Stan Deyo

Expanding Earth Hypothesis *

Published April 27, 2012

The Expanding Earth Hypothesis.

For thousands of years, it was accepted that the surface of the earth was in a static state. This belief persisted until the rediscovery of America in 1492 and the cartographic improvements during the following century before Abraham Ortelius in his 1596 Thesaurus Geographicus^[1225] proposed that the Americas had once been joined to Europe and Africa. It is often claimed that in 1620 Francis Bacon commented on the close fit of eastern South America with the west coast of Africa, however, this, according to G.L. Herries Davies, is an exaggerated interpretation of what he actually said^(o).

A number of others concurred with the jig-saw suggestion until 1858 when the French geographer Antonio Snider-Pellegrini offered^[0555] a theory of crustal movement that was more fully developed in 1912 by Alfred Wegener, which he came to label ‘continental drift’^(e). Snider-Pellegrini also thought that the Earth had been much smaller at the time of the biblical Genesis^(ac)! The big objection to the theory was a lack of a convincing mechanism to explain it^(f).

A number of writers have attempted to bring the theory of Continental Drift (CD) into the Atlantis debate. They seem to overlook the fact CD was proposed as a very very slow process, while Plato describes the demise of Atlantis as occurring in a single day and a night.

Wegener’s theory was debated until the late 1950’s when it morphed into the theory of Plate Tectonics (PT) following new developments in earth sciences in particular the recognition of seafloor spreading at mid-ocean ridges. However, PT as we know it demands subduction^(z), which in itself has created new problems^(aa)(ab).

The theory divides the lithosphere into a number of plates that are constantly moving in various directions at rates of a few centimetres a year. Competing with PT in the early years was the theory of Earth Crustal Displacement advocated by Charles Hapgood which claims that the entire crust of the earth moved as a unit. Endorsed by Albert Einstein it is fundamental to the theory of an Antarctic location for Atlantis proposed by Rose & Rand Flem-Ath.

Unfortunately, Plate Tectonics does not explain everything and ever since it gained the pre-eminence it currently enjoys, various writers have questioned what they perceive as its shortcomings^(g)(h)(i).

A totally different proposal is that the earth is expanding. Although the concept did not get much attention until the 1980’s there are antecedents stretching back to 1888^(a), when the earliest suggestion was made by the Russian, Ivan Yarkovsky (1844-1902). A year later the Italian geologist (and violinist) Roberto Montovani (1854-1933) proposed^(I) a similar mechanism. In 1933, Ott Christoph

Hilgenberg

Hilgenberg^(t) published Vom wachsenden Erdbal (The Expanding Earth) ^[1328].

In 1963, a Russian lady, Kamilla Abaturova, wrote to Egerton Sykes expressing the view that although her theory of an expanding Earth involved a ‘slow’ process, she proposed that at the time of Atlantis’ the radius of the Earth was 600 km shorter^(af). In geological terms, this is far from ‘slow’!

The leading proponent of the theory today is arguably the, now retired, geologist Dr James Maxlow^(b). A detailed outline of the theory is also offered on his website^(c). For laymen like myself, a series of YouTube clips^(d) are probably more informative. I have stated elsewhere that I am sympathetic towards the idea of earth expansion finding it somewhat more credible than plate tectonics. The truth of the matter is that since Ortelius first suggested that the continents of our planet had moved, all that has emerged since is a refinement of that basic idea leading to CD which became PT and as the latter still does not answer all the questions it raises, it is clear that further modification will be required. In December 2021, Maxlow published an overview of his current thinking on Expansion Tectonics^(ag).

The Expanding Earth Hypothesis may, as its proponents claim, supply all those answers. Others do not think so, which brings me to J. Marvin Herndon who has ‘married’ the theory of an expanding earth with the idea of crustal plates^(j), naming his 2005 concept Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics (WEDD).

The Thunderbolts.info website has a three-part article seeking to offer “an alternative to plate and extension tectonics”. The anonymous author suggests that an electrical element is involved in the development of our planet. An extensive look at mountain building is also included^(y).

