The spanish town Cadiz, which is situated nearly 100 Km north-west of the Street of Gibraltar at the coast of the Atlantic, was named in older times Gades and before that, in the time of the ancient Greeks, Gadeiros. Cadiz is taken for an foundation of the Phoenicians and is known as oldest town of the western world. There is no doubt at all, that Cadiz and the Gadeiros of Platon are the same towns.

North of Cadiz there is a plain which is nearly 150 Km large at the sea and is extending in west-east direction nearly 300 Km into southern Spain. This plain was settled since primeval times. There were found coarse worked tools of stone in layers of pebble, which was the former edge of the sea reaching to 30 Km further into the land. These tools were assigned to the so-called "homo habilis" and are nearly 1 million years old. With that, they are the oldest testimonials of human settling in the Iberian peninsula.

Against the cold wind of the north the plain is protected by a long range of mountains which is called today Sierra Morena. In the plain there is a lot of little rivers and as a big one , which is passable also for large seaships , the Guadalquivir. South of the Guadalquivir there is a less big river called Guadalete, which comes from the southern mountains and flows into the Atlantic at the port of"El Puerto de Santa Maria". About fifty km inland lies the town of Sevilla from which South America was conquered and ruled in the time of the Spanish empire. About 10 Kms north of Sevilla are the ruins of the Roman town Italica, from which came two famous Roman emperors. And further inland at the Guadalquivir lies Cordoba, which was about 1000 A.C. a cosmopolitan city with one million inhabitants, the seat of the western caliphate and main town of culture in the western world at that time. As one can see, a country full of history.

In the language of the Arabian conquerors of that time the country was called "al Andaluz" which following customary interpretation comes from the "Vandals", who here settled before the Visigoths as first people of the Germanic migration and than moved on to North Africa. But a little bit unclear pronounced and thinking of the thousands of years of oral and written name tradition which has passed, not so far away from the name "Atlantis" of the old Egyptians, which in their language meant "island without name". In Spain of today it is named "Andalucia" and is an independent region of Spain.
In this country was situated once a rich and famous town, which was called by the ancient Greeks "Tartessos" and is named in the Bible in the book of Jesaja and at many other points under the name of "Tharsis" or "Tarschisch". It is called here the merry town, which is proud of its age. Its merchants, which had branches at Tyrus and Sidon are called "inhabitants of the island" and their market and port was famous all over the Mediterranean Sea. Apart from Jesaja it is named in the Bible at 1.Mose 10,4; 2.Chronik 2,2; 20,36-37; Esther. 1,14 ; Psalm. 72, 10 ; Jeremia. 10, 9 ; Hesekiel. 27, 12. 25 ; Jona 1,3 ; 4,2 . The "Illustrated Dictionary and Concordance of the Bible" of 1990 calls it "the country from which the people of Tyrus imported silver, iron, tin and lead. Jona tried there to go by ship. Salomon also sent ships to it."
Following the texts of the Bible, Tharsis and the Chittits were sons of Javan, the ankle of Noah, who lived in the western countries and on the islands of the heathens. The ships of Tharsis were the wealthiest and most powerful on the sea and Tharsis itself is called the "town of primeval times".

We will not call the town with the name of "Tartessos", under which it is known in Spain, although its position is taken until now as unknown. It got this name in a later time after its reconstruction and in a time which is known in the history of the Iberian peninsula as "Phoenician".

Because here we are talking about its first great time we will use the name which is used in the Bible

And we will see , that it is identical with Platons "Atlantis" in all points.

It is not astonishing, that this signifying roll has found its expression in some overcoming reports of history. An Egyptian stele with hieroglyphs, by means of which an old , high-ranged Egyptian priest told the Greek Solon the story of power and importance of Atlantis and the Bible, the probably most important book of old history of the West. Also Homer has put a monument to it with his story of Scheria , the town of the kings of the Phaeakeans (D) , where Odysseus finally arrived after his long voyages. Over that, in Egyptian hieroglyph mentions you can find the name of nations of Atlantis which are often simply put together in the name of the "sea-people" . From the archives of the Egyptian kings is known a correspondence with the country "Alasija", which probably means "Atlantis". For the first supposition, that Alasija was situated in Cyprus, could not be confirmed.

