An A-Z Guide To The Search For Plato's Atlantis

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  • NEWS September 2023

    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

    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 »
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Pyramids

Pyramids are designed and built to be very stable structures. They were first encountered in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BC, known as ziggurats. Unfortunately, they were built of sun-dried mud bricks and so, over time have crumbled. These early pyramids were stepped with between two and seven tiers. Their function was ceremonial.

In August 2023, the first pyramid ever identified in the Central Asian Steppes was reported. This stepped (no pun intended) feature has been dated to the 2nd millennium BC and situated near the city of Karganda in Kazakhstan. There is also evidence of a horse cult associated with the site(fz).

Pyramids around the World

Pyramidal structures are now to be found around the globe; whether this is a consequence of diffusion or independent design is uncertain, possibly both.

For Ignatius Donnelly, the pyramids of Egypt and Central America were the results of a shared heritage originating in Atlantis. However, the millennia that separate their construction in the two regions would seem to militate against this idea. Nevertheless, in 1967 Egerton Sykes published a paper supporting diffusionism with particular reference to pyramid building on both sides of the Atlantic(fk).

Although most pyramids are four-sided, round pyramids, although fewer in number, have been identified in various parts of the world(fm).

The Mayan pyramid at Mirador in Northern Guatemala was thought to be the largest by volume in the world, at 2.8 million cubic metres, however, the Great Pyramid of Cholula is 4.45 million cubic metres(au)(bq). This is now rivalled by the Mayan pyramid at Toniná, Chiapas(bd). The Great Giza Pyramid is 2.5 million cubic metres in volume.

Even more spectacular was the 1996 discovery of pyramids on the southern Atlantic coast of Brazil dated as early as 3000 BC, predating the earliest Egyptian Pyramids by a few hundred years. However, two sites in Peru, Caral, and Sechin Bajo have claimed pyramid complexes with dates of 3500 BC(j). Very ancient pyramids have also been claimed for Crimea(af).

What is arguably the greatest concentration of pyramids in the world is to be found in the Lambayeque Valley of northern Peru, numbering 250, built of mud brick, and dated to circa 750-1100 AD. The late Philip Coppens referred to the valley in his book, The New Pyramid Age [0759] and it was also the subject of a BBC documentary(an).

Apart from Meso-America, pyramids have also been discovered as far apart as the Canaries (dx), Sicily(ga)*, Sardinia and Mauritius(k) as well as Ukraine(dw), and China(cp). Russia is claimed to have pyramids in the far east near Vladivostok(fc) and the Kola Peninsula(dc) in the west near Finland! A website by Gabriele Lukacs, dedicated to possible European pyramids is now available(g). The remains of three pyramids have also been identified on the Greek Peloponnese, one of which has been dated to 2720 BC ± 580 years. (dr)(ds)

In 2005, an ongoing debate was ignited when the Bosnian-American ‘archaeologist’ Semir Osmanagic announced that he had identified a gigantic manmade pyramid beside Visoko, 30km north of Sarajevo. Highly publicised excavations began in 2006. Readers should be aware that Osmanagic has expressed [0519] rather bizarre notions including a belief that the Maya were descendants of the Atlanteans who in turn arrived on Earth from the Pleiades!

Osmanagic has also published a fully illustrated paper on the Koh Ker pyramid in Northern Cambodia, which he claims to act as an energy amplifier(eb).

A French commentator, Douglas Moonstone, disagreed with Osmanagic’s suggested  origin for the Atlanteans suggesting instead that they came from the constellation of Orion and that the “Neanderthals fled their bases on another near planet, probably a planet of Sirius B and a planet of Alnitak, as we have seen in previous volumes, and they have saved Hopis, Sapiens, in a space station in orbit.”(cc)

On one side, we had Philip Coppens offering support for Osmanagic(cl), while on the other, an on-site investigation by Robert Schoch concluded that the Visoko ‘pyramid’ was probably not man-made!(cm).

Osmanagic updated his claims in December 2011(o) and as recently as August 2016, He was still offering a spirited defence of his views(bi).

Gigantic pyramids have also been proposed for Germany by K. Walter Haug(ab). and demonstrated on his heavily illustrated website(aj).

Maxim Yakovenko was the founder of the world-pyramids.com website(bf). in 2008. It has a range of interesting articles that relate to pyramids around the globe. Unfortunately, the news section does not appear to have been updated over the past two years.

A recent (2010) site, lists(h). the eight largest pyramids in the world. Also, a wide range of free papers, in pdf format, relating to the Giza Pyramids is available online(l).

Perhaps even more dramatic is a recent claim(q) of a pyramid older and larger than the Great Pyramid at Giza, known as Mount Sadahurip in Garut, West Java, Indonesia. However, the proliferation of step pyramids is not very well known, but Dhani Irwanto has, at least, partially redressed this in a 2019 article on his website(ey).

July 2012 saw Linda Moulton Howe publish(r) a two-part illustrated article about an anomalous feature in Alaska which has been identified as a buried pyramid larger than the Great Pyramid at Giza. This feature was first identified twenty years ago, but the story appears to have been suppressed, according to a retired U.S. Counter-intelligence officer who contacted Howe. A comparable claim has also been made for pyramids in Antarctica and later shown to be a hoax(w).

Now for some further light relief, earlier in 2012, a nonsensical report(s) of an underwater glass pyramid in the Bermuda Triangle emerged. I’m sure it will be soon followed by a sighting of Elvis creating crop circles in Antarctica.

In September 2013, it was reported(y) that “researchers have discovered an underwater pyramid 60 meters high with an 8000 meters square base near the Bank De João de Castro, between the islands of Terceira and São Miguel” in the Azores. Shortly afterwards the Portuguese Navy denied the existence of any such structure.(aa) This claim has now spawned its own website(ad).

However, in August 2013, the Portuguese American Journal reported that the many step-pyramids on Pico, one of the Azores, are clear evidence of extensive human activity in the archipelago long before the arrival of the Portuguese(fw). As a consequence, some have suggested that the seafaring ability of these pyramid builders to reach the Azores from Europe opens the possibility that they went further and reached America!

Even more ridiculous was a report in the UK’s Daily Star which claimed that an underwater pyramid estimated to be between 3.5 and 11 miles across had been spotted on Google Earth, situated off the coast of Mexico in the Pacific(cd).

Finally, it appears that to satisfy the public interest in pyramids the meaning of the term itself has been extended to include a range of natural features as well as man-made structures. Robert Schoch is happy to see Newgrange as a type of pyramid, others see Silbury Hill as a pyramid(e). while some writers apply the term to mountains as is the case with Jeff Nisbet(f). who sees ‘pyramids’ in Scotland. Nisbet attempts to justify his view with a very unconvincing suggested link between ancient Egypt and Scotland incorporating freemasonry and Princess Scota(bh). Similar stories are widespread in Ireland where Scota is allegedly buried in Kerry in Gleann Scoithin, now known as Foley’s Glen. Scotia was another ancient name for Ireland. Andrew Power expands on the Scota story in his Ireland: Land of the Pharaohs [1026] as well as Ralph Ellis [1684] and Loraine Evans [1781].

This claim of an Egyptian link with Ireland has been recently repeated by Steve Preston in his Egyptians in Ireland [1183]. David Halpin, an Irish writer from Carlow, has also written a three-part paper on the connections between Egypt with Ireland(av).

Pyramids of Egypt

The actual number of Egyptian pyramids recorded is variously cited as 118 or as many as 138. However, the greatest number of pyramids is to be found in Sudan, with around twice as many as Egypt, but are far less spectacular(df).

August 2012 brought a report(u) that two possible new Egyptian pyramid complexes have been discovered using Google Earth. However, subsequent inspection on the ground showed them to be less interesting(v).

Egypt’s oldest pyramid is generally accepted as that of King Djoser (2687-2668 BC), a six-stepped structure at Saqqara(dh).

Giza

For anyone coming to the subjects of the pyramids and Sphinx at Giza for the first time should begin by reading Giza The Truth [1690] by Ian Lawton and Chris Ogilvie-Herald, which offers a unique overview of the place, the personalities and the politics involved in the 3 square kilometres of this amazing site.

>Jason Colavito noted [1876.8] that with a height of 455 feet (139 metres) it was “the tallest building on Earth until it was finall surpassed in 1311” by Britain’s Lincoln Cathedral.<

A site providing a wonderful 360º view of the Giza Plateau is now available(m). while another site offers a remarkable panoramic aerial view(t).

Another site offers a remarkable collection of old images of the pyramids dating back to the mid-nineteenth century(be). Also in the 19th century, a book by Dr Everett W. Fish can give modern readers a flavour of ideas regarding the pyramids to be found in the 1880s(du).

Wim Verhart has written a paper in which he argues the pyramids on the Giza Plateau were designed with an overall mathematical plan in mind((dz).

Another matter that has caused continual controversy is the layout of the three Giza pyramids. Robert Bauval is probably best known as the original promoter of the Orion Correlation Theory, which claims that the layout of the three principal Giza pyramids mirrors ‘Orion’s Belt’ in that constellation. This received widespread coverage when it was outlined in The Orion Mystery [1707]. written by Bauval and Adrian Gilbert and in Keeper of Genesis [1050]. written with Graham Hancock, published two years later. In fact, Bauval first published his theory in 1989 in Discussions in Egyptology(cw).

In a paper(ft) published on Graham Hancock’s website in 2022, Freddy Silva proposed an additional OCT – in Scotland. He suggested that the Pyramids of Giza, and by extension, Orion’s Belt matched the layout of the three stone circles of Stenness, Brodgar and Bookan. In the same paper, he goes further identifying other megalithic monuments in Scotland with counterparts in Sardinia and Armenia!

However, Andrew Collins has disputed the OCT and has instead offered evidence that the alignment of the three principal Giza pyramids matches more closely the ‘wing’ stars of the Cygnus constellation than the ‘belt’ of Orion!(dg).

Early 2020 brought a claim by amateur historian Matt Sibson that there had been a fourth large pyramid at Giza. His contention is based on a sketch by a Danish sea captain, Frederik Ludvig Norden, in 1737, that appears to show this fourth edifice. The only explanation offered for its disappearance is that it was dismantled in the 1700s to build the city of Cairo! I would have thought that considering the effort required to dismantle a pyramid from the top down would have been much greater than quarrying new blocks. The larger pyramid blocks would need to be cut anyway. Then you would expect that at least the base or its location would still be identifiable today! This is just another incredible attention-seeking effort by Sibson(eo).

Manu Seyfzadeh wrote a lengthy paper(di). on the orientation of one particular minor stepped pyramid on Elephantine Island on the Nile. He concluded that it was associated with Sirius, which was so important to the ancient Egyptians as the heliacal rising of Sirius coincided with the summer solstice which heralded the next flooding of the Nile.

While the theory of Bauval & Gilbert is very well known, a more elaborate claim was proposed by Scott Creighton in his The Giza Oracle [1817], in which he suggests that 11 pyramids in the Giza complex along “with the Great Sphinx forms a grand ‘Precession Wheel’, indicating key dates from humankind’s remote past – and indeed, its future”!(cy)

Hans Jelitto has put forward the idea that the three pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure at Giza were intended to represent the three inner planets of our Solar System, Mercury, Venus and Earth(fl)!

John Patrick Hill, an independent researcher, claims that “Barringer Crater, Stonehenge and Giza are all related to one another.” He tells us that the distance between the outside corners of the main Giza pyramids is 0.72 miles which is the exact diameter of the Barringer Crater! As Michael Caine would say “Not many people know that” (dv). Hill had this paper published on the Academia.edu website, but it has now been removed. I have saved a copy, without images, as Archive 6555. He has also managed to produce a paper(fu) combining catastrophism and Roman Catholicism!!!

Further alignment claims and debate relating to two shafts that some believe were originally directed at particular stars(cx).

Date of the Egyptian Pyramids

The Pyramids of Egypt are generally accepted today to have been constructed in the third millennium BC in the period 2700 – 2150 BC. However, some investigators have inferred much greater antiquity for some of these remarkable structures particularly the Great Pyramid (G.P.) at Giza. They believe that pushing back the date for the construction of the Great Pyramid and/or Sphinx endorses the possibility that Plato’s early date of 9600 BC for the Atlantean War is factual.

>Jason Colavito [1876.95] has noted that some of the Muslim scholars of the Middle Ages attributed an early date to the construction of the pyramids, possibly before Noah’s Deluge!<

Hossam Aboulfotouh calculated the date of the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza as 3055 BC, which he claims was also the time of the Deluge or what he refers to as the “tsunami of the Mediterranean”.(da)(db)

Perhaps related to the Deluge is the claim from archaeologist Sherif el Morsi that he has evidence that indicates that the Great Pyramid had been covered by seawater(em)(en).