A 1998 paper^(ah). by Bill Mundy an American Professor of Physics is still relevant. In it, he discusses the pros and cons of both plate tectonics and the expanding earth hypothesis and concluded that “Despite the success that standard plate-tectonics theory has enjoyed, there are phenomena that it currently is not able to model. Perhaps the most adequate model would incorporate Owens’ suggestion that there is both subduction and expansion. This would allow the earth to expand at a modest rate with reasonable changes in surface gravitation and also require some subduction for which the evidence seems convincing. But such a model presents the difficulty of finding suitable mechanisms for expansion, plate motion and subduction!”

In October 2022 Doug Fisher published a paper on Graham Hancock’s website highlighting weaknesses in the generally accepted theory of plate tectonics and seeking a review of the expanding earth hypothesis^(ai).

Keith Wilson, an American researcher, has also developed a website^(k) devoted to the EEH and linked it to Pole Shift. However, he goes further and introduces Mayan prophecies into the subject, which in my view is unwise in the light of recent events or rather non-events!

In the meanwhile, a number of Atlantis researchers have endorsed the EEH including, Stan Deyo, Georg Lohle and Rosario Vieni. Nicolai Zhirov referred to the growing support both in Russia and elsewhere for the EEH citing a number of its supporters, adding that “the idea of the Earth expanding (within reasonable limits) cannot be ruled out altogether as absurd.”^[458.126]

A number of websites have dismissed the EEH as pseudoscience, which is confirmed by satellite measurements^(m)(n).

There is also a variation of the standard expansion theory which proposes^(q) that expansion may have occurred in fits and starts. There also seems to be evidence that the Earth is not alone with Venus expanding^(r) and Mercury contracting^(s).

Another matter that may be related to the claim of an expanding Earth is the question of the size of dinosaurs and other creatures and plants millions of years ago, which is claimed to have been impossible if gravity then was the same as today. A book^[^1218] by Stephen Hurrell has expanded on this idea. There is an interesting website^(p) that deals with the enormous size of the dinosaurs as well as other creatures at the same period and the support it may offer the EEH.

Neal Adams, a respected graphic artist^(u), is a vocal supporter of the EEH^(v), but, he has gone further and has also proposed a growing Moon as well^(w). Not content with that, he has extended his expansion investigations to other bodies in our Solar System, such as, Mars, Ganymede & Europa^(x). Adams considers the term “Expanding Earth” a misnomer and has named his proposed expansion process ‘pair production’.^(ad)

A December 2018 paper by Degezelle Marvin offers some new support for the EEH^(ae). The author includes an interesting comparison of the problems of the currently accepted paradigm of plate tectonics with possible solutions offered by EEH. The author concludes with;

“The problems with plate tectonics were presented in this paper. Earth scientists dogmatically follow the plate tectonics theory that is falsified by geological data while Earth expansion is clearly a viable candidate to replace plate tectonics. Analysis map of the age of the oceanic lithosphere showed that the isochrons only ft on a smaller Earth with a calculated radius. Mountain formation has even been presented as a logical result of the Earth’s expansion. The average rate of the growth of the Earth’s radius is 1.22cm/year, obtained by geological methods.”

Finally, I cannot help thinking about those Victorians who thought that they had reached the pinnacle of scientific understanding. They were wrong and, I believe, that so are we, although we are slowly, very slowly, edging towards the truth, which may or may not involve the vindication of the Expanding Earth Hypothesis.

