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NEWS September 2023
September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we move to Sicily and Malta. The trip is purely vacational. Unfortunately, I am writing this in a dreadful apartment, sitting on a bed, with access to just one useable socket and a small Notebook. Consequently, I possibly will not […]Read More »
Joining The Dots
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 »
Richat Structure
Parker, Mike
Mike Parker is the author of The Radical website(a), in which expresses his interest in Ancient History in general and Atlantis in particular. He considers Atlantis to have been a West African archipelago(b) with the Richat Structure as its capital. As you can read elsewhere in this site, I am convinced by neither hypothesis and shall return to this again.
In another blog, Parker attempts to link the iconic Egyptian symbol of the Eye of Horus with the Richat Structure because of their superficial resemblance to each other. However, this vague similarity can only be observed from the sky. On the ground the circularity of this geological feature is not apparent at all, just as the curvature of the Earth is not to be discerned at ground level.
Then Parker juxtaposes the two phrases ‘The Eye of Horus’ and ‘The Eye of Africa’ as if to suggest a linguistic connection between the two of them, which there is not. I suggest that this is sharp practice! The former has a history going back many thousands of years when it was known as a ‘wedjat’, but I’m unable to locate the first use of the English term, however, the latter is easily dated to middle of the 20th century when spotted by astronauts although it was described on the ground in the 1930s.
Parker has written a two-part article on the location of Atlantis, of which only the first has been published(b) . He places Atlantis around 10,000 years ago, which for me is nonsensical as neither Egypt nor Athens existed at such an early period. In fairness to Parker I shall say nothing more until part 2 is available
(a) https://www.theradical.co.uk/about
(b) https://www.theradical.co.uk/post/plato-s-dialogues-part-1-atlantis-was-a-west-african-archipelago
Corsetti, Jimmy *
Jimmy Corsetti is the owner of the YouTube channel Bright Insight which deals with a range of what is considered ‘fringe’ subjects. Over the past few years, he has been advocating the Richat Structure as the remains of Atlantis, despite a total lack of archaeological evidence and so much scientific support for its identification as a ‘salt dome‘.
Corsetti was overjoyed and felt vindicated when David Edwards published Atlantis Solved [1926] in April 2022 which also endorsed the Richat Structure as Atlantis. However, Edwards admits that he has built his claim on Corsetti’s earlier ideas regarding Richat and is only offering an echo.
>It is now being trailed that Edward’s second book, Fingerprints of the Atlanteans, will be published in late 2023. We expect this to be a reprise of his first book. The pre-publication blurb ends with the claim that “this book changes everything!” I have heard that so many times before(a) and have always been disappointed. We can only hope that Edward does better this time rather than piggyback on Corsetti’s flawed ideas.<
(a) 25% OFF PREORDER – Fingerprints of the Atlanteans – A History Of (archive.org) *
Edward, David
David Edward is the author of Atlantis Solved: The Final Definitive Proof [1296], a slender 99-page volume published in 2022 that endeavours to prove that the Richat Structure was the location of Atlantis. The author claims to have been inspired by videos by Jimmy Corsetti, on the Bright Insight YouTube channel, who has been promoting the Structure as Atlantis for the past four years.
This identification has no archaeological or geological evidence to support it and more importantly, it conflicts with Plato’s account. These shortcomings are dealt with in greater detail in the Richat Structure entry here. However, Ulf Richter has succinctly pointed out that the feature is too wide (35km), too elevated (400 metres) and too far from the sea (500km) to be seriously considered as the location of Atlantis. To which I would add that with well over 3,000km between them, to launch an attack on Athens from Richat would have been totally impractical.
It is now being trailed that Edward’s second book, Fingerprints of the Atlanteans, will be published in late 2023. We can expect this to be a reprise of his first book. The pre-publication blurb ends with the claim that “this book changes everything!” I have heard that so many times before(a)>and have always been disappointed. We can only hope that Edward does better this time rather than piggyback on Corsetti’s flawed ideas.<
(a) 25% OFF PREORDER – Fingerprints of the Atlanteans – A History Of (archive.org) *
Bisceglia, Carlos Alberto
Carlos Alberto Bisceglia is the author of Atlantis 2021 – Lost Continent Discovered [1895]. He has several other books currently being translated from their original Italian.