David Rohl in his introduction to Andrew CollinsGateway to Atlantis [072]  refers to the work of Egyptologist Kate Spence who “demonstrated that the north alignment of all the Old Kingdom pyramids shifted through time in the relative position of the circumpolar stars. This tracking of the north celestial pole (relative to the stars) plots the known wobble in the earth’s axis of rotation (referred to as precession), which can be dated using astronomical retrocalculations.”  Spence concluded that the Great Pyramid had been built c.2470 BC(ej). Archaeastronomer Giulio Magli has taken issues with some of Spence’s claims(ek).

Ralph Ellis, a British researcher, has investigated the erosion to be seen at Giza, Meidum, and Dashur and concluded [0517] that there is evidence for 8000 BC or an even earlier date for the construction of these structures(a). Ellis also has an article on the internet outlining his evidence for an earlier date for the construction of the Great Pyramid. More recently Robert Schoch announced the discovery of evidence of erosion INSIDE the Great Pyramid suggesting that a more ancient core had been exposed to the elements for a long period before being built upon to give us the structure we have today.

Edgar Cayce ‘revealed’ in 1932 that the Great Pyramid was built over a hundred years from 10,490 to 10,390 BC(ap). At the other end of the time spectrum, Huang Heqing, a professor in the Department of Art & Archaeology at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, amused the world with the claim that the Egyptian pyramids were built in the 19th century, he goes further and maintains “that all the achievements of ancient Western cultures were fabricated in the nineteenth century”, including the Parthenon, the Temple of Zeus in Athens and the ruins of Persepolis in Iran(cu).

The late Joseph Jochmans related [0518] how it was recorded that the outer casing stones showed water marks halfway up the height of the Pyramid before the Arabs removed them. Geologists have found evidence of a final catastrophic flooding event in Egypt circa 10,000 BC. Furthermore, radiocarbon dating of organic inclusions in a fourteen-foot layer of silt around the base of the Great Pyramid offered a date of around 9600 BC.

This suggested extended age for the pyramids has been incorporated into the argument to prove the possible existence of other advanced ancient civilisations that were concurrent with the 9600 BC date given by Solon for the antiquity of Atlantis.

Understandably, these revolutionary ideas have been met with fierce opposition by established archaeologists. This is a debate that will run for some time yet.

The earliest historical references to the pyramids can be found in early Egyptian and Greek documents(ch). However, the oldest known papyri, discovered at the Egyptian site of Wadi el-Jarf offer evidence supporting a date of about 2500 BC for the construction of the Great Pyramid, which reinforces conventional dating theories. One of the documents, written by Merer an overseer, records details of the construction of the final stages of the G.P.(ce). This, of course, seriously undermines the extended antiquity of the pyramids by proponents such as Graham Hancock.

Zecharia Sitchin, the controversial ‘alternative’ historian, entered the fray in 1980, with the claim that the only concrete evidence that the Great Pyramid had been built by Khufu, was an inscription forged by Colonel Richard Howard-Vyse(d). (see below). Philip Coppens has also written an article(cq). about Sitchin’s claim. The Howard-Vyse forgery debate has been stirred up again by a researcher, Scott Creighton, who produced copies of Howard-Vyse’s papers to support the claim of fraud(ah). If true, this would lend some support to a redating of the structure.

2014 began with a report that two Germans, Dominique Goerlitz and Stefan Erdmann, had chiselled off part of the ‘Vyse’ cartouche from inside the Great Pyramid, which led to an international incident. They claim that the objective of their foolhardy act was to demonstrate that the Pyramid is older than generally accepted and was a remnant of the Atlantean empire(z). A March 2015 statement issued by Dr Goerlitz offers a quite different view of the episode(ei). I have published an English translation as Archive 6944. The initial claim seems to have originated with Zahi Hawass in an attack on Robert Bauval(fn).

At the opposite end of the speculation spectrum is a recent book by Emmet Sweeney, The Pyramid Age [0520], in which he claims that the pyramids were in fact far more recent and bravely suggests a date of around 800 BC for their construction. In this regard, it is to be recorded that the Bible makes not the vaguest reference to one of the greatest wonders of the ancient world. It has been erroneously stated that Herodotus, a prolific recorder of trivia who claims to have travelled as far south as Elephantine, failed to mention the pyramids. This is not true, as can be seen in Book II of his Histories 124-134. However, it is possible that it was meant to say that Herodotus did not refer to the Sphinx! It has been claimed that he was describing the pyramids at Dashur and not Giza(ao)!

In May 2013, Peter James, a structural engineer, published a new theory on why the building of pyramids ceased(x).

The Pyramid Builders

For a long time, it was thought that the pyramids had been built by slaves, possibly Israelites. Recent years have seen this idea debunked(at)(fd). and reinforced by papyri put on display for the first time in July 2016, which indicates that the pyramid builders were paid and were not slaves (or extraterrestrials)(be)(dy). However, a 2017 paper by Damien Mackey has reverted to claiming that the Jews were slaves who contributed to the building of the pyramids(fs).

A more sober review of the development of pyramid building and the technology involved was offered by Owen Jarus in June 2016(bo).

Unfortunately, there are some commentators such as von Däniken [1333.95], who have attributed the construction of the Great Pyramid to extraterrestrials, who cannot accept that the Egyptians built the pyramids, in desperation have interpreted the existence of the pyramids as ‘evidence’ of extraterrestrial visitations!(ae).    

One such proponent is Peter Lemesurier who identifies the Elohim of the Old Testament as the designers of the GP and that they came from the star Sirius [1798]. He claims that they left prophetic messages in the structure of the GP for humanity.

Many and varied are the claims regarding the pyramid builders and their methods, including that they were built by refugees from Atlantis(bl). In October 2017 Gerry Cannon & Malcolm Hutton claimed (bx).  that the Great Pyramid was built by an advanced civilisation, which may have been Atlantis! Graham Hancock holds similar views.

Gernot L. Geise offers the following comment, “In order not to have to trouble some extraterrestrials for the construction of the pyramids, an early human high culture can certainly be assumed. The available periods of time for the development of such cultures are completely sufficient after Cremo & Thompson proved that “modern man” is already millions of years older than conventional science would have us believe.

The pyramids of Giza present me with the following picture: The builders of the pyramids – whoever they were, wherever they got their knowledge from and wherever they came from – possessed a high level of technology that was far superior to ours today. This is an inevitable fact, because the pyramids prove it: we cannot (yet) rebuild them with our current technology. However, Pharaoh Cheops (if he existed) would probably have laughed out loud if he had been told at the time that future archaeologists would have interpreted his little temples around the pyramid as a sign that he had built the gigantic structure…”(fj)

Even more entertaining is a claim by two Irishmen, Francis J. and Francis P. Ward, that druids from Ireland, which they consider to have been Atlantis, built the pyramids at Giza!(bt) 

Rico Paganini is the creator of the Giza Legacy website that offers some interesting titbits of background information relating to the Giza structures(eg). Much of the content consists of excerpts from his book of the same name. However, when he came to discuss a possible Atlantean connection he completely fell off the cliff of reality as the excerpt below reveals!

“According to the ancient tales, the Atlanteans lived according to the role model of the Lemurians. There were three Atlantean cycles or three periods when civilization flourished in the Atlantic era. People there are said to have had mental skills including telepathy (which remained active among the Aborigines in Australia until the 20th century), telekinesis, teleportation and similar powers. This made them seem like gods to other cultures to the east and west of Atlantis. The Atlanteans were technically adept and built megalithic structures, such as the great pyramids in Giza. However, in the later period the people in Atlantis had begun to place their own wills above that of their kings, and priests and even above the will of the gods, until, as happened before when Lemuria flourished, they were attacked from outer space.” Consequently, I suggest that you treat anything that he has written with great caution.

The Great Pyramid Building Methods

It has been suggested that the course of the Nile was different at the time of the pyramid building, which together with canals enabled the building materials to be brought closer to the Giza Plateau, saving time and effort(fh).

The idea that a gently sloping ramp was used has been a popular idea for a long time, but weaknesses in the concept were soon apparent. For example, the material required to build some of the proposed ramps, with the required incline, would have been greater than the pyramid itself. Franz Löhner developed what he calls a ‘rope roll’ to demonstrate that simple technology available to the Egyptians could have been used to lift the pyramid’s blocks into place. Löhner has worked in a quarry and consequently has an intimate knowledge of the practicalities involved. He has co-authored a book (German only) [1590], with Dr Heribert Illig which expands on his idea, and has developed an interesting website(cg), in English and German, with further information.

The most persistent question relating to the pyramids and in fact all megalithic structures is “how did they manage to build them using such large heavy rocks and blocks”? Many ingenious solutions are on offer but perhaps the most remarkable is that proposed by W. T. Wallington who has demonstrated(n)  that using basic materials, which were available to the Egyptians, one individual can manipulate a 4500kg stone block. His website includes a remarkable video clip of his method. A review(bu) of this video is worth a read. More recently a collaboration between Matter Design and CEMEX Global R&D has demonstrated that irregularly shaped cement objects weighing many tons can be moved easily by hand, suggesting that the manpower required to build many ancient monuments was far less than is generally assumed today. The conclusion is that technique is the key to how many of the ‘impossible’ structures of the past were constructed(ci)Ashley Cowie has written an article in which he looks at how these techniques may have been applied to the construction of the megalithic walls of Cuzco in Peru, the ancient capital of the Inca(cj).  Cowie also holds that a huge earthquake caused a major change in Inca construction methods(ck)

 Two suggestions that still have considerable support are that (A) many of the stone blocks were ‘cast’ in situ as proposed by Joseph Davidovits(bm) and (B) that an internal ramp within the pyramid was used as claimed by Jean-Pierre Houdin(bn).

Antoine Gigal has drawn attention to another proposal of some years ago from Hasan Sayid Ahmed, who claims that the ascending and descending passages were used as ramps(el).

In 2006, Dr Michel Barsoum of Drexel University of Philadelphia claimed to have proof that the Egyptians had used lime-based cement in the building of the pyramids(cz)

What may be relevant was what was found at Giza(bk) and described as ‘melted limestone’, which led Robert Schoch to consider it the result of a ‘plasma event’.

Margaret Morris offers a comprehensive account of the features of the Great Pyramid and possible construction methods on her website(bb) and in three books [683][1200][1201]. Morris is a supporter of Joseph Davidovits who proposed the controversial idea that the building blocks of the Pyramid were cast in situ.

In 2007, petrographer, Dipayan Jana, refuted Davidovits’ theory and as far as I’m aware, no rebuttal has been forthcoming from either Davidovits or Morris. Later in 2008, Ioannis Liritzis and his team also challenged the theory of Davidovits, when they pointed out that the material used to build Egypt’s most famous monuments “contain hundreds of thousands of marine fossils” that are distributed throughout the rock in a manner compatible with natural rock(dd)

However, it struck me that if Davidovits was correct, this ‘rock’ might instead be some of his liquid geopolymer that had been spilt and hardened in the sun!

In 2019, Fehmi Krasniqi produced a three-and-a-half-hour video(cv)  on the building of the Egyptian pyramids, primarily based on Davidovits’ claim that the Egyptians used a form of concrete to make the building blocks in situ. However, Krasniqi ventures beyond Egypt, suggesting that the ancient Egyptians travelled to America, stopping off for supplies in Atlantis, now the Azores.

Davidovits has also gone beyond Egypt for evidence of artificial stone being used to create some ancient monuments, in Tiwanaku, Puma Punku and Easter Island(ff). While it is beyond my competence to argue with Davidovits’ chemistry, there are a number of details that still trouble me. In Egypt, the proposal that pyramid blocks were cast rather than carved, there are no images in any of the tombs and temples portraying such a practice. Secondly, casting implies the use of moulds, of which no remains have been found and finally a study of the Great Pyramid reveals that the blocks are of many different sizes, which would require a multiplicity of different moulds in a country where timber is in very short supply.

