Collins, Andrew

Published June 6, 2010

Andrew Collins was born in England in 1957. Several of his earlier books are concerned with psychic questing^(v). However, he eventually shifted his focus to a study of alternative history.

Over the past twenty years, he has been investigating the possible existence of ancient advanced civilisations. He has written three books on the subject of pre-history^[⁰⁷²^]^[⁰⁷³^]^[⁰⁷⁴^]. His volume on Atlantis has been well received as an example of how the subject should be researched. Although Collins initially thought that Antarctica had been home to Atlantis, he eventually concluded that Cuba was its location and provided a wealth of evidence to support this view in his book, Gateway to Atlantis. David Rohl wrote a sympathetic Introduction for the book and repeated and expanded on his expressed views at a subsequent lecture^(h).

What did surprise Collins, was that following the publication of his carefully-argued ‘Gateway’ was that most responses to his book indicated that the dominant theory regarding the location of Atlantis favoured Antarctica!^(ac)

Collins also wrote of why his chosen Cuba is a better candidate for the location of Atlantis than the Bahamas^(r). He seems to have been reluctant to exclude the Bahamas completely from the Atlantis story. In an article in Atlantis Rising magazine^(z), he commented “There is no question that if the Bahamian landmass did once support a prehistoric culture, then it was also present on Cuba as well”.

Collins has recently written another controversial book^[⁰⁷⁵^], on the place of the constellation Cygnus in prehistoric consciousness. Arising from this study, it appears that the position of the Cygnus stars correlates more accurately with the Giza pyramids than those of Orion, which was proposed some years ago by Robert Bauval. Incredibly, a fifteen-year-old Canadian boy has produced a comparable theory^(e) involving Mayan cities and a star map. The site proposed by him has now been identified, by people who personally know the location, as either an abandoned cornfield or a marijuana crop^(f).

In 2018, Gustavo Muniz posted a number of videos on YouTube suggesting an Orion connection with a site in the Amazon Basin⁽ⁱ⁾!>His ideas were developed into a book, Orion: The Connection between Heaven and Earth ^[2082].<

However, Collins has not been completely seduced by Bauval’s discovery and prudently remarks that the correlation may just be a coincidence. Jason Colavito has written a brief critique^(b) of this book.

In 2002 Collins teamed up with Chris Ogilvie-Herald to write Tutankhamun ^[1898]. It is a great read involving as it does, unexplained deaths, political intrigue and possible blackmail. Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon are also accused of looting some of the treasures from Tutankhamun’s tomb. However, for me, the core weakness in this book is that it is dependent on a claim that the plunder taken by Carter and Carnavon had included papyrus documents, the contents of which allegedly contained material that was still deemed politically sensitive even three thousand years later! Without the papyrus, there is no book.

In 2007, he wrote an article^(q) for Alternate Perceptions Magazine reviewing the comet impact theory of Richard Firestone et al and its possible implication for his Atlantis theory.

In 2005, Collins published The Cygnus Mystery^[⁰⁷⁵^]in which he explored the significance of the Cygnus constellation in the ancient cultures of America, Egypt and Britain. (a condensed version of the book is available online^(s)). Furthermore, in August 2013 he published a paper^(c) with Rodney Hale suggesting that the Göbekli Tepe site is probably aligned with the star Deneb in the Cygnus constellation. This idea has now been expanded on in Collins’ 2014 book, Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods^[⁰⁹⁸³^], although his treatment has been heavily criticised as pseudoscience^(g).

In a recent paper^(t), Andrew Collins disputed Bauval‘s Orion Correlation Theory and instead offered evidence that the alignment of the three principal Giza pyramids matches more closely the ‘wing’ stars of the Cygnus constellation than the ‘belt’ of Orion! Greg Little offered some rather lukewarm support for Collins’ alternative to the OCT^(u).

Nevertheless, Little & Collins teamed up as co-authors of Denisovan Origins ^[1672] in 2019, a literary bromance that has led to another joint offering, Origins of the Gods due for publication in 2022, in which the authors explore “how our ancestors used shamanic rituals at sacred sites to create portals for communication with non-human intelligences”. If that does not sufficiently whet your appetite, the news that the well-known convicted fraudster Erich von Däniken has written the Foreword should clinch it for you.

Collins has made some dramatic claims regarding the significance of Cygnus including the proposal that “The veneration of Cygnus as a bird associated with cosmic life and death goes back 17,000 years to when the constellation occupied pole position in the northern night sky” and perhaps even more extreme, the idea that “Cygnus is at the root of all the world’s religions.”

Collins continues with the Cygnus-Giza connection in a subsequent offering Beneath the Pyramids^[⁶³¹^]. This book reveals the tunnels and chambers beneath the Giza pyramids and their possible connection with the “Hall of Records” predicted by Edgar Cayce to be located there and due for discovery.

