Fundamental Flaws in Graham Hancock's Book 'Fingerprints of the Gods'

Fundamental Flaws in Graham Hancock's Book 'Fingerprints of the Gods'

For those that don't know Graham Hancock is a well known author and journalist since the late 1980's.  He is a world explorer famous for looking at ancient ruins. 

Until a couple years ago I did not know who Graham Hancock was, or any other of his contemporaries for that matter.  I did not start using the Internet until several years ago.  Radio waves and electro-magnetic waves emitted by electronic and cellular devices are actually very harmful (even up to and including causing cancers) to the human immune system, white blood cells, our own natural energy/ electromagnetic fields and the like (which actually protects us from sickness- when our "auras" are compromised sickness can occur).  For more on this issue please see Dr. Robert Becker's study 'Cross Currents' and Daniel Reid's book 'The Complete Book of Chinese Health and Healing: Guarding the Three Treasures" (which are shen- or spirit, chi- or inner energy, and jing- or essence).  Dr. Yang Jwing Ming's book "The Root of Chinese Qigong" is also good, he had a Longfist KungFu and Tai Chi school in Jamaica Plains outside of Boston. 

Anyway several years ago I started using a lap-top computer.  I enjoy using it as a device and tool for learning, either like a library of information, and also there are many great lectures and presentations on various subjects that people have uploaded.  When I came across radio interviews of people like Graham Hancock I was excited.  I like his work.  On many points I would agree with Graham Hancock or John Anthony West that there must have been a former "Golden Age" in our history, probably before the cataclysm of the Last Ice Age 12,000 years ago.  For instance, the alternative dating of the Sphinx of the Giza Platue sounds solid, pushing this monument further into the past.  And now sites like Gobekli Tepe in Turkey and Gunong Pudang in Indonesia affirm that there really are discernable physical evidence of civilizations going back before the time of the last ice age.

I would agree with people like Graham Hancock who wrote 'FingerPrints of the Gods' and Ignatious Donnelly who wrote 'Atlantis: the Antediluvian World' that many of our ancient civilizations gained some of their building skill and knowledge from still older civilizations.  For instance, similarities in some of the different deities and legends that existed among the ancient Sumerians, Egyptians and Mayans/ Olmecs (Xi) peoples are too strong to ignore, even down to the writing symbols of their respective hieroglyphic alphabets as Ignatious Donnelly pointed out in his Atlantis book.  Graham Hancock proposes that these civilizations inherited this knowledge from much ancient times, and from there things evolved sepeartly.  He could be right, or partly right about this.  I would urge ourselves to think twice before we think that we know better than this.  He calls this an "unknown third party influence."

Furthermore, I could show somebody a picture of a lesser-known temple ruin from the Yucatan Peninsula and than show them a lesser known temple from Cambodia, and fool them by saying they are from the same place and people would believe this because the ruins are so architecturally similar.  This can also apply to some of the Stone Chambers and mounds in the American Northeast and SouthEast compared with the British Isles and the Mediteranian region.  In both these cases, the latitude lines are the same, ocean travel would have been (is) possible or these areas could have even been connected at a very remote age.  So what is going on here.  Did our ancestors inherit their civilizations from common sources in a "Golden Age" tens of thousands of years ago?  From this perspective I do find the work of Graham Hancock fascinating.  SOMETHING happened.  In the old Arab world such megalithic ruins were said to be "as old as Ad", meaning, as old as civilization or time itself (see Donnelly's 'Atlantis- the Anteduluvian World.').

However, I started to read his book 'FingerPrints of the Gods' just recently and found some aspects of the book to be immediately distasteful.  The first part about the maps is good.  I enjoy the journey he takes us through South and Central America, but he gets some very fundamental things wrong in which he bases some of his ideas on.  According to the Spanish conquistador chroniclers, says Hancock, the great civilizer of the Incan tradition Varicocha and the great civilizer of the Mayan/ Azetz traditions, Quetzelcoatl was a white man!  This is absurd!  The ancient people of these regions probably associated the color white as a sacred color associated with Creation, for it is the magnetic white light energy of the universe that brings life onto the Earth plane.  Much like how people even today think that every event in the Judaic/ Christian Bible is literal (certainly there is some historic accuracy with the Bible, but not neccesarily with, say, Ezekial's vision which sounds like a 'divine/ spiritual' intervention), the Spanish conqueror's probably gave attributes such as blue eyes and caucasian descriptions to the Viracocha and Queztelcoatl deities in an act of manifest destiny so that the Crown governments and the Church could stake their claims in the New World.  So this is the first flaw that Hancock makes in his work.

Furthermore Graham Hancock attributes statues and idols of bearded men amongst the ruins of the temple complexes of Central and South America to be representative of a caucasian presence.  He reverts to the old stereo-type that Native people of the New World do not grow facial hair!  Again, this is fundamentally flawed.  Among the Aztecs, for instance, it was customary that an adolescent male pluck his facial hair out with a pair of hot tweezers.  However, this was not true of the priest-classes.  They DID have beards.  Similarly, this is true with other cultures as well, which gives credence to Hancock's overall hypothesis of civilization being handed down in an age of deep antiquity.  For instance, the priests of the chiefs on the Hawaiian Islands had/ have beards.  This, as well as some stone structures and idols, can be seen in the 1960's movie 'Hawaii!' which was based on an earlier novel of a mission to early colonial Hawaii.  In North America, it was considered a 'crime' to tug on or to shave the beard of a Cherokee holy man.  It is true that Native people may not grow facial hair as fully or as fast as white people, but we do grow facial hair.  Take myself for instance, a person of Native heritage although one might say also having a strong white admixture.  Even I do not grow facial hair as quickly or as fully as the average white person.  When I haven't shaved for 2 days it looks like some people's five o' clock shadow.  But anyway.  So this is Graham Hancock's second flaw.  Native indigenous people of the 'New World' could grow, and in some cases had, beards.  These statues Mr. Hancock writes about probably weren't Caucasian but rather, Mayan/ Olmec/ Aztec holy men and astronomers, "presiding" over the temple grounds.

Next, Hancock claims that the heads of Olmec statues are features of black men.  This may or may not be true.  Many people point out the flat nose and full lips as a black feature.  However, some Aztec and other native people have such features and when compared to the statues match up with those features.  So in this case Hancock's claim that the Olmec heads are representations of black people is shaky at best and perhaps flat-out inaccurate.

These are just some points about Graham Hancock's book 'Fingerprints of the Gods' I wanted to point out, that I find to be flawed.  I found that Ignatious Donnelly in his Atlantis book, written in the late 19th century, also made similar mistakes and conclusions concerning race.  However, Graham Hancock's research into ancient ruins and civilizations is still astounding and educational in many ways, including the Ice Age cataclysm event which is the subject of his most recent book 'Magicians of the Gods.'  Even though these authors made some mistakes due to lack of an indigenous knowledge base, their general subject matter and issues which they write about concerning the ancient past are far more important than any mistakes they may have made.  For instance, some cultural similarities should be looked at such as architectural design, knowledge of astronomy, similarities in the syllables in the hieroglyphic alphabets of the Mayans and Egyptians and their meanings, and legends such as the Mayan/ Aztec Aztlan (the Aztec equivalent of the Greek Atlantis) coming from an island of reeds to the East in the Atlantic, compared to where the Egyptians said their civilization came from, also an island of reeds.  Such things cannot be coincidence.

So, those are just some thoughts on that subject for now.