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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 »
Romania
Danube *
The River Danube is the second-longest river in Europe, which was known to the ancient Greeks as ‘Istros’. It rises in Germany’s Black Forest and after passing through many countries, including four capital cities, it eventually empties into the Black Sea.
A number of researchers have associated the river with Plato’s Atlantis. One of the earliest was Nicolae Densusianu who proposed that Atlantis had been situated in ancient Dacia, his native Romania. Over a century later some of his ideas have been revived by other Romanian commentators such as Adrian Bucurescu and Alexandra Furdui, who also translated Densusianu’s monumental work into English.
Densusian’s nationalism is now frowned upon and there is an understandable suspicion that his modern Romanian supporters may have similar underlying motivations.
There is a gorge on the Danube known as the Iron Gates which provides part of the boundary between Serbia and Romania. Densusianu located the Pillars of Heracles at the Iron Gates, an idea supported by Ticleanu, Constantin & Nicolescu at the 2008 Atlantis Conference, who place Atlantis further west on the Pannonian Plain [750.365]. In 2020, Veljko Milkovic also placed the ‘Pillars’ at the Iron Gates on the Danube and Atlantis in the Pannonian Basin(c) in his book Panonska Atlantida [1932].
However, Ranko Jakovlievic expressed the view that the Iron Gates section of the Danube was the location of Atlantis!
Related to this, is the claim by an anonymous ‘Sherlock’ that Pindar’s Olympian Ode 3 suggested that the Pillars of Herakles had been situated at the confluence of the Seva and Danube rivers near modern Belgrade(b).
A recent book [1742] by Antonije Shkokljev & Slave Nikolovski–Katin also recount an ancient version of the ‘Labours of Hercules’ that took place in the Balkans.
Christian and Siegfried Schoppe locate Atlantis east of the Danube Delta on Snake Island (Zimiinyi) in the Black Sea, an idea now adopted by George K. Weller(a). [Zimiinyi, Ukrainian territory, was occupied by the Russians 25.02.22 as part of their invasion of Ukraine]
Bucurescu, Adrian
Adrian Bucurescu is a Romanian ethnographer and a prolific article writer and also the author of Dacia Secreta and Dacia Magica. He identifies the Black Sea and what is now mainland Romania as the home of Atlantis. He locates the Pillars of Hercules at the Danube gorge at the mouth of S-W Romanian river Cerna (also known as Acheron, Charon, Geryon) and that the capital of Atlantis was the city of Tulcea (Tul=atlas+Cea=land) at the Danube Delta.
>A recent book [1742] by Antonije Shkokljev & Slave Nikolovski–Katin have related an ancient version of the ‘Labours of Hercules’ based in the Balkan-Danube region.<
Furthermore, Bucurescu claims that Plato originally said 5,000 not 9,000 years had elapsed between the Atlantean war and Solon’s visit to Egypt. He bases this idea on his claim that the works of the Greek philosophers were preserved in Arabic translations after the fall of Constantinople and that their numbers ‘5’ and ‘9’ were sufficiently similar to have led to a transcription error!(b)>This is difficult to accept as the Arabic character for nine is rather like our ‘9’, while the Arabic five is like our zero!<
Bucurescu’s ideas should be compared with those of Densusianu and the more recent book of Alexandra Furdui.
However, a further contribution on Graham Hancock’s website has him listing the ten kingdoms (of Atlantis) extending over a much larger region, including Poland, Egypt and Sumeria(a)!
(a) https://grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?1,176280,176318
(b) https://grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?1,176280,176305#msg-176305
Thrace *
Thrace was an ancient kingdom, which according to Greek mythology was named after Thrax, the son of Ares, the 
Greek god of war. Some push back the origins of the Thracians to 3000 BC(b)(c). Homer described the Thracians as allies of Troy. Today Thrace would occupy southeast Bulgaria along with adjacent parts of Greece and Turkey. Some have attempted to link Thrace with Atlantis(a). Abraham Akkerman suggests in Phenomenology of the Winter City[1179.98] that the inspiration for “Plato’s layout of his Ideal City on the island of Atlantis” may be found in Thrace. Keep in mind that situated just north of Thrace was Dacia, part of Romania, another Atlantis candidate.
