Jim Allen, born James Mathieson Allen in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1948 which makes him of British nationality and a British passport holder.
In 1967 he joined the Royal Air Force where he subsequently trained and served as a Photographic Interpreter (air photo analyst) specialising in the study of maps and aerial photos for military report writing, including serving with the RAF in Cyprus and Malta.
After leaving the RAF he bought a large motor boat and sailed the inland waterways to arrive in Cambridge where he worked for several years with a public utility as a Cartographic Draughtsman engaged on making field surveys and maintaining map records.
His interest in Atlantis began around 1978 when researching the origins of ancient measurement systems and he came cross Plato’s description of the rectangular level plain of Atlantis which Plato said measured 3,000 x 2,000 “stades”, an ancient Greek unit of measurement.
Having read that America might be Atlantis, Allen searched all of America for a region which might contain the level rectangular plain mentioned by Plato and which Plato said existed “in the centre of the whole island”. Using modern satellite mapping, Allen identified a region of South America (the Bolivian Altiplano) which seemed to fit Plato’s description but it was only when he constructed a three-dimensional topographical model of the region using techniques learned in the RAF, that the rectangular shape of the Altiplano could be seen, confirming this as the location of the missing plain of Atlantis. Allen then put forward the theory that it was not the continent of Atlantis which disappeared into the sea in a single day as Plato said, but only the capital, built on a volcanic island and also called Atlantis which disappeared into the inland sea of Lake Poopo.
This discovery seemed to attract little attention in modern universities such as Cambridge where Allen lived, but all the same he began to write various magazine articles trying to attract attention to the discovery and self-published a booklet “Atlantis – the City and the Plain” which set out the theory and was also reviewed in “The Peruvian Times” in 1982.
Thus began several years of study of the Bolivian Altiplano, bearing in mind that at that time the Internet had not yet been developed and reliable information about Bolivia was hard to come by. Allen also began studying Spanish at evening classes and in 1995, after selling his house in Cambridge flew to Bolivia where he travelled to Oruro, hired a jeep and drove into the desert west of Lake Poopo to investigate what looked like a giant canal which he had seen on satellite photos of the lake area.
In 1998 with the aid of Col John Blashford-Snell who had taken an interest in the project and promoted it on British radio, Allen’s book “Atlantis: the Andes Solution” was published by the Windrush Press in England, U.S.A., Italy, Mexico and several other countries. In this year Allen also returned to Bolivia to meet up with Col Blashford-Snell’s “Kota Mama” expedition and guide them to the canal site west of Lake Poopo.
In 1999 Allen returned to Bolivia with a British film company and made a circuit of the Altiplano which included an unknown lost city at Pumiri, volcan Sajama, volcan Quemado and the extremely remote village of Chipaya on the edge of the Salar de Coipasa, thus establishing the pattern for what was to become “The Atlantis Trail”. This became the title of a second Atlantis book which Allen has written (La Ruta de la Atlantida) which gives details of the various expeditions and the route has now been officially adopted as a tourist route by the Oruro authorities.
Later the same year another expedition to the region followed at the invitation of Carlos Aliaga of Cochabamba and with Carlos and in Carlos’ jeep Allen investigated the region to the south of Lake Poopo around a volcanic site known as Santuario de Quillacas arriving on the day of the festival of “el señor de Quillacas.” It was on this expedition that Pampa Aullagas was seen for the first time in the distance on the other side of the lake. Following on from correspondence between Allen and Carlos Aliaga after Allen’s return to England, Carlos visited Pampa Aullagas in May the following year and sent Allen a report of the ring-like formations at Pampa Aullagas.
This was followed in December 2000 by the “Millennium Atlantis Expedition” to Pampa Aullagas in the company of Lisa Hutchison from “Of Like Mind Productions” making the film “Atlantis in the Andes” on behalf of the Discovery Channel.
Although Plato said Atlantis was swallowed up by the sea, it was now obvious that in fact Pampa Aullagas was the missing site of Atlantis and the waters of the sea, meaning the nearby Lake Poopo, had risen up to cover the site, which had also been destroyed by earthquakes just as Plato said.