^(a) https://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=394&Itemid=59

^(b) https://www.expansiontectonics.com/page2.html

^(c) https://www.expansiontectonics.com/page3.html

^(d) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUkEu6YYR3s

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

^(f) https://www.scientus.org/Wegener-Continental-Drift.html

^(g) https://davidpratt.info/ncgt-jse.htm

^(h) https://davidpratt.info/lowman.htm

⁽ⁱ⁾ https://www.newgeology.us/presentation21.html

^(j)https://web.archive.org/web/20200926204322/http://nuclearplanet.com/

^(k) https://www.eearthk.com/

^(l) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Mantovani

^(m) https://web.archive.org/web/20200928171034/https://www.xearththeory.com/expanding-earth-theory-debunked/

⁽ⁿ⁾ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/2014/05/12/the-expanding-earth/

^(o) Francis Bacon and Continental Drift (archive.org) *

^(p)The Inflating Earth: 4 – Gravity | MalagaBay (archive.org)

^(q) https://web.archive.org/web/20161203151134/http://www.xearththeory.com/expansion/

^(r)https://web.archive.org/web/20200808000231/https://www.xearththeory.com/expanding-venus/

^(s)https://web.archive.org/web/20200807234839/https://www.xearththeory.com/mercury/

^(t) https://web.archive.org/web/20200206154438/http://wachsende-erde.de/web-content/bilder/hilgenb/hilgenberg1933.pdf

^(u) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Adams

^(v) https://www.naturalphilosophy.org/site/dehilster/2014/09/22/is-the-earth-expanding-and-even-growing/

^(w)Neal Adams: 02 – The Growing Moon | MalagaBay (archive.org)

^(x) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy3_sWF7tv4

^(y) https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16534 (link broken Oct. 2019) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3326/

^(z) https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-subduction-3892831

^(aa) https://www.newgeology.us/presentation8.html

^(ab) https://web.archive.org/web/20190715191800/http://areopagusletters.com/10-problems-with-plate-tectonics

^(ac) https://www.annalsofgeophysics.eu/index.php/annals/article/view/4622

^(ad) https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2015/12/17/neal-adams-01-the-growing-earth/

^(ae) https://www.gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Research%20Papers-Astrophysics/Download/7531

^(af) Atlantis, Volume 16, No. 1, February 1963.

^(ag) NCGTJV9N4_Pub.pdf (registeredsite.com)

^(ah) https://www.grisda.org/assets/public/publications/origins/15053.pdf

^(ai)Maps, Myths & Paradigms – Graham Hancock Official Website

Tagged Abraham Ortelius, Albert Einstein, Alfred Wegener, Antonio Snider-Pellegrini, Bill Mundy, Charles Hapgood, Continental Drift, Degezelle Marvin, dinosaurs, Doug Fisher, EEH, Egerton Sykes, Europa, Expanding Earth Hypothesis, G.L. Herries Davies, Ganymede, Georg Lohle, Ivan Yarkovsky, J. Marvin Herndon, James Maxlow, Kamilla Abaturova, Keith P. Wilson, Mars, Mercury, Neal Adams, Nicolai Zhirov, Ott Christoph Hilgenberg, Plate tectonics, Rand & Rose Flem-Ath, Roberto Montovani, Rosario Vieni, Sir Francis Bacon, Stan Deyo, Stephen Hurrell, Venus

Muster, Alexander

Published January 17, 2012

Alexander Muster and his foster son Basil Bemmelen^(a) are two Dutch ‘researchers’ who promotes the idea that Atlantis was located in Aden, now a part of Yemen. They does so, in a rather chaotic style with an irritating overuse of uppercase letters^(b), on various Internet forums and have been barred from at least one site. Muster usually posts under the name of ‘bluehue’. One Dutch blogger has expressed exasperation^(c)at the barrage of emails from Muster which he now treats as spam. Muster’s theory is similar to that of Stan Deyo, author of The Vindicator Scrolls.

^(a) https://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php?topic=76.15;wap2

^(b) https://www.mythicalireland.com/other/atlantis.php

^(c) https://mainzerbeobachter.wordpress.com/tag/atlantis/

Tagged Aden, Alexander Muster, bluehue, Stan Deyo

Aden

Published January 17, 2012

Aden was formerly a British possession and is now part of war-torn Yemen. Stan Deyo, author of The Vindicator Scrolls^[⁷⁸⁴^], in 1989 located Atlantis in Aden. A Dutch amateur Egyptologist, Alexander Muster, also promotes a similar idea through a variety of Internet forums. A former French police chief, Jacques Hébert, has proposed that the Yemeni island of Socotra was part of the Atlantean civilisation.

