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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 »
Mahabharata
Ancient Flying Machines
Ancient Flying Machines are claimed to have been in existence in a number of ancient civilisations. Although many will have read of the claim that ancient India had flying machines known as vimanas, promoters of the ancient astronaut idea have relied heavily on the vimana reports in the likes of the Mahabharata spiced up with the additional suggestion of their involvement in atomic warfare. However, Joanna Gillan revealed that “Rather than being entirely fictitious, the passage is composed of a merging together of various unrelated passages scattered throughout the 200,000-verse epic, some of which are also questionable English translations of a questionable French translation of the original Sanskrit. When viewed in their original context, they are a little less convincing.”(a)
As I said, the claim of early flying machines is not unique to India. A paper by the late R. Cedric Leonard, makes a case for ancient aircraft in Mesopotamia(c) , citing the Babylonian books, such as the little-known Halkatha, and the Sifr’ala, allegedly translated by Yonah N. Ibn A’haron. Although Leonard was satisfied regarding the existence of Mr A’haron, Jack Churchward is less sure(b) . The flying machines described in the Book of Ezekiel were encountered in what was known as Chaldea.
In Egypt a small wooden object shaped like a small glider or bird was discovered at Saqqara in 1898. With the development of flight in the early 20th century, some of the more imaginative suggested that the Saqqara Bird may have been a model of an early flying machine. Despite various attempts to substantiate this claim it remains a matter of speculation(d) .
A number of other ancient cultures have also left atifacts and writings that are interpreted by some as evidence of flying machines in ancient times. One site has referenced China, Polynesia and a number of South American countries as offering hints of prehistoric flight and noted(e) that “To many the enormous bulk of this evidence is conclusive enough. Indeed the inescapable conclusion is that thousands of years ago a form of aviation did once exist. A form of transport that enabled people to travel to and from about the world much like we do today! But if so, where are the remains of these machines? We hear no mention of them being found at archaeological sites, and presumably if they had existed we should have found some trace of them?”
As I see it, many of the artefacts offered as evidence are open to subjective interpretation and therefore offering the possibility of unreliable conclusions and where documents are involved, lf they are genuine, they are usually in some exotic ancient language, leaving us totally dependent on the credibility of the interpreter.
Naturally, Atlantis has not escaped the claim of having mastered flight. This idea came from Edgar Cayce who advised us “that the Atlanteans discovered electricity and also had ships and aircraft powered by a mysterious form of energy crystal. He tells us that these flying machines were made of elephant skins! (Reading 364-6)(f) and that they could also travel through water! With all this technology at their disposal, it is incredible that they could have lost a war with anyone, particularly the relatively primitive Athenians.”
(a) Was the Mohenjo Daro ‘Massacre’ Real? | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)
(b) Rediscovery of The Naacal Tablets – Accusations Addressed (bibliotecapleyades.net)
(c) https://atlantisquestscience.wordpress.com/myth/ancient-aeronautica/chaldean-aircraft/
(d) Model Airplane? (catchpenny.org)
Teleguin, Sergey
Sergey Teleguin is a Russian professor of Philology and a leading advocate of the idea that the city of Tripura (Triple City) in Vedic tradition was the original inspiration behind Plato’s city of Atlantis. In support 
of his contention he has outlined a number of parallels between Plato’s account and the sacred texts of India, the Puranas and Mahabharata, in an extensive English excerpt(a) from his 2005 Russian book, Anatomy of a Myth[1122].
A further claim by Teleguin is that the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Maya gives clears evidence that they came from the far north – Ultima Thule. He goes further and attributes a North Pole origin to both the Maya and the Indo-Europeans(b).
He has recently outlined his ideas further in an article for (Nov/Dec 2013) Issue 102 of Atlantis Rising magazine.
He recently reiterated, in an email, his view that Plato’s Atlantis story should only be accepted literally or not at all. It is difficult to accept that an academic could write such nonsense. He cannot be unaware that Plato’s narrative is composed of mythology, history and within the bounds of literary licence, some embellishment of his own. Otherwise, according to Teleguin, we are expected to believe that Clieto actually gave birth to five sets of male twins, that Athens fought a war before it existed and that Poseidon and Atlas were real people! The same absence of critical thinking allows people to believe that the world was created in seven days.
Homer
Homer (c. 8th cent. BC) is generally accepted as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, regarded as the two greatest epic poems of ancient Greece. A recent study of the Greek used by Homer has enabled scientists from the University of Reading to confirm that the language used is compatible with that used in the 8th century BC, in fact dating it to around 762 BC(i).
Nevertheless, there are questions raised regarding the authorship of the ‘Homeric’ epics. For example, Andreas Pääbo is certain that the Odyssey and the Iliad came from two different authors(ar).
Even more extreme was the opinion of the ancient geographer, Eratosthenes who was a persistent critic of Homer, whom he considered to be a fantasist. Strabo reported what the geographer said in the late 3rd century BC: “You will find the scene of Odysseus’ wanderings when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of winds”(av).
Manolis Manoledakis, a professor of Classical Archaeology, in a paper(as) on the Academia website “examines an aspect of the broader issue of the geography of the Odyssey, the primary stimulus being the references of the poem to places that could be associated with the Black Sea, namely the Aeaea and the entrance to the Underworld. As we shall see, while these particular places are indeed relevant to the Black Sea region, they do not belong to the context of a specific journey with specific halts in a specific geographical sequence. The Odyssey is a synthesis of many different episodes, and there is no point in trying to trace a complete geographical course for Odysseus’ voyage.”
It should also be noted that over 130 quotations from the Illiad and Odyssey have been identified in Plato’s writings(s). George Edwin Howes (1865-1942), an American classicist, produced a dissertation[1458]+ on Homeric quotations in Plato and Aristotle.
