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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 »
Ralph Ellis
Hall of Records
The Hall of Records (HoR) is a term used to describe an alleged repository of ancient wisdom, frequently claimed to be situated under the Sphinx at Giza. Today, the HoR is usually associated with the prognostications of Edgar Cayce who, in one of his trances, told us that there were three such repositories, near Bimini, the Yucatan and Giza.
Popular writers Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock were convinced that the HoR had been situated under the rear paws of the Sphinx in Keepers of Genesis [1050], published as Message of the Sphinx in the USA. Ian Lawton & Chris Ogilvie-Herald have noted in Giza the Truth [1690] how both Bauval and Hancock have modified their view of the HoR in a later video [p.400]. Cayce thought that the HoR would be found under the left paw of the Sphinx.
Lawton & Ogilvie-Herald also review the comments of other writers, both modern and ancient regarding the HoR. Their preliminary conclusion was “that it would appear that the weight of evidence supports the idea that secret records of mankind’s ancient past and knowledge do indeed exist in various locations in the world. However, the evidence linking them to Giza is far less substantial.” [p.242]
In 2000, Ralph Ellis announced his intention to lead an expedition to Mount Kailash in Nepal to find the Hall of Records!(a)
(a) Atlantis Rising magazine #23 p15 http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At *
Cart-Ruts *
The Cart Ruts of Malta are one of the many remarkable archaeological features of the archipelago. Unfortunately, the local authorities have not done all they could to ensure their preservation. Cart ruts are also found in other countries but with nothing like the numbers found in Malta.
Sardinia has a number of comparable cart ruts that have only recently received the attention they deserve. Dr Dominique Görlitz has studied these cart ruts(ai). Images of the Sardinian ruts can also be seen in a YouTube video(aj).
Madeira taxi sleds
An article written in 1904(h) describes a visit to the Madeiras where the writer travelled on a sled drawn by oxen, while Alexander Braghine describes how Paul le Cour visited the Azores and noted that the natives there used ‘sledges’ rather than wheeled vehicles and greased the runners to assist movement, similar to the practice on the Madeiras. A more recent paper(s) by Félix Rodrigues of Azores University discusses in detail cart ruts found on Terceira Island in the Azores. Other papers(w)(x) on the Academia.edu website discuss ‘ruts’ on Lanzarote in the Canaries.
Uwe Sneider has produced the most comprehensive overview of the geographical distribution of cart ruts that I have encountered(ak). He has visited many of the sites in the Mediterranean and across Europe and has alluded to possible traces of ruts on other continents.
An image (4th down) from Malta on a 2017 posting(af), appears to show where axles have worn into a raised stone wall at one side of a rut, which would seem to end the ‘sledge versus wheel’ controversy.
Another feature of the ruts found in Malta is the inexplicable manner in which some will suddenly disappear at cliff edges! Furthermore, ruts are also found disappearing into the sea on one side of a bay and then reappearing on the opposite side. Over a century ago Emanuel Magri reported that there were cart ruts on the tiny island of Filfla, which lies 5km off the south coast of mainland Malta, suggesting the disappearance of a very large tract of land between the two.
The melitamegalithic website has linked the altered orientation of Malta’s temples with the geological disruption indicated by the cart ruts (ae) noting that “While the geology of the Maltese islands indicates unmistakably major events of a cataclysmic nature, these give little hint as to what took place, and when. What is definitely obvious is that the geologic events are evident from man-made artefacts. Those artefacts point to the kind of event and the time when it occurred. In geological time they are quite recent.”
“The earliest reference to cart-ruts was made by Gian Francesco Abela (1582–1655) in 1647 [1676] who suggested that they were used to transport stones from quarries to the sea for exportation to Africa during the Arab rule in Malta.”(z)
Dr David Trump (1931-2016) who has done much to advance Maltese archaeology, published a booklet on the cart-ruts in 2008 [658]. Trump nicknamed the complex collection of ruts at Misrah Ghar il-Kbir “Clapham Junction” after the London railway station, where several railway services interchange. A 1998 paper(d) by Joseph Magro Conti and Paul C. Saliba focused on “Clapham Junction” and concluded that the ruts had a clear connection with the transportation of material from adjacent quarries.
Speaking of railways, Ralph Ellis has written on the suggestion that the standard British railway gauge may have had its origins in the cart ruts of Malta or ancient Egyptian cubits!(ag)
A connection between the cart ruts and Atlantis has been suggested by Anton Mifsud and adopted by the late Axel Hausmann, who both claim that the ruts were the irrigation channels referred to by Plato (Critias 118c-e).
Another prominent archaeologist, Claudia Sagona, has also suggested(f)(j) that the ruts were used for irrigation, although she has not associated them with Plato’s text. While this linkage fits nicely with the theory of Atlantis having been in the region of Malta, it does not stand up to close examination.
First of all the cart ruts follow the natural undulations of the Maltese landscape and so to function as irrigation channels would require water to flow uphill for parts of its journey, Trump has mentioned how some of the ruts can be seen sloping as much as 45°. Roman aqueducts, like the one in Malta’s Rabat(ac)(ad), seldom used a gradient greater than half of one percent.
Secondly, the fact that the ruts are always found in pairs would suggest a degree of unnecessary and wasteful duplication found in no other irrigation system in the world. Because; if the ruts were intended to carry water, for the same labour they could have been cut as a single channel at twice the depth cutting losses through evaporation by half.
As well as that, the ground between each pair of tracks could provide an extra acre of arable land for every two miles of length. Furthermore, the multiplicity of tracks at the ‘Clapham Junction’ site is incompatible with an irrigation system.
All of which is compounded by the absence of controlling sluicegates anywhere at the remaining 100+ sites, and emphasised by Trump’s observation that “no association of ruts with water sources has been demonstrated.”[870.268]
I refer below to several countries where comparable cart ruts have also been found. I am not aware of even one instance where any of these have been suggested as having an irrigation function.
Compounding all that is the fact that no supporter of the cart ruts as Plato’s irrigation channels has attempted to explain how the dimensions of the ruts can be measured in inches while Plato describes canals measured in feet – tens of feet!
Joseph S. Ellul in his book Malta’s Prediluvian Culture [0289] expressed some controversial unconventional views(t) regarding the cart-ruts, including his assertion that the ruts were created by tools or machinery and were formed during the Stone Age before the biblical Deluge! A chapter from his book focussed on the cart ruts has been translated(ah) into German and published by Atlantisforschung. With the help of Google Translate, I have added an English text below (See: Archive 7256P).
Graham Hancock refers to the cart ruts several times in Underworld [274], where he commented that “It is certain, too, that they were not simply worn away in the tough limestone by the passage of cart-wheels over periods of centuries, as many have wrongly theorized; on the contrary, there is no proof whatsoever that cart-wheels ever ran in these ruts – which were initially carved out of the bedrock with the use of tools.” [p.331] His claim that the ruts were hand-carved is disputed and Gordon E. Weston in his excellent book [754.172] debunks the idea.
Philip Coppens wrote a paper on the ruts, offering an overview of the controversies relating to their use and date(aa).
By way of comic relief, I thought I should include one theory regarding an explanation(c) for the ruts from Laura Knight-Jadczyk, a noted conspiracy theorist, which I quote in full: “Do I have an idea to propose? Of course I do. I wouldn’t be writing about it if I didn’t. I would like to suggest that these “ruts” look an awful lot like places where lightning has struck, and the electricity has blasted away the dirt and rock as it shoots along some sort of natural earth power grid conductor. The only difference is that the cart ruts are not random. That suggests that there was something present in the ground laid out in a definite grid, which acted as a conductor. Were the cart ruts some sort of networked energy conduction system? Could some sort of element have been placed in the ground by an ancient civilization; something that conducted power to their homes the way our vulgar power poles and lines crisscross the landscape? And then, at some point in time, was the earth hit by such a surge of energy from some unknown source that these power “lines” melted the rock in which they were “strung?” Perhaps a surge of some kind of cosmic energy source? Maybe even the Electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear explosion? Maybe it was neither of these, but merely a massive overheating of the surface of the earth so that the conduction element and its insulating covering melted and was swept away?”
One of the more bizarre suggestions has been proposed by Markus Tutsch on the German EFODON website, that the parallel ruts were used in some way to distribute electrical power(q)!!!