>Yemen’s long history was highlighted just before the end of the last century, when a group of megaliths were discovered, by chance, on the coastal plain of western Yemen^(c).<

In 2008, Gary Vey and John McGovern claimed to have evidence that the Ark of the Covenant had been buried in Yemen (the ancient kingdom of Saba)^(b).

>Immanuel Velikovsky placed the Garden of Eden in Aden^(d).<

A recent Russian website^(a) also places Atlantis in the Gulf of Aden opposite the legendary land of Punt in what is now Somalia.

^(a) https://sites.google.com/view/atlantis-aden/main

^(b) Proto-Canaanite / First Tongue / Ark of the Covenant (viewzone.com)

>^(c) https://archive.archaeology.org/online/news/yemen.html

^(a) http://www.varchive.org/ce/baalbek/eden.htm<

Tagged Aden, Alexander Muster, Ark of the Covenant, Garden of Eden, Gary Vey, Gulf of Aden, Immanuel Velikovsky, Jacques Hebert, John McGovern, megaliths, Punt, Saba, Socotra, Stan Deyo, Yemen

Deyo, Stan

Published June 7, 2010

Stan Deyo is American by birth but moved to Australia in the early 1970’s. He is the author of The Vindicator Scrolls^[784] in which he opted for Aden (Eden), now part of Yemen, as the site of Atlantis^(a). He places the Plain of Atlantis in what is now eastern Saudi Arabia adjacent to a Persian Gulf extending further north^(e). The Persian Gulf itself to have been the original Atlantic!

Alexander Muster, an amateur Dutch Egyptologist puts forward^(c) a vaguely similar idea. Deyo identifies the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains as the Pillars of Heracles!

In 2014, Deyo chose Tanzania as the location of the Garden of Eden^(h). This idea has been echoed elsewhere and more recently on a website dealing with the history of Israel^(f) and on a Christian website where the Ngorongoro Crater is specified^(g).

Deyo seems to subscribe to his own brand of religious fundamentalism, referring constantly to biblical characters and events. He dates the creation of the world to around 6000 BC and It appears that he believes that India was connected to Africa less than 5,000 years ago!

He also subscribes to the Expanding Earth Hypothesis, with which I am sympathetic. However, when he ventured into the realms of ‘free energy, anti-gravity and extraterrestrial visitors he lost me completely. A lot of research has gone into The Vindicator Scrolls although some readers may find his use of so many mathematical formulae makes much of the content inaccessible.

Some less than complimentary comments regarding Deyo are to be found on the Internet^(d).

^(a) https://www.standeyo.com/bio.Stan.html

^(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20171002114120/https://www.mythicalireland.com/other/atlantis.php

^(c) https://mainzerbeobachter.wordpress.com/tag/atlantis/

^(d) https://web.archive.org/web/20181022120234/https://www.christianmediaresearch.com/deyo.html

^(e) https://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.ie/2017/02/the-asteroid-flood-atlantis-and-alien.html

>^(f) https://web.archive.org/web/20191005055547/https://www.israel-a-history-of.com/the-biblical-garden-of-eden-in-tanzania-africa.html

^(g) https://web.archive.org/web/20190901221543/https://eliotelwarapologetics.com/2015/07/24/the-biblical-garden-of-eden-found/<

^(h) https://www.standeyo.com/Podcast/Show_Images/Eden_Images.html

Tagged Aden, Alexander Muster, Expanding Earth Hypothesis, Garden of Eden, Ngorongoro, Pillars of Heracles, Plain of Atlantis, Stan Deyo, Tanzania, Vindicator Scrolls, Yemen

Garden of Eden *

Published April 5, 2010

The Garden of Eden, like Atlantis, has excited the imagination of many over the centuries. Its location has been the subject of what was sometimes wild speculation that offered a range of locations compared with the variety of sites proposed for Atlantis.

The traditional belief was that the ‘Garden’ had been situated in Mesopotamia between the Euphrates and Tigris as noted in the Bible. Athanasius Kircher, who is better known to many for his speculative map of Atlantis located in the Atlantic Ocean also produced a plan of the Garden of Eden in what is now southern Iraq. David J. Gibson (1904-1966) arrived at a similar conclusion placing ‘Eden’ just south of Baghdad in his book, The Land of Eden Located, now available online^(t).

The T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism offers a clue to the sort of difficulties that ‘Garden seekers’ must deal with, in the Garden of Eden entry. “as an earthly garden, its specific location within both the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple literature. Thus, some texts place it in the east (Gen 2:8; 1En.32; Jub 8:16; 2 En. [rec.32] 42:3, 65:10; Philo QG 1:7; Leg 1:56; Josephus, Ant. 1.3), while others place it in the west (Gen 3:24; Josephus, JW 2.155), north (Ezek 28:13; 1En. 61.1), or northwest (1 En.24-25, 70:3).”^(ap)

More recently, Robert McRoberts in an article about the rivers of Eden included a map by Arianna Ravenswood, who placed Eden northwest of Babylon in what is now the Iraqi Province of Diyala^(u).

Within the same region is a submerged location at the head of the Persian Gulf promoted by Juris Zarins (1945- ).^(w) In his theory, the Bible’s Gihon River would correspond with the Karun River in Iran, and the Pishon River would match the Wadi Batin river system that had drained the now dry, but once quite fertile central part of the Arabian Peninsula. His suggestion about the Pishon River is supported by James A. Sauer (1945–1999) formerly of the American Center of Oriental Research although strongly criticized by the archaeological community^(x).

A number of commentators have suggested that the site of Eden is now under water, where lower sea levels during the Ice Age would have revealed land now submerged, such as in the Persian Gulf. The Red Sea has also been proposed.

Kircher’s Garden of Eden

The conventional idea has been enhanced in the opinion of some by the discoveries of the German archaeologist, Klaus Schmidt, who believed that his excavations at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey have unearthed artefacts dating to 8000 BC when the people there changed from hunting and gathering to agriculture. This region also contains Ur and Harran, mentioned in the Old Testament and since Göblekli Tepe is located between the Tigris and Euphrates and is within view of the Taurus Mountains, it conforms remarkably to the topographical description of Eden in the Bible. Tom Knox speculated on this in an article in the UK’s Daily Mail Online^(aa).

It was no great surprise when I found at that least one commentator has proposed Göbekli Tepe and the surrounding area was the site of the Garden of Eden^(au).

Garold Spire jr, an American researcher, offers a strong case for placing Eden in southern Turkey at the Karaca Dag shield-volcano. He studied the sacred books of the Abrahamic religions and drew up a short list of characteristics that the Garden must have;

1) It must have been warm enough to be comfortable without protective clothing. Gen 2:25.

2) It must be uphill geographically, due to the fact that four rivers exited

from it, these are the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Pishon, and the Gihon. Gen 2:10-14

3) The Pishon must compass or border Havila where there is gold and onyx. Gen 2:11, 12.

4)The Gihon must compass or border the whole land of Cush. Gen 2:13

5) It must account for a flaming sword on its east side. Gen 3:24

6) It must be well watered, Gen 13:10 by a mist (in Hebrew) not rain, Gen 2:5-6, which came up from the earth.

Spire maintains that his Turkish location has all these features^(an).

Christopher Columbus believed that the source of the Orinoco River, in what is now known as Venezuela had been the location of Eden. Antonio de León Pinelo (1590-1660) was a Spanish chronicler who spent some years in South America and was also convinced that the Garden of Eden had been situated between the great rivers of South America^(k)!

The imaginative Augustus Le Plongeon claimed the Yucatan as the location of the ‘Garden’^(s)an idea endorsed by his wife, Alice Dixon Le Plongeon.

