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

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    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 »
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    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 »
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megalith builders

Thomas Sheridan & Neil McDonald

Thomas Sheridan & Neil McDonald are the authors of Atlantis: An Empire Lost and Found [2070] in which they attempt to associate the megalithic monuments of the eastern Atlantic seaboard with Atlantis. In particular, they are in awe of the sophistication of the megaliths of the Orkneys and the ongoing discoveries being made there. I agree that they are impressive, but there is no evidence to link them with Atlantis. Such speculation regarding the megalith builders is nothing new, so I let it pass. Additionally, the book lacks both a Bibliography and an Index.

However, speculation is okay, but a distortion of facts is unacceptable. The authors’ speculation continued later with the suggestion that the round towers of Ireland “may well indicate artefacts of an Atlantean civilisation.” To support this contention they claim that in his 1834 book, The Round Towers of Ireland [0124], Henry O’Brien “proposed that the towers were constructed by survivors of an Atlantean-style civilisation, and these had become known in time as the Tuatha Dé Danann of Irish mythology.” To be clear, O’Brien never once mentioned either Plato or Atlantis. Muddying the waters further, the theories of Phillip Callahan regarding the towers and paramagnetism are added to the mix.

When I found that Sheridan & McDonald liberally cited sources such as Blavatsky, Steiner and Cayce, I realised that this book had no real value for me and abandoned it.

360-Day Year

A 360-Day Year literally means a year that is 5¼ days shorter than today and is a view usually favoured by people with a religious agenda, such as Christadelphians(a). The author of that paper, Dale W. Wong, has expanded his claim into a 2006 book [2065].

Donald W. Patten wrote several books and papers, two of which were with Samuel R. Windsor entitled The Recent Organisation of the Solar System, and The Mars-Earth Wars, which are also available online(h)(i). One of the consequences of this ‘reorganisation’ and encounters with our neighbouring planets was a lengthening of our solar year from 360 to 365+ days(j)!

Some years ago the late William F. Dankenbring published a lengthy paper claiming that prior to the biblical Exodus the year was reckoned to have 360-day year. He goes further, claiming a 360-day year for the Maya(k).

A further variation is proposed in a 1996 paper by Wayne Horowitz, titled The 360 and 364 Day Year in Ancient Mesopotamia, from which I quote the abstract here(l).

“During the later portion of the Second Temple period in Israel, a 364 day calendar emerged to challenge the traditional lunar calendar with its regular year of 12 lunar months (approximately 354 days) and leap year of 13 lunar months (approximately 384 days). Evidence from cuneiform sources suggests that this ancient Israelite 364 day year, which appears in the apocryphal books of Enoch and Jubilees, and in the writings of the Qumran community, had its origins in a Mesopotamian ideal mean lunar year of 364 days (12 lunar months = 354 days plus 1/3 ideal lunar month [= 10 days]). This year length of 12 months plus 10 additional days is attested in Mesopotamia from the seventh century B.C.E. onwards, and itself represents an improvement on an ideal 360 day calendar year that dates back to the fourth millennium B.C.E.”

In the 1950s, Immanuel Velikovsky, often accused of an overdependence on the Old Testament quoted a number of ancient sources to support his view that there was a calendrical change required as a consequence of a close encounter with an extraterrestrial body, which slowed the Earth’s rotation. He claimed that this took place in Egypt after the reign of the Hyksos. Velikovsky tackled the 360-day year in Chapter Eight of Worlds in Collision, noting its use in ancient India, China, Persians, Babylonians as well as Egyptian and Romans [037].

Another unusual claim comes from Yair Davidiy, who wrote on the Brit-Am website – “Dolmens and Megalithic Monuments originated in Ancient Israel. Jeremiah 31:21 says that the Lost Ten Tribes will construct a trail of Megalithic Monuments from Israel to their places of exile and evidence of this path will enable them to return. Such a trail exists! It is the Trail of the Dolmens from the Middle East to the West.”(d) As far as I’m aware Davidiy has not explained the huge numbers of dolmens in places such as Korea and Japan! Professor W.A. Liebenberg has written a longer piece(e) on the ‘Lost Tribes as the builders of the megaliths. However, since the megalithic building period is generally accepted to have lasted from around 4000 BC until 1500 BC, this created a problem for Davidy and Liebenberg (D&L). The disappearance of the Lost Tribes is dated to around 700 BC leading to their dispersal and proposed megalith building as they travelled. D & L include Newgrange (3200 BC) among their monuments and that is where their difficulties begin. Like Velikovsky(c), both claim that before 700 BC the year was 360 days in length rather than our present 365 days. They argue that if Newgrange (among other monuments) had been built when we had a 360-day year the sun would not still light up the interior at the winter solstice. Therefore, they conclude that most megaliths were erected after 700 BC!

There is also a website actively concerned with the study of the 360-day year(b). This includes comments on ancient 360-day calendars.

Guy Cramer offers a very detailed review of the 360 v 365 debate, citing among other sources, the Book of Enoch(f)(g).

