Ceram, C.W. *

 C.W. Ceram (1915-1972) was the pseudonym of the German journalist, Kurt Wilhelm Marek, who apparently wrote under that nom de plume in order to distance himself from his wartime work as a Nazi propagandist working as a member of the Propagandatruppe.

In 1951, Ceram had an article published in The Atlantic magazine^(b) detailing some of Heinrich Schliemann‘s adventures while excavating in Greece and Turkey, which he subsequently expanded and included in Gods, Graves and Scholars.

His interest in archaeology led to a number of books on the subject, the best know of which were Gods, Graves and Scholars ^[1095] and The Secret of the Hittites ^[1096]. A contemporary and highly critical review of the former is available online^(a).

Ceram, an Atlantis sceptic, ‘calculated’ that 20,000 books had been written on the subject. This is nonsensical, but might be half true if all translations Atlantis specific books together with all published papers, directly related to the subject, are counted as well.

Michael Shermer noted^(c) that in 1989, Pierre Jarnac estimated that at the time there were ‘5,000 book titles about Atlantis’. This is just more nonsense and probably includes the huge number of fictional books with ‘Atlantis’ in the title. The total of Atlantis-specific books probably numbers in the hundreds with many more just touching on the subject en passant. Both the Bibliography and Chronology of Atlantis Theories on this site can confirm this.

Ceram is also responsible for coining the often-quoted phrase: “Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple”

^(a) https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1952.54.3.02a00250

^(b) The Man Who Found Troy – The Atlantic 

^(c) Skeptic » Reading Room » Alternative Civilization and Its Discontents: An Analysis of the Alternative Archaeologist Graham Hancock’s Claim That an Ancient Apocalypse Erased the Lost Civilization of Atlantis (link broken/suspended?) *