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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 »
Radek Brychta
Fréret, Nicolas
NICOLAS FRERET French antiquary and chronologist. Date: 1688 – 1749
Nicolas Fréret (1688-1749) was a French scholar with a particular interest in history and mythology, which inevitably led to his study of the Atlantis question.>He was unhappy with accepting that Plato’s 9,000 ‘years’ was a reference to solar years, but preferred instead to consider that units of three or four months were used.<As a consequence, he concluded that the Atlantean War took place in 3380 BC.
>To make Plato’s 9,000 years more credible, commentators such as Giovanni Carli, also in the 18th century and Rafinesque in the 19th have suggested that Plato’s years were in fact ‘seasons’. The idea has gained further traction in more recent years with support from Radek Brychta and the late Axel Hausmann and most recently Rosario Vieni.<
Fréret was one of the first to suggest Syrtis Major as the location of Atlantis.
Egyptian Calendar, The
The Egyptian Calendar is central to the debate regarding the date of the Alantean war. At first sight it appears that Plato dated that event to 9,000 years prior to Solon’s visit to Egypt. However, since such a date conflicts with both archaeology and common sense, commentators have striven to reconcile the differences. Either the number is exaggerated, the unit of measurement is wrong, or both require revision. I’m inclined towards the latter.
The ancient Egyptians had three types of ‘years’, solar, lunar or seasonal(a). The first was based on the heliacal rising(b) of the star Sirius, the second was a count of the annual lunar cycles and the last was the number of seasons of which there were three in the Egyptian year. The lunar cycles or months were the means by which the Egyptian priesthood calculated the passage of time and since Solon received the story of Atlantis from Egyptian priests it is assumed by many that the 9,000 ‘years’ were in fact months. Apart from modern authorities, the use of lunar cycles by the Egyptians for calculating time was noted by Eudoxus of Cnidos (410- 355 BC) and also by Plutarch, Manetho, Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus.
Zhirov noted[458.375] that the lunar calendar was re-introduced into Egypt by the Arabs in 641 AD.
Some others, such as Radek Brychta and Rosario Vieni, have proposed that the number of seasons were used in a similar manner. Even more extreme was the contention of André de Paniagua who claimed that the date of Atlantis was recorded in Sothic cycles of 1,460 solar years each, which would push its time back 13 million years!
Nevertheless, there are many who still maintain that Plato’s 9,000 should be taken literally, even though neither Egypt nor Athens existed as structured societies at such an early date!
Seasons
Seasons are sub-divisions of the year usually based on changes in ecology, weather or hours of daylight. The number of seasons varies between two (Polar) and six (India). My native Ireland has been described by cynics as now having only three seasons, as recent weather changes seem to have removed summer from our calendar.
The Egyptian year is divided into three seasons as they also did in the Indus civilisation. In an effort to make Plato’s 9,000 years more credible, commentators as early Giovanni Carli in the 18th century and Rafinesque in the 19th have suggested that Plato’s years were in fact ‘seasons’. The idea has gained further traction in more recent years with support from Axel Hausmann and Radek Brychta and most recently Rosario Vieni. Both Hausmann and Vieni presented papers to the 2005 Atlantis Conference, where Hausmann proposed that the ‘years’ be treated as seasons and so concluded that the demise of Atlantis took place in 3522 BC[629.359]. However, at the same conference Vieni presented his paper entitled “11,500 years ago…..” [629.337], obviously at that stage accepting Plato’s 9,000 years at face value. Three years later, he presented a paper to the 2008 Atlantis Conference which he entitled “About 5600 years ago….” [750.347], in which he had changed his understanding of Plato’s ‘years’ to be now seasons. While his intellectual honesty is to be applauded, I must point out that because a person changes their opinion, there is no guarantee that their second choice is any more correct than the first.
I am not convinced by the ‘seasons’ explanation, as it just seems to be a rather feeble attempt to explain away Plato’s 9,000 being a reference to solar years. Supporters of this ‘seasons’ explanation appear to be forced to look for an alternative to a literal 9,000 years as that figure conflicts dramatically with the Bronze Age setting of the Atlantis narrative and runs counter to the archaeological evidence for dating the foundation of both Athens and the Egyptian civilisation.
