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The Empires of Atlantis
The Origins of Ancient Civilizations and Mystery Traditions throughout the Ages
Published by Bear & Company
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
Establishes the historical and geological reality of Atlantis and reveals its continuing influence around the world
Exploring more than 100,000 years of Earth’s history, Marco Vigato combines recent discoveries in the the fields of archaeology, geology, anthropology, and genetics with the mystery teachings of antiquity to investigate the true origins of civilization. Establishing the historical and geological reality of Atlantis stretching all the way back to 432,000 BCE, he traces the course of Atlantean civilization through its three empires, revealing how civilization rose and fell several times over this lengthy span of time.
The author shows that Atlantis did not vanish “in one terrible day and night” but survived in a variety of different forms well into the historical era. He reveals how the the first Atlantean civilization lasted from 432,000 to 35,335 BCE, the second one from 21,142 to 10,961 BCE, and the third Atlantis civilization--the one celebrated by Plato--collapsed in 9600 BCE, after the Younger Dryas cataclysm. The author examines the role of Atlantean survivors in restarting civilization in different parts of the world, from Göbekli Tepe and Egypt to India, Mesopotamia, and the Americas. He personally documents their colonies and outposts around the globe, offering unique views of the colossal network of pyramids, earthen mounds, and other megalithic monuments they le behind. He shows how these monuments testify to the survival of a sacred science of Atlantean origin, and he documents the survival of the primeval Atlantean tradition through various secret societies into the modern era.
Drawing on more than 500 ancient and modern sources and sharing never-before-seen photographs from his own personal exploration of hundreds of archaeological sites around the world, Vigato shows not only that Atlantis was real but that the whole world is now being called to become a New Atlantis and awaken into a new golden age.
Exploring more than 100,000 years of Earth’s history, Marco Vigato combines recent discoveries in the the fields of archaeology, geology, anthropology, and genetics with the mystery teachings of antiquity to investigate the true origins of civilization. Establishing the historical and geological reality of Atlantis stretching all the way back to 432,000 BCE, he traces the course of Atlantean civilization through its three empires, revealing how civilization rose and fell several times over this lengthy span of time.
The author shows that Atlantis did not vanish “in one terrible day and night” but survived in a variety of different forms well into the historical era. He reveals how the the first Atlantean civilization lasted from 432,000 to 35,335 BCE, the second one from 21,142 to 10,961 BCE, and the third Atlantis civilization--the one celebrated by Plato--collapsed in 9600 BCE, after the Younger Dryas cataclysm. The author examines the role of Atlantean survivors in restarting civilization in different parts of the world, from Göbekli Tepe and Egypt to India, Mesopotamia, and the Americas. He personally documents their colonies and outposts around the globe, offering unique views of the colossal network of pyramids, earthen mounds, and other megalithic monuments they le behind. He shows how these monuments testify to the survival of a sacred science of Atlantean origin, and he documents the survival of the primeval Atlantean tradition through various secret societies into the modern era.
Drawing on more than 500 ancient and modern sources and sharing never-before-seen photographs from his own personal exploration of hundreds of archaeological sites around the world, Vigato shows not only that Atlantis was real but that the whole world is now being called to become a New Atlantis and awaken into a new golden age.
Excerpt
From Chapter 1. Worlds Before Our Own
The search for the physical evidence of humanity’s first great civilization will take us on a veritable journey of discovery around the world. Some of the sites discussed in this book will be certainly familiar to most readers - places like the Great Pyramid of Egypt, the ruins of Tiwanaku in Bolivia, and the citadel of Machu Picchu in Peru. Others sites perhaps less famous or only recently brought to the attention of the general public will nevertheless hold equally important clues to the true history of the human race.
What will emerge from this journey is the realization of a pattern of sacred sites and places of power established thousands of years ago by people with a very peculiar mission to accomplish - to resurrect the primeval world of the Gods and initiate a new Golden Age.
In this book, we will work to demonstrate that a fundamental episode of civilization occurred more than 10,000 years ago. This civilization, which we may call Atlantis, left its mark over the traditions of nearly every culture on the planet that either directly or indirectly derived from it.
While this will sound like far-fetched speculation to many, those used to thinking in terms of a purely linear progression and evolution of human societies, evidence is mounting both within and outside of the scientific community for a radical reassessment of our views of prehistory and the origin of civilization.
