The Lost Empire of Atlantis

by Gavin Menzies

  Edward J. Olsen lays out the problems one after another. He explains lucidly how the method works. Each trace element in the copper sample is energised by X-rays and then emits a signal. The intensity of the signal denotes the strength of the trace element. The method can be used for trace element 22 (titanium) upwards. However the accuracy depends on:

  1. Size of sample and whether it is an aggregation or one single mass.

  2. The particular trace element and its relationship with copper: i.e. zinc’s trace element ‘peak’ is so close to copper’s ‘peak’ that it can be masked; another example, silicon, increases the apparent intensity of aluminium. Then the efficiency of the X-ray tube depends on the trace element being sought and how this differs from trace element to trace element.

  He summarises:

  Thus, in order to determine the chemical characteristics of copper [artefacts] from a given locality one must be aware that trace elements are exceedingly unreliable.

  Bearing these two reports in mind, I wanted to double-check my contention that Bronze Age copper of 99 per cent purity was only found in the mines of Lake Superior. Unfortunately, the distinguished Professor Hauptmann believes it is impossible to be this precise. As he wrote to me: ‘you cannot prove [10 Uluburun ingots] came from Lake Superior’.

  Despite this I maintain my assertion – firstly because the reports assembled by Professor Griffin are not dealing with artefacts but with mined copper. Secondly, there is an almost complete lack of trace elements in the reports Griffin has assembled – which record the analysis of Lake Superior copper. We are not considering minute differences between one trace element and another but the virtual absence of all of the trace elements. The argument is about statistics, factorial probability, and not about the accuracy of the X-ray method deployed.

  As to the actual artefacts themselves, I undertook an extensive study of my own. My first job was to separate out the different implements on the Uluburun wreck, then combine those objects with those found on the Seytan Deresi (16th century BC) and Cape Gelidonya (late 13th century BC) wrecks; the aim being to show exactly what was in use in the Mediterranean between 1600 and 1200 BC. All three wrecks were discovered off the coast of Turkey.

  Then I decided to combine the implements from these shipwrecks with similar Bronze Age implements, tools and artefacts found at Minoan sites of the same age. These sites were in Crete, Santorini (Thera), some of the Cyclades islands and Mycenae. Marcella and I had already visited the principal museums in those places – the Heraklion and Knossos museums in Crete, the Archaeological Museum of ancient Thera; the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and museums in Mycenae and Tiryns.

  The purpose of this exercise was to see whether any items found in the wrecks were different from those that could have been found in Minoan bases near and around Crete. As far as we could see there were none. The style of tools, weapons and implements found in the Uluburun and Cape Gelidonya wrecks were also found in Crete, Thera and Mycenae. In other words this was a check and balance to confirm that it was Minoan bronze artefacts, as opposed to various imports, that filled the wrecks. Images of the artefacts – separated out into those found in the two wrecks and four museums – are shown on our website.

  COMPARISON BETWEEN MINOAN BRONZE AGE ARTE-FACTS FOUND IN CRETE, THERA AND THE BRONZE AGE WRECKS WITH THOSE FOUND IN LAKE SUPERIOR

  We trawled through the Bronze Age bronze, copper and tin artefacts left by the miners who mined the copper from Lake Superior, in particular those from the Keweenaw Peninsula and Isle Royale. We separated these Bronze Age artefacts into the same categories as those from the Old World, as described in this chapter. As far as I can see, every item found in Lake Superior has its near-counterpart in Minoan artefacts of the time. Lake Superior’s ancient miners had the same array of implements, weapons, tools and domestic equipment as the people who lived on Bronze Age Crete, Thera and Mycenae.

  This could, of course, be simply the phenomenon known as parallel development. The Isle Royale miners needed bronze weapons to defend themselves, to hunt and to eat the food they caught. So they designed implements whose form would ‘follow function’, as a modern-day designer would put it. The logical result of that process, of refining a design until it reaches an optimum point, could end in tools that are highly similar to their Old World, Minoan counterparts. This argument will have its supporters, naturally. Yet how can it be coincidence that the measuring weights used so many thousands of years ago take the form of animals? (See second colour plate section.)

