The Atlantis Syndrome - Tapa dura

Atlantis: fact or fiction? Was there really ever a superior civilisation, conveniently lost to archaeology, to which the rest of the world's cultures somehow owe their origins? Dismayed and frustrated by the mass of recent books and theories which encourage belief in this kind of 'alternative archaeology', here, at last, a highly respected professional archaeologist fights back. Paul Jordan carefully unravels the whole Atlantis mythology, starting with the first reference to it in the works of Plato in about 360 BC. Is there any factual truth in it, how does it square with geography, geology and archaeology, and why did no earlier Greek writers mention it? Jordan then follows the evolution of the idea through classical times and the Middle Ages, and shows how the modern approach to the story was pioneered by an Italian poet in 1530. In the 1860s the Flemish scholar Brasseur de Bourbourg claimed that Mayan hieroglyphs recorded a colossal cataclysm that had engulfed a large island in the Atlantic in 9937 BC - this island, he argued, was Plato's Atlantis. Having examined how the myth has developed through history, Jordan then unpicks the key elements of what he calls the 'Atlantis syndrome' To set the record straight, we are guided through the real facts.

Paul Jordan read Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University and was for many years a writer and producer of television programmes about science, history and archaeology with both the BBC and Independent Television. He is the author of Neanderthal, Early Man, Riddles of the Sphinx, The Face of the Past (Batsford) and Egypt the Black Land (Phaidon). He lives in Norfolk.