{"id":1952,"date":"2010-05-28T21:19:31","date_gmt":"2010-05-28T21:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/island-peninsula-or-continent\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T18:58:02","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T18:58:02","slug":"island-peninsula-or-continent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/island-peninsula-or-continent\/","title":{"rendered":"Island, Peninsula or Continent?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/strong>sland,<\/strong> Peninsula<\/strong><\/a> or<\/strong> C<\/strong>ontinent<\/strong>?\u00a0 <\/strong>Advocates of a continental rather than island identification for Atlantis have to contend with the fact that Plato never referred to Atlantis as a continent instead he used the Greek words for ‘island’, namely \u2018nesos\u2019 and \u2018neson\u2019. Their line of argument is that these words in addition to \u2018island\u2019 or \u2018islands\u2019 can also mean \u201cislands of an archipelago\u201d or \u201cpeninsula\u201d. Furthermore, it is claimed that the ancient Greeks had no precise word for \u2018peninsula\u2019.<\/p>\n

Gilles le Noan[912<\/span><\/a>]<\/span><\/sup>, quoted by Papamarinopoulos<\/a>[629<\/a>.558]<\/sup>, has offered evidence that there was no differentiation in Greek between \u2018island\u2019 and \u2018peninsula\u2019 until the time of Herodotus<\/a> in the 5th<\/sup> century BC. In conversation with Mark Adams<\/a>[<\/sup>1070<\/sup><\/a>.198]<\/sup> he explains that in the sixth century BC, when Solon lived, nesos had five geographic meanings. “One, an island as we know it. Two, a promontory. Three, a peninsula. Four, <\/em><\/p>\n

Elena P. Mitropetrou<\/a> a Greek archaeologist at the University of Patras, delivered two papers to the 2008 Atlantis Conference<\/a> in Athens [750<\/a>]<\/sup>. She also pointed out that in the 6th century BC, the Greek word nesos<\/em> was employed to describe an island, but also, a peninsula or a promontory. Mitropetrou herself considers the Iberian peninsula to be the ‘island of Atlantis.’<\/p>\n

Robert Bittlestone, in his Odysseus Unbound<\/em> [<\/sup>1402<\/sup><\/a>.143]<\/sup> also notes that “nesos usually means an island whereas cheronesos means a peninsula, but Homer could not have used cheronesos when referring to the peninsula of Argostoli for two very good reasons. First, it cannot be fitted into the metre of the epic verse and second, the word hadn’t yet been invented: it doesn’t occur in Greek literature until the 5th century BC.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Another\u00a0researcher, Roger Coghill, echoed the views of many when he wrote on an old webpage that \u201cTo the Greeks peninsulae were the same as islands, so the Peloponnesian peninsula was \u201cthe island of Pelops\u201d and the Chersonnese was to them \u201cthe island of Cherson\u201d. Similarly in describing a place found after escaping the Pillars of Hercules, Plato quite normally describes the Lusitanian coast\u00a0(modern Portugal<\/a>)\u00a0as an \u201cisland\u201d, reached, he clearly says, after passing Cadiz\u201d.<\/p>\n

Johann Saltzman<\/a> claimed that ‘nesos’ did not mean \u2018island\u2019 or \u2018peninsula\u2019 but \u2018land close to water\u2019. However, I would be happier sticking to the respected Liddell & Scott\u2019s interpretation of island or peninsula. If Saltzman is correct, what word did the Greeks use for island?<\/p>\n

The Modern Greek word for peninsula is \u2018chersonesos\u2019 which is derived from \u2018khersos\u2019 (dry) and \u2018nesos\u2019 (island) and can be seen as a reasonable description of a peninsula. It is worth noting that the etymology of the English word \u2018peninsula\u2019 is from the Latin \u2019paene\u2019 (almost) and \u2019insula\u2019 (an island).<\/p>\n

Jonas Bergman<\/a> maintains that the Greek concept of \u2018island\u2019 is one of detachment or isolation. He also points out that the original Egyptian word for ‘island’ can also mean lowland or coastland because the Egyptians had a different conception of \u2019island\u2019 to either the ancient Greeks or us. Some commentators have claimed that the Egyptians of Solon\u2019s time described any foreign land as an island.<\/p>\n

Eberhard Zangger<\/a> offers another correction of the Atlantis mystery: If one compares the land-sea distribution in Egypt and in the Aegean Sea, it becomes obvious why the Egyptians used at that time the expression \u201cfrom the islands\u201d. While today the word \u201cisland\u201d has a clear meaning, this was not the case in the late Bronze Age. For the Egyptians more or less all strangers came from the islands. As there had been practically no islands in Egypt, the ancient Egyptian language did not have any special character for it. The hieroglyphic used for \u201cisland\u201d was also meaning \u201csandy beach\u201d or \u201ccoast\u201d and was generally used for \u201cforeign countries\u201d or \u201cregions on the other side of the Nile\u201d.<\/p>\n

