Atlantis and the Silver City

By Peter Daughtrey

Delve into an ancient mystery and witness the unveiling of the most complete and persuasive evidence for the real location of the lost empire of Atlantis.

More than two thousand years ago, Plato laid out a series of cryptic clues about the location of Atlantis. Since then, countless experts have tried to crack his code. Today, some experts claim Atlantis lies under the volcanic rocks of Santorini. Others place it in the Bermuda Triangle or off the coast of Africa or say it vanished forever beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. But what if Atlantis is closer than we think? What if we could walk the streets of its ancient capital today?

After a twenty-year forensic examination of Plato’s writings, Peter Daughtrey believes we can do just that. Having matched an unprecedented number of Plato’s clues to a modern locale, Daughtrey pinpoints the exact location of the once-glittering capital city of Atlantis and outlines the full reach of the empire.

Daughtrey’s quest takes him from the dusty stone quarries of Portugal and the hieroglyphs of Egyptian temples to the newly refurbished museums of Baghdad. Along the way, he unearths long-forgotten, vitally significant artifacts, pieces together sensational evidence of a lost alphabet, and identifies today’s descendants of this early civilization—and even reveals the location of another undersea settlement from the empire of Atlantis.

Hailed as “an intriguing, thought-provoking read” by Graham Hancock, the bestselling author of Fingerprints of the Gods, Atlantis and the Silver City is a detailed and accurate account of an adventurous journey of discovery, told with enthusiasm and verve.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Release date: Mar 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781453271704

Reviews for Atlantis and the Silver City

[joririchardson · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

At the beginning of this book, the author tells us that he believes he has found Atlantis ("I've found it," he states clearly). I was dubious - if Atlantis really had been discovered, wouldn't I have heard something about it? And yet, considering the fact that the general population today is more concerned with Kim Kardashian's twitter and hasn't heard of Tolstoy, maybe not. And when do I ever watch / read the news? So, I went into the book hoping that by the end, Atlantis really would be found. Well, by the middle, I had completely thrown out this possibility.Daughtery's research and theories are mainly based on the writings of Plato, whom he himself admits was known for embellishing facts and dramatizing history for the benefits of a good story.If there was one impression I took away from this book, it was that it seems Daughtrey didn't really have that much material to go on, and was trying to do some major padding here. We go back over Plato's exact words a dozen times, and things are constantly brought back up. For example, early in the book, Daughtrey discusses the possibility of Cadiz being the location of Atlantis, but moves on, stating it unlikely. Later, we go back to the Cadiz possibility, where he gives irrefutable evidence that it cannot, based on Plato's writings, be the site. Still, it's brought up again, and more than once. It was confusing, giving me the suspicion that the author didn't trust his own research or sources if he has to keep going back over things that he just told us he had ironed out.Another thing that I disliked was how dry things were. The topic of Atlantis is fascinating, yes, just not here. Reading about such an interesting subject shouldn't be a chore, but in this book, it was. And the way that Daughtrey came across sometimes was grating, stating things about "finding" Atlantis when he clearly hadn't, or saying he "can't wait to see the faces" of people who have doubted Atlantis' existence. Further into the book, he also starts including little fictional vignettes of imagined characters of Atlantis in each chapter. When I came across the first one, I was thinking "What is this?!" His writing slides from dryly detached to melodramatically sensational, describing priestesses and earthquakes and death, and he ends each with a "This may have happened," or, "Something like this likely occurred when..." Um, what??Daughtrey spends pages and pages on a list of potential sites, with long dialogues on why each one may or may not be the site of Atlantis. And at the end of all that, he says this: "So, had I exhausted all the possibilities? All the obvious ones, yes - but incredibly, there is another Algarve site that matches so many of the exacting clues left by Plato that it is quite impossible to be mere coincidence."Okay, so why wasn't that on your drawn out list in the first place? And if it's so perfect, then why isn't it obvious?He then says "Prepare to be amazed..." (About time, I grumbled.)Well, it turns out, the location that he finishes with does indeed sound like a likely guess for Atlantis, based on Plato's writings.In the next chapter, he says "I was exhilarated to have finally nailed Atlantis..."Wait, when was this? He found a location that seemed a strong possibility, yes, (going off of measurements and geographical attributes such as availability of water or building materials) but it was hardly conclusive. Did he find any buried cities, or even buried coins or pottery? Nothing of the sort. Or maybe he did, and is just saving the best, most irrefutable evidence for last?No, that's where he ends the book. Does he really expect to have convinced us with this?Daughtrey is good at brushing aside or ignoring the many, many flaws in his theories (such as that when Plato, an admitted embellisher of facts, wrote about Atlantis, it was already approximately 10,000 years in the past, as another reviewer mentioned), and he even briefly discusses and dismisses other books on Atlantis. Meanwhile, he thrusts his own opinions at us, assuring us that they are undeniably sound, when in fact they are shaky at best.I'd love for Atlantis to end up being a real part of history. I'd love for someone to discover it. But, spoiler, Daughtrey didn't.

[nielsengw_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Just under 2,400 years ago, a Greek man named Plato sat down and wrote a tale about a mythical place from a mythical time. It was an island in the vast, unexplored ocean that housed a civilization better than anything ever seen before. The island nation was overseen by a descendant of the god Poseidon and his nine siblings. Every passageway into the mainland was decorated with marble, brass, tin, and orichcalcum, an exotic metal. They oversaw a vast empire, and all that came to an abrupt end in 9600 BCE when a “single day and night of misfortune” wiped the island off the Earth. This island was called Atlantis and Peter Daughtrey’s Atlantis and the Silver City tries to settle the debate of its truth and origin.Daughtrey investigates the clues given in Plato’s Timaeus and Critias dialogues to pinpoint the extent and location of the Atlantean empire. His thesis is that the empire of Atlantis was once connected to the Portuguese nation, with major earthquakes, fault lines, and geological evidence pointing to Atlantis being just off the coast of the Iberian peninsula. He combs Plato’s “facts” to provide support for the region being the birthplace of the ancient lost island. His theory is that the empire once stretched across the Atlantic and encompassed parts of the five major Atlantic continents. Daughtrey also claims that the Bahamas and their geology provide further proof of the empire’s existence. While it is true that the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 speaks to the incredible potential of the area being able to swallow an island, only scant evidence exists of an entire civilization under the ocean.This book requires without a doubt a suspension of one’s disbelief. Daughtrey’s writing is clear and fun in places and I wish him well in his research. Major discoveries are often the ones found those at the fringe of the believable. A major assumption here, however, is the veracity of Atlantis’s existence. The first account of the empire is in Plato’s writings, almost ten millennia after the supposed fall of the land. That’s a massive length of time to go without anyone mentioning it. All accounts after Plato are usually traced back to him. Now, I played along for the length of the book, but in the end, I could not dispel the ten millennia issue. And besides, some of his theories about the ancient and deep knowledge of the Atlanteans (advanced metallurgy and writing systems) are just too thin to believe. A fun but unconvincing book.