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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 »
Lake Titicaca
Lake Titicaca
Lake Titicaca is the largest lake in South America and at over three kilometres is arguably the highest navigable lake in the world**, shared by Peru and Bolivia. In spite of claims to the 
contrary it is a fresh water lake, but is slowly reducing in size due reduced inflow from the retreating Andean glaciers. Lake Poopó to the south has now dried out completely(a).
***Karakul in Tajikistan exists at 4,000 metres and “is so salty, it’s almost impossible to navigate a boat on it without capsizing due to the vessel riding so far out of the water.”(e)*
To the south of the lake are remarkable archaeological remains of Tiwanaku and the equally exciting Puma Punku. Both sites have produced some extreme theories regarding the builders of these monuments, their technology level and the date of their construction. Arthur Posnansky, followed by Kurt Bilau have proposed a date of circa 9500 BC as the date of fall of Tiwanaku. There are also reports of pre-Incan structures submerged in Titicaca(d) .
South of Lake Titicaca, near Lake Poopó is Pampa Aullagus, a site identified by Jim Allen as the location of Plato’s Atlantis. While there is little doubt that advanced cultures existed around Titicaca, linking the region to Plato’s story is stretching credibility to its limits. I have already argued in respect of Jim Allen’s Andean theory, that the idea of an invasion of the eastern Mediterranean by an army from the west side of South America is untenable. That they would try it in reed boats like those of Titicaca is equally daft. Then, that this mighty army from ten regions of South America were defeated by the small city-state of Athens is just as laughable.
Equally questionable is the idea that there was a Sumerian presence around Titicaca, in relation to which Clyde Winters quotes(b) James Bailey as well as Ruth and A. Hyatt Verrill in supporting the idea that Lake Manu in Sumerian tradition was in fact Titicaca. The controversial(c) Fuente Magna bowl is also offered as evidence of this idea.
(c) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-fuente-magna-bowl-still-fake
*(e) https://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190207-asias-dead-lake-where-boats-cant-float*
Bambrough, Sean *
Sean Bambrough is a New Zealand researcher of ancient mysteries. Since 1999 he has been developing a theory that places Plato’s Atlantis in the Andes and identifies its city as Tiwanaku. He has published 37 pages of notes in support of this contention(a)(c). A reader will find them tough going and at times repetitious, but it is clear that he has put a lot of study into the subject even if he has, in my opinion, produced a very flawed theory.
Several researchers have assumed that when Plato referred to an ‘opposite continent’ he was referring to the Americas, however, Herodotus, who flourished after Solon and before Plato, was quite clear that there were only three continents known to the Greeks, Europe, Asia and Libya [4.42].
Bambrough’s first major error is to equate the sinking of Atlantis with the uplifting of the Andes! The Andes are rising at a rate of some millimetres per year. and the geological evidence is that in the past the uplift rate was somewhat more rapid, which “in geologic terms, rapid means rising one kilometer or more over several millions of years.”(b)(e)
There is no evidence that the cataclysmic upheaval described by him could have occurred around 1400BC. He does not explain how these newly elevated mountains created muddy shoals that made the Atlantic impassable.
As I have already argued in respect of Jim Allen’s Andean theory, the idea of an invasion of the eastern Mediterranean by an army from the west side of South America is untenable. That they would try it in reed boats like those of Titicaca is equally daft. Then, this mighty army from ten regions of South America was defeated by the small city-state of Athens is equally laughable.
I could go on, but just a final couple of points; Plato never described Atlantis as a continent and Kircher’s speculative map depicts Atlantis quite clearly in our Atlantic Ocean between Spain and America.
Bambrough has recently updated his website(d), however, his writing style is as irritating as ever, in particular his excessive use of retronyms (forward slashes).
In 2017, he published(f) an extended ‘check-list’ which he feels supports his location theory. This offering is far too long and repetitious. It is clearly a triumph of quantity over quality
In 2021, Bambrough has now published his paper/ebook on the academia.edu website(g). This migration has done nothing to improve the quality of its content. It is just a huge collection of lists, most of which could be discarded.
