Chasing Atlantis

[Ligurian]

THE ATLANTIDE OR LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF THE IBERIAN RACE.

Chapter 3, from

Le Premiers Habitants de l'Europe
Par
H. D'Arbois de Jubainville

Seconde Édition
Tome Premier

{excerpt}

CHAPITRE II.

L' ATLANTIDE OU LES ORIGINES LÉGENDAIRES DE LA RACE IBÉRIQUE.

Sommaire. § 1. Récit de Platon. § 2. Récit do Théopompe. § 3. Récit de Marcellus. § 4. Hypothèse de Poseidonios. § 5. Où aurait été située l'Atlautide? § 6. Doctrine de Sénèque le tragique.

§ 1. Récit de Platon.

Plusieurs auteurs grecs nous ont transmis une légende d'après laquelle, à un âge fort reculé, il y aurait eu des relations, depuis interrompues, entre notre continent et une autre contrée séparée de nous par l'Océan Atlantique. Le premier de ces auteurs est Platon; il vivait au iv siècle avant notre ère. Mais il s'appuie sur l'autorité d'un poème composé par Solon, deux siècles auparavant, et où ce législateur célèbre aurait consigné un récit historique conservé par les prêtres égyptiens.

Il y aurait eu, en regard du détroit appelé par les Grecs colonnes d'Hercule, ujourd'hui détroit de Gibraltar, une île plus grande que l'Afrique et l'Asie réunies. Elle aurait été le siège d'une civilisation bien supérieure à celle des habitants des cavernes, alors maîtres de l'Europe occidentale. Elle auraiteu des villes, des palais, des temples; de cette île, nommée par Platon
[17]
Atlantide, serait partie, neuf mille ans avant ce philosophe, une armée puissante; cette armée se serait emparée de l'Europe occidentale jusques et y compris l'Italie, appelée Tyrrhénie au temps de Platon; elle aurait conquis l'Afrique du nord jusques et non compris l'Egypte. Bien entendu, le chiffre de neuf mille ans ne doit pas être pris à la lettre, il indique seulement une date très reculée.2

§ 2. Récit de Théopompe.

Une autre forme de cette tradition apparaît chez Théopompe, auteur du iv siècle comme Platon, mais un peu postérieur à ce philosophe célèbre. Suivant Théopompe une version de l'histoire de l'Atlantique aurait fait partie des enseignements donnés par Silène à l'antique roi Midas. Silène, fait prisonnier par Midas, initie ce roi à la haute sagesse et aux secrets de la nature et de l'avenir. Or voici un des discours tenus par

2. Platon du reste donne pour contemporains aux conquérants venus de l'Atlantide les rois mythiques d'Athènes, Cécrops, Erechthée, que les autres monuments chronologiques de la Grèce mettent à une date beaucoup moins ancienne. Cécrops et Erechthée, suivant le marbre de Paros' auraient régné, l'un 1582 ans, L'autre 1409 ans avant J.-C.
[18]
Silène à Midas: L'Europe, l'Asie et l'Afrique sont des îles que le cours de l'Océan enveloppe coinme d'un cercle. Il n'y a qu'un seul continent et il se trouve ailleurs. Sa grandeur est immense. Il nourrit de grands animaux et des hommes deux fois aussi grands que nous. Leur vie n'est pas comme la nôtre; elle dure deux fois autant. Il se trouve dans leur pays beaucoup de villes, de grandes villes, qui ont leurs mœurs particulières et dont les lois sont l'opposé des nôtres... Les habitants de cette contrée possèdent une grande quantité d'or et d'argent, de sorte que chez eux l'or est moins estimé que cheznous le fer. Un jour ils entreprirent de passer dans nos îles, et après avoir traversé l'Océan au nombre de dix millions d'hommes, ils arrivèrent dans le pays des Hyperboréens (c'està-dire dans les régions où la race celtique dominait au vi siècle, car un auteur grec contemporain de Théopompe appelle Hyperboréens les Gaulois qui s'emparèrent de Rome). Les conquérants venus d'au-delà de l'Océan prirent des renseignements sur la contrée où ils débarquaient. On leur dit que les Hyperboréens étaient les plus heureux de tous les peuples de l'Europe, de l'Afrique et de l'Asie, et méprisant l'existence pauvre et misérable des Hyperboréens ils dédaignèrent d'aller plus loin.