The more popular alternative suggestion of treating the ‘years’ as lunar cycles makes much more sense, as it brings the Atlantis story into the end of the Greek Bronze Age. It also matches the time of the destruction of the spring on the Acropolis (Crit.112d) and conforms to details on the Parian Marble. But perhaps most important of all is that the use of lunar cycles by the Egyptian priesthood for calculating time was noted by Eudoxus of Cnidos (410-355 BC) and also by Plutarch, Manetho, Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus.
A third proposal, by Galanopoulos & Bacon[263], was that Plato’s large numbers were inflated by a factor of ten, but they never offered a satisfactory explanation for how this happened.
Bab-el-Mandeb
Bab-el-Mandeb, which means gate of tears, is the name given to the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea and has been identified as one of the two routes taken by humans ‘out of Africa’ around 120,000 years ago, the other being through Sinai.
The Strait has also been identified by some researchers as the location of the Pillars of Heracles referred to by Plato. This idea is advocated by Jacques Hébert, Thérêse Ghembaza and Sunil Prasannan who have respectively located Atlantis at Socotra, Meroë and Sundaland.
The French historian Philippe Potel-Belner also identifies Bab-el-Mandeb as the Pillars of Heracles(c) beyond which lay Atlantis on a long plain on the west coast of India(b).
>Atlantisforschung has also pointed out that Radek Brychta was another one to nominate Bab-el-Mandeb as the site of the ‘Pillars’(d).<
A fictional account of the destruction of Atlantis in the Red Sea and its relationship with the biblical Deluge by Orson Scott Card is now available on the Internet(a).
(a) http://www.hatrack.com/osc/stories/atlantis.shtml
(b) https://www.academia.edu/3480936/Atlantis_myth_legend_History (French) (offline Nov. 2015)
(c) https://www.academia.edu/3339364/PLATO_revisited_what_he_precisely_said_about_Atlantis (French) (offline Nov.2015)
(d) Säulen des Herakles – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *
Sumerians *
Sumeria was one of the earliest civilisations emerging between the 6th and 5th millennia BC and was situated in what is now central Iraq.
It was unknown in Europe until the middle of the 19th century. With the discovery and the decipherment of the Sumerian cuneiform tablets the sophistication of their culture prompted the idea that Sumer had been ‘the cradle of civilisation.’ Subsequent discoveries, such as those in the Indus Valley and more recently Göbekli Tepe have now somewhat diluted that idea.
Nevertheless, there is an acceptance that the Sumerians were very advanced in the field of mathematics and astronomy. The late Ernest McClain, a professor of music, was convinced that music theory could be traced back to the Sumerians as early as 3000 BC.
The origin of the Sumerians is still something of a mystery as is their language which seems to be an ‘isolate’, unrelated to any known language group(q). The Flem-Aths in an Atlantis Rising article (Issue 95) and Atlantis Beneath the Ice [981.70] claimed a cultural and genetic linkage between the Sumerians and the Haida of northwest America. The Flem-Aths also noted [062.54] that some have linked the languages of the two peoples!
Ronnie Gallagher has suggested that migrants from the Caucasus had provided the impetus that led to the development of the Sumerian civilisation. Gallagher’s theory is supported by Jerald Jack Starr on his Sumerian Shakespeare website, who emphatically attributes a Caucasian origin to the Sumerians(l).