In more recent times, Ramiro Gonzales Yaksic (1966- ), the author of Earthly Paradise: The Garden of the Andes ^[1055] in which he claims to have identified the biblical Garden of Eden in his native Bolivia^(ar). Dieter Groban has written in support of Yaksic^(as).

James Bailey published Sailing to Paradise ^[^0150] in 1994, some years before Yaksic’s book, in which he added further support for his Atlantis in America contention. Additionally, he placed the Garden of Eden somewhere on the Bolivian Altiplano.

^[0150] in 1994, some years before Yaksic’s book, in which he added further support for his Atlantis in America contention. Additionally, he placed the Garden of Eden somewhere on the Bolivian Altiplano.

General Gordon of Khartoum fame was so impressed by the island of Preslin in the Seychelles that he declared it to be the Garden of Eden and its famed Coco de Mer and breadfruit plants to be the Tree of Life and the Tree of Good and Evil. Science writer, Karl Shuker, has written an extensive article, Forbidden Fruit, for the January 2016 edition of Fortean Times, in which he gives the background to Gordon’s obsession and his inability to garner any serious support for it.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, it was reported^(r) that G. F. Becker (1847-1919) a geologist with the USGS nominated Luzon in the Philippines as the site of the biblical ‘Garden’, while Sven Hedin (1865-1952) a much-decorated Swedish geographer chose Janaidar a mythical city in Central Asia.

George H. Cooper, the American writer, identified Salisbury Plain ^[⁰²³⁶^.111] as the Garden of Eden along with its Wiltshire river system matching the Euphrates and Tigris in the Genesis story. W. Comyns Beaumont chose Britain’s Glastonbury as the site of the original Garden.

In the middle of the last century, a Baptist preacher, Elvy E. Callaway, announced that the Garden had been located in the vicinity of Bristol, Florida^(j).

David Rohl has studied the matter in great detail ^[²³⁰^] and located the ‘Garden’ in the northern Iranian province of East Azerbaijan near the city of Tabriz^(ad)(aj). Rohl’s reasoning is worthy of study and perhaps a comparison with the views of Emilio Spedicato, who offers his explanation for placing Eden in Pakistan’s Hunza Valley in two papers on the Internet⁽^b)(y⁾. Rohl was partly inspired by the work of Reginald A. Walker ^[1388/9].

The inventive David Hatcher Childress published an article in issue 31 of the Atlantis Rising magazine with the title of Central Asia’s Ancient Heart and a subtitle that asks the question ‘Could Afghanistan Once Have Been the Garden of Eden?’ He then proceeds to offer a couple of pages about ancient Mongolia, with little reference to either Afghanistan or the Garden of Eden!

Andrew Collins claims ^[⁰⁷³^] that the original Mesopotamian name for Eden was Kharsag, a view echoed by the late Christian O’Brien^(q). O’Brien’s nephew, Edmund Marriage, identifies the Bekka Valley in Lebanon as the location of Eden of Genesis. A new Lebanese location site is the subject of a website and forum^(h)(i). An excerpt from O’Brien’s book, relating to Eden, can be read online^(v).

Ari Zuker bravely suggests that the land of Israel was the Garden of Eden^(ao). John Appelt, an American pastor also supports this idea ^(at).

The Sabbah brothers, Roger and Messod, controversially place Eden in Egypt ^[³¹⁰^]and offer a range of evidence to support this contention. Ralph Ellis has also opted for Egypt in his book, Eden in Egypt^[⁰⁹⁵¹^] and claims that Adam and Eve were in reality, Akhenaton and Nefertiti! Ellis also supports his theory with two online papers providing excerpts from his books^(o)(p).

A Christian website, logoschristian.org, used to also claim that Eden had been located in the eastern Nile Delta, specifically named Al Mansura. In 1933, John G. Jackson wrote a paper advocating an African origin for the legend of the Garden of Eden. Jackson’s extreme Afrocentric views may have coloured his view of this subject!

