Customer Reviews

The Flood from Heaven: Deciphering the Atlantis Legend

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

 

 

I knew I was in for it when, on the first page the author wrote: "With an ambivalent feeling of satisfaction..." and "I was heading aimlessly toward Syntagma Square..." Being a student of linguistic psychopathology, I was alerted to the fact that there were going to be some bias problems.

Sure enough, on page 5, he revealed himself totally. Writing about a book on Atlantis he picked up in a bookshop, Zangger says: "...what a vast disappointment the book became for me when it turned out to be a collection of fictional fragments by various authors who had visions of lost continents." Five pages later he writes: "Using a 'brainstorming' technique, I typed out my thoughts, each in a separate paragraph marked by a hyphen. Finally, after a few hours of typing, I had reached the conclusion that Tiryns must have been hit by a simultaneous earthquake and flood, which occurred at ... the onset of the Mycenaean demise. ...Then, in the middle of typing this idea, I realized that I might have, inadvertently, begun deciphering the Atlantis legend."

In short, instead of a vision of a lost continent, he had a vision of Atlantis being a localized war and localized flood and earthquake blown up in legend. Somehow, I don't see much difference between his fictional fragment and anyone else's. He also might not have made such a fool of himself if he had read other books of "fictional fragments" that also include a lot of research and cite hard facts.

Zangger writes: "From secondary sources one is more likely to learn about the character and attitude of an author than to gain original information about a subject... As a scientist I was (and still am) strongly opposed to explaining the demises of civilizations by natural catastrophes. How many historical examples are there of cultures that were wiped out in a single, natural stroke?"

Hoo, boy, this guy is really ignorant and indeed, he does reveal much about his character and attitude - totally unscientific and lacking in little gray cells, if you ask me. (He compares himself to Hercule Poirot, so I'm not just making an nasty comment here.)

My conclusion: I'm not even going to bother to read the rest of the book and I don't recommend it to anyone. Save your time and money.

Eberhard Zangger gives us a nifty little puzzle, with all we need to solve it. Well and clearly written, The Flood From Heaven deals with the "black hole" of Atlantis studies: there is no Egyptian version of Atlantis. Whether his conclusion is correct or not, the trip is worth it for the insights and the information. My only concern is that Zangger concludes that "Atlantis" was the Egyptian version of the Trojan War, in part. But it is known that only Greeks knew of Atlantis. They simply attributed it to Egypt. Far easier to note, perhaps, that there are TWO Greek versions of Troy, and that time and confusion allowed us to miss the point for 25 centuries. Zangger's chief contribution is making us rethink an ancient legend and discover how much life there is in it even now.

Zangger successfully embeds the search for Atlantis within a rigorously scientific archeological framework. The result is a startling conclusion: that the myth of Atlantis actually came from an ancient Egyptian interpretation of the Trojan War.

Most accounts of Atlantis were, and continue to be, written by amateur archeologists with a mystical bent; the result, of course, is speculation that is as much theology as science. A good example of the "mystic" orientation in most accounts of Atlantis is very well-known account of Atlantis was written by the "mystic" Edgar Cayce. Cayce predicted Atlantis would arise from the foam of the ocean sometime in the 1970s...alas, such is the condition of practically all written work concerning Atlantis.

Zangger's methodology is rooted in making inferences based on existing evidence--that is, he does not posit the existence of superconducting crystals which fired lasers into space! Rather, he approaches the topic as a scientific researcher who is deeply versed in the archeology of the region.

His work is original in that he draws new connections between previously discrete phenomena. For example, he uses his specialist's knowledge of the Trojan Plain's ancient appearance to construct a comparison between what the ancient Trojan Plain probably looked like and how the Egyptians described Atlantis (with many very intriguing parallels!). He makes many more connections between the specifics detailed in Plato's text and the condition of the Trojan Plain at the time of the Trojan War. The overall effect is powerful: I believe Zangger effectively answered the question of the location of Atlantis without resorting to mysticism.