The First Dawn of Man: A Study of Atlantis, Lost Civilizations & Consciousness

By Anthony North

Science says it's rubbish. Believers search in vain. What is the reality of ideas concerning a lost civilization? In this book, Anthony North looks at the evidence and attempts an understanding of Atlantis and the lost civilization in terms of present-day knowledge. Indeed, it may be a differing form of consciousness today that lies at the heart of our non-understanding.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthony North
• Release date: Jul 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463527948

Anthony North

Thinker & Storyteller****7,453 Words to Save the UK and I,Writer are now FREE. Scroll down to find them.*****1955 (Yorkshire, England) – I am born (Damn! Already been done). ‘Twas the best of times ... (Oh well).I was actually born in the year of Einstein's death, close to Scrooge's Counting House. It doesn't mean anything but it sounds good. As for my education, I left school at 15 and have had no formal education since. Hence, I'm self-taught.****From a family of newsagents, at 18 I did a Dick Whittington and went off to London, only to return to pretend to be Charlie and work in a chocolate factory.When I was ten I was asked what I wanted to be. I said soldier, writer and Dad. I never thought of it for years – having too much fun, such as a time as lead guitarist in a local rock band – but I served nine years in the RAF, got married and had seven kids. I realized my words had been precognitive when, at age 27, I came down with M.E. – a condition I’ve suffered ever since – and turned my attention to writing.Indeed, as I realized that no expert could tell me what was wrong with me, I began my quest to find out why. Little did I realize it would last decades and take me through the entire history of knowledge, leaving me with the certainty that our knowledge systems are inadequate.****My non-fiction is based on P-ology, a thought process I devised to work with patterns of knowledge, and designed to be a bedfellow to specialization. A form of Rational Holism, it seeks out areas the specialist may have missed. I work from encyclopaedias and introductory volumes in order to gain a grasp of many subjects and am not an expert in anything, but those patterns keep forming. Hence, I do not deal in truth, but ideas, and cover everything from politics to the paranormal.When reading my work I ask only: do I make sense? Of course, an expert would say: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I agree. And an expert has so little knowledge of everything.I also write novels and Flash Fiction in all genres.

Book preview

The First Dawn of Man:

A Study of Atlantis, Lost Civilizations & Consciousness

By Anthony North

Copyright: © Anthony North, 2019

Cover image copyright: © Yvonne North, 2019

Smashwords Edition

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

Other books by Anthony North

Beginning in 2019 I’m publishing 14 volumes of my fiction, inc 7 novels in most genres, & 21 works of non-fiction covering cults, politics, conspiracies, religion, disasters, science, philosophy, warfare, crime, psychology, new age, green issues & all areas of the unexplained, inc ufology, lost worlds and the paranormal. Hopefully appearing at the rate of one a month, check out the latest launch at my bookstore at http://anthonynorth.com or buy direct from Smashwords for all devices at: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/anthonynorth

In addition to the above, you may like my ‘I’ Series – 8 volumes of flash fiction (horror, sci fi, romance, adventure, crime), 4 volumes of poetry & 5 volumes of short essays from politics to the unexplained. Available from same links as above. Also check out my bookstore for news of my books out in paperback.

CONTENTS

Chapter One - Dialogue of a Vanished World

Chapter Two - The Rise and Fall of Paradise

Chapter Three - Where Are You Atlantis?

Chapter Four - Theory and Fantasy

Chapter Five - Secrets of the Atlantic

Chapter Six - Of Islands and Myths

Chapter Seven - Boys and Girls Come Out to Play

Chapter Eight - Ending the Myth

Chapter Nine - Plato's Dream

Chapter Ten - Lost Lands Aplenty

Chapter Eleven - The Giza Plateau

Chapter Twelve - Egyptian Mysteries

Chapter Thirteen - Aztecs & Co

Chapter Fourteen - The Birth of Religion

Chapter Fifteen - Sacred Mounds

Chapter Sixteen - The Snake

Chapter Seventeen - Evidence for a Lost Civilization

Chapter Eighteen - Oceanic Enigmas

Chapter Nineteen - Forget the Cataclysm

Chapter Twenty - Understanding the Flood

Chapter Twenty One - A Lost World

Chapter Twenty Two - Changing Minds

Chapter Twenty Three - The First Psyche

Chapter Twenty Four - Sacred Technology

Chapter Twenty Five - Magical Albion

Chapter Twenty Six - Enter the Dragons

Chapter Twenty Seven - The First Dawn

Contents by Subject

Bibliography

About the Author

Connect With Anthony

Chapter One – DIALOGUE OF A VANISHED WORLD

It is dark. You stand, alone and expectant. Shadows flit about you, but undefined. Only in your innermost soul do you understand what is about to happen.

Endless minutes tick by as you wait. Then, all at once, you realise time has moved on from night to herald a new dawn. But this is no ordinary dawn. This is Midsummer dawn, and you are about to experience the magic of the ancients.

Far to your front a spectral sky appears, peppered with the light cloud of a beautiful day. Around you, shapes take form and they are stones, ancient stones, standing stones; and you exist in the magic circle of things unknown.

The central, altar stone awaits its kiss with destiny, and a sun winks to life as if arising from the ground. Slowly, so slowly, it grows, glows orange, demands attention, and a ray darts across the sky and hits the stone, and the kiss is true.

Suddenly, as you witness the precision, as you witness the ages old beauty of it all, you know you are one with nature, with the universe, and with man from the dawn of time.

