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

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    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 »
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    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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Uwe Topper

Topper, Uwe

Uwe Topper (1940-) was born in Wroclaw, Poland (formerly Breslau, Germany) and currently living in Berlin where he earns a living as an artist.  However, he is better known as a researcher and author in the fields of history, ethnography and anthropology. Uwe_TopperTowards the end of the last century, he turned his attention to chronology and developed his own version of New Chronology which incorporates some of the views of Anatoly Fomenko [1823] and Heribert Illig.

‘New Chronology’ is also a term applied to the realignment of the chronologies of the Middle East as expounded by David Rohl and others. An interesting review of the New Chronology and its revisionist antecedents is available online(h).

A paper(b) by Topper on the subject is worth a read as is a critical review(g) of Topper’s work by Jason Colavito.

An English translation of some of Topper’s work relating to his revisionist view of ancient chronology is available(i). In it he explores what he describes as “jolts and gaps in historical chronology”, noting that dates that were detem1ined centuries ago and documented in classical and prehistoric monuments collide with those re-calculated by modem techniques for those same objects. They diverge quite noticeably, and the more the dates go back in time the bigger the difference between the two, i.e. between real observation of that time and re-calculation based on present observations.” Topper is convinced that chronological misalignments are the consequences of cataclysms(b).

Topper seems to thrive on controversy, because not content to deconstruct our chronology, he has denounced, Beowulf, the cave paintings of Chauvet, and the Lady of Elche as all fakes(a). He has also written an extensive paper(f) on the cart ruts, usually associated with just Malta, but which are found around the Mediterranean and further afield.

Topper has also written about Atlantis, placing its capital on the site of modern Cadiz surrounded by nine other cities between Lisbon and Tarragona (see Richard Cassaro) and has identified possible references to Atlantis in the Qur’an and also speculated that by 11,000 BC Atlantean culture had spread as far as the Americas and Asia! He dealt with these matters in his 1977 book[916], Das Erbe der Giganten. Untergang und Rückkehr der Atlanter  (The legacy of the giants, fall and return of the Atlantean)

He has also attempted to revive interest in Hanns Hörbiger’s ‘world-ice theory’(d).

My instincts tell me that Topper’s views should be treated with great caution.

Topper’s son, Ilya, is following in his father’s footsteps with articles on New Chronology as well as papers with provocative titles such as; The Christian Koran and The Sumerians did not exist(c).

(a) http://www.ilya.it/chrono/pages/topperen.htm

(b) http://www.ilya.it/chrono/pages/kataursacheen.htm

(c) http://www.ilya.it/chrono/pages/ilyaen.htm

(d) http://www.ilya.it/chrono/pages/glacialen.htm

(f) http://www.ilya.it/chrono/pages/gleisedt.htm  (german)

(g) https://web.archive.org/web/20200227140310/http://jcolavito.tripod.com/lostcivilizations/id13.html

(h) The Revision of Ancient History – A Perspective | Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (archive.org) *

(i) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=544

Sumerians *

Sumeria was one of the earliest civilisations emerging between the 6th and 5th millennia BC and was situated in what is now central Iraq.

It was unknown in Europe until the middle of the 19th century. With the discovery and the decipherment of the Sumerian cuneiform tablets the sophistication of their culture prompted the idea that Sumer had been ‘the cradle of civilisation.’ Subsequent discoveries, such as those in the Indus Valley and more recently  Göbekli Tepe have now somewhat diluted that idea.

Nevertheless, there is an acceptance that the Sumerians were very advanced in the field of mathematics and astronomy. The late Ernest McClain, a professor of music, was convinced that music theory could be traced back to the Sumerians as early as 3000 BC.

The origin of the Sumerians is still something of a mystery as is their language which seems to be an ‘isolate’, unrelated to any known language group(q). The Flem-Aths in an Atlantis Rising article (Issue 95) and Atlantis Beneath the Ice [981.70] claimed a cultural and genetic linkage between the Sumerians and the Haida of northwest America. The Flem-Aths also noted [062.54] that some have linked the languages of the two peoples!