Bisceglia’s central claim is that Atlantis was situated on an ‘island’ in northwest Africa. He claims “that the ‘geographical coordinates’ left by Plato indicate that the empire of Atlantis included the regions enclosed by Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, the adjacent islands, and possibly southern Spain.” He further claims that this territory was known to the Egyptians as ‘Ma’, being an abbreviation of Meshwash!
The African Humid Period which ended between 6,000 and 5,000 years ago, saw North Africa as home to some very extensive river systems and huge lakes. In what is now Western Sahara, the Tamanrasset River flowed from the Atlas Mountains southward and then west to the Atlantic. This creates a virtual ‘island’ enclosing the Atlantean territory delineated above, leaving a relatively small ‘isthmus’ in the Atlas mountains between the Mediterranean and the source of the river.
A comparable claim was made by Michael Hübner in 2008, when he described the Souss-Massa plain of Morocco as an island, surrounded as it is by mountains and called ‘island’ by the native Amazigh people!
I did not find Bisceglia’s claim convincing. His insistence that the Atlantis war took place 9,000 years before Solon, millennia before Athens even existed and certainly well past the African Humid Period is, for me, untenable. His book lacks focus and could have been fruitfully edited to half its size. Having described his Atlantis, he wanders off all over the world to Göbekli Tepe, Gunung Padang, Nan Madol along with many other places, all interesting, but without any real connection to Atlantis in NW Africa. He names the Richat Structure along with the 50km distant Semsiyat Dome as the capital(s) of Atlantis! According to Bisceglia, the larger structure (Richat) was reserved for the deity, the smaller one (Semsiyat) for his ‘people’!
Nevertheless, Bisceglia offers a pathetic explanation as to why his chosen Atlantis location is not submerged by suggesting that his Land of Ma was confused with the Land of Mu (Sundaland) in the Pacific and that the two separate accounts ‘were merged into one’. He adds “how the Egyptian priests knew this is a mystery. Evidently, some survivors from Sundaland arrived in some way in Egypt”
>However, Bisceglia made one simple but highly pertinent comment – “If Plato had thought that Atlantis was an island located in what we today call the Atlantic Ocean, he would have written that his Atlantis was ‘in the Middle of Okeanos’.” For the Greeks of Plato’s time, Okeanos referred specifically to the great river that encircled the known world. Instead. he placed Atlantis in the Atlantic Sea, which in my opinion brings us back to the Mediterranean.
In 2022, Bisceglia’s entire book was plagiarised under the name of Annabel Caras and is still (8th May 2023) on sale at Amazon.<
Woods, Anthony
Anthony Woods is the author of Atlantis Ireland, published under the auspices of the unaccredited Keystone University(a) in Dublin, with Woods listed as CEO(b). To be blunt, for me as an Irishman, in spite of such an interesting title, I was greatly disappointed. In fact, I was by turn uncertain whether I should laugh or cry.
Woods engages in a generous level of speculation, which was certainly attention seeking. He selectively uses some mythological stories as if history whenever it suits his purpose [p.71]. The content is irritatingly repetitious throughout, references should have been numbered, which along with a few typos, all cry out for an editor.
His core contention is that Stone Age Ireland was a cultural hyperdiffusionist centre. He claims that megalith building, language and religion, all spread globally from Ireland, also known as Atlantis!
Among his many outlandish claims are that:
1.The ancient Irish language is the oldest in the world and is the most extensive with almost a million words [p.142], which is completely wrong by about a factor of six!
2.Irish megaliths are the most spectacular – obviously Woods has never heard of Brittany!
3.Megalith construction spread from Ireland to the world. However respected archaeologists such Aubrey Burl, Mike Parker Pearson and Robert Hensey [1766.6] burst that particular bubble with the their shared view that megalith building originated in France.
According to Woods, “the high concentration of megaliths on the west cost of Britain and France proves that Ireland was the fountainhead, the source of the megalithic mother culture.” The ‘logic’ here eludes me!
4.For some reason Woods thinks islands are ideal for evolution(p139), and that Cro-Magnon Man evolved in Ireland[p.103]!
5.Although Ireland was the island of Atlantis, the city of Atlantis (Cerne) was in Mauritania and is known today as the Richat Structure!
