Fingerprints

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Posted by: Doozer, on 3/11/2010, in category "Blog"
Views: this article has been read 1024 times

So you may remember that last year I started a book called Fingerprints of the Gods. The beginning started out pretty good, but I ended up dropping it for a few months because the middle section didn't appeal to me at all. And I was having a hard time getting interested in a book that had gone off on what appeared to be a relevant, but extremely boring, tangent. About a month ago I picked it up again and forced myself to plow through it, and managed to finish the book. And overall, I was pleasantly surprised.

I have to say that the ending really ties a lot of things together. It's unfortunate that the middle section is so dry, because it *is* somewhat necessary to complete some of the thoughts. And while the book doesn't have me completely sold, I certainly agree that it raises some interesting points.

The author makes the proposition that civilization in general is much older than what mainstream science currently believes, and raises some very interesting facts to support the conclusion. I think the reason this book (and the ideas) never really got traction in the mainstream community is because the book does get a bit "doomsday-ish" near the end (which does fall in line with some of the points raised), and because a lot of the evidence is somewhat circumstantial or at the very least undefinitive on its own. It's only when a lot of disparate pieces of information are combined in a certain way that some of the theories and ideas start to become somewhat believable, or at least worth more investigation. Some things like the fact that Antarctica wasn't discovered until the 1800s, yet there are maps from the 1500s with detailed drawings of it. Not only that, but the drawings fromthe 1500s actually show terrain - riverbeds, etc, which are currently under 2 miles of ice and were only verified with modern technology in the early 1900s. Not really any PROOF of anything, but certainly interesting tidbits of info.

Of course, like anything - reading a book like this is like going to a debate and only hearing one side before you have to stop. Anyone can string together a bunch of ideas combined with some evidence to support their conclusions, and sound pretty believable. I'm tempted now to look for some counter-point books, just to be fair. One that seems to be fairly blunt is "Archaeological Fantasies:How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public" by Garrett Fagan.

Of course, whether I actually get around to doing that is another story. There's probably a much higher chance that I'll just move on to read Homer's The Iliad, which is already waiting for me on my desk....