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book reviews

The EU English Edition of "The Atlantis Blueprint: Unlocking the Mystery of a Long Lost Civilisation" by Rand Flem-Ath and Colin Wilson, was first published on October 26 2000 The US edition of "The Atlantis Blueprint: Unlocking the Ancient Mysteries of a Long Lost Civilisation" by Rand Flem-Ath and Colin Wilson was published in March 2001

"The first time I read this book I made a list of the many aspects that impressed me, and the many revealing insights into the ancient world contained within its covers. As the book quoted from many other published sources, I chose one which had impressed the authors, Colin Wilson and Rand Flem-Ath, to read in between my second reading of "The Atlantis Blueprint" and the writing of this review. That book was "Uriel's Machine", by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, and it proved to be a wise choice - not least because Rand Flem-Ath argued that while Knight & Lomas had identified the correct 'sacred latitude' (55 degrees), they had the wrong hemisphere, and that the correct location of where Uriel is said to have observed the 'machine' is on Lesser Antarctica, where Rand Flem-Ath places Atlantis before the cataclysms marking the end of the last Ice Age.

Long aware that Stonehenge contained certain astronomical phenomena that was specific to the latitutde of its location, I was more than interested in the concept of 'sacred latitudes' as proposed by Rand Flem-Ath.

On my second reading of "The Atlantis Blueprint" I made another list, and compared the two. The second list contained much I had not realised the significance of during my first reading, as I had not then the benefit of understanding the fuller picture that can only come with having read the whole book. I also felt that any initial misgivings I may have had about the 'first-person/third person' narrative style of the two authors, which I had found quite confusing at first reading, had disappeared completely the second time around.

The essence of the book is 'Sacred Geometry', on both a local and a global geographical level. The same natural patterns that ancient peoples observed in nature were adequately shown by Flem-Ath and Wilson to have been incorporated not only into the various ancient monuments themselves, but also into their local inter-relationships and in the global distribution of many ancient sites that at some stage in prehistory have been regarded as somehow 'sacred' by ancient cultures worldwide.

The authors showed in many cases that numerous ancient monuments had been built on the same sites as much earlier structures, and that the earlier the original structure seems to have been, the more exact appears to be the underpinning knowledge of 'natural geometry' and 'megalithic science' demonstrated. Having spent some thirty years quietly trying to unravel some of the legacy of ancient mysteries left from archaic times myself, I found it difficult not to feel that what Rand Flem-Ath and Colin Wilson have also uncovered is another important piece of the jigsaw for our understanding of the past - the ragged pattern of 'civilisation in decline'.

Copyright © Rose & Rand Flem-Ath

This ragged pattern, more easily understandable thanks to the pioneering work of Charles Hapgood, and the development of that work by Rose and Rand Flem-Ath, concerns the orientation of various ancient structures that are distributed around the globe in simple, regular patterns. What distinguishes one pattern from another is that some sites are orientated to the current north pole, while others, apparently built at much earlier epochs, are orientated to the location of the old north pole - where it stood before the last major earth-crust displacement. The image to the left shows the locations of both the current and the previous north poles, and is an image/link directly to the Flem-Ath's website. Click on the image and you will be taken on a tour of the theories, and the history of the theories, about the earth's shifting crust, the various supposed locations of Atlantis, and the compelling similarities between various ancient maps and the world-view of our planet where Antarctica is shown as being 'up'.

A comparison that demands further explanation from our modern geographers, who cannot deny the evidence of the works of ancient mariners and surveyors now coming to light. Colin Wilson's encyclopaedic knowledge of archæological anomalies, coupled with his amazing ability to glean relevance from the often discarded discoveries of various explorers and adventurers in recent history, brings to the book the 'glue' that has been sought after by countless others who have tried to see a clearer picture of prehistory by attempting to link the remnants of the ancient structures of various past cultures. The 'blueprint' that Rand Flem-Ath and Colin Wilson have pieced together, has been thoughtfully presented in such a way that future researchers can benefit from their methodology, and the Flem-Ath website makes available the formula by which any ancient site, anywhere in the world, can be tested to see if it fits this ancient 'blueprint'.

At times the book seems to digress far from the theme its title suggests, but this is just an illusion the reader will entertain when only part-way through. The complimentary partnership of Rand Flem-Ath and Colin Wilson is at its best when delving into these apparent sidetracks, and only a veteran unraveller of ancient mysteries such as Colin Wilson could have guided the reader so adeptly through the quagmire of messianic lunacy that the 'Rennes Le Chateau phenomenon' has become, taking the reader right to the essence of that particular mystery - the 'sacred geometry' reflected in the regular distribution of ancient sites in that part of south-western France.

