Emilio Spedicato

 

Last to hit the stage was Emilio Spedicato, the Professor of Operations Research (a mathematical discipline) at Bergamo University. He had flown from Italy especially to be at the Mysteries of the Past conference.

Emilio treated the audience to a visual guide to the origins of the solar system and the possible mechanisms behind the appearance of comets, asteroids and other types of so-called Apollo objects in the inner solar system. He also confirmed that the Carolina bays cometary event at the end of the Pleistocene epoch might well have been responsible for the rapid climatic changes which eventually brought the last Ice Age to a sudden close some 11,500 years ago (I date these events around a thousand years later by using Carbon-14 data untainted by recalculations made using dendrochronology). Such an almighty impact would have caused a nuclear winter that re-advanced the ice sheets for a period of around 200 years (conforming with our knowledge of the brief re-advances known as the Valders in America and the Younger Dryas in Europe). Afterwards the climate would have warmed rapidly causing the melting of greet ice-sheets and glaciers, particularly in the northern parts of the American continent. The result would have been the rapid drowning of low-lying regions of the globe, including the Caribbean.

To finish his lecture, Emilio introduced the audience to his own theories on the true location of Atlantis. Using the basic evidence independently reviewed by myself and David Rohl, he has come to the conclusion that Plato’s Atlantic island was Hispaniola, the second largest island in the Greater Antilles group.

Evidence for this conclusion, he says, comes from the fact that the coasts of Atlantis were said by Plato to have been particularly precipitous, a description which applies very well to Hispaniola’s coastline. Moreover, since there have been no major changes to the shoreline since the termination of the glacial age, geologists can safely say that this is how the island would have looked in the time-frame proposed by Plato for the destruction of Atlantis.

On Hispaniola a roughly rectangular-shaped plain exists in the south-eastern corner of the island. Similar to the irrigated plain described in the CRITIAS, it is shielded to the north by a range of hills. Plato asserts that the size of the Atlantean plain is 3000 stadia (552 kilometres) by 2000 stadia (368 kilometres). This, Emilio feels, comes close to matching the overall size of Hispaniola, which is orientated east-west and measures approximately 650 x 300 kilometres; he dismissed the neighbouring island of Cuba as a possible candidate since it is too large to fit the island being implied by Plato.

One possible candidate for the location of the Atlantean city would, in Emilio’s estimate, be the lowland region of Hispaniola known as the Plaine de Cul-des-Sac. It is bordered north and south by mountains. Moreover, it possesses several lakes, including Lake Enriquillo, the surface of which is currently below sea-level. There is every reason to suggest that the lake could contain coralline structures, today covered by sediment, which might well help to explain the red, white and black stone said by Plato to have been used to construct the city.

The Taino of Hispaniola referred to the island as Quisqueya, the ‘mother of lands’. Did this denote, he suggested, its importance as a mythical homeland to the peoples of the Caribbean archipelago during prehistoric times?

If Hispaniola is Atlantis, then the other islands said by Plato to have formed the Atlantean empire would constitute the principal islands of the Greater Antilles, namely Cuba and Puerto Rico, a point I would not query. However, I have grave doubts about Hispaniola being Atlantis and address each and every one of the points raised by Emilio in its favour within GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS. Furthermore, you can read about the growing debate over the true location of Atlantis in the article on the work of Paul Felix Cabrera to be found elsewhere on this site. Yet the sheer fact that an academic of Emilio Spedicato’s calibre has concluded that Atlantis was the neighbouring island to the one proposed by myself only strengthens each other’s claims for having found the true location of Atlantis. I now have no doubt whatsoever that we are within a hare’s breath of uncovering the final mysteries of what is arguably one of the greatest mysteries of the past 2000 years.