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NEWS September 2023
September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we move to Sicily and Malta. The trip is purely vacational. Unfortunately, I am writing this in a dreadful apartment, sitting on a bed, with access to just one useable socket and a small Notebook. Consequently, I possibly will not […]Read More »
Joining The Dots
I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
Incas
Nile River *
The River Nile was considered the longest river in the world, a title now disputed by the Amazon.(a) More important was the part it played in the development of pharoanic Egypt. Understandably, it also played a part in the mythology and religion of ancient Egypt.
In 2019 a paper(d) by Larry Pahl, who looked again at the Orion Correlation Theory and concluded that Robert Bauval should not have confined his theory to Orion’s ‘belt’, but looked at the entire constellation and sought a more extensive reflection on the monuments of ancient Egypt. Prahl then proceeds to do exactly that.
Similarly, Jean-Pierre Lacroix claimed that other Egyptian structures may have been located to reflect the layout of other constellations in the sky. Specifically, he focuses on Aries and Thebes(e) .
Alessandro Berio went further with the claim(f) that the entire Nile was ‘designed’ to be a reflection of the constellations above!
Philip Coppens commenting on how the Incas viewed the valley of Cusco wrote “Modern research suggests that the Sacred Valley of the Vilcamayu and Urubamba rivers symbolised the Milky Way. Identifying rivers with constellations, specifically the Milky Way, is nothing new. Other examples are the Nile, as well as the Po in Italy and the Rhône in France.”(b)
Derek Cunningham claims to have discovered(c) that there is an association between the layout of the Stonehenge complex with the Milky Way!
(a) Nile – Wikipedia
(b) Viracocha’s voyage – Eye Of The Psychic
(c) https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3055/
(d) https://www.academia.edu/41868838/Expanding_the_Orion_Correlation_Theory_OCT_
Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu is generally accepted to have been an Incan retreat, built in the middle of the 15th century on a barely accessible mountaintop of Peru about fifty miles northwest of Cuzco. It was apparently abandoned a century later and only brought to the attention of the outside world in 1911 when it was rediscovered by Hiram Bingham III (1875-1956).
In 2021 the use of a more advanced dating method (accelerator mass spectrometry) has pushed back the earliest date for the site by a couple of decades to 1420 AD(j).
Mark Adams, the American writer, wrote an account of his retracing of Bingham’s journey to Machu Picchu[976]. Along with the narrative of his pilgrimage, Adams has also interwoven a valuable history of the region.
In 2013, a Polish-Peruvian team, while exploring a previously unexcavated building on the site, claimed to have discovered that the structure was astronomically aligned(a). The following year saw a newly discovered section of the Inca Road, which leads to Machu Picchu, announced by the Andina News Agency(c).
In July 2016, it was reported that what are considered pre-Inca petroglyphs were discovered in the Machu Picchu region(d)(e). Research is proceeding.
The siting of the sanctuary has been something of a mystery, Recent research suggests that the existence of geological faults that lie beneath it may offer some of the answers. Rualdo Menegat, a Brazilian geologist, presented a paper to the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in Phoenix, in which he claims that the Incas deliberately chose to build Machu Picchu and some of their cities where tectonic faults meet!(h)
It was revealed in 2019 that work had commenced on the building of a new international airport to service Machu Picchu, a development that has been vigorously opposed as a threat to the already fragile site. It is worth noting that in 2017, 1.5 million visitors, nearly twice the limit recommended by UNESCO, came to Machu Picchu(g).
Also in 2019, it was announced that an even older Inca site was discovered 1,500 metres higher than Machu Picchu using LiDar(i).
Some pathetic attempts have been made to link Machu Picchu with Atlantis. One of them claims that “This was the (summer?) residence of the continental governor, who at the time of the destruction of Atlantis was a woman.”(b) Others, such as Rand Flem-Ath along with the late Colin Wilson[063], as well as Jim Alison, have included the Andean site in proposed global grids linking prehistoric sites.
A less-known Inca site is that of Choquequirao(f), sometimes referred to as the ‘sister’ of Machu Picchu. Only a third of the site has been excavated so far.
>In March 2022, it was reported that “a new academic paper argues that since its rediscovery more than a century ago, the site has been known by the wrong name. A Peruvian historian and a leading US archaeologist argue that the Unesco world heritage site was known by its Inca inhabitants as Huayna Picchu – the name of a peak overlooking the ruins – or simply Picchu.”(l)<
Charles R. Kos expressed a belief “that Macchu(sic) Picchu in Peru which is held to be ‘Inca’ is in fact, I am fairly certain, an Irish Monastery from the Dark Ages.”(k)
(a) https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-2330/
(h) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190923140814.htm
(j) Machu Picchu older than expected, study reveals | YaleNews
(l) Machu Picchu: Inca site ‘has gone by wrong name for over 100 years’ | Archaeology | The Guardian *
Foerster, Brien *
Brien Foerster is an American writer who now lives in Cuzco, the former Inca capital in Peru. He has studied the 
ancient cultures of the Andes and believes that many predated the Incas and had advanced technologies that permitted the precise drilling of stone(a). His fully illustrated Kindle book, Lost Ancient Technology of Peru and Bolivia[0923], provides many examples. The book is worth purchasing for the images alone. There is now a video(d) that complements Foerster’s book.
Foerster has now studied the stonework of the ancient Egyptians and like Chris Dunn concluded that their level of accuracy could not have been achieved without possession of a high technology, now lost(i). He has expanded on this in his 2014 book, Lost Ancient Technology of Egypt[1487].
