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Review of "Meet Me in Atlantis" by Mark Adams

4/3/2015

16 Comments

 
It should probably not come as news that the latest book examining the legend of Atlantis contains no roadmap to the lost city, and no new evidence for its existence. However, the destination is not always as important as the journey, and the trip to Atlantis can be fun and fascinating in its own right. Mark Adams is a New York Times bestselling author whose previous travel book, Turn Right at Machu Picchu (unread by me), earned praise for its light tone and entertaining examination of the history of Peru’s most famous tourist attraction. His new book is called Meet Me in Atlantis: My Obsessive Quest to Find the Sunken City, and it pulls something of a bait and switch on the reader, though not without reason. While the book’s title suggests that it’s about his search for Atlantis, this isn’t really the case at all. At its core, it’s a book about the people who devote their lives to finding—and failing to find—Plato’s city.
First, a word of disclosure: Adams offered me a review copy of Meet after I wrote about an interview he gave to National Geographic. His publisher, Dutton, which sent me the copy by overnight shipment, is part of the Penguin Random House group, which distributes my book, The Cult of Alien Gods, internationally by arrangement with Prometheus Books.

In Meet Adams profiles a number of researchers who together comprise the modern Atlantis research community. These men—and they are almost all men, and nearly all middle aged or older—know one another and snipe at each other over the many and varied reasons that their hypotheses about Atlantis can’t be true. Their internecine disputes remind me of the crack about the atheist telling the Christian that he simply believes in one fewer god—Here, I find, that I simply believe in one fewer Atlantis location than any of the men in the book. The men involved include such familiar figures as Richard Freund, the Jewish studies professor who hijacked a Spanish archaeological excavation and turned it into a much-reviled National Geographic documentary, Finding Atlantis, claiming that Atlantis was in Spain and was also the Biblical city of Tarshish; Tony O’Connell, the author of the Atlantipedia website; Anton Mifsud, the advocate of the Atlantis-in-Malta theory; and several more.

Adams frames their relationships through the two guiding lights he uses in his search: Freund’s Finding Atlantis NatGeo documentary, on which several appeared or against which they have written, and Atlantipedia, which is Adams’s most important source for research. At one level, Meet Me in Atlantis is a book-length reaction to Finding Atlantis, the program Adams credits (obliquely) with sparking his interest in seeking out the continent. The documentary’s shadow hangs heavily over the volume from beginning to end, often cited by name. This isn’t a flaw—my own books are often reactions, too. Knowing Fear responded to David Skal’s Monster Show, and my Jason and the Argonauts responded, in a sense, to Robert Temple’s Sirius Mystery.

Adams profiles each of the self-proclaimed Atlantis experts, offering portraits of their personalities and the blind spots that prevent them from seeing the bigger picture beyond their pet theories. Tony O’Connell is friendly and personable but clearly fancies himself the arbiter of acceptable evidence. Richard Freund is ebullient but self-important. The late Michael Hüber possessed Teutonic overconfidence in mathematical precision. Rainer Kühne described his obsession with Atlantis as stemming from his Asperger’s Syndrome, and credited an Uncle Scrooge comic book with starting his obsession at age 10. And on it goes, one “expert” after another depicted as seeing himself (or, more rarely, herself) as possessed of the true secret of Atlantis. This part of Adams’s book is fascinating, and it illuminates, without quite meaning to, the web of connections that form to the alternative history community and the outsiders who devote their time, energy, and (often) money to standing against what they perceive as close-minded academics.

Adams repeats many times—and quotes scholars as claiming—that research on Atlantis is frowned upon, discouraged, or forbidden in the halls of academia. This seems to contradict a JSTOR search, which finds more than 7,000 academic articles mentioning Atlantis between the late 1800s and today, with more than 1,200 of them being about Plato’s Atlantis (as opposed to the space shuttle, Bacon’s New Atlantis, etc.). Granted, most articles assume, due to the lack of evidence, that the story is a fiction. The trouble seems to be that people who think they’ve found Atlantis perceive opposition to their claims as a blanket prohibition on examining the Atlantis narrative through any lens.

But that is only part of the story. Adams devotes much of his book to exploring and evaluating the various claims and counterclaims for the location of Atlantis, focusing primarily on Freund’s Spanish theory, the late Michael Hübner’s Moroccan theory, Mifsud’s Malta theory, and the more widely accepted candidates of Santorini and Helike in Greece. Adams shows himself to be a skeptical inquirer, picking apart the flaws in each claim while still holding out hope that there is truth behind the overall vision of Atlantis presented in Plato. Needless to say, he found Atlantis in none of these locations.

It is to his credit that he can, for a time, create a willing suspension of disbelief where it seems just possible that there may have been a historical reality beneath Plato’s allegorical accounts in the Timaeus and Critias, the oldest (and only) primary sources for the Atlantis legend.

However, it is here that the book’s greatest flaw becomes apparent. Adams is no scholar, classical or otherwise, and while he has gathered an enormous number of claims about Atlantis from the past 150 years or so, his discussion skates lightly on the surface of the literature. He freely admits, for example, that he did not understand Plato, and he appears to make no effort to consult any other ancient authors except Aristotle. His knowledge of Atlantis theories and Atlantis literature is overly reliant on what other people tell him, and this means that his views and interpretations are filtered through an extra layer, the biases and misconceptions of the Atlantis believers and mainstream scholars he interviews. Thus, for example, that he knows the hoax text attributed to Eumalos of Cyrene primarily through what true believer Anton Mifsud tells him. He recognizes it as a hoax (or, more accurately, hoax-adjacent) but does not or cannot articulate the reasons why, seemingly for not having read it. (He quotes a sentence or two, almost certainly provided to him by Mifsud.)

