Author Description

Atlantis: The Antediluvian World is a book by American writer Ignatius Donnelly, first published in 1882. The author was also a congressman and author of fiction, but he is remembered today for his fringe theories, including his beliefs about the lost city of Atlantis. He believed that accounts of the island mentioned in Plato's Timaeus and Critias, were largely factual and that Atlantis was the origin of all present civilisations. Many of his theories have persisted to modern-day ideas about the lost city, including the fact that it had technology beyond it's time, that Atlantis was where barbarism gave way to civilisation, that the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Hindus, and the Scandinavians were simply the kings, queens, and heroes of Atlantis, that a civil war between good and evil, took place there, and that it was lost forever when a natural catastrophe caused the whole island to sink into the ocean.