Far from being unsophisticated cave dwellers, our remote ancestors do not cease to surprise us with the level of their scientific and cultural achievements. To show that these were not mere isolated sparkles of genius in the long night of prehistory but the legacy of a much greater and far older civilization will be the purpose of this book.
One does not need to go much further than the South of France to find evidence of this prehistoric genius already 40,000 years ago. Truly, the art of the Chauvet and Lascaux caves has nothing primitive to it, but strikes us with its sophistication and complexity. It is often quoted that, upon exiting the cave of Lascaux in Dordogne - often called the Sistine Chapel of cave art - an awed Pablo Picasso declared: “we have learned nothing in twelve thousand years.”1 On one thing, however, Picasso was wrong: the stunning depictions of bulls, horses, aurochs and other ice age fauna that grace the walls and ceilings of the Lascaux cave are at least 17,300 years old. The equally impressive Chauvet cave in Ardeche is even older, at almost 32,000 years.2
Yet for centuries cave art was ignored, even dismissed as a clever prank. Its subtlety and refinement was believed impossible for such an early age. Today, new findings keep pushing back in time the beginnings of abstract thought and artistic expression.
More intriguing still is the possibility that Ice-Age man may have possessed more than a passing interest in astronomy. Prof. Michael Rappenglueck of the University of Munich has gone so far as to suggest that the Lascaux paintings contain accurate prehistoric star charts, with some of the larger animal figures correlating with the position of the constellations of Taurus, Orion, and the Pleiades in the sky.3 He also noticed that the main cave opening points to the sunset on the summer solstice - a natural coincidence perhaps, yet significant enough for Paleolithic men to deliberately incorporate it in their art.
Another example of this paradigm shift, which has taken the world of archaeology by storm in recent years, is the discovery of the megalithic temple of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey.
Predating Stonehenge by over 6,000 years, Göbekli Tepe is a site that truly upends the conventional views of the rise of civilization.4 Not only is Göbekli Tepe an incredible feat of engineering in and of itself, consisting of multiple circles of over 200 T-shaped pillars, each weighing as many as 20 tons, but is also the oldest known temple at a staggering 11,000 years old. Yet Göbekli Tepe was virtually unknown until 1996: A previous 1960 expedition by the University of Chicago had in fact dismissed it as a medieval cemetery. It is only thanks to the perseverance of the late German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt that we now know more about it.
Göbekli Tepe proves that our ancestors were capable of creating complex megalithic architecture thousands of years before what archaeologists believed possible, and to do so on a scale and level of complexity that would not be seen again for another 6,000 years. What is more, a project like Göbekli Tepe would have certainly required hundreds of workers, under the direction of a sophisticated priestly or shamanic elite. Just how ancient and how advanced was this elite?
The true paradox of Göbekli Tepe is that the earliest layers are also the largest and most sophisticated.5 New rings were continually added on top of the older ones, becoming however increasingly smaller and cruder. To quote author Charles C. Mann, it is “as if the people at Göbekli Tepe got steadily worse at temple building”; until, suddenly, about 8,200 BC, all construction ceased: “Göbekli Tepe was all fall and no rise.”6
If Göbekli Tepe was the work of an elite, where did these people come from, and where did they go? Perhaps it is no chance that, although no trace of agriculture or plant domestication has been found at Göbekli Tepe, another site located less than 50 miles away called Nevali Çori has provided the earliest evidence of wheat domestication in 7,200 BC.7
Göbekli Tepe is certainly at the forefront of an archaeological revolution that is shattering many of our most widely held beliefs regarding the origins of civilization and the evolution of early human societies. And it is not alone.
Another megalithic complex in Southeast Asia threatens to push back the beginnings of monumental stone architecture even further, to 24,000 years BC. Gunung Padang, located in Indonesia’s West Java province, is a massive pyramid standing over 100 meters high and covering an area of 25 hectares. According to Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, the geologist in charge of the site’s excavations, the pyramid is actually five different structures, each built on top of the other over several thousands of years. The uppermost layer, which consists of thousands of prismatic blocks of basalt, has been recently dated to 5,200 BC - a full 2,000 years older than Stonehenge. Yet the oldest layers may be as many as 26,000 years old, including a possible chamber located 25 meters below the pyramid.8
The conventional dating of other well-known monuments, like the Pyramids and the Sphinx of Giza, has similarly been challenged in recent years. When, in the early 1990s, renowned geologist Robert Schoch first publicized his views that the great Sphinx of Giza had suffered thousands of years of water erosion well before its supposed date of construction in 2,500 BC, he started a debate that threatened to undermine the very foundations of the discipline of Egyptology.9
According to Schoch, the erosion marks visible on the body of the Sphinx can only have been the result of intense rain erosion that occurred at a time when North Africa was not yet a desert, between 9,000 and 3,000 BC.10 Furthermore, evidence shows that the head of the Sphinx was most certainly recarved during Old Kingdom times (2649-2150 BC), and may have been originally that of a lion, as proven by its apparent disproportion with the rest of the body and its lack of significant signs of water erosion.