(a) https://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php/topic,33901.0.html
(b) Taking the pulse of mountain formation in the Andes — ScienceDaily (archive.org) *
(c) http://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php/topic,33831.15.html
(d) https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-2674/
(e) Taking the pulse of mountain formation in the Andes (phys.org) *
(f) Atlantis May have been in Bolivia – History Forum ~ All Empires (archive.org) *
(g) https://www.academia.edu/61088843/Atlantis_Found_in_the_Andes_by_V_Sean_Bambrough *
(h) All-Dread: Sodom found in Mesopotamian records? (iwillnotbeassimilated.blogspot.com) *
Fuente Magna Bowl
The Fuente Magna Bowl is a remarkable artefact sometimes called ‘the Rosetta Stone of the Americas.’ It was discovered accidentally near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. The bowl’s claim to fame is that it has been inscribed with cuneiform writing, similar to Sumerian.
It is claimed that thermoluminescence dating has shown the object to be quite ancient and not a forgery. The same site(a) quotes at length a translation of the text by Clyde Winters, but a German website(b) denounces his translation as nonsense, although it accepts that the Bowl as genuine. Another site(c) offers a selection of detailed images of the Bowl.
Carl Feagans’ website(f) is equally critical of Winters’ ‘translation’ and raises a number of questions regarding the authenticity of the artefact.
April Holloway offered an overview of the controversy relating to the Fuente Magna Bowl on the Ancient Origins website, concluding quite reasonably, that further objective linguistic research could bring the debate to a conclusion(g).
Jim Allen and his supporters have sought to link the Bowl with the theory of Atlantis in the Andes(d).
The bad archaeology website has a reasonably balanced article(e) on the bowl which should be read.
>Michel Leygues has published(h) his study of the Fuente Magna Bowl in which he endeavours to demonstrate the relationship between Sumerian, Akkadian, Aymara and Quechua. Unfortunately, so far it is only available in French.<
(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20110727221012/http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_8.htm
(c) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20160613101558/https://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/biados/fuentmag.htm
(e) https://badarchaeology.wordpress.com/tag/fuente-magna-bowl/
(f) https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2017/11/fuente-magna-bowl-not-cuneiform-not-sumerian/
Sumerians *
Sumeria was one of the earliest civilisations emerging between the 6th and 5th millennia BC and was situated in what is now central Iraq.
It was unknown in Europe until the middle of the 19th century. With the discovery and the decipherment of the Sumerian cuneiform tablets the sophistication of their culture prompted the idea that Sumer had been ‘the cradle of civilisation.’ Subsequent discoveries, such as those in the Indus Valley and more recently Göbekli Tepe have now somewhat diluted that idea.
Nevertheless, there is an acceptance that the Sumerians were very advanced in the field of mathematics and astronomy. The late Ernest McClain, a professor of music, was convinced that music theory could be traced back to the Sumerians as early as 3000 BC.
The origin of the Sumerians is still something of a mystery as is their language which seems to be an ‘isolate’, unrelated to any known language group(q). The Flem-Aths in an Atlantis Rising article (Issue 95) and Atlantis Beneath the Ice [981.70] claimed a cultural and genetic linkage between the Sumerians and the Haida of northwest America. The Flem-Aths also noted [062.54] that some have linked the languages of the two peoples!
Ronnie Gallagher has suggested that migrants from the Caucasus had provided the impetus that led to the development of the Sumerian civilisation. Gallagher’s theory is supported by Jerald Jack Starr on his Sumerian Shakespeare website, who emphatically attributes a Caucasian origin to the Sumerians(l).
Emilio Spedicato has controversially suggested that the Sumerians came from the Tibetan region!(m) Equally provocative were the views of Catherine Acholonu-Olumba, who as the author of Eden in Sumer on the Niger [1833], claimed that her book, “provides multidisciplinary evidence of the actual geographical location in West Africa of the Garden of Eden, Atlantis and the original homeland of the Sumerian people before their migration to the “Middle East”. By translating hitherto unknown pre-cuneiform inscriptions of the Sumerians, Catherine Acholonu and Sidney Davis have uncovered thousands of years of Africa’s lost pre-history and evidences of the West African origins of the earliest Pharaohs and Kings of Egypt and Sumer such as Menes and Sargon the Great.”(p)
Sumeria has now been proposed as a possible source of the Atlantis story. Dr Ashok Malhotra, a professor of Engineering, has suggested(a) that that ‘the likelihood of the Atlantis stories being of Sumerian origin is strengthened by the fact that the submergence of ancient cities was a strong part of the Sumerian mythology. It dominates their historical tradition. The destruction of the ancient city as a result of sin was also part of their beliefs.’ Malhotra then proposes that these Sumerian stories reflected actual flooding events in the Indus Valley region that were brought first to Sumeria and then were later transferred to Egypt and from thence via Solon to Plato to us.
