Author Uses Google Earth to Assert Conspiracy to Steal Treasures of Atlantis

Have you been waiting patiently for Atlantis to be discovered? Are you tired of looking in places where Plato said it might be, such as beyond the Pillars of Hercules? If so, you might be interested in the latest news coming from Joseph Daniel Brady, an independent researcher who published Atlantis: The ReNamed (sic) Island in 2010. According to Brady, an unknown person or organization is systematically suppressing his evidence for the lost treasure of Atlantis, and he updated his book last month to reflect these shocking developments.

Brady presents a convoluted historical narrative that seeks to identify Plato’s Atlantis with the area between Lemnos and Anatolia. His evidence for this comes from Pausanias, who presents the following narrative of Chryse in his Description of Greece at 8.33.4:

The following incident proves the might of fortune to be greater and more marvellous than is shown by the disasters and prosperity of cities. No long sail from Lemnos was once an island Chryse, where, it is said, Philoctetes met with his accident from the water-snake. But the waves utterly overwhelmed it, and Chryse sank and disappeared in the depths. Another island called Hiera (Sacred) . . . was not during this time. So temporary and utterly weak are the fortunes of men. (trans. W. H. S. Jones)

Brady sees this as analogous to the destruction of Atlantis as given by Plato in the Timaeus: “But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea” (trans. Benjamin Jowett).

Superficially, of course, the narratives seem similar. The trouble is that Chryse doesn’t match Plato’s description in one key aspect: It was still above the waves when Plato wrote. Pausanias speaks of the destruction of the island as being relatively recent, and we know from Appian’s Mithridatic Wars (77) that the island was the site of a battle between the Romans and Mithradites VI Eupator of Pontus in 73 BCE.

Technically, this is an inference. Appian describes the place not by name but as the island “where the altar of Philoctetes is shown with the brazen serpent, the bows, and the breastplate bound with fillets, to remind us of the sufferings of that hero” (trans. Horace White). The location of this “barren island near Lemnos” correlates with Pausanias’ description of Chryse as the spot where Philoctetes died, as well as references to Philoctetes’ death in Greek literature dating back to the Iliad.

Obviously, Plato could not possibly have written about the destruction of Chryse before it happened, unless we attribute to him psychic powers and also dump 90% of the Timaeus.

Brady goes on to identify Chryse with Biblical references to Tyre, which he prefers not to view as the Phoenician city but rather as Atlantis. He cites Ezekiel 28 as evidence that the Jews spoke also of a great city felled by disaster:

Through your widespread trade
    you were filled with violence,
    and you sinned.
So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God,
    and I expelled you, guardian cherub,
    from among the fiery stones.

Your heart became proud
    on account of your beauty,
and you corrupted your wisdom
    because of your splendor.
So I threw you to the earth;
    I made a spectacle of you before kings. (28:16-17)

Ezekiel described the destruction as fire rather than water, but: details!

According to a press release Brady sent out last week, Lemnos, Tyre, and Troy were all along the outer ring of the vanished island of Atlantis, which was Chryse:

Plato writes that a harbor was located within the straits, near the Island, and that this harbor was filled in by the subsidence of the Island. Homer's Illiad describes a bay at Troy inside the Dardanelle Straits that no longer exists. Therefore, Atlantis' gold treasures are likely under the plain at Troy and in the labyrinth on Lemnos Island. Evidence exits that the Ark of the Covenant is one of these treasures.

On Lemnos, Brady refers to satellite images of the island to identify what he thinks are artificial lakes lined with Atlantean gold and a giant geoglyph of a satyr. He did not, of course, visit Lemnos to confirm the existence of what look for all the world like satellite artifacts. He likens the white color of one of the lakes to Zechariah 9:3, describing Tyre: “Tyre has built herself a stronghold; she has heaped up silver like dust, and gold like the dirt of the streets.”

He then noted that a more recent satellite photograph failed to turn up the same images and consequently believes that a shadowy conspiracy has seized control of the treasures of Atlantis: “Someone appears to be seizing the gold and silver hoard of the Atlantis’ labyrinth treasury.”

Now here’s the thing: Lake Aliki on Lemnos isn’t actually a lake, much less a gold-lined artificial one. Instead, Lake Aliki is a saltwater marsh that geographic sources report is actually wet only part of the year. The remainder of the time, it is dry. Clearly, there isn’t any gold there or someone might have seen it before now. Brady makes much of the white color of the lake on a Google satellite image, but this is isn’t because it’s reflecting gold. It’s because the marsh is very shallow and is, in this image, actually depicted during the dry period. It isn’t even “white” in color. How do I know this? Let’s compare.

Here is how Brady presents the satellite image in his book, with washed out colors and little contrast from a scan of a printout of the original image:

Here is the same image taken directly from Google Earth:

The details of marsh bed are rather obvious, and it clearly is not lined with gold, for if it were, it would be reflecting sunlight to the point that it would blind the satellite camera. You can go to Google Earth or Google Maps to view the area yourself.