If Schoch’s hypothesis is correct, the history of the Giza plateau could be rewritten. In fact, not only the Great Sphinx, but also portions of the pyramids’ lower stone courses show similar erosion patterns.11 We may now look with less skepticism at the claims of those researchers who have similarly argued in favor of a much greater antiquity of such mysterious monuments as the Osireion of Abydos or the ancient city of Tiwanaku in Bolivia.
More puzzling still is the evidence of ancient high technology, including stone vitrification, high-speed drilling and machining, which is also found in these same sites.
How then could an entire society, clearly very advanced in the arts of civilization, vanish altogether form the historical and archaeological record? Maybe, to use the words of author Graham Hancock, we truly are a species with amnesia.12 So much of the evidence of ancient advanced civilizations is now slowly beginning to emerge from beyond the veil of history: It will be one of the great scientific endeavors of our age to map the true extent of the vast ruin within which we all live - the legacy of our seemingly super-human ancestors. This book wishes to be but a small contribution in that direction.
The search for the physical evidence of humanity’s first great civilization will take us on a veritable journey of discovery around the world. Some of the sites discussed in this book will be certainly familiar to most readers - places like the Great Pyramid of Egypt, the ruins of Tiwanaku in Bolivia, and the citadel of Machu Picchu in Peru. Others sites perhaps less famous or only recently brought to the attention of the general public will nevertheless hold equally important clues to the true history of the human race.
What will emerge from this journey is the realization of a pattern of sacred sites and places of power established thousands of years ago by people with a very peculiar mission to accomplish - to resurrect the primeval world of the Gods and initiate a new Golden Age.
In this book, we will work to demonstrate that a fundamental episode of civilization occurred more than 10,000 years ago. This civilization, which we may call Atlantis, left its mark over the traditions of nearly every culture on the planet that either directly or indirectly derived from it.
While this will sound like far-fetched speculation to many, those used to thinking in terms of a purely linear progression and evolution of human societies, evidence is mounting both within and outside of the scientific community for a radical reassessment of our views of prehistory and the origin of civilization.
Far from being unsophisticated cave dwellers, our remote ancestors do not cease to surprise us with the level of their scientific and cultural achievements. To show that these were not mere isolated sparkles of genius in the long night of prehistory but the legacy of a much greater and far older civilization will be the purpose of this book.
One does not need to go much further than the South of France to find evidence of this prehistoric genius already 40,000 years ago. Truly, the art of the Chauvet and Lascaux caves has nothing primitive to it, but strikes us with its sophistication and complexity. It is often quoted that, upon exiting the cave of Lascaux in Dordogne - often called the Sistine Chapel of cave art - an awed Pablo Picasso declared: “we have learned nothing in twelve thousand years.”1 On one thing, however, Picasso was wrong: the stunning depictions of bulls, horses, aurochs and other ice age fauna that grace the walls and ceilings of the Lascaux cave are at least 17,300 years old. The equally impressive Chauvet cave in Ardeche is even older, at almost 32,000 years.2
Yet for centuries cave art was ignored, even dismissed as a clever prank. Its subtlety and refinement was believed impossible for such an early age. Today, new findings keep pushing back in time the beginnings of abstract thought and artistic expression.
More intriguing still is the possibility that Ice-Age man may have possessed more than a passing interest in astronomy. Prof. Michael Rappenglueck of the University of Munich has gone so far as to suggest that the Lascaux paintings contain accurate prehistoric star charts, with some of the larger animal figures correlating with the position of the constellations of Taurus, Orion, and the Pleiades in the sky.3 He also noticed that the main cave opening points to the sunset on the summer solstice - a natural coincidence perhaps, yet significant enough for Paleolithic men to deliberately incorporate it in their art.
Another example of this paradigm shift, which has taken the world of archaeology by storm in recent years, is the discovery of the megalithic temple of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey.