Ronnie Gallagher has suggested that migrants from the Caucasus had provided the impetus that led to the development of the Sumerian civilisation. Gallagher’s theory is supported by Jerald Jack Starr on his Sumerian Shakespeare website, who emphatically attributes a Caucasian origin to the Sumerians(l).

Emilio Spedicato has controversially suggested that the Sumerians came from the Tibetan region!(m) Equally provocative were the views of Catherine Acholonu-Olumba, who as the author of Eden in Sumer on the Niger [1833], claimed that her book, provides multidisciplinary evidence of the actual geographical location in West Africa of the Garden of Eden, Atlantis and the original homeland of the Sumerian people before their migration to the “Middle East”. By translating hitherto unknown pre-cuneiform inscriptions of the Sumerians, Catherine Acholonu and Sidney Davis have uncovered thousands of years of Africa’s lost pre-history and evidences of the West African origins of the earliest Pharaohs and Kings of Egypt and Sumer such as Menes and Sargon the Great.”(p)

AncientSumeria2Sumeria has now been proposed as a possible source of the Atlantis story. Dr Ashok Malhotra, a professor of Engineering, has suggested(a) that that ‘the likelihood of the Atlantis stories being of Sumerian origin is strengthened by the fact that the submergence of ancient cities was a strong part of the Sumerian mythology. It dominates their historical tradition. The destruction of the ancient city as a result of sin was also part of their beliefs.’ Malhotra then proposes that these Sumerian stories reflected actual flooding events in the Indus Valley region that were brought first to Sumeria and then were later transferred to Egypt and from thence via Solon to Plato to us.

George Michanowsky went much further and claimed that the Sumerians had known Atlantis under the name of NI-DUK-KI, known today as Dilmun[282.66]. The renowned Henry Rawlinson interpreted this name to mean ‘blessed hill’ or ‘blessed isle’. While Michanowsky’s suggestion is highly speculative, if correct, it would be the earliest known reference to Atlantis.

The Sumerian king list(e) from Larsa records eight kings (some versions note ten) before the Deluge, which may have been reflected, in a distorted fashion, in the ten patriarchs of Genesis and/or the ten kings of Atlantis! Another suggested link is with the eight generations between Adam and Noah recorded in Genesis chapter 5.

John Sassoon would seem to support Malhotra’s thesis in his book[566], which proposes a Sumerian origin for the Jews with possible earlier links with the Indus Valley. He is not concerned with Atlantis, just the ancestry of the Jewish people of whom Abraham was born in Sumeria around 2000-1800 BC. Sassoon’s views offer a possible transmission route for Eastern traditions and myths to have reached Egypt and subsequently through Solon to Athens.

More recently, Dr Willem McLoud, a South African researcher, commented that “we have good reason to think that Atlantis was not located beyond the pillars of Heracles in the Atlantic Ocean, as is so often propagated, but that it was actually none other than the ancient land of Sumer itself.” Mcloud is primarily concerned with the Sumerians and Akkadians, which he will expand on in a forthcoming book(n).

In 2001, a book by Radek Brychta was published in the Czech Republic in which he also advocates a Sumerian connection. He identifies Atlantis with the legendary Dilmun of Sumerian legend and locates it on the Indus civilisation island of Dholavira. Excerpts from this fascinating book are available on the Internet and are worth a read.

However, the most extreme claims came from Zechariah Sitchin who proposed that the Sumerians had been ‘influenced’ by ancient astronauts from the planet Nibiru, which information is to be found in their cuneiform tablets if Sitchin’s translation is to be believed. Similar daft ideas(g) have been put forward by Hermann Burgard[1316] but so far have only been foisted on a German-reading public.

As if that was not bad enough, we now (Oct 2016) have the Iraqi Transport Minister claiming, among other matters, that the Sumerians launched spaceships 8,000 years ago(h)!

The Sumerian texts also crop up in the wild theories of Dieter Bremer[1022] and Jakob Vorberger, who claim that Atlantis was a space station(I)!

