Cyprus-a part of Atlantis?

[Strengthandhonour]

Cyprus 'just the tip of Atlantis'

An expedition on the trail of the lost city of Atlantis says it has discovered evidence of man-made structures submerged in the sea between Cyprus and Syria.

Robert Sarmast, who is convinced the fabled city lurks in the watery depths off Cyprus, will give details of his findings this week.

"Something has been found to indicate very strongly that there are man-made structures somewhere between Cyprus and Syria," a spokesperson for the mission told Reuters.

The mystery of Atlantis - both whether it existed and if so, why it disappeared - has fired the imagination of explorers for decades.

Many believe the ancient civilisation was destroyed in a massive flood, a cataclysm which many ancient cultures believe occurred about 9,000 BC.

Greek mythology says Atlantis was a powerful nation whose residents were so corrupted by greed and power that Zeus destroyed it.

Theories place Atlantis somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, near the Greek island of Santorini, off the Celtic Ridge of Britain or even further afield in the South China Sea.

Sarmast's theory is that Cyprus is the pinnacle of Atlantis, with the rest of it about 1.6 kilometres below sea level.

His expedition took place about 110 km off the eastern coast of Cyprus towards Syria.

-Reuters

source:http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems...1/s1243122.htm

[Ederico]

There is also the theory that Malta was part of Atlantis. Malta ruined by a mostly fickle population that used to breed like rabbits (well, actually the breeding patterns always followed the European norm) and is over-populated hides historical gems under each and every one of our steps, a vast heritage that goes neglected by an incompetent acultural "Nationalist" (they're as a Nationalist as I'm into East 17, for those that know me know that that is blasphemy) government and a population, always bred in ignorance of its own history.

Malta witholds the worlds most ancient stone free-standing structures. Actually however, Gozo, the secondary island on which I live does. Numerous underwater archaelogical sites were found in recent years in Maltese territorial waters, there are also what are termed as "cart ruts" which in certain cases lead mysteriously down to the sea and are known to continue into the Mare Nostrum.

Anyways, a statement in Maltese and also Italian, Malta, stupenda.

Some material of interest:

http://www.discoveryofatlantis.com/n...y_atlantis.htm

New theory puts Atlantis off southern Cyprus

Jesmond Bonello

The theory that Malta was Atlantis is being challenged by a new publication which claims that the fabled city lies off the southern tip of Cyprus.

The book "Discovery of Atlantis - the Startling Case for the Island of Cyprus", written by an expert on the ancient world, Robert Sarmast, uses maps to show the location of archaeological remains on a sunken strip of land just off the south coast of Cyprus, which he claims is Atlantis.

The book, which has just been launched in the US, is being given wide coverage by the international media.

The Sunday Telegraph of London said this book may be the answer generations of experts on the ancient world have been looking for.

The Sunday Telegraph writes that after nearly 10 years of research using ocean mapping technology and accounts from ancient texts, Mr Sarmast has evidence that Atlantis lies off the southern tip of Cyprus.

The newspaper, however, acknowledges that Mr Sarmast's claim about Cyprus is just the latest in a long list of suggested locations for Atlantis including Malta, the Azores, the Sahara desert, Central America and Antartica.

Mr Sarmast was quoted saying that his new research "will rewrite the history books. We are set to make the biggest archaeological discovery of all time".

The new research, which cost $500,000, was paid for by the Heritage Standard Corporation. Mr Sarmast now intends to carry out an expedition to explore the seabed in a bid to find proof of his theory.

Mr Sarmast is adamant that the site matches Plato's account of Atlantis, in the dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 400 BC. The description is said to be based on the writings of Solon, who in turn recorded the story told to him by the Egyptians at around 600 BC.

Whereas many historians believe that Atlantis is the stuff of legend and that Plato's description is an allegory to praise the values of Athenian society, Mr Sarmast takes a more literal view.

He was quoted saying that his discovery "will vindicate Plato. Within his dialogues, Plato provides factual clues to what Atlantis was like. I have matched all but two of the 45 clues with the area around Cyprus. That's either the biggest coincidence in the history of the world or we have found Plato's Atlantis."

Last year the idea that Malta was Atlantis gained international recognition and featured in popular television documentaries, publications and guidebooks.

A Russian TV crew had visited Malta for this purpose and a documentary was screened on OTR channel 1 in the Soviet Union. Piero Angela, of Super Quark, was also interested enough to come to Malta to make a documentary about the subject.

