Atlantis

Atlantis Risen: New Discoveries & Review of the Evidence

By Will Hart

Plato gave us a piece of history, but it has since long been dismissed as a myth, an allegorical tale or a parable. All polite words that mean it was not true history even though the master philosopher  assured readers that it was.

The following is typical of the modern academic view,

“”…a fictional island mentioned within an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works Timaeus and Critias…the pseudo-historic embodiment of Plato's ideal state…” Wikipedia

However, just prior to delivering his discourse Critias said “Then listen, Socrates, to a tale though strange is certainly true.”

In the latter vein I am here to dispute the modern view and to show the reasons for my rejection of it. After decades of research I am convinced that Plato was telling the truth; and I have the evidence to back up that claim.

To begin with I need to present portions of his account which appears in the famous Dialogue titled, ‘The Kings of Atlantis and their Portions of the Empire’ Plato recounts how Poseidon gave Atlas’s twin brother,

“…the extremity of the island towards the Pillars of Heracles facing…the region of Gades,” 

The location is both clear and specific. The Pillars refer to the Gibralter Strait; Gades, a city in Iberia, (Gadis, Spain today). Poseidon gave his son the eastern side of the island that faced Gibraltar and Spain.

Moreover the narrative goes on to state the following:

“And of the fifth pair he gave to the elder the name of Azaes, and to the younger that of Diaprepes. All these and their descendants for many generations were the inhabitants and rulers of diverse islands in the open sea…

I underlined diverse islands because this is an absolutely key passage that tells us that the civilization of Atlantis was spread across a group of islands. Those were connected to the central, larger island, where the capitol city was located.  

In fact, though his description is clear, concise and geographically identifiable, generations of people have acted as if that was not the case. Atlantis has been “found” here, there and everywhere except for the geographic region Plato pointed to. (Insert)

He specifically mentioned several landmarks, the Pillars (Gibraltar Strait) and a city in Spain, Gades (Cadiz).  In addition he noted the names Diaprepes and Azaes. The former reference means “The Brightly Shining One,” and for that reason it has long been associated with a volcanic mountain in the Canary Islands, Tenerife's Mt. Teide.

Moreover, we find that Greek geographer and historian Diodorus Siculus writing of a native people dwelling in coastal “Mauretania” (modern Morocco), facing the direction of Atlantis.

The Siculus wrote called themselves the Autochthones. Critics often claim that only Plato mentions Atlantis, no other ancient writers. That is completely untrue.

He also noted they were descendants of Atlantean colonizers who established an allied kingdom on the Atlantic shores of North Africa. Though people claim that Atlantis was Plato’s invention, Siculus is considered an early historian as well as a geographer.

Would he too fabricate a make believe continent and fantasy tribes living along the coast of North Africa? In fact, the people of that region were called “the Atlantes” in antiquity.

Instead of searching the globe for artifacts that might be from or related to Atlantis, early on I decided to search for people. Not just any cultural group anywhere. I focused on the region Plato and Siculus identified.

That area being northwestern Africa and the nearby coastal Canary Islands. My detective reasoning was simple. If I could find anomalies among the peoples of that region I might get some very serious leads.

This was many, many years ago. At that time I had never heard of the Guanche, the indigenous tribe that the Spaniards encountered in the early 1500’s.

I was in for a big, positive surprise when I began my research into the Canary Islands. Right away I found photos of pyramids, references to “white savages”, images of mummies…Whoa! I was stunned, how come I never heard of any of this before?

The following image is an artist’s rendition of a male Guanche based upon the descriptions in the Spanish accounts. Additionally, one their pyramids

📷 j📷

Well, as Sherlock Holmes would exclaim, ‘Watson, the game is afoot!’

I soon found the Spanish Chronicles contained descriptions of a tribe that looked like Europeans. Strange. They encountered the Guanche isolated from the continents in the 15th century. However, they looked like typical Europeans but had a totally alien culture and they spoke a language unlike any in Europe.

I knew of the Basques then and the Guanche reminded me of them, they were outliers too. The former have long been known as being an outlier culture distinct from the rest of Europe.

Even today, they speak a language (uskara)  isolate, one that has no relation to any other languages. They have a very distinctive genetic fingerprint as well, which shall get into later.

However, while I am including the Basques in this presentation I am not focusing on them. They and their story is already well known.

Anyway, I had my anomalous people sooner than expected and that was encouraging.

Still, it was hardly more than a thumbs up for the idea that real, tangible evidence for Atlantis existed. There should not be any outlier, non-European people, who looked Caucasian, living on islands off the coast of North Africa in the 1500s.

How were the Guanche accounted for by historians?

Like the Basques, historians and anthropologists had always had trouble nailing down their identity and origins. They still do. I reasoned that they were not much, if at all, related to the cultures of Europe. None of those cultures built pyramids or practiced mummification.

Their unusual, non-European language supported that view. I found other odd clues on the Canaries. Though they lived on islands the Guanche were not focused on fish as their main food source, like Polynesians are for instance.

In fact, they did not even have seaworthy boats. That meant they could not even travel between their islands, therefore each tribe remained isolated. Moreover, they were much more farmers and meat eaters than fishermen. All unusual facts.

I soon found that the Guanche grew grain crops and they were also pastoral herding flocks of sheep and goats. These too seemed anomalous to me. Where did these long isolated, unknown people get domesticated grains and sheep from?

Linguists eventually linked their language to that of the Berber tribes inhabiting North Africa. They became  my next people to investigate. Plato’s positioning of Atlantis and the comments by Diordus Siculus made sense.

The lost continent was not that far distant from the coastline of North Africa. When Atlantis went down the survivors scrambled to the nearest safe havens where there was solid ground.

The Canaries must have been on the periphery of the main islands that comprised Atlantis. That was my working hypothesis. It made the Guanche direct descendants. And they were still a living culture when the Spaniards arrived 500 years ago.

Spanish chroniclers documented their way of life, their farming practices, their customs and so forth. I knew what to look for in Morocco, the first landing point on the continent  for my hypothetical survivors.

One of the initial things I had to establish (factually) was that the Berber people were not Europeans. For example, some stray, marginal folks that had somehow meandered down to North Africa.

Historians had proposed that at one point. However, I quickly found that anthropologists had determined they went all the way back to the Paleolithic era. There were no longer any doubts about them being indigenous to North Africa. in my mind, thereafter.

That issued taken care I could move on.

Today, people think of the “Berbers” as nomadic tribes that inhabit the desert and are of Arab lineage. That is not even half of the truth. They call themselves the Amazigh, free people, the term Berber was attached to them by the Romans long, long ago..

📷Berbers today

I had heard that the Berbers were once described by ancient historians, the same way the Guanche had been in the Spanish chronicles. After 1200 years of intermarrying with the colonial Arab population, the above insert shows ancient historians were not lying.

Next, I wanted to see if I could find: 1) ancient artifacts that either showed a similarity to the Guanche or 2) evidence of ancient cities. As with the Guanche, the question naturally arises: where did these (outlier) Berber people come from originally?

Historians have no clue and since they reject Atlantis with a scoff, no place to look either. They do know, and put in writing, that they are not related to Indo-Aryan-Europeans.

The insert below shows a map of the Gibraltar Straight and the tiny sliver of water that separates southern Europe from North Africa. West of this location is where Plato said Atlantis once existed. In red we find the name Smugglers Cave, lower left side.

📷📷

To my mind this was a very good candidate to look for the earliest evidence of arriving survivors. I started doing research into the cave. Excavations of Smugglers Cave have been going on for decades.

The remains of at least four archaeological cultures have been found at the site: The Mousterian in the lower layers, the Aterian, the Iberomaurusian, and finally the Neolithic in the topmost layers.

The site is best-known for the important human remains it has yielded from the Aterian. This particular archaeological culture is interesting because it dates to the time period (between 60 to 100,000 years ago), very early for Homo sapiens.

Now, the first two eras, Mousterian and Aterian, were too early for consideration. However, the Iberomaursian period fit. Here I am inserting a quote from an important research paper, Iberomaurusian Ancient DNA:

“The Western North African population was characterized by the presence of Iberomaurusian civilization at the Epilaeothic period 20K years before present to 10K before present. The origin of this population is still not clear, they may come from Europe, Near East sub-Saharan Africa…”

That last sentence confirms what I asserted earlier, the origins of the Guanche and the Berbers remain obscure. The first sentence was what I was in search of. (I did not insert that quote to delve into the genetics at this point, we shall tackle that later.)