See Ancient Chronology

(a) Bible Articles and Lessons: 1-9 – 360-day year (archive.org) 

(b) https://360dayyear.com

(c) Worlds in Collison [037], https://www.british-israel.us/413.html

(d) https://www.britam.org/Proof/Attributes/roleDolmen.html

(e) (99+) A Historical Research of the Ten Tribes Scattered Into the Nations Part 10 | Prof (Dr) WA Liebenberg – Academia.edu

(f) 360 vs. 365 (xwalk.ca) (part 1)

(g) Isaiah’s Sundial & Joshua’s Long Day (xwalk.ca) (part 2)

(h) https://creationism.org/patten/PattenRecOrgSolSys/PattenRootssCh00aTitle.html

(i) http://creationism.org/patten/PattenMarsEarthWars/

(j) https://creationism.org/patten/PattenRecOrgSolSys/PattenRootssCh01.html

(k) https://triumphpropheticministries.com/360-day-calendar-mayan.htm

(l) (PDF) The 360 and 364 day year in ancient Mesopotamia | Wayne Horowitz – Academia.edu *

 

 

 

 

 

Woods, Anthony

 Anthony Woods is the author of Atlantis Ireland, published under the auspices of the unaccredited Keystone University(a) in Dublin, with Woods listed as CEO(b). To be blunt, for me as an Irishman, in spite of such an interesting title, I was greatly disappointed. In fact, I was by turn uncertain whether I should laugh or cry.

Woods engages in a generous level of speculation, which was certainly attention seeking. He selectively uses some mythological stories as if history whenever it suits his purpose [p.71]. The content is irritatingly repetitious throughout, references should have been numbered, which along with a few typos, all cry out for an editor.

His core contention is that Stone Age Ireland was a cultural hyperdiffusionist centre. He claims that megalith building, language and religion, all spread globally from Ireland, also known as Atlantis!

Among his many outlandish claims are that:

1.The ancient Irish language is the oldest in the world and is the most extensive with almost a million words [p.142], which is completely wrong by about a factor of six!

2.Irish megaliths are the most spectacular – obviously Woods has never heard of Brittany!

3.Megalith construction spread from Ireland to the world. However respected archaeologists such Aubrey Burl, Mike Parker Pearson and Robert Hensey [1766.6] burst that particular bubble with the their shared view that megalith building originated in France.

According to Woods, “the high concentration of megaliths on the west cost of Britain and France proves that Ireland was the fountainhead, the source of the megalithic mother culture.” The ‘logic’ here eludes me!

4.For some reason Woods thinks islands are ideal for evolution(p139), and that Cro-Magnon Man evolved in Ireland[p.103]!

5.Although Ireland was the island of Atlantis, the city of Atlantis (Cerne) was in Mauritania and is known today as the Richat Structure!

6.The Celts didn’t come to Ireland, they came from Ireland![p.99]

7.Woods makes the modest claim that the Irish visited America thousands of years before Columbus. Which may or may not be true, but what has that to do with Atlantis? [p.93]

In all, this book is not just an Hibernocentric rant. Woods also offers a lengthy diatribe against British imperialism and Vatican political interference, which, although probably justifiable, has also nothing to do with Atlantis

He introduces a range of subjects such as giants, Machu Picchu, Gobekli Tepe and the Garden of Eden, all with Woods’ imagined connection with ancient Ireland!

Apart all the nonsense about ancient Ireland, he barely touches on Plato’s dialogues, except to rubbish his narrative with “It’s clear that Plato’s legend is useful but unreliable, that it combined two separate related places, a lot of exaggeration and several historical errors.”[p.13] and twice patronisingly refers to Plato’s account as “useful but unreliable.”[p.50]

Woods did quote from Ulf  Erlingsson, who made a more valliant attempt to link Ireland with Atlantis some years. Erlingsson matched the dimensions of 2000 x 3000 stadia (340 x 227 miles) given by Plato with the diagonal dimensions of Ireland [319.16]. Unfortunately, Erlingsson got it very wrong and Woods copied his error. Plato’s figures were the dimensions of the Plain of Atlantis, while the Central Plain of Ireland is just a fraction of its size(c), being very roughly 150 x 100 miles in extent. Now, who’s unreliable?

At which point, I could take no more and gave up.

(a) https://www.keystone.ie     

(b) https://ie.linkedin.com/in/anthonymwoods

(c) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Ireland

Channelling *

Channelling is a modern term for mediumship that claims to provide contact with the spirits of the departed. It has become fashionable now for channellers to claim communication with entities from Atlantis and or Lemuria/Mu! As a means of assisting in the quest for Atlantis, channelling, in the opinion of your compiler, is about as useful as a packet of sausages. Recent articles regarding psychics and police work have only strengthened my scepticism(a)(h). Simon Singh, a well-known author, recently penned an article on the subject(c)(d).

My principal objections to the use of so-called channelled information are listed in Joining the Dots [p.63].

