Here are 62 books that Europe's Lost World fans have personally recommended if you like
Europe's Lost World.
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Growing up in post-WWII Europe, young people’s anxiety was often channelled into searching for ‘lost worlds’, places hope could be nurtured and ancient solutions revived. So I encountered Atlantis and Lemuria and other imagined places but also learned, from training as a geologist, that once-populated lands had actually been submerged. Myths and legends often contain grains of observational truth at their heart. The more ‘submergence stories’ I research, from Australia through India and across northwest Europe, the more I realize how much we have forgotten about undersea human pasts. And how our navigation of the future could be improved by understanding them.
One of the first books written about scientific discoveries of Cities in the Sea was this by Nic Flemming and it is a great read. Impassioned, exciting, personal, you cannot fail to be swept along as the author describes his discovery of Pavlopetri, still acknowledged as the world’s earliest-known underwater city. Written before the world knew about climate change, this book is not in any sense forward-looking but rather a celebration of the discovery of once-inhabited undersea places that lit the way ahead for a whole generation of people curious about human pasts.
Growing up in post-WWII Europe, young people’s anxiety was often channelled into searching for ‘lost worlds’, places hope could be nurtured and ancient solutions revived. So I encountered Atlantis and Lemuria and other imagined places but also learned, from training as a geologist, that once-populated lands had actually been submerged. Myths and legends often contain grains of observational truth at their heart. The more ‘submergence stories’ I research, from Australia through India and across northwest Europe, the more I realize how much we have forgotten about undersea human pasts. And how our navigation of the future could be improved by understanding them.
Sometimes English readers are never exposed to histories in other languages but I feel personally indebted to Sumathi Ramaswamy for this monumental scientific study of Tamil traditions about the ‘lost land’ of Kumari Kandam. It is not merely comprehensive but leads its reader through Tamil literature and poetry to express the profundity of loss associated with this land’s submergence. Which may conceivably have informed western stories about Lemuria in the Indian Ocean.
During the nineteenth century, Lemuria was imagined as a land that once bridged India and Africa but disappeared into the ocean millennia ago, much like Atlantis. A sustained meditation on a lost place from a lost time, this elegantly written book is the first to explore Lemuria's incarnations across cultures, from Victorian-era science to Euro-American occultism to colonial and postcolonial India. The Lost Land of Lemuria widens into a provocative exploration of the poetics and politics of loss to consider how this sentiment manifests itself in a fascination with vanished homelands, hidden civilizations, and forgotten peoples. More than a consideration…
Growing up in post-WWII Europe, young people’s anxiety was often channelled into searching for ‘lost worlds’, places hope could be nurtured and ancient solutions revived. So I encountered Atlantis and Lemuria and other imagined places but also learned, from training as a geologist, that once-populated lands had actually been submerged. Myths and legends often contain grains of observational truth at their heart. The more ‘submergence stories’ I research, from Australia through India and across northwest Europe, the more I realize how much we have forgotten about undersea human pasts. And how our navigation of the future could be improved by understanding them.
In the late 1990s when this book was published, it seems no scientist had ever given serious thought to the consequences for human evolution of the submergence of Sundaland in the aftermath of the last ice age. There is compelling scientific evidence, compiled and analyzed here in compendious detail, that Sundaland was a heartland of human innovation and that its drowning may have led to the spread of rice agriculture, pottery making, and even tales of lands being ‘fished up’ (as by the Pacific demigod Maui). An astonishing read that today I still regard as largely credible.
At the end of the Ice Age, Southeast Asia formed a continent twice the size of India. The South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand and the Java Sea, which were all dry, formed the connecting parts of the continent. Geologically, this half-sunken continent is the Sunda shelf of Sundaland. In Eden in the East Stephen Oppenheimer puts forward the astonishing argument that here in Southeast Asia was the cradle of civilisation that fertilised the great cultures of China, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Crete six thousand years ago. He produces evidence from ethnography, archaeology, oceanography, from Creation stories, myths and…
Growing up in post-WWII Europe, young people’s anxiety was often channelled into searching for ‘lost worlds’, places hope could be nurtured and ancient solutions revived. So I encountered Atlantis and Lemuria and other imagined places but also learned, from training as a geologist, that once-populated lands had actually been submerged. Myths and legends often contain grains of observational truth at their heart. The more ‘submergence stories’ I research, from Australia through India and across northwest Europe, the more I realize how much we have forgotten about undersea human pasts. And how our navigation of the future could be improved by understanding them.
