The sunken continent that never was: Atlantis not to be found at Gibralter, not at Bimini, and not near Cuba

The story of Atlantis is one of the most widely known myths -- or legends, if you will -- in the world today. Every other week the story is discussed on Coast tot Coast AM or related new age shows, often by representatives of the Edgar Cayce Association. Even in the mainstream media the sunken continent is regularly brought up when yet another researcher is looking for Atlantis in yet another part of the world: in the Mediterranean, around the Canary Islands, the Azores, near Great Britain, in the Caribbean, or other places. The purpose of this article is to once and for all demonstrate that there is no reason to even remotely suspect that Atlantis could ever have existed. In fact, it should be so blatantly obvious to any serious researcher that the story of Atlantis doesn't check out, that it becomes hard to not question the motives of those who keep promoting the theory.

As many readers may already know, the story of Atlantis is based on only a single source: Plato, the famous philosopher and mathematician from Ancient Greece. In 360 B.C., Plato wrote down a conversation between him, Socrates, and men with the names Critias, Hermocrates and Timeaus. Criticias is the one who informed the group about Atlantis. It was a story told within his family, father to son. His great grandfather originally heard the tale from a person with the name Dropidas, who in turn claimed to have been told by Solon (±640-558 B.C.), a well known ruler of Athens who played a key role in bringing about the first known form of democracy in the world. Assuming that no one later on has made up the story, then it was Solon who was informed about Atlantis by an Egyptian priest while on a (state) visit to Sais in Egypt. According to Criticias, the words of the priest were as follows:

Which deluge Solon and the Hellenic Greeks remembered is a good question. Maybe the most likely one is the Minoan eruption of about 1,600 B.C. The eruption and subsequent tsunami wiped out several Minoan settlements on smaller Greek islands and caused an estimated 20 meter (66 ft) high tsunami on Crete. The tsunami doesn't seem to have hit the Athens region and mainland in general all that hard, but the eruption would have been seen everywhere in the region. It had a Dense-Rock Equivalent (DRE) at least 50 times larger than Mount St. Helens in 1980 and 11 times larger than Mount Pinatubo in 1991. Possibly it was as large as the 1815 Mount Tambora eruption of 100 km3 DRE, which famously made 1816 the "year without summer". There have been various earthquakes and tsunamis in the Mediterranean, but nothing as big as this. The priest continued:

According to Criticias, Solon got really excited upon hearing these words. This, of course, is the type of information he can come home with and tell his people. Solon asks for more information about his ancestors:

Interesting. So the priest tells Solon that Athens' origins date back to about 9,000 B.C. and Egypt, Sais in this case, goes back to 8,000 B.C. That's nice of the priest, to inform the Greeks that their race is older. Solon must have loved to hear that. But there's a problem: there's no evidence for a civilization in either place at this point. People were still hunter-gatherers. The first farming communities were established in Iran around 8,000 B.C. Roughly a thousand years later they begin to appear in the region of Greece and the Nile Delta in Egypt. The Goddess that the Egyptian priest is talking about is Neith, which they identified with the Greek Athena. Neith's cult was centered around Sais and goes back to the very beginnings of Ancient Egypt, not to 9,000 B.C., but to about 3,100 B.C., immediately after King Menes (Narmer) unified Egypt and became the country's first pharaoh. The Egyptian priest continues with some more obvious flattering of the Greeks:

Finally, after what can only be described as an enormous amount of ass kissing -- a very typical thing to do in the ancient world -- the priest gets down to the story of Ancient Greece's war with Atlantis, which seems to fit in the same appeasement strategy. He puts the war at the exact birth of Greece.

To summarize the story of Atlantis:

1. The Egyptian priest is praising Solon's Greece into the heavens.
2. At 9,000 B.C. Atlantis was located "in front of" the Strait of Gibraltar and reportedly the size of a small continent.
3. Atlantis had conquered virtually all regions along the Mediterranean.
4. The Ancient "Hellenes" (Greeks) save the Egyptians and basically the entire world from Atlantis at the dawn of civilization.
5. Earthquakes and tsunamis conveniently swallow Atlantis and most of Greece's men immediately after the Greeks defeated Atlantis, hence virtually no one lived to talk about it.
6. Reportedly the Atlantic Ocean in front of the Strait of Gibraltar is impossible to navigate due to the remnants of Atlantis.

There are a few obvious problems with this story:

1. Archeological research, including ever more accurate carbon dating, as well as genetic evidence, demonstrates that there was no known large scale civilization back in 9,000 B.C. People were still primitive hunter-gatherers.
2. Geological research demonstrates that there never was a small, let alone continent-size, sunken island anywhere close to the Strait of Gibraltar, or anywhere else, in the past 12,000 years or beyond.
3. The written script was invented in three different locations around the same time. First in Sumer in about 3,500 B.C., followed by Egypt a century later, and the Indus Valley Civilization another century later. If the Atlantis story is true, that would mean that there has at least been 5,500 years of accurate word-to-mouth storytelling.
4. Writings before the modern era are seldom coherent. They included an incredible amount of metaphors, bias, mythology, theatrics, and embellishments.
5. Democracies with freedom of expression did not exist until thousands of years after the written script had been invented. Rulers and ruling classes could tell the public just about whatever they would find the most useful to stay in power. It also was a dangerous world with many permanent enemies and constant warfare. The fact is, the Egyptians could always use another ally against rival civilizations in the Near East and Mediterranean.