(1) Channelling sources have frequently been shown to be fraudulent or demonstrate manifestations of schizophrenia.

(2) Channelled ‘information’ relating to Atlantis frequently contradicts accepted scientific knowledge.

(3) Channelled ‘information’ repeatedly conflicts with commonsense.

(4) Channelled ‘information’ is not acceptable in a court of law.

(5) Channelling sources often contradict each other.

(6) No published medium, psychic or psychotic,  has ever offered a verifiable location, date, or identity for Atlantis.

We should also keep in mind that the name Atlantis was a Hellenised name concocted by Solon or Plato to identify the homeland of the Atlantean invaders, hundreds if not thousands of years after their island was submerged. So when it is claimed that messages have been received from Atlantis or past lives experienced there, how do the mediums know that Atlantis was the source of their ‘communication’, since Atlantis would have been known by a different name or names to its inhabitants and they could not have been aware of a name invented many centuries after their demise. Furthermore, how do we explain these ancient Atlanteans communicating in English or any other modern vernacular language?

Psychic Archaeology has been defined  as “the process of using psychic abilities to locate objects of centuries past.”  It gained wider public awareness in 1978 with the publication of two books, Psychic Archaeology [781] by Jeffrey Goodman and The Secret Vaults of Time [1881] by Stephan A. Schwartz. They both touch on the subject of Atlantis, but only in the context of the ‘revelations’ of Edgar Cayce. In the 21st century, Luciano Pederzoli published The Megalith Builders – Psychic archaeology and the Nuragic civilization(n). His book deals specifically with “the reconstruction of an entire life is presented – from birth to death – of an important individual who lived on the Italian island of Sardinia approximately 3,500 years ago, at the peak of what is known as the Nuragic civilization, which is now gradually attracting more attention from progressive scholars,”

A book-length paper by Luciano Pederzoli on the Researchgate.net website that purports to offer information about life in Sardinia during and before the Nuragic period(o). It is claimed that it was developed through the use of regression hypnosis. Pederzoli has published a number of papers about channelling and Out-of-Body Experiences(p). This is not for me.

When law courts allow channelled information to be admitted in evidence, I will be happy to reconsider my opinion. While speaking of courts, I should point out that the evidence of witnesses is preferred where there is corroboration, partly in recognition of the fragility of memory(f) and partly because of the risk of lying. How do you corroborate that the ‘spirit source’ of a medium is real? A recent study(g) of a high-profile medium Allison DuBois would do little to encourage channelling as a dependable tool.

Further psychic pscandals(l) have even led their representative organisations to call for greater controls(k).

A lengthy paper(j) by Eric Pement, soberly discusses the subject of channelling from a religious viewpoint.

David Pratt, in a paper on Pole Shift theories, has highlighted the conflicting information generated by psychics when exploring the subject(m), noting that “A number of psychics, with the help of their ‘spirit guides’, have offered dramatic and generally conflicting accounts of past and future pole shifts. All their ‘prophecies’ have so far failed to come true.”

In the meanwhile, it might be worth reading an article by Karla McKlaren, a former New Age leader, on her conversion to scepticism(e). Also consider a 2016 large-scale study(i) which concluded that The results don’t prove that relatively poor analytical thinking skills cause people to become believers in psychic phenomena, but they are certainly consistent with the idea that a lack of these skills may leave people more prone to developing such beliefs.”

See Also: Critical Thinking

(a) Psychic Detectives Have a Perfect Record – Pacific Standard (archive.org) *

(c) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/16/psychic-sally-morgan-deluded-harmless

(e) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20180825014452/https://www.csicop.org/si/show/bridging_the_chasm_between_two_cultures

(f) The Certainty of Memory Has Its Day in Court – The New York Times (archive.org)

(g) https://web.archive.org/web/20170502150312/https://www.csicop.org/si/show/medium_allison_dubois_is_testedand_failsin_the_real_world

(h) A Recent Investigation Into British Psychics Revealed Something Shocking – Hayley is a Ghost Geek (archive.org) 

(i) Why do so many people believe in psychic powers? – Research Digest (archive.org)

(j) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3169/

(k)   https://www.psychicnews.org.uk/articles/Psychic-News-TRUTH-campaign

(l) http://www.badpsychics.com/2016/06/gary-mannion-secretly-recorded-cheating.html

(m) https://www.davidpratt.info/pole2.htm

(n)https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317264700_THE_MEGALITH_BUILDERS_-_Psychic_archaeology_and_the_Nuragic_civilization

(o) (PDF) THE MEGALITH BUILDERS – Psychic archaeology and the Nuragic civilization (researchgate.net) 

(p) (99+) Luciano Pederzoli | EVANLAB – Academia.edu 

Mzora Stone Circle *

The Mzora Stone Circle is a huge megalithic monument in Morocco and is in fact the largest stone ellipse in the world. Mzora and the Egyptian Nabta Playa site are claimed to have used the same construction methods that Alexander Thom has shown to have been used by the British megalith builders. A recent article by Sarah P. Young claims that “The circle is constructed using a Pythagorean right angled triangle with the ratios 12, 35, 37 and this is the same method used by 30 megalithic stone circles in Britain alone. Other similarities in construction and proportions exist such as the use of the so called ‘megalithic yard – a unit of measurement which seems to have been universally employed across Europe – and evidently even further afield” (g).

