THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF CHARLES BROKAW

Q & A

July 3, 2009 interview with Dr. Martin H. Greenberg. (Marty is a friend of the author, the CFO of Tekno Books, and worked with him on the book.) A clip of the interview will be available soon on www.expandedbooks.com.

Q: What is The Atlantis Code about? 

A: The Atlantis Code is about Thomas Lourds, a man driven to understand the past, who finds artifacts that point to the existence of an ancient and unknown language.  He believes that the language may be from lost Atlantis. But he isn’t the only one looking for the artifacts, and for Atlantis. There’s a secret organization inside the Vatican called the Society of Quirinus that knows all about Atlantis, and will stop at nothing to prevent the sunken city’s real secrets from becoming public knowledge. And there’s a rogue agent within that secret organization who wants the Atlantis secrets for himself, so that he can rule the world, just as the popes did in the days of the Vatican’s greatest power.

Once the artifacts begin to surface, Thomas Lourds is shot at, threatened, and chased all across the world by dangerous men, as all of them seek more artifacts. In the course of his adventures, he winds up leading a team consisting of a beautiful blond British producer, a laid-back surfer-slacker cameraman, and a dangerous but beautiful Russian Police woman. All of them are in fear of their lives, but none will stop before they find the encoded keys to Atlantis’s secrets.

Q: What sparked the book?

A: We were familiar with the original dialogues from Plato, particularly the Dialogues of Timeaus and Critius, which describe Atlantis. (Relevant passages below.)

In summer of 2004, there were some fascinating discoveries based on satellite photography of an area of Spain near Cadiz. The photos show some clearly artificial formations of land that matched the descriptions of Atlantis almost exactly. The journal Antiquity which was founded in 1927 (whose motto, 'Our field is the Earth, our range in time a million years or so, our subject the human race,' O.G.S. Crawford, founder of Antiquity, wrote in his first editorial in 1927.) detailed the discovery. There was also some play on the discovery in the BBC (see the ‘links’ page"). The formations are in one of Spain’s great national parks, so the odds of excavating the find are pretty small, but we thought it might be nice to imagine what would happen if it really did turn out to be Atlantis.

The element of a code that hides the secrets of Atlantis was added because we were thinking about something else about the same time—there was a lot of interest in the idea of codes in the Bible that predicted the future. We thought that the idea of ancient codes was fascinating, and wondered how they could be used to hide devastating things in the past, things which could bring destruction down upon us, like Atlantis was destroyed. 

Those three things—the story of Atlantis from Plato, the satellite photo of a site that could really be Atlantis, and the idea of great secrets hidden in ancient codes—combined to become The Atlantis Code.

Q: Tell us more about your main character, Thomas Lourds—what is his drive? What inspired this character?

A: I’m an academic, and so is the writer. You meet a lot of real characters on college campuses. So Thomas Lourds’ silly tics and his all-consuming drive to learn new things about a very narrow subject are drawn from life.

Basically, Thomas Lourds is a professor obsessed with finding the lost library of Alexandria, or at least enough of it to learn what the ancient world was really like. He read about the library as a kid, how all the learning of the ancient world could be found in that one place, and it changed his life. He grew up to learn all the languages that were represented in the lost library, and became an expert on ancient languages and artifacts that could be connected to the Alexandrian library. In the course of his studies, he translated some coded ancient documents that made him a minor celebrity, and he’s the first guy they call when new artifacts turn up from ancient times.

Q: Please tell us about the research for this book.

A: There was a ton of it. We researched all the Atlantis myths to decide what we thought was relevant to our take on Atlantis, and what we wouldn’t use. 

We researched ancient languages. 

We researched ancient musical instruments—for example, there’s a cave system in Luray, Virginia. Luray Caverns. It has what’s called the Great Stalacpipe Organ, but it’s based on one of the oldest musical instruments ever found: a lithophone. Normally lithophones are made up of stone bars of different lengths. Or wood. But the Great Stalacpipe Organ was constructed using stalactites as musical instruments, with electricity to power the clappers. They play the huge organ in the cave and actually sell records of songs they make. Very fascinating.

We researched ancient clothes and textiles. We researched ancient trade routes, to decide how to disperse the ancient instruments. We researched ancient libraries. We researched locations for every single scene in the book—the story takes place on five continents. We even researched British T-shirts, to flesh out the cameraman’s wardrobe.

Q: What did you learn that surprised you?

A: The most interesting thing I didn’t expect to find was the stuff on the Yoruban people in Africa and the city of Ile-Ife.  That culture is one of the richest and oldest in human history, and I didn’t know anything about them until I started researching for the book. The African peoples who lived in Yoruba land, at least by the 4th Century BC, are from an even older culture. Both archeology and traditional Yoruba oral historians confirm the existence of Yoruba people in this region for several millennia. Yoruba spiritual heritage maintains that the Yoruba ethnic groups are a unique people who were originally created at Ile-Ife.  I really want to learn more about these people.