Below is a world map as it was known at the time of Plato and Socrates. Clearly the farther away one gets from the Mediterranean and the Near East, the less accurate the map becomes. Herodotus' map doesn't even list Great Britain or the western coast of Africa. Anything to the south of Lower Egypt is completely unknown territory at this point. Clearly the Greeks did not like to sail far beyond the "Pillars of Heracles".

At this point it seems to be rather safe to conclude that the story of Atlantis is fiction. Obviously the Egyptians and Greeks were aware of natural disasters as asteroid impacts ("fire from the heavens"), earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis, but knowledge of these types of phenomena -- not to mention war -- were just worked into the otherwise fictional account of Atlantis.

Both Egypt and Greece would have benefited from a little create storytelling in Solon's era. Under Pharaoh Psamtik I, beginning around 656 B.C. when partly conquered by the Assyrians, Egypt grew increasingly close to Hellenic Greece. Egypt managed to remain politically independent from Assyria for 50 years, but in the end it was forced to fight alongside Assyria against the expanding Babylonian empire. In 605 B.C. the combined Assyrian-Egyptian military was destroyed by Babylon, leading to the annexation of Assyria and the freedom of farther-away but badly weakened Egypt. Soon after, in 593 B.C. Solon, came to power in Greece. Babylonian conquests continued for some time. In 587 B.C. the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II managed to destroy Jerusalem. An alliance between Greece and Egypt made all the sense in this time period. And most likely the story of Atlantis was simply fabricated to keep Solon and Greece as a whole deeply invested in Egypt.

With the story of Atlantis set straight, it's time to start looking at Edgar Cayce, the "sleeping prophet", who began to revive the theory of Atlantis in the 1930s. A first problem with Cayce is that quite a few people still seem to be of the opinion that he was a respectable, spiritual and honest person. The giant Coast to Coast AM radio show, with its extremely close association with the Cayce Association and its claims [6], has a lot to do with protecting this legacy. Granted, on the surface a few of Edgar Cayce's ideas seem quite interesting, at least to spiritually-inclined individuals, but once a person digs deeper, he or she will find that every word spoken by Cayce was very vague. And much of what he said is clear, demonstrable nonsense.

What instantly discredits Cayce the most is his enormous amount of psychic readings on Atlantis. He has given extensive (but always rather vague) readings on Atlantean civilization. It's quite actually a challenge to find Cayce's own words, unless one happens to stumble across the right book: Atlantis (published in 2009, under Cayce's name), and even that is not perfect. His full sessions cannot be found on the website of the Cayce Association and his work is seldom quoted at length by representatives of the association. Much like the bible, they prefer to cite isolated, numbered passages from the Cayce readings in order to make his words sound more interesting and reasonable than they really were. Here are two of Cayce's passages on Atlantis:

364-3:

364-4:

The Sargasso Sea is located roughly 500 miles east of Florida, at the center of several major currents of the Atlantic Ocean. The sea varies in depth from 1,500 to 7,000 meters ( 5,000 to 23,000 ft), which makes it a somewhat unlikely candidate for Atlantis. Even more unfortunate for Cayce is that knowledge of geology has also greatly increased since his lifetime. Below the reader can see a map created by the National Geophysical Datacenter (NGDC), which belongs to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). It shows global sea levels at the end of the last ice age, roughly 10,000 B.C., and how the land masses were shaped as a result.

Shorelines have expanded, especially in North-East America and western Europe, but Atlantis is nowhere to be found. On top of that, and as already explained, Atlantis does not fit into the timeline of human history at all - based on archeological, geological and genetic research in endless different places of the world. If Atlantis existed, not only should it be visible on the map above, evidence for it should also be found in the genes of American and Latin American Indians. But it doesn't. Instead, gene research proves that American Indians evolved from a small group of Early Modern Humans (EMH) crossing the Bering Strait roughly 15,000 B.C. There's just no evidence that people from the Mediterranean crossed the Atlantic Ocean. If Cayce's version of Atlantis were true, the evidence should be found in our genes. So once again the conclusion is: Atlantis did not exist and Cayce was wrong.

To be fair, Cayce's story of Atlantis is actually more complex. Not that it really changes anything, but for the sake of being thorough, we'll include it here. According to Edgar Evans Cayce, the youngest son of Edgar Cayce who spent years analyzing all of his father's readings, in 10,000 B.C. only the last few remaining islands of Atlantis went down. The lost continent already existed for over 200,000 years at this point. If that's not enough, Atlantean civilization also possessed high technology with laser-like beams powering the various islands. Then, around 50,000 B.C., a chunk of the continent sank as the result of a war between the Atlantean "Aryans" and the "Sons of Belial" in which earthquake-triggering high technology was used. Then, in 28,000 B.C., more of the continent sank. Only a few islands remained. And these islands all went down in 10,000 B.C., at the end of the last ice age [7]