The catchpenny.org  website agrees that “the theory is very nice and well-described. Unfortunately, it totally ignores a huge body of evidence. Davidovits works hard to explain away the existing quarries, the abundance of tools found during the Third and Fourth Dynasties, and the decrease in pyramid quality after the Fourth Dynasty.” (dq)

A 2014 study(ag)  revealed that the Egyptians were able to move the pyramid building blocks over wet sand. “By using the right quantity of water they could halve the number of workers needed.” This is comparable with the documented method employed by the Chinese to transport 200/300-ton blocks used in the construction of their ‘Forbidden City’(ai).  In October 2018 it was revealed that the remains of a ramp flanked by two staircases with postholes were discovered at an ancient quarry at Hatnub in Egypt’s Eastern Desert. “Using a sled which carried a stone block and was attached with ropes to these wooden posts, ancient Egyptians were able to pull up the alabaster blocks out of the quarry on very steep slopes of 20 percent or more.”(cf).  While this may explain how blocks could have been moved, with relative ease, to pyramid-building sites, it does not tell us how the pyramids were actually constructed.

Mario Pincherle in his book, La Grande  Piramide [1835], offers a radical explanation of how the Egyptians raised the huge granite slabs used to roof the King’s Chamber and the relieving chambers above it. Pincherle studied Herodotus’ references to the pyramids and concluded that an ingenious process of wetting and then drying wooden blocks, slowly forced the slabs up the slope of the Great Gallery(dk).

Twenty years ago Chris Dunn wrote an interesting article for Atlantis Rising magazine(es) in which he discussed the possible reasons for constructing the relieving chambers in the manner that the Egyptians did, concluding that they did so because the granite beams above the King’s chamber were an essential and integral part of making this pyramid machine……hum!!!! Subsequent editions of AR brought further comments from readers on the subject(et).

In an article(ew) by Steven Mehler, he wrote that “Chris Dunn suggests that there is evidence that the Great Pyramid may have experienced a cataclysmic event, an explosion, some time in its distant past which ended its role as an active power plant, a machine, which Dunn proposes was its primary function. I further advanced Dunn’s hypothesis of an explosion in the pyramid in my book, The Land of Osiris.”

Australian Paul Hai has now offered an ingenious suggestion for the construction of the pyramids using an unusual pulley system. He arrived at this theory based on components that are still available and decoding of chapter one of the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel combined with some comments from Herodotus. He offers all this in an extensive and fully illustrated website(fg) as well as a book Raising Stone 1 [1941].

By way of complete contrast is the opinion of Gernot L. Geise, who, as a guest author offered a controversial paper on the Atlantisforschung.de website with the self-explanatory title of ‘The Giza pyramids were not built by ancient Egyptians’(dl). He maintains that the Egyptians lacked the technology to build the pyramids, but instead, were constructed by a much older and more advanced civilisation.

Naturally. there are those among us, who will never be happy with conventional explanations and the mystery of the Egyptian pyramid-building methods has provided an ideal opportunity to serve up exotic solutions. One of the most commonly offered is that some form of levitation was employed; a claim usually based on an account by Al-Masudi, who reported that a ‘magic papyrus’ was used(dn). Others have claimed the use of sound to achieve levitation. However, although this is theoretically possible it has been shown to be impractical(do). This idea of acoustics being used in some obscure manner was introduced in a theory that claimed the use of ‘tuning forks’(fr).

Nick Redfern, best known for his books on UFOs, alien abductions and conspiracy theories, has now published How Antigravity Built the Pyramids[2061], a title that tells you all you need to know(fy).

[I should mention that William Bramley also published a book entitled The Gods of Eden in 1989 [1942]+]

Lawton & Ogilvie-Herald discuss the possible use of sonic levitation in the building of the pyramids in Giza the Truth [1690.203]. However, They were at the receiving end of criticism from the late John Anthony West in 2000, when West published an article in Atlantis Rising magazine that ended with a scornful “The point is that the facile assurances given by Ogilvie-Herald/Lawton endorsing the orthodox view are illegitimate, their exclusion of contrary, genuinely informed opinion is typical of their selective bogus scholarship, and their long-winded acoustic levitation hypothesis is pure speculation and self-contradictory besides. We still don’t know how the pyramids were built/ Period. Full stop.”(er)

Alan Alford discussed the acoustics of the Great Pyramid in Pyramid of Secrets [010] and in a paper in Atlantis Rising magazine #50(ez).

Nevertheless, a paper entitled ORMUS and Pyramids by Barry Carter refers extensively to the work of Dr Philip Callahan (see: Smutny, Pavel | (atlantipedia.ie) who has associated paramagnetism and the Great Pyramid(dt).

Mike Molyneaux offers a study of the building techniques of the ancient Egyptians and their application to the construction of the pyramids and the raising of obelisks(dp).

In a paper by Domenic A. Narducci III entitled In Control of the Pyramids in which he outlines the need for Geometric Control (GC) that must have been employed in the building of the pyramids. He defines GC as “a system of procedures that establishes and then maintains the geometry of a structure during the course of the construction process.” He offers a detailed description of the procedures used by the Egyptians(ec).

Great Pyramid’s Function

Edward Malkowski supports(ax)  the ideas of Edward Kunkel(ay)  and John Cadman(az), who believed that the Great Pyramid was designed to function as a water pump. However, Malkowski goes further, suggesting that this pump was used to generate subtle electrical fields that were used to assist plant growth, which seems unnecessary, considering the fertility of the Nile Valley was renewed naturally by the annual flooding of the river.

Frank Joseph also referred to Kunkel’s theories in an Atlantis Rising article in edition #56(fa). Two issues later, Joseph returned to this idea of the Great Pyramid having an electrical function. The title of the article was Atlantis and the Great Pyramid, so to justify the inclusion of Atlantis he added The citadel of Atlantis, where the holy-of-holies was enshrined, as defined by Plato, was the same diameter (seven hundred fifty-eight feet) as the base side of the Great Pyramid. This revelation becomes clear only after the dimensions of the citadel, as given in Greek stadia for Plato’s account, are transposed into an original Egyptian unit of measurement, known as the aroura.” His fertile imagination did not bring him to explain what the other two huge pyramids at Giza were for!(fb)

The American scientist Philip Callahan, like Malkowski, proposed that the electromagnetic properties of the pyramid were used to enhance agricultural production and added “I am firmly convinced that the pyramids, both Egyptian and Central American, were huge antigravity structures for levitating the priests.

The pyramid acted like a huge “enlarger-type” condensing lens which concentrated the cosmic energy into the hollow resonant stone tower, which in turn was filled with the IR-paramagnetic, organic breath of chanting priests.”(fv)

Hermann Waldhauser has also proposed that a hydraulic system was used in the Great Pyramid as explained in a series of articles by Stefan Erdmann(fi).

Steven Myers has written two books(ba) on the subject of ancient Egyptian hydraulics.

In 2001, Joseph P. Farrell published The Giza Death Star [1917*], in which he claimed that the Great Pyramid had been designed as a weapon of mass destruction! His website has a number of papers relating to the pyramids(eu).

In 2009, Dean Talboys published his theory(co).  which suggests that the remarkable internal features of the GP, including the King’s Chamber and the Grand Gallery, were part of a device that used seawater to generate enough torque to drive an electric dynamo. Talboys suddenly ends his dissertation with the unexpected admission that “we are still left with the problem of what to do with the electricity it generates we could, at least, be a little closer to understanding why someone went to all that trouble”!

Nearly half a century ago, Kurt Mendelssohn (1906-1980), a physics professor put forward the idea in The Riddle of the Pyramids [1885] that “what mattered was not the pyramid – it was the building of it. The pyramid does not represent an aim in itself but the means to achieve an aim: the creation of a new form of society. These huge heaps of stone mark the place where man invented the state.”

Many and varied are the theories that have been put forward regarding the intended function of the Great Pyramid. A most recent (Jan.2021) has been offered by Konstantin Borisov, who suggested that the purpose of the Great Pyramid of Giza was to emit free electrons to the Ionosphere, to create light on the planet! This capability was enhanced by Giza’s location near the maximum geographical centre of Earth and the use of nummulitic limestone in the construction of the Great Pyramid! Further details are revealed in an article published on the Ancient Origins website(ct).

Donald E. Jennings has speculated that the Great Pyramid and its polished, and possibly painted casing stones, could have sent sunlight from the pyramids to other important locations.(dj) Today, only remnants of the original layer of casing stones remain. This is often explained as the result of being removed to be used as a building material for the expanding nearby Cairo. Another explanation on offer is that the casing stones were shed by earthquakes. Some years ago, Will Hart published an article in Atlantis Rising #42-43(ex) in which he questioned both of these theories.   

2014 also saw the publication of Pyramid Gravity Force(ac) by John Shaughnessy in which he claims that “The pyramids were built to prevent and/or control tectonic plate movement, volcanic activity, tidal waves, major earthquakes, land movements and the magnetic field movements on Earth.” I suggest that all the Amazon reviews be read before purchasing.

It was recently revealed(ar). that, Ben Carson, a former Republican candidate for the US presidency, once proposed to an assembly of students at Andrews University that the Egyptian pyramids were built to store grain! This idea has been traced back to the sixth century when there was a belief that the pyramids had been the granaries of Joseph, as Julius Honorius (Cosmographia, c. 500 CE), Antoninus of Piacenza (Itinerary 43, c. 570 CE), and Geoffrey of Tours (History of the Franks 1.10, 594 CE), among others, all testify! This theory was later popularized by works such as ‘The Book of John Mandeville’, a hugely popular 14th-century travelogue.”(bs). Jason Colavito has pointed out [1876.63] that this silly idea was debunked in 1646 by Professor John Greaves.

In early 2021, Konstantin Borisov published his hi-tech explanation for the purpose of the GP which he proposed “was to emit free electrons to the Ionosphere, to create light on the planet . The hydrogen gas produced in the subterranean chamber was used as a source of electrons needed for the process.” (ef).

John DeSalvo has gathered a collection of old theories, many dating from the 19th century, regarding the purpose of the pyramids. They range from interesting to amusing(fo).

Perfection of the Great Pyramid!

Among the numerous mysteries related to the Great Pyramid is the fact that each side of the structure is actually slightly concave, making it the only known eight-sided pyramid (pedants would probably claim nine sides, including the base). This feature was first photographed in 1940(al). Jean-Paul Bauval has written a paper on this concavity, arguing that it was a design feature and not a construction error. He goes further and proposes “that the geometry generated by the concavity on the overall shape of the monument shows a clear relationship, whether intended or by accident, between the Egyptian Royal Cubit (RC) to the meter unit (m). Finally, this geometrical design has the peculiarity of creating a ‘virtual space’ at the top of the monument on which might have been placed a spherical object”(cr).

The assumed accuracy of the orientation and dimensions of the Great Pyramid was recently called into question by Mark Lehner and Glen Dash(bj).

Apart from the disputed question of the age of the Great Pyramid, its very structure has prompted its own share of debate with persistent claims that its location, dimensions, and orientation have significance in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, and geography. Lists of these connections are available online(p).

A June 2016 report revealed(bc). that the builders of the Great Pyramid had made a very minor miscalculation resulting in the west side being around 5 inches longer than the east side. The research team, led by Dash and Lehner, also noted that the pyramid is not oriented as precisely with the cardinal points as we have been led to believe since “The pyramid’s north-south axis (or meridian) runs 3 minutes 54 seconds west of due north while its east-west axis runs 3 minutes 51 seconds north of due east, he told Live Science. The east-west axis also runs through the center of a temple built on the east side of the pyramid. These measurements mean that the Great Pyramid is oriented just slightly away from the cardinal directions, the degree of error from north-south and east-west being almost the same.” However, these very minor defects cannot detract in any way from the magnificence of the structure constructed so long ago.

In a 2018 paper(ca), Glen Dash returned to the very slight misalignment of the Great Pyramid with the cardinal points.“The builders of the Great Pyramid of Khufu aligned the great monument to the cardinal points with an accuracy of better than four minutes of arc or one-fifteenth of one degree.” Dash claims that the engineers who designed the plans for the Great Pyramid used the fall equinox to seamlessly align this pyramid to the cardinal points. “He also claims that all three major Giza pyramids exhibit the same degree of error in that they are rotated slightly counter-clockwise from the cardinal points.”(fe)In fact, all three of the largest Egyptian pyramids – two at Giza and one at Dahshur – are remarkably aligned, in a way you wouldn’t expect to see from an era without drones, blueprints, and computers.

Manfred Greifzu has also written a fairly forensic study of the orientation of the Giza pyramids for the atlantisforschung.de website(dm).

November 2017 began with an exciting claim published in Nature magazine(bv). that a huge cavity had been identified above the Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid of Giza. This discovery was made using non-invasive technology, which suggests that physical verification will require some degree of interference with the structure of the pyramid, which may not be allowed by the Egyptian authorities. The initial announcement was quickly followed by a refutation of the claim of a void over the Grand Gallery by Zahi Hawass(bw). Nevertheless, further investigation now (2019) seems to have confirmed the existence of this void(cn).