Almost nothing is known of Homer’s life. He has been variously described as mad, blind and even mythical. Andrew Dalby, the English linguist, has gone so far as to claim[0591] that the author of the two famed epics was a woman! While in 1897 Samuel Butler, the novelist, was even more specific when he proposed that Homer was a Sicilian woman(j).
For centuries it was assumed that the content of these Homeric poems was the product of his imagination, just as the historical reality of Homer himself has been questioned. In 1795, F.A. Wolf, a German academic declared that ‘Homer’ was just a collective name applied to various 
poets whose works were finally combined into their present form in the 6th century BC. Wolf’s ideas sparked furious argument among Greek scholars that still resonates today. Now (2015), historian, Adam Nicholson has claimed that the author ‘Homer’ should not be thought of as a person but instead as a ‘culture’(o).
In a 2021 review of Victor Davis Hanson’s Who Killed Homer? [1854], Adam Kirsch outlines how “Milman Perry proved that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not written by a lone genius(ah). They were originally not written at all, but through fieldwork in Yugoslavia, Perry (1902-1935) demonstrated how the Homeric epics were the result of traditional bardic storytelling. Wikipedia describes Perry as “an American Classicist whose theories on the origin of Homer’s works have revolutionized Homeric studies to such a fundamental degree that he has been described as the ‘Darwin of Homeric studies’.”
Ed Whelan, an Irish classical scholar, published a brief paper in 2021 that endorsed the Homeric ‘multiple authors’ theory(ap).
An anonymous author offered “Although there has been a great deal of controversy about the question of whether Homer alone wrote the two famous poems, much of the evidence points towards Homer being the author due to the consistent style of writing. Also, some analysts argue that Homer may have written one of the poems but not the other since both differ greatly in style. In contrast, the reason other analysts state for this difference is that Iliad was written in his youth while Odyssey was created during Homer’s years of age.” (aq).
The identification of the site at Hissarlik in modern Turkey as Troy by Heinrich Schliemann led to a complete re-appraisal of Homer’s work and, of course, further controversy. Homer’s Iliad is the story of the Trojan War and it has been suggested that in fact, he had compressed three or more Trojan wars into one narrative. What is not generally known is that there are also ancient non-Homeric accounts of the Trojan War(q).
Kenneth Wood and his wife Florence have built on the research of his mother-in-law, the late Edna Leigh, and produced Homer’s Secret Iliad[391], a book that attempts to prove that the Iliad was written as an aide-memoire for a wide range of astronomical data.
Allied to, but not directly comparable with, is the astronomical information identified in the Bible by the likes of E. W. Maunder (1851-1928)[1137].
Guy Gervis has adopted some of their work and, in a lengthy article, specifies a date of around 2300 BC for the events described in the Iliad and Odyssey, based on an analysis of this astronomical data(n). Harald A.T. Reiche held similar views which followed some of the ideas expressed in Hamlet’s Mill[0524] by Santillana & Dechend who were colleagues of Reiche at M.I.T. They also claimed that “myths were vehicles for memorising and transmitting certain kinds of astronomical and cosmological information.”
Much has been written about the historicity of Homer’s epic accounts, including a good overview on Wikipedia(ab). Many have concluded that Homer did use real events, even if they were frequently dressed in mythological clothing compatible with the literary conventions of his day. I consider Plato to have treated the story of Atlantis similarly.
A recent study of solar eclipses recorded in Odyssey using data from NASA has confirmed that Odysseus returned to Ithaca on the 25th of October 1207 BC(r).
Scholars have generally supported the idea that Homer’s works have a Mediterranean backdrop with regular attempts to reconcile his geography with modern locations, such as the claim in 2005 by Robert Brittlestone, a British investigator to have located the site of Ithaca, the homeland of Odysseus, on the Greek island of Cephalonia. This popular idea should be put alongside the views of Zlatko Mandzuka who maintains[1396] that all the locations mentioned in the Odyssey can be identified in the Adriatic.
Kazmer Ujvarosy of San Francisco State University, has noted that there are 22 different places currently on offer as the location of Ithaca(ax).
Nevertheless, there has been a growing body of opinion that insists that this Mediterranean identification is impossible. A range of alternative regions has been proposed(f) as the setting for the epics, which extend from Portugal as far northward as the Baltic.
In his Odyssey (VII: 80), Homer wrote about the island of Scheria in the western sea. His description of the island has been compared with Plato’s description of Atlantis and has led to the theory that they refer to the same place. There is little doubt that both the detailed geography and climatic descriptions that are provided by Homer cannot be easily reconciled with that of the Mediterranean. Consequently, the Odyssey has had many interpretations, ranging from Tim Severin’s conclusion[392] that it refers entirely to the Eastern Mediterranean to Iman Wilkens’ book, Where Troy Once Stood[610], which has the voyage include the west coast of Africa, then across to the West Indies and following the Gulf Stream returns to Troy which he locates in Britain.
Location is not a problem exclusive to the writings of Plato. Wilkins’s claims are a reflection of similar ideas expressed by Théophile Cailleux[393] in the 19th century. Gilbert Pillot has also argued for voyages of Ulysses having taken him into the North Atlantic [742]. A Spanish review of Pillot’s book is available(ag). In 1973, Ernst Gideon (? – 1975) wrote in a similar vein in Homerus Zanger der Kelten, reprinted later as Troje Lag in Engelan[1643].
It is worth noting that Bernard Jones in The Discovery of Troy[1638] has recently moved Troy to Britain, probably in the vicinity of Cambridge, a location also preferred by Wilkens! Like many others, he argues that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were not set in the Mediterranean as so many of the details that he provides are incompatible with the characteristics of that sea. However, Jones has gone further and claimed that there are details in Virgil’s Aeneid, which are equally inconsistent with the Mediterranean [p.6-10], requiring a new location! Jones’ book has been reviewed on the Hall of Maat website(at) as well as by Jason Colavito(au).