George Michanowsky went much further and claimed that the Sumerians had known Atlantis under the name of NI-DUK-KI, known today as Dilmun[282.66]. The renowned Henry Rawlinson interpreted this name to mean ‘blessed hill’ or ‘blessed isle’. While Michanowsky’s suggestion is highly speculative, if correct, it would be the earliest known reference to Atlantis.
The Sumerian king list(e) from Larsa records eight kings (some versions note ten) before the Deluge, which may have been reflected, in a distorted fashion, in the ten patriarchs of Genesis and/or the ten kings of Atlantis! Another suggested link is with the eight generations between Adam and Noah recorded in Genesis chapter 5.
John Sassoon would seem to support Malhotra’s thesis in his book[566], which proposes a Sumerian origin for the Jews with possible earlier links with the Indus Valley. He is not concerned with Atlantis, just the ancestry of the Jewish people of whom Abraham was born in Sumeria around 2000-1800 BC. Sassoon’s views offer a possible transmission route for Eastern traditions and myths to have reached Egypt and subsequently through Solon to Athens.
More recently, Dr Willem McLoud, a South African researcher, commented that “we have good reason to think that Atlantis was not located beyond the pillars of Heracles in the Atlantic Ocean, as is so often propagated, but that it was actually none other than the ancient land of Sumer itself.” Mcloud is primarily concerned with the Sumerians and Akkadians, which he will expand on in a forthcoming book(n).
In 2001, a book by Radek Brychta was published in the Czech Republic in which he also advocates a Sumerian connection. He identifies Atlantis with the legendary Dilmun of Sumerian legend and locates it on the Indus civilisation island of Dholavira. Excerpts from this fascinating book are available on the Internet and are worth a read.
However, the most extreme claims came from Zechariah Sitchin who proposed that the Sumerians had been ‘influenced’ by ancient astronauts from the planet Nibiru, which information is to be found in their cuneiform tablets if Sitchin’s translation is to be believed. Similar daft ideas(g) have been put forward by Hermann Burgard[1316] but so far have only been foisted on a German-reading public.
As if that was not bad enough, we now (Oct 2016) have the Iraqi Transport Minister claiming, among other matters, that the Sumerians launched spaceships 8,000 years ago(h)!
The Sumerian texts also crop up in the wild theories of Dieter Bremer[1022] and Jakob Vorberger, who claim that Atlantis was a space station(I)!
Jim Allen, the leading advocate of ‘Atlantis in the Andes’ has also claimed(b) a Sumerian connection with South America citing Ruth & Alpheus Hyatt Verrill, who include in their book[838.293] three pages of Sumerian words compared with the language of ancient Peru as well as other cultural aspects there. They also believed that Sargon (2369-2314 BC) was known in Peru as the deity Viracocha! Their fanciful idea stems from an account of Sargon sailing to the West and spending three years there! Zhirov supported this claim[458.23] describing it as ”a seemingly semi-fantastic theory”. My reason for considering this claim to be nonsensical, is simply that Sargon was continually engaged in expanding his empire and constantly dealing with rebellions in the various city-states that he ruled over. The idea that he took three years out to visit America, 14,000 km away, is in no way credible.
Nevertheless, the idea of Sargon in South America persists with James Bailey repeating it in Sailing to Paradise[0150.66] and more recently by the Afrocentrist, Clyde Winters in an article on the Ancient Origins website(f) in which he quotes Bailey and the Verrills as supporting Lake Titicaca as the Lake Manu of Sumerian tradition. A further article(j) on the same website begins with the forceful claim that “it is becoming increasingly clear that the Sumerians had established a colony in South America called Kuga-Ki.” The paper is based on a series of questionable artefacts, the Fuente Magna Bowl, the Crespi Collection and the Pokoyia monument!