Predating Stonehenge by over 6,000 years, Göbekli Tepe is a site that truly upends the conventional views of the rise of civilization.4 Not only is Göbekli Tepe an incredible feat of engineering in and of itself, consisting of multiple circles of over 200 T-shaped pillars, each weighing as many as 20 tons, but is also the oldest known temple at a staggering 11,000 years old. Yet Göbekli Tepe was virtually unknown until 1996: A previous 1960 expedition by the University of Chicago had in fact dismissed it as a medieval cemetery. It is only thanks to the perseverance of the late German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt that we now know more about it.
Göbekli Tepe proves that our ancestors were capable of creating complex megalithic architecture thousands of years before what archaeologists believed possible, and to do so on a scale and level of complexity that would not be seen again for another 6,000 years. What is more, a project like Göbekli Tepe would have certainly required hundreds of workers, under the direction of a sophisticated priestly or shamanic elite. Just how ancient and how advanced was this elite?
The true paradox of Göbekli Tepe is that the earliest layers are also the largest and most sophisticated.5 New rings were continually added on top of the older ones, becoming however increasingly smaller and cruder. To quote author Charles C. Mann, it is “as if the people at Göbekli Tepe got steadily worse at temple building”; until, suddenly, about 8,200 BC, all construction ceased: “Göbekli Tepe was all fall and no rise.”6
If Göbekli Tepe was the work of an elite, where did these people come from, and where did they go? Perhaps it is no chance that, although no trace of agriculture or plant domestication has been found at Göbekli Tepe, another site located less than 50 miles away called Nevali Çori has provided the earliest evidence of wheat domestication in 7,200 BC.7
Göbekli Tepe is certainly at the forefront of an archaeological revolution that is shattering many of our most widely held beliefs regarding the origins of civilization and the evolution of early human societies. And it is not alone.
Another megalithic complex in Southeast Asia threatens to push back the beginnings of monumental stone architecture even further, to 24,000 years BC. Gunung Padang, located in Indonesia’s West Java province, is a massive pyramid standing over 100 meters high and covering an area of 25 hectares. According to Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, the geologist in charge of the site’s excavations, the pyramid is actually five different structures, each built on top of the other over several thousands of years. The uppermost layer, which consists of thousands of prismatic blocks of basalt, has been recently dated to 5,200 BC - a full 2,000 years older than Stonehenge. Yet the oldest layers may be as many as 26,000 years old, including a possible chamber located 25 meters below the pyramid.8
The conventional dating of other well-known monuments, like the Pyramids and the Sphinx of Giza, has similarly been challenged in recent years. When, in the early 1990s, renowned geologist Robert Schoch first publicized his views that the great Sphinx of Giza had suffered thousands of years of water erosion well before its supposed date of construction in 2,500 BC, he started a debate that threatened to undermine the very foundations of the discipline of Egyptology.9
According to Schoch, the erosion marks visible on the body of the Sphinx can only have been the result of intense rain erosion that occurred at a time when North Africa was not yet a desert, between 9,000 and 3,000 BC.10 Furthermore, evidence shows that the head of the Sphinx was most certainly recarved during Old Kingdom times (2649-2150 BC), and may have been originally that of a lion, as proven by its apparent disproportion with the rest of the body and its lack of significant signs of water erosion.
If Schoch’s hypothesis is correct, the history of the Giza plateau could be rewritten. In fact, not only the Great Sphinx, but also portions of the pyramids’ lower stone courses show similar erosion patterns.11 We may now look with less skepticism at the claims of those researchers who have similarly argued in favor of a much greater antiquity of such mysterious monuments as the Osireion of Abydos or the ancient city of Tiwanaku in Bolivia.
More puzzling still is the evidence of ancient high technology, including stone vitrification, high-speed drilling and machining, which is also found in these same sites.
How then could an entire society, clearly very advanced in the arts of civilization, vanish altogether form the historical and archaeological record? Maybe, to use the words of author Graham Hancock, we truly are a species with amnesia.12 So much of the evidence of ancient advanced civilizations is now slowly beginning to emerge from beyond the veil of history: It will be one of the great scientific endeavors of our age to map the true extent of the vast ruin within which we all live - the legacy of our seemingly super-human ancestors. This book wishes to be but a small contribution in that direction.
