinavian location for Atlantis(ax).
Eckart Kahlhofer has now (2022) been investigating the idea of ‘North Sea Peoples’ for thirty years and supports the concept in his free ebook. He claims that in the twelfth century BC, the Egyptians referred to the Sea Peoples as the Nine Bows people, which is a geographical term.
Before the emergence of these Bronze Age seafarers, there was a history of Northern Boat-Peoples who gradually expanded globally after the last Ice Age. A paper by Andres Pääbo charts their story(k). Zach Zorich is a freelance journalist and contributing editor at Archaeology magazine. In January 2016 he wrote an article(r) that would seem to contradict the idea of Northern European ‘Sea People’ invading Egypt, for the simple reason that sailing boats were not developed in Scandinavia until around the time of the Vikings! – “The plank boats and log boats being built in northern Europe were not the most advanced watercraft of their time. The Greeks, Egyptians, and other cultures around the Mediterranean Sea used sailing ships to conduct trade, and sails wouldn’t be used in Northern Europe until the Iron Age, during the seventh or eighth century CE.”
Another site(an) also describes the various ships of the period used by the Egyptians, Greeks and the Sea Peoples. One unusual suggestion on the same site is that some of the Sea Peoples, although allied with groups from across the Mediterranean, came from Britain and Northern Europe(ao)!
The Sea Peoples’ Alliances
I have used the plural because the evidence suggests that over the extended period of the Sea Peoples activities, the alliances did experience some change in members.
Federico Bardanzellu offers several papers on his Museo dei Dolmen website(n) in which he suggests specific homelands for many of the members of the alliance(o).
Bob Idjennaden along with co-author, Mebarek S. Taklit, have produced The Mysterious Sea Peoples attack Egypt [1195], which provides an overview of the various incursions against Egypt during the 2nd millennium BC. The prominent part played by the Berbers or their ancestors in varying alliances that constituted the Sea Peoples is highlighted.
According to Raffaele D’Amato & Andrea Salimbeti [1152.20]+, the Denyen was one of the major groups of the Sea Peoples and have been known in ancient sources by different names; Danai, Danaoi, Danaus, Danaids, Dene, Danaids, Danuna. Others have linked them with the Danaan of Irish mythology. The Tuatha de Danaan invaded Ireland in prehistoric times. Having noted that Dan/Don/Danu were ancient words for water, it is not such a wild supposition that the Tuatha de Danaan were at least a constituent part of the Sea Peoples, an idea promoted by Leonardo Melis. A short review of D’Amato’s and Salimbeti’s book is available(bb).
On the other hand, Egerton Sykes thought that the Tuatha de Danaan were refugees from Atlantis, an idea he expressed in his 1949 edition of Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis. A paper offering a sober Irish (not an oxymoron) view of the Tuatha de Danaan should also be read(bc).
Sykes was convinced that Murias one of the four legendary cities of the de Danann had been located in Bimini. This highly speculative idea failed to bear fruit as have all efforts to identify the location of the other three cities, Falias, Finias and Gorias.
Speculation regarding the identity of individual tribes in the federation can be found on various websites(i)(f). One of the most comprehensive is provided by two Italian military historians, D’Amato & Salimbeti in their 2015 booklet [1152]+ and on the internet(l) and both are to be highly recommended. They highlight the complexities involved in definitively identifying the members of the varying alliances that were loosely described as the ‘Sea Peoples’ over a three-hundred-year period.
Atlantis and the Sea Peoples
The German classical scholar, Wilhelm Christ, was probably the first to identify the invading Sea Peoples with the Atlanteans(p), predating Jürgen Spanuth’s theory by the better part of a century. Christ’s idea was also supported to varying degrees by Theodor Gomperz, Spyridon Marinatos, John V. Luce, and Herwig Görgemanns. A translation of the relevant text of Christ’s 1886 paper was recently published by Jason Colavito(bd).