Also See: Nicolae Densusianu, Romania
(a) atlantis history (archive.org) *
(b) The Enigma of the Thracians and the Orpheus Myth | Ancient Origins (archive.org) *
(c) The Enigma of the Thracians and the Orpheus Myth – Part 2 | Ancient Origins (archive.org) *
Invasion
Invasion today, as in the past, is usually the consequence of a shortage of resources (food, metals, oil, water), climate change (affecting food supply), overpopulation (also affecting food supply) or political upheaval. Although I do not speak as a military strategist, it would seem obvious that if for any of these reasons, a state is forced into expansionism, it will first look at its nearest neighbours and assess the chances of military success. It is obvious that before the introduction of airborne attacks, propinquity in the form of contiguous territory or short sea journeys has always been critical for a successful invasion(a) and the continued control of occupied territories. This is borne out by the simple historical fact that all the earliest empires, which were located in what we now call the Middle East, expanded through the invasion of its neighbours.
Even today (27.02.22) Vladimir Putin has expanded his empire into more of the contiguous state of Ukraine, having already annexed Crimea. Some military imperatives never change.
However, over-expansion can be costly and potentially dangerous. With particular reference to the fall of the Roman Empire, Rachel Nuwer noted in a recent BBC article(c) that. “By the end of the 100 BC, the Romans had spread across the Mediterranean, to the places most easily accessed by sea. They should have stopped there, but things were going well and they felt empowered to expand to new frontiers by land. While transportation by sea was economical, however, transportation across the land was slow and expensive. All the while, they were overextending themselves and running up costs.”
Many people think that military intelligence gathering is a relatively modern development. However, ancient documents, including the Bible, have accounts of spying thousands of years ago. Mary Rose Sheldon has produced an invaluable sourcebook[1445] on the subject, as well as a volume on Spies in the Bible[1446], while Peter Dubovsky, in his Hezekiah and the Assyrian Spies[1568], focuses on espionage described in 2 Kgs 18-19. It is reasonable therefore to assume that Atlantis also exercised due diligence and endeavoured to assess their opponent’s strengths and weaknesses before invading.
Boris Rankov has noted(b) in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History that military intelligence in ancient times had its value limited by the “slowness of communications, which meant that it was often out of date before any response could be brought to bear.” This, of course, ties in with the then established practice of invading those within your immediate proximity; supply lines are shorter and information more up-to-date. In turn, it implies that Atlantis was within relatively easy striking distance of Athens!
Even in modern times, the same constraints determined the actions of invaders. Hitler could not have invaded Russia without first controlling Poland and Romania. Even expansionist Japan, although an island nation, expanded into Korea and Manchuria (China) and following the attack on Pearl Harbour spread even further within the same region.
The ancient land-based empires were dependent on military might, whereas others, such as the Phoenicians, expanded their influence through trade, supported by extensive merchant fleets. However, over time, Phoenician or more correctly Carthaginian rivalry with Rome led to disastrous wars.
One of the primary military concerns today, as in ancient times, will be to ensure that its men are fed and watered and consequently there will be a need to keep its supply lines as short as possible.
>>One of the possible threats that lay to the west of ancient Athens was from across the Adriatic in Italy. However, even closer were a number of possible rivals to the east in Anatolia, such as Lydians and Hittites and later, the Persians.<<
I argue elsewhere that according to Plato, southern Italy constituted part of the Atlantean domain (see Etruscans). I suggest that the Atlantean invasion of Greece was probably launched from there. The motivation is unclear, but we can speculate that success in Greece would have been followed by the control of the entire Aegean, including Crete, offering a huge expansion in trade.
The alternative is that the nearest part of Atlantis was elsewhere, necessitating the bypassing of other territories on the way and stretching supply and communication lines more than desirable. Italy looks the best bet, with forces added from the Atlantean HQ in Sicily or Sardinia, possibly travelling through the Strait of Messina, sometimes identified as the location of the Pillars of Heracles.