Jim Allen, the leading advocate of ‘Atlantis in the Andes’ has also claimed(b) a Sumerian connection with South America citing  Ruth & Alpheus Hyatt Verrill, who include in their book[838.293] three pages of Sumerian words compared with the language of ancient Peru as well as other cultural aspects there. They also believed that Sargon (2369-2314 BC) was known in Peru as the deity Viracocha! Their fanciful idea stems from an account of Sargon sailing to the West and spending three years there!  Zhirov supported this claim[458.23] describing it as ”a seemingly semi-fantastic theory”. My reason for considering this claim to be nonsensical, is simply that Sargon was continually engaged in expanding his empire and constantly dealing with rebellions in the various city-states that he ruled over. The idea that he took three years out to visit America, 14,000 km away, is in no way credible.

Nevertheless, the idea of Sargon in South America persists with James Bailey repeating it in Sailing to Paradise[0150.66] and more recently by the Afrocentrist, Clyde Winters in an article on the Ancient Origins website(f) in which he quotes Bailey and the Verrills as supporting Lake Titicaca as the Lake Manu of Sumerian tradition. A further article(j) on the same website begins with the forceful claim that it is becoming increasingly clear that the Sumerians had established a colony in South America called Kuga-Ki.” The paper is based on a series of questionable artefacts, the Fuente Magna Bowl, the Crespi Collection and the Pokoyia monument!

The Fuente Magna Bowl is frequently offered as evidence of a pre-Columbian link with the Sumerians in America(c), although its provenance is unclear and there are suggestions of a hoax. A sceptical view of the ‘Bowl’ by Carl Feagans(k) is available.

Other commentators have suggested that the Sumerians reached Spain. Dr Paul Haupt (1858-1926}, an early Assyriologist proposed that the ‘two rivers’ in the story of Utnapishtim, a Noachian equivalent, were the Guadalquivir and Guadiana of Andalusia(r). Mario Mas Fenollar is a modern advocate for Sumerians in Spain.

The very existence of Sumerians has recently been attacked in an appendix to The Three Ages of Atlantis[972] by Marin, Minella & Schievenin. They maintain that the Sumerian ‘language’ “could be an artificial construct created by Akkadian priests” to be used for liturgical purposes. These ideas were first expressed at the end of the 19th century by the respected Orientalist, Joseph Halévy. Andi Zeneli has expressed comparable ideas(d) regarding the Sumerian language.

Uwe Topper’s son Ilya has also put forward the idea that the Sumerians did not exist(o).  His paper is a critique, originally in Spanish, of Gunnar Heinsohn’s Die Sumerer gab es nicht.

(a) In Search of Atlantis — Getting Closer (archive.org)(new link)*

(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20200704031245/http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/boliviaandthesumerianconnection.htm

(c) https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1551445/posts

(d) https://sumeriantestament.blogspot.ie/2012/08/what-is-sumerian.html

(e) https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-asia/sumerian-king-list-still-puzzles-historians-after-more-century-research-001287

(f) https://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/was-bolivia-peru-sunset-land-sumerians-006708?nopaging=1

(g) https://www.amazon.de/Encheduanna-Offenbarungen-Oberfl%C3%A4chlich-Priesterf%C3%BCrstin-Originaltitel/dp/3943565033

(h) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-mysterious-phenomena/iraqi-transport-minister-announces-sumerians-launched-spaceships-7000-021011?utm_source=Ancient-Origins+Newsletter&utm_campaign=e99e2b8dea-Top_Trending_Stories_Oct_No2_REAL_10_10_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2dcd13de15-e99e2b8dea-85158329

(i) Mesopotamische Überlieferungen | Atlantis Mythologie (archive.org)

(j) https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-writings/representation-sumerian-elites-detected-crespi-gold-tablets-009920

(k) https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2015/03/sumerians-in-bolivia-probably-not/

(l) https://sumerianshakespeare.com/734501.html

(m) https://www.academia.edu/6556879/AA_MER_MERU_rel_2

(n) https://whisperingtales.net/services/

(o) Ghost Empires (ilya.it)

(p) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262069423_Eden_In_Sumer_On_The_Niger

(q) The origin of the Sumerians and the great flood (archive.org)  

(r) https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/528616.pdf 

 

 

Hörbiger, Hanns *

Hans-horbigerHanns Hörbiger (1860-1931) was an Austrian mining engineer by profession and in his spare time was an amateur astronomer.  Today, he is probably better known as the father of the actors Paul and Attila Hörbiger.