A better example makes clearer where Adams’s reliance on secondary sources leaves his book feeling in places a bit superficial. At two points in the book he quotes Aristotle as saying that “He who invented Atlantis also destroyed it,” and the second time he explains that Thorwald Franke argued in a self-published book that the quotation came from “a conflation of two similar-sounding passages” in Strabo’s Geography. OK, so what are they? What does this tell us about Aristotle’s actual views?

For the record, the two quotes run as follows. First, Strabo discusses why Posidonius believed in Atlantis, and compares Posidonius’ reliance on Plato’s authority to a line about Homer’s wall of the Achaeans (Iliad 12.1-33), a wall of which no trace has ever been found: “Posidonius thinks it better to quote this than to say, ‘He who brought it into existence can also cause it to disappear, as the poet did the wall of the Achivi’” (Geography 2.3.6, trans. Hamilton & Falconer). The “conflation” is actually a joint reading of this exact line with an allusion to it later in the Geography at 13.1.36: “…perhaps no wall was built and the erection and destruction of it, as Aristotle says, are due to the invention of the poet.” Thus, the inference is that Aristotle said Atlantis was fictitious. This is, strictly speaking, only an inference, and it depends on weight you place onto whether the “it” in the first quote originally referred to Atlantis or was merely meant to refer to any fictitious creation.

Similarly, Adams prefers a quick, punchy story to the more complex underlying facts. In one passage he briefly tells of Maxine Asher’s failed 1973 Pepperdine University search for Atlantis in Spain. Adams presents it as a wacky hippie adventure, but as I discovered years ago, this actually rose to the level of an international incident that involved members of Congress (particularly Sen. Alan Craston of California), the State Department, and officials up to Sec. of State Henry Kissinger:
The expedition, led by self-proclaimed “psychic” and Pepperdine audio-video specialist Maxine Asher, then 42, received support from members of Congress, who pressured the Nixon administration to lobby the fascist Spanish government of Francisco Franco for unusual access to the waters off Cadiz. The result of the extraordinary intervention of the American ambassador roused the suspicions of the Spanish government, who in turn decided that such high-level interest must have meant that the boatload of New Age hippies was instead a front for a secret spy mission.
(You can read the State Department telegrams about the incident here.)

By playing the story for laughs, Adams misses out on some of the darker consequences of fringe history. And this is true at many stages of the book, where secondhand information and lack of detail prevented Adams from tying together some of the connections that would have made his book deeper and richer, closer to, say, the richness of David King’s Finding Atlantis (Harmony, 2005) or the analytical depth of Paul Jordan’s The Atlantis Syndrome (Sutton, 2001). I know Adams is aiming for a popular audience, but that should not preclude presenting all the facts.

In fact, while he dutifully if briefly reports on racist interpretations of fringe history, he is rather quiet on the social purposes to which the Atlantis story has been put over the centuries. And here I think is the greatest missed opportunity. Regardless of the truth of the Atlantis story, it has served as a reflection for the cultures that have engaged with it. In Plato’s day it was an allegory for how an empire fails. In the Age of Exploration, it was (as Adams notes) a way of understanding the New World but also (as he does not) a justification for European colonization of the Americas, with figures like Francisco López de Gómara and John Dee competing to claim parts of “Atlantis” for the Spanish and British empires respectively. In the Age of Enlightenment, Atlantis was a symbol of the failure of monarchy, swept away by the tides; or, scientific proof of Noah’s Flood. For the Victorians Atlantis became the precedent for imperialism and colonialism, a mythic predecessor to universal (Euro-American and white) Empire. Today in the fractured modern world it again serves as a cautionary tale of failed greatness, a technological paradise that bestrode the world as a colossus and yet somehow could not escape the sands of time and the winds of fate, or the wrath of nature. Adams decontextualizes Atlantis theories, and in so doing decouples them from the social forces that drive the hunt for Atlantis.

This connects back to the biggest difference I have with the author. For the most part, I agree with his conclusions—which are that Atlantis is largely a fiction, an allegory of Plato’s, but one that may have been informed by real life events, like the destruction of Helike, remembered in history and myth. (I’d favor assigning inspiration to Near Eastern Flood myths, but that’s just me.) But I disagree wholeheartedly with the idea that Plato, writing around 360 BCE had access to his ancestor Solon’s well-preserved and accurate notes about what Egyptian priests told him around 600 BCE. Adams believes this because Plato makes his characters, particularly Critias, assert that the story is true—but as should be plain, Critias’ words are fictional and can’t be taken literally. Indeed, other ancient writers said similar things about obviously untrue stories. Euhemerus pretended that his voyage to Panchaea was true (Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 2.2), and most ludicrously Lucian titled his second century CE tale of a voyage to the moon the True History, though he happily admitted it was fiction. Lucian, though, helps to explain what Plato was doing when he relates in the introduction to the True History that “Many other writers have adopted the same plan, professing to relate their own travels, and describing monstrous beasts, savages, and strange ways of life. […] When I come across a writer of this sort, I do not much mind his lying; the practice is much too well established for that, even with professed philosophers; I am only surprised at his expecting to escape detection” (trans. Fowler and Fowler).

And yet somehow, uniquely, Plato has done just that with Atlantis.

To that end, Adams tries to make the case that Noah’s Flood really happened (citing comets, meteors, and tsunamis) and that Atlantis truly was the antediluvian world, praising Immanuel Velikovsky for rehabilitating catastrophism even while formally debunking his planetary claims. He brings in Charles Hapgood’s claims about the prehistoric accuracy of Renaissance-era maps, which Adams only partially debunks because he does not or cannot read the Latin legends on the maps that clearly explain their mundane origins. (Kircher’s Atlantis map clearly states it simply illustrates Plato, while Oronteus Finaeus’s map of “Antarctica” just as clearly states it is a new map with speculative details and information drawn from recent Spanish explorations of Tierra del Fuego, which Finaeus mistakenly assumed was part of the mythic southern continent Terra Australis.) It does not follow that if catastrophism were true that Atlantis were real.

