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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 »
Toltecs
Görlitz, Dominique
Dominique Görlitz holds a doctorate in biogeography. As an experimental archaeologist, for many years he has been studying the
Abora-Projekt, Dr. Dominique Görlitz
ability of prehistoric and early historical cultures to spread. He gained international recognition for his ABORA reed boat expeditions(a).
Unfortunately, he also received unwanted international attention when he and his associate, Dr Stefan Erdmann, were accused of damaging and removing artifacts from the Pyramid of Cheops(b).
>His interest in pyramids led him to study the pyramidal structures on the island of Pico in the Azores, following which. in 2014, Dominique Görlitz gave a lecture on the Pico pyramids(f). Related to this, is an article on the Atlantisforschung website regarding the debate between Nuno Ribeiro and Portuguese archaeologists regarding the authenticity of the structures as pyramids(g).<
In 2013, Görlitz published a report of his investigation of the Bosnian pyramids in which he concluded “that at least the Great Pyramid of the Sun and the lesser Pyramid of the Moon are not the archaeological remains of an unknown civilization.”(e)
Dr Görlitz has also studied the cart ruts found in Sardinia(c). Images of these ruts can also be seen in a YouTube video(d).
>What I consider his most extreme suggestion is the claim that the Basques had crossed the Atlantic and influenced the culture of the Toltecs of Mexico in a two-part article for Atlantisforschung(h). “In addition to the well-known cultural parallels between the peoples of the Old and New Worlds, many Native American cultures have old myths about foreign culture bringers that relate to the beginnings of their culture and agriculture.”<
(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abora_(expeditions)
(c) On the trail of the Cart Rut mystery – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)
Patriarchs and Longevity
The Patriarchs referred to in Genesis and their seemingly exaggerated longevity has been a source of continuous debate ever since biblical criticism developed in the 18th century. Cornelius de Pauw referred to the apparently exaggerated life spans of the biblical patriarchs explaining that it was widespread in the Middle East and further afield to name a dynasty or family after its founder and attribute the total years of its reign to that founder. [1756.258]
Before dePauw, Pierre-Daniel Huet expressed similar views to Samuel Borchart, linking the biblical patriarchs and the story of Atlantis in his Demonstratio Evangelica [1007]. >Atlantology’s interest in the apparent longevity of the patriarchs stems from the difficulty created by Plato’s insistence that Atlantis was at war with Athens and Egypt 9,000 years before Solon’s visit to Egypt. This idea defies reason as neither state existed until many millennia later. An astounding number of attempts to reconcile this large discrepancy are on offer (See Dating Atlantis).<
Stephen E. Jones has published an interesting paper in 2005, whose investigation led him to conclude “there is no real conflict on this matter between the Bible and science nor between the Bible and itself”(i). Carol A. Hill has written a paper, Making Sense of the Numbers of Genesis, also intended to reconcile the Ages of the biblical patriarchs and science(j) as was a paper by Jim Stump(k).
Lee Mckague has suggested that there may be a biological explanation for the longevity of the biblical patriarchs(h)!
Emilio Spedicato in a paper(f) entitled Large Numbers in Asian Chronology Decrypted includes some radical ideas on how to resolve the mystery of the ages of the patriarchs recorded in the Bible. He also expanded on his ideas regarding large numbers in ancient chronologies with a paper(l) in which he considers “large numbers in days, not in years, that appear in Mesoamerican Mayan and Toltecs chronologies. We show how such numbers, when reduced to years under some hypotheses, provide important information for a period extending over several thousand years BC, related to catastrophic events on our planet and to a special event in the solar system.”
A paper(a) by an unnamed and apparently deceased author was published by Duane L. Christensen. It approaches the ages of the patriarchs from a numerological standpoint with some curious conclusions. I’m wary of all such occult claims but will leave it to readers to decide.
>Over a century ago, George H. Cooper offered the simplistic suggestion that the great ages of the patriarchs recorded in the Bible was the result of confusing lunar cycles with solar years [236.232]!<
Zoltan Simon has claimed that the ages of the patriarchs were calculated using 90-day ‘years’ [0549.7].
Another paper by Dean Talboys, entitled Methuselah Debunked(b)(c)(d) offers a convoluted explanation for the ages based on Babylonian astronomy/astrology.
Philip Coppens has also touched on a possible astronomical explanation for the patriarchal numbers(g).
