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Prue's Reviews > Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
by
by
I disagreed with quite a lot of Donnelly’s arguments, but that’s not really why this book gets quite the average rating. It was an interesting read, with some points that made clear connections between the human race’s early ancestors. Yes, the author is clearly very intrigued by ancient history and anthropology, but I can’t say he knows everything there is to know. I found he did contradict himself on many occasions, and that some of his conclusions weren’t quite complete or satisfactory.
This book was written over a century ago, so a lot of the research we have today hadn’t been completed then, and it does show. For example, there is little to no mention of both Linear A and B, simply because in 1882, very little was known about the two scripts. I didn’t want to fault the book for being written in the past, however, although I found it odd that Donnelly acknowledged the existence of cuneiform, yet didn’t include it in his language comparisons (considering it is such an old script, like Egyptian).
Finally, and this is partly why I couldn’t give this book any more stars. the lingo of this book is uncomfortably racist. You can tell that it was written in the eyes of a white imperialist Victorian era, and there were times when it seemed that Donnelly just wanted to believe that “the civilised white man colonised the world”, and I think that did dent his ability to properly analyse anthropological origins, given that he seemed reluctant to give people of colour praise for any achievement (it all had to come from the white Atlanteans, apparently). Alongside this, he wasn’t fully able to fully appreciate polytheism, and there was a definite lack of understanding in that when he approached attitudes towards deities, even in the Ancient Greek society. This was especially evident in his using the Bible as a middle ground when comparing all religions - Donnelly didn’t seem to acknowledge that the Bible itself seems to have derived from a polytheistic background, which once again hindered his ability to fully analyse the facts.
It’s not the worst book in the world, but you ought to be prepared for the racist Victorian lingo if you do decide to pick it up!
This book was written over a century ago, so a lot of the research we have today hadn’t been completed then, and it does show. For example, there is little to no mention of both Linear A and B, simply because in 1882, very little was known about the two scripts. I didn’t want to fault the book for being written in the past, however, although I found it odd that Donnelly acknowledged the existence of cuneiform, yet didn’t include it in his language comparisons (considering it is such an old script, like Egyptian).
Finally, and this is partly why I couldn’t give this book any more stars. the lingo of this book is uncomfortably racist. You can tell that it was written in the eyes of a white imperialist Victorian era, and there were times when it seemed that Donnelly just wanted to believe that “the civilised white man colonised the world”, and I think that did dent his ability to properly analyse anthropological origins, given that he seemed reluctant to give people of colour praise for any achievement (it all had to come from the white Atlanteans, apparently). Alongside this, he wasn’t fully able to fully appreciate polytheism, and there was a definite lack of understanding in that when he approached attitudes towards deities, even in the Ancient Greek society. This was especially evident in his using the Bible as a middle ground when comparing all religions - Donnelly didn’t seem to acknowledge that the Bible itself seems to have derived from a polytheistic background, which once again hindered his ability to fully analyse the facts.
It’s not the worst book in the world, but you ought to be prepared for the racist Victorian lingo if you do decide to pick it up!
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