An A-Z Guide To The Search For Plato's Atlantis

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  • NEWS September 2023

    NEWS September 2023

    September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we move to Sicily and Malta. The trip is purely vacational. Unfortunately, I am writing this in a dreadful apartment, sitting on a bed, with access to just one useable socket and a small Notebook. Consequently, I possibly will not […]Read More »
  • Joining The Dots

    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 »
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Thorwald C. Franke

Holland, Tom

Tom Holland (1968- ) is the English author of a number of books on ancient and medieval history as well as a presenter of documentaries on the BBC.

Holland along with Dominic Sandbrook has fronted an extensive series of podcasts titled The Rest is History . Two recent (50 min) episodes(a)(b) dealt with the story of Atlantis. Thorwald C. Franke was ‘displeased’ with their content and produced a lengthy critique of the two segments in German(d) and English(c) in his Newsletter No.211. I advise that his full paper be read.

(a) (77) 314. Atlantis: The Legend – YouTube

(b) (77) 315. Atlantis: Legacy of the Lost Empire – YouTube

(c) Tom Holland on Plato’s Atlantis – Atlantis-Scout  (Eng)

(d) Tom Holland über Platons Atlantis – Atlantis-Scout (Ger)

Svensén. Emil

Emil Svensén (1850-1931) was a Swedish journalist who had a great interest in Atlantis. Thorwald C. Franke tracked down two publications(a)(b) in which Svensén offered his opinions on Atlantis.

He believed that Plato’s Atlantis was based on at least two historical realities – the invasions of the Sea Peoples and the eruption of Thera, although details of the events became distorted and eventually emerged as the narrative we now have.

(a) Jorden och menniskan – Allmän geografisk läsebok “, Series: Svenska biblioteket , Stockholm (Fahlcrantz & Co) 1887

(b) “Atlantis”, in: Ord och Bild , 1895, pp. 289-310

Emil Svensén (1850-1931) was a Swedish journalist who had a great interest in Atlantis. Thorwald C. Franke tracked down two publications(a)(b) in which Svensén offered his opinions on Atlantis.

He believed that Plato’s Atlantis was based on at least two historical realities – the invasions of the Sea Peoples and the eruption of Thera, although details of the events became distorted and eventually emerged as the narrative we now have.

(a) Jorden och menniskan – Allmän geografisk läsebok “, Series: Svenska biblioteket , Stockholm (Fahlcrantz & Co) 1887

(b) “Atlantis”, in: Ord och Bild , 1895, pp. 289-310

Nowak, Peter

Peter Nowak is the author of the 2016 German-language book Everything You Wanted to Know about Atlantis (Was Sie schon immer über Atlantis wissen wollten)[1955].  Roland M. Horn, the Atlantisforschung founder, wrote the Foreword and declared that this “is one of the best Atlantis books ever written in my opinion!”(a)

Thorwald C. Franke has offered more muted support in an Amazon review(a).

(a) https://www-amazon-de.translate.goog/schon-immer-Atlantis-wissen-wollten/dp/3739241160?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

Assman, Jan

Jan Assmann (1938- ) is a renowned German Egyptologist and is Emeritus Professor at the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg. In June 2018, Thorwald C. Franke (Newsletter No.117) offered the following comments on Assmann’s attitude to Atlantis. “In his works, Jan Assmann touches on the topic of Plato’s Atlantis several times. In all relevant passages, he consequently avoids formulations and wordings which declare Atlantis to be just an invention by Plato. Assmann talks about the Atlantis tradition as an Egyptian tradition.

On the other hand, Jan Assmann avoids any explicit statement in favor of the existence of Atlantis, and how to imagine this existence in detail. And of course, as a reasonable Egyptologist, Jan Assmann rejects pseudo-science approaches such as considering Egypt and the Sphinx 11000 years old.

Assmann’s book with the most relevance to Atlantis research is “Wisdom and Mystery: The Image of the Greeks of Egypt”, which is available in German only, while other works of Assmann have been translated into English.”(a)

Assmann’s book Cultural Memory and Early Civilization [2071] can now be read online (b)

(a) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_newsl_archive.htm *

(b) (99+) Assmann, Jan – Cultural Memory and Early Civilization | mustafa kaya – Academia.edu *

Bradwardine, Thomas

Thomas Bradwardine (1290-1349) was a highly regarded mathematician and theologian, who was, for a very brief period, Archbishop of Canterbury just before his death. Thorwald C. Franke has drawn attention to Bradwardine’s rejection of Plato’s, or more correctly the Egyptian priest’s, apparent claim of a very early date for Atlantis [1255.242]. It seems, particularly as a cleric, that he found such a date conflicted with biblical chronology. It seems that in the end, he proposed that Plato’s ‘years’ were lunar cycles.