Quite a number of other writers have identified the Atlanteans as the Sea Peoples whose invasion of the Eastern Mediterranean has been recorded in some detail by the Egyptians. One such high-profile identification in the 20th century was by Spyridon Marinatos. One of the latest to join this school is Dr Rainer W. Kühne who not only makes the same identification but, using satellite images, believes that he has pinpointed the capital of Atlantis in Southern Spain. His website has a list of comparisons of Atlanteans to the Sea Peoples(a), which is worth consideration.
‘Rider’, the anonymous author of an article(ae) concerning ‘the campaigns of the Sea Peoples’ on the allempires.com website also suggests that Plato’s Atlanteans can be identified with the Sea Peoples.
Frank Joseph contends that conflict between the Egyptians and the Sea Peoples was part of the Trojan War [0108.11] and has identified the Meshwesh, one of the Sea Peoples, as Atlantean [1535]. His speculation extended to describing ‘the Atlantean Sea Peoples’ as culture bearers who were responsible for, among other matters, the famous Serpent Mound of Ohio(ay).
Eberhard Zangger argues that the Sea Peoples were survivors of the Trojan War that fled to various parts of both the central and eastern Mediterranean(g). He has written further on this identification and more on the Luwian Studies website(s). Zangger claims that the Sea Peoples were an alliance of Libyans and Western Anatolian (Luwian) states(w)(y), which seems odd since Plato describes the Atlanteans as mightier than Libya and Asia combined. If Zangger is correct in identifying Troy as Atlantis [0483], he is also implying that according to Plato, a part (Troy) is greater than the whole (Libya and Asia combined), Troy being part of Asia! Something is wrong with his theory.
In a 2022 article in Popular Archaeology (Oct.15 2022)(bg) Zangger returns to the identification of Luwians as part of the Sea Peoples.
In 2020, Sean Welsh maintained that survivors of the eruption of Thera, which held the capital of Atlantis ‘morphed’ into the Sea Peoples [1874].
Other Theories
A more recent (2017) paper(aa) on a conservative website suggests that the Sea Peoples were ‘early Western Europeans’.
W.S. Baird has also offered a western Mediterranean identification for the Sea Peoples, whom he considers to have originally been colonists from the Aegean who settled in the southeast of Spain and are known as the El Argar culture! Their society suffered some form of collapse around 1350 BC and according to Baird is in some way connected with the emergence of the Sea Peoples!(ap)
The most radical suggestion regarding the Sea Peoples has come from Jim Allen, who promotes a South American location for Atlantis. He also seemingly equates at least some of the Sea Peoples with his South American Atlanteans [077.123], and has drawn attention to the similarity of some of the Sea Peoples’ headgear with that of Amazonian ‘Indians’(c)!
The Malagabay website published a lengthy article(t) in July 2016, offering evidence along with some conjecture, supporting the equally extreme idea that the Sea Peoples had originated in India and having migrated westward, some of them reached the Aegean and became known as Dorians! The author of the article appears to have followed the ideas of Edward Pococke (1604-1691) published in his India in Greece [1231].
Another unexpected twist is the claim by the discoverer of the Phaistos Disk, Luigi Pernier, that the characters used on the Disk are similar to the representations of the Sea Peoples at Medinet Habu.
Peter Adamis, an Australian ex-military serviceman has devoted a section of his website to the question of the Sea Peoples’ identity. It offers a large number of related videos and papers(be).
Two contributors to the Sea Peoples debate in the 1970s were Alessandra Nibbi (1923-2007) [1670] and Nancy K. Sandars (1914-2015) [1671] who, although they had their differences, appear to have agreed on: “(a) the ‘Sea Peoples’ were not one particular people, (b) their label as being ‘of the sea’ is misleading, and (c) earlier attempts to blame the cataclysmic collapse throughout the East Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age on the Sea Peoples is untenable.”