An interesting overview of the various attempts to transfer the Odyssey from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe is available(w). Damien Mackey has also endorsed the idea of a Northern European backdrop to Homer’s Odyssey(aa).
Another researcher who places most of Odysseus’ travels in the eastern Atlantic is Gerard. W.J. Janssen of Leiden University on the academia.edu website(v). In a series of six papers(ai-an), he systematically reviews Homer’s geography, identifying locations referred to by him with places in the Atlantic. He compares his identifications with other commentators including Iman Wilkens and Théophile Cailleux. His website, with an English translation, offers additional information, including the suggestion(ao) that Homer’s Laestrygonians were to be found in Cuba, an interpretation also offered by Cailleux and Wilkens. They also claim that Odysseus’ Caribbean trip included a visit to Saba, a Dutch possession, which is identified as the Aeolian Isle!
The idea of an Atlantic backdrop to the Homeric epics will not go away. The Dutch researcher, N.R. De Graaf(ae). continues to write extensively on his Homeros Explorations website(ad)(x) regarding many of the specifics in Homer’s accounts. He has proposed Lanzarote in the Canaries as the location of Scheria, which concurs with the views of Wilkens and Janssen. Other specifics are that Ithaca was near Cadiz and that Sparta was Cordoba, while the ancient city of Carmona on the plains of Andalucia are, for De Graaf, Mycenae!(af)
E.J. de Meester also argued(ac) for the British Isles as the location of many of Homer’s references. It struck me as quite remarkable that the level of debate regarding the date, source and geographical details of Homer’s works is rather similar to the controversy surrounding Plato’s Atlantis in Timaeus and Critias. The late Edo Nyland was another researcher who had also opted for a Scottish backdrop to the Odyssey and had recently published his views[394].
Felice Vinci also supports[019] a Northern European background to the Iliad and Odyssey. However, in Vinci’s case, Scandinavia, and in particular the Baltic Sea, is identified as the location for the adventures in Homer’s classic. An English language synopsis of his book is available on the Internet. The persuasiveness of Vinci’s argument has recently renewed interest in the idea of a Baltic Atlantis. The assumption is that if Troy could be located in the Baltic, so might Atlantis. Vinci’s views are comparable with those of J. Rendel Harris expressed in a lecture delivered in 1924(p) in which he claims that “we are entitled to take Homer and his Odysseus out of the Mediterranean or the Black Sea, and to allow them excursions into Northern latitudes.”
However, a scathing review of Vinci’s book can be found on the Internet(d) and in issue 216 (2006) of Fortean Times written by Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs.
Further support for a Northern European Troy has come from the historian Edward Furlong, a former naval navigation officer, who has advocated for over twenty years that the journey of Odysseus went as far north as Norway>>after visting Ireland and the Scottish Islands.<< His particular views are outlined on the Internet(c).
Other writers, such as the late Henrietta Mertz [0396/7], have suggested that Homer’s epic refers to a trip to North America. Professor Enrico Mattievich Kucich of Lima University is also certain that the ancient Greeks discovered America America[400]. However revolutionary this idea may seem it shows how this particular subject is growing and would probably justify a reference book of its own.
The idea of an Atlantic backdrop to the Homeric epics will not go away. The Dutch researcher, N.R. De Graaf continues to write extensively on his Homeros Explorations website(x) regarding many of the specifics in Homer’s accounts.
In 1973, James Bailey also proposed in his well-received The God-Kings and the Titans[149] that the Odyssey recorded a trans-Atlantic trip. Evidence exists for large-scale mining in the Americas as early as the 5th millennium BC. Bailey maintained that the Europeans imported enormous quantities of copper and tin from Central and South America to feed the demands of the Old World Bronze Age, an idea that was later heavily promoted by Frank Joseph and in great, if overly speculative, detail by Reinoud de Jong(y).
Finally, the Atlantis connection with this entry is that if, as now appears to be at least a possibility, Homer’s Odyssey was about a journey to the North Sea then the possibility of the North Sea setting for the Atlantis story is somewhat reinforced.
A recent book[395] by Steven Sora has developed the Atlantic notion further with the suggestion that not only was Troy located outside the Strait of Gibraltar but that both Homer’s Trojan War and Plato’s Atlantean war are two versions of the same war with the understandable distortions and embellishments that can occur with a narrative, probably involving some degree of oral transmission and then written down hundreds of years after the events concerned.
Ukraine is soon to be added to the growing list of alternative locations for the setting of Homer’s epics with the publication of Homer, The Immanent Biography, a book by A.I. Zolotukhin(g). He claims that Homer was born in Alibant (Mykolayiv, Ukraine) on September 14, 657 BC(t). He follows the views of Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876) who believed that most of Odysseus’s travels took place in the Black Sea rather than the Mediterranean. Additionally, he locates Atlantis in the western Crimean area of Evpatoria(l). His 60-page book is available on his website(m).
An interesting paper(e) by the German historian, Armin Wolf, relates how his research over 40 years unearthed 80 theories on the geography of the Odyssey, of which around 30 were accompanied by maps. One of the earliest maps of the travels of Odysseus was produced by Abraham Ortelius in 1597(u), in which the adventures of Odysseus all take place within the Central and Eastern Mediterranean, arguably reflecting the maritime limits of Greek experience at the time of Homer or his sources! Another website(z) by Jonathan S. Burgess, Professor of Classics at the University of Toronto offers further information on this, including some informative bibliographical material.
In 2009, Wolf published, Homers Reise: Auf den Spuren des Odysseus[669] a German-language book that expands on the subject, also locating all the travels of Odysseus within the Central and Eastern Mediterranean.
