Peter Heller
Heller, Peter
Peter W.F. Heller (1948- ) is an archaeologist and the author of Atlantis: Beyond the Pillars of Herakles [1954]. Another Atlantis author[1955], Peter Nowak, has written a quite critical review on Amazon, awarding it one star only(a) !
Atlantisforschung offers a shorter, gentler critique – “As a result of his relevant studies, Heller published his book Atlantis – Beyond the Pillars of Herakles in 2012, in which he clearly rejected speculative and fantastic interpretations of the Atlantis report: ” In order to track down the riddle of Atlantis, Heller leads the readers with an appropriate balance between scientific correctness and general understanding revisit deep into history. Is the evidence for the existence of Atlantis genuine, was here the cradle of all civilizations, was the first writing created here? Atlantis about computers, electrical energy, beam weapons and flying machines? Are there references to Atlantis in the Bible? And where was Atlantis really located? In the end, not everything turns out to be true that one initially believes to see… In this popular scientific work, the author examines the story of the legendary island of Atlantis in an exciting and entertaining manner, which disappeared forever ‘in a single day and a single night’.“(b)
(b) Peter WF Heller – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)
Schliemann, Paul
Paul Schliemann was the self-declared grandson of Heinrich Schliemann the discoverer of Troy. He was at the centre of an early Atlantis hoax in 1912 when he declared in a New York newspaper article that he had inherited, from his grandfather, artefacts made in Atlantis. He claimed to have ancient documents describing the destruction of Mu and insisted that the Azores were a remnant of Atlantis and that Troy had been a colony of Atlantis. For good measure, he informed the world that the Atlanteans fully understood electricity and had aircraft and power-driven ships. All of which reminds me of some of the later claims of Edgar Cayce!
Additionally, he claimed to have solved the Atlantis mystery after studying the Mayan Troano Codex in the British Museum. Unfortunately, the Troano Codex was housed in a museum in Madrid where it still resides. A further mistake by Paul was to claim that his grandfather referred to the Lion Gate at Mycenae on Crete, when in fact it was situated on mainland Greece. These errors were compounded by his reference to Atlantean coins which is completely anachronistic as coinage only came into use in Lydia around the time of Solon.
Heinrich Schliemann’s collaborator, William Dörpfeld, testified that although Schliemann had occasionally referred to Atlantis, he was unaware that he had made any serious study of the subject or had written anything about it.
Furthermore, Heinrich actively sought publicity and it would have been completely out of character for him not to have claimed the glory for himself of having discovered Atlantis.
Despite all this, the story was widely quoted and is still accepted as reliable by some writers. The full story is now available on the Internet(a).
I recently discovered an article(b) in The Mail of Adelaide in South Australia of February 28th 1925, which in turn was quoting an unnamed San Francisco source, purporting to be based on an interview with Paul Schliemann, ‘son’ of the late Heinrich promoting a forthcoming book on his search for Atlantis. This was a clear attempt to extend the 1912 hoax, but was not spotted by The Mail, considering the amount of space that they allocated to the article as well as the accompanying images.
Egerton Sykes wrote an extensive article about Paul Schliemann’s claims, adding further questions that needed to be answered(c). In 1966, Sykes wrote that Paul had died during World War I, and that his widow later married Panagis Tsaldaris, who became Prime Minister of Greece(d) (This is doubtful – TO’C). Nevertheless, as late as 1974, Sykes was still accepting Schliemann’s 1912 claims as credible(e).
Less than a decade later Marjorie Braymer devoted a short chapter of her book Atlantis: The Biography of a Legend [198.72] to a more critical review of the Paul Schliemann episode, concluding with “The whole story had struck the more reflective Atlantologists as being much too good to be true. The fact is that Heinrich Schliemann did not have a grandson named Paul” and the artefacts never materialised!
>>In 2001, Atlantis: Beyond the Pillars of Hercules, a novel based on the claims of Paul Schliemann, was published by Cy Wenberg. This is not to be confused with the non-fiction book with the same name [1954] written by Peter Heller. Other authors have used the same title without the ‘Atlantis’ prefix. The most important of which [221] was by Rhys Carpenter a former Professor of Archaeology.<<
Also see: Chevalier Pino
(a) https://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/hif/index.htm
(c) Atlantis, Vol.4, No.5, January 1952 & Atlantis, Vol.11, No.2, January 1958
(d) Atlantis, Vol.19, No.4, July/August, 1966
(e) Atlantis, Vol.27, No.4, July/August, 1974