Another comical suggestion is offered by Dr Cornelius Niels Kopf who has proposed that “The Bronze Age traces on Malta and Gozo and many other parts of the then populated world, known as cart ruts, were sports facilities, and the area designated as ‘Clapham Junction’ was apparently the ‘stadium’ of Malta.” (r)
In 2010, the most comprehensive work on the ruts, that I’m aware of, was published by Gordon E. Weston[754]. Weston now has a website(g) where he discusses the ‘ruts’ further and provides additional links. Weston also published Clapham Junction: 3000 Years of Maltese Heritage, in 2015 [1619].
There are also several websites devoted to the investigation of these enigmatic features(a). One of them(m) offers a fine collection of images, including the one above, as well as a discussion on the origin, use, and questions raised by the Maltese cart ruts.
A study of the ruts by three geomorphologists at Portsmouth University, published in Antiquity, is a valuable addition to the literature on the subject(b). The authors “that the ruts could be caused by two-wheeled carts with a gauge of 1.40m carrying moderate loads. In wet weather the carts would gradually cut into the limestone and reach their ground clearance of 0.675m, causing the carriers to try another route – so there are plenty of them.”
Uwe Topper has written an extensive paper on cart ruts around the Mediterranean and beyond(i). He controversially theorised that the ruts were created when the limestone on which they were cut was ‘softer’!!!
A short April 2015 video clip(l) demonstrates how even a 20kg quarter-scale slide-car, can with one pass cut a 1mm groove into the soft Maltese limestone, near Sliema. A full-scale slide-car would be carrying 320 Kg.
Amateur archaeologists, Ronnie Gallagher and Abbas Islamov have highlighted the existence of cart-ruts in the Gobustan peninsula of Azerbaijan (e).
In a 2014 article(k)(ak) on the Mysteria 3000 website, André Kramer drew attention to the cart-ruts discovered on Mallorca, the principal island of the Balearic archipelago.
Evidence exists for cart ruts in other countries in Europe, such as Switzerland, and much further afield including South America(u). The same site makes two interesting points, (1) since the earliest carts probably lacked brakes, the repeated use of the ruts gave some small degree of control, and (2) without any obvious passing points the ruts seem to indicate that they were limited to one-way traffic.
In 2015, Russian geologist Alexander Koltypin drew much media attention(o) when he claimed that comparable tracks in the Phrygian Valley of Turkey were dated to 14 million years ago and were created by an unknown civilisation. He also implied that the cart ruts of Malta had a similar origin! However, a quick look at his website(p) revealed him to have travelled well beyond the lunatic fringe.
I find it interesting that much more investigation of the Maltese cart ruts has been carried out by foreigners than by natives of the islands. A recent example is the inventory of ruts recently published by Monika I. Trinkler, a Swiss photographer, who has listed 717 pairs on Malta and 43 on Gozo Dec. 2020). Her interest in the Maltese ruts has now expanded into the identification of ruts throughout Central Europe(v).
Unfortunately, the date and function of the ruts are still sources of intense debate, particularly in Malta itself. In 2017, Anthony Bonanno published The Archaeology of Malta and Gozo [1665] in which he argued for a Roman rather than a prehistoric date for the cart ruts. This runs counter to the opinion of many, particularly that of the late David Trump. In 2019, Anton Mifsud published a rebuttal of Bonanno’s claims in a fully illustrated book entitled David’s Ruts [1666], published as a tribute to the work carried out by David Trump on Malta.
In August 2021, it was announced that some of Malta’s cart ruts were to be covered by a new airport roundabout(ab)! A comment is unnecessary.
(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20190102032648/https://cartruts.com/
(c) https://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/adventures247.htm
(d) https://www.angelfire.com/ar/magrosalibarchaeo/
(e) https://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai103_folder/103_articles/103_cart_ruts.html
(f) Oxford Journal of Archaeology (Vol.23, Issue 1, p.45-60)
(g) https://cartrutanswers.com/index.html (offline 15/07/14)
(h) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20110616093830/https://www.oldandsold.com/articles09/travel-45.shtml
(i) http://www.ilya.it/chrono/pages/gleisedt.htm (german)
(j) https://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/000350.html
(k) Cart-Ruts auf Mallorca – Mysteria3000 (archive.org)
(l) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4y2aLns5So
(m) Cart Ruts Malta – Maltas Cart Tracks – others aound the world (archive.org)
(n) Archive 3036
(p) Earth before the Flood: Disappeared Continents and Civilizations (archive.org) *
(q) https://www.efodon.de/html/publik/sy/SY132/SY13239 Tutsch – Cart Ruts.pdf
(r) Archive 6308 & Archive 6309
(s) https://www.academia.edu/37215162/Dating_the_Cart-Ruts_of_Terceira_Island_Azores_Portugal
(t) https://web.archive.org/web/20050301092052/https://www.truegood.fsnet.co.uk/hagarq5.htm
(u) http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/cartruts.htm
(v) https://malta-cartruts.ch/
(z) http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/cartruts.htm
(aa) https://web.archive.org/web/20200420044822/https://www.eyeofthepsychic.com/cartruts/
(ac) ~~ Roman Aqueduct System at Rabat – Eugene P Teuma – Culture Malta Culture Malta (archive.org)
(ad) https://www.academia.edu/1819676/QANAT_SAQQAJJA_and_ROMAN_AQUEDUCT_SYSTEM_at_RABAT_MALTA
(ae) https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/2019/09/25/beyond-the-he*retic-reality/
(ag) https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/religion.occult.new_age/occult.conspiracy.and.related/Ellis,%20Ralph%20-%20Assorted%20Articles.pdf (see ‘Ancient Egyptian Railways’)
(ah) Cart Ruts – Mysteriöse Wagenspuren auf Malta – Atlantisforschung.de (German)
(ai) On the trail of the Cart Rut mystery – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)
(ak) Cart-ruts – Eine Annäherung an ein archäologisches Mysterium (www-cartruts-de.translate.goog) (English)
https://www.cartruts.de (German)
Josephus, Flavius
Flavius Josephus, the 1st century AD historian and Jewish priest, has been invoked by Georges Diaz-Montexano to support his belief in an Iberian location for Atlantis(a). Diaz-Montexano refers to Book II. 374-375, which records the incursion by, what appears to have been a tsunami, onto the Atlantic coastal lands of modern Spain and Portugal, while at the time occupied by the Lusitanians and Cantabrians. Diaz-Montexano claims, let it be said, without proof, that this could only have been the same inundation that destroyed Atlantis.
>>Josephus identified the Hyksos with the patriarchal Jews and that after their expulsion from Egypt they founded Jerusalem(f).<<
Ralph Ellis has made the wild claim that Josephus was in fact St. Paul!(b) This idea has also been put forward by others(c). On the other hand Flavio Barbiero offers the theory that Josephus and St. Paul were certainly known to each other(d). In his book, The Secret Society of Moses [1102], Barbiero expands on the idea that Josephus played an important role in the development of early Christianity.
Some doubt has been cast on Josephus’ reliability as an historian(c).
(b) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsNOAUMyKIo
(c) https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread206916/pg1&colorshift=yes
(d) https://www.q-mag.org/mithras-jesus-and-josephus-flavius.html
(e) https://www.allabouthistory.org/how-reliable-is-josephus-work-faq.htm
(f) Contra Apion 1.90 *
Exodus
The Biblical Exodus has been linked by some with the time of the destruction of Atlantis. J. G. Bennett has firmly identified the 2nd millennium BC eruption of Thera with the destruction of Atlantis(f) and in turn, the effect of the volcanic fallout on the Egyptian nation generating the Plagues of Egypt recorded in Exodus.
The fixing of the date of the biblical Exodus is still debated, compounding the broader problem of synchronising the Bronze Age chronologies of the eastern Mediterranean. The early arguments were usually the preserve of biblical scholars(t). However, a wider audience became aware of some of the difficulties when Immanuel Velikovsky published Ages in Chaos [039] and offered some solutions. Since then further revisions have been proposed by Peter James and David Rohl, but the Exodus date is still not definitively fixed(m)(y)(z). On top of all that, other events that should provide reliable chronological ‘anchors’, such as the Trojan War or the eruption of Thera continue to generate dispute as well.
Dr Hans Goedicke, a leading Austrian Egyptologist, expressed a similar view regarding an Exodus link in a 1981 lecture, leading to quite a media stir(c). Ian Wilson, best known for The Turin Shroud, has calculated that the volcanic plume from the Theran eruption would have been clearly visible from the Nile Delta [979.112].
Film-makers Simcha Jacobvici and James Cameron collaborated on the 2006 two-hour documentary The Exodus Decoded, in which, among other matters, it claims that the biblical Exodus took place a couple of hundred years before the generally accepted date(aa). A review in The Jerusalem Post(ab) noted that none of the arguments made in the film were accepted by mainstream archaeology and that Jacobovici freely admitted his lack of academic credentials.
