{"id":4178,"date":"2010-06-12T18:24:32","date_gmt":"2010-06-12T18:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/turkey\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T06:36:28","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T05:36:28","slug":"turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/strong>urkey<\/strong> is the preferred location of Atlantis according to authors Peter James<\/a> and Eberhard Zangger<\/a>.<\/strong> In his book[<\/sup>047<\/sup><\/a>]<\/sup>\u00a0James asserts that Plato took the idea for Atlantis from the city of Tantalis<\/a>, which was located in what is today the Province of Manisa in Western Turkey, just north-east of the ancient port of Smyrna (today\u2019s Izmir). Zangger also opts for Turkey but favours ancient Troy<\/a> as the original Atlantis[<\/sup>483<\/sup><\/a>]<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, \u00c7atal H\u00fcy\u00fck, one of the world\u2019s oldest cities, is\u00a0located in Turkey just over 200 km south of the capital Ankara. Like Atlantis, \u00c7atal H\u00fcy\u00fck also had a bull cult and a Great Mother Goddess reminiscent of ancient Malta<\/a>. After decades of work, excavations are continuing at the site(a)<\/sup>. Mysteriously, this early city of some seven thousand people apparently abandoned their homes around 5600-6000 BC. They were not the only settlement to be abandoned around this period. Cyprus, Palestine and Syria and more famously Jericho all provide evidence of abandonment at the same time.<\/p>\n

Ian Wilson<\/a> has pointed out that following the Younger Dryas<\/a> mini Ice Age\u00a0of around 9000 BC a further mini Ice age occurred between 6200 BC and 5800 BC, a period that coincides with this unexplained desertion of \u00c7atal H\u00fcy\u00fck and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

However exciting \u00c7atal H\u00fcy\u00fck may be, its antiquity would appear to have been overshadowed by the discoveries made at G\u00f6bekli Tepe <\/a>where the site has been dated to 9600BC.\u00a0Also noteworthy is Asikli H\u00f6y\u00fck which is 1,000 years older than the \u00c7atal H\u00fcy\u00fck settlement on the Konya plain and as the earliest village settlement founded in the Cappadocia region, the site is no less important(b)<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Although Zangger and James have had little support for their Turkish locations for Atlantis, a more recent attempt to situate Atlantis near the west coast of the Asian landmass of Turkey is offered by an American researcher, Joe Plegge. In 2012 Plegge published Turkish Stonehenge: G\u00f6bekli Tepe<\/em> [1909<\/a>]<\/sup> in which he claims that the two sites share some similar astronomical features. In his Atlantis paper, he reveals how he also sought to link G\u00f6bekli Tepe<\/a> with Atlantis but found no evidence to support this idea. Plegge accepts Plato’s apparent early date for Atlantis of circa 9600 BC even though by his own admission this date conflicts with Plato’s anachronistic references to metalworking, a one-million-man army, horses and chariots. However, for me, Plegge’s use of Paul Schliemann<\/a> as a source destroys his credibility as a researcher.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Readers may find it of interest that in April 2019 there were media reports that “researchers compared DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains found across Britain with that of people alive at the same time in Europe. The Neolithic inhabitants were descended from populations originating in Anatolia (modern Turkey) that moved to Iberia before heading north. They reached Britain in about 4,000 BC. Details have been\u00a0published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.\u00a0The migration to Britain was just one part of a general, massive expansion of people out of Anatolia in 6,000 BC that introduced farming<\/a> to Europe.”<\/em> (d) <\/sup>. This has led to the conclusion that Stonehenge<\/a> was built by descendants of these Anatolian settlers!<\/p>\n

(a) <\/sup>See: https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180212032433\/https:\/\/popular-archaeology.com\/issue\/september-2011\/article\/latest-find-at-world-s-largest-neolithic-settlement-a-harbinger-of-surprises-yet-to-come<\/a><\/p>\n

(b) <\/sup>https:\/\/www.hurriyetdailynews.com\/cappadocias-11000-year-old-settlement-thrills-experts–.aspx?PageID=238HYPERLINK<\/a><\/p>\n

(c) <\/sup>(99+) (PDF) Atlantis in the Meander Valley, Turkey | Joe Plegge – Academia.edu<\/a><\/p>\n

(d)\u00a0<\/sup> (BBC<\/em> April.16, 2019)\u00a0Stonehenge: DNA reveals origin of builders (bbc.com)<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turkey is the preferred location of Atlantis according to authors Peter James and Eberhard Zangger. In his book[047]\u00a0James asserts that Plato took the idea for Atlantis from the city of Tantalis, which was located in what is today the Province of Manisa in Western Turkey, just north-east of the ancient port of Smyrna (today\u2019s Izmir). […]<\/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":[3565,1487,3497,3498,3496,113,320,1948,319,12,147,876,669,2266],"class_list":["post-4178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agriculture","tag-anatolia","tag-asikli-hoyuk","tag-cappadocia","tag-catal-hoyuk","tag-eberhard-zangger","tag-gobekli-tepe","tag-ian-wilson","tag-jericho","tag-malta","tag-peter-james","tag-stonehenge","tag-turkey","tag-younger-dryas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178","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=4178"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64583,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions\/64583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}