Customer Reviews

Atlantis from a Geographer's Perspective

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As an archaeologist who works in Ireland, I was interested to read this book. I was dismayed to see that it is riddled with factual errors. Here are some of the things in it that are simply wrong:

There is no such thing as a megalithic stadium. There was no such thing as a "megalithic empire" or indeed a single megalithic culture. Only one monument at Tara dates to the Neolithic. All of the other monuments, including the enclosure, are 1000+ years later than any megalith. The Irish myths and sagas date to the early centuries AD and MAYBE a few centuries earlier; they have nothing to do with the megalithic period. Plato was clear that Atlantis was "in front of the Pillars of Heracles", and Ireland is nowhere near the Pillars of Heracles. Plato said Atlantis was the size of Asia and Libya combined, while Ireland is nowhere near this size. It is statistically invalid only to compare the aspects of Ireland that "match" Atlantis while ignoring those that don't.

These are all factual errors that appear in this book and seriously affected my opinion of it. There are others that would take too long to explain. Anyone who wants to know more is free to email me. But for the reader who is not well-versed in archaeology and ancient history, read this book with caution. It may sound good, but the information it is based on does not hold up to scrutiny.

Ulf Erlingsson has written a book about Atlantis that is well thought out. I have read many books on this subject, and this is one of the best. His conclusions are reasonable and well documented, and provoke thought on the part of the reader about whether some of our preconceptions about our distant past serve us as our paradigm changes in the new century.

Reading this book opened up a lot of doors to the past for me. A past just as complicated as our present maybe. It is easy to forget how long we humans have possessed the abilities of present mankind - our intelligence and inventiveness. This book made atleast me question how ancient societies really was formed and functioned, just by putting forward some facts and comparing them with old myths/tales. To me this is a sensible book not leaping off into fantasy, but at the same time it does evoke my fantasy and imagination.

I was intrigued by the claims of the author of this book that it was
anchored in the scientific method. But not only did I find out that
the scientific method he claims to use isn't scientific at all, he
falls into the trap that so many other authors on Atlantis fall into-
ignoring what Plato so clearly and explicitly SAID and instead
manipulating the text, and claiming to know what Plato actually MEANT.
For example, Plato SAID Atlantis was in front of the Pillars of
Heracles (now called the Straits of Gibraltar). That's pretty clear.
But since Ireland isn't located there, the author claims that Plato
MEANT that Atlantis was "somewhere in the Atlantic." Voila-now Ireland
fits perfectly! The rest of the book pretty much follows the
same "method"-interesting fiction, but nowhere near scientific!

The book is based on logic and the scientific method. It presents the hypothesis that the Atlantean empire is correlated with the megalithic tombs of Europe and NW Africa, and tests it using logic. The author also argues that we need to base our society on science and logic, not on misplaced belief in authorities (to which he may be including poor scientists, but be too polite to say so).

A common error in books about Atlantis is the belief that you can count statistics in the form of "if 40% of the details agree, the match is better than if only 20% match". This author understands that it is irrelevant if 40% or even 80% match, if those matches are not statistically significant. Therefore he adopts the classic scientific approach rather than useless counting of percentages, and explains every step clearly in the book.

The results are not sensitive. For instance, he uses the megalithic yard proposed by A. Thom, but the result is not dependent upon it--they would be the same if using Greek units from Plato's time. But due to the hypothesis being tested, it would be logically flawed to use the Greek one.

It is a short but thought-provoking book that opens the mind for the reader who is prepared to think outside the box (and does not rely on authorities to think for him/her).