A couple of weeks ago, a book with an odd and impossible sounding title, caught my attention. The beautiful cover was by an author I knew of, Colin Wilson, from Cornwall, England. The title was, ATLANTIS and the Kingdom of the NEANDERTHALS, 100,000 Years of Lost History.

I like to follow the clues and solve the mystery, but I would never have connected Neanderthal cave men with stories about the technologically advanced civilization of Atlantis. By the time I had begun the third chapter, I was out of my seat, reaching for my handy desk-top globe and world atlas. To anyone else who reads this book, I might suggest they get their own globe out, too.

Like all great research projects, this book is the result of some one telling some one else about a theory, which some one passes on to still some one else, who writes it into a story, this story.

The book begins with the sudden death of a New England professor, the late Charles Hapgood, who had said he had proof that man has not been walking this earth for a mere 10,000 years, but ten times that!

Hapgood had written to arrange to share this information with a colleague, Rand Flem-Ath, but before the two could meet to discuss it, Professor Hapgood was killed in the street by a bus. His notes have never been found, but a good story is never stopped by lack of proof.

Flem-Ath tried ways of finding or gathering or re-creating Hapgood's studies, to no avail. He eventually contacted Colin Wilson and passed the story to him. Colin decided to simply begin again. He began to write letters and arrange the answers in them into what they seemed to say, rather than what might be expected.

As we readers are led through various known timelines and geological depths of proven evidence showing several ancient floods and global catastrophes, a connection seems to magically form between Atlantis and the Neanderthals. It's amazing.

It does seem possible, now, that the skull of the Neanderthal was so much larger than ours was because he was using more of his brain than we do now. I am thinking, maybe, he was smart enough to help a displaced people survive those days after the first floods. One might think that, if they did that, there would be some record of it.

If one did think that, one might read this book carefully and find that there are hundreds of records. Evidence is all over the planet, from Antarctica and South Africa to the hills of West Virginia. One just needs to see at least as much as what is in this book to get things into perspective.

We, as readers, are encouraged to think without a box and reconsider the intelligence of the Neanderthal, putting him in a place, very different from the place our school books place him. We are brought to a 75,000 year old Bear Alter in frozen lands of Asia and drawn down into 100,000 year old red ochre mines on Africa.

We are told about a smoothed and polished 500,000 year old board that was accidentally dug up with a trench-cutter. We are even allowed to know of 800,000 year old rafts found on the island of Flores. If that is not enough to know that mankind was thinking and planning and creating a lot longer than the history books say, then how can we explain the pure gold chain found inside a lump of coal?

Coal forms from carbon-based material after just the right conditions, and it takes about 3 million years to do it. The "real story" would be that man was around so long ago, that the gold chain mentioned had to have been buried with its owner, about three million years ago and that that civilization is now being utilized as fossil fuel. Little wonder there is not much evidence of Atlantis or any other long, lost people.

The research of Colin Wilson shows the mark of a man who tries to make sure he can back up what he is says, and this book seems to say that the earth has shrugged her shoulders, at least once, and swept more than one great civilization completely under its rug - then ground all remnants of them back into dust.

Similar stories of ancient catastrophes from all over the world tell of a great flood, days of terrible fire falling from the sky and the watchful eyes of the seven sisters of the stars. The sheer quantity of these stories says they must be based on something from a shared past. This story is like a giant shortcut to actually learning something from them.

I enjoyed the way reality and story blended in this amazing mind-bender. It's got me thinking in new directions. Not only is it filled with hard facts and interesting evidence, it reads easily and fairly fast. It's just the thing to keep anyone's mind sharp this winter.

Somewhere in the far distant past may not be far enough or distant enough to tell us the truth of our beginnings. ATLANTIS and the Kingdom of the NEANDERTHALS, 100,000 years of Lost History is a great way to start re-configuring what we know.

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