The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts

Fifty generations ago the cultural empire of the Celts stretched from the Black Sea to Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. In six hundred years, the Celts had produced some of the finest artistic and scientific masterpieces of the ancient world. In 58 BC, Julius Caesar marched over the Alps, bringing slavery and genocide to western Europe. Within eight years the Celts of what is now France were utterly annihilated, and in another hundred years the Romans had overrun Britain. It is astonishing how little remains of this great civilization.

While planning a bicycling trip along the Heraklean Way, the ancient route from Portugal to the Alps, Graham Robb discovered a door to that forgotten world--a beautiful and precise pattern of towns and holy places based on astronomical and geometrical measurements: this was the three-dimensional "Middle Earth" of the Celts. As coordinates and coincidences revealed themselves across the continent, a map of the Celtic world emerged as a miraculously preserved archival document.

Robb--"one of the more unusual and appealing historians currently striding the planet" (New York Times)--here reveals the ancient secrets of the Celts, demonstrates the lasting influence of Druid science, and recharts the exploration of the world and the spread of Christianity. A pioneering history grounded in a real-life historical treasure hunt, The Discovery of Middle Earth offers nothing less than an entirely new understanding of the birth of modern Europe.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 11/04/2013
ISBN: 9780393081633
Pages: 416
Weight: 1.63lbs
Size: 9.39h x 6.40w x 1.32d

Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 06/15/2013 pg. 62
Publishers Weekly 08/26/2013
Library Journal 09/15/2013 pg. 85
Booklist 10/01/2013 pg. 17
Kirkus Reviews 11/01/2013
Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/04/2013 pg. 32
New York Times Book Review 11/24/2013 pg. 28
New Yorker (The) 12/16/2013 pg. 87
New York Review of Books 02/20/2014 pg. 33
Library Journal 06/15/2013