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Dominique Görlitz (born June 15, 1966 in Gotha, Thuringia) is a German experimental archaeologist, vegetation geographer, author, filmmaker and lecturer at the Global Top Speakers.

He received a doctor’s degree as Biogeographer. As experimental archaeologist he is engaged in the vagility of prehistoric and early cultures, for many years.

He became internationally known through his ABORA reed boat expeditions (1999, 2002 and 2007). With these nautical experiments, he aimed to support theories of early prehistoric marine and intercultural interactions of distant ancient cultures.

He is founder and leader of the “Association of Experimental Archaeology and Research Chemnitz e.V." and member of the Explorers Club Manhattan/U.S. as ell as member of the European Association for the advancement of archaeology by experiment (EXAR).

Between 1989 and 1994 he studied physical and biology education as teaching degree for secondary schools at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany. As student he started his first experiments of prehistorical seafaring with his wife Cornelia Lorenz who is supporting him energetic. Together they realized many archaeological experiments. In doing so they met Thor Heyerdahl in 1995 who supported Görlitz until his death in 2002.

The first big reed boat expedition started in 1999 with ABORA I. His second sea voyage did he start in 2002 with a circuit in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The ABORA II which was built according to prehistoric Egyptian petroglyphs, could document for the first time in modern age that reed rafts could sail crosswind and against the wind. In 2007 started the first crossing of the Northern Atlantic Ocean with a replica of a prehistoric reed boat. The journey had to be aborted approximately 500 sea miles before the Azores for technical reasons. Nevertheless, the ABORA III demonstrated that a prehistoric reed sailing vessel was able to follow the Gulf stream and pass the eddies independently. Up to then the scientists had considered this as impossible for vessels of such kind.

In 2012, Görlitz earned his Ph. D. in natural science with his trans-disciplinary thesis on "Prehistoric Propagation Mechanisms of Transatlantic Common Crops" at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg. This dissertation provided various trans-disciplinary reports, that many cultivated plant taxons were spread very early across the ocean by humans. Furthermore, the inter hemispherical spreading of tobacco, cocaine and the South American tobacco beetle to Egypt during the Bronze Age can probably be traced back to early trade connections between the Old and New World.

Additional Dr. Görlitz is engaged in prehistoric cartography. Since 2013 he is working as post-doc Fellow as freelance scientist at the Technical University Dresden at the Institute for Cartography. Therefore, he is cooperating with a team of international scientists from the USA and Hungary regarding the unsolved mysteries of the explorer’s history of the early modern age as well as the antique cosmographers.

Since April 2013 Dr. Görlitz collaborates with the author and private researcher Stefan Erdmann regarding the building technology of the Cheops Pyramid. In the context of their controversial studies in the Cheops Pyramid they were able to discover steady marks of magnetite at 18 different locations on the ceiling of the King’s chamber. Those seem to be an evidence for highly developed lifting technology, the same as from the records of the Creek historian Herodotus (480 to 420 BC). Furthermore, the discovery of the magnetite confirms the reports of Herodotus, that the Egyptians already had used iron tools for the construction. A detailed publication to those evidences is in preparation (March 2015).

Dominique Görlitz is is currently preparing a new expedition with ABORA IV on the Black Sea.