However, Foerester has recently stepped out of line when he apparently chipped fragments from stones at the Bolivian Puma Punku site with a view to having them tested for age. The laboratory refused to test the fragments as Foerester did not have the appropriate export document from Bolivia(e). It would appear that Foerster is either stupid or criminally irresponsible or both. Apparently, Foerester now claims that the details of this report are inaccurate and may be libellous(f).
This episode is reminiscent of the two German scientists who in 2013 were wrongfully accused of removing part of the ‘Vyse cartouche’ in the Great Pyramid and illegally smuggling it out of Egypt. This was subsequently shown to be a false claim by Zahi Hawass(l).
Elsewhere with regard to Atlantis, he claims “the most plausible idea is that Atlantis was not a single land mass that sank, but was a series of smaller states in the Atlantic area 12,000 years ago.”
In recent interviews, Foerster has proposed that the story of Atlantis is based on an Ice Age civilisation(g). His latest attention-seeking claim is that the Maya visited ancient Egypt, a trip that had some form of Atlantis connection(h).
He has also co-authored with David Hatcher Childress a book on South American cranial deformation and elongated skulls. These are reminiscent of similar skulls found in Malta(c) and Egypt as well as elsewhere around the world and date back many thousands of years(b).
Carl Feagans’ website(j) has a number of articles that are highly critical of Foerster’s methods and motivation. Equally critical is a posting and comments on the newagefraud.org website(k).
(a) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR7of1Lkef0
(b) https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/head-space-artificial-cranial-deformation
(c) https://nexusilluminati.blogspot.ie/2013/03/ancient-elongated-skulls-and-cranial.html
(d) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmK7Ng0eGV8
(h) https://verumetinventa.wordpress.com/2016/06/28/brien-foerster-good-evidence-of-maya-culture-in-egyptian-pyramids/ (offline October 2017)
(k) http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=5345.0 *
(l) URGENT URGENT! BREAKING NEWS: EGYPT – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)
Huari Román, Americo
Americo Huari Román (1950 – ) is a Peruvian electrical engineer who was 
born in the former Inca capital of Cuzco. He is the author of La Atlantida y el Imperio de los Incas (Atlantis and the Empire of the Incas)[1127]. This is a bilingual book with a somewhat flawed English translation.
He contends that originally Atlantis had been an island in the Atlantic from where their influence spread to the the cultures of Europe, Africa and South America.Huari enters the realms of speculation with the wild claim that the Atlanteans used some form of levitation using anti-gravity fields! At the same time he also claims that they did not have the wheel as they did not need it! He quotes Blavatsky and other theosophists and psychics, which is probably where he got his ideas of advanced technology in Atlantis that is comparable with our own.
Even more disappointing for me was Huari’s failure to address Plato’s account, in particular the control of the Western Mediterranean by the Atlanteans from North Africa northward as far as modern Tuscany, and does not adequately explain the war with Egypt, if, as he claims[p.211] it was already an Atlantean colony!
Before the Great Deluge, Huari claims that most of central Brazil had been a huge inland sea and that Atlanteans and Arawaks lived around this lake and that one artifact left by them is the enormous carved Ingá Stone(c).
After the Deluge a cataclysm inundated Atlantis and Brazil rose 100 metres, which got rid of the inland sea. Some groups fled to the Andean highlands of Peru, eventually developing the Empire of Tiwanaku which later morphed into the Incan Empire.
Huari supports his views with a number of video clips (a) which unfortunately are only in Spanish. Huari published a new video(b) in July 2014.
(a) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVzhBgn_am8
Atlantis and 2012
Atlantis and 2012. Some years ago there was a widespread rumour that an impending global disaster was about to befall us in December 2012, supposedly based on a particular reading of Mayan inscriptions. However, this interpretation was hotly disputed and of course, nothing happened, apart from the usual assortment of disasters which is the lot of the inhabitants of this cosmic speck that we live on.
A number of commentators attempted to link this ‘promised’ catastrophe with the story of Atlantis. One of the better known is Frank Joseph who has earned a comfortable living over recent years with his output of books on the subject of Atlantis. Not wishing that particular revenue stream dry up added Atlantis and 2012[0694], in which he claimed that the Mayan calendar was developed by Atlanteans and Lemurians. He suggests that we may be nearing the beginning of a new Ice Age invoking Hopi, Inca and Norse mythologies in support of his claims. Joseph’s credibility should now be clear. When the world did not end, Joseph revised his book and republished it as Atlantis and the Coming Ice Age[1074] in 2015!
We were then told to forget 2012, in fact, we had only days left. Harold Camping a then ninety-year-old American fundamentalist Christian decreed that May 21st 2011 was the date of the ‘Rapture’ and the end of the world as we know it and when that passed uneventfully, he then declared October 21st as the date. He had previously suggested May 21st 1988, then Sept. 6th 1994 as the date of the Second Coming of Christ. Understandably, Camping’s biblical interpretation has been heavily criticised by scriptural authorities and lay people alike(a). Camping died in December 2013.
Camping had spent large amounts of money publicising his daft ideas. As usual, there were fools prepared to believe all this 2011 or 2012 nonsense. For my part, I planned a special holiday in 2013 to celebrate my 70th birthday. Which did occur.
Chris McCann
Nevertheless, the spirit of Camping lived on in the person of Chris McCann (left) who announced that October 7th 2015 would be the Earth’s last day. It seems that this silliness is unending(h).