This seems to be nevertheless not very much and not appropriate to the historical importance of the country and the town. This is due to the devastations which were produced by later nations in the mediterranean area. On standing out place you will find here the Romans. They have caused the destruction of the library of Alexandria, in which burned 700 000 books with the gathered knowledge of the old world and have also destroyed nearly all knowledge of the West European heirs of Atlantis, the Etruscans (D) and the Carthageneans . The succession of them was taken by the early christians and later by the catholic church. They condemned any knowledge coming from older times as "heathen" and destroyed it inconsiderately.

An other reason for it, is the politics of secrecy which was practised by the countries of the Atlantian empire. For the Atlantians and their successors the Phoenicians and also the Carthageneans provided by all means, that no greek ship could enter into the sea west of Italy. Also the ships of the Romans were fought with all methods to keep the coasts and sea routes as secret as possible. This was done with pure commercial consideration , for they did not like to show the sea ways to the sources of Atlantian wealth, the mines of copper, tin, silver and gold and other important raw materials to the possible competitor.

But now back to the today position of the town of Tharsis or Atlantis.

The town which lies today at the place of the former port of Atlantis at the mouth of the Guadalete is called "El Puerto de Santa Maria" and was called in that region since time immemorial "El Puerto", "The Port". Before the conquest by the Moors, it was called, following the official history of town, to his legendary founder "Puerto de Menestheo" , which does mean "The Port of the God Menes." The visitor, burdened with knowledge of old history, remembers, that the king or god Menes is known as the man, who unified Upper- and Lower-Egypt and initiated the rapid cultural rise of the land at the Nile about 3000 B.C. This shows at least, that this port is very old and older than the Phoenician trading place Cadiz , which is situated in front of it on a small peninsula and was founded at 1100 B.C.

In the area of Puerto and its port were found at some 10 000 m2 the vestiges of a village in form of huts and houses and assigned to that subterranean constructions in form of a bell which served as silos and sometimes as tombs. Also were found tools for the production of sun-dried bricks and places of cooking, richly furnished with usual kitchen equipment. Knife-edges, handmade pottery, crescent shaped teeth, arrowheads, thin plates of trapezoid form, sharped flints, splinters of stones and bones were found, showing that there was production of tools and devices for daily use. This early settlement was dated to 3500 B.C.

A look at the Michelin-map of Andalusia scaled 1:400 000 shows: Following the direction of the port to the North-East there is a small canal going into the land until it is forced by the railway line Cadiz-Jerez to break to the East. The railway line itself avoids an in North-East to South-West extending mountain range of nearly six kilometer length and surrounds it in the South-East at the village of "El Portal". Between railway and mountain goes the old road from Puerto to Jerez de la Frontera and on the other side of the railway-line flows the river Guadalete from here to the port of Puerto in many curves.

Already in front of Jerez branches the old road to Algeciras, which was named in the time of the Romans Carteia and was in Phoenician time and almost also in Atlantian time a representing town. In direction East-North-East follows the old road to Arcos de la Frontera which goes further to Ronda and to Antequera. Also these two towns have been proved as very old and were existing at least as settlements about 2500 B.C. To North-North-East follows the old, probably most important road which goes to Utrera and Carmona and from there to Lora del Rio and the mines of the Bronze Age in the mountains of Sierra Morena. At the other side it goes from Utrera over Ecija to Cordoba and opens with that the whole of the Andalusian plain. Also from Utera branches the old road to North, which goes to the Sevilla of today and further to the tin and silver regions of North-West Iberia and is until now named "Ruta de la Plata", which means "silver-road".

This spider-web formed road network shows once more the importance of the region. It is shown also by the fact that there happened the deciding battle between the Visigoths and the Moors (D) .
Also the Romans won here a deciding battle. It looks like a fact, that the conquest of this region was an absolute precondition for the mastery of the hinterland, and it becomes clear, why the here positioned town was at last totally levelled and made inhabitable by the conqueror. The conqueror than prevented for a long time , that it was reconstructed.