This book is my attempt to understand that man, and the greatest mysteries he has left behind. Who was that man? How primitive, or how intelligent, was he? Did he exist only with his local tribe, or was he part of a global, lost civilization as many believe? And if so, what was that lost civilization; how did it come to be? And how did it come to an end? Or, alternatively, is this speculation all the product of wishful thinking, this strange idea that an unknown people created human society?

Perhaps the sceptics are right, and the believers exist in an emotional sea of expectation, hope and foolish certainty. Or maybe neither stance - sceptic or believer - is true. Maybe, when all the evidence and all the ideas are analysed, a totally new understanding can come of the first dawn of man.

Myths and ideas of a vanished civilization exist from around the world. But none have been as enduring as the legend of Atlantis. So perhaps it is here that we should begin; with that wonderful vanished world of the past.

It all began with the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato. He put down his ideas in a large number of dialogues of varying length, from a few thousand words to over a hundred thousand. But it is in two dialogues, 'Critias' and 'Timaeus', that we find the first written words upon Atlantis. He first mentions Atlantis through the character, Critias, in 'Timaeus', going on to elaborate in 'Critias'. The indication was given that a third dialogue would also be written, but this never appeared.

To this day people argue whether he died before writing the final part of the trilogy, whether he wrote it and it was destroyed, or whether he just gave up on what was a ridiculous period of fantasy writing.

Critias, through whom he speaks of Atlantis, was a politician and author, and a distant relative of Plato. Critias himself heard of it second or third hand and is traced back to the great law-giver, Solon. Solon himself died in 588BC, so by the time of writing 'Critias' in about 350BC, the story was already over two centuries old.

As well as being a great Athenian statesman, Solon also liked to travel, having a thirst to understand the roots of Greek civilization. These travels took him to Egypt, and it was here that Plato tells us he met an Egyptian priest at Sais on the Nile Delta. Many years previously, Solon was told, an old priest had deciphered an ancient manuscript. Wanting to know if this document said anything of the beginnings of Greek civilization, he was told it did.

Greece itself had been founded about 9600BC. A great civilization, it was, however, eclipsed by the might and splendour of Atlantis, a huge island beyond the ‘Pillars of Hercules', which ruled much of the ancient world. As Greece grew stronger, it was inevitable that the two civilizations would clash. And it was around the time of this clash - said to be about 9560BC - when Atlantis mysteriously sank under the sea and was no more.

Doubly intrigued, Solon wanted to know more of this strange and mysterious land, and over two centuries later, Plato attempts to recount what the Egyptian priest told the ancient law-giver. And thus was born the enigma of Atlantis.

Chapter Two – THE RISE AND FALL OF PARADISE

Atlantis, it was said, was founded in the deep past before we were able to record time. Somewhere in the world a huge island existed, and upon this island was a hill surrounded by canals. On the hill lived the mortal maiden, Cleito, who was kept by the sea god Poseidon, better known today as Neptune. Eventually, Poseidon fathered ten children from Cleito, born as five pairs of twins.

From these twins, ten kings descended, forming the house of Atlas, the name of the eldest king, from which Atlantis was named. A Royal City of Atlantis was built, and in its centre was constructed a temple to Poseidon. Going on to rule the Atlantian race, every five or six years the ten kings would meet to discuss the running of their kingdoms.

As the generations came and went, the future ten kings ruled with great wisdom, Atlantis developing into the greatest paradise on Earth. Working under a strict code of ethics, the ten kingdoms never made war, and always came together if any one kingdom was threatened.

This was an ideal government for an ideal, wealthy and technologically advanced civilization - the initial home of all knowledge and all civilization. An idyllic society where all were equal, it was the 'Golden Age of Earth.' Later, the Roman poets Virgil and Tibullus were to advance this political paradise in their poetry, arguing that the Atlantian lived a form of communistic life where all land was common land and no one owned anything individually. Other, more mythical, sources speak of a land with no crime, no lying, no sickness, no old age. In every way it was perfection.

The Atlantians were also magnificent engineers, building cities, temples, huge harbours for their magnificent ships, and spacious dining halls where the Atlantians ate communally. The huge capital city was eleven miles in diameter, built around the hill upon which Poseidon's temple stood. The city itself was surrounded by concentric rings of land and canals, joined by huge tunnels through which ships could sail.

The outer band of land was connected to the sea by a canal 300 feet wide and a hundred feet deep. Behind the city was a huge plain 230 by 340 miles, defended by a mighty ditch encircling the entire area. The plain itself grew all the Atlantian’s food which provided a perfectly balanced diet; and in the plain were also mines which extracted an abundance of gold and gems, and other minerals with which to work, including an unknown metal called Orichalcum.

Later, more modern writers have added to this impressive list of achievements, crediting the Atlantians with air travel, the discovery of X-rays, and the building of huge power sources fuelled by crystals. It has even been suggested that the remnants of this crystal power are behind the strange disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle.

By this point, of course, Atlantis has fallen from graceful poetry to fantasy. Yet in a way, such modern theorizing reflects the over-indulgence that eventually came to this mighty, ancient, and now lost, land.

Slowly but surely, the Atlantians began to lose their wisdom. To the gods it should have been inevitable. For the Divine spark had been mixed with mortal frailty in the ancestry of Poseidon's impregnation of mortal Cleito. And men can never be god-like.

Human weaknesses and desires began to affect the Atlantians. Understanding the physical delights of materialism, they began to shun their spirituality, adopting evil habits of greed and the pursuit of power. The kingdoms began to war with each other and from these battles mighty armies and navies grew which went out to war with the early societies of Europe and Africa.

Eventually Zeus,