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

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  • NEWS September 2023

    NEWS September 2023

    September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we move to Sicily and Malta. The trip is purely vacational. Unfortunately, I am writing this in a dreadful apartment, sitting on a bed, with access to just one useable socket and a small Notebook. Consequently, I possibly will not […]Read More »
  • Joining The Dots

    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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Pillars of Hercules

Pearlman, Roger, M

Roger M. Pearlman is a Torah scholar, who has written extensively on the reconciliation of the Torah with science. A number of his papers can be found on the academia.edu website.

He has also tackled the subject of Atlantis in Plato’s Atlantis Legend Resolution: Abraham is the Real Atlas (1596). Apart from the unexpected identification of Abraham, he also equates Hercules with the biblical Samson and places the Pillars of Hercules at Gaza! Disturbingly, he suggests that Sodom can be identified as Atlantis. Then, for good measure, he maintains that Gobekli Tape was founded by Noah’s family!

>On the subject of Abraham, I note that Gene Matlock claimed that “there are certain striking similarities between the Hindu god Brahma and his consort Saraisvati and the Jewish Abraham and Sarai that are more than mere coincidences.”(b)<

Perhaps I should mention that the superficial resemblance of Samson to Heracles was noted as far back as the time of Eusebius (Circa 300 AD)(a).

(a) https://www.maverickscience.com/wp-content/uploads/samson.pdf

(b) http://www.viewzone.com/abraham.html *

 

 

Motya

 

Motya 2Motya is a small island off the west coast of Sicily between Trapani and Marsala. It has been a Phoenician, and later Carthaginian, island city from around 700 BC.>Recent archaeological work there has shown that the island had settlements from 2000 BC.(b)<

It has been nominated by Federico Bardanzellu as the location of the Pillars of Hercules.(a)

(a) http://www.museodeidolmen.it/popomare.html

Frau, Sergio *

FrauSergio Frau was born in 1949 and is a journalist with Italy’s leading daily newspaper La Repubblica. He is also the author of a hefty 672-page volume, Le Collone d’Ercole: Un’inchiesta[302] that firmly places Atlantis in Sardinia and the Pillars of Hercules in the Strait of Sicily between Tunisia and Sicily. He supports this contention with references to ancient writers such as Herodotus and Dicaearchus.

So far, Frau’s book is only available in Italian and from 2008 in German(c).

Professor Louis Godart offered wholehearted support for Frau’s location for the Pillars of Herakles in a short paper in Italian(o) and English (Archive 7096).

Frau contends that a catastrophic inundation of some sort destroyed the mysterious ancient civilisation on Sardinia known as the Nuraghi, after whom the numerous ancient towers on the islands are named. A megatsunami around 1200 BC is accepted to have struck from the south. A more specific date on offer is 1175 BC. However, Carthaginian and Roman remains have been found underneath the sediment deposited by this tsunami conflicting with the date and greatly weakening the suggestion that Atlantis was destroyed by this event (i).

Frau believes that some of the survivors migrated to the Italian mainland and founded the Etruscan civilisation, while others formed part of the Sea Peoples who attacked Egypt.

His book sold over 30,000 copies in Italy, his theory received favourable attention from UNESCO and an exhibition based on his work has been shown in Paris and Rome. This is in sharp contrast to the 250 historians who reportedly denounced his theory. Then there are many others, such as Hannah Fielding, the novelist, who is very attracted to Frau’s ideas(b).

A collection of reviews of Frau’s book, in English, is available(k).

Frau has received support for his theory from the well-known geologist, Mario Tozzi. Another commentator, Silvio Diego Novo has also given his backing to the idea(b).

Robert Ishoy proposed a similar theory(a) on the Internet at least two years before Frau had his book published. However, the earliest claim that Atlantis had existed on Sardinia was made in 1982 by Paolo Valente Poddighe, who now accuses Frau of plagiarism.

The Atlantisforschung.de website has also offered a review of Frau’s book on the tenth anniversary of its publication including a number of criticisms and particularly its inability to generate any great support in either academic or Atlantis circles.(n)

Although the media have generally given a positive response to Frau’s book, Thorwald C. Franke has panned it, denouncing it as pseudo-science(d), but reluctantly conceded that Frau could nevertheless be partially right! For the record, I agree with Franke’s limited support.

In addition, at the instigation of Alessandro Usai, 71 Sardinian archaeologists, geologists and historians have signed a 21-point refutation of Frau’s theory(e). Antonio Usai (relation?) has also endorsed the criticism in this document(j). An English/Italian version of the document is available as Archive 2704.

