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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 »
Nan Madol
Bisceglia, Carlos Alberto
Carlos Alberto Bisceglia is the author of Atlantis 2021 – Lost Continent Discovered [1895]. He has several other books currently being translated from their original Italian.
Bisceglia’s central claim is that Atlantis was situated on an ‘island’ in northwest Africa. He claims “that the ‘geographical coordinates’ left by Plato indicate that the empire of Atlantis included the regions enclosed by Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, the adjacent islands, and possibly southern Spain.” He further claims that this territory was known to the Egyptians as ‘Ma’, being an abbreviation of Meshwash!
The African Humid Period which ended between 6,000 and 5,000 years ago, saw North Africa as home to some very extensive river systems and huge lakes. In what is now Western Sahara, the Tamanrasset River flowed from the Atlas Mountains southward and then west to the Atlantic. This creates a virtual ‘island’ enclosing the Atlantean territory delineated above, leaving a relatively small ‘isthmus’ in the Atlas mountains between the Mediterranean and the source of the river.
A comparable claim was made by Michael Hübner in 2008, when he described the Souss-Massa plain of Morocco as an island, surrounded as it is by mountains and called ‘island’ by the native Amazigh people!
I did not find Bisceglia’s claim convincing. His insistence that the Atlantis war took place 9,000 years before Solon, millennia before Athens even existed and certainly well past the African Humid Period is, for me, untenable. His book lacks focus and could have been fruitfully edited to half its size. Having described his Atlantis, he wanders off all over the world to Göbekli Tepe, Gunung Padang, Nan Madol along with many other places, all interesting, but without any real connection to Atlantis in NW Africa. He names the Richat Structure along with the 50km distant Semsiyat Dome as the capital(s) of Atlantis! According to Bisceglia, the larger structure (Richat) was reserved for the deity, the smaller one (Semsiyat) for his ‘people’!
Nevertheless, Bisceglia offers a pathetic explanation as to why his chosen Atlantis location is not submerged by suggesting that his Land of Ma was confused with the Land of Mu (Sundaland) in the Pacific and that the two separate accounts ‘were merged into one’. He adds “how the Egyptian priests knew this is a mystery. Evidently, some survivors from Sundaland arrived in some way in Egypt”
However, Bisceglia made one simple but highly pertinent comment – “If Plato had thought that Atlantis was an island located in what we today call the Atlantic Ocean, he would have written that his Atlantis was ‘in the Middle of Okeanos’.” For the Greeks of Plato’s time, Okeanos referred specifically to the great river that encircled the known world. Instead. he placed Atlantis in the Atlantic Sea, which in my opinion brings us back to the Mediterranean.
In 2022, Bisceglia’s entire book was plagiarised under the name of Annabel Caras and is still>>(8th August, 2023)<<on sale at Amazon.
Kruparz, Heinrich
Heinrich Kruparz is an Austrian geologist who has recently ventured into the world of Atlantology with 
the publication of Atlantis und Lemuria[990]. From the title, he obviously supports the idea of sunken continents with advanced civilisations in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Like many others, he views the Azores as the remnants of Atlantis.
Unfortunately, he appears to incorporate some of the wild ideas of Cayce and Blavatsky. Kruparz also offers his views in a lecture available on a YouTube clip(a).
>Kruparz has also written a paper (in English) on the mysterious megaliths of Nan Madol(b).<
(a) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4IOtyHsZLg (German)
(b) https://migration-diffusion.info/pdfdownload.php?id=445&file=1 · *
Gunung Padang
Gunung Padang is a megalithic site on the Indonesian island of Java, which was first surveyed in 1914 by the Dutch colonial authorities and published as Rapporten van de Oudheidkundige Dienst (Report of the Department of Antiquities). A post-war Australian investigation concluded that the site was much older than previously believed. Now, with presidential support, local archaeologists are carrying out an extensive investigation of the site.
The site has recently been claimed as part of 
Atlantis. Evidence that the site contains hidden chambers prompted Graham Hancock to speculate whether it “Could it be the fabled “Hall of Records” of Atlantis?”(k).>>Apart from contradicting Edgar Cayce this piece of unbridled conjecture was debunked in a YouTube video(k). Furthermore, in their book Keepers of Genesis [1050], Robert Bauval and Hancock had already designated a location under the rear paws of the Giza Sphinx as the home of the Hall of Records!<<
A few years ago the late Arysio dos Santos was the leading proponent of Sundaland, which included Indonesia, being Atlantis. Then Danny Hilman Natawidjaja (DHN) an Indonesian geologist has made a similar claim in his Kindle ebook, Plato Never Lied: Atlantis Is in Indonesia[961]. In it, Gunung Padang plays an important role. Mount Padang has also been claimed as the world’s oldest pyramid! Although I do not support the idea of an Indonesian Atlantis, I am forced to admit that a far more interesting case for it has been made by Dhani Irwanto.
