ATLANTIC LEGEND 69 



What Mrs. Wishaw found in the neighborhood of the 

 stone-age fortress at Niebla were mines anciently exploited 

 with considerable hydraulic engineering skill dating back 

 somewhere between 12,000 and 40,000 b.c. Her conclusion is 

 that Tartessos and the surrounding area was a colony of Atlan- 

 tis exporting the wealth of the Rio Tinto mines. She further 

 produces evidence that an Iberian culture existed here long 

 before the Phoenicians settled Gades, and she links up Iberian 

 alphabetic signs with those found in the rock paintings of 

 Libya, and points out that this unique Libya-Tartessian cul- 

 ture must have sprung from an Atlantean source. There is a 

 good deal of other interesting evidence in Mrs. Wishaw's book 

 which at least indicates that there was a very early and highly 

 developed culture beyond the Gates of Gibraltar on the Atlan- 

 tic shores, predating the Minoan, Egyptian, and Phoenician 

 cultures by several millenniums, and possibly the parent source 

 of those Mediterranean cultures. At any rate she has brought 

 to new life the Tarshish of King Solomon. 



Perhaps the man who has made the most thoroughgoing 

 and serious study of the Atlantis question since Donnelly in 

 1882 published his book, AtlantiSy the Antediluvian Worldy is 

 Lewis Spence. Over a lifetime of research this learned Scottish 

 enthusiast has issued the following books: The Problem of 

 Atlantis, The History of Atlantis, and Atlantis in America. 

 Spence's basic thesis is as follows: 



A great continental land mass formerly occupied the major 

 portion of the north Atlantic region and some of the south 

 equatorial region. This land mass, of early geological origin, in 

 subsequent periods underwent frequent submergence and 

 emergence from the surrounding waters. Around a million 

 years ago, in Tertiary times, volcanic activities and shifting of 

 the earth's crust changed the continental nature of this land 

 into island masses. The largest of these was situated west of 

 the Mediterranean entrance, and another island was located 