6.The Celts didn’t come to Ireland, they came from Ireland![p.99]
7.Woods makes the modest claim that the Irish visited America thousands of years before Columbus. Which may or may not be true, but what has that to do with Atlantis? [p.93]
In all, this book is not just an Hibernocentric rant. Woods also offers a lengthy diatribe against British imperialism and Vatican political interference, which, although probably justifiable, has also nothing to do with Atlantis
He introduces a range of subjects such as giants, Machu Picchu, Gobekli Tepe and the Garden of Eden, all with Woods’ imagined connection with ancient Ireland!
Apart all the nonsense about ancient Ireland, he barely touches on Plato’s dialogues, except to rubbish his narrative with “It’s clear that Plato’s legend is useful but unreliable, that it combined two separate related places, a lot of exaggeration and several historical errors.”[p.13] and twice patronisingly refers to Plato’s account as “useful but unreliable.”[p.50]
Woods did quote from Ulf Erlingsson, who made a more valliant attempt to link Ireland with Atlantis some years. Erlingsson matched the dimensions of 2000 x 3000 stadia (340 x 227 miles) given by Plato with the diagonal dimensions of Ireland [319.16]. Unfortunately, Erlingsson got it very wrong and Woods copied his error. Plato’s figures were the dimensions of the Plain of Atlantis, while the Central Plain of Ireland is just a fraction of its size(c), being very roughly 150 x 100 miles in extent. Now, who’s unreliable?
At which point, I could take no more and gave up.
Hernandez, Jose D. C.
Jose D.C. Hernandez wrote an extensive article for the world-mysteries website in 2013, entitled A Celestial Impact and Atlantis(a). In this fully illustrated paper he outlines his belief that an impact around 12,000 years ago was responsible for the biblical Deluge, the creation of Australia and the destruction of Atlantis. He specifies the Richat Structure in Mauritania as the remains of Atlantis.
(a) https://blog.world-mysteries.com/science/a-celestial-impact-and-atlantis/ (item 11)
Gigal, Antoine
Antoine Gigal is a French researcher, probably best known for her work on the pyramids of Sicily 
described on her multilingual and well illustrated website(a). Her first love is clearly ancient Egypt, a passion that is evident throughout her website. She includes an interesting article on the method used to build the Great Pyramid proposed by Hasan Sayid Ahmad, which involves the use of sledges in the internal ascending passage(d).
She has only touched on the subject of Atlantis, apparently accepting its existence without involving herself in discussing any specific aspects of the story. An example of this is to be seen in her article on the Richat Structure(b).
Gigal was also a founder of the Giza for Humanity website(c).
(a) https://www.gigalresearch.com/uk/pyramides-sicile.php
(b) https://www.gigalresearch.com/uk/mystery-of-the-giant-blue-eye-of-africa-in-mauritania.php
Alexander, George S., and Rosen, Natalis
George S. Alexander and Natalis Rosen have established a website(a) promoting the Richat Structure, in Mauritania, as the location of the city of Atlantis. They are not the first to make this suggestion but have at least visited the site in 2008 to gather evidence to support their contention. Their expedition formed the basis for a free one hour video(b). Like supporters of various other locations theories, Alexander and Rosen have managed to match some of the details in Plato’s description with features in the Richat area.
The Richat Structure is around 35 km in diameter yet no evidence whatsoever of buildings whatsoever was found. In my opinion Alexander & Rosen have not satisfactorily explained this absence. Apart from that, a city with a diameter of 35 km is not credible in the timeframe proposed by them.
>(a) Visiting Atlantis | Gateway to a lost world (archive.org)
(b) Visiting Atlantis (archive.org)<
Salt Domes
Salt Domes are the result of large deposits of salts laid down millions of years ago and subsequently covered by layers of sediment that in time became stratified rock. Over time the deposits push upwards, as they are usually less dense than the overlying rock, creating domes. Erosion of these domes can produce a feature that has the appearance of a series of concentric circles. These domes can be many kilometres in diameter and in Kazakhstan have been numbered at 1,200.
Salt domes have been recently put forward as an explanation for the circular waterways of Atlantis, as described by Plato. Ulf Richter has proposed(a) that if one such dome had originally been overlaid with strata of varying hardness the effects of erosion could have produced a number of concentric depressions that could have been adapted as canals. Richter provides a diagram demonstrating the process and gave the Richat Structure in Mauretania as a good example of the process.
*Richter outlined this in a paper presented to the 2005 Atlantis Conference [629.451].
