David Hatcher Childress

Pseudo-archaeologists continue to perpetuate the idea that Atlantis was a racialized place. David Hatcher Childress, one of the most flagrant violators of basic archaeological reasoning, has provided perhaps the most outrageous racialized vision of Atlantis. In discussing Tiahuanaco in Bolivia—as a palace built long before any Native South Americans were present—Childress proposes that the majestic site could only have been constructed by the "Atlantean League." The league was composed of mythic seafarers who "sailed the world spreading a megalithic culture, and wore red turbans over their blond hair" (Childress 1986: 139, emphasis added). Nowhere did Plato, the only actual source on Atlantis, mention the blond hair of the Atlanteans. Plato did mention that the men and women of Atlantis, being semi-divine, were inherently good . . . The correlation between goodness and whiteness is thus obvious in Childress's formulation and in much else that has been written about Atlantis.

Born in France to American parents, and raised in Colorado and Montana, United States, Childress went to University of Montana–Missoula to study archaeology, but left college in 1976 at 19 to begin travelling in pursuit of his archaeological interests. After several years in Asia and then Africa, Childress moved in 1983 to Stelle, Illinois, a community founded by New Age writer Richard Kieninger; Childress had been given one of Kieninger's books while touring Africa. Childress chronicled his explorations in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s in his Lost Cities and Ancient Mysteries series of books.

Childress has appeared on NBC (The Mysterious Origins of Man), Fox Network (Sightings and Encounters), Discovery Channel, A&E, and History (e.g. Ancient Aliens), to comment on subjects such as the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, and UFOs. Since first entering the industry in 1984, Childress has been involved in two lawsuits regarding publishing; one, concerning the Kennedy assassination, failed after expiry of a statute of limitations and the other, involving an unpublished master's thesis about UFOs written in 1950, was settled out of court. Childress writes humorously about these suits in his 2000 autobiography A Hitchhiker's Guide to Armageddon. Childress has been interviewed on several radio programs.

Childress's first book, A Hitchhikers Guide to Africa and Arabia, was published in 1983 by Chicago Review Press. In 1984, Childress moved to Kempton, Illinois, and established a publishing company named Adventures Unlimited Press, which is a sole proprietorship. His company published his own works and then those of other authors, presenting fringe-scientific theories regarding ancient civilizations, cryptozoology, and little-known technologies. In 1992, Childress founded the World Explorers Club, which occasionally runs tours to places he writes about, and publishes a magazine called World Explorer.

Childress's company has published nearly 200 books (many translated into foreign languages) over the course of two dozen years. Childress himself has authored and co-authored over a dozen books, from his first in 1983 to his most recent in 2013. His influences include Erich von Däniken, Thor Heyerdahl, and Charles Berlitz.

David Hatcher Childress (born June 1, 1957) is an American author, and the owner of Adventures Unlimited Press, a publishing house established in 1984 specializing in books on unusual topics such as ancient mysteries, unexplained phenomena, alternative history, and historical revisionism. His own works primarily concentrate on pseudoarchaeological and pseudoscientific topics such as Atlantis and Lemuria, pole shifts, the hollow earth, pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact, suppressed technology, Nikola Tesla, free energy, UFOs and ancient astronauts, anti-gravity, vimana aircraft, and secret societies including the Knights Templar. More recently, he has written on time travel and cryptozoology phenomena such as the yeti and sasquatch. Childress refers to himself as a "rogue archaeologist".