In the south, the Atlantean forces in North Africa (Ancient Libya), if not augmenting the attack on Greece, were probably planning their invasion of Egypt (Timaeus 25b & Critias 114c). Success there would have been followed by a two-pronged attack by both northern and southern Atlantean forces on the eastern Mediterranean coast, later known as the Levant, giving them total control of the eastern Mediterranean Basin.
Invasion requirements are the strongest argument against any of the fanciful Atlantis theories that place Plato’s Atlantis in Antarctica, the Andes, or North America. It is ludicrous to claim that any invasion force came across the Atlantic to attack Greeks and Egyptians. That there were remarkable early cultures in both North and South America is absolutely undeniable, however, it is foolishness to claim that they had any connection with Plato’s story.
(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invasions
(b) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah26323/abstract
(c)http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse
Tartaria Tablets
The Tartaria Tablets are three clay tablets found in 1961 in Romania, which have been a source of controversy for over half a century. They are incised 
with symbols that have been compared with those of the Vinca culture in the same region. If the Tablets are a genuine script they possibly pre-date the Sumerian script by a thousand years, having been dated to 5300 BC! Because Plato told us that Atlantis had writing, a few unconvincing attempts have been made to link Atlantis with the Vinca culture(c).
Marija Gimbutas the celebrated archaeologist bravely declared that the Tablets were examples of the world’s earliest writing system.
Keith Massey who, along with his twin brother Kevin, has offered an interpretation of the Phaistos Disk has now produced a mathematical explanation for the Tablets and has outlined it in a YouTube clip(a).
>A 2022 blog on the Old European Culture website offers an interesting attempt to decipher some of what is referred to as the third tablet(d).<
A free 400-page book about Tartaria Tablets can be applied for online(b).
(a) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_UD-Dm1ge8
(b) https://www.prehistory.it/Tartaria_book/Tartaria_book_index_.htm
(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20190830053312/https://www.black-sea-atlantis.com/black-sea-atlantis/
(d) https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2022/01/tartaria-tablets.html *
Gadeiros
Gadeiros was the twin brother of Atlas snd was known in Greek as Eumelos. It is generally accepted that he gave his name to the city of Gades, now Cadiz in southwest Spain. A more radical view is expressed by C. & S. Schoppe, who think that he gave his name to the Getae who occupied parts of today’s Bulgaria and Romania(a).
Others have sought to identify Gadeiros with Jacob’s son, Gad!
>(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20190930162447/https://www.black-sea-atlantis.com/black-sea-atlantis/<
Iron Gate(s), The
The Iron Gate(s) is the name given to a gorge on the River Danube that forms part of the boundary between Serbia and Romania. A century ago, Nicolae Densusianu proposed The Iron Gate as the location for the Pillars of Heracles, on the Danube in ancient Dacia, modern Romania.
A recent book [1742] by Antonije Shkokljev & Slave Nikolovski–Katin has related an ancient version of the ‘Labours of Hercules’ based in the Balkan-Danube region.
Recently, Ranko Jakovljevic expressed the view that the Iron Gate section of the Danube in Serbia was the location of Atlantis.
A paper presented to the 2008 Atlantis Conference by Ticleanu, Constantin & Nicolescu [750.375] has the ‘Pillars of Heracles’ located at the Iron Gate but placed Atlantis a little further west on what is now the Pannonian Plain.
>In 2020 Veljko Milkovic also placed the ‘Pillars’ at the Iron Gates on the Danube and Atlantis in the Pannonian Basin(c)(d) in his book Panonska Atlantida [1932].<
This minority view of Atlantis located in Eastern European is seen by a few commentators to be vindicated by the literate Vinca culture(b) of the Danubian region, although the Schoppes see the Vinca people as refugees from their original home in the Black Sea region(a).
For me, all those theories conflict with Plato’s unambiguous statement that the invading Atlanteans came from the west (Tim.25b & Crit.114c). In fact, what Plato actually said was that the invasion came from the Atlantic Sea (pelagos). Although there is some disagreement about the location of this Atlantic Sea, all candidates proposed so far are west of both Athens and Egypt.