Sources
The earliest book devoted entirely to the Sea Peoples, which I am aware of, was Immanuel Velikovsky’s Peoples of the Sea. However, Velikovsky was more concerned with revising the chronologies of the Middle East and so focused on dating the invasion of the Sea Peoples rather than identifying their origins. Velikovsky has an interesting footnote in his Peoples of the Sea [758.4], which reads; “When Ramses III speaks of ‘Peoples of the Sea’ he specifies the Tkeker, the Shekelesh, the Teresh, the Weshesh and the Sherden (or Sardan); he specifies the Denyen as ‘Peoples of the Isles.'” It would be interesting to know the reason for the distinction.
Trude & Moshe Dothan have added another valuable book to the Sea Peoples’ literature with their People of the Sea which has the interesting sub-title of The Search for the Philistines [1524]. Related to their work, is the result of recent excavations at Ashkelon, an important Philistine city, which suggests that the city had received migrants from southern Europe during the Bronze Age, who may have constituted a component of the Sea Peoples(ah). Clearly, further investigation will be required to confirm these indications.
An extensive review of all the available material relating to the Sea Peoples was also published online in October 2015(q). The MalagaBay website (now closed) had also a wide-ranging illustrated article(u) about the Sea Peoples, although without reaching any firm conclusions.
[1152.20]+ https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1498/88/1498880873171.pdf
(a) Location and Dating of Atlantis (archive.org)
(c) http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/headgear.htm (link broken) see part atlantis bolivia part 4 conclusion, mummies,uente magna and links
(d) https://web.archive.org/web/20181014190855/http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/seapeople.htm
(g) http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/199503/who.were.the.sea.people.htm
(h) http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsMiddEast/AnatoliaSeaPeoples.htm
(i) Archive 2813 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(j) http://www.phoenician.org/sea_peoples.htm
(k) Archive 2337 (all three parts)
(l) http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/index.htm
(n) http://www.museodeidolmen.it/englishdefault.html
(o) http://www.museodeidolmen.it/englishpopomare.html
(p) Abhandlungen der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vol.. XVII, 2nd part, Munich 1886, pp. 451-512. (German)
(q) http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/sea.htm
(r) https://hakaimagazine.com/news/uncovering-culture-bronze-age-logboats/
(s) https://luwianstudies.org/the-sea-peoples-inscriptions-and-excavation-results/
(t) https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2016/07/07/catastrophic-english-india-in-greece/
(u) https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/deja-vu-vikings/
(w) https://luwianstudies.org/the-sea-peoples-inscriptions-and-excavation-results/
(x) http://rlebling.blogspot.ie/2012/03/where-was-ogygia-isle-of-calypso.html
(z) https://www.livescience.com/60629-ancient-inscription-trojan-prince-sea-people.html
(aa) Archive 3429
(ab) https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1498/88/1498880873171.pdf
(ac) https://www.academia.edu/7287651/The_Ethnicity_of_the_Sea_Peoples_dissertation_
(ad) https://listverse.com/2016/06/06/10-theories-regarding-the-sea-peoples/
(ae) The Campaigns of the Sea Peoples – All Empires (archive.org)
(ah) https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/7/eaax0061
(ai) https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/c3fm5j/who_were_the_mysterious_sea_people_during_the/ (halfway down page)
(aj) https://www.academia.edu/4594906/The_Ships_of_the_Sea_Peoples
(ak) https://www.academia.edu/4635111/Were_the_Sea_Peoples_Mycenaeans_The_Evidence_of_Ship_Iconography
(al) http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/ships.htm
(am) http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/sea.htm
(an) Ancient Ships: The Ships of Antiquity (archive.org)
(ap) The Origin of the Sea Peoples (archive.org) *
(ar) https://www.academia.edu/173946/M_J_Adams_and_M_E_Cohen_The_Sea_Peoples_in_Primary_Sources
(as) Cambridge Ancient History Ist edition, Vol.II, p.8
(at) https://www.academia.edu/34555497/The_Sea_Peoples_Superior_on_Land_and_at_Sea
(au) File: <seapeopl (archive.org)
(aw) https://www.academia.edu/38648258/Sea_Peoples_of_the_Northern_Levant
(ax) https://hiddenhistorysecrets.blogspot.com/2008/01/hidden-history-scandinavia-atlantis.html
(ay) Atlantis Rising magazine #36 http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At
(ba) https://listverse.com/2016/06/06/10-theories-regarding-the-sea-peoples/
(bc) https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/tuatha-de-danann-irish-gods-aliens
(bd) Atlantis and the Sea Peoples – JASON COLAVITO
(be) SEA PEOPLES – ABALINX (archive.org)
(bf) https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/who-were-the-sea-peoples
(bh) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(bi) https://www.academia.edu/355166/2009_Cline_Sea_Peoples_and_Israelites_article
360-Day Year
A 360-Day Year literally means a year that is 5¼ days shorter than today and is a view usually favoured by people with a religious agenda, such as Christadelphians(a). The author of that paper, Dale W. Wong, has expanded his claim into a 2006 book [2065].