Emilio Spedicato has controversially suggested that the Sumerians came from the Tibetan region!(m) Equally provocative were the views of Catherine Acholonu-Olumba, who as the author of Eden in Sumer on the Niger [1833], claimed that her book, “provides multidisciplinary evidence of the actual geographical location in West Africa of the Garden of Eden, Atlantis and the original homeland of the Sumerian people before their migration to the “Middle East”. By translating hitherto unknown pre-cuneiform inscriptions of the Sumerians, Catherine Acholonu and Sidney Davis have uncovered thousands of years of Africa’s lost pre-history and evidences of the West African origins of the earliest Pharaohs and Kings of Egypt and Sumer such as Menes and Sargon the Great.”(p)
Sumeria has now been proposed as a possible source of the Atlantis story. Dr Ashok Malhotra, a professor of Engineering, has suggested(a) that that ‘the likelihood of the Atlantis stories being of Sumerian origin is strengthened by the fact that the submergence of ancient cities was a strong part of the Sumerian mythology. It dominates their historical tradition. The destruction of the ancient city as a result of sin was also part of their beliefs.’ Malhotra then proposes that these Sumerian stories reflected actual flooding events in the Indus Valley region that were brought first to Sumeria and then were later transferred to Egypt and from thence via Solon to Plato to us.
George Michanowsky went much further and claimed that the Sumerians had known Atlantis under the name of NI-DUK-KI, known today as Dilmun[282.66]. The renowned Henry Rawlinson interpreted this name to mean ‘blessed hill’ or ‘blessed isle’. While Michanowsky’s suggestion is highly speculative, if correct, it would be the earliest known reference to Atlantis.
The Sumerian king list(e) from Larsa records eight kings (some versions note ten) before the Deluge, which may have been reflected, in a distorted fashion, in the ten patriarchs of Genesis and/or the ten kings of Atlantis! Another suggested link is with the eight generations between Adam and Noah recorded in Genesis chapter 5.
John Sassoon would seem to support Malhotra’s thesis in his book[566], which proposes a Sumerian origin for the Jews with possible earlier links with the Indus Valley. He is not concerned with Atlantis, just the ancestry of the Jewish people of whom Abraham was born in Sumeria around 2000-1800 BC. Sassoon’s views offer a possible transmission route for Eastern traditions and myths to have reached Egypt and subsequently through Solon to Athens.
More recently, Dr Willem McLoud, a South African researcher, commented that “we have good reason to think that Atlantis was not located beyond the pillars of Heracles in the Atlantic Ocean, as is so often propagated, but that it was actually none other than the ancient land of Sumer itself.” Mcloud is primarily concerned with the Sumerians and Akkadians, which he will expand on in a forthcoming book(n).
In 2001, a book by Radek Brychta was published in the Czech Republic in which he also advocates a Sumerian connection. He identifies Atlantis with the legendary Dilmun of Sumerian legend and locates it on the Indus civilisation island of Dholavira. Excerpts from this fascinating book are available on the Internet and are worth a read.
However, the most extreme claims came from Zechariah Sitchin who proposed that the Sumerians had been ‘influenced’ by ancient astronauts from the planet Nibiru, which information is to be found in their cuneiform tablets if Sitchin’s translation is to be believed. Similar daft ideas(g) have been put forward by Hermann Burgard[1316] but so far have only been foisted on a German-reading public.
As if that was not bad enough, we now (Oct 2016) have the Iraqi Transport Minister claiming, among other matters, that the Sumerians launched spaceships 8,000 years ago(h)!
The Sumerian texts also crop up in the wild theories of Dieter Bremer[1022] and Jakob Vorberger, who claim that Atlantis was a space station(I)!
Jim Allen, the leading advocate of ‘Atlantis in the Andes’ has also claimed(b) a Sumerian connection with South America citing Ruth & Alpheus Hyatt Verrill, who include in their book[838.293] three pages of Sumerian words compared with the language of ancient Peru as well as other cultural aspects there. They also believed that Sargon (2369-2314 BC) was known in Peru as the deity Viracocha! Their fanciful idea stems from an account of Sargon sailing to the West and spending three years there! Zhirov supported this claim[458.23] describing it as ”a seemingly semi-fantastic theory”. My reason for considering this claim to be nonsensical, is simply that Sargon was continually engaged in expanding his empire and constantly dealing with rebellions in the various city-states that he ruled over. The idea that he took three years out to visit America, 14,000 km away, is in no way credible.