So in the end, Adams has produced a compulsively readable book that tells us what today’s generation of Atlantis researchers is currently up to and how their myopia has left them overconfident about ideas that are flawed and often absurd. Yet I can’t help but feel that Meet Me in Atlantis could have been a bit more than a popular portrait of fringe subculture if it had layered a little more specificity of detail to fill out its impressionistic narrative and to let the reader feel that its author came to the right conclusion from more thorough research and a mastery of the facts rather than the men who told him many of the facts secondhand. It’s a book that I’m glad I read, but I can’t imagine turning to for reference.
16 Comments
Shane Sullivan
4/3/2015 11:34:17 am

Thanks for taking the time to review this book, I've been looking forward to it.

Reply
Coridan
4/4/2015 12:51:11 am

I have always been a firm believer that Atlantis was "based on a true story" like Dante's Peak was based on Mt. St. Helen, Atlantis was based on Thera/Santorini and the Minoans.

Reply
Jamie Eckles
4/5/2015 06:11:47 am

There is so much that fits, the way the Minoan civilization was subsequently destroyed by the devastation the eruption wrought and how the Greeks moved in and took over what was left.

Reply
Titus pullo
4/4/2015 02:40:46 am

Thanks jason, I might download the book and read on my next business trip. Funny but I can relate to having to listen to authorities who not only have the answer but are feuding with other folks of similar beliefs at local political meetings I've been to over the years. Go to a libertarian meeting and pretty soon you have everyone yelling at each other on the proper interpretation of the role of govt. love libertarians but but ten in a room and watch the fun.

Reply
Hypatia
4/4/2015 07:40:14 am

Instructive review, thank you. I probably will read the book some nice sunny day, as well as some of the other ones on the topic you pointed out.

And yes, Plato </font size="huge"> lied </font>.
Who ever believed that his Socrates represented the real words spoken by Socrates? Not Xenophon.

Plato placed his Atlantis at the 'end of the world' as he and his contemporaries knew it, just like people write allegories, tales and myths today about far away stars and galaxies. Some people take those seriously. Scientologists and perhaps Mormons come to mind, as well as Ancient Alienists.

The extensive details of the architecture of the city suggest that, even if copied from knowledge about Minoa, he really enjoyed making up his dream architecture, giving it precise descriptions in cubits dimensions, in materials and in resources, just like people were describing what would be their new Jerusalem temple at the end of days.

And before the colonialist expansion of the Greeks with their Mediterranean navy, it's obvious there also were other ships in that sea which were roaming, looting or settling, in-between the volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis.

His further allegory is that he made Atlantis sink. They had everything, dream city, dream land, instructions from God to keep it running smoothly, but they blew it. Ach, if Plato had been there, none of this would have happened.

Reply
Jamie Eckles
4/5/2015 06:14:09 am

I bet he placed it "beyond the pillars of Hercules" just to play with people.

Reply
terry the censor
4/20/2015 08:36:29 pm

> Who ever believed that [Plato's] Socrates represented the real words spoken by Socrates? Not Xenophon.

To be fair, Xenophon has his own issues as a biographical source. If I remember correctly (it's been about 15 years since I read it), in the first few chapters of the Memorabilia, X gives us a rather idealised, almost too perfect Socrates (this reads like mere PR). The remaining chapters have an increasingly scattered portrait of an increasingly normal man who does not much resemble the saintly fellow in the opening pages.

It's tricky.

Reply
Hypatia
4/21/2015 04:47:57 am

Not surprising that the students would have life long issues with their masters since it was an accepted practice for the masters to use their adolescent student boys as sexual servants. My point was that there are different accounts and Plato made up his own Socrates too.

Thorwald C. Franke link
4/13/2015 06:33:25 am

It is true, Mark Adams' book is no academic work, yet it was not intended to be one. It is more a lighthearted and popularizing approach to a question which is known to everybody -- yet only few ever set on track to find answers beyond authoritative statements of skeptic scholars or believing gurus. And this is exactly what Adams does, he starts investigating, and I like this.

Naturally, Mark Adams' book is about people searching for Atlantis, but not only. Adams also interviews skeptics and experts of special branches of science without a special interest in Atlantis. And he reports what he read in books. And of course, Mark Adams let us know what he thinks himself.

I wonder about your impression that "Finding Atlantis" was like a "shadow" over this book. This was not my impression. Maybe because I do not see it because I never cared about "Finding Atlantis" ...

Adams does not generally state that scholars refuse to talk about Atlantis, since some of his meetings are with such scholars. Yet I suggest to take the complaints seriously: The refusal of considering Atlantis to be a real place often -- not always -- shows characteristics of a dogma instead of a well-founded teaching. I have my own experiences. After having read dozens and dozens of the mentioned thousands (?) of academic articles claiming that Atlantis is an invention, I have a better idea why this is the case: There is no sufficient foundation for this claim, but a lot of fringe ideas, only "the other way round". You wouldn't believe how manyfold and crazy and self-contradictory the interpretations of this allegedly "obvious allegory" are ... there is no such thing like a common, unified and agreed invention theory opposed to a wild zoo of fringe location theories. If academic agreement concerns only on the *one* thing, that it is an invention, this is not sufficient.