Sahara Desert
The Sahara Desert and in particular its northern regions have attracted its share of attention from Atlantis investigators. However unlikely it may appear as a possible location for Atlantis it must be kept in mind that the Sahara of prehistory was very different from what we see today. Not only was it wetter at various periods in the past, but also there is clear evidence for the existence of a large inland sea extending across the borders of modern Algeria and Tunisia. This evidence is in the form of the chotts or salt flats in both countries. This proposed sea is considered by some to have been the Lake Tritonis referred to by classical writers. It is suggested that some form of tectonic/seismic activity, common in the region, was responsible for isolating this body of seawater from the Mediterranean and eventually turning it into the salt flats we see today.
An even more extensive inland sea, further south, was proposed by Ali Bey el Abbassi and based on his theory a map was published in 1802 which can be viewed online(c).
More recently, Riaan Booysen has published an illustrated paper on the ancient inland Saharan seas as indicated on the 16th-century maps of Mercator and Ortelius(i). King’s College London runs The Sahara Megalakes Project which studies the Megalakes and the Saharan Palaeoclimate record(m).
A 2013 report in New Scientist magazine(d) revealed that 100,000 years ago the Sahara had been home to three large rivers that flowed northward, which probably provided migration routes for our ancestors. Depending on how long the African Humid Period lasted, this article may be read in conjunction with George Sarantitis‘ theory regarding the Voyage of Hanno that he claims took place in the interior of Africa.
Other studies(h) have shown the previous existence of a huge river system in the Western Sahara, which flowed into the Atlantic on the Mauritanian coast.
An article in the Sept. 2008 edition of National Geographic pointed out that the Saharan climate has been similar for the past 70,000 years except for a period beginning 12,000 years ago when a number of factors combined to alter this fact. A northerly shift by seasonal monsoons brought additional rain to an area the size of the contiguous USA. This period of a greener Sahara lasted until around 4,500 years ago.
More recent studies claim that “there’s geologic evidence from ocean sediments that these orbitally-paced Green Sahara events occur as far back as the Miocene epoch (23 million to 5 million years ago), including during periods when atmospheric carbon dioxide was similar to and possibly higher than today’s levels. So, a future Green Sahara event is still highly likely in the distant future.” (p)
Henri Lhote contributed an article to Reader’s Digest‘s, The World’s Last Mysteries [1083], regarding the ‘green’ Sahara that existed prior to 2500 BC. Two German climatologists Rudolph Kuper and Stefan Kröpelin have estimated that this last greening of the Sahara began around 8500 BC and ended sometime between 3500 BC and 1500 BC(r)(u)* .
Some have suggested a connection between the latest aridification of the Sahara and the migration of settlers to the Nile Valley, where, coincidentally, the ancient Egypt we know about was founded around 3100 BC.
Others have endeavoured to link the last aridification of the Sahara with the destruction of Atlantis!
More recently, human activity has been blamed as a major contributory factor for the desertification of the Sahara region less than 10,000 years ago.(n)
Related to the above is a recent study of sediments off the west coast of Africa, which resulted in the discovery of what was “primarily a new “beat,” in which the Sahara vacillated between wet and dry climates every 20,000 years, in sync with the region’s monsoon activity and the periodic tilting of the Earth.” (o)
In Mauritania, a huge natural feature known as the Richat Structure has been claimed as the remnant of Atlantis by George Sarantitis [1470] as well as by Alexander & Rosen and others.
In 1868, it was proposed by D.A. Godron, the French botanist, that the Sahara was the location of Atlantis. In 2003, the non-existent archaeologist Dr.Carla Sage announced that she was hoping to lead an international expedition to the Sahara in search of Atlantis. Her contention was that “Atlantis was the capital of a vast North African empire with ports on the Gulf of Sidra”. This report is now confirmed to have been a hoax! I am indebted to Stel Pavlou for uncovering the origin of this story(e).
The idea of an African Atlantis was highlighted in 2021 with the publication of Atletenu [1821], in which the author, Diego Ratti, identified the Hyksos as Atlanteans with their capital at Avaris in the eastern Nile Delta. At the other end of North Africa, the chotts of Tunisia and Algeria were nominated by Holden Zhang as the location of Atlantis in a YouTube clip(q).
