The Atlantis Blueprint: Unlocking the Ancient Mysteries of a Long-Lost Civilization - Hardcover

Wilson, Colin; Flem-Ath, Rand

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385334796 ISBN 13: 9780385334792

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 2001

Synopsis

A spellbinding blend of history and science, scholarship and speculation, this landmark work presents startling new evidence that traces archaeology's most enduring mysteries back to the lost civilization of Atlantis....

The Great Pyramid. Stonehenge. Machu Picchu. For centuries, these and other sacred sites have inspired wonder among those who ponder their origins.

Conventional science tells us they were constructed by local peoples working with the primitive tools of a fledgling civilization. But these megaliths nonetheless continue to attract pilgrims, scholars, and adventurers drawn by the possibility that their true spiritual and technological secrets remain hidden.

Who could have built these elaborate monuments? How did they do it? And what were their incomprehensible efforts and sacrifices designed to accomplish?

Now comes a revolutionary theory that connects these mysteries to reveal a hidden global pattern -- the ancient work of an advanced civilization whose warnings of planetary cataclysm now reverberate across one hundred millennia.

International bestselling author Colin Wilson and Canadian researcher Rand Flem-Ath join forces to share startling evidence of a fiercely intelligent society dating back as much as 100,000 years -- one that sailed the oceans of the world, building monuments to preserve and communicate its remarkable wisdom.

The Atlantis Blueprint is their term for a sophisticated network of connections between these sacred sites that they trace to Atlantis: a sophisticated maritime society that charted the globe from its home base in Antarctica ... until it was obliterated by the devastating global changes it anticipated but could not escape.

Here is adventure to realms beyond our imaginings ... to shifting poles, changing latitudes ... into the world of ancient mariners who recharted the globe ... to astonishing discoveries about our ancestors. Here are the great mysteries ... the incredibly complex geography of the Temple of Luxor ... the startling sophistication of Egyptian science and math ... and tantalizing similarities among the Hebrew, Greek, and Mayan alphabets to the Chinese lunar zodiac.

The Atlantis Blueprint opens up a Pandora's box of ancient mysteries, lost worlds, and millennial riddles. It is a story as controversial, fascinating, dangerous -- and inspiring -- as any ever told.

About this title

About the Author

Colin Wilson, author of such international bestsellers as The Outsider and The Occult, also writes on archaeology, astronomy, and cosmology. His recent book, From Atlantis to the Sphinx, reached number five on the London Times bestseller list. He lives in Cornwall, England, with his wife.

Rand Flem-Ath, a Canadian librarian, is one of the world's leading researchers in catastrophe myths; he is the author of When the Sky Fell: In Search of Atlantis. He lives on Vancouver Island with his wife, Rose, and their two dogs and two cats.

From the Back Cover

In November 1982, Professor Charles Hapgood wrote to a young correspondent,
Rand Flem-Ath, adding an amazing postscript to his life's work on ancient civilizations:

"There is evidence that the last displacement of the crust moved both American continents southward about 30 degrees, and absolutely devastated life and civilization on them. . . .

"Furthermore, in recent exciting discoveries I believe I have convincing evidence of a whole cycle of civilization in America and Antarctica, suggesting advanced levels of science that may go back 100,000 years...."

The idea was revolutionary. And it came from a man who had collaborated with Albert Einstein on the theory of earth crust displacement. Hapgood had discovered maps of
sub-glacial Antarctica and he was on a secret quest for Atlantis. He was now telling Rand that civilization was 100,000 years old.

Rand Flem-Ath replied immediately, asking for some hint of Hapgood's reasons for this amazing assertion. For weeks there was no reply, then his letter was returned, stamped "deceased."

Hapgood's last letter led Flem-Ath to his own quest for the origin of science and civilization, of which this book tells the story....