 

Mzora3

Although no formal claim has been made for any connection with Atlantis, the supporters of the idea that the megalith builders were Atlanteans see the complexity of the Mzora site as further justification for their opinion. A July 2018 paper(f) links the ancient Berbers with Mzora and as the Berbers occupied territory described by Plato as Atlantean (Timaeus 25a-b & Critias 114c), Mzora may also be legitimately described as Atlantean.

 

James Mavor, better known for his research at Santorini, surveyed the Mzora site in the 1970s. Bob Quinn visited the site in 1982 and was struck by its similarity with Newgrange! Robert Temple discusses the site at length in his Egyptian Dawn[736]. According to Hugh Newman in a paper on the global ubiquity of stone circles(h), he refers to Mavor’s work and notes that Mzora “appears to have been constructed either by the same culture that erected the megalithic sites in France, Britain and Ireland or by one that was intimately connected with them.”

 

John E. Palmer visited and surveyed the site in 1978 and subsequently wrote an article for Kadath magazine, unfortunately in French only. He reported that extensive damage was done to the site by ‘archaeologist’ César Luis de Montalban with excavations in 1935-6(d) and that many of the stones have been broken by ignorant Islamic extremists.

 

In 2011, Graham Salisbury gave coordinates for the site and offers a history of Mzora in a longer article(b).

 

(b)  See: https://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/the-mysterious-moroccan-megalithic-menhirs-of-mzora/

(d) https://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/004222.html

(f) The Rich Mythology and Megalithic Culture of the Ancient Berbers, Lords of the Desert | Ancient Origins (archive.org) *

(g) The Mzora Stone Circle: A Megalithic Mystery in Morocco | Ancient Origins (archive.org) *

(h) https://grahamhancock.com/newmanh3/

Vega, Manuel

Manuel Vega (1967- ) was born in Spain and studied Chemistry there and later worked as a research scientist in America and Japan. He travelled widely in the Far East before returning to the United States where he spent five years training a Buddhist monk before resuming a more secular life.

In 2012 he published Sailors of Stonehenge[868] in which he reviews the principal megalithic sites of Western Europe, including some interesting speculation. For example he describes the English Avebury complex as a site of ‘monarchical renewal’ and proposes related ceremonies at Stonehenge.  Another of what I consider his more fanciful ideas is his suggestion that Ireland’s Boyne Valley, which includes Newgrange, was used as a ‘royal funerary complex’ for dead English kings! He maintains that the location of many of these sites was determined by the position of astronomical features in the night sky.

Vega ends the book with a chapter on Atlantis, which he locates in the Atlantic and identifies the Atlanteans as the Megalith Builders. By the end of the 4th millennium BC they designed a huge celestial mirror over the Atlantic territories, which served to regulate themselves politically and religiously (implementing Heavens on Earth). The largest and most unique constructions, such as those at Carnac, Avebury, Stonehenge and Newgrange, were royal monuments erected at key sites of this celestial mirror according to a megalithic technology designed to attain the rebirth of the sacrificed kings again as princes, keeping an unbroken royal lineage.”

*   Vega returned to the subject of the megalith builders in 2015 with the publication of Voyage Zero[1443].  However, in 2017 he became even more contentious in Madrid is Atlantis[1444], which as the title implies, claims that Atlantis was located in the vicinity of the author’s native city.*

I found it very hard to accept most of his claims.

Those interested in reading more of Vega’s ideas can read his blogs(a).

(a) https://circleofmeditation.wordpress.com/

Irish Atlantology

Irish Atlantology, with a couple of notable exceptions, has not been overly productive. The man responsible for kick-starting ‘modern’ interest in Atlantis, Ignatius Donnelly (1831-1901), was the son of an Irish emigrant to the United States and so, although he might have qualified for the Ireland Soccer Team, I must exclude him as a contributor to Irish Atlantology. Another excludee is Henry O’Brien (1807-1835) who, although unquestionably Irish, has been associated with the study of Atlantis by publishers who cynically retitled his The Round Towers of Ireland [124] as The Round Towers of Atlantis [125] although it does not contain a single reference to either Atlantis or Plato!

Edward Hull (1829-1917) was a noted geologist and like Donnelly supported the idea of the Azores as remnants of Atlantis.

Marion McMurrough Mulhall published a number of books including Beginnings or Glimpses of Vanished Civilizations [1343]. In this interesting, if rather dated work of 136 pages, she suggests that “The gods and goddesses of the ancient Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Hindoos, and the Scandinavians were simply the kings, queens, and heroes of Atlantis, and the acts attributed to them in mythology are a confused recollection of real historical events.

