J. Konstapel Leiden, 21-11-2025.

This website Homer & Atlantis offers a striking intellectual cartography—a reminder that the roots of European myth may lie as much in the Ukrainian steppe and the Black Sea as in the Aegean.

Homer and Atlantis: A Cimmerian–Scythian Alternative to the Classical Narrative

An Essay on the Complete Works of Anatoliy V. Zolotukhin (2001–2017)

Introduction: From Aegean Dogma to Pontic Revelation

For two centuries Homeric scholarship has remained imprisoned in a Mediterranean-centric paradigm. Troy lies in Hisarlık, Odysseus sails past Sicily and the Straits of Gibraltar, and Atlantis — if it existed at all — must be sought somewhere west of the Pillars of Heracles.

Ukrainian engineer and independent scholar Anatoliy V. Zolotukhin (Mykolaiv, Ukraine) spent more than thirty years demolishing that paradigm from within — using only the Homeric texts themselves and regional archaeology. His conclusion, developed in stages between 2001 and 2017, is as radical as it is internally consistent:

• Homer was no Ionian bard but a historical Cimmerian-Scythian king named Gnurus who ruled in the northern Black Sea region from 657–581 BC.
• The Iliad and Odyssey are strongly autobiographical works whose geography is almost entirely confined to the Black Sea and its river systems.
• Atlantis was no myth and no ocean-spanning continent: it was a real Bronze-Age maritime power whose core territory lay on the Crimean peninsula around modern Evpatoria. It was destroyed around 1450 ± 100 BC by the colossal eruption of Thera (Santorini) and the ensuing tsunami.
• A small elite (ten families on ten ships) escaped the catastrophe and founded a refugee colony called Alibant (“city of the deceased”) on the high bank of the Southern Bug — the archaeological site known today as Dykyi Sad (“Wild Orchard”) near Mykolaiv.
• Homer, as one of the last legitimate heirs of that Atlantean-Cimmerian royal line, deliberately placed the entrance to Hades at Dykyi Sad because it was literally the necropolis of drowned Atlantis.
• Plato’s Timaeus and Critias are a heavily redacted, de-scaled, and de-contextualised Egyptian summary of the same tradition — with the true location (Crimea / northern Black Sea) deliberately obscured for political reasons.

This essay presents Zolotukhin’s complete model as it stood at the end of his active publication period (2017), incorporating both his early synthesis (2001–2006) and the decisive later discoveries (2012–2017) that fixed Atlantis on the Crimea and tied it directly to the Thera explosion.

Part I: The Archaeological and Textual Anchor — Dykyi Sad = Alibant

The entire reconstruction rests on one extraordinary site: the Late Bronze Age fortified settlement Dykyi Sad at the confluence of the Southern Bug and Ingul rivers (modern Mykolaiv oblast).

• Radiocarbon-dated to ca. 1300–900 BC (Byelozerska culture).
• Strategic river-port controlling the barnsteen (amber) route from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
• Described by Ukrainian archaeologists (Grebennikov, Gorbenko, Smirnov, Klochko) as “the only Black Sea town-port from the era of legendary Troy”.

Zolotukhin (from 2012 onward) identifies this site as the colony Alibant, founded by the ten Atlantean families who survived the Thera catastrophe. Because virtually the entire population of the motherland had perished, the survivors experienced the new settlement as a city of the dead — hence Homer locates the land of the Cimmerians and the gates of Hades precisely there (Odyssey XI).

Part II: The Catastrophe — Thera 1450 BC and the Birth of the Cimmerian Dynasty

Zolotukhin aligns Homer’s chronological pointers and hidden verses with modern volcanology:

• The eruption of Thera is currently dated to ca. 1620–1450 BC; Zolotukhin accepts the later adjusted dates around 1450 ± 100 BC.
• The explosion and tsunami match Homer’s descriptions of the destruction of a great maritime power.
• Ten royal ships escape (exactly as in Plato, but here historically grounded).
• The refugees reach the northern Black Sea and establish Alibant/Dykyi Sad, bringing with them the royal genealogy that will eventually produce the historical Cimmerian and Scythian kings — and, centuries later, Homer himself.

The Cimmerian thalassocracy of the 9th–8th centuries BC is therefore not a new phenomenon but the final phase of post-Thera Atlantean culture on the mainland.

Part III: Homer as Last Atlantean Heir-King

Using his method of immanent biography (all data must come from the epics themselves) and his newly founded discipline apocryphology (the science of deliberately concealed texts), Zolotukhin reconstructs:

• Homer’s real name: Gnurus (mid-7th century BC).
• Born in the Mykolaiv peninsula (“Hades” district), died and buried on Berezan island (“island of Aeae”).
• Spent seven years in Egypt under Psammetichus I and one year in Phoenicia searching temple archives for written records of the Atlantean catastrophe.
• Encoded thousands of hidden autobiographical verses in the Iliad and Odyssey, as well as in later works (Plato, the Bible, Ukrainian chronicles, even Pushkin) and in more than 1000 lapidary inscriptions from the northern Black Sea littoral.