--from The Atlantis Blueprint

Reviews

In this pseudoscientific account, Flem-Ath, a Canadian librarian, and Wilson (Alien Dawn: An Investigation into the Contact Experience; etc.), bestselling author and New Age-y jack-of-all-trades, propose a single, geo-historical theory that links the Egyptian, Chinese and South American pyramids and other sacred sites. According to this argument, these civilizations received templates from Atlantis that contained crucial geodesic, geological and geometric information. Furthermore, Atlantean mariners, based in Antarctica, sailed the globe over 100,000 years ago and established more than 60 sacred sites around the world, such as Byblos and Jericho, to preserve the sophisticated wisdom of their culture. They erected these sites, say the authors, before geological disasters wiped out their civilization. Flem-Ath and Wilson take us on a hectic roller-coaster ride through pseudoscientific history, complete with the requisite numerology and mythology. The authors stand proudly on the shoulders of their forefathers, Charles Hapgood featured prominently among them. Before his death in 1982, Hapgood had amassed "irrefutable" proof of civilizations far more ancient than accepted archeology allows for. Flem-Ath and Wilson seem to leave no cultural, geological or paleontological stone unturned in their quest for detailed evidence, touching on everything from the origins of Freemasonry and the Ark of the Covenant, to ancient Japanese pottery in America and angels in the Book of Enoch. Frequently, they claim the interest or support of various famous people, many of whom suffered untimely deaths. Albert Einstein and John F. Kennedy, for instance, died before fully embracing earlier theories about Atlantis. For followers of mystical science, fantasy readers and conspiracy theorists, Flem-Ath and Wilson's enthusiasm and conviction will be a welcoming island in a sea of skepticism.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Veteran chronicler of history's mysteries Wilson and his cowriter Flem-Ath have come up with a new theory on Atlantis, or at least an expanded version of an old one. An intelligent society (but probably not from outer space), commonly known as Atlanteans, lived in snow-free Antarctica and left a connection of sacred sites that spans the globe. Whether the authors' theory could possibly be true is hard to divine because their evidence is so convoluted, so filled with measurements and math, geometry and geography, that it would take an Atlantean to work it all out. It doesn't help that the authors feel compelled to throw into their discourse everything but the kitchen sink: the Knights Templars, pyramids, even the Shroud of Turin make an appearance. Still, these sorts of books always generate hype and never fail to attract a solid audience. Pair it with James and Thorpe's Ancient Mysteries (1999), which debunks just this kind of treatment. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Hapgood's Secret Quest for Atlantis

On a rainy night in December 1982, a retired New England professor of anthropology named Charles Hapgood stepped off the pavement without looking left and was hit by an oncoming car. He died in hospital three days later.

Two months earlier he had sorted out his books and papers, and invited his sons to come and take what they wanted. He had been retired for sixteen years, and, at the age of seventy-eight, had the satisfaction of knowing that the last thirty years of his life had produced work of amazing originality. Earth's Shifting Crust (1958), written with the active encouragement and co-operation of Albert Einstein, had proposed a revolutionary new theory of the great ice ages: namely, that the crust of the earth can slide, like the skin on cold gravy, under the weight of polar ice caps, and move whole continents around. But perhaps his most revolutionary book was Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings (1966), which proved beyond reasonable doubt that civilisation is far older than historians had suspected; it should have brought him worldwide celebrity, since his arguments were irrefutable. He also produced a second edition of Earth's Shifting Crust (called The Path of the Pole, 1970) with still more evidence for his theory of crust slippage.

Born in 1904, Hapgood had graduated from Harvard in philosophy of science, then studied at Freiburg during the 1930s, when he witnessed the rise of the Nazis. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was inducted into the Office of Strategic Studies--the forerunner of the CIA--as an expert on Germany. When the war was over, Hapgood became a professor of anthropology at Springfield College in Massachusetts.

He was a good teacher, who believed in involving his students as much as possible. When, in 1949, a student named Henry Warrington asked him about the lost continent of Mu, the legendary civilisation that is supposed to have been engulfed by the Pacific Ocean, Hapgood told him to go away to research it, then report back to the class. As an afterthought, he told Warrington to examine the evidence for Atlantis too.

Warrington had only to consult any good encyclopaedia to learn that in the 1850s an English zoologist named P. L. Sclater had observed a strange similarity between animals and plants as far apart as India and Australia, and suggested that there must have been a land bridge between the Malay archipelago and the south coast of Asia during the Eocene Age, around 55 million years ago. He called this Lemuria, because his missing continent connected places where lemurs--a primate species--were common.

The existence of Lemuria became incorporated into the teachings of the eccentric genius Madame Blavatsky, who said it was the home of what she called the 'third root race', predecessors of human beings who looked like giant apes and communicated by telepathy, who were followed by Atlantis, then our current civilisation, the fifth root race. But, since only members of the Theosophical Society took Madame Blavatsky seriously, this view of Lemuria failed to gain wide currency.

In the 1880s a brilliant but erratic French scholar called Augustus Le Plongeon claimed to be able to read texts of the ancient Maya of Mexico, where he said he had found references to a continent called Mu that had vanished beneath the waves after tremendous earthquakes. Few took him seriously. Then in 1926 a British ex-intelligence officer named James Churchward, who had been a colonel in the Bengal Lancers, wrote a book called The Lost Continent of Mu, following it up with four sequels. Churchward had a friend called William Niven, a Scottish engineer and amateur archaeologist, who had been excavating near a village called Amantia, north of Mexico City, when he found hundreds of tablets apparently written in the Mayan script.

