254 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
in Japanese oral traditions. These Sabani are remarkably similar to craft used
by Polynesians, and may still be seen occasionally plying the waters between the
Hawaiian Islands. Sobata dwelling sites have been radio-carbon dated to the mid-
fifth millennium B.C. from Hokkaido in the north to the Ryukyu Islands in the
south. Their prodigious feats of navigation almost perfectly parallel the distribution
of Jomon earthenware finds made along the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan,
and may account for Jomon pottery shards found on the other side of the Pacific
Ocean, in Ecuador.
Professor Nobuhiro Yoshida, President of The Japan Petroglyph Society, states,
“If they (the Sobata) were not after all navigators from Mu itself—spreading its
cultural influences to both sides of the Pacific—then they may have been the direct
inheritors of a thallasocratic tradition from the Motherland after its geologic demise.”
(See Ama, Mu)Solon
One of the “Seven Wise Men of Greece,” he introduced social reforms and a
legal code which formed the political basis of classical civilization. Solon was also
the first great poet of Athens. In the late sixth century B.C., he traveled to Sais, the
Nile Delta capital of the XXVI Dynasty, where the Temple of Neith was located.
Here a history of Etelenty was preserved in hieroglyphs inscribed or painted on
columns, which were translated for him by the high priest, Psonchis. Returning to
Greece, Solon worked all the details of the account into an epic poem, Atlantikos,
but was distracted by political problems from completing the project before his
death in 560 B.C. About 150 years later, the unfinished manuscript was given to
Plato, who formed two dialogues, Timaeus and Kritias, from it. As one of the very
greatest historical figures in classical Greek history, Solon’s early connection with
the story of Atlantis lends it formidable credibility.
(See Etelenty, Neith, Plato, Psonchis)Sotuknang
In Hopi Indian myth, a god who long ago drowned the world, sending all human
treasures to the bottom of the sea.Spence, Lewis
Born James Lewis Thomas Chalmbers Spence, on November 25, 1874, in
Forfarshire, Scotland, he was a prominent mythologist, who inherited Ignatius
Donnelly’s position as the world’s leading Atlantologist of the early 20th century.
An alumnus of Edinburgh University, Spence was made a fellow of the Royal
Anthropology Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and elected Vice President
of the Scottish Anthropology and Folklore Society. Awarded a Royal Pension