Key correspondences (unchanged since 2006 but now reinforced by the Crimean discovery):

Homeric name	Zolotukhin’s identification	Modern location
Oceanus	Dnipro (Borysthenes)	Main river
Cocytus	Southern Bug
Styx	Ingul
Acheron	Dnipro–Bug estuary	Entrance to Hades
Hylaea / Tartarus	Kinburn Spit
Aeae (Circe)	Berezan island (formerly peninsula)	Place of Homer’s death
Hades proper	Mykolaiv peninsula + subterranean galleries	Alibant / Dykyi Sad necropolis

The night voyage from Circe’s island to the Cimmerian land (Odyssey X–XI) is still a real 70–75-mile return trip under sail — but now with the added meaning that Odysseus/Homer is visiting the very grave of his drowned ancestors.

Part IV: Plato as Distorted Echo

Zolotukhin’s late work (especially the projected Apocryphology of the History of Atlantis) shows that Plato’s account contains dozens of hidden Homeric verses lifted almost verbatim. Solon (or the Egyptian priests) removed Homer’s name and multiplied all distances by ten in order to detach the story from contemporary Cimmerian-Scythian power and make it appear as harmless ancient myth.

Conclusion

Anatoliy Zolotukhin’s lifelong project, culminating in the identification of Atlantis with Crimean Thera-survivors who founded Alibant/Dykyi Sad, offers the first fully coherent alternative macro-history that:

• takes Homer literally as a historical source,
• requires no hypothetical continents or lost technologies,
• and is supported by archaeology, radiocarbon dates, volcanology, and textual criticism.

Whether or not the academic world ever accepts it, the model possesses a rare and almost disturbing internal harmony. At the very least it demonstrates that the “Aegean consensus” is not the only possible reading of the evidence — and perhaps not even the most elegant one.

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Annotated Reference List

1. Zolotukhin, A. V. (2008). Homer: The Immanent Biography. Nikolaev, Ukraine.
   – Primary Ukrainian monograph proposing Homer’s Cimmerian–Scythian origin, re-mapping the Odyssey onto the Northern Black Sea, and detailing the genealogical line Targitaus → Ateas. Sources from Herodotus and Genesis are integrated into a unified dynastic chronology. [PDF source uploaded by user]
2. Zolotukhin, A. V. (2022). “Homer’s Egyptian Autographs!” Homer and Atlantis Project. https://homerandatlantis.com/ukrainian-%D1%94%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BA%D1%96-%D0%B0%D0%B2%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B8-%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B0/
   – Extends the 2008 framework to Egypt; claims Homer personally inscribed two Saqqara epitaphs and composed the Rosetta Stone. Introduces the explicit Atlantis linkage: the Cimmerian kings as heirs of Atlantis and Homer’s Egyptian expedition as a quest for its traces.
3. Herodotus (5th cent. BCE). Histories, Book IV.
   – Primary classical testimony on Scythian ethnogenesis and the myth of Targitaus and his sons (Leipoxais, Arpoxais, Colaxais), which Zolotukhin re-interprets as historical dynasts of Hylaea.
4. Assyrian Royal Inscriptions (7th cent. BCE). Translations in Luckenbill, D. (1926). Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia.
   – Mention of Cimmerian kings Teushpa, Lygdamis, and their campaigns in Anatolia; used by Zolotukhin to anchor the early Cimmerian chronology.
5. Klochko, V. I. et al. (2001–2010). Archaeological Reports on Dykyi Sad, Mykolaiv.
   – Document the late Bronze Age fortified harbor settlement interpreted by Zolotukhin as the “town of the Cimmerian people.” Referenced in The Immanent Biography. [115†source]
6. Homeric Texts. Odyssey XI, XIV, XXIV; Iliad XVIII.
   – Zolotukhin’s primary textual basis for localizing Hades and interpreting Homer’s autobiographical elements.
7. Constable, H. (2023). “Over Fake Wetenschap, Cultuur en Media.” https://constable.blog/
   – Dutch essay referencing the Crimean/Black Sea hypothesis for Atlantis; includes discussion of Zolotukhin’s materials and broader critique of mainstream scientific paradigms.
8. Mozolevsky, B. (1971). Excavation of the Tovsta Mohyla Pectoral.
   – Archaeological context for the Scythian gold pectoral that Zolotukhin reinterprets as a symbolic genealogical diagram of Cimmerian-Scythian royalty.
9. Supplementary regional studies:
   • Rolle, R. (1989). The World of the Scythians. University of California Press.
   • Murzin, V. (2012). “The Cimmerians and Early Scythians of the Northern Black Sea.” In Pontic Archaeology vol. XV.
     – Provide archaeological background against which Zolotukhin positions his alternative chronology.