I've just read "Underworld". :spinning
Graham Hancock has correctly identified a need for a clearly explained book on the possibility of compex societies existing long before our current age - ie at the end of the paleolithic.
Unfortunately he didn't write that book.
It rambles. There are bits and pieces about his childhood, his migraines, his hypothermia.
A huge section (100 pages) is devoted to Hancocks beliefs about portolan maps which carries his argument forward not at all. Sure there may have been a "normal portolan" of truly great age but unless it is found saying that portolans seem to have coastal features associated with ice age landscapes is pointless.
Another 137 pages are dedicated to a fruitless search for undersea remains in Malta, including attacks on the Maltese Archaeological service. Fine, we know that there are doubts about it's conclusions regarding the temples and human habitation of those islands but these doubts have no place in this book.
And another thing towards the end of the book I felt that if I read one more time that "of course, I'm no expert - just a reporter" (not a direct quote) I would throw the volume out of the window. It has the same grating quality as Uriah Heep's "I'm everso 'umble". Hancock has spent umpteen years investigating the idea of paleo-civilisations, it says little for his intelligence if he is not an expert by now.
Don't get me wrong, there are some excellent things in the book, what it documents and references makes it a good source book. The revelations about ice age coastlines and surge melting make it worth reading. Trouble is Hancock could have said what he has to say in about 200 pages. To takes 667 is a waste of woodland.
Graham Hancock has correctly identified a need for a clearly explained book on the possibility of compex societies existing long before our current age - ie at the end of the paleolithic.
Unfortunately he didn't write that book.
It rambles. There are bits and pieces about his childhood, his migraines, his hypothermia.
A huge section (100 pages) is devoted to Hancocks beliefs about portolan maps which carries his argument forward not at all. Sure there may have been a "normal portolan" of truly great age but unless it is found saying that portolans seem to have coastal features associated with ice age landscapes is pointless.
Another 137 pages are dedicated to a fruitless search for undersea remains in Malta, including attacks on the Maltese Archaeological service. Fine, we know that there are doubts about it's conclusions regarding the temples and human habitation of those islands but these doubts have no place in this book.
And another thing towards the end of the book I felt that if I read one more time that "of course, I'm no expert - just a reporter" (not a direct quote) I would throw the volume out of the window. It has the same grating quality as Uriah Heep's "I'm everso 'umble". Hancock has spent umpteen years investigating the idea of paleo-civilisations, it says little for his intelligence if he is not an expert by now.
Don't get me wrong, there are some excellent things in the book, what it documents and references makes it a good source book. The revelations about ice age coastlines and surge melting make it worth reading. Trouble is Hancock could have said what he has to say in about 200 pages. To takes 667 is a waste of woodland.