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Under Ancient Skies
Ancient Astronomy and Terrestrial Catastrophism
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In all of the world’s myths and religions we find traditions of a Great Flood. There are stories too of a Golden Age: the antediluvian paradise that it destroyed. Might these be real memories of the ancient world? And how can we analyse the subject scientifically? The key to unlock these ancient myths lies in astronomy. Under Ancient Skies will examine the astronomical evidence for a prehistoric cataclysm and in the process will explore a number of related anomalies in prehistory, including:
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Was there a single great flood in human prehistory, or could there have been many?
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Could the workings of ancient calendars and the records of ancient eclipses give us clues about the Flood and the antediluvian world?
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Did the Celtic Druids base a calendar on the orbit of Saturn; and is this the antediluvian calendar that is described in Plato’s myth of Atlantis?
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Do Hindu, Chinese and Mayan cosmology myths recall the early years after the Flood when our world wobbled on its axis?
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Did these same events trigger the building of astronomically aligned monuments such as Stonehenge and the pyramids?
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Was the Atenist religion of the heretic Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten inspired by a series of eclipses during his lifetime?
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Do the seven good and the seven bad years of the Joseph story recall a time when a comet struck the Earth?
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Did the British Druids use astronomy to calculate the size of the Earth; and could they have used this knowledge to navigate to America?
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Why were the ancient Celts so afraid that the sky might one day fall on their heads?
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Are comets and asteroids the only dangers lurking in the cosmos – or could there be other dangers as yet unknown to science?
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In 1994 we watched as a comet struck the giant planet Jupiter. Geologists have discovered the crater in Yucatan, where an asteroid impact destroyed the world of the dinosaurs. Scientists and astronomers have ceased to dismiss the theory that asteroids and comets could have struck the Earth during prehistory – but any suggestion that an astronomical event just a few thousand years ago might have caused the Biblical Flood, remains the last taboo. It is time for this dogma too, to be washed away. The reader is promised 'a real book': fully referenced with original content in every chapter and a bibliography of over 300 sources.
First published in 2005, this new edition will make the author's cross-disciplinary research available again to anyone who is interested in mythology, astronomy and ancient mysteries.
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Further information and features:
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Tags: Megalithic Age, Atlantis, Ancient Astronomy, Celtic Mythology, Elysian Fields, catastrophism
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Atlantis of the West
A Drowned Megalithic Civilisation
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In 1995 the author published his then-controversial theory that Plato’s Atlantis myth remembers the submergence of a Neolithic civilization around the shores of Britain and Ireland. He argues that this cataclysm resulted from a change in the Earth’s rotation consequent upon an astronomical event around 3100 BC.
The Middle-Neolithic period around 5,000 years ago was a time of dramatic climate and sea level changes all around the world.Welsh legends remember lost cities beneath the Irish Sea; and Irish myths recall an ‘otherworld’, a golden age when the eastern Irish Sea was a flowery plain inhabited by a golden-haired race of men. The author argues that Plato’s Atlantis is the same place that is remembered in these Celtic myths; and in Ancient Egyptian and Greek myths of an underworld known as the Elysian Fields. Bringing together modern scientific evidence and a pattern of ancient myths the author presents a multidisciplinary case for Atlantis as just one among many views of the submerged Neolithic civilization of the Megalith Builders. Atlantis of the West is an updated second edition of The Atlantis Researches, with an appendix of further evidences and extended notes and extensive bibliography. Originally published in 2002 it is now made available again in this new Kindle edition.
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Further information and features:
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​Tags: Megaliths, Atlantis, ancient astronomy, Celtic mythology, Elysian Fields, catastrophism, ancient calendars, ancient sea levels, pole-shift
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Picts and Ancient Britons
An Exploration of Pictish Origins
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Few problems in British history have proved as intractable as that of the origin and ethnic associations of the Picts. For although we may find numerous references to them within Roman and Celtic sources they have left us no historical texts of their own. So often we find the early Picts mentioned within histories of Roman Britain as mere opponents of Roman arms - but just who these tattooed barbarians were remains a mystery.
Modern opinion holds that the Picts were Celts, like the Scots and Welsh. This book seeks to demonstrate the scarcity of evidence for this common assumption and follows instead the evidence of native tradition. In a stimulating new study the author offers a view of the Picts that is certainly not the current text book standard. It concentrates on the very oldest traditions of Pictish origins, which together with early historical sources, would suggest that the Picts were not Celts at all, but ‘Scythians’. It will put an alternative case that the Picts were Finno-Ugrian immigrants from the Baltic coast. The author provides an investigation which subjects the traditions of Pictish origin to thorough scrutiny and by offering a viewpoint that does not commence from a Celtic bias, thereby offers some new ideas on a much neglected subject.