Donald W. Patten wrote several books and papers, two of which were with Samuel R. Windsor entitled The Recent Organisation of the Solar System, and The Mars-Earth Wars, which are also available online(h)(i). One of the consequences of this ‘reorganisation’ and encounters with our neighbouring planets was a lengthening of our solar year from 360 to 365+ days(j)!
Some years ago the late William F. Dankenbring published a lengthy paper claiming that prior to the biblical Exodus the year was reckoned to have 360-day year. He goes further, claiming a 360-day year for the Maya(k).
A further variation is proposed in a 1996 paper by Wayne Horowitz, titled The 360 and 364 Day Year in Ancient Mesopotamia, from which I quote the abstract here(l).
“During the later portion of the Second Temple period in Israel, a 364 day calendar emerged to challenge the traditional lunar calendar with its regular year of 12 lunar months (approximately 354 days) and leap year of 13 lunar months (approximately 384 days). Evidence from cuneiform sources suggests that this ancient Israelite 364 day year, which appears in the apocryphal books of Enoch and Jubilees, and in the writings of the Qumran community, had its origins in a Mesopotamian ideal mean lunar year of 364 days (12 lunar months = 354 days plus 1/3 ideal lunar month [= 10 days]). This year length of 12 months plus 10 additional days is attested in Mesopotamia from the seventh century B.C.E. onwards, and itself represents an improvement on an ideal 360 day calendar year that dates back to the fourth millennium B.C.E.”
In the 1950s, Immanuel Velikovsky, often accused of an overdependence on the Old Testament quoted a number of ancient sources to support his view that there was a calendrical change required as a consequence of a close encounter with an extraterrestrial body, which slowed the Earth’s rotation. He claimed that this took place in Egypt after the reign of the Hyksos. Velikovsky tackled the 360-day year in Chapter Eight of Worlds in Collision, noting its use in ancient India, China, Persians, Babylonians as well as Egyptian and Romans [037].
Another unusual claim comes from Yair Davidiy, who wrote on the Brit-Am website – “Dolmens and Megalithic Monuments originated in Ancient Israel. Jeremiah 31:21 says that the Lost Ten Tribes will construct a trail of Megalithic Monuments from Israel to their places of exile and evidence of this path will enable them to return. Such a trail exists! It is the Trail of the Dolmens from the Middle East to the West.”(d) As far as I’m aware Davidiy has not explained the huge numbers of dolmens in places such as Korea and Japan! Professor W.A. Liebenberg has written a longer piece(e) on the ‘Lost Tribes’ as the builders of the megaliths. However, since the megalithic building period is generally accepted to have lasted from around 4000 BC until 1500 BC, this created a problem for Davidy and Liebenberg (D&L). The disappearance of the Lost Tribes is dated to around 700 BC leading to their dispersal and proposed megalith building as they travelled. D & L include Newgrange (3200 BC) among their monuments and that is where their difficulties begin. Like Velikovsky(c), both claim that before 700 BC the year was 360 days in length rather than our present 365 days. They argue that if Newgrange (among other monuments) had been built when we had a 360-day year the sun would not still light up the interior at the winter solstice. Therefore, they conclude that most megaliths were erected after 700 BC!
