The questions that arise in any consideration of Atlantis and its civilization are: When, where, and why? The moment we give reasonably accurate answers to these important questions we are in a position to command acceptance of our ideas by the scientific world. At this present moment we are well on our way to doing this as I shall endeavor to show. The date given by Plato for the end of Atlantis is accurate to within a few years. On astronomical grounds it has been fixed having taken place on the 18^th of November BC 9540 or 9542. The difference of two years is due to the fact that astronomers calculate elapsed time on a slightly different basis to the rest of us. The Soviet oceanographers who have recently reported on the matter give a date of 12,500 years ago, which would make it BC 10,540, a variation of 500 years. It may be taken that anywhere between these dates is likely to be reasonably accurate. But having established a date for the end of Atlantis what about its beginnings? From the information we have managed to dig up it seems that the Atlantean Culture began about 18,000. This date coincided with the end of two previous contemporary cultures, those of Tiahuanaco and Ethiopia, which do not seem to have been in contact with each other. Both of them perished in disasters of the classical pattern: missiles raining from the heavens, earthquakes on a vast scale, floods, and fire, famine and disease. The story of one of these disasters is to be found in every home even today. The development of the newly established culture was helped by the fact that practically the whole of Europe and North America was covered with sheets of ice as much as a mile in thickness. This meant that human activities were concentrated in the middle equatorial belt, with Atlantis lying in the middle of it in the most favorable position both from the viewpoint of climate and of communications. The survivors from the previous catastrophes brought with them a knowledge of building; of astronomy; of the calendar; of certain kinds of agriculture, mainly based upon maize; of religion. At some time during the process of evolution a system of hieroglyphs for dates, astronomical events, etc., was developed. While this was a form of writing, it does not seem to have been in any way even evolved by the Phoenicians as an adaptation of Assyrian cuniform. The Atlanteans themselves, at least the dominant race, seem to have been of a reddish color, medium height, with slopping foreheads giving them a slightly egg shaped heads. There does not appear to have been any difference between them and the people today. The proportion of high grade intellects to the number of the population has scarcely varied in the last 15,000 years but as the Atlanteans were less in number than many large countries today, their number of top people was correspondingly fewer. All that can be said of their civilization was that it was different to ours, neither better nor worse. Money had not been invented so trade was by barter, tribal wars and disputes occurred just as they have throughout history, we have no idea how the land was administered but one presumes that their rulers may well have combined functions of priests, judges, and doctors. Certain of their customs have survived until today. The habit of couvade, whereby the husband goes into purdah on the birth of a child, is still encountered from time to time. The artificial deformation of the skull by means of bandages or other pressure still exists from Africa to British Columbia. The Cyclopean architecture originated by the atlanteans is to be found everywhere from Egypt to Peru, from the Baltic Coast to Stonehenge. It is not only most impressive but also durable. The cloistered walks of the cathedrals of western Europe are the same width, for practical purposes, as the preists walks in the temples of ancient Egypt, and Peru, as again in Atlantis. The reason is simply that stone beams break in half if over a certain length, and this factor established the maximum width for any passage marked out by trilithons. The stones at Stonehenge are nearly the same distance apart and for the same reason. Atlantis lay exactly where it was supposed to be in the center of the Atlantic Ocean, stretching from the Azores to Ascension Island, with a possible extension Northwards to Greenland. A glance at an underwater map of the Atlantic shows that its width must have been about a thousand miles at the widest part gradually tapering off in both directions. The area was bout a million and a half square miles. Traces of Atlantis remained above the waves until about the tenth and eleventh century and were recorded on the earliest maps. During the whole period of the existence of Atlantis there was no moon, for which reason the prevailing religion was that of sun worship. But, during the last few centuries of its existence our present moon, a large asteroid or a small planet with an eccentric orbit gradually began to come into the picture: bringing with it natural disasters on each time it approached earth. Because of this there must have been a sharp religious fight between those who were anxious to placate the new gods of the moon probably by means of human sacrifice and other rites and their opponents who still worshipped the sun. It is because of the memory of this that all the lunar gods and goddesses are popularly linked with black magic. When finally the new satellite, Selene our present moon, was picked up by the earth's gravity field, disaster and chaos followed. The vast tidal waves swept around the equatorial belt, the tectonic strains caused enormous earthquakes and at the same time threw the continents out of balance with the result that the waters of the earth congregated in the Atlantic and submerged Atlantis, their weight gradually pushing the mountain range further and further down. At the moment some parts are three miles under water. The sinking continent left a tidal race-gulf stream- circling its site. The Sargasso Sea in the center of this was originally a mass of debris. Today we have a couple of hundred classical references of Atlantis, six or seven hundred flood stories of different races which refer to the event, a couple of Atlantean Gods now in the Canary Islands, and a few odd bits and pieces here and there. Our best hope is that underwater television will enable us to see for ourselves the remains of temples and other buildings which even the vast weight of water could not crush. Most of the books on the subject are out of print but they can be obtained from your local library:

H.S. Bellamy: The Atlantis Myth, London

J. Bramwell: Lost Atlantis, London 1957

Comyns Beaumont: Riddle of Prehistoric Britian, London, 1946

Lewis Spence: Problem of Atlantis, London 1930

Jurgen Spanuth: Atlantis, London 1957

Atlantis, E. Sykes& I. Donnelly revised edition London and New York 1949

The Dawn of Magic, L. Bergier & I. Pawels, London 1963

Serpent, Jane Gaskell, London 1964

Webmasters Notes- Although the Moon Capture theory is controversial Sykes was very big supporter of Hans Horbiger Cosmic Ice Disaster theories and whether the moon was captured more then 10,000 years ago or further back or not the idea still has not been by science refuted as possible, or not. Also, the skull found in Australia on a show called the 'TheReal Eve' recently on the Discovery Channel has a skull of a slopping cranial deformed man and dated back to before 10,000 BC who was shown to not have the same mitochondria factor as the others who arrived latter than 10,000 B.C.. This means that it had a earlier variation then the latter 10,000 B.C. group but was not of the mitochondria of the pre 40,000 BC group it was of a different cultural movement?????? This webmaster is the first to point this out that the slopping forehead maybe of a different cultural movement from a location far into the Pacific, or far into the Atlantic? Stonehenge has been dated as 1,750 B.C., but the substratum circle has been dated at 3,500 B.C. at least which the survival of a megalithic cult in that region can go back easily to 6,000 BC and so there is some point to be made that Stonehenge was in the wake of a Atlantis technology or introduced forms of architecture later from another region.