Still with me? It's a great story, of course, but once again, where is the evidence? Evidence without resorting to pseudoscience and outright lies - which is exactly what Edgar Evans Cayce has been doing. For example, in a speech made around 2002, one of the things he tells his listeners is that "discoveries in Africa have extended man's time in the earth to millions of years instead of hundreds of thousands." [8] Check ISGP's historical timeline, based on widely available sources that all corroborate each other. The fact is that 200,000 years before present Anatomically Modern Human (AMH) and "modern" Neanderthal began to roam the earth. The more primitive Homo Erectus, first seen around 1.5 million years ago, was still around for another 50,000 years. What Cayce is referring to is that roughly 4 million years ago the first truly human-like apes surfaced: Ardipithecus Ramidus ("Ardi") and Australopithecus Afarensi ("Lucy"). But how does that change the timeline of human history? How does Atlantis all of a sudden fall into this timeline? Of course, it doesn't. Atlantis doesn't fit and it has never fitted. Cayce is just deceiving his audience.

A million other questions can be asked about Cayce's version of Atlantis. What were the effects of mega-eruption of the Toba volcano 75,000 years ago on Atlantis? It almost wiped out Anatomically Modern Human. They were down to a few thousand in Africa. Where are the fossils of modern humans? Where are the ruins? Where is the "death ray" technology? How did primitive human-like apes produce this kind of technology - and without leaving traces of it? Where is the geological evidence of a massive sunken continent? Where is the genetic evidence?

The fact is: there isn't any evidence that Atlantis, or any high technology civilization, has ever existed on earth, not 12,000 years ago, not 200,000 years ago. Today we have experts in plate tectonics and continental drift. They have found no evidence of a giant sunken continent. Atlantis is made up, first by the Egyptians, then by Cayce and his followers.

This is an excellent opportunity to look a little bit deeper into the Cayce Association, so prominent today in the most fringe aspects of the new age and conspiracy circles. Besides Atlantis, Edgar Cayce is also famously associated with claims about the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx, and the still undiscovered "hall of records" underneath the Sphinx, that should reveal all of Atlantis' secret technologies. On the surface, people may think that this is possible, that this hall of records really might be there. But this picture should change dramatically upon reading Cayce's actual words during his psychic readings in the 1930s:

So according to Cayce, the Great Pyramid was constructed more than 12,000 years ago by floating the stones into place. That sounds like a really plausible theory. As for the hall of records, Cayce actually designated three different ones: one on the sunken island of Atlantis, another underneath the Sphinx in Egypt, and another in the Yucatan, underneath one of the Mayan or Aztec temples. I picked some of the excerpts of Cayce's readings that I could find rather quickly. They should do the job of making it clear without a shadow of doubt that this is what Cayce claimed; that they were not later inventions. Those interested can always try to decipher his full readings. These include various other cryptic references to hidden underground chambers. Cayce's own words:

Clearly this kind of material really works on the imagination of people. A hidden hall of records, with all the secrets of an advanced ancient civilization? To find something like that, that's definitely one of the most exciting things anyone can ever overcome. It even gets my imagination going. But, unfortunately, it is all made up. Even if there is some kind of hall of records somewhere on this planet -- which is highly unlikely -- we can be sure that it won't contain any secrets of Atlantis - because Atlantis never existed, certainly not in the context presented by the Egyptians and Edgar Cayce. That's the harsh reality every open-minded person will have to face.

It's actually very much the question if Cayce's information about Atlantis was a case of well meant but inaccurate imagination. Cayce's full claims can only be compared to the most outrageously ridiculous conspiracy nonsense that is being put out today at an ever increasing pace. Cayce actually believed that he had been "Ra-Ta", a God-like human being with supernatural powers that built the Great Pyramid around 10,500 B.C. The Cayce Foundation has always stood by this belief. Examples? Here are the words of Lynne Salomon Miceli, the founder and former director of the New York Center Cayce Foundation, in a 2014 blog post:

And here are the words of Cayce's son, Hugh Lynn Cayce, in a paper included on the Cayce Association's cd-rom:

The ironic thing is, back in 1984 the Cayce Foundation funded a carbon-dating effort of the Great Pyramid and a few other structures. [13] On average a date of 2,900 B.C. came out for the Great Pyramid, which Edgar Evans Cayce still managed to spin to his followers in such a way that he could make the case for a 10,500 B.C. origin for the great Pyramid. [14] Since then, additional carbon datings and insights have cleared up the questions surrounding the first study. [15] All carbon datings roughly point to 2,600 B.C., the time of Pharaoh Khufu/Cheops, who the Egyptians and the Greek historian Herodotus already associated with the Great Pyramid. [16]

We'll get back to the Great Pyramid at a later stage.

Some readers who have looked at the website of the Cayce Association at this point might wonder why David Wilcock is relentlessly promoted here. After all, Wilcock is part of the worst of the worst of the conspiracy community, weaving together tails of aliens, gods, secret bases, and the "New World Order" into elaborate science fiction scenarios, trying to pass them off as genuine. Here is just one of too many examples:

Wilcock wrote the above text in 2011, the same year that his book The Source Field Investigations: The Hidden Science and Lost Civilizations Behind the 2012 Prophecies reached the 16th place in the The New York Times best sellers list. [18] A person like this is able to write best-selling books? What kind of world are we living in? Apparently in a world in which there exists a massive new age radio show with the name Coast to Coast AM (formerly Art Bell) that loves to promote persons as Wilcock. These days, the more outrageous the claims, the more airtime.

