Latest News
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 »
Zechariah Sitchin
Caspary, Nicholas
Nicholas Caspary published Plato’s Atlantis: On the Origin of Religion in March 2023 [2060], which according to the author is “intended as an update, a sequel, or a reboot if you wish, of Ignatius Donnelly’s 1882 work, and will as such be restating many of the same pertinent arguments as well as adding to his information that from our modern day.” For me, Donnelly’s ideas are now ‘old hat’ with little to offer modern Atlantis research and beyond resuscitation..
Nevertheless, Caspary spent the first half of his book reviewing Donnelly’s theories and then moved on to adding what he believes are more recent discoveries that support Donnelly. These include a change to the ice age cycle, the origin of our Moon as well as encounters with wandering extraterrestrial bodies.
Not content with a look at the evolutionary tree of humans, he then examines ancient astronauts, crystal skulls, Edgar Cayce, Orion Correlation Theory, etc, etc. He ends with a section on quantum physics, about which I and, I’m sure, most of my readers know very little. I was left with the feeling that I had just encountered a weird mixture of Däniken blended with Sitchin and Hancock that overall did little to justify Donnelly’s 19th-century speculations.
Leach, Shane
Shane Leach is an American writer who lives in Connecticut. He published Prehistory Explained [2007] as an ebook in May 2023 with the intention of proving ancient alien theory. I must be blunt and state that I consider the idea utter nonsense and have expressed my reasons throughout this compilation in particular in relation to Erich von Däniken, Zechariah Sitchin and ancient astronauts generally. In print, this Kindle book would fill over 700 pages offering an impressive triumph of quantity over quality.
The author’s introduction to the book tells you all you need to know about its content. “Prehistory Explained uses hundreds of pieces of irrefutable scientific evidence and hundreds of ancient writings to explain all the ancient mysteries. This book explores the following theories: Antarctica is the lost continent of Atlantis, the dinosaurs existed thousands of years ago not millions, ancient aliens left miles-high towers on the Moon, the Sapphire stone was a computer, Mars was inhabited in the ancient past, the Martian moon Phobos is an alien spacecraft, the Moon is an alien spaceship constructed by ancient aliens, ancient aliens directed panspermia by planting bacteria on the Earth, ancient aliens orchestrated the Cambrian Explosion, ancient aliens genetically-engineered us, and how the Anunnaki landed their X-Aerogel rocketships all over the Earth that have since depolymerized into stone pyramids.”
I therefore focused my attention on what is more relevant to this document, namely, Atlantis and found his offering sadly lacking.
Leach, along with regaling us with stories of ancient aliens and their spaceships also attempts to breathe new life into the Atlantis in Antarctica theory. He recycles the work of Rand Flem-Ath and Charles Hapgood and throws in the speculations of Richard Hoagland, but, for me, he fails to convince.
Overall the book is worth the $3 if only for its occasional comedic content.
Maxwell, Robin
Robin Maxwell is an American novelist who has published a five-volume Gods of Atlantos Saga using the story of Atlantis as a backdrop. Maxwell was nominated Author of the Month for September 2022 on Graham Hancock’s website(a). In her lengthy essay, she reveals that Plato was not the only author to inspire her as we find that Erich von Däniken et al and their ‘ancient aliens’ have been blended into her epic tale. Added to the mix we have Zechariah Sitchin’s Planet X as well as a UFO sighting by her mother and grandmother. This hotchpotch is certainly not for me.
Lawton, Ian *
Ian Lawton (1959- ) is an English researcher focused on ancient history and spiritual philosophy. He is probably best known as the co-author with Chris Ogilvie-Herald of Giza: The Truth [1690], which offers a sober forensic review of all the many and widely varied theories relating to the ancient structures on the Giza Plateau. In it, Lawton was highly critical of Robert Bauval‘s Orion Correlation Theory (OCT) both in the book (chapter 9)(d) and in open correspondence between them.
However, Lawton was at the receiving end of criticism from the late John Anthony West in 2000, when West published an article in Atlantis Rising magazine that ended with a scornful “The point is that the facile assurances given by Ogilvie-Herald/Lawton endorsing the orthodox view are illegitimate, their exclusion of contrary, genuinely informed opinion is typical of their selective bogus scholarship, and their long-winded acoustic levitation hypothesis is pure speculation and self-contradictory besides. We still don’t know how the pyramids were built/ Period. Full stop.”(e)
Two years later Ogilvie-Herald co-authored Tutankhamun [1898] with Andrew Collins.
