Customer Reviews

Atlantis of the West: The Case For Britain's Drowned Megalithic Civilization

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The author shows how mythology indicates a close kinship between the areas around the Irish Sea and Atlantis. That part is worth reading and interesting, as it throws light on another Atlantis book, "Atlantis from a Geographer's Perspective", which pinpoints Atlantis as Ireland based on a scientific study of geography.
Which brings us to the weak point in this book: Where it tries to explain why this similarity exists. The explanation is so wild that it totally destroys the credibility of the book. If the author had only refrained from those speculations, and written a shorter book, it could have gotten 5 stars from me. But now it gets 3, the average of the bad and good parts.

This was an excellent book. The vendor sent it promptly to my address. I was a little surprised to find that the first eight chapters were heavy on geo physics. The author has to build his case of the 'drowned megolithic civilization'. A very convincing story.

This book presents good evidence for the physics behind cometary impacts and for the megalithic civilization of the British Isles predating the rise of ocean levels. Where it misses the mark is in jumping to the conclusion that the latter was Atlantis. The writer ignores his own evidence that points to an asteroid impact event that submerged a large island just where and when Plato indicated. He claims multiple impact events thousands of years later, while ignoring the fact that there is no physical evidence for them then. The dendrochronological evidence he cites occurred because of major volcanic eruptions. He wrote in the mid-1990s without benefit of Ryan and Pittman's scholarly work about the flooding of the Black Sea (which resulted from rising sea level, itself a result of the end of glaciation in North America 11,000 years ago) but which likewise also ignores the same effects elsewhere in the world.

It is often the case that writers develop good evidence and then extrapolate conclusions that their evidence fails to support. This is one such case, as is that of Ryan and Pittman. There are numerous books each of which claims that Atlantis resided at their pet location: the British Isles, Spain, Denmark, Peru, the Caribbean, Mexico, etc. All of them ignore some part of Plato's description to champion their alternative choice and timeframe.

This book is good for two things. It explores the physical aspects of impact events, although it fails to connect them to the real one that occurred about 11,000 years ago. Also, it does a good job of identifying the state of culture in the British Isles during the megalithic culture of 5,000 years ago and how the rising ocean level affected it. For those reasons it is well worth reading. Beyond that, his conclusions are flawed and should be discarded.