Not long after, it was reported in the UK’s Daily Mail that an Italian archaeoastronomer, Giulio Magli, believes that the void at the centre of the Great Pyramid houses a throne made from meteorites, used to help the pharaoh in the afterlife(bz). Magli has previously received public notice with a paper that explored the possibility that Göbekli Tepe had been constructed to “celebrate and successively follow the appearance of a new, extremely brilliant star in the southern skies: Sirius.”(ca).

Moving forward to March 2023 we had the dramatic announcement that a 30 feet-long and over 6-foot wide corridor had been identified inside the north side of the Great Pyramid. This was the result of investigations by the ‘Scanpyramids‘ project carried out since 2016(fp)(fq).

PYRAMIDIOCY

In 2020, some notes of Isaac Newton’s from the 1680s were auctioned, which revealed Newton’s interest in the pyramids. It seems that “Newton was trying to uncover the unit of measurement used by those constructing the pyramids. He thought it was likely that the ancient Egyptians had been able to measure the Earth and that, by unlocking the cubit of the Great Pyramid, he too would be able to measure the circumference of the Earth.” (cs).

The pseudoscience of pyramidology took off in the 19th century, with a range of outlandish claims(aq), based on external and/or internal dimensions of the Great Pyramid, supporting anything from the British Israelites or the early Jehovah’s Witnesses to being a source of divine prophecy!

In the 20th century, Adam Rutherford, a British Israelite, founded The Institute of Pyrmidology in 1940. Between 1957 and 1974, Rutherford published a set of four books on the subject, although a fifth volume was planned [1772]. When Adam died, his son James took over the Institute, but following his death in a car accident, the Institute ended.

Also in the mid-20th century, we had crazy pyramid ideas being offered by John O. Kinnaman including a report that “Dr Kinnaman said that during their 1924 investigation of the Great Pyramid they (Kinnaman & Petrie) located a hidden vault which contained amazing technical objects, including what appeared to be an anti-gravity machine or parts of such a machine, and thousands of crystal prisms which they speculated may all have been brought from Atlantis.”(ed). Unsurprisingly, no evidence was produced.

Richard W. Noone is the author of 5/5/2000: The Ultimate Disaster which seems to have achieved near cult status. J. Douglas Kenyon wrote a favourable review of Noone and his book in Issue 14 (1999) of Atlantis Rising magazine (AR). Noone published a further article in AR #22 supporting his doomsday claim(eq)

 “Noone studied the mysterious mathematics of the Great Pyramid and calculated its cosmic calendar. He concluded that the end of history was pinpointed on May 5, 2000, and he correlated the doomsday date to a cataclysmic melting of the polar ice caps.” However, when Noone’s date for the promised catastrophe passed without any major event occurring, comments became more critical(ep).

Nevertheless, pyramidology was given a new twist in November 2015 when a Spanish architect, Miquel Pérez-Sánchez, added the old alphanumeric system of gematria to the mix and claimed that he had identified the name ‘Atlantis’ when ‘translating’ some of the dimensions in the structure of the Great Pyramid(by). Scott Onstott is also a modern advocate of the existence of Mathematical Encoding in the Great Pyramid.(as)

For those interested in the possible significance of numbers and the Great Pyramid, there are three related papers available on Keith M. Hunter’s website(aw). However, readers should be aware that “fringe pyramidologists persist in their claims despite a 1992 effort to debunk them by Dutch astrophysicist Cornelis de Jager, who demonstrated the dimensions of any object can be manipulated to yield a desired outcome; he derived the speed of light and the distance between the Earth and Sun from his measurements of a bicycle.”(fx)

Ralph Ellis, mentioned above, is a controversial English revisionist of biblical and ancient Egyptian history, who bravely argues(b) that Mount Sinai, of Ten Commandments fame, was in fact the Great Pyramid of Giza [656]! John Taylor (1781-1864) claimed in 1859 that Noah was the builder of the Great Pyramid [1451]. Even more imaginative was the claim by C.E. Getsinger in the 1920s that Noah’s Ark was in fact the Great Pyramid(bp)!

[1942]+ https://www.academia.edu/27402718/Bramley_William_The_Gods_of_Eden 

(a)  Archive2925

(b) Archive 2926

(d)  Archive 2494

(e) http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=207802

(f) Jeff Nisbet’s Mythomorph — Myth, History, and the Quest for Truth (archive.org) 

(g) EUROPEAN-PYRAMIDS – AMAZING DISCOVERIES IN EUROPE (archive.org)  

(h) http://www.touropia.com/largest-pyramids-in-the-world/

(i) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/worlds-oldest-pyramids-are-discovered-1353095.html

(j) Archive 2138

(k) http://www.gigalresearch.com/uk/pyramides-maurice.php

(l) (99+) (PDF) dating civilizations Jonathan Gray | NoStarPanel TruthSeeker – Academia.edu

(m) http://www.360cities.net/image/pyramid-of-khafre#105.63,0.00,96.0

(n) Pyramids, Stonehenge, Easter Island and the Great Pyramid explained by Wallace Wallington! (archive.org)

(o) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe-opinion-guest-authors/world-history-and-bosnian-pyramids-00220 *

(p) Archive 3620

(q) http://realitysandwich.com/132648/great_pyramid_garut/        

(r) Updated Part 1: Is There A Large Pyramid Underground Between Mt. McKinley and Nome, Alaska? – Earthfiles

(s) http://www.apparentlyapparel.com/2/post/2012/03/pyramids-of-glass-submerged-in-the-bermuda-triangle.html

(t) http://www.airpano.com/360Degree-VirtualTour.php?3D=Egypt-Cairo-Pyramids

(u) https://www.seeker.com/lost-egyptian-pyramids-found-1765918313.html

(v) https://web.archive.org/web/20161202051640/http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/04/13661093-see-the-google-pyramids-up-close?lite

(w)  https://web.archive.org/web/20150905142440/http://www.mountainguides.com/report_2006.shtml  (See Last Image)

(x) http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/mystery-solved-a-new-theory-about-why-egypt-stopped-building-pyramids/275738/

(y) http://beforeitsnews.com/beyond-science/2013/09/giant-underwater-pyramid-found-near-azores-island-associated-with-atlantis-portuguese-navy-investigating-2443658.html

(z) Why did two German ‘hobbyists’ deface a cartouche of Khufu inside the Great Pyramid and what does it have to do with Atlantis? (archive.org)

(aa) http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=255178&st=75

(ab) http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2013HYPERLINK “http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2013&id=375″&HYPERLINK “http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2013&id=375″id=375

(ac) https://web.archive.org/web/20200225142822/http://www.pyramidgravityforce.com/

(ad) https://web.archive.org/web/20190604070011/https://www.azores-pyramid.org/

(ae) http://robertjrgraham.com/?s=Pyramids  (link broken) 

(af) Archive 3619

(ag) http://phys.org/news/2014-04-ancient-egyptians-pyramid-stones-sand.html

(ah) Archive 2806

(ai) http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/incredible-discovery-reveals-how-chinas-forbidden-city-was-built-001001#!bdmL22

(aj) megalith-pyramiden.de (archive.org) 

(al) http://www.catchpenny.org/concave.html

(am) See: Archive 2564

(an) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00792v2

(ao) See: Archive 2818

(ap) The Stars Above, the Great Pyramid Below: 10,400 BCE | Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E. (archive.org)

(aq) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramidology

(ar) Ben Carson: Egyptian Pyramids Built For Grain Storage, Not By Aliens Or As Tombs (archive.org)

(as) http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa-opinion-guest-authors/mathematical-encoding-great-pyramid-002323

(at) http://www.jpost.com/Features/War-of-the-pyramid-theorists

(au) http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/once-hidden-plain-sight-and-surprisingly-ignored-great-pyramid-cholula-020650?utm_source=Ancient-Origins+Newsletter&utm_campaign=56d12fe000-Top_Trending_Stories_Dec_No2_REAL_14_12_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2dcd13de15-56d12fe000-85158329

(av) http://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/thoth-s-storm-new-evidence-ancient-egyptians-ireland-005187

(aw) Lost Age Secrets, World Mysteries & Forbidden Knowledge (archive.org) 

(ax) http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.ie/2012/01/new-theory-for-great-pyramid.html

(ay) https://web.archive.org/web/20191118024438/http://www.linux-host.org:80/energy/ebuilt.html 

(az) https://web.archive.org/web/20200318074200/http://sentinelkennels.com/Research_Article_V41.html

(ba) http://www.thepump.org/

(bb) Archive 3057

(bc) http://www.livescience.com/55118-great-pyramid-giza-is-slightly-lopsided.html

(bd) http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/researchers-confirm-recently-discovered-tonina-pyramid-largest-pyramid-mexico-020433?nopaging=1

(be) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3692283/The-diary-pyramid-builder-Oldest-papyrus-existence-details-workers-shifted-stones-sheep-ate-reveal-secrets-inside-Great-Pyramid-Giza.html 

(bf) https://web.archive.org/web/20180723084725/http://world-pyramids.com/en/

(bg) https://www.ancient-code.com/15-extremely-rare-ancient-images-of-the-pyramids-of-giza-youve-probably-never-seen/

(bh) http://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-europe/scota-mother-scotland-and-daughter-pharaoh-003798

(bi) http://dailygrail.com/Hidden-History/2016/8/The-Man-Who-Discovered-the-Bosnian-Pyramid-Answers-Critics

(bj) http://www.archaeology.org/issues/227-1609/trenches/4738-trenches-egypt-pyramid-measurement

(bk) http://www.dailygrail.com/Hidden-History/2016/8/What-Created-Melted-Limestone-Beside-the-Pyramids-Giza

(bl)  https://web.archive.org/web/20150627184535/https://dublinsmick.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/the-atlanteans-built-the-great-pyramid-not-the-egyptians/

(bm) https://www.geopolymer.org/archaeology/pyramids/are-pyramids-made-out-of-concrete-1/

(bn) Archive 3631

(bo) http://www.livescience.com/32616-how-were-the-egyptian-pyramids-built-.html

(bp) The Thomson Review, Thomson, Illinois, July 19th, 1922 – p.3

(bq) http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/04/mexico-is-hiding-the-world-s-largest-pyramid.html 

(br) https://web.archive.org/web/20200218000652/http://gizapyramid.com/oldphotos1.htm

(bs) http://io9.gizmodo.com/10-bizarre-theories-about-the-pyramids-that-dont-involv-1648634533

(bt) http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/02/the-great-pyramid-was-built-by-the-druids-of-ireland-1795923.html

(bu) https://www.anvilfire.com/bookrev/index.php?bodyName=wallington/forgotten_technology.htm&titleName=The%20Forgotten%20Technology%20by%20Wallace%20Wallington

(bv) http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaap/ncurrent/full/nature24647.html

(bw) https://phys.org/news/2017-11-egypt-archaeologist-criticises-pyramid-void.html

(bx) Archive 3618

(by) http://www.lavanguardia.com/lacontra/20151031/54437578233/la-contra-miquel-perez-sanchez-pla.html

(bz) https://nypost.com/2018/01/15/great-pyramid-may-have-throne-carved-from-ancient-meteorite/ *

(ca) http://www.nescientist.com/article/mg21929303.400-worlds-oldest-temple-built-to-worship-the-dog-star.html

(cb) An Archaeologist May Have Finally Unraveled The Mystery Of The Flawless Alignment Of The Great Pyramid Of Giza – The Inquisitr (archive.org) *

(cc) https://earthistheaim.wordpress.com/

(cd) https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/713508/Atlantis-found-proof-conspiracy-google-earth-underwater-pyramid-Mexico-video-google-maps

(ce) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-egypt-shipping-mining-farming-economy-pyramids-180956619/

(cf) https://www.livescience.com/63978-great-pyramid-ramp-discovered.html 

(cg) https://www.cheops-pyramide.ch/khufu-pyramid/e-mail.html

(ch) https://web.archive.org/web/20190105210122/http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/ghizahistoricaccounts.htm 

(ci) https://www.archdaily.com/915358/these-smart-megalithic-stones-can-move-and-assemble-easily-with-the-hands

(cj) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/ancient-megalithic-structures-0011761

(ck) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/machu-picchu-earthquake-0011195

(cl) https://www.eyeofthepsychic.com/nap_art4/ 

(cm) https://web.archive.org/web/20200219065954/http://www.robertschoch.net/Bosnian%20Geology%20Robert%20Schoch%20%20Pyramids%20Colette%20Dowell.htm