Written in the 1950s by a museum curator-geologist, Sunken Cities is one of the earliest expositions of ‘myth and legend’ and their plausible geological meanings. The author marries his deep knowledge of Welsh traditions about submerged places with contemporary geological understandings. Of course, geology was transformed the following decade but North’s book remains insightful and grounded in ways that many more recent accounts are not. If I lived in Wales, I would be off every weekend with it in hand!
When I was little, I knew I would work with books in some way, and I did, for many years working for one of the major children’s book publishers. But it wasn’t rewarding in the way I had hoped. Some kids know they want to be a teacher when they grow up. I definitely did not, yet I became one. I love finding ways to make learning fun. In my teaching days I found ways to get the most reluctant students to find something they could enjoy about learning. And now as an author, I find myself doing the same, and as a parent, seeking out books like the ones I recommend here that teach without teaching.
The first thing I love about this book is the very unusual use of 2nd person: “You live in a cave with your parents.” The child in this story loves exploring and using his imagination. Everyone else is busy with the job of surviving. The child sees shapes in the clouds and wonders why no one else can see what he sees. One night, without thinking, he takes a stick and draws on the cave walls. Now everyone can see what he sees, and it is the first-ever drawing. Everyone is amazed by it, thinks it is magic, and it is! The ability to use our imaginations to create art is magic, and it is what the author has done in this book, inspired by the real first drawing.
In 1994, the Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc was discovered, filled with the oldest known drawings in existence at that time, made 30,000 years ago. In that same cave, prehistoric footprints were discovered: those of an 8-year-old child and a wolf. From these astonishing facts, THE FIRST DRAWING was born.
In this beautiful picture book, Caldecott Medal-winning author/illustrator Mordicai Gerstein imagines one possible way drawing was invented. The young boy that stars in this story has such a vivid imagination that he sees images everywhere - clouds, stones and smoke look like animals to him. His parents, however, don't share his enthusiasm…
I am an author, theologian, musician, historian, and college professor who has written more than twenty books about ancient and alternative history, religion in modern culture, and long-distance, meditative bicycling. My study of the past convinced me that modern life has, for far too many of us, grown one-dimensional. It lacks the magic and mystery that imbued the ancients with the deep and rich mythology which we inherited from them, but then allowed to grow dormant within our sheltered lives. Remembering their vision and experience is a key to restoring our own sense of self-worth and essence. Maybe we all need to meet a “Wizard in the Wood!”
Why was Stonehenge built? What was its function? Cornwell offers a new interpretation that is both eminently possible and completely believable. Transporting us back to a time long forgotten, he makes us believe. And that is no easy task! When I first gazed in person upon Stonehenge, my thoughts, like those of almost everyone else, were consumed with “Why” and “How.” But this book takes us further into the mystery by asking “Who?” What motivated the first builders, and those who followed after them for thousands of years? They were “just folks,” like us. But they must have been motivated by something that we, sad to say, are lacking.
Bernard Cornwell's brilliant novel, reissued for fans to find out the story behind the stones. This is the tale of three brothers and of their rivalry that created this great temple.
One summer's day, a dying stranger carrying great wealth in gold comes to the settlement of Ratharryn.
The three sons of Ratharryn's chief each perceive the great gift in a different way. The eldest, Lengar, the warrior, harnesses his murderous ambition to be a ruler and take great power for his tribe. Camaban becomes a great visionary and feared wise man, and it is his vision that will force…
I have three lifelong passions, the first was reading, then writing, and then archaeology/history. To this end I studied and trained as an archaeologist before I sat down and decided to write stories set in the past as a way of bringing it to life. Of course, there had to be an adventure, a bit of a mystery, and a dash of magic to bring it all together. The books on my list are just a few of those that I have enjoyed reading during my hunt to get to know the past in intimate detail – on my own time travelling journey.
Going even further back in time this book looks to the archaeological evidence and asks, what was life like in the very distant past, in deep prehistory?
Was it short, violent, and miserable as we are often led to believe, or is there a different story? Here Francis Pryor examines the evidence to test this question and finds that actually, much like today, life was complex and yet a place where home and hearth lay at the center of our ancestors’ lives.
Francis Pryor writes from the heart, with empathy and imagination. I found it an easy read given it deals with what can be very dry pieces of archaeological evidence. If you are interested in early prehistory, this is a must read.
