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

~ (Author) "In a more religious age, it might have been considered an act of blasphemy to suggest that the story of Noah's flood might be just..." (more)
Key Phrases: Irish Sea, British Isles, Isle of Man (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A modern classic text on a subject which today, far from being a lost cause, is undergoing a rise in popular interest. Plato would be pleased."

Product Description

Do Welsh legends of lost cities beneath the sea match Plato's descriptions of the island civilization of Atlantis? Do Irish myths of a golden age when the eastern Irish Sea was a flowery plain describe the same place Herodotus said disappeared beneath the waves during a single day and night of geological upheaval millennia before Ancient Greece? Author and researcher Paul Dunbavin has embarked on a multidisciplinary investigation into how science could explain such a catastrophe and how modern archaeological findings point to a possible location for lost Atlantis. This book theorizes that the Middle Neolithic period around 5,000 years ago was a time of dramatic climate and sea-level changes all around the world. From an up-to-date scientific perspective, Dunbavin distills an array of significant geological theories and then examines the archaeological and mythological record-which together leads to a lost land thousands of years ago in the Irish Sea that was still mentioned in ancient Welsh histories recorded in the sixth century. Atlantis of the West presents a remarkable congruence of evidence from multiple disciplines to link the fabled lost Atlantis with the vanished Neolithic civilization of the megalithic builders. Maps and illustrations are included.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Running Press; Revised edition (June 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786711450
• ISBN-13: 978-0786711451
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,641,110 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Part of it worth reading, the majority not, November 30, 2004

By	Odysseus (Ithaka) - See all my reviews

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.

3.0 out of 5 stars Wrong left turn at Albuquerque, May 15, 2007

By	Scout (VA USA) - See all my reviews

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.