Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals: 100,000 Years of Lost History

In regards to his books on Atlantis, this is largely similar to his other two. There's not much on Neanderthals except Hapgood believing the site he found was that of a Neanderthal civilization, and a good background story on that. I'd recommend Atlantis & Its Fate In The Postdiluvian World: A Possible Site For Plato's Atlantis by Kodiak Island by Michael Szymczyk as a follow up read to this for those that are interested in Atlantis, there is a site off Kodiak Island with a Poseidon monument the size of Mount Rushmore under water and the shoreline of Kodiak during the Younger Dryas (10,000 BC) matches that of the Kircher Map for Atlantis, and he links it to a site around that time with increased Denisovian DNA in the people there.

I loved the book, finished it in a day and a half. I think his basic theory about neanderthals having been the source of much of the knowledge of ancient civilization has a lot of merit.HOWEVER, so much of the book seems to have little or nothing to do with any of this. He goes on for a long time about Christianity and the Merovingians and I can't tell you what any of that has to do with Neanderthals or Atlantis. It seemed, at times, more like a collection of recent writings than a concerted work.He spent a lot of time summarizing other books (Which I have already read and are not all of relevance to the point) and not enough giving us anything new.If he couldn't come up with anything more to say that was new. I would have at least enjoyed it if he had spent some time giving us more, even basic, information on Neanderthals; where they have been found, theories on why they died out (Did they die out?), maybe spend some time comparing and contrasting them physically with humans, discussing how we are related to them and what we may know about when we split off. Perhaps hints in mythology that back up his thesis? The section actually on them (While extraordinarily interesting) was almost unforgivably brief compared to the length of the whole work.I wanted more neanderthals!!!Beyond that, he spoke a lot about intuitive knowledge and I thought that this was all very interesting, but had to wonder if it worked against his main thesis. That is to say, he provided us with another explanation for the source of ancient knowledge that didn't require resorting to neanderthals.I am, however, giving the book 4 stars. The thesis is extremely interresting and revolutionary. It is an enjoyable read. I just wish...well...I would have liked him to talk more about neanderthals and less about Christ and other topics that didn't belong organically in this book.

Wilson wrote "Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals" a full decade after his first book on the subject matter. In that time (the pre Göbekli Tepe era) nothing major was discovered that would perhaps warrant a third attempt at the same material. Yet he wrote it anyway, circa 2006, even though his first two books were already excellent introductions on the main themes; and his TV documentary "The Flood: A Quest for Atlantis" (c. 2001) helped define the movement. The 1990s were the golden age of 'forbidden archeology' after Graham Hancock had popularized the subject with "Fingerprints of the Gods" (1995). Wilson's own "From Atlantis to the Sphinx" came out the following year in 1996, and was an international best seller.Why did Wilson write his third Atlantean work ten years later? He gives us a hint as to why in the acknowledgments, where he pays a debt of gratitude to Robert Lomas among a list of other authors. Lomas was instrumental in helping Wilson advance some of his theories on how various secret societies in history had acquired their building technologies and know-how. Wilson is not of the belief that they acquired this knowledge through their own efforts but had inherited it from a tradition going back thousands of years. It is this half occult, half mathematical, geometric, cosmological knowledge that we see manifest in the medieval cathedrals of Europe and the megaliths of Egypt. Dating back to antiquity, the Mysteries were direct receptacles for Atlantean knowledge, after the Deluge had wiped out this once monumental civilization.Catastrophes largely decimated the globe so that civilization had to start from scratch. Wilson brings to bear several different factors, all environmental, that contributed to this destruction. Floods and vast continental shifts in the earth's crust radically transformed the globe and thrust the population into primitivism. Most of the earth was "savage" before these trials and tribulations--these were simple beings--but at least there was a social order of some kind; exactly what kind of order Wilson does not say. He doesn't present us with white robed 'higher type' men that we read of in Plato who built glistening cities in the Atlantic. Wilson provides a more down to earth vision of the earth during the Atlantean time period--the "glistening" city is almost completely ignored simply because there is no direct evidence for its existence.The mass of the population consisted in Neanderthals, and later Cro-Magnon. Although simple by material standards, these were spiritual Einstein's. Wilson stresses this again and again, based on their mathematical/astronomical knowledge and their telepathic abilities. Shamanism, Wilson correctly intuits, is the surviving heritage of Atlantean magic working its way down into primitive cultures, albeit in a greatly lessened form requiring dangerous initiations and drugs to reproduce with any sort of effectiveness. The advanced technological knowledge and occult legacy survived in the form of the Mysteries, which were Initiate brotherhoods cultivated in post Atlantean cultures of India, Persia, Egypt, and Greece.Being an outsider in this field, Wilson is not really in the position to provide any definitive answers or solutions that some readers might expect when opening this book. In these vague, smoky areas of 'forbidden archeology' Colin Wilson relies on the research work conducted by experts who are authorities in their specific branch of learning, men such as Charles Hapgood, Henry Lincoln and Michael Baigent, Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval... On the one hand all these different sources and viewpoints provide you the reader with plenty of leads for further investigation, they can make us dizzy with confusion. Wilson never really gained the type of mastery he would need to speak as an authority, and at times he is forced into wildly conjecturing over this or that theory written in this or that book. That's the danger of being on the cutting edge. Some of the ideas are fantastic, some so-so, and others are ridiculous.

As always Colin Wilson delivers the real deal in his writings and this work is no exception. The book Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals deals with the sensitive or forbidden histories that most conventional historians have been desensitised to through their formatory education. Wilson is always willing to flit between disciplines to extract information which furthers his arguments that mankind is far older than we suspect. His evidence is drawn from a wealth of sources which makes the book all the more pleasurable as he leads from where we are now to the ultimate realisation that man as a being has almost unlimited potential. The old recommendation 'well worth a read' is an understatement. Tour de force is more accurate.

For one who has read widely on the subject, not much new, but very good effort at putting 30 years research in non-traditional history into perspective.

I ordered this book after reading Colin Wilson's article '100,000 year old civilisation' in Fortean Times number 272 and Stan Gooch's 'a doubly divided self' in the same magazine which had piqued my interest, especially Wilson's tale of a mysterious scientist that had to be written out of 'Atlantis Blueprint' which Wilson co-wrote. I was hoping this book would expand on it and although it's mentioned in a different context it's not. It did give me a broad brush stoke intro to the many subjects covered; I now have a plentiful supply of springboards to jump off, for further research. Wilson's style is easy reading and engaging so I finished it quickly. His research is pulling together numerous normally unassociated scientists from multi-disciplines to put his case. He starts with the aim of unravelling the mystery set by Charles Hapgood'...that there must have been intelligent life before the history of man as we have been told because there is too much evidence being ignored. He covers Ancient civilisations, Egypt, Maya and evidence of ancient technology, Brown's gas, etc and perhaps more importantly challenges perceptions of past and present native peoples being primitive as incorrect. This is good as is his ending with Shamanic perceptions of the World, anthropological discoveries and Stan Gooch's work. Like the 1 star reviewer I do not see why we yet again had to re-do such a basic look at Templars, Priory of Sion & Rennes-le-Chateau as it doesn't seem to fit (and for me casts a slight shadow on the rest depending on your view of this matter)although the history of Christianity does fit in, challenging perceptions. In all its a ripping good read and highly enjoyable, so go ahead and decide for yourself..... Is the World exactly as we've been told or is it quite different?