A contributor to the Skeptic\u2019s Dictionary(<\/sup>b<\/sup>)<\/sup> has added \u201cI remind you that the Greek definition of \u201cisland\u201d paralleled that of \u201ccontinent.\u201d To the Greeks, Europe was a continent. West Africa was an island, especially since it was cut off from the rest of what we now call \u201cAfrica\u201d by a river that ran south from the Atlas mountains and then west to what is now the western Sahara. This now dry river was explored by Byron Khun de Prorok<\/a> in the 1920s.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Reginald Fessenden<\/a> wrote: \u201cOne Greek term must be mentioned because it has given rise to much confusion. The word \u2018Nesos\u2019 is still translated as meaning \u2018island\u2019 but it does not mean this at all, except perhaps in late Greek. The Peloponnesus is a peninsula. Arabia was called a \u201cnesos\u201d and so was Mesopotamia<\/a>\u201d. This ambiguity in the written Greek and Egyptian of that period was highlighted at the 2005 Atlantis Conference<\/a> by Stavros Papamarinopoulos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Werner Wickboldt<\/a> pointed out at the\u00a0same conference that Adolph Schulten<\/a>, in the 1920s.referred to a number of classical writers who used the term \u2018nesos\u2019 in connection with the Nile, Tiber, Indus and Tartessos<\/a>, all of which possessed deltas with extensive networks of islands.<\/p>\n

To confuse matters even further, there have been several theories based on the idea that the ‘island’ of Atlantis was in fact land surrounded by rivers rather than the sea. These include Mesopotamia in Argentina<\/a> proposed by Doug Fisher<\/a>, the Island of Mero\u00eb<\/a> in Sudan suggested by Th\u00e9r\u00ease Ghembaza<\/a> and a large piece of land bound by the Mississippi, Ohio, and Potomac rivers offered by Henriette Mertz<\/a>. However, none of these locations matches Plato’s description of Atlantis as a maritime trading nation with a naval fleet of 1200 ships, nor do any of them explain how they controlled the Mediterranean as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia.<\/p>\n

Another Atlantis-island variant is based on the existence of a large inland sea where the Sahara<\/a> now exists. Gerald Wells<\/a> has proposed that the Atlas Mountains, in what is now Algeria<\/a>, were effectively an island isolated by this inland sea to the south, the Mediterranean to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. He claims that the City of Atlantis was situated on the Hill of Garet-el-Djeter.<\/p>\n

Related to Wells’ theory is the highly technical approach of Michael H\u00fcbner<\/a> who located Atlantis on the Souss Massa Plain of Morocco<\/a>, where today the plain and its adjacent valleys are called ‘island’ by the native Amazigh people.(Constraint 2.2.1.2\u00a0 R102)[632<\/a>]<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

The waters around Plato\u2019s island are indeed muddy!<\/p>\n

(<\/sup>b<\/sup>)<\/sup> https:\/\/skepdic.com\/comments\/atlantcom.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Island, Peninsula or Continent?\u00a0 Advocates of a continental rather than island identification for Atlantis have to contend with the fact that Plato never referred to Atlantis as a continent instead he used the Greek words for ‘island’, namely \u2018nesos\u2019 and \u2018neson\u2019. Their line of argument is that these words in addition to \u2018island\u2019 or \u2018islands\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3774,151,1534,880,884,248,113,7266,334,2336,475,266,817,3775,877,879,3101,2273,59,2335,885,866,881,5095,871,1280,146,2863,882,1376,883],"class_list":["post-1952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agentina","tag-algeria","tag-amazigh","tag-byron-khun-de-prorok","tag-cadiz","tag-doug-fisher","tag-eberhard-zangger","tag-elena-p-mitropetrou","tag-gerald-wells","tag-gilles-le-noan","tag-henriette-mertz","tag-herodotus","tag-island","tag-island-of-meroe","tag-johann-saltzman","tag-jonas-bergman","tag-mark-adams","tag-michael-hubner","tag-morocco","tag-nesos","tag-peninsula","tag-portugal","tag-reginald-fessenden","tag-robert-bittlestone","tag-roger-coghill","tag-sahara","tag-solon","tag-souss-massa","tag-stavros-papamarinoupolos","tag-therese-ghembaza","tag-werner-wickboldt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1952"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66905,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952\/revisions\/66905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}