Product Details
- Publisher: Bear & Company (April 28, 2022)
- Length: 416 pages
- ISBN13: 9781591434337
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Raves and Reviews
“For the complete library of all things Atlantis, Marco Vigato has written the kind of indispensable resource that fills in the details of this immense story as very few have. The Empires of Atlantis is a treasure trove of ancient lore that true Atlantis fans everywhere will be consulting for a long time to come.”
– J. Douglas Kenyon, author of Ghosts of Atlantis
“Atlantis is one of the greatest enigmas of the past still to be solved. Every year new facts and theories emerge, which together form pieces of a grand puzzle that will one day take us to the gates of a long-lost civilization. In The Empires of Atlantis author Marco Vigato reveals another important piece of that jigsaw. Thoroughly recommended.”
– Andrew Collins, coauthor of Denisovan Origins
“Marco Vigato sifts through the literary evidence throughout the ages and paints a picture of human history everyone should know. Packed with knowledge from the Cro-Magnon caves of France to Xochicalco, Mexico, Egypt, and the medieval cathedrals of Europe, The Empires of Atlantis is as enjoyable as it is informative and inspiring.”
– Ed Malkowski, author of Ancient Egypt 39,000 BCE
“I don’t know of anyone else who has the scope and vision to try to reconcile, let us say, Guenon, Sitchin, and contemporary science!”
– Joscelyn Godwin, author of Atlantis and the Cycles of Time
“Marco Vigato’s well-researched and insightful book reveals an ancient, unknown megalithic civilization, adept at constructing magnificent pyramids and highly stylized buildings in faraway places such as Egypt, Mexico, and Peru. These people appear to be part of a worldwide culture and possibly the fabled Atlantis, representing a missing epoch of a maritime nation in possession of a science and technology that is still beyond our perception. This is an important book that advances our understanding of the past.”
– Cliff Dunning, writer and host of the Earth Ancients podcast
“In addition to his own insightful outlook on the subject, Marco Vigato does us the very great service of pulling together many of the salient perspectives on Atlantis, drawn from many of the most respected historical and esoteric commentators.”
– Laird Scranton, author of Primal Wisdom of the Ancients
“Marco Vigato’s quest to merge modern science with the Western esoteric tradition is a daunting goal, but this author is up to the challenge as he tackles this ambitious subject in the pages of The Empires of Atlantis. He brings a clear vision to his thoughtful exploration of sacred sites and the intriguing mysteries surrounding ancient monuments around the globe.”
– Rand Flem-Ath, coauthor of Atlantis beneath the Ice
“Vigato’s argument, which draws from a wide range of sources from ancient texts and esoteric teachings to the latest discoveries in archaeology and genetics, is compelling. The implications of his book are far-reaching. The Empires of Atlantis is a must-read for those interested in alternative archaeology and the open-minded in the academic community who can appreciate Vigato’s impeccable research and scholarship.”
– Mark Carlotto, author of Before Atlantis
“The Empires of Atlantis will take you on a journey back in time. If you have ever wondered what it was like to travel back in time and see the world our ancestors built and understand the legacy they left for us, then this is where you start.”
– Ivan Petricevic, filmmaker and founder of Ancient Code
“Of the many hundreds of books written about Atlantis over the last twenty-four centuries, The Empires of Atlantis is unique. Marco Vigato synthesizes the rational criteria of modern science with the legacy of Western esoteric tradition to offer his different perspective on a familiar subject readers will find at once engagingly credible and eerily contemporary.”
– Frank Joseph, author of The Destruction of Atlantis
"An inherently fascinating read from cover to cover, The Empires of Atlantis: The Origins of Ancient Civilizations and Mystery Traditions throughout the Ages is an iconoclastic historical study that is enhanced with the inclusion of a section of color photography, as well as the occasional black-and-white illustration. A detailed work that will have a particular interest to both academia and the non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject, The Empires of Atlantis: The Origins of Ancient Civilizations and Mystery Traditions throughout the Ages is highly recommended for personal reading lists as well as community, college, and university library Antiquarian History collections in general, and Atlantis history supplemental curriculum studies lists in particular."
– Midwest Book Review
"In a period of less than 10,000 years, our planet could have been struck no fewer than four times by debris from a disintegrating comet circulating in the solar system, each time either destroying or stultifying civilization restarted in the aftermath by surviving Atlantean culture bearers. This is the engrossing theory put forward by Marco M. Vigato in The Empires of Atlantis, an impressively researched, almost encyclopedic, work which for me, as one fascinated by the debate around the origins of civilization, was a riveting read."
– Geoff Ward, book editor and journalist
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