9. On Sunken land of the North Sea - was this the world’s oldest and greatest civilisation?

"The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever". - Jacques Yves Cousteau

After the last ice age, the ‘great melt’ flooded the landscape of Britain for over ten thousand years.  This flooding started a chain reaction and as a consequence, the sea level slowly increased and vast areas of land were lost including a land mass known as ‘Doggerland.'

Doggerland sinks LONG after the Northern Ice Cap melts

Throughout the 19th century, oyster dredgers working the shallow waters off the north east coast of England recorded frequent finds of animal bones caught up in their nets. These discover- is became a regular occurrence as the fishing technology increased and the trawlers at a later date and in deeper waters of the North Sea also found traces of civilisation and a lost continent.  Sadly, the location and accuracy are rarely recorded with any degree of accuracy; this material appeared to come from some areas within the North Sea.

One area where the greatest number of finds discovered is known as the ‘Dogger Bank’ which lies just 90km  – 110km (60-70 miles)  from the coast of the British Isles.  This  shoal  (a shoal,  sand- bar,  sandbank or gravel bar is a somewhat linear landform within  or extending into  a body  of water, typically composed of sand,  silt  or small pebbles.) rises about 45m  (150  ft) above  the North Sea bed, to the north it plunges  into  deeper water and forms a subterranean plateau covering 17,600 sq. km. (6,800 miles)  With a maximum dimension being  260km (160  miles)  from North to South and 95  km (60 miles)  from East to West. Over time, the number of finds reduced as the same area was dredged day after day and any artefacts sitting on the surface would have been scooped up and either returned as a curiosity or in a majority of the time just thrown back in a different location.

Doggerland/Atlantis

Even so, items such as; bear, wolf, hyena, bison,  woolly rhino,  mammoth, beaver, walrus,  elk, deer and most importantly horse has been collected.  This precious collection of findings gives us a fantastic insight into what  Doggerland looked like, the environment that supported these animals and the climate of this unique area of the world.

It would be impossible to talk about Doggerland and its environment without understanding if there was a written history of a land that flooded thousands of years ago, and this comes in the works of the ancient Greek Philosopher Plato.   Over the years, Atlantis has grown to be both a legend and the source of many science fictions; this is neither correct nor helpful in tracing the history of humanity,  as it moves the debate from scientific observation to fantasy and the degrading of the most important time in our history. 

Plato is a source of credible information as he is not a ‘story teller’ like some other historical writers. He is fundamentally a philosopher, whose writings are still studied even now, some  2,000 years after his death at the most famous and prestigious universities throughout the world.   This man is not prone to fantasy or exaggeration, his writings, therefore, must be accepted as true evidence that once in the distant past a great ancient civilisation, did, in fact, exist, and that they changed the course of humanity in ways which I believe we do not fully understand to date.

Plato (Left)

Consequently, we need to look at the probability that Plato’s ‘Atlantis’  is a genuine reference to this land, as it is the oldest written source and may give us clues of how this civilisation lived and traded.  Fortunately, for us, Plato gave some detail about this civilisation, such as how they lived and what they believed, which will allow us to compare what we know; from known landscape and archaeological finds and moreover, look for more elusive areas of investigation the texts might reveal.

Plato’s most famous line from ‘Timaeus’, a dialogue between Critias and Socrates, in which ‘Critias’ tells a story, he learned through his family,  about the Greek statesman ‘Solon,' while he was studying with the most scholarly of Egyptian priests during a visit to Sais in Egypt in about 590BC. The priests claimed to have access to secret records about a lost civilisation called ‘Atlantis,'  which only they were allowed to read, for it was written on the pillars within their most sacred temple.

Now Sais was one of the oldest cities in the ‘old kingdom‘ of Egypt, and the city’s  patron goddess was ‘Neith,' whose cult is attested as early as the 1st  Dynasty, ca. 3100- 3050 BCE.

