Atlantis, The Aquatic Ape Theory and Science Versus Pseudo-Science

Many years ago I watched a documentary on television.  It must have been in the 1990s, before I had the internet or SKY TV and when we didn’t record everything digitally or look things up on You Tube.  It was about a rather unusual hypothesis written about by a Housewife who was unconvinced by the Male driven Scientific ideas on the evolution of ‘Man – the Hunter and provider’.  Her name was Elaine Morgan and the idea she was so excited by was ‘The Aquatic Ape Theory’.

The Aquatic Ape Theory by Elaine Morgan

The Descent of Woman by Elaine Morgan

I remember how excited I was by the evidence she pointed to in the documentary that I was watching.  I had just gotten out of the bath and was laying on my bed with my little portable TV on, I didn’t have a video recorder attached to the TV so I couldn’t just shove a tape in and start recording and I knew it would take me too long to go downstairs, get the right channel and hunt for a tape I would be willing to tape over, so I just grabbed a notepad and pen and just lay on my bed in the ‘altogether’ and completely got lost in the documentary, making little scribbled notes on how she had been interested in the similarities between humans and aquatic mammals, why we were hairless, why babies can swim from birth – oh!  Just so many interesting things she was saying about humanity and linking a lost past where we could have survived in a watery environment.  I was hooked and my imagination from that day on just started to blossom with an idea – an idea about what ifs…

The following link is to a documentary about Elaine Morgan and the Aquatic Ape Theory –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTe9qVEAcXk

(I don’t think this is the documentary I saw, I’m sure it had a younger Elaine Morgan going through her theory, but this is still a cool documentary.)

The following link is to Elaine Morgan’s Amazon page where you can purchase her books about the aquatic Ape Theory –

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Elaine-Morgan/e/B001HCW170/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

…On my 18th birthday I remember going on a fabulous day trip to Covent Garden in London with my Mum and my sister.  We had the best day exploring the stalls of arts and crafts and little antique shops and watching the street entertainers.  That day my Mum and my sister spoiled me rotten, I was bought a lovely hat that I had fallen in love with and my sister paid for me to have my portrait sketched by an amazing street artist who just took 15 minutes to draw the most amazing likeness in charcoal that I still have to this day (with me wearing my new hat!) and I  also bought a bracelet, 2 dolphins coming together in a circle.  I loved it from the moment I saw it and somehow I just knew there was a story in there somewhere, a story of adventure and mystery,  waiting to be told –  by little old me.  That was the very beginnings of what would become my novel “Atlantis and the Dolphin of Knowledge”…

..I had always wanted to write a book.  Since I was a little girl I had loved writing stories and poetry and in High school I just tore through the school library reading so many wonderful fantasies, getting lost in strange new worlds and my imagination would run away with me – I was there, not just reading a story, actually there in my mind and I wanted to be able to create like that, I wanted to be able to take someone else on a journey, my journey, a journey I had dreamed and could share with others.

My portrait from Covent Garden

My dolphin bracelet from Covent Garden

I started writing stories with the intention of them becoming great novel masterpieces, but I found it really hard to keep the story going.  All too soon they would peter out and I would lose interest when another great idea came along.  I began to wonder if I just didn’t have it in me to write a book and went back to just reading them.

And then this idea started to form in my mind, around my bracelet, and I remembered the Aquatic Ape theory and thought – what if – what if …the flood myths were true and at some time in our pre-history there was some major event that really did wipe out a lost civilization like Atlantis!  So then I put down the Sci-fi and fantasy books that I was reading at the time and started getting books out of the library on myths and legends and I began reading the pseudo-science books that talked about alternative histories or just theories that mainstream archaeologists didn’t agree with, like Erich Von Daniken, Graham Hancock, Colin Wilson and Robert Bauval.

I began to really enjoy what I was reading, it was a whole different type of reading than I had been used to, people actually talking about evidence and real places not just made up places.  I began to imagine myself in ancient Greece and Mesopotamia now, not just in science-fiction settings but somewhere lost in the past where real people had lived and worked and had strange ideas about gods and magic.  And I remember thinking how real magic and spirituality was starting to feel to me, because these people really did believe in these myths, these stories that the ancients told.

Erich Von Daniken’s books to me were just so amazing, they weren’t science-fiction novels but they weren’t academic, scientific or archaeology either they were better than both, they were exciting, showing cave art and strange geoglyphs from around the world like the Nazca lines in Peru and strange carvings like the sarcophagus cover at Palenque in Mexico (according to him depicting an ancient astronaut in a flying machine or space ship) and giant monuments and temple complexes like  Teotihuacan and other strange Pyramids (I had thought up to then that there were only the Egyptian pyramids), and when I read about Easter Island I got so excited I thought I would explode!

chariots-of-the-gods by Erich Von Daniken (I must have read this book a hundred times – no lie LOL)

Then I started reading Graham Hancock’s, Colin Wilson’s and Robert Bauval’s books and got caught up in the idea of these amazing megalithic structures and ancient temples mirroring the stars and there being some long lost knowledge from our pre-history about why these places were built, how they were built and most importantly when, because Graham Hancock was saying, hang on a minute, the time-line we have inherited from the mainstream historians and archaeologists is wrong!  Humanity has had civilizations on the Earth for thousands of years longer, perhaps even tens of thousands of years longer than what we are led to believe!  I would just gobble up the books and all the while a little story was starting  to grow in the back of my mind, so I started to write my ideas down and soon my brainstorming became a plan – a plan for a novel!  I didn’t care if the scientists and academia didn’t always agree with these people, what did that matter to me?  I didn’t want the boring old history that we had been force-fed at school, that just led to more questions than answers,  I wanted these new theories like ‘the aquatic ape theory’ and ‘the ancient astronaut theory’ – to me it all added up, it was how history should look, exciting, mysterious, magical, with questions being asked by every-day people that scientists felt threatened by!

Heaven’s Mirror by Graham Hancock and Santha Falla

Talisman – Sacred Cities, Secret Faiths by Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval

Of course the inevitable happened – I became enchanted by the myth of Atlantis.  First I looked at the Atlantis myth as told by Plato in his works Timaeus and Critias, about an ancient land in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that had been prosperous and full of wonder in its day but had disappeared in a single day and night 9000 years before his own time in some disastrous deluge, that sunk the Wondrous Atlantis and it was never to be seen again.  Then I began to think of the story of Noah and wondered if Atlantis and the story of the  ill-fated peoples of the bible were based in the same period in history.  I started to research and discovered so many flood myths from all around the world, that it was ridiculous to think there wasn’t a connection – and it appeared many other people had come to the same conclusion.

And that is when my story really began to take on a life of its own, it really did almost write itself but it took a long time in my up and down life to finish the story and there it sat in its raw form for many years in one single paper manuscript  form waiting to be put onto a computer and edited – in the trunk awaiting to be brought to life.  I have tried a couple of times to get it out and put it onto a computer over the years, unfortunately when I dug out the old floppy disc and tried to re-load it onto my modern laptop it was not compatible and  so I am now trying to re-write from the original manuscript, editing as I go and adding lots of new life as well.  I am becoming once more reacquainted to the characters I lovingly created all those years ago and their world begins once more to take shape and I can’t wait to get to the point where I can finally take you all on a tour of my own beloved Atlantis.

This is a link to Graham Hancock’s Amazon page –

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Graham-Hancock/e/B004561L0S/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

This is a link to Robert Bauval’s Amazon page –

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Robert-Bauval/e/B000AP96I2/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1367929496&sr=1-2-ent

This is a link to erich Von Daniken’s Amazon page –

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Erich-von-D%C3%A4niken/e/B001HMLE7I/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1367965054&sr=1-2-ent

I have watched so many really good documentaries on Atlantis but I have to say this is one of the best.  Take some time to watch this video, it covers everything you could possibly want to know about the history of the myth of Atlantis.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Sg0labHKg

Atlantis and the Dolphin of Knowledge Front Cover idea

Atlantis and the Dolphin of Knowledge by Laura Crean (Coming Soon)

Pearl is a young priestess initiate – one of The Chosen few born to the Temples of Atlantis with a destiny that is bound up with the dolphins who protect their great city. Her journey soon becomes a race against time as she becomes aware of a great secret hidden from her people for thousands of years. A secret that will unlock a great power – a power that could destroy her people forever or set them free, which will it be?

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