Nevertheless, the idea of Sargon in South America persists with James Bailey repeating it in Sailing to Paradise[0150.66] and more recently by the Afrocentrist, Clyde Winters in an article on the Ancient Origins website(f) in which he quotes Bailey and the Verrills as supporting Lake Titicaca as the Lake Manu of Sumerian tradition. A further article(j) on the same website begins with the forceful claim that “it is becoming increasingly clear that the Sumerians had established a colony in South America called Kuga-Ki.” The paper is based on a series of questionable artefacts, the Fuente Magna Bowl, the Crespi Collection and the Pokoyia monument!
The Fuente Magna Bowl is frequently offered as evidence of a pre-Columbian link with the Sumerians in America(c), although its provenance is unclear and there are the inevitable suggestions of a hoax. A sceptical view of the ‘Bowl’ by Carl Feagans(k) is available.
Michel Leygues has published two papers in which he offers evidence that the Sumerian and Akkadian languages can be identified in the languages of many of the native America peoples including the Hopi, Navajo and Incas(s)(t). Leygues also “presents the hypothesis that a kinship exists between Yamato Kotoba ideographic values, and Sumerian and Akkadian values. This despite a great geographical distance between Mesopotamia and Japan, and at different historical periods of language use. “(u)
Other commentators have suggested that the Sumerians reached Spain. Dr Paul Haupt (1858-1926}, an early Assyriologist proposed that the ‘two rivers’ in the story of Utnapishtim, a Noachian equivalent, were the Guadalquivir and Guadiana of Andalusia(r). Mario Mas Fenollar is a modern advocate for Sumerians in Spain.
The very existence of Sumerians has recently been attacked in an appendix to The Three Ages of Atlantis[972] by Marin, Minella & Schievenin. They maintain that the Sumerian ‘language’ “could be an artificial construct created by Akkadian priests” to be used for liturgical purposes. These ideas were first expressed at the end of the 19th century by the respected Orientalist, Joseph Halévy. Andi Zeneli has expressed comparable ideas(d) regarding the Sumerian language.
Uwe Topper’s son Ilya has also put forward the idea that the Sumerians did not exist(o). His paper is a critique, originally in Spanish, of Gunnar Heinsohn’s Die Sumerer gab es nicht.
(a) In Search of Atlantis — Getting Closer (archive.org) (new link)
(c) https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1551445/posts
(d) https://sumeriantestament.blogspot.ie/2012/08/what-is-sumerian.html
(i) Mesopotamische Überlieferungen | Atlantis Mythologie (archive.org)
(k) https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2015/03/sumerians-in-bolivia-probably-not/
(l) https://sumerianshakespeare.com/734501.html
(m) https://www.academia.edu/6556879/AA_MER_MERU_rel_2
(n) Chapter summary – WhisperingTales (archive.org) *
(p) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262069423_Eden_In_Sumer_On_The_Niger
(q) The origin of the Sumerians and the great flood (archive.org)
(r) https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/528616.pdf
(s) Sumer, Akkad, And The Languages Of The Navajo, The Hopi, The Zuni (calameo.com)
(t) Akkad, Sumer, and Incas, Nazcas languages (calameo.com)
(u) Sumer, Akkad and Yamato Kotoba by michel leygues – Issuu
Franklin, Stephen E. *
Stephen E. Franklin offers a wide-ranging website(a) which includes a book [1387], as yet unpublished, that ambitiously aims to reconcile the chronologies of the ancient Hebrews, Assyrians and Egyptians(e). This has been an area of great contention particularly since the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky were published in the 1950s. David Rohl has published a series of books on the subject in recent years with further contributions from Peter James and Emmet J. Sweeney.
Franklin’s book has chapter 8(c) devoted to the Garden of Eden and Atlantis where he maintains that the 9,000 ‘years’ of Plato refer to the three ‘seasons’ in the Egyptian year, an idea that seems to be gaining acceptance (see Radek Brychta, Rosario Vieni and Axel Hausmann).
This reassessment of Plato’s years enabled Franklin to claim that Athens was founded circa 3565 BC and Sais circa 3231 BC. Coincidentally the latter date is very close to the generally accepted time for the establishment of pharaonic Egypt.
Franklin has claimed that the Phaistos Disk is a king-list of Cretan rulers and also that it has a calendrical function(d).