Lawton has also been highly critical of the claims of the late Zechariah Sitchin(b) and his book Mesopotamia: The Truth [1751], he returns to the subject.
Lawton’s second book, Genesis Unveiled [1691], has been described as containing “remarkable new insights into the spirituality of the pre-flood human race”. Chapter 13 takes a somewhat generous view of Blavatsky and Theosophy(c).
He subsequently made changes(a) to the content and, in my opinion, opportunistically re-titled it as Atlantis: The Truth! In it Lawton has focused on prediluvian races, citing, with reservations, the work of Stephen Oppenheimer, Arysio dos Santos and Frank Joseph, which when added to Lawton’s research, he concludes that “it’s nevertheless interesting that all four of us have independently arrived at the same conclusion about the broad whereabouts of any forgotten race.” He argues that the location of such a race was in the general region of Sunda and Sahul Shelves.
(a) Atlantis: The Truth | Ian Lawton (archive.org) *
(b) Mesopotamia: The Truth | Ian Lawton (archive.org) *
(c) Atlantis: The Truth | Ian Lawton (archive.org) *
(d) Giza the Truth | Ian Lawton | Chris Ogilvie-Herald (archive.org) *
(e) Atlantis Rising magazine #23 http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At
Nephilim, The
The Nephilim in the Old Testament were the offspring of the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men” before the Deluge, according to Genesis 6:1-4. Many early translations of the OT, as well as the King James version, preferred to translate the original Hebrew word as ‘giants’.
The World Heritage Encyclopedia offers a range of theories regarding the etymology of the word(a). Wikipedia has further background information on the subject(c).
Jason Colavito has unearthed late 19th-century attempts to link the Cro-Magnons with the Nephilim(e).
Ignatius Donnelly implied that the antediluvian giant Nephilim of the Bible were Atlantean, while others such as Blavatsky were more explicit.
>In Gateway to Atlantis, Andrew Collins proposed that Valum Votan was the original homeland of the Mesoamerican peoples. He further suggested that Votan, the culture bearer, belonged to the Hebrew giant race known as Nephilim(g).<
In more recent times it was the work of the late Zechariah Sitchin that revived interest in the Nephilim, the Anunnaki and the existence of extraterrestrial visitors in ancient times. Unlike the more than dubious claims of Erich von Däniken, Sitchin’s ideas appeared to have a more reliable scientific foundation. However, this foundation was composed of Sitchin’s own interpretation of Sumerian texts, which has been heavily criticised(b).
>In late 2017 and early 2018, a two-part article(h)(i). by two young researchers, Jason Jarrell and Sarah Farmer added further criticism of Sitchin’s linguistic capabilities. In 2021, Jarrell & Farmer wrote a two-part article about the Anunnaki(j)(k)., in which they concluded “that rather than making the Anunnaki the equivalent of the “Elohim” who created man in the Book of Genesis; they should more properly be compared to the Nephilim and the fallen angels described in Genesis Chapter 6, 1 Enoch, and other extra-biblical texts.”<
In 2019, Ryan Pitterson, tried to revive the idea of a connection between Atlantis and the biblical Nephilim but failed miserably. He is the author of Judgement of the Nephilim [1620], which he claims to be “the first comprehensive biblical study of the Nephilim.” Jason Colavito disagreed(f). Promotional interviews for the book gave him his fifteen minutes of fame, which is more than this book deserves.
Petros Koutouplis has also published a paper on Graham Hancock’s website, in which he investigates the biblical origins of the Nephilim and the possibility that they were ‘giants’, based on the evidence of the language of the Bible(d).
(a) https://self.gutenberg.org/articles/eng/Nephilim (link broken)
(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/zecharia-sitchins-world.html
(c) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim
(d) https://grahamhancock.com/nephilim-origins-koutoupis/
(e) An Early Argument that Cro-Magnons Were the Nephilim – JASON COLAVITO
(g) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/cabrera.htm *
Marduk & Tiamat *
Marduk & Tiamat were two of the leading gods of the Babylonian pantheon (a). The controversial writer Zecharia Sitchin, in The Twelfth Planet [1599], identifies Marduk and Tiamat as planetary bodies that were involved in a re-ordering of the solar system through catastrophic collisions some millions of years ago (b). However, his proposed Sumerian cosmology includes another planet in our solar system, ‘Nibiru’ with an orbital period of 3,600 years, whose inhabitants visited Earth during their previous close encounters and genetically manipulated the development of humans!