Riaan Booysen believes(b) that two Exodus events can be linked with three possible Theran eruptions and has identified the Israelites as the Hyksos. Ralph Ellis has also linked the biblical Exodus with the expulsion of the Hyksos and devoted a short book[0656] to the idea.
Russell Jacquet-Acea, an American researcher, has written a three-part paper on dating the biblical Exodus, that includes the radical suggestion that there were three exoduses from Egypt(m)(n)(o).
Immanuel Velikovsky and others believed that the controversial Ipuwer Papyrus provides evidence in support of the biblical Exodus as well as the ‘Plagues of Egypt’(d). In 2018, Anne Habermehl delivered a paper to a creationist conference in which she concluded: “that the Ipuwer Papyrus displays strong extra-biblical evidence for the historicity of the Exodus in its description of a chaotic Egypt that would have resulted from the biblical 10 plagues.”(i).
Emilio Spedicato links the biblical Exodus with the explosion of Phaëton in 1447 BC, without any reference to the destruction of Atlantis, which, based on his interpretation of Plato’s text, he associates with a much earlier catastrophe(a). He also associates these events with the Flood of Deucalion as well as some people migrations that “took place essentially at the same time”(x).
Alfred de Grazia offers a radical interpretation of the Exodus in God’s Fire [1538], in which he saw the Exodus as a highly organised, rather than an opportunistic event. He also attributed some level of electrical knowledge to Moses, whom he credits with the construction of the Ark of the Covenant, if not the ‘invention’ of Yahweh himself!
Perhaps the most extreme Exodus theory has been presented by Finkelstein & Silberman, who have claimed that “the saga of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt is neither historical truth nor literary fiction” [280.70]. However, the same disbelieving Finkelstein is now going on a search for the Ark of the Covenant(e)!
Flavio Barbiero has now produced an extensive paper(g) in which he precisely dates the Exodus to the night between the 14th and 15th of July of 1208 B.C. (2/3 July of today).
It is important to point out that the historical reality of the Exodus is now being scrutinised as never before, generating growing scepticism. Both Jewish and Christian scholars have expressed serious doubts(s).
Walter R. Mattfeld wrote in a 2021 paper “My research on the Exodus has concluded that it is fiction, but a myth or fiction which has behind it real events which can be recovered via archaeological findings. My research endeavors are to identify the possible real events that came to be recast or reinterpreted as the Bible’s fictional Exodus. In other words, What’s behind these events that is recoverable via archaeological findings? Basically, I see two historical events, grounded in archaeological data, as behind the Exodus: (1) The Hyksos Expulsion of circa 1530 BC (2) The Iron Age I settlements that suddenly appear in Edom, Moab and Canaan 1200 BC to 1100 BC.These two events are separated in time by roughly 300 years.“ (w)
William Austin is just one of many who have devoted years to a study of the Exodus dating controversy. The result of his labours is Before the Exodus, a 500-page offering and a condensed version of From Noah to Moses now available on the academia.edu website(u) together with a number of other papers.
“If and when the Exodus occurred is one of the most controversial topics in biblical scholarship. Religious fundamentalists believe it is absolutely true. Skeptics doubt it occurred at all, and neither has any means to prove their case! My approach to the problem has been to assume that much of the controversy is due to an erasure of factual Israelite history in the Old Testament account. It is very difficult to read the Old Testament, then to scroll through Egyptian history and say, “Aha! There’s the Exodus. Read the Bible here; read the papyrus there… See, it all matches. Case closed.” It is very difficult, or it would have been done. This is not to say that the Exodus didn’t occur, it just didn’t occur exactly as recorded in the Old Testament of Christian Bibles.”
Gérard Gertoux noted that estimates for the date of the Exodus ranged from 2150 to 650 BC and so to narrow such an extensive range, he embarked on a forensic study of the problem. In a book(p), The Pharaoh of the Exodus: Fairy tale or real history? [1890] and a 22-page paper(h)(h2) he identified Pharoah Seqenenre Taa, who died on 10 May 1533 BC, as the Pharoah of the Exodus.
Unfortunately, the biblical Exodus has generated several controversies; was it a historical reality, its precise date, the route taken and the identity of the pharaoh of the Exodus? Regarding the last, Rameses II is linked by many with the Exodus, while others have nominated Tutankhamun (Collins & Ogilvie-Herald [1898]), Dudimose (Velikovsky(j), Rohl [229]), Amenemhat IV (Habermehl(k)) Ramesess V (Aboulfotouh(l)) and to these, we may add many others who have been proposed(k). This debate has a long way to go yet.
A more recent (April 2022) article by Jonah Cohen highlights the range of individuals proposed as the pharaoh of the Exodus and suggests that the mystery may not be solvable!(q) Another 2022 article by Gerald Eising opted firmly for Amenhotep II(r).
As you can see the actual date of the Exodus is disputed, but the difficulties don’t end there. Moses the charismatic leader of the Israelites has generated a separate set of problems. Ahmed Osman is just one commentator who has has identified Moses as the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten [1849]. Graham Phillips, among others, claims that Moses was two different people, living at different times [0034]! Immanuel Velikovsky has linked Akhenaten with Oedipus in Greek mythology [2041]. D.M.Murdock concluded [2058] that Moses cannot be discovered in history, whether as Akhenaten or another historical personage. Compounding all this confusion is the idea that Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch and yet, in it, he managed to describe his own death and burial!!
(See: Red Sea)
(a) https://interval.louisiana.edu/conferences/2007_Stenger/Slides_of_talks/mose8-6.pdf
(b) https://riaanbooysen.com/misc/167-book-announcement (link broken) See (v)
(c) Archive 2490 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(e) https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/02/new-search-begins-for-the-ark-of-the-covenant/
(f) https://www.systematics.org/journal/vol1-2/geophysics/systematics-vol1-no2-127-156.htm
(g) https://www.q-mag.org/a-precise-chronology-of-exodus.html
(h) (99+) (PDF) Absolute chronology of Exodus | Gerard GERTOUX – Academia.edu
(i) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329770320_The_Ipuwer_Papyrus_and_the_Exodus
(j) The True Story of Moses and the Pharaoh According to Velikovsky (hermetics.org)
(q) Who was the Exodus Pharaoh? (jns.org)
(r) Who was the Pharaoh of Exodus? – Tidings
(s) https://aroyking.wordpress.com/2016/04/02/has-archaeology-proven-that-the-biblical-exodus-is-a-myth/
(t) https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_exodus_date.html
(u) https://www.academia.edu/20426570/The_Hebrew_chronology_from_Noah_to_Moses_corrected_for_half-years
(v) Microsoft Word – Addendum to Thera_and_the_Exodus -Nov_2020.docx (riaanbooysen.com)
(w) (99+) The Archaeological Evidence for the Exodus being a Myth | Walter R. Mattfeld – Academia.edu
(x) The-Deucalion-catastrophe.pdf (atlantis.fyi)
(y) bmh_exodusdate_kmtsummer94.pdf (biblemythhistory.com)
(z) Talk Reason
(aa) https://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Documentary-sets-new-date-for-Exodus *
(ab) Documentary sets new date for Exodus – The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com) *
Carolina Bays
The Carolina Bays are named after the bay trees found growing in many of the 500,000 mysterious oval-shaped depressions, principally located in the eastern states of North America. In Maryland, the bays are called Maryland basins. In Mississippi and Alabama, they’re called Grady Ponds. In Kansas and Nebraska, they’re called Rainwater basins. In Texas, they’re called Salinas (because they often contain salty water).
Michael Tuomey (1805-1857) was the Irish-born State Geologist of South Carolina (1844-1847) and first State Geologist of Alalbama (1848-1857). He is credited with being the first to note the distinctive geomorphic features of the bays in a 1848 Report on the Geology of South Carolina (aa).
Allan & Delair have pointed out[014.254] in reference to the time of their creation “the Carolina bays of the eastern United States, the smaller but otherwise closely similar ‘bays’ of Holland, and the aligned ‘lakes’ of north-eastern Siberia, Alaska, northern Yukon and north-eastern Bolivia were apparently produced then.”
Their characteristics have been presented as evidence of impact damage from a comet or asteroid. As early as 1933 Edna Muldrow published a seven-page article in Harper’s Monthly(r) putting forward the idea of a comet colliding with our planet and creating the ‘Bays’. This was probably inspired by a paper by geology professor Frank A. Melton and physics professor William Schiever presented at the 1932 Annual Conference of the Geological Society of America(s).