Wilcock's rise to prominence on the Coast to Coast AM radio show, where he is has been invited roughly once a year since 2004, coincided with the publication of his first book The Reincarnation of Edgar Cayce? in which he "reluctantly" disclosed to the world that he is the present day reincarnation of Edgar Cayce. And if he considers himself to be the present-day reincarnation of Edgar Cayce, he also considers himself to be the present-day reincarnation of "Ra-Ta", the builder of the Great Pyramid in 10,500 B.C. The Cayce Association (ARE) fully supports these claims of David Wilcock. According to Wilcock's story, leading ARE members actually fingered him 1997 as Edgar Cayce's reincarnation, just in time to fulfill Cayce's old prophecy that he would return in 1998. Wilcock:

In his 2004 book The Reincarnation of Edgar Cayce? Wilcock describes how he became ARE's figurehead :

Wilcock had already set up a website in 2002, but it wasn't until the publication of his book in 2004 that he burst into the limelight with many appearances on Coast to Coast AM and shows as the History Channel's "Ancient Aliens". He has collaborated with men as Richard Hoagland, Graham Hancock, and, even before reaching any prominence, with the Disclosure Project's Steven Greer [20] - all three proven scam artists. [21]

This is one of these sections that I hadn't planned for at all, but seeing Cayce's description of Bimini as the most likely place where Atlantis can be discovered, it's hard not to be reminded of the controversy, still to this day, surrounding Bimini "Road." One would expect that there is a connection here. And as it turns out, there is. Back in the 1960s, followers of Edgar Cayce began looking in the waters of Bimini in the hope of finding remnants of Atlantis. In 1968 two pilots, both Cayce followers, spotted what would become known as the Bimini "Road". Associates of them went down into the water (only 15 feet/5.5 meters deep) and in no time speculation arose in the media that remnants of Atlantis were found. [22] The Rockwell Corporation and astronaut Edgar Mitchell joined the party. [23]

The problem with these Atlantis statements is that they were questionable from the very start. At least three different scientists who went down to analyze the structure in depth came to the conclusion that it is natural. [24] The underwater structure is simply beachrock. Nobody even denies that; Atlantis-proponents just don't like to emphasize it. Eventually, in 1978, Eugene Shinn of the U.S. Geological Society carbon dated the structure to roughly 3,000 B.C. Furthermore, what are some of the basic characteristics of beachrock? It is located parallel along coastlines, usually a few meters offshore, and can be up to several kilometers long. It's also flat, anywhere from about 20 cm to 3 meters thick. Another characteristic is that it can crack and form small gaps. And finally, coastal erosion due to sea level rise can expose it. This is all basic information from Wikipedia and a few geological websites. Nothing fancy. It is very mainstream knowledge these days.

Above the reader can see some of the best and most impressive photos of Bimini "Road". Without the hype that has been generated, and without Cayce's readings, would anyone seriously believe that these structures are man-made? And if so, would anyone go as far to suggest that the "advanced" building techniques displayed here are so significant that we need to rewrite human history in the Americas? Unlikely. It all looks impressive and gives off an illusion of being man-made, but the rocks do not appear to be that perfectly laid down. Besides, where are all the other ruins? From the very beginning Cayce followers, including Bimini "Road" founder J. Manson Valentine, reported to have spotted these type of ruins too [25], but where are they? Where is the evidence? It's just not there. We are looking at natural formations.

In a way the beachrock at Bimini resembles a very rare and very impressive natural phenomenon called "tessellated pavement". It can be found in at least two places in southern Australia. Pictures of these formations can be seen below. The first two are from Tasmania. The last one is from Kuringai National Park on the Australian mainland.

Natural phenomena. Also see Giant's Causeway on Northern Ireland's coast at the top of this page.

The conclusion on Bimini Road? Almost 50 years of hype based on nothing.

Throughout the 1970s a primary founder of Bimini Road, zoologist J. Manson Valentine, claimed to be discovering other ruins around Bimini, including Egyptian-like pyramids. [26] He teamed up with Charles Berlitz, author of best sellers on Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, the Dragon's Triangle, the Philadelphia Experiment, doomsday prophecies, and Roswell. That last subject may well be the only truthful historical event he has ever written about, but Berlitz clearly distorts the subject by focusing on the extremely unreliable Socorro crash site, 200 miles away from where 80+ witness claim the real event took place. [27]

Valentine died in 1994, but his type of "unique" thinking has continued through colleagues, many of whom ended up as regulars on Art Bell in the 1990s. Today the Art Bell show is known as Coast to Coast AM. Night after night it continues to promote long-discredited ideas as the Bimini "Road", Atlantis, 12,000 year old Egyptian pyramids, pyramids on Mars and really even crazier ideas than that. All this is done by what really amounts to a family of misfits authors, many with very suspect ties to intelligence and various establishment figures. [28] The Coast to Coast AM network is also the biggest platform available to the Cayce Association to keep spreading its fantasies on Atlantis and Caribbean ruins. David Wilcock is very popular, of course. But Cayce Association leaders as Edgar Evans Cayce, John van Auken, Greg Little, and Kevin Todeschi have all been invited to Coast to Coast AM, often on a regular basis. [29] Here is an example from 2005, the words of Greg Little:

And here is Greg Little in 2013:

No matter what the evidence to the contrary, the Cayce cult and Coast to Coast AM will continue to lie to and manipulate millions of people. There's a whole set of outside authors and remote viewers at Coast to Coast AM who coincidentally just all happen to back up the claims of the Cayce Association. [32] But no matter what all these people claim, the fact is that the existence of underwater ruins around the Bimini or other Caribbean islands has never been proved. And certainly no pyramids or large buildings have ever been found.

But, you say, what about those ruins in Cuban waters? Well, let's see how credible these reports are. They parallel earlier claims of J. Manson Valentine which were never even remotely verified. But maybe, just maybe, the Cuban ruins are different.

The story begins in May 2001 when Reuters reports that Paulina Zelitsky and her husband, Paul Weinzweig, claim to have found a large underwater city -- complete with pyramids -- off the western tip of Cuba. [33] The couple is mapping the seabed around the island for Fidel Castro's government. This time the discovery is not made in shallow water, as was the case with Bimini "Road" in 1968, but at a depth of no less than 700 meters (2300 ft). Sonar images and a computer-generated 3D model accompany some of the articles that would be produced on the alleged discovery. In 2002 the Washington Post repeats the claims of Zelitsky and Weinzweig. [34]

While the articles at the time looked extremely promising, there never was any follow up in the English-language mainstream press. One person who did instantly dive onto the Cuban Atlantis story as soon as it was released in 2001 was Linda Moulton Howe, Coast to Coast AM's resident journalist on the "latest" in the field of cattle mutilations, UFOs, and ancient civilizations. In July 2002, Howe recorded the following words from Zelitsky:

Interestingly, Howe and Zelitsky have (or had) a supporter in the form of Manuel Iturralde Vinent, a Ph.D. geologist of the National Museum of Natural History in Havana. In 2007 Iturralde was appointed president of the Cuban Geological Society. Iturralde's words to Linda Howe in July 2002 were:

This was basically the first and last thing we heard from Iturralde on the alleged sunken city. He continues to be one of Cuba's most respected geological scientists, but appears to have never spoken about Cuba's Atlantis again. Howe also never did a follow up interview with Iturralde, even though the first results of the "polished granite" rock samples were expected to come in within two weeks. [37] Pictures or video of this "polished granite" have never been shown to the public either. Also, no evidence has ever been presented that demonstrates or indicates that the Yucatan Channel contained islands that have sunk in the past 15,000, 50,000 or 100,000 years. Mainstream science is of the opinion that the whole Gulf of Mexico was above water back in the Triassic and Jurassic eras, roughly 150 million years before present, and that's basically it. Detailed information on the period that the land bridge between the Yucatan and Cuba sank is not (freely) available to the public. It's up to Zelitsky to come with the evidence for her claim that islands here sank deep below the ocean in the relatively recent past. Of course, we're talking here about the deep areas, which is where the underwater Cuban city is supposed to be located - not the relatively shallow areas that submerged after the last ice age. The same burden of proof is on Zelitsky for her claim that "Cuba has submerged three times in our information of the islands." [38] her words are not backed up with any papers whatsoever. Sea levels have fluctuated heavily in the past, let's say, 500,000 years, but have never exceeded today's level. Is a volcanic eruption or tectonic shift responsible for Cuba's sinking and reappearance? Or are we talking about many tens of millions of years ago? It's really up to Zelitsky to provide her evidence.

In any case, the story disappeared after 2002. Both in the mainstream and the alternative, nothing new came out. Then, in July 2005, the regional Diario de Yucatan and Cuba's Guerrillero newspapers produced a status update: a new expedition was being prepared.

It's not clear what has become of this expedition. Nothing ever appeared on National Geographic or any other network. It took another five years, until November 2010, for the alleged discovery to reach the "mainstream" media again, this time in the form of a History Channel's "Ancient Aliens" episode. The problem? Even 10 years after the original discovery, absolutely zero new evidence was presented by the History Channel. The only ingredient that has changed is the quality of the computer-generated 3D model - which is no proof at all. Manuel Iturralde Vinent is not interviewed. Linda Howe, of course, does make an appearance. So does Andrew Collins, author of Gateway to Atlantis who has appeared twice on Coast to Coast AM. Then there is John Van Auken, a key figure in the Cayce Association and frequent guest at Coast to Coast AM. On the program Auken continues to present Bimini "Road" as something worthy of investigation, with Collins suggesting that the alleged ruins on the Cuban seafloor are "evidence for a prehistoric culture that would probably go back tens of thousands of years. And this might be very exciting indeed." [40]

Once again, how does the timeline given by Zelitsky, Van Auken, Collins and, to an extent, also by Iturralde, even remotely fit in with the historical timeline of the world that we know as a fact? A timeline that is based on archeological evidence from around the world, on carbon dating, and on genetic research? We know that Early Modern Humans (EMH)/Cro-Magnon crossed the Bering Strait about 15,000 B.C. It took another few thousand years at the most to generate a significant population in Central and South America. Only in 1,200 B.C. the Olmecs began to built cities. First San Lorenzo, around 1,200 B.C., centuries later followed by cities as Monte Alban and La Venta. Of course, History Channel's "Ancient Alien" program also did an episode on the South American ruins. Key guests included Edgar Cayce-incarnate David Wilcock and Graham Hancock. Do we need to say more? The History Channel has literally been plucking its guests from the Coast to Coast AM guest register for its "Ancient Aliens" program.