La seule différence importante entre le récit de Théopompe et celui de Platon consiste dans l'étendue des conquêtes faites par les émigrants venus de l'Atlantide. D'après Théopompe, ces émigrants ne seraient pas sortis des régions hyperboréences, tandis que, suivant le texte de Platon cité plus haut, ils se seraient emparés de l'Italie et de la partie de l'Afrique qui avoisine l'Egypte. Le grand philosophe athénien, dont nous avons forcément abrégé les développements, nomme aussi parmi les possessions de ces conquérants étrangers le pays de
[19]
Gadir aujourd'hui Cadix, c'cst-à-dire l'Espagne. Enfin il parle d'une guerre entre les habitants de la Grèce et l'armée qui avait conquis les régions occidentales de notre continent. Les habitants de la Grèce repoussèrent l'invasion. Ce n'étaient pas encore les Héllènes. Les Pélasges, auxquels la tradition donnait une place si considérable dans l'histoire primitive d'Athènes, étaient encore maîtres de la contrée que le nom de Grèce désigna plus tard. Ils avaient des maisons et des villes, probablement des métaux. Ce serait devant eux qu'en Europe, après avoir mis sous le joug les habitants des cavernes, le flot des conquérants venus de l'Atlantide se serait arrêté: en Afrique il avait trouvé dans la civilisation égyptienne une barrière insurmontable, si nous en croyons ce que Platon nous raconte.3

3. Dans le Timée de Platon, le panégyrique des Athéniens qui triomphent des conquérants venus de l'Atlantide, se termine par le récit d'une inondation: vaioqueurs et vaincus sont engloutis à la fois. L'intervention d'un déluge à la fin de l'histoire pelasgique est lu conséquence naturelle de la conquête de la Grèce par la race hellénique dont l'histoire commence par le déluge de Deucalion. A la suite des traditions pélasgiques, les premiers historiens ont naturellement placé les plus anciennes traditions des Hellènes, successeurs des Pelasges; or ces traditions débutent par le récit du déjuge dit de Deucalion, et on a cru que ce déluge, étant de tradition hellénique, appartenait à la période hellénique de l'histoire grecque, tandis qu'il remonte à une date où la race européenne habitait encore l'Asie. L'histoire de Lesbos dans Diodore, livre V, c. 81; édition Didot-Müller, t. I, p. 305-306 nous donne un curieux exemple de ce procédé enfantin de composition historique. Les Pelasges, premiers habitants de Lesbos, occupent seuls cette ile pendant sept générations. Puis arrive le déluge de Deucalion, et après ce déluge, Macareus, à la tête d'une colonie composée d'Ioniens et d'autres hommes appartenant à des peuples anonymes. On sait que les Ioniens sont une subdivision de la race hellénique. Il est très curieux de comparer ce récit avec le résumé de l'histoire primitive d'Athènes donné par Justin, livre II, c. 6, qui, en abrégeant Trogue Pompée, reproduit médiatemcut la doctrine d'un auteur grec plus ancien. On trouve chez Justin une dynastie de rois antérieure au déluge de Dcucalion.
[20]
Tandis que le récit de Platon nous est donné comme d'origine égyptienne, Théopompe ne nous dit pas la provenance du sien, mais les variantes qui le distinguent nous permettent do le considérer comme tiré d'une source indépendante de celle où a puisé Platon.

§ 3. Récit de Marcellus.

Platon et Théopompe ne sont pas les seuls auteurs de l'antiquité chez lesquels il soit question de l'Atlantide. Marcellus, dans l'ouvrage intitulé Ethiopiques, parlait de dix îles situées dans l'Océan Atlantique près de notre continent, et dans lesquelles nous pouvons peut-être reconnaître les Canaries. Il ajoutait que les habitants de ces îles avaient conservé le souvenir d'une île beaucoup plus grande, l'Atlantide, qui avait longtemps exercé la domination sur les autres îles de l'Océan Atlantique. Ainsi deux textes, l'un de Platon, l'autre de Théopompe, s'accordent pour raconter la conquête d une partie de l'ancien monde par des étrangers venus d'un pays inconnu et le premier de ces deux textes s'accorde avec Marcellus pour désigner ce pays par le nom d'Atlantide.

§ 4. Hypothèse de Poseidonios.