In one(e) of his many papers on ancient chronology, Gérard Gertoux he controversially touches on subjects such as radiocarbon dating, the age of the patriarchs, the Ice Ages, evolution and more.
>Readers interested in the attempts to explain the apparently inflated ages of the patriarchs might be interested in a paper on the biologos website where it proposes that “One option is attaching some significance to the fact that all of the 30 numbers can be expressed as combinations of the two “sacred” numbers 60 and 7 in terms of years and months. 60 was culturally significant because it was the number that Babylonian mathematics was based on (the influence of this sexagesimal system is still felt today with our 60 minutes per hour and 60 seconds per minute). And 7, of course, has a prominent place in biblical symbolism beginning with the Sabbath. So when we’re told that Methuselah was 187 years when he had his son Lamech (Gen. 5:25), we can see that 187 = 60+60+60+7 years. And then because 60 months = 5 years, when Adam is said to be 130 years at the birth of his son Seth (Gen. 5:3), that can be expressed as (60+60 years) + (60+60 months).” (m)<
(a) https://jbburnett.com/resources/ot/christensen-patr-ages.pdf
(e) https://www.academia.edu/17026643/Noah_and_the_Deluge_Chronological_Historical_and_Archaeological_Evidence (around one-third of the page down)
(f) Migration & Diffusion (migration-diffusion.info)
(g) https://www.eyeofthepsychic.com/genesis5/
(h) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253528140_Methuselah_Oldest_Myth_or_Oldest_Man
(i) Stephen E. Jones: Projects: The ages of the patriarchs in Genesis 5 and 11 (archive.org)
(j) https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2003/PSCF12-03Hill.pdf
(k) https://biologos.org/articles/long-life-spans-in-genesis-literal-or-symbolic
(m) Long Life Spans in Genesis: Literal or Symbolic? – BioLogos *
Fontaine, Edward
Rev. Edward Fontaine (1814-1884) was a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, a politician and the author of How the World was Peopled[1277] in which he favoured the opinions of Brasseur de Bourbourg, who had identified the land of the Toltecs, in Central America, as the home of Atlantis, citing a comparison of Plato’s description of Atlantis with that of the mythical kingdom of Xibalba, similar to Donnelly’s later suggestion.
Fontaine adds quotations from classical writers as well as Humboldt in support of this Toltec theory[p.136-140]. However, most of the ideas in the book are now long outdated.
Honoré, Pierre
Pierre Honoré was the author of In Quest of the White God[956], which explored the legends that persisted among the natives of Central and South America of white pre-Columbian visitors, revered as gods, that had come from the east. Individual ‘gods’ were remembered as Kukulcan by the Maya and Quetzalcoatl by the Toltecs and Aztecs. Honoré proposed that these ‘deities’ had come from Crete and brought their script with them and since the use of Linear A & B ceased around 1400 BC, the transatlantic visits must have taken place before that date.
Honoré’s book was later republished as In Search of Quetzalcoatl, which can be read online(a). Unfortunately, Honoré’s work has been seen as racist and is often used now by white extremists.
Jason Colavito has delivered a characteristically harsh review of the ‘White Gods’ school of thought.(b)
Toltecs, The
The Toltecs were the predecessors of the Aztecs in central Mexico. It is generally accepted that they ruled between the 10th and 12th centuries AD. Some rather pathetic attempts by Theosophists and New Agers have been made to link the Toltecs with Atlantis. Annie Besant, the theosophist, informed us that the Toltecs were 27 feet tall!
William Scott-Elliot, also a theosophist, described the Toltecs as “averaging about eight feet during the period of their ascendency, but of course dwindling, as all races did, to the dimensions that are common today.”(a)
In the Toltec city of Tula, in the Mexican state of Hidalgo are 15-foot high statues known as Atlantes, which is also an architectural term used to describe supporting columns carved in the shape of a man.(b)
Nevertheless, Dominique Görlitz has written two-part article for Atlantisforschung in which he offers the suggestion that the Toltecs had been influenced by Basque visitors(c). “In addition to the well-known cultural parallels between the peoples of the Old and New Worlds, many Native American cultures have old myths about foreign culture bringers that relate to the beginnings of their culture and agriculture.”
John B. Newman, writing [0488.31] decades before Ignatius Donnelly and drawing on comments by Marco Polo, speculated that what became known as Toltecs had originally been part of a Chinese fleet intent on invading Japan that had been blown off course and ended up on the western shores of what is now Mexico. The settled there although in regular conflict with the native Aztecs. Unfortunately, Newman and Marco Polo have their chronologies mixed up as the the fleet in question was dispatched by Kublai Khan, long after the Toltecs arrived in Mexico.