The Fuente Magna Bowl is frequently offered as evidence of a pre-Columbian link with the Sumerians in America(c), although its provenance is unclear and there are the inevitable suggestions of a hoax. A sceptical view of the ‘Bowl’ by Carl Feagans(k) is available.
Michel Leygues has published two papers in which he offers evidence that the Sumerian and Akkadian languages can be identified in the languages of many of the native America peoples including the Hopi, Navajo and Incas(s)(t). Leygues also “presents the hypothesis that a kinship exists between Yamato Kotoba ideographic values, and Sumerian and Akkadian values. This despite a great geographical distance between Mesopotamia and Japan, and at different historical periods of language use. “(u)
Other commentators have suggested that the Sumerians reached Spain. Dr Paul Haupt (1858-1926}, an early Assyriologist proposed that the ‘two rivers’ in the story of Utnapishtim, a Noachian equivalent, were the Guadalquivir and Guadiana of Andalusia(r). Mario Mas Fenollar is a modern advocate for Sumerians in Spain.
The very existence of Sumerians has recently been attacked in an appendix to The Three Ages of Atlantis[972] by Marin, Minella & Schievenin. They maintain that the Sumerian ‘language’ “could be an artificial construct created by Akkadian priests” to be used for liturgical purposes. These ideas were first expressed at the end of the 19th century by the respected Orientalist, Joseph Halévy. Andi Zeneli has expressed comparable ideas(d) regarding the Sumerian language.
Uwe Topper’s son Ilya has also put forward the idea that the Sumerians did not exist(o). His paper is a critique, originally in Spanish, of Gunnar Heinsohn’s Die Sumerer gab es nicht.
(a) In Search of Atlantis — Getting Closer (archive.org) (new link)
(c) https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1551445/posts
(d) https://sumeriantestament.blogspot.ie/2012/08/what-is-sumerian.html
(i) Mesopotamische Überlieferungen | Atlantis Mythologie (archive.org)
(k) https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2015/03/sumerians-in-bolivia-probably-not/
(l) https://sumerianshakespeare.com/734501.html
(m) https://www.academia.edu/6556879/AA_MER_MERU_rel_2
(n) Chapter summary – WhisperingTales (archive.org) *
(p) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262069423_Eden_In_Sumer_On_The_Niger
(q) The origin of the Sumerians and the great flood (archive.org)
(r) https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/528616.pdf
(s) Sumer, Akkad, And The Languages Of The Navajo, The Hopi, The Zuni (calameo.com)
(t) Akkad, Sumer, and Incas, Nazcas languages (calameo.com)
(u) Sumer, Akkad and Yamato Kotoba by michel leygues – Issuu
Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco)
Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco) is an ancient city whose remains are located over two miles above sea level near the southern end of Lake Titicaca on the Altiplano of Bolivia. It was first encountered by Spanish conquistadors in 1549. Tiwanaku has all the features of a harbour, which has led some to describe it as the seaport of nearby Puma Punku another remarkable ancient site(o).
The ruins are scattered over a number of square miles through which the Guayqui-La Paz railway was constructed, which was responsible for the breaking up of many monuments to provide ballast. Before that, stone from the site was used in the construction of nearby homes and a church.
Belisario Díaz Romero believed that Tiwanaku had been built by a race of people he calls Homo atlanticus, who had come to America from Atlantis over a landbridge from the east, outlined in his 1906 book Tiahuanacu[1235]. Heather Pringle notes(t) that before Romero, “Francis de Castelnau (1810-1880), for example, proposed in the mid-19th century that Tiwanaku was the work of wandering Egyptian pharaohs, as opposed to the ‘imbecilic race that inhabits the country today’.”
The controversial Arthur Posnansky, who linked Tiahuanaco with Aztlan, the mythical “white” island homeland of the Aztecs investigated them in the early 20th century. The similarity of Aztlan with the name of Plato’s city has excited some straw-clutching Atlantis seekers into claiming a definite connection between the two.
Posnansky also noted that the expected alignments of structures at Tiwanaku were offset by an amount that suggested their construction at a time when they would have been correctly aligned to the cardinal points. He, after many years of study, was convinced that Tiahuanaco was the oldest civilisation on Earth [516] dating it to around 15,000 BC, which he later reduced to 10,000 BC.