I laughed about the alleged "analytical depth" of Paul Jordan’s Atlantis Syndrome ... this was a good joke! Yet I did not laugh when you applied Lukian's citation on lying authors straightforwardly to Plato ... this is such a typical superficial view on Plato which is not able to provide any reliable argument. The same is true for Theopompus' Meropis, Euhemerus' Panchaia, Thomas More's Utopia, Harrington's Oceana, Allais' Severambia, and others.

True is that Mark Adams says only few words about history of Atlantis research. But this was not his topic. My complaint would rather be that Mark Adams did not enough to unmask the superficiality of skeptic scholars. As you pointed out, the alleged word of Aristotle is first introduced as a fact in an interview with a skeptic, and only many chapters later it is questioned.

Concerning Aristotle's opinion I disagree to provide the impression that the wide-spread word has a likelihood of 50:50 to be a word of Aristotle. I would rather say it has a likelihood of almost zero. It takes a whole book to present the argument, so I wrote it. It is one of the few things Mark Adams found straightforwardly convincing which makes me proud. Read the opinions of others on the book here: http://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_aristotle.htm

Reply
Rainer Walter Kühne link
5/4/2016 05:16:59 am

Well, I think that the statement "Rainer Kühne described his obsession with Atlantis as stemming from his Asperger’s Syndrome, and credited an Uncle Scrooge comic book with starting his obsession at age 10." is hardly correct.

Correct is that my interest in Atlantis started with an Uncle Scrooge comic book that I read at age ten. Correct is also that I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. However, my work in Atlantis has a solid scientific basis.

http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/kuhne300/

I have a scientific background. In the following I post my curriculum vitae which includes some 400 internet links as references.


My profile pages:

ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rainer_Kuehne

Academia.edu: http://independent.academia.edu/RainerKuehne

Mendeley: https://www.mendeley.com/profiles/rainer-walter-khne/

CiteULike: http://www.citeulike.org/profile/RainerKuehne

arxiv.org: http://arxiv.org/a/kuhne_r_1.atom

vixra.org: http://vixra.org/author/rainer_w_kuhne

Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.de/citations?hl=de&user=W_OUOaEAAAAJ

INSPIRE: http://inspirehep.net/author/profile/R.W.Kuhne.1

Scopus: http://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.url?authorId=16487830600

Microsoft: http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Author/49006675/rainer-w-kuhne

Microsoft: http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Author/19272050/rainer-w-kuhne

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Rainer-Walter-K%C3%BChne/100008446721134

Google plus: https://plus.google.com/107224703787078712934/

LinkedIn: http://de.linkedin.com/pub/rainer-kuehne/85/474/573

Stayfriends: http://www.stayfriends.de/Personen/Braunschweig/Dr_-Rainer-Kuehne-P-7826-P

Twitter: https://twitter.com/rainer_w_kuehne

Xing: https://www.xing.com/profile/RainerWalter_Kuehne


****************************************************
Curriculum Vitae and Publication List of,
and Media Reports on Rainer Walter Kühne
****************************************************

Note:

PDF-files of my certificates and publications can be found via
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rainer_Kuehne

A list of the publications which cite my publications can be found via
http://scholar.google.de/citations?hl=de&user=W_OUOaEAAAAJ

**********************************
1. Curriculum Vitae
**********************************

**************************
1.1. Academic Tree
**************************

*************************************
1.1.1. Diploma Thesis
*************************************

1. Rainer Walter Kühne: Betrachtungen zur von David Hestenes eingeführten Raumzeit-Algebra. Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, 1995. Supervizor: Wolfgang Kundt, second examiner: Wolfram Neutsch.

2. Wolfgang Kundt: Methoden zur Charakterisierung von Lösungen der Einsteinschen Gravitationsfeldgleichungen. Universität Hamburg, 1958. Supervizor: Pascual Jordan.

3. Pascual Jordan: Zur Theorie der Quantenstrahlung. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 1925. Supervizor: Max Born.

4. Max Born: Untersuchungen ueber Stabilitaet der elastischen Linie in Ebene und Raum unter verschiedenen Grenzbedingungen. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 1906. Supervizor: Carl David Tolmé Runge.

5. Carl David Tolmé Runge: Über die Krümmung, Torsion und geodätische Krümmung der auf einer Fläche gezogenen Curven. Universität Berlin, 1880. Supervizor: Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstraß, second examiner: Ernst Eduard Kummer.

6. Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstraß: Über die Entwicklung der Modularfunktionen. Universität Königsberg, 1854. Supervizor: Christoph Gudermann.

7. Christoph Gudermann: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 1823. Supervizor: Bernhard Friedrich Thibaut.

8. Bernhard Friedrich Thibaut: Dissertatio historiam controversiae circa numerorum negativorum et impossibilium logarithmos sistens. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 1797. Supervizor: Abraham Gotthelf Kästner, second examiner: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg.

9. Abraham Gotthelf Kästner: Theoria radicum in aequationibus. Universität Leipzig, 1739. Supervizor: Christian August Hausen.

10. Christian August Hausen: De corpore scissuris figurisque non cruetando ductu. Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1713. Supervizor: Johann Christoph Wichmannshausen, second examiner: Johann Andreas Planer.

11. Johann Christoph Wichmannshausen: Disputationem Moralem De Divortiis Secundum Jus Naturae. Universität Leipzig, 1685. Supervizor: Otto Mencke.

12. Otto Mencke: Ex Theologia naturali -- De Absoluta Dei Simplicitate, Micropolitiam, id est Rempublicam In Microcosmo Conspicuam. Universität Leipzig, 1665. Supervizor: Jakob Thomasius.