(a) https://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/soa/soa17.htm
(b) Tula – Mysterious City of the Toltecs – The Maritime Explorer (archive.org)
Buelna, Eustaquio,
Eustaquio Buelna (1830-1907) was a Mexican lawyer, educator and philologist. He believed(a) that the Toltecs and the Aztecs were of the Nahuatl race and were originally from Atlantis, submerged in the Atlantic, but migrated to North America and eventually to the Valley of Mexico via the Gila and Colorado rivers.
Survivors
Survivors of the Atlantean destruction are a reasonable expectation given the extent of its influence as described by Plato. The fact that its rulers only met every few years suggests a geographical spread that must have left some, if not most, of the confederation intact, irrespective of the location of the earthquake’s epicentre. Some have proposed that survivors migrated to an extensive range of locations such as Egypt, the Middle East and the Americas, but offer little to substantiate their claims apart from the widely dispersed flood myths that are most likely to have arisen following the melting of glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age.
Sanchuniathon refers to the original kings of Egypt calling them ‘Aleteans’. Albert Slosman claims[551] that survivors from Atlantis had migrated to Egypt. The archaeologist, Marcelle Weissen-Szumianska, in a 1965 book, Origines Atlantiques des Anciens Egyptiens [837], maintained that the pre-pharaonic Egyptians originated in Atlantis, which had been situated in Morocco! Others suggest that Egypt was an Atlantean colony.
Egerton Sykes proposed that the Tuatha deDanaan were refugees from Atlantis in his 1949 edition of Donnelly’s Atlantis. Sean Welsh is one of several who have labelled the Sea Peoples as Atlantean refugees.
All the suggestions put forward are either pure speculation, invention or allegedly derived from some psychic source. W. Scott-Eliot claimed [543] that refugees from an Atlantic Atlantis fled westward to Mexico and became the Toltecs and eastward and built Stonehenge ln Britain! While other European cultures have also had Atlantean roots attributed to them, the most frequently named are the great civilisations of Central and South America – Aztec, Mayan and Incan. Posnansky went as far as to suggest that Tiwanaku in the Andes was built by Nordic refugees from Atlantis! Proof, however, is lacking in all cases.
Maya
The Maya of ancient Mexico and Guatemala have generated much controversy regarding their origins(w). Recent studies indicate that the story of the development of this remarkable civilisation may be more complex than previously thought(k). The demise of the Mayan culture (800-950 AD) has now been definitively shown to be the result of persistent drought, particularly in the southern lowlands(o).
Maya Area of Occupation
Nevertheless, a recent (Sept.2021) article(ac) with contributions from several authorities, highlights the complexity referred to above, while one area might be collapsing another could be flourishing – “A number of Maya cities rose and fell at different times, some within that 800 to 1000 time period, and some afterwards, according to scholars. For example, while areas in southern Mesoamerica, such as Tikal in what is now Guatemala, declined in the eighth and ninth centuries due to environmental problems and political turmoil, populations rose in other areas, such as Chichén Itzá, in what is now the Mexican Yucatán Peninsula,” and “When Chichén Itzá declined, largely because of a lengthy drought during the 11th century, another Yucatán Peninsula city, called Mayapán, started to thrive.”
“We should always remember, the last Maya state, Nojpetén, fell only in 1697 — pretty recent,” said Guy Middleton, a visiting fellow at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Newcastle University in the U.K. “It is really important to get the message out there that though classic Maya cities and states did collapse, and culture did transform, the Maya in no way disappeared,” said Middleton, adding that “we should pay attention to the story, the state and status of the Maya descendent population in Mesoamerica now.”
The commonly held idea, that the Maya were destroyed by drought is now disputed(ah).
The Maya of Central America today are estimated to number seven million.
Inevitably the Maya have been linked with Atlantis by some writers such as Lewis Spence and E.H. Thompson who claimed that the Maya were descendants of Atlanteans. The maverick, Augustus Le Plongeon, was alone in identifying Atlantis as a colony of the Maya and that their language was in fact Greek! Others, such as Jean-Frédérick Waldeck, included an Egyptian linkage as well.
Richard Cassaro has published a fascinating collection of parallels between the Mayan and Egyptian cultures on Graham Hancock’s website (ag).