Wolf’s ideas were enthusiastically adopted by Wolfgang Geisthövel in Homer’s Mediterranean[1578], who also concurs with the opinion of J.V. Luce [1579], who proposed that Homer was “describing fictional events against authentic backgrounds.” This would be comparable to a James Bond movie, which has an invented storyline set in actual exotic locations around the world.
Perhaps the most radical suggestion has come from the Italian writer, Michele Manher, who has proposed(h) that Homer’s Iliad originated in India where elements of it can be identified in the Mahabharata!
In August 2015, a fifteen-hour reading of the Iliad was performed in London.
[1458]+ https://archive.org/stream/jstor-310358/310358_djvu.txt
(c) https://www.academia.edu/8167048/WHERE_DID_ODYSSEUS_GO_
(d) https://mythopedia.info/Vinci-review.pdf
(e) https://authorzilla.com/9AbvV/armin-wolf-mapping-homer-39-s-odyssey-research-notebooks.html (link broken)
(f) https://codexceltica.blogspot.com/search?q=atlantis
(g) https://pushkinclub.homerandatlantis.com/english/homer.html
(h) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=100
(i) https://www.insidescience.org/content/geneticists-estimate-publication-date-iliad/946
(j) https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/aoto/index.htm
(k) https://web.archive.org/web/20180320072706/https://www.nwepexplore.com (see ‘n’)
(l) https://homerandatlantis.com/?lang=en
(m) https://homerandatlantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Homer_The_Immanent_biography_pdf2.pdf
(n) https://web.archive.org/web/20180320072706/https://www.nwepexplore.com
(o) https://www.newser.com/story/200859/homer-wasnt-a-person-historian.html
(p) https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:1m1163&datastreamId=POST-PEER-REVIEW-PUBLISHERS-DOCUMENT.PDF (link broken)
(q) https://luwianstudies.org/the-homeric-epics/
(r) Scientists provide evidence that Homer´s Odyssey is not fiction (archive.org)
(s) https://plato-dialogues.org/tools/char/homerqot.htm
(t) https://homerandatlantis.com/?p=4938&lang=en
(u) https://kottke.org/19/03/mapping-the-odyssey-isnt-easy
(v) https://www.academia.edu/38535990/ATLANTIC_OGUGIA_AND_KALUPSO?email_work_card=view-paper
(w) https://codexceltica.blogspot.com/2009/10/homers-north-atlantic-odyssey.html
(x) http://www.homeros-explorations.nl/
(y) https://www.academia.edu/3894415/COPPER_AND_TIN_FROM_AMERICA_c.2500-1200_BC_
(z) https://wakeofodysseus.com/
(ab) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Homeric_epics#History
(ac) https://web.archive.org/web/20090907222615/https://home-3.tiscali.nl/~meester7/engodyssey.html
(ad) Homeros Explorations – Homer, facts or fiction? (homeros-explorations.nl)
(ae) https://www.homeros-explorations.nl
(af) Mycenae, rich in gold – Homeros Explorations (homeros-explorations.nl)
(ag) Perijóresis: Odisea (perijoresis.blogspot.com) (Spanish)
(ah) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/14/the-classicist-who-killed-homer
(ai) https://www.academia.edu/40668880/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_I
(aj) https://www.academia.edu/40849368/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_II
(ak) https://www.academia.edu/40982169/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_III
(al) https://www.academia.edu/41200642/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_IV
(am) https://www.academia.edu/41474241/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_PART_V
(an) https://www.academia.edu/41625852/ATLANTIC_GEOGRAPHY_IN_HOMER_PART_VI
(ao) LAISTRUGONIACUBA, LA HAVANA (homerusodyssee.nl)
(ap) The Homeric Question – Who WAS Homer? (bibliotecapleyades.net)
(aq) Homer | Biography, Books and Facts (famousauthors.org)
(ar) (26) The Odyssey’s Northern Origins and a Different Author Than Homer | Andres Pääbo – Academia.edu
(at) http://www.hallofmaat.com/migrations/the-discovery-of-troy-and-its-lost-history/
(av) Strabo 1.2.15
Freksa, Martin
Martin Freksa (1945- ) is a German historian and the author of Das Verlorene Atlantis, a volume [303] that covers familiar ground but interestingly includes a comparison between characters in the Atlantis story and those of eastern mythologies, for example similarities between Zeus and Krishna. This book has now been translated into English and published under the title of Traces of the Atlantic Civilisation[691].
Freksa suggests that the apparent references to atomic warfare in the Mahabharata could be an allusion to a war involving Atlantis. He also suggests that this use of atomic weapons caused a rupturing of the earth, which led to the Biblical Deluge and the destruction of Atlantis. He dates this event to 3100 BC. The Atlantisforschung.de website has published excerpts from Freksa’s book relating to the war in the Marhabharata(a).
>Freksa also assumes that an earlier world catastrophe, caused by an impact in the western Atlantic, took place about 11,000 years ago. Atlantisforschung also includes a review of a book(b) by Lutz Gentes who recounts the instances of high technology that existed in ancient India.<
Freksa refers to the work of the Austrian writer, Josef F. Blumrich, who is best known for The Spaceships of Ezekiel. Blumrich, a NASA engineer also investigated the traditions of the Hopi Indians which retained a memory of flying machines and also a recollection of Atlantis going back at least 80,000 years.
For me, Freksa’s credibility as a historian was undermined by his acceptance of the hoax perpetrated by Paul Schliemann nearly a century ago.
(a) https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://www.atlantisforschung.de/&prev=search
Mahabharata
The Mahabharata and The Puranas are two of the ancient epics of Hinduism that refer to events dated between 1500 and 1000 BC and probably developed into their present form between 400 BC and 200 AD. However, Dr Manish Pandit has written three books advocating a date of 3067 BC for the Mahabharata War(e).