Some years ago Franklin published a book on the origins of the Tarot deck. Its subtitle was A Study of the Astronomical Substructure of Game and Divining Boards [301]. This can be downloaded for free from his website(b).
He has also engaged in the Shakespearean authorship controversy.
(a) Forgotten Origins: Steve Franklin’s Web Site (lordbalto.com) *
(b) Appendix C (lordbalto.com) *
(c) Eight: Adam and Atlas–Eden and the Fall of Atlantis (lordbalto.com) *
(d) Fourteen: The Phaistos Disc and the Early Kings of Crete (lordbalto.com) *
Dilmun *
Dilmun (Tilmun) is a legendary island paradise referred to in the mythology of Sumeria. Today, Bahrain is generally believed to harbour the location of this renowned city.
However, in 1983, Daniel Potts published a paper(c) which does not challenge the prevailing identification, but instead suggested that it is necessary “to both broaden and restrict the identification of Dilmun, according to the particular time in history to which one is referring.” He traces the use of the name in Mesopotamian texts as early as 3000 BC. He contends that Dilmun was applied to eastern Arabia by Early Dynastic Sumerians and that later power shifted to Bahrain with the name, Dilmun, which possibly applied to the island as well as part of mainland Arabia. Then around 2000 BC, the use of the appellation appears to have been extended to include the island of Failaka, off Kuwait. Potts suggests that subsequently Failaka may have replaced Bahrain as the centre of Dilmun.
Thirty years ago George Michanowsky proposed[282] that the Sumerian inscription NI-DUK-KI was the equivalent of the Akkadian ‘Dilmun’ and that it probably referred to Bahrain. He went further and identified Dilmun as Atlantis, which he contended was inundated when sea levels rose as a consequence of global warming caused by a supernova that was noted by the Sumerians 7,000 years ago.
However, in 2001 Radek Brychta published a book[203] that refutes this. Instead, he identifies Dilmun with the Indus civilisation city of Dholavira and proceeds to argue cogently for its acceptance as the original inspiration behind Plato’s Atlantis tale. He contends that the city declined at the end of the 3rd or beginning of the 2nd millennium BC as a result of natural catastrophes in the region. Brychta notes how flooding created swamps that impeded access to Dholavira reminiscent of Plato’s shoals preventing navigation where Atlantis had subsided. Brychta outlines the contacts between the Indus civilisation and Sumeria and between Sumeria and Egypt and proposes this as the route of the story of Dholavira’s demise, which eventually was related to Solon. Brachta’s book was published in the Czech Republic but extensive excerpts are available on the Internet(a) and well worth a viewing.
>In 2005 it was reported that a Saudi archaeologist, Nabiel Al Shaikh, drew attention to a temple in the Saar district of Bahrain where he claims a solar observatory still functions after a fashion. It seems that the sun no longer sets where it should and is off by around 10 degrees!(d) Al Shaikh suggested that this deviance might be the result of tectonic movement or ground erosion. Others might infer ‘pole shift’? For me, this is reminiscent of George Dodwell‘s work.<
Brachta’s theory is supported by Yashwant Koak, who is due to publish a book on his concept of Atlantis in India. Koak claims that investigations at Dholavira have shown a 92% match with Plato’s description of Atlantis.
The imaginative Zia Abbas also links Dilmun with Atlantis, but places it further east in Indonesia[001.28].
The Malagaybay website has an interesting illustrated article about Dilmun.(b)
(a) https://www.i-atlantis.com/enindex.htm (Offline)
(b) The Arabian Horizon – The Lost Lands: Dilmun | MalagaBay (archive.org)
(c) https://www.academia.edu/5789959/Potts_1983_-_Dilmun_Where_and_when?email_work_card=view-paper
Brychta, Radek
Radek Brychta is a Czech writer who has written[203] about the transmission of the Atlantis story from the Indus civilisation city of Dholavira, which he claims was the legendary island of Dilmun recorded by 
the Sumerians and from them, transferred to Egypt and eventually related to Solon.
Brychta considers Bab-el-Mandeb to be the location of the Pillars of Herakles.
