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NEWS October 2024
OCTOBER 2024 The recent cyber attack on the Internet Archive is deplorable and can be reasonably compared with the repeated burning of the Great Library of Alexandria. I have used the Wayback Machine extensively, but, until the full extent of the permanent damage is clear, I am unable to assess its effect on Atlantipedia. At […]Read More »
Joining The Dots
I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
Jordan
Köfels Impact
The Köfels Impact area in the Austrian Tyrol was identified by Alexander & Edith Tollmann as one of a number regions affected by an encounter with a comet/asteroid that resulted in its fragmentation prior to impact. The Tollmanns theorised that the flood of Noah and the Holocene extinctions were a consequence of these impacts.
The Köfels event has recently been linked in a book[426], A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels Impact Event, by Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell, to an Assyrian cuneiform tablet that apparently describes an earlier Sumerian observation of an encounter with an asteroid. The same encounter has also been suggested as the cause of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
In October 2015, there were reports that the sites of Sodom and Gomorrah had been finally located(a).
November 2018 saw a further claim(b) that Sodom and possibly other the ‘cities of the plain’ (Gen. 13) had been destroyed by a meteoric airburst, similar to the Tunguska or the more recent Chelyabinsk events. This catastrophe took place north of the Red Sea in what is now Jordan according to archaeologist Phillip Silvia of Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque.
Silvia’s conclusions have been confirmed by Dr. Steven Collins(c) who has excavated at the Tell el-Hammam site and describes his findings in a book, co-authored with Dr. Latayne C. Scott, Discovering the City of Sodom [1625].
Roger M. Pearlman has suggested[1596] that Atlantis can be equated with the Sodom of Genesis!
(c) More Evidence Confirms Tall el-Hammam as Sodom – Assist News (archive.org) *
Architecture of Atlantis
The Architecture of Atlantis is described in such detail, that you can almost feel the ’buzz’ of a large maritime capital. We are left with the feeling that it is either the creation of a skilled writer or the report of an observant eyewitness. Once again, I am inclined to see it as an amalgam of both. Quite possibly the description is based on one of the models that have been suggested by some writers, such as Troy, Syracuse, Carthage or even Athens. In fact, elements from all these can be seen in Plato’s Atlantis.
The canals, bridges, watchtowers, warehouses and the acropolis, as described, would all have been within the experience of Plato or his associates.
H. R. Stahel a professional architect has published a book[560] illustrating the principal features of the city described by Plato.
Mention should be made of the dimensions ascribed by Plato to some of the architectural features of Atlantis, which appear to be exaggerated even for a sophisticated Late Bronze Age city. No matter how wealthy Atlantis may have been, the level of over-engineering suggested by Plato is not credible. However, Ulf Richter has recently provided a rational explanation for the apparently extravagant structures in the city by suggesting that the much shorter Egyptian khet rather than the Greek stade was the unit of measurement originally recorded by Solon.
For the record, I should mention that the earliest prehistoric archictecture was reported in 2012(a) after the remains of 20,000 year-old huts were discovered in Jordan. A decade ago, it was discovered that the Zarqa Valley, also in Jordan, has been inhabited and irrigated for 13,000 years(b), which is is close to the time of Göbekli Tepe!
>(a) https://www.world-archaeology.com/world/asia/jordan/20000-year-old-huts-in-jordan/ <
(b) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091215155956.htm
Ancient Cities and Civilisations *
Ancient Cities and Civilisations are continually being unearthed all over the world.
“In the study of the ancient world, a City is generally defined as a large populated urban center of commerce and administration with a system of laws and, usually, a regulated means of sanitation.” This is not the only definition as there are many other factors that can be used to justify the description of `City’.(c)
If Plato’s description of Atlantis as an urban centred society is factual and the features of the city, which he has recorded, are not just transferred from his own age, using literary licence, then we must look to the earliest cities for possible clues to the location and nature of Plato’s city of Atlantis. November 2012 saw a report(a) of a previously unknown city unearthed in Jordan at Tall-el-Hammam that may have been the hub of a city-state dated to 1800-1540 BC.
However, this is ‘small beer’ when compared with the claims of other cities such as Jericho (9000 BC) or Damascus (9000 BC) which claims to be the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city. The discovery of Göbekli Tepe seemed to push the date of human structures back to 9600 BC, but as yet no urban centre that can be linked with the development of that site has been found!
Of related interest is a recent paper that describes how “ancient human settlements function in much the same way as modern cities.”(b)
(a) https://www.archaeologica.org/NewsPage.htm link broken) *