In 2010 a British service entitled Post Rapture Pet Care, run by atheists, offered to look after the pets of fundamentalist Christians when they are taken up to Heaven in the Rapture, for a fee of £69.99. A similar service is on offer in the US named Eternal Earth-Bound Pets.
National Geographic offers a rational explanation(d) of the reality behind this whole 2012 cynical scaremongering exercise. However, a somewhat less restrained view of the 2012 con job is provided by a ‘must read’ website(e)that highlights the harm being done to young and vulnerable people by this nonsense.
A recent discovery in Guatemala, reported in June 2012(f), has provided further evidence that the 2012 alarmist claims are unfounded and no more credible than the prognostications of Harold Camping. Let me spell it out, the latest find simply records that December 2012 will bring a Mayan time cycle (a baktun) to an end while another one will begin, in the same way, that we make a fuss at the end of a year, century or millennium.
However, for those that might be disappointed when 2013 arrives uneventfully, I can now reveal that in 2016 we shall, at last, have our catastrophe or so says Sylwester Kornowski(g). In a 94-page stew of religion and ‘science’, we are assured that April 2nd 2016 will bring on the cataclysm!
But don’t despair if 2016 fails to destroy us, because a newer prognostication is certain that 2027 will finally finish us off. Nevertheless, before getting too excited, it may be no harm to recall the words of Albert Einstein……“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
(a) https://www.cogwriter.com/harold-camping-may-21-2011.htm
(b) See: Archive 2739
(e) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20140811054919/https://2012hoax.wikidot.com/oldstart
(f) https://phys.org/news/2012-06-maya-archaeologists-unearth-monument.html
(g) https://www.cosmology-particles.pl/files/GtoG.pdf (Mercifully now offline)
Sumerians *
Sumeria was one of the earliest civilisations emerging between the 6th and 5th millennia BC and was situated in what is now central Iraq.
It was unknown in Europe until the middle of the 19th century. With the discovery and the decipherment of the Sumerian cuneiform tablets the sophistication of their culture prompted the idea that Sumer had been ‘the cradle of civilisation.’ Subsequent discoveries, such as those in the Indus Valley and more recently Göbekli Tepe have now somewhat diluted that idea.
Nevertheless, there is an acceptance that the Sumerians were very advanced in the field of mathematics and astronomy. The late Ernest McClain, a professor of music, was convinced that music theory could be traced back to the Sumerians as early as 3000 BC.
The origin of the Sumerians is still something of a mystery as is their language which seems to be an ‘isolate’, unrelated to any known language group(q). The Flem-Aths in an Atlantis Rising article (Issue 95) and Atlantis Beneath the Ice [981.70] claimed a cultural and genetic linkage between the Sumerians and the Haida of northwest America. The Flem-Aths also noted [062.54] that some have linked the languages of the two peoples!
Ronnie Gallagher has suggested that migrants from the Caucasus had provided the impetus that led to the development of the Sumerian civilisation. Gallagher’s theory is supported by Jerald Jack Starr on his Sumerian Shakespeare website, who emphatically attributes a Caucasian origin to the Sumerians(l).
Emilio Spedicato has controversially suggested that the Sumerians came from the Tibetan region!(m) Equally provocative were the views of Catherine Acholonu-Olumba, who as the author of Eden in Sumer on the Niger [1833], claimed that her book, “provides multidisciplinary evidence of the actual geographical location in West Africa of the Garden of Eden, Atlantis and the original homeland of the Sumerian people before their migration to the “Middle East”. By translating hitherto unknown pre-cuneiform inscriptions of the Sumerians, Catherine Acholonu and Sidney Davis have uncovered thousands of years of Africa’s lost pre-history and evidences of the West African origins of the earliest Pharaohs and Kings of Egypt and Sumer such as Menes and Sargon the Great.”(p)
Sumeria has now been proposed as a possible source of the Atlantis story. Dr Ashok Malhotra, a professor of Engineering, has suggested(a) that that ‘the likelihood of the Atlantis stories being of Sumerian origin is strengthened by the fact that the submergence of ancient cities was a strong part of the Sumerian mythology. It dominates their historical tradition. The destruction of the ancient city as a result of sin was also part of their beliefs.’ Malhotra then proposes that these Sumerian stories reflected actual flooding events in the Indus Valley region that were brought first to Sumeria and then were later transferred to Egypt and from thence via Solon to Plato to us.
George Michanowsky went much further and claimed that the Sumerians had known Atlantis under the name of NI-DUK-KI, known today as Dilmun[282.66]. 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.
The Sumerian king list(e) from Larsa records eight kings (some versions note ten) before the Deluge, which may have been reflected, in a distorted fashion, in the ten patriarchs of Genesis and/or the ten kings of Atlantis! Another suggested link is with the eight generations between Adam and Noah recorded in Genesis chapter 5.
John Sassoon would seem to support Malhotra’s thesis in his book[566], which proposes a Sumerian origin for the Jews with possible earlier links with the Indus Valley. He is not concerned with Atlantis, just the ancestry of the Jewish people of whom Abraham was born in Sumeria around 2000-1800 BC. Sassoon’s views offer a possible transmission route for Eastern traditions and myths to have reached Egypt and subsequently through Solon to Athens.
More recently, Dr Willem McLoud, a South African researcher, commented that “we have good reason to think that Atlantis was not located beyond the pillars of Heracles in the Atlantic Ocean, as is so often propagated, but that it was actually none other than the ancient land of Sumer itself.” Mcloud is primarily concerned with the Sumerians and Akkadians, which he will expand on in a forthcoming book(n).