Helen O’Cleary in her book, Atlantis [1248], aimed at younger readers, expressed the opinion that the early inhabitants of Ireland may have been refugees, rather than colonisers from Atlantis. She sees the gods of Egypt as having more in common with the Celts than with the pantheons of ancient Greece and Rome.

The most famous Irish Atlantologist was unquestionably the late J. V.Luce (1920-2011). He was a respected classicist and a leading proponent of the Minoan Hypothesis although he considered Plato’s Atlantis story to be a mixture of fact and fiction [120].

P. A. Ó Síocháin (1905-1995), a barrister, sought to link Atlantis with the Irish legend of Hy-Brasil [498].

The filmmaker Bob Quinn, in his book Atlantean [534], links the Irish megalith builders with the culture of North Africa and the maritime heritage which connected both.

Herbie Brennan in The Atlantis Enigma [030] offered a fairly general overview of ancient mysteries but does little to solve the when? where? or who? associated with Atlantis.

Dubliner, Ronan Coghlan produced his Companion to Atlantis and Other Mystery Lands [727] as an A-Z guide to Atlantis, Mu and Lemuria, which unfortunately includes a lot of dubious material which has emanated from ‘psychics’ and psychotics.

A 2010 contribution to Irish Atlantology was my own offering, Atlantipedia [1668]which was intended not only to inform but also encourage and hopefully assist others to take up Atlantean research. I wish all well in such an endeavour, irrespective of nationality. Truth does not recognise borders. It was a 500-page volume compared to the 2,100 pages that would be required to print the contents of this website now (May 2022).

>Ronnie Gallagher, an admirer of Reginald Fessenden, also located Atlantis in the Caucasus region and believes that was inundated as a consequence of the creation of a vast ‘flooded Eurasia’ that resulted from the collapse of glacial ice-dams(b), comparable with the Lake Missoula Floods in America.<

In November 2018, I published an ebook, Joining the Dots [1590]which reflected the results of my own fifteen years of research. The book had the self-explanatory subtitle of Plato’s Atlantis in the Central Mediterranean.

>In 2021, Anthony Woods, CEO of the unaccredited Keystone University(a)  published Atlantis Ireland, which is a pathetic attempt to identify Stone Age Ireland as a global hyperdiffusionist centre. He claims that megalith building, language and religion, all spread globally from Ireland, also known as Atlantis!<

(a) https://www.keystone.ie *

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

Armorica

Armorica was the Latin name given by the Romans to what we know today as the Brittany peninsula. The region contains some of the most remarkable monuments created by the megalith builders, such as those found at Carnac and Morbihan,

ArmoricaPlato described the influence of Atlantis reaching as far as Italy and Libya (Tim. 25b). In Europe megalithic structures have been found extending all along the Atlantic seaboard and into the Mediterranean as far east as Italy(a) and all across North Africa including modern Libya and Egypt, it was understandable when some commentators concluded that these megalithic monuments were a cultural expression of the Atlanteans. The evidence available indicates that the spread of megalithic building was effected by a maritime based society. How much of this spread was brought about through military or trade expansion or just migration  is not known.

A number of French and German researchers have identified Brittany as the power centre of the Atlantean ‘confederation’, while the American writer Hank Harrison is working on a book in which he will nominate Morbihan as a possible capital of Atlantis. R. Cedric Leonard has also written an interesting article(b) on the megalithic monuments of Brittany.

While megaliths are also found in the Middle East and across Asia as far as Japan, their greatest concentration is in Western Europe with a suggested focal point in Armorica. The legendary sunken city of Ys, often associated with Atlantis, is reputedly located off the coast of Armorica.

(a) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Megaliths_in_Italy

*(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20170113112315/https://www.atlantisquest.com/Carnac.html*

.

 

Temple, Robert *

Robert K. G. Temple (1945- ) is the American bestselling author of The robert templeSirius Mystery [735]+. In it he supports the idea of extraterrestrial influence on human cultural development, citing as evidence, the ‘knowledge’ of the Dogon people regarding the Sirius star system before verification by modern astronomy.

Temple’s claims were, in the main, based on the work of Marcel Griaule (1898-1956) and Germaine Dieterlen (1903-1999), published in The Pale Fox [1698].

In Gods of the New Millennium [006.109], Alan Alford described Temple’s evidence as ‘incontrovertible’!

Temple published a response to some of his critics, particularly Carl Sagan, with an open letter in 1997(l).

However, Temple’s ideas ha now come under further attack with the claim that Sirius C does not even exist(c).  The controversy is still raging as the Bad Archaeology website demonstrates(d) as well as an article from the Armagh Planetarium website(e). The refutation of the Sirius ‘mystery’ was achieved through the fieldwork of anthropologist, Walter E. A. van Beek, among the Dogon, which produced no evidence to support Temple’s claims(h). He published his findings in a 1991 paper [1685] and it is worth noting that van Beek’s criticisms were aimed at fellow anthropologist, Griaule, rather than Temple.

