Our Unknown Ancient Past

The Pleiades is the most obvious cluster to the naked eye in the night sky. This Greek name, according to the Oxford dictionary, probably derives from plein ("to sail") because of the cluster's importance in delimiting the sailing season in the Mediterranean Sea: "the season of navigation began with their heliacal rising". The earliest-known depiction of the Pleiades is the Nebra sky disk, a Northern German Bronze Age artifact of 1600 BC. According to Greek mythology the Pleiades were seven sisters, whose father was the Titan Atlas. Those were Maia (mother of Hermes), Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope and Merope, the youngest of the Pleiades who faded away because she was becoming mortal as a result of having married Sisyphus. In my book I discussed how these seven daughters of Atlas "gave birth to prominent sons, others of which became founders of nations and others founders of cities", as Diodorus Siculus put it. I also noted the suspiciou...

Plato, in his story of Atlantis, says that ships from all over the world were visiting the busy port of Atlantis in order to trade. Skeptics find this idea of primitive seafaring absurd and, for them, it is one more reason why Atlantis could never have existed. Archaeological findings in the areas of Plakias and Preveli of Crete, attributed to Homo Heidelbergensis and Homo Erectus, show that these two species had reached Crete by sea 130.000 to 700.000 years ago . The Paleolithic positions which were investigated were in caves that at that time were coastal. It is worth noting here that Crete has been an island for the past 5 million years and it was also quite far from the nearest land. The sea level might have been lower back then compared to today, but the sea is so deep in that area that the change in sea level does not have such a great effect on the distance from Peloponnese (the nearest Greek mainland) to Crete. And while there are a couple of islands (Kythera and Antikythera) i...