Book Reviews Perceptions Magazine, August 2023
The Mystery of Doggerland:
Atlantis in the North Sea
By Graham Phillips
Inner Traditions
Bear & Company
One Park Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767
July 2023, 224 pages, 6 x 9, US $20.00
ISBN: 9781591434238
Includes 16-page color insert and 24 b&w illustrations
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
The author of this book, Graham Phillips, is a former radio journalist and broadcaster for England’s BBC. He’s also a noted historical researcher and investigator, and the author of such previous titles as Wisdom Keepers of Stonehenge, The Lost Tomb of King Arthur, and The End of Eden. He maintains a website at: www.grahamphillips.net
In his latest book here, The Mystery of Doggerland, Phillips delves comprehensively into the archaeological findings and scientific analysis of what remains of a once advanced ancient civilization located today largely beneath the North Sea, north of the British Isles. This great land mass upon which this once great civilization existed is known to geologists as Doggerland, as well as Fairland, referred to in Celtic legends as Tu-lay.
Dated back to early as 4000 BC, this once magnificent “Atlantis in the North Sea” later fell victim to rising sea levels, devastating tsunamis, as well as a terrible epidemic generated by melting permafrost during the time period of a cataclysmic global warming. Phillips points out that this site once possessed sophisticated technology and advanced medical knowledge. Dated to more than 5,500 years ago, evidence has been found of numerous artificial structures preserved beneath the ground and on the ocean floor, ranging from complex settlements, gigantic earthworks, stone circles, and epic monoliths. Today Fair Isle, a very small island some 45 miles north of the Orkney Islands of Scotland, is all that remains above water of this once very impressive landmass. Fairland was swallowed by the ocean around 3100 BC, when its last survivors made their way to the British Isles. There they created the megalithic culture that built Stonehenge.
The scholar that he is, Phillips takes in a global review of extraordinary ancient sites also, the latest archaeological findings, DNA evidence, and even critically digs into the legendary tales of Lemuria and Atlantis. And like any good scholar or scientist, he searches for comparative features and characteristics. I know that when I looked at the illustration of a “typical megalithic complex” (fig. 6.3) featured in chapter six, I was reminded of an extraordinary ancient site with pathways to various satellite circles and earthworks that extended out from a main site in Portsmouth, Ohio, that I was guided to by authors Greg and Lora Little.
