Very much the same conclusion also holds for Tartessos (part of Spain) which hardly sank at all (see Koudriavtsev’s map here). The same also applies to the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, where the situation is
0
very much the same, as can be seen in the map just linked. What is even worse is the fact that not only Ireland, but all or most of the Celtic Shelf region was wholly covered by ice during the Ice Age, as can be seen in the map of Ice Age Europe here. This map shows the entire British Shelf as an ice covered polar desert during the Ice Age. ↑101
So, how could any substantial civilization ever develop there or anywhere else in Europe, which was then mainly desertic as this paleovegetation map dramatically shows?
The British Shelf is detailed in this Ice Age map of Ireland here. Its results are also applicable to Britain itself since it was from there that the glaciers advanced over Ireland. And this map also shows that the first humans only entered the region rather late, by about 7,000 BC or so. ↑102
This date is desperately belated for a possible connection with Atlantis, which disappeared 2,600 years earlier, according to Plato. It is also apparent from this fact that the first humans had to wait for the end of the Ice Age to be over in order to start colonizing the British Isles.
Again, this fact suggests an ice covered region. And this is verified in situ in Ireland itself, where the scouring done in the rocks of the region by the glaciers can be observed even today.
In Koudriavtsev’s map just linked, the areas covered by glaciers correspond to the areas in white. His estimate of the ice covering seems to be overly conservative in comparison to the more detailed, more precise maps just linked. In fact, most experts agree – based on the in situ evidence – that these glaciers extended further, to also cover the British Isles themselves, as just shown.
So, it is extremely hard to see how the Celtic Shelf could ever have housed Atlantis. Atlantis was tropical even at that time, according to the detailed report of Plato. Maybe this disappointing reality clarifies the disenchantment of Koudriavtsev with his research expedition to the British Shelf site.
Moreover, there are no volcanoes worth mentioning in this whole region. So, how could it have been destroyed by a supervolcanism and/or a giant tsunami of the type described by Plato?
Coconuts, bananas and scented woods – which abounded in Atlantis according to Plato – do not grow in this region even today, now that the local climate is far warmer than during the Ice Age. After all, temperatures rose globally by about 15ºC or more in average after the end of the Ice Age, according to the recent finds of experts on Climatology.
All in all, appealing as this proposal of the Celtic Shelf might appear to some local researchers, it seems that the theory of a West European Atlantis must be trashed.
With this, we turn our attention to Morocco, another nearby site long proposed for Atlantis. This identification has been done ever since Herodotus placed Atlantis and Mt. Atlas in precisely this region of the world. Plato was of course familiar with this fact, which he apparently disregarded in his writings, certainly because he realized the utter nonsense of the proposal.
It is true that Morocco benefits from the fact of having a few mighty volcanoes in the nearby Canary Islands, a site linked with the Isles of the Blest since remote antiquity. Besides, this region enjoyed a warm climate even during the Ice Age.
But we will see next that Morocco is no more than a second-hand replica, and that the place was artfully created by the clever Phoenicians as some sort of “mirror image” of true Atlantis. It was essentially desertic then, and hence unsuitable to house a mighty civilization of any sort.
This region of north Africa – called Mauritania by the ancient Greeks and the Romans – even had a “Mt. Atlas” according to Herodotus and others. Except that this name of the famous mountain is of a relatively late date, and derives from the Phoenician exploits in the region.
The Berber natives call the mountain by an entirely different name (Gebel Toubkal) and do not connect it with the legend of Atlas or Atlantis, which they also knew, by the way. According to the reliable Encyclopedia Britannica (sv. “Atlas Mts.”):
“The name [of the Atlas Mts.] was given by Europeans who supposed them to be the home of the mythical Greek god, and is never used by the native races” [my emphasis].
In fact, this appellative and its connection with Atlantis first figures in Herodotus himself (Hist. IV:184). But we believe that Herodotus and the other Greeks were merely reporting Phoenician (Carthaginian) legends on Hercules and Atlas, their two supreme heroes, whose exploits they unduly transferred to the region of Morocco.
As is known, these two heroes originated in Hindu and Phoenician and Pelasgian and Etruscan mythology, later passing to the ones of the Greeks and the Romans. Philo of Biblos, basing himself on the work of
Sanchuniathon, a Phoenician priest, affirmed that Greek mythology actually originated from the Phoenicians. This was also the view of several other ancient authorities, Herodotus included.
The Dualism of Hercules and Atlas
Noel, in his justly famous Dictionary of Mythology (Paris, 1867) affirms that: “the Phoenicians, during their exploits in Mauritania (Morocco) seeing the lofty mountains of this country covered by snow and occulted by clouds, gave them the name of Atlas, thereby transforming the king who is the symbol of astronomy into a mountain whose head sustains the skies.”
This curious myth closely parallels the one told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. According to the poet, Perseus, on being ill-treated by the giant, showed him the Medusa’s head, and Atlas turned into stone, huge as a mountain, and is said to bear the skies on his head and shoulders.
We believe that this curious myth – which is found even in the Americas, by the way, as just affirmed – allegorizes the actual transformation of people into stone which takes place when they are buried by volcanic cinders and become fossilized. This fact can be physically seen in Pompey and Herculaneum, where such fossilized “statues” are displayed to the fascinated tourists who visit the place.
We agree with Noel in that it was the Phoenicians and the Greeks who thus named the Atlas Mts. in Morocco. This event happened when they started to explore the region in the 6th century BC or so, with Hanno and Himilco, etc.. And the Phoenicians were, according to Herodotus and others, the instructors of the Greeks in many things, mythology and writing certainly among them.
So, they also handed this information – unknown to the Berber natives themselves – to the Greeks, who in turn passed it on to the Romans. But the dates in question are all too late to be of any use to those seriously searching for Atlantis rather than for illusions and mirages.
Moreover, this mountain is not even a volcano, and thus does not justify its naming as “Pillar of Heaven”. This expression was an onomastic reserved for volcanoes, as we have already said. The idea of “Pillar of Heaven” is in fact closely evoked by volcanic plumes, which literally rise to the sky itself as if supporting it.
We have already illustrated one such gigantic instance, which evokes the shape of an “atomic mushroom”. A close reading of all or most of the ancient references to such pillars will no doubt evoke the idea of a volcano and its plume, particularly in the smoke clouds which never abandon the summit of such mountains.
In Phoenician mythology, from which the Greek one on Hercules derives, the two heroes often figure as avatars of Atlas and Kronos. Kronos seems to be the alias of Hercules. And these two heroes or gods were often identified, for instance, in the Orphic Mysteries. ↑103
Athenagoras (Pro Christ. 18:20) reports the curious Orphic cosmogonic tradition where Hercules is explicitly identified with Kronos (Saturn) and is said to have been the origin of all things through an egg he laid. So does Diodorus Siculus (Lib. III:52) who affirms that Atlas and Kronos (Saturn) ruled Atlantis after their father Ouranos was ousted by Kronos, who moreover castrated him.
These texts allow us to conclude, by comparison with the writi
ngs of Plato, that Hercules and Gadeiros are both one and the same hero. These reports and cosmogonies (cf. Eusebius, Praep. Evang. I:10) are all very obscure and extremely confused, so that it is difficult to make much sense of them, unless one is a skilled master in matters mythological. ↑104
But what their myth finally amounts to is the identification of the twin heroes with the two races of Atlantis, as well as the two volcanoes, their ophiomorphic shape. In their disputes, the twins, like the two volcanoes of the Amerindian myths or the ones of other peoples, end up by causing the Flood and destroying the whole world.
In the text just linked, Eusebius quotes Sanchuniathon, the famed Phoenician priest, thus: “But the Greeks, surpassing all in genius, appropriated most of the earliest [Phoenician] stories, and then variously decked them out with ornaments of tragic phrase, and adorned them in every way, with the purpose of charming by the pleasant fables... and with these fables, as they traveled about, they conquered and drove out the truth.”
