Atlantis

A Lost Civilization

The Atlantis Encyclopedia is a result of more than two decades of

continuous studyand international travel. It began in 1980, when I

started picking up clues to the lostcivilization in locations from the

ruins of Troy and Egypt’s desert pyramids, to Morocco’

sunderground shrine and Britain’s Stonehenge, beyond to the

mountaintop city of Peru and a ceremonial center in the jungles of

Guatemala. My quest took me to Polynesia’scannibal temple, the

seldom seen solar monuments of Japan’s remote forests, and the

golden pillar of Thailand. I sought out credible proof in my own

country, traveling fromcoast to coast, finding telltale evidence

among the world’s most northerly pyramids,in Wisconsin; at

Ohio’s Great Serpent Mound; and in the ruins of North America’s

oldest city, in Louisiana. I participated in diving expeditions to the

Bahamas, Yucatan,the Canary Islands, the Aegean Sea, and the

PacificOcean. Decades of these on-site explorations was combined

with research in the libraries of the world and the shared wisdom

of devoted colleagues to produce this unique volume.Of the

estimated 2,500books and magazine articles published about

the lost civilization,The AtlantisEncyclopedia is the only one

of its kind. It is an attempt to bring together all the known details

of this immense, continually fascinating subject, as wellas to

provide succinct definitions and clear explanations. It is a

handbook of Atlantean information for general readers and

specialists alike. Everything one wants to knowabout Atlantis

is here in short form. It is a source for students of archaeology,

myth,and prehistory.Unlike most other books on the subject,

The Atlantis Encyclopedia offers fewertheories and more facts.

Areas of interest include geology, astronomy, and oceanography,

but with strong emphasis on the folk traditions of numerous

peoples around theworld who preserved memories of a great

flood that destroyed an ancestral island of memorial splendor.

These elements have never been presented together before in a

single volume. In so doing, the common threads that weave

European and Near Eastern versions to North American accounts,

beyond to Polynesian and Asian renditions,accumulatively build

a picture in the reader’s mind of a real event encapsulated for

thousands of years in the long-surviving myths and legends of

mankind.We learn that the Egyptians told of “the Isle of Flame”

in the Far Western Ocean from which their forefathers arrived

after a terrible natural disaster. Meanwhile, in North America,

the Apache Indians still preserve memories of their ancestral

origins from thesunken “Isle of Flames” in the distant seas of

the East. There is the Norse Lifthraserand Lif, husband and

wife refugees of the Great Flood, just as the ancient Mexicans

remembered Nata and Nena, the pair who escaped a world

deluge. Balor leads his people to safety in pre-Celtic Ireland,

while Manibozho survives to become the founder of all North

American Indian tribes. Underpinning them all is the story of

Atlantis, as given to the world 24 centuries ago by the greatest

thinker of classical Greece. Plato’s Atlantis still lives in the

folkish memories of virtually every people on Earth. Although

fundamentally similar to all the rest, each version presents its

own details, contributing to an overall panorama of the Atlantean

experience, as dramatic as it is persuasive.The Atlantis

Encyclopedia offers equally exhaustive information about a

Pacific counterpart—the lost kingdom of Mu, also known as

Lemuria. Although at opposite cultural and geographical poles,

the two civilizations were at least partially contemporaneous

and in contact with each other, produced transoceanic seafarers

who founded new societies around the globe, and succumbed

in the end to natural catastrophes that may have been related.

Persuasive physical evidence for the sunken realm came to

light in 1985 off the coast of Yonaguni, a remote Japanese

island, when divers found the ruins of a large ceremonial

building that sank beneath the sea perhaps as long ago as

12,000 years. Long before that dramatic discovery, accounts

of Mu or Lemuria were preserved in the oral folk traditions

of numerous peoples around the Pacific Basin, from America’s

western coastal regions, across Polynesia and Micronesia, to

Australia, and throughout Asia. As such, the story of Atlantis

is incomplete without some appreciation of the complimentary

role played by its Lemurian predecessor and coruler of the world.

And no comprehensive investigation of this kind can ignore

the “life-readings” of Edgar Cayce, America’s “Sleeping

Prophet,” during the first half of the 20th century.His vision

of Atlantis, still controversial, is nonetheless compelling and,

if true, insightful and revealing. Cayce’s testimony is unique,

because he spoke less of theories and history, than of individual

human beings, and the high drama they lived as players on the

stage of the Atlantean world.

Although it does not set out to prove the sunken capital

actually existed, The Atlantis Encyclopedia musters so much

evidence on its behalf, even skeptics may conclude that

there must be at least something factual behind such an

enduring, indeed global legend. For true believers, this book

is a gold mine of information to help them better understand

the lost civilization. Atlantologists (serious investigators of

the subject) may use it as a unique and valuable reference

to spring-board their own research. Students of comparative

myth have here a ready source of often rarely presented

themes connecting the Bronze Age to Classical World

images. For most readers, however, The Atlantis

Encyclopedia offers an easily accessible introduction

to this eternally enthralling enigma.