With Blue Sky Development company advertising heavily that
they have ‘found’ Atlantis, to see a book on the subject on the Big C Extra
Bookazine shelves was too great a temptation to pass up. The Lost Empire
of Atlantis has been written by Gavin Menzies (ISBN 987-0-857-82006-8,
Orion Books 2011). Despite the fact that the book’s Atlantis and that of the
developers are obviously not the same, I am quite willing to accept a
spotter’s fee following their next sale. ;-))
The book is divided into six smaller “books”, each with
several chapters. They cover the Minoan civilization, Voyages to the near
East, Journeys West, Examining the heavens, the reaches of the empire and
the Legacy.
Author Menzies describes in great detail their
civilization, and it comes as a shock to find the Minoans had hot and cold
running water, flush toilets, fountains and bath tubs. They were also
skilled traders and more importantly skilled seafarers, able to navigate
through the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic to the USA (waiting to be
“discovered” by Christopher Columbus) and up through to Cornwall and Wales
in the UK to bring back copper and tin. They even sailed to Africa, and that
was 4,000 years before Vasco da Gamma and the ‘Age of Discovery’. How long
have we been fooling ourselves?
To be able to sail around the world, the Minoans needed
to be able to navigate expertly, and this they did with the aid of stone
circles, such as the one at Stonehenge, but there are many more, including
one in Egypt, as the Egyptians were also involved in sea trade. To have the
accuracy necessary for oceanic routes, they must have understood the
coordinates in the night sky. That is at 4,800 BC. And what about Stonehenge
which we were always told were used in religious practices by the druids?
Really? That is not what Gavin Menzies found.
The author has stopped this becoming a dry and dreary
dredge through the Bronze Age by writing in a down to earth conversational
style. Whilst he quotes freely from world experts in the various fields
covered, you also get to know what he had for breakfast that morning.
He has proved his postulation, to my satisfaction at
least, that the Minoans traversed the globe and even visited America 1,500
years BC. Christopher Columbus may have “sailed the ocean blue in 14 hundred
and 92”, but he was just a little late in his discovery. The Minoans had
been bringing back tobacco leaves (and a tobacco beetle or two) and copper
from America 3,000 years before!
So were the Minoans and Atlantis one and the same? Did a
tsunami wipe out the Minoans? Was the “sinking” of Atlantis allegorical? Or
did it never exist?
At the RRP of 685 THB, this is an absolutely fascinating,
and easily read book. Plenty of references after each major chapter, two
sets of color plates and an excellent index. A resource book, but written
like a novel. If you are at all interested in the history of the world, get
this book. You will be better informed afterwards.