Où l'Atlantide était-elle située? Si nous nous en rapportons
[21]
à Platon, il serait inutile de chercher ce pays sur nos cartes. L'Atlantide, suivant Platon, a été détruite par des tremblements de terre. On voit quelquefois la terre s'élever, on la voit quelquefois s'abaisser, écrivait environ un siècle avant notre ère l'historien Poseidonios: on peut donc, continuait-il, admettre que le récit de Platon sur l'Atlantide n'est pas une fiction, il y a même plus de raisons pour accueillir ce récit que pour le rejeter. Les Açorcs, les Canaries et Madère seraient donc les débris d'un continent ou d'une grande ile dont les poétiques tableaux de Platon et Théopompe exagèrent beaucoup l'importance géographique, mais non le rôle dans l'histoire de notre civilisation. Ce serait de là que la race ibérique aurait été conquérir les régions occidentales de l'Europe, où, sous les yeux étonnés des sauvages habitants des cavernes, elle aurait bâti les premières villes, et où elle domina jusqu'à l'arrivée des Indo-Européens. Ce serait de là que la race ibérique aurait étendu son empire sur l'Afrique du nord, jusqu'au moment où la race berbère, proche parente des Egyptiens, venue d'Orient comme les Egyptiens, fit la conquête de cette région.2 Peut-être pourrait-on retrouver aujourd'hui dans l'Afrique centrale, suivant une hypothèse admise par M. A. Maury, quelques descendants des Ibères rejetés dans ces contrées brûlantes par les Berbères vainqueurs, quelques parents des

2. C'est probablement aux coiiquùles de la race berbùre sur les Ibères d'Afrique que se réfère un passage d'Éphore sur les migrations des Éthiopiens en Occident et sur la tradition conservée à ce sujet en Espagne par les Tartesses: "{}, Strabon, livre I, c. II, § 26; édition Didot-Müller et Dubner, p. 27, 1. 25-28; cf. p. 9i-2. Éphore, fragm. 38, chez Didot-Müller. Fragmenta historicornm graecorum, t. I, p. 241.
[22]
Basques, de ces autres Ibères que l'invasion indo-européenne a relégués dans un coin des Pyrénées.

§ 5. Doctrine de Senèque le tragique.

Mais il semble que dès l'antiquité une théorie plus hardie aurait été proposée. Quelques esprits audacieux ont cru, paraît-il, que l'Atlantide existait encore dans des régions alors inaccessibles à la navigation timide des marins grecs et romains. Sénèque le tragique se fait Torgane de cette thèse brillante: «Un temps viendra, dans les siècles futurs, où la mer laissera tomber les chaînes qui ferment ses passages: une vaste terre se développera devant nous; la mer laissera voir des mondes nouveaux, et des pays connus le dernier ne sera plus Thulé.» Ces paroles éloquentes ne sont probablement autre chose qu'une explication évémériste do la croyance au séjour occidental des morts sous le sceptre mythique de Kronos, père du grand dieu Zeus. Le hasard a fait que ce commentaire, produit logique d'une méthode vulgaire, a pris à nos yeux l'aspect mystérieux d'une prophétie: Sénèque est un prédécesseur de Christophe Colomb.

M. Withney, un des linguistes les plus distingués de notre époque, dit, en parlant du basque, c'est-à-dire du représentant moderne de la langue des Ibères: «Il n'y a pas de dialecte dans le vieux monde qui lui ressemble autant sous le rapport de la structure, que les langues américaines.»

Mais gardons-nous de rien conclure. Attendons que les études de linguistique aient pris plus de développement et de profondeur, que les langues de l'Amérique, que les langues
[23]
de l'Afrique centrale, que les races de ces pays, encore si peu et si mal explorés, soient mieux connues: jusque-là no prétendons pas dévoiler des secrets encore inabordables à la science de notre temps. Bornons-nous à constater que d'antiques légendes placent à l'aube de l'histoire, dans les régions occidentales de l'Europe, un puissant empire créé par une population dont l'origine, suivant ces vieux récits, n'était pas asiatique, et qui serait venue d'une île située, parait-il, à l'ouest de l'Espagne et des régions septentrionales de l'Afrique.

__________________
Please forgive the OCR-corrections I didn't catch.

 

[Occams Barber]

THE ATLANTIS OR LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF THE IBERIAN RACE.

Chapter 3, from

The First Inhabitants of Europe
By
H. D'Arbois de Jubainville

Second Edition
Volume I

{excerpt}

CHAPTER II.