This points in direction of Rome, for it is known, that the Romans, first in Etruria (D) , than in Carthago and later on in Jerusalem (D) and at many not so well-known places, prevented, that old famous towns were reconstructed after the conquest and destruction by them for nothing should reduce the fame of the world ruling city of Rome. Beside this, the Romans ruled over 400 years South-Iberia and this time was sufficient to extinguish the knowledge of the old town in the memory of the inhabitants of the country. The archaeological report published in 2003 confirms this supposition.

The highest elevation of the mountain at its south-eastern end is given in the map as 124 m. In front of it is situated a hill of nearly one kilometer length and 30 m height. Here you find the large archaeological excavation which shows until now a fortified town of the time between the ninth and the third century B.C. At this digging up has been worked since 1978.

There were found extensive rests of walls of burned houses, surrounded by fortifications. In the houses were found pottery, Phoenician devices and rests , which are showing an intensive exchange with the Greeks. This town is, following the archaeological won datas of time, not Atlantis-Tharsis. But all is pointing out to interpret this town as the successor of Atlantis-Tharsis named "Tartessos". Because Tartessos was the heir of the advantages of the position of Atlantis-Tharsis, its position cannot be far away. When you look at the area and are conscious of the Atlantis report of Platon, there is only the plain between the hill of Tartessos and the sea , which answers to all given details.

Here you can easily put the rings of water and land described by Platon. The river Guadalete with its curves could have given the island of the beginning.

On the saddle of the mountain situated behind the hill of Tartessos ( it is now called "Sierra de San Cristobal" and upon it were found extended necropoles of the beginning of the Bronze Age until the Tartessian time) there are big modern settings of sources of water and a little bit north of it you can find several ditches and tunnels. The walls of it are vertical and smooth hewed. The ceilings are lightly bended. In their old grey state they are remembering the submarine boat bunkers of the second world war or the bunkers of the "Atlantikwall" in France.

But there is no marking of planking and no jutting out rusted reinforcement of steel. These bunkers were knocked out of the rock and in it were probably stored the ships and stocks of the town situated in front of the mountain. The size of the tunnels would have been sufficient to store two boats of the atlantian time side by side. Also the height is like that of a little house.

Above the saddle of the mountain there is at his highest point a flat place. The large grey socles on which the Parthenon of Athens would have place enough, prove themselves as water containers, hewn into the rock with a gigantic flat coverplate and conically to the top running supports like an Egyptian temple. The lightly rising roads between the separate socles are planted with bushes and flowers like a temple road and to the south-east follows a forest of beautiful trees.

Again Platon enters into the mind, telling: The temple of Poseidon was long one stadion, 500 feet large and of corresponding height. It would have had place here and with it the castle of the king and all other described by Platon. The modern construction of the water containers has destroyed naturally all vestiges of old times, but a little bit further to the end of the mountain, where the flat plate passes over to a spur of the mountain 100 m large and 600 m long, there is an undisturbed archaeologically interesting place which is marked with fragments of pottery and some elevations like destroyed walls. A sign with the inscription "Archaeological Place" shows that also this place is reserved for a later digging up.
At the edge of the mountain-top you are surprised by the marvelous panorama which is offered.

Far,far goes the look over the fertile country, the white Jerez seems to be a little village in the gigantic plain and to the other side the look goes over the plain to the sea and the cranes of Cadiz. Everything Platon is telling about the uniqueness of this place is here fulfilled. Truely a place which would have been chosen by gods.

Here becomes clear, why in all religions of nations coming from the atlantian culture, gods are living on a mythic mountain. This is the mountain which gave the basic idea for the Olymp of the Greeks, the Walhalla of the Germans , the zikkurates of Mesopotamia (D) and many other natural or artificially created mountain of gods.
And Platon must again be quoted because there is no better description of the place as this:

Read to this, (for the moment only available in German language) :

DIE GESCHICHTE VON ATLANTIS, der vergessene Ursprung unserer Kultur
by Karl Juergen Hepke
TRIGA - DER VERLAG, D 63584 Gruendau-Rothenbergen, Germany, 2nd Edition, Hardcover, 268 Pages, EUR 22,00, ISBN 978-3-89774-539-1 ,