Liritzis, Ioannis

Ioannis Liritzis, is an archaeologist at the University of the Aegean who has proposed that the ancient Greeks journeyed across the Atlantic far as Canada in the 1st century AD. Liritzis presents his argument in a paper, co-authored with astronomer Panagiota Preka-Papadema, philosopher Konstantinos Kalachanis, meteorologist Chris G. Tzanis, and information technology consultant Panagiotis Antonopoulos^(a).

Their claim is based primarily on the writing of Plutarch^(b).

>In a 2018 review of their paper by Rebecca Boyle on the Hakai website a number of interesting points were offered including a range highly critical comments from respected maritime experts. Additionally, Boyle’s article clarifies the objective of the Greek team’s paper^(f).

“The Greek researchers acknowledge in their paper that there is no evidence that the Greek sailors actually made these trips; they only set out to show its plausibility, using interdisciplinary approaches and scientific evidence.

“That ancient Greeks made it to Scandinavia and the New World … is not supported by archaeology yet, but the potentiality of such a hypothesis has been modeled by arguments and the reaflrmation of astronomical, geographical, and oceanographical factors,” they write.”<

Although Liritzis does not link his theory with the story of Atlantis, he does express his views on Plato’s narrative in a later paper^(c).

Some years earlier Liritzis was engaged in another controversial subject when a study by him and his team challenged the theory of Joseph Davidovits, who claimed that the building blocks of the Great Pyramid had been cast on-site. Liritzis pointed out that the material used to build Egypt’s most famous monuments “contain hundreds of thousands of marine fossils” that are distributed throughout the rock in a manner compatible with natural rock^(d). 

I note that Liritzis has also extended his interest into the growing field of disaster archaeology^(e).

^(a) (99+) Does Astronomical and Geographical Information of Plutarch’s De Facie Describe a Trip Beyond the North Atlantic Ocean | IOANNIS LIRITZIS, Konstantinos Kalachanis, and Chris G Tzanis – Academia.edu 

^(b) https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/did-ancient-greeks-sail-to-canada/

^(c) https://www.academia.edu/40670982/REEMERGENCE_OF_ATLANTIS_THE_SHIFTING_PARADIGM_AND_CREATION_OF_NEO_SPATIAL_MODELS?email_work_card=view-paper

^(d) Pyramids packed with fossil shells › News in Science (ABC Science) (archive.org)

^(e) ResearchGate 

^(f) Did Ancient Greeks Sail to Canada? | Hakai Magazine *