In the 1920s, Edmund Kiss studied the ruins of Tiwanaku and concluded that it had been constructed by Nordic refugees from Atlantis which had been destroyed by a falling moon! His ideas were enthusiastically received back in Nazi Germany. A further expedition was planned but never materialised because of the start of World War II.(u)
Dr Graham Holton, an Australian commentator has written about the pseudo-science practised in the early 20th century at Tiwanaku by the likes of Posnansky and Kiss and endorsed by Hörbiger and Hans Bellamy(al)(am).
Although, as you can see below, Posnansky’s work and particularly his dating of Tiwanaku has been rejected by many, he still has supporters. In Graham Hancock‘s 1995 book Fingerprints of the Gods [275], he supported Posnansky’s date, referring to his work throughout the book. Ian Alex Blease, a devout sceptic took issue with this endorsement (aa). For my part, I note that Hancock was happy to support Posnansky in ‘Fingerprints’, but in America Before [1680], despite its title, he gives Posnansky’s date no mention, perhaps because it clashed with his new date for the destruction of his ‘Lost Civilisation’!
>>Hancock has been highly critical of Carbon-14 as a dating method, particularly for megalithic sites and specifically Tiwanaku. The late Garrett Fagan took issue with Hancock regarding the dating of Tiwanaku in a 2000 post on Hancock’s site(ar). Hancock responded with a challenge to Fagan that led to a further article from him(aq). The temperature rose with a further article from Hancock(as).<<
Charles Orser Jnr. debunked Posnansky’s dating in a 2001 article(k) as did Paul Heinrich(n).
Marin, Minella & Schievenin [972.97] “Between 1927 and 1930 several scientists, including Hans Ludendorf, at the time director of the Astronomical Observatory of Potsdam; astronomer Arnold Kohlshutter, University of Bonn; Dr Rolf Muller, University of Potsdam and Dr Friedrich Becker, Specula Vatican, meticulously checked the archaeological-astronomical research of Posnansky for accuracy. After three years of work these scientists corroborated his thesis.”
Before retirement, R. Cedric Leonard supported Posnansky’s early date for Tiwanaku citing a number of atronomers who endorsed his chronology. “Between 1927 and 1930 Prof. Posnansky’s conclusions were studied intensively by a number of authorities. Dr. Hans Ludendorff (Director of the Astronomical Observatory of Potsdam), Friedrich Becker of the Specula Vaticana, Prof. Arnold Kohlschutter (astronomer at Bonn University), and Rolf Müller (astronomer of the Institute of Astrophysics at Potsdam) verified the accuracy of Posnansky’s calculations and vouched for the reliability of his conclusions.
The conventional practice of dating Tiahuanacu as beginning c. 200 A.D. and collapsing c. 1000 A.D. started with Wendell Bennett’s excavations, which turned up numerous examples of pottery, small statues and other artifacts. Since it is common for later arrivals to be awed by massive ruins (sometimes attributing their origin to supernatural beings, thus replicating the “sacred” images on their own pottery and textiles), I think it is a mistake to fuse the two cultures into one, implying that the later arrivals were the same people who built the original ruins. I believe Bennett and his successors are all guilty of such an error.” (ap)
R. Cedric Leonard believed that Posnansky’s date addressed all of the mysteries associated with the site and “Thus I think it likely that Tiahuanaco was built at sea level c.15,000 B.C. as an Atlantean port.”(z)
The American archaeologist, Neil Steede, while reviewing Posnansky’s date, thought that a date of 7000-5000 BC was more appropriate(aj).
At the other end of the spectrum, Emmet Sweeney, an ardent chronology revisionist claimed that “most probably, Tiahuanaco was built around the same time as pharaoh Djoser’s Step Pyramid at Sakkara in Egypt. It can thus claim to be among the oldest of human monuments [700.208].” Tiwanaku is conventionally dated between 200 BC and 100 AD, while the Step Pyramid is thought to have been constructed around 2650 BC.
Some researchers, including Jim Allen, have studied Tiwanaku’s remarkable Gate of the Sun and identified the figures carved on it as a sophisticated calendar(v).