The  Greeks, such as Herodotus, Plato and Diodorus Siculus, identified her with  Athena and hence postulated a primordial link to Athens. Diodorus recounts that Athena built  Sais  ‘before’ the ‘deluge’ (flooding)  that supposedly destroyed Athens and Atlantis. While all Greek cities were destroyed during that cataclysm, the Egyptian cities, including  Sais survived.  As we can see from this connection, the deluge has incredible importance to ancient civilisations, clearly indicating that any prehistoric civilisation that wanted to ‘stay alive’ would possibly build boats, not for some,  but for everyone. Sadly, the city of Sais has been recently destroyed by farmers who used the house and temple mud bricks, as free fertiliser for the fields – to this date, the temple and its writings have never been found.

The  most famous line from Plato’s dialogue is “in front of the mouth which you Greeks say ‘the pillars of Hercules’ there lay an island  which is much larger than Libya and Asia together” translated by W.R.M. Lamb 1925  or “in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Hercules; the island was bigger than Libya and Asia together” B. Jowett 1871.

This single sentence has caused no end of the debate about the location of Atlantis.  Some suggest that ‘the pillars’ can refer to water flows, thus allowing the speculation (which is current) that Atlantis is a Greek Island. Others suggest (including myself) that the ‘pillars of Hercules’ is the mouth of the Mediterranean between Morocco and Spain.   Now this is a case of translation and interpretation; the word  ‘mouth’ is sometimes called ‘strait,' in other quotations Plato  refers to the Mediterranean Sea as “within the straits of Hercules.” 

According to some  Roman sources, while on his way to the island of ‘Erytheia’ Hercules had to cross the mountain that was once  Atlas (the Atlas Mountains are in Northern Africa overlooking the Mediterranean), instead of climbing the great mountain, Hercules used his superhuman strength to smash through it. By doing so, he connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and formed the Straits of Gibraltar.  However, the best evidence is in the name itself ‘Atlantis’  for Herodotus (an ancient Greek historian, 484 BC – c. 425 BC) in a time before Plato’s writings call the Sea outside the Pillars of Hercules the ‘Atlantis Sea’ (Cyrus,  557-530 BC: Book 1).  Moreover, even today we call it the Atlantic Ocean and in history C’s and S’s are commonly transposed.

So we are left with a clear understanding that Atlantis was in the Atlantic Ocean, but then come the next problem with this description “the island was bigger than Libya and Asia together” this is where most Atlantis claims fall  flat.  Libya was well-known in Plato’s time as a big country as it bor- dered the Mediterranean, but the reference to Asia cannot be the Asia we know as it was unknown to the old world and the Greeks, therefore, the Asia that Plato was referring to,  is now called Asia Minor.

‘Asia Minor (from Greek: Μικρồ ồσία, Mikrá  Asía, small Asia) is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two-thirds of the Asian part of Turkey. It is a peninsula bounded by the Black Sea to the north, Georgia to the north- east,  the Armenian Highland  to the east, Mesopotamia to the south-east, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the west.’

Europe 14,000 BCE - A large PENINSULA in the Atlantis Ocean (NEP)

The size of this ‘island’ is consequent, a major problem for historians to date, as the only two island possibilities are the Caribbean in America or a continent that was once in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that has disappeared without a trace.   Well,  the islands of the Caribbean are far too small and the trek across the middle of the Atlantic Ocean without landmass to guide the ships, eleven thousand years ago, would have been quite daunting with  ‘Bronze Age technology’ as Plato suggests.

Some  researchers have  speculated an island  in the middle  of the Atlantic between America and Europe, but to date there has  been only evidence of small islands and nothing to the scale of either Libya or Asia Minor (let alone  both!) under the ocean  that has  sunk in the last 10,000 years according to Plato’s text.

This  is why the search has failed, to date, and all various ‘silly’ hypotheses based on the Mediterranean make news headlines.  If we look again at this passage and the exact wording of Atlantis, we find something most researchers have overlooked in the translation, and it’s the word  ‘island,' the original Greek word is ‘nesos’ which can mean either island or peninsula.

If we are looking for a ‘Peninsula’ (which is a piece of land that is bordered by water on three sides but connected to the mainland)  that is outside the Mediterranean, then there are only two possibilities - Africa or Europe.  These are both outside the Pillars of Hercules and can be easily navigated by sticking to the shorelines. The  African continent has shown no signs of any peninsula on its Atlantic side; that has disappeared in the past 10,000 years - but Europe has! 