These epics make mention of Attala, the white island, a continent located in the western ocean. This vague similarity with the name of Atlantis may be purely coincidental, but it is regularly produced as ‘evidence’ of pre-Platonic reference to Plato’s flooded island.
A brief, but highly speculative attempt to link Atlantis with the Mahabharata is offered by Santosh Kumar(c).
A quite radical suggestion has come from the Italian writer, Michele Manher, who has proposed(a) that Homer’s Iliad originated in India where elements of it can be identified in the Mahabharata!
Wikipedia notes(d) that “the Greek writer Dio Chrysostom (c.40–c.120 CE) reported that Homer’s poetry was being sung even in India. Many scholars have taken this as evidence for the existence of a Mahabharata at this date, whose episodes Dio or his sources identify with the story of the Iliad.”
The website(b) supporting the ‘Atlantis in Indonesia’ theory of Arysio dos Santos has an extensive article with the self-explanatory title of The Hindu Origin of the Myth of Atlantis.
>Sloppy research involving the Mahabharata, produced one of the most dramatic claims of the 20th century, namely, that atomic warfare had taken place in ancient India. In response to thls Joanna Gillan published an article giving a potted history of Mohenjo Daro and including a critical review of those, including David Davenport, who have tried to prove that the site was the location of an ancient nuclear war. Supporters of this idea have pointed to quotations from the Mahabharata in support of this idea. However, Gillan revealed that “Rather than being entirely fictitious, the passage is composed of a merging together of various unrelated passages scattered throughout the 200,000-verse epic, some of which are also questionable English translations of a questionable French translation of the original Sanskrit. When viewed in their original context, they are a little less convincing.”(f)<
(a) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=100
(b) The Hindu Origin of the Myth of Atlantis | Atlantis (archive.org)
(e) https://astronomyofindia.wordpress.com/2020/12/29/3067bce-dissection-of-theories-on-the-mahabharata/
(f) Was the Mohenjo Daro ‘Massacre’ Real? | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net) *
Indus Valley
The Indus Valley civilisation is dated to 2600-1900 BC (preceded by the Mehrgarh People) is now referred to as the Harappan civilisation. To date, over a thousand settlements and five cities have been identified, but only 10% have been excavated(v).
The origins of the Indus people has been debated for some time, but a DNA study of four skeletons discovered, some years ago, at Rakhigarhi, in India, may offer some clues. However, three years later (2017) the results have still not been made public(z)(aa)! A September 2019 report in Live Science highlighted the fact that gathering usable DNA from the Indus Valley is extremely difficult as the climate there degrades it rapidly. Attempts to extract DNA from 61 individuals in the cemetery in Rakhigarhi were successful in only one instance. Unfortunately, only limited information was gleaned from this study, namely that “about two-thirds to three-fourths of the ancestry of all modern South Asians come from a population group related to that of this Indus Valley individual.” according to Vagheesh Narasimhan, one of the authors of the report.
In recent years, the Indus region has received several nominations as the source of the Atlantis story. Dr Ashok Malhotra has identified the submergence of the city of Dwarka as the inspiration for the story, which was then brought to Sumeria and later Egypt 
before transmission to Greece.
However, Radek Brychta has opted[203] for the ancient city of Dholavira as a more likely candidate, while independently Yashwant Koak arrived at the same conclusion and intends to publish soon.
A 2014 blogger offered similar ideas with a paper(n) entitled ‘Atlantis was Indus Valley plateau?’ but then proceeds to describe Indonesia as the hyperdiffusionist source for the great civilisations “such as those of the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Cretans and the Mesopotamians. These also included the Jews, the Phoenicians, and the Aryans, driven away from their ancestral lands in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.”
In Thorwald C. Franke’s Newsletter No.119 he draws attention to a review by Professor Heinz-Günther Nesselrath of a new over-priced book by Erika Daniels-Qasim. Although the book is published in German[1580], Nesselrath’s highly critical review is in English(ac), Nesselrath reveals that this is just another useless attempt to link Plato’s Atlantis with the Indus Valley civilisation. Franke describes it as a ‘sad book’.
Although the ‘ancient alien’ idea has nothing to back it up, the claim that a very ancient nuclear war destroyed the Indus civilisation has had some support(ad). However, Jason Colavito has also debunked the story of the ‘radioactive skeleton’ there(ab). A decade ago (2013) Dale Drinnon also published a blog refuting the ancient atomic war claims(aj).
In 2012, the Spanish researcher, José Angel Hernández, proposed that the Tarshish of the Bible was to be found on the coastal region of the Indus Valley, but that Tartessos was a colony of the Indus city of Lhotal and had been situated on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar! He also compared the bull cult of Plato’s Atlantis with that of the Indus civilisation(f)(g).
The central Indus city of Mohenjo-Daro was only rediscovered in 1922(m) and a curious more recent discovery there, was that 10% of artefacts found there related to play! Clusters of game pieces suggested the use of communal social centres. Unrelated, but perhaps more relevant to our study is the fact that there is a dearth of weaponry fortifications or evidence of warfare in the Indus culture(d), which is in sharp contrast to the belligerent Atlantean society described by Plato. More details of the city and the Indus culture can be read on the Italian larazzodeltempo.it website(ag)(ah).
A frequently referred to anomaly at Mohenjo-Daro is evidence of vitrification and radioactivity that some have attributed to atomic warfare or attacks by ancient aliens(af). A more balanced view(k)(l) can be found online. A 2015 article on this subject is also worth a look(o). Jason Colavito has unearthed(ab) the origin of this claim, tracing it back to the 1960s and an unreliable Russian writer, Alexander Gorbovsky, compounded by later distortions by ‘fringe investigators.