  It is also intriguing that even local Native American myth appears to support the idea that it was outsiders who were mining the area’s islands and peninsulas. This has a bearing on the other potent argument for the involvement of outsiders in Lake Superior’s mining heritage: namely, the industrial scale on which the copper was mined and processed. This area was so rich in minerals that local people didn’t need to mine: they could use the abundant float copper found on the surface. Those who mined the copper were clearly not indigenous Americans. I suggest the best explanation is that the miners were the same people as those who so efficiently controlled the bronze trade in the Old World.

  The stone astronomical structures were so like those in Britain. Grave barrows, astronomical alignments, avenues and cursi: the elements were the same. One could just about argue that these basic structures, particularly those based on fundamental geometrical elements like the circle, could have been arrived at by different cultures acting independently of each other. Yet combine that with the discovery that the tools are of the same design and I felt that the evidence for a common culture was building. I knew that it could be a long haul to prove my case definitively, but it was getting there . . .

  It does not of course follow that after a certain period in prehistory the Minoans used Lake Superior copper exclusively. But it is an inescapable fact that certain ingots in the Uluburun wreck do not match any known European source.

  If I am right, we have another fixed date to work with: the Minoans were sailing to Lake Superior before the Uluburun was wrecked in 1310 BC.

  NOTES TO BOOK V

  1. J. Walter Graham, ‘The Minoan Unit of Length and Minoan Palace Planning’, American Journal of Archaeology, 64 (1960)

  2. Cyrus Gordon, Forgotten Scripts, Basic Books, 1982

  3. Anthony Johnson, Solving Stonehenge: The New Key to an Ancient Enigma, Thames & Hudson, 2008

  4. Dava Sobel, Longitude, Fourth Estate, 1998

  5. J. Fermor and J. M. Steele, ‘The Design of Babylonian Waterclocks: Astronomical and Experimental Analysis’, Centaurus, 42, 2000 pp. 210–222

  6. J. M. Steele and F. R. Stephenson, ‘Lunar eclipse times predicted by the Babylonians’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 28 (1997)

  7. J. M. Steele, ‘The Accuracy of Eclipse Times Measured by the Babylonians’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 28 (1997)

  8. N. M. Swerdlow, The Babylonian Theory of the Planets, Princeton University Press, 1998

  9. J. M. Steele, Journal of the American Oriental Society 119 (1991), p. 696

  10. Nature, vol. 468, (2010) pp. 496–498

  11. Homer, Odyssey, trans. Samuel Butler, 1998

  12. N. H. Winchell, ‘Ancient Copper Mines of Isle Royale’, Popular Science Monthly, vol. 19, 1881

  13. James B. Griffin (ed.), Lake Superior Copper and the Indians – Miscellaneous Studies of Great Lakes Prehistory, University of Michigan, 1961

  14. Based on a number of research papers published in The Ancient American – Archaeology of the Americas Before Columbus, and by researchers from the Ancient Artefact Preservation Society, notably an article by Emeritus Professor James Scherz titled ‘Ancient Trade Routes in America’s Copper Country’ (Ancient American, issue 35)

  15. Professor Sorenson (Refer to select bibliography in this book)

  16. Edward J. Olsen, ‘Copper Artefact Analysis with the X-ray Spectrometer, American Antiquity, vol. 28, no. 2 (October, 1962)

  17
. George Rapp et al., ‘Determining Geological Sources of Artefact Copper: Source Characterisation using Trace Element Patterns’, American Antiquity, vol. 68, no. 2 (April 2003)

  BOOK VI

  THE LEGACY

  CHAPTER 38

  THE SPOTS MARKED ‘X’

  By now, I was running to catch up. I’d got solid proof that the Minoans had travelled throughout most of Europe and that they had explored a large part of North America. Now I needed to find out if there were any studies that showed a common thread. Tracking down DNA evidence would be my next line of enquiry.

  ‘X’ usually marks the spot in any treasure hunt. By pure coincidence, the same was true of my own hunt for gold – in the form of information. There is a widespread, but much contested theory that the first Amerindians originally came from East Asia. However, an intriguing DNA haplogroup has recently been found in several Native American populations – haplogroup X. The X group is the only Amerindian haplogroup that does not show a strong connection to East Asia.

