Atlantis in the Amazon

If you're one of those people who - like me - have a nagging, deep suspicion that, as a species, we have tragically lost to the fog of time an incredible and sensational body of data on cultures, civilizations and cities long, long-gone, then Atlantis in the Amazon is most certainly a book for you.

Published by Bear and Co. - who put out countless excellent titles, and whose catalog I heartily recommend - the book is part-road-trip, part-real-life adventure, part-detective story, and all-things enlightening.

Written by Richard Wingate - check out his movie Atlantis in the Bahamas - this new title presents the reader with data, facts and theories on a scenario that is as thought-provoking as it is disturbing.

The story essentially begins when we are introduced to Wingate's personal, on-site studies of the much-talked-about controversies surrounding Father Carlo Crespi - an Italian priest who moved to Ecuador in the early years of the 1920s - and his curious and captivating collection of priceless artifacts of gold and bronze.

But, there's much more to the story - at least some of those same artifacts appeared to portray evidence of ancient, fantastic technologies of a type that science and mainstream history tell us simply cannot have existed in the distant past.

But, utterly against all the odds, what if they did? And, if so, who were the makers of such astounding machines - including possibly even early, ancient aircraft (yes, you did read that right!)? How and why did they flourish only to vanish beneath the waves in the millennia-old cataclysms and catastrophes that numerous, priceless old texts tell us pummelled the Earth - and those that called it home - all those thousands of years ago?

These (and many more) are the questions that Wingate seeks to answer in Atlantis in the Amazon. Of course, numerous locales have been suggested as the origins for the tales of Atlantis and its mighty people. But, Wingate's theory is a particularly fascinating one, and he ties it in with the Father Crespi saga in a fashion that held my attention throughout.

For me, certainly, the most notable part of the book was that dealing with the Mahabharata - one of the two prime Sanskrit depictions of ancient India, the other one being the Ramayana.

Atlantis in the Amazon discusses the Mahabharata from the perspective and possibility that, in very distant times, the ancients possessed the secrets of the atom and may have tragically unleashed its terrifying power on the battlefield, thus laying to waste entire, largely-forgotten cultures and their fantastic technologies in the process.

Controversial? Certainly! But, I urge you to read Wingate's words on what sounds eerily like an incredibly old atomic skirmish - and one that may have radically altered the course of history and civilization.

Indeed, Wingate suggests that perhaps an early branch of humankind - who may have flourished in ways beyond our wildest dreams - was ultimately reduced to a struggling rabble in the wake of ancient nuclear exchanges. The result: they chose to destroy, or hide, any and all remaining evidence of the fantastic technologies that led to their disastrous downfall, and of which we - today - occasionally stumble upon enigmatic evidence and legends.

Could such a scenario be true? Are we merely the latest in possibly even a long line of civilizations that have surfaced, flourished, and ultimately reached the point of near-complete exterminaton? Are we now teetering on the brink of destruction? And if the unthinkable happens, will our world one day be viewed - tens of thousands of years from now, by the people of that era - as nothing more than the stuff of legend and folklore?

These are just some of the issues and questions that Richard Wingate's book brings to mind.

Atlantis in the Amazon is an excellent study of a forgotten, buried past that may have been as fantastically advanced as it was ultimately tragic. Let's hope we don't go the same way as those that came before us, and become merely the stuff of fairy-tales and mythology.