Fingerprints of the Gods - Book Review

[marduk]

On 4th November 1999, British television viewers were treated to a Horizon special documentary, which examined the theories of Graham Hancock concerning a lost civilisation from 10500 BC. The documentary, entitled 'Atlantis Uncovered', focused on (a) the Giza pyramids and Orion's Belt alignment; (b) the temples of Angkor Wat and Draco alignment; (c) the age of the Sphinx; (d) the age of Tiwanaku; (e) the theory of a lost civilisation beneath the ice of Antarctica; and (e) the significance of the sunken site of Yonaguni in Japan.

Beginning with the Giza pyramids and Orion's Belt, Horizon interviewed the American astronomer/mythologist Dr Ed Krupp, who demonstrated that the alleged match between the pyramids and Orion was in fact upside down, or rotated through 180 degrees. If the Egyptians were commemorating the position of Orion at 10500 BC, why did they build the pyramids according to an upside down design?

In any event, Horizon then turned their attention to more serious matters, pointing out that of the sixteen stars in Orion, only three could be matched to the pattern of pyramids in Egypt, and that no other convincing correlations of pyramids and stars could be found. Hancock's response was: "I don't need every pyramid of Egypt to match a star - the people who built these monuments were making a grand symbolic statement, supposed to be understood on an intuitive and spiritual level."
(you could say the same of Hancocks understanding or real egyptology)

Horizon then pulled a trump card, citing the astronomer Anthony Ferrell, who in June 1999 demonstrated that the match of the Giza pyramids and Orion's Belt in 10500 BC was nowhere near as accurate as claimed. Instead of a precise 45-degree angle from north in both cases, Ferrell found the pyramids to be at an angle of 38 degrees, with the stars at an angle of 50 degrees. Hancock did not appear to take issue with these figures, but instead admitted: "the [alignments] are NOT absolutely correct, and I don't care. I have to stress that in my view the ancient Egyptian priesthood was not staffed by anal-retentive bureaucrats. They were a group of creative and imaginative thinkers..." Earlier, Hancock had apparently backtracked on his accurate alignment hypothesis by claiming that the Egyptians were merely making "a pleasing symbolic resemblance to what they saw in the sky on the ground."

and this is just what Alan "awful" Alford had to say about Hancocks ideas about Egypt
you remember him
he was the one looking nervous in this photo

probably thinks I'm gonna ask him about his accountancy qualifications to write history books
still as long as he doesnt stand by things he wrote in Gods of thenew millenium then hes cool with me
heres something of his

"Alan F. Alford concluded that Negroid Slaves of the Tihuanaco Culture made the Nazca-Lines. After a revolution the Negroid population destroyed some figure, this is the explanation for overdrawn zigzag-formations. Later this people went in northern direction and founded Chavin and the Olmec culture. "

heres what he had to say about that in june 2005

Hi Steve,

No I don't stand by that statement and I wouldn't want you to use it. In recent years all printed copies of GOTNM ppbk carried a foreword in which I retracted many of the ideas in the book. For the detailed retraction, see the self-critique on my website under the section Human Origins/Ancient Astronauts.

All the best to you
Alan Alford
http://www.eridu.co.uk

hehe

see unlike Hancock Alford has now retired from writing pseudohistory books and emigrated to Nepal (don't ask)
so he doesnt have to continue to knowingly lie to his readership like Hancock to ensure the gullibility dollars keep rolling in

[Minimalist]

Let me review it tonight.

Are you sure you want to skip over 46? We've had plenty of discussions about the likely emergence of man in the post-glacial savannahs of what is now the Sahara.

[Beagle]

No, not at all. I was thinking, as you said, we've done it so much. However, we haven't done it in the course of this review.

My January is free for the next twenty years. Hopefully longer.

Maybe we can put to rest a few issues.

[Beagle]

BTW Min, I may not be here for more than a few posts until after supper.
I don't know. No problem though, just let me know if that doesn't work.

[Minimalist]

That's cool. I'm in and out during the day.

It seems that there has been a lot of work done recently which supports at least the broad outlines of what Hancock says that Hoffman, Hassan and Wendorff were talking about.

[marduk]

Hancock makes a huge leap though
hes claiming that the factual information that very few people were utilising vegetable in their diet from a natural unfarmed source means that they were also busy on the Giza plateau marking out the foundations for the pyramids
and that then due to natural flooding in the nile region the people forgot all about their building plans for 8000+ years in a struggle for survival

heads up
the nile flooded every year. the fact that people no longer subsisted on vegetable crops (poss barley ) does not mean that they were on their way to building pyramids during the ice age
it suggests that they got lucky for a couple of seasons because of a bumper natural abundance of cereals and then gave the whole idea up because it was easier to fish

this in no way supports any of Hancocks conclusions and he deliberately doesn't reproduce any of the wording of the report he claims supports him because it doesn't

do you guys look in both directions when you are crossing a busy road or just one like you do when discussing history ?
at some point you're gonna get flattened by a semi

[Beagle]

It seems that there has been a lot of work done recently which supports at least the broad outlines of what Hancock says that Hoffman, Hassan and Wendorff were talking about

I'm not aware of that. You'll need to explain it to me.