The controversial American politician Charles Gates Dawes was convinced that there had been a connection between Atlantis and the Maya.
Joachim Rittstieg claimed that the Maya and the Vikings had contact for nearly 500 years (754-1224 AD)(ae).
However, trumping all that is a recent claim that the Maya had contact with extraterrestrials and that a documentary providing evidence is planned(b). In a similar vein is the latest English language publication from Erich von Däniken entitled: Astronaut Gods of the Maya[1422]. Semir Osmanagic, of Bosnian pyramid fame, added a twist to this proposed linkage when he claimed[0519] that the Maya had come from Atlantis, which in turn had been founded by visitors from the Pleiades!
For some comic relief, I can suggest a 1976 book[833] by brothers Eric & Craig Umland which ‘reveals’ that the Maya ‘are remnants of space explorers whose attempts to colonise our solar system went awry more than 40,000 years ago.’ Nearly every page is full of hilarious nonsense and nearly worth the £0.01 currently quoted on Amazon.co.uk. A website(i) dealing with ‘unreason’ uses extracts from the Umlands as good examples! If you wish to read about the Maya in Antarctica, the Canaries as well as the Moon, this is the book for you.
July 2012 saw a report(j) on the discovery of the largest Mayan manmade dam at Tikal in Guatemala, which was 33ft high and 260ft long and included sand filters.
The Maya had a sophisticated writing system that occupied the attention of some 19th-century writers including Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg and Le Plongeon. Unfortunately, de Bourbourg followed the work of the 16th-century bishop of Yucatán, Diego de Landa whose interpretation was seriously erroneous. It was Constantine Rafinesque who partially deciphered some of the Mayan numerals in 1832.
A report in 2013(l) indicated that substantial progress has been made in the decipherment of any outstanding difficulties in the translation of the Mayan script through Internet cooperation.
July 2012 saw a report(j) on the discovery of the largest Mayan man-made dam at Tikal in Guatemala, which was 33ft high and 260ft long and included sand filters. Ten years later, it was discovered that the Maya had also the ability to engineer a water fountain in their city of Palenque(v) and had advanced water management systems(z). A recent BBC article(ab) took an in-depth look at the remarkable hydrological capabilities of the Maya.
Since Tikal was first seen by a European, probably in 1696, it became recognised as Guatemala’s largest archaeological site. In 2021 the use of lidar revealed that the city was four times more extensive than previous thought. The March 2024 edition of National Geographic has an article highlighting the wonderful discoveries regarding the sophisticated society of the Maya revealed by lidar. Unfortunately, looting continues to be a serious problem compounded by a lack of funds to properly exploit the tourism potential of places such as Tikal.
In 2020, the largest and oldest Mayan monument in Mexico was identified. It is in the form of a ceremonial platform that is between 33 and 50 feet tall and is nearly a mile long(x). The structure, dated to around 3,000 years ago and was discovered with the help of LIDAR in the state of Tabasco.
James O’Kon, an engineer, has investigated Mayan technology for decades, including the discovery of a suspension bridge at the ancient Mayan city of Yaxchilan in Mexico in 1995, which is believed to be the longest bridge of the ancient world(r). This and other aspects of Mayan technology he explores in his book, The Lost Secrets of Maya Technology[1490].
One of those technological secrets was the unusual acoustics found at Mayan sites, particularly Chichen Itza(ad). In 1931 Leopold Stokowski, the renowned conductor, spent four days at the site to determine the acoustic principles that could be applied to an open-air concert theatre he was designing. He failed to learn the secret.
More recently, Lorraine Stobbart has written Utopia: Fact or Fiction[0476], which suggests that the ‘Utopia’ of Sir Thomas More was inspired by the Mayan culture although his text was written before Mexico was ‘officially’ discovered. Stobbart recently revealed that she is now revising her views.
However, a more serious claim relates to the idea that Mayan inscriptions revealed that a global catastrophe was to occur in 2012. This nonsense(g) turned into a minor publishing industry. Some even tried to link this daft idea to Atlantis. Fortunately, May 2012 saw evidence from excavations in Guatemala that shows the Mayan calendar extending well beyond 2012(h).
