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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 »
SIS
New Chronology
New Chronology is a term that was coined in the 20th century and applied to two very different schools of chronological revisionism.
One was applied to the theories of Anatoly Fomenko(a), a Russian mathematician, “that challenge the traditional timeline of history, suggesting that events we know as ancient and early medieval actually occurred much later, between 1000 to 1500 AD, and that the construction of ancient history was done in the 17th and 18th centuries.” Nevertheless, he also had prominent supporters, such as Heribert Illig(c) and Gunnar Heinsohn(b) as well as Garry Kasparov the former World Chess Champion(d).
The other application of the term was to describe a possible realignment of the ancient chronologies of the Eastern Mediterranean. More particularly, it refers to the work of David Rohl and Peter James that grew out of the revisionism in Velikovsky‘s Ages in Chaos[039] and the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS).
There have been many variants of Velikovsky’s proposed revisions, such as those proposed by Emmet Sweeney. The matter remains unsettled to the satisfaction of all. This lack of resolution was referred to in a 2023 paper(e) by Donald Keith Mills, who offered some interesting observations. “I am sympathetic to the need for chronological revision but do not have a preference for any one model. In recent years, my relation to chronological revisionism, both in my role as part of the SIS C&C Review editorial team, and in my articles, has not been to prove or “disprove” chronological revisions, but to identify “errors, inconsistencies, and deficiencies” in the data and/or interpretations on which specific parts of Velikovskian-style revisions are based. It is important to clear the field of misinformation and infeasible interpretations that make it difficult to define what chronological revisions in general, or any revision in particular, may legitimately encompass.“
(b) https://www.q-mag.org/_search.html?req=heinsohn
(c) The Phantom Time Hypothesis • Damn Interesting
Palmer, Trevor
Trevor Palmer (1944- ) is an English Professor of Biology now living in Scotland. Apart from his day job of enzymology and the study of genetic 
disorders, which led to an interest in evolution, which in turn brought him to research catastrophism, he has written several books on these subjects, including >Controversy Catastrophism and Evolution [1971]<Perilous Planet Earth [888], which places today’s “concern about the threat to Earth from asteroids and comets within a historical context.” He devotes two chapters of this comprehensive work to the subject of Atlantis, in which he reviews (chap.13) some of the late 19th and early 20th century theories as well as more recent developments (chap.28) exposing many of the weaknesses in the arguments on offer.
>A lecture with the same title as the book was delivered to the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS) in September 2004 and is now available online(m).<
While Palmer does not express any personal views on the subject, it is noteworthy that he wrote an introduction to the 2005 Barnes & Noble edition of Lewis Spence’s The History of Atlantis. After a brief look at Spence’s life, Palmer gives an overview of the principal strands of Atlantology today and concluded that many of the issues debated 80 years ago are still unresolved and for that reason, Spence’s book continues to be worth studying.
Palmer wrote a short paper(a) in 1987 in which he was cautiously sceptical of the Atlantis story, particularly the possibility that it was destroyed during the Late Pleistocene era, with which I concur. He also touched on the subject of the Carolina Bays, apparently adding support to the now-discredited idea that they were created by wind action. I expect that he may have modified his views by now. However, the US Geological Survey is now (2021) identifying the bays as ‘relict thermokarst lakes’.(h)
Palmer presented a paper entitled Catastrophes: The Diluvial Evidence at the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS) Silver Jubilee Conference in September 1999.(i) He also addressed the SIS in 2004 on the background to his book published the previous year(d).
Palmer published two similar papers in 2010(b) and 2012(e) on the history of catastrophism and the ensuing debates from the time of Velikovsky until the present, when catastrophism has greater acceptance and which now offers a variety of competing ideas regarding the number, source, date and consequences of specific catastrophes.
In the second paper delivered to the Quantavolution Conference on Naxos, he offers the interesting observation that “In science, unlike religion, the great revelations lie in the future; the coming generations are the authorities, and the pupil is greater than the master if he has the gift to see things anew.”