(cn) https://www.dailygrail.com/2019/11/mysterious-hidden-chamber-in-great-pyramid-confirmed-by-new-scans/

(co) https://old.world-mysteries.com/dtalboys_gp1.htm

(cp) https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://www.eyeofthepsychic.com/nap_art8/

(cq) https://web.archive.org/web/20190128150937/https://www.eyeofthepsychic.com/nap_art9/

(cr) https://www.academia.edu/27541864/THE_CONCAVITY_OF_THE_GREAT_PYRAMID_a_design_feature_Did_the_designer_know_the_Meter_Unit?email_work_card=view-paper 

(cs) Revealed: Isaac Newton’s attempts to unlock secret code of pyramids | Isaac Newton | The Guardian

(ct) Has the Function of the Great Pyramid of Giza Finally Come to Light? | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)

(cu) Art History Professor in China Claims Egyptian Pyramids Are Modern Fakes – JASON COLAVITO

(cv) The Movie Great Pyramid K 2019 – Director Fehmi Krasniqi – Bing video

(cw) Discussions in Egyptology, volume 13, 1989, pp. 7-18

(cx) https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/are-the-egyptian-pyramids-aligned-with-the-stars

(cy) The Giza Oracle: A New Theory Concerning the Design of the Pyramids of Giza – Graham Hancock Official Website 

(cz) Solving the Mysteries of the Pyramids | Drexel Engineering (archive.org) 

(da) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266350431_THE_HORIZON_THEORY_PART-I_ORIGINAL_CONCEPT_PLAN_OF_THE_PYRAMIDS_PLATEAU

(db) https://web.archive.org/web/20190603114325/http://www.geocities.ws/fotouh28/H-Aboulfotouh-Horizon-II.pdf

(dc) https://www.eyeofthepsychic.com/nap_art10/ 

(dd) Pyramids packed with fossil shells › News in Science (ABC Science) (archive.org)

(de) Zangkunchong : Ancient Art Homepage (archive.org)

(df) In The Reign Of The Black Pharaohs (freerepublic.com)

(dg) (99+) (PDF) Orion: The Eternal Rise of the Sky Hunter | Andrew Collins – Academia.edu 

(dh) https://www.ancient.eu/article/862/the-step-pyramid-of-djoser-at-saqqara/ 

(di) https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=79265

(dj) https://www.dailygrail.com/2021/04/the-shining-ones-did-the-egyptian-pyramids-produce-reflections-that-illuminated-other-sacred-sites/ *

(dk) http://www.gizapyramid.com/pincherle.htm  

(dl) Die Pyramiden von Gizeh wurden nicht von Altägyptern erbaut – Atlantisforschung.de  (Ger)

See: Archive 6401 | (atlantipedia.ie) (Eng)

(dm) Pyramid Puzzles – Atlantisforschung.de (German)

(dn) Understanding the Ancient Art of Levitation (liveabout.com) 

(do) https://brucedrinkwater.com/2016/12/01/acoustic-levitation-of-the-pyramids-is-theoretically-possible/

(dp) http://www.catchpenny.org/mmbuild.html

(dq) http://www.catchpenny.org/theories.html

(dr) https://eaglesanddragonspublishing.com/the-pyramids-of-ancient-greece/

(ds) Diamantis Koutoulas – Elliniki Agogi. Dec. 2001 p 1823

(dt) http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/pyramids.htm

(du) https://archive.org/details/egyptianpyramids00fish/page/n1/mode/2up?q=hyksos

(dv) Archive 6555 | (atlantipedia.ie)  

(dw) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/sep/07/ukraine.tomparfitt

(dx) https://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=8693.0

(dy) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/who-built-the-pyramids/ 

(dz) https://www.academia.edu/51260091/The_Mathematical_Layout_of_the_Giza_Plateau_RESUME

(ea) https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/chinese-pyramids-of-xian

(eb) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-asia/revealing-mysterious-story-koh-ker-pyramid-cambodia-008013 

(ec) In Control at the Pyramids – World Mysteries Blog (world-mysteries.com) 

(ed) http://thesecondsight.blogspot.com/2006/12/great-pyramid-of-lunacy.html 

(ef) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa/has-function-great-pyramid-giza-finally-come-light-009861 

(eg) https://evol-forum.ch/giza-en/?noredirect=en_US

(eh) Prehistorical History – GIZA-LEGACY (archive.org) 

(ei) Press Release by Dr. Dominique Goerlitz & Stefan Erdmann – Atlantisforschung.de 

(ej) (99+) (PDF) Ancient Egyptian chronology and the astronomical orientation of pyramids | Kate Spence – Academia.edu

(ek) https://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0307/0307100.pdf

(el) Who Solves The Mystery Of The Great Pyramid Building ? (gigalresearch.com) 

(em) The Menkara petrified shallow marine creature (gigalresearch.com) 

(en) https://curiosmos.com/fossil-discovery-suggests-the-pyramids-and-sphinx-were-submerged-under-water/ 

(eo) Missing Fourth Great Pyramid of Giza may Finally Have Been Found (thevintagenews.com) 

(eq) Atlantis Rising magazine #22  https://media.oiipdf.com/pdf/8cc846c3-42b2-4ec1-b499-50cb1008e2c0.pdf 

(er) Atlantis Rising magazine #23  http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At  

(es) Atlantis Rising magazine #29  http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At  

(et) Atlantis Rising magazine #31 http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At  

(eu) https://gizadeathstar.com/?s=great+pyramid  

(ev)Atlantis Rising magazine #35  http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At  

(ew)Atlantis Rising magazine #39  http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At  

(ex) Atlantis Rising magazine #42/43  http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At  

(ey) Pyramids Building | Atlantis in the Java Sea (atlantisjavasea.com) 

(ez) Atlantis Rising magazine  #50 http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At  

(fa) Atlantis Rising magazine  #56 http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At  

(fb) Atlantis Rising magazine  #58 http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At  

(fc) https://culturacolectiva.com/travel/russia-pyramids-kola-peninsula-discovery-older-egypt/ 

(fd) Records of the pyramid builders: discovering eye-witness accounts of a legendary construction project | The Past (the-past.com) 

(fe) The Secret of The Pyramids’ Perfect Alignment Might Be Explained After All (sciencealert.com) 

(ff) https://www.geopolymer.org/library/video/they-came-from-america-to-build-easter-island/ 

(fg) Ezekiel 1-29 decoded via the re-discovery of ancient Egypt’s four-lobe pinion-pulley via composite artifacts, proves Khufu’s Great Pyramid was constructed with mass production techniques requiring well developed critical flow analysis for perfect completion within the historically documented twenty year time-frame. (haitheory.com)

(fh) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/pyramid-builders-0017205  

(fi) Hermann Waldhauser’s Theory of the Great Pyramid Stefan Erdman (erdmann–forschung-de.translate.goog) (English) 

(fj) Die Pyramiden von Gizeh wurden nicht von Altägyptern erbaut – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) (Eng)

(fk) Is Atlantological diffusionism ‘old news’? – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) 

(fl) Hans Jelitto – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) 

(fm) Round pyramids – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) 

(fn) URGENT URGENT! BREAKING NEWS: EGYPT – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) 

(fo) THEORIES ON WHY THE GREAT PYRAMID WAS BUILT (gizapyramid.com) 

(fp) New discovery in Great Pyramid of Giza: A 30-foot hidden corridor (usatoday.com) 

(fq) Precise characterization of a corridor-shaped structure in Khufu’s Pyramid by observation of cosmic-ray muons | Nature Communications 

(fr) Mystery Of Tools Used To Build Giza Pyramids: What If They Were Never Lost? (howandwhys.com) 

(fs) https://mosesegyptianised.wordpress.com/2019/10/16/israelite-slaves-did-build-egypts-mighty-pyramids/ 

(ft) Scotland’s Hidden Sacred Past – Graham Hancock Official Website 

(fu) https://www.academia.edu/67887392/The_Younger_Dryas_Impact_A_Catholic_Perspective_Eden_was_our_shared_time_of_peace_on_Earth_From_Land_Dotted_with_Holy_and_Famous_Landmarks 

(fv) https://ayda.net/healthy-living-research-and-development/philip-callahan-an-entomologist/philip-callahan-and-round-towers/ 

(fw) http://portuguese-american-journal.com/pico-new-archeological-evidence-reveals-human-presence-before-portuguese-occupation-azores/ 

(fx) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/no-really-there-is-no-secret-code-in-the-pyramids-17662247/ 

(fy) Acoustic Levitation Today – Graham Hancock Official Website 

(fz) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/pyramid-kazakhstan-0019062 

(ga) Archive 2006 | (atlantipedia.ie) *

Ophir

Ophir is referred to in the Bible as a source of gold, silver, precious stones and exotic animals. King Solomon was reputed to have received a cargo of such goodies every three years, a detail which points to Ophir being a considerable distance from Israel.

The exact location of Ophir is the subject of continuing controversy. In broad terms the most popular regions suggested are, or have been, India(g), Africa(f) and the Americas(a), but they were not the only proposed locations, even Australia and the Solomon Islands were considered. Emilio Spedicato has opted for Tibet, where an ancient goldmine fits the bill, which he outlines in his paper entitled Ophir, It’s Location Unveiled(h).

There is also a claim that the Batanes Islands off the Northern Philippines held the site of Ophir(b). Further west, Dhani Irwanto has claimed that Punt was also known as Ophir(d) and was situated on Sumatera (Sumatra) in Indonesia(c). However, he went further and also located Atlantis in Indonesia in his book, Atlantis: The lost city is in the Java Sea [1093]. His chosen site is just north of Bawean Island in the Java Sea.

However, Irwanto was not the first to link Atlantis with Ophir, Theodore L. Urban was the author of a paper delivered to the Lancaster County Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1897. In it, he denied that Atlantis had been completely destroyed and argued that the biblical Ophir was in fact Atlantis, suggesting that it had been located in the Americas, which explained the three years that the round trip took(e).

>Jason Colavito has published articles written by Thomas Crawford Johnston in 1892(i) that he later developed into his 1913 book Did the Phoenicians Discover America [1902+] in which he places Ophir in America!

(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophir#Americas

(b) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZqYQpmRCx0

(c) https://atlantisjavasea.com/2015/11/14/land-of-punt-is-sumatera/

(d) https://atlantisjavasea.com/2019/06/16/land-of-ophir/

(e) https://openlibrary.org/works/OL10326701W/American_Indians (p.91)

(f) https://www.historicmysteries.com/lost-mine-ophir/

(g) https://www.britannica.com/place/Ophir

(h) OPHIR 27-10-09 (2010-q-conference.com)  *

(i) Phoenicians in America – JASON COLAVITO *

 

Landbridges

Landbridges, in biogeography, are described by Wikipedia as “an isthmus or wider land connection between otherwise separate areas, over which animals and plants are able to cross and colonize new lands. A land bridge can be created by marine regression, in which sea levels fall, exposing shallow, previously submerged sections of continental shelf; or when new land is created by plate tectonics; or occasionally when the sea floor rises due to post-glacial rebound after an ice age.”

In the distant past, landbridges are believed to have played a critical part in early human migration. Similarly, migration-routeslandbridges, both real and speculative are important components in many Atlantis theories. There is no doubt that the ending of the last Ice Age and the consequent rising sea levels led to the creation of islands where continuous land has previously existed. The separation of Ireland and Britain from each other and from mainland Europe is just one example, the latter leading to a number of writers identifying ‘Doggerland‘, which lay between Britain and Denmark as the home of Atlantis.

>The two most discussed landbridges were at the Bering Strait, where it is thought that it provided the gateway for humans to enter the Americas from Asia and an Atlantic landbridge, which was proposed as early as the 17th century when Francois Placet, a French abbot, who, in 1668, wrote “The break up of large and small world’s, as being demonstrated that America was connected before the flood with the other parts of the world.” A Scientific American article relates how “He argued that the two continents were once connected by the lost continent of “Atlantis” and the flood of the bible separated them.” (d)<

Later by John B. Newman in 1849 [488.8], who wrote that “in former times an island of enormous dimensions, named Atlantis, stretched from the north-western coast of Africa across the Atlantic ocean and that over this continental tract both man and beast migrated westward.

>Charles Frédéric Martins was a French botanist and geologist who was so intrigued by the similarity of geology as well as plant species on the Azores, Spain and Ireland that he suggested in his 1866 book, Du Spitzberg Au Sahara [1440],that these were physically linked in the distant past and that they may have been part of Atlantis(c).

