Latest News
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 »
The Deluge
Moon, The *
The Moon and its origin have been the subject of speculation for centuries, examples of which are reviewed below. Professor Robert M. Hazen of George Mason University tells us in The Origin and Evolution of the Earth(ad) that “three competing theories—the fission theory, the capture theory, and the co-accretion theory—were all in contention prior to 1969, but the treasure trove of Apollo Moon rocks provided the answer: None of the pre-1969 theories worked……….The Moon is now thought to have formed as the result of an epic impact with a Mars-sized planet that was competing for the same solar system real estate as Earth. Earth was bigger and won, but the Moon was formed from the debris of the impact.”
The impact theory received a boost from the results of a study carried out at Durham University involving the use of a supercomputer for modelling(ag).
Irrespective of the controversies surrounding the formation of the Moon, what is less contentious is that for prehistoric man, the moon was a readymade calendar. An article(ap) by Rebecca Boyle has the following introductory paragraph.
“The sun’s rhythm may have set the pace of each day, but when early humans needed a way to keep time beyond a single day and night, they looked to a second light in the sky. The moon was one of humankind’s first timepieces long before the first written language, before the earliest organized cities and well before structured religions. The moon’s face changes nightly and with the regularity of the seasons, making it a reliable marker of time.”
The Moon has little connection with Plato’s Atlantis story apart from the more extreme speculations of some writers. One of the wildest is that the Atlanteans had established a research facility on the Moon(a), an idea rivalled by that of Alan Butler & Christopher Knight in their book, Who Built the Moon[0937], in which they propose that the Moon was ‘constructed’! This idea has now been revived by Rob Shelsky[1584]. In 1965, the Umland brothers[833] proposed that the Moon was a communications relay station for the Maya to make contact with their home planet!
In his recent book, Dead Men’s Secrets [1910.299], Jonathon Gray suggested that ancient texts support the idea that man has visited the Moon in the distant past! This is available as a pdf file(ac).
In 1970, Michael Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, of what was then the Soviet Academy of Sciences, advanced a hypothesis that the Moon is a spaceship created by unknown beings(k). These ideas inspired the title of Don Wilson’s 1976 book, Our Mysterious Spaceship Moon [1704].
In 2018 and in a number of previous editions of Ancient Aliens, David Hatcher Childress endorsed the daft idea that our Moon is hollow and artificial. Jason Colavito noted that this idea has “been going around for the past half-century, based on a piece of Russian propaganda from the 1960s aimed at Western audiences. Childress alleged that aliens created the moon by inflating an asteroid. Yes, really. “Like a glass blower blows glass, you go out into the asteroid belt, get yourself an asteroid, and with your alien technology you superheat that asteroid. Then you blow into it to make a giant space station,” he said. That seems like rather a lot of work to avoid showing yourself to the humans(ao).“
In 2023, Shane Leach tried to resuscitate this daft idea. He also recycled the suggestion that the Martian satellite, Phobos, was an alien construction. However, neither he nor Butler & Knight can claim originality as the idea of artificial moons was floated decades ago by the Russian I. S. Shklovskii(g) among others mentioned above.
Some years later Arnold L. Lieber published The Lunar Effect [1888] in which he put forward his theory of ‘biological tides’ that proposes that the Moon affects human behaviour. This seemed to reinforce the popular belief that aggression and even suicides were affected by the phases of the Moon. Commenting on Lieber’s theory at the time, astronomer Dr Nicholas Sanduleak debunked his claims(aa).
The idea that the Moon was to some extent hollow was given impetus in the 1970s when a study of moonquakes revealed that the Moon ‘rang like a bell’ (i). Now, nearly half a century later, Wallace Thornhill, a leading Electric Universe proponent, has endorsed the hollow Moon idea and seems sympathetic to the idea of a hollow Earth. This was expressed at a recent EU conference and be viewed at the 40-minute mark of a YouTube video.(j)
Neal Adams, a respected graphic artist(s), is probably best known for his work on the DC Comics characters Batman and Green Arrow. He is a vocal supporter of the Expanding Earth Hypothesis(t), but, he has gone further and also proposed a growing Moon as well(u)(r). Not content with that, he has extended his expansion investigations to other bodies in our Solar System, such as Mars, Ganymede & Europa(v). Adams considers the term “Expanding Earth” a misnomer and has named his proposed expansion process ‘pair production’!