A paper from Marco Antonio Cabero regarding the ‘Gate’ throws a modicum of doubt on its possible use as a calendar. Instead, he focused on the other side of the monument where he claims there is evidence that the ancient people of Tiwanaku knew the ‘golden number’, phi.
“The composition of the front face of the Gate of the Sun in Tiwanaku presents, anthropometric, and bilateral symmetry. On the back side, there are also harmonic proportions but with less significance. These proportions were not found before because the study of the content of its engraving frieze was believed to be a calendar, an idea that has been so widely extended, that any other interpretations were ignored (however, the presence of these proportions does not exclude the possible existence of some type of calendar). The Gate of the Sun may not be part of a temple, but its content could also be considered as the expression of a monument in itself; a work that testifies to the importance of knowledge, art, and science “(ac).
Ashley Cowie has recently proposed that Tiwanaku was located on an ancient Prime Meridian(w).
Also eye-catching is the claim(l) by Roger Elefant that later construction at Tiwanaku was carried out by the Vikings!
However, a more recent, but catastrophic, explanation is offered by Stephen Smith(d) on the Thunderbolts.info website. Perhaps Smith’s ideas might be combined with the studies of George Dodwell to produce a more comprehensive hypothesis. Posnansky’s date is greatly at variance with conventional dating that puts the flourishing of Tiwanaku from 1200 BC until 1200 AD. The latter part of that period roughly coincides with the existence of the Wari Empire, a possible rival of Tiwanaku(e).
In 2013, Jason Yaeger and Alexei Vranich published a detailed study of the chronological development of Tiwanaku and Puma Punku. This is now available on the Academia.edu website(ao). Anyone seeking support for ancient astronauts, giants or Atlantis will be greatly disappointed. The authors confirmed a starting date for monumental construction at the site of no earlier than 200 BC, which continued intermittently until the arrival of the Spanish invaders. Their report is the result of the ‘hard slog’ required by real archaeology.
Several claims attempting to link Tiahuanaco with Atlantis have been made, with one anonymous blog(y) insisting that it was the capital of Atlantis. James Bailey was an early advocate [149] of a Peruvian Atlantis with its capital at Tiwanaku or Chan Chan, which was probably the largest pre-Colombian city in South America.
The claim of a direct connection between Tiahuanaco and Atlantis is hard to accept on a number of grounds; for example, the idea of an army travelling from the west coast of South America to attack Greece in the east of the Mediterranean is not tenable. That there was an advanced culture in the Andes is undeniable but to link it to Plato’s story is stretching credibility to extremes. Lake Titicaca and Tiahuanaco have plenty of mysteries still to be explained. In 1980 the Bolivian scholar, Hugo Boero Rojo, aided by one of the local natives, Elias Mamani, located underwater ruins off the coast of Puerta Acosta[576]. His discoveries included megalithic temples, flights of stairs and stone roads.
More recently, Dave Truman has written about an alignment known as ‘The Way of Viracocha’ that runs from Cajamarca in the north, through Cuzco and Tiwanaku and finishing at Pukara Grande(p), oriented exactly 45° west of true north. Truman has built on the work of Maria Sholten d’Ebneth (1926-2007), who wrote of the La Ruta de Wiracocha[1236] in the 1970s(q). Others have expanded on her work, but usually in Spanish. Truman has speculated on whether “Viracocha, the great teacher and restorer of civilisation in the Andes, in some way embodied the scientific knowledge of a sophisticated, but long-forgotten high culture?” Truman 
also discusses the ‘chakana’ or Andean stepped cross (see right) and its possible meaning.
It was reported in October 2013(g) (that a team of Belgian and Bolivian archaeologists had found an assortment of ceramics, gems and gold objects at an apparent ceremonial site beneath the waters of Lake Titicaca, which was sacred to the Incas and Tiwanakus. It was not until 2019 that images of some of the artefacts recovered from the lake were widely published(x).
We cannot leave the matter of mysterious Tiahuanaco without referring to the fact that some miles further south is Lake Poopó beside which Jim Allen is convinced that the city of Atlantis was located. Allen claims that the large plain to the west of the lake is the plain mentioned by Plato as being adjacent to the city of Atlantis. In a recent documentary “Atlantis in the Andes” broadcast by ‘Discovery Civilization’, Allen identified Tiahuanaco as one of the ten kingdoms of Atlantis. However, I cannot help noticing that while Tiwanaku, claimed to be 17,000 years old, provides us with an astonishing wealth of structures and finely dressed stone, Allen’s chosen Atlantis site, Pampa Aullagas, offers little more than rubble!