David Furlong, author of Keys to the Temples, was also in Malta to study the positions of prehistoric sites and compare them with British sites.

The theory that Malta was Atlantis was published in the Italian journal of archaeology Hera, while the French journal Archeologie also carried articles about it.

Best selling author Graham Hancock had also published a book 'Underworld, flooded kingdoms of the Ice Age' in the UK, dedicating 120 pages out of its total of 761 to Malta and the publications Malta: Echoes of Plato's Island, and Dossier Malta - evidence for the Magdalenian, published in 1997. The latter had suggested that the presence of man on Malta could date back to about 15000 to 12000 BC rather than the traditionally accepted date of about 7000 BC.

RAI Tre had sent a team to Malta and Channel Four were in Malta last year and screened a documentary on the subject.

The theory and parts of the contents of the book 'Echoes of Plato's Island' have also been featured on several websites, including those of best selling author Andrew Collins and Egyptologist David Calvert Orange.


http://www.otsf.org/atlantis.html

Malta’s Stone Temples and Goddesses:
Evidence For Atlantis?

By

Linda C. Eneix

A few parts doesn’t quite fit the Atlantis myth. This island did not completely disappear under the sea, for example. The oldest stone buildings on the planet remain clearly visible on dry land, almost in defiance. The people of Malta in that age would not have made war on Athens and they didn't use chariots. However, recent underwater discoveries and current research are revealing compelling links between Malta and several of the ancient stories.

Imagine a natural artistic paradise: no weapons; no war; not even a defensive wall for over a thousand years. Even the paradise of Tahiti in the South Pacific cannot make the same claim. The Temple People: isolated on a sun-drenched island, solidly lining up mega-ton stones to record the movement of the sunrise and the passing of the seasons; heaving them into architecture the size of a two-story house in suburbia; painting and carving and decorating into perfection.

At least 23 sites where megalithic temples once stood are known today in an area of only a few square miles. Some of the structures were ruined in antiquity, some have been lost forever due to modern construction, yet some are still standing after all this time -- right through every event in recorded history. There is something compelling about those stones. There is something mysterious and other-worldly about them, and yet something that is hauntingly familiar. The culture which assembled them is so remotely in the past that they were already forgotten a long time before people started writing. All trace of them ends abruptly at around 2,500 BC, and any memory of them could only have survived through myths and legends.

Later generations confronted with the striking remains would have needed to come up with explanations for them. Human nature wonders and demands answers. An ancient mariner walking in the ruins of a Maltese temple and encountering the remains of a "weighty" statue which was probably close to eight feet tall in its heyday would probably have no trouble imagining a lost race of over-achievers: meaty female Amazons who could heft the stone blocks with ease. On the Maltese island of Gozo, there still persists an age-old folktale of a giant woman who carried stones on her head to build the temples.

As stated by Maltese architect Richard England, "we lack the soul to create such buildings today." We build grand churches and temples, but they are not erected by the worshippers. Hired construction crews and engineers are generally not doing their work for religious fulfillment. Maybe with technology, we’ve lost some spirit. Maybe that’s why the myth of a vanished Atlantis continues to be so attractive. How do we in our modern society explain the motivation for the cyclopean efforts required to build megalithic temples?

To try to understand the undocumented prehistoric people of Malta, we need to suspend a lot of things that most of us take for granted about religion and about the past. The fact is that the human remains of the period include healthy bones of about the same size as Mediterranean people today. They looked a lot like us.

Inside the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta, Malta are a few halls of unimaginably priceless artifacts sitting quietly in their lighted display cases. There are many theories and interpretations surrounding the shapes of the sculptures. Are these really "fat ladies" as they have been labeled? In some pieces there can be no doubt about gender. In others, the absence of clearly defined sexual characteristics leaves room for debate. One observant young man pointed out that to a completely uninformed viewer with no sense of context (an alien from space for example,) statues of the Virgin Mary are just as non-definitive.

Suppose we look at the more "meaty" figures as representations of abundance? Maybe gender wasn’t all that important. In the abstract, one can perhaps accept the idea of an ultimate femininity that didn’t have to be strictly sexual. To confuse the issue, there is a cluster of figures, again lacking sexual characteristics, which suggest a male shape. Other pieces clearly demonstrate that the temple-period artist knew how to be accurate. A mystery.