The thing is, there's nothing wrong with being open-minded, but it's highly irresponsible to provide a group of cultists with an influential and seemingly respectable scientific platform -- the History Channel -- and let them expound their ridiculously manipulative theories without even as much as pointing out that there is massive evidence to the contrary. Make no mistake, almost everything associated with the Coast to Coast AM radio show and the Cayce Association is a manipulative cult.

We've given a dozen examples already, but here's another: Linda Howe. In one of her early interviews with Zelitsky, she gets to hear that whatever is down at the seafloor, shows similarities with Aztec and Mayan ruins in Central America. Zelitsky explicitly denies any similarities with Greek not Egyptian architecture, artifacts or symbolism. Of course, Howe totally ignores that information and subsequently tries to convince her readers that one of the symbols is actually related to the Minoans [41], an Ancient Greek civilization going back to about 2,700 B.C. Then she rushes over to Ancient American magazine editor Frank Joseph. This may sound like a legitimate magazine, but the exact opposite is the case here. Joseph has written book after book about Plato's Atlantis and connections with the United States. One of his books is entitled.... here it comes... Edgar Cayce's Atlantis and Lemuria. There he is again: Edgar Cayce. You just can't escape him. Joseph has also helped to promote the 1909 hoax of a huge hidden cave with Egyptian hieroglyphics in the Grand Canyon. [42] Howe also quoted Joseph saying:

Dardanus was the son of Zeus and Electra in old Greek mythology. Here Joseph appears to have ben inspired by another old hoax article, one that appeared in William Randolph Hearst’s New York American in 1912, which claimed a link between Troy and Atlantis. [44] As already explained, the only source in existence on Atlantis is the conversation recorded by Plato - and we have already completely debunked this story.

Let's go wild here. Let's find out if there is anything unusual about the background of Paulina Zelitsky and her husband Paul Weinzweig. Let's see, Zelitsky is a Canadian. But she hasn't always been Canadian. She used to be a Soviet submarine engineer with a top secret clearance. Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s she was helping to build a top secret submarine base on Cuba. [45] In 1971 the KGB and GRU forcibly tried to recruit her, in part to become a "honey trap", but Zelitsky decided to defect to Canada instead. Here she met her future husband, the equally Jewish Paul Weinzweig. Weinzweig is the oldest son of prominent classical music composer John Weinzweig and best-selling author Helen Weinzweig. [46] Paul received his Ph.D. in sociology in 1970. After a period of "volunteer research work in West Africa at a community mental health project," he became a social sciences educator of some renown. [47] Ties to other prominent Canadian families as Bronfman, Desmarais and Maurice Strong are unknown, but in the late 1980s both Zelitsky and Weinzweig went to Russia and played roles in the "perestroika" movement. Zelitsky went here to help "forge the cooperation between Soviet and American submarine builders," [48] while Weinzweig was invited to Russia to promote his book The Ten Commandments Of Personal Power: Creative Strategies for Shared Happiness and Success, which was even turned into a 14-part TV series. [49] Fast forward in time: in 1999 Zelitsky and Weinzweig are contracted by Fidel Castro to map Cuba's waters. The reason for the company's existence has been stated openly:

The couple seemed to have no particular expertise in treasure hunting and deepwater exploration -- as the couple had only just set up their company, Advanced Digital Communications [51] -- but clearly Zelitsky had the right kind of background to venture into this arena. Certainly Zelitsky and Weinzweig didn't have to worry about American competition, as Cuba is still under a U.S. embargo, preventing U.S. companies from working with the Cuban government. Possibly on a side note, at least one group is trying to change this policy: the Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba, today known as the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association. Since 1998 the association promotes the reopening of economic and political ties with Cuba for the first time since corrupt dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by Castro in 1959. Directors since about 1998 include David Rockefeller and some of his closest friends as Paul Volcker, John Whitehead and Carla Hills; top level ex-CIA officers James Schlesinger and Frank Carlucci; reported illegal black operations veteran, Gen. Jack Sheehan; and JFK and 9/11 film maker Oliver Stone. [52]

Does Zelitsky know these people? Hard to say. Considering these names are part of the exact same old boys network that appears to run the Coast to Coast AM radio show [53], this might not be entirely irrelevant information. Also, when Zelitsky defected in 1971, Richard Helms, a close friend of David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger [54], was CIA director. James Angleton, later a ranking official in the radical American Security Council, still was the CIA's counterintelligence chief. Considering Zelitsky had extensive knowledge of the most important Soviet submarine base in Cuba, where at any one moment submarines with nuclear tipped ballistic missiles were present (a kind of permanent Cuban missile crisis), one would assume that Helms and Angleton at the very least knew who Zelitsky was.