Another supporter of an Andean Atlantis is Sean Bambrough, who has been developing a theory since 1999 that identifies Tiwanaku as the city of Atlantis(h). He has now published his magnum opus on the academia.edu website(ae).
In February 2015, Marcelo Ozorio also suggested a link with Plato’s Atlantis and most interesting is the huge number of images included on his site(i). There is also a large collection of related images on a YouTube clip(m).
In 2022, Marco Vigato‘s book, Empires of Atlantis [1830] was published, which included Tiwanaku as part of the evidence for his hyperdiffusionist Atlantis(ab).
In 2008, David E. Flynn brought to public attention an astonishing series of satellite photos(a) that show a vast network of the remains apparently of man-made structures that extend for many miles around Lake Titicaca. These ‘geoglyphs’ encompass Tiahuanaco.
The most remarkable collection of early photos of the Tiwanaku site can be found on the Above Top Secret website(b). The accompanying text makes a strong case for treating the location as archaeologically contaminated and as a consequence that many of the dates proposed for the site should be considered suspect. Other mysteries are the fact that saltwater Lake Titicaca contains known sea life and that old waterlines are slanted(c).
In late March 2015, the Bolivian government announced(j) that ground-penetrating radar had identified what appeared to be a buried pyramid in the Tiwanaku complex as well as other ‘anomalies’ and that excavations may start in May or June.
A mixed Spanish and English website(f) offers a number of interesting papers including a chapter from Posnansky’s book Tiahuanaco: The Cradle of American Man.
Archaeology magazine has an interesting Q & A paper relating to the history and current state of preservation at the Tiwanaku site(s).
A May 2017 report(r) confirmed that the entire Tiwanaku complex is much more extensive than previously thought, covering an area of at least 650 hectares (1,675 acres).
Joseph Davidovits who controversially proposed that Giza’s Great Pyramid stones had been cast rather than carved has also claimed that other well-known structures had been created in a similar manner, such as at Tiwanaku and Puma Punku in Bolivia(ah) and Easter Island(ai). He offers scientific evidence to support this claim in a very interesting video(ak). My objection to his ‘cast rather than carved’ hypothesis, particularly in relation to Easter Island, is that partially finished statues are visible today in a quarry still attached at the back to the rock from which they were carved as well as some of the tools used for the job. Images of these can be seen in Thor Heyerdahl’s Aku-Aku [1938].
Brien Foerster is an American writer who now lives in Cuzco, the former Inca capital in Peru. He has studied the ancient cultures of the Andes and believes that many predated the Incas and had advanced technologies that permitted the precise drilling of stone(af), the quality of which he has compared with examples found in Egypt and like Chris Dunn concluded that their level of accuracy could not have been achieved without possession of a high technology, now lost(ag). He has expanded on this in his 2014 book, Lost Ancient Technology of Egypt [1487].
A fully illustrated guide to the intriguing monuments of Tiwanaku/Puma Punku is now available which is an excellent introduction to the site including a map by Javier Escalante Moscoso(an).
