UCHRONIA?-ATLANTIS REVEALED

According to historians, the Minoans were a Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and flourished from the 27th to the 15th century BC. Various artifacts and signs of advanced agriculture on Crete though, dating as far back as 5000 BC, point to a much earlier Minoan presence on the island. Are those signs really of Minoans, or do they belong to another much older civilization, like that of Atlantis perhaps? (See proposed location of Atlantis under "Dissecting Plato".)

 

When comparing the Minoan civilization to that of Atlantis, the resemblance is so striking that it definitely raises a valid question of whether these two civilizations, separated by few millennia, were actually one and the same. Just as the Atlantians before them, we know the Minoans were a mercantile civilization heavily involved in “global” trade, and both are known to have regularly traveled and traded outside the Strait of Gibraltar. Both the Atlantians, as well as the Minoans, had a formidable navy that not only helped them to rule around the Mediterranean but ensured that their coastal colonies remained safe. Both civilizations lived in unfortified cities, and both relied on their powerful navy for protection. This further indicates that both were island civilizations as they had no fear of land invasion. Both seem to have practiced the same religion with the bull being their primary idol.

 

Although chronologically both cultures are separated by nearly three millennia, both employed technologies ahead of their time and utilized similar architecture that was characterized by red, white and black building material. Finally, and most importantly, both civilizations derived from within the same region. In fact, a common ground that physically connects the two cultures, and ultimately brings the two civilizations closer together, is the small island of Santorini.

 

Modern evidence shows that the Minoans, as the Atlantians before them, were regular visitors to the New World. Is this just a coincidence? If both cultures made it to America by following the same exact route, is it possible to consider that the Atlantians themselves could have been a proto-Minoan culture that collapsed with the rise of the oceans (see more under "The Great Flood"), only later to reform and resume as a whole new civilization, at least in the eyes of early historians? Is it possible that the rising oceans during the great flood, around 8000BC, not only washed Atlantis away but also erased the link that connects these two cultures?

 

Several clues in North America as well as on the island of Santorini, confirm that during the Bronze Age the Minoans were not only heavily mining copper from the area around Lake Superior, but they were regularly carrying tobacco and other spices from the Americas back to Santorini. Many ancient copper mines around the Great Lakes and primarily in the upper peninsula of Michigan are a testament of those days. More than 5000 shallow mines, up to 20 feet in depth, were discovered just within an area roughly 200 kilometers long by 10 kilometers wide. Carbon-dating of artifacts found around these mines indicates that the mines were active during the Bronze Age, between 2470 BC and 1050 BC. Even more surprisingly, a carbon-14 testing of wood remains found inside sockets of copper artifacts on Isle Royale, and on the nearby Keweenaw Peninsula (a region filled with copper mine pits), indicated that some mines in that area were in use even earlier than 3700 BC and possibly as early as 5000 BC, if not earlier.

There is a conservative estimate that around 3000 BC as many as 500,000 tons of copper were extracted from the upper peninsula of Michigan, an undertaking that cannot be clearly explained by mainstream historians or archaeologists. Not only there was no one in the New World at that time that could have extracted and used the copper, but no significant copper remnants were ever found in the Americas to account for the missing copper. While today’s researchers theorize that some ancient European civilization may have been the one to have utilized the precious metal, interestingly enough, the only Bronze Age culture capable of navigating to the Americas at the time, was the post-Atlantian Minoans.

 

More evidence, however, ties the Minoans to the New World. Ancient tools left behind at Lake Superior match those of the Minoans found in other European mines, while the type of copper extracted from North America (at 99%+ purity when chemically tested) also matches the product regularly used by them.

 

Evidence that connects the Minoans to North America also exists on the island of Santorini. Archaeological excavations on the island revealed that the Minoans were also importing tobacco, among other spices, from the New World. More precisely, an excavation in the ancient city of Akrotiri, near what was a merchant’s house, revealed that a tobacco beetle indigenous only to America at the time, was buried under the volcanic ash of the 1600 BC eruption. As the tobacco beetle, Lasioderma Serricorne, was indigenous to the American continent and historically tobacco was not introduced to Europeans until around 1518 AD (nearly 3000 years later), this find further reinforces the suggestion that the Minoans could have been importing tobacco along with copper from the New World.

 

This revelation of course solves yet another old mystery: how did ancient Egyptians obtained tobacco and other spices indigenous to America. Several earlier tests done on Egyptian mummies revealed that some of the plants and spices, including tobacco, used during the mummification process were native to the New World. Surprisingly enough, the same type of beetle that was discovered in Santorini, a sort of “pest of stored tobacco,” was also found inside the mummy of Ramses II (1213 BC) and inside King Tutankhamen’s tomb (1323 BC).

 

In 1992, additional tests by German scientists on several more mummies exposed remnants of hashish, tobacco and coca on their hair, skin and bones. The results were a huge surprise, to say the least. Unlike the hashish that historically originates in Asia, tobacco and coca were strictly New World plants at the time of mummification. In order to be sure that the results were not tainted somehow, or most likely to allow themselves to step outside this controversial discovery, the German team hired an independent lab to redo these particular tests. Needless to say, the independent lab found precisely the same substances. Out of the hundreds of mummies they tested, including that of Ramses II, they found nicotine traces on at least a third of them. If anything, this discovery further confirms that not only the ancient Egyptians were in need of a large supply of tobacco, but as it seems, the enterprising Minoans must have been those who supplied them with it.

 

The best evidence to connect the Minoans to the Americas, though, does not come to us in the form of copper, tobacco and other plants, but in the form of DNA. In fact, DNA analysis shows that in their journeys to the Americas, both the Atlantians and later the Minoans left their genetic fingerprint (haplogroup X) behind.