  What is interesting is that although haplogroup X is itself rare, it has a perplexingly wide geographic range: despite its relative scarcity the group is found throughout Europe and the Middle East.

  In North America this haplogroup is found particularly among Native Americans, especially tribes living in and around the Great Lakes, while in Scandinavia, for instance, it is found in only 0.9 per cent of the population.

  Haplogroup X2 is a rare subgroup of X that appears to have expanded quite widely in the Mediterranean and the Caucasus around 21,000 years ago. It’s now more concentrated in the Mediterranean, particularly in Greece, along with Georgia, the Orkney Islands and the Druze community in Israel. I looked for a summary. Here is the best I found, written by Jeff Lindsay. As he points out, some geneticists believe that ‘Lineage X’ suggests a ‘definite’ – if ancient – link between Eurasians and Native Americans.

  ENTER HAPLOGROUP X

  The team, led by Emory Researchers Michael Brown and Douglas Wallace, were searching for the source population of a puzzling marker known as X. This marker is found at low frequencies throughout modern Native Americans and has also turned up in the remains of ancient Americans. Identified as a unique suite of genetic variations, X is found on the DNA in the cellular organelle called the mitochondrion, which is inherited only from the mother . . .

  . . . Haplogroup X was different. It was spotted in a small number of European populations. So the Emory group set out to explore the marker’s source. They analysed blood samples from Native American, European and Asian populations and reviewed published studies.

  ‘We fully expected to find it in Asia, like the other four Native American markers [A, B, C and D],’ says Brown.

  To our surprise, haplogroup X was only confirmed in a smattering of living people in Europe and Asia Minor including Indians, Finns and certain Israelis. The team’s review of published MtDNA sequences suggested it may also be in Turks, Bulgarians and Spaniards. But Brown’s search has yet to find haplogroup X in any Asian population.

  ‘It’s not in Tibet, Mongolia, South East Asia or Northeast Asia,’ [Theodore] Schurr told the meeting. ‘The only time you pick it up is when you move west into Eurasia.’

  Haplogroup X is found in several places outside of Asia, including among the Finns for example (Finnila et al. 2001), who are often thought to be an earlier group in Europe in the light of Y chromo-some studies but nevertheless appear to share many MtDNA lineages with other Europeans. Detailed information about the mutations separating the X haplogroup from the Cambridge Reference and other European haplogroups are provided by Finnila et al. (2001): especially see their Figure 2.1

  In chapter 7, I’d discovered that the Minoans most likely arrived in Crete from central and eastern Anatolia. One would therefore expect to find a high incidence of X2 from that area. In fact, the statistics live up to expectations. The figures in brackets are percentages.

  Turks (4.4); Iranians (3.0); Nogays (4.2); Adygeis (2.5); Abazins (6.3); Kumyks (3.6); South Caucasians (4.3); Georgians (7.6); Armenians (2.6); Azeris (4.2).

  Here is where X2 has been found in significant amounts:

  Belgium (FTDNA 3)

  Crete (Reidla et al)

  Egypt (Kujanova)

  Finland (Mishmar and Moilanen)

  France (FTDNA 4)

  Israel/Lebanon (Shlush)

  Morocco (Maca Meyer)

  Navajo (Mishmar)

  Ojibwa/Chippewa – Great Lakes (Fagundes, Achilli, Pirego)

  Orkneys (Hartmann)

  Portugal (Pereira)

  Sardinia (Fraumene)

  Tunisia (Costa)

  The geographical spread of X2 was most helpfully summarised by Finnila and colleagues.2 It is replicated on our website.

  The American inheritors of X2 (Ojibwa/Chippewa, around the Great Lakes) have their own sub-divisions of X2: X2a1; X2a2; X2aib; X2a1a; X2g.

  From the higher percentages involved, it seems that X2 originated in the Near East, and particularly eastern Anatolia, just as the Minoans had done. There is much controversy over the dating of the DNA, i.e. when the mutations which resulted in the subhaplogroups occurred. It would be difficult to say with certainty when the European carriers of X2 reached America. At present there are two possible dates for the arrival of X2: 9,200–9,400 years ago or 2,300–3,800 years ago. I would summarise the research in this way:

  1. The implications are that the X2 populations in North America could have been caused by Y-DNA mutations from European X2 ancestors (c.1800 BC) or from a much earlier migration by Europeans to North America 9,420 years ago.