If we look at a map of Europe at the end of the Ice Age, we notice that the water levels were about 160m lower than today, so much lower that extra coastlines are added to both Spain and France.  However, when we look at the British Isles, we notice Britain has completely vanished and been replaced by a new landmass.   

This  ‘peninsula of Europe’ protrudes into the Atlantic Ocean, for the English  Channel,  Irish Sea and the North Sea as we know it today has been replaced by a single land mass.  Moreover, the waters to the west of Ireland and North West from Scotland have also been reclaimed from the sea.

This peninsula which includes not only Britain, Norway, Sweden and Finland,  but also Denmark and the Baltic  Sea, creating a continent about the same size  of Libya and Asia Minor,  which correlates to Plato’s writings.

We know from our history that the rising of sea waters over the last 10,000 years, caused flooding that created the island nation we know today. But, do the writings contain any other information, which will allow us to confirm this peninsula is the land mass Critias is talking about?

 

Plato  adds “yonder (beyond the pillars of Hercules) is a real Ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent” in this sentence the ‘island.' is turned into  a ‘continent’ so this proves that the translation of ‘nesos’ is a peninsula, not  island  and in today’s terms we are looking at a land mass  that incorporates British Isles, Scandinavia and the Northern  European countries of France, Germany, Holland,  Belgium, Poland, Netherlands, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia,  Estonia and the Baltic, North and Irish seas, that were at the time one great land mass,  which I call the North European Peninsula  (NEP).

Therefore, do the other descriptions of Plato’s Atlantis match this new continent?

He does give us an indication of some other features for this lost continent, “and it is possible for the travellers of that time to cross from it to the other islands and from the islands to the whole of the continent” if NEP is correct, this could mean either one of two different continents.  For about 2,000 years (between 10,000 BCE and 8,000 BCE) you could travel from the North West end  of the NEP to the Faroe Islands, which was about five times larger than the islands we know today (due to the drop  in sea  levels) and then a short hop west to Iceland, which again,  for the same  reasons, was twice as wide as it is today, then finally, over  the short distance to Greenland and then America.

Map of Common 'O' blood group (blue and red)

 

The coastal route would then allow you access to the ‘New World’ down the entire east side of America.  The most interesting and controversial aspect is that the Atlanteans would have discovered America 11,000  years before Columbus,  which may seem farfetched, but it will answer an evolutional mystery that has confused geneticists and anthropologists for many years.  This mystery involves the spread of the A- blood group in Northern American Indians and ancient skeletons that have  European features and stone tool kits. 

Other illustrations of Atlantis, in Plato’s writings, can now be compared for further comparison such as the famous plane of Atlantis.  “The whole country was said  by him to be very  lofty and precipitous on the side  of the sea,  but the country immediately about and surrounding the city  was a level plain, itself surrounded by mountains, which descended towards the sea;  it was smooth and even,  and of an oblong shape, extending in one direction three thousand stadia, but across the centre inland it was two thousand stadia.”

So the level oblong shaped plain that was surrounded by mountains, which were by the sea and the plain measured about 250 miles by 350 miles.   The current North Sea (Doggerland) would be comfortably incorporate a flat plain of that size, and hence it sinking below the rising sea levels, for it measures 450 miles by 1200  miles.   There are mountains in the North in both Scotland and Norway which ‘descended towards the sea’ not even taking into account the mountains of Doggerland in the North which are now the ‘Viking’ and ‘Berger’ sandbanks, between Shetland and Norway.

Another indication that we are talking about a peninsula or part of a continent is the line ’lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea’ if this was an island would not  ALL sides be on the side of the sea?  Our newly discovered Atlantis has one side by the sea where the city and plain lay, and that is in the north, the area we know now as Scotland, Shetland, Orkney across to Norway, where it always rains.