The origins of the Moon have also been the subject of extensive controversy with one side claiming that it had been ‘captured’ 
by the earth, while the other extreme argues that it had been ‘expelled’ from our planet. The expulsion theory posits(b) that a collision with another celestial body tore material from the Earth, which in time became our Moon(h). Nils Olof Bergquist writing in the 1940s supported the expulsion scenario and had his original Swedish book on the subject translated into English as The Moon Puzzle[0786].
Aloys Eiling (1952- ) is a German researcher who has offered a variation on the Moon capture theory, suggesting that it took place when our planet was already populated – somewhere between 40,000 and 13,000 BC. He notes(ab) that “the capture of the Moon caused worse than a flood; it changed the geography of the world. Earth’s surface was devastated, millions died, and life in total was brought to the brink of extinction. In the collective memory of mankind, the event indelibly remained in the myths about a Deluge.”
The most radical of the captured moon school was Hanns Hörbiger, who proposed that there had been a series of Moon captures. Many of his ideas were adopted by H.S. Bellamy, who added that the capture of our current satellite had destroyed Atlantis. Kurt Bilau has also proposed a moon capture theory that incorporates two near encounters before finally becoming our current satellite(ah)(ai).
Georg Hinzpeter was influenced by the Moon-capture ideas of Hanns Hörbiger, with whom he had personal contact. However, when he suggested some modifications he fell foul of the Nazis and was informed “that his work was no longer going to be supported by the regime because it deviated from Hörbiger’s original theory.” (an)
After the war, he contributed to Sykes Atlantis magazine, where, like Bellamy, he theorised that the destruction of Atlantis coincided with the capture of our present satellite, an event that he claimed to have taken place around 11,500 years ago(am).
Nikolay Bonev, the astronomer, caused a stir in 1961 when he expressed the view that our Moon had once been an independent planet(d) that had experienced violent volcanic eruptions that were powerful enough to have produced a ‘recoil’ effect, which nudged it towards our Earth’s orbit and was eventually captured as our satellite.
In 1948, an amateur astronomer, L.C. Suggars, endorsed the idea of the Moon as a captured planet, based on its diameter/density ratio, which was consistent with that of the other minor planets (Mercury, Mars, Venus & Earth).(w)
More recently Emilio Spedicato expressed similar ideas(c) and in another paper(aj) he wrote “we consider the Sumerian tradition of a planet, called Nibiru, claimed to approach Earth every 3600 years. We argue that the real period was 20 years and that a close passage of that body near Earth around 9500 BC ended the last Ice Age and the Atlantis civilization. Moreover, Earth a satellite of Nibiru became our Moon, in addition to the previous satellite, that was Mars. We discuss ancient statements that the Moon originally looked bigger and brighter than now and that the period of about 2400 years when there were two satellites explains the myth of Isis and Osiris. We argue that Nibiru around 6900 BC disappeared in a giant impact on Jupiter.“
Stuart L. Harris has proposed(m) that the planet Nibiru had a close encounter with our Earth in 9577 BC that destroyed Atlantis, followed by another visit in 9417 BC during which it lost one of its satellites, which became our Moon!
Immanuel Velikovsky wrote a short paper(af) reviewing the three most popular theories regarding the origins of our satellite and concluded that “Since mankind on both sides of the Atlantic preserved the memory of a time when the Earth was without the Moon, the first hypothesis, namely, of the Moon originating simultaneously with the Earth and in its vicinity, is to be excluded, leaving the other two hypotheses to compete between themselves.” I think it noteworthy that Velikovsky makes no reference to the theories of Hörbiger in this paper. In 2020, Velikovsky’s unfinished book, In the Beginning [1956], promoted as a prequel to Worlds in Collision, was finally published, where he returns to the matter of the Earth without its Moon.