(a) https://web.archive.org/web/20190819053842/https://www.black-sea-atlantis.com/schoppe.pdf
Romania
Romania does not automatically leap to mind as a possible location for Atlantis, nevertheless, in 1913 a massive book by Nicolae Densusianu was published in which such a claim was made. The suggestion was made en passant in this large work, which is mainly concerned with the prehistoric evolution of civilisation in the Dacia region of Romania. The 1000-page+ book in English is available in its entirety on the Internet[1597].
The Pannonian Plain, now part of Hungary was formerly part of ancient Dacia. A paper was submitted to 
the 2008 Atlantis Conference in Athens by three Romanian researchers, M. Ticleanu, P. Constanin and R. Nicolescu proposing that this region had been the original location of Atlantis. This paper, together with a large number of maps, is now available on the internet(a).
The location of the Pillars of Heracles is also discussed in depth and the author not unexpectedly also locates them along the Danube (Pt3 – Ch.XVI). It is noteworthy that in ancient times the Danube was called Okeanos Potamos.
To what extent nationalistic motives were the moving force behind this noteworthy tome is difficult to ascertain, but the possibility should be borne in mind. However, his excessive nationalism, was popular during the communist regime, but is now deemed unacceptable and his work discredited.
Nevertheless, interest in Densusianu and aspects of his theories have seen a resurgence in books from researchers such as Adrian Bucurescu and Alexandra Furdui.
>A cache of Roman coins was discovered in Transylvania in 1713. Originally accepted as genuine they were later, in 1868, denounced as forgeries. Now they are again being considered genuine. The debate centres on the image on the coins of Emperor Sponsian of whom no other record is known. It has been remarked that “at that time the bar for being an emperor was very old(b).<
In the meantime, neighbouring Bulgaria had seen the unearthing of remarkable artefacts, including gold jewellery, dating to 3000 BC and is now claiming the discovery of rock temples in the Rhodope Mountains that are a thousand years older than the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilisations. Watch this space.
Densusianu, Nicolae *
Nicolae Densusianu (1846-1911) was a Romanian ethnologist and folklorist, although he was born in Transylvania, at the time 
part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He claimed that ancient Dacia had been the centre of a widespread Pelasgian Empire. His major work, published posthumously, Prehistoric Dacia, includes the suggestion that Atlantis had been located in Dacia, now Romania. The text of this extensive book, in English [1597]+, is available in its entirety on the Internet.
His excessive nationalism, popular during the communist regime, is now deemed unacceptable and his work discredited.
Nevertheless, interest in Densusianu and aspects of his theories have seen a resurgence in books from researchers such as Adrian Bucurescu and Alexandra Furdui.
Densusianu’s work has also been recently echoed in two books by the Serbian historian, Ranko Jakovljevic, although he moves the focus further west from Romania to his own native Serbia.
[1597]+ https://www.scribd.com/doc/240014812/Prehistoric-Dacia-Nicolae-Densusianu-1913 *
Hyperboreans *
The Hyperboreans in Greek mythology lived to the far north of Greece in a land called Hyperborea, which means beyond the North Wind or Boreas, which has been linked by a number of writers with the Atlanteans. Even more exotic is the claim on one loony website that the Hyperboreans were an ancient extraterrestrial race (see end)! (j)
Researchers have variously identified this land of Hyperborea with Iceland, the British Isles, and the North Sea. Like many classical references and later commentators, there is no clear consensus on a precise location. Hecataeus of Abdera, a 4th century BC Greek historian, noted that the Hyperboreans were located “in the lands of the Celts, in the ocean, (where) there is an island no smaller than Sicily.”
Diodorus Siculus described Hyperborea as a northern island with a temple to which the god returns every nineteen years. This was initially thought by many to be a reference to England’s Stonehenge, but the renowned Aubrey Burl considered Stonehenge to be 500 miles too far south and instead proposed the Hebridean island of Lewis home to the famous Callanish megalithic site, which includes the ability to record the return of the stars to the same position every nineteen years(c).