Similarly, Pierre d’Ailly (1350-1420), a French theologian who became cardinal, arrived at the same conclusion. While discussing Timaeus he realised that Plato’s dates of 8,000 and 9,000 ‘years’ before Solon conflicted with church teaching that the world had only lasted for 6,200 years until the birth of Christ. In order to avoid an accusation of heresy, he used Bradwardine’s explanation that Plato referred to lunar cycles, not solar years.(a)

It is not unreasonable to deduce from this, that Bradwardine and d’Ailly would not have bothered to offer the ‘lunar cycle’ explanation unless they accepted the reality of Atlantis. It would have been much easier to dismiss the Atlantis story as a fiction.

(a)  Pierre d’Ailly (1350/1-1420) – Atlantisforschung.de

Rodríguez Cantos, Pablo

Pablo Rodríguez Cantos is self-described as “a mathematician, a Catholic priest and an amateur poet from Granada.” We first encountered him earlier this year (2021), when he published a review (in Spanish) of Paulino Zamarro‘s book[0024], a review that can be read in English here.

Rodriguez has been studying the matter of Atlantis for some time and has published a number of related blogs on his website(b). He has now advanced further into the swampy field of Atlantology by establishing a bilingual English/Spanish forum(a) which he “expects to be a meeting point for professional, independent and amateur researchers on Atlantis topics according to a scientific methodology. Everybody can read the forum, but you must register for writing messages. Registration is completely free and really simple. Please read and accept the rules of the forum before you participate.”

Due to a daunting backlog of work I was unable to participate in it as I had hoped. I now note in his Newsletter 178(c) that Thorwald C. Franke has withdrawn from the forum as he realised “that the forum admin was not pursuing an existence hypothesis on Plato’s Atlantis at all, but an invention hypothesis.”

(a) Atlantis Forum (foroactivo.com)

(b) https://perijoresis.blogspot.com

(c) Atlantis Newsletter Archive – Atlantis-Scout

Joining the Dots

Joining the Dots was the title of my book published 0ver two years ago. Its intention was to show that there was cumulative evidence that demonstrated the reality of Atlantis and had existed in the Central Mediterranean. While individual points have limited value, when put together, it clearly shows that ‘the balance of probabilities’ favours the existence of Atlantis.

Sometime after publication, Professor Heinz-Günther Nesselrath of Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen published a review of ‘Dots’ in the highly respected Bryn Mawr Classical Review(a) (BMCR) and subsequently published an extended critique of my book, which is rather unusual!

I eventually completed a response to Nesselrath’s initial article and have published it here today (2/3/21).

>Later in 2021 Thorwald C. Franke published his Newsletter No. 175(c) in which he revealed that in the course of correspondence with BMCR they claimed that they do not review self-published books, which mine was. One can legitimately wonder why Joining the Dots was chosen for such exceptional treatment! Franke’s entire newsletter should be read.<

(a) https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2020/2020.04.15/

(b) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340594821_How_Not_to_Join_the_Dots_Remarks_on_a_Flawed_Recent_Attempt_to_Locate_Atlantis

>(c) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis-bmcr-engl.htm<

Bittner, Stefan

Stefan Bittner is a German historian, who published a substantial book of over 500 pages [1730] >Atlantis – wissenschaftlich analysiert (Atlantis-Scientifically Analysed). Atlantisforschung commenting on Bittner’s book suggests that he has“made a challenging contribution to solving the Atlantis problem. He comes to the remarkable conclusion that ‘Plato uses a historical source and reinterprets it as a philosophical metaphor’.”

Bittner proposes a ‘new’ location for Atlantis in the valley of the river Oued Laou, the Wadi Laou east of Tangier in Morocco. Over the past century, a number of researchers have proposed a variety of specific locations within Morocco as the original home of Atlantis, with varying degrees of credibility. What is clear is that Plato did indicate that at least some of North Africa constituted a part of the Atlantean domain, so designating an individual valley as the totality of Atlantis is, for me, not credible and to claim that Atlantis was flooded but did not sink, contradicts Plato, which I consider an unwise position to take, as it also fails to explain how a flooded inland valley can become a hazard for navigation (Timaeus 25d).

Thorwald C. Franke has now written a more extensive review(a) of Bittner’s book.

(a) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis-stefan-bittner-engl.htm