There's a few books I want to give my review of coming up soon. I thought I'd work backwards with my latest read first, and then back to books I read a while back and just haven't had a chance to write down my thoughts on. So, with that in mind, first up is "From Atlantis to the Sphinx" from Colin Wilson.

I just read this a week or two ago during a couple of plane flights. In that respect, it's an incredibly readable book, very easy going for such a diverse topic that delves into many subjects which could be made quite difficult and unreadable. Colin Wilson really does an excellent job of bringing everything from how and when the Sphinx was built, to the history of man and pre-man through fossil evidence, to ancient maps and even neuroscience of man and how our brains may have evolved to the reader in a way which makes for easy, fun, educational reading.

The book starts off with a topic which has been controversial for Egyptologists for decades now; the dating of the construction of the Sphinx. The key point that seems to prove an earlier date than is generally recognized for Colin Wilson is the weathering of the base of the Sphinx. Was it done by sand, leaving open the possibility of the later, more accepted date? Or was it done by water, pushing the date of the construction back to at least 7,000 BC? He presents evidence from geologists, who seem to be at odds with the mainstream egyptologists about this, however, it seems as though many, if not most, geologists who have looked at the base of the Sphinx seem quite confident that there is evidence of water weathering. Assuming that it's OK to push the date back to at least that far, he takes it even further. Using astronomical calculations of the position of stars, it seems likely that the Sphinx, and perhaps the entire Giza plateau, was actually built in approximately 10,500 BC. A date which I've run into many times when researching mythologies from around the world, and in particular ancient Hopi legends and other North and South American mythologies. Can it be a coincidence that this date comes up so often, all around the world?

Going from that starting point, the book takes the reader through many other of Egypt's seemingly impossible accomplishments, from small, intricately cut vases that seem to require technology the Egyptians couldn't, or shouldn't, have had, to the precise measurements, construction and placement of the older pyramids and other artifacts contained within. He raises the possibility of advanced technology, such as some sort of sonic drill to make the precise, tiny, intricate vases, before launching off into another great question. Namely, if the Egyptians suddenly showed up alongside the Nile, ostensibly fresh off of living a nomadic lifestyle with no concept or idea of "society", how did they manage to spring right up and hit the pinnacle of their society right off the bat? Where did their construction ideas come from? Where did their medicine and construction knowledge come from? Is it likely that a society can go from nothing to something that complex without any build-up?

Of course, his point is that it's not at all likely. Leaving you to wonder where they came from and where their advanced knowledge came from. At this point, he quotes extensively from a book that's been on my "must read" list for a long time, but I haven't gotten around to reading yet: "Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings; Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age" by Dr. Charles Hapgood. To paraphrase much of the evidence presented at this point, in 1929, a map was found, painted on parchment, and signed with the name Piri Ibri Haji Memmed, This map became known as the Piri Re'is map. Captain Arlington H. Mallery got a hold of the map about 30 years later and came to the surprising conclusion that the map showed Antarctica before it was covered in ice. Since then, it seems to have been proven that the map, in fact, shows an incredibly detailed view of Antarctica in a time prior to its present condition. More maps were found, and they almost certainly prove that there was a rather advanced, worldwide, seafaring society which mapped the entire world in their time. At this point, have we found the source of not only the Sphinx, but other ancient structures from around the world?

At this point I know I wondered about how and when Antarctica might have actually been uncovered. Colin Wilson introduces the theory of the Earth's crust shifting to explain this. Once again, he calls in a Dr. Charles Hapgood book, this time "Earth's Shifting Crust" which explains that in his theory, around approximately 15,000 BC, Antarctica was, in fact, much closer to the equator. If we accept this theory, it seems entirely plausible that at this point in human history a society which was more advanced than we give credit for at that point in time was actually using boats to travel and map the world.

Most mainstream scientists at this point would argue that no proof of this has been found in the fossil record of early man, or in any archaeological evidence. Colin Wilson spends a while going through a book I'm quite familiar with to attempt to disprove this idea. "Forbidden Archaeology" is a book which I first read at least a decade ago and it opened my mind to the idea that mankind was, in fact, much older than we've given ourselves credit for. To attempt to describe all, or even a sampling, of the evidence contained in that book would be nearly impossible without an entire other book review for it(which I'd love to take time to do sometime). However, suffice to say that quite the opposite of the conventional idea that there's no evidence to show for this theory, there's actually quite a bit. A quote from Mr. Leakey seems appropriate here, "If someone went to the trouble of collecting together in one room all of the fossil remains so far discovered of our ancestors...he would need only a couple of large trestle tables to stretch them out." As Colin Wilson points out, within that tiny source from which we've drawn all of our knowledge about human evolution there's quite a few pieces which suggest we might have been around a lot longer than most people think.

Within this fossil evidence of early man, brain size seems to be held in high regard by many. However, Colin Wilson argues, many forbearers of modern man had large brain size, some even larger than our own modern brain. So, brain type and changes must play a large part. At this point he delves into the idea that while modern man has a well known, physical connection between the two halves of his brain, perhaps ancient man did not. The hypothesized result of this would be that ancient man would have felt like he "lived" in the left half of his brain, and from time to time he would almost "hear" a voice in his head. While this would actually be the right side, the more creative side, of his brain helping solve problems, he might have thought that this "voice" was, in fact, his creator, or God's voice itself. It's a well received thought that at some point in human pre-history statues, writings, etc. seemed to change in a way that has led to theories of actual, physical god-like beings have been here on Earth, and then leaving. Wilson argues that, perhaps, what actually happened is that the human brain evolved to the point that the two halves of the brain no longer communicated the way they used to, and now incorporated both parts more equally into daily life. Perhaps this evolution is part of what separates ancient man from modern man.

So in the end, what conclusions can you make from all of this evidence? It seems incredibly likely that the Sphinx, and other ancient structures from around the world were in fact created much longer ago than most assume today. It also seems likely that there was a society, whomever you wish to call them, that traveled the world, and put together a remarkably advanced society sometime prior to 10,500 BC. Probably, modern man had been around much longer than that, to evolve their society to that point.

If you accept those facts, many "problems" with the modern interpretation of early societies disappears. No longer do you have to wonder why the Giza Plateau seems to be the most well constructed, largest construction project in Egypt, where later structures don't show the same complexity or structural integrity, nor even the same size of building blocks. The earlier ones were probably built by pre-Egyptians. No longer do you have to worry about how complex societies seem to have sprung up from nowhere with astonishing speed. They had something to work off of prior to their societies. You don't have to find it a strange coincidence anymore that the ancient symbol for medicine just happens to be a near identical "picture" of DNA. There were people much further back than we now know of working on medicine. You don't have to find it odd that Egyptians, who lived in the desert on the edge of a river, had huge model of seafaring ships buried in the desert. They were working off of previous knowledge of the people who Hapgood called the "Sea Kings".

As Colin Wilson says, however, while that's interesting, what can you take from this? What kind of advancement can we make from knowing this? Perhaps, in attempting to understand how these ancient people thought, and how that may have been very different from how we think, we can understand where their knowledge came from to do such remarkable things. It seems obvious that they were much more in touch with nature and the world than we are. Have we lost our ability to manipulate the world by being so out of touch with it? He takes a long look at lost "magic" and how modern day shamans seem to be able to do things which we can't. One story he tells, which is a retelling from another researcher, is a story of how an island shaman brought porpoises to their death, without ever touching them. The story, in essence, is that a western man was researching the peoples on an island. The king told him that he looked like he needed some porpoise meat. So, the island shaman told him that he'd get porpoise meat. In his "magic" he went into his hut, and either slept, or came close to sleeping. Seemingly, he somehow "linked" with some porpoises out at sea. He came running out of his hut, and told everyone to go down to the water's edge. Sure enough, shortly thereafter, a pod of porpoises came right up to the shore, and a few of them beached themselves.

How could that be possible? Colin Wilson's conclusion is that somehow along the way, ancient man learned how to manipulate the world around him. Rather than being an "animal" who simply reacted to the world, and did his best to deal with it, man learned that he could actually control parts of the world. This was the evolutionary change that he believes actually defines the line between our ape ancestors and modern man. However, today, in our big cities and technological world, we've forgotten much of our ancient knowledge. Can we ever get it back? He seems to think that there's hope, if we want to.


While this review got a little larger than I had hoped, I think it barely scratches the surface of the research which Colin Wilson has packed into under 300 pages of material in this book. Obviously, I'd recommend it to anyone who's seriously studying the untold history of this world.