In 2001, a book by Radek Brychta was published in the Czech Republic in which he also advocates a Sumerian connection. He identifies Atlantis with the legendary Dilmun of Sumerian legend and locates it on the Indus civilisation island of Dholavira. Excerpts from this fascinating book are available on the Internet and are worth a read.
However, the most extreme claims came from Zechariah Sitchin who proposed that the Sumerians had been ‘influenced’ by ancient astronauts from the planet Nibiru, which information is to be found in their cuneiform tablets if Sitchin’s translation is to be believed. Similar daft ideas(g) have been put forward by Hermann Burgard[1316] but so far have only been foisted on a German-reading public.
As if that was not bad enough, we now (Oct 2016) have the Iraqi Transport Minister claiming, among other matters, that the Sumerians launched spaceships 8,000 years ago(h)!
The Sumerian texts also crop up in the wild theories of Dieter Bremer[1022] and Jakob Vorberger, who claim that Atlantis was a space station(I)!
Jim Allen, the leading advocate of ‘Atlantis in the Andes’ has also claimed(b) a Sumerian connection with South America citing Ruth & Alpheus Hyatt Verrill, who include in their book[838.293] three pages of Sumerian words compared with the language of ancient Peru as well as other cultural aspects there. They also believed that Sargon (2369-2314 BC) was known in Peru as the deity Viracocha! Their fanciful idea stems from an account of Sargon sailing to the West and spending three years there! Zhirov supported this claim[458.23] describing it as ”a seemingly semi-fantastic theory”. My reason for considering this claim to be nonsensical, is simply that Sargon was continually engaged in expanding his empire and constantly dealing with rebellions in the various city-states that he ruled over. The idea that he took three years out to visit America, 14,000 km away, is in no way credible.
Nevertheless, the idea of Sargon in South America persists with James Bailey repeating it in Sailing to Paradise[0150.66] and more recently by the Afrocentrist, Clyde Winters in an article on the Ancient Origins website(f) in which he quotes Bailey and the Verrills as supporting Lake Titicaca as the Lake Manu of Sumerian tradition. A further article(j) on the same website begins with the forceful claim that “it is becoming increasingly clear that the Sumerians had established a colony in South America called Kuga-Ki.” The paper is based on a series of questionable artefacts, the Fuente Magna Bowl, the Crespi Collection and the Pokoyia monument!
The Fuente Magna Bowl is frequently offered as evidence of a pre-Columbian link with the Sumerians in America(c), although its provenance is unclear and there are the inevitable suggestions of a hoax. A sceptical view of the ‘Bowl’ by Carl Feagans(k) is available.
Michel Leygues has published two papers in which he offers evidence that the Sumerian and Akkadian languages can be identified in the languages of many of the native America peoples including the Hopi, Navajo and Incas(s)(t). Leygues also “presents the hypothesis that a kinship exists between Yamato Kotoba ideographic values, and Sumerian and Akkadian values. This despite a great geographical distance between Mesopotamia and Japan, and at different historical periods of language use. “(u)
Other commentators have suggested that the Sumerians reached Spain. Dr Paul Haupt (1858-1926}, an early Assyriologist proposed that the ‘two rivers’ in the story of Utnapishtim, a Noachian equivalent, were the Guadalquivir and Guadiana of Andalusia(r). Mario Mas Fenollar is a modern advocate for Sumerians in Spain.
The very existence of Sumerians has recently been attacked in an appendix to The Three Ages of Atlantis[972] by Marin, Minella & Schievenin. They maintain that the Sumerian ‘language’ “could be an artificial construct created by Akkadian priests” to be used for liturgical purposes. These ideas were first expressed at the end of the 19th century by the respected Orientalist, Joseph Halévy. Andi Zeneli has expressed comparable ideas(d) regarding the Sumerian language.
Uwe Topper’s son Ilya has also put forward the idea that the Sumerians did not exist(o). His paper is a critique, originally in Spanish, of Gunnar Heinsohn’s Die Sumerer gab es nicht.
(a) In Search of Atlantis — Getting Closer (archive.org) (new link)
(c) https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1551445/posts
(d) https://sumeriantestament.blogspot.ie/2012/08/what-is-sumerian.html
(i) Mesopotamische Überlieferungen | Atlantis Mythologie (archive.org)
(k) https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2015/03/sumerians-in-bolivia-probably-not/
(l) https://sumerianshakespeare.com/734501.html
(m) https://www.academia.edu/6556879/AA_MER_MERU_rel_2
(n) Chapter summary – WhisperingTales (archive.org) *
(p) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262069423_Eden_In_Sumer_On_The_Niger
(q) The origin of the Sumerians and the great flood (archive.org)
(r) https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/528616.pdf
(s) Sumer, Akkad, And The Languages Of The Navajo, The Hopi, The Zuni (calameo.com)
(t) Akkad, Sumer, and Incas, Nazcas languages (calameo.com)
(u) Sumer, Akkad and Yamato Kotoba by michel leygues – Issuu
Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco)
Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco) is an ancient city whose remains are located over two miles above sea level near the southern end of Lake Titicaca on the Altiplano of Bolivia. It was first encountered by Spanish conquistadors in 1549. Tiwanaku has all the features of a harbour, which has led some to describe it as the seaport of nearby Puma Punku another remarkable ancient site(o).
The ruins are scattered over a number of square miles through which the Guayqui-La Paz railway was constructed, which was responsible for the breaking up of many monuments to provide ballast. Before that, stone from the site was used in the construction of nearby homes and a church.