Martins also said, in the Revue des Deux Mondes for March 1, 1867, “Now, hydrography, geology, and botany agree in teaching us that the Azores, the Canaries, and Madeira are the remains of a great continent which formerly united Europe to North America.”<

The Atlantic landbridge idea became quite popular by the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries and even as late as the 1970s when espoused by Rene Malaise(a), but is now completely abandoned. Ignatius Donnelly referred to such a landbridge as a ‘connecting plateau’ linking Europe, Africa and America that allowed plants and animals to cross in both directions.

Although there was only one suggestion that the Bering Strait was in any way connected with Plato’s Atlantis, several commentators identified an Atlantic landbridge as the ideal location for Plato’s Atlantis, particularly as he placed it in the Atlantic Sea. However, this should not be confused with the Atlantic Ocean, a word that had an entirely different meaning for the ancient Greeks.

The idea was initially put forward in order to explain the floral and faunal similarities shared by the Old World and the New World of the Americas. The hypothetical Atlantic landbridges or a series of steppingstone islands. also offered possible routes for the peopling of the Americas by Europeans and/or Africans. It was not long before the discovery of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge(b) seemed to confirm this idea. Then it was suggested that Atlantis existed on this landbridge, which was destroyed by rising sea levels after the last Ice Age, leaving just the Azores, Madeira and a few other islands as remnants.

A number of landbridges have been proposed for the Mediterranean and linked to a variety of Atlantis theories, the most notable being proposed for the straits of Gibraltar, Sicily, Messina and Bonifacio. Although it is evident that landbridges existed at most of these locations, to associate them with any particular Atlantis theory requires that the date of their existence is compatible with Plato’s narrative.

Less popular theories have been constructed involving landbridges in locations, such as the Caribbean and Indonesia.

(a) Atlantis, Vol.27, No.1, Jan-Feb 1974.

(b) From the Contracting Earth to early Supercontinents – Scientific American Blog Network

(c)  http://translate.google.com.mt/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k253383&prev=search *

(d)  https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/from-the-contracting-earth-to-early-supercontinents/ *

Punt *

Punt is the name given to a land with which the ancient Egyptians traded. The leading theory is that it was located to the southeast of Egypt, roughly occupying what is now called ‘the Horn of Africa, although there is also a popular view that it was situated on the Arabian Peninsula. Others suggest that a combination of parts of both regions might be nearer the truth. An article from November 2016 elaborates on the claim for this identification(e).

Punt

Along with the many luxury goods that Punt supplied to Egypt were baboons, so it was interesting to read in 2020 that “a new study tracing the geographic origins of Egyptian mummified baboons finds that they were sourced from an area that includes the modern-day countries of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, and Yemen, providing new insight into Punt’s location.”(i). The investigation centred on the strontium levels found in the ancient remains.

A November 2023 an article by Miriam Fauzia returned to the possibility that the baboons offered clues to the location of Punt and once again focused on East Africa, specifically the Eritrean location of the legendary port city known to the Romans as Adulis(n).

Thor Heyerdahl in The Tigris Expedition [1921] also identified the region around Djibouti as the land of Punt.

In 2013, a short book [1567] by Ahmed Ibrahim Awale, placed Punt in the same region, namely, in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland. A favourable and well-illustrated review(f) of Awale’s book is worth a read. The worldhistory.org website has pointed out that the name of the Puntland State of Somalia may preserve a memory of the original mythical Punt(h).

However, Immanuel Velikovsky wrote at length about Punt and its location in Palestine in Ages in Chaos [0039]. He maintains that Punt is consistently described as being to the east of Egypt, which would rule out Somalia. Added to this, he claimed that the Queen of Sheba and Queen Hatshepsut were one and the same person, a view endorsed by historical researcher Dr. Eva Danelius (1898-1995).

Others, such as Eulalio Eguia jr, identify the Queen of Sheba with Nefertiti(l). Velikovsky’s comments are certainly worth a read. Emmet Sweeney has adopted both Velikovsky’s location for Punt and his identification of the Queen of Sheba(j). Damien Mackey offers new evidence to support Velikovsky’s claims(m).

By way of contrast, David Lorton has offered a series of criticisms of Velikovsky’s Punt/Sheba ideas(k).

Frank Joseph in his Atlantis Encyclopedia[0104.37] claims that “the Lands of Punt (are) often associated with the islands of Atlantis.” Joseph expands on this in an Atlantis Rising article(a) where he refers to an ancient Egyptian story of “The Shipwrecked Sailor” in which the ‘Serpent King’ is identified as master of the island of Punt, which again Joseph claims to be Atlantis.

More recently, a small number of commentators have identified Punt/Atlantis with Indonesia(b)(c). Dhani Irwanto, who is a leading advocate of an Indonesian Atlantis[1093] published in November 2015 an extensive article online(d) in which he specifically names the Indonesian island of Sumatera (Sumatra) as the land of Punt. He has now expanded this into a book, Land of Punt: In Search of the Divine Land of the Egyptians [1628].  Irwanto goes further and also identifies the mysterious land of Ophir in the Bible as Punt.

Xavier Séguin proposed that Punt along with Atlantis, Mu and Hyperborea were in fact satellites(g)!!!

(a) See: Archive 2790

(b) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/atlantida_mu/esp_atlantida_3a.htm

(c) http://www.lost-civilizations.net/true-history-atlantis-2.html

(d) https://atlantisjavasea.com/2015/11/14/land-of-punt-is-sumatera/

(e) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa/somalia-ancient-lost-kingdom-punt-finally-found-006893?nopaging=1

(f) The Mystery of the Land of Punt Unravelled – book review | Land of Punt (archive.org) 

(g) https://eden-saga.com/en/mythology-deluge-cataclysm-plato-flood-atlantis-location-piri-reis-last-days-in-atlantis.html

(h) https://www.worldhistory.org/punt/?visitCount=48&lastVisitDate=2021-4-9&pageViewCount=64

(i) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201215082048.htm

(j) https://www.hope-of-israel.org/expeditionpunt.html 

(k) Hatshepsut, the Queen of Sheba, and Immanuel Velikovsky (archive.org) (new link)

(l) Nefertiti – The Queen of Sheba | PDF | Tutankhamun | Akhenaten (scribd.com) *

(m) (83) Solomon and Sheba | Damien Mackey – Academia.edu 

(n) https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/11/mummified-baboons-point-to-the-direction-of-the-fabled-land-of-punt/

 

Irwanto, Dhani

Dhani Irwanto (1962- ) is an Indonesian hydraulic engineer, who is the latest proponent of the IrwantoSundaland location for Atlantis, in his April 2015 book, Atlantis: The lost city is in the Java Sea[1093]. A review of his book online(a), shows quite clearly that the author has made a serious effort to match Plato’s narrative with his chosen location for Atlantis, namely off the southern coast of the island of Kalimantan in the Java Sea. Irwanto also uses his professional expertise to analyse Plato’s many references to the waterways of the Atlantean capital and its extensive plain. The review also includes a number of maps and video clips used to support Irwanto’s views.

Irwanto has also adopted(c) the 32-point checklist of dos Santos and expanded it to 60 points. He has now published a YouTube video supporting his theory(d). The first 30 pages of his book can be read online(f).

Irwanto also claims that the biblical Garden of Eden and the legendary island of Taprobane were situated on the island of Kalimantan*. In an extensive online(b) article in November 2015, he identified the Indonesian island of Sumatra as the land of Punt, which he thinks was also known as the Ophir referred to in the Old Testament (1 Kings 9.26 & 10.11).

In June 2017, Irwanto published an illustrated paper(e) on Aurea Chersonesus, referred to by Ptolemy in his 2nd century Geographia . Irwanto has matched the details in Ptolemy’s description with a place in western Sumatra called Tanjungemas renowned for its gold mines in ancient times.

On his website, since the publication of his book, Irwanto had continued to add a number of detailed articles that are of interest to students of Atlantology. One example came in late 2021, when he added an extensive paper entitled Decoding Plato’s Narrative to Find Atlantis, using a visual format, infographics(g) that is worth a look.

(a) https://ahmadsamantho.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/a-new-theory-of-atlantis-disclosed/

(b) https://atlantisjavasea.com/2015/11/14/land-of-punt-is-sumatera/

(c) https://atlantisjavasea.com/2015/10/28/professor-arysio-nunes-dos-santos-initiator-of-indonesian-atlantis-theory/

(d) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT23A12-tDc&feature=youtu.be

(e) https://atlantisjavasea.com/2017/06/08/aurea-chersonesus-is-in-sumatera/

(f) https://www.academia.edu/18597541/Atlantis_in_Java_Sea 

(g) https://atlantisjavasea.com/2021/10/17/decoding-platos-narrative-to-find-atlantis-in-infographics/ 

Gunung Padang

Gunung Padang is a megalithic site on the Indonesian island of Java, which was first surveyed in 1914 by the Dutch colonial authorities and published as Rapporten van de Oudheidkundige Dienst (Report of the Department of Antiquities). A post-war Australian investigation concluded that the site was much older than previously believed. Now, with presidential support, local archaeologists are carrying out an extensive investigation of the site.

The site has recently been claimed as part of gunung padangAtlantis. Evidence that the site contains hidden chambers prompted Graham Hancock to speculate whether it “Could it be the fabled “Hall of Records” of Atlantis?”(k).

A few years ago the late Arysio dos Santos was the leading proponent of Sundaland, which included Indonesia, being Atlantis. Then Danny Hilman Natawidjaja (DHN) an Indonesian geologist has made a similar claim in his Kindle ebook, Plato Never Lied: Atlantis Is in Indonesia[961]. In it, Gunung Padang plays an important role. Mount Padang has also been claimed as the world’s oldest pyramid! Although I do not support the idea of an Indonesian Atlantis, I am forced to admit that a far more interesting case for it has been made by Dhani Irwanto.

In his review of Hancock’s Magicians of the Gods, Jason Colavito refers to  Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, the Indonesian geologist who declared the site of Gunung Padang on Sumatra to be ten or twenty thousand years old, and thus making Indonesia the cradle of civilization. Natawidjaja is a true believer in fringe history and suspects that Plato was speaking of Gunung Padang when writing of Atlantis. His opinions are noteworthy only because the previous government of Indonesia gave him the money and resources to excavate the site in search of proof of Indonesian primacy in history before the current government shut down the investigation for becoming an international laughingstock. Like Semir Osmanogich in Bosnia, Natawidjaja sees artificial layers of construction in the deepest layers of what his colleagues in Indonesia and archaeologists around the world believe to be a natural hill crowned with later ruins.” (n).

Nevertheless, a recent (May 2017) assault on Natawidjaja’s theories in an open letter(i) from Rebecca Bradley has laid bare the weaknesses in his claims.

DHN in an address to the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in 2018, said that radiocarbon dating suggests the top layer of the site could be up to 3,500 old years old, the second layer somewhere around 8,000 years old, and the third layer anywhere in the vicinity of 9,500 to 28,000 years old(j).

Graham Hancock has written a review(b) of the excavations at Gunung Padang and in October 2014 added further comments(d)(m)Robert Schoch has also offered a geologist’s view of the site(f).

One report that I thought rather interesting was that “aside from its age, is that during coring it was found that much of the buried structure was reinforced with a type of cement.  This bonding agent, which has been used as a mortar and sort of glue in certain parts of the site, consists of 45% iron ore, 41% silica and 14% clay.  It’s said that this mixture provides for a very strong and durable mortar base, and is surprising evidence of the level of sophistication of the building technique.”(l)

Andrew Collins has now added an article(h). to his website that examines the preliminary claim that the lower levels at the site could be 12,000 years older than Gobekli Tepe. If confirmed, it will undoubtedly require some rewriting of history books. Do not lose sight of the fact that radiocarbon dating has limitations, being accurate for up to around 6,000 years with increasing unreliability up to perhaps 50,000 BC after which it is generally useless.

We now (Nov. ’14) have a report(e) that some type of ‘electrical device’ has been discovered at the sitemade out of gold and copper and seems to resemble a primitive electrical capacitor.’ Until further information is available this claim must be treated with caution.

There are, however, dissenting voices as reported by journalist, Michael Bachelard(g), such as vulcanologist Sutikno Bronto, who says “Gunung Padang is simply the neck of a nearby volcano, not an ancient pyramid. Danny Hilman is not a vulcanologist. I am.” As for the carbon-dated cement between the stones, on which Hilman relies for his claims about the age of the site, Sutikno believes it is simply the byproduct of a natural weathering process, ”not man-made”. Other sceptics are even tougher. One archaeologist, who does not wish to be named since the President took such an interest, says the presidential taskforce is deluding itself. ”In the Pawon cave in Padalarang [about 45 kilometres from Gunung Padang], we found some human bones and tools made of bones about 9500 years ago, or about 7000 BCE. So, if at 7000 BCE our technology was only producing tools of bones, how can people from 20,000 BCE obtain the technology to build a pyramid?” the archaeologist asks.