John Ackerman, a keen follower of Immanuel Velikovsky claimed that there were two catastrophic events related to “the capture of the Moon into its current orbit,” marking both the beginning and the end of the Younger Dryas period(p). Although Ackerman was an admirer of Velikovsky’s work, he was also critical of some of his conclusions(x).
The Moon controversies continue with the recent suggestion by Erik Asphaug, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who claims that originally the Earth had two moons that coalesced into a single satellite (n)! A few years earlier, Dr Martin Jutzi from the University of Bern, Switzerland put forward a similar theory involving a smaller second moon that had a slow-motion collision with the larger satellite. He proposed that this event explains “why the near side of the Moon – the one visible from Earth – is flat and cratered while the rarely-seen far side is heavily cratered and has mountain ranges higher than 3,000m.”(z) Jutzi thought that samples from the far side of the Moon might confirm the theory.
Gary Gilligan, a catastrophist, also supports the concept of moon capture but dated this event to as recent as 2000 BC(f) and then later advanced it to 1200 BC(g). He claims that he can “show that the moon could not have existed during prehistory as evidenced by the absence of the moon in Neolithic artwork and artefacts.” A comment that ignores the maxim ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’
Researcher, Mark Andrew commenting on Gilligan’s claims wrote that “Although Gilligan promises more evidence to come, his theory has to contend with the varied evidence of an earlier Moon, including the earliest known written myth of the Moon’s death and rebirth, the epic poem Descent of Inanna (dating from 1750 BC), and also the oldest known map of the moon (dating from 2800 BC).”(l)
Ticleanu, Constantin & Nicolescu in their paper delivered to the 2008 Atlantis Conference very briefly touched on the origin of the Moon. They claim that our Moon, a former planet, was captured by our Earth sometime within the last 40,000 years [750.368].
Two American commentators, Kevin A. & Patrick J. Casey maintain that a globally catastrophic event occurred 13,000 years ago(ae). The kernel of their theory is that originally the Earth had two moons that at some later point collided, producing our current Moon, while the remnant of the second one eventually exploded over North America kick-starting what we refer to as the cooler Younger Dryas period. They are adamant that it was not a comet or asteroid that caused the devastation, and so clash with the conclusions of Richard Firestone and his colleagues. They refer to this as the 13K Event, which is also known as the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH).
The moon could have formed immediately after a cataclysmic impact that tore off a chunk of Earth and hurled it into space, a new study has suggested. Since the mid-1970s, astronomers have thought that the moon could have been made by a collision between Earth and an ancient Mars-size protoplanet called Theia; the colossal impact would have created an enormous debris field from which our lunar companion slowly formed over thousands of years.
But a new hypothesis, based on supercomputer simulations made at a higher resolution than ever before, suggests that the moon’s formation might not have been a slow and gradual process after all, but one that instead took place within just a few hours. The scientists published their findings on October 4, 2022, in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters(al).
Unexpectedly, the orbital speed of the Moon appears to vary on its trip around the Earth(e).
Some of the ideas above regarding the origin of the Moon are extremist and are far more radical than a recent theory regarding the Sun proposed by Ev Cochrane, a comparative mythologist, in a YouTube clip(o), where he offers evidence that the Sun as observed in ancient times seemed quite different to how we see it today. This is borne out by the related mythologies and petroglyphs from our ancient past and shows a global consistency that cannot be explained by imagination.
Professor Neil F. Comins of the University of Maine challenged his students with the question ‘what if the Moon didn’t exist?’ The responses were interesting (no eclipses) and amusing (a new word for ‘lunatic would be required), but not always correct (no tides). One important consequence would be an eight-hour day(q).
Even more challenging are recent comments from Randall Carlson in an exchange between Carlson and Jesse Michels(ak).
JM “Do you believe that there are survivors of ancient Atlantis among us, perhaps with underwater bases or bases on the Moon and advanced technology!”