John Sassoon[0566] has suggested, based on Genesis 11.2 that the Sumerians had in fact migrated from the east with the Indus Valley as a possible point of origin. He suggests further that the Sumerians were in fact the progenitors of the Jews. This theory would also offer a line of transmission from the Indus valley to the Nile delta.
He includes a rational explanation for the 9,000-year age of Atlantis by noting that the Egyptians, as well as the Indus civilisation, counted time in seasons of which there were three annually. Dividing 9,000 by three and adding the probable date of Solon’s Egyptian sojourn, 590 BC, gives us a more credible date of 3590 BC. This idea has also been proposed by Rosario Vieni and Axel Hausmann.
A further possible link between the Atlantis story and the Indus civilisation is strengthened by such matters as the existence of elephants.
>An abbreviated version of Brychta’s book in seven sections is now archived here(a). A review of Brychta’s book on the Atlantisforschung website is worth a read(b).<
(a) Archive 2905 *
Dholavira *
Dholavira is a recently discovered city of the Indus Valley civilisation, and is now estimated to be one of the five largest (out of 700) Harappan sites, covering an area of up to 100 hectares. It is known locally as Kotada. Only 10% of the site has been excavated, leaving a promise of further important discoveries still to come.
Its foundation is dated to around 3000 BC and it flourished until approximately 1500 BC(a). 2010 saw the first discovery in Dholavira of an inscription on natural stone in the Indus script. 2011 produced a report(b) that what may be the world’s oldest theatrical stage had been found on the Dholavira site.
In October 2014 it was reported that a stepwell, dated to 3000 BC, had been discovered at Dholavara that was three times the size of the ‘Great Bath’ at Mohenjo Daro(c).
The city has number of special features outlined on a Pakistani website in 2015. The same posting(f) suggests that “the Indus Valley civilisation. Ideally it should be called Indus-Saraswsati civilisation, but the work to trace the path of saraswati is still in progress.”
At least two writers have claimed Dholavira as the source of Plato’s Atlantis story. Radek Brychta who has already written(d)(e) on the subject of an Atlantean connection and Yashwant Koak who is planning to publish in the near future, although, as of May 2018 nothing further has been heard of this.One claim is that “the archaeological discoveries at the site of Dholavira matches 90% of the description of the Atlantis city.”
Brychta wrote an article on his Atlantean Dholavira for the Atlantisforschung.de website(d)..
(a) https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/dholavira-ancient-wonder-of-gujarat.html
(d) https://atlantisforschung.de/index.php?title=Die_Entdeckung_von_Platons_Atlantis_VII_b (German)
(e) https://atlantis.brychta.org/en7.htm (English)
(f) https://defence.pk/threads/dholavira-the-zenith-of-harappan-town-planning.372591/
Also See: Dilmun
Indus Valley
The Indus Valley civilisation is dated to 2600-1900 BC (preceded by the Mehrgarh People) is now referred to as the Harappan civilisation. To date, over a thousand settlements and five cities have been identified, but only 10% have been excavated(v).
The origins of the Indus people has been debated for some time, but a DNA study of four skeletons discovered, some years ago, at Rakhigarhi, in India, may offer some clues. However, three years later (2017) the results have still not been made public(z)(aa)! A September 2019 report in Live Science highlighted the fact that gathering usable DNA from the Indus Valley is extremely difficult as the climate there degrades it rapidly. Attempts to extract DNA from 61 individuals in the cemetery in Rakhigarhi were successful in only one instance. Unfortunately, only limited information was gleaned from this study, namely that “about two-thirds to three-fourths of the ancestry of all modern South Asians come from a population group related to that of this Indus Valley individual.” according to Vagheesh Narasimhan, one of the authors of the report.
In recent years, the Indus region has received several nominations as the source of the Atlantis story. Dr Ashok Malhotra has identified the submergence of the city of Dwarka as the inspiration for the story, which was then brought to Sumeria and later Egypt 
before transmission to Greece.