A 2012 conference on Harappan archaeology saw the origins of that culture pushed back to the 7th millennium BC, contemporary with that of Sumer(j). The same conference saw linguistic connections between the two cultures under discussion. However, despite numerous attempts over the past century the Indus Valley script remains undeciphered(p), although there are regular claims of successful decipherment, 2007(q), 2009(r), 2011(s), 2013(t), to date totalling nearly 100, somewhat reminiscent of the constant flow of Atlantis theories. Now linguists are turning to computer technology to finally solve the problem(x).
A radical theory regarding Mohenjo-Daro has been proposed by an Indian researcher, Jeyakumar Ramasami, in which he claims that the city was a necropolis and not a metropolis. His book on the subject can be downloaded as a free Word file(e). A similar theory was proposed by Hans Georg Wunderlich regarding the Minoan ‘palace’ of Knossos on Crete.
A comprehensive website(a) with many photos and diagrams relating to the Indus Valley civilisation is available. A related article by Patrick Chouinard is also of interest(b).
A recent discovery off the Konkan Coast in the State of Maharashtra in western India has revealed a remarkable structure that is based on sea-level changes that may be 8,000 years old(c). A wall 24 km long, 2.7 metres high and 2.5 metres in width was discovered in just three metres of water. Speculation has centred on the possibility of it being evidence of a completely unknown civilisation that could pre-date that of the Indus Valley. A second site, thought to be pre-Harappan, located in Rakhigarhi village in Haryana’s Hisar district, over 200 km from Chandigarh, is now under investigation.
A 2008 article(i) adds further information about the Indus Valley, which includes a reference to the Neolithic site at Mehrgarh a precursor to the Indus civilisation and dated to 7000 BC, a date that has now been pushed back to 8000 BC according to a paper published(u) in the May 25th, 2016 edition of Nature.
A recent paper(w) has revealed how the Indus people coped with the consequences of climate change when their civilisation was at its height around 2500-1900 BC. Another paper suggests that the demise of the Indus Valley civilisation was the result of climate change caused by changing monsoon patterns. The author, Nishant Malik, assistant professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Mathematical Sciences, used mathematical modelling to support his claim(ae).
Until now it was thought that many of the Indus settlements had been dependent on a major Himalayan river, the Ghaggar-Hakra, now dried up. However, recent studies(y) indicate that this river changed course over 8,000 years ago suggesting that “when the Indus people settled the area, there was only an abandoned large river valley occupied by seasonal monsoon river flow instead of a large Himalayan river.” So it seems that, unlike the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations the Indus people did not require a substantial permanent river!
Joanna Gillan published an article giving a potted history of Mohenjo Daro and including a critical review of those, including David Davenport, who have tried to prove that the site was the location of an ancient atomic war. Supporters of this idea have pointed to quotations from the Mahabharata in support of this idea. However, Gillan revealed that “Rather than being entirely fictitious, the passage is composed of a merging together of various unrelated passages scattered throughout the 200,000-verse epic, some of which are also questionable English translations of a questionable French translation of the original Sanskrit. When viewed in their original context, they are a little less convincing”(ak).
Another article on the Ancient Origins website, also by Gillan, in January 2022 reviews the history of Mohenjo Daro and unfortunately highlights that “Although it has survived for five millennia, Mohenjo Daro now faces imminent destruction. While the intense heat of the Indus Valley, monsoon rains, and salt from the underground water table is having damaging effects on the treasured site, it is the visitors that flock in their thousands to the site that are the biggest threat. Adding to the problem is a lack of funding, public indifference, and government neglect. The government even approved a festival being held at the site back in 2014, where tents, lights and stages were hammered into the walls of the delicate ruins.
Mohenjo Daro is already in an incredibly fragile condition. It is estimated that at its current rate of degradation, the World Heritage-listed site could be gone within 20 years(ai).
(b) https://newagearchaeology.weebly.com/the-indus-valley.html
(c) A civilisation as old as Indus valley? (archive.org)
(d) Indus Valley Civilization: The Demise of Utopia (archive.org)
(e) https://archive.org/details/NewInterpretationsOnIndusValleyCivilization
(f) https://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/mito-y-religion/
(g) https://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/arqueologia-e-historia/
(i) https://wondersofpakistan.wordpress.com/2009/02/21/mehrgarh-the-lost-civilisation-2/
(j) Archive 2329
(k) Mohenjo Daro – The Thunderbolts Project™ (archive.org) (new link)
(l) See: Archive 3516
(m) https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2959492/posts
(n) See: Archive 3617
(o) https://dailygrail.com/Hidden-History/2015/2/Mohenjo-Daro-Ancient-Nuclear-Mystery
(p) https://www.nature.com/news/ancient-civilization-cracking-the-indus-script-1.18587
(q) https://www.hindunet.org/hvk/articles/0207/56.html (offline Nov. 2016)
(r) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/apr/23/indus-civilisation-language-symbols
(s) https://www.boloji.com/articles/10657/a-new-light-on-the-decipherment-of
(t) Decoding the Ancient Script of the Indus Valley | Archaeology Online *
(z) https://www.quora.com/When-will-Rakhigarhi-excavations-DNA-results-be-published
(ac) https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2018/2018.08.23/
(ad) Nuclear War In Ancient Times | War Between Rama Empire and Atlantis? (archive.org)
(ag) Mohenjo-Daro, a Bronze Age metropolis – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it)
(ai) Mohenjo Daro and The Mounds That Hid a Civilization | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)
(aj) Archive 2324 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(ak) Was the Mohenjo Daro ‘Massacre’ Real? | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)
India *
India, which at first sight to Europeans might appear an improbable candidate, has not escaped the attention of Atlantis seekers. For the sake of simplicity, I use the term ‘India’ as employed before independence so as to include Pakistan, in order to accommodate most of the Indus Valley area of influence, which straddled both those modern states. Awareness of the region was boosted by the investigations of Graham Hancock and recorded in his book Underworld, which prompted a flurry of speculation(a)(c).
