4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Intelligent Approach to the Search for Atlantis, September 30, 2008
This review is from: Atlantis: Lessons from the Lost Continent (Paperback)
I have finally finished reading the book and still greatly appreciate the author's sensible approach to resolving the mystery of whether Atlantis ever existed at all, and if so, where it might have been. The author begins with a well considered analysis of Plato's accounts of Atlantis, and what factors may affect the truthfulness and accuracy of those tales.
However, I am more impressed by the author's early recognition that sea levels were much lower 12,000 years ago, and the outlines of continents would have been different, and so would the regions of human population (mostly along now submerged coastlines). This fact seems too often overlooked in previous or competing theories.
On the downside of this book, the first chapter was written with all the academic rigor of a cocktail party monologue, reminiscent of Erick von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods". There seem to be a number of editing errors, or inconsistencies. The author seems to confuse "descendant" with "ancestor". Additionally, he neglects the archeological evidence of stone-age man using flint tools in America, while supposing that Atlanteans enjoyed a global, cosmopolitan culture, along side primative shanty-towns. Even with the ghettos in America, you find plastic spoons from McDonald's.
On the plus side, the author gives useful data on the natural decomposition of modern manufactured materials: steel, cement, paper, styrofoam, etc. Few, if any of these last for more than two thousand years, let alone ten thousand. And while this would certainly explain the absence of readily identifiable structures or machinery of an ancient technology, it does little to prove the existence of an Atlantean civilization.
I commend this book for bringing to bear a better understanding of how such a civilization might have disappeared with so little remaining trace. However, in the absence of better evidence, I will have to side with the skeptics who doubt that any civilization ever existed on Earth that was reasonably close in technological sophistication as our own.
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