ATLANTIS OR THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF THE IBERIAN RACE.

Summary. § 1. Plato's account. § 2. Narrative of Theopomp. § 3. Narrative of Marcellus. § 4. Hypothesis of Poseidonios. § 5. Where would Atlautid have been located? § 6. Doctrine of Seneca the Tragic.

§ 1. Plato's account.

Several Greek authors have transmitted to us a legend according to which, at a very remote age, there were relations, since interrupted, between our continent and another country separated from us by the Atlantic Ocean. The first of these authors is Plato; He lived in the fourth century BC. But it relies on the authority of a poem composed by Solon, two centuries earlier, and in which this famous legislator would have recorded a historical account preserved by the Egyptian priests.

There would have been, in front of the strait called by the Greeks Pillars of Hercules, today the Strait of Gibraltar, an island larger than Africa and Asia combined. It would have been the seat of a civilization far superior to that of the caved dwellers, then masters of Western Europe. It would have had cities, palaces, temples; from this island, named by Plato
[17]
Atlantis, would have left, nine thousand years before this philosopher, a powerful army; this army would have seized Western Europe up to and including Italy, called Tyrrhenia in the time of Plato; it would have conquered North Africa up to and not including Egypt. Of course, the figure of nine thousand years should not be taken literally, it only indicates a very distant date.2
§ 2
. Narrative of Theopompus.

Another form of this tradition appears in Theopompus, author of the fourth century like Plato, but a little later than this famous philosopher. According to Theopompus, a version of the history of the Atlantic would have been part of the teachings given by Silenus to the ancient king Midas. Silenus, taken prisoner by Midas, initiates this king into the high wisdom and secrets of nature and the future. But here is one of the speeches held by

2. Plato of the rest gives as contemporaries to the conquerors from Atlantis the mythical kings of Athens, Cecrops, Erechtheus, that the other chronological monuments of Greece put at a much less ancient date. Cecrops and Erechtheus, following the marble of Paros' would have reigned, one 1582 years, the other 1409 years before J.-C. [18]
Silenus in Midas: Europe, Asia and Africa are islands that the course of the Ocean envelops in a circle.
There is only one continent and it is somewhere else. Its greatness is immense. He feeds large animals and men twice as big as us. Their lives are not like ours; it lasts twice as long. There are many cities, large cities, in their country, which have their particular customs and whose laws are the opposite of ours... The inhabitants of this region have aAnde quantity of gold and silver, so that in them gold is less esteemed than in us iron. One day they undertook to pass through our islands, and after crossing the Ocean to the number of ten million men, they arrived in the land of the Hyperboreans (that is to say, in the regions where the Celtic race dominated in the sixth century, because a Greek author contemporary of Theopompus calls Hyperboreans the Gauls who seized Rome). The conquerors from beyond the ocean took information about the country where they landed. They were told that the Hyperboreans were the happiest of all the peoples of Europe, Africa, and Asia, and despising the poor and miserable existence of the Hyperboreans they disdained to go further.

The only important difference between the account of Theopompus and that of Plato consists in the extent of the conquests made by the emigrants from Atlantis. According to Theopompus, these emigrants would not have left the hyperboreence regions, while, according to Plato's text quoted above, they would have seized Italy and the part of Africa bordering Egypt. The great Athenian philosopher, whose developments we have necessarily shortened, also names among the possessions of these foreign conquerors the country of
[19]
Gadir today Cadiz, that is, Spain. Finally, he speaks of a war between the inhabitants of Greece and the army that had conquered the western regions of our continent. The inhabitants of Greece repelled the invasion. It was not yet the Helens. The Pelasgians, to whom tradition gave such a considerable place in the primitive history of Athens, were still masters of the land that the name Greece later designated. They had houses and towns, probably metals. It would be before them that in Europe, after having put under the yoke the inhabitants of the caves, the flow of conquerors from Atlantis would have stopped: in Africa he had found in Egyptian civilization an insurmountable barrier, if we believe what Plato tells us.3
3
. In Plato's Timaeus, the panegyric of the Athenians who triumph over the conquerors from Atlantis, ends with the story of a flood: vaioqueurs and vanquished are swallowed up at the same time. The intervention of a flood at the end of the pelasgic history is read as a natural consequence of the conquest of Greece by the Hellenic race whose history begins with the flood of Deucalion. Following the Pelasgic traditions, the first historians naturally placed the oldest traditions of the Hellenes, successors of the Pelasgians; but these traditions begin with the account of the so-called judge of Deucalion, and it has been believed that this flood, being of Hellenic tradition, belonged to the Hellenic period of Greek history, while it dates back to a date when the European race still inhabited Asia. The history of Lesbos in Diodorus, Book V, c. 81; edition Didot-Müller, t. I, p. 305-306 gives us a curious example of this childish process of historical composition. The Pelasgians, the first inhabitants of Lesbos, occupied this island alone for seven generations. Then comes the flood of Deucalion, and after this flood, Macareus, at the head of a colony composed of Ionians and other men belonging to anonymous peoples. It is known that the Ionians are a subdivision of the race hellenic. It is very curious to compare this account with the summary of the early history of Athens given by Justin, Book II, c. 6, which, in abbreviating Trog Pompey, reproduces mediates the doctrine of an older Greek author. Justin has a dynasty of kings prior to the flood of Dcucalion.
[20]
While Plato's account is given to us as of Egyptian origin, Theopompus does not tell us the origin of his, but the variants that distinguish him allow us to consider it as drawn from a source independent of that from which Plato drawn.