Palmer has also written a 2018 review(c) of Perilous Planet Earth in light of developments since it was first published.
In 2009, Palmer published an interesting paper on the Black Sea and its dramatic connection with the Mediterranean (9,400 years ago) and how it may have influenced the creation of flood myths in the region(l). “The various groups currently investigating the area are agreed that cataclysmic flooding took place during the Late Pleistocene, but remain divided about whether similar floods also occurred during the Holocene. Eye-witness accounts of catastrophic floods in the Black Sea basin at either time could have been passed on to future generations, eventually giving rise to the later Mesopotamian legend of Uta-napishtim and, subsequently, the Biblical story of Noah. However, in the absence of any direct evidence of cultural transmission, that can presently only be regarded as plausible speculation.”
Palmer and Gunnar Heinsohn have been debating Heinsohn’s claim that our chronology of the 1st millennium AD is deeply flawed, on the Q-Mag website(f). Palmer has also written a lengthy paper supporting his views on the matter(g).
In addition, Palmer has also examined the ancient Greek and Roman historians “to test whether they present a picture of the past consistent with that revealed by archaeology, particularly inscriptions indicating sequences and timescales, and also to see the extent to which they support, or otherwise, the orthodox chronology and a number of representative alternative chronologies.” He concluded that there was ‘general accuracy’(j). He subsequently expanded on this paper to include a review of the chronology of the 1st millennium AD(k).
(a) See Archive 3026
(c) Archive 4971 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(d)Archive 4972 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(e) Archive 4973 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(f) https://www.q-mag.org/_search.html?req=Trevor+Palmer
(g) https://www.academia.edu/37544096/Writers_and_Re_Writers_of_First_Millennium_History_Second_draft_October_2018_
(h) https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147904/ice-age-carolinas
Society for Interdisciplinary Studies
The Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS) was founded in 1974 to promote discussion and further study of the ideas of Immanuel Velikovsky. He was one of the first to publicise the fact that the ancient chronology of Egypt was, and according to some, still is badly wrong. SIS is “the oldest and most up-to-date Society for information and research into cosmic catastrophes and ancient chronology revision.”
For its Jubilee Conference in 1999, P. John Crowe delivered a lengthy paper(e) on the various attempts to revise ancient chronology, before and after Velikovsky.
Trevor Palmer who was Chairman of the SIS from 1995-1998 and 2000-2002 has written Perilous Planet Earth[888], which is a comprehensive history of catastrophism and includes a couple of chapters on Atlantis.
In 1997, the SIS organised a conference entitled Natural Catastrophes During Bronze Age Civilisations: Archaeological, geological, astronomical and cultural perspectives. The background to the conference is worth a read.(c)
A search on their website(a) reveals a number of articles and reviews relating to Atlantis – not all positive. Their Catastrophism CD(b), although expensive, is an absolute must for any serious student of the subject.
S.I.S. has also compiled a valuable collection of web resources on its website(d).
(a) https://www.sis-group.org.uk/
(b) Publications | Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (archive.org) *
(d) Resources | Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (archive.org) * (2022)
Ancient Chronology
Ancient Chronology is a subject fraught with difficulties(a) as well as the focus of intense academic debate, particularly over the past half-century.
Archbishop Ussher (1581-1656) calculated the date of creation to have been October 23rd 4004 BC(d). Incredible as it may seem, even today (2019), there are still people prepared to give further consideration to his ideas (c)(e).
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) became the first ‘modern’ revisionist of accepted ancient chronology. His work was heavily criticised and few serious advances were made until the development of Egyptology following Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt at the end of the 18th century.
Difficulties with details of Egyptian dating slowly accumulated, particularly when endeavouring to align it with Greek, Minoan and other Eastern chronologies. The scholarly debates became very public in the middle of the 20th century with the eventual publication of Ages in Chaos by Immanuel Velikovsky and the attempts made to suppress it altogether. The refining of Velikovsky’s theories followed, with important contributions by S. Talbott, Edward Schorr and John Bimson. Some, such as Emmet Sweeney, have accused Velikovsky of being over-dependent on his belief in the inerrancy of biblical chronology.
The Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS)(b) was founded in 1974 and produces regular publications. This was followed a few years later by three important books[229][230][232] by David Rohl and Centuries of Darkness [046] by Peter James, who also wrote The Sunken Kingdom in which he places Atlantis in Turkey. Rohl & James were in agreement on many details, but fell out over the identity of Shishak (was he Ramesses II or III?). However, prior to that, in the early 1980s, they had published a joint paper that gave the world a first look at their New Chronology. Rohl republished it in 2012(v).
On the occasion of the SIS Jubilee Conference in 1999 a paper by P. John Crowe was presented, which gave a valuable insight into historical revisionism before and after Velikovsky(a).
In 2002, Manfred Bietak and Ernst Czerny, both distinguished Egyptologists edited a collection of 45 papers presented at a SCIEM Conference in 2000 highlighting the problems of synchronising the chronologies of civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 2nd millennium BC(w).
Gunnar Heinsohn (1943-2023) was a Professor Emeritus at the University of Bremen but was also an ardent chronology revisionist,< concerned not just with the dating problems of the ancient world(l) but also with difficulties to be seen in the first millennium of the Common Era(m).
One of the most controversial aspects of Plato’s Atlantis story is the old Egyptian priest’s claim that Atlantis was destroyed 9,000 years before Solon’s visit. He also related that Athens, who fought the Atlanteans, was established one thousand years before the Egyptian state or as is more likely, before the foundation of the city of Sais. Apart from anachronisms in Plato’s narrative, the archaeological evidence completely contradicts the dates seemingly offered by the priests of Sais. It is interesting that most of the chronology revisionist debate centres on the second millennium BC which is arguably the most rational timeframe for the destruction of Atlantis based on the Bronze Age references in Timaeus and Critias, provided they are not just anachronistic embellishments.
I should also mention that while the debates regarding the Bronze Age chronologies rage on, further controversy has arisen regarding claims of duplicated centuries in the first millennium of our era. Leading the charge here are Anatoly Fomenko(k) [1823], Heribert Illig(h)(i)(j) and Gunnar Heinsohn(g). A keen supporter of Fomenko’s work is Garry Kasparov the former World Chess Champion(p). A more critical view of Fomenko’s work is on offer from Stephen Sorensen(s).
Nathaniel Lloyd had written an extensive three-part paper on the history of chronological revisionism(t). This should be read in conjunction with a paper entitled The Glorious Stupidity of Fomenko’s New Chronology(u).
Up to this point, I have outlined some of the problems and theories concerning the accurate alignment of specific events with particular years. A clash of archaeology and accepted history, secular and religious. has generated libraries of debate. However, our problems do not end with the counting of years, but contention has also arisen over the length of the day before the seventh century BC. Evidence is available to show that there was a 360-day year in use around the world in those ancient times.
Some religious sites have proposed that before the Deluge we had a 365-day year, then it changed to 360 days and then reverted to the current 365.2422 days(q). By way of complete contrast Danny Faulkner, a creationist astronomer rejects the idea that the world was created with a 360-day year, although it is a view held by many creationists(r).
William Whiston was one of the first ‘modern’ commentators to conclude that in very ancient times a 360-day year was used(n). More recently, Immanuel Velikovsky devoted a chapter of Worlds in Collision to The Year of 360 Days(o). The Brit-Am movement endorsed Velikovsky’s views in this regard, as does William F. Drankenbring.