Belisario Díaz Romero believed that Tiwanaku had been built by a race of people he calls Homo atlanticus, who had come to America from Atlantis over a landbridge from the east, outlined in his 1906 book Tiahuanacu[1235]. Heather Pringle notes(t) that before Romero, “Francis de Castelnau (1810-1880), for example, proposed in the mid-19th century that Tiwanaku was the work of wandering Egyptian pharaohs, as opposed to the ‘imbecilic race that inhabits the country today’.”
The controversial Arthur Posnansky, who linked Tiahuanaco with Aztlan, the mythical “white” island homeland of the Aztecs investigated them in the early 20th century. The similarity of Aztlan with the name of Plato’s city has excited some straw-clutching Atlantis seekers into claiming a definite connection between the two.
Posnansky also noted that the expected alignments of structures at Tiwanaku were offset by an amount that suggested their construction at a time when they would have been correctly aligned to the cardinal points. He, after many years of study, was convinced that Tiahuanaco was the oldest civilisation on Earth [516] dating it to around 15,000 BC, which he later reduced to 10,000 BC.
In the 1920s, Edmund Kiss studied the ruins of Tiwanaku and concluded that it had been constructed by Nordic refugees from Atlantis which had been destroyed by a falling moon! His ideas were enthusiastically received back in Nazi Germany. A further expedition was planned but never materialised because of the start of World War II.(u)
Dr Graham Holton, an Australian commentator has written about the pseudo-science practised in the early 20th century at Tiwanaku by the likes of Posnansky and Kiss and endorsed by Hörbiger and Hans Bellamy(al)(am).
Although, as you can see below, Posnansky’s work and particularly his dating of Tiwanaku has been rejected by many, he still has supporters. In Graham Hancock‘s 1995 book Fingerprints of the Gods [275], he supported Posnansky’s date, referring to his work throughout the book. Ian Alex Blease, a devout sceptic took issue with this endorsement (aa). For my part, I note that Hancock was happy to support Posnansky in ‘Fingerprints’, but in America Before [1680], despite its title, he gives Posnansky’s date no mention, perhaps because it clashed with his new date for the destruction of his ‘Lost Civilisation’!
Charles Orser Jnr. debunked Posnansky’s dating in a 2001 article(k) as did Paul Heinrich(n).
Marin, Minella & Schievenin [972.97] “Between 1927 and 1930 several scientists, including Hans Ludendorf, at the time director of the Astronomical Observatory of Potsdam; astronomer Arnold Kohlshutter, University of Bonn; Dr Rolf Muller, University of Potsdam and Dr Friedrich Becker, Specula Vatican, meticulously checked the archaeological-astronomical research of Posnansky for accuracy. After three years of work these scientists corroborated his thesis.”
>Before retirement, R. Cedric Leonard supported Posnansky’s early date for Tiwanaku citing a number of atronomers who endorsed his chronology. “Between 1927 and 1930 Prof. Posnansky’s conclusions were studied intensively by a number of authorities. Dr. Hans Ludendorff (Director of the Astronomical Observatory of Potsdam), Friedrich Becker of the Specula Vaticana, Prof. Arnold Kohlschutter (astronomer at Bonn University), and Rolf Müller (astronomer of the Institute of Astrophysics at Potsdam) verified the accuracy of Posnansky’s calculations and vouched for the reliability of his conclusions.
The conventional practice of dating Tiahuanacu as beginning c. 200 A.D. and collapsing c. 1000 A.D. started with Wendell Bennett’s excavations, which turned up numerous examples of pottery, small statues and other artifacts. Since it is common for later arrivals to be awed by massive ruins (sometimes attributing their origin to supernatural beings, thus replicating the “sacred” images on their own pottery and textiles), I think it is a mistake to fuse the two cultures into one, implying that the later arrivals were the same people who built the original ruins. I believe Bennett and his successors are all guilty of such an error.” (ap)<
R. Cedric Leonard believed that Posnansky’s date addressed all of the mysteries associated with the site and “Thus I think it likely that Tiahuanaco was built at sea level c.15,000 B.C. as an Atlantean port.”(z)
The American archaeologist, Neil Steede, while reviewing Posnansky’s date, thought that a date of 7000-5000 BC was more appropriate(aj).
At the other end of the spectrum, Emmet Sweeney, an ardent chronology revisionist claimed that “most probably, Tiahuanaco was built around the same time as pharaoh Djoser’s Step Pyramid at Sakkara in Egypt. It can thus claim to be among the oldest of human monuments [700.208].” Tiwanaku is conventionally dated between 200 BC and 100 AD, while the Step Pyramid is thought to have been constructed around 2650 BC.
Some researchers, including Jim Allen, have studied Tiwanaku’s remarkable Gate of the Sun and identified the figures carved on it as a sophisticated calendar(v).
A paper from Marco Antonio Cabero regarding the ‘Gate’ throws a modicum of doubt on its possible use as a calendar. Instead, he focused on the other side of the monument where he claims there is evidence that the ancient people of Tiwanaku knew the ‘golden number’, phi.
“The composition of the front face of the Gate of the Sun in Tiwanaku presents, anthropometric, and bilateral symmetry. On the back side, there are also harmonic proportions but with less significance. These proportions were not found before because the study of the content of its engraving frieze was believed to be a calendar, an idea that has been so widely extended, that any other interpretations were ignored (however, the presence of these proportions does not exclude the possible existence of some type of calendar). The Gate of the Sun may not be part of a temple, but its content could also be considered as the expression of a monument in itself; a work that testifies to the importance of knowledge, art, and science “(ac).