Nevertheless, the Atlantika has published over twenty short papers, generally supportive of Frau from what has been called a ‘Jury of Experts’(m). However, the general focus of that support was not related to Atlantis but to endorse the credibility of Frau’s location of the Pillars of Herakles before the term was applied to the Strait of Gibraltar. Frau maintains that it was used to describe a location at the Strait of Sicily. This brings us to another question, which Strait of Sicily? In ancient times, that term was also a reference to the Strait of Messina, which, for me, makes more sense as today’s Strait of Sicily does not conform to any definition of a ‘strait’, while the Strait of Messina is a perfect example.

In August 2016, Frau received another round of publicity following an interview with Sputnik news media(f). The interview added nothing of consequence, although the text was copied by other media outlets. Nevertheless, this did not hold back Jason Colavito from his standard atlantiphobic attack(g).

So far, Frau’s book is only available in Italian and German(c). In 2017, Frau published a sequel to his Le Collone d’Ercole, entitled Omphalos[1553] in which he expands on aspects of his Sardinian location for Atlantis in a hefty 1154-page volume, which once again is currently only available in Italian. He highlights the fact that lying on the 40th parallel, Sardinia is virtually halfway between the west coast of America ((11,359 km distant) and the Pacific coast of Japan (11,350) and so can be truly considered the navel (or omphalos) of the world! It should be obvious that Sardinia is also midway between any number of other paired locations, so what?

An extensive collection of snippets from Omphalos is also available(l).

2018 saw Frau win a defamation case against Fabrizio Frongia and damages of 22,500 Euro(h), as a result of comments in Frongia’s book Le torri di Atlantide[1609] (The Towers of Atlantis).

(a) http://www.atlantisdiscovered.org/Home.htm

(b) Hannah Fielding: Home – Award-Winning Romantic Books (archive.org) *

(c) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/index_engl.htm

(d) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis-sergio-frau-english.htm

(e) https://www.colonnedercole.it/spip/spip.php?article67 (Italian)

(f) https://sputniknews.com/europe/20160824/1044602988/sardinia-new-lost-atlantis.html

(g) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/italian-journalist-talks-to-sputnik-magazine-about-why-sardinia-was-really-atlantis

(h) https://www.omphalos-sardegna.it/crollano-le-torri-di-atlantide-giustizia-per-sergio-frau/

(i) https://scienze.fanpage.it/sardegna-atlantide-la-tesi-dello-tsunami-secondo-gli-specialisti/ (Italian)

(j) http://www.lavocedifiore.org/SPIP/article.php3?id_article=3095

(k) http://www.colonnedercole.info/pdf/txtenglish.pdf

(l) Omphalos the book – OMPHALOS (omphalos-sardegna.it) 

(m) http://www.colonnedercole.it/spip/spip.php?rubrique16  

(n) Sergio Frau – Atlantisforschung.de 

(o) http://www.colonnedercole.it/spip/spip.php?article15  (Italian) 

Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea however improbable at first sight as a candidate for the location of Atlantis has a number of features that cannot be ignored. The area was subjected to post-glacial inundations following the last Ice Age. Tacitus, the respected Roman historian placed the Pillars of Hercules or at least one set of them, in the Baltic.

It was reported by Konrad Kretschmer towards the end of the 19th century that another German writer only referred to as Hafer proposed in 1745 that Atlantis had been located in the Baltic with its capital situated on the island of Rugen.

Jürgen Spanuth based his Atlantis theory on an unambiguous identification of the Atlanteans with the Hyperboreans of the Baltic region. His map of the Atlantean Empire is shown on the right. The German writer Doris Manner attempted to identify the legendary Baltic city of Vineta with Atlantis.

The Italian writer Felice Vinci has recently offered[0018,0019] compelling arguments that support his contention that much of Greek mythology has its roots in northern Europe. He focuses on the epic poems, IIliad and Odysseus, attributed to Homer, to demonstrate a Baltic origin for the stories. Vinci suggests that the Atlantis story should also be reviewed in the light of his own research. He also offers some interesting views on the size of Atlantis.

Spanuth’s views on the subject of Nordic influences on Greek poets and writers are also worth a read[017.163].

>Although Iman Wilkens also proposed a northern Europe location for the Trojan War, with Troy itself situated in southern Britain. However, he does locate a few of the participants in the Baltic.

