MYSTERY OF THE ANCIENTS by Eric and Craig Umland

We're going back to our roots with today's entry, some eminently readable nonsense courtesy the Umland brothers, riding on von Daniken's coattails with a special focus on the Maya and their irrefutable outer space connection! Rare enough for this genre, the Umland boys attest that the Maya peoples are still alive and well and living on planet Earth ... which makes it even odder when they pull out the usual unknowable "mysteries," as if we couldn't just pop down to the Yucatan and ask somebody about the Mayan moon bases! 

That's right, moon bases. The Umlands bring in some timely NASA coverup action - why did NASA and the USSR both put the kibosh on their lunar photography projects with only 10% of the moon covered? What were they afraid of finding, or what had they already found? And why won't the modern Maya admit their brothers are still up there, ready to invade at a moment's notice?

There's also death rays, Nazca lines, pyramid power and levitation, and assorted other super sciences which we've seen before many a time. But at least it's fast and fun, bringing to mind Warren Smith's beautiful pseudonymous piffle piece Gods, Demons, and UFO's. Much is made of Mayan sculpture and statuary supposedly portraying global peoples, which is the kind of gloriously loose pseudoscience reasoning that would take von Daniken twice as long to strangle out in one of his bloated books, with half the verve. The Umlands simply sum up von Daniken (and others like Robert Charroux) short and sweet.

This was the Umland brothers' only book, but it must have sold well because it received multiple editions. More silly details include flash frozen mammoths, von Daniken's fraudulent ancient Ecuadorean caves, Planet X blowing up into the asteroid belt, and the ancient Mayans spurning the wheel in favor of jet power! All of this in just 151 pages, plus a bibliography! It's mix and match mystery mongering at its best, shamelessly dumb, dense and dirty. Not bad, Eric and Craig!

Some other editions

Mystery of the Ancients is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Signet Books, 1975 (original pub. 1974)

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Donnelly's Atlantis

Lost Atlantis as imagined by its modern pioneer, Ignatius Donnelly. From Citadels of Mystery, by L. Sprague de Camp. Courtesy Ballantine Books, 1973 (original pub. 1946).

EDGAR CAYCE ON ATLANTIS by Edgar Evans Cayce

Cities fall, the oceans roil, and Atlantis rises in 1969! So sayeth the Sleeping Prophet, Edgar Cayce! Some case studies of Cayce's readings on Atlantean reincarnations are also included, as is Cayce's pseudo-Theosophical history of Atlantis, from 50,000 BC to the present, when as predicted the sunken continent will resurface, sparking a spiritual reawakening as humanity rediscovers their heritage as spirit energy entities inhabiting physical bodies.

A very slim volume that often reads as an advertisement for the Cayce-founded Association of Research and Enlightenment. As noted, Cayce's visions of Atlantis read like reheated Theosophy, but Hugh Lynn Cayce assures us in his preface that his father "did not read Plato's material on Atlantis, or books on Atlantis, and that he, so far as we know, had absolutely no knowledge of the subject." Well, that settles that! In a similar vein, second son Edgar Evans takes Atlantean haters L. Sprague de Camp and Willy Ley to task for "attacking Plato's credibility" in what appears to be a deliberate misrepresentation of their argument for Plato's use of allegory. All in all, weak stuff from the Cayce progeny.

Edgar Cayce on Atlantis is available to read and download on archive dot org.

Paperback Library, 1968

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Churchward's Mu

From Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme by L. Sprague de Camp. Courtesy Ballantine Books, 1970 (original pub. 1954).