Pepper, Martin

Martin Pepper is an American geologist who is intent on demonstrating that Santorini was the site of Atlantis, claiming to have new supportive evidence. He had his ideas revealed in a History Channel program, Atlantis Found, which first aired on October 19^th, 2015^(a) as part of their How the Earth Works series.

I found it interesting that the advertising blurb for the show never once mentions Plato!

Unsurprising, Jason Colavito, an Atlantis sceptic, offers a scathing critique of the two-hour show ^(b).

>Additionally, the German website, Atlantisforschung, criticises^(c) the selective manner in which Pepper chose excerpts from Plato, carefully ignoring details that might conflict with Santorini being Atlantis.

– “Furthermore, Martin Pepper commits the same mistake as almost all supporters of the Creto-Minoan Atlantis theories: He seeks out exactly those details from Plato’s Atlantis report that correspond to his own ideas and a supposedly unalterable ‘state of scientific knowledge’, while ignoring everything which doesn’t fit.” Atlantisforschung ends with a quote from Stelios Pavlou who commented – “Although Pepper relies heavily on factual science, much of the criticism of [his] theory boils down to the fact that his claim is based on ignoring much of Plato’s real text.”<

For my part, I cannot accept the Santorini/Thera theory without a convincing explanation for where, in the 2^nd millennium BC, the Atlantean military of over a million men, plus an even larger civilian population actually lived, not to mention the elephants. Then there is also a small matter of the Plain of Atlantis 370x550km (230×345 miles); where was that? Finally, for good measure, we are missing “the mountains which surrounded it (that) were at that time celebrated as surpassing all that now exist in number, magnitude and beauty.” (Critias.118b). I think Pepper should try again or better still, forget Atlantis altogether!

^(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20160417204840/https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3amelg

^(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-historys-atlantis-found-documentary

^(c) Martin Pepper – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *