Richard Cassaro

Italy

Published March 21, 2016

Italy seems to have an uncertain etymology; Thucydides claims that Italos, the Sicilian king gave his name to Italy, while more recently Emilio Spedicato^(h) considers that ”the best derivation we believe to be the one proposed by the Italian nuclear engineer Felice Vinci (1998), in his monograph claiming a Baltic setting for the Homeric epic: he derives Italia from the rare Greek word aithalia, meaning the smoking one.” This is thought to be a reference to Italy’s many volcanoes.

Italy today is comprised of territory south of the Alps on mainland Europe including a very large boot-shaped peninsula, plus Sicily, Sardinia and some smaller island groups, which along with the French island of Corsica virtually enclose the Tyrrhenian Sea.

The earliest proposal that Italy could be linked with Atlantis came from Angelo Mazzoldi in 1840 when he claimed that before Etruria, Italy had been home to Atlantis and dated its demise to 1986 BC. Mazzoldi expressed a form of hyperdiffusion that had his Italian Atlantis as the mother culture which seeded the great civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean region^(b).

Some of Mazzoldi’s views regarding ancient Italy were expanded on by later scholars such as Camillo Ravioli, Ciro Nispi-Landi, Evelino Leonardi, Costantine Cattoi, Guido DiNardo and Giuseppe Brex. Ravioli sought to associate the Maltese island of Gozo with his proposed Atlantis in Italy.

The Italian region of Lazio, which includes Rome, has had a number of very ancient structures proposed as Atlantean; Monte Circeo (Leonardi) and Arpino^(a) (Cassaro). Another aspect of Italian prehistory is the story of Tirrenide, which was described as a westward extension of the Italian landmass into the Tyrrhenian Sea during the last Ice Age, with a land bridge to a conjoined Sardinia and Corsica. At the same time, there were land links to Sicily and Malta, which were all destroyed as deglaciation took place and sea levels rose.

It is surprising that so few researchers have commented on Italy’s part in Plato’s Atlantis narrative considering that he twice, without any ambiguity, informs us that the Atlantean domain extended as far as Tyrrhenia (modern Tuscany).

Crit.114c. So all these, themselves and their descendants dwelt for many generations bearing rule over many other islands throughout the sea and holding sway besides, as was previously stated, over the Mediterranean peoples as far as Egypt and Tuscany. Tim.25a/b. Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvellous power, which held sway over all the island, and over many other islands also and parts of the continent; and, moreover, of the lands here within the Straits they ruled over Libya as far as Egypt, and over Europe as far as Tuscany. (Bury)

The quotation from Timaeus is most interesting because of its reference to a ‘continent’. Some have understandably but incorrectly claimed that this is a reference to America or Antarctica, when quite clearly it refers to southern Italy as part of the continent of Europe. Moreover, Herodotus is quite clear (4.42) that the ancient Greeks knew of only three continents, Europe, Asia and Libya.

Philo of Alexandria (20 BC-50 AD) in his On the Eternity of the World^(g)wrote “Are you ignorant of the celebrated account which is given of that most sacred Sicilian strait, which in old times joined Sicily to the continent of Italy?” (v.139).>The name ‘Italy’ was normally used until the third century BC to describe just the southern part of the peninsula^(e).<Some commentators think that Philo was quoting Theophrastus, Aristotle’s successor. This would push the custom of referring to Italy as a ‘continent’ back near to the time of Plato. More recently, Armin Wolf, the German historian, when writing about Scheria relates^(f) that “Even today, when people from Sicily go to Calabria (southern Italy) they say they are going to the ‘continente’.” This continuing usage is further confirmed by a current travel site^(d)and by author, Robert Fox^[¹¹⁶⁸^.141]. I suggest that Plato used the term in a similar fashion and can be seen as offering the most rational explanation for the use of the word ‘continent’ in Timaeus 25a.

When you consider that close to Italy are located the large islands of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, as well as smaller archipelagos such as the Egadi, Lipari and Maltese groups, the idea of Atlantis in the Central Mediterranean can be seen as highly compatible with Plato’s description.

If we accept that Plato stated unambiguously that the domain of Atlantis included at least part of southern Italy and also declared that Atlantis attacked from beyond the Pillars of Heracles, then this appellation could not be applied at that time to any location in the vicinity of the Strait of Gibraltar but must have been further east, probably not too far from Atlantean Italy. This matches earlier alternative locations recorded by classical writers who placed the ‘Pillars’ at the straits of Messina or Sicily. I personally favour Messina, unless there is stronger evidence that some of the islands in or near the Strait of Sicily such as the Maltese or Pelagian Islands or Pantelleria were home to the ‘Pillars’.

^(a) http://www.richardcassaro.com/hidden-italy-the-forbidden-cyclopean-ruins-of-giants-from-atlantis

^(b) Archive 2509P (Eng) Archive 2943 (Ital)

^(c) Archive 2946

^(d) Four Ways to Do Sicily – Articles – Departures (archive.org)

^(e)https://profilbaru.com/article/Name_of_Italy *

^(f) Wayback Machine (archive.org)

^(g) http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book35.html

^(h) http://2010-q-conference.com/ophir/ophir-27-10-09.pdf

Tagged Angelo Mazzoldi, Armin Wolf, Baltic, Calabria, Camillo Ravioli, Ciro Nispi-Landi, continent, Corsica, Costantine Cattoi, deglaciation, Egadi Islands, Emilio Spedicato, Evelino Leonardi, Felice Vinci, Giuseppe Brex, Gozo, Guido DiNardo, Herodotus, Italos, Italy, Lipari Islands, Malta, Ophir, Pantelleria, Pelagian Islands, Philo of Alexandria, Pillars of Heracles, Richard Cassaro, Sardinia, Scheria, Sicily, Strait of Gibraltar, Strait of Messina, Strait of Sicily, Theophrastus, Thucydides, Tirrenide, Tyrrhenian Sea, volcanoes

Hyperdiffusion

Published January 14, 2016

Hyperdiffusion is defined by Wikipedia⁽ⁿ⁾as “a pseudoarchaeological hypothesis suggesting that certain historical technologies or ideas originated with a single people or civilization before their adoption by other cultures. Thus, all great civilizations that share similar cultural practices, such as construction of pyramids, derived them from a single common progenitor. According to its proponents, examples of hyperdiffusion can be found in religious practices, cultural technologies, megalithic monuments, and lost ancient civilizations.”

Hyperdiffusion with Atlantis at its centre was argued at great length by Ignatius Donnelly when he proposed Atlantis as the mother culture, located in the Atlantic. Through colonisation and migration, their civilisation was brought to the Americas and the Mediterranean, particularly Egypt. The idea received widespread support at the time>>from people such as the Rev. Joseph Cook<<and has persisted until today^(a), with Graham Hancock being currently the best-known proponent of hyperdiffusion. In 2022, Marco Vigato also advocated Atlantis as a hyperdiffusionist hub.

A similar hyperdiffusionist proposal was made by James Churchward regarding his Pacific island of Mu.

Angelo Mazzoldi expressed support for a form of regional hyperdiffusion that had his Italian Atlantis as the mother culture which seeded all the great civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean region.

However, even earlier, in the seventeenth century, Olof Rudbeck “purported to prove that Sweden was Atlantis, the cradle of civilization, and Swedish the original language of Adam from which Latin and Hebrew had evolved.”⁽ⁱ⁾

Since Atlantis in the Atlantic is considered by many to be highly improbable and Mu only existed in Churchward’s imagination, a more likely explanation is that diverse ideas emerged independently in different locations, possibly around the same time. These developments then diffused through trade and migration in various directions, sometimes returning in an improved format. The result is that today we are finding that most ancient civilisations show evidence of cultural influences from more than one source.

Lawrence Freeman is the American author of Beyond The Pillars: a search for Antediluvian civilizations^(l) in which he reviews almost every civilisation and prehistoric mystery that you ever heard of. He refers to Atlantis throughout the book, but in rather sceptical tones, with the nearest to a conclusion being that – “Atlantis may well have never existed, but if it did exist, then it was likely only as part of a worldwide antediluvian civilization that is now coming to light.”

Richard Cassaro and Jim Allen have both published online large collections of images^(b)(c)(d) that clearly demonstrate widespread diffusion. This is particularly so in the case of South America where influences from both east and west are clearly evident. While it is regularly claimed that Egypt influenced South American civilisations it is obvious that Asian inspiration was equally, if not solely, at work. The existence of pyramids in both Egypt and Mesoamerica is put forward as evidence of contact between them. However, the problem is that the American pyramids were constructed hundreds if not thousands of years later than the Egyptian ones. However, in spite of this separation by time and distance, the Egyptians and the Aztecs also shared feathered-serpent deities^(g)! What appears to be overlooked is the fact that the Chinese pyramids are more like Mesoamerican examples and are dated to the second half of the first millennium BC, again closer to the development of pyramids in Mesoamerica.

Christian O’Brien contended that global cultural hyperdiffusion was centred in Southern Lebanon (the Garden of Eden) and was spread from there by ‘The Shining Ones’ leading to the establishment of some of the great civilisations of our ancient past!^(m)

An even more unusual hyperdiffusionist opinion was expressed by the Argentine palaeontologist, Florintino Ameghino (1854-1911), who thought that mankind originated in South America^(h) and spread globally from there!

In 2020, Anthony Woods ^[1775] attempted to prove that Atlantis was Ireland and also the source of the mother culture for the entire world. As an Irishman, when reading this, I did not know whether to laugh or cry.

In March 2021, Hugh Newman published a paper drawing attention to the similarity of megalithic building techniques, using polygonal stones, found in America, Asia, Europe and Africa. He goes further, noting that “Peruvian relief carvings match those at Göbekli Tepe.” How much of this might be the result of coincidence or hyperdiffusion is a matter of opinion.^(k)

Carl Feagans offers a paper that is highly critical of hyperdiffusion and its promoters, denouncing them as “willfully ignorant and grossly racist. Though they don’t say it directly, the message is still the same: “white people did it, not savages.”^(j)

A 1986 paper^(f) by Ben Urish entitled Cultural Diffusion^[⁰⁹⁶⁹^] should be read in this connection.

^(a) https://www.africaspeaks.com/reasoning/index.php?topic=5106.0

^(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20200629021253/http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/artefacts.htm

^(c) https://www.richardcassaro.com/suppressed-by-scholars-twin-ancient-cultures-on-opposite-sides-of-the-pacific

^(d) https://www.richardcassaro.com/pagan-god-self-icon-found-worldwide-rewrites-history-reveals-lost-golden-age-religion

^(e)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_pyramids

^(f) Wayback Machine (archive.org) *

^(g) See: Archive 2827

^(h)See: https://web.archive.org/web/20180329154212/https://webs.advance.com.ar/lae_tor/teorias.htm

⁽ⁱ⁾ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaus_Rudbeck

^(j) https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2016/12/hyper-diffusion-archaeology/

^(k) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places/megalithic-origins-g-bekli-tepe-and-ancient-peru-same-architects-008402

^(l) https://lfreeman.blogspot.com/2006/11/beyond-pillars-search-for-antediluvian.html

^(m) https://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/shining.php

⁽ⁿ⁾ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperdiffusionism

Tagged Atlantic, Ben Urish, Diffusion, Egypt, Florintino Ameghino, Graham Hancock, Hyperdiffusion, Ignatius Donnelly, James Churchward, Jim Allen, Marco Vigato, Mu, Olof Rudbeck, pyramids, Richard Cassaro, South America, Wikipedia

Mesoamerica

Published November 15, 2012

Mesoamerica is the term used to describe a region which includes Mexico and Central America that was home to a number of important pre-Columbian cultures including that of the Mixtec, Toltec and Maya peoples. When news of Columbus’ rediscovery of America got back to Europe it did not take long for theories linking the ‘New World’ with Plato’s Atlantis to develop. While most initial speculation focused on the idea that America was Atlantis. As time went by, this concept was downgraded to just identifying America as the home of refugees from Atlantis, usually located in the Atlantic.

By the 19^th century the similarity between the pyramids of Mesoamerica and those of Egypt began prompting the thought that Egypt may also have been home to Atlantean refugees. However, further comparisons of ancient Indian architecture with that of ancient Central America has led to a set of new theories^(a) that generally excludes Atlantis. While Jim Allen has illustrated^(c) a number of interesting cultural links between Mesopotamia and Bolivia, Richard Cassaro has published^(b) an extensive series of images linking Egypt and Mesoamerica.

^(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20200217000546/http://www.hinduwisdom.info/Pacific.htm

^(b) https://www.richardcassaro.com/suppressed-by-scholars-the-mystery-of-twin-cultures-egyptians-incas-on-opposite-sides-of-the-globe/

^(c)https://web.archive.org/web/20200704031245/http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/boliviaandthesumerianconnection.htm

Tagged Central America, Egypt, Jim Allen, Maya, Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, Mexico, Mixtec, Richard Cassaro, Toltec

Swastika

Published March 30, 2012

The Swastika is a symbol that is said to have a 12,000-year-old history^(I) and is occasionally suggested as having an Atlantean link. This is highly improbable as modern research has suggested that it was more likely to have originally represented an ancient cometary display in the sky^(c), explaining the ubiquity of the symbol around the world. Fernando Coimbra wrote a paper^(h)on this subject in 2011.

In 1896, the Smithsonian Institution published an extensive paper by Thomas Wilson (1832-1902), a curator at the U.S. National Museum, demonstrating the global spread of the swastika symbol^[1466].

Another site demonstrates the widespread use of the swastika and its variants in commercial iconography^(d). In April 2014, a well-illustrated report^(k) revealed that a 7,000-year-old piece of pottery with a swastika on it was discovered in Bulgaria.

I recall that my native Dublin had a firm, founded in 1912 by a Mr. Brittain, called the Swastika Laundry, which had their vans liveried in bright red with a white swastika on a black background. The business lasted into the 1960s. However, the use of the swastika in Ireland goes back much further, perhaps to pre-Christian times. St. Brigid, one of Ireland’s patron saints, is generally thought to be a Christianised version of the Celtic goddess Brighid. St.Brigid’s Cross, a popular symbol of the saint found all over Ireland, is considered to be a variant of the swastika. One Indian gentleman was amazed when he encountered a swastika inside the Catholic church at Ballintubber Abbey in Co. Mayo^(s).

James Churchward claimed that the swastika was a symbol of his invented civilisation, Mu, while Robert Stacy-Judd speculated^[607.243] that it had originated in Atlantis. Others have attempted^(e) to link the swastika and its presentation in red, white and black to be in some way connected with Plato’s reference to the colours of the rocks found in Atlantis. In a 1959 article in Sykes’ Atlantis magazine by Arthur Louis Joquel II declared^(o) that the swastika had been the symbol of Atlantis! No evidence was offered.

Leaving conjecture aside it can be demonstrated that the swastika was an ancient Hindu symbol and also used in the Indus Valley civilisation^(b). In fact, the use of the swastika has now been traced back to circa 10,000 BC. This image is included in the incredibly well-illustrated lecture by Robert M. Chapple, which also includes a large section with many images of swastikas used from early Christian times in Ireland until the present^(r).

While Heinrich Schliemann was excavating Troy at Hissarlik, he discovered many hundreds of swastikas throughout the site and was responsible for bringing what had been, until then, a benign symbol back to Germany, where it was later hijacked by the Nazis and came to represent oppression⁽ⁿ⁾.

The long honourable history of the swastika should not be erased because of its abuse at the hands of the Nazis. The residents of Swastika in Ontario, have for decades steadfastly refused to change the name of their community, which has been in use since 1907.

In 1925, the people of Panama’s indigenous province of Guna Yala adopted a flag having a black left-facing swastika, said to represent the four directions and the creation of the world^(p). Also in the Americas, Gary A. David has highlighted the use of the swastika in a more benign way by the Hopi of northern Arizona along with its innocent use in other cultures including the Minoans, as well as in 20th century USA^(q).

Jacques Gossart wrote a book^[341] on the history of the swastika and in Denys Eissart’s now inactive website, L’épopée atlante (The Atlantis Epic) he devoted a page to a discussion on the subject^(a). More recently Richard Cassaro has published two articles^(f)(g) highlighting the extensive use of the swastika. The articles are well illustrated including some fascinating images. He also attempts, unsuccessfully in my view, to suggest a link between the swastika and Atlantis. A Reclaim the Swastika website^(j) is campaigning for the promotion of the swastika as a spiritual symbol as it had been in the past.

A number of large swastika-shaped features have been spotted from the air^(m). In 2007 it was announced^(t) that “The Navy plans to spend $600,000 for ‘camouflage’ landscaping and rooftop adjustments so that 1960s-era barracks at the Naval Base Coronado near San Diego will no longer look like a Nazi swastika from the air.”

^(a) Svastikas (L’épopée atlante) (archive.org)

^(b) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/IndusValleySeals.JPG

^(c) Visual Astrology Newsletter – February 2007 – When beggars die, there are no comets seen. PLUS a focus on Facies. (archive.org) *

^(d) https://web.archive.org/web/20120611130831/https://www.alef.net/ALEFThings/ALEFThings.Asp?Thing=Swastikas

^(e)https://kachina2012.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/black-white-red-are-the-strings-that-connect-the-swastika-to-atlantis/

^(f) https://www.richardcassaro.com/the-ancient-secret-of-the-swastika-the-hidden-history-of-the-white-race-p-1-of-2

^(g) https://www.richardcassaro.com/the-ancient-secret-of-the-swastika-the-hidden-history-of-the-white-race-p-2-of-2

^(h)https://www.academia.edu/2951519/The_astronomical_origins_of_the_swastika_motif

⁽ⁱ⁾https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/symbol-swastika-and-its-12000-year-old-history-001312

^(j)https://web.archive.org/web/20201108132629/http://reclaimtheswastika.com/

^(k)https://atlanteangardens.blogspot.ie/2014/04/7000-year-old-swastika-pottery.html

^(l) https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/symbol-swastika-and-its-12000-year-old-history-001312

^(m)https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/04/another-giant-swastika-spotted-this-time-near-roswell/

⁽ⁿ⁾ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/man-who-brought-swastika-germany-and-how-nazis-stole-it-180962812/

^(o) Atlantis, Vol.12, No.3, March/April 1959.

^(p) http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180813-guna-yala-the-islands-where-women-make-the-rules

>^(q) https://www.academia.edu/8661508/The_Four_Arms_of_Destiny_Swastikas_in_the_Hopi_World_and_Beyond

^(r) (99+) (PDF) The Swastika in Irish art & Archaeology: Origins, associations … and general decorations … | Robert M Chapple – Academia.edu

^(s)https://deshika.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/a-swastika-in-a-catholic-church/

^(t) The New York Times, Sept. 27 2007

Tagged Arthur Louis Joquel II, Ballintubber Abbey, Denys Eissart, Fernando Coimbra, Gary A. David, Heinrich Schliemann, Hopi, Indus Valley, Jacques Gossart, James Churchward, Mu, red, red white & black, Richard Cassaro, Robert M. Chapple, Robert Stacy-Judd, St Brigid's Cross, swastika, Swastika Laundry, Thomas Wilson

Cassaro, Richard

Published August 5, 2011

Richard Cassaro (1972- ) is a journalist from New York City, now based in Madrid, with a passionate interest in ancient mysteries. His 2011 book, Written in Stone^[1207]is a study of parallel architectural features to be found in ancient structures on both sides of the Atlantic and further afield in Asia. He focuses on the ubiquity of what he calls a “triptych’ feature in sacred buildings around the world and ascribes their continued use to the influence of Freemasonry. In January 2013 he published^(f) a further selection of these triptych features found in China.

Up to this point, I find his work credible but I think that he pushes the boat out too far when he speculates that these structural similarities are the result of the influence of a much earlier mother culture – Atlantis.

His website^(a) includes excerpts from his book and interesting video clips.

Included there in January 2017 is an illustrated article on the ‘cyclopean’ wall that surrounds the ancient city of Tarragona situated southwest of Barcelona as well as a comparable wall at Orbetello in Italy. He maintains that this was a colony of the Cyclopes, a mythological race of one-eyed giants. Well, if they were giants, why does the height of the doorways in Cassaro’s images appear no greater than standard doorways today? Cassaro also implies that the Cyclopes were Atlanteans, which explains the title of the article – Atlantis Ruins in Europe? The Megalithic “Master Masonry” of a Cyclopean Colony in Tarraco (Tarragona), Spain.⁽ⁿ⁾

Cassaro also produced an article and video^(b) on the frequency with which a pagan concept of a sacred trinity is expressed in symbolism found across ancient pre-christian Europe. The Wikipedia entry for ‘triskelion’^(c) augments Cassaro’s case.

He has recently written an article^(d)claiming that the Egyptian god Osiris was the first Messiah and that Jesus was the second! However, I must advise readers that this is not an entirely new idea^(e).

October 2013 saw Cassaro publish^(g) a large series of images from around the world that various deities all posing in a comparable manner! His conclusion is that “the (god) icon is the chief symbol of a lost ancient universal religion.” He also endeavours to link this ancient symbology with later esoteric ideas and Freemasonry. He published a second series in January 2014⁽ⁱ⁾.

He has also examined the Egyptian ankh and tau symbols and identified counterparts in South America^(j). In 2015, Cassaro published images online that show the ‘third eye’ symbol as found in Asia and across the great ancient civilisations of the New World^(k)and expanded on this in a later article on Graham Hancock’s website^(l).

I should point out that Jim Allen has published an even more impressive collection of images of artefacts ^(h) that clearly demonstrate that the early civilisations of America were greatly influenced by cultures in both the east and west. The contributions of Allen and Cassaro offer a persuasive argument for cultural diffusion occurring at an early date in man’s development.

Cassaro has now delved further into what he refers to as the ‘godself’ icon and published his findings in a new, fully illustrated, book, The Missing Link^[1208] together with another promotional article on Graham Hancock’s website^(m). Coincidentally, on the same day that I read of Cassaro’s new book, I also read of one element in the iconography at Göbekli Tepe, which was also to be found at other sites around the world. Cassaro’s work on diffusion should now be given wider consideration, although in my view hyperdiffusion is still unproven.

In his latest book, Mayan Masonry ^[1659], Cassaro returns to familiar suspects in which he speculates on the possibility that the ancient Maya were an older branch of the Masonic family tree^(p)! He has also posted a lengthy excerpt^(o) from the new book.

Those interested in his work can sign up for Cassaro’s newsletter.

^(a) https://www.richardcassaro.com/

^(b)https://www.richardcassaro.com/pagan-trinity-discovered-shows-holy-trinity-a-cover-up

^(c) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskelion

^(d) https://www.richardcassaro.com/osiris-the-first-messiah-was-jesus-the-second-coming-of-egypts-christ

^(e)https://web.archive.org/web/20200223181545/http://www.egyptorigins.org/osirisandjesus.htm

^(f) Articles – Richard Cassaro (archive.org) *

^(g) https://www.richardcassaro.com/pagan-god-self-icon-found-worldwide-rewrites-history-reveals-lost-golden-age-religion

^(h)https://web.archive.org/web/20200629021253/http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/artefacts.htm

^(I)https://www.richardcassaro.com/pagan-god-self-icon-found-worldwide-rewrites-history-pt-2-of-2

^(j) https://web.archive.org/web/20200208144312if_/http://www.messagetoeagle.com/ankhcrossaztecs.php#.Xj7JCClxepo

^(k) https://www.richardcassaro.com/discovery-of-the-third-eye-in-the-ancient-Americas

^(l) https://grahamhancock.com/cassaror2/

^(m) https://grahamhancock.com/cassaror3/

⁽ⁿ⁾ https://www.richardcassaro.com/atlantis-ruins-europe-megalithic-master-masonry-cyclopean-colony-tarraco-spain

^(o) https://www.richardcassaro.com/artifacts-of-the-golden-age-archaeological-evidence-that-civilization-is-declining-not-advancing/

^(p) https://grahamhancock.com/cassaror4/

Tagged Atlantis, China, Freemasonry, Gobekli Tepe, Jesus, Jim Allen, Maya, messiah, New World, Osiris, Richard Cassaro, Third Eye, triptych, triskelion

Diffusion *

Published March 2, 2011

Diffusion is the anthropological term used to describe how similar customs, beliefs and artefact designs are spread between cultures through migration, invasion or trade. Diffusion is not just a ‘one-way street’ as history has shown that ideas have travelled in all directions, while in fact most ancient civilisations can be demonstrated to have absorbed cultural elements from a multiplicity of foreign societies. Today, globalisation has increased exponentially the variety of influences that all societies now experience. Not only is the number of these influences greater but the rate of increase is apparently accelerating. The ubiquity of Coca-Cola, T-shirts, Irish pubs, Japanese cameras, German cars, English language, Guinness, Chinese toys, ABBA, AK-47s etc., etc., etc., are indicative of the global reach of commercial ‘empires’ today. In older civilisations trade was more concerned with commodities such as metals, olive oil, wine, amber, obsidian, or timber, so the technologies involved in their production or exploitation were also exchanged.

The development of agriculture also saw techniques spread, which had to be modified to suit different climates, although recent studies indicate that agriculture started around the same time in a number of centres^(I).

In the Fertile Crescent as far north as the Zagros Mountains and further north, on the steppes of Russia, horses were domesticated and apparently there also the use of chariots originated. A book by David W. Anthony also attributes the region as being the source of what is known as the Proto-Indo-European family of languages^[¹³⁵⁶^].

Societal concepts, religious or legal were no different as their geographical spread can also be tracked over time. Consider the different strands of the Abrahamic faiths, beginning with Judaism, which spawned Christianity and later was joined by Islam through Muhammad, who claimed to be a descendant of Abraham. Similarly, democracy has slowly evolved and spread over time and still has a long way to go.

Since early man left Africa, he has had ample time to settle all over our planet and exploit its resources, moving from being a hunter-gatherer to becoming a settled farmer, developing urban centres (city-states), then empires and the inevitable wars. Wars, then like today, led to the development of new technologies, chariots, longbows, and armour, to be copied and if possible improved upon, by each side.

My view is that initially, technology and techniques were freely exchanged between peoples, until gradually the idea of monopoly entered the human psyche, eventually leading to the paranoia and greed associated with the ownership of ‘intellectual property’ today. I would speculate that a freer and possibly gentler diffusion of ideas lasted until, at the earliest, the first millennium BC.

In 2014, the University of Connecticut published the result of studies that demonstrated that human technological innovation occurred intermittently throughout the Old World, rather than spreading from a single point of origin, as previously thought^(j).

Egerton Sykes, a leading 20th-century Atlantologist, was a committed diffusionist, describing it as “the lifeblood of civilisation”^(h). Atlantisforschung has published a 1967 paper by Sykes supporting diffusionism with particular reference to pyramid building on both sides of the Atlantic^(ad).

Andrew Cutler published a paper on cultural diffusion in August 2023 that should be studied by anyone interested in the subject. He discusses themes such as the Pleiades, Snakes, Finger Removal and Linguistics among others. He expresses the opinion that while many assume that such common features can be traced back to before the 100,000 BC Out of Africa migration, Cutler suggests a much later time circa 40,000-30,000 BC^(ae).

A more extreme view is the concept of ‘hyperdiffusion’, which is the idea that there was a single ‘mother culture’ that led to the development of all major civilisations. Ignatius Donnelly was a hyperdiffusionist, advocating Atlantis as the mother culture. His ‘heretical’ views were highlighted by the range of similarities between structures around the world in apparently unrelated cultures, which seem to greatly exceed what could be expected by mere coincidence alone. This is explored further in a recent illustrated article on the Malagabay website^(v).

Similarly, James Churchward proposed his invention, Mu, as an alternative hyperdiffusion centre. Perhaps better known is the work of W. J. Perry who was convinced ^[^1353] that an archaic civilisation had begun in Egypt and gradually spread eastward through Asia and Polynesia, eventually reaching the Americas. Ben Urish published a paper^(d) in 1986 that offers a critical overview^[⁹⁶⁹^] of hyperdiffusion.

Alice A. Storey and Terry L. Jones commented that “Hyperdiffusion, in which diffusion is used to explain all phenomena observed in the archaeological record, implies that independent invention was the property of only a select few in prehistory; it is this extreme view that tarnished early diffusionists and led mainstream archaeologists away from the concept” ^(ah).

Konrad Kulczyk promotes a hyperdiffusionist theory that places his proto-civilisation, New Atlantis, just south of the Aral Sea^(e).

Ivar Zapp proposes the existence of a global seafaring civilisation thousands of years before the Greeks, Egyptians or Sumerians^(k)in an as-yet-unpublished book, Babel Deciphered.

Hyperdiffusion is clearly a seductive theory that has attracted the attention of researchers such as Richard Cassaro, who has produced an impressive collection of visual cultural similarities between ancient Egypt and pre-Columbian America^(a). While the idea is not new, Cassaro’s images highlight the concept of diffusion very effectively, although he has, in my opinion, overinterpreted the evidence in order to support hyperdiffusion.

Cassaro published The Missing Link^[1208] in 2016 in which he expands on the widespread distribution of what he refers to as the ‘godself icon’. Although he clearly demonstrates that the motif has an extensive geographical spread it is equally obvious that the appearance of the icon is spread over a vast period of time apparently coinciding with the emergence of civilisation in different places at very different times, which, in my view, is not fully compatible with the concept of hyperdiffusion, as I would have expected a ‘mother-culture’, if such existed, to have spread its global influence far more rapidly.

A comparable discovery has been made by Ozgür Baris Etli, who has drawn attention^(o) to carved hands at Göbekli Tepe that have counterparts in many other parts of the world where hands meet at the navel are similarly depicted. I recently came across an image of^(q) a megalithic statue in the Indonesian Bada Valley^(u)showing its hands in a similar position. Also in Göbekli Tepe, we encounter what has become known as ‘the handbag of the gods’^(y) which has been found depicted in many locations such as Turkey (Göbekli), Iraq (Assyria), Mesoamerica (Olmecs)^(w), Egypt and New Zealand^(x). These images are not only spread over thousands of miles but thousands of years.

However, Andrew Gough is the only researcher who seems to have come anywhere near to explaining the purpose of the ‘handbag’. In a lengthy article on his website, he explains how a British Museum guide confirmed that the bag was a pollen carrier^(ac). This dovetailed with Gough’s belief regarding the importance of the bee in ancient cultures.

Having mentioned Indonesia, I must draw your attention to a recent book by Dhani Irwanto, entitled Sundaland: Tracing the Cradle of Civilizations (1618), in which he makes a strong case for considering his native land as an ancient diffusionist centre, which experienced waves of emigration at the end of the Younger Dryas period that influenced the great civilisations of the Indus Valley, Egypt and Greece. Irwanto also claims that their cultural impact included the transference of the story of Atlantis from its original home in Sundaland.

Equally intriguing is the ‘Three Hares’ motif, found across Europe, the Middle East ad as far as China^(p) and now the subject of a book by Greeves, Andrew & Chapman^[1210]. Another stylised symbol is that of the rosette found in the Mediterranean and spread as far as India^(r)(s).

In a similar vein, Jim Allen has devoted chapter three of his latest book to outlining what he entitled Bolivia and the Sumerian Connection^(b). Arguably, even more impressive us the array of images presented by Allen^(b) suggesting that the civilisations of America were greatly influenced by ancient cultures in both the east and the west . Although some artefacts can be developed independently, at some point , the number of similar items produced by two separate cultures can exceed the number that can be reasonably attributed to coincidence. The number of similarities presented by Allen alone clearly exceeds that threshold suggesting that the Americas were influenced by different sources, ruling out the Americasas the home of a mother culture!

In the August 2019 edition of National Geographic magazine there is an update on the results of the latest genetic studies relating to the origins of European peoples^(ag). “Their findings suggest that the continent has been a melting pot since the Ice Age. Europeans living today, in whatever country, are a varying mix of ancient bloodlines hailing from Africa, the Middle East, and the Russian steppe.” One item that caught my attention was that about 5,000 years ago “Farther north, from Russia to the Rhine, a new culture sprang up, called Corded Ware after its pottery, which was decorated by pressing string into wet clay.” and “Many Corded Ware people turned out to be more closely related to Native Americans than to Neolithic European farmers. That deepened the mystery of who they were.” Does it imply that prehistoric transatlantic travel took place then and if so, in which direction? As I read it, the NG article offers nothing to endorse hyperdiffusion, if anything, it does the very opposite.

An extensive website managed by Erich Fred Legner offers a wide range of evidence to support the view that the Americas had been visited and settled by people from both Asia & Europe before Columbus^(aa).

Similarly, Gary A. David proposed that Votan was a diffusionist deity with counterparts known by other names such as Kukulkan, Quetzalcoatl or Viracocha in the different American civilisations. However, he goes further placing Votan’s origins in the Old World suggesting that he may have been Phoenician or Hebrew, citing Adrian Gilbert and Andrew Collins in support of this^(af).

The whole subject of diffusion is wide-ranging and complex and well beyond my competence to do it justice in this short entry. However, for those interested in pursuing the subject further, I would like to recommend a 1997 paper^(l) by David H. Kelley (1924-2011), available on Dale Drinnon’s website.

Egypt is frequently mentioned in this regard being seen as the influence behind Neolithic megalith building AND the pyramids of Central America, in spite of the fact that Newgrange was constructed before the Egyptian Pyramids and the New World pyramids were built thousands of years after those in Egypt. Atlantis is regularly suggested as another mother culture but without a single piece of evidence to support this speculative contention. For decades the idea that the pyramids of Egypt and those in the Americas were the consequence of diffusion from a common source, namely Atlantis situated in the Atlantic was heavily promoted. However, we can now more closely identify the pyramids of America with the step pyramids of China!

Consequently, for me, hyperdiffusion is not convincing. History has clearly shown that inventions have frequently been independently developed at the same time in different countries, while even in prehistoric times it has been demonstrated^(f) that the evolution of stone tools took place as a result of the innovative abilities of local populations, addressing the same needs.

A word of warning; “recent research published in Nature by a team led by Tomos Proffitt at the University of Oxford shows that capuchin monkeys regularly produce sharp-edged flakes indistinguishable from those made by early hominins.”^(t)

Even today technologies are developed independently throughout the world, but not in complete isolation, because of the instant worldwide communications available.

As a result of global marketing, in Ireland now we drive German, British and Japanese cars, use US computer technology and play with Chinese toys. However, being generous by nature, we gave the world the Irish pub, Riverdance and Guinness.

A two-part blog^(m)(n) highlighting the many weaknesses in the concept of hyperdiffusion should be required reading for anyone interested in the subject.

Although Donnelly and his contemporaries, focused on the possibility of Old World influences in the New World, today, there is less of a Mediterranean-centred or Eurocentric approach to diffusionism. Instead, there is greater acceptance that the Americas have also had extensive cultural influences from Asia.

In March 2021, Hugh Newman published a paper drawing attention to the similarity of megalithic building techniques, using polygonal stones, in America, Asia, Europe and Africa. He goes further noting that “Peruvian relief carvings match those at Göbekli Tepe.” How much might be the result of coincidence is a matter of opinion.^(ab)In January 2022, Marco M. Vigato published a new book, The Empires of Atlantis ^[1830], in which he offers a hyperdiffusionist view of Atlantis. He “traces the course of Atlantean civilization through its three empires, as well as the colonies and outposts formed by its survivors in Egypt, Göbekli Tepe, India, Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, and North and South America” and “reveals how the first Atlantean civilization lasted from 432,000 to 33,335 BCE, the second one from 21,142 to 10,961 BCE, and the third Atlantis civilization–the one celebrated by Plato–collapsed in 9600 BCE, after the Younger Dryas cataclysm.”^(z).

^(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20160305000748/https://www.richardcassaro.com/suppressed-by-scholars-the-mystery-of-twin-cultures-egyptians-incas-on-opposite-sides-of-the-globe

^(b)https://web.archive.org/web/20200704031245/http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/boliviaandthesumerianconnection.htm

^(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20200629021253/http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/artefacts.htm

^(d) https://soar.wichita.edu/bitstream/handle/10057/1746/LAJ_v11_no1_p75-87.pdf?sequence=3

^(e) https://blog.world-mysteries.com/mystic-places/new-atlantis-the-source-of-civilization-on-earth/

^(g)Stone Age site challenges old archaeological | EurekAlert! (archive.org) *

^(h) https://web.archive.org/web/20190430181930/http://www.seachild.net/atlantology/fields/socialsci.html

^(I) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130705101629.htm

^(j) Stone Age site challenges old archaeological | EurekAlert! (archive.org)

^(k) https://www.prestige-ocean-properties.com/blogs/michael_mills/archive/2012/10/13/unusual-theory-about-stone-spheres-in-costa-rica.aspx

^(l) See: Archive 3563

^(m) https://skepticalcubefarm.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/hyperdiffusionism-a-blog-in-two-parts/

⁽ⁿ⁾ https://skepticalcubefarm.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/hyperdiffusionism-part-the-second/

^(o) https://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/statues-and-symbolic-gestures-link-ancient-g-bekli-tepe-easter-island-020384?nopaging=1

^(p) https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/three-hares-motif-cross-cultural-symbol-numerous-interpretations-005640?nopaging=1

^(q) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-asia/exploring-mysterious-megaliths-bada-valley-indonesia-006032

^(r) https://aratta.wordpress.com/the-rosette-symbol/

^(s) https://www.sophia-project.net/conferences/HeavenAndEarth/presentations/pdfs/CherylHart.pdf

^(t) https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/stone-tools-may-not-have-been-made-by-human-ancestors-research-finds

^(u) Atlantis Rising No.110 March/April 2015 p.41

^(v) Ignatius Donnelly: Trans-Atlantic Architecture | MalagaBay (archive.org)

^(w) What is the mysterious handbag seen in Ancient Carvings across Cultures carried by the Gods | ARCHAEOLOGY WORLD (archive.org)

^(x) https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/what-mysterious-handbag-seen-ancient-carvings-across-cultures-and-021191

^(y) https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk01EY5V0clVAkJB9-3PZ7CyJZcvzsQ:1612175987167&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=handbag+of+the+gods&client=opera&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjj5p7Iv8juAhVnUhUIHQJmD2UQjJkEegQIDBAB&biw=1496&bih=726&dpr=1.25

^(z)https://www.amazon.co.uk/Empires-Atlantis-Civilizations-Traditions-throughout-ebook/dp/B092B3L8LC/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=plato+atlantis&qid=1618966015&s=books&sr=1-1

^(aa) E. F. Legner vita and websites (ucr.edu)

^(ab) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places/megalithic-origins-g-bekli-tepe-and-ancient-peru-same-architects-008402

^(ac) https://andrewgough.co.uk/articles_pollen/

^(ad) Is Atlantological diffusionism ‘old news’? – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)

^(ae) https://www.vectorsofmind.com/p/evidence-for-global-cultural-diffusion

^(af) http://www.viewzone.com/votanx.html

^(ag) Genetic testing reveals that Europe is a melting pot, made of immigrants (nationalgeographic.com)

^(ah)(99+) Diffusionism in Archaeological Theory: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly | Alice Storey – Academia.edu

Tagged Abraham, Adrian Gilbert, Alice A. Storey, Andrew Collins, Andrew Cutler, Aral Sea, Bada Valley, Bee, Ben Urish, Dale Drinnon, David H. Kelley, David W. Anthony, Dhani Irwanto, Diffusionism, Egerton Sykes, Egypt, Erich Fred Legner, Fertile Crescent, Gary A. David, Gobekli Tepe, Greeves Andrew & Chapman, Guinness, Handbag of the gods, Hugh Newman, Hyperdiffusion, Ignatius Donnelly, India, Indonesia, Ivar Zapp, James Churchward, Jim Allen, Konrad Kulczyk, Malagabay, Marco M. Vigato, Mesopotamia, Mu, New Zealand, Olmecs, Ozgür Baris Etli, pyramids, Richard Cassaro, Riverdance, rosette motif, Terry L. Jones, Three Hares, Votan, W. J. Perry, Younger Dryas, Zagros Mountains

Tartessos *

Published June 12, 2010

Tartessos or Tartessus is generally accepted to have existed along the valley of the Guadalquivir River where the rich deposits of copper and silver led to the development of a powerful native civilisation, which traded with the Phoenicians, who had colonies along the south coast of Spain^(k).

A continuing debate is whether Tartessos was developed by a pre-Phoenician indigenous society or was a joint venture by locals along with the Phoenicians.^(o) One of the few modern English-language books about Tartessos was written by Sebastian Celestino & Carolina López-Ruiz and entitled Tartessos and the Phoenicians in Iberia ^[1900].

A 2022 BBC article offers some additional up-to-date developments in the studies of Tartessos^(v).

It is assumed by most commentators that Tartessos was identical to the wealthy city of Tarshish that is mentioned in the Bible. There have been persistent attempts over the past century to link Tartessos with Atlantis. The last king of Tartessia, in what is now Southern Spain, is noted by Herodotus to have been Arganthonios, who is claimed to have ruled from 630 BC until 550 BC. Similarly, Ephorus a 4th century BC historian describes Tartessos as ‘a very prosperous market.’ However, if these dates are only approximately true, then Atlantis cannot be identified with Tartessos as they nearly coincide with the lifetime of Solon, who received the story of Atlantis as being very ancient.

However, the suggested linkage of Tartessos with Atlantis is disputed by some Spanish researchers, such as Mario Mas Fenollar ^[1802] and Ester Rodríguez González⁽ⁿ⁾. Mas Fennolar has claimed that at least a thousand years separated the two. Arysio dos Santos frequently claimed that Atlantis was Tartessos throughout his Atlantis and the Pillars of Hercules ^[^1378].

Rodrigo Caro

The existence of a ‘Tartessian’ empire is receiving gradual acceptance. Strabo writes of their system of canals running from the Guadalquivir River and a culture that had written records dating back 6,000 years. Their alphabet was slightly different to the ‘Iberian’. The Carthaginians were said to have been captured by Tartessos after the reign of Arganthonios and after that, contact with Tartessos seems to have ended abruptly!

The exact location of this city is not known apart from being near the mouth of the Guadalquivir River in Andalusia. The Guadalquivir was known as Baetis by the Romans and Tartessos to the Greeks. The present-day Gulf of Cadiz was known as Tartessius Sinus (Gulf of Tartessus) in Roman times. Cadiz is accepted to be a corruption of Gades that in turn is believed to have been named after Gaderius. This idea was proposed as early as 1634 by Rodrigo Caro (image left), the Spanish historian and poet, in his Antigüedades y principado de la Ilustrísima ciudad de Sevilla, now available as a free ebook⁽ⁱ⁾.

In 1849, the German researcher Gustav Moritz Redslob (1804-1882) carried out a study of everything available relating to Tartessos and concluded that the lost city had been the town of Tortosa on the River Ebro situated near Tarragona in Catalonia. The idea seems to have received little support until recently, when Carles Camp published a paper supporting this contention^(w⁾. It was written in Valenciano, which is related to Catalan and can be translated with Google Translate using the latter option.

A few years ago, Richard Cassaro endeavoured to link the megalithic walls of old Tarragona with the mythical one-eyed Cyclops and for good measure suggest a link with Atlantis^(l⁾. Concerning the giants, the images of doorways posted by Cassaro are too low to comfortably accommodate giants! Cassaro has previously made the same claim about megalithic structures in Italy^(m⁾

The German archaeologist Adolf Schulten spent many years searching unsuccessfully for Tartessos, in the region of the Guadalquivir. He believed that Tartessos had been founded by Lydians in 1150 BC, which became the centre of an ancient culture that was Atlantis or at least one of its colonies. Schulten also noted that Tartessos disappeared from historical records around 500 BC, which is after Solon’s visit to Egypt and so could not have been Atlantis.

Richard Hennig in the 1920s also supported the idea of Tartessos being Atlantis and situated in southern Spain. However, according to Atlantisforschung he later changed his opinion opting to adopt Spanuth’s Helgoland location instead^(x⁾.

Otto Jessen, a German geographer, also believed that there had been a connection between Atlantis and Tartessos. Jean Gattefosse was convinced that the Pillars of Heracles were at Tartessos, which he identifies as modern Seville. However, Mrs E. M. Whishaw, who studied in the area for 25 years at the beginning of the 20th century, believed that Tartessos was just a colony of Atlantis. The discovery of a ‘sun temple’ 8 meters under the streets of Seville led Mrs Whishaw to surmise^[⁰⁵³^] that Tartessos may be buried under that city. Edwin Björkman wrote a short book, The Search for Atlantis^[¹⁸¹^] in which he identified Atlantis with Tartessos and also Homer’s Scheria.

Steven A. Arts, the author of Mystery Airships in the Sky, also penned an article for Atlantis Rising in which he suggests that the Tarshish of the Old Testament is a reference to Tartessos and by extension to Atlantis^(r⁾!

More recently Karl Jürgen Hepke has written at length, on his website⁽^a⁾, about Tartessos. Dr Rainer W. Kühne, following the work of another German, Werner Wickboldt, had an article^[⁴²⁹^] published in Antiquity that highlighted satellite images of the Guadalquivir valley that he has identified as a possible location for Atlantis. Kühne published an article⁽^b⁾ outlining his reasons for identifying Tartessos as the model for Plato’s Atlantis.

Although there is a consensus that Tartessos was located in Iberia, there have been some refinements of the idea. One of these is the opinion of Peter Daughtrey, expressed in his book, Atlantis and the Silver City^[0893]in which he proposes that Tartessos was a state which extended from Gibraltar around the coast to include what is today Cadiz and on into Portugal’s Algarve having Silves as its ancient capital.

It was reported⁽^c⁾ in January 2010 that researchers were investigating the site in the Doñana National Park, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, identified by Dr Rainer Kühne as Atlantis in a 2011 paper^(s). In the same year, Professor Richard Freund of the University of Hartford garnered a lot of publicity when he visited the site and expressed the view that it was the location of Tartessos which he equates with Atlantis. The Jerusalem Post in seeking to give more balance to the discussion quoted archaeology professor Aren Maeir who commented that “Richard Freund is known as someone who makes ‘sensational’ finds. I would say that I am exceptionally skeptical about the thing, but I wouldn’t discount it 100% until I see the details, which haven’t been published as far as I know.”^(u⁾

A minority view is that Tarshish is related to Tarxien (Tarshin) in Malta, which, however, is located some miles inland with no connection to the sea. Another unusual theory is offered by Luana Monte, who has opted for Thera as Tartessos. She bases this view on a rather convoluted etymology^(e) which morphed its original name of Therasia into Therasios, which in Semitic languages having no vowels would read as ‘t.r.s.s’ and can be equated with Tarshish in the Bible, which in turn is generally accepted to refer to Tartessos.

Giorgio Valdés favours a Sardinian location for Tartessos^(f), an idea endorsed later by Giuseppe Mura in his 2018 book, published in Italian, Tartesso in Sardegna ^[^2068], the full title of which translates as Tartessos in Sardinia: Reasons, circumstances and methods used by ancient historians and geographers to remove Tartessos (the Tarshish of the Bible) from Caralis and place it in Spanish Andalusia. Caralis is an old name for Cagliari, the Sardinian capital.

Andis Kaulins has claimed that further south, in the same region, Carthage was possibly built on the remains of Tartessos, near the Pillars of Heracles^(j).

A more radical idea was put forward in 2012 by the Spanish researcher, José Angel Hernández, who proposed^(g)(h)that the Tarshish of the Bible was to be found in 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!

A recent novel by C.E. Albertson^[¹³ ⁰^] uses the idea of an Atlantean Tartessos as a backdrop to the plot.

A relatively recent claim associating Tartessos with Atlantis came from Simcha Jacobovici in a promotional interview^(p⁾ for the 2017 National Geographic documentary, Atlantis Rising. In it, Jacobovici was joined by James Cameron as producer, but unfortunately, the documentary did not produce anything of any real substance despite a lot of pre-broadcast hype.

There is an extensive website⁽^d⁾ dealing with all aspects of Tartessos, including the full text of Schulten’s book on the city. Although this site is in Spanish, it is worthwhile using your Google translator to read an English version.

“Today, researchers consider Tartessos to be the Western Mediterranean’s first historical civilization. Now, at an excavation in Extremadura—a region of Spain that borders Portugal, just north of Seville—a new understanding of how that civilization may have ended is emerging from the orange and yellow soil. But the site, Casas del Turuñuelo, is also uncovering new questions.”^(q) First surveyed in 2014 it was in late 2021, a report emerged of exciting excavations there that may have a bearing on the demise of Tartessos. Work is currently on hold because of a dispute with landowners, with only a quarter of the site uncovered. The project director is Sebastian Celestino Perez. The Atlas Obscura website offers further background and details of discoveries at the site^(t).

^(a)http://web.archive.org/web/20170716221143/http://www.tolos.de/History%20E.htm

^(b) Meine Homepage (archive.org)

^(c)http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/7019522/Lost-city-of-Atlantis-could-be-buried-in-southern-Spain.html

^(d) TARTESSOS.INFO: LA IBERIA BEREBER (archive.org)

^(e) http://xmx.forumcommunity.net/?t=948627&st=105

^(f) http://gianfrancopintore.blogspot.ie/2010/09/atlantide-e-tartesso-tra-mito-e-realta.html

^(g) http://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/mito-y-religion/

^(h) http://joseangelh.wordpress.com/category/arqueologia-e-historia/

⁽ⁱ⁾ http://books.google.ie/books/about/Antiguedades_y_Principado_de_la_ilustr%C3%AD.html?id=mIxBueFRuk0C&redir_esc=y

^(j) Pillars of Heracles – Alternative Location (archive.org)

^(k)Archive 3283 | (atlantipedia.ie)

^(l) https://www.richardcassaro.com/atlantis-ruins-europe-megalithic-master-masonry-cyclopean-colony-tarraco-spain/

^(m) https://www.richardcassaro.com/atlantis-ruins-europe-megalithic-master-masonry-cyclopean-colony-tarraco-spain/

⁽ⁿ⁾ (PDF) Tarteso vs la Atlántida: un debate que trasciende al mito (researchgate.net)

^(o) (PDF) Definiendo Tarteso: indígenas y fenicios (researchgate.net)

^(p) Lost City of Atlantis And Its Incredible Connection to Jewish Temple (israel365news.com)

^(q) The Ancient People Who Burned Their Culture to the Ground – Atlas Obscura

^(r) Atlantis Rising magazine #36 http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At

^(s)(PDF) The Archaeological Search for Tartessos-Tarshish-Atlantis and Other Human Settlements in the Donana National Park (researchgate.net) *

^(t) https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/tartessos-casas-del-turunuelo

^(u) https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-news/the-deepest-jewish-encampment

^(v) https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220727-the-iberian-civilisation-that-vanished

^(w) https://www.inh.cat/articles/La-localitzacio-de-Tartessos-es-desconeguda.-Pot-ser-Tartessos-Tortosa-

^(x) Richard Hennig – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)

Tagged Adolf Schulten, Andalusia, Arysio dos Santos, Baestis, C.E. Albertson, Carles Camp, Carolina López-Ruiz, Casas del Turuñuelo, Edwin Bjorkman, Ephorus, Ester Rodríguez González, Extramadura, Gades, Giorgio Valdes, Giuseppe Mura, Gustav Moritz Redslob, Helgoland, Indus Valley, Italy, James Cameron, Jean Gattefosse, José Angel Hernández, Karl Hepke, Luana Monte, Mario Mas Fenollar, Mrs Whishaw, National Geographic, Otto Jessen, Peter Daughtrey, Portugal, Rainer Kuhne, Richard Cassaro, Richard Freund, Richard Hennig, Rodrigo Caro, Sebastian Celestino, Sebastian Celestino Perez, Seville, Simcha Jacobovici, Tarshish, Tartessos, Thera, Tortosa, Valenciano

Maya

Published June 10, 2010

The Maya of ancient Mexico and Guatemala have generated much controversy regarding their origins^(w). Recent studies indicate that the story of the development of this remarkable civilisation may be more complex than previously thought^(k). The demise of the Mayan culture (800-950 AD) has now been definitively shown to be the result of persistent drought, particularly in the southern lowlands^(o).

Maya Area of Occupation

Nevertheless, a recent (Sept.2021) article^(ac)with contributions from several authorities, highlights the complexity referred to above, while one area might be collapsing another could be flourishing – “A number of Maya cities rose and fell at different times, some within that 800 to 1000 time period, and some afterwards, according to scholars. For example, while areas in southern Mesoamerica, such as Tikal in what is now Guatemala, declined in the eighth and ninth centuries due to environmental problems and political turmoil, populations rose in other areas, such as Chichén Itzá, in what is now the Mexican Yucatán Peninsula,” and “When Chichén Itzá declined, largely because of a lengthy drought during the 11th century, another Yucatán Peninsula city, called Mayapán, started to thrive.”

“We should always remember, the last Maya state, Nojpetén, fell only in 1697 — pretty recent,” said Guy Middleton, a visiting fellow at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Newcastle University in the U.K. “It is really important to get the message out there that though classic Maya cities and states did collapse, and culture did transform, the Maya in no way disappeared,” said Middleton, adding that “we should pay attention to the story, the state and status of the Maya descendent population in Mesoamerica now.”

The commonly held idea, that the Maya were destroyed by drought is now disputed^(ah).

The Maya of Central America today are estimated to number seven million.

Inevitably the Maya have been linked with Atlantis by some writers such as Lewis Spence and E.H. Thompson who claimed that the Maya were descendants of Atlanteans. The maverick, Augustus Le Plongeon, was alone in identifying Atlantis as a colony of the Maya and that their language was in fact Greek! Others, such as Jean-Frédérick Waldeck, included an Egyptian linkage as well.

Richard Cassaro has published a fascinating collection of parallels between the Mayan and Egyptian cultures on Graham Hancock’s website ^(ag).

The controversial American politician Charles Gates Dawes was convinced that there had been a connection between Atlantis and the Maya.

Joachim Rittstieg claimed that the Maya and the Vikings had contact for nearly 500 years (754-1224 AD)^(ae).

However, trumping all that is a recent claim that the Maya had contact with extraterrestrials and that a documentary providing evidence is planned^(b). In a similar vein is the latest English language publication from Erich von Däniken entitled: Astronaut Gods of the Maya^[¹⁴²²^]. Semir Osmanagic, of Bosnian pyramid fame, added a twist to this proposed linkage when he claimed^[⁰⁵¹⁹^] that the Maya had come from Atlantis, which in turn had been founded by visitors from the Pleiades!

For some comic relief, I can suggest a 1976 book^[833] by brothers Eric & Craig Umland which ‘reveals’ that the Maya ‘are remnants of space explorers whose attempts to colonise our solar system went awry more than 40,000 years ago.’ Nearly every page is full of hilarious nonsense and nearly worth the £0.01 currently quoted on Amazon.co.uk. A website⁽ⁱ⁾ dealing with ‘unreason’ uses extracts from the Umlands as good examples! If you wish to read about the Maya in Antarctica, the Canaries as well as the Moon, this is the book for you.

July 2012 saw a report^(j) on the discovery of the largest Mayan manmade dam at Tikal in Guatemala, which was 33ft high and 260ft long and included sand filters.

The Maya had a sophisticated writing system that occupied the attention of some 19^th-century writers including Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg and Le Plongeon. Unfortunately, de Bourbourg followed the work of the 16^th-century bishop of Yucatán, Diego de Landa whose interpretation was seriously erroneous. It was Constantine Rafinesque who partially deciphered some of the Mayan numerals in 1832.

A report in 2013^(l) indicated that substantial progress has been made in the decipherment of any outstanding difficulties in the translation of the Mayan script through Internet cooperation.

July 2012 saw a report^(j⁾ on the discovery of the largest Mayan man-made dam at Tikal in Guatemala, which was 33ft high and 260ft long and included sand filters. Ten years later, it was discovered that the Maya had also the ability to engineer a water fountain in their city of Palenque^(v) and had advanced water management systems^(z). A recent BBC article^(ab) took an in-depth look at the remarkable hydrological capabilities of the Maya.

Since Tikal was first seen by a European, probably in 1696, it became recognised as Guatemala’s largest archaeological site. In 2021 the use of lidar revealed that the city was four times more extensive than previous thought. The March 2024 edition of National Geographic has an article highlighting the wonderful discoveries regarding the sophisticated society of the Maya revealed by lidar. Unfortunately, looting continues to be a serious problem compounded by a lack of funds to properly exploit the tourism potential of places such as Tikal.

In 2020, the largest and oldest Mayan monument in Mexico was identified. It is in the form of a ceremonial platform that is between 33 and 50 feet tall and is nearly a mile long^(x). The structure, dated to around 3,000 years ago and was discovered with the help of LIDAR in the state of Tabasco.

James O’Kon, an engineer, has investigated Mayan technology for decades, including the discovery of a suspension bridge at the ancient Mayan city of Yaxchilan in Mexico in 1995, which is believed to be the longest bridge of the ancient world^(r⁾. This and other aspects of Mayan technology he explores in his book, The Lost Secrets of Maya Technology^[¹⁴⁹⁰^].

One of those technological secrets was the unusual acoustics found at Mayan sites, particularly Chichen Itza^(ad). In 1931 Leopold Stokowski, the renowned conductor, spent four days at the site to determine the acoustic principles that could be applied to an open-air concert theatre he was designing. He failed to learn the secret.

More recently, Lorraine Stobbart has written Utopia: Fact or Fiction^[^0476], which suggests that the ‘Utopia’ of Sir Thomas More was inspired by the Mayan culture although his text was written before Mexico was ‘officially’ discovered. Stobbart recently revealed that she is now revising her views.

However, a more serious claim relates to the idea that Mayan inscriptions revealed that a global catastrophe was to occur in 2012. This nonsense^(g) turned into a minor publishing industry. Some even tried to link this daft idea to Atlantis. Fortunately, May 2012 saw evidence from excavations in Guatemala that shows the Mayan calendar extending well beyond 2012^(h).

The Mayan calendar has provoked speculation and controversy ever since its discovery. Its origins are obscure, but one interpretation is that the world we live in was created on this day in 3114 B.C. A quite different view was proposed over seventy years ago by Georg Hinzpeter of the German Hoerbiger Society who claimed that our Moon was captured by the Earth in June of 8498 BC and that it became the zero date for the Maya.^(y)

Aloys Eiling, the German researcher, commented on the accuracy of the Mayan calendar “The Mayan calendar even surpasses the precision of the Gregorian calendar in use today. Not only did the Mayan calendar measure the duration of the Earth’s orbit around the sun more accurately than our current calendar, but the Maya gave an even more precise value for the average duration of the Moon’s orbit around Earth. The precision achieved is all the more remarkable as the Moon in deserts or regions with clear skies may have played an important role in everyday life as a nightly source of light. But of what use is its dull light in the rainforest or cloudy regions of the world?”^(af)

>>The accuracy of the Mayan calendar is such that it loses just one day in 6,000 years^(ap).<<

In 2012, it was reported that Mike Baillie, the renowned dendrochronologist, had discovered a correlation between ice core chemistry spikes and the Mayan Long Count Calendar^(al)(m).

The late David H. Kelley, a Harvard-educated archaeologist and epigrapher at Canada’s University of Calgary, had been investigating ancient links between Asia and pre-Columbian America. In that regard, he published a paper outlining similarities between the Mayan and ancient Chinese calendars that were too numerous to be explained by independent development^(p). A more sceptical view is offered^(an)by Jason Colavito, who traces the idea back to Alexander von Humboldt^(q).

In a paper entitled On the Mayan Chronology^(ao), Emilio Spedicato offers several ideas regarding ancient Meso-American chronologies. For example, he proposes that the large numbers used by the Maya and Toltecs record days rather than years. Many of his ideas stem from the work of Immanuel Velikovsky, John Ackerman and the Tollmans.

The work of Teobert Maler at the end of the 19th century was invaluable in the advancement of Mayan studies. Subsequent researchers have seized upon his discovery of a frieze at Tikal, which he interpreted as a depiction of the destruction of Atlantis, as evidence of the existence of Atlantis in the Atlantic. Apart from Maler’s conjectural ideas, no tangible link has been found between the Maya and Atlantis apart from the use in their glyphs of elephants, an animal that features in Plato’s narrative.

The authenticity of the photo of the frieze has been called into question by Jason Colavito and his related blog⁽ⁿ⁾ is worthy of consideration.

Otto Muck overstated it somewhat when he wrote “If Atlantis had not existed there would be no way of explaining the origins of the Maya civilisation”^[^098.^243]

In late 2011 controversy erupted when it was claimed that the Itza Maya had migrated to North America, more specifically Georgia^(c). It was also suggested that earthen pyramids in Georgia and Florida can be attributed to the Maya^(e). Richard Thornton led the charge with this claim, which understandably generated considerable controversy. This led to a frosty exchange between Thornton and Jason Colavito^(ai).

Among their other accomplishments is the claim that the Maya were capable of predicting meteor showers^(s).

Gene Matlock, the well-known advocate of Atlantis in Mexico, is certain that the Maya were originally Tamils from Sri Lanka^(a) and Sumerians!

Kurt Schildmann’s 2003 book ^[1759], was reviewed by Dr Horst Friedrich who commented that “One of the provisional results of Schildmann’s decipherment of the Maya script, and study of the Maya language, is the rather sensational discovery that words from several Old World languages (Sumerian, Accadian, Indo-Iranian, Phoenician, Hebrew and Basque) have somehow found their way into the Maya language.”⁽^aa⁾ I’m sure this will be disputed!

A recent article^(f)gives an interesting firsthand account of encountering the important Mayan city of Calakmul deep in the Yucatan jungle. Potentially even more important are recent LiDAR surveys carried out in Guatemala that have revealed an astounding number of previously unidentified Mayan structures. The number of additional Mayan sites identified through the use of LiDAR continues to grow at an incredible rate^(u). It was estimated in 2022 that “researchers using laser technology have located nearly 1,000 previously unknown Maya settlements in Guatemala – the sites include ceremonial centers, sporting facilities, roads, and reservoirs“^(ak).

In June 2023, it was announced that once again that LiDAR had enabled another forgotten Mayan city to be located in the Yucatan⁽^aj⁾.

Muddying the waters further is an Islamic site that claims that the Maya were Atlantean^(m).

⁽^a⁾ https://viewzone2.com/ancientturksx.html

^(b)Mayan Filmmaker Offers Photo as Proof of Aliens, Says Hawking Agrees (Exclusive) (archive.org)

^(c)http://www.billdawers.com/2011/12/22/is-there-an-1100-year-old-mayan-site-in-north-georgia/

^(e⁾ http://www.mayainamerica.com/2012/01/pyramids-in-florida-and-georgia.html

^(f)https://travel4wildlife.com/deep-jungle-puerta-calakmul-mexico/#.U5K8MpAU9to

^(g)https://web.archive.org/web/20140811054919/https://2012hoax.wikidot.com/oldstart

^(h) https://www.christianpost.com/news/earliest-mayan-mural-contradicts-dec-21-2012-doomsday-74788/

⁽ⁱ⁾https://web.archive.org/web/20200925184903/https://www.jfk-online.com/exploring.html

^(j)https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120716191443.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Ffossils_ruins%2Fancient_civilizations+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Fossils+%26+Ruins+News+–+Ancient+Civilizations%29

^(k) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130425142343.htm

^(l)https://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/28/maya-script-glyph-language-decoding?INTCMP=SRCH

^(m)https://mashiyah.blogspot.ie/ (offline 1/8/14)

⁽ⁿ⁾https://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2014/02/did-the-maya-depict-the-end-of-atlantis-at-tikal.html

^(p) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/mayan-calendar-similar-ancient-chinese-early-contact-006612

^(q)https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/newly-published-articles-claim-mexican-calendar-derives-from-chinese-original

^(r) The Lost Secrets of Maya Technology (archive.org)

^(s) Ancient Maya May Have Foreseen Meteor Showers – Eos *

^(t) https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/lasers-shed-some-light-on-the-maya-snake-kingdom/

^(u)https://news.artnet.com/art-world/technology-transforming-mayan-archaeology-1558456

^(v) https://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/03/maya-pyramid-plumbing-unearthed-by-archaeologists/1#.Xm-Nb2BFBVc (link broken)

^(w) Mexico and atlantis | Truth Control (archive.org)

^(x) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/largest-and-oldest-maya-structure-found-mexico-lidar-180975037/

^(y) Atlantean Research, Vol 3, No.1, May, 1950

^(z) Maya Water System Discoveries Show the Ancient Civilization in a New Light | Discover Magazine

^(aa) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/books.php

^(ab) The Maya’s ingenious secret to survival – BBC Travel

^(ac) https://www.livescience.com/why-maya-civilization-collapsed.html

⁽^ad⁾ https://www.nature.com/articles/news041213-5

^(ae) http://atlantisorschung.de/index.php?title=Joachim_Rittstieg

^(af) https://grahamhancock.com/eilinga3/

^(ag) The Ancient Egyptians and Mayans: Ten Unexplained Parallels – Graham Hancock Official Website

^(ah) Ancient Maya lessons on surviving drought: Huge variety of plant foods made their starvation unlikely — ScienceDaily

^(ai) Richard Thornton and the “Maya” of Georgia – JASON COLAVITO

^(aj) https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/lost-maya-city-discovered-deep-in-the-jungles-of-mexico

^(ak) https://news.artnet.com/art-world/guatemala-mirador-calakmul-karst-basin-lidar-maya-settlements-2235254

^(al) Mayan Match: Baillie discovers correlation between ice core chemistry spikes and Mayan Long Count Calendar – The Cosmic Tusk

^(am) Microsoft Word – Science Brevia paper.doc (cosmictusk.com)

^(an) Atlantis, Mu, and the Maya – JASON COLAVITO *

^(ao) ON THE MAYAN CHRONOLOGY – Ruggero Marino – Cristoforo Colombo *

^(ap)Celestial and Mathematical Precision in Ancient Architecture (redicecreations.com) *

Tagged 2012, Alexander von Humboldt, Aloys Eiling, Augustus le Plongeon, Brasseur de Bourbourg, Calakmul, Calendars, Chichen Itza, David H. Kelley, Drought, E.H.Thompson, Edith & Alexander Tollman, Emilio Spedicato, Eric & Craig Umland, Erich von Daniken, extraterrestrials, Florida, Gene Matlock, Georg Hinzpeter, Georgia, German Hoerbiger Society, Guatemala, Guy Middleton, Horst Friedrich, Immanuel Velikovsky, Itza Maya, James O'Kon, Jason Colavito, Jean-Frederick Waldeck, Joachim Rittstieg, John Ackerman, Kurt Schildmann, Leopold Stokowski, Lewis Spence, LIDAR, Lorraine Stobbart, Maya, Mayan Long Count Calendar, Mesoamerica, Mexico, Mike Baillie, National Geographic, Otto Muck, Pleiades, Richard Cassaro, Richard Thornton, Santorini, Semir Osmanagic, Tamils, Teobert Maler, Thomas More, Tikal, Toltecs, Yaxchilan, Yucatan

Megalith Builders

Published December 5, 2009

The Megalith Builders, who date mainly from the Neolithic Period, are frequently identified with Plato’s Atlanteans. Their remarkable structures were built between the middle of the fifth and second millennia B.C., a period that is compatible with the final days of Atlantis according to Plato. The building of megalithic structures in Western Europe appears to have ended just before the beginning of the Bronze Age – coincidence? Emmet Sweeney^, however, contends that “the great Megalithic-building culture of Atlantic Europe and North Africa commenced around 1100 BC or perhaps a little earlier”! ^[^700.208]

Proponents of the idea of a megalithic building in Atlantis see the location and extent of the megalithic structures as agreeing with Plato’s description, particularly his reference to Atlantis being ‘beyond the Pillars of Heracles’. However, the location of the ‘Pillars’ at the time of Solon’s visit to Egypt, is strongly disputed. In fact, the only territory unambiguously named by Plato as Atlantean was in southern Italy and North Africa along with several islands of which there are many in that region.

However, there are many features in Plato’s narrative that do not conform to our current knowledge of the megalith builders. There is no evidence that they had writing, irrigation technology or navigational skills to mount an attack on Egypt/Athens or any other characteristics ascribed to the Atlanteans by him.

On the other hand, if these attributes are just literary flesh applied to a skeleton of historical truth there is the possibility of a link between the Atlanteans and the megalith builders remaining.

Atlantis enthusiasts are quite happy to associate the megalith builders with Atlantis, as it provides something tangible to enhance the credibility of Plato’s narrative pointing to sites such as Stonehenge or the Maltese Temples. British researcher Robert John Langdon has gone further and proposed that the megalith builders originally came from Africa and settled in Doggerland at the end of the Ice Age, where they established Atlantis^[919]. When Doggerland was submerged they migrated to what is now mainland Britain, where they built Stonehenge as a memorial to Atlantis.

Manuel Vega, who places Atlantis in the Atlantic has some novel ideas regarding Stonehenge as well as Ireland’s Newgrange ^[0868].

Megalith building in North Africa has been documented for over a century. The Hill of Graces^[1566] by H.S. Cowper in 1897 concentrated on describing the megaliths in the region of Tripoli. The Mzora Stone Circle is a huge megalithic monument in Morocco and is considered to be the largest stone ellipse in the world. Further east the stone circle of Nabta Playa in Egypt had its importance further highlighted in a 2010 book by Robert Bauval & Thomas G. Brophy, Black Genesis^[1508]. A 2012 illustrated paper reviews the range of megalithic monuments found across North Africa^(af).

We must, of course, not omit the greatest megalithic monuments of all, namely, the Egyptian pyramids and particularly those at Giza. The apparent sophistication of their builders was greatly enhanced by the introduction of the Orion Correlation Theory (OCT) by Robert Bauval.

In a paper^(at) published on Graham Hancock’s website in 2022, Freddy Silva proposed an additional OCT – in Scotland. He suggested that the Pyramids of Giza, and by extension, Orion’s Belt matched the layout of the three stone circles of Stenness, Brodgar and Bookan. In the same paper, he goes further identifying other megalithic monuments in Scotland with counterparts in Sardinia and Armenia! OCT is not without critics.

The megaliths of North Africa are not the only monuments to adorn that continent Atlantisforschung drew my attention to a number of short articles by William Corliss ^(al)(am)(an)highlighting what has become known as the Senegambian Complex and are now a UNESCO World Heritage site^(ak).

Paul Dunbavin in his Atlantis of the West ^[⁰⁰⁹⁹^]and Towers of Atlantis ^[1627]promotes the idea of a megalithic Atlantis centred off the coast of Wales in what is now the Irish Sea. In 2022 Dunbavin recorded^(ao) that “In a review of the “Pathways to the Cosmos” conference held at Dublin Castle in September 2018, Liz Henty makes some perhaps surprising comments. She notes that this is the first such conference where archaeologists and archaeoastronomers have combined to broadly agree that some Neolithic monuments in Britain and Ireland were astronomically aligned^(ap).

While not a new idea, a megalithic connection with Atlantis has recently been given further attention by the French writer Sylvain Tristan who was inspired by Jean Deruelle and Alan Butler. More recently, Jean-Michel Hermans, a French ethnologist, also added support for a megalithic Atlantis. Alfred deGrazia also joined this club as well as the German author Helmut Tributsch who has added his support to the idea of a megalithic Atlantis, specifically locating its capital on the island of Gavrinis in Brittany. A similar claim has been made by Hank Harrison, who also believes that the Morbihan region was an important Atlantean centre if not the location of its capital. Further support for a megalithic Atlantis has been given by Walter Schilling who places Plato’s city in the Bay of Cadiz. Robert Temple has recently offered grudging support for the concept of Atlantean megalith builders^(ac).

Iberia is also home to very many megalithic structures of varying types. Recently, lower waters in a Spanish reservoir revealed once more the impressive 144-stone Dolmen-de-Guadalperal, situated roughly halfway between Madrid and the Portuguese border^(z). Efforts are being made to ensure its preservation before the water levels rise again.

The most recent (2022) attempt at linking the megalith builders with Atlanteans has come from a disappointing book by Thomas Sheridan and Neil McDonald ^[2070], in which their starting point is the magnificent megalithic remains found in the Orkneys that are situated just north of the Scottish mainland.

As far as I am aware classical writers make no obvious reference to the megalith builders, nor has this omission been commented on by modern writers. However, the numerous indirect references to Atlantis by the same ancient writers are deemed inadequate, which seems consistent with a dearth of information regarding early history.

It appears to me that other questions that have not been definitively answered relate to the identity of the megalith builders, why they stopped building and what happened to them. Another thought is that if the megalith builders lived at the same time as the Atlanteans, is it not strange that both disappeared around the same time or did they? My opinion is that we are probably confronted with two unrelated mysteries – the disappearance of the megalith builders and the demise of Atlantis.

Parallel with the megaliths of the eastern Atlantic seaboard are the megaliths of North America^(ab), particularly those of New England^(ag). Who built them and when? Are they evidence of very early pre-Columbian voyagers from Europe?^(b)Nobody seems to have put forward the idea that megalith building might have spread from America to Europe! Is it such a wild suggestion?

Johnni Langer has published a lengthy paper on the prehistoric megaliths of South America and in particular Brazil. Generally speaking references to South American megaliths focus on Tiwanaku or Cuzco, considered to be relatively recent. However, Langer’s article has drawn attention to structures further afield in Brazil that suggest astronomical alignments^(ar). Brazil continues to reveal more megalithic structures, unfortunately, in some cases only because of deforestation^(au). The Brazilian discoveries have only added to the who and when questions relating to megaliths generally and whether there is any possible connection between the megalith builders and Atlantis.

A 2024 report has drawn attention to a stone circle in Peru. Although it has been known for over 60 years, it was only systematically studied from 2015. It has been dated as 4,700 years old at a location known as Callacpuma^(aw).

An interesting article combining all the strange aspects of megalith building can be read online^(c) which certainly offers food for thought. A paper^(d) published in September 2013 gives a good overview of megalithic studies during the past few decades. Walter Haug’s well-illustrated website^(k) offers a range of previously ignored megalithic sites in Germany.

Much nonsense has been written about the megalith builders, particularly on the Internet, where you find daft ideas such as attributing their construction to aliens^(a). The suggestion that extraterrestrials had the technology to travel in space but when they land on earth they have to build observatories with stone is just silly. Why would they even need such crude observatories if they had the technology and astronomical knowledge to travel across the cosmos?

A valuable website dealing with the global spread of megalithic monuments is The Megalithic Portal established by Andy Burnham^(g), which has regular updates. Other useful sites are Stone Pages^(h) and Megalithic Ireland⁽ⁱ⁾. Another site worth a look at is that of Sjur C. Papazian^(l). There is also a site^(j) dealing specifically with the dolmens of Corsica and Sardinia.

In the Middle East dolmens stretch in a line from the Caucasus^(s)(p) to Yemen with a remarkable concentration of them in modern Jordan^(m), a fact which prompted a former Dutch ambassador to Jordan, Gajus Scheltema, to write Megalithic Jordan^[1206]. Jordan is also home to an ancient mysterious 150 km wall, which was 1-1.5 metres high^(u).

Dolmens are also found in more distant lands such as India^(r), Korea^(n)(v) and Japan^(o). It is difficult to look at the worldwide distribution of dolmens and not consider the possibility of some form of global cultural diffusion! Rarely discussed are the widely dispersed megalithic remains found throughout the Pacific islands^(q).

A remarkable theory is presented by John M Jensen Jr to explain the function of dolmens throughout the globe, namely that they were constructed to protect from attacks by dinosaurs! This suggestion is part of a paper that claims that humans and dinosaurs co-existed^(ad).

Another unusual claim comes from Yair Davidiy, a Brit-Am promoter, who wrote on their website – “Dolmens and Megalithic Monuments originated in Ancient Israel. Jeremiah 31:21 says that the Lost Ten Tribes will construct a trail of Megalithic Monuments from Israel to their places of exile and evidence of this path will enable them to return. Such a trail exists! It is the Trail of the Dolmens from the Middle East to the West.”^(ae) As far as I’m aware Davidy has not explained the huge numbers of dolmens in places such as Korea and Japan! Professor W.A. Liebenberg has written a longer piece^(aq) on the ‘Lost Tribes’ as the builders of the megaliths. However, since the megalithic building period is generally accepted to have lasted from around 4000 BC until 1500 BC, this created a problem for Davidy and Liebenberg. The disappearance of the Lost Tribes is dated to around 700 BC leading to their dispersal and proposed megalith building as they travelled. D & L include Newgrange (3200 BC) among their monuments and that is where their difficulties begin. Both claim that before 700 BC the year was 360 days in length (after Velikovsky ^[^037.128]) rather than our present 365 days. They argue that if Newgrange (among other monuments) had been built when we had a 360-day year the sun would not still light up the interior at the winter solstice. Therefore, they conclude that most megaliths were erected AFTER 700 BC! An alternative conclusion is that the idea of a 360-day year is flawed and that a date BEFORE 700 BC must be correct!

There is a well-illustrated website offering an overview of the megalithic culture of Western Europe and the Mediterranean^(t).

In February 2019 the Smithsonian Magazine had a report telling us that “Bettina Schulz Paulsson, an archaeologist at the University of Gothenburg, reexamined some 2,410 radiocarbon dating results that have been assigned to Europe’s megaliths and put them through a Bayesian statistical analysis. Based on the picture the data presents, Schulz Paulsson believes that the megaliths were first constructed by dwellers of northwest France during the second half of the fifth millennium BC.” ^(w)

Some years ago, the renowned English archaeologist, Aubrey Burl, concluded after twenty years of study that French immigrants had built Stonehenge^(aa). More recently, Mike Parker Pearson, a leading Stonehenge expert, has also endorsed this idea of a French origin for megalith building^(x).

Archaeologist, Robert Hensey in his insightful First Light ^[1766.9] has also noted that “Construction of Breton passage tombs is likely to have ended by 3900 BC, almost certainly by 3800 BC, and the most recent evidence from Ireland suggests that passage tomb construction had not yet begun on this island by that time.”

Archaeologist Ashleigh Murzewski published a 2012 paper ^(av)on the significance of megalithic monuments in Atlamtis Europe and noted that “the construction of megalithic monuments in Atlantic Europe are not restricted to a single purpose, nor how they reflect one aspect of the community that built them.”

Jean-Michel Hermans contends that the megalith builders of Brittany had originated in the Caucasus and after a sojourn in what is now Bulgaria moved to Brittany after 5000 BC^(aj).

Antequera is a city in Spain’s region of Andalucia. It is home to three megalithic structures (1) the “Dolmen de Menga”, (2)the “Dolmen de Viera” and (3) the “Tholos de Romeral” of which de Menga has been described as the largest and heaviest in Spain. They are collectively designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and described by that organisation as “These three tombs, buried beneath their original earth tumuli, are one of the most remarkable architectural works of European prehistory and one of the most important examples of European Megalithism.” The limited carbon dating that has been carried out would seem to indicate that construction took place sometime in the fourth millennium BC. Richard Cassaro has visited the site and posted an interesting report with many illustrations^(ai).

The interesting claims of Schulz Paulsson, who places the origins of megalithic construction in Brittany in the fifth millennium BC, may be challenged by a little-known counterclaim that tombs in the Ox Mountains in the west of Ireland have been dated to the seventh millennium BC^(y). However, my personal view is that it would be more likely that the practice of megalith building would have spread from the east or south rather than from Ireland westward!

A number of megalithic sites situated around the world are reviewed on the illustrated megalithic builders website. Contributions from popular writers, such as Hancock, Bauval and Schoch are included^(ah).

A rational explanation for the construction of cyclopean masonry has been offered by Professor of Architecture Jean-Pierre Protzen and demonstrated on a YouTube clip^(f).

^(a)Unexplained Mysteries around the world (archive.org)

^(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20171105055925/http://planetvermont.com/pvq/v9n2/megaliths.html

^(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20140625091115/http:/www.bibleufo.com/ancconstmono.htm

^(d)https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.ie/2013/09/whats-significance-of-megalithic.html

^(e) https://www.paranormalpeopleonline.com/cyclopean-masonry-a-mystery-of-the-ancient-world/

^(f) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkze3WUvHz4

^(g) https://www.megalithic.co.uk/

^(h) https://www.stonepages.com/about_us.html

⁽ⁱ⁾ https://www.megalithicireland.com/

^(j) http://www.museodeidolmen.it/englishdefault.html

^(k) https://web.archive.org/web/20220808093846/https://www.megalith-pyramiden.de/AB-001-Cairn-Forschungsgesellschaft.html

^(l) https://aratta.wordpress.com/megalith-culture/