This view is hotly disputed, as is the idea that they are of relatively recent origin at the beginning of the Holocene. Emilio Spedicato is one proponent who considers that a relatively recent impact to have been a contributory fact to the ending of the last Ice Age leading to the demise of Atlantis.
In 1976, Otto Muck was probably the first to suggest a link between the Carolina bays and Atlantis [098.154-158].
A more mundane explanation has been recently offered by Jon Pelletier, assistant professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He has just published a paper on a series of uniformly shaped and oriented lakes on the North Slope of Alaska. Pelletier has offered a credible ‘thaw slumping’ rationalisation for their annual growth. However, I have not seen his expla, George A. Howard concluded a paper(x) on the Bays with the following “Given a confident belief that the answers are indeed out there in the sand, we come then to the true shame of the Carolina Bay story: the willingness of the current geophysical research community to tolerate and admit such a profound “mystery” in their midst. I’ve known respected professional earth scientists to brush off questions about Carolina Bays origin with references to “alien landings” and “giant fish.” With prodding, they generally elicit a thin collage of wind and wave theory faintly recalled from their student years. One gets the distinct feeling that the study of Carolina Bay origin is the ‘crazy aunt in the attic’ of the Coastal Plain researcher. And that visiting his dear relative is hardly worth the disturbing consequences.”
The cometary explanation was given additional support in 2007, when a team of researchers from Oregon University outlined evidence that included the Carolinas, for the disintegration of a comet over Eastern Canada around 10900 BC. They claim that apart from the initiation of the Younger Dryas period, it caused widespread destruction across North America and also led to the disappearance of the Clovis culture. Further evidence supporting this view(b) was advanced by other academics in 2008.
A paper by Jennifer Marion completely denies that there was any Holocene Impact that “caused a significant abrupt climate change, extinction event, and termination of the Clovis culture at 12.9 ka.” (v)
Nevertheless, there is also evidence from optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating that the bays were formed 80,000 -100,000 years BP, which conflicts with the YD date! My layman’s view is that after 80,000 years I would expect the bays to be much more eroded than they appear to be.
A more recent paper(e) by Antonio Zamora offers an important new concept, namely that the ‘bays’ were created by a meteorite striking the Laurentide Ice Sheet that existed in the Great Lakes region, during the last Ice Age, which in turn produced an enormous hail of ice ejecta which rained down on the eastern seaboard of what is now the United States. In his conclusion, he claims “that the new model of slow-velocity impacts from ice ejecta resulting from a meteorite impact on the Laurentide ice sheet explains many of the characteristics of the Carolina Bays, including the lack of shock metamorphism and meteorite fragments.” Zamora has also published an impressive LiDAR image of a section of the bays, which is best viewed on a large screen(o).
Zamora has also published in 2012 an ebook entitled Meteorite Cluster Impacts [1120](f), and in his 2015 book, Solving the Mystery of the Carolina Bays [1121], he expands on his theory that the ‘Bays’ were created as a result of an extraterrestrial impact with the Laurentide Ice Sheet. He describes in great detail the mathematical basis for his views.
Zamora has now had a new paper on the ‘Bays’ published in the peer-reviewed journal, Geomorphology(i), which may help to rekindle discussion on the subject. Although, in my opinion, they are not directly related to the Atlantis narrative, the existence of the Carolina Bays provides very obvious evidence of our catastrophic past.
Ralph Ellis believes that Zamora’s ‘blocks of ice’ ejecta created by the impact should be thought of instead as being more akin to softer ‘slushballs’(g)(h). Ellis noted that the inspiration for his papers relating to the Bays came from the work of geologist Michael Davias(t). Davias and his friend Tim Harris have been advocating the idea that Michigan’s Saginaw Bay holds evidence of an impact(u).
Robert W. Felix, an American architect totally rejects the ice ejecta theory, principally because the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS) should have disappeared before the creation of the Carolina Bays(l). However, conventional wisdom dates the decline of the LIS to around 9,600 BC(m), coincidental with the arrival of the Carolina Bats! Felix contends in one of his books [1688] that the Bays were formed by millions of gigantic explosions in the sky, explosions triggered by a magnetic reversal!
The serial sceptic, Paul Heinrich, claims(d) that there is dating evidence, which indicates varying dates for the creation of different Carolina Bays. The most recent popular work to discuss comprehensively, the origin as well as the conflicting dating evidence for the Carolinas, is The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes by Firestone, West and Warwick-Smith. This is an important book that is primarily concerned with a cosmic catastrophe that wiped out the North American mammoth along with other large animals at the same time that the Clovis People disappeared 13,000 years ago. This was also the time of the colder Younger Dryas period.
When the Russian investigator Leonard Kulik studied the Tunguska River area, over which a meteor/asteroid exploded in 1908, he discovered several neat oval bog holes that might offer support for either the impact theory or more improbably the theories of Pelletier.
Now, over a century after the Tunguska event, an Italian research team has concluded that it was an asteroid that struck the earth and that nearby Lake Cheko is the impact crater(c). However, this theory was debunked in 2017 by “researchers led by Denis Rogozin, from the Institute of Biophysics at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, carried out their own analysis and concluded that lake sediments were at least 280 to 390 years old, ‘significantly older than the 1908 Tunguska Event.’
And in a new study published May 2 in the journal Doklady Earth Sciences, Rogozin and colleagues presented more evidence to refute the idea Lake Cheko is the Tunguska asteroid’s impact site.”(z)
In 2013 Gernot Spielvogel co-authored Sonnenbomben[1582] in which it is suggested that the Tunguska event was caused by a solar plasma ‘bomb’! Even Nikola Tesla was blamed by some as the perpetrator of the Tunguska event(n).
However, although the impact theory does appear to have widespread support, there appears to be a move to look at a natural earthbound explanation. The U.S. Geological Survey is now identifying the Bays as ‘relict thermokarst lakes’(q).
Such suggestions have been excluded by Paul-Jürgen Hahn who is adamant that the bays were the result of a cometary impact with the Sargasso Sea and was also linked to the Atlantis story and the Pyramids and Sphinx! He gives the date of the impact as “12 March 9,337 BC (Greg.), 10:19 true local time in South Carolina, respectively 09:27 Bahamas time.”(y)
A 2020 article reviews the theories relating to the origin of the bays as well as the extraordinary biodiversity to be found within the bays(p).
Nevertheless, various other theories are still under investigation, including serious consideration of the possibility of an alien spaceship explosion!(j)
Charles O’Dale, a Canadian researcher who has studied impact craters across Canada also ventured south to investigate the Carolina Bays. In a 2022 paper, he includes a number of excerpts from a range of other commentators that highlight the principal details relating to the Bays that are still in contention ninety years after their first discovery(w).
>In 2024, David Anderson, a retired physician, offered another look at the mystery of the Carolina Bays and their creation at the time of the Younger Dryas. In a 2024 paper(ab) on Graham Hancock’s website he reviewed the work of Zamora and Firestone et al and concluded that both offered valuable information, but that some modification was required. However, Anderson saw the catastrophe that created the Bays in a global context, which resulted in his detailed study of the origins of the Hongshan Shui Jing glass and offers evidence to associate them with the Younger Dryas event. He digresses near the end with a suggestion on how the large stones used by megalith builders were moved, which he proposed was done using balloons filled with hydrogen or methane!<
(a) See: Archive 2042
(b) https://www.uc.edu/news/NR.asp?id=8625
(c) https://phys.org/news/2012-05-team-evidence-lake-cheko-impact.html
(d) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-2040/
(e) https://www.scientificpsychic.com/etc/carolina-bays/carolina-bays.html
(g) https://independent.academia.edu/ralphellis4 see (h)
(i) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169555X16308479?np=y (abstract only)
(j) https://www.qconference-athens-2011.grazian-archive.com/aspacekeytotheri/rubtsov-paperx.pdf
(k) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_bay
(l) Carpet bombing the Carolinas – Ice Age Now (archive.org)
(m) https://study.com/academy/lesson/laurentide-ice-sheet-facts-collapse-timeline.html
(n) https://theunredacted.com/the-tunguska-blast-teslas-death-ray/
(o) https://www.scientificpsychic.com/etc/carolina-bays/carolina-bays-image.html
(p) https://augustamagazine.com/2020/06/30/amazing-carolina-bays/
(q) https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147904/ice-age-carolinas
(r) The Comet that Struck the Carolinas Harper’s Monthly No.168, 1933. p 87
(s) https://www.jstor.org/stable/30084930
(t) http://cintos.org/index.html
(u) Saginaw Bay fingered by gravity data as ice impact feature – The Cosmic Tusk
(v) (99+) Arguments and Evidence Against a Younger Dryas Impact Event | Jennifer Marlon – Academia.edu
(w) https://craterexplorer.ca/carolina-bays-structure/
(x) The Carolina Bays: George Howard’s Original 1997 Web Essay – The Cosmic Tusk (archive.org)
(y) Die Datierung der Atlantis-Katastrophe (p-j-hahn.de)
(z) The biggest asteroid to hit Earth in recorded history vanished without a trace: How? | Live Science
(aa) https://archive.org/details/reportongeologyo00tuom/page/144/mode/2up [p.143-144]
Appleby, Nigel
Nigel Appleby (a.k.a. Major Niall Arden) is the ‘author’ of Hall of the Gods[076], which purported to identify the location, in Egypt, of the Hall of Records that is supposed to contain the accumulated knowledge of an advanced worldwide civilisation that preceded the ancient Egyptians.