More recently a wall was discovered just 3 metres below the surface of the sea off the coast of Konkan on the west coast of India. The structure stretches over many kilometres (possibly as much as 25 km) and has been dated to 8000 BC(j). At the northern end of the Konkan Coast lies the Bay of Cambay, where the discovery of a large sunken city has also generated claims of great antiquity. A paper(r) by Badrinaryan Badrinaryan proposed that this ‘great metropolis’ had lasted from 13,000 BP until 3000 BP!
It may be informative to read a more sceptical commentary on discoveries in the Bay of Cambay. In a lengthy article, Paul V. Heinrich wrote – “Given the significance of the claims being made for artefacts recovered from the Gulf of Cambay, remarkably little, if anything has been published. As of the time that this article was written, nothing has been published in any scientific literature about these artefacts. At this time, the only known source of pictures had been newspaper articles, popular books (Hancock 2002a), and web pages (Hancock 2002b). Being an experienced archaeological geologist familiar with lithic materials used to prepare artefacts and concretions created by both pedogenic and marine processes, these artefacts naturally attracted my attention. However, an examination of the artefacts illustrated by Hancock (2002b) generated considerable scepticism on my part as to whether many of these so-called “artefacts” illustrated by Hancock (2002b) are really artefacts.”(u)
Further interest was generated by suggestions that the Indus Valley civilisation could also have had an Atlantis connection.
In Search of the Cradle of Civilization: New Light on Ancient India[0817] is a ground-breaking book wherein its three authors, Feuerstein, Kak & Frawley, argue that there was no “Aryan invasion” and that India, not Sumer, was the cradle of civilized humanity.
P. N. Oak (1917-2007) the Indian history revisionist has gone as far as to claim that the British Isles had once been ruled by India(l)(t)!
An Indian researcher, P. Karthigayan, had prepared a paper for the 2005 Atlantis Conference on Melos entitled ‘The Origin of the Atlantis Civilisation through Tamil literary evidence’, however, circumstances prevented his attendance. Another Indian anthropologist, Amlan Roychowdhury, an anthropologist, also proposes(b) that the Vedic culture of India is a remnant of the Atlantean civilisation. March 17th 2013 saw an article(i) published in the Sunday Observer of Sri Lanka by Neil Kiriella, in which he proposed that Plato’s Atlantis story was a reworking of the destruction of Lankapura as recorded in the Ramayana.
In an October 2015 article by blogger Abo Rashad, he outlined in some detail similarities between Vedic civilisation and that of ancient Egypt. He concluded with the following comment, “ There are evidences galore that Vedic civilization was the precursor of all major civilization in the world. Similarities between the Egyptian civilization and the Vedic civilization and the evidence of the latter being the progenitor of the earlier is but one example. There are plenty of similarities between Vedic and Celtic civilization, between Vedic and Anatolian civilization, between Vedic and Mayan civilization etc. The question is the similarities between one and many.”
Sergey Teleguin is a Russian professor of Philology and a leading advocate of the idea that the city of Tripura (Triple City) in Vedic tradition was the original inspiration behind Plato’s city of Atlantis. In support of his contention, he has outlined a number of parallels between Plato’s account and the sacred texts of India, the Puranas and Mahabharata in an extensive English excerpt(n) from his 2005 Russian book, Anatomy of a Myth[1122].
The Malagabay website published a lengthy article(l) in July 2016, offering evidence along with some conjecture, supporting the radical idea that the Sea Peoples had originated in India and having migrated westward, some of them reached the Aegean and became known as Dorians! The author of the article appears to have followed the ideas of Edward Pococke published in his India in Greece[1231].
Martin Freksa has a totally different view of where India fits into the Atlantis saga by maintaining that Atlantis while pursuing world domination, was destroyed by atomic weapons aboard missiles launched by India around 3000 BC.
David Hatcher Childress has written Vimana Aircraft of Ancient India and Atlantis[1252] in which he discusses the vimanas, the ancient Indian flying machines(s) and for good measure includes the vailxi aircraft of the Atlanteans, the latter being first mentioned in 1894 by the author of A Dweller on Two Planets[1014].
James Hartman, quoting from the Agastya Samhita offers(m) intriguing evidence that the ancient Indians had the ability to make batteries, the design of which is rather reminiscent of the Baghdad Battery!
Cedric R. Leonard in an article on pre-Platonic references to Atlantis(e) identified what he believed are relevant in the ancient writings of India(v).
Ashok Malhotra has proposed that the ancient submerged Indian city of Dwarka provided the inspiration for Plato’s Atlantis story(d).
Qusai Ayman Naser writing in 2013 from Syria also suggested India as holding the location of Atlantis, specifically in the Bay of Bengal(h).
The French historian Philippe Potel-Belner also identifies Bab-el-Mandeb as the location of the Pillars of Heracles(g) beyond which lay Atlantis on a long plain on the west coast of India(f). He has recently drawn attention to the Farasan Islands, near Bab-el-Mandeb, where a Latin inscription could be interpreted as supporting the locality as the site of the ‘Pillars’ (n).
In March 2019, Eugenio B. Ralbadisole offered the highly speculative theory that Atlantis had been situated in India, in an article(o) on the Ancient Origins website. He specifies its location as the Girinagar Mountains of the Junagadh District of Gujarat in western India as its location. His ideas are more fully outlined in a paper on the Academia.edu website.(p)
Apart from any association with Atlantis, Gene Matlock has made the unexpected claim that there is “100% Non-Contestable Proof!” that ancient India had conquered the Americas(q)!