Further relocations were proposed by Mauro Biglino and co-author Cinzia Mele who discovered two distinct wooded areas in Finnish territory called Sodom & Gomorrah. Further investigation revealed dozens of geographical ‘coincidences’ using Google Earth and the Finnish toponymy site Nimiarkisto.fi. Details are given in their two books, Gli Dei Baltici Della Bibbia [1907] (The Baltic Gods of the Bible) and La Bibbia il Regno del Nord? [1908] (The Bible: The Kingdom of the North?), both in Italian only.<

Perhaps the strongest argument against the Baltic Hypothesis is geological when Plato records that sometime after the war both Athens and Atlantis suffered catastrophic destruction as a consequence of a powerful earthquake and floods. Unlike the Aegean, the Baltic was not noted for earthquakes and they lie over 1,200 miles from each other. It is unknown for an earthquake to simultaneously cause even minor damage at two locations so far apart and would appear to be impossible when one of them is seismically stable.

The British Daily Mail of Jan. 27th, 2014 reported(a) that Swedish divers had discovered the remains of an 11,000-year-old settlement under the Baltic at Hano, off the coast of Skane County, which was quickly labelled ‘Sweden’s Atlantis’!

(a) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2546720/Swedish-divers-unearth-Stone-Age-Atlantis-11-000-year-old-ancient-settlement-discovered-Baltic-Sea.html?ico=ushome%5Eheadlines.

Cádiz

Cádiz is the modern name for ancient Gades considered the original kingdom of Gadeirus the twin brother of Atlas. However, the certainty normally associated with this accepted identification is weakened by the fact that quite a number of locations with similar-sounding names are to be found in the Central and Western Mediterranean regions.

It has also been suggested that the name Cadiz came from Gadir, which in turn was derived from Kadesh!

cadizThe Spanish historian, Adolfo Valencia wrote a history of Cádiz[0208],  in which he suggested that Atlantis might have extended from Cádiz to Malta.

In 1973, Maxine Asher led an expedition to search for Atlantis off the coast of Cadiz, which despite claims of having discovered Plato’s Island, nothing verifiable was found(a). These claims received global press attention, enabling Asher to dine out on it for the rest of her fraudulent life.

It is generally accepted that the Phoenicians from Tyre founded Gadir, later to be known as Gades to the Romans. The Roman historian, Velleius Paterculus (c.19 BC – c.31 AD) wrote that Cadiz was founded 80 years after the Trojan War, circa 1100 BC. In the 9th century BC, the Phoenicians, under Princess Dido, founded a new capital at Carthage in North Africa. At Gades, the Phoenicians/Carthaginians built a temple to Melqart that had two columns that many consider to be the original Pillars of Hercules. In 2007, it was announced that excavations in the old town centre produced shards of Phoenician pottery and walls dated to the 8th century BC, probably making it the oldest inhabited city in Europe.

In early January 2022, Archaeologists from the University of Seville and the Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage claim to have discovered the lost Temple of Hercules Gaditanus. Using information they obtained from documentaries and aerial photographs, the researchers found a large rectangular structure submerged in the Bay of Cadiz. (b)
The structure, nearly 1,000 feet long, 500 feet wide, and matches the ancient descriptions of 
the temple, is only visible in low tide.”

>In September 2023, the latest attempt to revive interest in a Spanish Atlantis was unveiled at a press conference in Chipiona, near Cádiz. The theme of the conference was the discovery of long underwater curved walls that some have claimed to match exactly Plato’s description of Atlantis.

Thorwald C. Franke(c)  has more on the background to this effort to put the spotlight on the possibility of Atlantis being situated in this region of Spain which lies at the southern end of the Doñana Marshes that had received extensive investigation over the past couple of decades. The press conference was also used to announce the showing of a new documentary series by Michael Donnellan on October 8th in Cádiz.<

Also See: Egadi Islands

(a)  1973 Atlantis Expedition (fourth-millennium.net)

(b) Spanish Archaeologists Claim to Have Discovered The Temple of Hercules (sputniknews.com)

(c) Atlantis Newsletter Archive – Atlantis-Scout *

Greenland

Greenland was first proposed as the location of Atlantis in the 17th century by François de la Mothe le Vayer. More recently some of the more imaginative writers have tried, unsuccessfully, to revive interest in Huffman_greenland_1_230this idea. One of these is the American, Dale Huffman, who claims that the outline of Greenland is comparable with Kircher‘s famous map of Atlantis. He has also proposed that while Atlantis primarily consisted of Greenland it also included the islands of the United Kingdom and Iceland”(h). Huffman ignores the fact that Kircher’s map clearly places Atlantis between the Strait of Gibraltar and America, not between Canada and Scandinavia. Apart from this, Kircher favoured the Azores and Canaries as the remnants of Atlantis.

Another proponent is Mario Dantas who is equally determined to link Plato’s description with the enormous island of Greenland(a) and has submitted a paper on the subject to the 2008 Atlantis Conference in Athens.