By gazing at the moon he became convinced that he was looking at a bright outer layer of ice. Hörbiger published his “Doctrine of Eternal Ice” around 1913 in a book[389] co-authored with a schoolteacher named Philip Fauth. Hörbiger proposed an early form of catastrophism that saw the Earth capture several moons in succession. Periodically, each of these moons disintegrated as they spiralled to earth producing enormous ‘ice showers’ followed by meteors of iron. He saw the effects of these impacts as the source of Flood myths and claimed that when our current Moon was captured around 9500 BC it triggered earthquakes that led to the destruction of Atlantis. His theories were hailed in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s and were officially backed by the Nazis (see Ahnenerbe). Heather Pringle notes[0032.180] Hitler’s personal support for Hörbiger’s theories.

In 1966, Egerton Sykes wrote that “in addition, Hitler requiring a Teutonic cosmology as well as a Germanic Europe, adopted Hoerbiger’s hypothesis, probably one of the few sensible acts that the Nazis ever made”(w).

It seems that the adoption of World Ice Theory by National Socialism was intended to present a German alternative to ‘Jewish science’, specifically, to the theory of relativity, developed by Albert Einstein(x).

There was a Viennese Hörbiger Institute for World Ice Science founded in 1932(p). Their publication Mitteilungen had two volumes published from 1941 to 1944 and a third volume 1971-1976(o).

An interesting 1949 report by Manfred Reiffenstein describes the problems that the Hörbiger Institute had encountered with the Nazis from 1938 onwards. While efforts were made to close the Institute down and transfer its archives to Himmler’s Ahnenerbe organisation, this was prevented by the efforts of Hörbiger’s sons(s), which might be considered an example of postwar revisionism.

A recent paper by Graham Holton explicitly accuses Hörbiger of ‘archaeological racism’, along with Edmund Kiss, Posnansky and others in the Ahnenerbe(t). Holton also noted that Hörbiger also subscribed to Blavatsky‘s daft idea of Root Races.

His ideas were adopted and developed further by Hans Bellamy in a number of his books[092][096][097]. During the first half of the 20th century, many beyond the Nazi realm frequently referred to Hörbiger’s moon theory as authoritative.

Hörbiger refused to accept the evidence that his ‘icy’ moon had a daytime temperature of 100°C. Followers of Hörbiger existed in Germany, Britain and France after the war, until an actual landing on the Moon demonstrated that it was composed of neither ice nor cheese.

Of course, the moon landing is denounced by some as faked and according to one 2019 blogger, it must be so because it contradicts Hörbiger’s theories!!! The same blogger lists his religion as ‘Hitlerism’(y).

A bizarre consequence of Hörbiger’s status with the Nazi leadership is recounted by  Pauwels and Bergier [910.170] who tell us that: “The German engineers, whose work was fundamental to the construction of those rockets that sent the first artificial satellites up into the sky, were prevented by the leaders of the NSDAP themselves from using the V2 for it to be completed at the scheduled time.

Work on the V2 in Peenemünde had to be interrupted several times because Hitler and the apologists of the Hörbiger doctrine feared that rocket launches could result in a world catastrophe.

General Walter Dornberger led the tests in Peenemünde, where the guided missiles were created. These experiments were stopped in order to submit the general’s reports to the apostles of Hörbiger’s cosmology. Above all, one wanted to know how the “eternal ice” would react in space and whether this violation of the stratosphere would not result in some kind of catastrophe in the world.

In his book “V2 – The shot into the universe” General Dornberger tells that shortly afterwards his work had to be interrupted again for two months. The guide had dreamed that the V2 would not work, or rather that heaven would take its revenge. This dream was to carry more weight for the leading men of the Third Reich than the view of the technicians. Behind the Germany of science and organization, the spirit of ancient magic was still alive.(z)

Several other writers developed theories that were variations on Hörbiger’s ideas. 1954 saw the publication of The Moon Puzzle[786] by the Swedish engineer, N.O. Bergquist, in which he suggested that Earth had a close encounter with a planetoid which caused the ejection of a large amount of matter, which became our Moon leaving a huge scar we call the Pacific. Although many details of Berquist’s theory differ greatly from Hörbiger’s, he never refers to the then widely supported views of Hörbiger.