RC “Now there’s a loaded question, Jesse.” [pause] “I would say, a very provisional – Yes!”
Unfortunately, Michels did not pursue the matter in the clip available.
(a) See: Archive 3334
(b) https://www.q-mag.org/moon-mars-impacts-and-collisions.html
(c) https://aisberg.unibg.it/retrieve/handle/10446/316/1369/WPMateRi05%282008%29SpedicatoPetruzzi.pdf
(e) The Clockwork Moon | MalagaBay (archive.org)
(f) https://grahamhancock.com/earth-capture-the-moon-gilligan/
(g) https://www.gks.uk.com/moon-origin-egyptian/
(h) https://www.q-mag.org/moon-mars-impacts-and-collisions.html
(i) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(j) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gouqy4OghyY
(k) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Moon
(l) https://web.archive.org/web/20160710150837/https://atlantisrisingmagazine.com/article/late-arrival/
(n) When the Earth Had Two Moons – Issue 74: Networks – Nautilus (archive.org)
(o) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eAwUiadZHY
(p) Firmament and Chaos (archive.org) *
(r) Neal Adams: 01 – The Growing Earth | MalagaBay (archive.org)
(s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Adams
(t) https://www.naturalphilosophy.org/site/dehilster/2014/09/22/is-the-earth-expanding-and-even-growing/
(u) Neal Adams: 02 – The Growing Moon | MalagaBay (archive.org)
(v) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy3_sWF7tv4
(w) Atlantean Research, Vol.1, No.2, September/October 1948
(x) Velikovsky’s Mistakes | Acksblog (cycliccatastrophism.org)
(z) Earth may once have had two moons – BBC News
(aa) SCIENCE WATCH – The Moon and Lunacy – NYTimes.com (archive.org)
(ab) https://grahamhancock.com/eilinga2/
(ad) The Origin and Evolution of Earth: From the Big Bang to the Future of Human Existence (archive.org)
(ae) https://www.academia.edu/38380799/13k_Theory_Atlantis_Revisited.pdf
(af) The Earth Without the Moon (varchive.org)
(ag) How did the moon form? A supercomputer may have just found the answer | Live Science
(ai) The Revelations of John – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)
(aj) (99+) Nibiru-tiamat rel 6 June 13 | Emilio Spedicato – Academia.edu
(ak) Graham Hancock: Aliens, Atlantis & the Apocalypse – YouTube
(al) How did the moon form? A supercomputer may have just found the answer | Live Science
(am) Atlantis, Vol.4, No,4, November 1951
(an) https://www.academia.edu/16833657/Hitlers_Supernatural_Sciences
(ap) Ancient humans used the moon as a calendar in the sky (sciencenews.org)
Bergquist, Nils Olof
Nils Olof Bergquist (1897-1989) was a Swedish engineer with an interest in ancient history. In 1954 he published The Moon Puzzle[786] which is probably a reworking of his 1946 Swedish publication[1186]. In it he describes a very close encounter of the earth with a large extraterrestrial body some millions of years ago. As it grazed the earth it caused the ejection of a large mass from what is now the Pacific Ocean. This mass became our Moon.
Although his theories differ in many respects from those of Hörbiger, Bergquist never once referred to Hörbiger’s ideas, which were still popular at that time. Berquist was content to link together the Deluge of Genesis, the Atlantis story and the Nordic Niflhem saga.
>The Dellen Lakes of Central Sweden were identified by Bergquist as having been formed by material from the Moon which fell down as a meteorite on the surface of the Earth(a)!<
In 1971, he published, in Swedish, Ymdogat-Atlantis[785]which looked at Atlantis in the light of Norse mythology. He also studied The Oera Linda Book and in the end endorsed the Dogger Bank as the most likely location of Atlantis.