He continues; “This part of the peninsula looked towards the south, and was sheltered from the north. The  surrounding mountains were celebrated  for their number and size  and beauty, far be- yond any, which still  existed, having in them also many wealthy villages  of country folk,  and rivers, and lakes, and meadows supplying  food enough  for every animal, wild or tame, and much wood of various sorts, abundant for every single  kind of work.”  Modern sonar readings of the North Sea floor have shown this land of ‘rivers and lakes and meadows’ and with the mountains in the north, the great plain would naturally face south.

Doggerland with it;'s vast plains and hills

 Even when we search the description for the most obscure references to test this hypothesis, we find correlation; “There was an abundance of wood for carpenter’s work, and sufficient maintenance  for tame and wild animals.   Moreover, there  were a great number of elephants in the island;  for as there was the provision for all other sorts of animals,  both for those who live in lakes and marsh- es and rivers, and also for those who live in mountains and on plains,  so there was for the animal which is the largest and most voracious of all.”

Plato  is clearly referring to tropical animals  such  as Elephants and Lions and anyone  living in Britain today would find this unlikely and therefore, rule  out  this continent, but again,  we found in the catches of North Sea trailer men  the bones of Elephants, Mammoths; Lions and Tigers have  been found in the last 100 years in Doggerland making this scenario ‘quite probable’  and it would not  take much of a stretch of the imagination to classify ‘the  largest and most voracious of all’  as the ferocious  Sabre-Toothed Tiger, which coincidently went  extinct during  the ‘Atlantean period’  14,000 BCE – 4,000BCE.

 

So we are looking at the civilisation of megalithic builders who once lost their ‘homeland’ and no doubt a great number of friend’s family and loved ones in the deluge. This being the case - how would we expect a civilisation to mark such a momentous occasion?

We are a civilisation that has had great losses through war and tragedy in the past, 9/11  in America we commemorated with a memorial garden and here in Britain the losses of war are remembered by the Cenotaph in London, where we come annually to remember the dead with a minute’s silence.

How would future archaeologists view the cenotaph, if all written records are lost 10,000 years in the future - when the wind and rain had wiped the stone monument bear, but still resembling the stone pillar it once was?

Kazarac War Memorial - Does it remind you of something?

 Radiocarbon dates of post holes in the visitor’s car park, which Stonehenge was built about 8500 BCE as a place for the sick and dead, we also know that the site was remodelled some four to five thousand years later roughly at the time that Atlantis/Doggerland finally ‘disappeared.' What I am suggesting is that the new monument continued its commemoration to the dead, but not to the individual dead but the death of Atlantis, which would explain how and why this historically massive construction was erected.

Furthermore, it will explain some of the features of Stonehenge; we have not mentioned to date in this book.   The popular view of Stonehenge is a completely round monument with lintel stones completing the circle - but there is a massive problem, for not all the stones or the stone post holes are present. Some people have suggested that the monument is incomplete, but those individuals do not understand the monument and the reason for its construction.

A monument to the dead does not face the Summer Solstice Sunrise it faces the Winter Solstice Sunset to mark the shortest day - when light overcomes the darkness the symbolism of life after death. That being the case, a monument to the dead should face either Winter Sunrise of Win- ter Sunset and Stonehenge faces the latter. Another reason to ignore the reference to the Sun is that the Sun is usually a representation of life and a completed circle, where through a crescent the Moon represents the dead and a crescent. So, the monument would be crescent shaped and hence the reason for the lack of two stones in the South West Quadrant.

So why is there a horseshoe crescent in the centre of the monument?

The  ‘crescent within  the crescent’ that  faces the Summer solstice sunrise; this is very  symbol- ic as it represents reborn or reincarnation, it’s a poignant message through the ages to us (the dece- dents of the Atlanteans), that their homeland may be dead, but the survivors are still  alive and began again.   So the ‘open’ end of the horseshoe points to the Solstice Sunrise, but the ‘main’ direction of the symbol points in the opposite direction – the winter solstice sunset. 

Furthermore, in the centre of the Circle lays a very special stone - the altar stone, the reason it’s special is two-fold. Firstly, it’s made of a material unlike the other Sarsen standing stones, called mica. ‘Hawkins makes note that while all the other stones were either bluestone or Sarsen, the so- called altar-stone is ‘of fine-grained pale green sandstone, containing so many flakes of mica that its surface, wherever freshly exposed, shows  the typical mica glitter’  Currently, geologists are trying to locate the source of this sandstone in Wales. Sadly, they are probably looking in the completely wrong direction as I would imagine it’s from their homeland and under currently less than 30m  of water in Doggerland.