Emilio Spedicato published a paper regarding the Sumerian Nibiru in which he argues that its real period was 20 years “and that a close passage of that body near Earth around 9500 BC ended the last Ice Age and the Atlantis civilization. Moreover a satellite of Nibiru became our Moon, in addition to the previous satellite, that was Mars. We discuss ancient statements that Moon originally looked bigger and brighter than now and that the period of about 2400 years when there were two satellites explains the myth of Isis and Osiris. We argue that Nibiru around 6900 BC disappeared in a giant impact on Jupiter.“(d)
Now, Stuart L. Harris has published a paper(c) naming a body, Marduk/Nibiru, that had a number of close encounters with Earth causing global catastrophes, which included the destruction of Atlantis in 9577 BC, which he believes had been situated in the North Atlantic near Rockall. He proposes that this event generated a tsunami 1,500 metres high that swept across Europe. Harris also credits Marduk with the destruction of the planet Tiamat, which led to the creation of the asteroid belt.
The Babylonian Marduk is frequently associated with the Greek Phaëton.
(a) https://www.ancient.eu/Marduk/
(b) https://www.tokenrock.com/explain-tiamat-planetary-theory-144.html
(d) https://www.academia.edu/6556878/Nibiru_tiamat_rel_6_June_13
Jeffries-Fox, Bruce
Bruce Jeffries-Fox is an American musician, who recently completed a musical based on the content of Sumerian cunieform tablets. influenced by the writings of Zechariah Sitchin!
His Enduring Mysteries website contains a number of interesting essays on ancient history subjects, which includes two(a)(b) devoted to the possibility of Atlantis in France, based on the ideas of Marcel Mestdagh and Philip Coppens’ book, The Lost Civilization Enigma [1275].
Djonis, Christos A.
Christos A. Djonis is a Greek Cypriot now living in the United States. His first book Cyprus-The Island of Aphrodite, is a travel guide to that island. He has now ventured into much deeper waters with his latest book Uchronia-Atlantis Revealed[0935]. The central core of his theory is that Atlantis lay in the Aegean Sea, to the north of Thera, which itself contained the capital city of the Atlantean confederation. He gives no credit to Paulino Zamarro who proposed a similar location fifteen years ago[0024].
Djonis accepts 9600 BC as the time of its existence as the lower sea level then would have created a single landmass with a large central plain. Among his other 
claims is the idea that during the Bronze Age the Minoans “were not only heavily mining copper from the area around Lake Superior, but they were regularly carrying tobacco and other spices from the Americas back to Santorini.”(d)
He supports this link with North America with the geographical spread of the human mitochondrial DNA designated Haplogroup X. In his own words(e),
“While most geneticists today maintain that haplogroup X walked to America via the Bering Strait, genetic maps show that the furthest region east of the Mediterranean with small traces of haplogroup X, is the Altai Republic in Southern Russia. No traces of haplogroup X exist between Altai Republic and the greater region of the Great Lakes. If haplogroup X infiltrated North America via the Bering Strait, why then does the greatest concentration of haplogroup X (away from the Mediterranean) exist around the Great Lakes and not in Alaska or alongside the west coast? Most importantly, how do we otherwise explain that heavy traces of haplogroup X incidentally also exist in Scotland, Orkney Islands, Faroe islands and Iceland, essentially all the island stops to North America from Europe.”
Not unexpectedly, Jason Colavito, who denies the existence of Atlantis, wrote a highly critical review of Djonis’ claims and had further exchanges with Djonis in the comments section of his blog(i).
Even more damning is that Djonis cites the 1996 claim of Mark McMenamin that ancient Carthaginian coins depicted America. Unfortunately, Djonis was apparently unaware that in 2000, McMenamin was obliged to confirm that the coins in question were fakes(k) as revealed in his book, Phoenicians, Fakes and Barry Fell [1738]. Nevertheless, as recently as 2020 Djonis was still being quoted in the media(m)(n) as using the fake coins as evidence for the existence of Atlantis. He continued to tout this falsehood into September 2021(o).
