Colin Wilson was born in Leicester, England in 1931. He has been a most prolific author with around a hundred titles to his credit. The range of subjects that he has covered is breathtaking; from Jack the Ripper to Sex to Atlantis.
Initially he was a supporter of the Minoan Hypothesis, then in 1996[335] he linked the controversial redating of the Sphinx by Robert Schoch, with the influence of earlier sophisticated Atlanteans. It is revealing to note that the original title of Wilson’s book was Before the Sphinx but this was altered at the insistence of his publishers in order to include ‘Atlantis’ on the cover!
A few years later he was co-author with Rand Flem-Ath, the originator of the Atlantis in Antarctica theory, of The Atlantis Blueprint[063] again promoting the idea of the Atlantean civilisation having spread to other parts of the world that is now visible in the remains of so many megalithic cultures around our planet. Wilson revealed later, in a 2007 edition of From Atlantis to the Sphinx (p381), that he was unhappy with the final content of The Atlantis Blueprint stating that “it did not represent his views” and wrote a full account, no longer available, on the Internet of how that book evolved.
Wilson joined the Sarmast expedition of October 2004, as he has now shifted his preference(a) to the Cyprus region as the location of Atlantis. He eventually found the idea of Atlantis in the Antarctic waging war against Athens, a distance of 5,000 miles, untenable. I feel that he may have to revise his position again if he just considers that Plato relates how the flooded Atlantis was still a hazard to shipping in his time, while Sarmast’s site is in water over a mile deep.
In 2006 Wilson continued[336] his support for Sarmast but added a new dimension with the claim on the cover notes that ‘the Neanderthals had been the civilising force behind Atlantis’. However in his earlier book[335.p390] he states clearly that he is “not suggesting there was some connection between Atlantis and Neanderthal man”. Perhaps the cover notes were just a concoction of Wilson’s publisher.
(a) http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jbmorgan/cwilson.html