However, Radek Brychta has opted[203] for the ancient city of Dholavira as a more likely candidate, while independently Yashwant Koak arrived at the same conclusion and intends to publish soon.
A 2014 blogger offered similar ideas with a paper(n) entitled ‘Atlantis was Indus Valley plateau?’ but then proceeds to describe Indonesia as the hyperdiffusionist source for the great civilisations “such as those of the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Cretans and the Mesopotamians. These also included the Jews, the Phoenicians, and the Aryans, driven away from their ancestral lands in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.”
In Thorwald C. Franke’s Newsletter No.119 he draws attention to a review by Professor Heinz-Günther Nesselrath of a new over-priced book by Erika Daniels-Qasim. Although the book is published in German[1580], Nesselrath’s highly critical review is in English(ac), Nesselrath reveals that this is just another useless attempt to link Plato’s Atlantis with the Indus Valley civilisation. Franke describes it as a ‘sad book’.
Although the ‘ancient alien’ idea has nothing to back it up, the claim that a very ancient nuclear war destroyed the Indus civilisation has had some support(ad). However, Jason Colavito has also debunked the story of the ‘radioactive skeleton’ there(ab). A decade ago (2013) Dale Drinnon also published a blog refuting the ancient atomic war claims(aj).
In 2012, the Spanish researcher, José Angel Hernández, proposed that the Tarshish of the Bible was to be found on the coastal region of the Indus Valley, but that Tartessos was a colony of the Indus city of Lhotal and had been situated on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar! He also compared the bull cult of Plato’s Atlantis with that of the Indus civilisation(f)(g).
The central Indus city of Mohenjo-Daro was only rediscovered in 1922(m) and a curious more recent discovery there, was that 10% of artefacts found there related to play! Clusters of game pieces suggested the use of communal social centres. Unrelated, but perhaps more relevant to our study is the fact that there is a dearth of weaponry fortifications or evidence of warfare in the Indus culture(d), which is in sharp contrast to the belligerent Atlantean society described by Plato. More details of the city and the Indus culture can be read on the Italian larazzodeltempo.it website(ag)(ah).
A frequently referred to anomaly at Mohenjo-Daro is evidence of vitrification and radioactivity that some have attributed to atomic warfare or attacks by ancient aliens(af). A more balanced view(k)(l) can be found online. A 2015 article on this subject is also worth a look(o). Jason Colavito has unearthed(ab) the origin of this claim, tracing it back to the 1960s and an unreliable Russian writer, Alexander Gorbovsky, compounded by later distortions by ‘fringe investigators.
A 2012 conference on Harappan archaeology saw the origins of that culture pushed back to the 7th millennium BC, contemporary with that of Sumer(j). The same conference saw linguistic connections between the two cultures under discussion. However, despite numerous attempts over the past century the Indus Valley script remains undeciphered(p), although there are regular claims of successful decipherment, 2007(q), 2009(r), 2011(s), 2013(t), to date totalling nearly 100, somewhat reminiscent of the constant flow of Atlantis theories. Now linguists are turning to computer technology to finally solve the problem(x).
A radical theory regarding Mohenjo-Daro has been proposed by an Indian researcher, Jeyakumar Ramasami, in which he claims that the city was a necropolis and not a metropolis. His book on the subject can be downloaded as a free Word file(e). A similar theory was proposed by Hans Georg Wunderlich regarding the Minoan ‘palace’ of Knossos on Crete.
A comprehensive website(a) with many photos and diagrams relating to the Indus Valley civilisation is available. A related article by Patrick Chouinard is also of interest(b).
A recent discovery off the Konkan Coast in the State of Maharashtra in western India has revealed a remarkable structure that is based on sea-level changes that may be 8,000 years old(c). A wall 24 km long, 2.7 metres high and 2.5 metres in width was discovered in just three metres of water. Speculation has centred on the possibility of it being evidence of a completely unknown civilisation that could pre-date that of the Indus Valley. A second site, thought to be pre-Harappan, located in Rakhigarhi village in Haryana’s Hisar district, over 200 km from Chandigarh, is now under investigation.