In October 2023, Danny Hilman endeavoured to return to the limelight with a paper in the journal Archaeological Prospection(o), published by Wiley, in which he recycled some of his earlier claims identifying Gunung Padang as an Ice Age pyramid. Jason Colavito commented briefly(p) on this latest feeble offering from Hilman and cites a more forensic article by Carl Feagans(q) as an effective rebuttal.>It was subsequently revealed(r) that the journal and its publisher have launched an ethics investigation into the flawed paper, according to a report in Nature!<

 

(a) https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?62108-Is-Gunung-Padang-the-oldest-pyramid-on-the-planet

(b)https://wakeup-world.com/2014/07/03/new-archaeological-discoveries-uncover-the-mysteries-of-a-lost-civilisation/

(c) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/gp.htm

(d) https://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/HancockG10-Gunung-Padang-Latest.php

(e) https://web.archive.org/web/20170811003647/https://mysteriousearth.net/2016/05/11/amazing-2500-year-old-electrical-device-found-at-gunung-padang/

(f) https://web.archive.org/web/20140716174346/https://atlantisrisingmagazine.com/2014/03/01/journey-to-gunung-padang/

(g) https://www.smh.com.au/world/digging-for-the-truth-at-controversial-megalithic-site-20130726-2qphb.html

(h) https://www.facebook.com/notes/1076395952375272/

(i) https://www.skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2017/05/14/gunung-padang-open-letter-danny/

(j) Long-Hidden ‘Pyramid’ Found in Indonesia Was Likely an Ancient Temple | Live Science

(k) Gunung Padang: The lost records of Atlantis? — Secret History — Sott.net

(l) Gunung Padang and The Lost City of Atlantis | Mysterious Universe

(m) https://www.academia.edu/8776410/From_Indonesia_To_Turkey_New_Archaeological_Discoveries_Uncover_The_Mysteries_Of_A_Lost_Civilisation_By_Graham_Hancock

(n) Magicians of the Gods Review – JASON COLAVITO 

(0) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/arp.1912

(p) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/on-the-fantasy-of-a-primeval-gunung-padang-pyramid 

(q) https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2023/08/gunung-padang-what-archaeology-really-says/?utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Twitter&referrer-analytics=1 

(r) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03546-w *

Natawidjaja, Danny Hilman *

Danny Hilman Natawidjaja is an Indonesian geologist who is no stranger danny-hilman-natawidjajato media interest, as he is regularly wheeled out for comment after the all-too-frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in his country.

In 2013 he garnered further attention with two dramatic claims. The first was a declaration that the huge megalithic site at Gunung Padang on Java was also home to the oldest pyramid in the world(a). Not content with that, he has also stated that the same site is evidence for Atlantis in Indonesia(b). Apart from the media attention he also received support from the Indonesian president. Graham Hancock and Robert Schoch have both visited the site along with Danny Hilman(c).

National pride would appear to drive the current claims for the great antiquity of Gunung Padang, where Göbekli Tepe, in Turkey, is seen to have garnered the lion’s share of attention as the world’s oldest verified megalithic site(g).

Natawidjaja published his Atlantis theory in a Kindle ebook, Plato Never Lied: Atlantis Is in Indonesia[961]. To be candid, I found the Atlantis in Indonesia theory[1093] by Dhani Irwanto to be far superior.

In his review of Hancock’s Magicians of the Gods, Jason Colavito refers to  Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, the Indonesian geologist who declared the site of Gunung Padang on Sumatra to be ten or twenty thousand years old, and thus making Indonesia the cradle of civilization. Natawidjaja is a true believer in fringe history and suspects that Plato was speaking of Gunung Padang when writing of Atlantis. His opinions are noteworthy only because the previous government of Indonesia gave him the money and resources to excavate the site in search of proof of Indonesian primacy in history before the current government shut down the investigation for becoming an international laughingstock. Like Semir Osmanogich in Bosnia, Natawidjaja sees artificial layers of construction in the deepest layers of what his colleagues in Indonesia and archaeologists around the world believe to be a natural hill crowned with later ruins.”(f)

November 2016 saw a further incredible claim coming from Natawidjaja, namely that a 2500-year-old ‘electrical device’ had been found on Gunung Padang, which is claimed to be some form of a capacitor and has been compared with the design of the biblical Ark of the Covenant. The report(d) that I’ve seen does not include any images, but until more concrete information is available, my scepticism is on ‘red alert’.

In May 2017, Rebecca Bradley, in an open letter, wrote(e) an extensive attack on Natawidjaja’s Gunung Padang claims.

Wikipedia has also noted criticism coming from local scientists(i)  “Thirty-four Indonesian scientists signed a petition questioning the motives and methods of the Hilman-Arif team. Vulcanologist Sutikno Bronto states that the site is the neck of an ancient volcano and not a man-made pyramid. An archaeologist who did not wish to be named due to the involvement of the country’s president who had set up a task force said that: ‘In archaeology, we usually find the ‘culture’ first … Then, after we find out the artefact’s age we’ll seek out historical references to any civilisation which existed around that period. Only then will we be able to explain the artefact historically. In this case, they ‘found’ something, carbon-dated it, then it looks like they created a civilisation around the period to explain their finding.'” (h)

(a) https://beforeitsnews.com/beyond-science/2013/08/indonesian-pyramid-is-20000-years-old-claims-archaeologist-discovery-may-rewrite-history-2442948.html

(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20140306231657/https://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2013/05/indonesian-geologist-says-region-perfect

(c)  Gunung Padang, “The Mountain Of Light”, West Java, Indonesia. | Shift Frequency (archive.org) 

(d) https://web.archive.org/web/20170811003647/https://mysteriousearth.net/2016/05/11/amazing-2500-year-old-electrical-device-found-at-gunung-padang/

(e) https://www.skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2017/05/14/gunung-padang-open-letter-danny/

(f) Magicians of the Gods Review – JASON COLAVITO 

(g) https://www.asiangeo.com/2019/heritage/the-pyramid-of-gunung-padang/ (link broken) *

(h) Digging for the truth at controversial megalithic site (smh.com.au) 

(i) Gunung Padang Megalithic Site – Wikipedia 

Tripura

Tripura is the name of a triple city in Hindu mythology that was famed for its architecture and rich adornments. Its inhabitants are reputed to have become greedy over time and were destroyed by Shiva (Mahabharata, Bk7, Drona Parva, Sec.XI). The story is almost the same as that of Atlantis and its demise. Since 1997 until his death in 2005 the late Arysio Nunes dos Santos has championed the idea that Plato’s Atlantis narrative regarding a submerged civilisation had been borrowed from the east. He also linked Atlantis with Tripura(a).

2005 not only saw the death of dos Santos shortly after the publication of his theory in book form[320], while in Moscow, Sergey Teleguin had his book,  Anatomy of a Myth, published in Russian, in which he also identified Tripura with Atlantis. An English translation of part of his book has now been provided by Teleguin(c).

R. Cedric Leonard has also linked Atlantis with Tripura, the capital of the island of  Atala(b). However, Leonard has chosen the Azores as the most likely location for Atlantis and dos Santos opted for Sundaland, a large landmass, now partly submerged encompassing, among others, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia!

(a) Corroborating evidence on the reality of Atlantis | Atlantis (archive.org)

(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20170624235600/http:/www.atlantisquest.com:80/Asura.html*

(c) https://atlantida.primordial.org.ua/archives/251

Scylla and Charybdis

Scylla and Charybdis were a sea monster and a whirlpool in Greek mythology that according to Homer and other writers were located opposite each other across a narrow strait. This led to the idiomatic phrase “between Scylla and Charybdis” similar to our more modern phrase of being “between the devil and the deep blue sea” describing being caught between two opposing forces.

Many, such as Heinrich Schliemann[1243], assume the original to have been located between Sicily and the Italian mainland at the Strait of Messina.>However, Ernle Bradford, who retraced the voyage of Odysseus, voiced his view that Corfu was the land of the Phaeacians and noted that “the voice of antiquity is almost as unanimous about Scheria being Corfu as it is about the Messina Strait being the home of Scylla and Charybdis.”<

Arthur R. Weir in a 1959 article(d)  refers to ancient documents, which state that Scylla and Charybdis lie between the Pillars of Hercules(c).

A minority have opted for the Scylla being Calpe (The Rock of Gibraltar) and Charybdis being Mt. Abyla across the strait in North Africa or in other words the Pillars of Heracles(a). However, Professor Arysio Santos promoting his Atlantis in Indonesia theory suggested that the ‘original’ Pillars of Heracles were in at Sunda Strait and later brought to ancient Greece where it was included by Homer in his Odysseus as Scylla and Charybdis!(b)

Anatoly Zolotukhin has proposed that Scylla & Charybdis had been situated in the Bosporus near the Pillars of Heracles, while he located Atlantis itself in Crimea near Evpatoria(e).

Writers who have located the wanderings of Ulysses in the North Atlantic have gone further afield in their search for Scylla and Charybdis with suggestions such as the west coast of Scotland (Pillot[742] and Nyland[394]), the Orkneys (Sora)[395] southwest Cornwall (Janssen)(f) and near the Scilly Isles (Wilkens)[610].

More recently, Andres Pääbo wrote that ” many of the details in Odysseus’ (or Ulysses’) travels can be easily associated with locations along the Norwegian coast and islands north of the British Isles. The starkest northern location found in the Odyssey is the large whirlpool called Charybdis, identifiable with the famous Maelstrom off the Lofoten Islands (g)

Perhaps the most distant Atlantic location was proposed by Henriette Mertz in The Wine Dark Sea [0397] to have been in Canada’s Bay of Fundy, reputed to experience the world’s greatest tidal range averaging 52 feet.

In January 2022, Kalju Pattustaja published a paper(h) in which he placed Scylla off the Kola Peninsula in northwest Russia. Coincidentally, Russia claims to have ancient pyramids on the Kola Peninsula(i).

(a)  See: https://web.archive.org/web/20120224202757/https://www.cadiznews.co.uk/info2.cfm?info_id=29858

(b) https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1yeBGKreTCYC&pg=PA286&lpg=PA286&dq=%22scylla+and+charybdis%22+pillars+of+heracles&source=bl&ots=OHY6tg_u_n&sig=CCNonMEsUxIRU4DXYPUGH8F_mP8&hl=en&ei=_xF6TrW0DIqp0AX_ltyvAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

(c)  https://drive.google.com/file/d/10JTH401O_ew1fs8uhXR9C5IjNDvqnmft/view

(d)  Atlantis – A New Theory, Science Fantasy #35, June 1959 pp 89-96

(e) https://homerandatlantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Scylla-CharybdisJAH-1.pdf

(f) http://www.homerusodyssee.nl/id24.htm

(g) https://www.academia.edu/9815005/The_Odyssey_s_Northern_Origins_and_a_Different_Author_Than_Homer?email_work_card=view-paper&li=0

(h) https://new-etymology.livejournal.com/466128.html

(i) https://culturacolectiva.com/travel/russia-pyramids-kola-peninsula-discovery-older-egypt/ 

Diffusion

Diffusion is the anthropological term used to describe how similar customs, beliefs and artefact designs are spread between cultures through migration, invasion or trade. Diffusion is not just a ‘one-way street’ as history has shown that ideas have travelled in all directions, while in fact most ancient civilisations can be demonstrated to have absorbed cultural elements from a multiplicity of foreign societies. Today, globalisation has increased exponentially the variety of influences that all societies now experience. Not only is the number of these influences greater but the rate of increase is apparently accelerating. The ubiquity of Coca-Cola, T-shirts, Irish pubs, Japanese cameras, German cars, English language, Guinness, Chinese toys, ABBA, AK-47s etc., etc., etc., are indicative of the global reach of commercial ‘empires’ today. In older civilisations trade was more concerned with commodities such as metals, olive oil, wine, amber, obsidian, or timber, so the technologies involved in their production or exploitation were also exchanged.

The development of agriculture also saw techniques spread, which had to be modified to suit different climates, although recent studies indicate that agriculture started around the same time in a number of centres(I).

In the Fertile Crescent as far north as the Zagros Mountains and further north, on the steppes of Russia, horses were domesticated and apparently there also the use of chariots originated. A book by David W. Anthony also attributes the region as being the source of what is known as the Proto-Indo-European family of languages[1356].