The Mayan calendar has provoked speculation and controversy ever since its discovery. Its origins are obscure, but one interpretation is that the world we live in was created on this day in 3114 B.C. A quite different view was proposed over seventy years ago by Georg Hinzpeter of the German Hoerbiger Society who claimed that our Moon was captured by the Earth in June of 8498 BC and that it became the zero date for the Maya.(y)
Aloys Eiling, the German researcher, commented on the accuracy of the Mayan calendar “The Mayan calendar even surpasses the precision of the Gregorian calendar in use today. Not only did the Mayan calendar measure the duration of the Earth’s orbit around the sun more accurately than our current calendar, but the Maya gave an even more precise value for the average duration of the Moon’s orbit around Earth. The precision achieved is all the more remarkable as the Moon in deserts or regions with clear skies may have played an important role in everyday life as a nightly source of light. But of what use is its dull light in the rainforest or cloudy regions of the world?”(af)
>>The accuracy of the Mayan calendar is such that it loses just one day in 6,000 years(ap).<<
In 2012, it was reported that Mike Baillie, the renowned dendrochronologist, had discovered a correlation between ice core chemistry spikes and the Mayan Long Count Calendar(al)(m).
The late David H. Kelley, a Harvard-educated archaeologist and epigrapher at Canada’s University of Calgary, had been investigating ancient links between Asia and pre-Columbian America. In that regard, he published a paper outlining similarities between the Mayan and ancient Chinese calendars that were too numerous to be explained by independent development(p). A more sceptical view is offered(an)by Jason Colavito, who traces the idea back to Alexander von Humboldt(q).
In a paper entitled On the Mayan Chronology(ao), Emilio Spedicato offers several ideas regarding ancient Meso-American chronologies. For example, he proposes that the large numbers used by the Maya and Toltecs record days rather than years. Many of his ideas stem from the work of Immanuel Velikovsky, John Ackerman and the Tollmans.
The work of Teobert Maler at the end of the 19th century was invaluable in the advancement of Mayan studies. Subsequent researchers have seized upon his discovery of a frieze at Tikal, which he interpreted as a depiction of the destruction of Atlantis, as evidence of the existence of Atlantis in the Atlantic. Apart from Maler’s conjectural ideas, no tangible link has been found between the Maya and Atlantis apart from the use in their glyphs of elephants, an animal that features in Plato’s narrative.
The authenticity of the photo of the frieze has been called into question by Jason Colavito and his related blog(n) is worthy of consideration.
Otto Muck overstated it somewhat when he wrote “If Atlantis had not existed there would be no way of explaining the origins of the Maya civilisation”[098.243]
In late 2011 controversy erupted when it was claimed that the Itza Maya had migrated to North America, more specifically Georgia(c). It was also suggested that earthen pyramids in Georgia and Florida can be attributed to the Maya(e). Richard Thornton led the charge with this claim, which understandably generated considerable controversy. This led to a frosty exchange between Thornton and Jason Colavito(ai).
Among their other accomplishments is the claim that the Maya were capable of predicting meteor showers(s).
Gene Matlock, the well-known advocate of Atlantis in Mexico, is certain that the Maya were originally Tamils from Sri Lanka(a) and Sumerians!
Kurt Schildmann’s 2003 book [1759], was reviewed by Dr Horst Friedrich who commented that “One of the provisional results of Schildmann’s decipherment of the Maya script, and study of the Maya language, is the rather sensational discovery that words from several Old World languages (Sumerian, Accadian, Indo-Iranian, Phoenician, Hebrew and Basque) have somehow found their way into the Maya language.”(aa) I’m sure this will be disputed!
A recent article(f) gives an interesting firsthand account of encountering the important Mayan city of Calakmul deep in the Yucatan jungle. Potentially even more important are recent LiDAR surveys carried out in Guatemala that have revealed an astounding number of previously unidentified Mayan structures. The number of additional Mayan sites identified through the use of LiDAR continues to grow at an incredible rate(u). It was estimated in 2022 that “researchers using laser technology have located nearly 1,000 previously unknown Maya settlements in Guatemala – the sites include ceremonial centers, sporting facilities, roads, and reservoirs“(ak).
In June 2023, it was announced that once again that LiDAR had enabled another forgotten Mayan city to be located in the Yucatan(aj).
Muddying the waters further is an Islamic site that claims that the Maya were Atlantean(m).