In Home Francis Pryor, author of The Making of the British Landscape, archaeologist and broadcaster, takes us on his lifetime's quest: to discover the origins of family life in prehistoric Britain
Francis Pryor's search for the origins of our island story has been the quest of a lifetime. In Home, the Time Team expert explores the first nine thousand years of life in Britain, from the retreat of the glaciers to the Romans' departure. Tracing the settlement of domestic communities, he shows how archaeology enables us to reconstruct the evolution of habits, traditions and customs. But this, too, is Francis…
I began life as an apprentice motor engineer before starting my own business. Before I married, I used my holidays to visit some of the great historical sites of the Middle East, including, of course, Egypt. That first look at the pyramids, both inside and out, set me on a lifetime study of them and other sites across Europe. Relying on the physical work of others I was able to put down on paper my thoughts on a much earlier civilization that seems to have come from nowhere, erected incredible monuments, and then simply vanished. Now, I still have a very keen interest in it all and slowly I'm amassing enough material for another book.
Hapgood was a lecturer who used the bright young minds of some of his graduate students to make a detailed study of a pre-Columbian map drawn in 1513 by a Turkish Admiral by the name of Pirie Re’is. Rei’is had drawn his map using source maps made by Alexander the Great and even earlier peoples. It is of the Atlantic showing the Americas correctly drawn and placed. There is an ice-free Antarctica where the correct outline of the coast of Queen Maude land is less than 7 miles out of place. Hapgood’s similar analysis of other maps shows that there had been a global civilization on this planet sometime in the past.
Some scholars have long claimed that a world civilization existed thousands of years ago - long before Egypt. They have even claimed that this lost civilization was almost as advanced as ours today.
In this book, Professor Charles H. Hapgood has produced the first concrete evidence of the existence of such a civilization. He has found the evidence in many beautiful maps long known to scholars, the so-called Portolano charts of the Middle Ages, and in other maps until now thought to have originated around the time of Columbus. Working with his students over a period of seven years, Hapgood…
I am a holistic adult and child psychiatrist, astrologer, shamanic practitioner, and energy healer who has been in practice for 35 years. I am thoroughly familiar with the conventional paradigm for treating psychiatric illness, but I no longer endorse it and, in fact, believe that it causes harm. I am convinced that there is an urgent need for a paradigm shift in medicine at this time of collapse and breakdown on the planet. The sacred's vital role in healing needs to be acknowledged, as does the role of nutrition and lifestyle, as well as a need to identify and treat the root causes of illness rather than simply suppressing symptoms with pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Terry Wahls is an absolutely brilliant physician whose accessible book describes a treatment approach that is enormously effective for treating the inflammation that is at the heart of so many conditions. She reversed her own illness with it. She had rapidly progressive degeneration of her nervous system due to multiple sclerosis, which resulted in her needing to use a wheelchair. Through implementing her own protocol, she is now back to riding her bike.
I recommend this book to 95% of the patients in my practice because the dietary approach that she clearly describes makes such a difference in their health and well-being. I like the fact that she outlines three stages of implementing her protocol so that a person can begin with the least restrictive and, if desired, can take it to the next level.
This approach offers flexibility and allows a person to ease into making lifestyle changes.…
The cookbook companion to the groundbreaking The Wahls Protocol, featuring delicious, nutritionally dense recipes tailored to each level of the Wahls Paleo Diet.
The Wahls Protocol has become a sensation, transforming the lives of people who suffer from autoimmune disorders. Now, in her highly anticipated follow-up, Dr. Wahls is sharing the essential Paleo-inspired recipes her readers need to reduce and often eliminate their chronic pain, fatigue, brain fog, and other symptoms related to autoimmune problems, neurological diseases, and other chronic conditions, even when physicians have been unable to make a specific diagnosis. Packed with easy-to-prepare meals based on Dr. Wahls’s…
I've been fond of the Homeric poems since my youth. I followed classical studies in the high here in Rome, so I studied Latin and Greek before graduating in nuclear engineering. Then, in addition to my professional activity, I've devoted myself to the study of The Iliad and the Odyssey, with their huge contradictions between geography and their traditional Mediterranean setting. The book I published on this topic was translated and published into eight foreign languages (as The Baltic Origins of Homer's Epic Tales), and has given rise to many scientific discussions. I also published The Mysteries of the Megalithic Civilization, a Bestseller here in Italy.
In this book, an important 20th-century archaeologist reconstructs the life of prehistoric populations in the second millennium BC. Therefore, for those who are interested in this subject, it represents an important tool to better deepen a historical period whose knowledge is currently undergoing great evolution and which in the future could give us many surprises.
