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Mary Settegast

Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology Paperback – January 1, 2000

by Mary Settegast (Author)

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In his Timaeus and Critias dialogues, Plato wrote of two ancient civilizations that flourished more than 9000 years before his time. Socrates accepted the account as true, and modern archaeological techniques may yet prove him right. In a synthesis of classical and archaeological scholarship, Mary Settegast takes us from the cave paintings of Lascaux to the shrines of Catal Huyuk, demonstrating correspondences both to Plato's tale and to the mystery religions of antiquity. She then traces the mid-seventh millennium impulse that revitalized the spiritual life of Catal Huyuk and spread agriculture from Iran to the Greek peninsula -- at precisely the time given by Aristotle for the legendary Persian prophet Zarathustra, for whom cultivation of the earth was a religious imperative.

Print length

334 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Lindisfarne Pr
Publication date

January 1, 2000
Dimensions

7 x 1 x 10 inches
ISBN-10

0940262347
ISBN-13

978-0940262348
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Lindisfarne Pr (January 1, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 334 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0940262347
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0940262348
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.87 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 1 x 10 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,541,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,886 in Archaeology (Books)
- #16,685 in Ancient Civilizations

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Kadita

Great product

Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2019

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One of the best book on Atlantis! I have several from different authors, but this book is the best one.

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james caldwell blanchard

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2016

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So far am about half way through it is a 5 Star

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Arizona

A perspective history buffs and professionals should read

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2013

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Clear rational thinking and arguments support comcepts and findings .. a compliment to other works that works in concert with them.

3 people found this helpful

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Jeff Hicks

Fascinating look at prehistoy

Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2002

Prehistoric cultures have always been a mystery unto themselves. How "civilized" were they and what knowledge was passed on to the earliest civilizations of Egypt and Sumer (and in turn future civilizations like Greece) is debatable.
The purpose of this book is to show that Plato may have been referring to actual events that took place during the end of the last ice age. This is not a book about an Atlantis that was comprabable to 2002 technology. This book is about prehistoric cultures that were widespread throughout Europe that were more advanced than current thought would lead us to believe. How advanced is really the question as this book only refers to the possiblilities while presenting it's case. Anyway the belief is that at the end of the last ice age water levels were much lower, hence cultural meccas were wiped out leaving the lesser cultures to carry the torch, when the water levels began to rise to present day levels. These cultures were the Atlantians and the Greeks who fought, according to the priests of Egypt. There's much more to the story but that's the start of it.
This book is very well written and researched. You certainly get a sense of Miss Settegast opinions but she sticks to the facts when reviewing her case. I have read a dozen or so books on the subject and this is by far the best of the lot. If Plato's story is true (and I believe it was to Plato just because of the Solon reference alone), then this is a vey sound theory. Oh and one more thing.... Anyone who thinks that Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations appeared out of nowhere might have a differnt take after reading this book, especially the section about Catal Huyuk.

32 people found this helpful

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Holy Olio

Best Book I've Read in Two Years

Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2000

I'm currently reading the original (1986/87) edition of this book. First saw it cited in Robert Schoch's "Voices of the Rocks" which I also highly recommend. Mary Settegast has produced a well written, well reasoned, and well documented survey work. She builds a case for the identification of the Magdalenian culture as the historical basis for Plato's Atlantis legend. This is analogous to Schliemann's use of Homer's Trojan war accounts to locate the historical Troy. While not necessarily accurate in certain particulars (conversations between characters etc), each tale is a retelling and preservation of an historical event with many verifiable facts.

26 people found this helpful

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John David Ebert

One of the Ten Best Books About Mythology Ever Written

Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2005

Fewer and fewer scholars these days have either the nerve or the temerity to speculate about culture, particularly when such speculations are based upon archaeological data from pre-literate civilizations. Fortunately, Mary Settegast is not one of the more timid sort of scholar, but a brave and insightful visionary who is capable of handling concrete data with the eye of a literary artist. Academics, these days, do not like generalists, for such imaginative individuals are a threat to their so-called specialties; and academics are nothing if not power hungry. They sit guarding their little turf hills like slobbering devils out of a Bosch painting, and anyone who gets too close is likely to come away missing a finger or a two.

But Ms. Settegast doesn't care about such turf wars, for she is one of those rare individuals with enough imagination to see that the trees do in fact make up a forest, and if you don't see the forest as a totality, then you will not gain an understanding of its emergent properties as an ecosystem.