In his review of Hancock’s Magicians of the Gods, Jason Colavito refers to “Danny Hilman Natawidjaja (DHN), the Indonesian geologist who declared the site of Gunung Padang on Sumatra to be ten or twenty thousand years old, and thus making Indonesia the cradle of civilization. Natawidjaja is a true believer in fringe history and suspects that Plato was speaking of Gunung Padang when writing of Atlantis. His opinions are noteworthy only because the previous government of Indonesia gave him the money and resources to excavate the site in search of proof of Indonesian primacy in history before the current government shut down the investigation for becoming an international laughingstock. Like Semir Osmanogich in Bosnia, Natawidjaja sees artificial layers of construction in the deepest layers of what his colleagues in Indonesia and archaeologists around the world believe to be a natural hill crowned with later ruins.” (n).
Nevertheless, a recent (May 2017) assault on Natawidjaja’s theories in an open letter(i) from Rebecca Bradley has laid bare the weaknesses in his claims.
DHN in an address to the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in 2018, said that radiocarbon dating suggests the top layer of the site could be up to 3,500 old years old, the second layer somewhere around 8,000 years old, and the third layer anywhere in the vicinity of 9,500 to 28,000 years old(j).
Graham Hancock has written a review(b) of the excavations at Gunung Padang and in October 2014 added further comments(d)(m).
>>In the 2001 Netflix Apocalypse Now TV series Hancock returned to the subject of Gunung Padang as well as Nan Madol. Fortunately, there is a YouTube video(u) that forensically analyses Episode 1, revealing a litany of errors and misleading statements that seriously undermine Hancock’s credibility.<<
Robert Schoch has also offered a geologist’s view of the site(f).
One report that I thought rather interesting was that “aside from its age, is that during coring it was found that much of the buried structure was reinforced with a type of cement. This bonding agent, which has been used as a mortar and sort of glue in certain parts of the site, consists of 45% iron ore, 41% silica and 14% clay. It’s said that this mixture provides for a very strong and durable mortar base, and is surprising evidence of the level of sophistication of the building technique.”(l)
Andrew Collins has now added an article(h). to his website that examines the preliminary claim that the lower levels at the site could be 12,000 years older than Gobekli Tepe. If confirmed, it will undoubtedly require some rewriting of history books. Do not lose sight of the fact that radiocarbon dating has limitations, being accurate for up to around 6,000 years with increasing unreliability up to perhaps 50,000 BC after which it is generally useless.
We now (Nov. ’14) have a report(e) that some type of ‘electrical device’ has been discovered at the site ‘made out of gold and copper and seems to resemble a primitive electrical capacitor.’ Until further information is available this claim must be treated with caution.
There are, however, dissenting voices as reported by journalist, Michael Bachelard(g), such as vulcanologist Sutikno Bronto, who says “Gunung Padang is simply the neck of a nearby volcano, not an ancient pyramid. Danny Hilman is not a vulcanologist. I am.” As for the carbon-dated cement between the stones, on which Hilman relies for his claims about the age of the site, Sutikno believes it is simply the byproduct of a natural weathering process, ”not man-made”. Other sceptics are even tougher. One archaeologist, who does not wish to be named since the President took such an interest, says the presidential taskforce is deluding itself. ”In the Pawon cave in Padalarang [about 45 kilometres from Gunung Padang], we found some human bones and tools made of bones about 9500 years ago, or about 7000 BCE. So, if at 7000 BCE our technology was only producing tools of bones, how can people from 20,000 BCE obtain the technology to build a pyramid?” the archaeologist asks.
In October 2023, Danny Hilman endeavoured to return to the limelight with a paper in the journal Archaeological Prospection(o), published by Wiley, in which he recycled some of his earlier claims identifying Gunung Padang as an Ice Age pyramid. Jason Colavito commented briefly(p) on this latest feeble offering from Hilman and cites a more forensic article by Carl Feagans(q) as an effective rebuttal. It was subsequently revealed(r) that the journal and its publisher have launched an ethics investigation into the flawed paper, according to a report in Nature!
March 2024 saw Archaeological Prospection retract this flawed paper(s).
Danny Hilman et al published their reaction to the retraction on Graham Hancock’s website, describing the rescindment as ‘unjust’(t).