The latter part of the Epilaeothic is when Plato said the island collapsed.

Evidence of a civilization, created by an unidentified, outlier people dating back to the time when Atlantis existed. Perfect. The trail I had taken was warm and getting hotter. After establishing those points I was emboldened.

Survivors from Atlantis would build a new life wherever they landed, the Canaries and North African and  bring the old culture with them.  The pieces of the puzzle were easy to envision, not so easy to find and put together in the real world time would reveal.

It took time and a lot of it. Reading this account may give a false impression that I zipped right along. Not. Research into Atlantis, most of ancient history, is full of false leads, wild goose chases and flat-out dead ends.

That aside, what I was anxious to find were any anomalous artifacts, like the pyramids on the Canaries, or just as good, megalithic structures. The megaliths of Europe are very well-known for the enigmas they present, a la Stonehenge.

But I not heard of any in North Africa at that time.

I knew there were many in southern Europe, especially in Iberia, Spain and Portugal. Iberia was also a natural choice for Atlantis refugees. I would focus my research there eventually but first I had to learn what was in North Africa.

Any megaliths I could find in Morocco, or the rest of North Africa, would add fuel to the fire. One of the big problems in digging far back into the history of Morocco, (North Africa in general), is the fact that it has been invaded and taken over by various ancient powers, repeatedly.

In fact, it seems that all the ancient powers had to take a turn at being overlords in North Africa.

Nonetheless, with that in mind I did come across a major megalithic site in Morocco. Barely known by the general public it is located at Msoura, a large, stone circle.

📷Msoura, 📷

This is exactly what I needed to find. No one has ever satisfactorily explained how (Neolithic) people lifted these huge stones. Yet these identical stone structures- standing stones, circles and dolmen - are found worldwide.

Neither has anyone identified the region or source-culture that created them. Could lost Atlantis be where the use of megaliths began? I wondered.

In addition, perhaps the ultimate source of the age of pyramids was the lost continent as well? The Msoura stone circle and the Canary Island pyramids supported the hypothesis. But a lot more evidence would be needed to make that claim to the public.

As my investigation evolved the bar got raised ever higher.

The next focus on my investigation list was the Atlas Mountain range. They are located in Morocco, named after Poseidon’s son. One of the first things I came across and was struck by were the terraces built by the ancient Berbers. Why the terraces?

I know they are not a Great Pyramid or Stonehenge-type, megalithic, tourist attraction. No, and those often don’t tell the rest of the story, in truth, we need to make sense of them. The terraces do.

The reason I locked onto the terraces in the Atlas Mountains was due to the fact I had found them on the Canary Islands and the Azores as well as in Basque country.

Above is a photo of a Guanche step pyramid. I brought up the point that the Guanche were farmers earlier. Well, not all the Berbers are nomads riding camels across the desert as the cultivated stereotype would have it. Many farm and live in villages.

Here was another connection, a subtler one between the Guanche and Amazigh. They lived very similarly, close to nature, yet they were not ‘primitive savages ‘. They grew crops and tended flocks of sheep. The terraces...were they an echo from that remote epoch back on Atlantis?

In addition to the terraces eventually another extremely important site on the Canary Island of La Gomera came to my attention. It was a direct link to the Msoura Stone Circle, which proved that the early berbers were megalithic builders. The La Guancha stone circle, did the same for the Guanche in my mind.

With each new discovery I kept asking myself, where did these peoples originate?

Above, I mentioned that the Guanche were not a seafaring people.

Odd to find islanders who were farmers instead of fishermen; who did not build boats and sail the seas.

This curiosity has not escaped the attention some independent thinking historians. If the Berbers sailed to the Canaries and became the Guanche, the latter would have made boats and possessed seafaring skills.

No, they did not because the migration was not from east to west, it was the reverse; from the west (Atlantis) to the Canaries, Morocco and across North Africa to Egypt.

The connections between the Canary Islanders and their counterparts in North Africa are as obvious as they are profound. They extend from their Caucasian-like appearance, to artifacts, to shared culture and language, and we will find the deepest levels of genetics.

However, we are not quite ready for the DNA analysis yet.