Matthew Cochrane, Guest Blog: Book Review: Fingerprints of the Gods

Fingerprints of the Gods

By Graham Hancock/Three Rivers Press

In his fascinating book, Fingerprints of the Gods, Graham Hancock details his travels around the world studying ancient civilizations, focusing primarily on Central and South America and Egypt. Approaching mankind’s history like a giant jigsaw puzzle, Hancock makes, what seems at first glance, two seemingly outrageous claims: 1) A civilization much more advanced technologically and culturally than our own existed thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, years ago before perishing in a series of cataclysmic natural disasters; and 2) This civilization left warning signs around the world to prepare us for more forthcoming disasters.

To support his first claim, Hancock makes a compelling case. He uses, in turn, archeological, historical, and scientific evidence, forcing readers to challenge their preconceived notions of history and the evolution of human civilization. This premise takes up the vast majority of Hancock’s massive tome, as he slowly and carefully reveals the evidence for his bold assertion. Unfortunately, Hancock makes the case for his second claim much more boldly and sloppily, resorting to a foundation built on more opinion and speculation than facts and evidence.

Hancock begins the book a bit oddly. Without any introduction whatsoever, he begins discussing the Piri Reis Map, a map made in Constantinople in 1513 derived from other, earlier, sources. Hancock quickly notes several peculiarities about this early map, not the least of which is that the Piri Reis Map accurately depicts the coastline of Antarctica more than 300 years before the frozen continent was allegedly discovered. He also explains that part of the coastline illustrated in the map had not been in an ice-free condition since approximately 4000 BC according to the all of the geological evidence. Hancock writes:

In other words, the true enigma of this 1513 map is not so much its inclusion of a continent not discovered until 1818 but its portrayal of part of the coastline of that continent under ice-free conditions which came to an end 6000 years ago and have not since recurred.

It is here Hancock first introduces us to Professor Hapgood’s “earth crust displacement” theory. Endorsed by Albert Einstein, Hapgood was a professor at Keene College and believed the whole outer crust of the earth can undergo massive shifts around the earth’s core “much as the skin of an orange, if it were loose, might shift over the inner part of the orange all in one piece.” I can neither competently endorse nor criticize this geological theory but the fact Einstein endorsed it seems to lend it some credence. Hancock then proposes that Antarctica’s coastlines might not have been covered by ice thousands of years ago, when the sources of the Piri Reis Map were originally made because it might not have sat on the earth’s South Pole. This would account for the coastlines being ice-free, allowing the cartographers to accurate map the continent’s geological coastline.

After a few brief chapters on Hapgood’s earth crust displacement theory and Antarctica, Hancock largely ignores both subjects for four hundred pages before picking them up again near the book’s conclusion. While he does eventually tie everything together, this originally leaves the reader confused as to why he began his book this way.

It is after these chapters, however, that Hancock assumes the first-person narrative style of his travels and the pace of the book picks up and goes from interesting to fascinating. Beginning in South America, Hancock explores archeological artifacts that seem to point to one conclusion: ancient civilizations, of which we know little to nothing about, possessed vast and sophisticated scientific knowledge.

The first of these phenomena Hancock explores are the famous Nazca lines. The Nazca plateau in southern Peru is a desolate, unwelcoming place. The only thing making this plateau memorable is a series of drawings – on a massive, epic scale. How large are they? Hancock answers:

None of the designs is small enough to be seen from ground level, where they appear merely as a series of ruts in the desert. They show their true form only when seen from an altitude of several hundred feet. There is no elevation nearby that provides such a vantage point.

The drawings include geometrical shapes (where some of the lines extend for miles) and pictures of animals and humans. In fact, some of the drawings are more remarkable for their precision and attention to detail than they are for their sheer size. Hancock writes:

…let us note that the Nazca spider also accurately depicts a member of a known spider genus – Rinuculei. This, as it happens, is one of the rarest spider genera in the world, so rare indeed that it has only been found in remote and inaccessible parts of the Amazon rainforest. How did the supposedly primitive Nazcan artists travel so far from their homeland, crossing the formidable barrier of the Andes, to obtain a specimen? More to the point, why should they have wanted to do such a thing and how were they able to duplicate minute details of Ricinuclei’s anatomy normally visible only under a microscope…?

Hancock relates several other places of interest in the lower American continent. For instance, a sculpture from the Olmec site of La Venta very clearly shows a man seated and driving what can only be described as some sort of vehicular or mechanical device. Through it all, Hancock points to what might be deemed clues, but not cold hard proof, that a great civilization was lost deep in the annals of history.