Curiously, in volume II of her biography, The Sea is Only Knee Deep, Zelitsky feels the need to spread a little CIA propaganda along the lines of the 2006 German documentary Rendezvous with Death, which used anti-Castro CIA assets -- not to mention General Alexander Haig [55] -- to make the case that Castro was behind the Kennedy assassination.

These are some radical opinions. The main reason the Cubans downed the U-2, after observing it for more than an hour, was because commanders feared it had discovered a local Russian ICBM transport. The situation is little different from China, which shot down five U-2 spy planes over the course of 104 U.S. overflights. You overfly a foreign country, you run the risk of having your plane shot down. That's just what happens.

Then the question can be asked why Castro allowed the ICBMs on Cuban soil. The main reason appears to be that he feared a U.S. invasion, which is exactly what the CIA leadership and Joint Chiefs were trying to provoke at the time, elements that became allied in the private American Security Council. They were praying for the day that Castro (and earlier the Soviet Union) would react to the numerous sabotage and outright terrorist actions of anti-Castro Cuban militias as Alpha 66. It is also these men who came up with the notorious Operation Northwoods, calling for false flag operations to justify an invasion of Cuba.

Also, as documented by this site, all leads in the JFK assassination point to this radical right-wing U.S. group, most notably Ted Shackley, a life-long protege of Richard Helms and the head of JM/WAVE, the CIA's anti-Castro CIA station in Miami at the time of the assassination. That's the same Shackley later reported to be in touch with anti-"communosocialist" assassins and terrorists of the Italian P2 Lodge, acting as an intermediary for Alexander Haig. [57] Of course, ever since ISGP found out that Shackley ran Le Cercle, this makes a ton of sense. Haig's name also showed up as an insider in the Jonestown Cult, another, seemingly a CIA MKULTRA-type mind control operation. [58] The fact is, Shackley and his colleagues at the CIA wanted an invasion of Cuba and at the very least a hardline stance against the Soviet Union. That's why they had Oswald hand out pro-Castro leaflets and most likely that's also why they sent him to the Soviet Union. The only thing that prevented an invasion of Cuba in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination is the fact that there were other powerful forces in the government, mainly tied to the State Department, who preferred a diplomatic solution to Cuba.

The Kennedy brothers were Castro's best friends in the U.S. government. They followed a policy aimed at reducing tensions with the Soviet Union, then under the rule of the radical Nikita Khrushchev, and did what they could to restrain CIA-sanctioned raids of anti-Castro (often pro-Batista) Cuban exile militias against Cuba. They were the ones who caused the certain failure of the CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion by withdrawing air support at the last moment. Of course, the CIA and Joint Chiefs knew that the militants could never succeed on their own. They were hoping for was a protracted conflict on the Cuban island that sooner or later would drag in the United States on the side of militants. Obviously the Kennedy brothers were completely despised by the CIA, the Joint Chiefs, the anti-Castro militants -- not to mention the mafia -- in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. So to suggest that Castro was behind the Kennedy assassination is absolutely beyond ridiculous. If the dictator wanted war, obviously followed by certain defeat, he could have provoked it at a moment's notice.

Zelitsky has made other interesting statements in her biography. From volume I of The Sea is Only Knee Deep:

It's increasingly hard to argue that Putin is any kind of benign leader, although it cannot be denied that he has been much better for the Russian people than Yeltsin, who allowed the Russian mafia and oligarchs to destroy and plunder the country. He even joined them in the process. Would Zelitsky ever point this fact out? Unlikely. So even though she may largely be right in her words about Putin's Russia, there's no balance in her opinions. Also, she takes a remarkable interest in geopolitical strategy between the U.S. and Russia, an area of expertise generally reserved for foreign policy experts and intelligence agents.

Ironically, without knowing anything about her background, ISGP initially went looking for a connection with former CIA director James Woolsey, a person who occupies a second place in ISGP's Superclass Index, due to involvement in more than 80 different NGOs, almost all of them related to national security with a distinctly Israeli or neoconservative flavor. Woolsey also has very close behind-the-scenes connections to the Coast to Coast AM radio show [59] and has been mentioned in relation to the cover up of conspiracy-related matters. [60] Woolsey basically appears to be the key CIA handler of neoconservative American Zionists and a key liaison to the Israeli national security state. The way things are beginning to look at this point, Zelitsky would probably get along quite well with Woolsey.

And there's still more to discuss. A few overlooked and almost forgotten articles reveal that in 2009 Zelitsky was arrested immediately after her plane landed in Mexico City. Apparently she had gone in business with a politically-influential, but very questionable Mexican family, who wanted to force her into paying back an earlier investment. [61] How she managed to get out of Mexico is quite a story:

These articles about Zelitsky's James Bond adventures reveal a few other interesting facts. Back when she discovered the Cuban ruins, newspapers and Linda Howe only described her as running "Advanced Digital Communications, or ADC, with offices in both Victoria, British Columbia, and Havana, Cuba. Her specialty is deep ocean exploration." [63] Maybe in the early 2000s that was her only line of work. But by 2009 she was also running a company with a different kind of specialty:

That's quite a bit of interesting information. PEMEX is Mexico's state oil company. Back in 2009 it provided the Mexican government with 40% of its annual income. [65] Since then this percentage has gone down to about one-third, due to declining oil reserves. [66] A bigger problem in this case is that the Mexican government and PEMEX officials stand accused of having laundered billions of dollars in oil revenues for their own personal profit. [67] Why would people with so much power hire Zelitsky as a consultant? One would think positions like that are reserved for trusted individuals only.

