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

Latest News

  • NEWS October 2024

    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

    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 »
Search

Recent Updates

Margaret Murray

Flinders Petrie, Wm. M. *

William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) was a renowned English Egyptologist, who developed improved archaeological methods, some of which are still employed today. One of his first publications was in 1883, entitled The Pyramids and Temples 0f Gizeh[1660]. This is now available online, while a 1990 edition has additional material supplied by Zahi Hawass(c).

Jason Colavito has drawn attention(a)  to a short article written by Flinders Petrie in Ancient Egypt, September 1924, in which he finds value in the work of Reginald Fessenden, who was an advocate of Atlantis in the Caucasus. However, I note that he makes no explicit comment on Fessenden’s Atlantis theory. Petrie was interested in the evidence that strongly suggested that people from the Caucasus region had an influence on the development of the ancient Egyptian culture, noting again a couple of year s later “It appears, then, that the cultural connections of the earliest Egyptians, as well as the physical descriptions in their mythology, point to the Caucasus region. When, further, we find there the names of the principal places of the mythology in their relative positions, it gives strong grounds for regarding that region as the homeland of the earliest civilization of the Egyptians”. (Ancient Egypt, June 1926) (b) .

Dr. Margaret Murray (1863-1963), who worked with Petrie, was also sympathetic to this view. More recently, Ronnie Gallagher has taken up this cause and has gone further by suggesting the possibility that not only were migrants from the Caucasus responsible for kick-starting the development of Egyptian culture, but that people from the same region had a similar influence on the early inhabitants of Sumeria and the Indus Valley.

Although Flinders Petrie is better known for his extensive work in Egypt, he also excavated in Palestine, where he died and was buried.

(a) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/flinders-petrie-on-atlantis.html

(b) https://grahamhancock.com/gallagherr1/

(c) Wayback Machine (archive.org) *

Gallagher, Ronnie

Ronnie Gallagher is a retired environmental manager and an amateur archaeologist with a great interest in the Caucasus region, where Ronnie Gallagherhe has carried out extensive research. He has written an interesting paper on the effects of the post-glacial flooding of the Caspian Sea and its former physical connection with the Black Sea as well as with the Arctic Ocean(a).

Gallagher has also drawn attention to cart ruts in Azerbaijan(b) similar to, but not as numerous as, those on Malta. He is also an admirer of the work of Reginald Fessenden who placed Atlantis in the Caucasus(c) and proposed that migrants from that region were responsible for kick-starting what we know as the Egyptian civilisation. The renowned Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray were sympathetic to this view, as is Gallagher(d).

However, Gallagher goes further and suggests that people from the Caucasus were also responsible for the development of the great cultures of Sumeria and the Indus Valley!

>Gallagher expanded on his view that migrants from the Caucasus had settled in Egypt, suggesting that they brought with them memories of their homeland and one of its best-known landmarks – Mount Barmak in modern Azerbaijan and used its outline to inspire the Great Sphinx at Giza(g)!!! In another paper, he expands on anthropomorphic images in Azerbaijan(l).<

His own conclusion regarding the location of Atlantis in the Caucasus region was that it was inundated as a consequence of the creation of a vast ‘flooded Eurasia’ that resulted from the collapse of glacial ice-dams(d)(h)(m), comparable with the Lake Missoula Floods in America.

Gallagher’s paper should be read in conjunction with a 2004 paper(e) from a team of Russian and US scientists that relates to a ‘Giant Siberian Lake’.

>Related to this is a recent study that has shown that 12 million years ago the same vast region was home to the Earth’s largest-ever lake, which the authors have called Paratethys(i). In fact, it is claimed that its history begins even further back at 34 million years ago and at its greatest extent stretched from Germany to China!(j)<

Gallagher’s studies in Azerbaijan continue, where he has identified an extensive number of strandlines in the region resulting from ancient catastrophic flooding.

>His presentation to the Second International Conference on the Aral Sea Problems in 2019 in St. Petersburg is available online in a lengthy and extensively illustrated pdf file(k).<

He has now published a number of extended abstracts of recent papers on the academia.edu website(g). He concluded one(f) with the following:  “However, the  thorny  problem  of  what  might  have  caused  the  Gilazi  strandlines and  the  inferred worldwide flood can only be speculated on and will be controversial.

 Perhaps open-minded discussion on the theories, such as the reality of the diverted Russian Rivers, an enlarged Ponto Caspian and the ingress of marine waters into the Eurasian continental interior might begin to reveal a different pre-history and provide support for a world-wide flood.”

Also See: Lake Agassiz, Deglaciation and Melt Water Pulses.