Also See: Yashwant Koak, Dholavira and Kumari Kandam
(a) See: Archive 2051
(b) IS VEDIC CIVILIZATION THE REMNANTS OF THE LEGENDARY ATLANTIS | Vedic Vidyalay ????? ???????? (archive.org) (26 pages)
(c) Indian Atlantis? (archive.org) *
(d) In Search of Atlantis — Getting Closer (archive.org)
(e) See: Archive 2055
(f) See: Archive 2056
(g) See: Archive 2057
(h) See: Archive 5135
(i) See: Archive 2058
(j) See: Archive 2059
(k) See: Archive 2723.
(l) Catastrophic English: India In Greece | MalagaBay (archive.org)
(m) https://www.sacred-texts.com/ufo/ourpast.htm
(n) langue et histoire – ACTUALITES (archive.org)
(o) https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/atlantis-india-0011657
(q) http://www.viewzone.com/gene.india.html
(r) Gulf of Cambay: Cradle of Ancient Civilization | Archaeology Online (archive.org)
(s) Ancient Indian Aircraft Technology (bibliotecapleyades.net)
(t) P N Oak: World Vedic Heritage | MalagaBay (wordpress.com)
(v) The Vimana Epics (Expanded Knowledge-base) | Ancient Astronaut Archive (one third way down page) *
Herodotus *
Herodotus (c.484 – c.420 BC) was born in Halicarnassus, today known as Bodrum, a popular tourist resort in Turkey. He wrote the first comprehensive history of the ancient world. His work has been lauded and denounced in equal measure, earning the twin appellations of ‘Father of History’ and ‘Father of Lies’. The latter is the consequence of some of his accounts appearing incredible at first reading, but a little 
investigation and lateral thinking can reveal the underlying truth of his statements as demonstrated by Reginald Fessenden among others. Herodotus also described an unusual Egyptian barge, known as a ‘baris’, which was not confirmed until the 21st century(e).
A recent article(d) on the Ancient Origins website defends Herodotus’ reputation.
Another example is to be found in Book IV of The Histories[1239] where he mentions the Atlantes as being vegetarians and never dreaming (v.184). This apparently strange comment may be explained by the fact that vegetarians are frequently short of vitamin B6, which is recognised today as leading to the suppression of dreams. This is reminiscent of a reference in the Mahabharata to Atala, sometimes proposed as a reference to Atlantis, where it notes that it is inhabited by “white men who never have to sleep or eat” (Santi Parva, Section CCCXXXVII).
Writing nearly a century before Plato, Herodotus refers to Atlantes as a people occupying the interior of what was then known as Libya (Hist.4.184.1) and since the Atlanteans controlled the Mediterranean as far as Egypt (Timaeus 25b) Herodotus may have been alluding to them. In Book I, 202, Herodotus refers to the sea beyond the Pillars of Heracles as the ‘Sea of Atlantis’. The pre-platonic date of these comments dispels the notion that Atlantis was an invention of Plato. This same text refers to the fact that all the known seas are connected; (i) ‘the sea known to the Greeks’, namely the Aegean or eastern Mediterranean, (ii) ‘the sea beyond the Pillars of Heracles’ in the western Mediterranean and (iii) the ‘Erythraean’ or the Red Sea. This interpretation of the text implies that the Pillars of Heracles were located somewhere in the region of Malta, a view supported by some recent writers such as Anton Mifsud.
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]. This provides a powerful argument against the claim that America was known to the Greeks or that Plato’s ‘opposite continent’ could have been a 
reference to America. Furthermore, Anaximander drew a ‘map’ of the known world in the 6th century BC showing three continents without any suggestion of territory beyond them.
In spite of the above references that are apparently supportive of the existence of Atlantis, it has been reasonably argued, by Alan Alford, that they are counterbalanced by the fact that Herodotus considered the wars between the Persians and the Greeks as the greatest of all time, that he considered Sardinia the largest in the world and that the Minoans had developed the first sea empire in the Mediterranean, all attributes of Plato’s Atlantis. In response, I must argue that the war with Atlantis could have been the greatest up to that point in time but subsequently eclipsed by the scale of the war with the Persians. Similarly, the First World War was the most extensive until World War II. With regard to the Minoans, it must be pointed out that the Phoenicians had a more extensive trading empire encompassing both the eastern and western Mediterranean, whereas the Minoans were mainly active in the eastern basin.
Finally, Herodotus was wrong regarding Sardinia, as Sicily is in fact the largest island in the Mediterranean in terms of area (25,708 km2 vs. 24,090 km2). However, the coastal length of Sardinia is much greater than Sicily’s (1843 vs 1115 km). Interestingly, Felice Vinci recently wrote[019] that ancient seafarers measured territory by its coastal perimeter rather than by its area, as we do today. In fact he relates how this method was in use up to the time of Columbus. So in the end Herodotus was quite correct according to the criteria of his age. Once again we see the dangers inherent in trying to understand writings from another age and culture.
This method of measuring territory by the length of its coastal boundaries must be taken into account when considering Plato’s description of Atlantis being greater than Asia and Libya together.
Pierre Vidal-Naquet has pointed out[580.23] how Jean-François Pradeau after studying the language of Critias demonstrated[385] that ‘this dialogue employs certain terms that do not appear elsewhere in Plato’s works, terms that are borrowed from Herodotus’.
A modern review of Herodotus’ Histories was written by Daniel Mendelsohn in The New Yorker in April 2008(f).
Thorwald C.Franke delivered a paper to the 2008 Atlantis Conference with the self-explanatory title of The Importance of Herodotus’ Histories for the Atlantis Problem. This interesting document is now available online(c). Franke believes that Herodotus has more to offer Atlantology than is generally thought. He mentions the work of J.V.Luce having made a positive use of Herodotus’ Histories as a contribution to the Atlantis debates.
The full text of Herodotus’ writings is available online(b).
(b) The Internet Classics Archive | The History of Herodotus by Herodotus *
(c) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/Franke_Herodotus_Atlantis2008_Proceedings.pdf
(f) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/28/arms-and-the-man-3