Ashley Cowie has recently proposed that Tiwanaku was located on an ancient Prime Meridian(w).
Also eye-catching is the claim(l) by Roger Elefant that later construction at Tiwanaku was carried out by the Vikings!
However, a more recent, but catastrophic, explanation is offered by Stephen Smith(d) on the Thunderbolts.info website. Perhaps Smith’s ideas might be combined with the studies of George Dodwell to produce a more comprehensive hypothesis. Posnansky’s date is greatly at variance with conventional dating that puts the flourishing of Tiwanaku from 1200 BC until 1200 AD. The latter part of that period roughly coincides with the existence of the Wari Empire, a possible rival of Tiwanaku(e).
In 2013, Jason Yaeger and Alexei Vranich published a detailed study of the chronological development of Tiwanaku and Puma Punku. This is now available on the Academia.edu website(ao). Anyone seeking support for ancient astronauts, giants or Atlantis will be greatly disappointed. The authors confirmed a starting date for monumental construction at the site of no earlier than 200 BC, which continued intermittently until the arrival of the Spanish invaders. Their report is the result of the ‘hard slog’ required by real archaeology.
Several claims attempting to link Tiahuanaco with Atlantis have been made, with one anonymous blog(y) insisting that it was the capital of Atlantis. James Bailey was an early advocate [149] of a Peruvian Atlantis with its capital at Tiwanaku or Chan Chan, which was probably the largest pre-Colombian city in South America.
The claim of a direct connection between Tiahuanaco and Atlantis is hard to accept on a number of grounds; for example, the idea of an army travelling from the west coast of South America to attack Greece in the east of the Mediterranean is not tenable. That there was an advanced culture in the Andes is undeniable but to link it to Plato’s story is stretching credibility to extremes. Lake Titicaca and Tiahuanaco have plenty of mysteries still to be explained. In 1980 the Bolivian scholar, Hugo Boero Rojo, aided by one of the local natives, Elias Mamani, located underwater ruins off the coast of Puerta Acosta[576]. His discoveries included megalithic temples, flights of stairs and stone roads.
More recently, Dave Truman has written about an alignment known as ‘The Way of Viracocha’ that runs from Cajamarca in the north, through Cuzco and Tiwanaku and finishing at Pukara Grande(p), oriented exactly 45° west of true north. Truman has built on the work of Maria Sholten d’Ebneth (1926-2007), who wrote of the La Ruta de Wiracocha[1236] in the 1970s(q). Others have expanded on her work, but usually in Spanish. Truman has speculated on whether “Viracocha, the great teacher and restorer of civilisation in the Andes, in some way embodied the scientific knowledge of a sophisticated, but long-forgotten high culture?” Truman 
also discusses the ‘chakana’ or Andean stepped cross (see right) and its possible meaning.
It was reported in October 2013(g) (that a team of Belgian and Bolivian archaeologists had found an assortment of ceramics, gems and gold objects at an apparent ceremonial site beneath the waters of Lake Titicaca, which was sacred to the Incas and Tiwanakus. It was not until 2019 that images of some of the artefacts recovered from the lake were widely published(x).
We cannot leave the matter of mysterious Tiahuanaco without referring to the fact that some miles further south is Lake Poopó beside which Jim Allen is convinced that the city of Atlantis was located. Allen claims that the large plain to the west of the lake is the plain mentioned by Plato as being adjacent to the city of Atlantis. In a recent documentary “Atlantis in the Andes” broadcast by ‘Discovery Civilization’, Allen identified Tiahuanaco as one of the ten kingdoms of Atlantis. However, I cannot help noticing that while Tiwanaku, claimed to be 17,000 years old, provides us with an astonishing wealth of structures and finely dressed stone, Allen’s chosen Atlantis site, Pampa Aullagas, offers little more than rubble!
Another supporter of an Andean Atlantis is Sean Bambrough, who has been developing a theory since 1999 that identifies Tiwanaku as the city of Atlantis(h). He has now published his magnum opus on the academia.edu website(ae).
In February 2015, Marcelo Ozorio also suggested a link with Plato’s Atlantis and most interesting is the huge number of images included on his site(i). There is also a large collection of related images on a YouTube clip(m).
In 2022, Marco Vigato‘s book, Empires of Atlantis [1830] was published, which included Tiwanaku as part of the evidence for his hyperdiffusionist Atlantis(ab).
In 2008, David E. Flynn brought to public attention an astonishing series of satellite photos(a) that show a vast network of the remains apparently of man-made structures that extend for many miles around Lake Titicaca. These ‘geoglyphs’ encompass Tiahuanaco.
The most remarkable collection of early photos of the Tiwanaku site can be found on the Above Top Secret website(b). The accompanying text makes a strong case for treating the location as archaeologically contaminated and as a consequence that many of the dates proposed for the site should be considered suspect. Other mysteries are the fact that saltwater Lake Titicaca contains known sea life and that old waterlines are slanted(c).
In late March 2015, the Bolivian government announced(j) that ground-penetrating radar had identified what appeared to be a buried pyramid in the Tiwanaku complex as well as other ‘anomalies’ and that excavations may start in May or June.
A mixed Spanish and English website(f) offers a number of interesting papers including a chapter from Posnansky’s book Tiahuanaco: The Cradle of American Man.
Archaeology magazine has an interesting Q & A paper relating to the history and current state of preservation at the Tiwanaku site(s).
A May 2017 report(r) confirmed that the entire Tiwanaku complex is much more extensive than previously thought, covering an area of at least 650 hectares (1,675 acres).