(b) Welcome – Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (archive.org)
(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology
(e) https://www.academia.edu/36854822/Ussher_Explained_and_Corrected
(f) See (a)
(g) https://www.q-mag.org/_search.html?req=heinsohn
(h) The Phantom Time Hypothesis • Damn Interesting
(i) Did the Early Middle Ages Really Exist? (ecplanet.org)
(j) Jan Beaufort: 30 questions about chronology (cybis.se)
(k) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_chronology_(Fomenko)
(l) THE RESTORATION OF ANCIENT HISTORY (archive.org)
(m) https://www.q-mag.org/_search.html?req=heinsohn
(o) I. Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision, Part 2, Chapter Viii, p.316
(p) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(q) http://xwalk.ca/360vs365.html
(r) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265167051_On_the_Caution_about_the_360-Day_Year
(s) Fomenko’s New Chronology – Ctruth
(t) https://www.historicalblindness.com/blogandpodcast//the-chronological-revision-chronicles-part-one-the-fomenko-timeline (new link)
(v) https://davidrohl.blogspot.com/2012/11/
(w) The Synchronisation of Civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the … – Google Books *
James, Peter
Peter James (?- ) graduated in ancient history and archaeology at Birmingham University and engaged in postgraduate research at University College, London.
James came to public attention when, in collaboration with Nick Thorpe, Nikos Kokkinos, Robert Morkot and John Frankish, he authored Centuries of Darkness [346] in which he explored the problems of the chronology of the Mediterranean and Near East in the second millennium BC. It generated much controversy, which continues as the authors’ website(c)(d) demonstrates.
The following years saw the production of an impressive three-volume work by David Rohl[229][230][232] offering similar ideas on a New Chronology for the region.>Initially, James and Rohl had jointly researched the flaws in Velikovskian chronology for a number of years, which resulted in a paper(e) written for the SIS in 1982. Rohl has published this document on his website as he “felt it would be useful to republish the ‘first outing’ of the New Chronology theory here since the original paper is difficult to find. It also serves to put the record straight about when and how the revision of the Third Intermediate Period took shape.”<
Unfortunately the collaboration ended over divergent views regarding the identification of the biblical Shishak, Rohl favouring Ramesses II, while James opted for Ramesses III.
James has also been studying the Atlantis question since the early 1970s. Paul Dunbavin recounts that James had originally favoured Megalithic Britain as Atlantis. Francis Hitching in The World Atlas of Mysteries[307] notes how James calculated the date of the demise of Atlantis as 3600 BC. He arrives at this by accepting the commonly agreed date for the beginning of Egyptian civilisation of 3100 BC. He then adds the 1,000 years, which Solon was told by the Egyptian priests, was the time that had elapsed between the Atlantean Athenian war and then arbitrarily subtracts 500 years to compensate for an assumed nationalistic exaggeration of Egypt’s antiquity; a habit common to many ancient kingdoms.
However, when he finally published his work on the subject, The Sunken Kingdom [047], he controversially offered a site in Anatolia in western Turkey as his preferred location for Atlantis. Unfortunately, he has been unable to obtain permission from the authorities to dig at the site and hopefully substantiate his theory. The book is supported by a website(a).
A few years earlier, Eberhard Zangger published The Flood From Heaven, in which he also placed Atlantis in western Anatolia, specifically in Troy. James offers a few critical comments including what he considers a major weakness in Zangger’s theory, namely that Troy did not ‘sink beneath the waves in a single day and a night’. [p.201]
James was highly vocal in disputing the dendrochronological dating of the Uluburun shipwreck discovered in 1982 off southwestern Turkey. The initial date given was 1315 BC, later revised to 1305 BC but due to a lack of bark on the piece of wood tested a definitive date was impossible. Even if the bark had been attached it would still only have provided the date that the tree had been felled not the date of the shipwreck(b). Subsequently, the more imprecise radiocarbon dating gave a date of ‘around’ 1300 BC.
James is also co-author, again with Nick Thorpe, of Ancient Inventions [757], which is a 672-page tome that offers a fascinating account of the inventive capabilities of ancient civilisations. In this 1994 book, he comments that “Plato’s yarn is largely a work of fiction” [p.455], which makes you wonder why, just a year later, he published The Sunken Kingdom!