The author wrote of ‘Atlantis’ being “really just a symbolic name for the previous worldwide civilisation that existed prior to the last reversal of the Sun and Earth’s magnetic fields and the subsequent cataclysm that followed.” He then added that most of this civilisation still exists, virtually intact, beneath the Antarctic ice (p.363). He also claimed to have identified Nibiru in Sumerian texts independently of Zechariah Sitchin and to have deduced that it is “about the size of Earth and nearer than anticipated.”
He also announced the establishment of ‘Operation Hermes’, which had the objective of locating the Hall of Records near Giza(c) as well as other expeditions to Central & South America, China and Antarctica (p.378). Operation Hermes was abandoned when the Egyptian authorities refused permission for the expedition.
Shortly after the publication of the book in 1998, the publishers had to withdraw it from sale following claims of plagiarism by a number of other authors(a). Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince reveal some of the details of this episode in their Stargate Conspiracy [705.97].>Ian Lawton & Chris Ogilvie-Herald also devote a chapter of Giza the Truth [1690] to ‘The Appley Affair’ giving more detail, particularly the battle that Ralph Ellis had to demonstrate that large chunks of his book, Thoth: Architect of the Universe, had been used by Appleby.<
The whole matter was further confused when Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval along with Colin Wilson, Andrew Collins, Christopher Knight, Robert Lomas, Simon Cox and Alan Alford issued An Official Statement Regarding Operation Hermes(a) declaring that they were unaffiliated with Operation Hermes, then and in the future.
Lightning struck twice when the second book of Appleby’s, Desert Fire, was also withdrawn from sale within days of publication in 2006!
(a) https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg03919.html
(b) https://www.dailygrail.com/blogs/Chris-Ogilvie-Herald/2006/7/Nigel-Appleby-Egypt-Iraq
(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20010818232620/http://www.islandearth.net/hermes/content.htm
Abydos *
Abydos, known locally as Umm el-Qa’ab, is a site in Upper Egypt that contains a variety of structures including the Osirion, which is alleged to be the burial-place of Osiris, the Egyptian deity who was the father of Horus and the brother and husband of Isis. It was discovered in 1901/2 by Sir William Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) and Margaret Alice Murray (1863-1963)(c).
An illustrated tour of the Abydos Temple of Seti I and the Osirion is offered by Jimmy Dunn, writing as Peter Rome(t).
The Osirion (Osireion) has several unusual features that have led some, such as John Anthony West(a) to reasonably conclude that it is from a much earlier or at least a different period than the adjacent Temple of Seti I.
This view is based on at least three observations.
(i) The foundations of the Osirion are much lower than those of the Temple of Seti, a feature that would have been unprecedented. It is more likely that the structure was originally designed to be built at ground level in a conventional manner. However, after construction, the ground level rose over succeeding years with the deposits of silt from the annual inundation by the Nile. Consequently, when the adjacent Temple of Seti was built, a considerable number of years later, it was erected on the much higher ground beside a buried Osirion.
(ii) The Temple of Seti has an unusual unique outline being ‘L’ shaped instead of having the usual rectangular form. This would seem to suggest that during the construction of the temple, the builders discovered the buried Osirion and had to alter the original design.
(iii) For some, the most compelling reason for dating the Osirion differently to Seti’s Temple is that stylistically the structure is totally at variance with anything else from Seti’s era.
In response to the last point, conventional archaeologists have proposed that “the Osireion was purposely archaized by New Kingdom architects to make it appear to be ancient. Such a design would be appropriate for the tomb of an ancient god. Any resemblance to Khafre’s Valley Temple, then, would be purely intentional.”
A 2006 article pointed out that “the Osirion is the only temple known from Ancient Egypt to be built below ground level!(o)
In 1995, Graham Hancock drew attention[275] to this difference in style and a 2019 article, Freddy Silva also commented on this incongruity(h)(k), but notes that while the Osirion at first sight, does not appear to have any obvious astronomical alignment, “only in the epoch of 10,000 BC do connections begin to emerge, for the constellation Cygnus appears in full upright ascent over the horizon in conjunction with the axis of the temple, the entrance framing its brightest star, Deneb.”
Silva added that the Osirion “represents a complete departure from standard temple design. However, a geological appraisal contradicts this opinion. In ancient times the level of the Nile was fifty feet lower than today, its course seven miles closer to and beside the Osirion. When North Africa was subjected to major flooding between 10,500-8000 BC, layers of Nile silt gradually compacted and rose inch by inch until they surrounded and covered the Osirion. In other words, the temple was originally a freestanding feature on the floodplain.”
On cue(i), Jason Colavito attacked Silva, pointing out a bad mistake where Silva incorrectly quoted Diodorus Siculus, subtly implying that everything else that he wrote was also erroneous.
As noted above, it is argued(d). that the apparently archaic architecture of the Osirion is just an example of how “the Egyptians had a recurring tendency to build in a ‘pseudo-archaic’ style”, noting that the style of the temple of Khafre in Giza resembles the Osirion. If so, which was copying which? While Khafre’s temple is adorned with hieroglyphics the apparent absence of any contemporary hieroglyphics in the Osirion seems to suggest a preliterate period for its construction!
The Valley Temple and the Sphinx Temple at Giza show similar construction techniques and are also devoid of inscriptions. As I see it, there is no unequivocal evidence on offer to demonstrate that the Osirion could not be much earlier than the nearby Seti Temple. Therefore, I would urge caution before hastily dismissing Hancock, Silva and others regarding this matter.
The conventional view that Seti I was responsible for the building of both the Temple and the Osireion is expressed in a well-illustrated paper by Keith Hamilton on the Academia.edu website(j).
This suggestion of an earlier date, such as in Ralph Ellis’ Thoth, the Architect of the Universe [0517], has added weight to the more general claim that other Egyptian monuments such as the Sphinx and some of the lower courses of the Great Pyramid are also from a predynastic era. This is interpreted by some as evidence of an early civilisation that might be more in keeping with the 9600 BC date in the story of Atlantis told to Solon by the Egyptian priests at Sais. Brien Foerester has also advocated an early date for the Osirion(n).
Another feature that appears to be unique to the Osirion is drawings of the ‘Flower of Life’ (FoL) on one of its pillars! Gary Fletcher touched on this in a 2009 paper(s). However, it is impossible to say when they were placed there. David Furlong has posted an article on the (FoL), noting particularly that some Greek letters have been identified inscribed beside the FoL design. This may suggest that the badly worn lettering was added long ofter the construction of the Osirion(u). Also on Furlong’s site we have an article by Malcolm Stewart describing the circle clusters and Greek writing as graffiti, possibly dating to the 3rd or 2nd centuries BC(v)!
A sceptic’s view of the claimed early date for the Osirion can be read online(d).
It is worth noting that Abydos was also the site of a remarkable discovery of 14 buried boats that have been dated to at least 3000BC and again possibly even pre-dynastic.
Klaus H. Aschenbrenner has produced an Internet article, Giza and Abydos: The Keys to Atlantis, unfortunately in German only, which bravely promotes the idea of an 11th millennium BC date for parts of both Giza and Abydos.
Hieroglyphics in the Temple of Seti at Abydos have also been seized upon by proponents of ancient technology existing in prehistoric times and possible links to a hi-tech Atlantis. These carvings suggest the outline of a helicopter and a submarine! A refutation of this interpretation, by Margaret Morris(b) and others(e)(f), has demonstrated that the carvings have been reworked and that some of the plaster infills had deteriorated. This helicopter claim has been successfully debunked on a number of sites(q), including a December 2022 posting on The Archaeologist website(r), which is particularly graphic. Furthermore, there is clear evidence that images of the hieroglyphics circulating on the internet were digitally ‘tidied up’.