13. Jakob Thomasius: Universität Leipzig, 1643. Supervizor: Friedrich Leibnütz.

14. Friedrich Leibnütz: Disputatio de Casibus perplexis in Jure. Universität Leipzig, 1622. Supervizor: Johann Müller.

*

Reply
Rainer Walter Kühne link
5/4/2016 05:22:48 am

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1.1.2. Dissertation
*************************************

1. Rainer Walter Kühne: Thermodynamics of Heisenberg Chains Coupled to Phonons. Universität Dortmund, 2001. Supervizor: Ute Löw, second examiner: Andreas Klümper.

2. Ute Löw: CP-verletzende Mischungen von Toponium-Zuständen. Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, 1987.

2. Andreas Klümper: Die Spektren exakt lösbarer Vertex- und verwandter Modelle. Universität zu Köln, 1989. Supervizor: Johannes Zittartz.

3. Johannes Zittartz: Funktionsmittelwerte in der statistischen Theorie von quantenmechanischen und klassischen Systemen vieler Teilchen. Universität zu Köln, 1964. Supervizor: Bernhard Mühlschlegel.

4. Bernhard Mühlschlegel: Zur Theorie der Transporterscheinungen in Metallen bei tiefen Temperaturen. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 1953. Supervizor: Friedrich Fritz Möglich.

5. Friedrich Fritz Möglich: Beugungserscheinungen an Körpern von ellipsoidischer Gestalt. Universität Berlin, 1927. Supervizor: Max von Laue.

6. Max von Laue: Über die Interferenzerscheinungen an planparallelen Platten. Universität Berlin, 1903. Supervizor: Max Planck.

7. Max Planck: Über den zweiten Hauptsatz der mechanischen Wärmetheorie. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 1879. Supervizor: Alexander Wilhelm von Brill.

8. Alexander Wilhelm von Brill: Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, 1864. Supervizor: Rudolf Friedrich Alfred Clebsch.

9. Rudolf Friedrich Alfred Clebsch: De motu ellipsoidis in fluido incompressibili viribus quibuslibet impulsi. Universität Königsberg, 1854. Supervizor: Franz Ernst Neumann.

10. Franz Ernst Neumann: De lege zonarum principio evolutionis systematum crystallinorum. Universität Berlin, 1825. Supervizor: Christian Samuel Weiß.

11. Christian Samuel Weiß: De notionibus rigidi et fluidi accurate definiendis. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 1801. De indagando formarum crystallinarum charactere geometrico principali. Universität Leipzig, 1808.

Source: http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=200060

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1.2. Family Tree
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Note: Numbers are given in the usual way of genealogy, i. e. for person number n the father gets the number 2*n and the mother gets the number 2*n+1, if the person is male his child gets the number n/2, if the person is female her child gets the number (n-1)/2. Double numbers are used for the date and place of marriage. Names refer to the birth names of women, question marks mean that the given name is unknown to me.

1 Dr. Rainer Walter Kühne 23 May 1970 Braunschweig
2 Helmut Eberhard Kühne 31 July 1939 Hannover
3 Heidrun Martha Elisabeth Kühne 02 April 1947 Braunschweig
2&3 6 and 7 December 1968
4 Walter Kühne 15 June 1900 - 28 February 1968 Braunschweig
5 Elsa Hoffmeister 12 August 1908 Boppard - 29 January 1992 Braunschweig
4&5 3 June 1933
6 Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Kühne 21 March 1908 - 9 May 1984 Braunschweig
7 Marta Bothe 29 July 1909 - 28 March 1984 Braunschweig
6&7 30 July 1938
8 Friedrich Kühne 30 August 1859
9 Anna Henriette Sophie Bernstein 22 July 1870
8&9 8 December 1892
10 Fritz Louis Hoffmeister 05 March 1870 Salzgitter - 18 June 1941 Helmstedt
11 Anna Klara Lehmann 12 August 1880 Speyer - 18 July 1975 Helmstedt
10&11 15 February 1900 Speyer
12 Wilhelm Robert Fritz Kühne
13 Marie Sofie Schäfer
14 ? Berke
15 Anna Bothe
22 Karl Friedrich Wilhelm August Lehmann 22 July 1853 Neu-Stahnsdorf - 04 September 1919 Nietleben
23 Maria Katharina Ditsch 22 December 1851 Speyer - 19 July 1929 Speyer
22&23 16 February 1878 Speyer
46 Heinrich Ditsch 25 November 1820 Speyer - 22 December 1876
47 Anna Maria Elisabetha Rehberger 16 May 1823 Speyer - 28 October 1871
46&47 14 February 1847 Speyer
92 Johann Philipp Heinrich Ditsch 23 September 1798 Speyer
93 Maria Elisabetha Wüst 1797 Speyer
92&93 4 December 1817 Speyer
94 Johann Heinrich Rehberger 25 February 1786 Speyer - 26 March 1849
95 Catharina Elisabeth Klamm 07 May 1789 Speyer - 30 July 1868
94&95 18 July 1811 Speyer
188 Andreas Johann Georg Rehberger 1744 Speyer
189 Susanna Catharina Durian 1764 Speyer - 15 June 1797
188&189 1785 Speyer
190 Johann Marx Klamm 22 January 1765 Iggelheim
191 Maria Barbara Ebert 21 November 1769
190&191 07 November 1786 Iggelheim
380 Johannes Klamm 15 April 1726 Iggelheim - 02 May 1791 Iggelheim
381 Anna Margarethe Lützel 04 February 1727 Iggelheim - 24 January 1796 Iggelheim
380&381 21 September 1747 in Iggelheim
382 Georg Ludwig Ebert
383 Catharina Elisabetha
760 Georg Ludwig Klamm 27 May 1697 Iggelheim - 02 November 1727 Iggelheim
761 Anna Barbara Portune 24 June 1696 Iggelheim - 27 July 1729 Iggelheim
760/761 19 May 1716 Iggelheim
762 Johann Peter Lützel 12 March 1686 Iggelheim - 15 April 1758 Iggelheim
763 Anna Bar