§ 3. Narrative of Marcellus.

Plato and Theopompus are not the only authors of antiquity in whom Atlantis is mentioned. Marcellus, in the work entitled Ethiopiques, spoke of ten islands located in the Atlantic Ocean near our continent, and in which we can perhaps recognize the Canaries. He added that the inhabitants of these islands had retained the memory of a much larger island, Atlantis, which had long exercised domination over the other islands of the Atlantic Ocean. Thus two texts, one by Plato, the other by Theopompus, agree to tell the conquest of a part of the old world by foreigners from an unknown country and the first of these two texts agrees with Marcellus to designate this country by the name of Atlantis.

§ 4. Hypothesis of Poseidonios.

Where was Atlantis located? If we refer
[21]
to Plato, it would be useless to look for this country on our maps. Atlantis, according to Plato, was destroyed by earthquakes. We sometimes see the earth rise, we sometimes see it falling, wrote about a century before our era the historian Poseidonios: we can therefore, he continued, admit that Plato's account of Atlantis is not a fiction, there are even more reasons to welcome this story than to reject it. The Azorcs, the Canary Islands and Madeira would therefore be the remains of a continent or a large island whose poetic paintings by Plato and Theopompus greatly exaggerate the geographical importance, but not the role in the history of our civilization. It would be from there that the Iberian race would have conquered the western regions of Europe, where, under the astonished eyes of the savages of the caves, it would have built the first cities, and where it dominated until the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. It would be from there that the Iberian race would have extended its empire over North Africa, until the moment when the Berber race, close relative of the Egyptians, coming from the East like the Egyptians, conquered this region.2 Perhaps we could find today in Central Africa, according to a hypothesis admitted by M. A. Maury, some descendants of the Iberians rejected in these burning lands by the victorious Berbers, Some parents of the

2. It is probably to the coiiquùles of the Berber race on the Iberians of Africa that refers a passage from Ephorus on the migrations of the Ethiopians in the West and on the tradition preserved on this subject in Spain by the Tartesses: "{}, Strabo, book I, c. II, § 26; Didot-Müller and Dubner edition, pp. 27, 1. 25-28; cf. pp. 9i-2. Ephorus, fragm. 38, at Didot-Müller. Fragmenta historicornm graecorum, vol. I, p. 241.
[22]
Basques, of those other Iberians whom the Indo-European invasion relegated to a corner of the Pyrenees.

§ 5. Doctrine of Seneca the tragic.

But it seems that as early as antiquity a bolder theory would have been proposed. Some daring minds believed, it seems, that Atlantis still existed in regions then inaccessible to the timid navigation of Greek and Roman sailors. Seneca the tragic is Torgane of this brilliant thesis: "A time will come, in future centuries, when the sea will drop the chains that close its passages: a vast land will develop before us; the sea will reveal new worlds, and known countries the last will no longer be Thule." These eloquent words are probably nothing more than a vemeristic explanation of the belief in the Western abode of the dead under the mythical scepter of Kronos, father of the great god Zeus. By chance, this commentary, the logical product of a vulgar method, has taken on the mysterious aspect of a prophecy: Seneca is a predecessor of Christopher Columbus.