The figures of the Greek Herakles and the Roman Hercules both ultimately derive from the one of Baal Melkhart, the great Phoenician god, and his twin and dual, Atlas. The two brothers are often confused and interchangeable, just as are the twins of all mythologies.
In reality, the two heroes imperson the two main moieties of the Greek nation, the Pelasgians (partly Phoenician and Etruscan) and the Aryans. The first component corresponds to the Dravidas (or “reds”) and the second to the Indo-Europeans (Yavanas or “whites”). And the disputes of these two brothers in fact correspond to the War of Atlantis, as Plato expounds in his seminal dialogues.
Gades, Gadeira, Cadiz and Gadir
Gades or Gadeiros is in fact the Phoenician name of Hercules, as the twin brother of Atlas, according to Plato. This name means something like “cowherd, herdsman”. Plato translates his name as Eumelos, which means something like “rich in cattle” in Greek. But the real meaning is akin to the one of the “Good Shepherd”, who leads his people away from the site of Paradise destroyed. 13
That the name of Gades or Gadeira is not specifically applicable to Cadiz in Spain is attested by the multitude of places named Gades, Gadir, Gadeira, Agadir and so on, applied to many regions of the Atlantic coast both of Europe and Africa frequented by the Phoenicians. The name of Gadeiros – which Plato affirms to correspond to the original language – is said to be Phoenician by Moreau de Jonnés, the great French exegete and mythologist.
According to him, this name means the same thing as “strait”. But this etymology is only approximate. Even more exactly, this word means the same as the English “oxford” and the Latin bosphorus or bosporus, derived from the Greek bosphoros, that is, “the place where cattle ford”. Better yet, the name means “the place where cattle are forded (or ferried by boats)”. The Hindus call these places “ghats”, a word akin to “gate” and, more exactly, to a strait or passage or pass.
This name is of great importance in Hinduism. It refers to the Tirthankaras, the saviors of mankind who effect the crossing from one era to the next, leading their people (or “cattle”). In other words, Tirthankaras are some sort of a Noah figure or, better yet, Moses, who created a ford on the Red Sea for his people to pass through during Exodus.
The name of Gades also translates the Hindu one of Kattigara, the Indian port which figures preeminently in every map of the region since the times of Ptolemy. Kattigara ultimately derives its name from the Dravida kati-kara, meaning exactly the same as “oxford” or “bosphorus”, as the place where cattle are embarked in order to cross over the ocean.
We commented this Dravidian etymology in one of the endnotes, the next one. We note that the place in question here is ancient Indonesia (Taprobane or Kattigara), whose pristine language was precisely Dravida. Hence, the etymology just derived is not to be dismissed idly, as it is philologically perfect in every sense.
If so, it seems that we have located the exact site of the Far Eastern Gades, alias Tarshish or Tartessos. It was from Kattigara that the vast amounts of tin which rendered the Bronze age a reality was shipped to the Mediterranean region.
In relation to Hercules, the name of Gadeiros represents precisely this sort of thing, the time when he brought the “cattle” of Geryon to Greece, crossing the Bosphorus, in his tenth labor. The route is confused (purposefully) and is said to be across either (or both) the Bosphorus (in the east) and Gibraltar (in the west), betraying an early confusion of the two sites as being the “Pillars of Hercules”. 14
Several facts oppose Morocco’s identification with Atlantis. For one, the whole region of the Sahara Desert – Morocco included – was an extreme desert during the Ice Age, as is easy to show, basing ourselves on detailed paleovegetation maps of the region such as this one here. ↑105
Now, this is a fact, and not the result of any idle speculation. So, it cannot be dismissed by anyone, unless they are prepared to back up their claims with further finds that somehow invalidate the one just made that Morocco was a dreary desert during the Ice Age, the time of Atlantis.
Consequently, the region of Morocco could not support any productive agriculture and was hence mostly uninhabited and backwards. In other words, Morocco could hardly harbor a decent civilization, let alone the populous one of Atlantis, as described by Plato.