Reply
Rainer Walter Kühne link
5/4/2016 05:24:52 am

763 Anna Barbara Groß 1694 Böhl - 19 January 1767 Iggelheim
762/763 05 April 1712 Böhl
1520 Johann Heinrich Klamm (in Iggelheim) - 02 February 1732 Iggelheim
1521 Anna Katharina Wirth (in Iggelheim) - 20 August 1744
1520/1521 1689 Iggelheim
1522 Johann Daniel Portune 15 June 1673 Böhl - 18 September 1737 Iggelheim
1523 Margarethe Fesinger (in Iggelheim) - 08 December 1725 Iggelheim
1522/1523 1695 Iggelheim
1524 Johann Christoph Lützel 27 November 1650 Iggelheim
1525 Maria Ursula 1655 - 02 April 1700 Iggelheim
1524/1525 1685 Iggelheim
1526 Johann Philipp Groß 1660 Böhl
1527 Rosina 1665
1526/1527 1690 Böhl
3040 Hans Simon Clamm (in Dannstadt) - 13 September 1694
3041 Barbara Stumpf (* in Klein-Schifferstadt)
3040/3041 03 July 1651 Klein-Schifferstadt
3042 Johannes Wirth
3043 Barbara Stang
3044 Hans Veit Portnay (* in Böhl)
3045 Anna Ursula
3044/3045 1669
3048 Jakob Lützel 1615 Haßloch
3049 Anna Margarethe Zickgraf 09 June 1617 Iggelheim
3048/3049 21 November 1649 Iggelheim
6080 Valentin Clamm (* Dannstadt)
6081 Anna
6080/6081 1624
6082 Michael Stumpf (* in Klein-Schifferstadt)
6083 Elisabeth Betz
6082/6083 1624
6088 Marx Borttner
6089 Helena
6088/6089 1648 Böhl
6096 Marx Lützel 1580 - 1624 Haßloch
6097 Eva Lützel 1585 Haßloch - 1655 Iggelheim
6096/6097 1605 Haßloch
6098 Bechthold Zickgraf
6099 Anna Cloß 1594
6098/6099 1616 (in Iggelheim?)

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1.3. Toddler
*******************************

I was born as the first child of my parents in Braunschweig on 23 May 1970 at 3:56 a.m. CET. I was 48 centimeters tall and weighted 3200 grams.

My memory starts with the holiday in the hotel "Jardin del Atlantico" in Playa del Ingles on Gran Canaria from 28 February till 21 March 1974. There I became acquainted with Stephanie Schneider from Sundern (near Herford), who was nearly two years older than me. She and her parents stayed in the same hotel. Stephanie visited me several times and we played jointly.

Since my fourth birthday on 23 May 1974 my parents read Petzi books (picture-books, http://www.amazon.de/dp/3551737215 ) to me. In 1975 my parents taught me reading and writing. In December 1975 I read for the first time a book. It was a Mickey Mouse book (Lustige Taschenbücher no. 29, Micky der Westernheld http://www.amazon.de/dp/B0039EEQZE ).

In January 1976 I became acquainted with Melanie Bergstedt in Braunschweig. I went tobogganing. Suddenly a girl who was several months older than me sat with me on the toboggan. So I became acquainted with Melanie. During the following months she visited me twice or thrice a week. Our friendship lasted for at least three months.

****************************************
1.4. Primary School
****************************************

On 2 August 1976 my brother Torsten was born. Four days later was my first day at school.

Presumably during the whole time at primary school (from 1976 till 1980 at the Grundschule Am Lehmanger in Braunschweig) I was best pupil of the classes 1e through 4e. No grades were given for the first two years. During the third and fourth class my average grades were 1.444, 1.400, 1.555, and 1.444. I was especially good in mental arithmetic.

During the breaks we boys played hide-and-seek and tag. Remote from the other pupils my classmate Nadine Kunkel and I had a natter during several breaks in 1979.

Motivated by the comic books about the globetrotter Petzi bear I began to read an atlas of the world and taught myself the mountains, rivers, and countries of the world. Also I read an atlas of the world about animals (Weltatlas der Tiere, Neuer Tessloff Verlag, 1973 http://www.amazon.de/dp/B00AQ0KXBA ) which my parents gave me as a present on Christmas 1975.

From 1977 till 1980 I read the detective stories authored by Wolfgang Ecke (e. g. http://www.amazon.de/dp/3473392146 ) and Enid Blyton (Geheimnis um ... http://www.amazon.de/dp/3781752003 ). From 1979 till 1983 I also read the detective stories authored by Stefan Wolf (TKKG, e. g. http://www.amazon.de/dp/3570215717 ). While reading TKKG I noticed that the plot of the story appeared to me as if I was watching a movie, this means I was not under the impression that I was reading a book but watching the story. After I finished reading the book, however, I had difficulties to remember the content of the story. Maybe this was an early version of my "in trance" of my later life.

From late 1979 onwards I became interested in astronomy (stars and planets). This was motivated by the last page of the atlas of the world which dealt with astronomy. Also from late 1979 onwards I became interested in dinosaurs. This was motivated by a sheet of handcraft with dinosaurs. From 1979 onwards I read popular science books for approximately one hour per day.

*******************************************************
1.5. Orientierungsstufe (Orientation School)
******************************************

Reply
Rainer Walter Kühne link
5/4/2016 05:27:12 am

During my time at the Orientierungsstufe Rothenburg in Braunschweig from 1980 till 1982 I was still a good pupil. My average grades during the fifth (5c) and sixth (6c) class were 1.583, 1.727, 2.000, and 2.083. During the breaks we boys played hide-and-seek, tag, and table tennis. On Monday preceding Ash Wednesday 1982 my classmate Andrea Langner painted for about half an hour a little heart on my cheek.