A 2008 article(i) adds further information about the Indus Valley, which includes a reference to the Neolithic site at Mehrgarh a precursor to the Indus civilisation and dated to 7000 BC, a date that has now been pushed back to 8000 BC according to a paper published(u) in the May 25th, 2016 edition of Nature.
A recent paper(w) has revealed how the Indus people coped with the consequences of climate change when their civilisation was at its height around 2500-1900 BC. Another paper suggests that the demise of the Indus Valley civilisation was the result of climate change caused by changing monsoon patterns. The author, Nishant Malik, assistant professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Mathematical Sciences, used mathematical modelling to support his claim(ae).
Until now it was thought that many of the Indus settlements had been dependent on a major Himalayan river, the Ghaggar-Hakra, now dried up. However, recent studies(y) indicate that this river changed course over 8,000 years ago suggesting that “when the Indus people settled the area, there was only an abandoned large river valley occupied by seasonal monsoon river flow instead of a large Himalayan river.” So it seems that, unlike the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations the Indus people did not require a substantial permanent river!
Joanna Gillan published an article giving a potted history of Mohenjo Daro and including a critical review of those, including David Davenport, who have tried to prove that the site was the location of an ancient atomic war. Supporters of this idea have pointed to quotations from the Mahabharata in support of this idea. However, Gillan revealed that “Rather than being entirely fictitious, the passage is composed of a merging together of various unrelated passages scattered throughout the 200,000-verse epic, some of which are also questionable English translations of a questionable French translation of the original Sanskrit. When viewed in their original context, they are a little less convincing”(ak).
Another article on the Ancient Origins website, also by Gillan, in January 2022 reviews the history of Mohenjo Daro and unfortunately highlights that “Although it has survived for five millennia, Mohenjo Daro now faces imminent destruction. While the intense heat of the Indus Valley, monsoon rains, and salt from the underground water table is having damaging effects on the treasured site, it is the visitors that flock in their thousands to the site that are the biggest threat. Adding to the problem is a lack of funding, public indifference, and government neglect. The government even approved a festival being held at the site back in 2014, where tents, lights and stages were hammered into the walls of the delicate ruins.
Mohenjo Daro is already in an incredibly fragile condition. It is estimated that at its current rate of degradation, the World Heritage-listed site could be gone within 20 years(ai).
(b) https://newagearchaeology.weebly.com/the-indus-valley.html
(c) A civilisation as old as Indus valley? (archive.org)
(d) Indus Valley Civilization: The Demise of Utopia (archive.org)
(e) https://archive.org/details/NewInterpretationsOnIndusValleyCivilization
(f) https://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/mito-y-religion/
(g) https://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/arqueologia-e-historia/
(i) https://wondersofpakistan.wordpress.com/2009/02/21/mehrgarh-the-lost-civilisation-2/
(j) Archive 2329
(k) Mohenjo Daro – The Thunderbolts Project™ (archive.org) (new link)
(l) See: Archive 3516
(m) https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2959492/posts
(n) See: Archive 3617
(o) https://dailygrail.com/Hidden-History/2015/2/Mohenjo-Daro-Ancient-Nuclear-Mystery
(p) https://www.nature.com/news/ancient-civilization-cracking-the-indus-script-1.18587
(q) https://www.hindunet.org/hvk/articles/0207/56.html (offline Nov. 2016)
(r) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/apr/23/indus-civilisation-language-symbols
(s) https://www.boloji.com/articles/10657/a-new-light-on-the-decipherment-of
(t) Decoding the Ancient Script of the Indus Valley | Archaeology Online *
(z) https://www.quora.com/When-will-Rakhigarhi-excavations-DNA-results-be-published
(ac) https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2018/2018.08.23/
(ad) Nuclear War In Ancient Times | War Between Rama Empire and Atlantis? (archive.org)
(ag) Mohenjo-Daro, a Bronze Age metropolis – The Tapestry of Time (larazzodeltempo.it)
(ai) Mohenjo Daro and The Mounds That Hid a Civilization | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)
(aj) Archive 2324 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(ak) Was the Mohenjo Daro ‘Massacre’ Real? | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)