(a) https://www.scribd.com/doc/95437026/The-Ice-Age-Rise-and-Fall-of-the-Ponto-Caspian-Ancient-Mariners-and-the-Asiatic-Mediterranean

(b) https://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai103_folder/103_articles/103_cart_ruts.html

(c) https://www.radiocom.net/Deluge/Deluge1-6.htm

(d) https://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/GallagherR1.php

(e) See Archive 2372)

(f) https://www.academia.edu/37625564/Observations_of_Caspian_strandlines_their_use_as_highstand_indicators_with_consideration_for_their_implications_with_regard_to_regional_geomorphology_paleodrainage_and_biodiversity

(g) https://www.academia.edu/37625563/Anthropomorphic_images_in_Azerbaijans_landscape_and_their_possible_significance

>(h) (99+) (PDF) Observations on Late Pleistocene Flooding of the Eurasian Continental Interior and Possible Alluvial Origin of Loess | Ronnie Gallagher – Academia.edu

(i) Earth’s Largest-Ever Lake Engulfed Europe and Asia 12 Million Years Ago | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)  

(j) https://www.researchgate.net/project/The-evolution-of-Paratethys-the-lost-sea-of-Central-Eurasia 

(k)  Strandlines on Azerbaijan’s Mud Volcanoes and coastal interior: New evidence of a catastrophic marine flood impacting the Ponto Caspian and Aral Sea regions with its implications to natural sciences and humankind (zin.ru) 

(l) Anthropomorphic Images in Azerbaijan’s Landscape – Graham Hancock Official Website 

(m) Observations on Late Pleistocene Flooding of the Eurasian Continental Interior and Possible Alluvial Origin of Loess – Graham Hancock Official Website<

Fessenden, Reginald Aubrey

Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, (1866-1932), was a remarkable Canadian ReginaldFessendenlrgwho, at the age of 24, had been head chemist to Thomas Edison. He was Professor of postgraduate Mathematics and Electrical Engineering, Western University of Pittsburgh and Engineering Commissioner, Ontario Power Commission. While there he took on the challenge of wireless communication and he made his first radio voice ‘broadcast’ on Christmas Eve, 1906, at a time when Marconi was still signalling in Morse code. In fact, his first voice transmission was on December 23rd 1900 which was heard one mile away.

Fessenden investigated an ancient civilisation in the Caucasus and identified it as Atlantis. The famous Egyptologist Flinders Petrie was interested in his work, which revealed evidence that people from the Caucasus had an influence on the development of ancient Egyptian culture(b). Dr Margaret Murray (1863-1963), who worked with Petrie, was also sympathetic to this view. More recently, Ronnie Gallagher has taken up this cause(c) and has gone further by suggesting the possibility that not only were migrants from the Caucasus responsible for kick-starting the development of Egyptian culture but that people from the same region had a similar influence on the early inhabitants of Sumeria and the Indus Valley.

Fessenden approached the Smithsonian seeking help with organising an expedition to Russia to search for evidence in support of his theories. Their response of March 1924 is available online(e).

Fessenden was also the author of The Deluged Civilisation of the Caucasus Isthmus published in three parts between 1923 and 1933 and now available on the Internet(a). In this extensive work, he discusses an alternative interpretation of the geography of early Greek myths and its consequences for Plato’s story of Atlantis.

>The journal Nature published a very brief review of Fessenden’s work in the 20th Dec. 1924 edition(g).

Fessenden’s monumental work on the civilisations of the Caucasus concludes with a short paper having the interesting title of Synopsis of Some Unpublished Chapters of the Deluged Civilization of the Caucasus Isthmus he notes a number of intriguing points, keeping in mind that this was written nearly a century ago.

“The names of the gods of the Babylonian Creation legend, i.e. Lakamu, Lakmu, Kingu, Anshar, An, Marduk, Gaga, are the names of the most prominent mountains of the Caucasus range. The names are all unchanged except Kingu, now Elbruz, and Anshar, now Kasbek; whose old names are given in the Encyclopedia Britannica, article “Caucasus”. 

Almost all of these names are very distinctive and are found nowhere else, e.g. Lakamu, Gaga, etc., though Kingu is found as Kongur on the shore of Lake Sevanga. In addition, their characteristics correspond with those of the gods. For example, Kingu is the greatest, Anshar next, then An; and Marduk is near Anshar, and Gaga is a smaller mountain between Marduk and Terek. The Apsu was the crest of the range.” (f)

He also identified the Jakin or eastern Pillars of Hercules as shown on one of Adolf Stieler’s maps on the old shore of the Caspian Sea and furthermore, he quoted from Encyclopedia Britannica, ‘Babylonia’ where similarities between the names of locations in Babylonia and Finland are noted!<

In 1940, Fessenden’s widow, Helen, just a year before her own death, completed Reginald’s unfinished autobiography [1615]. In Chapter 28, his support for Atlantis being situated in the Caucasus is reiterated.

Jason Colavito has written a short critique of Fessenden’s work(d).

(a) https://www.radiocom.net/Deluge/Deluge1-6.htm

 https://www.radiocom.net/Deluge/Deluge7-10.htm

https://www.radiocom.net/Deluge/Deluge11.htm

(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/flinders-petrie-on-atlantis.html

(c) https://grahamhancock.com/gallagherr1/

(d) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/on-atlantis-berossus-and-alternative-scholarship

(f) SYNOPSIS OF SOME UNPUBLISHED CHAPTERS OF THE DELUGED CIVILIZATION OF THE CAUCASUS ISTHMUS (lektsia.com) *

(g) https://www.nature.com/articles/114892c0 *