Late in 1980 I wondered about cosmology. Had the universe a finite size? If it had a finite size, what was then its border? Did it consist of stone? How thick was this border? What came behind this border? Existed further space behind this border? Was this further space limited by a further border? Or was the universe infinitely large? I came to no satisfying conclusion.

On 28 April 1981 I passed a test by swimming for 15 minutes (plus diving to the ground of the swimming pool). I obtained the Freischwimmer certificate from the Orientierungsstufe Rothenburg in Braunschweig.

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1.6. Grammar School
*****************************

From 1982 till 1989 I went to the grammar school Gymnasium Martino-Katharineum in Braunschweig. My average grades from the seventh (7c) through the tenth (10c) class were 2.545, 2.636, 2.692, 2.538, 3.307, 2.923, 2.833, and 2.833, from the eleventh (11a) through the thirteenth (4PhL) class they were 2.916, 2.916, 3.100, 3.000, 3.000, and 3.200. Only one time, in the first semester of the ninth class, one of my grades was a five (poor), in music.The grade of my Abitur (maturity) was 2.8. I managed to obtain the maturity without having to repeat a year.

During the tenth class I wrote the mathematics class tests "in trance". During the eleventh and twelveth class I wrote some of the physics class tests "in trance". This means that while I was concentrated in solving the tasks I have not noticed anything what was around me. Directly after I had finished the class test and handed it over to my teacher I was unable to remember the tasks. I was only certain that I managed to solve most of the tasks relatively good. In most cases the grades of these class tests which I solved "in trance" were a two (good).

During the breaks from the seventh till the tenth class we boys played soccer. During the classes eleven through thirteen we played skat.

In December 1982 my classmate Ivana Sinikovic invited all the pupils of the class 7c to attend her birthday party. There I have kissed for the first time a girl. It was my classmate Sandra Much.

From 1983 onwards my interest in dinosaurs weakened and my interest in cosmology and elementary particle physics started. From this time onwards I read popular science books for approximately two hours per day.

In October 1983 I formulated my first cosmological theory. I assumed that the universe was formed by the collision of two elementary particles which I later called rapidons. During the collision of the two rapidons millions of new elementary particles shall have been created, which I called after-big-bang-particles, or Ab-particles for short. I assumed that these Ab-particles were the centers of quasars and galaxies like M 87 which were situated within the centers of galaxy clusters. On Saturday 6 April 1985 I have explained my theory for more than one hour to Dr. Joachim Prölß of the Planetarium Bochum just after his public talk "Neue Planetensysteme entdeckt?" (new planetary systems discovered?). I was unable to convince him of my theory. Nevertheless he was impressed that I had been occupied with this subject so intensively although I was so young.

In late 1984 I started my interest in the theories of Erich von Däniken (extraterrestrial visitors in former times) and in Plato's lost island of Atlantis. I learned about Atlantis for the first time in 1979 by reading a Donald Duck story (Onkel Dagobert auf Tauchwegen, Lustige Taschenbücher no. 53, Dagobert, der Milliardenakrobat http://www.amazon.de/dp/B00473UIDU ), whose original in English language had appeared in 1954 under the title "The Secret of Atlantis".

In January 1985 I wrote a very long letter to Erich von Däniken. It included my theory about rapidons and Ab-particles and my views on extraterrestrial visitors in the past. In February 1985 Erich von Däniken replied by a short letter ( http://www.beepworld.de/members/archiv_rainer_kuehne_3/ ). From this time onwards I was occupied with my interests (cosmology, elementary particle physics, Atlantis, theories of Erich von Däniken) for three hours per day.

In autumn 1985 I taught myself the special theory of relativity.

In May 1986 I wrote my first cosmological preprint and submitted it to the scientific research journals "Astronomy and Astrophysics" (then editor: Prof. Michael Grewing) and "The Astrophysical Journal" (then editor: Dr. Helmut Abt). Both journals rejected my preprint ( http://www.beepworld.de/members/archiv_rainer_kuehne_4/ ).

In June 1986 I gave a seminar talk

Reply
Rainer Walter Kühne link
5/4/2016 05:32:56 am

In June 1986 I gave a seminar talk which lasted for two double-hours (180 minutes in total) about Atlantis within the framework of the religious education (Lutherian religion of the classes 10b and 10c, teacher: Mrs. Ernst). I have not used any notes for this talk.

In July 1986 during a holiday in Kötschach-Mauthen in Kärnten, Austria, I fell in love with Susanne Beck from Mühlhausen (near Tiefenbronn). She was several months older than me.

In June 1987 I wrote a paper about Atlantis. After several modifications Erich von Däniken accepted it for publication under the title "Plädoyer für Atlantis" (the case for Atlantis) in the German edition of his magazine "Ancient Skies" ( https://archive.is/x2gxO ). There it appeared in the January/February 1989 issue (Vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 3-8). This was my first publication ( http://www.atlantis-scout.de/KuehneR_PlaedoyerAtlantis_1989_preprint.pdf ).

During the Projektwoche (project week) from 29 August till 3 September 1988 at the grammar school Martino-Katharineum I was course leader for the course "Außerirdische Intelligenzen" (extraterrestrial intelligences). It was course no. 6a, took place in room 206, and the supervizing teachers were Mr. Kurth and Mr. Reinhardt. Participants of the course were the pupils Nina T. Meier (7a), Steffen Gall (7b), Robert Waltemath (7b), Dirk Herbes (8c), Christoph Ender (8c), Sascha Reschke (8d), Yasemin Altunordu (8d), Semra Gencay (8d), Sascha Schulz (9a), Lars Wickboldt (9c), Robert Lingnau (9c), Tobias Drews (9c), Jakub Ravan (9c), Armando Gorebki (9c), Michael Ebener (9c), Nicola Krause (11e), Frank Brewe (3PhL), and Marion Schaloske (3ChL).