(c) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/gp.htm
(d) https://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/HancockG10-Gunung-Padang-Latest.php
(h) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/news/eq_0515.htm
(i) https://www.skepticink.com/lateraltruth/2017/05/14/gunung-padang-open-letter-danny/
(j) Long-Hidden ‘Pyramid’ Found in Indonesia Was Likely an Ancient Temple | Live Science
(k) Gunung Padang: The lost records of Atlantis? — Secret History — Sott.net
(l) Gunung Padang and The Lost City of Atlantis | Mysterious Universe
(n) Magicians of the Gods Review – JASON COLAVITO
(0) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/arp.1912
(p) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/on-the-fantasy-of-a-primeval-gunung-padang-pyramid
(r) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03546-w
(s) Archaeological Prospection | Archaeological Journal | Wiley Online Library
(u) Potholer54 Debunks Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse Theory – Search Videos (bing.com) *
Nan Madol
Nan Madol is a large stone city on the Micronesian island of Pohnpei in the Western Pacific. The entire site covers 170 acres and according to Frank Joseph is comprised of an estimated 250 million tons of basalt!(b) An article on the Smithsonian website offers very different figures(c).
The city 
has a series of canals connecting the structures, which were built on nearly a hundred artificial islands. It has been called both the ‘Venice’ and the ‘Atlantis’ of the Pacific. Conventional archaeology dates the site to around 1200 AD.
James Churchward claimed Nan Madol as part of his concocted Mu. David Hatcher Childress has proposed that the site was part of Lemuria, another invention. Erich von Däniken in his The Gold of the Gods was happy to claim that as a result of extraterrestrial intervention, the ancient Micronesians, had mastered flight and used this ability to transport the stone for the construction of the city!
In 1979, Bill S. Ballinger published Lost City of Stone [1920], following the author’s visit to the island a few years earlier. In common with other commentators, he could not offer any credible explanation as to the identity of the site’s builders or its purpose.
Recent archaeological research in 2017, led by Mark McCoy from Texas Southern Methodist University, has, not unexpectedly, regenerated foolish speculation that the remarkable site might in some way be connected with Plato’s Atlantis(a).
Dr Heinrich Kruparz, the Austrian author of Atlantis und Lemuria [990] has also penned a paper (in English) on the mysterious megaliths of Nan Madol(d).
Another site offers a series of interesting images from Nan Madol(e).
>The megalithic site of Pohnpaid is less than four miles from the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Nan Madol, and is the subject of a book by Carole Nervig, The Petroglyphs of MU [2087]. She featured as Author of the Month on Graham Hancock‘s website for December 2022(f). The author includes a lot of waffle about earth grids created by an ancient Mother Culture a la Hancock!<
(b) Atlantis Rising magazine #51 p.46 https://atlantisrising.com/product/issue-51-atlantis-in-the-bahamas/
(c) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nan-madol-the-city-built-on-coral-reefs-147288758/
(d) https://migration-diffusion.info/pdfdownload.php?id=445&file=1 ·
(e) Scientists are puzzled by this mysterious ancient city (msn.com)
(f) The Petroglyphs of Mu: Pohnpei, Nan Madol and the Legacy of Mu – Graham Hancock Official Website *
Elasippos
Elasippos is the name of the elder of the fourth pair of twins who became kings of the Atlantean empire. This name is claimed to have been modified by time and usage to what we know as Lisbon today, where his kingdom is assumed to have existed. However, Plato tells us that the names of the original ten kings of Atlantis recorded by him have been Hellenised so that the putative connection between Elasippos and Lisbon is somewhat suspect.
The Greeks knew Lisbon as Olissipo and believed that this was derived from Ulysses whom is supposed to have founded the city, although it is more conventionally accepted as having been established by the Phoenicians and known by them as Alis-Ubbo.
However, Frank Joseph claims that they knew it as Elasippos (b) and in Douglas Kenyon’s Forgotten Origins [1191.67] he translates the name as ‘Kingly horse-rider’. However, in The Lost Civilisation of Lemuria [0107] Joseph suggested that Elasippos was possibly a reference to Olisihpa a king of Nan Madol in the Pacific! (d)
It is interesting that this suggested Ulysses connection supports the view that the adventures of Homer’s hero took place outside the Mediterranean.
C.&S.Schoppe translate ‘Elasippos’ as ‘horse of war’ referring to its domestication and also claim that he gave his name to a region around the River Don(a) that flows into the Black Sea, their preferred location for Atlantis.
Other translations of the different variants of the name are ‘calm roadstead’ or ‘walled town’ (c).
>(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20190830053312/https://www.black-sea-atlantis.com/black-sea-atlantis/<
(b) See: Archive 3646
(d) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/daily-mail-suggest-that-nan-madol-offers-evidence-for-atlantis