(a) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/11035896809451894?journalCode=sgff19 *
Goodman, Jeffrey *
Jeffrey Goodman was formerly a geological consultant to the oil industry. He is better known as a maverick archaeologist with a degree from the University of Arizona. He came to public attention with the publication of his first book Psychic Archaeology in 1977. He does not claim to be a psychic himself but is content to use the talents of others in this regard. He has gone on to ruffle more feathers with his claim that modern man originated in California 500,000 years ago!
His latest book The Comets of God [1687] should generate further controversy with its claim to provide new evidence of God(a). However, what he has provided are a number of instances in the Old Testament where catastrophic events can be interpreted as encounters with cometary bodies. These include the Deluge, Sodom & Gomorrah, the Exodus and Joshua’s Great Victory.
In Psychic Archaeology[781] he touches on the subject of Atlantis focussing, perhaps understandably, on Edgar Cayce’s ‘contribution’ to the mystery.
(a) http://www.thecometsofgod.com/ (account suspended 05.10.22) *
Bangert, Kurt
Kurt Bangert is a German humanitarian working with the World Vision relief 
organisation, who has written extensively on issues such as HIV/AIDS, boy soldiers and poverty. Among his many essays are a couple relating to Atlantis. A 2007 paper(a), in German, entitled The Sinking of Atlantis and the Black Sea Flood gives support to the Black Sea location for Atlantis promoted by Christian and Siegfried Schoppe.>Atlantisforschung quotes Bangert’s view of the Schoppes’ Black Sea Atlantis as “not only having a high degree of plausibility, but is so resoundingly valid that it can almost be regarded as a historical fact.“(c)
He studied the biblical Deluge and concluded that ‘the cradle of civilisation’ was on the Black Sea and not Mesopotamia.
Bangert has also written about other ancient mysteries including the Nebra Sky Disk, the Tower of Babel and Mt Sinai(b).<
(a) https://kurtbangert.de/downloads/2_6_Der_Untergang_von_Atlantis_und_die_Schwarzmeerflut.pdf (link broken) *
(b) Kurt Bangert – Mythologie und Wirklichkeit (archive.org)
Charpentier, Louis *
Louis Charpentier (1905-1979) was a French journalist with a fascination for the mysteries of ancient history. He has written books on the Basques and the Templars, the latter were considered by Charpentier to have built Chartres Cathedral as a repository for ancient wisdom. Tracy Boyd has written a related paper(b), in which she mentions that “Many of the labyrinths originally installed in cathedrals in France were later destroyed by the Church itself”!
In 1975, he produced a paper in which he speculated on the existence of Atlantis and concluded that it probably existed as a Cro-Magnon society on an island in the Atlantic that was destroyed by the Deluge. The text of the article is available on the Atlantisforschung.de website(a).
(a) http://atlantisforschung.de/index.php?title=Das_cromagnoide_Atlantis
(b) our lady of chartres (archive.org) (Footnote 27) *
Bab-el-Mandeb
Bab-el-Mandeb, which means gate of tears, is the name given to the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea and has been identified as one of the two routes taken by humans ‘out of Africa’ around 120,000 years ago, the other being through Sinai.
The Strait has also been identified by some researchers as the location of the Pillars of Heracles referred to by Plato. This idea is advocated by Jacques Hébert, Thérêse Ghembaza and Sunil Prasannan who have respectively located Atlantis at Socotra, Meroë and Sundaland.
The French historian Philippe Potel-Belner also identifies Bab-el-Mandeb as the Pillars of Heracles(c) beyond which lay Atlantis on a long plain on the west coast of India(b).
>Atlantisforschung has also pointed out that Radek Brychta was another one to nominate Bab-el-Mandeb as the site of the ‘Pillars’(d).<
A fictional account of the destruction of Atlantis in the Red Sea and its relationship with the biblical Deluge by Orson Scott Card is now available on the Internet(a).
(a) http://www.hatrack.com/osc/stories/atlantis.shtml
(b) https://www.academia.edu/3480936/Atlantis_myth_legend_History (French) (offline Nov. 2015)
(c) https://www.academia.edu/3339364/PLATO_revisited_what_he_precisely_said_about_Atlantis (French) (offline Nov.2015)
(d) Säulen des Herakles – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) *
Dodwell, George F.