This is how Stonehenge used to look when new in 4200 BCE

 

But this is not the only piece of Sarsen that is made of ‘mica-sandstone’.  The  most important piece of this special mica-sandstone lies by the moat  of the monument to the northeast  and is called the ‘Slaughter Stone’ I will not  delve  into  the reason why this stone is called the slaughter stone, but it is interesting that even  the druids some  4000 years after the stone was laid on  the ground still associated it with death.

Most archaeologists believe that the slaughter stone was once a standing stone at the en- trance of the monument, these flawed ideas are the result of a hypothetical drawing by Inigo  Jones in 1655. This drawing shows Stonehenge as a perfect circle with hexagon shaped trilithon interior (a trilithon is two standing stone with a third suspended on top of the two uprights) and three entrances into the site with six erect standing stones as access points, which the slaughter stone was one.  This idea was incorporated in John Aubrey’s drawing in 1666,  which was more accurate, but again had the tendency to place all the fallen stones in upright positions.

This false assumption was further compounded by William Cunning in 1880,  when (it was re- ported) that he suggested his grandfather “saw” the upright slaughter stone in the 17th Century). This mistake was later corrected, yet the myths among archaeologists remain (Stones of Slaughter, E Herbert Stone, 1924  pp120).

The reality is that the slaughter stone was always (like the Altar Stone) a deliberate recumbent as the excavations of this stone by Hawley and Newall in the 1920s clearly show as the chalk subsoil was also deliberately flattened before it was placed in its current position. Hawley presumed that the Slaughter Stone was once  ‘buried’, this idea  is understandable as the stone does lay below the ground level, but what Hawley never understood is that the reason the stone was in this position was for the same  reason the ditch was built  around Stonehenge, as it was made  to be full of water.

The Slaughter Stone - as it would have looked when first laid in water

 

This  can be observed by the size of the stone hole called ‘E’ (WA1165)  which lays two metres, North West of the Slaughter stone, but still within the ‘hollow’ that also contains the stone. Most stone holes at Stonehenge are quite shallow  – less than a metre in depth, but stone hole ‘E’ is twice as deep, over  2m.  If the Slaughter stone were placed in it (as some have suggested) it would only be 3m high on the surface, compared to 4.57m for the Heel  Stone a few yards away.  The only other place in Stonehenge with these larger pits is within the Ditch section that surrounds the site, which is the same depth allowing access to the ground water levels.

In the past when the Slaughter stone was placed in this ditch, like the moat, water would have surrounded the stone like an island  - what we see today at Stonehenge is a 6,000-year-old model of the land we call Atlantis that lay in the current North Sea.

Not only did they place a piece of special mica-sandstone in a watery ditch surrounded by water, but they also carved out the contours of the island,  showing high and low ground like a contour release.  Archaeologists have always believed these features were ‘weather worn’ by age (although the other recumbent stones have not been weathered in the same fashion), but recent laser technology has confirmed our belief that this stone was carved as the markings from the tools used can still be seen at microscopic levels.

Finally, and more importantly, the stone has been placed in a very strange position, almost in the way of The Avenue.  This shows that this stone and the Avenue have a connection, this type of connection we see in association with  Egyptian Pyramids when ‘slight lines’ are cut into the sides of the burial chambers to important star constellations to show their associations with the Gods.   At Stone- henge, the Slaughter Stone and the Avenue  are important as they link rebirth with  the death of this Great Civilisation, for if we look at the Major Sightline stone the Altar Stone and look towards the Slaughter Stone, it is quite remarkable a direct line POINTING TO the location of Atlantis in the North Sea, a place  we now call Doggerland.