Further to the west is the Tunisian town of Oudna, which has been nominated as Eden by one Patrick Archer on his somewhat sparse website⁽^d⁾.

Gerald Wells also identified some of his Algerian Atlantis territories as having included the biblical Garden of Eden^(aq⁾.

Another African location was put forward by Georg Hinzpeter over half a century ago when he suggested that the Ethiopian plateau had been the home of Adam & Eve before their eviction^(z).

Stephen E. Franklin has also opted for an African location for the Garden of Eden, placing it south of the Ahaggar Mountains near the Wadi Tafanasset in southern Algeria.^(ah⁾ He also claims that Mt. Tahat, the highest peak in the Ahaggars, was, according to Franklin, the original Atlas mountain referred to by Herodotus as the home of the Atlantes (sometimes Atarantes^(ai⁾). Sprague De Camp noted ^[194.191]that Paul Borchardt also identified the ancient Mt. Atlas with the Ahaggar Mountains rather than the Atlas Mountains of the Maghreb! I should add that this identification of Mt. Atlas remains moot.

In 2014, Stan Deyo chose Tanzania as the location of the Garden of Eden^(h). Paulo Riven has also supported the region as the site of the ‘Garden’^(ak). This idea has been echoed elsewhere and more recently on a website dealing with the history of Israel^(f) and on a Christian website where the Ngorongoro Crater is specified^(g).

Carl Seaver has also offered an African location for the Garden. In a 2022 article, he reports that according to recent research, Botswana is the most likely location of the Garden and where humans originated. Eden sat in the Kalahari Desert, which used to be a wetland where the early humans lived. During this time, Lake Makgadikgadi stretched from Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe^(am).

In 2023 an African location for the Garden was again proposed by journalist, Tom Hale, who wrote^(al) “The so-called Cradle of Humankind can be found in South Africa around 50 kilometers (31 miles) northwest of Johannesburg. This site is home to the largest concentration of human ancestral remains anywhere in the world. Among the thousands of fossils found here, researchers have unearthed the remains of Australopithecus, an early ape-like human species dated to around 3.4 to 3.7 million years old.

It wasn’t until 200,000 to 300,000 years ago that modern Homo sapiens evolved. Once again, Africa was the location of this development, with modern humans most likely first emerging somewhere around modern-day Ethiopia.

So, if we’re looking for a scientific Garden of Eden, it looks like South Africa and Ethiopia are our best bet. Whether these sites were once home to a paradise where four rivers once met remains to be seen, however.”

What may appear just as implausible to many is the claim by Felice Vinci^[⁰¹⁹^], that the Eden story was imported from northern Europe, specifically from Finnish Lapland^(af⁾. At the end of the 19th century, William Fairfield Warren placed the Garden in the Arctic ^[0078].

Even more incredible is the assertion by the likes of William C. Chappell that the Garden of Eden was situated in the United States. His Mormon-inspired views are available as a free eBook⁽^c⁾ on the Internet. Interestingly, Jackson County, Missouri was the location of Eden revealed by Joseph Smith^(ac). the founder of Mormonism and well-known collector of wives.

A more ‘commercial’ suggestion has come from Dennis Brooks who suggested that Tarpon Springs, Florida, was originally the location of the Garden of Eden and that Tampa Bay contained the port of Atlantis.

The Urantia Book promotes the idea of two Edens, one near Cyprus and a second further east! In 2003, Robert Sarmast compiled a list of similarities between Plato’s account of Atlantis and the description of the Garden of Eden in the Urantia Book^(l).

In his 2004 book Finding Atlantis he claimed one of the Edens, noted in The Urantia Book, along with Atlantis had been situated near Cyprus, now in waters a mile deep! Two expeditions were organised to verify his claims, but nothing conclusive was found. Although very little has been heard from Sarmast in recent years, in 2018, Robert S. Bates attempted to breathe new life into Sarmast’s ideas that the Mediterranean region around Cyprus had been home to both Atlantis and the Garden of Eden^(ae).