From their depth, Niven judged them to be more than 12,000 years old. Contemporary Mayan scholars were unable to decipher the script, but when Niven showed some of the tablets to Churchward, the ex-lancer claimed to be able to read it. During his time in India, he explained, he had formed a friendship with a Hindu priest who, when he learned that the young British officer was interested in archaeology, spent two years teaching him to read inscriptions that, he claimed, were written in Naacal, which was the original tongue of mankind and also the language of the lost continent of Mu. And now Niven had demonstrated the truth of another assertion of Churchward's mentor: that the priesthood of Mu had sent emissaries to Central America to teach their secret knowledge and to prepare a place of refuge in the event of the destruction of their own civilisation. This had finally come about, according to Churchward, about 50,000 years ago.

Because Churchward made no attempt at a scholarly presentation, his books were generally dismissed as fantasy. When Henry Warrington presented his report to Charles Hapgood's class at Springfield College, everyone agreed that there was no real evidence for Mu.

Atlantis was a different matter. It had first been described by Plato in two of his dialogues, the Timaeus and Critias, and the Greek Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus had stated that Plato's student Crantor (c.340-275 bc) had visited Egypt, where he saw pillars inscribed with the legend of Atlantis.

In the Timaeus, Plato's uncle, Critias, describes how his ancestor Solon (639-559 bc), the great statesman, had visited Egypt about two centuries earlier. Realising that the Egyptians knew far more about history than the Greeks, he lured a group of priests to talk about the past by telling them what he knew of Greek history. The bait was successful; an old priest told him, 'Oh Solon, Solon, you Greeks are all children.' He went on to say that the earth had experienced many catastrophes that had almost destroyed mankind, some by fire, some by water, and some by other means. But 9,000 years before (i.e. about 9,600 bc), one of the greatest of these catastrophes had occurred--a destruction by water. At this time, Solon was told, Athens already existed, and out in the ocean, beyond the Pillars of Hercules (which we now know as the Straits of Gibraltar), there was an island-continent called Atlantis, 'as large as Libya and Asia combined'. (By Libya he meant all of North Africa and by Asia he meant an area equivalent to the Middle East.)

The priest then made a baffling statement. From Atlantis, he explained, it was possible to reach other islands that formed part of Atlantis, 'and from them, the whole opposite continent that surrounds what can be truly called the ocean'.

It is conceivable that, by the 'opposite continent', the priest was referring to America--for there is evidence that Europeans visited America thousands of years before Columbus--but to say that the opposite continent surrounds the ocean sounds odd. Sea can surround a continent, but surely a continent does not surround the sea?

On Atlantis, said the priest, a powerful dynasty of kings had succeeded in extending their empire as far as the borders of Egypt. Their next ambition was to conquer Egypt and Greece. But Greece had resisted; an alliance led by Athens succeeded in defeating the Atlanteans. After this, a tremendous catastrophe, involving earthquakes and floods, destroyed most of the Greeks, and engulfed Atlantis under the waves.

This is not the usual version of history. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, Athens probably dates from about 900 bc, possibly a few centuries earlier. Even though it admits that 'the more substantial remains of later periods have largely effaced prehistoric settlement evidence', there is still a huge gap between 900 bc and 9,000 bc. On the other hand, we know that archaeology is continually pushing back the age of civilisation. In the 1960s, Jericho--the first walled city--was believed to date from about 6,500 bc, but it is now believed to date from at least 2,000 years earlier. 'The great stone wall, some twenty feet high and nine feet thick, was joined by at least one apsidal tower which . . . would not have disgraced one of the more impressive mediaeval castles,' says one expert. But early settlers do not build walls and towers like that; they build one-room huts. It took European man about 1,000 years to move from fortified wooden barricades to medieval castles. So Jericho might well be as old as 8,000 bc. And in that case, why not Athens?

In the Critias, Plato continues the story. Atlantis was founded by the sea god Poseidon (Neptune), who fathered five pairs of twins on a mortal woman. The god built her a home on a hill, and surrounded it with concentric rings of sea and land. The twins were each allotted a portion of the island, and over the generations extended their conquests to other islands and to the mainland of Europe.

Great engineers, the Atlanteans built a circular city, 11 miles in diameter, with a metal wall and a huge canal connecting it to the sea. Behind the city there was a plain 229 by 343 miles wide, on which farmers grew the city's food supply. Behind this were mountains with fertile meadows and every kind of livestock, including elephants. Plato spends many pages describing the magnificent buildings, with hot and cold fountains, communal dining halls and palaces of many-coloured stone, then goes on to describe the Atlantean social structure at equal length.

As time went by, the Critias goes on, the god-like element among the Atlanteans became diluted with human stock and they were no longer able 'to carry their prosperity with moderation'. The meaning is quite clear: undisturbed prosperity makes human beings lazy, and those who are too aggressive to allow themselves to vegetate fly from boredom by using up their energies in a struggle for power and wealth (things have not changed all that much). Although the Atlanteans regarded themselves as fortunate and contented, the gods were fully aware of their corruption. So Zeus summoned all the gods to a meeting in his palace . . .

And at that p...

Edition details

• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0385334796
• ISBN 13: 9780385334792
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448