The question is also how deep elements of the U.S. government are involved in the PEMEX corruption, as it seems that back in the 1980s the CIA, undoubtedly through groups as the American Security Council, was running much of the Direccion Federal de Seguridad (the Federal Security Directorate controlling various cartels) and various cartel heads, all in conjunction with the Mexican government itself. [68] This was all done under the guise of fighting communist and socialist influences, as the American Security Council was doing worldwide, usually in conjunction with death squad leaders and other drug traffickers.

The post-Cold War neocon continuation of the American Security Council is the Center for Security Policy, where James Woolsey has served as co-chairman and whose founder, along with at least one other board member, have connections to Coast to Coast AM. In any case, Woolsey always shows up in oil, gas and alternative energy issues in relation to national security. At Booz Allen Hamilton, where Woolsey could be found as one of its vice presidents in the 2002-2008 period, his specialty was described as "energy and security issues." [69] He can or could also be found at ViZn Energy Systems (Zinc Air), the Energy Future Coalition, the American Council On Renewable Energy, and Securing America's Future Energy (SAFE).

Even more important, in 2011 Woolsey was a key founder of the U.S. Energy Security Council, which falls under the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS). The magazine of the IAGS and U.S. Energy Security Council is the Journal of Energy Security. In 2011 it described the importance of PEMEX and the problems surrounding the company. According to the magazine, "Thanks to [the supergiant] Cantarell [oil field], Mexico became, after Canada, the United States' most trusted supplier of foreign oil." [70] Clearly this is a strong hint that America's national security establishment has a deep interest in guaranteeing PEMEX's continued, uninterrupted existence. At the same time it seems clear that we are talking about massive corruption at PEMEX.

So, even though a direct link between Woolsey and Zelitsky cannot be established, one important question to ask is what Zelitsky is doing in these high government and big business circles. Is it just a coincidence that a person like this comes up with a still unconfirmed discovery that has been refueling Atlantis theories for well over a decade now? She certainly has gotten herself into a strange situation with this discovery, her questionable geological remarks, her association with Coast to Coast AM "journalists" as Linda Howe, followed by her James Bond adventures with powerful and questionable Mexicans. She never quit the security business either. Today she is still involved in "perimeter security" and something called the "Pipelines Security Group" [71], about which no further information can be found. Has she met with former CIA directors Richard Helms, James Woolsey, John Deutch, or James Schlesinger? Impossible to say for sure, but she definitely shares (or shared) one important passion with them: pipeline security.

What conclusion to draw about Zelitsky? Very little, except that she doesn't seem to be the most trustworthy individual. Even besides the fact that Atlantis never existed, we shouldn't be surprised at all if absolutely nothing can be found in the Cuban depths: no ruins, no artifacts, no strange inscriptions - nothing. Keep in mind, it's been fourteen years now after the initial discovery and absolutely no evidence has been produced.

Update: I must be psychic. As it turns out, Shackley's private CIA network, largely working through George H. W. Bush, has been infiltrating PEMEX and the Mexican president's office since the 1960s. These operations were very successful. Through the family of an agent with the name Ricardo Chavez, they were able to recruit numerous people at the top of PEMEX, not to mention the Mexican president himself. In 1976 Mexican president Jose Lopez Portillo put CIA agent Jorge Diaz Serrano in charge of PEMEX, a position he kept until 1981. [72] Two years later Diaz Serrano was arrested and eventually convicted of embezzling $54 million, $34 million of which had gone into his own pocket. [73] In other words, the controversy surrounding PEMEX began with a CIA takeover of the company. Would Shackley's group and the CIA have let go of PEMEX? Doubtful. Zelitsky seems clear-cut evidence that CIA-controlled contracts are still flowing towards PEMEX, as they did in the 1970s and 1980s.

Yes, I'm going say it: until proven otherwise, in my book Zelitsky is CIA.

Anybody who carefully reads the original story of Atlantis and compares it to the knowledge that we have today about geology, archeology, and genome research, should come to the conclusion that Atlantis has never existed. More than likely the Ancient Egyptians did a little creative story-telling to endear the Greek ruler Solon to the them. The evidence for this conclusion is overwhelming and already discussed at the very beginning of this article.

Now that we know the Atlantis story is a complete fabrication, maybe the primary question should be why a giant radio show as Coast to Coast AM, in cooperation with the Cayce Association and History Channel's Ancient Aliens program, continues to promote the story of Atlantis. Is it about money? Or is there more to the story? In any case, with Zelitsky and her husband - reportedly another Cayce enthusiast [74] - helping to provide the necessary fuel for these theories, the quest for an Atlantis that never existed will probably continue for many years to come.