The best part of the book, however, deals with Egypt and the great pyramids. Personally, I always imagined the pyramids were such a big deal because of their sheer size. Other than that, I never gave them much thought. After reading Fingerprints, though, I now realize that their size is just about their least significant characteristic. As he does with most of his subject matter, Hancock questions the conventional wisdom concerning the pyramids. He questions who built them, how they were built, how long it took to build them, how old they were, and even why they were originally built. Explaining some of these issues, Hancock writes:

It wasn’t just the tens of thousands of blocks weighing 15 tons or more that the builders would have had to worry about. Year in, year out, the real crises would have been caused by the millions of “average-sized” blocks, weighing say 2.5 tons, that also had to be brought to the working plane. The Pyramid has been reliably estimated to consist of a total of 2.3 million blocks. Assuming that the masons worked ten hours a day, 365 days a year, the mathematics indicate that they would have needed to place 31 blocks in position every hour (about one block every two minutes) to complete the Pyramid in twenty years. Assuming that construction work had been confined to the annual three-month lay-off, the problems multiplied: four blocks a minute would have to be delivered, about 240 every hour.

It is impossible to comment on all the mysteries Hancock reveals to his readers in the space provided here. Needless to say, I have whole new respect for the precision and scope of the pyramids then I ever had before. Throughout his book, Hancock also compares remarkably similar legends shared by different cultures he encountered throughout his journey. He believes (as do I) the similarities of these legends points to one common civilization all cultures share in their history. Some of these legends are familiar to all, like ancient accounts of a worldwide flood made famous in Genesis.

Something also needs to be said, here, of Hancock’s writing style, which, I suspect, most readers will either love or hate. For most of the book Hancock resorts to a first-person narrative, describing his clues for an advanced ancient civilization as he travels to and explores the pertinent locales. At some points, this sort of narrative soars. For instance, while Hancock illegally scaled the exterior of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, he simultaneously talks about the Pyramid’s stones. His first-person narrative of scaling these same stones added a lot of perspective and detail to the text. At other points, this writing style seemingly falls flat. For example, in another place in the book, he attempts to tell a humorous anecdote of being discovered by Japanese tourists as he climbed into a coffin to gain a different perspective. While this might have been amusing in a shorter book, in this 500+ page tome, it feels more tedious than anything else.

Hancock also displays a maddening habit of leaving his readers with more questions than answers. For instance, while discussing the complex Mayan calendar produced, by all other standards, a rather crude and simple civilization he writes:

So how come the Maya got handy with big periods like hundreds of millions of years? Was it a freak of cultural development? Or did they inherit the calendrical and mathematical tools which facilitated, and enabled them to develop, this sophisticated understanding? If an inheritance was involved, it is legitimate to ask what the original inventors of the Mayan calendar’s computerlike circuitry had intended it to do. What was it designed for? Had they simply conceived of all its complexities to concoct “a challenge to the intellect, a sort of tremendous anagram,” as one authority claimed? Or could they have had a more pragmatic and important objective in mind?

This might be inevitable considering the subject matter but I found myself constantly wishing for more concrete answers than Hancock provides.

Indeed, for such a long book most of my criticism centers on it not being long enough. Hancock ambitiously bites off a lot and sometimes fails to thoroughly cover all of his bases. When questioning orthodox scholarship on any particular question he usually handles the argument well, explaining why mainstream scholarship accepts a certain position and why he disagrees. In these instances, Hancock rarely fails to make a compelling case. In more than a few instances, however, Hancock states what orthodox scholarship believes on a certain topic but fails to disclose why they believe this. In these cases, it is impossible to judge Hancock’s arguments based on the merits of the case.

Hancock concludes his book by coming full circle. He reveals his belief that an ancient civilization existed on the continent of Antarctica and that it was essentially destroyed when the earth’s crust shifted and placed the continent on the earth’s South Pole. There were a few survivors, however, who managed to pass on their knowledge to other civilizations, like Egypt and places in Central and South America. Hancock believes this explains why these cultures have so many common traditions and legends (e.g. a cataclysmic worldwide flood).

Furthermore, Hancock believes that within the Pyramids and other devices (e.g. the Mayan calendar), are complex codes meant to be deciphered by future advanced civilizations such as ourselves. These codes, Hancock believes, spell out when the next great crust displacement is to take place, giving us warning. Most of these conclusions are based on bold speculations, not facts, so I don’t want to criticize Hancock too much for thinking outside of the box. These warnings don’t seem to do us much good, however, as Hancock proposes we do little more than set up safe havens that would hopefully survive the next great crust displacement.

Overall, Hancock’s book is fascinating. He explores several ancient cultures and civilizations, opening up a world previously unknown to millions of readers (myself included). While the book is initially hard to get into and hits a few tedious spots along the way, for the most part, Hancock holds the reader’s attention while relating fascinating mysteries of the ancient world.

Matthew Cochrane works in law enforcement in South Florida. He blogs regularly at Not Conformed Thoughts where, according to his legions of admiring fans, he keeps busy making up a “bunch of bull crap rules.” He then uses those rules as “excuses” to delete comments he doesn’t like. Those who don’t know him say he is a weak person who “probably” has got some “real issues.” He is also widely known by those who have never met him to be immature with no sense of humor. In his spare time he is a contributing editor at Conservative 21, a website dedicate to defending conservative ideals and principles.