Fingerprints of the Gods
by Graham Hancock
(578 pages, hb, $27.50)
New York, Crown Publishers, 1995
ISBN 0-500-81030-3
A brilliant and comprehensive overview of evidence for ancient technological
civilizations. Fun to read. Makes the books in the intermediate section
easier to understand.
Chapter Titles
Part I The Mystery of the Maps
Part II Foam of the Sea: Peru and Bolivia
Part III Plumed Serpent: Central America
Part IV The Mystery of the Myths: 1. The Species with Amnesia
Part V The Mystery of the Myths: 2. The Precessional Code
Part VI The Giza Invitation: Egypt 1
Part VII Lord of Eternity: Egypt 2
Part VIII Where's the Body?
Selected quotes:
p. 24, 25
"It is probably unnecessary to add that no one on earth in Roman times,
when Ptolomy drew his map, had the slightest suspicion that ice ages could
once have existed in northern Europe. Nor did anyone in the fifteenth century
(when the map was rediscovered) possess such knowledge. Indeed, it is impossible
to see how the remnant glaciers and other features shown on Prolemy's map
could have been surveyed, imagined or invented by any known civilization
prior to our own.
The implicacations of this are obvious. So, too, are the implications of
another map, the 'Portolano' of Iehudi Ibn Ben Zara, drawn in the year 1457.
This chart of Europe and North Africa may have been based on a source even
earlier than Ptolomy's, for it seems to show glaciers much farther south
than Sweden (roughly on the same latitude as England in fact) and to depict
the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Aegean Seas as they might have looked before
the melting of the European ice-cap. Sea level would, of course, have been
significantly lower than it is today. It is therefore interesting, in the
case for instance of the Aegean section of the map, to note that a great
many more islands are shown than currently exist. At first sight this seems
odd. However, if ten or twelve thousand years hvae indeed elapsed since
the era when the Ibn Ben Zara's source map was made, the discrepancy can
be simply explained: the missing islands must have been submerged by rising
sea levels at the end of the last Ice Age.
Once again we seem to be looking at the fingerprints of a vanished civilization
- one capable of drawing impressively accurate maps of widely separate parts
of the earth.
What kind of technology, and what state of science and culture, would have
been required to do a job like this?"
p. 452
"How high was the knowledge of those prehistoric inventors?
'They knew their epochs,' said Bauval, 'and the clock that they used was
the natural clock of the stars. Their working language was precessional
astronomy and these monuments express that language in a very clear, unambiguous,
scientific manner. They were also highly skilled surveyors - I mean the
people who originally prepared the site and laid out the orientations for
the pyramids - because they worked to an exacting geometry and because they
knew how to align the base-platforms, or whatever it was they built, perfectly
to the cardinal points.'
'Do you think they also know that they were marking out the site of the
Great Pyramid on latitude 30 degrees North?'
Bauval laughed: 'I'm certain they knew. I think they knew everything about
the shape of the earth. They knew their astronomy. They had a good understanding
of the solar system and of celestial mechanics. They were also incredibly
accurate and incredibly precise in everything they did. So, all in all,
I don't think anything really happened here by chance - at least not between
10,450 and 2450 BC. I get the feeling that everything was planned, intended,
carefully worked out...Indeed I get the feeling that they were fulfilling
a long-term objective - some kind of purpose, if you like, and that they
brought this to fruition in the third millennium BC...'
