Fingerprints of the Gods - Book Review

[Forum Monk]

Yes, I am aware of those ice dam floods as many geological features in the pacific northwest resulted from such catastrophies. The effect on local populations would have been immeasurable. It seems in most cases the flood strikes and recedes. It doesn't remain since most water will eventually drain away. Afterward, it becomes a coastal event if the flood is large enough.

[Minimalist]

Besides, there is the exaggeration factor. The flood will always get bigger and more destructive, never less so....particularly when it falls into the hands of religion purveyors who attempt to use it as a means to gain control over the populace.

You know, the fundis are always going on about Jesus Coming because there are floods and earthquakes and wars and famines....

But there have always been floods and earthquakes and wars but there was no CNN to bring it to us in real time. Put it another way. How long would it have taken us to hear about the Indian Ocean tsunami if it had happened in 1804 instead of 2004? Two hundred years is not even noticeable on the geological clock. Ships at sea are not in danger from tsunamis but if they then sailed into a devastated port would they even understand the scope of the calamity? How long to sail from Calcutta back to Britain? There would have been no "relief effort." Those people would have lived or died on their own. Same with the Pakistan earthquake. Two hundred years ago there would have been no international relief effort....no one would have known it happened until months after it was over. In such circumstances I can see entire civilizations coming to an end from the damage from the causal event and the follow up from disease, starvation and lawlessness.

Perhaps Ted Turner is the anti-christ? He made it possible for us to find out about all the "signs."

[marduk]

do you really want to know about the great flood Min
what if it makes G.H look like an intellectual fraudster ?

[Beagle]

Hey, Beags, if it is okay with you I would like to move on to an issue on which I disagree totally with Hancock...just for a change! Thanks to Monk for finding the online version, I don't have to re-type the whole thing. In Chapter 50 Hancock begins by talking about his researcher resigning.

It transpired that, in his opinion, certain significant economic, climatic, topographical and geographical preconditions had to be met before a civilization could evolve:

So if you are looking for a hitherto undiscovered civilization of great originators who made it on their own, separate from any of the ones we already know, you are not looking for a needle in a haystack. You are looking for something more like a city in its hinterland. What you are looking for is a vast region which occupied a land area at least a couple of thousand miles across.

This is a landmass as big as the Gulf of Mexico, or twice the size of Madagascar. It would have had major mountain ranges, huge river systems and a Mediterranean to sub-tropical climate which was buffered by its latitude from the adverse effects of short-term climatic cooling.

It would have needed this relatively undisturbed climate to last for around ten thousand years ... Then the population of several hundred thousand sophisticated people, we are to believe, suddenly vanished, together with their homeland, leaving very little physical trace, with only a few surviving individuals who were shrewd enough to see the end coming, wealthy enough and in the right place, with the resources they needed to be able to do something about escaping the cataclysm.

So there I was without a researcher. My proposition was a priori impossible. There could be no lost advanced civilization because a landmass big enough to support such a civilization was too big to lose.

Now, Hancock used this dubious proposition by his researcher to latch on to Hapgood's discredited Crust-Shift model. But a more reasoned approach would have been to question the parameters which were set. Why would a lost civilization have had to be on a continent-sized landmass?

History, especially his own, teaches us that small civilizations have developed major empires. Britain, not so long ago, an island nation of no great size, expanded so that the boast "the sun never sets on the British Empire" was not an idle claim. They did not do this with machine guns and jet fighters. Much of their empire was built with single-shot muskets and bayonets and a navy to transport them where needed. The Minoan civilization apparently got much the same service from its navy, yet Crete is also just a small island and not a continent. Roman civilization developed from one small city state. Greek culture developed in isolation and then spread when the Macedonian developed a 21 foot pike to push their enemies away. Sometimes, something as minor as a compound bow versus a plain bow was a sufficient technological edge.

At some point I think that Hancock lost the courage of his convictions, here. Anyone who wants to can go play with that sea level toy I posted. If you go back to the LGM and set the sea level to -130 meters you will find plenty of areas the size of Rome, Crete, Britain or Greece which were submerged. Why does Hancock not stick to his original thesis that a civilization could easily have developed in a now submerged coastal region and given rise to many of the legends which we maintain.

With any mythology you have to look for the kernel of truth which underlies. In any fish story, the fish never gets smaller. So it is necessary to start peeling back the layers of exaggeration to find out what the reality may have been. If underwater archaeology can help in this, I am all for it.

Hey Min, I just got back from Indiana, had to run up for a funeral ( one of my distant in-laws).

I agree that the size of the land mass has little to do with ability of a culture to project it's influence on others. Moreover, once GH buys into the ECD theory he then has a free ticket to conjure up any scenario that suits him. He has taken advantage of that at times but I don't think he got too preposterous with it. After all, he didn't invoke the Atlanteans, as he easily could have.

His best argument, to me anyway, lies in the fact that he stressed legends and myths that are common to most of humankind, from all different countries. (And we're agreed about the kernal of truth.)

Unfortunately though, this doesn't separate Hancock from scores of book authors that fill the bookstores. Most people see the logic of a common theme. Authors keep trying to answer the mystery. Who knows, maybe the answer to the First American mystery will provide the missing links.

[Minimalist]

Authors who do not have club membership cards keep trying to answer the question, you mean.

[Essan]

Most of the models I have seen do not call for a slow meltdown, though.

All models and data indicate a gradual meltdown, punctuated with the occasions ice dam collapse - but even the worst of these would only have produced global sea rises of a few inches.

Although in geological terms it was pretty quick - taking only about ten thousand years.

Sea levels reached their peak around 6,000 years ago.

[Forum Monk]

Besides, there is the exaggeration factor. The flood will always get bigger and more destructive, never less so....particularly when it falls into the hands of religion purveyors who attempt to use it as a means to gain control over the populace.