Joseph Davidovits who controversially proposed that Giza’s Great Pyramid stones had been cast rather than carved has also claimed that other well-known structures had been created in a similar manner, such as at Tiwanaku and Puma Punku in Bolivia(ah) and Easter Island(ai). He offers scientific evidence to support this claim in a very interesting video(ak). My objection to his ‘cast rather than carved’ hypothesis, particularly in relation to Easter Island, is that partially finished statues are visible today in a quarry still attached at the back to the rock from which they were carved as well as some of the tools used for the job. Images of these can be seen in Thor Heyerdahl’s Aku-Aku [1938].
Brien Foerster is an American writer who now lives in Cuzco, the former Inca capital in Peru. He has studied the ancient cultures of the Andes and believes that many predated the Incas and had advanced technologies that permitted the precise drilling of stone(af), the quality of which he has compared with examples found in Egypt and like Chris Dunn concluded that their level of accuracy could not have been achieved without possession of a high technology, now lost(ag). He has expanded on this in his 2014 book, Lost Ancient Technology of Egypt [1487].
A fully illustrated guide to the intriguing monuments of Tiwanaku/Puma Punku is now available which is an excellent introduction to the site including a map by Javier Escalante Moscoso(an).
(a) https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1977971/posts
(b) https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread732575/pg1
(c) https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2012/04/30/tiwanaku/
(d) https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/04/03/tiwanaku-3/
(e) http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/science-wari-tiwanaku-rival-empire-01473.html
(f) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/arqueologia/esp_tiahuanaco5.htm
(h) https://2rbetterthan1.wordpress.com/atlantis-south-americatiahuanaco/
(i) Tiwanaku, pre-columbian archaeological and world heritage site at Bolivia (viagem.space)
(k) https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg62910.html
(l) https://atlantide-mu.over-blog.com/2013/12/terre-creuse.html
(m) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkuoXm9uafI
(n) http://www.intersurf.com/~chalcedony/Tiwanaku.html
(o) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170601230717/https://www.atlantisquest.com/prehistcity.html
(p) https://grahamhancock.com/trumand1/
(q) https://puri-aprendiendovida.blogspot.ie/2013/02/la-ruta-de-viracocha-camino-de.html
(s) https://interactive.archaeology.org/tiwanaku/qanda.html
(t) https://archive.archaeology.org/blog/the-fantasy-world-of-tiwanaku/
(u) https://theappendix.net/issues/2013/4/andean-atlantis-race-science-and-the-nazi-occult-in-bolivia
(v) https://blog.world-mysteries.com/science/the-gate-of-the-sun-calendar-from-ancient-tiwanacu/
(w) https://www.ancient-origins.net/events/unearthing-lost-meridian-tiwanaku-s-temple-builders-0010322
(y) https://grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?1,1063585,1063585#msg-1063585
(z) https://web.archive.org/web/20161107001948/https://www.atlantisquest.com/prehistcity.html
(aa) https://www.oocities.org/debunkinglc/tiwanaku.html (link broken)
(ab) https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Atlantis-Civilizations-Traditions-throughout/dp/1591434335
(ad) (PDF) Mathematics in Tiwanaku-The gold number in the gate of the sun (researchgate.net)
(ae) https://www.academia.edu/61088843/Atlantis_Found_in_the_Andes_by_V_Sean_Bambrough
(af) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR7of1Lkef0
(ag) https://ahotcupofjoe.net/
(ah) https://www.geopolymer.org/archaeology/tiahuanaco-monuments-tiwanaku-pumapunku-bolivia/
(ai) https://www.geopolymer.org/library/video/they-came-from-america-to-build-easter-island/
(aj) QC2K – Neil Steede (archive.org)
(ak) https://www.geopolymer.org/library/video/they-came-from-america-to-build-easter-island/
(am) (99+) 2007 Chapter 3 Tiwanaku.doc | Graham Holton – Academia.edu
(an) Tiwanaku, the mysterious pre-Inca capital – mapaymochila.es
Atlantology
Atlantology as a distinct field of study is accepted by most to have begun with the works of Ignatius Donnelly, however flawed many of his ideas may have been. Since Donnelly, it has developed into a very complex multidisciplinary subject. Students of the topic are known today as Atlantologists although an earlier designation was Atlantists, a term now used to describe supporters of political and economic co-operation between the USA and Western Europe. The inventive Zia Abbas prefers to use the term ‘Atlantisology’!
N. Zhirov, the leading Russian Atlantologist, has offered the following formal definition of the subject: “It may be regarded as a department of the biogeography of the modern, Quaternary period (Anthropogen) of the Earth’s geological history, a department chronologically relating to the period of the emergence of intelligent man, a period directly preceding our historical epoch beginning with the last glaciation.” He believed that Atlantis was primarily a geological problem that could only be resolved through a study of the geological history of the Atlantic Ocean.
A less cumbersome definition might be “the study of all aspects of Plato’s references to Atlantis”
A forum dealing with Atlantology(a) and suggested parameters for its study may be found interesting by readers. I personally disagree with a number of the headings proposed for inclusion, such as ‘Rudolf Steiner’, ‘Ireland & Tara’ and ‘Shangri-la’, as I consider them unrelated to Plato’s Atlantis.