George F. Dodwell (1879-1963) was a leading Australian astronomer, who made an extensive study of ancient gnomons and discovered that they deviated from what had been anticipated. A gnomon is the part of a sundial that casts the shadow. He concluded that there was consistent evidence that the tilt of the earth’s rotational axis was altered around 2345 BC. This view supported those that have claimed that the poles shifted within the memory of man, possibly as a result of a close encounter or impact with an extraterrestrial body such as a comet. Some have gone further and attribute the destruction of Atlantis to this clash. Dodwell’s complete work on the subject can now be read on Barry Setterfield’s website(a).
Dodwell, a devout Christian, concluded that it was this sudden shift of the earth’s axis that led to the Flood of Noah. Reinaud de Jonge proposed a similar linkage between the 2345 BC cosmic encounter and the biblical Deluge. He also claimed that a large collection of petroglyphs at Mougau-Bihan in Brittany were inspired by this event.
Rene Noorbergen (1928-1995) mentions in his Secrets of the Lost Races [612.20] that Dodwell wrote to Professor Arthur J. Brandenberger of Ohio State University, outlining his theory in the following manner; “I have been making during the last 26 years an extensive investigation of what we know in astronomy as the secular variation of the obliquity of the ecliptic. From a study of the available ancient observations of the position of the sun at the solstices during the last three thousand years, I find a curve which, after allowing for all known changes, shows a typical exponential curve of recovery of the Earth’s axis after a sudden change from a former nearly vertical position to an inclination of 26½ degrees, from which it was returned to an equilibrium at the present inclination of 23½ degrees during the interval of the succeeding 3,194 years to A.D. 1850. The date of the change in the Earth’s axis, 2345 B.C., is none other than that of the flood recorded in the Bible, and the resulting conclusion is that the Biblical account of the flood as a universal one, together with its story of Noah’s Ark, is historically true.”
Dodwell was also impressed by the work of the creationist, George McCready Price (1870-1963), who had also concluded[1616] that the Earth’s axial tilt had been altered as a result of an impact with a celestial body. Price also linked the event with the biblical Deluge.
Dodwell referred to a paper of F.S.Richards on the orientation of the Temple of Ammon at Karnak(b), which indicated an anomalous obliquity of the ecliptic of 25°9’55”. This led to considerable debate regarding the age of the temple. William Fix drew attention[871.264] to the widespread reuse of very ancient sacred sites by successive cultures, which might explain the incompatibility between the apparent age of the most recent temple and the greater antiquity suggested by the obliquity of the ecliptic. Alternatively, it might also indicate an encounter with an extraterrestrial body that affected the Earth’s axis and caused widespread destruction, including, according to some theories, the destruction of Atlantis!
S.F. Wells published a paper(h) on Graham Hancock’s website in which he investigated the Avebury stone circle and its associated monuments and found evidence that they “show knowledge of past Polar positions”.
In the interests of balance, I must refer readers to an extensive 2013 paper(f) by a creationist, Dr Danny Faulkner, who has cast doubts on Dodwell’s conclusions. More recently Paul Dunbavin also published a positive critique of Dodwell’s work in Prehistory Papers [1758.71]. This essay was written a few years ago and is now available on his website(k)>>as well as the academia.edu website(l).<<
Another interesting comment is offered by Barry Setterfield, who wrote(a) that “ Dodwell has assumed here that the original axis tilt of the earth, before 2345 B.C., was nearly upright. For that reason, he supposed a very strong impact was necessary to jolt the earth from that position to its current 23.5-degree tilt. This is why a number of astronomers have rejected Dodwell’s work in this area. However, if the axis tilt was greater than its current axis tilt before 2345 B.C., then an impact of much less force would have been required to restore the earth to a slightly more upright position. The evidence for this greater axis tilt may be seen in the evidence of the ice age which covered most of Europe prior to 2345 B.C.”