But, if flood theology is a means to gain control of the populace, it wouldn't have been restricted to hebrews and christians. Many religions through the eons could have 'enhanced' the story.

Perhaps Ted Turner is the anti-christ? He made it possible for us to find out about all the "signs."

I thought he pretty much clinched the title when he married Jane Fonda.

[Minimalist]

No, Monk. "Religion" is about controlling people. They simply use any pretext available to make the point.

[Forum Monk]

No, Monk. "Religion" is about controlling people. They simply use any pretext available to make the point.

That being said, there were religions which predated judaism and extrapolating your logic, would have exaggerated or modified the flood history to suit their agenda. (and not only the flood history, but any history which can be exploited)

IMO religion was such a part of cultural existence it is difficult to examine evidence of any kind without considering the influence those religious beliefs may have had upon it. Even those Akkadian texts which are used as evidence of hebrew redaction, are wrapped in into a religious context. Afterall, who sent the flood? A natural disaster? No. A god and why? Becuase humans were too 'noisy'. Perhaps in violation of a religious ban on excess noise for some reason or another.

[Minimalist]

there were religions which predated judaism and extrapolating your logic, would have exaggerated or modified the flood history to suit their agenda.

And so they did. Arch isn't here any longer so when current archaeological thinking shows that the "Israelites" did not begin to coalesce into a community until sometime around 1200 BC it does not set off a firestorm of Fundi Fury. Judaism was a johnny-come-lately to the world in that sense and they plagiarized that story and many others from the Babylonians.

[Forum Monk]

There are two problems with fundemental literalism as I see it.

The first is, acknowledging that the hebrew texts are a combination of literal and allegorical constructs, how does one spearate between the two? One can conduct a thorough exegesis of the scripture to gain some clues but it is not reasonable to ignore external 'truths' as a guide in making the determination. eg. the age old question, "did God make the dinosaur fossils?"

The second, in my opinion is related to the first but deals specifically with interpretation. For example, the current fundemental thinking says the exodus occured about 1447bce. This is referenced to a historical starting date of when Solomon built the original temple in Jerusalem and going backward 490 years through the period of the Judges, wanderings, etc. And yet, a literal interpretation of the judges period requires quite a few more years than 490. So why the descrepancy and why do the literalists ignore it? Other, well written hypotheses have been put forth such as the "omission principle". The problem is, this alters the orthodox view and is not well received. The same can be said for the entire patriarchal period. Interpretation is everything and it is flat out, often wrong as history itself attests. Recall, the church once interpreted that God would never create a universe that did not have the earth at its center.

To be fair, however, the second principle of interpretation applies very much to archaeology as well. Finds are often misinterpreted for myrads of reasons and quite frequently the anthropologists have a completely different interpretation of evidence. One of the big problems we face is sometimes a theory or hypothesis is put forth and finds favor. It may later be thoroughly and utterly discredited and debunked. And yet it continues to a have a life of its own.

I am not a literalist because I have not figured out how to perform the exegesis, and how to 'rightly divide the Word of Truth" as Paul admonishes. I think it may take a lifetime of careful study. I guess some are just smarter than me.

[marduk]

Judaism was a johnny-come-lately to the world in that sense and they plagiarized that story and many others from the Babylonians.

at the time they plagiarized those stories from the library of Nineveh Babylon was under Assyrian control
this was before the Babylonian dispora and Nebuchadrezzars attack on Jerusalem
and the majority of the texts and stories they retold edited in line with their own cultural identity were actually from Akkadian texts

[Minimalist]

The problem with literalism is that we would have to simply scrap every piece of historical and scientific evidence which proves literalism wrong.

We know there is not enough water on the planet to cover the mountain tops. Their answer: Yes there is.

Life evolves. This is a fact. There are enough evidences of primitive forms in the fossil record and there have been enough observances of evolution on the microbiological level to prove that. The mechanism of evolution is still in dispute but science will eventually figure it out. Their response: No it isn't.

The earth is 4 billion years old. Their response: No...it's 6,000 years old...or maybe 12,000 but no more.

The Earth revolves around the sun. Their response....actually they are strangely silent on that one because the bible says the sun is moving. One can only wonder why they chose to give up that little tidbit?

Anyway, if the Exodus was in 1447 then there is a strange void in the Tel-El-Amarna letters which date from the reign of Ahkenaten c 1350 BC and which detail the Egyptian dominance over their Canaanite vassals without so much as a mention of any 'Israelites.' The Egyptians kept a choke hold on Canaan from c 1550 to 1150 BC and the only reference to "Israel" is from the Merneptah stele c 1207 BC in which he claims to have kicked the crap out of them.

The other problem with 1447 is that it falls during the reign of Amenhotep II, a ruler who successfully ended revolts in Syria in the early years of his reign and then had a long and prosperous rule with no indication that the country was "laid low" by anything. Moreover, since the 480 years between Exodus and the Temple followed 480 years in bondage, that would take the start of the enslavement back to 1927 BC during the reign of Senusret I. This was getting close to the end of the Middle Kingdom and Egypt dissolved in a period of virtual anarchy called the Second Intermediate Period. It was during this time that the Hyksos, semitic invaders (or perhaps settlers) from Canaan came to power in Egypt as the 15th dynasty. So....were there Canaanite 'slaves' in Egypt they would have been held in slavery by fellow Canaanite rulers....not Egyptians for a good part of this time. Bible fails to mention this.

The trouble with fundamentalist literalism is that everyone else's history and science has to be trashed to make room for it. That only works in "religion" not in real life.

[Forum Monk]

You might have been a preacher in another life.

[Minimalist]

I've got as much chance of being a preacher as I do of being Chairman of The Club's Membership Committee.