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NEWS October 2024
OCTOBER 2024 The recent cyber attack on the Internet Archive is deplorable and can be reasonably compared with the repeated burning of the Great Library of Alexandria. I have used the Wayback Machine extensively, but, until the full extent of the permanent damage is clear, I am unable to assess its effect on Atlantipedia. At […]Read More »
Joining The Dots
I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
Robert Schmalz
Schmalz, Robert
Dr. Robert F. Schmalz (1929- ), a geologist with Pennsylvania State University, declared his support for a Tunisian-Algerian location for Atlantis, which included northern Tunisia and part of northeastern Algeria. He describes how just northeast of Gabes there is a low sandy plain which separates the Mediterranean from the salty chotts that extend hundreds of miles westward into the Sahara.
In the article in the Montreal Gazette of 26/8/77(a), he cities dramatic changes in sea levels and land elevations as the cause of its destruction. He dates this event to the end of the last Ice Age conforming closely to the prima facie date given by Plato for the time of Atlantis!
His ideas, among others, were reviewed by the geographer Richard B. Cathcart in a 2001 paper(b).
(b) See Archive 5079
Algeria *
Algeria is the largest nation by area in Africa and the tenth largest in the world. Most of the population lives in the fertile north, while most of the country is rather arid, including part of the Sahara. Over two thousand years ago, when the climate was more benign, Algeria along with its neighbour, Tunisia, as well as Egypt, were the ‘breadbaskets’ of Rome.
Since the early 18th century Atlantis has been associated by a number of researchers with Algeria, often linked with Tunisia and/or Morocco. These included Ali Bey El Abbassi, Robert Schmalz, Giovanni Ugas and the American researcher Gerald Wells(a) who specified the western Algerian province of El Bayadh as the location of Atlantis. He offered its exact coordinates as 31.84°N Latitude and 103.03°E Longitude and added that the Garden of Eden had existed in the same region!
A more frequent suggestion is that the chotts of Algeria and Tunisia had been the location of the legendary Lake Tritonis when the Sahara was a more fertile place with a wetter climate. Ulrich Hofmann supports this view while Alberto Arecchi contends that Lake Tritonis was the ‘Atlantic Sea’ referred to by Plato, with the Pillars of Heracles situated at the Gulf of Gabes. A related claim has been made recently by Hong-Quen Zhang(b).
(a) Atlantis-Bakhu | Wells Research Laboratory (archive.org) * ^6 pages
(b) https://medcraveonline.com/IJH/is-atlantis-related-to-the-green-sahara.html