(a) https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1977971/posts
(b) https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread732575/pg1
(c) https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2012/04/30/tiwanaku/
(d) https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/04/03/tiwanaku-3/
(e) http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/science-wari-tiwanaku-rival-empire-01473.html
(f) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/arqueologia/esp_tiahuanaco5.htm
(h) https://2rbetterthan1.wordpress.com/atlantis-south-americatiahuanaco/
(i) Tiwanaku, pre-columbian archaeological and world heritage site at Bolivia (viagem.space)
(k) https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg62910.html
(l) https://atlantide-mu.over-blog.com/2013/12/terre-creuse.html
(m) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkuoXm9uafI
(n) http://www.intersurf.com/~chalcedony/Tiwanaku.html
(o) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170601230717/https://www.atlantisquest.com/prehistcity.html
(p) https://grahamhancock.com/trumand1/
(q) https://puri-aprendiendovida.blogspot.ie/2013/02/la-ruta-de-viracocha-camino-de.html
(s) https://interactive.archaeology.org/tiwanaku/qanda.html
(t) https://archive.archaeology.org/blog/the-fantasy-world-of-tiwanaku/
(u) https://theappendix.net/issues/2013/4/andean-atlantis-race-science-and-the-nazi-occult-in-bolivia
(v) https://blog.world-mysteries.com/science/the-gate-of-the-sun-calendar-from-ancient-tiwanacu/
(w) https://www.ancient-origins.net/events/unearthing-lost-meridian-tiwanaku-s-temple-builders-0010322
(y) https://grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?1,1063585,1063585#msg-1063585
(z) https://web.archive.org/web/20161107001948/https://www.atlantisquest.com/prehistcity.html
(aa) https://www.oocities.org/debunkinglc/tiwanaku.html (link broken)
(ab) https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Atlantis-Civilizations-Traditions-throughout/dp/1591434335
(ad) (PDF) Mathematics in Tiwanaku-The gold number in the gate of the sun (researchgate.net)
(ae) https://www.academia.edu/61088843/Atlantis_Found_in_the_Andes_by_V_Sean_Bambrough
(af) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR7of1Lkef0
(ag) https://ahotcupofjoe.net/
(ah) https://www.geopolymer.org/archaeology/tiahuanaco-monuments-tiwanaku-pumapunku-bolivia/
(ai) https://www.geopolymer.org/library/video/they-came-from-america-to-build-easter-island/
(aj) QC2K – Neil Steede (archive.org)
(ak) https://www.geopolymer.org/library/video/they-came-from-america-to-build-easter-island/
(am) (99+) 2007 Chapter 3 Tiwanaku.doc | Graham Holton – Academia.edu
(an) Tiwanaku, the mysterious pre-Inca capital – mapaymochila.es
(ap) Tiahuanacu, The Mysterious City (archive.org)
(aq) https://www.hallofmaat.com/methodological/an-answer-to-graham-hancock/ *
Lake Poopó
Lake Poopó in the Bolivian Andes is adjacent to a large plain that is claimed, by Jim Allen, to be the site of Atlantis. Allen has reduced Plato’s dimensions by half as he contends that originally the South Americans counted with a base of twenty rather than our base of ten. With this arbitrary reduction he found that Plato’s plain of Atlantis could be identified with the plain to the west of Lake Poopó. Allen names the exact site of Atlantis itself as Pampa Aullagas.
Unfortunately, by 2015, Poopó, Bolivia’s second largest lake had been reduced to a salt pan and Titicaca, the largest, was also in trouble(a).
(a) New Scientist, 12 March, 2016. p8
Saurat, Denis
Denis Saurat (1890-1958) was born in Toulouse and educated in Britain and France. He was a professor of French literature and lectured in both countries. He also had a lifelong interest in the occult among a wide range of subjects. One of his conclusi
ons was that the worldwide megalithic remains of prehistory are evidence for the existence of a race of giants in our dim and distant past. His books[536][537] discuss this idea in detail including supporting hints from the Bible and then link the entire concept with Plato’s story of Atlantis. Saurat also suggested that the use of electricity in ancient Egypt produced gleaming eyes in the statues of Isis in her temples.>This suggestion of electricity in early Egypt was recently revisited by an engineer Andrew Hall in a YouTube video(b).<
Unfortunately, Saurat also seems to have borrowed many of the exotic concepts of Hans Hoerbiger such as a succession of moons crashing to earth. Saurat has added little to the solution of the Atlantis mystery.
He suggests two Atlantises, one about 30,000 years ago in the Andes around Lake Titicaca and the second 12,000 years ago described by Plato. Fortunately, Saurat is not arrogant and so in recognition of how scientific advances have a way of destroying previously held ‘certainties’, he admits in his summation (p118) that “despite all the evidence marshalled in this book, at no point can we say that we are absolutely sure.”
A further book[538] deals with the religion of the giants.
In 2003 the Canadian author, John Robert Colombo published a biography of Saurat[626].
A blog(a) from Jason Colavito offers further details of Saurat’s daft ideas.
(a) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/atlantis-and-the-nephilim-in-the-work-of-denis-saurat
(b) Andrew Hall: Electricity in Ancient Egypt | Thunderbolts – YouTube *