The 'pentacle' symbol, long held sacred by many ancient cultures, and also by more modern 'secret societies' that have variously seen themselves as the 'protectors of ancient wisdom' and 'guardians of sacred knowledge', has a long and complicated history. Expressed often as a 'rose', this geometric figure was shown by the authors to have been central to the astronomical basis of much of what is termed 'sacred geometry', and particularly to the pattern of the 'observed geocentric orbit of Venus' - something central to the unfolding ancient 'blueprint'

Copyright © Rose & Rand Flem-Ath

Since the publication of the book, "When The Sky Fell", in which Rose and Rand Flem-Ath first put forward their ideas about Antarctica being Atlantis, there has been active debate in many circles about their dating of the cataclysm that undoubtedly happened at some time in the last 15,000 years. The Bauval & Hancock school of thought places much emphasis on a date of 10,500 BC, whilst the Flem-Aths prefer the date that Plato gives in his Critias and Timaeus dialogues - 9,600 BC. The image to the left is a link directly to the Flem-Ath's website, where you can find out more about Antarctica as Atlantis. Albert Einstein was in contact with Charles Hapgood before he died, and expressed support for Hapgood's theories about 'the earth's shifting crust' as a probable cause of the apparent polar changes at the end of the last Ice Age. But Hapgood was also in contact with Rand Flem-Ath, and it was this correspondence that eventually led him on a journey that resulted in the joint venture with Colin Wilson, and a research project which eventually became "The Atlantis Blueprint".

A must read for everyone who is interested in the many mysteries of the past. Although the authors' inclusion of the metric system in their proposed 'blueprint' will not please many of those who have studied the 'sacred geometry' that is evident in the ancient monuments of various cultures around the globe. In fact, this is the one proposal in the book which, to many informed readers, may seem to let it down. But I would caution against the temptation to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as the book contains much that gives a clearer picture of the achievements of our ancestors, and, just as importantly, of the cataclysmic predicaments in which they periodically found themselves. More sorely needed proof, then, that we are living amongst the ruins of both a long lost civilisation, as well as the 'megalithic observatories' built by those who survived the catastrophe that destroyed it.

Hopefully, at some stage in the future, the authors will offer a more comprehensive explanation than they do in "The Atlantis Blueprint" for their inclusion of the recent metric system in the geometric schemes of ancient geographers and surveyors - the remnants of whose works, the authors adequately show, lie in post-catastrophic ruin around the globe. This book is definately worth a second reading ... and a third.

"Voices of the Rocks" by Robert M. Schoch & Robert Aquinas McNally

"The great 19th-century battle between catastrophists and uniformitarians seemed to end with the notion of global cataclysms being dismissed as a back door to the supernatural. But the catastrophist theory has gradually become more and more plausible, so that now, less than a hundred years later, it is widely believed that mass extinctions are linked to meteor strikes. Geologist Robert M. Schoch believes that if a large meteor or comet could extinguish most of our planet's complex life (just ask the trilobites), then a smaller one could destroy a civilization, and perhaps did. In "Voices of the Rocks", he tells us how it may have happened

Asked to investigate the Sphinx at Giza, Schoch was troubled to find evidence of a much greater age than the 4,500 years suggested by Egyptologists. This led him to examine the possibility of a lost civilization dating back to at least 10,000 B.C. Looking at linguistic, geological, and archaeological evidence from around the world, he proposes an outline of prehistory that differs markedly from our received wisdom--after all, if the Lascaux cave paintings really are star maps, then we've got a lot of catching up to do."

"Exodus to Arthur" by Mike Baillie

"This book reads like a detective story where the plot slowly unfolds. In the beginning it describes the use of tree rings to date old wood in buildings, paintings, ships and other archeological specimens. By a huge collaborative effort by many tree ring scientists it has been possible to establish almost continuous tree ring patterns over 6000 years in bristlecone pine, oak, and other species. Most variations in ring width is due to local conditions. However, six peculiar worldwide, decade long episodes of reduced growth has become evident, for example around 1628 BC and 540 AD. The archeologist Baillie compares this with chinese, egyptian and other history, with the bible and with myths from all over the world, and with what is known of climate changes, vulcano eruptions, analyses of Greenland ice cores and the probability of impacts of comets and asteroids.

This book is the best one I have read. It appears to me that publishers and editors for these books are demanding "human-interest stories" presenting the thoughts and emotions of the author(s) as they performed their research. Apparently most scientists do not have the skill to write a human-interest story and still present compelling scientific arguments. Professor Baillie pulls off the trick of mixing the personal with the scientific almost seamlessly, probably because he has a good sense of humor, which comes through in his writing."

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