Mr. Withney, one of the most distinguished linguists of our time, says, speaking of Basque, that is, the modern representative of the language of the Iberians: "There is no dialect in the old world that resembles it as much in terms of structure as the American languages."

But let us not conclude anything. Let us wait until the studies of linguistics have taken more development and depth, than the languages of America, than the languages
[23]
of Central Africa, until the races of these countries, still so little and so poorly explored, are better known: so far let us not pretend to reveal secrets still unattainable to the science of our time. Let us confine ourselves to noting that ancient legends place at the dawn of history, in the western regions of Europe, a powerful empire created by a population whose origin, according to these old stories, was not Asian, and which would have come from an island located, it seems, west of Spain and the northern regions of Africa.

 

[Chesterton]

No entiendo lo que me dices.

 

[Ligurian]

No entiendo lo que me dices.

Yep, so I guessed someone would know how to use the various translation websites.

"Let us confine ourselves to observing that ancient legends place at the dawn of history, in the western regions of Europe, a powerful empire created by a population whose origin, according to these old accounts, was not Asiatic, which would have come from an island situated, it seems, in the west of Spain and the northern regions of Africa."

 

[Ligurian]

"a powerful empire created by a population whose origin, according to these old accounts, was not Asiatic, which would have come from an island situated, it seems, in the west of Spain and the northern regions of Africa."--H. Arbois de Jubainville

Except it isn't an island... Atlantis and the Silver City by Peter Daughtrey
opened my eyes. And I began to check his sources... starting with this:

"This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean..."--Plato's Timaeus, Jowett translation

τότε γὰρ πορεύσιμον ἦν τὸ ἐκεῖ πέλαγος: νῆσον γὰρ πρὸ τοῦ στόματος εἶχεν,
ὃ καλεῖτε, ὥς φατε, ὑμεῖς Ἡρακλέους στήλας ἣ δὲ νῆσος ἅμα Λιβύης ἢ ἦν καὶ ᾿Ασίας μείζων,
ἐξ ἡ ἧς ἐπιβατὸν ἐ ἐπὶ τὰς ἄλλας νήσους τοῖς τότ᾽ ἐγίγνετο πορευομένοις, ἐκ δὲ τῶν νήσων ἐπὶ τὴν καταντικρὺ πᾶσαν ἤπειρον τὴν περὶ τὸν ἀληθινὸν ἐκεῖνον πόντον.

νῆσος = nesos transliterated.
1. island…
2. land flooded by the Nile… alluvial land
3. peninsula… Πελοπϋννηςορ. = Peloponnesos, aka Pelop's peninsula.
--Liddell & Scott Greek Lexicon

"There does not seem to be any reason why "island" was the preferred initial translation, but all subsequent translators have followed suit--despite other specific facts given by Plato that do not justify its use.
For instance, he only ever mentioned one coast--the south. In clue 23 he explains there was a vast productive plain facing the sea and expands on that in clues 84 to 88, intimating that it faced south with a high coast overlooking the sea. It was sheltered to the north by mountains "celebrated for their number, size and beauty." Significantly, no reference was made to the north, east, or west coasts. If an island was being described, surely these would have warranted at least a passing mention? Look at clue 84 again: "The whole country was said by him to be very lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea." Note that it refers to the whole country and the "side" facing the sea. An island has all sides facing the sea, not just one of them.
Clue 4 includes another subtle misinterpretation. In ancient Greek, Plato did not write "an island situated in front of the straits," as in the accepted translation by Benjamin Jowett, but "because there was an island/peninsula in the mouth or lobby of the Gulf, that you consider the columns of Hercules."35 The clear implication is that the Straits of Gibraltar formed the throat, and the area outside the Atlantic where the sea broadened out was the mouth (that is, the area outside the straits that was still confined on the north by the southern coast of Iberia and on the south by the North African coast). A lobby is clearly the area of sea you pass through before entry through the straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean."
--Daughtrey, Atlantis and the Silver City

Those sheltering mountains are probably the Pyrenees which were formed by the action of tectonic plates... the same sort of action that sunk the three rings of plains which Daughtery talks about. I bought his book years ago and only recently began really studying it. This book isn't made by technical people for technical people, it's boots-on-the-ground... with just enough science to make it work. If nothing else, it might help you fight your way out of the mainstream box.

