Magicians of the gods The forgotten wisdom of earth's lost civilization

Hancock (The Sign and the Seal) is an author and researcher on alternative interpretations of human prehistory and archaeology. This title was written to provide evidence of worldwide cataclysmic comet impacts that hit Earth between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago and to provide new interpretations to existing archaeological evidence that the author views as correlated with well-known ancient myths, such as the Noachian Deluge and the destruction of Atlantis. Hancock relies heavily on his prior work, Fingerprints of the Gods, and petulantly assumes that the reader is intimately familiar with its content. This volume is written in diatribe as a message of impending destruction of Earth based on globally disparate geological, environmental, and archaeological knowledge for which Hancock makes connections that counter conventional interpretations. Much of his archaeological evidence is taken from the Near and Middle East at sites such as Göbekli Tepe, Mount Ararat, Mount Judi, and Harran in Turkey; Baalbek in Lebanon; and Mount Hermon in Syria. Verdict Fans of Hancock's previous works may find the arrogant tone here off-putting. Much of the story is the same as those of his prior writings, and he demonstrates a level of personal frustration against conventional science throughout. These issues aside, readers of alternative science may find this book worthwhile for its entertainment value and provocative discussion of archaeological and environmental data.-John Dockall, Austin, TX © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Asteroids melted the poles! Baalbek was erected by "ancient and unknowable minds"! Everything we know is wrong! Having dusted off long-debunked Von Dniken-isms in Fingerprints of the Gods (1995), Hancock aims for a similar audience in his latest, which works two large themes: we are the unknowing beneficiaries of an Atlantis-like disappeared civilization, and that civilization was swept under the sea thanks to a cataclysmic event. Catastrophism sells, and if read as one might an L. Ron Hubbard novel, Hancock's tale is clunky but ingenious, breathless in its certainty that "the timeline of history taught in our schools and universities for the best part of the last hundred years can no longer stand." It's a mashup of Ignatius Donnelly and Dan Brown, an I-thought-this-and-I-unearthed-that tale of ersatz discovery. As scholarship, it's cherry-picking among dubious facts and factoids that hinge on fixed chronologies: at exactly 9600 B.C.E., say, agriculture and architecture sprang forth. Hancock's favorite rhetorical strategy is to disdainfully dismiss the careful efforts of the professoriat in favor of his own heterodoxical wonderfulness: "That is certainly how things look when viewed through the prism of Egpytologic'i.e. that special form of reasoning, with a built-in double standard, deployed only by Egyptologists." So how did those Babylonians and Incas and proto-Hittites build their massive structures of monolith and marble? Well, setting aside the possibility that some long-inundated, advanced civilization supplied the know-how, the answer is one that any engineer would endorse: through a lot of hard work, a lot of trial and error, and a lot of time. Hancock prefers more miraculous answers, full of conjecture ("the Ancient Egyptians might have reached not only the Americas, but also Indonesia and Australia") and spectacularly shameless but highly entertaining pseudoscience. For the Art Bell addict in the audience. Risible and sure to sell. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.