Plato Prehistorian begins, as do all such great tomes, like Frazer's Golden Bough, or Graves's White Goddess or even Hertha von Dechend's Hamlet's Mill, with a question: is it possible that Plato's myth of Atlantis, which takes place in roughly 10,000 bc, is an actual record of a real conflict that took place between two cultures that flourished at about that time in the Mesolithic Mediterannean? Settegast assumes that the answer might be a yes, and that a search for a sunken continent is not so much the issue, as a search for vanished and forgotten cultures. For the war of the Greeks vs. the Atlanteans, Settegast substitutes a mysterious European culture whose tool industries were known as 'tanged' arrowheads and which appear in Paleolithic Europe at just about the time of the decline of Magdalenian culture circa 10,000 bc. Settegast supposes that the Magdalenians--who may have tamed the horse, and may have been seafaring folk--correspond to the horse-riding and Poseidon-worshipping Atlanteans. She traces the possible migration of these Magdalenians in two directions: one going down through Spain to North Africa, where they become the so-called Iberomarusian peoples who may have domesticated the Barbary sheep as early as 18,000 bc, and onward into Egypt at Helwan and up into Palestine; in the other direction, across Europe as the Gravettian culture which may have migrated from Neolithic Greece across the eastern basin of the Mediterranean to mix with the populations of Palestine, where they may have become the Natufians. The appearance of a stone tower at Jericho circa 8500 bc seems to have coincided with the abandonment of Natufian sites and the appearance of a whole panoply of arrowheads indicative of a possible war. In the so-called 'Battling Bowmen" of the Spanish-Levantine rock art, furthermore, she sees a possible commemorative record of such a war that may have been Mediterranean-wide, since rock art from caves at Levanzo and Addaura in Sicily record similar conflicts, as does the art from Ukrainian Kobystan.

But as one reads this surprising and fascinating narrative, the story begins to metamorphose with the dream logic of Finnegans Wake, and becomes an extended meditation on the Neolithic origins of the mythological systems of the Bronze Age High Civilizations. Gradually, the scaffolding of the Atlantean narrative begins to fall away, as a larger, more important narrative emerges in which Settegast flies like a shaman bird from one Neolithic site to the next, identifying this or that peculiarity and idiosyncracy while fathoming the earliest origins of higher, and more well-known mythololgies from the literate civilizations. We find, for instance, that the origins of the Dionysus cult may lie in the leopard boy imagery of Catal Huyuk, or that Demeter and Persephone may have a similar origin in the motif of the Twin Goddess from that village; we ponder the possible origins of the Mithraic mythology in the Shaft of the Dead Man at Lascaux, in which the eviscerated bull which may have been gored by the rhino corresponds to Angra Mainyu's assault on the Primordial Ox at the beginning of creation (it so happens that there is an African tradition that rhinos are linked with the moon and the darkness of the night sky, like Angra Mainyu); or the smith god Hephaestus who may originate out of the obsidian trade and the early metallurgical industries which, with their connections to volcanoes and high temperature furnaces, may have ties with the volcanic linkages of this god; or Athena, the mistress of weaving, who may have an early connection with the imagery of the veiled goddess at Catal Huyuk. As the narrative proceeds, we begin to have the distinct feeling that the mythologies of the later Bronze--and even Iron--Ages have a deep and firmly rooted past in the Neolithic and Paleolithic traditions.

As Thomas Mann, at the start of his magnum opus Joseph and His Brothers wrote: "Very deep is the well of the past. Indeed, should we not call it bottomless?"

46 people found this helpful

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Angus Jenkinson

Fascinating view of 10,000-5,000 BCE

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 27, 2004

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Settegast was a Harvard archaeologist when she wrote this extraordinarily important book nearly 20 years ago, but its importance remains largely unrecognised. Like the best scientists and historians she is prompted by an open yet rigorous mind. In this case the starting point of her inquiry is the statement by Plato and others that there had been a war between ancient Athenenians and 'Atlanteans' some 6000 years earlier followed by a flood. She notes that the failure to find evidence of an ATlantis meant that the implications for most investigations of the history of the period had been overlooked. She begins by ignoring 'Atlantis' as such, while questioning whether there might be any evidence of some level of ancient civilisation or culture with subsequent events that might accord with the comments of Plato and the others. This is therefore a serious inquiry.
What follows is a tour de force investigation into Old European and Near Eastern culture and society from 10,000 to 5,000 BCE. She reviews the nature of carbon dating, changes to water levels (the Mediterranean basin experienced significant drowning of its shores in the early part of the period) and then reviews Paleolithic culture (for example French cave culture and northern Africa) followed by Jericho, Catal Huyuk and other settlements over the millenia.
She concludes that there is evidence for an ancient culture that distributed remarkable towns, buildings and culture (for the time), followed by some set back consistent with flooding of shoreline settlements (the common location for many civilisations), and other changes consistent with people who might have escaped to hills and then developed new cultures.
She also investigates the statement within Zoroastrianism and Old Iranisan texts that (the first) Zarathustra had appeared millenia earlier than the historical figure normally credited with starting the religion. The evidence lies in dramatic new settlements and effects on agriculture and pottery throughout the Near East and Old Europe.
Finally she finds continuity between the mystery religions of the classical period and ancient settlements such as Catal Huyuk (c6000BCE), described as 'an ancient Rome'.
This is a fascinting page-turner; do read it for a thought provoking re-evaluation of the past that even transforms our understanding of the present.

6 people found this helpful

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