Book Review: The Lost Empire of Atlantis by Gavin Menzies

This review is based on the audio book version.

Gavin Menzies. The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest Mystery Revealed. Swordfish, 2011. 356 pp.

This was a fun book to read/listen to. The title is purely promotional, referring to a minor aspect of the book: Plato's accounts about the island kingdom of Atlantis. The heart of the book is Menzies research on ancient Minoan shipping, especially their quest for copper and tin that fueled progress during the bronze age. Menzies, retired from the royal navy, is a great story teller and writes much of the book as a travelogue, describing how he chased down information about the Minoans. The account begins in the Mediterranean and branches outward from there. The only part where the book seriously broke from this travelogue style was his detailed discussion of ancient navigation---a specialty for him---which was good to learn about but more difficult to follow for an audio book. If you would enjoy the personal account of a gifted amateur historian, you will love this book.

Now, as a historian, I have to say that I could not accept all that Menzies argued or the approach he took. He has a tendency to form an interesting theory, incorporate it into his narrative as fact, and then use it to develop yet another theory. This theorizing ultimately leads to a long string of weaker and weaker evidence. I found myself agreeing comfortably with many things he argued at the beginning of the book, including the theory that ancient Thera and Crete, the chief islands of Minoan civilization, could be the basis of Plato's description of Atlantis (an idea that has been around for years). But the further he went away from the Mediterranean, the more I doubted the reliability of the information.

Menzies based much of his argument on common characteristics between artifacts found in various places. His conclusion often was that this indicated a common culture making these artifacts, namely, the Minoans. This had the Minoans travelling not only around the Mediterranean and Red Sea (perhaps in cooperation with Egyptian civilization)---ideas that seemed plausible---but outward to India and northern Europe. He provided no discussion of how ideas and articles of trade may travel between civilizations as a way of answering how a commonly manufactured item could appear in many places. For example, the existence of stone circles found in Europe and Asia, designed to study the heavens, does not necessitate that the Minoans erected them in each case. It may indicate that the Minoans shared a common interest in the heavens, as ancient people certainly shared a common interest in tracking time and furthering trade.

A second form of evidence used was genetic information and specific genetic characteristics that nicely fit with aspects of his arguments about Minoan trade. However, to properly present a theory, one needs to account not only for the possibilities of relationships but also for aberrations. Menzies argued that the spread of a genetic characteristic pointed to the Minoans reaching the Great Lakes region of North America---a bold assertion! But in rehearsing the evidence, he mentioned that a high incidence of the genetic characteristic also occurred among Navajo Indians in the American South West, without explaining how this was possible. He was focused on getting Minoan genes from Crete to Lake Superior and so left all manner of loose ends in considering the evidence used. This is a specific example of how he was handling evidence, one that must raise serious doubts about the conclusions.

At any rate, Menzies provides an interesting account from the plausible to the unproven, which is fun to read/listen to. His idea will no doubt be explored by more cautious historians in years to come.