In 1955, G. Demortier published a theory of cosmic catastrophe that was somewhat similar to Hörbiger’s. However, a couple of years earlier, doubts were beginning to emerge regarding aspects of Hörbiger’s theories as our cosmological knowledge advanced(u), nevertheless, in the same magazine Edmund Kiss attempted to justify Hörbiger’s idea of an ice-covered Moon! 

It is even more astounding that as late as 1964, Egerton Sykes, the leading British atlantologist of the day, was still clinging to the concept of an ice-covered lunar surface. In fact, after re-reading the old editions of Sykes’ Atlantis newsletter, I am amazed at the number of contributors that offered so many articles based on Hörbiger’s flawed ideas. My personal view is that having read Sykes’ newsletters, he can only be considered a gullible British gentleman. 

Egerton Sykes founded and promoted an English post-war Hoerbiger Institute through his Atlantis magazine(q). In March 1948 Bellamy contributed a short article (Hoerbiger Monograph No. 1. 2nd Edition)(n) to the newsletter, reiterating his support for the idea that the capture of our moon led to the destruction of Atlantis.

Commander E.H. Nutter, a Royal Navy engineer, who contributed many articles to Sykes’ Atlantis magazine was considered “the leading technical authority on the Hoerbiger Theory in England” in the 1950s(v).

Although Hörbiger wrote extensively about the origins of our satellite, when Immanuel Velikovsky wrote a short paper in 1973 entitled Earth without a Moon(v) he made no reference to the theories of Hörbiger.

Henry M. Eichner was also drawn to Hörbiger’s Moon theory as a mechanism to explain the worldwide Deluge myths. However, as the first Moon landing took place just two years before his death, Eichner was forced to admit that Hörbiger got his claim of an icy Moon wrong, but still believed that some of Hörbiger’s ideas had merit [287.57].

Uwe Topper, the controversial German researcher has continued to support much of Hörbiger’s ideas. Additionally, in 2003, Gary Gilligan, a prominent catastrophist, first proposed that our Moon had been captured around 2000 BC, which he has now revised to 1200 BC(I)!

The August 2010 edition of the BBC’s Focus magazine (p.81), informed us that the Moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of 3.8cm per year, destroying the foundation of Hörbiger’s basic theory. The 9th Nov. 2011 issue of New Scientist published further evidence supporting this view(h), with further claims that this recession will reverse in the very distant future as the Earth’s rotation slows(r).

In the 17th century Johannes Kepler demonstrated that when an object’s orbital velocity increases, its orbital radius will expand; thus, the Moon slowly recedes from Earth(d). This idea was discussed further in a BBC documentary broadcast on Feb.1st, 2011(b).

The 9th Nov. 2011 issue of New Scientist published further evidence supporting this view(h), with further claims that this recession will reverse in the very distant future as the Earth’s rotation slows(r).

The Live Science website in April 2023 offered more information on the future of the Earth-Moon relationship(ab). In about 50 billion years, Earth’s slowing rotation would make it tidally lock with the moon so that Earth would permanently show just one side to the moon, Jean Creighton, director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, told Live Science. At this point, the moon and Earth would stop moving away from each other, Eric Klumpe, a professor of astronomy at Middle Tennessee State University, told Live Science.

However, about 5 billion years from now, as the sun begins to die, it will swell to become a red giant star, “at which point the Earth-moon system will almost certainly be disrupted and destroyed,” David Trilling, chair of the Astronomy and Planetary Science Department at Northern Arizona University, told Live Science.”

Nevertheless, updated Moon capture theories have been developed since Hörbiger. Emilio Spedicato has published a brief overview of recent contributions on the subject as well as his version(c), dating it to around 9450 BC, triggering the end of the Ice Age and the destruction of Atlantis!

It was long-accepted wisdom that a moonless earth would have made the development of complex life more difficult because of greater climatic fluctuations. However, a new study challenges this, calculating that Jupiter together with other factors would minimise the effect  of not having our satellite(g)

The story of lunar history took an unexpected turn in 2011 when the journal Nature published a paper by planetary scientists Erik Asphaug of the University of Santa Cruz and Martin Jutzi of the University of Berne who proposed that originally the Earth had two moons that later collided and formed our present satellite(e). At the end of 2011, two NASA lunar probes were launched(j) which may resolve this particular question.

In America, the WEL-Institute is dedicated to investigating Hörbiger’s ‘World Ice Theory’(k).  I note that the U.S. is also home to associations concerned with both a Hollow Earth(l)  and a Flat Earth(m)!

(b) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12311119

(c) Wayback Machine (archive.org)

(d) Ive heard that the Moon is moving away from Earth by about an inch 25 cm each year Why is this happening – Astronomy Magazine (archive.org)

(e) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20160320161310/https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390413,00.asp

(g) https://web.archive.org/web/20190925225222/https://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/the-odds-for-life-on-a-moonless-earth/

(h) https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21147-how-the-cold-dead-moon-stayed-magnetic.html

(I) https://www.gks.uk.com/moon-origin-egyptian/

(j) GRAIL and the Mystery of the Missing Moon | Science Mission Directorate (archive.org) *

(k) https://welinstitute.wordpress.com/about/

(l) https://www.ourhollowearth.com/

(m) https://theflatearthsociety.org/home/

(n) https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/library/pamphlets/Atlantis%20Hoerbiger%20Monograph%20(No.%201%20March%201948).pdf

(o) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3042/

(p) See: Archive 3043

(q) https://www.amazon.ca/Atlantis-Organ-Hoerbiger-Institute-1965-1974/dp/B00MOKVR2Y  (Link broken Sept. 2020)

(r) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4199400/Earth-moon-COLLIDE-65-billion-years.html

(s) Atlantean Research, Volume 1, Number 5, January/February 1949

(t) https://www.academia.edu/30755462/Archaeological_Racism_Hans_H%C3%B6rbiger_Arthur_Posnansky_Edmund_Kiss_and_the_Ahnenerbe_Expedition_to_Tiwanaku_Bolivia

(u) Atlantis Vol.6, No.1 & 2, May & July 1953

(v) Atlantis, Vol. 9, No. 2, January 1956, p.39

(w) Atlantis, Vol.19, No.5, September/ October 1966

(x) https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/the-weird-ice-world-cosmology-passionately-believed-by-hitler-and-other-top-nazis/ 

(y) https://forums.skadi.net/threads/183985-Moon-Landing-was-FAKE/page8 (Link broken) See: Archive 6966 

(z) Hörbiger, WEL und der Nationalsozialismus – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) 

(aa) https://www.lewrockwell.com/2011/12/immanuel-velikovsky/the-earth-without-the-moon/ 

(ab) Will Earth ever lose its moon? | Live Science

Adlantis

Adlantis was imagined by Ignatius Donnelly to be another form of Atlantis. He notes that the first inhabitants of Arabia were known as Adites (Pt. IV Chap1). They were apparently named after Ad who was fourth in line from Noah. Without any convincing reason, Donnelly states[121] that “these Adites were probably the people of Atlantis or Adlantis”. He also quotes an Arabic tradition that they are descended from Ad, son of Ham although this is not confirmed by the Qur’an. However, the Qur’an does claim that Noah was allowed by God to warn the people of Ad of the impending Deluge.

A short discussion paper in Atlantisforschung mentions that the Ad people are referred to 14 times in the Qur’an and attributes the first identification of the Ad people as Atlanteans to Uwe Topper in 1977, nearly a century after Donnelly(a)!

The lost city of Ubar, also known as ‘Iram of the Pillars’, was discovered using satellite imagery in 1992 in southern Oman. The city had been sought after by Lawrence of Arabia and referred to by him as the ‘Atlantis of the Sands’, a name that has stuck. Its discovery prompted speculation that this was the city of the people of Ad mentioned in the Qur’an. An article by Harun Yahya discusses this idea from an Islamic viewpoint(b).

The location of Ubar has centred on the ancient Bedouin site of Shisr in the Dhofar province of Oman, but, as usual, there is controversy about this identification(c).

(a) Ad – Atlantisforschung.de

(b) https://www.islamicity.com/science/QuranAndScience/destruction/GeneratedFilesNoFrame/ThePeopleof145AdandUbartheAtlantisoftheSands.htm

(c) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis_of_the_Sands#Shisr