Olof Rudbeck‘s over-enthusiastic nationalism not only brought him to associate Atlantis with Sweden but also linked the writings of Homer and other classical writers with the prehistory of his homeland. This inevitably led him to declare ancient Sweden as Hyperborea. David King outlines how Rudbeck came to this conclusion [530.71].
However, Homer reportedly(h) placed Boreas in Thrace, and therefore Hyperborea, according to him, would be located north of Thrace, in Dacia, modern Romania!
Jürgen Spanuth based his Atlantis theory[0015] on an unambiguous identification of the Atlanteans with the Hyperboreans of the Baltic region, specifically nominating Jutland, part of today’s Denmark, as the land of the Hyperboreans [p.88].
The renowned Flemish cartographer, Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594), showed a large archipelago near the North Pole on one of his charts. This inclusion by him and other cartographers of the period stemmed from a now-lost book by an English Franciscan friar entitled Inventio Fortunatae (The Discovery of the Fortunate Isle).
Based on ancient maps and the work of other researchers such as Emilio Spedicato, Stuart L. Harris has proposed(e) that Hyperborea was also known as Atland to the Frisians. He further suggests that this land disappeared in 2194 BC as noted in the controversial Oera Linda Book, and that today’s Faroe Plateau topped by the Faroe Islands are its remnants.
It also appears that in the 18th century, the Russian Empress Catherine II organised an expedition in an attempt to find Hyperborea in the vicinity of the North Pole, in a pathetic attempt to discover ‘the elixir of eternal youth” allegedly invented by the Hyperboreans. She was apparently captivated by the descriptions of the classical writers who related that the Hyperboreans lived in total happiness for a thousand years.
It was reported in 2006(a) that a Russian scientist, Valery Dyemin, inspired by the work of Jean-Sylvain Bailly and William Fairfield Warren was attempting to prove the reality of Hyperborea in the Arctic region. Another Russian, Sergey Teleguin has also attributed a North Pole origin to both the Maya and the Indo-Europeans(b).
J.G. Bennett, a British philosopher, has opted for a Hyperborean origin for the Indo-European culture, a claim that has resonances with the Nazi claim that Hyperborea has been the ancestral home of the ‘master race’. He also supported the idea of an Arctic Hyperborea(i), inspired by the ideas of Bal Gangadar Tilak, although at the same time, he was critical of Warren’s reasoning.
Luciano Chiereghin, who promotes the idea of Atlantis being situated in Italy’s Po Valley, also claims that the same river valley and its plain were also previously known as Hyperborea! The authors of The Three Ages of Atlantis, Marin, Minella and Schievenin, also refer to “the Hyperboreans of the Po Valley” [972.181].
Wikipedia includes some of the more bizarre ideas regarding Hyperborea(h).
“Robert Charroux first related the Hyperboreans to an ancient astronaut race of “reputedly very large, very white people” who had chosen “the least warm area on the earth because it corresponded more closely to their own climate on the planet from which they originated” [766.29]. Miguel Serrano was influenced by Charroux’s writings regarding the Hyperboreans.”
An extensive internet article outlines the mythology associated with Hyperborea and recent efforts to determine its location(d). The Theoi.com website(g) offers a list of all classical references to Hyperborea.
(a) http://english.pravda.r science/mysteries/29-11-2006/85697-paradise u/science/mysteries/29-11-2006/85697-paradise-0/
(b) https://mayanarchaeology.tripod.com/id23.html
(c) A Hyperborean Temple? The Stone Circles of Callanish | Humans Are Free (archive.org) *
(d) Mysterious Hyperborea | Earth Chronicles News (archive.org)
(e) https://www.academia.edu/36044603/Identification_of_Hyperborea_with_Atland_and_Frisland
(f) History, 3a.264. F.7.5.
(g) https://www.theoi.com/Phylos/Hyperborea.html
(h) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperborea
(i) THE HYPERBOREAN ORIGIN OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN CULTURE by J. G. Bennett from SYSTEMATICS I/3
(j) Hyperboreans: An ancient alien race that lived on Earth – Infinity Explorers