Moreover, the region of Morocco did not sink at the end of the Ice Age, as can be seen in this map published in my Atlantis site. Hence, Morocco does not at all fit Plato’s report on Atlantis, since the philosopher explicitly speaks of the well-watered, vast lowlands full of rivers subsequently sunk by the Atlantean cataclysm. ↑106
Even if we somehow discount this crucial detail, the region of Morocco is also by far too small, being about the same size as Spain itself. It is hence many times smaller than huge Atlantis, whose very extensive fertile lowlands were ecstatically lauded by Plato.
Again, the same geographical problems which arise for Spain and the North Sea also beplague the site of Morocco. This region can hardly be said to be placed “in front of Gibraltar Strait”, and it would be clumsy of Plato – deemed both the prince of philosophers and of rhetors – to say so.
Furthermore, we are compelled to ask if the Atlantic is really the “True Ocean” specifically mentioned by Plato. Plato’s reference was apparently done with regard to the Pacific Ocean, as we already demonstrated further above. Hardly would this expression fit the puny Atlantic Ocean itself.
Tartessos (Spain) has also often been proposed, and is once more back to the media, as a possible site of Atlantis due to the sad efforts of some Spaniards. But this is only an old confusion which can never be. This whole region was a dry steppe during most of the Ice Age, as can be seen in this paleovegetation map of Europe here. ↑107
What this means in practice is that the region of Spain, like most of Europe, was totally unsuitable for agriculture during the Ice Age, and hence could not harbor a populous nation like Atlantis.
And the same observations made above also apply to the site of Spain itself, and of Portugal. As can be seen in this map, the British Isles (England and Ireland) were both extreme polar deserts during the Ice Age, the times of Atlantis. It is known that they were unpopulated then except perhaps by a few hunters-gatherers following the herds of large mammals characteristic of the Ice Age.
The same also holds in regards to the North Sea and the Scandinavian Peninsula, which were then either Extreme Polar Deserts or, even worse, simply covered by mile thick glaciers, as can also be seen in this remarkable paleovegetation map.
It is hence no surprise to observe that proponents of this site for Atlantis invariably place Plato’s Lost Continent in later times, in the Neolithic and even after. But this is a Procrustean force-fitting that is most unfair, and which should be vehemently denounced by all serious researchers.
Disfigure Plato’s words in such a drastic way, and the wonderful element is removed from his relation. Atlantis becomes an ordinary civilization of minor importance, located in the middle of nowher
e and having no impact whatsoever on the past civilizations of Europe and the Near East. And if this is really true, why bother to look for it at all?
After this long but necessary preamble, we are able to finally apply the above results to reality, as shown in Table III.4 below. As noted in this table, can we really say, as Plato did, that these regions are located in front of Gibraltar? Or are they some other such pillars we might far more reasonably find somewhere else?
Are the sunken lands of any of these regions really “larger than Asia and Libya put together”? Are there “many islands beyond”, on the way to the Americas, helping the sailors get there?
The Azores are in fact more or less midway to America. But they hardly help anybody, being placed in treacherous waters and contrary winds and currents which lead to doom.
Many sailors have been wrecked by these perilous waters. Why would Plato affirm just the opposite then, and claim that they would be helpful to explorers on the way there? And why would Plato speak of “many islands” if the Azores really are a minor archipelago at best; puny volcanic rocks which were uninhabited until their discovery by the Portuguese in 1428? Hardly do these islands fit Plato’s description of the “many islands ahead”.
Table III.4 - Results for the Celtic Shelf, Morocco, Tartessos, Spain, etc..
Two Pillars (Gibraltar) In Front ???????
Sunken
Lands of the Region
Larger than Asia + Libya ???????
Many Islands
Beyond
???????
In the True
Ocean
???????
Outer
Continent
Beyond
(America)
Likewise, the Canaries can hardly be said to be placed “ahead of the way” to the Americas, unless Plato is supposed to have been unable to express himself with clarity. But the Outer Continent ahead does in fact seem to be America itself. However, the results in Table III.4 are too full of question marks to be deemed acceptable for a reliable identification of this site with Atlantis.
Atlantis the Lost Continent Finally Found Page 27