  2. The people with one of the highest incidences of X2, the Ojibwa, live mainly around Lake Superior in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and Ontario (Canada) – i.e. near the copper mines described in chapters 33–37.

  3. No fewer than sixteen European and Mediterranean countries in which significant levels of X2 DNA have been found were visited by the Minoans, as described in chapters 1–15.

  4. DNA X2 has thus been found on both sides of the Atlantic and throughout the Minoan trading empire. Taking all of the evidence in the round, it appears that the Minoans could well have been the carriers of X2: it has been found where the Minoans originated, where they settled and where they traded. Other unknown European travellers appear to have reached America 6,000 years before them in substantial numbers.

  5. X2 is not found outside the areas I have already identified as probable trading outposts of the Minoan trading empire.

  Bearing in mind that X2 is also found where Minoan Linear A script is found, it seems to me that we can learn lessons from the DNA reports, not least:

  (i) The Minoans originated from northeast rather than central Anatolia – because of the high incidence of X2 in that area and in neighbouring Georgia, Armenia, Iran and Azerbaijan (Finnila).

  (ii) The mutation from X2 to X2a in the Ojibwa/Chippewa probably took place between 1800 and 1200 BC.

  (iii) There seems to have been little sexual contact between the Minoans and the English (0.9) or the French (0.8) compared to that which took place between the Minoans and the Orcadians (7.2) or the Spanish (4.2).

  (iv) The Minoans did not get to central, southeast or East Asia nor to West or southern Africa, but did apparently reach the Gulf States (Oman 1.3), Saudi Arabia (1.5) and Kuwait (2.0).

  (v) The Minoan presence in what are now Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan was even more pronounced, as evidenced by X2 in populations of Israeli Druze (11.1), Israelis (3.4) and Lebanese (5.8).

  CHAPTER 39

  A NEW BEGINNING

  In some ways this book was ending as it had begun. I had been working flat out, starting at 05:00 a.m. and working through for twelve hours each day. My right wrist was locked with arthritis and once again I was dog-tired. Still, my team and friends, especially Cedric Bell and Ian Hudson, had also been working hard, collating a stream of evidence from the well-wishers contributing to our website. I owed it to them to finis
h the manuscript and get the book published.

  Nonetheless, the prospect of describing the end of the Minoan civilisation filled me with foreboding. For the Minoans, the end of empire was a slow and painful death, not a sudden execution. I could hardly bear to think of it. All that brilliance, all that invention – and all their cultural and technological expertise lost.

  Thera’s volcano had given several weeks’ notice of its anger, so it must have seemed as if disaster had been averted. The island was thoroughly evacuated: the absence of carbonated corpses, as found at Pompeii, tells us that. The real tragedy was yet to come.

  For safety’s sake, everybody on Thera most likely sailed to the mother island, Crete. How could they know what would happen next? For days there would have been grumblings, maybe even the flash of an odd explosion, coming from the direction of Thera. Then it happened for real. An almighty thunder clap seemed to split the horizon. Next came a sinister rush of sound, as ash and gases blasted up from the volcano’s heart.

  After the staggering eruption, the heavy sky must have felt leaden and threatening. A spreading stain of purple on the northern horizon heralded the sulphurous clouds to come. I imagine a terrible moment of calm; a charged silence as, inexplicably, the sea reared back from the shore, leaving a mass of gasping and struggling sea creatures in its wake. Then came a low and distant roar. A gathering wall of water raced across the sea towards the mother island, its sheer force pulverizing everything in its path.

  A hundred-foot wall of water hit Mochlos, the harbour town on eastern Crete. The tsunami probably destroyed the entire Minoan fleet, as it lay tied up in the various ports. If the first surge didn’t pull them apart, the next one would have seen to that. The evacuees recently arrived from Thera were all sheltering in the coastal towns, so the disaster may have taken many lives. A superheated pyroclastic surge of gas, light ash and pumice may have followed. At Mochlos, it probably killed everyone. Plato’s words came back to me: