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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 »
Ulrich Hofmann
Winder, David
David Winder is the author of Mysterien der Bronzezeit (Mysteries of the Bronze Age) [1936]. He is in some agreement with the Atlantis theories of Paul Borchardt, Albert Herrmann and Ulrich Hofmann, who all placed Atlantis in the northwest region of Africa. However, Winder’s views are somewhat tainted by an over-dependence on the possibly dubious Oera Linda Book.
Winder also claims that the Typhon story, the attacks of the Sea Peoples and the Trojan War were all part of the same event. Just as unlikely is his dating of the biblical Deluge at 1050 BC.
The atlantisforschung.de website offers a critical review of Winder’s book that ends up looking into the murky waters of racism. Atlantisforschung ends up describing Winder’s offering as ‘Just Disgusting’!(a)
>However, I note that Winder was subsequently invited to write a paper for Atlantisforschung, outlining his theories! Regarding the location of Atlantis, he insists that “It should now be clear to everyone that this can only be the Chott el Djerid(b).<
(a) Buchbesprechung: David Winder: Mysterien der Bronzezeit – Atlantisforschung.de
(b) Atlantis: Vom Mythos zur Realität – Atlantisforschung.de (German) *
Agadir
Agadir is a city in the South-West of Morocco. It is situated at the Atlantic end of the Sous-Massa-Draa valley which was considered by Michael Hübner to have been the location of Atlantis(a). The name ‘Agadir’ was identified by him as a variation of Gades, a region of Atlantis, ruled by Gadeiros, the twin brother of Atlas.>As you will see below, another of Atlas’ siblings has also been linked with this region.
Atlantisforschung has noted that the German Atlantis researcher Paul Borchardt, who suspected Atlantis to be in the region of Tunisia, claimed that the name Ampheres, one of the kings of Atlantis, was derived from a Berber tribe called ‘Am-Phares’: “They are undoubtedly the Pharusii of Ptolemy (IV, 6, 17) in the Wadi Draa south of the Atlas. Am means people. The name is still very common today. Borchardt thus localizes“, as Ulrich Hofmann, an expert on Borchard’s work, remarks, “ the area of the Ampheres on the southwestern edge of the Maghreb, in modern-day Morocco, south of the 2500m high Atlas Mountains.”(b)<
Keep in mind that Agadir was about 3,300 km away from Athens and 3,700 km from the Nile Delta. Not what you might call ‘easy striking distances’. The relevance of this is discussed more fully in the ‘Invasion‘ entry.
Berbers *
The Berbers of North Africa, sometimes referred to as Amazigh, are blond and blue-eyed where they have not interbred with the Arab population.
They are genetically related to the Saami people of northern Scandinavia according to mtDNA studies(g) published in the American Journal of Human Genetics in 2005. It is frequently mentioned that the Berbers refer to a rich land called Attala situated in the west. The Berbers are probably related to the Guanches of the Canary Islands who were also blond with blue/grey eyes. Although the Spanish virtually wiped out the Guanches, there are still native tall blond blue-eyed individuals to be seen in the Canaries.
Genetic studies in 2009 offered evidence that the first inhabitants of the Canaries were Berbers(a). In 2017, additional investigation offered further confirmation of this relationship, published in a report in the October edition of Current Biology(h) and expanded on in an article on the Ancient Origins website by Alicia McDermott(i).
Madghacen
The Berbers also constructed pyramidal structures as tombs or temples such as that at Madghacen in Algeria(e).
Frederick Dodson designated the Berbers as Atlanteans in chapter 4d of his book Atlantis and the Garden of Eden[0989].
Recently Ulrich Hofmann has offered evidence[161] that the predecessors of the Berbers were the people of Atlantis. He identifies these Atlanteans with the Temehu and Tehenu of ancient Libya, recorded in the ancient inscriptions of Egypt. Emmet Sweeney follows a similar line claiming[700.36] that “if we seek the modern descendants of the Atlanteans, we must search among the Berbers”.