Wayne James Howson offers some radical ideas concerning the Osireion in a 400-page book available on the Academia.edu website(l). Howson was influenced by the work of Jim Westerman(m).
In November 2016, it was announced that a city was unearthed not far from the Abydos temples, where “it is believed the city was home to important officials and tomb builders and would have flourished during early-era ancient Egyptian times.(g)“
(a) http://www.jawest.net/hall_of_maat.htm
(b) See Archive 2727
(c) https://ascendingpassage.com/Osirion-at-Abydos.htm
(d) https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Osireion,
(e) https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Abydos_helicopter
(f) http://www.catchpenny.org/abydos.html
(g) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38084391
(h) https://grahamhancock.com/silvaf4/
(j) https://www.academia.edu/37568156/The_Osireion_A_Laymans_Guide
(k) https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/osirion-abydos-0012397
(m) https://jameswesterman.org/?p=home
(n) Ancient Egypt: The Osirion And The “Mystery ” of the “Flower Of Life” Symbols – Hidden Inca Tours
(o) http://egyptiansecrets.blogspot.com/2006/02/mysterious-osirion-at-abydos.html
(p) Who built the Osireion? (catchpenny.org)
(q) http://www.fineart.be/UfocomHQ/usabydos.htm (link broken)
(r) https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/the-abydos-helicopter-hieroglyphics
(t) http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/setiabydos.htm
(u) The Osirion and the Flower of Life (davidfurlong.co.uk)
(v) The Flower of Life – Malcolm Stewart Article (davidfurlong.co.uk)
Hyksos
The Hyksos is the name applied to two dynasties of foreign kings who ruled Egypt around 1650-1530 BC(a). Gerard Gertoux suggests three dynasties reigning from circa 1750- 1530!(l) They are generally accepted to have been Semitic people, from an unknown land, who invaded Egypt around 1710 BC. They ruled for over a hundred years until defeated by the Egyptian Pharaoh Amasis I.
Their name was originally taken to mean ‘Shepherd Kings, but more recently, it is accepted that the Egyptian term ‘heqa-khase’ which means ‘rulers of foreign lands’ gives us a simple but credible title of ‘Foreign Kings’. It has been suggested by David J. Gibson (1904-1966) that the modern interpretation indicated that the Hyksos ruled a vast empire and has devoted a book[1507] to justifying this view(g). This empire lay mainly to the east of Egypt with the possible exception of Crete. Gibson identifies the Hyksos with the biblical Edomites!
Walter Baucum summarises his view on the subject as follows, “The Early Hyksos Shepherd Rulers of Egypt were descendants of Shem and identical with Typhon and the Titans, the peoples of Set, and to some degree with the Hebrews. The early Hyksos were to a large degree Israelites but after they left, the Amalekites conquered Egypt and were also referred to as Hyksos”.
Hyksos Pharoah
This identification of the Hyksos with the biblical Amalakites was supported by Velikovsky, Rohl and Donovan Courville(o). This identification is disputed by Emmet Sweeney [1867], who is generally sympathetic to Velikovsky’s revised chronology, but disagrees with him in this instance. In a recent (2023) paper(r) on the Academia.edu website Donald Keith Mills was highly critical of Velikovsky’s research on the Hyksos and Amalakites in Ages in Chaos.
“Repeatedly, when faced with conflicting accounts of pre-Islamic (and essentially prehistoric) events, Velikovsky selected only those that met his purposes. The damaging aspect of this criticism is the fact that, almost without exception, he did so without discussing the alternatives, without providing reasons for rejecting them, and without even acknowledging their existence.“
There have also been persistent suggestions that there were strong links between the Hyksos and Crete, as referred to both above and below. But the exact nature of the links is unclear and may not be more than you get between nations trading over an extended period. The relevance of such links, if they were ever shown to be political rather than commercial, would take on new significance for supporters of the Minoan Hypothesis. Time will tell.
Peter A. Clayton, an Egyptologist and author of Chronicle of the Pharaohs suspected that the Hyksos had their origins in Crete. E. J. de Meester has suggested links between Crete and the Hyksos, an idea included in an article by Philip Coppens(b). In a similar vein, Diaz-Montexano claims that a study of the names of the Hyksos pharaohs suggests to him that they were proto-Greek or Mycenaeans.
An example of the diversity of opinions regards the origins of the Hyksos is a brief article written by Emilio Spedicato who identifies them with the Scythians. Gunnar Heinsohn (1943- ) is a German professor emeritus at the University of Bremen, who presented a paper entitled ‘Who were the Hyksos’ to the 6th International Congress of Egyptology in 1993, in which he concluded that they were to be identified with the Old-Akkadians(j).
Perhaps even more radical is the suggestion by Riaan Booysen that the Hyksos were the fleeing Israelites in the biblical Exodus story(c). He claims that there were two ‘exoduses’ which coincided with two separate eruptions on Thera. This idea is not as new as it might seem as something similar was proposed by the 1st century AD Jewish historian Josephus(d).
Nick Austin also identifies the Hyksos as Jews [1661.184] but is more generous than Booysen claiming that there were four separate eruptions of Thera. Like many others, he has also associated the biblical Exodus and the Plagues of Egypt with the Theran eruptions.
Ralph Ellis, among others, has endorsed(e)(f) the idea that the biblical Exodus and the historical Expulsion of the Hyksos describe the same event. There are theories, many and varied, regarding the origins and post-Egyptian settlement of the Hyksos.
>In March 2024 an undated paper on the Academia website written under the pseudonym of ‘The Mumble’ and titled Mexico City & the Site of Atlantis(s). Its basic contention is that the Olmecs were originally Hyksos, who ruled an empire stretching from America to India! Unfortunately, real evidence is in short supply here to support this wild hypothesis. The paper is full of misquotations and other inaccuracies that are offered throughout.
One glaring error, at the heart of the claim is that Mexico City was city of Atlantis described by Plato. Unfortunately, Plato’s Atlantis was situated close to the sea, while Mexico City is roughly 200 miles from both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Canals led from the city to the sea – where are the 200-mile-long canals in Mexico? Additionally, Mexico City lies at a height of 7,350 feet and could not have been inundated by either ocean. According to Plato, Atlantis disappeared underwater, but Mexico did not! I think it was a good idea for ‘The Mumble’ to write under a pseudonym.<
In July 2020, it was reported that “new research led by Bournemouth University archaeologists supports the theory that the Hyksos, the rulers of the 15th Dynasty of ancient Egypt, were not from a unified place of origin, but Western Asiatics whose ancestors moved into Egypt during the Middle Kingdom lived there for centuries, and then rose to rule the north of Egypt.”(k)
The full facts relating to the Hyksos’ rule are only slowly emerging(m) and I expect that it will be some years before a definitive history can be agreed upon. Just over a year after I wrote this, In March 2021, Diego Ratti published Atletenu, in which he identified the Hyksos as Atlanteans, with their capital situated at Avaris in the eastern Nile Delta(n).
Ratti explains “that the first king of Atlantis called Atlas by Plato was a prince of Ugarit called Shamshi-Shu I who led a coalition of Foreign Kings to conquer Egypt. Plato’s “Critias” mentions the name of the first 10 kings of Atlantis: in “Atletenu” author Diego Ratti explains that the names of these 10 kings provide us with an indication of the origin and ethnicity of the Hyksos.
It was a coalition of 10 foreign Hyksos kings to invade Egypt in 1646 BC: some of them were from Southern Canaan and Northern Sinai while their majority was from Northern Syria and Lebanon. The prevalent ethnicity of the Hyksos coalition was the Amorite one: they had Amorite names, Amorite customs, traditions and religion. The prince of Ugarit leading the coalition of Hyksos was an Amorite.
The legend of Atlantis was the history of the Hyksos: this fascinating thesis is discussed in the book “Atletenu” with supporting archaeological and textual evidence.” (q)
A paper by the distinguished Austrian archaeologist Manfred Bietak entitled Avaris: The Capital of the Hyksos(p) should be read in conjunction with Ratti’s theory.