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1.7. Obligatory Military Service
******************************************

I did obligatory military service in the Freiherr-von-Fritsch-Kaserne in Celle-Scheuen (3./331) from June till August 1989 and in the Hammerstein-Kaserne in Wesendorf (1./332) from September 1989 till August 1990. I became Truppenfernmeldesoldat and Obergefreiter (troop telecommunications soldier and lance-corporal).

From Mondays till Fridays, after service, I wrote a book manuscript, which I typed on Saturdays and Sundays on a typewriter. I did so from September 1989 till February 1990. My typescript remained unpublished ( https://archive.is/djv7z ). Later I posted 40 of the more than 300 pages in the internet ( http://www.atlantis-scout.de/KuehneR_SpurenGoetter_unveroeffManuskript.pdf ).

In February 1990, during a military exercise in the Sennelager, I wrote the manuscript for my paper "Cold Fusion: Pros and Cons". It was rejected by the research journal "Europhysics Letters", but published after several revisions by the scientific research journal "Physics Letters A" in May 1991. It was my first scientific publication (no. 1 of my publication list, see chapter 2).

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1.8. University in Bonn
*************************************

From October 1990 till October 1995 I studied physics at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn. I listened to the lectures and made my homework. The grades of my Vordiplom (preliminary examination) were a one in astronomy, a three in both experimental and theoretical physics, and a four in mathematics. The grades of my diploma were a one in astronomy and a two in each experimental, theoretical, and applied physics, and a 2.15 for my written diploma thesis. The title of my diploma thesis was "Betrachtungen zur von David Hestenes eingeführten Raumzeit-Algebra". My supervizor was Prof. Wolfgang Kundt, the second examiner was Dr. habil. Wolfram Neutsch. I finished my studies within the Regelstudienzeit, this is the period of time within which a student should complete his studies, but what in reality can be managed only by a minority of students.

I made my automobile driving licence at the driving school Bachl in Bonn. I received my driving licence on 7 April 1992 from the authorities of the city of Bonn. My first automobile was a blue Opel Corsa with the number plate W-AY 878.

In May 1992 I received a letter from Dr. Sc. Roman Sioda. In it he wrote that he had read my publication in Physics Letters A. By exchanging several snail mails we formulated a theory which I named "extended micro hot fusion scenario". We completed this theory in September 1992. In March 1995 we published jointly a paper about this theory in the research journal "Fusion Technology" (no. 4 of my publication list). Moreover we published jointly a contribution at the Fifth International Conference on Cold Fusion, Monte Carlo, Monaco, 9-13 April 1995. This contribution and two further ones authored by me alone (abstracts 433-435) were reprinted in the May 1995 issue of the magazine "Fusion Facts" (pp. 19-21, http://newenergytimes.com/v2/archives/fic/F/F199505.PDF ).

From 27 February till 4 March 1993 I visited Roman Sioda in Warsaw. I travelled by train from Braunschweig to Wa

Reply
terry the censor
5/4/2016 12:32:11 pm

Rainer, a friendly piece of advice. To address what you see as a slight mischaracterisation of yourself, you should not respond in such a way that shows the characterisation was right on the button.

Reply
Frank
2/7/2017 12:21:04 pm

Since you, Jason, are the god of this site you "created," and are no doubt the "man-in-charge," you can see from your high position who is who that is truly posting what, and under which specific assumed "posting" name.

Therefore to be Frank with you, and to others here, I have to admit, and repeat my praises for you, but also to give praises to some of the "special" readers you seem to attract. Now, one could, accurately, represent the praises through a couple of similes. However, one can be taken as a complement, and the other as an insult. But you be the judge of it, since you seem to be a very gifted writer, and a student of extraordinaire range and depth of all sorts of subjects; a jack of all trades, I would say. But that is not one of two similes I intended. These are it. You are a sweet-smelling flower full of pollen that will go to make royal jelly by all those busy bees landing on you. You are one big pile of sweet-smelling shit on which all sorts of pesty flies land on, to feed themselves of their natural and preferred food.

But no matter which one of these two "similes" one chooses, one cannot come away without the impression that you, Jason, are indeed a very inspired man, and a most eloquent writer, a most-high sophist. And If I were to believe in reincarnation and the immortality of the soul, I would venture to assert that you, in your present body, must be the soul of our very own creator of the Atlantis myth, Plato. Your uncanny and zealot like pursuit for truth also confirms this to me.

Is it any wonder why all these professional Atlantis researchers take notice of your just criticism of them, which compels them to come to you and argue (beg) you to retract your comments? Too bad you only attracted just a couple of those busy bees, as your intimate, and infinite knowledge of Plato can exterminate the whole hive of seeking bees. Again, this can only mean that you are indeed our reincarnated Plato, and that is why all these, "boys" mostly, come to you for the ultimate judgement as to how well they are coming along at learning and playing the game of, Hide and Seek Atlantis. They sit at your feet, slaves to your opinions and desires.

Now, if you would only concentrate your reborn skills and aim them at the same sources you did when you embodied our wide forehead, and wide shoulders man on which our Western civilization has stood on the most, then I will say that the first simile fits you to the T, even though you will still have thorns. But a sweet-smelling rose you still would be, nevertheless.

To hell with Atlantis, as our democracy needs you, Jason!

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