 

[Ligurian]

Plato, Critias: "... these [laws] were inscribed by the first king on a pillar of orichalcum"

Strabo: "Turdetani… are the most cultured of all the Iberians; they employ the art of writing and have written books containing memorials of ancient times, and also poems and laws set in verse, for which they claim an antiquity of six thousand years."

Diodorus Siculus: "Men tell us... that the Phoenicians were not the first to make the discovery of letters; but that they did no more than change the form of the letters, whereupon the majority of mankind made use of the way of writing them as the Phoenicians devised."

Tacitus: "The Phoenicians gained the reputation of inventing a form of writing, which they merely received."

 

[Ligurian]

"It is clear, however, from the pages of Caesar and Tacitus that at the time of the Roman conquest there were at least two distinct peoples in Britain--the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed Celt, identical with the Gallic tribes,* and the dark-complexioned, wavy-haired South Welshmen (Silures), who are compared by Tacitus to the Iberi of Spain. This comparison is now amply justified by a visit to most Welsh towns on a market day--say Denbigh or St. Asaph--where the small dark Welshman is to be seen identical in everything but dress and speech with the small dark Basque of the Western Pyrenees, both French and Spanish. We need not, however, go so far as the Pyrenees to find people identical with the small dark Welsh. The small dark Irish of the south-west of Ireland, the small dark Highlander of Scotland, and the dark inhabitants of Devon and Cornwall are physically of the same race."
--Dawkins, The Place of the Welsh in the History of Britain

"This proposed migration from southwest Iberia to the Celtic areas of Great Britain has received support from research recently carried out in Wales. Professor John Koch from the University of Wales at Aberystwyth says that archaeological inscriptions on those large stones found in the Algarve show that the Celts came from southern Portugal and southwest Spain—not from central Europe, as previously accepted. He maintains that the Southwestern Script in Chapter Seventeen can be deciphered as Celtic."
--Daughtery, Atlantis and the Silver City

"This Celtic Atlantic Bronze Age theory represents a major departure from the long-established, but increasingly problematical scenario in which the story of the Ancient Celtic languages and that of peoples called Keltoí Celts are closely bound up with the archaeology of the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures of Iron Age west-central Europe. The Celtic from the West proposal was first presented in Barry Cunliffe’s Facing the Ocean (2001) and has subsequently found resonance amongst geneticists. It provoked controversy on the part of some linguists, though is significantly in accord with John Koch’s findings in Tartessian (2009)."
Celtic From The West | Celtic Studies Publications

So, maybe the big blonde Celts are not the owners of "the Celtic language"... but they're definitely not the Druids:

"…so we must pass on to the non-Celtic natives, who had another religion, namely, Druidism, which may be surmised to have had its origin among them."
--Rhys, Celtic Britain

_____________________________
* "Thus, the ruddy hair and large limbs of the Caledonians point out a German derivation. The swarthy complexion and curled hair of the Silures, together with their situation opposite to Spain, render it probable that a colony of the ancient Iberi possessed themselves of that territory."
--Tacitus, Germany and Agricola

"It will, however, be in place to say, that at that time the Picts, divided into two tribes, called Dicalydones and Verturiones, as well as the Attacotti, a warlike race of men, and the Scots, were ranging widely and causing great devastation; while the Gallic regions, wherever anyone could break in by land or by sea, were harassed by the Franks and their neighbours, the Saxons, with cruel robbery, fire, and the murder of all who were taken prisoners."--Ammianus Marcelinus

Dicalydones = two Calydonians according to Hudson, in his book The Picts.

The argument used to be that because the Picts spoke P-celtic they must be Brythons.
But the Aryan Mitanni weren't Hurrians just because they learned the Hurrian language.

For a long time, wiki had photos of the same shield... on one page titled Celtic, and another page titled Scythian.
Meanwhile, the Gundestrap Cauldron shows the same Scythian horsemen, complete with leggings...

 

[Ligurian]

Chasing Atlantis... into the light.