[Minimalist]

He's referring to two books

Michael Hoffman’s Egypt before The Pharaohs and Wendorff and Schild’s Prehistory of the Nile Valley for the assertion that Egypt enjoyed an explosion of agriculture between 13,000 and 10,000 BC. Hassan is an Egyptian who seems to specialize in Nile flooding.

I wonder if any of these books are in the library? Hancock says that the early agricultural period was wiped out by the devastating floods which these authors say swept the Nile valley in the 11th millenium.

It seems fair to say, as has been done on this board, that if North Africa were a fertile area there would be no need for people to crowd into the Nile Valley or leave Africa. Hancock seems surprised by the idea that it took 5,000 years for agriculture to re-establish itself in the Nile Valley but suppose (and this is me talking, not Hancock) that it simply was not necessary for people to live next to a river which flooded them out every year because the rest of North Africa was equally well-watered and fertile. Only when the desiccation advanced was there a need to head back to the Nile?

In any case, the implications for Hancock's idea is clear. An agricultural society in Egypt prior to those floods would have had the food surplus made possible by agriculture to indulge in monumental building projects.
Like the Sphinx.

[Beagle]

Hmm...I haven't read the books, but I can remember us talking about Egypt before it became a desert, and the lifestyle of the people. I think that was in the Giza thread.

I guess we can start at the beginning of the chapter. Go ahead, and I'll keep in mind where you're coming from.

[marduk]

Agriculture in Africa
The Revolution developed independently in different parts of the world, not just in the Fertile Crescent. On the African continent, three areas have been identified as independently developing agriculture: the Ethiopian highlands, the Nile River Valley and West Africa.

Prof. Fred Wendorf and Dr. Romuald Schild, of the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University, have evidence of early agriculture in Upper Paleolithic times at Wadi Kubbaniya, on the Kom Ombos plateau, of Egypt, including a mortar and pestle, grinding stones, several harvesting implements and charred wheat and barley grains - which may have been introduced from outside the region. Carbon-14 dates range from 15,000 to 16,300 BC, showing that this early grain harvesting exceeded that of the Middle East by about 5,000 years.

The archaeologists state that "These are not the only Late Paleolithic sites which have been discovered in Egypt along the Nile, nor or they alone in containing stone artifact assemblages which seem to indicate the harvesting of grain. Among others are several sites at Wadi Tushka, near Abu Simbel, at Kom Ombo, north of Aswan, and a third group [a whole series of sites] near Esna. All these are in the Nile Valley." The Egyptian Esna culture shows "extensive use of cereals," date from 13,000 to 14,500 years ago.[citation needed]

They continue: "While the flaked stone industries from them are different from those found at Kubbaniya, the Tushka site yielded several pieces of stone with lustrous edges, indicating that they were used as sickles in harvesting grain."

Many such grinding stones are found with the early Egyptian Sebilian and Mechian cultures dating 10,000-13,000 BC. Smith[citation needed] writes: "With the benefit of hindsight we can now see that many Late Paleolithic peoples in the Old World were poised on the brink of plant cultivation and animal husbandry as an alternative to the hunter-gatherer's way of life". Unlike the Middle East, this evidence appears as a "false dawn" to agriculture, as the sites were later abandoned, and permanent farming then was delayed until 4,500 BC with the Tasian and Badarian cultures and the arrival of crops and animals from the Near East.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_ ... _in_Africa

[Beagle]

Hmm...I haven't read the books, but I can remember us talking about Egypt before it became a desert, and the lifestyle of the people. I think that was in the Giza thread.

I guess we can start at the beginning of the chapter. Go ahead, and I'll keep in mind where you're coming from.

My grandson is here to spend the night, so if I seem distracted, don't worry.

[Minimalist]

Forgetting Hancock for the moment there should be some commentary on the ideas of Hoffman, Wendorff, etc.

Of course, we can fully expect the Club to disavow any importance of them.

[Beagle]

I'd love to hear them. I may agree with them.

[Minimalist]

I'll go scouting around.

[Beagle]

I'm reviewing a bit, it's been awhile. On p. 412 GH is making reference to these guys. I'm reading the "key facts" about them.