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Ever since the first accounts of Atlantis appeared in Plato's Dialogues, the idea of lost continents has fired man's imagination. A massive land-mass called Mu in the Central Pacific; Lemuria, a mightly land-bridge between India and Africal; the famed Atlantis; all according to the various theories, were sites of strange civilizations before the waters closed over their glories and they sank to the bottom of the sea.
Here, in the most detailed study ever compiled of lost continent mythology over the years and around the globe, a noted author, teacher and historian sorts fact from fiction, and reports just about everything that has ever been thought or written said or done about this fascinating theme.
Elaborate mythologies, mystic cults, ingenious psuedo-scientific dissertations, and some highly imaginative literary works have evolved around sunken continents and lost peoples.
Mr. de Camp covers them all; the alleged pre-Columbian discovery of the New World by the Welsh; the location of the Lost Tribes of Israel; the life history of humanity's (suppositions) 12 foot tall, three-eyed ancestor, the apelike Lemur; and many other absorbing sagas.
Mr. de Camp recounts the role of the protean lost continent myth in literature, from the adventures of Captain Nemo and Alley Oop to teh poetry of John Masefield and Conrad Aiken, including accounts of its adaptations in the best science fiction.
Attention to origins and evolution of the myth in its many forms gives much insight into the myth-making process in general as a carrier of human culture.
Lost continents have surfaced in quasi-religious cults, utopian allegories, faked or mistaken archeological data, complex explanations of human origins, comic books and even, Mr. de Camp reports, in the featured act of a certain burlesque theatre.
Slightly revised publication of 1st (1954) edition. 17 illustrations and maps. 348 pages.
CONDITION: Soft cover, used lightly, mild stain to end papers.
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