Drowned Atlantis & Pity the Poor Neanderthal

Finally finished – Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals. Lord what a silly book. It's a good thing I only read this when I was in transit someplace so I don’t feel like I want those bits of my life back still it did waste valuable time that I could have spent staring at my shoe.

Colin bangs all over the map in this – grabbing here there in a pretty confused muddle of a book that is seems to be attempting to say well I’m not sure what it’s trying to say. Really. It’s very confused.

It starts off with the Piri Reis map. This map from 1516 or so is the earliest map showing north and South America – and is said to put together from other maps including Columbus’s maps. What makes some folks excited is that it seems to maybe show Antarctica which was official discovered in the 18th century but without ice which hasn’t been for a long time. Of course it could also be the bottom half of south America bent funny and it could just a mistake – the map was make in Istanbul which is about as far away from South America as you can get.

Anyway one Charles Hapgood examined this map and several others and came to the conclusion these maps which show things (in his opinion) that were not known until much later indicated that the maps were made using information gleamed from sources who’s origin was lost in the mist of time. A seafaring civilization that we currently know nothing about.

Okay, it’s an interesting Hypothesis and one that is at least worth a listen and maybe testing.

The trouble is that folks like Von Danikien and Graham Handcocks others ran off with this idea like it had been proven and then went on along adding things like aliens made the maps – or postulating this is an example of the lost knowledge of Atlantis.

It may not be fair and it may not be right, but if you are working on the idea that there is a civilization older than any currently known that vanished in the past (not out of the question – Civilization as we know if is about 6,000 or so years old – Homo Sapiens was around for about 100,000 so it’s not impossible) and you want someone to take your work seriously – never, never ever mention the magic word “Atlantis” you do and you’ll be dropped into the crank box so fast your head will spin. And with good reason, scientists and scholars have enough to do without dealing with every crank that shows up on their doorstep talking about Atlantis. And there are a lot of them – check out the list on Amazon sometime. It’s scary.

Sadly Dr. Hapgood succumbed to this temptation in his next book. He proposed that the crust of the earth shifts, not via the plates that drift a few inches a year but the whole thing shifts violently from time to time – and did about 12,000 years ago which Plato reported as the sinking of Atlantis. Hapgood seems to have felt that Atlantis (which was a world wide civilization) is now lying buried under the mile high sheet of ice in Antarctica, which makes it hard to find, which is a little too convenient for me to swallow.

Apparently so for Colin cause sometime later in the book he’s talking about Atlantis being in southeast Asia - the idea being it was all one landmass before the flood – yes that one – Noah and all that – which flooded the land creating the Malay Peninsula and the various islands such as Singapore (hello Linda). This seems somewhat unlikely. This is also been

Later Colin talks about Atlantis being Cyprus – which at least is nearer Greece, maybe I could ask for a moratorium on using the word Atlantis to describe an ancient civilization unless they called themselves that? I won’t get it. But I can dream can’t I?

And Colin then drags in the poor Neanderthals and suggests, after talking about all sorts of things from the Da Vinci Code, Shamans, Idiot Savants, to the Maya (who he does not like) that the Neanderthals were the first civilization passing down knowledge of the stars, the size of the earth and other secrets to modern man.

And then I assume they abandoned this civilization and went to hunt woolly rhinos with spears. I mean come on, leave the poor Neanderthals alone – they’ve been beaten up a lot in current thinking – they couldn’t talk, the couldn’t plan ahead they were stuck where they were, they were going to die out cause they were dumb – despite having a bigger but differently constructed brain than we do – it’s not been a good time for the guys. To hang Atlantis around them like an albatross seems most unfair Colin.

The title is a bit misleading since Colin does not mention the Neanderthals in depth until the very last chapter and even then it is pretty superficial. But that’s this book. Like I said valuable shoe staring time was lost.

Meantime – We are in the second day of the Democratic Controlled congress and it seems like the Republic will endure. Even with a female speaker of the House. We make progress – 100 years ago women couldn’t vote, 200 years ago – people were owned in this country – Although I hear Wal-mart wants this back – we go forward slow and in fits and starts with falling back but we do make progress.

The Weekend movie will be bride of the Gorilla a pointless film featuring a tiger in Africa (don’t ask).

Watching Ghost in the Shell the stand alone complex – thoughts on the Major to come.

Peace, love, Atlantis