A further four years passed until November 2004 when Allen was invited by the Oruro Technical University co-ordinated by Miguel Vargas and with the assistance of John Villegas of Zingara Travel, to return to Bolivia to participate in some conferences which the UTO was hosting for UNESCO and to revisit the site in Pampa Aullagas. At this time, Allen’s book was published in Bolivia by Ivan Canales of Latinas Editores in Oruro under the title “Atlantida: la solucion Andina” and presented to the public at the UNESCO conferences. An expedition was made to Pampa Aullagas in the company of two coachloads of “tourists” from the UNESCO conferences and on this trip, the presence of cut stones from a previous unknown culture was confirmed, as had been suggested in reports sent by three enthusiastic Bolivian investigators who had visited the site.
In August 2005 Allen returned to Bolivia after a further invitation to continue exploration in Pampa Aullagas and help promote tourism in the area. On this occasion Allen spent eight months in Bolivia. He proposed to the Bolivian Congress that “the Atlantis Trail” be officially adopted as a tourist route and a law was passed in Congress to this effect. He also worked with the Chamber of Commerce in Santa Cruz and the Oruro authorities to promote a route “Atlantida and the Inter Salares”, diverting tourist traffic which would otherwise go directly to Uyuni along a new route which would include Quillacas and the Atlantis site at Pampa Aullagas then crossing the salt desert to Uyuni. A new road was promised for construction to aid this proposal and a new hotel was undertaken to be built by the village people of Pampa Aullagas.
Allen also returned to Pampa Aullagas where accompanied by his assistant, Luis Gutierrez, he carried out a survey of the entire site using a GPS thereby establishing that concentric rings of land (as described by Plato for the site of Atlantis) do indeed exist surrounding the entire site and making a map for the use of future tourists.
This material has now been written up by Allen for a third book “Atlantis: Lost Kingdom of the Andes” which completes the work as a trilogy “Atlantis – the Andes trilogy” which offers the reader respectively the theory, the expeditions and the discovery.
The Oruro Technical University subsequently awarded Allen
the title “Doctor Honoris Causa” and the city of Oruro awarded him the medal “Distinction of Scientific Investigation Dr.
Jose Maria Dalence”.
A keen traveller, Allen lists his interests as photography, oil painting, sailing, music, cooking and is also an enthusiast of Spain, Balearic and Canary Islands and of course Bolivia which has become his adopted native country.
Atlantis: the Andes Solution (Atlantida la solucion andina) is the original book published by Windrush Press in 1998 which sets out Allen’s theory that since a continent cannot sink into the sea in the space of a single day as Plato described, it must logically only have been the capital city also called Atlantis which sank into the inland sea of Lake Poopo and that Atlantis was an original Andean culture which existed on the Bolivian Altiplano next to Lake Poopo. It was subsequently destroyed by earthquakes and floods at some unknown date in the remote past.
The Atlantis Trail (La Ruta Atlantida) is Allen’s second book which is the story of the five expeditions around the region leading to the discovery of the actual site of the former Atlantis island at Pampa Aullagas to the south of Lake Poopo. On this trip Allen also unearthed a Bolivian legend “the Legend of the Desaguadero” which tells of a city punished by the gods and sinking beneath the waters of a lake – not just a parallel to Plato’s story but surely the origin of Plato’s story.
Atlantis: Lost Kingdom of the Andes (Atlantida: reino perdido de los Andes) is the third and final book which presents more information on the site discovered at Pampa Aullagas and completes the work as a trilogy. It also includes satellite images showing the rings of land at Pampa Aullagas as well as a site map made with the aid of the GPS showing the location of the circular concentric channels which were the main feature of the Atlantis described by Plato. It further includes excerpts from rare works such as Francisco Lopez de Gomarra’s account of how Columbus came to discover “America” in the first place and how people of that time thought he had discovered Atlantis, and Sarmiento de Gamboa’s 16th century “History of the Incas” – lost for 300 years – which clearly describes “South America” as being “Atlantis”.