There is also a website actively concerned with the study of the 360-day year(b). This includes comments on ancient 360-day calendars.
Guy Cramer offers a very detailed review of the 360 v 365 debate, citing among other sources, the Book of Enoch(f)(g).
(a) Bible Articles and Lessons: 1-9 – 360-day year (archive.org)
(b) https://360dayyear.com
(c) Worlds in Collison [037], https://www.british-israel.us/413.html
(d) https://www.britam.org/Proof/Attributes/roleDolmen.html
(f) 360 vs. 365 (xwalk.ca) (part 1)
(g) Isaiah’s Sundial & Joshua’s Long Day (xwalk.ca) (part 2)
(h) https://creationism.org/patten/PattenRecOrgSolSys/PattenRootssCh00aTitle.html
(i) http://creationism.org/patten/PattenMarsEarthWars/
(j) https://creationism.org/patten/PattenRecOrgSolSys/PattenRootssCh01.html
(k) https://triumphpropheticministries.com/360-day-calendar-mayan.htm
(l) (PDF) The 360 and 364 day year in ancient Mesopotamia | Wayne Horowitz – Academia.edu *
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/ *
Patten, Donald W.,
Donald W. Patten (1929-2014) was an American researcher and keen supporter of catastrophism. He 
was also a dedicated creationist. His cosmological theories were comparable to those of Velikovsky, who claimed that some of the planets in our Solar System were rearranged within the memory of man. This reorganisation involved a number of damaging close encounters by some planets with the Earth. While Velikovsky was to a great extent focused on the movements of Venus, Patten was more concerned with the activities of Mars.
Stuart Harris noted in a 2017 paper(c) that “Donald W. Patten modeled flybys of Mars as a fIxed sequence that alternated spring and fall, spaced 108 years apart. He sequenced flybys from 701 to 1404 BCE using historical records. Flybys alternated between the night of March 20-21 on odd years, and during the day of October 24 on even years.”
Harris’ paper “extends Patten’s methodology to March 7137 BC by recognizing that the 108-year interval was not constant but occasionally increased in increments of four years. Two important milestones are March 3161 BC, the Biblical Flood, and March 3761 BC, the start of the Hebrew calendar.”
Patten wrote a number of books and papers, two of which were with Samuel R. Windsor entitled The Recent Organisation of the Solar System, and The Mars-Earth Wars, which are also available online(a)(b).One of the consequences of this ‘reorganisation’ and encounters with our neighbouring planets was a lengthening of our solar year from 360 to 365+ days(d)!
It is interesting to compare Patten’s ideas with the the 366 day year proposed by Alan Butler in The Bronze Age Computer Disc [504], based on his interpretation of the Phaistos Disc. His explanation has been endorsed by Sylvain Tristan(e).
>A related book, The Mystery of the Great Flood Confirmed, [1442] by Elsar Amos Orkan envisages an ancient interaction between the Earth, Mars and our Moon around 8000 BC. However, the principal objective of the book is to argue that our current global warming is the result of a shortening of the distance between the Earth and the Sun!
Patten & Windsor also produced a paper(f) titled Catastrophic Theory of Mountain Uplifts that they claim resulted from close encounters with other planetary bodies, such as Venus and Mars!<
(a) https://www.creationism.org/patten/PattenRecOrgSolSys/PattenRootssCh06.html
(b) https://creationism.org/patten/PattenMarsEarthWars/
(c) https://migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=504
(d) https://creationism.org/patten/PattenRecOrgSolSys/PattenRootssCh01.html
(e) http://spcov.free.fr/site_nicoulaud/en/geoalan.php
(f) https://saturniancosmology.org/files/patten/mountains.html *