(a) https://viewzone2.com/ancientturksx.html
(b) Mayan Filmmaker Offers Photo as Proof of Aliens, Says Hawking Agrees (Exclusive) (archive.org)
(c) http://www.billdawers.com/2011/12/22/is-there-an-1100-year-old-mayan-site-in-north-georgia/
(e) http://www.mayainamerica.com/2012/01/pyramids-in-florida-and-georgia.html
(f) https://travel4wildlife.com/deep-jungle-puerta-calakmul-mexico/#.U5K8MpAU9to
(g) https://web.archive.org/web/20140811054919/https://2012hoax.wikidot.com/oldstart
(h) https://www.christianpost.com/news/earliest-mayan-mural-contradicts-dec-21-2012-doomsday-74788/
(i) https://web.archive.org/web/20200925184903/https://www.jfk-online.com/exploring.html
(k) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130425142343.htm
(l) https://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/28/maya-script-glyph-language-decoding?INTCMP=SRCH
(m) https://mashiyah.blogspot.ie/ (offline 1/8/14)
(n) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2014/02/did-the-maya-depict-the-end-of-atlantis-at-tikal.html
(r) The Lost Secrets of Maya Technology (archive.org)
(s) Ancient Maya May Have Foreseen Meteor Showers – Eos *
(t) https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/lasers-shed-some-light-on-the-maya-snake-kingdom/
(u) https://news.artnet.com/art-world/technology-transforming-mayan-archaeology-1558456
(v) https://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/03/maya-pyramid-plumbing-unearthed-by-archaeologists/1#.Xm-Nb2BFBVc (link broken)
(w) Mexico and atlantis | Truth Control (archive.org)
(y) Atlantean Research, Vol 3, No.1, May, 1950
(z) Maya Water System Discoveries Show the Ancient Civilization in a New Light | Discover Magazine
(aa) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/books.php
(ab) The Maya’s ingenious secret to survival – BBC Travel
(ac) https://www.livescience.com/why-maya-civilization-collapsed.html
(ad) https://www.nature.com/articles/news041213-5
(ae) http://atlantisorschung.de/index.php?title=Joachim_Rittstieg
(af) https://grahamhancock.com/eilinga3/
(ag) The Ancient Egyptians and Mayans: Ten Unexplained Parallels – Graham Hancock Official Website
(ai) Richard Thornton and the “Maya” of Georgia – JASON COLAVITO
(aj) https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/lost-maya-city-discovered-deep-in-the-jungles-of-mexico
(am) Microsoft Word – Science Brevia paper.doc (cosmictusk.com)
(an) Atlantis, Mu, and the Maya – JASON COLAVITO *
(ao) ON THE MAYAN CHRONOLOGY – Ruggero Marino – Cristoforo Colombo *
(ap) Celestial and Mathematical Precision in Ancient Architecture (redicecreations.com) *
Kukulcan
Kukulcan was the ‘feathered serpent’ god of the Mayan religion. He also had a human form that 
closely matches a description of a tall Caucasian, white-skinned, blue-eyed with blonde or silver hair. This similarity led to the European invaders being initially greeted as ‘gods’. There have been frequent suggestions that the original Kukulcan was a survivor of the demise of Atlantis, who managed to escape to Mesoamerica bringing the knowledge of the lost city to the Americas. However, it must be stressed that this is only conjecture. The Aztecs and Toltecs had a similar god, Quetzalcoatl, who had a matching description.
Pierre Honoré claimed that these ‘deities’ had arrived from Crete bringing with them their script. As the use of the Cretan Linear A & B had ceased by 1400 BC Honoré surmised that these transatlantic trips took place before that date!
Cuchulainn, an Achilles type hero in Irish mythology, has also been speculatively linked with Kukulcan because of the name similarity, an idea that has never had any scholarly support.>So it was no surprise that the unreliable Xavier Séguin supported this silly idea(a). Even Philip Gardiner seems to have been seduced by this linkage, noting in The Serpent Grail “that the Irish have a Celtic god-hero named Cuchulainn, which is too similar to the Mayan Kukulcan to be mere coincidence.”<
(a) https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/irish-hero-cu-chulainn-was-a-mayan-god *
Olmecs
The Olmecs flourished around 1200 BC on the southern Gulf coast of Mexico and spread their influence in Central America from Belize to Costa Rica until around 300 BC when they just disappeared!
In a short 2022 article, National Geographic describes the Olmec civilization as an ‘archaeological culture’. “This means there is a collection of artifacts thought by archaeologists to represent a particular society. What is known about archaeological cultures is based on artifacts, rather than texts.”(ac)
David Childress wrote an interesting article(c) on what little is known about the origin of the Olmecs in the 2007 Sept/Oct. issue of Atlantis Rising magazine. This was one of a number of promotional pieces(e) for his book The Mystery of the Olmecs[1034] published earlier that year. In early 2014, Frank Johnson published a lengthy paper(f) debunking Childress’ Olmec book, with further criticism from Jason Colavito following shortly afterward (g).