In a paper^(d), co-authored with Rodney Hale, published in April 2016, Collins returned to the theory of a Cygnus-Giza correlation based on a master plan that they claim can now be demonstrated mathematically.

Collins has now moved on to new ground with his Lightquest^[895], in which he attempts to offer a new explanation for the UFO phenomena. He claims that what has been described as UFOs are “the product of sentient light forms and light intelligences that co-exist with humanity, and have done so since time immemorial.”

Nevertheless, Collins returns to the subject of Atlantis with a new book, Atlantis in the Caribbean^[¹¹⁹⁷^], which is a revised version of Gateway to Atlantis. In it, he follows some of Otto Muck’s ideas and “Explains how Atlantis was destroyed by a comet, the same comet that formed the mysterious Carolina Bays“.

Collins, who proposes Cuba as one of the legendary Hesperides and also the location of Atlantis, has offered a critical response to Emilio Spedicato‘s Hispaniola theory in both Gateway to Atlantis and its revised version Atlantis in the Caribbean, which can be read online^(ad).

When the Denisovans were recently identified as an extinct species of hominid, related to the Neanderthals It did not take long for speculative history enthusiasts to jump on board this new bandwagon. Andrew Collins has now published The Cygnus Key^[¹⁵⁰⁹^], in which he claims to present “compelling evidence showing that the earliest origins of human culture, religion, and technology derive from the Denisovans, the true creators of the lost civilization long known to exist but never before proved.” Jason Colavito also presents a critique of this latest ‘Cygnus’ book in a two-part^(m)(n) offering.

While the first Denisovan remains were found in Siberia, now there is evidence that they were also the earliest hominins on the Tibetan Plateau^(j).

Before the identification of the Denisovans, Colin Wilson had claimed that the Neanderthals “were the civilising force behind Atlantis”!^[⁰³³⁶^]One cannot help wondering if another early hominid species is discovered, which is quite possible, will they also be claimed as the progenitors of Plato’s lost civilisation?

In this new book Collins also “explains how the stars of Cygnus coincided with the turning point of the heavens at the moment the Denisovan legacy was handed to the first human societies in southern Siberia some 45,000 years ago, catalyzing beliefs in swan ancestry and an understanding of Cygnus as the source of cosmic creation.” Hmm.

Collins and chartered engineer, Rodney Hale have studied the Gunung Padang site in Indonesia, which has generated claims of antiquity greater than that of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. While their investigation raised a number of minor matters, they were unable to endorse the rather extreme dates suggested until more convincing data is available^(x).

Collins and Hale have also co-authored a paper on the possible astronomical significance of images on what is known as Pillar 43 or sometimes the ‘Vulture Stone’ at Göbekli Tepe^(af). This is not the first such suggestion, but their new interpretation should be considered.

In June 2019, Collins published a two-part article^(l) on the Ancient Origins website, in which he explores the possibility of Giza’s Great Pyramid having sound technology incorporated into its construction and that “its Dead-end passage function as an infrasound generator?”

Later in 2019, Collins had his 1996 book, From the Ashes of Angels, banned in Turkey^(p), it is not clear yet if he is personally banned as well. Apparently, it all stems from some perceived support that Collins gave to the Kurdish cause in ‘Ashes’! I hope he refrains from mentioning the Armenians. A YouTube video from Collins offers his account of the episode^(y⁾.

Collins has seemingly made peace with the Turkish authorities as he is now planning a tour of Karahan Tepe later in 2022^(ab). This link has some interesting images.

Andrew Collins maintains a useful website⁽^a⁾ that has plenty of information on his books and lectures. He also offers an extended section relating to his Atlantis theories^(o). Nevertheless, he does seem to have retained his interest in metaphysical subjects, which is where he started.

An article on Graham Hancock’s website offers a rebuttal of a series of Collins’ claims^(ae).

Collins is now a regular contributor to Ancient Origins. His website lists the articles published there so far^(aa).

^(a)www.andrewcollins.com

^(b) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2012/10/did-cosmic-rays-from-cygnus-create-religion.html

^(c) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Gobekli_Sirius.htm

^(d) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301568542_A_Study_of_the_Simple_Geometrical_Relationship_of_the_Main_Monuments_of_Giza_and_a_Possible_Connection_to_Stars?origin=publication_list

^(e)https://dailygrail.com/Hidden-History/2016/5/Has-Lost-Maya-City-Been-Found-15-Year-Old-Based-Ancient-Star-Maps

^(f) https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/05/parts-of-that-lost-maya-city-might-actually-be-a-marijuana-grow-op/

^(g) Wayback Machine (archive.org)

^(h) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/mysteries/drohl.htm

⁽ⁱ⁾ Gustavo Muniz – YouTube andBing Videos (Spanish) *

^(j) https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24232283-700-major-discovery-suggests-denisovans-lived-in-tibet-160000-years-ago/