More recently Johan Nygren drew attention to the similarities between a map of Greenland and the 17th-century map of Atlantis produced by Athanasius Kircher(m).

>Before that, Riaan Booysen commented on Mercator’s treatment of the Arctic region on his 1569 world map as developed by his son “Virtually all the medieval maps of the Arctic region depict Greenland as free of ice. In order to see if there might be a correlation between Mercator’s transposed map of Greenland and an ice free Greenland, the latter has to be compared to a bedrock elevation map of Greenland. This is done in Figure 30 (see link), which shows an arguably marked correlation between the two maps. If true, it would prove, like the ice free maps of Terra Australis, not only that an ancient, prehistoric map-making civilization once existed, but also that the ice core dating technique is fundamentally flawed, or at least, the interpretation of the ice core data.”. (n)<

Another website(b) advocates the Baffin Basin just west of Greenland, as the Great Plain of Atlantis. This idea developed by a New Zealander, Ian Fox, is based on a reinterpretation of Plato’s text combined with the studies of Charles Hapgood.

In 2014, Antonio Usai published an English translation of his 2011 booklet on the Pillars of Hercules[980]  in which he places the original ‘Pillars’ on the Tunisian island of Kerkennah and then unexpectedly proposed that Atlantis was situated in Greenland.

Another proponent of the Greenland location is Stefan Grossmann in his book, Atlantlantean(sic) Philosophy(d), a commentary on the non-existent ‘Emerald Tablets of Thoth’(e), concocted by Maurice Doreal (Claude Doggins).

In October 2011 a team of researchers from the Laboratory of Geology in Lyon may have elevated the importance of Greenland to an even higher level with their claim(c) that life on earth may have originated there 3.8 billion years ago.

In 2013, Lucio Russo, an Italian mathematician and science historian, located Thule on the coast of Greenland, having identified errors in Ptolemy’s geographical calculations[1060].

In 2014 Antonio Moreno Checa published La Atlántida. El mito hecho realidad (Atlantis. The myth comes true) [1063] in which he also locates Atlantis in Greenland. Gennaro Anziano, an Italian writer, has also located Atlantis in Greenland(g) in his 2001 book, Atlantis – Discover the land of the gods[1072].

David Chase Taylor, journalist and conspiracy theorist, published, Greenland Theory: Apocalypse Now, which placed Atlantis in Greenland. However, he is more concerned with the location of the CIA, which he continually repeats has its headquarters under CERN in Switzerland(j)!!! An April 2020 review gives a flavour of the wide-ranging nonsense to be found within this book(k), with little to advance our knowledge of Atlantis.

Marco Goti published The Island of Plato[1430] in 2017 and offered another failed attempt at identifying Greenland as Atlantis.

Leaving aside any suggested connection with Atlantis, there are other features of the vast island that deserve attention. There are a number of raised beaches that clearly indicate that “the whole of this large island has been raised, or the sea has sunk, in post-glacial times” and that “the upheaval has been greater in the north”. Their height above sea level varies from 325 and 480 feet!

In 2018 a huge impact crater was discovered under Greenland’s Hiawatha Glacier. It was initially thought that this impact had been the cause of the Younger Dryas cooling 12,000 years ago, but this idea has now been discounted as the crater is now thought to be 58 million years old.

(a)  https://www.a7lan7is.blogspot.com/
(b) https://www.angelfire.com/film/atlantis_1/Page001.html

(c) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2054226/Life-Earth-bubbled-volcano-Greenland-3-8-billion-years-ago-say-scientists.html

(d) https://archive.org/stream/StefanGrossmann2AtlanteanPhilosophyNineBodiesOfManCRC/Stefan%20Grossmann%20-%202%20Atlantean%20Philosophy%20Nine%20Bodies%20of%20Man%20CRC#page/n0/mode/1up

(e) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-emerald-tablets-of-thoth-a-lovecraftian-plagiarism

(g) Svelato il mistero delle Piramidi (archive.org)

(h) https://web.archive.org/web/20150915033928/https://newsblaze.com/story/20090707063207dale.nb/topstory.html

(i) Greenland – Raised Beaches – I | MalagaBay (archive.org)

(j) https://archive.org/details/GreenlandTheory/mode/2up

(k) https://americanloons.blogspot.com/2020/04/2324-david-chase-taylor.html

(l) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm2434 

(m) https://steemit.com/geography/@johan-nygren/atlas-the-titan-the-atlas-vertebrae-and-atlantis-as-the-continent-that-carries-the-sky-or-the-earth

(n) 9. Greenland ice free? – Page 10 (archive.org) *