>Seachild the official seller of copies of Egerton Sykes Atlantis journals, has also produced a number of papers(c)(d) relating to scientific Atlantology and fields of study under which it should be investigated. These documents are now twenty or more years old and badly in need of revision.<
Over the years that I have spent compiling Atlantipedia it became clear that different theories became ‘fashionable’ from time to time, because of new discoveries, the opinions of prominent individuals or as a consequence of heavily publicised books. The 15th century saw Gutenberg develop the printing press in 1436 and the first complete works of Plato, translated by Marsilio Ficino were published in 1484, so when Columbus discovered the New World in 1492, there were many who speculatively identified the Americas as Plato’s Atlantis. This idea persisted until the end of the 19th century and even today some think it a possibility.
More specifically, when the monumental structures of the Maya and Incas were gradually revealed to Europeans, once again a link with Atlantis was proposed for South America and still has some support today.
However, the most popular and enduring theory is that Atlantis had been situated in the Atlantic Ocean, with the Azores as the prime candidate. It received a boost in support with the discovery of the Mid Atlantic Ridge in the 19th century and was used by Ignatius Donnelly in the formulation of his Atlantis theory.
In 1872, the elements of the Minoan Hypothesis began to appear when Louis Figuier was the first to link Atlantis with the 2nd-millennium eruption of Thera. Today, this idea is probably the most accepted, apart from the Atlantic location.
There are many other theories regarding Atlantis, some more exotic than others, but, in my opinion, none match all the criteria that can be gleaned from Plato’s account, although their authors would disagree.
In 1971, John S. Bowman [193] apparently coined the term ‘atlantist’ as an improvement on ‘atlantologist’ to describe those who have a keen interest in the study of Atlantis, but it got little support.
A potted history of Atlantology from Donnelly until Sykes, is available at the Atlantis Online website(b).
(a) https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread412294/pg1
(b) https://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=778.0
Incas
The Incas or at least their ancestors are claimed by Jim Allen to have ruled Atlantis, which he insists exited on the Altiplano of the Andes in Bolivia. However, the idea of a connection between Atlantis and the cultures of Central and South America is not new, having been first mooted by Pedro Samiento de Gamboa in 16th century. Supporters of the theory today cite the extremely controversial Oera Linda Book which states that one of the Frisian naval commanders named Inka reached America after the destruction of Atlantis. With this tenuous etymological link they conclude that he was the founder of the Inca civilisation, ignoring the fact that the earliest evidence for the Inca tribe dates to around 1200AD while the Oera Linda Book puts the destruction of Atlantis circa 2200BC, leaving an unexplained gap of nearly 3500 years. A Frisian–Inca connection is also proposed on the Stepping Stones website(a) which for good measure endeavours to link them with the Shang Chinese, the Magyars and, of course, the Atlanteans(b).
The great tragedy of the Inca culture is that they left no written records with the exception of the knotted strings known as quipu (khipu)(d). Gary Urton is a Professor of pre-Columbian Studies and has a website dedicated to the study of quipu(e). In April 2017, Sabine Hyland published a paper on some late 18th century khipus made of animal hair, which according to local Peruvian villagers contained an account of an uprising against the Spaniards(g)(i).
But now, Urton and Alejandro Chu, of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima have studied a collection of khipus at the Inkawasi site have concluded that the khipus in question probably recorded taxes levied on local crops(j).
Leaving aside any consideration of an Atlantean link with the Inca people, there is no doubt that that the Incas possessed remarkable construction capabilities. It has been estimated that they constructed nearly 25,000 miles of roadway in a period of around 100 years(f)! This network, known as Qhapaq Ñan, extends over six countries and is now a Unesco World Heritage Site, the largest on the planet. Unfortunately it has been allowed to deteriorate. Efforts are being made to redress this unfortunate situation(h).
The megalithic masonry to be found in Cusco, their ancient capital, further highlights their outstanding construction abilities. A recent well-illustrated book by Brien Foerster, Lost Ancient Technology of Peru and Bolivia[923] examines a range of Incan sites and their often enigmatic monuments. This is a valuable addition to the literature on the subject.
In 2007 the Peruvian engineer and writer, Jesus Americo Huari Roman (1950-), wrote a book (for private circulation) entitled La Atlantida y el Imperio de los Incas (Atlantis and the Empire of the Incas), in which he also argues that then Incas were descendants of the Atlanteans. He has video clips on YouTube supporting his theory(a), unfortunately, with Spanish dialogue only.
(a) https://www.youtube.com/user/JESUSAMERICO100/feed
(b) https://all-ez.com/epigraphy.htm
(c) https://all-ez.com/frisian-inka.htm
>(d) http://enperublog.com/2009/06/30/unlocking-the-secrets-of-the-quipus/
(e) Researchers (archive.org)<
(g) https://www.sciencenews.org/article/twisted-textile-cords-may-contain-clues-inca-messages?tgt=nr
(h) https://www.bbc.com/travel/gallery/20170912-a-30000km-road-network-from-the-andes-to-the-amazon
(i) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unraveling-an-ancient-code-written-in-strings/
(j) https://www.sciencenews.org/article/khipus-knotted-cords-incas-taxes
Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro
Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (1532-1592) was a Spanish explorer who has given us a valuable insight into history of the Incas with an important 16th century perspective on their Spanish conquerors. De Gamboa was convinced that the Native Americans were originally of European origin and speculated that they were in fact the descendants of refugees from Atlantis, which he calculated to have been destroyed in 1320 BC. He referred to Atlantis as Atlanticus.
What is also interesting is that he was also one of the earliest to suggest the application of months or lunar ‘years’ to the problem of Plato’s date for Atlantis. De Gamboa’s book has recently been republished as The History of the Incas[309], with a free English translation is also available as an eBook on the Internet(a).
(a) History of the Incas by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa – Free Ebook (archive.org)