The late Philip Coppens wrote two highly critical articles(i)(j) denouncing the Dogon story as ‘false mythology’. He cites the work of Van Beek and The Stargate Conspiracy [705] by Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, which he felt completely demolished Temple’s claims. Over twenty years later the book has again been reviewed in an audio format(k).

Temple contends that this interaction took place between 5000 and 3000 BC and refers to that era as the ‘Contact Period’. He goes further and claims that these ‘visitors’ were responsible for the building of the Sphinx and the pyramids and that later efforts by the Egyptians to build other pyramids on the same scale failed.  However, some of the Mayan pyramids are equally impressive although built later than the magnificent Giza monuments, Temple does not explain the source of the Mesoamerican structures.

In 2000, Temple published The Crystal Sun[928 in which he outlined the evidence for early optical science, including its possible use in the lighthouse at Pharos(f). The matter of ancient lenses is discussed online(g). 2013 saw the publication of Ancient Glass[1002]  by Prof. Julian Henderson in which he pushes back the earliest production of crude glass to the middle of the third millennium BC. Temple has a degree in Oriental Studies and Sanskrit from the University of Pennsylvania. He has written a number of sometimes controversial books on various historical subjects(a). Jason Colavito has cast doubt on Temple’s academic credentials in a September 2012 blog(b). However, it was not until his 2010 book, Egyptian Dawn[736], that he touched on the subject of Atlantis. In it, he declared that the “true ‘Atlantis’ was the Atlantic Coastal civilisation of the megalith builders.” He further proposes that the story of Atlantis was concocted by those megalith builders “for consumption by the people of the Mediterranean, as a kind of disinformation campaign.” Temple has hinted that he may devote an entire book to the subject of Atlantis sometime in the future!

Temple’s next offering came in 2022 in the form of A New Science of Heaven [1959]. The promotional blurb claims the book is “a new, explosive study of plasma and its revolutionary implications for how we understand the universe and our place in it.” Some of us probably find the subject of plasma rather arcane, nevertheless, there is one suggestion in this book that might have relevance for all of us. Plasma pervades the universe and Temple puts forward the idea that it may be sentient, which sounds like an updated form of pantheism!

[735]+ Available online: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242865509_The_Sirius_Mystery  

(a) Professor Robert Temple (archive.org) *

(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2012/09/is-sirius-mystery-author-robert-temple-really-a-professor.html

(c) Kein dritter Stern im Sirius-System: Astronomen finden keinen Beleg für Dogon-Mythologie | Mysteria3000 (Prä Astronautik, PaläoSETI, Atlantis-Forschung) (archive.org)  

(d) Did the Dogon of Mali know about Sirius B? (archive.org)

(e) https://web.archive.org/web/20190212112317/https://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/the-sirius-mystery.html/

(f) https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/lost-technology-of-the-ancients-the-crystal-sun

(g) https://web.archive.org/web/20200212044246/http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/optics.htm

(h) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/germaine-dieterlen-the-sirius-mystery-and-the-quest-for-truth

(i) https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-4055/

(j)  https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-4056/

(k) The Stargate Conspiracy – The Saucer Life

(l) On the Sirius Mystery: an open letter To Carl Sagan … – Robert Temple (yumpu.com) *

 

Doggerland

Doggerland is a term applied to a shallow region (Fig.1) of the North Sea between Denmark and the North of England that covers an area of around 10,000 sq. miles. The existence of Doggerland was first suggested in a late 19th-century novel by H.G. Wells entitled A Story of the Stone Age.>>In 1913, the British geologist, Clement Reid, published his study of the North Sea that included a proposed map of the landbridge that had connected Britain with mainland Europe during the last Ice Age.<< 

The appellation ‘Doggerland’ was coined by Professor Bryony Coles in 1998. However, the name has been applied recently(f) to nearly the totality of the Celtic Shelf (Fig.2). Ulf Erlingsson who had promoted his theory(b) that Atlantis hDoggerland2ad been located in Ireland (with 98.9% confidence!) has explained that the Egyptian story of Atlantis is the result of an account of megalithic Ireland conflated with a report of the inundation of Doggerland in 6200 BC resulting from a Norwegian storegga(ad).

According to some, this flooding may have been the inspiration behind the ‘impassable shoals’ described by Plato following the submergence of Atlantis.

However, it was Rachael Carson who was probably the first to suggest the Dogger Bank as the home of Atlantis in her 1951 book, The Sea Around Us[1267].  Later a Scandinavian writer, Nils Olof Bergquist, in his 1971 book, Ymdogat-Atlantis[785]. who appeared next to support this idea.   

Other writers such as Jean Deruelle(a), Sylvain Tristan(c) and Guy Gervis(d) have also linked the Dogger Bank with Atlantis. Gervis has written two related papers(k)(l) on the subject. The earliest suggestion of such a  connection was briefly supported by Robert Graves[342.39-3]. Rob Waugh, a British journalist, has offered an illustrated article(g) with the provocative title of Britain’s Atlantis found at the Bottom of the North Sea, in which he touches on some of the discoveries made on Doggerland.