>Arguably, the most exotic suggestion put forward regarding the Hyksos comes from a Chinese geochemist, Professor Sun Weidong(h)(i) at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei in eastern China stirred up a debate with the suggestion “that the founders of Chinese civilization were not in any sense Chinese but actually migrants from Egypt. He conceived of this connection in the 1990s while performing radiometric dating of ancient Chinese bronzes; to his surprise, their chemical composition more closely resembled those of ancient Egyptian bronzes than native Chinese ores.” Sun specifies these culture bearers as the Hyksos. A paper(t) by Ricardo Lewis on the Academia.edu website offers more details and background information.<
(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20180203181622/https://history-world.org/hyksos.htm
(b) See: Archive 2133
(c) https://riaanbooysen.com/misc/167-book-announcement
(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_Hyksos
(e) https://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/exodus.htm
(f) https://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/2000-January/006340.html
(g) See: Archive 3468
(j) https://web.archive.org/web/20111202130828/https://www.egyptologie.be/6IECT_1993_hyksos_heinsohn.htm
(l) https://www.academia.edu/2414447/Dating_the_war_of_the_Hyksos
(m) Did the Hyksos Pull Off a Peaceful Invasion of Egypt? | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)
(n) Book Author | Atletenu (archive.org)
(o) https://en.everybodywiki.com/Donovan_Courville
(p) https://www.academia.edu/10071070/Avaris_Capital_of_the_Hyksos
(q) Hyksos | Atletenu (archive.org)
(r) (99+) VELIKOVSKY AND THE AMALEKITES | Donald Keith Mills – Academia.edu
(s) (99+) Mexico City & the Site of Atlantis | The Mumble – Academia.edu *
(t) Does Chinese Civilization Come From Ancient Egypt? – Foreign Policy *
Ireland *
Ireland according to James Bramwell [0195.181], was first identified with Atlantis as early as circa 1250 AD in the Speculum Regale (The King’s Mirror)(g) which was written in Norway. Apart from that, Ireland was less controversially was first suggested in the 18th century as a possible location of Atlantis by the English geologist John Whitehurst. The idea lay dormant for over a century until the early part of the 20th century when George H. Cooper [236] suggested that Cork harbour fits Plato’s description of the harbour of Atlantis. Fifty years later an official guidebook claimed that one of the outposts of Atlantis was to be found on the west coast of Galway. As a nation famed for its storytelling we have never let truth stand in the way of a good tale.
The mythical Hy-Brasil was shown west of Ireland on maps as early as 1325 and incredibly, was not removed from naval charts until 1865. The UK’s Daily Star (21/5/16) with typical tabloid accuracy told its readers(f) that Hy-Brasil was off the coast of ‘Britain’!
In 1976, Steiner Books, New York, republished a book under the misleading title of Atlantis in Ireland. One may be excused for viewing this as a blatant case of exploitative opportunistic publishing. The original text was written by Henry O’Brien and published in London (1834) as The Round Towers of Ireland. Apart from being written in the rather turgid English of the period, there is not a single reference to Plato or Atlantis to be found in that volume.
Diodorus Siculus, in a well-known passage (Bk 1.158), that is claimed by some as a reference to Ireland(h), describes it as ”an island in the ocean over against Gaul, to the north, and not inferior in size to Sicily, the soil of which is so fruitful that they mow there twice in the year.” Some consider this to be reminiscent of the Platonic reference to the two crops a year gathered in Atlantis. However, I am more inclined to think that Diodorus was referring to Britain. Diodorus also mentions the Irish singular temples of ’round form’, however, this seems too early to be a reference to the round towers and more likely to be an allusion to the astronomically aligned mounds such as Newgrange, Dowth and Knowth in Ireland or Stonehenge in Britain!
Bob Quinn has written and lectured on possible ancient cultural links between North Africa and Ireland. This idea may have been reinforced by a number of 19th century reports that visitors from North Africa were able to understand the Irish language!(i)
In 1923, Conor MacDari, who’s eccentricity was comparable with that of Comyns Beaumont, published Irish Wisdom Preserved in the Bible and Pyramids [1157], which among a litany of bizarre claims, proposed that Atlantis had been located in Ireland.
When Ignatius Donnelly came to the subject of Ireland, he attributed an Atlantean origin to so the various waves of settlers that came to the post-glacial island. He substitutes evidence with assertion and speculation. Donnelly further claimed that the famous round towers of Ireland are proof that the people of Atlantis settled in Ireland.
More recently Ulf Erlingsson, a Swedish geographer, insisted that with a claimed probability
Hill of Tara
factor of 99.98%, that his interpretation of Plato’s text demonstrates that Ireland was home to Atlantis [319]. The subtitle of the book, Mapping the Fairy Land, is probably a good guide on how seriously to take this book, particularly as it is by an author who hails from the land of the original Trolls.
In March 2008, it was reported that a Dr. Jac Hummer had mounted an expedition to South America with the intention of discovering the r emains of St. Patrick under a pyramid there. But it gets better – he then explains that such a discovery will prove his theory that Ireland is Plato’s lost island of Atlantis! I can only conclude that this is a hoax story.
Irish legend speaks of the Domnu, people of the deep sea from a land that disappeared beneath the waves. However, Ireland is still above the waves and in contrast to Plato’s statement that even in his time the location of Atlantis was marked by impassable shallows. Since sea levels have generally risen only slightly since Plato lived, he cannot have been referring to Ireland.
John Douglas Singer in his slender book, Ireland’s Mysterious Lands and Sunken Cities [828], has carried out an investigation into the ancient legends of Ireland and their possible connection with Plato’s Atlantis. He points out that Ireland has the greatest number of legends relating to sunken cities and islands! He draws on the works of Egerton Sykes and Lewis Spence among others.
Ireland was also nominated by Thomas Dietrich as an early colony of Atlantis in The Origin of Culture.
Somewhat incongruously, the website of extremist, Dejan Lucic, has an extensive and fully referenced article entitled The Irish Origins of Civilisation(a), including not a few controversial sources such as, Comyns Beaumont, Ralph Ellis and John Gordon.
Around 2010, a father and son team Francis J.Ward & Francis P.Ward seeminglly published their first book The Truth Against the World-Red Phoenix Rising & the Return of the Thunder Gods [1156], in which they express the view that “Atlantis was a global, maritime empire based in Ireland”.(c)
In 2013, Skender Hushi informed the world that Albanian had been the original language of Ireland and Atlantis! Another equally odd claim came from Zoltán Simon who proposed that the ancient Hun Calendar came from Ireland [0549.147]!
More recently Jonathan Northcote has identified Ireland as Plato’s Gadeira [1369]
Evidence for the earliest humans in Ireland is now dated as 10,500 BC.(d)(e)
In July 2020, Erlingsson’s Atlantis in Ireland theory was recycled by a website(j) with the title of ‘Keystone University’. It promises to build a world-class enterprise centre in Ireland in 2025. The site implies that Keystone has the support of Brian Tracy, an American self-development speaker. While Keystone seems to focus on business success and personal development, it incongruously includes a study of Atlantis a la Erlingsson as part of its course! It has published two papers on the Ancient Origins website(k)(l).
The Atlantis claims of Keystone were found earlier in January on YouTube and while it ostensibly appeared to add the gravitas of an educational institution to the subject of Atlantis, it was only a smokescreen for an attempt to entice people to sign up for overpriced seminars. Jason Colavito drew attention(m) to this at the time and to the more recent articles on Ancient Origins(n).
(a) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-2159/
(b) Archive 2833 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(d) https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35863186
(f) https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/517004/Mystery-island-lost-city-atlantis-hybrasil-phenomenon-ireland-uk-Britain (link broken) * {l(g) https://www.archive.org/stream/kingsmirrorspecu00konuuoft/kingsmirrorspecu00konuuoft_djvu.txt
(h) https://www.libraryireland.com/HistoryIreland/Sun-Worship.php
(i) https://www.libraryireland.com/articles/IrishLanguageAfricaUJA7-1859/index.php
(k) https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/atlantis-ireland-0013940
(l) https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/ireland-atlantis-0013941
Ice Ages
Ice Ages have been a fact of life on Earth for aeons, according to conventional ice age theory. There is now evidence that during the very early existence of our planet, the entire Earth was completely glaciated, possibly twice!(w)
However, the exact cause of the onset of any ice age is still a matter of active debate(ab). Ralph Ellis has now proposed a new theory based on a cyclical alteration of polar albedo by atmospheric dust(n).
In any study of Ice Age Theory, due consideration must be given to the radical views expressed by Allan & Delair in their well-received book, Cataclysm [014].
