Inspired by the revelation that the Sphinx had been weathered by water and not by wind-blown sand and was, therefore, thousands of years older than the oldest civilisation known to man, Colin Wilson sets out to explore the remote depths of history. The compelling argument of this bestselling book is that, thousands of years before Ancient Egypt and Greece held sway, there was a great civilisation whose ships travelled the world and who possessed some knowledge system that offered a unified view of the universe, alien to modern man. In this fascinating exploration of the world at a time when, according to Plato, the 'lost civilisation' of Atlantis was destroyed, the author makes a ground-breaking attempt to understand how these long-forgotten peoples thought, felt and communicated on a universal plane.