Looking closer at the fabulous collection known as "the shaman’s bundle" (so-called because of the way it lay when found after being buried for 5,000 years or so,) we see that these figures are elaborately dressed with styled hairdo’s. Other figures also indicate apparel and garments of woven fabric. Spindle whorls were turned up in the excavations, and so were buttons.

Among the most impressive of the artifact sculptures, "the sleeping lady" and "the twin seated figures" are seen to be occupying furniture. Close examination shows a sophisticated woven pattern of caning and reed. The temple people were not savage cavemen.

The temples were developed in the Neolithic Period: a time when people across Europe and Asia had mastered the production of a continuous food supply through planting crops and by domesticating animals. The people who built the temples got to the Maltese islands by way of Sicily. They navigated the 60-mile crossing in craft large enough to carry not only their families and household goods, but also seed and livestock. The earth and the things which it provided were of foremost importance in those days. In addition to the obvious fruit and grain, the earth grew the grass which fed the animals which produced milk, wool, meat, bone for tools. And the earth provided the stone for the temples.

Atlanteans?

Well, who knows. Myths come from somewhere. There is usually a kernel of some truth behind the fantastic stories of the Mediterranean - a fact which is proving itself every day.


http://www.maltaweb.com/culture/cart...art_ruts1.html

Explaining the unexplained

And now the latest: Malta is what remains of the submerged continent of Atlantis. By

Franklin Mamo

One of the few courses in psychology I thoroughly enjoyed, back in my University days, was one called "Anomalistic psychology". This course made a critical scientific examination of whatever lies on the fringe (what some would call parapsychology): from UFOs to weeping Madonnas, from life on Mars to faith healing, from astrology to cryptozoology (the Loch Ness monster would fall under this category). A mixed bag of stories which were great fun to read, admittedly more fun thanthe cold, rational dissection they were submitted to later.

They were a great read, first, because stories of lost civilisations building canals on Mars are highly entertaining, secondly, because they rested on the flimsiest of evidence. I remember this "archaeologist" who claimed that the Romans had reached the North American coast and established themselves there. The proof? A slab of stone showing three deep perpendicular scratches. Uh? "Yeah" said the ‘archaeologist’ "that’s the Roman numeral III".

Don’t buy it? Nor do most of the archaeological establishment. So what happens next? These fringe theorists hatch conspiracy theories. NASA won’t release all the photos of the "face" on Mars, the US government covered up an alleged crash of an alien ship in the 1940s and won’t allow anyone in "Area 52" where aliens are still kept. The US government, of course, doesn’t allow any Tom, Dick or Harry into any military installations – and for good reason.

Malta has had its fair share of bizarre theories too. Remember the cart ruts? Those parallel grooves in the stones which run quite some distance and most of which are unceremoniously covered in weeds, rubble or even built over. One theorist, who can tell nice stories of how advanced alien civilisations often visited their pre-historic earthy counterparts, thinks that those cart ruts were "runways" for alien spaceships. So, hello Earthling, at what time does Malta-Venus depart?

And now the latest: Malta is what remains of the submerged continent of Atlantis. This is not the first time that this statement has been made. But, at least, before it was touted as an hypothesis. Now there is "proof". Here goes: first, Malta was inhabited long before we had thought, a thousand years before the pyramids. Yes, and? One is expected to ask. And there were bones in Ghar Dalam which means that there was great flooding ("could", of course, is omitted). And, guess what, Malta’s pre-historic communities disappeared around the same time the Atlantidians were flushed off the face of the Earth.

Here’s more: Plato said the Atlantidians built boats and the pre-historic Maltese built boats. Plato also said that Atlantis was full of canals and Malta had cart ruts. And so on and so forth, all in that style of reasoning which says that if cats, like elephants, have four legs, a tail and two ears, then all cats are in fact elephants. No surprise that there are a few other places who have laid similar claims to being the lost continent.

And now the conspiracy theories. First, the Roman Catholic Church removed all reference to the "semi-divine" Atlantidians, which supposedly make an appearance in the Book of Genesis. Where and how we are not told. We are only told that texts referring to Atlantis made a re-appearance in the 15th century (rather than a "re-appearance" this was more of a rekindled interest when Greek refugees came to the West after the fall of Byzantium). Equally guilty, we are told, are the archaeological authorities here. They are engaged in a massive cover-up, motive unknown, to hide the fact that we are descended from people with big heads and therefore big brains.