Gary Gilligan, the well-known catastrophist, wrote a thought-provoking article(k) on the origin of the Saharan sands, which he claims are extraterrestrial in origin and expands on the idea in his 2016 book Extraterrestrial Sands [1365].>A March 2024 report(t). on the BBC website has revealed that a particular type of sand dune has now been dated. They are known as ‘star’ or ‘pyramid’ dunes – “are named after their distinctive shapes and reach hundreds of metres in height.” They are found in Africa, Asia and North America, as well as on Mars – but experts had never before been able to put a date on when they were formed. Now scientists have discovered that a dune called Lala Lallia in Morocco formed 13,000 years ago.”<
David Mattingly, an archaeologist at Leicester University has found that an ancient people known as the Garamantes had an extensive civilisation in the Sahara(l). He has evidence of at least three cities and twenty other settlements. The Garamantes reached their peak around 100 BC and then gradually diminished in influence as fossil water supplies reduced until in the 7th century AD they were subjected to Islamic domination. Some researchers such as Frank Joseph have identified the Garamantes as being linked with the Sea Peoples. Bob Idjennaden has published short but informative Kindle books about both the Garamantes [1194] and the Sea Peoples [1195], without a suggestion of any connection between the two.
The discovery of megalithic structures discovered at Nabta Playa (Nabta Lake) in the Egyptian Sahara has provided evidence for the existence of a sophisticated society in that area around 5000 BC. In the same region, near the Dakhleh Oasis, archaeologists have produced data that supports the idea that pre-Pharaonic Egypt had Desert Origins rather than being an importation from Mesopotamia or elsewhere(a).
Nabta Playa is not unique, in fact, the largest megalithic ellipse in the world is to be found at Mzorah, 27 km from Lixus in Morocco(b). It appears that the construction methods employed at both Mezorah and Nabta Playa are both similar to that used in the British Isles. An even more impressive site is Adam’s Calendar in South Africa which has been claimed as 75,000-250,000 years old.
West of Cairo near the border with Libya is the Siwa Oasis, where it has now been demonstrated that “it is in fact home to one of Ancient Egypt’s astounding solar-calendar technologies– the solar equinox alignment between the Timasirayn Temple and the Temple of Amun Oracle in Aghurmi.”(j).
I think we can expect further exciting discoveries in the Sahara leading to a clearer picture of the prehistoric cultures of the region and what connections there are, if any, with Plato’s Atlantis. In the meanwhile in the Eastern Egyptian Desert, Douglas Brewer, a professor of archaeology at the University of Illinois, has discovered over 1,000 examples of rock art, including numerous depictions of boats although the sites, so far undisclosed, are remote from water.
Even more remarkable is the report(e) of March 2015 that a survey of the Messak Settafet escarpment in the central Sahara revealed that there were enough discarded stone tools in the region “to build more than one Great Pyramid for every square kilometre of land on the continent”! Coincidentally, around the same time, it was reported that over a thousand stone tools had been found in the Northern Utah Desert(g). What the Utah discovery lacked in quantity was made up for in quality with the finding of the largest known Haskett point spearhead, measuring around nine inches in length.
(a) Saudi Aramco World (2006, Vol. 57, No.5 p.2-11)
(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20201019061756/http://catalog.afriterra.org/zoomMap.cmd?number=1036
(d) NewScientist.com, 16 September 2013, https://tinyurl.com/mg9vcoz
(e) https://books.google.com/books?id=GvMDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA46&dq=dr.+carla+sage+archaeologist&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GSENVKiaO9W0yASJgoIY&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=dr.%20carla%20sage%20archaeologist&f=false
(f) https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/saharan-carpet-of-tools-is-the-earliest-known-man-made-landscape
(i) 7. The lakes in the middle of the Sahara desert – Page 8 (archive.org)
(l) See: Archive 3268
(n) https://popular-archaeology.com/issue/winter-2017/article/did-humans-create-the-sahara-desert
(o) https://phys.org/news/2019-01-sahara-swung-lush-conditions-years.html#jCp
(p) https://www.livescience.com/will-sahara-desert-turn-green.html
(q) Revive Eden 3 Convincing Atlantis – YouTube
(r) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/uncovering-secrets-of-the-sphinx-5053442/
(s) https://las.illinois.edu/news/2006-09-01/oasis-art-egyptian-desert *
(t) Star dune: Scientists solve mystery behind Earth’s largest desert sands – BBC News *
(u) Shift From Savannah to Sahara Was Gradual, Research Suggests – The New York Times (nytimes.com) *