88 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
no city or civilized state of Atlantis existed at the period alluded to by Plato—
9600 B.C.” Moreover, geologists know that the mid-ocean tropical island Plato
describes would not have been possible when he wrote it existed, because the
North Atlantic was, at that time, plunged into the final phase of the last Ice Age.
They realize, however, that the Alleroed Interstadal was a warm phase during the
Devensian glaciation in Europe’s Pleistocene Ice Age, when massive, catastrophic
flooding did indeed occur about the time of a literal reading of Plato’s date for
the destruction of Atlantis. Even so, enough of at least the general outlines of
human culture and the level of material achievement during the Pleistocene
reveal that the sophisticated civilization described by Plato, let alone Cayce, bore
nothing in common with post-glacial society.
Researchers need to ask, “What kind of years was Plato writing about? We
assume they were solar years, identical to our own calendar. But what if he was
using a different calendrical system? What would that make of his date for
Atlantis?” This, in fact, is the root of the problem that was solved as long ago as
the early 1950s, when a German Atlantologist, Juergen Spanuth, pointed out that
the Egyptian priests who relayed the Atlantis story to Solon (and almost certainly
Plato himself) used a lunar, not a solar calendar. When they spoke of time it was
always in terms of the cycles of the moon. Indeed, their temple in which they
preserved Atlantean records was dedicated to a moon-goddess, Neith.
Recalibrating Plato’s solar date into its original lunar years, a more realistic
period for the destruction of Atlantis is revealed circa 1200 B.C. As soon as Atlantologists
learned of the corrected time scale, they were themselves deluged by a wealth of
confirming evidence that placed Atlantis squarely in the Bronze Age. Pre-Columbian
traditions, Egyptology, climatology, geology, even astronomy, all combined to under-
score the revised date, and thereby provided more quality arguments for the cred-
ibility of Atlantis than ever before. Moreover, Plato’s own description of Atlantis
belongs to an arch-typical Late Bronze Age capital. Indeed, the Classical Greek writer
Apollodorus maintained the tradition that Zeus, depicted by Plato as the destroyer of
Atlantis, endeavored to annihilate mankind at the end of the Bronze Age.
But the unusual ringed design of Atlantis suggests much older Neolithic
origins from and upon which the city grew over thousands of years. These deeply
prehistoric beginnings are far more difficult to define than the Atlantean cata-
clysm. Based on the known dates of megalithic sites in the British Isles and Spain,
Atlantis perhaps began its rise as a Neolithic settlement more than 6,000 years
ago. By the mid- to late fourth millenniumB.C., it may have reached a high level
of civilization.
Both Plato and Cayce mentioned more than one Atlantean deluge preceding
the final disaster, and there does appear to have been at least one major upheaval
before obliteration took place. Berosus, the Chaldean historian who wrote of the
Great Flood from which his Babylonian ancestors came, stated it occurred on the
15th day in the month of Daisios—around June 15, 3116 B.C. This date compares
almost exactly with the origin of the Maya calendar, said to have been brought
to Yucatan by a white-skinned, yellow-bearded flood survivor—Kukulcan, the