Stephen Oppenheimer has pointed out^[⁰⁰⁴^] that Genesis 2:8 reads that “the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden”. He argues (p.409) that this supports the idea of a ‘paradise’ in the Sundaland region. However, Oppenheimer does not equate Eden with Atlantis.

As Monty Python used to say “now for something completely different” – The North Pole. This suggestion has come from Gene Matlock who advocated that ‘Eden was the North Pole’ in a paper of the same name^(ab).

The Garden of Eden has been suggested by some as another name for Atlantis, representing as it does a mythical time of peace and abundance. However, Eden is never spoken of in terms of military might and commercial success attributed to Atlantis. One of the better-known proponents of this idea of an Atlantean Eden was the late Professor Arysio dos Santos⁽^a⁾ who was convinced that it was located in the South China Sea before the ending of the last Ice Age submerged large areas of Sundaland. Confusingly, he referred to Eden as ‘Lemurian Atlantis’, but added that “This Lemurian Atlantis of ours should not be confused with the purely fanciful counterparts of the Theosophists and other such followers of Mme. Blavatsky. Their ‘Lemuria’ is a hypothetical sunken continent of the mid-Pacific region, one which never existed at all.

Shortly before his death in 2005, Santos published ^[³²⁰^] his theories, expanding on material that he had made available on the Internet for some years. Frank Joseph also claims ^[¹⁰⁶^][¹⁰⁷^] that the Garden of Eden was located on the lost island of ‘Lemuria’ located in the Pacific.

Bill Hanson, who has authored a number of books on ancient ‘mysteries’, has recently written a work ^[³⁵²^] that links the Garden of Eden with Atlantis. He identifies five similarities between the two accounts:

Both prehistoric locations are regarded as ‘lost paradises’
The four rivers of Eden are reflected in the four waterways of Poseidon the island capital of Atlantis.
Atlantis started with ten kings and the Bible speaks of ten patriarchs.
Zeus destroyed Atlantis because mortals and gods mated, whereas the Bible records the mating of the ‘sons of God’ and human females.
Atlantis was flooded just as the Age of the Patriarchs ended with the flood of Noah.

The late Joseph Robert Jochmans identified^(g⁾ Atlantis with Eden in a comprehensive article on his website. John Nichols also wrote a long article^(e⁾ identifying Atlantis with the Garden of Eden and placing it on the Celtic Shelf about a hundred miles off the coast of France due west of Brest.

Frederick Dodson in a hefty 523-page book^[989]claims an Atlantis-Garden of Eden connection⁽ⁿ⁾. In 2018, the Catalan researcher, José Luis Espejo also equated Atlantis with the Garden of Eden^[¹⁶⁰⁷^].

In 2022, a writer, hiding behind the nom de plume of ‘gserpent’, produced a lengthy article blending Atlantis, Eden and Lemuria into one heap of literary manure⁽^ag⁾.

Currently. the sadly benighted Iraq is trying to lure tourists to spend their holidays in ‘the Garden of Eden’^(m⁾!

⁽^a⁾http://www.lost-civilizations.net/atlantis-corroborating-evidence-page-12.html

⁽^b⁾kharsag (grazian-archive.com)

⁽^c⁾http://losttruthfound.com/gardenofedenfound.pdf

⁽^d⁾https://patrickofatlantis.com/

⁽^e⁾ https://jjswn35.wordpress.com/article/atlantis-eden-how-to-find-2vfxjftuay98o-9/

⁽^f⁾ https://sites.google.com/site/tribesofatlantis/Home/the-garden-of-eden

^(g) See: Archive 3602

^(h)The Garden of Eden – Found in Rashaya El-Wadi – the-lebanon.com (archive.org) ^or Archive 3182

⁽ⁱ⁾ https://www.christianforums.com/threads/the-garden-of-eden-origin-of-agriculture-found-near-rashaya-el-wadi-lebanon.7535161/*

^(j) Weird Florida (archive.org) *

^(k) See: Archive 2999