Jacques de Mahieu, the French Nazi, claimed that the Olmecs were descended from refugees that fled from Troy after the Trojan War. He goes further claiming that the Trojans had originally come from Scandinavia!
The Olmecs have been linked by a variety of writers with Atlantis. The first Latin writer of Aztec history was Fernando de Alva Cortes Ixitilxochill, of Aztec lineage, who maintained that the Olmecs had come to Eastern Mexico from the Antilles via Florida.
At the end of the 17th century, a former Jesuit, Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Gongora who had befriended the son of Ixitilxochill was allegedly in possession of a remarkable collection of native manuscripts that had escaped the insane mass burnings of the 15th century. He believed that the earliest inhabitants of Mexico had come from Atlantis. The Olmecs who preceded the Toltecs were not identified until the 19th century.
The 1973 discovery of a grooved 3.5 cm hematite bar by Michael D. Coe at the San Lorenzo site led researchers to immediate conjectural comment. In 1979, Robert Temple wrote two articles(o)(p), for Second Look magazine, on this find and the possibility of Olmec knowledge of magnetism. However, wild speculation led to the conclusion from this single artefact that the Olmecs had invented the compass. This assumption led to the further suggestion(j)(k) that the Olmecs had advanced navigational skills and with a final leap of imagination decided therefore that they had arrived in America from their homeland, Atlantis!
Ivar Zapp & George Erikson use the stone spheres of Costa Rica as the starting point for their controversial book[244] on Atlantis, insisting on a connection between the stones and the Olmecs. Gene Matlock considers the Olmecs to have had Hindu origins(t) and to be possible survivors from Atlantis[472] and Clyde Winters holds similar views and has supported them with his book [496] on the subject. In the same book[p.13] he offers Libya as the home of Atlantis, while elsewhere Matlock suggested(d) that the Olmecs were Turkish! Nevertheless, this speculative suggestion that the Olmecs were possibly Atlantean survivors has persisted until today, without a shred of any real evidence(aa).
In March 2024, my attention was drawn to an undated paper on the Academia website written under the pseudonym of ‘Mumble’ and titled Mexico City & the Site of Atlantis(ad). Its basic contention is that the Olmecs were originally Hyksos, who ruled an empire stretching from America to India! Unfortunately, real evidence is in short supply here to support this wild hypothesis. The paper is full of misquotations and other inaccuracies that are offered throughout.
However, Afrocentrist, Paul Barton, claims(m) that the Olmecs came from the Mende people of West Africa who are now one of the principal ethnic groups of Sierra Leone. Alessandro Demontis, who is something of a Zecharia Sitchin apologist, has written a short paper(r) on the leading proponents of the concept of an African origin for the Olmecs and argues that the academic background of many of them demands greater consideration of their viewpoint. Demontis thinks that to simply dismiss them as pseudoscientists is unwarranted.
The Negroid features that are clearly to be seen on some of the huge beautifully carved Olmec heads are probably evidence of an ancient link with Africa and nothing more. 17 heads have been discovered so far and like so many other megalithic monuments around the world have raised comparable questions. Some of the heads are up to 10 or more feet in height and weigh up to 12 tons.
The basalt stone used to carve the heads were often located many miles from their resting places, so the questions of how they were quarried and transported remain unanswered(ab).
Many think that the Olmec heads are the only evidence for pre-Columbian links with Africa, however, that is far from the truth as dozens if not hundreds of artefacts displaying African features have been discovered in the Americas(u)(v), although I cannot help noting that there is an obvious Asian influence in some of the figures!
On balance, I do not think that any credible case for identifying the Olmecs with Atlantis has yet been made. However, in my opinion, a far more convincing case has been made for linking the Chinese with the Olmecs(a)(b) and in that regard, the book by Dr H. Mike Xu, Origin of the Olmec Civilisation [698], is worth a read. Similarly, Charlotte Harris Rees has compiled a vast collection of data linking the Chinese with America in her Secret Maps of the Ancient World [0697]. She devotes chapter 4 to the Olmecs. Jacques Gossart has also reviewed(l) the evidence for the Chinese ancestry of the Olmecs. R.A. Jairazbhoy proposed in his book Ancient Egyptians and Chinese in America[992] that as well as Chinese, there are also Semitic, Egyptian and African traces to be found among the Olmecs.
Archaeologist Betty J. Meggers (1921-2012), who worked at the Smithsonian Institution has made a study of the apparent cultural similarities between the Chinese Shang dynasty of c.1750 BC and the Olmecs dated to some centuries later. This she did in a lengthy paper in American Anthropologist in 1974(w).
Jason Colavito describes Patrick Chouinard as a gigantologist, who in his Lost Race of the Giants [1424], argues that the Olmecs were merely one branch of an indigenous race of ‘red-haired giants’. Many Mormons believe that the Olmecs were the Jaredites who are only referred to in their Book of Ether. This idea has been developed in a short Kindle book by John Dreha[1377].
This multiplicity of suggested origins for the Olmecs is confusing and was made more so by the observations of Bibhu Dev Misra that many Olmec artefacts show figures adopting a range of yogic poses, which adds to the possibility of an Indian cultural influence. His 2017 illustrated paper on Graham Hancock’s website is intriguing(x).
In 2006 it was announced(a) that a stone slab was discovered in the Mexican state of Vera Cruz, which appears to be the earliest known writing in the Americas and attributed to the Olmecs and dated to around 900 BC.
The most extreme theory regarding the Olmecs that I have found, is the claim that they were astronauts. This idea was expressed(h) by Xavier Séguin, quoting US astronaut Gordon Cooper [1757]! However, I discovered Séguin to be unreliable when I found that he also quoted the words of a fictional character, Professor Mortimer, from a work by the renowned writer, Edgar P. Jacobs, as supposedly uttered by a real scientist(n), concerning the Pillars of Heracles.
Zechariah Sitchin in The Lost Realms [1718] claims that the Olmecs were culture bearers who arrived in America circa 3000 BC, which conflicts with the date of 1500 BC proposed by conventional archaeology. Sitchin also quoted(s) Cooper’s heavily panned book, A Leap of Faith [1757] in which he offered supporting evidence from a leading Mexican archaeologist, Pablo Bush Romero, for Sitchin’s early date for the Olmecs(y).
In 2006, it was announced(i) that a stone slab was discovered in the Mexican state of Vera Cruz, which appears to be the earliest known writing in the Americas and attributed to the Olmecs and dated to around 900 BC.
May 2017 brought an interesting article(q), on the Ancient Origins website, outlining the unique features of the Olmecs. Three years later AO published another article offering further information about the Olmec culture(z).
(a) See Archive 2532
(b) https://printarchive.epochtimes.com/a1/en/us/sfo/2007/11-Nov/29/B6_Sci&Tech_2007-11-29.pdf See: Archive 3316
(d) https://viewzone2.com/ancientturksx.html
(e) https://www.transformtheillusion.com/articles/David%20Childress/The%20Mystery%20of%20the%20Origin%20of%20the%20Olmecs%20.html (offline Nov. 2016) see Archive 2294
(f) https://ancientaliensdebunked.com/mystery-solved-olmecs-and-transoceanic-contact/ (offline May 2018) See: Archive 2295
(g) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/frank-johnson-on-david-childress-and-the-Olmec
(h) https://eden-saga.com/en/gordon-cooper-finds-olmecs-deep-knowledge-in-astronautics.html
(i) Archive 2708 | (atlantipedia.ie)
(j) Archive 2776
(k) Ancient Olmecs: Survivors of the city-continent of Atlantis (archive.org)
(l) Orbs l’autre Planète #4 : Les Racines du Futur http://www.orbs.fr Issue #5
(m) https://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/ancientamerica.htm
(o) Wayback Machine (archive.org) *
(p) Wayback Machine (archive.org) *
(r) https://migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2020&id=717
(s) The Olmecs and Ancient Astronauts – Alien UFO Truth (archive.org)
(t) http://www.viewzone.com/gene.olmec.html
(u) <American Archeology> (ucr.edu)
(v) https://faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/ethnic/oriental.htm
(w) https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7f40/cdcdd4d1ddd513696cf04c68631886c84e29.pdf
(y) Atlantis Rising magazine #26 http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At
(aa) Olmec Civilization: Survivors of Atlantis? – Nexus Newsfeed
(ab) Atlantis Rising magazine #57 http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At
(ac) Olmec Civilization | National Geographic Society
(ad) (99+) Mexico City & the Site of Atlantis | The Mumble – Academia.edu