The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest Mystery Revealed Hardcover – January 1, 1994

I would like to see a 'professional historian' whoever that mysterious person may be, take ALL the evidence Mr Menzies has presented - original sources; talk to the experts in every field he has quoted evidence from; identical carvings from across the planet, identical stone circles which exist in all kinds of places on this globe [including New Zealand] and come up with a usable hypothesis using all this data, including the genetic data - which is different to Mr Menzie's hypothesis.As a trained historian myself I have read hundreds of historical books by 'historians' which present less data, and fewer original sources to back up far more boring and less likely concepts.The truth is those with tenure lack courage.Merely dismissing his extensive and very substantially supported work as 'drivel' - as quoted in wikipedia.com does nothing to convince any thinking person that Mr Menzies has not placed before us some damn good evidence to connect humans in our pre-history in ways which have never before been connected.A modern historical Copernicus he may be - with the kind of nasty comments and doubts being bruited about him with scant evidence to back up these snide comments. Have courage dear doubters, PLEASE refute his ideas one by one, I beg of you.Mr Menzies has passion and follows his passions to the end - this energy in a person his age is a delight and refreshingly inviting.Those who diss him, I suggest, are suffering from envy - at his freedom from tenure constrictions and fund-raising problems; the fact that people love his books and he's a best selling author; his ability to network with some extremely talented and tenured people around the globe. Why would not any historian envy Menzie's travels and his expertise at navigation and sailing.As a blue-water sailor myself I know it is a no-brainer to assert that human beings from any era who built boats would set sail in them and sail as far as they felt like it. If their ship did not cope with the weather, they improved it until it did. Like honey bees, having once found something of value, they would return over and over to the source of the honey, copper, gold, spices etc. If there were attractive women there, no doubt a lot of genetic exchanging would have occurred - just as it did when Europeans and Maori discovered each other here in New Zealand.In fact the mystery I suggest - was the fear-ridden tentativeness of the Europeans of the middle ages to venture further than across the English Channel to France or beyond the Mediterranean. It is from this temporary European fear of the unknown I suggest - only overcome in the 1400s it seems - that modern ice water is created for the ventures of earlier mariners.Just because it is fashionable to 'believe' that prehistoric man did not sail the planet, does not prove that they did not. Mr Menzies has done an excellent job of proving that Europeans from 6000 years ago made use of copper from North America. The facts are incontrovertible.Whose nose does that fact dis-joint? Mr C. Columbus is not going to lose any hits on Facebook from this information. Only those who have created careers based on an imagined history of the world where ancient humans did not travel internationally will have a concern.Here in New Zealand we know and many Polynesian mariners have proven - that navigation worldwide can be done without technical instruments.Well done Mr Menzies, we await your next hypothesis with interest.

I see the shills have been around here reviewing. I see comments like "speculative" "needs proof" and the like. What??? We must have read entirely different books. There was little in the way of unsupported speculation. Lots of artifacts, hard science and math, history, and nautical knowledge of which Menzies has plenty of. Lets get this out of the way. This is not really about finding or proving Atlantis. It is about suggesting that the tale of Atlantis might have been inspired by the real life Minoans and their "well attested by artifacts all over the world" empire. There are certain conclusions that are impossible to deny, if you remove the impossible, as Sherlock Holmes would suggest. But shills and their supporters just want to discourage any sensible revision of history, fearing that real history might unravel their nonsense they have been feeding us for so long such as Columbus discovered America or that we were all idiots and cavemen prior to 1776 or 1860 and that no one could sail or navigate the world so early. That might indicate brains and knowledge and then one has to ask, where did that knowledge originate?Now that does not mean the book is error free. Menzies seems to suggest an empire lasting continuously for 3000 years. I'd sooner believe in the Easter bunny than that any empire could last that long. He also chooses to ignore the 1628 BC tree ring recorded date for Mt. Thera, one of the biggest eruptions, 3rd largest in the last 400,000 years, and whose tree ring record shows up all over the world in tree rings. That is pretty hard to ignore. Menzies also misses that the Minoans likely had a "sons of Gomer and Javan" origin as revealed by a very rare but most amazing book on the Celtic people of old lost history by a French Monk, Paul Yves Pezron. You should get it and read it. But these are small nit picking things. Menzies did an amazing and you will note the many 5 star ratings of people who share far more brain power than the shills and "geniuses." Yes, that was intended to be sarcastic. It is stunning to realize that such a vast organized empire existed so early. But climate and the internal breakdown of the "family business" likely took them down and out in the late Bronze age. Yes, the Minoans were likely all somewhat related and a family can only stay together for so long. Read about the first multinational corporation on earth. That is what this was. A great book and easy to read and will hold your interest. 1434, by comparison, was dry by the nature of its content. No dryness here. Menzies delivers, big time!

The author takes us through an amazing journey from the Mediterranean Sea to Turkey, Egypt, India, Northern Europe, the British Isles and North America, pinpointing the possible outposts of the Atlantean (Cretan-Minoan) Empire, connecting the dots and describing a magnificent culture and an advanced civilization that co-existed and traded with Ancient Egypt and the rest of the World. His analysis and research are very thorough and convincing. Something was going on around the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean between 3000 BC and 1450 BC and classic historians have not made an effort to elucidate nor satisfactorily explain the mysterious ruins and copper mining sites (and bronze tools !) found in Northern Europe and North America, dating from that era. Thanks to the finding of ancient sunken Minoan boats and their precious cargo, new light is being shed on the importance of copper, arsenic and tin in those times, in order to make Bronze (the ultimate alloy that propelled civilization forward).The sudden stop of Cretan-Minoan activities coincided with the volcanic eruption in Santorini (Thera) and the subsequent tsunami that wiped out the islands around it, circa 1450 BC. As new archeological discoveries are made, the History books will have to be re-written, no doubt. Gavin Menzies provides a lot of ammunition to that effect.