Societal concepts, religious or legal were no different as their geographical spread can also be tracked over time. Consider the different strands of the Abrahamic faiths, beginning with Judaism, which spawned Christianity and later was joined by Islam through Muhammad, who claimed to be a descendant of Abraham. Similarly, democracy has slowly evolved and spread over time and still has a long way to go.

Since early man left Africa, he has had ample time to settle all over our planet and exploit its resources, moving from being a hunter-gatherer to becoming a settled farmer, developing urban centres (city-states), then empires and the inevitable wars. Wars, then like today, led to the development of new technologies, chariots, longbows, and armour, to be copied and if possible improved upon, by each side.

My view is that initially, technology and techniques were freely exchanged between peoples, until gradually the idea of monopoly entered the human psyche, eventually leading to the paranoia and greed associated with the ownership of ‘intellectual property’ today. I would speculate that a freer and possibly gentler diffusion of ideas lasted until, at the earliest, the first millennium BC.

In 2014, the University of Connecticut published the result of studies that demonstrated that human technological innovation occurred intermittently throughout the Old World, rather than spreading from a single point of origin, as previously thought(j).

Egerton Sykes, a leading 20th-century Atlantologist, was a committed diffusionist, describing it as “the lifeblood of civilisation(h).>Atlantisforschung has published a 1967 paper by Sykes supporting diffusionism with particular reference to pyramid building on both sides of the Atlantic(ad).<

>Andrew Cutler published a paper on cultural diffusion in August 2023 that should be studied by anyone interested in the subject. He discusses themes such as the Pleiades, Snakes, Finger Removal and Linguistics among others. He expresses the opinion that while many assume that such common features can be traced back to before the 100,000 BC Out of Africa migration, Cutler suggests a much later time circa 40,000-30,000 BC(ae).<

A more extreme view is the concept of ‘hyperdiffusion’, which is the idea that there was a single ‘mother culture’ that led to the development of all major civilisations. Ignatius Donnelly was a hyperdiffusionist, advocating Atlantis as the mother culture. His ‘heretical’ views were highlighted by the range of similarities between structures around the world in apparently unrelated cultures, which seem to greatly exceed what could be expected by mere coincidence alone. This is explored further in a recent illustrated article on the Malagabay website(v).

Similarly, James Churchward proposed his invention, Mu, as an alternative hyperdiffusion centre. Perhaps better known is the work of W. J. Perry who was convinced [1353] that an archaic civilisation had begun in Egypt and gradually spread eastward through Asia and Polynesia, eventually reaching the Americas. Ben Urish published a paper(d) in 1986 that offers a critical overview[969] of hyperdiffusion.

Konrad Kulczyk promotes a hyperdiffusionist theory that places his proto-civilisation, New Atlantis, just south of the Aral Sea(e).

Ivar Zapp proposes the existence of a global seafaring civilisation thousands of years before the Greeks, Egyptians or Sumerians(k) in an as-yet-unpublished book, Babel Deciphered.

Hyperdiffusion is clearly a seductive theory that has attracted the attention of researchers such as Richard Cassaro, who has produced an impressive collection of visual cultural similarities between ancient Egypt and pre-Columbian America(a). While the idea is not new, Cassaro’s images highlight the concept of diffusion very effectively, although he has, in my opinion, overinterpreted the evidence in order to support hyperdiffusion.

Cassaro published The Missing Link[1208] in 2016 in which he expands on the widespread distribution of what he refers to as the ‘godself icon’. Although he clearly demonstrates that the motif has an extensive geographical spread it is equally obvious that the appearance of the icon is spread over a vast period of time apparently coinciding with the emergence of civilisation in different places at very different times, which, in my view, is not fully compatible with the concept of hyperdiffusion, as I would have expected a ‘mother-culture’, if such existed, to have spread its global influence far more rapidly.

A comparable discovery has been made by Ozgür Baris Etli, who has drawn attention(o) to carved hands at Göbekli Tepe that have counterparts in many other parts of the world where hands meet at the navel are similarly depicted. I recently came across an image of(q) a megalithic statue in the Indonesian Bada Valley(u) showing its hands in a similar position. Also in Göbekli Tepe, we encounter what has become known as ‘the handbag of the gods’(y) which has been found depicted in many locations such as Turkey (Göbekli), Iraq (Assyria), Mesoamerica (Olmecs)(w), Egypt and New Zealand(x). These images are not only spread over thousands of miles but thousands of years.

However, Andrew Gough is the only researcher who seems to have come anywhere near to explaining the purpose of the ‘handbag’. In a lengthy article on his website, he explains how a British Museum guide confirmed that the bag was a pollen carrier(ac). This dovetailed with Gough’s view of his belief regarding the importance of the bee in ancient cultures.

Having mentioned Indonesia, I must draw your attention to a recent book by Dhani Irwanto, entitled Sundaland: Tracing the Cradle of Civilizations (1618), in which he makes a strong case for considering his native land as an ancient diffusionist centre, which experienced waves of emigration at the end of the Younger Dryas period that influenced the great civilisations of the Indus Valley, Egypt and Greece. Irwanto also claims that their cultural impact included the transference of the story of Atlantis from its original home in Sundaland.

Equally intriguing is the ‘Three Hares’ motif, found across Europe, the Middle East and as far as China(p) and now the subject of a book by Greeves, Andrew & Chapman[1210]. Another stylised symbol is that of the rosette found in the Mediterranean and spread as far as India(r)(s).

In a similar vein, Jim Allen has devoted chapter three of his latest book to outlining what he entitled Bolivia and the Sumerian Connection(b). Arguably even more impressive is the array of images presented by Allen(c) suggesting that the civilisations of America were greatly influenced by ancient cultures in both the East and the West. It is obvious that a number of artefacts can be developed independently, but at some point, the number of similar items produced by two separate cultures can exceed the number that can be reasonably put down to coincidence. The number of similarities presented by Allen alone clearly exceeds that threshold, demonstrating that the Americas were influenced by different sources, ruling out the Americas as the home of a mother culture.

>Similarly, Gary A. David proposed that Votan was a diffusionist deity with counterparts known by other names such as Kukulkan, Quetzalcoatl or Viracocha in the different American civilisations. However, he goes further placing Votan’s origins in the Old World suggesting that he may have been Phoenician or Hebrew, citing Adrian Gilbert and Andrew Collins in support of this(af).<

An extensive website managed by Erich Fred Legner offers a wide range of evidence to support the view that the Americas had been visited and settled by people from both Asia & Europe before Columbus(aa).

The whole subject of diffusion is wide-ranging and complex and well beyond my competence to do it justice in this short entry. However, for those interested in pursuing the subject further, I would like to recommend a 1997 paper(l) by David H. Kelley (1924-2011), available on Dale Drinnon’s website.

Egypt is frequently mentioned in this regard being seen as the influence behind Neolithic megalith building AND the pyramids of Central America, in spite of the fact that Newgrange was constructed before the Egyptian Pyramids and the New World pyramids were built thousands of years after those in Egypt. Atlantis is regularly suggested as another mother culture but without a single piece of evidence to support this speculative contention. For decades the idea that the pyramids of Egypt and those in the Americas were the consequence of diffusion from a common source, namely Atlantis situated in the Atlantic was heavily promoted. However, we can now more closely identify the pyramids of America with the step pyramids of China!

Consequently, for me, hyperdiffusion is not convincing. History has clearly shown that inventions have frequently been independently developed at the same time in different countries, while even in prehistoric times it has been demonstrated(f) that the evolution of stone tools took place as a result of the innovative abilities of local populations, addressing the same needs.

A word of warning; “recent research published in Nature by a team led by Tomos Proffitt at the University of Oxford shows that capuchin monkeys regularly produce sharp-edged flakes indistinguishable from those made by early hominins.”(t)

Even today technologies are developed independently throughout the world, but not in complete isolation, because of the instant worldwide communications available.

As a result of global marketing, in Ireland now we drive German, British and Japanese cars, use US computer technology and play with Chinese toys. However, being generous by nature, we gave the world the Irish pub, Riverdance and Guinness.

A two-part blog(m)(n) highlighting the many weaknesses in the concept of hyperdiffusion should be required reading for anyone interested in the subject.

Although Donnelly and his contemporaries, focused on the possibility of Old World influences in the New World, today, there is less of a Mediterranean-centred or Eurocentric approach to diffusionism. Instead, there is greater acceptance that the Americas have also had extensive cultural influences from Asia.

In March 2021, Hugh Newman published a paper drawing attention to the similarity of megalithic building techniques, using polygonal stones, in America, Asia, Europe and Africa. He goes further noting that “Peruvian relief carvings match those at Göbekli Tepe.” How much might be the result of coincidence is a matter of opinion.(ab) In January 2022, Marco M. Vigato published a new book, The Empires of Atlantis [1830], in which he offers a hyperdiffusionist view of Atlantis. He “traces the course of Atlantean civilization through its three empires, as well as the colonies and outposts formed by its survivors in EgyptGöbekli TepeIndia, Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, and North and South America” and “reveals how the first Atlantean civilization lasted from 432,000 to 33,335 BCE, the second one from 21,142 to 10,961 BCE, and the third Atlantis civilization–the one celebrated by Plato–collapsed in 9600 BCE, after the Younger Dryas cataclysm.”(z).

(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20160305000748/https://www.richardcassaro.com/suppressed-by-scholars-the-mystery-of-twin-cultures-egyptians-incas-on-opposite-sides-of-the-globe

(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20200704031245/http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/boliviaandthesumerianconnection.htm

(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20200629021253/http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/artefacts.htm

(d) https://soar.wichita.edu/bitstream/handle/10057/1746/LAJ_v11_no1_p75-87.pdf?sequence=3

(e) https://blog.world-mysteries.com/mystic-places/new-atlantis-the-source-of-civilization-on-earth/

(f) https://popular-archaeology.com/issue/fall-09012014/article/prehistoric-stone-tools-evolved-independently-within-local-populations-say-researchers

(g) https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-09/uoc-sas091914.php

(h) https://web.archive.org/web/20190430181930/http://www.seachild.net/atlantology/fields/socialsci.html

(I) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130705101629.htm

(j) https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-09/uoc-sas091914.php

(k) https://www.prestige-ocean-properties.com/blogs/michael_mills/archive/2012/10/13/unusual-theory-about-stone-spheres-in-costa-rica.aspx

(l) See: Archive 3563

(m) https://skepticalcubefarm.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/hyperdiffusionism-a-blog-in-two-parts/

(n) https://skepticalcubefarm.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/hyperdiffusionism-part-the-second/

(o) https://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/statues-and-symbolic-gestures-link-ancient-g-bekli-tepe-easter-island-020384?nopaging=1

(p) https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/three-hares-motif-cross-cultural-symbol-numerous-interpretations-005640?nopaging=1

(q) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-asia/exploring-mysterious-megaliths-bada-valley-indonesia-006032

(r) https://aratta.wordpress.com/the-rosette-symbol/

(s) https://www.sophia-project.net/conferences/HeavenAndEarth/presentations/pdfs/CherylHart.pdf

(t) https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/stone-tools-may-not-have-been-made-by-human-ancestors-research-finds

(u) Atlantis Rising No.110 March/April 2015 p.41

(v) Ignatius Donnelly: Trans-Atlantic Architecture | MalagaBay (archive.org)

(w) What is the mysterious handbag seen in Ancient Carvings across Cultures carried by the Gods | ARCHAEOLOGY WORLD (archive.org)

(x) https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/what-mysterious-handbag-seen-ancient-carvings-across-cultures-and-021191

(y) https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk01EY5V0clVAkJB9-3PZ7CyJZcvzsQ:1612175987167&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=handbag+of+the+gods&client=opera&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjj5p7Iv8juAhVnUhUIHQJmD2UQjJkEegQIDBAB&biw=1496&bih=726&dpr=1.25

(z) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Empires-Atlantis-Civilizations-Traditions-throughout-ebook/dp/B092B3L8LC/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=plato+atlantis&qid=1618966015&s=books&sr=1-1

(aa) E. F. Legner vita and websites (ucr.edu)

(ab) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places/megalithic-origins-g-bekli-tepe-and-ancient-peru-same-architects-008402 

(ac) https://andrewgough.co.uk/articles_pollen/ 

(ad) Is Atlantological diffusionism ‘old news’? – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *

(ae) https://www.vectorsofmind.com/p/evidence-for-global-cultural-diffusion *

(af) http://www.viewzone.com/votanx.html *