"Many archaeologists still hold this view of a grand iron-age Celtic culture in the centre of the continent, which shrank to a western [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] after Roman times. It is also the basis of a strong sense of ethnic identity that millions of members of the so-called Celtic diaspora hold. But there is absolutely no evidence, linguistic, archaeological or genetic, that identifies the Hallstatt or La Tène regions or cultures as Celtic homelands. The notion derives from a mistake made by the historian Herodotus 2,500 years ago when, in a passing remark about the “Keltoi,” he placed them at the source of the Danube, which he thought was near the Pyrenees. Everything else about his description located the Keltoi in the region of Iberia.
[…]
So, based on the overall genetic perspective of the British, it seems that Celts, Belgians, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings and Normans were all immigrant minorities compared with the Basque pioneers, who first ventured into the empty, chilly lands so recently vacated by the great ice sheets."

Myths of British ancestry

Everything you know about British and Irish ancestry is wrong. Our ancestors were Basques, not Celts. The Celts were not wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons...

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk

"…it is misleading for you to talk about frequencies of the R male lineage in different European countries as if this constituted a uniform genetic background, since there are actually two main R groups, which split tens of thousands of years ago outside Europe and had completely different modes of spread and present distributions in Europe. R1b expanded from the Basque Ice Age refuge and predominates in extreme western Europe, being found at only 20 per cent or less in Russia and the Baltic states. R1a1, on the other hand, predominates in eastern Europe, and to a lesser extent in Scandinavia. I deal with the spread of both major R lineages at length in chapters 3 and 4 of my book The Origins of the British."

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/mythsofbritishancestryrevisited

__________________________________________
I've had The Origins of the British and Facing the Ocean for years... maybe it's time to start reading them, now.

 

[Ligurian]

"to insist that the Celtic languages,
called such by a seventeenth-century antiquarian,
represent Celts loosely defined by Greek and Roman writers
involves a circular argument."​

"By the middle of the first millennium BC the languages spoken throughout much of western Europe were a closely related branch of Indo-European. The similarites were first recognized by an Oxford museum-keeper, Edward Lhuyd, at the end of the seventeenth century. By studying the languages still spoken at that time in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany, Lhuyd was able to identify them as part of a single language group, which he called "Celtic." Subsequent studies of epigraphy and place-names have shown that the languages spoken in the later first millennium in France, central and western Iberia, and the south-western Alps belonged to the same "Celtic" family: these are generally known after the ancient tribal names of these areas--Gaulish, Celtiberian, and Lepontic.

A great deal has been based on this linguistic evidence. Lhuyd's "Celtic languages" have generally beeen regarded as the languages spoken by the peoples described as Celts by classical authors. In some areas, such as central and western France, this is certainly so, but to insist that the Celtic languages, called such by a seventeenth-century antiquarian, represent Celts loosely defined by Greek and Roman writers involves a circular argument. The simple fact is that no classical writer ever referred to the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland as Celts.

To complicate matters still further, the linguistic model was soon taken as the basis for constructing a historical model. Thus, of Britain, Ireland, and Iberia the inevitable question to be asked is, "When did the Celts arrive?" Inherent in the question are clearly several unsubstantiated assumptions--among them that the languages of the west were the languages spoken by the people described by Greek and Roman writers as Celts and that the "Celtic" language was introduced by migrants from continental Europe. To some scholars the migrants soon became invaders. Archaeologists, eager to substantiate the invasionist model, endeavoured to find assemblages of artefacts by which the "invaders" could be identified, and linguists used these suggestions as support for their own assumptions. In this way the circularity of the argument was complete."
--Barry Cunliffe, Facing the Ocean (2001), p. 294-295


And so, Koch et al began their Celtic from the West books.

 

[Ligurian]

"Triad VI. The three National Pillars of the Isle of Britain. First, Hu Gadarn, [Hu the Mighty], who originally conducted the nation of the Cymry into the Isle of Britain. They came from the Summer-Country, which is called Deffrobani, (that is, the place where Constantinople now stands), and it was over the Hazy Sea, [the German Ocean], that they came to the Isle of Britain, and to Llydaw, [Armorica], where they continued.

"British vessel Aratec sighted the white plane north of the Azores, flying steadily over the choppy and hazy sea. Three hours later another British vessel sighted this craft and reported it was heading back towards Europe."

Full text of "Circleville Herald (1928-08-06)"

https://cdn.britannica.com/91/3591-...atures-map-locator-Azores-Madeira-Islands.jpg

The Haze of the Atlantic Sea at the Azores... because the people are Iberian, by DNA, and skin and hair color…

So, the (Constantinople) and [German Ocean] comments from some random editors don't seem to be entirely accurate.