| < | atlantis introduction | |
 Many cultures have known myths and legends about the lost continent Atlantis. Over the years many a work has been published claiming to have identified and proven Atlantis’ correct location. Our research has lead to an inventory of those sites. In our research on the locations of Atlantis and Troy we have chosen to limit ourselves to North- and West Europe, and to the countries along the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Sources that have been used mainly include geographic literature, maps and other sources. Also literature has been found regarding possible locations in Africa, America and other place. For the sake of completeness this literature is mentioned as well. In our study a various researchers played a significant role. These are Hubert Lampo, Marcel Mestdagh, Richard Cavendish, Otto Muck, and Charles Berlitz. A very extensive bibliography of literature about Atlantis was created by Jurgen Spanuth (see references). As of yet, the host of New Age literature on this subject did not provide any relevant information.
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| The beginning With the event of the Humanism in the late Middle Ages the legend of Atlantis took root in Europe. With the spread of the classic Greek scriptures in Western Europe, also Plato’s dialogs Timaeus and Kritias got renewed interest. It is therefore not surprising that Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492, followed by the flow of travellers, geographers, and surveyors, lead some researchers to believe that there a link existed between the “New World” and Atlantis. This triggered a endemic and fantasy-driven search for Atlantis. | |
Where was Atlantis located? Today many thousands of books exist about Atlantis. If we consider the opinion of the most prominent researchers, about 20% of them concludes that Atlantis did not exist at all. They consider Atlantis to be: | ||
| Geografical scheme of the Atlantislocations: Atlantic 45 %, Europe 24 %, America 11 %, Africa 10 %, Asia 6 %, North pole 2 %, Pacific 1 %, Indian Ocean 1 %. 1. Plato's Atlantis 2. Europa, N.Africa and Middle East 3. Worldmap with locations, authors and year of publication | ||
Researchers of Atlantis can be subdivided into five categories: - 1. Philosophers and archaeologists; They are looking for an Atlantis that answers Plato’s description and that exactly matches the dimensions that Plato and others have given. - 2. Geologists, ethnologists, and pre-historians; They are looking for an Atlantis that lies at the root of today’s civilizations. - 3. Occultists, truth-tellers, esoteric practitioners, theosophists and New Age prophets; They believe in the product of their imagination, in this case Atlantis, whereby discoveries assume the status of revelation. The demarcation line between the world they create and reality is broken. - 4. Supporters of the Völkische Bewegungen, which is the melange of on the one hand certain types of occult speculations and, and the other hand, of the attitude that lead to the German Ahnenerbe (scientific research of the German ancestral heritage), giving way to theories about the Arische Übermensch and glacier-cosmology. - 5. Fantasy, fiction, and science fiction of writers, artists, cartoonists, movie makers, and composers who gave the Atlantis theme a role in their work. (transl. by Paul C. Smits) | ||
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