David Eccott, a British advocate of very early pre-Columbian trans-Atlantic contacts, has a paper on Andrew Collins’ website in which among others, he claims that Berber seafarers reached the Americas and that rock art in Utah can be attributed to them(j).
The difficulties attached to tracing ancient ‘Libyans’ are outlined in a paper, What Happened to the Ancient Libyans, by Richard L. Smith (1945- ). This essay can be downloaded as a pdf file(b) and is highly recommended as it gives additional insights into the credibility of many of the classical writers frequently quoted in connection with the Atlantis story.
Following the 2011 fall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, the Berbers there, who were particularly repressed, have again begun to assert their right to greater cultural expression, considering themselves to be the original Libyans(c). However, a report from Reuters dated 18/10/12(d) tells of the destruction of an 8,000-year-old petroglyph by Islamic extremists in an Amazigh region of Morocco. This is the latest example of efforts by the Islamic Salafists to destroy evidence of pre-Islamic culture.
Bob Idjennaden and Mebarek Taklit have written[1195] of the prominent part played by Berbers in the shifting alliances that constituted the ‘Sea Peoples’, who attacked Egypt at least twice during the 2nd millennium BC.
The possibility of a link between the Berbers and Atlantis has now been extended to include the Richat Structure(k). Although to propose an association of the Berbers with the Richat Structure is not too outlandish, once again there is no attempt to explain why or how anyone would launch an attack from Mauritania on Athens nearly 4000 km away by land (3000 km by sea). The idea is logistical nonsense and completely unsupported by any archaeological evidence!
(a) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091021115147.htm
(c)https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16289543
(d) https://gulfnews.com/news/region/morocco/pagan-rock-carving-in-morocco-destroyed-1.1091000
(e) Madghacen 3rd century BC Mausoleum, page 1 (archive.org) *
(f) See: Archive 3608
(g) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1199377/
(h) https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(17)31257-5
(j) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/mysteries/deccott.htm
Atlas Mountains
The Atlas Mountains stretch for over 1,500 miles across the Maghreb of North-West Africa, from Morocco through Algeria to 
Tunisia. The origin of the name is unclear but seems to be generally accepted as having been named after the Titan.
Herodotus states (The Histories, Book IV. 42-43) that the inhabitants of ancient Mauretania (modern Morocco) were known as Atlantes and took their name from the nearby mount Atlas. Jean Gattefosse believed that the Atlas Mountains were also known as the Meros and that a large inland sea bounded by the range had been known as both the Meropic and the Atlantic Sea. Furthermore, he contended that Nysa had been a seaport on this inland sea.
The Maghreb, or parts of it, have been identified as the location of Atlantis by a number of commentators. One of the earliest was Ali Bey El Abbassi, who wrote of the Atlas Mountains being the ancient island of Atlantis when what is now the Sahara held a huge interior sea in the centre of Africa.
Ulrich Hofmann concluded his presentation at the 2005 Atlantis Conference with the comment that “based on Plato’s detailed description it can be concluded that Atlantis was most likely identical with the Maghreb.”[629.377] Furthermore, he has proposed that the Algerian Chott-el-Hodna has a ring structure deserving of investigation.
To add a little bit of confusion to the subject, the writer Paul Dunbavin declared[099] that Atlas was a name applied by ancient writers to a number of mountains.
My contention is that the Atlas Mountains of northwest Africa are the mountains referred to by Plato in Critias 118, where he describes the mountains north of the Plain of Atlantis as being the most numerous, the highest and most beautiful. Certainly, within the Mediterranean region, they are the only ones that could match the superlatives used by Plato. In isolation, the Atlas ranges can justifiably be proposed as the peaks referred to by Plato, but there is much more to justify this identification.
The North African climate was slightly wetter in the 2nd & 3rd centuries BC, later, Algeria, Egypt and particularly Tunisia, became the ‘breadbaskets’ of Rome (b). Even today well-irrigated plains in Tunisia can produce two crops a year, usually planted with the autumnal rains and harvested in the early spring and again planted in the spring and harvested in late summer. The Berbers of Morocco produce two crops a year — cereals in winter and vegetables in summer(a).
There is general acceptance that the North African elephants inhabited the Atlas Mountains until they became extinct in Roman times(d)(e). The New Scientist magazine of 7th February 1985(c) outlined the evidence that Tunisia had native elephants until at least the end of the Roman Empire. These were full-sized animals and not to be confused with the remains of pygmy elephants found on some Mediterranean islands. Plato refers to many herds of elephants, which he describes (Critias 115a) as being ‘the largest and most voracious’ of all the animals of Atlantis,>which is not a description of pygmy elephants.<
On top of all that, the only unambiguous geographical clues to the extent of the Atlantean confederation are that it controlled southern Italy as far as Tyrrhenia (Etruria) and northwest Africa as far as Egypt as well as some islands (Tim.25b & Crit.114c). So we have fertile plains with magnificent mountains to the north, inhabited by elephants and controlled by Atlanteans. Q.E.D.
(a) https://www.britannica.com/place/Atlas-Mountains
(b) https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Tunisia
(c) New Scientist 3 Jan.1985 and New Scientist, 7 February.1985 *
(d) https://interesting-africa-facts.com/Africa-Landforms/Atlas-Mountains-Facts.html
Atlantis Research Charter, The
The Atlantis Research Charter followed on from the 2005 Atlantis Conference in Melos. Some of the German participants including the late Ulf Richter, Christian & Siegfried Schoppe and Ulrich Hofmann decided to develop some basis for mutual cooperation. Thorwald C. Franke subsequently joined this group and provided the first draft of the Atlantis Research Charter. Unfortunately, the promoters of the Charter never developed beyond an informal association, due to a change in the research interests of some members and the untimely death of Ulf Richter.
The text of this charter is available on the Internet(a). Briefly, the charter aims to have the subject of Atlantis discussed from a scientific perspective as an open issue. The charter firmly rejects pseudoscience, dogmatism and abuse for political or religious ends.
Hofmann, Ulrich *
Ulrich Hofmann was born in Kronberg, Germany in 1967. He studied physics at Marburg University and is currently working at the Forschungsinstitut.
He had been studying the Atlantis question for some years and published Platons Insel Atlantis [161] outlining his theories as well as presenting them to the 2005 Atlantis Conference [629.361]. After the publication of Hofmann’s book, Thorwald C. Franke wrote a critique, which is intended as a refutation of Hofmann’s hypothesis(b).
There is a pdf file, in English, available on the Internet(a) giving a summary of his views.
He supports the idea of Atlantis as a Bronze Age city located in North Africa. He believes that the Chotts in what are today Algeria 
and Tunisia originally constituted the Lake Tritonis of Greek legend and was also known as the Atlantic Sea and connected to the Mediterranean at the Gulf of Gabés, where the Pillars of Heracles were situated.
He also points to an ancient people, the Temehu or Tenehu who ruled North Africa up to the borders of Egypt. He believes that those Tehenu were in fact Atlanteans and the ancestors of today’s Berbers.
Hofmann’s theories are similar in some respects to the views of Alberto Arecchi and the beliefs of this compiler.
(a) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/HofmannU_2005_AtlantisBronzeAgeMetropolisNorthAfrica.pdf
(b) Eine „heiße“ Atlantis-Hypothese – Mysteria3000 (archive.org) (German) (Link broken) *
Identity of the Atlanteans *
The Identity of the Atlanteans has produced a range of speculative suggestions nearly as extensive as that of the proposed locations for Plato’s lost island. However, it is highly probable that we already know who the Atlanteans were, but under a different name.
The list below includes some of the more popular suggestions and as such is not necessarily exhaustive. While researchers have proposed particular locations for Atlantis, not all have identified an archaeologically identified culture to go with their chosen location. The problem is that most of the places suggested have endured successive invasions over the millennia by different peoples.
It would seem therefore that the most fruitful approach to solving the problem of identifying the Atlanteans would be to first focus on trying to determine the date of the demise of Atlantis. This should reduce the number of possible candidates, making it easier to identify the Atlanteans.
A final point to consider is that the historical Atlanteans were a military alliance, and as such may have included more than one or none of those listed here. The mythological Atlanteans, who included the five sets of male twins and their successors would be expected to share a common culture, whereas military coalitions are frequently more disparate.
Basques: William Lewy d’Abartiague, Edward Taylor Fletcher
Berbers: Alberto Arecchi, Alf Bajocco, Ulrich Hofmann, Jacques Gossart, Ibn Khaldun
British: William Comyns Beaumont, E. J. de Meester, Donald Ingram, George H. Cooper, Anthony Roberts, Paul Dunbavin.
Cro-Magnons: R. Cedric Leonard, Theosophists, Georges Poisson, Robert B. Stacy-Judd, Kurt Bilau, Louis Charpentier
Etruscans: Richard W. Welch, Frank Joseph *
Guanches: B. L. Bogaevsky, Bory de Saint Vincent, Boris F. Dobrynin, Eugène Pégot-Ogier
Irish: Ulf Erlingsson, George H. Cooper, John Whitehurst, Thomas Dietrich, Padraig A. Ó Síocháin, Lewis Spence,
Maltese: Anton Mifsud, Francis Xavier Aloisio, Kevin Falzon, Bibischok, Joseph Bosco, David Calvert-Orange, Giorgio Grongnet de Vasse, Albert Nikas, Joseph S. Ellul, Francis Galea, Tammam Kisrawi, Charles Savona-Ventura, Hubert Zeitlmair.
Maya: Robert B. Stacy-Judd, Charles Gates Dawes, Colin Wilson, Adrian Gilbert, L. M. Hosea, Augustus le Plongeon, Teobert Maler, Joachim Rittstieg, Lewis Spence, Edward Herbert Thompson, Jean-Frédérick de Waldeck,
Megalith Builders: Lucien Gerardin, Paolo Marini, Sylvain Tristan, Jean Deruelle, Alan Butler, Alfred deGrazia, Helmut Tributsch, Hank Harrison, Walter Schilling, Robert Temple, Manuel Vega
Minoans: K.T. Frost, James Baikie, Walter Leaf, Edwin Balch, Donald A. Mackenzie, Ralph Magoffin, Spyridon Marinatos, Georges Poisson, Wilhelm Brandenstein, A. Galanopoulos, J. G. Bennett, Rhys Carpenter, P.B.S. Andrews, Edward Bacon, Willy Ley, J.V. Luce, James W. Mavor, Henry M. Eichner, Prince Michael of Greece, Nicholas Platon, N.W. Tschoegl, Richard Mooney, Rupert Furneaux, Martin Ebon, Francis Hitching, Charles Pellegrino, Rodney Castleden, Graham Phillips, Jacques Lebeau, Luana Monte, Fredrik Bruins, Gavin Menzies, Lee R. Kerr, Daniel P. Buckley.
Persians: August Hunt, Pierre-André Latreille, William Henry Babcock, Hans Diller.
Phoenicians: Jonas Bergman, Robert Prutz,
Sardinians: Paolo Valente Poddighe, Robert Paul Ishoy, Sergio Frau, Mario Tozzi, Diego Silvio Novo, Antonio Usai, Giuseppe Mura.
Sicilians: Phyllis Young Forsyth, Thorwald C. Franke, Axel Hausmann, Peter Jakubowski, Alfred E. Schmeck, M. Rapisarda,
Swedes: Johannes Bureus, Olaf Rudbeck
Sea Peoples: Wilhelm Christ, Jürgen Spanuth, Spyridon Marinatos, Rainer W. Kühne, John V. Luce, Theodor Gomperz, Herwig Görgemanns , Tony O’Connell, Sean Welsh, Thorwald C. Franke, Werner Wickboldt.