I first read Graham Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth’s Lost Civilization in the early 2000’s, after a friend casually mentioned it in conversation. It wasn’t really a book recommendation, at that point. And in fact, I don’t really remember what he said about the book, specifically, that piqued my interest. But he was someone I respected, the book sounded intriguing, and I immediately picked up a copy.
The thing was a tome. About two inches thick, in paperback, and coming in at 592 pages. It was far from being the longest book I’d read up to that point, but it was definitely a chunk of book that felt wonderful to hold in my hand. I do almost all of my reading via ebooks these days, but I’ve always been a sucker for a good, solid book.
I’ve also always loved history, though I did go through a period where I apparently denied this, first to myself and then, by extension and attitude, to others. It wasn’t cool, after all. I had enough trouble getting along with people in school, especially high school, without throwing “he’s the guy who nerds out about history” into the mix.
Actually, it wasn’t even strictly history I nerded out over. It was weird and unusual history.
I loved reading and watching things about ancient Egypt, for example, but mostly it was the stuff about lost tombs and treasures, mystic objects and mythic beings, powerful gods and sorcerers that really got my brain buzzing. The hint of mystery among the ancient was always the most intriguing part to me. Reading a laundry list of lineage between dynasties was never quite as appealing, and neither was memorizing when Person X read Speech Y at Location and Event Z.
A plea to history teachers: Please stop teaching history as if it’s just one big census, and start focusing on the inspiring and fun parts. Love, people who love history.
Fingerprints of the Gods hit all the right notes for me, right from page one. And though it was not the first book about “weird and unusual history” I’d ever read, it was still the start of a new era in reading and research and thought for me. It became a foundational book for my experience with and slog through history and archaeological study, and even more so for my career as a novelist.
You can see the influence of this book (as well as other books by Hancock and his peers) in my Dan Kotler Archaeological Thrillers. Kotler is, in essence, an homage to guys like Hancock—an archaeologist who skirts the edge of the accepted narrative of history, who finds himself continuously at odds with the institutions of science and academia, challenging their self-assured positions with new facts that they’d prefer to ignore. Kotler gets compared to other famous fictional archaeologists and historians—notably the likes of Indiana Jones and Dr. Robert Langdon (of Da Vinci Code fame), and even Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt, at times—but at his core is an echo of Graham Hancock.
The thing that intrigues me most about Fingerprints is the concept of comparative mythology. It’s a theme I’ve come back to hundreds of times in my novels, and to me it’s perhaps the key to understanding more about human culture and history, shedding a very different light on our origins than what has so far been our story.
Comparative mythology is, in a nutshell, the notion that hidden among all of the various and disparate cultures of the world are threads of a common story, and hints of a civilization lost to the mists of time. As just one example, when you look into every single myth and religion in recorded history, there is a flood myth. And that flood myth invariably contains common elements, even between cultures that should have absolutely nothing in common. There is always a man who communes with a greater power (God, or gods, or spirits, or some other powerful entity). This figure is told in advance of the coming of a great flood, and given explicit instructions for what to do so he and his family will survive. And in following those instructions they all do survive, to go forth and repopulate the Earth.
It’s mind boggling how similar the stories are. It shows up everywhere.
Call me on this. Go look at myths from the Mayans and Aztecs, compare them to myths from the Christian story, and then to myths from ancient Egypt, the Mesopotamian, the Phoenicians. And then, just for fun, look for flood myths among the Celts and Vikings.
Water, water everywhere.
The same thing happens with other myths and legends, including the presence of “great trees” in just about every religion in existence, and the story of a savior who dies, only to be resurrected and raised to the heavens. Read the story of Osiris, and compare him to Christ, and then for some real fun go look at the story of Viracocha—the bearded, white-skinned god worshiped by the pre-Inca in Peru, who was known for traveling the land with his disciples, teaching about doing good while healing the sick, and even walking on water.
Mind = Blown.
Fingerprints looks at all of the above, by the way, and has served me as a very stable foundation for exploring things like this at a much deeper level.
In this book I first learned of the alignment of the pyramids at Giza to the stars in the belt of Orion. I further learned that the same sort of alignment is in evidence at the Mayan pyramids. I learned about the prolific presence of circular cycles of destruction and resurrection in all the ancient cultures, a speculation about the continual death and rebirth of humanity. I learned that there are human cultures of which we know practically nothing, beyond the whispers we’ve deciphered from time-worn stone and ancient artifacts. All of these things, in one form or another, have made it into my books. And all of them hint at a world before the world we know, more ancient than we ever imagined.
“Stuff just keeps getting older,” as Graham Hancock himself is fond of saying. And he’s right.
If you’ve read and enjoyed my Dan Kotler thrillers, and have an interest in the type of “weird and usual history” that Kotler is now famous for exploring, I recommend reading Fingerprints of the Gods, and the other books that have sprung from Hancock’s pen. You’ll come away with a new perspective on history and humanity, and it will change you forever.
YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES
Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books.
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