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Summary: The best book I've ever read
Review: A book that will question your beliefs on the history of mankin
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Summary: what, or who is "ibid" referred to hundreds of times in book
Review: wonderful book. i couldn't put it down from the moment i read about the piri riis map. however i am mystified about the hundreds of references to "ibid", apparently a book, probably ancient, and unknown to any bookstore i've talked to, and also unknown to amazon. other references given in the book, and in subsequent books of hancock's, i.e. "lessons of the sphinx" are complete, with author's name and publication data. no such information is included in references to ibid. what is ibid????
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Summary: Hancock Visits the Temple of His Mind
Review: Hancock's book contains intriguing detail, but I just have to wonder about some of his assertions. The pyramids at Giza are certainly magnificent examples of ancient architecture. But, is the brilliance in their execution an example of extraterrestrial intervention in human events? Hancock provides numerous mathematical relationships to support his theories, but the question is: did the ancient Egyptians think as Hancock does? And, does the evidence which Hancock cites truly prove that ET visited ancient Egypt? Books such as this one serve as an important lesson to inquiring, intelligent minds: Belief can be the deciding factor in the "truth" one manages to see--a condition to which we are all susceptible.
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Summary: Amazing.But keep your eyes open and your BS detector on!
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book and thinking about some of the things Hancock talks about, especially about the pyramids and the mathematics involved. I've also read his 'Message of the Sphinx' and found that equally interesting. The thing is, I found myself following some of his lines of investigation and evidence and going, "Okay, okay, that makes sense...whoa! Where did that come from??" Hancock has a bad tendency to take one piece of evidence and say, "This may be the key to the mystery....now that we know this is TRUE therefore, this must also be true." So I'm perfectly willing to entertain the theory that something like the pyramids or the sphinx may be older than we think, and that the ancient Egyptians had advanced mathematical knowledge but when he tries to link everything together to show some kind of global cataclysm is coming, I can't help but put him in the same category as all the other Chicken Little millenialist doomsayers. He certainly is enthusiastic and has a dramatist's flair, often ending chapters with a breathless statement that you suppose will be addressed in the next chapter, but he tends to drift and not really give you a big wind-up to his cliffhangers. For all that it is interesting and he does have some points to make about Egyptology and the fossilized attitudes of academia. So read it, and more importantly, THINK about it and draw your own conclusions, read between the lines and see what does and doesn't make sense, and don't go cashing in your mutual funds and blowing it all on a big party ten years from now because Graham Hancock says the world is going to end...
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Summary: a breathtaking voyage into the unknown
Review: basically, hancocks investigations lead to quite an outstanding view of our past and future.Even for all you sceptics out there, most of his views are based on solid mathematical research, and you cannot argue with the power of math. read it now!!!!!!!!!!!
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Summary: Excellent read but a very one sided view
Review: A very interesting series of hypotheses presented in a very clear manner expounding the possibility of an ancient pre Egyptian civilization being responsible for the pyramids etc, the implication of which is to completely amend earth history as we currently perceive it. Striking in its attack upon conventional Egyptologists blinkered approach to the evidence when it suits them, but throughout you want to hear the contra view also.
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Summary: You've missed the point
Review: Interestingly, I have skipped through all the reviews of 'Fingerprints' to those who gave it less than a gleaming review.Why? Because i thought it was one of the most wonderful books I have read and was interested to see if I was bereft of objectivity. O.K. the criticisms centre around the length of the work and the abundance of seemingly disjointed examples. But you've missed the point! It re-awakened in me the spirit of adventure and the feeling of what it is like to actually begin to question and think about things more deeply - as opposed to rushing home from work to watch TV. It's been a long time since school - the last time I was fascinated by a quest for knowledge - (largely achieved through reading) - and this book has reintroduced me to two of the great wonders of that time, history and books. I have become a devotee of all Graham's works since.
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Summary: Provocative but hardly substantiated
Review: I'll leave it to the numerous other reviewers to summarize Hancock's conclusions. In essence, however, he is a latter-day Atlantis enthusiast who places his lost civilization in Antarctica. This naturally ignores the geological evidence, from ice cores, that the ice sheet on Antarctica is at least 150,000 years old, and probably older. It is this lack of critical thinking, this credulity, that ultimately undermines the arguments he makes. There is enough here to give one pause, though. Evidence of extensive water erosion on the Sphinx hints at a greater age than Egyptologists would acknowledge (though Hancock characteristically glosses over more than a millenium of wet weather on Giza from 7000-5500 B.C. in setting his age at 10,500 B.C.). The lack of adornment in the Giza pyramids, as contrasted to other pyramids, hints at a function other than simple tombs. And so on. Hancock is not a man who believes in coincidences; thus the monuments of the ancient American civilizations must draw upon the same sources as those of Egypt, common features of myths from across the world reflect a shared heritage, and preoccupations with astrological signs in different cultures are undoubtedly "messages" from a lost society looking to the impermanence of the stars for their legacy. One must look elsewhere to find a more complete description of these matters, with a discussion of the _differences_. Even based on what is here, however, it is not clear to me why the recurrence of floods, or dogs, in different myths should be surprising, for example. And of course, to explain the loss of a great Antarctic civilization, Hancock must bring up a radical new geological idea of crust displacement that has no basis in any sort of evidence. I am tempted to call Hancock a von Daniken of the '90's. In the end, I think he is actually more of a Velikovsky of the '90's: Velikovsky wanted to explain Biblical events using natural phenomena, and so invented a goofy scenario of Earth/Venus interactions to explain them; at root, the idea that the collision of small bodies with the Earth has profound effects upon its history is of value. Hancock wants to validate the idea of a prehistorical Atlantis, and so he engages in all sorts of goofy speculation; at root, the idea that civilization of some sort may have existed 15,000 years ago may prove of value.
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Summary: One of the most inspiring books in human history. Thrilling.
Review: The Great Sphinx, the pyramids in Giza, the fascinating temples in Tiahuanaco, the Temple of the Sun,... All these monuments of ancient history were always very intriging for mankind. How could they've been built without our modern technology, without our common knowledge and science? In 'Fingerprints of the Gods' Graham Hancock brings all the elements (myths, the way the temples were built, the materials that were used,...) together and discovers that all these buildings could refer to a forgotten and disappeared civilization, he discovers that all these monuments refer to an other epoch, an epoch which ended about 10000 BC. He has built an incredible theory which is well constructed, almost irrefutable and what do the egyptoligists, archeologists and historicians do? Nothing, they just ignore him. Frustrating. This book contains a very renewing 'theory'. A must for everybody who's interested in history or archeology. Magnificently written.
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Summary: Extremely interesting...
Review: This book brings intriguing questions about our own human history, such questions that modern science has yet to answer. I had to take the book everywhere I went until I finished it. After reading this, one realizes how easy it is for a global disaster to destroy all our knowledge. Most scientists, and many an average person, think that the progression of technology is absolute. Man goes from stone-age to computer age, in the geologically short time span of 5,000 years. So they immediately discredit any story coming from prehistory as "myths" -- Make believe, fiction. This shows that we need to keep our minds more open, and be willing to look into something that diverts from the mainstream. There may be more than what just meets the eye.
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