A line from the Alter Stone through the Slaughter Stone - points to Doggerland

Yet,  when you read the two detailed accounts of Plato’s work in ‘The Timaeus’ and ‘Critias’ where some  of the narratives are repeated, you get a sense that Plato  is talking about two different times of Atlantis’ - the ancient history, with  the original  landscape and people  and then suddenly the demise, flood and war.   As we have  seen his dialogue are not  fixed in time, or example: “and it was possible for travellers OF THAT TIME  to cross from it to the other islands,” “Many great deluges have  taken place  during  the nine thousand years, for that is the number of years, WHICH HAVE ELAPSED  since the time of which I am speaking.”

So are we hearing about the original Atlanteans of 9000 years ago who lived in this green and pleasant land or are we being told  of a land that was once great during that time then sunk overnight leaving nothing?

The secret is in the text at the start of the story of Solon and what the Egyptians told him “As for those genealogies of yours which you just now recounted to us, Solon,  they are no better than the tales of children. In the first place,  you remember a single  deluge only, but there were many previous ones;  in the next place,  you do not  know that there formerly dwelt in your  land the fairest and noblest race of men who ever lived  and that you and your  whole city  are descended from a small seed or remnant of them, which survived. And this was unknown to you, because, for many generations, the survivors of that destruction died, leaving no written word.”

What the priests were trying to tell  Solon,  is that the Deluge that Greek history remembers was the one that wiped out  Athens once and that many such deluges happened in the past - so we can see the confusion with the dates of these floods.    Again, we see this two-fold story unveiling with Atlanteans referred to as “in your land dwelt the fairest and noblest race of men who ever lived” does this give us a description of an Atlantean?

We know from DNA the Scandinavians are descended from blonde and blue-eyed ancestors with pale complexions – this description seems to confirm that fact, as when we use the word fair, we generally are referring to their hair and features.  Moreover, it also shows that two stories are being  recited here as within  the same  book,  the Atlanteans are also called “various  tribes of Barbarians,” “a mighty power  unprovoked” and “invaders.”

Moreover, does the line “And this was unknown to you, because, for many generations, the survivors  of that destruction died,  leaving  no written word.” Suggest this race had no written language? It is well known that the Nordic races relied on the verbal storytelling for their histories; I believe this confirms a ‘Nordic’ Atlantean.   However, the most explosive revelation not  picked up by most scholars is the line “and that you and your  whole city  are descended from a small seed or remnant of them, which survived.” The priests are telling Solon that the Greeks are ‘seeds’ of their great nation, are they, therefore, implying that they were the first people to colonise Athens and leave their philosophy and beliefs?

The  writing then goes  on to say,  “Solon marvelled at his words, and earnestly requested the priests to inform him exactly and in order about these former citizens” and it continues to reinforce this suggestion by saying,  “You are welcome  to hear about them, Solon,"  said  the priest, "both for your sake and for that of your  city, and above  all, for the sake of the goddess who is the common pa- tron and parent and educator of both our cities.” So we now, not only have the Atlanteans ‘seeding’ the Greek population but also the Egyptian population a thousand years later.  The only question left to answer is when, and that is revealed just a paragraph later when he writes, “And the duration of our civilisation as set down in our sacred writings is 8000 years."

“As touching your citizens of nine thousand years ago.”  So we have our answer, probably the most astonishing revelation in the history of world  civilisation, the Atlanteans “from  a distant point  in the Atlantic ocean  was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe and Asia, to boot”  in boats from a land beyond the “Pillars  of Hercules” seeded and established the kingdoms  of Greece nine thousand years ago and Egypt a thousand years later.

The Pillars of Hercules

The  interesting aspect of this two-fold story is that some  scholars get confused and believe that Atlantis sunk 9000 years ago, when clearly, Plato  was talking about the colonisation of Greece and Egypt and then goes  on to talk  about the Atlanteans coming to conquer and enslave the Greeks and Egyptians, which is clearly a later date. When he does talk about Atlantis sinking,  no dates are

offered. This  is when the second story totally conflicts with  the first, initially  they were “the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived” but within  a paragraph or two become “For these histories tell  of a mighty power  which unprovoked made  an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your  city  (Athens) put  an end.  This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles...
 