Over the last three million years, a period referred to by geologists as the Pleistocene Epoch, at least thirty Ice Ages have been ‘identified’. The exact extent of the polar ice caps during the last Ice Age is the subject of some debate with new evidence from northern Sweden and Norway, suggesting a less extensive cap than previously believed. However, there is evidence that Mauna Kea in Hawaii, which is now 13,803 feet above sea level,” had a large glacial ice cap of about 70 square kilometres until 14,500 years ago.”(ag)
Various theories have been proposed to explain the onset and the ending of these Ice Ages ranging from changes in the Earth’s orbit(g) around the sun to the effects of the Earth’s passage through the spiral arms of the Milky Way.
Over recent decades we have been consistently told that global warming is underway with a constant threat of rising sea levels. Consequently, it was no surprise when, in April 2018, The Guardian had a headline declaring that Glacier loss is accelerating because of global warming(r). However, an equally up-to-date website(s) claims that most of the world’s glaciers are actually growing and makes the comparable assertion that sea levels have stopped rising(t). Over a decade ago the well-known botanist David Bellamy made similar claims, that were refuted in a revealing article by George Monbiot, also in The Guardian(u).
Emilio Spedicato has proposed(a) that glaciations are started by asteroidal or cometary impacts on land and terminated by impacts with an ocean. The late Sir Fred Hoyle and his equally radical colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe concurred with this view. They believe that an impact of sufficient size would have vaporised and ejected billions of gallons of water into the upper atmosphere creating an immediate ‘greenhouse effect’ that then led to the melting of the glaciers. In a 1999 paper, Hoyle & Wickramasinghe wrote of the positive effect of greenhouse gases in staving off the next ice age(aa).
Another impact theory has been proposed by Jon Nelo Juganaru, writing as Raven Alb J, in his rather bloated offering Why and How the Ice Age Ended [1051]. In it he suggested that an asteroidal collision with the Earth effected a pole shift and that caused the Great Flood and the last ice age!
Another recent theory suggests that a severe reduction in sunspot activity may herald the imminent return of another ‘little ice age’ such as was experienced in the 17th century and known as the Maunder Minimum. During that period only 50 sunspots were recorded instead of the usual 40-50 thousand(ah). NASA has denied that there is any such impending cooling and that the possible effect of any reduced solar activity would be more than offset by the warming caused by human activity(ai).
Spedicato contends(z) that circa 9,600 BC, an impact in the Atlantic by an Apollo Object led to the demise of Atlantis, an idea similar to the earlier contention of Otto Muck.
In 2003, scientists at Kansas University drew a lot of attention with their claim that gamma-ray bursts can cause an ice age and mass extinctions. However, the suggested frequency of a gamma-ray explosion that might affect the Earth, every few hundred million years runs counter to conventional ice age theory which proposes that the frequency of ice ages runs to hundreds of thousands of years(ad).
The last Ice Age reached what is known as the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) around 25,000 -15,000 BP, according to Ray & Adams(q). LGM describes the time when the glaciers reached their maximum extension.
Remarkably, the very existence of an Ice Age was only first conceived just over 150 years ago when Louis Agassiz first published his theory[002][003]. It took another century before it was fully realised that some of the consequences of the melting of the glaciers at the end of each Ice Age, would have been the flooding of continental shelves and the breaching of low-lying land bridges.
An example of such events would have been the submergence of the majority of the Celtic Shelf separating Britain and Ireland from mainland Europe. In the South China Sea, large chunks of what is known as Sundaland were also flooded. At the eastern end of the Mediterranean, the Bosporus was breached flooding the Black Sea, and more controversially some claim that there had been a breach of a landbridge at the Strait of Gibraltar.
Prompted by the fact that the date given by Solon/Plato for the destruction, 9600 BC coincides with the retreating of the glaciers of the last Ice Age, all the above submergences and breaches have been included in the Atlantis debate.
New studies have shown interesting confirmation of the ‘Out of Africa‘ theory, which had recently come under attack. The effects of the last Ice Age on the population of Europe were quite dramatic(l). In 2013, journalist, Paul Salopek set out on a 21,000-mile walking journey from East Africa, across Asia, and down the west coast of the Americas in an attempt to emulate mankind’s long odyssey as he (mankind not Saklopek) populated the planet(v).
The most recent genetic studies suggest that “a vast inland oasis in present-day northern Botswana was once home to the founder population of all modern humans.” (x)
A first-rate work [390] by Steven Mithen on the aftermath of the last Ice Age was recently published.
Fundamentalist Christians who believe in a literal seven days of creation have great difficulty with modern Ice Age theory(b) and some propose that an ice age occurred after the biblical Deluge(f). For some fundamentalists the (only) Ice Age lasted from around 2500 BC until 1500 BC(o), otherwise, it will not fit into Archbishop Ussher’s 4004 BC date for the creation of the world!
Furthermore, it would be dishonest if I did not record that there have been more credible attempts to debunk the ‘conventional’ Ice Age Theory. The late Peter K. Bros (1939-2007) expressed such views in J. Douglas Kenyon’s Forbidden History[802.44] and in Atlantis Rising magazine(ae).
Dr. Horst Friedrich (1931-2015) was strongly opposed to Ice Age Theory and in one of the many papers that he published on the subject, he invoked the earlier work of C.G.S. Sandberg in support of his views(aj).
Furthermore, Allan & Delair offer similar views in Chapter 12 of Part One of their acclaimed book Cataclysm[014] as does Richard E.Mooney [0842.87]. An essay by Kurt Johmann entitled “Debunking Ice Age” is also worth a read. The Thunderbolts website has a forum(h) dealing with whether Ice Ages occurred at all! Those interested in this particular controversy will find some worthwhile comments there. The same site has linked to an article that offers further challenges to conventional Ice Age and global warming theories. This report(j) concerns the discovery of the remains of a 4,000-year-old forest in the Alps at the edge of a retreating glacier, which added further evidence that warmer climates than at present were experienced since the last Ice Age. A regular Thunderbolts contributor, Rens Van Der Sluijs, also deals with global warming during the last Ice Age as revealed through mythology(k). However, Thunderbolts ‘Electric Universe’ concept has also received some highly critical reviews(m).
An interesting side issue is the work of Genevieve von Petzinger(y) who has collated recurring geometric symbols found in the Ice Age caves and rock carvings, not only across Europe but in Asia and less frequently in Africa and the Americas.
The University of Sheffield has now produced a set of maps showing the shrinkage of the last glacial ice sheet that covered most of the British Isles at the end of the last Ice Age(d). That particular ice sheet contained enough water to raise the world’s oceans by 2.5 metres when melted. Further maps have been published on Don Hitchcock’s website(i).
The retreating ice sheets also produced drumlins, with as many as 20,000 to be found in Ireland, with many of these and other Ice Age creations featuring in the placenames of my country(p).
We should not forget that Mother Nature can still spring weather surprises on us, such as the Great European Freeze of 1709 that led to widespread death of humans and livestock, crop failures and food riots(af).
(a) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(b) https://creation.com/do-greenland-ice-cores-show-over-one-hundred-thousand-years-of-annual-layers
(f) https://www.accuracyingenesis.com/iceage.html
(g) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100406133707.htm
(h) Questioning the Ice Ages – Thunderbolts Forum (v2.0) (archive.org)
(i) https://donsmaps.com/icemaps.html
(k) Global Warming in the Ice Age – The Thunderbolts Project™ (archive.org) (new link) *
(m) See: Archive 922
(o) http://therightsway.com/great-pyramid-for-navigation/
(q) https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue11/rayadams_toc.html
(s) Ice Age Now – The next ice age could begin any day (archive.org)
(t) Sea levels falling Archives – Ice Age Now
(u) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/may/10/environment.columnists
(v) https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/out-of-eden-walk/articles/2018-08-cities-silence/
(w) Scientists Are Warming Up to the Idea of Snowball Earth (archive.org)
(x) https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/likely-human-homeland-identified
(y) https://www.bradshawfoundation.com/geometric_signs/geometric_signs.php
(z) https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/407b/61808c670384e94df67cd6bd956ce75131ad.pdf
(aa) http://defendgaia.org/bobk/ccc/ce120799.html
(ab) https://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/IceAgeTheories.html
(ac) https://www.big-lies.org/modern-physics-a-fraud/kj_debunk_ice_age.html
(ad) Scientists have new theory on ice age (freerepublic.com)
(ae) Atlantis Rising No. 41
(af) New Scientist, 07 February 2009
(ag) Ancient Hawaiian glaciers reveal clues to global climate impacts — ScienceDaily
(ah) https://q-mag.org/a-new-little-ice-age-by-2030.html
(ai) https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/2953/there-is-no-impending-mini-ice-age/
(aj) Ein kompetenter Geologe verreißt die Eiszeitlehre! – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) (English)