Seven years later James and Thorpe teamed up again to compile Ancient Mysteries [1922], which covers familiar subjects, such as Nazca, Sodom & Gomorrah, the Vinland Map and the Maya.
(a) https://www.knowledge.co.uk/the-sunken-kingdom/
(b) https://www.centuries.co.uk/uluburun.pdf
(c) https://www.centuries.co.uk/replies.htm
(d) https://www.centuries.co.uk/faq.htm
(e) David Rohl Official Blog *
Rohl, David *
David Rohl (1950- ) holds a degree in Ancient History and Egyptology from University College London. He is a former rock musician and is the author of three best-selling history books[229][230][232] that controversially proposed a New Chronology for the ancient 
eastern Mediterranean and has presented television documentary programmes on the same subject, which have provoked severe criticism(a).
Bryant G. Wood, an American biblical archaeologist, disputes the validity of Rohl’s revised chronology as he sees it as an attack on his belief in the veracity of the Bible(f).
Drawing some inspiration from the work[1388/9] of Reginald A. Walker (1917-1989), Rohl has also argued for the Garden of Eden being situated in what is now northwestern Iran[230]. Equally controversial is Rohl’s claim that the biblical Tower of Babel was sited at the Sumerian city of Eridu[231]. This claim was explored in detail in Yesterday Channel’s, Secrets of the Bible series (S1 E8).
Unexpectedly, he has written an introduction to Andrew Collins’ bestseller, Gateway to Atlantis, in which he expresses his regret for the lack of firm archaeological evidence to support the existence of Atlantis, but is clearly sympathetic to the idea and is somewhat supportive of an Atlantic location. He repeated and expanded on his views at a subsequent lecture(b).
Rohl also proposed that the Shardana, one of the Sea Peoples, originally came from Sardis in Lydia and later established the Nuragic Culture in Sardinia [232.449]. Recently, Angelo Paratico propounded the same idea during a lecture in Hong Kong in 2004(d). Perhaps more pertinent is a Wikipedia entry which notes that “According to Timaeus, one of Plato’s dialogues, Sardinia and its people as well, the “Sardonioi” or “Sardianoi”, might have been named after “Sardò”, a legendary woman from Sardis, capital of the ancient Kingdom of Lydia in Anatolia.”(e)
Peter James is another high profile historian who has advocated[046] a similar radical revision of the chronologies of the Mediterranean and Near East. Initially, James and Rohl had jointly researched the flaws in Velikovskian chronology for a number of years, which resulted in a paper(j) written for the SIS in 1982. Rohl has published this document on his website as he “felt it would be useful to republish the ‘first outing’ of the New Chronology theory here since the original paper is difficult to find. It also serves to put the record straight about when and how the revision of the Third Intermediate Period took shape.”
Unfortunately the collaboration ended when until they had divergent views regarding the identification of the biblical Shishak(c), Rohl favouring Ramesses II, while James opted for Ramesses III, suggested earlier by Immanuel Velikovsky [0039]. James has also written a controversial work[0047] on Atlantis, placing it in ancient Lydia (Turkey). Complicating matters further is a related dispute as to whether the biblical Shishak is to be identified as the Egyptian Pharoah Shoshenq or they should be treated as two separate people!(g) Their original collaborative paper is available on Rohl’s website(h) which contains a number of interesting blogs but appears to have been only active in 2012, with nothing posted since!
Readers might be interested in reading the transcript of a 2009 interview that Rohl gave to Andrew Gough(i).
(b) David Rohl (archive.org) *
(c) https://davidrohl.blogspot.ie/
(d) https://www.gingkoedizioni.it/is-there-an-association-between-sardis-and-sardinia/
(e) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_people
(f) RohlsChronologyDeconstructed (bibleorigins.net)
(g) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334975146_Shishak_and_Shoshenq_A_Disambiguation
(h) http://davidrohl.blogspot.com
(i) https://andrewgough.co.uk/interviews_rohl/