In 2003, Georg Lohle put forward the idea that Atlantis had been situated in the North Sea between Denmark and Britain and destroyed around 2200 BC. He based this speculation on the content of the controversial Oera Linda Book(ac).

Some have combined Doggerland with exposed land further north, now known as the Viking-Bergen Banks, as having constituted the territory of Atlantis(x).

National Geographic

In 2009 a book[662] was published with the subtitle of The Rediscovery of Doggerland, based on the research of a team led by Professor Vincent Gaffney of the University of Birmingham. In July 2012 the UK’s Daily Mail published(h) an extensive article on Doggerland.

The flooding of the Dogger Bank has been attributed to a 6200 BC event apparently caused by either an outpouring of meltwater from Lake Agassiz in North America or a huge tsunami generated by a Norwegian storegga(e). This event was covered in an extensive article in the November 2012 edition of the BBC Focus magazine. The same article has a sidebar on Atlantis which suggests that there is “perhaps just one archaeological theory that has any serious claim on the myth.” Then, not for the first time, the BBC offered tacit support for the Minoan Hypothesis in spite of the fact that, at least ostensibly, it does not match Plato’s description of Atlantis in terms of either time, size or location and offers no rationale for its stance.

In December 2020, a degree of revisionism was offered in a New Scientist article, which suggested that storegga tsunami may have been less than previously thought. Furthermore, it proposes that parts of what is now the submerged Dogger Bank was not completely flooded by the tsunami, but that parts continued as dry land, perhaps for centuries!(y)

“For a long time, scientists assumed that a tsunami of this kind also caused the Dogger Bank, which was still protruding from the sea, to sink completely. According to a study by researchers at the University of Bradford, however, there was no single, all-destroying tsunami.

Rather, by examining sediments, the researchers were able to prove that only the northern part of Doggerland was submerged after the tsunami and that the destructive force of its floods was probably slowed down by hills or forests on the island.

However, after the water receded, the flooded area recovered over the years, as is demonstrated by the fact that evidence of plants and animals can be found again in the sediment layers above the disrupted tsunami layer.”  There is a suggestion that Heligoland may be the last remnant of Doggerland.(ab)

It has been estimated that over a period of a couple of hundred years, the English Channel was also created in a comparable manner(n).

The December 2012 edition of National Geographic magazine also published an informative article on Doggerland and the ongoing work by archaeologists in the region. It considers the Storegga or the Lake Agassiz meltwater to be the cause of Doggerland’s final inundation. For me, it was interesting that a map in the article showed a small area around where I live as the last glaciated region of Ireland.

Alfred de Grazia’s online Q-Mag also published an overview of the Doggerland story in 2012(j) that was originally taken from the German magazine Der Spiegel. The same site has another paper(r) by Jean Deruelle in which he also argues that Doggerland was the location of the Great Plain of Atlantis that stretched from the east of the Dogger Bank and extended as far as what is now Denmark. Plato described the plain as being surrounded by a huge ditch. Then Deruelle, with a flash of ingenuity claims that it was not a ditch but instead was a dyke, designed to hold back the slowing advancing waters of the North Sea that were being fed by deglaciation. He endeavoured to reinforce this claim with the proposal that the Greek word for a ditch, ‘taphros’ can also be used for dyke. This interpretation seems possible according to W.K. Pritchett, a distinguished historian [1622.52.5].

Robert John Langdon has proposed that megalith builders from Africa came to Doggerland as the Ice Age ended and when Doggerland submerged they migrated to what is now mainland Britain, eventually constructing Stonehenge(i). But Langdon has gone further and also claims that Doggerland was actually Atlantis(aa).

A 2014 ‘Drowned Landscapes’ exhibition(m) organised by Dr Richard Bates of the Department of Earth Sciences at St Andrew’s University, reveals in greater detail the flora and fauna, as well as the lives of its inhabitants, of this submerged world. Much of the information was gleaned from data provided by oil and gas companies, combined with artefacts recovered from the seafloor.

Comparable discoveries have been made submerged deep under the waters of Hanö Bay near the coast of Havang, Sweden and dated to about 7000 BC(v).

In 2015 it was announced that €2.5 million in funding from the European Union has enabled a number of archaeologists from Britain’s top universities to team up for what will be the most intensive study of Doggerland so far(o)(q). Joined by experts from the University of Ghent and assisted by the Belgian Navy they located the first identifiable submerged settlements on the floor of the North Sea. Until now (2019) the only evidence of human habitation in the region were occasional artefacts caught up in fishermen’s nets.

In 2016, it was revealed(p) that the ancient footprints of both adults and children had been discovered off the coast of Northumberland, formerly a part of Doggerland. Their feet had apparently been shod.

