The images also reflect a degradation of their civilization, once the shoggoths gain independence. There is a hint that all earthly life evolved from cellular material left over from the creation of the shoggoths.Īs more buildings are explored, the explorers learn about the Elder Things' conflict with both the Star-spawn of Cthulhu and the Mi-go, who arrived on Earth shortly afterwards. By exploring these fantastic structures, the men learn through hieroglyphic murals that the Elder Things first came to Earth shortly after the Moon took form and built their cities with the help of 'shoggoths' - biological entities created to perform any task, assume any form, and reflect any thought. For their resemblance to creatures of myth mentioned in the Necronomicon, the builders of this lost civilization are dubbed the 'Elder Things'. The missing man is suspected of having gone utterly insane and having killed and mutilated all the others.ĭyer and a graduate student, named Danforth, fly an aeroplane across the mountains, which they identify as the outer walls of a vast abandoned stone-city, alien to any human architecture. They also discover that the better preserved life-forms have vanished, and that some form of dissection experiment has been done on both an unnamed man and a dog. Near the expedition's campsite, they find six star-shaped snow mounds with one specimen under each. Lake's camp is devastated, with the majority of men and dogs slaughtered, while a man named Gedney and one of the dogs are absent. When the main expedition loses contact with Lake's party, Dyer and his colleagues investigate. Some fossils of Cambrian age show signs of the use of tools to carve a specimen for food. The specimens' stratum places them far too early on the geologic time scale for the features of the specimens to have evolved. Six of the specimens have been badly damaged, while another eight have been preserved in pristine condition.

Throughout the course of his explanation, Dyer relates how he led a group of scholars from Miskatonic University on a previous expedition to Antarctica, during which they discovered ancient ruins and a dangerous secret, beyond a range of mountains higher than the Himalayas.Ī small advance group, led by Professor Lake, discovers the remains of fourteen prehistoric life-forms, previously unknown to science, and also unidentifiable as either plants or animals.

The story is recalled in a first-person perspective by the geologist William Dyer, a professor at Arkham's Miskatonic University, in the hope to prevent an important and much publicized scientific expedition to Antarctica.

At the mountains of madness summary