Maybe I should add my two cents’ worth to the "Malta was Atlantis" theory. Remember the old limerick which recounts how Malta is slowly sinking and that, one day, Sicilian seamen will be sailing somewhere in the middle of the Med and will say "here is where Malta once stood"? Yeah? That is definite proof that the Sicilians know something about it and they are keeping their mouths shut. Probably to avoid greater competition with Malta for the tourist market.

Because, it ought to be said, there was someone who bought this theory. It’s the Malta Tourism Authority which, and this I read second hand, will be using the theory as part of a campaign to bring more tourists to Malta. "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof" the French scientist Laplace once said. But then, whatever increases revenue for the country. When you consider that our real archaeological heritage seems to be valued only for its potential to milk tourists of their money, making money just by showing them the sea beyond Dingli cliffs is certainly innovative business.


On the Cart Ruts:
http://www.maltaweb.com/culture/cart...art_ruts1.html


An extract from an essay by Norman Lowell:

"Atlantis in Malta

Malta is a platform, an elevation of the sea floor that has showed it want to immerse more than once. Thirty-five pre-historic temples distributed on the two major islands, Malta and Gozo and many others actually submerged by the sea, make one think of a catastrophe that must have happened here around 3000-2500 BC., something that left its sign. Steep reefs falling vertically to the sea, contrarily to the more sloping northern shore, form the southern coast of Malta, the Dingli Cliffs. It's as if the island's major axis rotated around itself, submerging most of the coast that faces Sicily. Some local archeologists, including the already mentioned Dr.Anton Mifsud and Dr. Charles Savona Ventura, consider this cataclysm to be the real cause of the Atlantis legend's birth, the history of which would re-emerge from a number of relics of the island's mysterious megalithic past. The population that created extraordinary structures of giant stones, at a certain point of the island's history, just disappeared. Two-hundred-and-fifty years of darkness actually characterize the story of these people until the arrival of the new populations that successively occupied Malta. What had determined such an immense catastrophe? Perhaps an earthquake or the subsiding of the calcareous platform on which Malta stands. However, we know from the Leningrad Papyrus, (a hieratic scroll dated 1115 BC. conserved at the Hermitage museum) an Egyptian document composed around 2000 BC., dating back to the XII dynasty, that a serpent populace was destroyed by a "star falling from the heavens". Only one survived on an island "destined to be completely submerged". What is this strange fable? Was it the record of a catastrophe that destroyed a particular Mediterranean region? The myth also connected the serpents to the figures of Mother Goddesses such as Tanit, Innanna, Isis and Eve. They are feminine divinities that carry the baton of a culture to which the snake brings wisdom, medical, scientific and esoteric knowledge. But a doubt arises: couldn't these serpents rather be human beings of strange physical form, perhaps even a handicap? Mythology is full of weird beings that often seem more likely clinical cases than true divinities. For example, Cecrops, the mythical founder and first king of Athens, according to tradition, was born from the soil and his appearance was half human and half serpent. According to others, he came to Attica from Egypt and built the Acropolis, diffusing the cult of Zeus and Athena. Pythia (or Python) was a priestess of Delphi, taken by Apollo, who pronounced oracles. She took her name from Python the snake, killed by Apollo and believed to be buried under her temple. The woman enunciated the verdicts sitting on a sacred tripod set on the mouth of a natural gorge, from which vapors exhaled and communicated them to an assistant priest (said prophet), whom in turn transmitted them to the postulant (Hera 17).

But let's go back to Malta. Even Saint Paul shipwrecked in the Maltese bay that still bears his name, dealing with a snake that bit his foot. In reality, in the days of Saint Paul, the first century AD., these animals didn't exist in Malta. So it's strange that such a reptile bit indeed this Holy man. This legend may well be interpreted in a different, simpler manner. The serpent was the last priest of the Great Goddess left on the island, whose thaumaturgic power was threatened by that of Paul, obliged to dismantle what was left of the last pagan bastion of the great Healing Goddess."

Pictures of a Maltese Megalithic Temple and the underground Hypogeum:

[Menydh]

S&H, this thread does not meet the goals of this section. I'll look for a place to move it in later. Obviously the forum description was not all that clear. Sorry about that.