TITLE:   Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age

AUTHOR:  Charles H. Hapgood

DATE PUBLISHED:  2014 (originally 1965)

FORMAT:  Paperback

ISBN-13:  9780932813428

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DESCRIPTION:

Charles Hapgood s classic 1966 book on ancient maps is back in print after 20 years. Hapgood produces concrete evidence of an advanced worldwide civilization existing many thousands of years before ancient Egypt. He has found the evidence in many beautiful maps long known to scholars, the Piri Reis Map that shows Antarctica, the Hadji Ahmed map, the Oronteus Finaeus and other amazing maps. Hapgood concluded that these maps were made from more ancient maps from the various ancient archives around the world, now lost. Hapgood also concluded that the ancient mapmakers were in some ways much more advanced scientifically than Europe in the 16th century, or than the ancient civilizations of Greece, Egypt, and Babylonian. Not only were these unknown people more advanced in mapmaking than any people prior to the 18th century, it appears they mapped all the continents. The Americas were mapped thousands of years before Columbus. Antarctica was mapped when its coasts were free of ice. There is evidence that these people must have lived when the ice age had not yet ended in the Northern Hemisphere and when Alaska was still connected with Siberia by the Pleistocene, ice age land bridge.

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REVIEW:

A fascinating analysis of several old maps and what the results ultimately mean.

TITLE:  A Twist in Time: How the Rope Age Made Mankind

AUTHOR:  Ashley Cowie

DATE PUBLISHED:  2016

FORMAT:  Kindle

ASIN:  B01EILKPRE

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DESCRIPTION:

" Presenting an entirely new perspective on prehistory, A Twist in Time demands we re-engineer our views of the Stone Age. Revealing that ancient Britons used advanced rope making, measuring and surveying skills over two millennium before Greek mathematicians formalised geometry as a science, A Twist in Time introduces a new ancient landscape bound together with rope. Welcome to the Rope Age.

After examining the rope crafts in structures such as the Great Pyramids in Egypt, A Twist in Time explores Neolithic settlements, standing stone circles and burial chambers in Britain. New observations in the designs and measurements of stone super structures such as; Ring of Brogar and Skara Brae in Orkney and Newgrange in Ireland suggest an elite class of rope specialists controlled rope production, measuring, surveying, designing and building projects in Neolithic Britain.

A Twist in Time follows the trail of these ancient proto-scientists to the North of Scotland and by re-interpreting many of the 'sacred' and 'ritualistic' artefacts discovered at ancient sites, the author provides evidence that many were simple rope making, measuring and surveying devices. Using ropes and wooden posts, notions of mystery and magic are replaced with rope crafts skills as light is shed on this greatly unexplored, yet vastly important, aspect of human history. "

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REVIEW:

A short but interesting look at how ropes were (possibly) used to build megalithic structures (and by default societies) in the Stone Age, with a focus on the archaeology of Neolithic sites such as the Ring of Brogar and Skara Brae in Orkney and Newgrange.  The subtitle is misleading, as only a small portion of the globe is examined in this book, with but a passing mention of Egyptian use of ropes and Incan quipus.  None the less, still something to think about.

TITLE:  The Portable Cosmos:  Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World

AUTHOR:  Alexander Jones

DATE PUBLISHED:  2017

FORMAT:  Hardcover

ISBN-13:  9780199739349

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Book Description:

"From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Terracotta Army, ancient artifacts have long fascinated the modern world. However, the importance of some discoveries is not always immediately understood. This was the case in 1901 when sponge divers retrieved a lump of corroded bronze from a shipwreck at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea near the Greek island of Antikythera. Little did the divers know they had found the oldest known analog computer in the world, an astonishing device that once simulated the motions of the stars and planets as they were understood by ancient Greek astronomers. Its remains now consist of 82 fragments, many of them containing gears and plates engraved with Greek words, that scientists and scholars have pieced back together through painstaking inspection and deduction, aided by radiographic tools and surface imaging. More than a century after its discovery, many of the secrets locked in this mysterious device can now be revealed.

In addition to chronicling the unlikely discovery of the Antikythera Mechanism, author Alexander Jones takes readers through a discussion of how the device worked, how and for what purpose it was created, and why it was on a ship that wrecked off the Greek coast around 60 BC. What the Mechanism has uncovered about Greco-Roman astronomy and scientific technology, and their place in Greek society, is truly amazing. The mechanical know-how that it embodied was more advanced than anything the Greeks were previously thought capable of, but the most recent research has revealed that its displays were designed so that an educated layman could understand the behavior of astronomical phenomena, and how intertwined they were with one's natural and social environment. It was at once a masterpiece of machinery as well as one of the first portable teaching devices. Written by a world-renowned expert on the Mechanism, A Portable Cosmos will fascinate all readers interested in ancient history, archaeology, and the history of science."

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The conglomerate of corroded and broken bronze pieces, eventually known as the  Antikythera Mechanism, were salvaged from a shipwreck in the early 1900s.  Initially, the fragments were studied without any certainty of what they were. By the end of that century it was confirmed that the metal device with its gears and advanced clockwork mecahnism was some kind of analog computer.  It was eventually determined that the mechanism predicted phases of the moon, planetary positions and even eclipses with great precision.

A Portable Cosmos provides a description of the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism, an extensive  desciption of the device itself and how it worked, as well as the ancient astronomy behind it.   Jones explores the mystery of the Antikythera mechanism in a no nonsense fashion and includes relevant diagrams and photographs where necessary.  The author does a thorough job of presenting numerous related topics such as the history of astronomy and astrology, calendrics and the mechanics of eclipses, as well as any ancient records of such a mechanism.  Cicero wrote about a planetarium that Archimedes used as a teaching tool, which may have been similar to the Antikythera mechanism.  The book is devided into thematic chapters, so if the technical aspects are too detailed, the reader can skip these chapters without missing out too much.  This book is scholarly and rather technical, but is none the less absorbing and very interesting.

TITLE:  Ancient Alien Ancestors:  Advanced Technologies that Terraformed Our World

AUTHOR:  Will Hart

DATE PUBLISHED:  2017

FORMAT:  e-book

ISBN-13:  978 159 1432548

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The objective of the book is to "present the scientific basis for the theory of directed panspermia, which posits that life, via microorganism, was shipped to Earth by an extraterrestrial civilization".  The author also aims to prove his "Genesis Race Theory" that life was seeded on Earth by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization and that they intervened in the evolutionary processes to create humans and to generate civilizations.

Will Hart takes a look at the whole idea of panspermia in general, the possibility of life in the universe; the possible geoengineering of the Earth; various oddities involving the construction of the Great Pyramid, the advanced engineering and town planning of the Harappan/ Indus Valley civilization in India/Pakistan; modern UFO cases and government response to these; DNA; ABO blood group genetics, clones, chimeras, hybrids and the current state of transgenic science; the Cobalamin/ Vitamin B12 enigma, and ancient Sanskrit texts on advanced civilizations.

This is an interesting book that provides a great deal of "food for thought" and new information to research.  Will Hart raises many interesting questions and seems to have hit on a hypothesis that provides an answer to these oddities.  However, the author could have made a tighter conclusion based on the evidence in this book and his previous book (The Genesis Race), but seems to just leave the reader hanging at the end.

Other book by the same author:

The Genesis Race: Our Extraterrestrial DNA and the True Origins of the Species