Since this book was first published in 1998 new DNA evidence has further brought into question the long-held assumptions about 'Celts' and that perhaps the venerable Bede - and the Picts themselves - knew better about their own origins than modern scholarship. For some years out of physical print, this new edition will make this unique research available once again to anyone looking for a source book of the earliest literary references to the people of Scotland and wish to take the research further. Equally interesting to Scots who just want to understand their own past.
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Further information and Features
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​Tags: Picts, proto-Picts, Pictish language, Pictish studies, Pictish history, Pictish tribes, Ptolemy’s map, symbol stones, Taexali, Vacomagi, Caledonians, Agricola, Pictish religion, Bede, Niduari
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Towers of Atlantis
The Real Evidence (not the Fantasy)
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There have been many theories and (too many) fantasies about Plato’s Atlantis and other catastrophes in the ancient world. The real evidence is every bit as fascinating!
Here author & researcher Paul Dunbavin updates his hypothesis, first proposed twenty-five years ago in his book Atlantis of the West; that the legend remembers the Megalithic civilization of Western Europe and was centred upon the Middle Neolithic culture of Britain and Ireland.
Citing evidence that anyone may check for themselves, he uses a cross-disciplinary time-manner-place approach to establish when, how and where an ancient submergence most likely occurred; and that Plato’s narratives are just one among many ancient and modern scientific sources that together point to a similar conclusion.
For too long, academic specialists have hidden behind the safe conclusion: that Plato’s myth remembers the Mediterranean eruption of the Thera volcano. For too long, unscrupulous authors and their publishers have been able to put out books and television series with implausible theories that selectively neglect vital parts of the evidence. In the end you find you are no wiser. Towers of Atlantis is different, it follows where the real evidence leads us.
Legends from both Wales and Ireland speak of a golden tower (or sometimes a glass tower) emerging from the waves. The Irish hero Nemed saw this tower in the Irish Sea, on his way from Spain to Ireland; he called out to the people – but they did not reply. In Welsh legend it was the hero Arthur and his men who made an expedition to the tower but only seven of them returned. Other stories speak of a low-lying plain called Anwwn lying off North Wales; and Irish stories recall a similar flowery plain lost beneath the Irish Sea. Could these legends recall the same ancient plain that is described in the Atlantis myth and in Egyptian and Greek myths of the Elysian Fields?
By first establishing the correct era as 5,000 years ago (3200-3100 BC) the pieces of legendary evidence cross-check each other and fit well with physical evidence of submerged forests around the British coast dating from the same era. The real mystery is why nobody has looked for this legendary place? It has much to do with the indifferent attitude towards mythological evidence that has long been the norm among academics and scientists. This new study brings together the science, the legends and the history in a convincing way.
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Some reviews from 2017:
"Rather than wild speculation, Paul Dunbavin has again offered evidence, although subjectively interpreted, that offers a coherent hypothesis" Atlantipedia
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"A well thought out book which makes you wish the idea of pole shift was taken seriously - or at the least investigated in an unbiased manner."
SIS Journal
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Tags: Megaliths, Atlantis, Plato, Ancient Astronomy, Celtic Myth, Elysian Fields, catastrophism, pole-shift, pole tide, Irish legends, Welsh legends, Otherworld, Annwn, Irish Sea, submerged forests, Nemed, Irish invasion myths, Maxen
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Prehistory Papers
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A consolidated volume of the author's published articles, papers and web-pages up to 2020
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Latest versions of these may also be found via the Features menu and Academia website
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Prehistory Papers II
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A consolidated volume of the author's published articles, papers and web-pages 2020 - 2022
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Latest versions of these may also be found via the Features menu and Academia website
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Prehistory Papers III
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A consolidated volume of the author's published articles, papers and web-pages 2022 - 2023
Available from September 2023
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Latest versions of these may also be found via the Features menu and Academia website
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The Atlantis Researches
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The author's first book published in 1992. Although long out-of-print many second-hand versions can still be found.
A few first and second printings of the book are still available as collector's items. Ask the author.
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For research purposes see instead the second edition retitled as Atlantis of the West above.
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