Malcolm Bowden, the author of True Science Agrees with the Bible[1612], also wrote a pamphlet[590] supporting Dodwell’s findings and later produced a YouTube video explaining in detail Dodwell’s axial tilt theory(g). Paul D. Ackerman offers another review of Dodwell’s work from a creationist viewpoint(j). Ackerman is an ardent supporter of the concept of a young Earth [1727].
In 2011, Mike Baillie, the renowned dendrochronologist, gave a PowerPoint presentation(d) at the Quantavolution Conference in Athens, which offered tree-ring evidence that clearly demonstrated an ‘event’ in 2345 BC, which has counterparts in early Chinese and Middle East records suggesting a cometary encounter/impact! Baillie also notes that Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley both thought that Archbishop Ussher’s Flood of 2349 BC was due to a comet.
As early as 1696, William Whiston claimed that the earth’s encounter with a comet led to the biblical Deluge.
More recently, Andrew Bourmistroff, a Russian researcher, has determined that the orientation of the Great Pyramid at Giza is off by 9.85 degrees west of true north(e). The full significance, if any, of all these details has yet to be fully determined.
(b) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(d) https://www.qconference-athens-2011.grazian-archive.com/the2345topicmbai/index.html
(e) https://web.archive.org/web/20150909160031/https://www.world-mysteries.com/andb1.htm
(f) https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/earth/an-analysis-of-the-dodwell-hypothesis/
(g) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21WvVH4CXR4
(h) https://grahamhancock.com/wellssf1/
(i) THE COMET CATASTROPHE OF c.2345 BC – 1 (archive.org)
(j) https://creationism.org/csshs/v07n4p02.htm
(k) Updating George F Dodwell | pauldunbavin (third-millennium.co.uk)
(l) (96) Updating George F. Dodwell | Paul Dunbavin – Academia.edu *
Bennici, Elvira Mercurio (L)
Elvira Mercurio Bennici is an Italian author of who offered the world his contribution[158] to the search for Atlantis in 1982. Unfortunately, it appears to have been a round up of the ‘usual suspects’; Stonehenge, Aztecs, Ogygia, giants, the Deluge etc., etc. The search continues.
Aboulfotouh, Dr. Hossam
Dr. Hossam Aboulfotouh (1960 – ) is Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture in the Egyptian University of 
Minia. He has daringly suggested that Atlantis was sited in the Nile Delta and destroyed in 3070 BC(f).
Unfortunately, he has supported this contention with very little evidence. In his website(a) he wanders somewhat, discussing ancient metrology and hieroglyphics. He also offers a decoding of the Dendera Zodiac(e).
R. McQuillen offers a much stronger case for an Egyptian location. However, both Aboulfotouh and McQuillen have opted for the west of the Nile delta near Canopus as having been the location of the Pillars of Heracles referred to by Plato. It is interesting to note that the late Ulf Richter studied the topographical details provided by Plato and concludes that the capital city of Atlantis was constructed on a river delta.
In three rather technical papers(d) Aboulfotouh calculates the date of the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza as 3055 BC, which he claims was also the time of the Deluge or what he refers to as the “tsunami of the Mediterranean”. He also outlines his views on the methods used to design the Giza complex using ‘The Horizon Theory’.(b)(d)
Diego Ratti, in his 2021 book, Atletenu [1821], has placed Atlantis in Egypt’s eastern Nile Delta with Avaris its capital and so identifying the Hyksos as Atlantean.
Aboulfotouh has also written a paper on the tilt of the Giza pyramids’ entrance passages proving “that the pyramids’ designer was able to include the geographic, astronomical and time parameters in one relativistic equation, encoding the date of the design of the Giza pyramids in the tilt of the entrance passage of the Great Pyramid.”(c)
Some years ago Aboulfotouh put forward detailed plans for the rehabilitation of historic Cairo(h), but it seems that bureaucratic inertia has prevented any progress with his suggestions.