Q: What was it like for you to write the book? Tough? Inspired? Moments of serendipity?

A: The research was fun. I loved the characters, especially Natasha. She was a blast to write. So beautiful, and so deadly. Every big book has moments that are tough, and there were plenty in this book. The hardest part was making sure I surprised the readers on nearly every page. I think the story is complex enough to do that, and still it’s a great summer read.

Q: What do you know about Atlantis?

A: I don’t really KNOW anything about Atlantis. What I know about is the myth of Atlantis. According to Plato, a tourist who went to look at the pyramids in Ancient Egypt brought back this tale of a lost ancient civilization, which was washed away after incurring the wrath of the gods.

It’s an interesting thing, but virtually every ancient culture ever discovered has a flood mythology. You’ve got Noah’s ark in the Bible, for example. Also, there’s the Sumerian creation myth, the tale of Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh. And the Hindu Puranic story of Manu. The oldest tale, the earliest extant flood myth, is contained in the Sumerian manuscript Eridu Genesis, from around the 17th century BC. The story tells how the god Enki warns Ziusudra of the gods' decision to destroy mankind in a flood. Enki instructs Ziusudra to build a large boat. After a flood of seven days, Zi-ud-sura makes appropriate sacrifices and prostrations to An (the sky-god) and Enlil (the chief of the gods), and is given eternal life in Dilmun (the Sumerian Eden) by An and Enlil.  He then proceeds to repopulate the earth.

There are comparable stories in Chinese mythology. Shujing, or the “Book of History,” which was written around 700 BC, has a story where Emperor Yao is facing the problem of flood waters that “reach to the Heavens.” This is the backdrop for the intervention of the famous Da Yu, who succeeded in controlling the floods. He went on to found the first Chinese dynasty.

On top of that, there are lots of civilizations and places that might have been the seed for the Atlantis myths. You’ve got the Minoans. There’s the Greek Island of Santorini, which has incredible Minoan ruins and a giant volcanic hole blasted into it. Crete, Cyprus, and Malta are other possible locations for the Atlantis myth. There are places even farther afield, like the Yonaguni formations off Japan, and the Bimini road in the Caribbean.

Nobody, including me, knows anything for sure about Atlantis.  But that may change at any moment with the right archeological discovery.

Q: What’s your best hope for your book?

A: Of course I want it to be a giant bestseller, and for people everywhere to clamor for the next Thomas Lourds book, which I might add is called The Lucifer Code, and which is being edited at the publisher even as we speak.

Q: What would you like readers to take away from the book?

A: I’d love them to know that the world is a wonderful place, and that history is fascinating. Humans have done amazing things through the centuries, and studying languages and history and archeology opens doors into understanding just how fascinating our ancestors were. Every moment, we’re just one great discovery away from finding the next big adventure. I like to tell kids about how history opens up, and how it’s often ordinary people doing everyday things that brings the next explosion of knowledge along. Like how villagers digging a well found Emperor Chin’s terra cotta army in Xian in the ‘70s. Or how a shepherd found the Dead Sea Scrolls while searching for a lost lamb. 

From the Dialogues of Plato:

Over 11,000 years ago there existed an island nation located in the middle of the Atlantic ocean populated by a noble and powerful race. The people of this land possessed great wealth thanks to the natural resources found throughout their island. The island was a center for trade and commerce. The rulers of this land held sway over the people and land of their own island and well into Europe and Africa.

This was the island of Atlantis.

Atlantis was the domain of Poseidon, god of the sea. When Poseidon fell in love with a mortal woman, Cleito, he created a dwelling at the top of a hill near the middle of the island and surrounded the dwelling with rings of water and land to protect her.

Cleito gave birth to five sets of twin boys who became the first rulers of Atlantis. The island was divided among the brothers with the eldest, Atlas, first King of Atlantis, being given control over the central hill and surrounding areas.

At the top of the central hill, a temple was built to honor Poseidon which housed a giant gold statue of Poseidon riding a chariot pulled by winged horses. It was here that the rulers of Atlantis would come to discuss laws, pass judgments, and pay tribute to Poseidon.

To facilitate travel and trade, a water canal was cut through of the rings of land and water running south for 5.5 miles (~9 km) to the sea.

The city of Atlantis sat just outside the outer ring of water and spread across the plain covering a circle of 11 miles (1.7 km). This was a densely populated area where the majority of the population lived.

Beyond the city lay a fertile plain 330 miles (530 km) long and 110 miles (190 km) wide surrounded by another canal used to collect water from the rivers and streams of the mountains. The climate was such that two harvests were possible each year. One in the winter fed by the rains and one in the summer fed by irrigation from the canal.