The dialogue continues “This vast power, gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at a blow, our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits; and then, Solon,  your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all humanity.  She was pre-eminent in courage and military skill and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest fell  off from her, being  compelled to stand alone,  after having undergone the very  extremity of danger, she  defeated and triumphed over  the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not  yet subjugated, and generously liberated all the rest of us who dwell within the pillars.”

This dichotomy does not make sense unless we are talking about two separate time periods. Nine thousand years ago, Athens was being seeded, and Egypt did even exist as a civilisation for another one thousand years.  However, the Atlantean army set forth to conquer and enslave, but was defeated by a nation that was in its infancy!   Clearly,  this shows two stories with independent timelines.   With this in mind, we can date the end of Atlantis after the armed conflict and deluge that destroyed Athens.  For  Plato writes, “But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune, all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis, in like manner, disappeared in the depths of the sea.  For  which reason the sea  in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal  of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.”   B.Jowett (1871)

But another interpretation is “But at a later time there occurred portentous earthquakes and floods, and one grievous day and night befell them, when the whole body  of your  warriors was swallowed up by the earth, and the island  of Atlantis, in like manner, was swallowed  up by the sea  and vanished; wherefore also the ocean  at that spot has  now become impassable and unsearchable, being blocked up by the shoal  mud which the island  created as it settled down.” W.R.M.Lamb (1925)

I think the key, here is ‘But afterwards’ or ‘But at a later time,' this was a period unknown ‘after’ the conflict, and I would imagine that conflict would be many thousands of years after the establishment of Greek and Egypt with independent armies and leadership.  We know from geologists that the last piece of Doggerland sank in about 4000 BC, which is about the time that the Greece Empire was at its height, and the Atlantis Empire was all but gone, so it’s my opinion this is the period Plato was referring to.   This  would also make sense of the line “For which reason the sea  in those parts is impassable and impenetrable because there is a shoal  of mud in the way, and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.”  For even today some  6,000 years later, we refer to the area as the ‘dogger sandbank’.

Finally, there is evidence within  Plato’s writing that there was contact with  the Atlanteans even  after the flood had  taken away their major city  Atlantis, for a line in Critias talking about the final flood gives  us get another clue to the location of this legendary land, for Plato  writes, “ there are remaining in small islets only the bones of the wasted body,  as they may be called, all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeletons of the country being  left.”

So what was left after Doggerland disappeared? 

We have  to remember this sea  level increase was happening all over  the lost continent, so much so that the Irish Sea separated Ireland from Wales; the English  Channel was formed separating Britain from mainland  Europe, and the North Sea took  the last of the peninsulas’  land mass  and island to become a vast watery landscape – but the British Isles remained.  In comparison would you not call that the ‘bones’ of what was formerly there, and does the makeup of this island look like a ‘skeleton of a country’?

Hyperborea

It would be wrong to imagine that Plato’s writings are the only one who mentions an advanced ancient civilisation that lived in prehistory, although he is the only one to mention Atlantis by name. The  Greek scholar Herodotus (Histories, Book IV, Chapters 32-36) some  500 years BEFORE Plato talks about a myth of an ancient land called Hyperborea.  Remembering that the Atlanteans had ‘seeded’  this culture in about 9000BC such as myths should be considered, if not as solid as Plato’s works,  but just as valid to endorse the location and description of the land, for the more pieces of the jigsaw, we find the clear the picture we will obtain.

The Hecataeus of Abdera in the 4th Century BC, believed Hyperborea was in Britain as:

“In the regions beyond the land of the Celts there lies in the ocean an island no smaller than Sicily.   This  island  is situated in the north and is habited by Hyperborean’s, who are called by that name because their home is beyond the point  whence the north wind blows; and the island  is both fertile  and productive of every crop, and has  an unusually  temperate climate.”

Map of Hyperborea by Abraham Ortelius 1572

 

From  Diodorus Siculus (ii.47.1-2).  Also, the sun was supposed to rise and set only once a year – as it does in the North Eastern area of Atlantis known today as northern Sweden and Norway.   Hecateaus of Abdera, also, wrote that the hyperborean’s had a ‘circular temple’  on their island  – is this Stonehenge or the temple of Apollo on the Plain of Atlantis?