>In a December 2022 article, Djonis suggested that Atlantis lies under 400 feet of water in the Aegean(p). Unfortunately, this conflicts with Plato’s text which tells us that as late as Plato’s time the place where Atlantis had been submerged was still a maritime hazard. Keeping in mind that Kurt Lambeck has demonstrated(q) from a study of Roman fish pens that the sea level along the Italian coast, 2000 years ago, was just 1.35 metres below today’s levels and if we add a generous additional foot to take us back to Plato’s day, we can calculate that Atlantis should now be in around 5, not 400 feet, of water.<
Djonis does not explain why Plato unambiguously stated that the Atlanteans came from the west (Tim.25b & Crit.114c) and yet Djonis’ Atlantis is situated to the southeast of Athens and north of Egypt? In fact, what Plato said was that the invasion came from the Atlantic Sea (pelagos). Although there is some disagreement about the location of this Atlantic Sea, all candidates proposed so far are far west of both Athens and Egypt.
Instead, he prefers to parrot the discredited ancient astronaut theories of Zechariah Sitchin, based on his flawed interpretation of Sumerian texts. These include claims that humans were ‘created’ by these extraterrestrial visitors. In fact, he wastes over half his book discussing UFOs and ETs.
In April 2016 Djonis had an article published on the Ancient Origins website(j), in which he discussed Sitchin’s theory of Planet X without arriving at any conclusions. Why?
I did not find Djonis convincing regarding either the Annunaki or Atlantis.
January 2016 had Djonis plunge into the muddy waters relating to the early discovery of America with a three-part article on the Ancient Origins website(f). Not unexpectedly, Jason Colavito had few caustic comments to offer on this latest offering from Djonis(g).
Recently, Djonis and I exchanged emails in which I offered some of my reasons for rejecting his ideas. Clearly unhappy with my comments, he has now used Ancient Origins to rehash(h) his flawed ideas. Included in his offering is a sarcastic reference to me as an ‘expert’, a title I have never used or claimed. Apart from his support for the idea of ancient astronauts, which he carefully avoided in this recent article, my main gripe is that Djonis’ is content to discard elements in Plato’s account without any justifiable reason. Djonis presumptuously wrote of me that there is “no doubt in his mind that Atlantis was a myth.” On the contrary, I believe that it is highly probable that Atlantis existed, but, it is also quite clear that Plato’s narrative contains mythical elements that may have impeded researchers seeking to identify the historical Atlantis.
In 2021, Djonis published Atlantis: The Find of a Lifetime [1857], in which, unsurprisingly, he just recycles the Uchronia material along with a degree of padding. This new and ‘expanded’ edition is in fact listed as 20 pages shorter. As of June 21st, I found it strange that the book is not mentioned on Djonis’ website(l)!
A YouTube clip(b) and PowerPoint presentation(c) are also available.
(a) https://www.atlantisislandrevealed.com/
(b) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7PphlD9mw&feature=youtu.be
(c) https://vimeo.com/79041220
(d) https://www.atlantisislandrevealed.com/#!the-minoans/cr2t
(i) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/new-atlantis-claim-places-lost-continent-in-Cyclades
(l) ChristosDjonis.com: Author | BOOKS (cdjonis.com)
(p) Atlantis: How Plato’s Story Corresponds to Real History (greekreporter.com) *
Nibiru *
Nibiru was a Sumerian astronomical term used to describe a planetary body that periodically approached Earth. This account was hijacked by the late Zechariah Sitchin to construct his Planet X theory in which he claimed that this planet had an orbit that took it to the outer limits of the solar system returning every 3600 years to the vicinity of Earth. Sitchin claimed that during one of these visits some of its inhabitants came to earth and become the ‘gods’ of the Sumerians. However, Sitchin failed to explain how the inhabitants of this Planet X survived the lack of heat and light that it would have had to endure as it moved away from the proximity of the Sun. For us inhabitants of Earth, a drop of just a few degrees is fatal.
However, Emilio Spedicato has a radically different and certainly more rational view of this Sumerian planet. He ascribes a much shorter orbital period of 20 years to Nibiru and claims that close encounters with this planet (and its satellites) had a dramatic physical effect on the prehistory of our planet including the capturing of our Moon, the destruction of Atlantis and later the biblical Exodus! His scenario has elements that can be traced to Velikovsky, Ackerman and Hörbiger.
Robert Solarion was a keen follower of Immanuel Velikovsky and like him was convinced that in the first and second millennia BC the Earth had suffered a catastrophic Pole Shift as a result of a close flyby of a large extraterrestrial body or bodies. Velikovsky identified these as Venus and Mars, but Solarion differed, suggesting that it was the putative Nibiru!(h)
Professor Spedicato’s November 2012 paper, From Nibiru to Tiamat, an Astronomic Scenario for Earliest Sumerian Cosmology, can be read or downloaded from the excellent Diffusion and Migration website(a). A number of his other papers can be found on the same website and are certainly worth studying.
In sharp contrast to the serious work of Spedicato, for the past couple of years, we have been subjected to a barrage of silly articles(b) linking Nibiru with the promised 2012 global catastrophes ‘predicted’ by the Mayan calendar.
A debunking of both Sitchin’s scholarship and the existence of Nibiru has been offered by a number of sites(c).
Nevertheless, in 2018, Stuart L. Harris published three papers(e-g) proposing Rockall as the location of Atlantis, which was destroyed by an encounter with Nibiru in 9577 BC.
However, some people, such as David Meade (a pen-name) who describes himself as a ‘Christian numerologist’ predicted that Nibiru would collide with Earth on September 23, 2017! When this did not happen he moved the event to October, but again nothing happened. But he persisted and subsequently moved our demise to March 2018, then April, with a final suggestion for that year of between May and December(d).
In August 2023, another buffoon, Mike Buckner, announced the impending arrival of Nibiru and that he was fleeing to hide in a cave. When nothing happened, he explained to his fans that “the ‘physics worked’ but he had gotten the shape of the Earth wrong.” He now realises that we live on a flat Earth!(j)
In early 2021, an article on the BBC offered a potted history of the search for Planet X from the time of Percival Lowell until now(i). Although, Planet X has proved elusive, “either way, the search for the legendary ninth planet has already helped to transform our understanding of the solar system. Who knows what else we’ll find before the hunt comes to an end.”
(a) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2012&id=351
(b) Search Results Nibiru : Your Own World USA (yowusa.com)
(c) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-2994/
(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Meade_(author)
(h) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/cosmic_tree/nightsun.htm
(i) If Planet Nine exists, why has no one seen it? – BBC Future (archive.org)
Adam’s Calendar
Adam’s Calendar, also called the Blaauboschkraal stone ruins, is claimed to be the oldest known arrangement of standing stones in the world. It was discovered by Johan Heine, a pilot and firefighter. While the amazing discoveries at Gobekli Tepe have received widespread publicity, Adam’s Calendar is virtually unknown.
Heine together with astronomer Bill Hollenbach have identified a number of astronomical alignments at the site and have controversially dated the monument to between 75,000 and 250,000 years ago(a). Adam’s Calendar is one of many thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of man-made stone features across southern Africa. A blog on Dale Drinnon’s website elaborates with images on these enigmatic structures(d).
One of their interesting claims is that the alignments with the cardinal points were all out by 3°17’43’’ suggesting a crustal displacement.
To my eye Adam’s Calendar is very similar to the megalithic astronomical circle at Nabta Playa in the northern Sahara.
Johan Heine teamed up with writer Michael Tellinger to produce two books, Adam’s Calendar (2008)[803]and Temples of the African Gods (2010)[804]. These books are heavily illustrated but light on text. However, in my view, what really detracts from them is the pathetic attempt to link Adam’s Calendar with the ancient astronaut theories of the late Zechariah Sitchin and his Sumerian Annunaki gods. For good measure in a lengthy paper on Graham Hancock’s website(e). Tellinger has thrown in the claim that the circular stone ruins are “energy generating devices“! I suspect that all this nonsense was introduced as padding by Tellinger(c) who had written previously about extraterrestrial interference with mankind in his Slave Species of God [805].
For good measure Tellinger, when referring to Sitchin’s Annunaki, also claims “that Great Zimbabwe was Enki’s ‘Headquarters’, simultaneously dating it to c. 260,000 years old.”(h)
A highly critical commentary of Heine’s claims should be read for balance(g).
In 2011 Andrew Collins visited the site(b) and was impressed by what he saw. However, he was, as I am, quite sceptical about the dating of the monument in the absence of stronger evidence. He was dubious about the 3°17’43’’ misalignment due to the ‘jumbled’ positioning of some of the stones on the southern side. He concludes with a call for further investigation and research.
Tellinger has a website with links to his books and videos(f).
(a) https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=22930
(b) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/txsa_4_adams.htm
(c) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sumer_anunnaki/esp_sumer_annunaki34.htm
(d) See: Archive 3590
(e) https://grahamhancock.com/tellingerm1/
(g) https://sacredsites.com/africa/south_africa/adam_s_calendar_stone_ring.html