On Sunday, January 13th, 2019. the UK’s Sunday Express delighted its readers with two Atlantis stories(t)(u). First, the online edition of the paper had a story by one of its reporters, with an ‘Atlantis Discovered’ headline claiming that the remains of an ancient 8,000-year-old city, home to ‘tens of thousands’ of people, had been discovered in the North Sea, in a huge region sometimes referred to as Doggerland. The reporter cites Dr Richard Bates in support of this account. Unfortunately, the 2012 comments by Dr Bates never mentioned ‘a city’, but a vast area occupied by ‘tens of thousands’ of people, presumably early farmers(s). Then the same edition of the same paper by the same ‘reporter’ with another ‘Atlantis Found?’ headline, offered a video clip of the Maltese island of Filfla, while the commentator told us that Plato had said that a devastating earthquake had destroyed Atlantis it was finished off by an eruption. This is factually incorrect as Plato never mentioned an eruption. These two accounts are a sad reflection of the quality of media reporting today.

In 2020, David Keys, author of Catastrophe [1330] wrote an article for the UK’s Independent newspaper outlining the most recent research into the 6200 BC tsunami that destroyed Doggerland. It is estimated that multiple giant waves inundated some 2,700 square miles of land – from Scotland in the north to Norfolk in the south.

New underwater research carried out by the universities of Bradford, Warwick, St Andrews and Wales has for the first time discovered that the tsunami devastated parts of East Anglia and adjacent land which is now submerged beneath the southern part of the North Sea.” (z)

In 2021, the UK’s Guardian reported on an “exhibition, Doggerland: Lost World in the North Sea’, at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities) in Leiden, southern Holland, includes more than 200 objects, ranging from a deer bone in which an arrowhead is embedded, and fossils such as petrified hyena droppings and mammoth molars, to a fragment of a skull of a young male Neanderthal. Studies of the forehead bone, dredged up in 2001 off the coast of Zeeland, suggests he was a big meat eater.”(ae)

Graham Phillips‘ latest offering is The Mystery of Doggerland: Atlantis in the North Sea [2063], published in late July 2023.

(a) atlantide (archive.org)

(b) http://atlantisinireland.com/

(c) http://spcov.free.fr/site_nicoulaud/en/empire.php

(d) See:  https://web.archive.org/web/20180320072706/https://nwepexplore.com/

(e) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20160303180752/https://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/pdf35/weninger35.pdf

(f)https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-18687504?goback=.gde_157795_member_130235946

(g) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/atlantida_mu/esp_atlantida_38.htm

(h) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2167731/Britains-Atlantis-North-sea–huge-undersea-kingdom-swamped-tsunami-5-500-years-ago.html

(i) http://www.the-stonehenge-enigma.info/#!/2013/06/stonehenge-atlantis-momentous-discovery.html
Also See:https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-2071/

(j) https://www.q-mag.org/doggerland-lost.html

(k) See: Archive: 2073

(l)  See: Archive 2074

(m) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2167731/Britains-Atlantis-North-sea–huge-undersea-kingdom-swamped-tsunami-5-500-years-ago.html#ixzz374DGxUiM

(n) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

(o) https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/secrets-britains-atlantis-revealed-archaeologists-6361422

(p) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/7000-year-old-forest-and-footprints-uncovered-atlantis-britain-005913?nopaging=1

(q) https://www.q-mag.org/doggerland-to-be-digitally-repopulated.html

(r) https://web.archive.org/web/20150706130417/https://www.q-mag.org/the-great-plain-of-atlantis-was-it-in-doggerland.html

(s) https://www.guidememalta.com/en/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-mysterious-islet-of-filfla

(t) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-18687504

(u) https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1071594/atlantis-found-malta-island-matches-plato-description-spt

(v) https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/01/17/the-discovery-of-the-submerged-stone-age-atlantis/

(w) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/atlantis-britain-stone-age-north-sea-archaeology-artefacts-discovery-a8952721.html?fbclid=IwAR2JPs3s5OvPxHyVHpOYeiSmTJiWoqSOu7_72ZOZzHhK2DaKIQCyiXoVURg

(x) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbenuEzWgQk 

(y) Tiny island survived tsunami that helped separate Britain and Europe | New Scientist

(z) https://news.knowledia.com/GB/en/articles/how-a-giant-tsunami-devastated-britain-s-atlantis-3d966568f069ce0cc79d391c7f4a28ee51e59cfa

(aa) Chapter 3 – Atlantis – Dawn of the Lost Civilisation (archive.org) *

(ab) https://www.dw.com/en/doggerland-how-did-the-atlantis-of-the-north-sea-sink/a-55960379 

(ac) Atlantis is a myth or real past (archive.org) 

(ad) https://www.academia.edu/437214/The_Catastrophic_Final_Flooding_of_Doggerland_by_the_Storegga_Slide_Tsunami

(ae) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/01/doggerland-lost-atlantis-of-the-north-sea-gives-up-its-ancient-secrets