Gothicism ( is the name given to what  is considered to have  been a cultural movement in Swe- den, centred around the belief in the glory of the Swedish ancestors, originally considered to be the Geats, which were identified with  the Goths)in the 17th century in Sweden, declared the Scandina- vian peninsula was both Atlantis and Hyperborean land.   Ptomolemy (Geographia, 2.21) and Marcian of Heraclea (perplus, 2.42) both placed Hyperborea in the North Sea which they called the ‘Hyperborean Ocean.'

In conclusion, Hyperborea was a fabulous realm of eternal spring located in the far north beyond the land of winter. Its people were tall and blessed, a long-lived race free of war, hard toil and the ravages of old age and disease. The land is usually described as a continent-bound land, bordered by the great earth-encircling river to the north (The  Atlantic), and the great peaks of the mythical Rhipaion Mountains to the south (The  Alps). Its main river was the Eridanos (The  Danube), which flowed south, drawing its waters directly from the Ocean-stream (The  Norwegian Trench). The shores of this stream were lined by amber-bearing poplar trees (as the Baltic  Sea is at its source) And its waters inhabited by flocks of white swans.  Blessed with eternal spring, the land producing two crops of grain per annum. However, most of the country was wild, covered with  rich  and beautiful forests, “the Garden of Apollo.”

The Golden Age

According to some modern thinkers (Blavatsky, Guenon and Evola), Hyperborea was the terrestrial and celestial beginning of civilisation. The home of original  Man. Some theories postulate Hyperborea was the original  ‘Garden of Eden,' the point where the earthly and heavenly planes meet. And it is said man transgressed Divine Law in this ‘Golden Age’ civilisation, the ultimate price being his banishment to the outside world.  Man ventured into other regions of Earth, establishing new civilisations, bringing to an end this great and glorious Golden Age.

Utopia

The  Golden Age is central to manifold ancient traditions and myths. Significantly, the Golden Age appears most frequent in the traditions of cultures stretching from India to Northern Europe — the area directly beneath the Polar Regions.  Joscelyn Godwin, in Arktos, The  Polar Myth  in Science, Symbolism and Nazi  Survival, says:

“The memory or imagination of a Golden Age seems to be a particularity of the cultures that cover the area from India to Northern Europe… but in the ancient Middle  East, there is an obvious relic of the Golden Age in Genesis, as the Garden of Eden where humanity walked with the gods before the fall.  The  Egyptians spoke of past epochs ruled by god-kings. Babylonian mythology… had  a scheme of three ages, each lasting while the vernal [spring] equinox precessed through four signs of the zodiac; the first of these, under the dominion of Anu, as a Golden Age, ended by the Flood. The Iranian Avesta texts tell  of the thousand-year Golden Reign of Yima, the first man and the first king, under whose  rule  cold and heat, old age,  death and sickness were unknown.”

The memory of a Golden Age, although rendered in an archetypal or mythological form, serves a super-historical purpose. This  is why the remembrance of the ancient civilisation of Atlantis is sometimes enmeshed with that of Hyperborea.  All myths are known to have a historical basis. Transmitted primarily by oral tradition, they are wrapped in a catchy and simple tale that ensures their survival and transmittal down through the ages.  Myth serves an extremely vital function — a recollection  of our beginnings, knowledge of where we are heading, and what we are supposed to do.

This I believe is the final piece of evidence that proves Doggerland, and the NEP was the continent and peninsula that are referred to in history as Atlantis.

Doggerland is a name given by archaeologists and geologists to a former landmass in the North Sea that connected the island of Great Britain to mainland Europe during and just after the last Ice Age, surviving until about 6,500 or 6,200 BCE and then gradually being flooded by rising sea levels. Geological surveys have suggested that Doggerland was a large area of dry land that stretched from Britain's east coast across to the present coast of The Netherlands and the western coasts of Germany and Denmark.

For the last 100 years, vessels have dragged up mammoth and lion remains, among other remains of land animals, and small numbers of highly sophisticated prehistoric tools and weapons that were used by the region's inhabitants.  The pre-Socrates Greeks called this land ‘Hyperborea’ - land of the North; Plato called it ‘Atlantis’.

RJL