Aboulfotouh published a number of papers on the Academia.edu website relating to ancient Egypt and the mathematical knowledge of the time there. One of his most unusual contributions is a paper entitled Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence Using the Architectonic Magic Codes, which he suggests could be converted in a musical piece that might be recognised by both parties!(g) Steven Spielberg used a similar idea nearly 50 years ago in Close Encounters of the Third Kind!
(a) https://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php?topic=1062.0
(c) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(f) https://web.archive.org/web/20100708140347/www.fotouh.netfirms.com/Aboulfotouh-Atlantis.htm
Formorians
The Formorians are reputed to have been the earliest occupiers of Ireland after the last Ice Age, according to the Book of Invasions(e). Although the etymology of their name is uncertain a commonly accepted theory is that the term Formorian is supposed to be derived from ‘Firmorrichi’ meaning ‘men of Morocco’ conforming to a tradition that they came from North Africa. Thomas Dietrich is happy to accept[0217] the Moroccan connection as he considers early Morocco to have been a colony of Atlantis and so by extension to have brought Atlantean culture to Ireland.
Ignatius Donnelly in Part V, chapter 7(f) of his now rather dated 1882 book, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World also designates Ireland as a former colony of Atlantis. He also disputes the generally accepted etymology for the name ‘Formorian’, preferring to adopt the views of Col. Francis Wilford[0114] to support his contention that it means ‘from the west’, which according to Donnelly could only be a reference to Atlantis in the Atlantic.
However, the Irish Annals of Clonmacnoise(g) claim that the Formorians were descended from Noah’s youngest son Cham who according to the Bible was born 100 years before the Flood (Genesis 7).
The Ancient Pages.com website had an article in July 2017 with the misleading headline of “Formorians: Supernatural Race Of Giants Who Came From Atlantis”, without a single mention of Atlantis in the body of the text(h). Readers can draw their own conclusions about the reliability of A. Sutherland, the author.
Ronan Coghlan has suggested that “the CHAM referred to in the Annals of Clonmacnoise is not SHEM but HAM, noting that in the Vulgate translation of the Bible, Ham is CHAM”!
Robert Stacy-Judd[0607.237] followed Donnelly and accepted that the ancient Irish annals(b) describe the Formorians coming to Ireland ‘before the Deluge’ and having a fleet of sixty ships and a strong army. He also quotes the Annals of Clonmacnois which records that the Formorians ‘were descended from Cham, the son of Noeh and lived by piracy and spoil of other nations and were in those days very troublesome to the whole world.’ Stacy-Judd also speculates that Noah and his sons were Atlanteans!
The reliability of the Irish annals as historical documents is highly questionable, particularly when dealing with very early events.
James I. Nienhuis seems to have adapted some of Dietrich’s ideas for his Dancing from Genesis blog (Nov. 2007)(a) , although he does not seem to be clear on the difference between Ireland and Britain, as he places Newgrange in the United Kingdom and has the Formorians settling in Britain rather than Ireland!
The excellent Migration and Diffusion website(c) has a paper by Stuart L. Harris who puts more flesh on the bones of the idea of the Formorian invasion of Ireland from Galicia in Spain, which he dates at 2186 BC. However, Harris’ claims that “the Formorians spoke and wrote in Finnish” and that “until about 1200 BC, Ireland spoke Finnish, not Gaelic”, reflecting his obsession with the ancient Finns. Such a claim would be guaranteed the raise the eyebrows, if not the hackles, of many Irish academics.
Dale Drinnon has an extensive article on the Formorians in his Frontiers of Anthropology website(d).
(a) https://dancingfromgenesis.wordpress.com/
(b) https://www.scss.tcd.ie/misc/kronos/chronology/synchronisms/Edition_4/K_trad/K_synch.htm
(c) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2012&id=333
(d) See: Archive 3570
(e) See: Archive 3628
(f) https://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/ataw/ataw507.htm
(g) https://archive.org/stream/annalsofclonmacn00mage/annalsofclonmacn00mage_djvu.txt
(h) https://www.ancientpages.com/2017/07/18/fomorians-supernatural-race-giants-came-atlantis/